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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,609 4,117 5,148
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.83% 16.02% 13.72%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.19% 42.53% 41.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,999 2,813 3,797
10th Percentile £350 £351 £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 £737 £745
UK median daily rate £522 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -0.57% -2.78% -3.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 24 70
10th Percentile £25.47 £23.65 £17.78
25th Percentile £54.66 £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 £64.20 £65.94 £59.99
90th Percentile £83.00 £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 13,295 9,681 12,333
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.52% 37.66% 32.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,174 6,552 8,916
10th Percentile £309 £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 £606 £638 £638
90th Percentile £705 £738 £730
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 373 146 321
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £14.25
25th Percentile £20.32 £21.30 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £27.50 £21.46
Median % change year-on-year +45.45% +28.15% -14.16%
75th Percentile £60.00 £47.88 £46.18
90th Percentile £79.90 £74.63 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £39.75 £27.50 £21.46
% change year-on-year +44.55% +28.15% -14.16%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 3,033 £543 -1.18% 872
North of England 0 728 £500 +5.26% 504
South East -1 702 £500 -7.06% 702
Midlands -2 472 £500 -1.96% 274
North West +1 368 £479 -3.31% 267
West Midlands -1 353 £525 -2.33% 170
South West +4 343 £512 -2.57% 221
Yorkshire -3 312 £500 +11.11% 161
East of England -1 162 £550 +2.33% 158
East Midlands -4 117 £433 -3.78% 103
North East -4 52 £515 +7.01% 83
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
1 270 (4.81%) SharePoint
2 189 (3.37%) Microsoft Exchange
3 154 (2.75%) Apache Spark
4 149 (2.66%) Confluence
5 83 (1.48%) Apache
6 73 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.34%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.27%) Appian
8 15 (0.27%) CMS
9 14 (0.25%) SAS
10 13 (0.23%) ArcGIS
11 12 (0.21%) Camunda
12 10 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.18%) Mendix
13 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.16%) IIS
14 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
15 7 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 7 (0.12%) WebLogic
16 6 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 106 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 84 (1.50%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.82%) MS Visio
4 43 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.12%) Trello
8 5 (0.089%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.089%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.089%) Weka
9 4 (0.071%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.053%) 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%) Spreadsheet
12 1 (0.018%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 96 (1.71%) Dynamics CRM
2 61 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.21%) Maximo
4 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.16%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.12%) Endur
6 7 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.089%) Dynamics NAV
8 5 (0.089%) NetSuite
8 5 (0.089%) Oracle Assets
8 5 (0.089%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.089%) Oracle Payables
8 5 (0.089%) Oracle Receivables
8 5 (0.089%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.089%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 1,986 (35.41%) AWS
2 1,165 (20.77%) GCP
3 1,098 (19.58%) Azure DevOps
4 762 (13.59%) Power Platform
5 721 (12.85%) Entra ID
6 672 (11.98%) Microsoft 365
7 552 (9.84%) GitHub
8 411 (7.33%) Azure Data Factory
9 318 (5.67%) Serverless
10 310 (5.53%) GitHub Actions
11 255 (4.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 252 (4.49%) Dynamics 365
13 238 (4.24%) SaaS
14 218 (3.89%) Power Automate
15 214 (3.82%) Azure AKS
16 201 (3.58%) Azure Functions
17 195 (3.48%) Azure Monitor
18 190 (3.39%) PaaS
19 187 (3.33%) Azure Logic Apps
20 182 (3.24%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 381 (6.79%) Firewall
2 256 (4.56%) DNS
3 200 (3.57%) VPN
4 168 (3.00%) Network Security
5 157 (2.80%) DHCP
6 130 (2.32%) WAN
7 98 (1.75%) TCP/IP
8 97 (1.73%) LAN
9 79 (1.41%) Wi-Fi
10 72 (1.28%) VLAN
11 65 (1.16%) Kerberos
12 61 (1.09%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.70%) HTTP
14 36 (0.64%) BGP
15 34 (0.61%) Wireless
16 31 (0.55%) OSPF
16 31 (0.55%) SSL
17 29 (0.52%) MPLS
17 29 (0.52%) SAN
18 28 (0.50%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 524 (9.34%) Power BI
2 320 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 290 (5.17%) Data Warehouse
4 271 (4.83%) Data Lake
5 208 (3.71%) PostgreSQL
6 183 (3.26%) Azure SQL Database
7 162 (2.89%) NoSQL
8 132 (2.35%) Metadata
9 106 (1.89%) Delta Lake
10 104 (1.85%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 74 (1.32%) MongoDB
13 68 (1.21%) Big Data
14 65 (1.16%) Tableau
15 61 (1.09%) Oracle Database
16 56 (1.00%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.96%) MySQL
18 48 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
19 47 (0.84%) Redis
20 37 (0.66%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 427 (7.61%) Git
2 386 (6.88%) JIRA
3 273 (4.87%) Jenkins
4 207 (3.69%) GitLab
5 91 (1.62%) Selenium
6 72 (1.28%) Postman
7 57 (1.02%) JUnit
8 53 (0.94%) Cucumber
9 49 (0.87%) JMeter
9 49 (0.87%) MLflow
10 44 (0.78%) SonarQube
11 37 (0.66%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.64%) Oracle APEX
13 32 (0.57%) Cypress.io
14 28 (0.50%) Artifactory
14 28 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 27 (0.48%) TestRail
16 25 (0.45%) Bitbucket
17 24 (0.43%) Maven
18 22 (0.39%) ERwin
General
1 1,722 (30.70%) Social Skills
2 1,026 (18.29%) Finance
3 590 (10.52%) Public Sector
4 572 (10.20%) Analytical Skills
5 336 (5.99%) Banking
6 188 (3.35%) Documentation Skills
7 107 (1.91%) Legal
8 100 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 88 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
10 83 (1.48%) Retail
11 82 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
12 77 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
13 72 (1.28%) Marketing
14 58 (1.03%) Investment Banking
14 58 (1.03%) Telecoms
15 57 (1.02%) Financial Institution
16 54 (0.96%) Law
17 46 (0.82%) Front Office
18 42 (0.75%) Manufacturing
19 36 (0.64%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 920 (16.40%) Architect
2 781 (13.92%) Developer
3 633 (11.29%) Senior
4 461 (8.22%) Azure Engineer
5 460 (8.20%) Data Engineer
6 409 (7.29%) Lead
7 377 (6.72%) Analyst
8 275 (4.90%) Solutions Architect
9 263 (4.69%) DevOps Engineer
10 252 (4.49%) Consultant
11 165 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 157 (2.80%) Security Engineer
13 151 (2.69%) Cloud Engineer
14 137 (2.44%) Azure Architect
15 136 (2.42%) Senior Developer
16 135 (2.41%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 123 (2.19%) Platform Engineer
18 112 (2.00%) Azure Data Engineer
18 112 (2.00%) Data Architect
19 109 (1.94%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 428 (7.63%) .NET
2 381 (6.79%) REST
3 260 (4.64%) React
4 214 (3.82%) Kafka
5 208 (3.71%) PySpark
6 197 (3.51%) Node.js
6 197 (3.51%) RESTful
7 174 (3.10%) OAuth
8 169 (3.01%) Spring
9 157 (2.80%) HTML
10 152 (2.71%) AngularJS
11 144 (2.57%) LDAP
12 140 (2.50%) Spring Boot
13 134 (2.39%) PyTorch
14 128 (2.28%) CSS
15 121 (2.16%) SAML
15 121 (2.16%) SOAP
16 120 (2.14%) Middleware
16 120 (2.14%) TensorFlow
17 117 (2.09%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 501 (8.93%) Cloud Native
2 229 (4.08%) Onboarding
3 189 (3.37%) Product Ownership
4 163 (2.91%) Security Posture
5 158 (2.82%) Hybrid Cloud
6 145 (2.59%) Enterprise Software
7 138 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
8 123 (2.19%) Data Centre
9 105 (1.87%) Public Cloud
10 92 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
11 82 (1.46%) AI Agents
12 80 (1.43%) Replication
13 77 (1.37%) Data Structures
14 65 (1.16%) Algorithms
15 63 (1.12%) Management Information System
16 58 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
17 57 (1.02%) Low-Code
18 56 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
19 51 (0.91%) Analytical Mindset
20 46 (0.82%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 637 (11.36%) Windows
2 320 (5.71%) Linux
3 179 (3.19%) Windows Server
4 114 (2.03%) Windows 10
5 64 (1.14%) Unix
6 57 (1.02%) VMS
7 46 (0.82%) Mac OS
8 37 (0.66%) Apple iOS
8 37 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 28 (0.50%) Android
10 20 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
11 19 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 18 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 12 (0.21%) CentOS
13 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 7 (0.12%) Solaris
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.089%) AIX
16 5 (0.089%) Data ONTAP
17 4 (0.071%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,026 (36.12%) DevOps
2 1,681 (29.97%) CI/CD
3 1,349 (24.05%) Agile
4 1,027 (18.31%) Problem-Solving
5 859 (15.31%) Analytics
6 798 (14.23%) AI
7 725 (12.93%) Infrastructure as Code
8 687 (12.25%) Migration
9 597 (10.64%) Business Intelligence
10 586 (10.45%) Data Modelling
11 584 (10.41%) Stakeholder Management
12 545 (9.72%) Containerisation
13 531 (9.47%) Continuous Improvement
14 509 (9.07%) Data Pipeline
15 508 (9.06%) Machine Learning
16 505 (9.00%) ETL
17 491 (8.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 482 (8.59%) Microservices
19 471 (8.40%) Data Engineering
20 442 (7.88%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,459 (26.01%) Python
2 1,265 (22.55%) SQL
3 627 (11.18%) PowerShell
4 472 (8.42%) C#
5 465 (8.29%) Java
6 440 (7.84%) JavaScript
7 241 (4.30%) TypeScript
8 228 (4.06%) Bash
9 164 (2.92%) Bicep
10 91 (1.62%) Scala
11 78 (1.39%) PL/SQL
12 75 (1.34%) Go
13 65 (1.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 61 (1.09%) Kusto Query Language
15 60 (1.07%) T-SQL
16 39 (0.70%) R
17 29 (0.52%) PHP
18 28 (0.50%) Shell Script
19 27 (0.48%) C++
20 20 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,366 (24.35%) Security Cleared
2 1,126 (20.07%) SC Cleared
3 456 (8.13%) Degree
4 337 (6.01%) Azure Certification
5 192 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 163 (2.91%) CISSP
6 163 (2.91%) Microsoft Certification
7 123 (2.19%) AWS Certification
8 116 (2.07%) DV Cleared
9 102 (1.82%) CISM
10 97 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
11 82 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
12 73 (1.30%) Master's Degree
13 54 (0.96%) TOGAF Certification
14 50 (0.89%) CCNP
15 46 (0.82%) PMI Certification
16 44 (0.78%) PMP
17 42 (0.75%) ISTQB
18 33 (0.59%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 31 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 378 (6.74%) Data Quality
2 351 (6.26%) GDPR
3 294 (5.24%) QA
4 260 (4.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 210 (3.74%) NIST
6 97 (1.73%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.46%) NCSC
8 79 (1.41%) PCI DSS
9 55 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 53 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 50 (0.89%) SLA
12 40 (0.71%) PMO
13 37 (0.66%) HIPAA
14 31 (0.55%) GRC
15 30 (0.53%) SOC 2
16 28 (0.50%) WCAG
17 25 (0.45%) EU AI Act
18 24 (0.43%) ISO 20022
19 23 (0.41%) PSD2
20 21 (0.37%) NIST 800
System Software
1 782 (13.94%) Active Directory
2 671 (11.96%) Docker
3 179 (3.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (1.52%) Hyper-V
5 82 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
6 69 (1.23%) Virtual Desktop
7 67 (1.19%) vSphere
8 24 (0.43%) VMware NSX
9 17 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.20%) Firmware
10 11 (0.20%) NFS
11 10 (0.18%) Postfix
12 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 7 (0.12%) Snort
13 6 (0.11%) GPFS
13 6 (0.11%) KVM
13 6 (0.11%) Lustre
13 6 (0.11%) Squid
Systems Management
1 840 (14.98%) Terraform
2 820 (14.62%) Kubernetes
3 333 (5.94%) Microsoft Intune
4 241 (4.30%) Ansible
5 146 (2.60%) Single Sign-On
6 139 (2.48%) Grafana
7 127 (2.26%) SCCM
8 122 (2.18%) Prometheus
9 72 (1.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 41 (0.73%) Argo
11 25 (0.45%) Puppet
12 24 (0.43%) Istio
13 21 (0.37%) 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 (0.32%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.29%) vRealize
17 14 (0.25%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,843 (32.86%) Microsoft
2 574 (10.23%) Databricks
3 310 (5.53%) Oracle
4 288 (5.13%) Google
5 257 (4.58%) ServiceNow
6 235 (4.19%) VMware
7 163 (2.91%) SAP
8 142 (2.53%) Cisco
9 141 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 136 (2.42%) Splunk
11 113 (2.01%) CyberArk
12 93 (1.66%) Salesforce
13 92 (1.64%) Foundry
14 90 (1.60%) Palo Alto
15 78 (1.39%) Okta
16 69 (1.23%) Citrix
17 68 (1.21%) Red Hat
18 63 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
19 59 (1.05%) IBM
20 52 (0.93%) Siemens