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

6 months to
26 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,138 4,077 5,250
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.92% 15.41% 13.95%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.07% 41.69% 41.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,671 2,728 3,914
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -3.51%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £709 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £517 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.52% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 27 77
10th Percentile £16.25 £22.14 £17.77
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -14.08%
75th Percentile £68.75 £62.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £93.75 £76.18 £67.95
UK median hourly rate £56.50 £29.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +94.83% -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 12,214 9,779 12,607
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.85% 36.97% 33.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,493 6,481 9,206
10th Percentile £304 £313 £270
25th Percentile £406 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £732
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 296 137 286
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.55 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.46 £17.13
Median hourly rate £30.25 £27.50 £23.23
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% +18.39% -3.22%
75th Percentile £58.16 £45.00 £49.77
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.75 £66.66
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £24.02
% change year-on-year +9.09% +14.49% +3.76%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 2,768 £540 -1.82% 990
North of England -1 669 £465 -2.11% 752
South East -2 636 £500 -5.66% 1,191
Midlands -2 438 £517 -1.10% 440
West Midlands +2 332 £550 - 201
North West -2 329 £450 - 388
South West +4 318 £512 -2.57% 407
Yorkshire 0 296 £479 +0.74% 251
East of England -1 139 £513 +17.14% 432
East Midlands -2 105 £436 -3.11% 231
North East -6 47 £475 -6.17% 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
1 259 (5.04%) SharePoint
2 172 (3.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 131 (2.55%) Apache Spark
4 120 (2.34%) Confluence
5 73 (1.42%) Apache
6 69 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.49%) OpenStack
8 23 (0.45%) CMS
9 22 (0.43%) SAS
10 13 (0.25%) Camunda
11 12 (0.23%) Appian
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 (0.18%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.18%) Mendix
14 8 (0.16%) Smallworld
Applications
1 111 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.73%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.90%) MS Visio
4 44 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
6 10 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.16%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 8 (0.16%) Trello
8 5 (0.097%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.097%) Weka
9 3 (0.058%) Adobe XD
9 3 (0.058%) PTC Creo
10 2 (0.039%) Windchill
11 1 (0.019%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.019%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.019%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.019%) Revit
11 1 (0.019%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 98 (1.91%) Dynamics CRM
2 58 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.18%) Maximo
6 8 (0.16%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.16%) Endur
6 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 8 (0.16%) Teamcenter
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 (0.097%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.097%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.097%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.097%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.097%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.097%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,818 (35.38%) AWS
2 1,073 (20.88%) GCP
3 1,017 (19.79%) Azure DevOps
4 703 (13.68%) Power Platform
5 628 (12.22%) Entra ID
6 625 (12.16%) Microsoft 365
7 524 (10.20%) GitHub
8 356 (6.93%) Azure Data Factory
9 301 (5.86%) Serverless
10 296 (5.76%) GitHub Actions
11 247 (4.81%) Dynamics 365
12 221 (4.30%) SaaS
13 218 (4.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 217 (4.22%) Power Automate
15 200 (3.89%) Azure AKS
16 192 (3.74%) Azure Monitor
17 190 (3.70%) Azure Logic Apps
18 189 (3.68%) Azure Functions
19 179 (3.48%) PaaS
20 177 (3.44%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 348 (6.77%) Firewall
2 232 (4.52%) DNS
3 174 (3.39%) VPN
4 149 (2.90%) Network Security
5 141 (2.74%) DHCP
6 122 (2.37%) WAN
7 93 (1.81%) TCP/IP
8 83 (1.62%) LAN
9 63 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
10 62 (1.21%) VLAN
11 60 (1.17%) SD-WAN
12 51 (0.99%) Kerberos
13 43 (0.84%) HTTP
14 34 (0.66%) BGP
15 30 (0.58%) Internet
16 29 (0.56%) Wireless
17 25 (0.49%) MPLS
18 24 (0.47%) SAN
19 22 (0.43%) SSL
20 21 (0.41%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 499 (9.71%) Power BI
2 288 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 237 (4.61%) Data Warehouse
4 235 (4.57%) Data Lake
5 181 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 173 (3.37%) Azure SQL Database
7 159 (3.09%) NoSQL
8 111 (2.16%) Metadata
9 108 (2.10%) Relational Database
10 83 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 82 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 76 (1.48%) MongoDB
13 59 (1.15%) Big Data
13 59 (1.15%) Oracle Database
14 56 (1.09%) MySQL
14 56 (1.09%) Tableau
15 52 (1.01%) BigQuery
16 46 (0.90%) Redis
17 44 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
18 39 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 383 (7.45%) Git
2 350 (6.81%) JIRA
3 273 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 204 (3.97%) GitLab
5 81 (1.58%) Selenium
6 79 (1.54%) Postman
7 54 (1.05%) SonarQube
8 43 (0.84%) JUnit
9 39 (0.76%) Cucumber
10 37 (0.72%) MLflow
11 36 (0.70%) Oracle APEX
12 35 (0.68%) JMeter
13 34 (0.66%) REST Assured
14 33 (0.64%) Cypress.io
15 30 (0.58%) Maven
16 29 (0.56%) Artifactory
17 26 (0.51%) Bitbucket
17 26 (0.51%) CircleCI
17 26 (0.51%) Gradle
18 24 (0.47%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,647 (32.06%) Social Skills
2 915 (17.81%) Finance
3 552 (10.74%) Public Sector
4 509 (9.91%) Analytical Skills
5 320 (6.23%) Banking
6 168 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 97 (1.89%) Legal
9 80 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
10 79 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
10 79 (1.54%) Retail
11 73 (1.42%) Marketing
12 68 (1.32%) Investment Banking
13 54 (1.05%) Telecoms
14 51 (0.99%) Financial Institution
14 51 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
15 50 (0.97%) Law
16 45 (0.88%) Manufacturing
17 38 (0.74%) Local Government
18 35 (0.68%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 821 (15.98%) Architect
2 743 (14.46%) Developer
3 540 (10.51%) Senior
4 399 (7.77%) Azure Engineer
5 388 (7.55%) Data Engineer
6 363 (7.07%) Lead
7 344 (6.70%) Analyst
8 263 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
9 256 (4.98%) Solutions Architect
10 207 (4.03%) Consultant
11 162 (3.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 147 (2.86%) Security Engineer
13 135 (2.63%) Senior Developer
14 131 (2.55%) Cloud Engineer
15 125 (2.43%) Azure Architect
16 115 (2.24%) Platform Engineer
17 111 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 106 (2.06%) Azure Data Engineer
19 102 (1.99%) Support Engineer
20 99 (1.93%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 408 (7.94%) .NET
2 361 (7.03%) REST
3 231 (4.50%) React
4 195 (3.80%) Kafka
5 193 (3.76%) RESTful
6 188 (3.66%) PySpark
7 176 (3.43%) Node.js
8 168 (3.27%) OAuth
9 154 (3.00%) Spring
10 139 (2.71%) Spring Boot
11 138 (2.69%) AngularJS
12 137 (2.67%) HTML
13 132 (2.57%) LDAP
14 123 (2.39%) SOAP
15 118 (2.30%) PyTorch
16 116 (2.26%) JSON
17 115 (2.24%) CSS
18 110 (2.14%) TensorFlow
19 107 (2.08%) SAML
20 105 (2.04%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 457 (8.89%) Cloud Native
2 199 (3.87%) Onboarding
3 166 (3.23%) Product Ownership
4 152 (2.96%) Enterprise Software
5 147 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
6 144 (2.80%) Security Posture
7 136 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
8 103 (2.00%) Data Centre
9 97 (1.89%) Public Cloud
10 85 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
11 78 (1.52%) Replication
12 68 (1.32%) AI Agents
12 68 (1.32%) Management Information System
13 60 (1.17%) Data Structures
14 57 (1.11%) Algorithms
15 56 (1.09%) Low-Code
16 48 (0.93%) Data Protection Act
17 47 (0.91%) CMDB
17 47 (0.91%) NHS
18 43 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 611 (11.89%) Windows
2 318 (6.19%) Linux
3 188 (3.66%) Windows Server
4 117 (2.28%) Windows 10
5 71 (1.38%) Unix
6 55 (1.07%) VMS
7 46 (0.90%) Apple iOS
8 41 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 38 (0.74%) Android
10 28 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.39%) Ubuntu
13 16 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
14 11 (0.21%) CentOS
15 9 (0.18%) Solaris
16 8 (0.16%) Amazon Linux
16 8 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
17 7 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.097%) AIX
19 3 (0.058%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,875 (36.49%) DevOps
2 1,501 (29.21%) CI/CD
3 1,264 (24.60%) Agile
4 1,000 (19.46%) Problem-Solving
5 769 (14.97%) Analytics
6 677 (13.18%) AI
7 654 (12.73%) Infrastructure as Code
8 601 (11.70%) Migration
9 567 (11.04%) Business Intelligence
10 525 (10.22%) Stakeholder Management
11 502 (9.77%) Containerisation
12 500 (9.73%) Data Modelling
13 461 (8.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 456 (8.88%) Continuous Improvement
15 437 (8.51%) Machine Learning
16 424 (8.25%) Data Pipeline
16 424 (8.25%) ETL
16 424 (8.25%) Microservices
17 418 (8.14%) Test Automation
18 381 (7.42%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,313 (25.55%) Python
2 1,123 (21.86%) SQL
3 568 (11.05%) PowerShell
4 461 (8.97%) Java
5 429 (8.35%) C#
6 399 (7.77%) JavaScript
7 227 (4.42%) Bash
8 210 (4.09%) TypeScript
9 146 (2.84%) Bicep
10 92 (1.79%) Scala
11 85 (1.65%) Go
12 73 (1.42%) PL/SQL
13 62 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
14 53 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 53 (1.03%) T-SQL
15 46 (0.90%) R
16 33 (0.64%) C++
17 30 (0.58%) Shell Script
18 25 (0.49%) PHP
19 21 (0.41%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,256 (24.45%) Security Cleared
2 1,041 (20.26%) SC Cleared
3 428 (8.33%) Degree
4 310 (6.03%) Azure Certification
5 178 (3.46%) Computer Science Degree
6 152 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 138 (2.69%) CISSP
8 112 (2.18%) DV Cleared
9 109 (2.12%) AWS Certification
10 88 (1.71%) CISM
11 79 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
12 71 (1.38%) Master's Degree
13 66 (1.28%) BPSS Clearance
14 43 (0.84%) PMI Certification
15 38 (0.74%) ISTQB
15 38 (0.74%) PMP
16 36 (0.70%) MCP
16 36 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
17 35 (0.68%) CCNP
18 25 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 327 (6.36%) GDPR
2 305 (5.94%) Data Quality
3 269 (5.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 268 (5.22%) QA
5 202 (3.93%) NIST
6 98 (1.91%) Accessibility
7 79 (1.54%) NCSC
8 70 (1.36%) PCI DSS
9 48 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 47 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 41 (0.80%) SLA
12 36 (0.70%) HIPAA
13 34 (0.66%) SOC 2
14 30 (0.58%) WCAG
15 28 (0.54%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.54%) PMO
16 26 (0.51%) PSD2
17 24 (0.47%) GRC
18 22 (0.43%) ISO 20022
19 17 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 714 (13.90%) Active Directory
2 641 (12.48%) Docker
3 169 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (1.54%) Hyper-V
5 68 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
6 66 (1.28%) Virtual Desktop
7 54 (1.05%) vSphere
8 20 (0.39%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.25%) Squid
10 11 (0.21%) DFS Replication
10 11 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.19%) KVM
12 9 (0.18%) Postfix
13 8 (0.16%) Dovecot
14 7 (0.14%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.14%) Firmware
14 7 (0.14%) NFS
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 6 (0.12%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 751 (14.62%) Terraform
2 750 (14.60%) Kubernetes
3 289 (5.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 241 (4.69%) Ansible
5 130 (2.53%) SCCM
6 127 (2.47%) Single Sign-On
7 126 (2.45%) Grafana
8 117 (2.28%) Prometheus
9 60 (1.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.72%) Argo
11 34 (0.66%) Puppet
12 21 (0.41%) Nessus
13 20 (0.39%) Istio
14 19 (0.37%) Kibana
14 19 (0.37%) Progress Chef
15 18 (0.35%) Nmap
15 18 (0.35%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.33%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.33%) vRealize
17 15 (0.29%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,705 (33.18%) Microsoft
2 509 (9.91%) Databricks
3 315 (6.13%) Oracle
4 286 (5.57%) Google
5 237 (4.61%) ServiceNow
6 217 (4.22%) VMware
7 143 (2.78%) SAP
8 140 (2.72%) Cisco
9 135 (2.63%) Splunk
10 129 (2.51%) OpenAI
11 112 (2.18%) Salesforce
12 105 (2.04%) CyberArk
13 84 (1.63%) Palo Alto
14 66 (1.28%) Okta
15 65 (1.27%) Foundry
16 60 (1.17%) Citrix
16 60 (1.17%) Red Hat
17 59 (1.15%) BeyondTrust
18 53 (1.03%) IBM
19 49 (0.95%) Fortinet