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 12 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,402 4,124 5,162
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.90% 15.82% 13.73%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.18% 42.17% 41.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,851 2,788 3,840
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.38% -4.55% -2.74%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.78% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 24 71
10th Percentile £18.87 £21.06 £17.78
25th Percentile £37.77 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £65.88 £65.00 £59.98
90th Percentile £86.00 £76.68 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £30.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +86.99% -33.41% -13.44%

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 12,808 9,780 12,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.70% 37.51% 33.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,847 6,532 9,040
10th Percentile £305 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £420 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £603 £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 347 141 299
10th Percentile £14.47 £15.44 £14.10
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +34.55% +24.15% -11.40%
75th Percentile £59.86 £47.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £66.11
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £27.43 £22.50
% change year-on-year +31.27% +21.89% -10.00%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 2,915 £540 -1.74% 925
North of England 0 704 £475 - 534
South East -2 687 £500 -4.76% 747
Midlands -3 448 £500 -1.23% 299
North West -1 346 £450 -1.37% 300
South West +5 337 £504 -4.05% 246
West Midlands +1 336 £531 -3.45% 186
Yorkshire -2 310 £486 +2.32% 159
East of England -1 154 £550 +15.79% 192
East Midlands -3 111 £433 -3.78% 113
North East -2 52 £515 +10.87% 80
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
1 271 (5.02%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 151 (2.80%) Apache Spark
4 129 (2.39%) Confluence
5 82 (1.52%) Apache
6 66 (1.22%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.43%) CMS
7 23 (0.43%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.28%) Appian
8 15 (0.28%) SAS
9 13 (0.24%) ArcGIS
9 13 (0.24%) Camunda
10 11 (0.20%) HCL Notes
10 11 (0.20%) IIS
10 11 (0.20%) nginx
10 11 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
11 9 (0.17%) Mendix
11 9 (0.17%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 118 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 95 (1.76%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 46 (0.85%) MS Visio
5 39 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.15%) Trello
8 6 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.093%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.093%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.093%) Weka
10 4 (0.074%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.037%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.037%) Windchill
12 1 (0.019%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.019%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.019%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.019%) Revit
Business Applications
1 93 (1.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.20%) Maximo
5 10 (0.19%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.19%) NEC Housing
6 9 (0.17%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.13%) Endur
7 7 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.093%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.093%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.093%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.093%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.093%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.093%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,910 (35.36%) AWS
2 1,127 (20.86%) GCP
3 1,058 (19.59%) Azure DevOps
4 732 (13.55%) Power Platform
5 670 (12.40%) Entra ID
6 647 (11.98%) Microsoft 365
7 534 (9.89%) GitHub
8 392 (7.26%) Azure Data Factory
9 317 (5.87%) Serverless
10 291 (5.39%) GitHub Actions
11 243 (4.50%) Dynamics 365
12 240 (4.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 233 (4.31%) SaaS
14 217 (4.02%) Azure AKS
14 217 (4.02%) Power Automate
15 200 (3.70%) Azure Monitor
16 199 (3.68%) Azure Functions
17 196 (3.63%) Azure Logic Apps
18 184 (3.41%) PaaS
19 179 (3.31%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 359 (6.65%) Firewall
2 246 (4.55%) DNS
3 186 (3.44%) VPN
4 153 (2.83%) Network Security
5 148 (2.74%) DHCP
6 126 (2.33%) WAN
7 94 (1.74%) TCP/IP
8 90 (1.67%) LAN
9 72 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.20%) Kerberos
11 64 (1.18%) VLAN
12 59 (1.09%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.72%) HTTP
14 34 (0.63%) BGP
15 32 (0.59%) Wireless
16 28 (0.52%) Internet
17 27 (0.50%) SAN
17 27 (0.50%) SSL
18 26 (0.48%) MPLS
18 26 (0.48%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 515 (9.53%) Power BI
2 304 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 267 (4.94%) Data Warehouse
4 257 (4.76%) Data Lake
5 189 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
6 182 (3.37%) Azure SQL Database
7 167 (3.09%) NoSQL
8 129 (2.39%) Metadata
9 104 (1.93%) Relational Database
10 92 (1.70%) Delta Lake
11 88 (1.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 77 (1.43%) MongoDB
13 66 (1.22%) Tableau
14 63 (1.17%) Big Data
14 63 (1.17%) Oracle Database
15 53 (0.98%) MySQL
16 52 (0.96%) BigQuery
17 47 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
18 45 (0.83%) Redis
19 39 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 402 (7.44%) Git
2 365 (6.76%) JIRA
3 264 (4.89%) Jenkins
4 202 (3.74%) GitLab
5 80 (1.48%) Selenium
6 73 (1.35%) Postman
7 50 (0.93%) SonarQube
8 45 (0.83%) MLflow
9 42 (0.78%) JUnit
10 40 (0.74%) Cucumber
11 38 (0.70%) JMeter
12 37 (0.68%) REST Assured
13 36 (0.67%) Oracle APEX
14 32 (0.59%) Cypress.io
15 29 (0.54%) Artifactory
16 28 (0.52%) Visual Studio
17 25 (0.46%) Bitbucket
17 25 (0.46%) Maven
17 25 (0.46%) TestRail
18 24 (0.44%) ERwin
General
1 1,707 (31.60%) Social Skills
2 978 (18.10%) Finance
3 579 (10.72%) Public Sector
4 555 (10.27%) Analytical Skills
5 335 (6.20%) Banking
6 182 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
7 106 (1.96%) Legal
8 99 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
10 83 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
10 83 (1.54%) Retail
11 78 (1.44%) Marketing
12 65 (1.20%) Investment Banking
13 64 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
14 58 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 54 (1.00%) Financial Institution
16 53 (0.98%) Law
17 40 (0.74%) Manufacturing
18 37 (0.68%) Front Office
19 36 (0.67%) Military
Job Titles
1 897 (16.60%) Architect
2 756 (13.99%) Developer
3 578 (10.70%) Senior
4 437 (8.09%) Azure Engineer
5 427 (7.90%) Data Engineer
6 384 (7.11%) Lead
7 370 (6.85%) Analyst
8 274 (5.07%) Solutions Architect
9 268 (4.96%) DevOps Engineer
10 229 (4.24%) Consultant
11 169 (3.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 140 (2.59%) Security Engineer
13 136 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
13 136 (2.52%) Senior Developer
14 135 (2.50%) Azure Architect
15 130 (2.41%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 119 (2.20%) Platform Engineer
17 111 (2.05%) Data Architect
18 109 (2.02%) Azure Data Engineer
19 106 (1.96%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 413 (7.65%) .NET
2 379 (7.02%) REST
3 247 (4.57%) React
4 214 (3.96%) Kafka
5 200 (3.70%) PySpark
6 199 (3.68%) RESTful
7 192 (3.55%) Node.js
8 178 (3.30%) OAuth
9 158 (2.92%) Spring
10 146 (2.70%) HTML
11 145 (2.68%) LDAP
12 140 (2.59%) Spring Boot
13 133 (2.46%) AngularJS
14 128 (2.37%) CSS
15 124 (2.30%) PyTorch
15 124 (2.30%) SOAP
16 121 (2.24%) JSON
17 117 (2.17%) SAML
18 116 (2.15%) TensorFlow
19 110 (2.04%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 476 (8.81%) Cloud Native
2 215 (3.98%) Onboarding
3 177 (3.28%) Product Ownership
4 153 (2.83%) Hybrid Cloud
5 147 (2.72%) Enterprise Software
5 147 (2.72%) Security Posture
6 140 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
7 114 (2.11%) Data Centre
8 100 (1.85%) Public Cloud
9 83 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
10 79 (1.46%) Replication
11 75 (1.39%) Data Structures
12 72 (1.33%) AI Agents
13 62 (1.15%) Algorithms
13 62 (1.15%) Management Information System
14 57 (1.06%) Low-Code
15 55 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
16 50 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
17 47 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
18 46 (0.85%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 634 (11.74%) Windows
2 317 (5.87%) Linux
3 185 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 120 (2.22%) Windows 10
5 67 (1.24%) Unix
6 55 (1.02%) VMS
7 46 (0.85%) Apple iOS
8 44 (0.81%) Mac OS
9 39 (0.72%) Android
10 31 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.20%) CentOS
14 10 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
15 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 5 (0.093%) AIX
18 3 (0.056%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,952 (36.13%) DevOps
2 1,585 (29.34%) CI/CD
3 1,317 (24.38%) Agile
4 1,040 (19.25%) Problem-Solving
5 833 (15.42%) Analytics
6 756 (13.99%) AI
7 703 (13.01%) Infrastructure as Code
8 634 (11.74%) Migration
9 592 (10.96%) Business Intelligence
10 556 (10.29%) Stakeholder Management
11 555 (10.27%) Data Modelling
12 532 (9.85%) Containerisation
13 489 (9.05%) Continuous Improvement
14 484 (8.96%) Machine Learning
15 483 (8.94%) ETL
16 463 (8.57%) Microservices
17 461 (8.53%) Data Pipeline
17 461 (8.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 438 (8.11%) Data Engineering
19 424 (7.85%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,386 (25.66%) Python
2 1,196 (22.14%) SQL
3 602 (11.14%) PowerShell
4 460 (8.52%) Java
5 448 (8.29%) C#
6 407 (7.53%) JavaScript
7 227 (4.20%) TypeScript
8 226 (4.18%) Bash
9 157 (2.91%) Bicep
10 89 (1.65%) Scala
11 79 (1.46%) Go
12 76 (1.41%) PL/SQL
13 63 (1.17%) Kusto Query Language
14 62 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 54 (1.00%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.76%) R
17 32 (0.59%) C++
18 26 (0.48%) Shell Script
19 25 (0.46%) PHP
20 20 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,318 (24.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,086 (20.10%) SC Cleared
3 452 (8.37%) Degree
4 326 (6.03%) Azure Certification
5 190 (3.52%) Computer Science Degree
6 156 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
7 150 (2.78%) CISSP
8 117 (2.17%) AWS Certification
9 116 (2.15%) DV Cleared
10 94 (1.74%) CISM
11 85 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
12 84 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
13 72 (1.33%) Master's Degree
14 46 (0.85%) TOGAF Certification
15 45 (0.83%) PMI Certification
16 41 (0.76%) CCNP
16 41 (0.76%) PMP
17 40 (0.74%) ISTQB
18 32 (0.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 29 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 351 (6.50%) GDPR
2 350 (6.48%) Data Quality
3 283 (5.24%) QA
4 267 (4.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 205 (3.79%) NIST
6 100 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.52%) NCSC
8 73 (1.35%) PCI DSS
9 53 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 51 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 44 (0.81%) SLA
12 35 (0.65%) HIPAA
13 33 (0.61%) PMO
13 33 (0.61%) SOC 2
14 29 (0.54%) WCAG
15 28 (0.52%) EU AI Act
16 27 (0.50%) GRC
17 26 (0.48%) PSD2
18 23 (0.43%) ISO 20022
19 22 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 747 (13.83%) Active Directory
2 651 (12.05%) Docker
3 177 (3.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (1.57%) Hyper-V
5 74 (1.37%) Virtual Machines
6 70 (1.30%) Virtual Desktop
7 61 (1.13%) vSphere
8 20 (0.37%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.20%) Squid
11 9 (0.17%) DFS Replication
11 9 (0.17%) Postfix
12 8 (0.15%) Firmware
12 8 (0.15%) KVM
12 8 (0.15%) NFS
13 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 7 (0.13%) Snort
14 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 803 (14.86%) Terraform
2 779 (14.42%) Kubernetes
3 316 (5.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 238 (4.41%) Ansible
5 140 (2.59%) Single Sign-On
6 132 (2.44%) SCCM
7 128 (2.37%) Grafana
8 115 (2.13%) Prometheus
9 70 (1.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.72%) Argo
11 27 (0.50%) Puppet
12 22 (0.41%) Nessus
13 20 (0.37%) Istio
14 19 (0.35%) Nmap
15 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.33%) Kibana
15 18 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 18 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.31%) vRealize
17 16 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,785 (33.04%) Microsoft
2 547 (10.13%) Databricks
3 303 (5.61%) Oracle
4 292 (5.41%) Google
5 249 (4.61%) ServiceNow
6 231 (4.28%) VMware
7 152 (2.81%) SAP
8 148 (2.74%) OpenAI
9 141 (2.61%) Cisco
10 138 (2.55%) Splunk
11 111 (2.05%) CyberArk
12 109 (2.02%) Salesforce
13 87 (1.61%) Palo Alto
14 79 (1.46%) Foundry
15 68 (1.26%) Okta
16 64 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
17 63 (1.17%) Red Hat
18 61 (1.13%) Citrix
19 53 (0.98%) IBM
20 51 (0.94%) Fortinet