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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,071 4,053 5,211
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.87% 15.31% 14.15%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.83% 41.63% 41.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,614 2,715 3,876
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £417 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £705 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 27 69
10th Percentile £16.25 £22.14 £17.75
25th Percentile £27.86 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £56.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +61.43% -24.21% -9.45%
75th Percentile £69.38 £62.88 £58.00
90th Percentile £93.75 £76.18 £71.40
UK median hourly rate £54.50 £28.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +89.57% -37.74% -5.76%

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 12,123 9,735 12,423
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.95% 36.77% 33.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,418 6,470 9,057
10th Percentile £302 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £422 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 289 135 261
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.85 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £30.00 £28.41 £23.22
Median % change year-on-year +5.60% +22.38% +0.61%
75th Percentile £57.25 £46.84 £50.00
90th Percentile £76.79 £68.75 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £24.02
% change year-on-year +9.09% +14.49% +6.68%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +1 2,741 £538 -2.27% 897
North of England -1 662 £463 +0.93% 719
South East -3 623 £492 -7.82% 1,064
Midlands -1 437 £523 +4.50% 419
West Midlands +1 331 £545 -0.91% 186
North West -1 324 £450 - 357
South West +2 304 £512 -2.57% 391
Yorkshire -1 297 £475 - 252
East of England 0 137 £500 +14.29% 403
East Midlands -4 105 £442 -1.78% 224
North East -5 45 £475 -2.56% 117
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
1 253 (4.99%) SharePoint
2 170 (3.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 125 (2.46%) Apache Spark
4 120 (2.37%) Confluence
5 76 (1.50%) Apache
6 65 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.45%) OpenStack
8 22 (0.43%) SAS
9 20 (0.39%) CMS
10 19 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.26%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.26%) nginx
12 12 (0.24%) Appian
12 12 (0.24%) Camunda
13 11 (0.22%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.22%) IIS
13 11 (0.22%) Skype for Business
14 9 (0.18%) GeoServer
14 9 (0.18%) Mendix
15 8 (0.16%) Smallworld
Applications
1 115 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
3 44 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 43 (0.85%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.16%) Trello
9 5 (0.099%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.099%) Weka
10 3 (0.059%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.059%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.039%) Windchill
12 1 (0.020%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.020%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.020%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.020%) Revit
12 1 (0.020%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.020%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.020%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 96 (1.89%) Dynamics CRM
2 61 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.20%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.18%) Maximo
5 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
6 8 (0.16%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.14%) Endur
7 7 (0.14%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.12%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.12%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.099%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.099%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.099%) Remedy ITSM
9 5 (0.099%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.079%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,812 (35.73%) AWS
2 1,056 (20.82%) GCP
3 1,006 (19.84%) Azure DevOps
4 688 (13.57%) Power Platform
5 612 (12.07%) Microsoft 365
6 606 (11.95%) Entra ID
7 508 (10.02%) GitHub
8 347 (6.84%) Azure Data Factory
9 301 (5.94%) Serverless
10 289 (5.70%) GitHub Actions
11 246 (4.85%) Dynamics 365
12 216 (4.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 214 (4.22%) Power Automate
14 213 (4.20%) SaaS
15 200 (3.94%) Azure AKS
16 196 (3.87%) Azure Monitor
17 191 (3.77%) Azure Logic Apps
18 188 (3.71%) Azure Functions
19 175 (3.45%) PowerApps
20 174 (3.43%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 350 (6.90%) Firewall
2 222 (4.38%) DNS
3 172 (3.39%) VPN
4 150 (2.96%) Network Security
5 129 (2.54%) DHCP
6 120 (2.37%) WAN
7 95 (1.87%) TCP/IP
8 81 (1.60%) LAN
9 65 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.20%) VLAN
11 58 (1.14%) SD-WAN
12 43 (0.85%) HTTP
13 38 (0.75%) Kerberos
14 32 (0.63%) BGP
15 30 (0.59%) Internet
15 30 (0.59%) Wireless
16 24 (0.47%) MPLS
16 24 (0.47%) SAN
17 22 (0.43%) SSL
18 21 (0.41%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 493 (9.72%) Power BI
2 288 (5.68%) SQL Server
3 237 (4.67%) Data Lake
4 234 (4.61%) Data Warehouse
5 183 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
6 167 (3.29%) Azure SQL Database
7 158 (3.12%) NoSQL
8 108 (2.13%) Metadata
9 105 (2.07%) Relational Database
10 80 (1.58%) Delta Lake
10 80 (1.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 77 (1.52%) MongoDB
12 59 (1.16%) Oracle Database
13 57 (1.12%) Big Data
14 55 (1.08%) MySQL
14 55 (1.08%) Tableau
15 49 (0.97%) BigQuery
16 44 (0.87%) Redis
17 40 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
17 40 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 387 (7.63%) Git
2 355 (7.00%) JIRA
3 273 (5.38%) Jenkins
4 202 (3.98%) GitLab
5 79 (1.56%) Selenium
6 72 (1.42%) Postman
7 54 (1.06%) SonarQube
8 47 (0.93%) JUnit
9 40 (0.79%) Cucumber
10 38 (0.75%) MLflow
11 36 (0.71%) Oracle APEX
12 32 (0.63%) Maven
13 31 (0.61%) Cypress.io
13 31 (0.61%) REST Assured
14 30 (0.59%) JMeter
15 27 (0.53%) Gradle
16 26 (0.51%) Artifactory
16 26 (0.51%) Bitbucket
16 26 (0.51%) CircleCI
17 23 (0.45%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,628 (32.10%) Social Skills
2 916 (18.06%) Finance
3 559 (11.02%) Public Sector
4 496 (9.78%) Analytical Skills
5 314 (6.19%) Banking
6 166 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
7 102 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 91 (1.79%) Legal
9 81 (1.60%) Retail
10 78 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
11 77 (1.52%) Marketing
12 76 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
13 67 (1.32%) Investment Banking
14 54 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 52 (1.03%) Financial Institution
15 52 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
16 50 (0.99%) Law
17 46 (0.91%) Manufacturing
18 40 (0.79%) Local Government
19 38 (0.75%) Military
Job Titles
1 802 (15.82%) Architect
2 728 (14.36%) Developer
3 540 (10.65%) Senior
4 388 (7.65%) Data Engineer
5 387 (7.63%) Azure Engineer
6 362 (7.14%) Lead
7 348 (6.86%) Analyst
8 266 (5.25%) DevOps Engineer
9 251 (4.95%) Solutions Architect
10 198 (3.90%) Consultant
11 155 (3.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 146 (2.88%) Security Engineer
13 133 (2.62%) Senior Developer
14 126 (2.48%) Cloud Engineer
15 121 (2.39%) Azure Architect
16 120 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
17 109 (2.15%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 104 (2.05%) Azure Data Engineer
19 98 (1.93%) Support Engineer
20 96 (1.89%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 406 (8.01%) .NET
2 350 (6.90%) REST
3 221 (4.36%) React
4 195 (3.85%) Kafka
4 195 (3.85%) RESTful
5 187 (3.69%) PySpark
6 172 (3.39%) Node.js
7 159 (3.14%) OAuth
8 155 (3.06%) Spring
9 135 (2.66%) HTML
10 132 (2.60%) Spring Boot
11 131 (2.58%) AngularJS
12 122 (2.41%) SOAP
13 120 (2.37%) LDAP
14 118 (2.33%) JSON
15 117 (2.31%) PyTorch
16 111 (2.19%) CSS
17 109 (2.15%) TensorFlow
18 102 (2.01%) Middleware
19 99 (1.95%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 453 (8.93%) Cloud Native
2 196 (3.87%) Onboarding
3 165 (3.25%) Product Ownership
4 155 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
5 147 (2.90%) Hybrid Cloud
6 145 (2.86%) Security Posture
7 131 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
8 107 (2.11%) Data Centre
9 99 (1.95%) Public Cloud
10 85 (1.68%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.34%) Replication
12 67 (1.32%) Management Information System
13 65 (1.28%) AI Agents
14 60 (1.18%) Data Structures
15 58 (1.14%) Algorithms
16 55 (1.08%) Low-Code
17 51 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
18 47 (0.93%) NHS
19 46 (0.91%) CMDB
20 45 (0.89%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 606 (11.95%) Windows
2 324 (6.39%) Linux
3 186 (3.67%) Windows Server
4 114 (2.25%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.56%) Unix
6 56 (1.10%) VMS
7 45 (0.89%) Apple iOS
8 41 (0.81%) Android
9 40 (0.79%) Mac OS
10 28 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.39%) Ubuntu
13 15 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.20%) CentOS
15 9 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.18%) Solaris
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.099%) AIX
17 5 (0.099%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.079%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,848 (36.44%) DevOps
2 1,482 (29.23%) CI/CD
3 1,241 (24.47%) Agile
4 983 (19.38%) Problem-Solving
5 761 (15.01%) Analytics
6 653 (12.88%) Infrastructure as Code
7 648 (12.78%) AI
8 584 (11.52%) Migration
9 564 (11.12%) Business Intelligence
10 521 (10.27%) Stakeholder Management
11 501 (9.88%) Containerisation
12 482 (9.51%) Data Modelling
13 457 (9.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 453 (8.93%) Continuous Improvement
15 428 (8.44%) Machine Learning
16 419 (8.26%) Microservices
17 418 (8.24%) ETL
18 417 (8.22%) Test Automation
19 414 (8.16%) Data Pipeline
20 374 (7.38%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,300 (25.64%) Python
2 1,115 (21.99%) SQL
3 553 (10.91%) PowerShell
4 459 (9.05%) Java
5 422 (8.32%) C#
6 385 (7.59%) JavaScript
7 230 (4.54%) Bash
8 196 (3.87%) TypeScript
9 147 (2.90%) Bicep
10 83 (1.64%) Scala
11 80 (1.58%) Go
12 72 (1.42%) PL/SQL
13 64 (1.26%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (1.03%) T-SQL
15 51 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 48 (0.95%) R
17 32 (0.63%) C++
18 31 (0.61%) Shell Script
19 26 (0.51%) PHP
20 22 (0.43%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,246 (24.57%) Security Cleared
2 1,029 (20.29%) SC Cleared
3 424 (8.36%) Degree
4 306 (6.03%) Azure Certification
5 171 (3.37%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.84%) Microsoft Certification
7 141 (2.78%) CISSP
8 116 (2.29%) DV Cleared
9 108 (2.13%) AWS Certification
10 88 (1.74%) CISM
11 80 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
12 72 (1.42%) Master's Degree
13 59 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
14 42 (0.83%) PMI Certification
15 40 (0.79%) MCP
16 38 (0.75%) ISTQB
16 38 (0.75%) PMP
17 36 (0.71%) CCNP
18 35 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
19 28 (0.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 328 (6.47%) GDPR
2 302 (5.96%) Data Quality
3 269 (5.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 269 (5.30%) QA
4 206 (4.06%) NIST
5 94 (1.85%) Accessibility
6 75 (1.48%) NCSC
7 74 (1.46%) PCI DSS
8 48 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
9 44 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 39 (0.77%) SLA
11 33 (0.65%) SOC 2
12 32 (0.63%) HIPAA
13 30 (0.59%) PSD2
14 29 (0.57%) WCAG
15 28 (0.55%) EU AI Act
16 27 (0.53%) PMO
17 23 (0.45%) GRC
18 22 (0.43%) ISO 20022
19 16 (0.32%) SEPA
System Software
1 690 (13.61%) Active Directory
2 644 (12.70%) Docker
3 166 (3.27%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.54%) Hyper-V
5 63 (1.24%) Virtual Machines
6 62 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 52 (1.03%) vSphere
8 20 (0.39%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.28%) Squid
10 12 (0.24%) DFS Replication
11 10 (0.20%) KVM
11 10 (0.20%) Postfix
11 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 9 (0.18%) Dovecot
13 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.14%) Firmware
14 7 (0.14%) NFS
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.14%) Snort
14 7 (0.14%) zsh
Systems Management
1 744 (14.67%) Kubernetes
1 744 (14.67%) Terraform
2 285 (5.62%) Microsoft Intune
3 241 (4.75%) Ansible
4 127 (2.50%) SCCM
5 124 (2.45%) Grafana
6 122 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
7 113 (2.23%) Prometheus
8 47 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 37 (0.73%) Argo
10 34 (0.67%) Puppet
11 22 (0.43%) Nessus
12 21 (0.41%) Progress Chef
13 19 (0.37%) Istio
13 19 (0.37%) Kibana
14 18 (0.35%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.35%) Nmap
14 18 (0.35%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.34%) vRealize
16 15 (0.30%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,661 (32.75%) Microsoft
2 506 (9.98%) Databricks
3 316 (6.23%) Oracle
4 280 (5.52%) Google
5 236 (4.65%) ServiceNow
6 214 (4.22%) VMware
7 149 (2.94%) Cisco
8 144 (2.84%) Splunk
9 142 (2.80%) SAP
10 124 (2.45%) OpenAI
11 105 (2.07%) Salesforce
12 104 (2.05%) CyberArk
13 85 (1.68%) Palo Alto
14 63 (1.24%) Citrix
15 62 (1.22%) Okta
16 61 (1.20%) Foundry
16 61 (1.20%) Red Hat
17 59 (1.16%) BeyondTrust
18 54 (1.06%) IBM
19 51 (1.01%) Dynatrace