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

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 4,974 4,070 5,227
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.88% 15.31% 14.37%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.81% 41.68% 42.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,525 2,738 3,902
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £420 £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 £710 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 28 61
10th Percentile £16.03 £19.96 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.60 £23.80 £22.50
Median hourly rate £53.25 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +52.14% -24.21% -8.55%
75th Percentile £73.20 £56.25 £53.75
90th Percentile £94.13 £66.13 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £48.00 £27.43 £46.18
% change year-on-year +75.02% -40.61% +4.21%

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 11,896 9,764 12,412
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.98% 36.73% 34.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,223 6,507 9,063
10th Percentile £304 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £422 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £734
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 272 130 237
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.18 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.50 £28.21 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% +25.36% -0.07%
75th Percentile £56.13 £45.89 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.60 £64.78 £74.25
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £27.35 £22.75
% change year-on-year +0.55% +20.22% +1.11%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 2,677 £544 -1.09% 867
North of England -1 638 £465 -2.11% 658
South East -2 620 £492 -6.29% 990
Midlands 0 432 £525 +5.00% 394
West Midlands +2 328 £550 +0.81% 181
North West -1 311 £450 - 324
South West +4 307 £524 -0.19% 342
Yorkshire 0 289 £475 -1.04% 231
East of England -4 129 £500 +15.94% 364
East Midlands -2 103 £436 -3.11% 205
North East -5 42 £488 - 112
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
1 252 (5.07%) SharePoint
2 169 (3.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 120 (2.41%) Apache Spark
4 116 (2.33%) Confluence
5 73 (1.47%) Apache
6 69 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.46%) OpenStack
8 22 (0.44%) SAS
9 19 (0.38%) CMS
10 18 (0.36%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.28%) HCL Notes
12 13 (0.26%) nginx
13 11 (0.22%) Appian
13 11 (0.22%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.22%) IIS
13 11 (0.22%) Skype for Business
14 9 (0.18%) Camunda
14 9 (0.18%) GeoServer
14 9 (0.18%) Mendix
15 8 (0.16%) Smallworld
Applications
1 115 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 84 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 43 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.16%) Trello
9 5 (0.10%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.10%) Weka
10 2 (0.040%) Windchill
11 1 (0.020%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.020%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.020%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.020%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.020%) Revit
11 1 (0.020%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.020%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.020%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 91 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 55 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
4 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 9 (0.18%) Maximo
4 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
5 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.14%) Endur
6 7 (0.14%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.12%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.12%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.12%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.10%) Cloudability
8 5 (0.10%) Dynamics NAV
8 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.10%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.080%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,788 (35.95%) AWS
2 1,028 (20.67%) GCP
3 977 (19.64%) Azure DevOps
4 677 (13.61%) Power Platform
5 595 (11.96%) Microsoft 365
6 581 (11.68%) Entra ID
7 505 (10.15%) GitHub
8 339 (6.82%) Azure Data Factory
9 292 (5.87%) GitHub Actions
10 287 (5.77%) Serverless
11 241 (4.85%) Dynamics 365
12 212 (4.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 212 (4.26%) SaaS
13 210 (4.22%) Power Automate
14 201 (4.04%) Azure AKS
15 195 (3.92%) Azure Monitor
16 186 (3.74%) Azure Logic Apps
17 184 (3.70%) Azure Functions
18 181 (3.64%) PowerApps
19 174 (3.50%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 356 (7.16%) Firewall
2 208 (4.18%) DNS
3 164 (3.30%) VPN
4 151 (3.04%) Network Security
5 118 (2.37%) WAN
6 115 (2.31%) DHCP
7 95 (1.91%) TCP/IP
8 80 (1.61%) LAN
9 63 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.21%) VLAN
11 58 (1.17%) SD-WAN
12 43 (0.86%) HTTP
13 32 (0.64%) BGP
14 30 (0.60%) Wireless
15 29 (0.58%) Internet
16 28 (0.56%) Kerberos
17 25 (0.50%) MPLS
18 24 (0.48%) SAN
19 22 (0.44%) SSL
20 21 (0.42%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 489 (9.83%) Power BI
2 276 (5.55%) SQL Server
3 239 (4.80%) Data Lake
4 228 (4.58%) Data Warehouse
5 189 (3.80%) PostgreSQL
6 167 (3.36%) Azure SQL Database
7 156 (3.14%) NoSQL
8 107 (2.15%) Relational Database
9 105 (2.11%) Metadata
10 78 (1.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 77 (1.55%) MongoDB
12 73 (1.47%) Delta Lake
13 62 (1.25%) Oracle Database
14 57 (1.15%) Big Data
15 56 (1.13%) Tableau
16 55 (1.11%) MySQL
17 50 (1.01%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.92%) Redis
19 40 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
20 39 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 386 (7.76%) Git
2 338 (6.80%) JIRA
3 266 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 193 (3.88%) GitLab
5 77 (1.55%) Selenium
6 69 (1.39%) Postman
7 55 (1.11%) SonarQube
8 47 (0.94%) JUnit
9 40 (0.80%) Cucumber
10 37 (0.74%) Oracle APEX
11 35 (0.70%) MLflow
12 33 (0.66%) CircleCI
12 33 (0.66%) Maven
13 30 (0.60%) Cypress.io
13 30 (0.60%) REST Assured
14 28 (0.56%) Bitbucket
15 27 (0.54%) Gradle
16 26 (0.52%) JMeter
17 25 (0.50%) Artifactory
18 22 (0.44%) ERwin
General
1 1,591 (31.99%) Social Skills
2 909 (18.28%) Finance
3 553 (11.12%) Public Sector
4 476 (9.57%) Analytical Skills
5 317 (6.37%) Banking
6 162 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
7 106 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 79 (1.59%) Legal
9 76 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
9 76 (1.53%) Marketing
10 75 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
10 75 (1.51%) Retail
11 73 (1.47%) Investment Banking
12 53 (1.07%) Telecoms
13 50 (1.01%) Financial Institution
13 50 (1.01%) Law
14 48 (0.97%) Manufacturing
14 48 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
15 39 (0.78%) Military
16 38 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 789 (15.86%) Architect
2 718 (14.44%) Developer
3 531 (10.68%) Senior
4 387 (7.78%) Azure Engineer
5 372 (7.48%) Data Engineer
6 360 (7.24%) Lead
7 344 (6.92%) Analyst
8 268 (5.39%) DevOps Engineer
9 247 (4.97%) Solutions Architect
10 188 (3.78%) Consultant
11 157 (3.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 146 (2.94%) Security Engineer
13 135 (2.71%) Senior Developer
14 126 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
15 120 (2.41%) Platform Engineer
16 117 (2.35%) Azure Architect
17 105 (2.11%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 105 (2.11%) Azure Data Engineer
18 100 (2.01%) Software Engineer
19 97 (1.95%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 405 (8.14%) .NET
2 336 (6.76%) REST
3 216 (4.34%) React
4 190 (3.82%) Kafka
5 186 (3.74%) RESTful
6 180 (3.62%) PySpark
7 167 (3.36%) Node.js
8 147 (2.96%) OAuth
8 147 (2.96%) Spring
9 135 (2.71%) HTML
10 127 (2.55%) AngularJS
11 124 (2.49%) JSON
12 121 (2.43%) SOAP
12 121 (2.43%) Spring Boot
13 114 (2.29%) PyTorch
14 110 (2.21%) CSS
15 106 (2.13%) TensorFlow
16 105 (2.11%) LDAP
17 102 (2.05%) Middleware
18 91 (1.83%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 438 (8.81%) Cloud Native
2 184 (3.70%) Onboarding
3 161 (3.24%) Product Ownership
4 155 (3.12%) Enterprise Software
5 145 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
6 144 (2.90%) Security Posture
7 133 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
8 111 (2.23%) Data Centre
9 94 (1.89%) Public Cloud
10 83 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
11 63 (1.27%) Algorithms
11 63 (1.27%) Management Information System
12 62 (1.25%) AI Agents
13 59 (1.19%) Replication
14 58 (1.17%) Data Structures
15 54 (1.09%) Low-Code
16 50 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
17 48 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
18 47 (0.94%) CMDB
19 44 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 575 (11.56%) Windows
2 324 (6.51%) Linux
3 170 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 111 (2.23%) Windows 10
5 78 (1.57%) Unix
6 56 (1.13%) VMS
7 44 (0.88%) Apple iOS
8 40 (0.80%) Android
9 38 (0.76%) Mac OS
10 27 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 20 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 12 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.18%) CentOS
13 9 (0.18%) Solaris
14 6 (0.12%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
15 5 (0.10%) AIX
16 4 (0.080%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,809 (36.37%) DevOps
2 1,435 (28.85%) CI/CD
3 1,216 (24.45%) Agile
4 943 (18.96%) Problem-Solving
5 732 (14.72%) Analytics
6 641 (12.89%) Infrastructure as Code
7 621 (12.48%) AI
8 579 (11.64%) Migration
9 560 (11.26%) Business Intelligence
10 508 (10.21%) Stakeholder Management
11 488 (9.81%) Containerisation
12 472 (9.49%) Data Modelling
13 449 (9.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 430 (8.64%) Continuous Improvement
15 420 (8.44%) Machine Learning
16 413 (8.30%) Microservices
17 399 (8.02%) ETL
18 397 (7.98%) Data Pipeline
18 397 (7.98%) Test Automation
19 360 (7.24%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,262 (25.37%) Python
2 1,093 (21.97%) SQL
3 536 (10.78%) PowerShell
4 443 (8.91%) Java
5 423 (8.50%) C#
6 382 (7.68%) JavaScript
7 232 (4.66%) Bash
8 189 (3.80%) TypeScript
9 145 (2.92%) Bicep
10 79 (1.59%) Go
11 77 (1.55%) Scala
12 75 (1.51%) PL/SQL
13 65 (1.31%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (1.05%) T-SQL
15 51 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 49 (0.99%) R
17 31 (0.62%) C++
18 29 (0.58%) Shell Script
19 27 (0.54%) PHP
20 23 (0.46%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,209 (24.31%) Security Cleared
2 999 (20.08%) SC Cleared
3 415 (8.34%) Degree
4 303 (6.09%) Azure Certification
5 164 (3.30%) Computer Science Degree
6 142 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
7 141 (2.83%) CISSP
8 114 (2.29%) DV Cleared
9 109 (2.19%) AWS Certification
10 88 (1.77%) CISM
11 83 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
12 73 (1.47%) Master's Degree
13 47 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
14 40 (0.80%) MCP
14 40 (0.80%) PMI Certification
15 35 (0.70%) CCNP
15 35 (0.70%) ISTQB
15 35 (0.70%) PMP
15 35 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
16 30 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 317 (6.37%) GDPR
2 285 (5.73%) Data Quality
3 272 (5.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 260 (5.23%) QA
5 207 (4.16%) NIST
6 91 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 72 (1.45%) NCSC
8 71 (1.43%) PCI DSS
9 47 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
10 36 (0.72%) SLA
11 35 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 32 (0.64%) SOC 2
13 31 (0.62%) HIPAA
14 29 (0.58%) PMO
15 28 (0.56%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.56%) PSD2
16 27 (0.54%) WCAG
17 23 (0.46%) GRC
18 20 (0.40%) ISO 20022
19 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
System Software
1 660 (13.27%) Active Directory
2 644 (12.95%) Docker
3 161 (3.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 75 (1.51%) Hyper-V
5 61 (1.23%) Virtual Desktop
5 61 (1.23%) Virtual Machines
6 50 (1.01%) vSphere
7 19 (0.38%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.28%) Squid
9 12 (0.24%) DFS Replication
10 10 (0.20%) KVM
10 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 9 (0.18%) Dovecot
11 9 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.18%) Postfix
12 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 8 (0.16%) zsh
13 7 (0.14%) Snort
14 6 (0.12%) Firmware
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
Systems Management
1 736 (14.80%) Kubernetes
1 736 (14.80%) Terraform
2 273 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
3 239 (4.80%) Ansible
4 127 (2.55%) Grafana
5 125 (2.51%) SCCM
6 120 (2.41%) Prometheus
7 111 (2.23%) Single Sign-On
8 37 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 36 (0.72%) Argo
10 32 (0.64%) Puppet
11 22 (0.44%) Nessus
12 20 (0.40%) Kibana
13 18 (0.36%) Nmap
13 18 (0.36%) Progress Chef
13 18 (0.36%) vCenter Server
14 17 (0.34%) FortiGate
14 17 (0.34%) Istio
14 17 (0.34%) vRealize
15 16 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,614 (32.45%) Microsoft
2 493 (9.91%) Databricks
3 314 (6.31%) Oracle
4 269 (5.41%) Google
5 233 (4.68%) ServiceNow
6 209 (4.20%) VMware
7 151 (3.04%) Cisco
8 148 (2.98%) Splunk
9 139 (2.79%) SAP
10 118 (2.37%) OpenAI
11 106 (2.13%) Salesforce
12 100 (2.01%) CyberArk
13 82 (1.65%) Palo Alto
14 65 (1.31%) Citrix
15 61 (1.23%) Red Hat
16 57 (1.15%) BeyondTrust
17 56 (1.13%) Foundry
18 55 (1.11%) IBM
19 52 (1.05%) Dynatrace
19 52 (1.05%) Okta