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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,530 4,057 5,181
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.81% 15.98% 13.72%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.13% 42.50% 41.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,952 2,771 3,825
10th Percentile £350 £352 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £732 £745
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -3.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 24 70
10th Percentile £25.01 £23.65 £17.78
25th Percentile £53.91 £24.70 £23.06
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -19.69%
75th Percentile £60.83 £65.94 £59.99
90th Percentile £86.40 £77.41 £66.30
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%

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 13,125 9,545 12,435
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.52% 37.60% 32.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,072 6,450 8,996
10th Percentile £306 £313 £275
25th Percentile £408 £418 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £730
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 364 147 318
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.36 £14.21
25th Percentile £19.98 £21.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £38.54 £27.50 £21.48
Median % change year-on-year +40.15% +28.03% -14.08%
75th Percentile £60.00 £47.75 £46.18
90th Percentile £79.28 £74.45 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £27.50 £21.50
% change year-on-year +36.36% +27.91% -14.00%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 2,985 £541 -1.66% 925
North of England 0 718 £492 +3.58% 549
South East -1 702 £500 -7.41% 734
Midlands -2 464 £500 - 315
North West 0 360 £475 +0.74% 296
West Midlands -2 344 £525 -2.33% 192
South West +4 336 £512 -2.57% 232
Yorkshire -3 309 £500 +5.26% 165
East of England -1 161 £550 +6.02% 186
East Midlands -2 118 £437 -2.94% 122
North East -5 53 £515 +8.42% 95
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
1 264 (4.77%) SharePoint
2 185 (3.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 152 (2.75%) Apache Spark
4 145 (2.62%) Confluence
5 84 (1.52%) Apache
6 71 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
7 20 (0.36%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.27%) Appian
8 15 (0.27%) CMS
9 14 (0.25%) SAS
10 13 (0.24%) ArcGIS
11 12 (0.22%) Camunda
12 10 (0.18%) HCL Notes
13 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.16%) IIS
13 9 (0.16%) Mendix
13 9 (0.16%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.14%) Skype for Business
14 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
15 7 (0.13%) Jupyter
Applications
1 108 (1.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 86 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.83%) MS Visio
4 43 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 13 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.13%) Trello
8 5 (0.090%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.090%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.090%) Weka
9 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.054%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 2 (0.036%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.018%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.018%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.018%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.018%) Revit
12 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
12 1 (0.018%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 95 (1.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.20%) Maximo
4 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.16%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.13%) Endur
6 7 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.090%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.090%) Oracle Payables
8 5 (0.090%) Oracle Receivables
8 5 (0.090%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.090%) SAP BPC
8 5 (0.090%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,960 (35.44%) AWS
2 1,138 (20.58%) GCP
3 1,079 (19.51%) Azure DevOps
4 750 (13.56%) Power Platform
5 704 (12.73%) Entra ID
6 661 (11.95%) Microsoft 365
7 547 (9.89%) GitHub
8 407 (7.36%) Azure Data Factory
9 314 (5.68%) Serverless
10 307 (5.55%) GitHub Actions
11 254 (4.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 249 (4.50%) Dynamics 365
13 236 (4.27%) SaaS
14 213 (3.85%) Azure AKS
14 213 (3.85%) Power Automate
15 200 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
16 199 (3.60%) Azure Functions
17 190 (3.44%) Azure Logic Apps
18 189 (3.42%) PaaS
19 177 (3.20%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 375 (6.78%) Firewall
2 252 (4.56%) DNS
3 193 (3.49%) VPN
4 167 (3.02%) Network Security
5 155 (2.80%) DHCP
6 129 (2.33%) WAN
7 96 (1.74%) LAN
8 93 (1.68%) TCP/IP
9 77 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
10 70 (1.27%) VLAN
11 65 (1.18%) Kerberos
12 61 (1.10%) SD-WAN
13 37 (0.67%) HTTP
14 34 (0.61%) BGP
15 33 (0.60%) Wireless
16 30 (0.54%) SSL
17 29 (0.52%) Internet
17 29 (0.52%) OSPF
17 29 (0.52%) SAN
18 28 (0.51%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 515 (9.31%) Power BI
2 314 (5.68%) SQL Server
3 285 (5.15%) Data Warehouse
4 271 (4.90%) Data Lake
5 206 (3.73%) PostgreSQL
6 183 (3.31%) Azure SQL Database
7 158 (2.86%) NoSQL
8 131 (2.37%) Metadata
9 106 (1.92%) Delta Lake
10 104 (1.88%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 74 (1.34%) MongoDB
13 66 (1.19%) Big Data
14 65 (1.18%) Tableau
15 61 (1.10%) Oracle Database
16 55 (0.99%) BigQuery
17 52 (0.94%) MySQL
18 48 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
19 46 (0.83%) Redis
20 38 (0.69%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 413 (7.47%) Git
2 379 (6.85%) JIRA
3 264 (4.77%) Jenkins
4 208 (3.76%) GitLab
5 88 (1.59%) Selenium
6 74 (1.34%) Postman
7 54 (0.98%) JUnit
8 49 (0.89%) MLflow
9 48 (0.87%) Cucumber
10 46 (0.83%) JMeter
11 45 (0.81%) SonarQube
12 37 (0.67%) REST Assured
13 36 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
14 33 (0.60%) Cypress.io
15 29 (0.52%) Artifactory
16 28 (0.51%) TestRail
17 27 (0.49%) Visual Studio
18 26 (0.47%) Bitbucket
18 26 (0.47%) Maven
19 23 (0.42%) ERwin
General
1 1,702 (30.78%) Social Skills
2 1,004 (18.16%) Finance
3 581 (10.51%) Public Sector
4 565 (10.22%) Analytical Skills
5 328 (5.93%) Banking
6 187 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (1.90%) Legal
8 97 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 86 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
10 85 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
11 82 (1.48%) Retail
12 75 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
13 71 (1.28%) Marketing
14 62 (1.12%) Investment Banking
15 58 (1.05%) Financial Institution
15 58 (1.05%) Telecoms
16 53 (0.96%) Law
17 43 (0.78%) Front Office
18 41 (0.74%) Manufacturing
19 36 (0.65%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 910 (16.46%) Architect
2 756 (13.67%) Developer
3 620 (11.21%) Senior
4 455 (8.23%) Azure Engineer
5 450 (8.14%) Data Engineer
6 403 (7.29%) Lead
7 382 (6.91%) Analyst
8 275 (4.97%) Solutions Architect
9 268 (4.85%) DevOps Engineer
10 247 (4.47%) Consultant
11 164 (2.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 155 (2.80%) Security Engineer
13 149 (2.69%) Cloud Engineer
14 136 (2.46%) Azure Architect
14 136 (2.46%) Senior Developer
15 130 (2.35%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 121 (2.19%) Platform Engineer
17 110 (1.99%) Business Analyst
18 109 (1.97%) Azure Data Engineer
18 109 (1.97%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 414 (7.49%) .NET
2 381 (6.89%) REST
3 259 (4.68%) React
4 211 (3.82%) Kafka
5 209 (3.78%) PySpark
6 197 (3.56%) RESTful
7 195 (3.53%) Node.js
8 174 (3.15%) OAuth
9 165 (2.98%) Spring
10 146 (2.64%) HTML
11 142 (2.57%) LDAP
12 140 (2.53%) AngularJS
13 139 (2.51%) Spring Boot
14 131 (2.37%) PyTorch
15 128 (2.31%) CSS
16 126 (2.28%) SOAP
17 120 (2.17%) SAML
18 119 (2.15%) Middleware
19 117 (2.12%) TensorFlow
20 116 (2.10%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 492 (8.90%) Cloud Native
2 218 (3.94%) Onboarding
3 189 (3.42%) Product Ownership
4 161 (2.91%) Security Posture
5 158 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
6 145 (2.62%) Enterprise Software
7 141 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 116 (2.10%) Data Centre
9 102 (1.84%) Public Cloud
10 90 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
11 81 (1.46%) AI Agents
12 79 (1.43%) Data Structures
12 79 (1.43%) Replication
13 62 (1.12%) Algorithms
14 61 (1.10%) Management Information System
15 59 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
16 55 (0.99%) Low-Code
17 54 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
18 47 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
19 46 (0.83%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 629 (11.37%) Windows
2 320 (5.79%) Linux
3 179 (3.24%) Windows Server
4 114 (2.06%) Windows 10
5 63 (1.14%) Unix
6 57 (1.03%) VMS
7 46 (0.83%) Mac OS
8 37 (0.67%) Apple iOS
9 36 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 29 (0.52%) Android
11 20 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 12 (0.22%) CentOS
14 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.090%) AIX
17 5 (0.090%) Data ONTAP
18 4 (0.072%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,994 (36.06%) DevOps
2 1,643 (29.71%) CI/CD
3 1,333 (24.10%) Agile
4 1,021 (18.46%) Problem-Solving
5 852 (15.41%) Analytics
6 791 (14.30%) AI
7 725 (13.11%) Infrastructure as Code
8 673 (12.17%) Migration
9 590 (10.67%) Business Intelligence
10 582 (10.52%) Stakeholder Management
11 577 (10.43%) Data Modelling
12 545 (9.86%) Containerisation
13 520 (9.40%) Continuous Improvement
14 498 (9.01%) Data Pipeline
15 497 (8.99%) ETL
15 497 (8.99%) Machine Learning
16 484 (8.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 475 (8.59%) Microservices
18 462 (8.35%) Data Engineering
19 434 (7.85%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,442 (26.08%) Python
2 1,234 (22.31%) SQL
3 620 (11.21%) PowerShell
4 456 (8.25%) Java
5 454 (8.21%) C#
6 425 (7.69%) JavaScript
7 236 (4.27%) TypeScript
8 225 (4.07%) Bash
9 167 (3.02%) Bicep
10 91 (1.65%) Scala
11 77 (1.39%) Go
11 77 (1.39%) PL/SQL
12 62 (1.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 61 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
14 59 (1.07%) T-SQL
15 40 (0.72%) R
16 29 (0.52%) C++
17 28 (0.51%) PHP
18 27 (0.49%) Shell Script
19 19 (0.34%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,340 (24.23%) Security Cleared
2 1,102 (19.93%) SC Cleared
3 452 (8.17%) Degree
4 330 (5.97%) Azure Certification
5 189 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 161 (2.91%) CISSP
6 161 (2.91%) Microsoft Certification
7 120 (2.17%) AWS Certification
8 117 (2.12%) DV Cleared
9 102 (1.84%) CISM
10 91 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
11 83 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
12 73 (1.32%) Master's Degree
13 52 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
14 45 (0.81%) CCNP
14 45 (0.81%) PMI Certification
15 43 (0.78%) PMP
16 41 (0.74%) ISTQB
17 32 (0.58%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 31 (0.56%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 372 (6.73%) Data Quality
2 356 (6.44%) GDPR
3 289 (5.23%) QA
4 265 (4.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 210 (3.80%) NIST
6 101 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.50%) NCSC
8 78 (1.41%) PCI DSS
9 57 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
10 53 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 47 (0.85%) SLA
12 39 (0.71%) PMO
13 37 (0.67%) HIPAA
14 31 (0.56%) GRC
14 31 (0.56%) SOC 2
15 30 (0.54%) WCAG
16 25 (0.45%) EU AI Act
17 23 (0.42%) ISO 20022
18 22 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 22 (0.40%) PSD2
System Software
1 767 (13.87%) Active Directory
2 660 (11.93%) Docker
3 177 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (1.57%) Hyper-V
5 82 (1.48%) Virtual Machines
6 70 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
7 67 (1.21%) vSphere
8 23 (0.42%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.18%) NFS
11 9 (0.16%) Postfix
12 8 (0.14%) Snort
13 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.13%) Firmware
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.11%) DFS Replication
14 6 (0.11%) GPFS
14 6 (0.11%) KVM
14 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 844 (15.26%) Terraform
2 810 (14.65%) Kubernetes
3 327 (5.91%) Microsoft Intune
4 237 (4.29%) Ansible
5 147 (2.66%) Single Sign-On
6 133 (2.41%) Grafana
7 126 (2.28%) SCCM
8 117 (2.12%) Prometheus
9 72 (1.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.71%) Argo
11 25 (0.45%) Puppet
12 22 (0.40%) Istio
13 20 (0.36%) Progress Chef
14 19 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
14 19 (0.34%) Nessus
14 19 (0.34%) Nmap
14 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
15 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.29%) vRealize
17 14 (0.25%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,823 (32.97%) Microsoft
2 570 (10.31%) Databricks
3 305 (5.52%) Oracle
4 283 (5.12%) Google
5 253 (4.58%) ServiceNow
6 235 (4.25%) VMware
7 159 (2.88%) SAP
8 145 (2.62%) Cisco
9 140 (2.53%) OpenAI
10 137 (2.48%) Splunk
11 111 (2.01%) CyberArk
12 104 (1.88%) Salesforce
13 89 (1.61%) Palo Alto
14 87 (1.57%) Foundry
15 71 (1.28%) Okta
16 68 (1.23%) Citrix
16 68 (1.23%) Red Hat
17 63 (1.14%) BeyondTrust
18 57 (1.03%) IBM
19 49 (0.89%) Fortinet