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

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,307 4,128 5,224
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.89% 15.71% 13.74%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.14% 42.07% 41.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,775 2,785 3,901
10th Percentile £350 £353 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.51% -3.64% -3.34%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.43% -4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 24 75
10th Percentile £19.85 £21.06 £17.75
25th Percentile £35.63 £23.80 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £68.38 £65.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £93.75 £76.68 £69.05
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 12,595 9,812 12,555
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.70% 37.35% 33.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,716 6,521 9,167
10th Percentile £305 £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 £601 £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 329 143 303
10th Percentile £14.39 £15.45 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.25 £16.42
Median hourly rate £35.00 £27.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% +22.22% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58.75 £47.75 £47.47
90th Percentile £77.75 £68.75 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £27.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +27.27% +22.22% -6.25%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 2,862 £541 -1.66% 1,050
North of England 0 695 £475 - 564
South East -2 671 £500 -6.98% 753
Midlands -1 439 £500 -2.44% 316
North West -1 337 £450 -1.37% 323
South West +5 330 £508 -3.33% 258
West Midlands +1 329 £525 -4.55% 193
Yorkshire -2 312 £484 +1.79% 170
East of England -2 151 £550 +15.79% 196
East Midlands -3 109 £436 -3.11% 122
North East 0 50 £500 +10.13% 73
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
1 267 (5.03%) SharePoint
2 182 (3.43%) Microsoft Exchange
3 143 (2.69%) Apache Spark
4 126 (2.37%) Confluence
5 81 (1.53%) Apache
6 67 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.45%) OpenStack
8 23 (0.43%) CMS
9 16 (0.30%) SAS
10 14 (0.26%) Appian
11 13 (0.24%) Camunda
12 12 (0.23%) ArcGIS
12 12 (0.23%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.21%) IIS
13 11 (0.21%) nginx
13 11 (0.21%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
15 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
15 9 (0.17%) Mendix
16 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 119 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 93 (1.75%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.87%) MS Visio
4 45 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.15%) Trello
8 7 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.094%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.094%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.094%) Weka
10 4 (0.075%) 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 95 (1.79%) Dynamics CRM
2 57 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.19%) Maximo
4 10 (0.19%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.19%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.17%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.15%) 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 (0.094%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.094%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.094%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.094%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.094%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,875 (35.33%) AWS
2 1,104 (20.80%) GCP
3 1,048 (19.75%) Azure DevOps
4 722 (13.60%) Power Platform
5 661 (12.46%) Entra ID
6 638 (12.02%) Microsoft 365
7 528 (9.95%) GitHub
8 378 (7.12%) Azure Data Factory
9 313 (5.90%) Serverless
10 293 (5.52%) GitHub Actions
11 244 (4.60%) Dynamics 365
12 231 (4.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 230 (4.33%) SaaS
14 214 (4.03%) Power Automate
15 210 (3.96%) Azure AKS
16 198 (3.73%) Azure Functions
17 197 (3.71%) Azure Logic Apps
17 197 (3.71%) Azure Monitor
18 181 (3.41%) PaaS
19 177 (3.34%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 359 (6.76%) Firewall
2 244 (4.60%) DNS
3 180 (3.39%) VPN
4 151 (2.85%) DHCP
4 151 (2.85%) Network Security
5 126 (2.37%) WAN
6 92 (1.73%) TCP/IP
7 89 (1.68%) LAN
8 70 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
9 65 (1.22%) Kerberos
10 62 (1.17%) VLAN
11 59 (1.11%) SD-WAN
12 40 (0.75%) HTTP
13 34 (0.64%) BGP
14 30 (0.57%) Internet
14 30 (0.57%) Wireless
15 26 (0.49%) MPLS
15 26 (0.49%) SAN
15 26 (0.49%) SSL
16 23 (0.43%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 506 (9.53%) Power BI
2 299 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 255 (4.80%) Data Warehouse
4 247 (4.65%) Data Lake
5 181 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 176 (3.32%) Azure SQL Database
7 158 (2.98%) NoSQL
8 121 (2.28%) Metadata
9 105 (1.98%) Relational Database
10 88 (1.66%) Delta Lake
11 86 (1.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 73 (1.38%) MongoDB
13 67 (1.26%) Tableau
14 60 (1.13%) Oracle Database
15 59 (1.11%) Big Data
16 54 (1.02%) MySQL
17 51 (0.96%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
19 45 (0.85%) Redis
20 38 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 390 (7.35%) Git
2 364 (6.86%) JIRA
3 263 (4.96%) Jenkins
4 198 (3.73%) GitLab
5 79 (1.49%) Selenium
6 73 (1.38%) Postman
7 49 (0.92%) SonarQube
8 40 (0.75%) Cucumber
8 40 (0.75%) JUnit
8 40 (0.75%) MLflow
9 36 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
9 36 (0.68%) REST Assured
10 35 (0.66%) JMeter
11 31 (0.58%) Cypress.io
12 28 (0.53%) Artifactory
12 28 (0.53%) Visual Studio
13 24 (0.45%) Bitbucket
13 24 (0.45%) Maven
13 24 (0.45%) TestRail
14 22 (0.41%) CircleCI
General
1 1,684 (31.73%) Social Skills
2 961 (18.11%) Finance
3 568 (10.70%) Public Sector
4 543 (10.23%) Analytical Skills
5 331 (6.24%) Banking
6 179 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (1.98%) Legal
8 99 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 83 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
10 82 (1.55%) Retail
11 81 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
12 78 (1.47%) Marketing
13 67 (1.26%) Investment Banking
14 59 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
15 56 (1.06%) Telecoms
16 53 (1.00%) Law
17 52 (0.98%) Financial Institution
18 40 (0.75%) Front Office
18 40 (0.75%) Manufacturing
19 38 (0.72%) Military
Job Titles
1 859 (16.19%) Architect
2 753 (14.19%) Developer
3 564 (10.63%) Senior
4 425 (8.01%) Azure Engineer
5 413 (7.78%) Data Engineer
6 381 (7.18%) Lead
7 364 (6.86%) Analyst
8 266 (5.01%) DevOps Engineer
9 264 (4.97%) Solutions Architect
10 221 (4.16%) Consultant
11 167 (3.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 141 (2.66%) Security Engineer
13 136 (2.56%) Senior Developer
14 134 (2.52%) Azure Architect
14 134 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
15 122 (2.30%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 120 (2.26%) Platform Engineer
17 106 (2.00%) Azure Data Engineer
18 104 (1.96%) Support Engineer
19 102 (1.92%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 412 (7.76%) .NET
2 379 (7.14%) REST
3 240 (4.52%) React
4 206 (3.88%) Kafka
5 195 (3.67%) RESTful
6 193 (3.64%) PySpark
7 185 (3.49%) Node.js
8 174 (3.28%) OAuth
9 157 (2.96%) Spring
10 145 (2.73%) LDAP
11 139 (2.62%) HTML
11 139 (2.62%) Spring Boot
12 133 (2.51%) AngularJS
13 127 (2.39%) SOAP
14 120 (2.26%) CSS
14 120 (2.26%) JSON
14 120 (2.26%) PyTorch
15 114 (2.15%) SAML
16 112 (2.11%) TensorFlow
17 106 (2.00%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 470 (8.86%) Cloud Native
2 213 (4.01%) Onboarding
3 173 (3.26%) Product Ownership
4 153 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
5 150 (2.83%) Enterprise Software
6 147 (2.77%) Security Posture
7 136 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
8 111 (2.09%) Data Centre
9 100 (1.88%) Public Cloud
10 79 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
11 78 (1.47%) Replication
12 73 (1.38%) AI Agents
13 67 (1.26%) Data Structures
14 66 (1.24%) Management Information System
15 58 (1.09%) Algorithms
16 55 (1.04%) Low-Code
17 51 (0.96%) Data Protection Act
18 50 (0.94%) CMDB
19 49 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
20 47 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 628 (11.83%) Windows
2 314 (5.92%) Linux
3 189 (3.56%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.24%) Windows 10
5 67 (1.26%) Unix
6 55 (1.04%) VMS
7 44 (0.83%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.79%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.70%) Android
10 29 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.21%) CentOS
14 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
15 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.094%) AIX
17 3 (0.057%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,940 (36.56%) DevOps
2 1,552 (29.24%) CI/CD
3 1,301 (24.51%) Agile
4 1,017 (19.16%) Problem-Solving
5 810 (15.26%) Analytics
6 730 (13.76%) AI
7 688 (12.96%) Infrastructure as Code
8 625 (11.78%) Migration
9 578 (10.89%) Business Intelligence
10 553 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
11 527 (9.93%) Data Modelling
12 516 (9.72%) Containerisation
13 482 (9.08%) Continuous Improvement
14 466 (8.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 465 (8.76%) Machine Learning
16 455 (8.57%) ETL
17 451 (8.50%) Microservices
18 447 (8.42%) Data Pipeline
19 418 (7.88%) Data Engineering
20 414 (7.80%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,349 (25.42%) Python
2 1,165 (21.95%) SQL
3 599 (11.29%) PowerShell
4 454 (8.55%) Java
5 446 (8.40%) C#
6 401 (7.56%) JavaScript
7 225 (4.24%) Bash
8 221 (4.16%) TypeScript
9 154 (2.90%) Bicep
10 89 (1.68%) Scala
11 81 (1.53%) Go
12 76 (1.43%) PL/SQL
13 63 (1.19%) Kusto Query Language
14 62 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 52 (0.98%) T-SQL
16 43 (0.81%) R
17 34 (0.64%) C++
18 27 (0.51%) Shell Script
19 26 (0.49%) PHP
20 20 (0.38%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,280 (24.12%) Security Cleared
2 1,059 (19.95%) SC Cleared
3 445 (8.39%) Degree
4 322 (6.07%) Azure Certification
5 186 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 156 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
7 141 (2.66%) CISSP
8 113 (2.13%) DV Cleared
9 111 (2.09%) AWS Certification
10 90 (1.70%) CISM
11 79 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
12 74 (1.39%) Master's Degree
13 73 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
14 46 (0.87%) PMI Certification
15 41 (0.77%) PMP
16 40 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
17 39 (0.73%) CCNP
17 39 (0.73%) ISTQB
18 30 (0.57%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 25 (0.47%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 342 (6.44%) GDPR
2 330 (6.22%) Data Quality
3 274 (5.16%) QA
4 267 (5.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 205 (3.86%) NIST
6 97 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.55%) NCSC
8 70 (1.32%) PCI DSS
9 50 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 48 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
11 44 (0.83%) SLA
12 36 (0.68%) HIPAA
13 34 (0.64%) SOC 2
14 32 (0.60%) PMO
15 29 (0.55%) WCAG
16 28 (0.53%) EU AI Act
17 27 (0.51%) GRC
18 26 (0.49%) PSD2
19 23 (0.43%) ISO 20022
20 19 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 739 (13.93%) Active Directory
2 640 (12.06%) Docker
3 178 (3.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 83 (1.56%) Hyper-V
5 70 (1.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 69 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
7 61 (1.15%) vSphere
8 20 (0.38%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.23%) Squid
9 12 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.19%) DFS Replication
11 8 (0.15%) KVM
11 8 (0.15%) NFS
11 8 (0.15%) Postfix
12 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 7 (0.13%) Dovecot
12 7 (0.13%) Firmware
12 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 788 (14.85%) Terraform
2 767 (14.45%) Kubernetes
3 310 (5.84%) Microsoft Intune
4 239 (4.50%) Ansible
5 139 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
6 137 (2.58%) SCCM
7 128 (2.41%) Grafana
8 118 (2.22%) Prometheus
9 69 (1.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.72%) Argo
11 29 (0.55%) Puppet
12 22 (0.41%) Nessus
13 21 (0.40%) Istio
14 19 (0.36%) Progress Chef
15 18 (0.34%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.34%) Kibana
15 18 (0.34%) Nmap
15 18 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.32%) vRealize
17 16 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,763 (33.22%) Microsoft
2 528 (9.95%) Databricks
3 303 (5.71%) Oracle
4 290 (5.46%) Google
5 251 (4.73%) ServiceNow
6 231 (4.35%) VMware
7 150 (2.83%) SAP
8 146 (2.75%) OpenAI
9 138 (2.60%) Cisco
10 137 (2.58%) Splunk
11 110 (2.07%) CyberArk
11 110 (2.07%) Salesforce
12 85 (1.60%) Palo Alto
13 76 (1.43%) Foundry
14 69 (1.30%) Okta
15 63 (1.19%) BeyondTrust
15 63 (1.19%) Citrix
16 62 (1.17%) Red Hat
17 52 (0.98%) IBM
18 48 (0.90%) Fortinet