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 30 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,240 4,106 5,229
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.87% 15.45% 13.87%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.94% 41.69% 41.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,734 2,762 3,901
10th Percentile £350 £352 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £446
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% -3.64% -3.51%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £712 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £517 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.48% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 26 78
10th Percentile £17.82 £21.78 £17.75
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.80 £22.53
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.94 £59.95
90th Percentile £93.75 £76.35 £67.40
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £29.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +98.28% -37.20% -9.45%

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 12,495 9,848 12,567
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.83% 37.06% 33.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,670 6,536 9,169
10th Percentile £304 £313 £272
25th Percentile £406 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £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 310 139 293
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.65 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.67
Median hourly rate £33.09 £27.50 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.31% +19.57% -6.12%
75th Percentile £58.75 £46.84 £48.75
90th Percentile £77.28 £69.75 £67.20
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £27.50 £23.22
% change year-on-year +18.18% +18.46% -3.27%

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 30 January 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 30 January 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 30 January 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 2,819 £540 -1.82% 982
North of England 0 689 £475 - 619
South East -2 653 £492 -8.47% 931
Midlands -1 448 £515 -1.90% 360
North West -1 346 £450 - 348
West Midlands +1 337 £550 - 184
South West +3 324 £512 -2.57% 301
Yorkshire -2 300 £475 - 189
East of England 0 143 £525 +16.67% 278
East Midlands -3 110 £436 -3.11% 172
North East -4 46 £488 -3.70% 85
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
1 263 (5.02%) SharePoint
2 179 (3.42%) Microsoft Exchange
3 136 (2.60%) Apache Spark
4 126 (2.40%) Confluence
5 76 (1.45%) Apache
6 70 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.50%) OpenStack
8 24 (0.46%) CMS
9 21 (0.40%) SAS
10 13 (0.25%) Appian
10 13 (0.25%) Camunda
11 12 (0.23%) HCL Notes
11 12 (0.23%) nginx
11 12 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.21%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.21%) IIS
12 11 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.17%) Mendix
14 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 117 (2.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 91 (1.74%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.90%) MS Visio
4 45 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 8 (0.15%) Trello
8 5 (0.095%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.095%) Weka
9 4 (0.076%) PTC Creo
10 3 (0.057%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.038%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.038%) Windchill
12 1 (0.019%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.019%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.019%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.019%) Revit
Business Applications
1 101 (1.93%) Dynamics CRM
2 58 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.17%) Maximo
5 9 (0.17%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.15%) Endur
7 7 (0.13%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.095%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.095%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.095%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.095%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.095%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,849 (35.29%) AWS
2 1,082 (20.65%) GCP
3 1,038 (19.81%) Azure DevOps
4 713 (13.61%) Power Platform
5 657 (12.54%) Entra ID
6 637 (12.16%) Microsoft 365
7 532 (10.15%) GitHub
8 365 (6.97%) Azure Data Factory
9 309 (5.90%) Serverless
10 292 (5.57%) GitHub Actions
11 251 (4.79%) Dynamics 365
12 228 (4.35%) SaaS
13 224 (4.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 218 (4.16%) Power Automate
15 202 (3.85%) Azure AKS
16 196 (3.74%) Azure Monitor
17 194 (3.70%) Azure Logic Apps
18 193 (3.68%) Azure Functions
19 186 (3.55%) PaaS
20 179 (3.42%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 354 (6.76%) Firewall
2 240 (4.58%) DNS
3 178 (3.40%) VPN
4 149 (2.84%) Network Security
5 148 (2.82%) DHCP
6 124 (2.37%) WAN
7 92 (1.76%) TCP/IP
8 86 (1.64%) LAN
9 68 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
10 62 (1.18%) VLAN
11 61 (1.16%) Kerberos
12 60 (1.15%) SD-WAN
13 43 (0.82%) HTTP
14 34 (0.65%) BGP
15 30 (0.57%) Internet
16 29 (0.55%) Wireless
17 27 (0.52%) MPLS
18 25 (0.48%) SAN
19 23 (0.44%) SSL
20 22 (0.42%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 498 (9.50%) Power BI
2 297 (5.67%) SQL Server
3 246 (4.69%) Data Warehouse
4 238 (4.54%) Data Lake
5 180 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 175 (3.34%) Azure SQL Database
7 164 (3.13%) NoSQL
8 112 (2.14%) Metadata
9 110 (2.10%) Relational Database
10 86 (1.64%) Delta Lake
11 84 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 76 (1.45%) MongoDB
13 62 (1.18%) Tableau
14 60 (1.15%) Big Data
14 60 (1.15%) Oracle Database
15 56 (1.07%) MySQL
16 54 (1.03%) BigQuery
17 47 (0.90%) Redis
18 44 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
19 39 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 392 (7.48%) Git
2 361 (6.89%) JIRA
3 269 (5.13%) Jenkins
4 201 (3.84%) GitLab
5 79 (1.51%) Postman
5 79 (1.51%) Selenium
6 55 (1.05%) SonarQube
7 43 (0.82%) JUnit
8 39 (0.74%) Cucumber
8 39 (0.74%) MLflow
9 36 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
10 34 (0.65%) JMeter
10 34 (0.65%) REST Assured
11 31 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 29 (0.55%) Artifactory
12 29 (0.55%) Maven
13 27 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 26 (0.50%) Gradle
15 25 (0.48%) Bitbucket
15 25 (0.48%) CircleCI
General
1 1,683 (32.12%) Social Skills
2 942 (17.98%) Finance
3 569 (10.86%) Public Sector
4 527 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
5 325 (6.20%) Banking
6 178 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 100 (1.91%) Legal
9 83 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
10 81 (1.55%) Retail
11 79 (1.51%) Marketing
12 78 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
13 68 (1.30%) Investment Banking
14 55 (1.05%) Telecoms
15 53 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
16 52 (0.99%) Law
17 51 (0.97%) Financial Institution
18 43 (0.82%) Manufacturing
19 38 (0.73%) Local Government
20 36 (0.69%) Military
Job Titles
1 844 (16.11%) Architect
2 755 (14.41%) Developer
3 548 (10.46%) Senior
4 412 (7.86%) Azure Engineer
5 398 (7.60%) Data Engineer
6 365 (6.97%) Lead
7 361 (6.89%) Analyst
8 270 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 266 (5.08%) Solutions Architect
10 210 (4.01%) Consultant
11 167 (3.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 143 (2.73%) Security Engineer
13 137 (2.61%) Senior Developer
14 135 (2.58%) Cloud Engineer
15 128 (2.44%) Azure Architect
16 118 (2.25%) Platform Engineer
17 117 (2.23%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 106 (2.02%) Azure Data Engineer
19 104 (1.98%) Support Engineer
20 99 (1.89%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 416 (7.94%) .NET
2 372 (7.10%) REST
3 237 (4.52%) React
4 201 (3.84%) RESTful
5 198 (3.78%) Kafka
6 189 (3.61%) PySpark
7 178 (3.40%) Node.js
8 169 (3.23%) OAuth
9 153 (2.92%) Spring
10 145 (2.77%) LDAP
11 141 (2.69%) HTML
12 139 (2.65%) AngularJS
12 139 (2.65%) Spring Boot
13 125 (2.39%) SOAP
14 123 (2.35%) JSON
15 120 (2.29%) CSS
16 119 (2.27%) PyTorch
17 111 (2.12%) TensorFlow
18 109 (2.08%) SAML
19 107 (2.04%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 464 (8.85%) Cloud Native
2 204 (3.89%) Onboarding
3 174 (3.32%) Product Ownership
4 153 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
5 151 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
6 147 (2.81%) Security Posture
7 140 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
8 107 (2.04%) Data Centre
9 102 (1.95%) Public Cloud
10 83 (1.58%) Replication
11 80 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
12 70 (1.34%) AI Agents
13 68 (1.30%) Management Information System
14 64 (1.22%) Data Structures
15 56 (1.07%) Algorithms
15 56 (1.07%) Low-Code
16 49 (0.94%) Data Protection Act
17 48 (0.92%) CMDB
17 48 (0.92%) NHS
18 47 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 622 (11.87%) Windows
2 320 (6.11%) Linux
3 188 (3.59%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.27%) Windows 10
5 70 (1.34%) Unix
6 55 (1.05%) VMS
7 48 (0.92%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.76%) Android
10 28 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.38%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
14 11 (0.21%) CentOS
15 9 (0.17%) Solaris
16 8 (0.15%) Amazon Linux
16 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.095%) AIX
19 3 (0.057%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,922 (36.68%) DevOps
2 1,535 (29.29%) CI/CD
3 1,282 (24.47%) Agile
4 1,016 (19.39%) Problem-Solving
5 787 (15.02%) Analytics
6 700 (13.36%) AI
7 674 (12.86%) Infrastructure as Code
8 614 (11.72%) Migration
9 570 (10.88%) Business Intelligence
10 542 (10.34%) Stakeholder Management
11 516 (9.85%) Containerisation
12 513 (9.79%) Data Modelling
13 469 (8.95%) Continuous Improvement
14 465 (8.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 451 (8.61%) Machine Learning
16 437 (8.34%) ETL
17 436 (8.32%) Microservices
18 431 (8.23%) Data Pipeline
19 421 (8.03%) Test Automation
20 395 (7.54%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,326 (25.31%) Python
2 1,150 (21.95%) SQL
3 595 (11.35%) PowerShell
4 455 (8.68%) Java
5 442 (8.44%) C#
6 397 (7.58%) JavaScript
7 227 (4.33%) Bash
8 216 (4.12%) TypeScript
9 148 (2.82%) Bicep
10 92 (1.76%) Scala
11 80 (1.53%) Go
12 73 (1.39%) PL/SQL
13 62 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
14 56 (1.07%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 54 (1.03%) T-SQL
16 47 (0.90%) R
17 33 (0.63%) C++
18 30 (0.57%) Shell Script
19 25 (0.48%) PHP
20 21 (0.40%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,280 (24.43%) Security Cleared
2 1,055 (20.13%) SC Cleared
3 435 (8.30%) Degree
4 316 (6.03%) Azure Certification
5 179 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 155 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 141 (2.69%) CISSP
8 113 (2.16%) DV Cleared
9 111 (2.12%) AWS Certification
10 90 (1.72%) CISM
11 79 (1.51%) Cisco Certification
12 72 (1.37%) Master's Degree
13 68 (1.30%) BPSS Clearance
14 43 (0.82%) PMI Certification
15 38 (0.73%) PMP
16 37 (0.71%) ISTQB
16 37 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
17 36 (0.69%) CCNP
18 29 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 25 (0.48%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 335 (6.39%) GDPR
2 315 (6.01%) Data Quality
3 269 (5.13%) QA
4 268 (5.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 205 (3.91%) NIST
6 99 (1.89%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.55%) NCSC
8 68 (1.30%) PCI DSS
9 48 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 46 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
11 41 (0.78%) SLA
12 36 (0.69%) HIPAA
13 34 (0.65%) SOC 2
14 30 (0.57%) PMO
14 30 (0.57%) WCAG
15 28 (0.53%) EU AI Act
16 27 (0.52%) PSD2
17 25 (0.48%) GRC
18 23 (0.44%) ISO 20022
19 18 (0.34%) SEPA
System Software
1 738 (14.08%) Active Directory
2 645 (12.31%) Docker
3 176 (3.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 84 (1.60%) Hyper-V
5 69 (1.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 67 (1.28%) Virtual Machines
7 57 (1.09%) vSphere
8 20 (0.38%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.25%) Squid
10 12 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.21%) DFS Replication
12 10 (0.19%) KVM
13 9 (0.17%) Postfix
14 8 (0.15%) Dovecot
15 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 7 (0.13%) Firmware
15 7 (0.13%) NFS
15 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 775 (14.79%) Terraform
2 755 (14.41%) Kubernetes
3 305 (5.82%) Microsoft Intune
4 246 (4.69%) Ansible
5 136 (2.60%) Single Sign-On
6 133 (2.54%) SCCM
7 126 (2.40%) Grafana
8 117 (2.23%) Prometheus
9 66 (1.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.73%) Argo
11 33 (0.63%) Puppet
12 23 (0.44%) Nessus
13 20 (0.38%) Progress Chef
14 19 (0.36%) Istio
15 18 (0.34%) Kibana
15 18 (0.34%) Nmap
15 18 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.32%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.32%) vRealize
17 16 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,739 (33.19%) Microsoft
2 521 (9.94%) Databricks
3 316 (6.03%) Oracle
4 289 (5.52%) Google
5 242 (4.62%) ServiceNow
6 228 (4.35%) VMware
7 146 (2.79%) SAP
8 139 (2.65%) Cisco
8 139 (2.65%) OpenAI
9 135 (2.58%) Splunk
10 110 (2.10%) Salesforce
11 109 (2.08%) CyberArk
12 84 (1.60%) Palo Alto
13 73 (1.39%) Foundry
14 69 (1.32%) Okta
15 63 (1.20%) BeyondTrust
15 63 (1.20%) Citrix
16 60 (1.15%) Red Hat
17 52 (0.99%) IBM
18 48 (0.92%) Fortinet