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 3 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 4,813 4,632 5,712
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.58% 15.21% 14.96%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.70% 42.02% 42.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,365 3,132 4,260
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £419 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.80% -2.73% -3.51%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £725 £745
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 33 70
10th Percentile £15.80 £23.63 £17.75
25th Percentile £26.00 £23.80 £23.13
Median hourly rate £46.00 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +31.43% -24.21% -5.76%
75th Percentile £77.38 £60.75 £59.50
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.94 £72.75
UK median hourly rate £46.00 £31.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +48.39% -32.87% +31.94%

All Cloud 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 11,827 11,024 13,440
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 38.28% 36.21% 35.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,094 7,350 9,793
10th Percentile £304 £313 £288
25th Percentile £405 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £650 £645
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 148 268
10th Percentile £15.48 £17.00 £14.33
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £26.15 £32.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.28% +28.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £51.38 £56.31 £55.63
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £77.65
UK median hourly rate £26.30 £30.00 £26.25
% change year-on-year -12.33% +14.29% +19.32%

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 3 December 2025.

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 3 December 2025.

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 3 December 2025. 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 2,580 £538 -2.27% 1,110
North of England -2 598 £475 -5.00% 663
South East -4 582 £500 -4.76% 1,054
Midlands -1 434 £525 - 406
West Midlands 0 326 £550 +4.76% 254
South West +6 314 £503 -1.47% 274
North West -1 293 £465 -7.00% 358
Yorkshire -2 277 £488 -2.50% 227
East of England +2 155 £500 +18.34% 223
East Midlands -2 105 £450 -10.00% 144
North East -11 32 £515 +17.05% 87
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
1 251 (5.22%) SharePoint
2 172 (3.57%) Microsoft Exchange
3 124 (2.58%) Confluence
4 114 (2.37%) Apache Spark
5 77 (1.60%) Apache Airflow
6 76 (1.58%) Apache
7 26 (0.54%) SAS
8 23 (0.48%) CMS
9 22 (0.46%) OpenStack
10 16 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.29%) nginx
12 10 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.19%) IIS
14 8 (0.17%) Camunda
14 8 (0.17%) HCL Notes
14 8 (0.17%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.15%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.15%) GeoServer
16 6 (0.12%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 118 (2.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
3 41 (0.85%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 31 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
6 15 (0.31%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 9 (0.19%) Trello
9 5 (0.10%) Weka
10 2 (0.042%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.042%) Windchill
11 1 (0.021%) Acrobat
11 1 (0.021%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.021%) Revit
11 1 (0.021%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.021%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.021%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 88 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 44 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.33%) Aladdin
3 16 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.23%) Endur
4 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
5 9 (0.19%) Workday HCM
6 8 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
8 6 (0.12%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.12%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.12%) Teamcenter
9 5 (0.10%) Cloudability
9 5 (0.10%) NEC Housing
10 4 (0.083%) Maximo
10 4 (0.083%) Primavera
10 4 (0.083%) Remedy ITSM
10 4 (0.083%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.083%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 1,746 (36.28%) AWS
2 993 (20.63%) GCP
3 945 (19.63%) Azure DevOps
4 622 (12.92%) Power Platform
5 576 (11.97%) Microsoft 365
6 568 (11.80%) Entra ID
7 444 (9.23%) GitHub
8 295 (6.13%) Azure Data Factory
9 265 (5.51%) GitHub Actions
10 259 (5.38%) Serverless
11 219 (4.55%) Dynamics 365
12 216 (4.49%) SaaS
13 200 (4.16%) Power Automate
14 197 (4.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 191 (3.97%) Azure AKS
16 189 (3.93%) Azure Monitor
17 184 (3.82%) PowerApps
18 175 (3.64%) Azure Logic Apps
18 175 (3.64%) PaaS
19 170 (3.53%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 347 (7.21%) Firewall
2 193 (4.01%) DNS
3 149 (3.10%) VPN
4 130 (2.70%) Network Security
5 103 (2.14%) DHCP
6 101 (2.10%) WAN
7 81 (1.68%) TCP/IP
8 65 (1.35%) LAN
9 54 (1.12%) VLAN
10 53 (1.10%) HTTP
11 52 (1.08%) SD-WAN
11 52 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
12 37 (0.77%) SAN
13 31 (0.64%) BGP
14 30 (0.62%) Internet
15 28 (0.58%) MPLS
16 24 (0.50%) SSL
17 23 (0.48%) Wireless
18 20 (0.42%) OSPF
18 20 (0.42%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 440 (9.14%) Power BI
2 256 (5.32%) SQL Server
3 214 (4.45%) Data Warehouse
4 201 (4.18%) Data Lake
5 199 (4.13%) PostgreSQL
6 157 (3.26%) NoSQL
7 148 (3.08%) Azure SQL Database
8 103 (2.14%) Relational Database
9 100 (2.08%) Metadata
10 80 (1.66%) MongoDB
11 68 (1.41%) Big Data
12 65 (1.35%) Delta Lake
13 63 (1.31%) Tableau
14 56 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 54 (1.12%) BigQuery
16 53 (1.10%) MySQL
17 52 (1.08%) Oracle Database
17 52 (1.08%) Redis
18 38 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
19 34 (0.71%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 383 (7.96%) Git
2 340 (7.06%) JIRA
3 259 (5.38%) Jenkins
4 180 (3.74%) GitLab
5 72 (1.50%) Selenium
6 67 (1.39%) Postman
7 63 (1.31%) SonarQube
8 48 (1.00%) JUnit
9 36 (0.75%) Maven
9 36 (0.75%) Oracle APEX
10 32 (0.66%) Bitbucket
11 30 (0.62%) CircleCI
11 30 (0.62%) Cucumber
12 29 (0.60%) Cypress.io
12 29 (0.60%) MLflow
13 28 (0.58%) JMeter
14 27 (0.56%) Gradle
15 22 (0.46%) ERwin
16 21 (0.44%) SoapUI
16 21 (0.44%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,556 (32.33%) Social Skills
2 927 (19.26%) Finance
3 538 (11.18%) Public Sector
4 457 (9.50%) Analytical Skills
5 341 (7.08%) Banking
6 158 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
7 120 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 88 (1.83%) Investment Banking
9 83 (1.72%) Marketing
10 77 (1.60%) Retail
11 76 (1.58%) Legal
12 75 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
12 75 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
13 69 (1.43%) Telecoms
14 57 (1.18%) Manufacturing
15 55 (1.14%) Law
16 46 (0.96%) Financial Institution
17 42 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
18 41 (0.85%) Front Office
19 40 (0.83%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 782 (16.25%) Architect
2 756 (15.71%) Developer
3 507 (10.53%) Senior
4 368 (7.65%) Analyst
5 342 (7.11%) Azure Engineer
5 342 (7.11%) Lead
6 314 (6.52%) Data Engineer
7 277 (5.76%) Solutions Architect
8 223 (4.63%) DevOps Engineer
9 185 (3.84%) Consultant
10 158 (3.28%) Security Engineer
11 156 (3.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 139 (2.89%) Senior Developer
13 132 (2.74%) Azure Architect
14 122 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
15 117 (2.43%) Platform Engineer
16 100 (2.08%) Business Analyst
17 98 (2.04%) Data Architect
18 96 (1.99%) Support Engineer
19 94 (1.95%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 399 (8.29%) .NET
2 288 (5.98%) REST
3 216 (4.49%) React
4 201 (4.18%) RESTful
5 186 (3.86%) Kafka
6 165 (3.43%) Node.js
7 155 (3.22%) OAuth
8 154 (3.20%) Spring
9 145 (3.01%) HTML
9 145 (3.01%) PySpark
10 138 (2.87%) AngularJS
11 128 (2.66%) JSON
12 123 (2.56%) Spring Boot
13 115 (2.39%) CSS
14 108 (2.24%) SOAP
15 100 (2.08%) PyTorch
16 95 (1.97%) Middleware
17 94 (1.95%) SAML
18 89 (1.85%) TensorFlow
19 82 (1.70%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 396 (8.23%) Cloud Native
2 169 (3.51%) Onboarding
3 157 (3.26%) Product Ownership
4 139 (2.89%) Hybrid Cloud
5 122 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 115 (2.39%) Data Centre
7 112 (2.33%) Security Posture
8 99 (2.06%) Enterprise Software
9 91 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
10 73 (1.52%) Public Cloud
11 70 (1.45%) Algorithms
12 69 (1.43%) Management Information System
13 62 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
14 60 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
15 54 (1.12%) Replication
16 53 (1.10%) AI Agents
17 49 (1.02%) Data Structures
18 48 (1.00%) Low-Code
19 45 (0.93%) PKI
20 44 (0.91%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 557 (11.57%) Windows
2 324 (6.73%) Linux
3 175 (3.64%) Windows Server
4 93 (1.93%) Windows 10
5 85 (1.77%) Unix
6 50 (1.04%) Android
7 47 (0.98%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.87%) VMS
9 36 (0.75%) Mac OS
10 26 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.44%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.23%) Solaris
14 10 (0.21%) Amazon Linux
14 10 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
15 9 (0.19%) CentOS
16 6 (0.12%) AIX
16 6 (0.12%) Mac OS X
17 5 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
18 4 (0.083%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,730 (35.94%) DevOps
2 1,363 (28.32%) CI/CD
3 1,270 (26.39%) Agile
4 879 (18.26%) Problem-Solving
5 674 (14.00%) Analytics
6 624 (12.96%) Infrastructure as Code
7 565 (11.74%) AI
8 553 (11.49%) Migration
9 510 (10.60%) Business Intelligence
10 492 (10.22%) Stakeholder Management
11 474 (9.85%) Containerisation
12 425 (8.83%) Data Modelling
13 422 (8.77%) Microservices
14 418 (8.68%) Machine Learning
15 410 (8.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 388 (8.06%) Test Automation
17 381 (7.92%) Continuous Improvement
18 353 (7.33%) Cybersecurity
19 350 (7.27%) Data Pipeline
19 350 (7.27%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,228 (25.51%) Python
2 1,037 (21.55%) SQL
3 520 (10.80%) PowerShell
4 451 (9.37%) Java
5 420 (8.73%) C#
6 373 (7.75%) JavaScript
7 243 (5.05%) Bash
8 188 (3.91%) TypeScript
9 134 (2.78%) Bicep
10 83 (1.72%) Go
11 66 (1.37%) Kusto Query Language
12 65 (1.35%) Scala
13 63 (1.31%) PL/SQL
14 54 (1.12%) R
15 41 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 41 (0.85%) T-SQL
16 39 (0.81%) C++
17 28 (0.58%) Perl
18 25 (0.52%) Shell Script
19 24 (0.50%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,058 (21.98%) Security Cleared
2 861 (17.89%) SC Cleared
3 412 (8.56%) Degree
4 282 (5.86%) Azure Certification
5 155 (3.22%) Microsoft Certification
6 152 (3.16%) CISSP
7 150 (3.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 121 (2.51%) AWS Certification
9 118 (2.45%) DV Cleared
10 93 (1.93%) CISM
11 78 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
12 69 (1.43%) Master's Degree
13 51 (1.06%) BPSS Clearance
14 39 (0.81%) ISTQB
15 34 (0.71%) MCP
16 33 (0.69%) CCNP
17 32 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
18 30 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 29 (0.60%) OSCP
19 29 (0.60%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 319 (6.63%) GDPR
2 291 (6.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 251 (5.22%) QA
4 235 (4.88%) NIST
5 212 (4.40%) Data Quality
6 93 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 75 (1.56%) PCI DSS
8 65 (1.35%) NCSC
9 47 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 44 (0.91%) HIPAA
11 36 (0.75%) SOC 2
12 28 (0.58%) EU AI Act
12 28 (0.58%) SLA
13 26 (0.54%) GRC
13 26 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 25 (0.52%) PSD2
14 25 (0.52%) WCAG
15 19 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 18 (0.37%) ISO 20022
17 16 (0.33%) NIST 800
System Software
1 611 (12.69%) Active Directory
2 602 (12.51%) Docker
3 153 (3.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
5 63 (1.31%) Hyper-V
6 62 (1.29%) Virtual Desktop
7 45 (0.93%) vSphere
8 22 (0.46%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.33%) Squid
10 13 (0.27%) DFS Replication
11 11 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 11 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.21%) Dovecot
12 10 (0.21%) Postfix
13 8 (0.17%) KVM
13 8 (0.17%) NFS
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.17%) Snort
13 8 (0.17%) zsh
14 6 (0.12%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 684 (14.21%) Terraform
2 674 (14.00%) Kubernetes
3 270 (5.61%) Microsoft Intune
4 229 (4.76%) Ansible
5 120 (2.49%) SCCM
6 107 (2.22%) Grafana
6 107 (2.22%) Prometheus
6 107 (2.22%) Single Sign-On
7 34 (0.71%) Puppet
8 33 (0.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 32 (0.66%) Argo
10 26 (0.54%) Nessus
11 21 (0.44%) NetBackup
12 20 (0.42%) Progress Chef
13 19 (0.39%) Kibana
14 18 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
15 17 (0.35%) vRealize
16 16 (0.33%) Nmap
17 15 (0.31%) Podman
17 15 (0.31%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,578 (32.79%) Microsoft
2 456 (9.47%) Databricks
3 298 (6.19%) Oracle
4 258 (5.36%) Google
5 208 (4.32%) ServiceNow
6 198 (4.11%) VMware
7 146 (3.03%) Cisco
8 134 (2.78%) Splunk
9 133 (2.76%) SAP
10 111 (2.31%) Salesforce
11 106 (2.20%) OpenAI
12 78 (1.62%) CyberArk
13 77 (1.60%) Citrix
13 77 (1.60%) Palo Alto
14 56 (1.16%) Foundry
14 56 (1.16%) Red Hat
15 49 (1.02%) Zscaler
16 48 (1.00%) F5
16 48 (1.00%) Okta
17 47 (0.98%) IBM