Azure Contract Job Trends in England

Microsoft Azure
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Azure skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,431 4,053 5,192
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.84% 15.81% 13.69%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.06% 42.24% 41.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,880 2,745 3,845
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.80% -2.73% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 25 71
10th Percentile £20.84 £21.42 £17.78
25th Percentile £42.50 £23.80 £23.52
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £60.80
90th Percentile £84.80 £77.38 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -16.04%

All Cloud Computing Skills
England

Azure falls under the Cloud Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring cloud computing skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for cloud computing skills 12,911 9,595 12,531
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.65% 37.42% 33.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,917 6,420 9,080
10th Percentile £306 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 356 140 308
10th Percentile £14.75 £16.18 £14.09
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.08
Median % change year-on-year +34.55% +24.58% -11.70%
75th Percentile £58.75 £48.19 £48.83
90th Percentile £77.50 £73.93 £67.17
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.30
% change year-on-year +34.55% +23.32% -10.80%

Azure
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Azure relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Azure job vacancy trend in England

Azure
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure

Azure
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Azure in England over the 6 months to 17 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Azure in England

Azure
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure

Azure
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Azure in England over the 6 months to 17 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in England

Azure
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Azure within the England region over the 6 months to 17 February 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London 0 2,938 £540 -1.82% 999
North of England -1 698 £475 +0.74% 559
South East -1 690 £500 -7.24% 828
Midlands -2 454 £500 -4.08% 305
North West -1 347 £450 -3.28% 317
South West +4 341 £500 -4.76% 249
West Midlands +1 339 £525 -4.55% 178
Yorkshire -2 304 £488 +2.63% 165
East of England 0 155 £550 +4.76% 214
East Midlands -4 113 £433 -3.78% 125
North East -1 51 £508 +9.26% 82
Azure
UK

Azure
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 272 (5.01%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.73%) Apache Spark
4 128 (2.36%) Confluence
5 79 (1.45%) Apache
6 64 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.39%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.28%) Appian
8 15 (0.28%) CMS
9 14 (0.26%) SAS
10 13 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.24%) Camunda
11 11 (0.20%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.20%) IIS
11 11 (0.20%) Skype for Business
12 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
12 9 (0.17%) Mendix
12 9 (0.17%) nginx
12 9 (0.17%) WebLogic
13 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 116 (2.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 92 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.88%) MS Visio
4 46 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.092%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.092%) Weka
9 4 (0.074%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.074%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 2 (0.037%) SOLIDWORKS
10 2 (0.037%) Windchill
11 1 (0.018%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.018%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.018%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.018%) Revit
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 94 (1.73%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.20%) Maximo
4 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.17%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.13%) Endur
6 7 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.092%) Dynamics NAV
8 5 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
8 5 (0.092%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.092%) Oracle Payables
8 5 (0.092%) Oracle Receivables
8 5 (0.092%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,916 (35.28%) AWS
2 1,132 (20.84%) GCP
3 1,061 (19.54%) Azure DevOps
4 732 (13.48%) Power Platform
5 675 (12.43%) Entra ID
6 654 (12.04%) Microsoft 365
7 538 (9.91%) GitHub
8 395 (7.27%) Azure Data Factory
9 308 (5.67%) Serverless
10 294 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
11 248 (4.57%) Dynamics 365
12 245 (4.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 237 (4.36%) SaaS
14 216 (3.98%) Azure AKS
15 210 (3.87%) Power Automate
16 201 (3.70%) Azure Monitor
17 192 (3.54%) Azure Functions
18 188 (3.46%) Azure Logic Apps
19 183 (3.37%) PaaS
20 174 (3.20%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 358 (6.59%) Firewall
2 244 (4.49%) DNS
3 186 (3.42%) VPN
4 156 (2.87%) Network Security
5 151 (2.78%) DHCP
6 125 (2.30%) WAN
7 92 (1.69%) TCP/IP
8 91 (1.68%) LAN
9 74 (1.36%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.22%) VLAN
11 65 (1.20%) Kerberos
12 58 (1.07%) SD-WAN
13 38 (0.70%) HTTP
14 34 (0.63%) BGP
15 31 (0.57%) Wireless
16 27 (0.50%) Internet
16 27 (0.50%) OSPF
16 27 (0.50%) SSL
17 25 (0.46%) MPLS
17 25 (0.46%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 509 (9.37%) Power BI
2 303 (5.58%) SQL Server
3 274 (5.05%) Data Warehouse
4 261 (4.81%) Data Lake
5 194 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
6 179 (3.30%) Azure SQL Database
7 163 (3.00%) NoSQL
8 132 (2.43%) Metadata
9 104 (1.91%) Relational Database
10 95 (1.75%) Delta Lake
11 89 (1.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 74 (1.36%) MongoDB
13 65 (1.20%) Tableau
14 62 (1.14%) Big Data
15 61 (1.12%) Oracle Database
16 53 (0.98%) MySQL
17 52 (0.96%) BigQuery
18 48 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
19 45 (0.83%) Redis
20 38 (0.70%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 402 (7.40%) Git
2 361 (6.65%) JIRA
3 259 (4.77%) Jenkins
4 201 (3.70%) GitLab
5 79 (1.45%) Selenium
6 72 (1.33%) Postman
7 47 (0.87%) SonarQube
8 46 (0.85%) MLflow
9 43 (0.79%) JUnit
10 40 (0.74%) Cucumber
11 38 (0.70%) JMeter
12 37 (0.68%) REST Assured
13 36 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
14 33 (0.61%) Cypress.io
15 29 (0.53%) Artifactory
16 27 (0.50%) Visual Studio
17 26 (0.48%) TestRail
18 25 (0.46%) Bitbucket
18 25 (0.46%) Maven
19 24 (0.44%) ERwin
General
1 1,692 (31.15%) Social Skills
2 994 (18.30%) Finance
3 576 (10.61%) Public Sector
4 558 (10.27%) Analytical Skills
5 333 (6.13%) Banking
6 184 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
7 108 (1.99%) Legal
8 97 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 87 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
10 86 (1.58%) Influencing Skills
11 76 (1.40%) Marketing
11 76 (1.40%) Retail
12 67 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
13 64 (1.18%) Investment Banking
14 60 (1.10%) Telecoms
15 53 (0.98%) Financial Institution
16 52 (0.96%) Law
17 41 (0.75%) Manufacturing
18 39 (0.72%) Front Office
19 37 (0.68%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 902 (16.61%) Architect
2 752 (13.85%) Developer
3 586 (10.79%) Senior
4 450 (8.29%) Azure Engineer
5 440 (8.10%) Data Engineer
6 385 (7.09%) Lead
7 376 (6.92%) Analyst
8 279 (5.14%) Solutions Architect
9 272 (5.01%) DevOps Engineer
10 237 (4.36%) Consultant
11 167 (3.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 144 (2.65%) Security Engineer
13 140 (2.58%) Cloud Engineer
14 135 (2.49%) Azure Architect
15 133 (2.45%) Senior Developer
16 127 (2.34%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 121 (2.23%) Platform Engineer
18 110 (2.03%) Azure Data Engineer
18 110 (2.03%) Data Architect
19 108 (1.99%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 414 (7.62%) .NET
2 377 (6.94%) REST
3 247 (4.55%) React
4 211 (3.89%) Kafka
5 205 (3.77%) PySpark
6 196 (3.61%) RESTful
7 188 (3.46%) Node.js
8 180 (3.31%) OAuth
9 159 (2.93%) Spring
10 143 (2.63%) LDAP
11 141 (2.60%) HTML
12 139 (2.56%) Spring Boot
13 134 (2.47%) AngularJS
14 123 (2.26%) CSS
14 123 (2.26%) PyTorch
15 121 (2.23%) SOAP
16 117 (2.15%) JSON
17 116 (2.14%) Middleware
17 116 (2.14%) SAML
17 116 (2.14%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 471 (8.67%) Cloud Native
2 218 (4.01%) Onboarding
3 181 (3.33%) Product Ownership
4 149 (2.74%) Hybrid Cloud
5 146 (2.69%) Security Posture
6 145 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
7 142 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
8 115 (2.12%) Data Centre
9 98 (1.80%) Public Cloud
10 79 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
11 76 (1.40%) Replication
12 75 (1.38%) AI Agents
12 75 (1.38%) Data Structures
13 61 (1.12%) Algorithms
13 61 (1.12%) Management Information System
14 56 (1.03%) Low-Code
15 54 (0.99%) Data Protection Act
16 51 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
17 48 (0.88%) NHS
18 46 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 637 (11.73%) Windows
2 317 (5.84%) Linux
3 185 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 122 (2.25%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.22%) Unix
6 55 (1.01%) VMS
7 44 (0.81%) Mac OS
8 42 (0.77%) Apple iOS
9 34 (0.63%) Android
10 31 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.33%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.20%) CentOS
14 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
15 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.092%) AIX
17 4 (0.074%) Amazon Linux
18 3 (0.055%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,968 (36.24%) DevOps
2 1,603 (29.52%) CI/CD
3 1,320 (24.30%) Agile
4 1,031 (18.98%) Problem-Solving
5 833 (15.34%) Analytics
6 771 (14.20%) AI
7 713 (13.13%) Infrastructure as Code
8 641 (11.80%) Migration
9 585 (10.77%) Business Intelligence
10 562 (10.35%) Stakeholder Management
11 556 (10.24%) Data Modelling
12 538 (9.91%) Containerisation
13 503 (9.26%) Continuous Improvement
14 489 (9.00%) ETL
15 480 (8.84%) Machine Learning
16 469 (8.64%) Data Pipeline
17 464 (8.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 462 (8.51%) Microservices
19 447 (8.23%) Data Engineering
20 422 (7.77%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,411 (25.98%) Python
2 1,204 (22.17%) SQL
3 608 (11.19%) PowerShell
4 455 (8.38%) Java
5 453 (8.34%) C#
6 412 (7.59%) JavaScript
7 233 (4.29%) TypeScript
8 223 (4.11%) Bash
9 162 (2.98%) Bicep
10 89 (1.64%) Scala
11 76 (1.40%) Go
11 76 (1.40%) PL/SQL
12 64 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
13 60 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 56 (1.03%) T-SQL
15 40 (0.74%) R
16 32 (0.59%) C++
17 26 (0.48%) PHP
17 26 (0.48%) Shell Script
18 20 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,325 (24.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,095 (20.16%) SC Cleared
3 448 (8.25%) Degree
4 329 (6.06%) Azure Certification
5 189 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 157 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
7 148 (2.73%) CISSP
8 119 (2.19%) AWS Certification
9 118 (2.17%) DV Cleared
10 93 (1.71%) CISM
11 85 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
12 84 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
13 72 (1.33%) Master's Degree
14 50 (0.92%) TOGAF Certification
15 42 (0.77%) PMI Certification
16 40 (0.74%) CCNP
16 40 (0.74%) ISTQB
17 38 (0.70%) PMP
18 32 (0.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 29 (0.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 362 (6.67%) Data Quality
2 350 (6.44%) GDPR
3 292 (5.38%) QA
4 268 (4.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 205 (3.77%) NIST
6 102 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.49%) NCSC
8 75 (1.38%) PCI DSS
9 55 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
10 50 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 47 (0.87%) SLA
12 35 (0.64%) HIPAA
13 34 (0.63%) PMO
14 33 (0.61%) SOC 2
15 29 (0.53%) WCAG
16 28 (0.52%) EU AI Act
17 27 (0.50%) GRC
18 26 (0.48%) PSD2
19 25 (0.46%) ISO 20022
20 22 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 756 (13.92%) Active Directory
2 649 (11.95%) Docker
3 174 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 84 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 78 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
6 69 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
7 63 (1.16%) vSphere
8 20 (0.37%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.15%) Firmware
10 8 (0.15%) NFS
10 8 (0.15%) Postfix
10 8 (0.15%) Snort
10 8 (0.15%) Squid
11 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 7 (0.13%) DFS Replication
11 7 (0.13%) KVM
11 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
11 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 823 (15.15%) Terraform
2 787 (14.49%) Kubernetes
3 321 (5.91%) Microsoft Intune
4 235 (4.33%) Ansible
5 144 (2.65%) Single Sign-On
6 129 (2.38%) SCCM
7 125 (2.30%) Grafana
8 110 (2.03%) Prometheus
9 73 (1.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.72%) Argo
11 26 (0.48%) Puppet
12 20 (0.37%) Istio
12 20 (0.37%) Nessus
13 19 (0.35%) Nmap
14 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 17 (0.31%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.31%) vRealize
16 16 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
16 16 (0.29%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,787 (32.90%) Microsoft
2 554 (10.20%) Databricks
3 300 (5.52%) Oracle
4 290 (5.34%) Google
5 247 (4.55%) ServiceNow
6 227 (4.18%) VMware
7 154 (2.84%) SAP
8 151 (2.78%) OpenAI
9 136 (2.50%) Cisco
9 136 (2.50%) Splunk
10 110 (2.03%) CyberArk
11 105 (1.93%) Salesforce
12 88 (1.62%) Palo Alto
13 83 (1.53%) Foundry
14 68 (1.25%) Okta
15 64 (1.18%) Citrix
16 63 (1.16%) BeyondTrust
17 62 (1.14%) Red Hat
18 53 (0.98%) IBM
19 51 (0.94%) Fortinet