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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,165 4,112 5,199
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.91% 15.34% 14.05%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.94% 41.63% 41.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,688 2,757 3,880
10th Percentile £350 £350 £356
25th Percentile £417 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.71% -4.55% -4.26%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £704 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 27 71
10th Percentile £16.25 £22.14 £17.75
25th Percentile £28.25 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £56.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +61.43% -24.21% -12.04%
75th Percentile £68.75 £62.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £93.75 £76.18 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £55.75 £29.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +92.24% -37.20% -8.55%

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 12,315 9,877 12,425
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.94% 36.85% 33.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,569 6,569 9,069
10th Percentile £304 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £423 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £607 £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 295 139 273
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.65 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.69 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £30.00 £28.00 £23.61
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +18.59% +1.99%
75th Percentile £57.50 £46.18 £49.08
90th Percentile £75.60 £68.75 £67.20
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £24.86
% change year-on-year +9.09% +10.64% +9.70%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 2,782 £538 -2.27% 961
North of England -1 674 £465 +1.47% 809
South East -3 633 £492 -6.29% 1,254
Midlands -1 449 £520 +1.46% 498
West Midlands +1 343 £540 -1.02% 209
North West -1 330 £450 - 394
South West +4 314 £512 -2.57% 476
Yorkshire -1 301 £479 +0.74% 289
East of England -1 140 £500 +14.29% 506
East Midlands -4 105 £437 -0.23% 281
North East -6 47 £475 -2.56% 130
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
1 257 (4.98%) SharePoint
2 171 (3.31%) Microsoft Exchange
3 130 (2.52%) Apache Spark
4 121 (2.34%) Confluence
5 81 (1.57%) Apache
6 68 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.48%) OpenStack
8 22 (0.43%) CMS
8 22 (0.43%) SAS
9 19 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.25%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 12 (0.23%) Appian
11 12 (0.23%) Camunda
11 12 (0.23%) IIS
12 11 (0.21%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.17%) Mendix
14 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 112 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
3 44 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 44 (0.85%) MS Visio
4 35 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
5 10 (0.19%) Chatbot
6 9 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 8 (0.15%) 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%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.019%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.019%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 98 (1.90%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.17%) Maximo
5 9 (0.17%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.15%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.15%) Endur
6 8 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
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 1,841 (35.64%) AWS
2 1,072 (20.76%) GCP
3 1,027 (19.88%) Azure DevOps
4 703 (13.61%) Power Platform
5 627 (12.14%) Entra ID
6 625 (12.10%) Microsoft 365
7 523 (10.13%) GitHub
8 358 (6.93%) Azure Data Factory
9 307 (5.94%) Serverless
10 296 (5.73%) GitHub Actions
11 249 (4.82%) Dynamics 365
12 219 (4.24%) Power Automate
13 217 (4.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 216 (4.18%) SaaS
15 200 (3.87%) Azure AKS
15 200 (3.87%) Azure Monitor
16 194 (3.76%) Azure Logic Apps
17 190 (3.68%) Azure Functions
18 179 (3.47%) PaaS
19 178 (3.45%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 353 (6.83%) Firewall
2 229 (4.43%) DNS
3 174 (3.37%) VPN
4 153 (2.96%) Network Security
5 135 (2.61%) DHCP
6 123 (2.38%) WAN
7 95 (1.84%) TCP/IP
8 84 (1.63%) LAN
9 64 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
10 63 (1.22%) VLAN
11 58 (1.12%) SD-WAN
12 45 (0.87%) Kerberos
13 44 (0.85%) HTTP
14 35 (0.68%) BGP
15 30 (0.58%) Internet
15 30 (0.58%) Wireless
16 26 (0.50%) MPLS
17 25 (0.48%) SAN
18 22 (0.43%) OSPF
18 22 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 501 (9.70%) Power BI
2 292 (5.65%) SQL Server
3 240 (4.65%) Data Warehouse
4 239 (4.63%) Data Lake
5 182 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 172 (3.33%) Azure SQL Database
7 158 (3.06%) NoSQL
8 111 (2.15%) Metadata
9 107 (2.07%) Relational Database
10 83 (1.61%) Delta Lake
11 82 (1.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 77 (1.49%) MongoDB
13 59 (1.14%) Oracle Database
14 57 (1.10%) Big Data
15 56 (1.08%) MySQL
15 56 (1.08%) Tableau
16 52 (1.01%) BigQuery
17 46 (0.89%) Redis
18 43 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
19 40 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 393 (7.61%) Git
2 355 (6.87%) JIRA
3 273 (5.29%) Jenkins
4 203 (3.93%) GitLab
5 82 (1.59%) Selenium
6 76 (1.47%) Postman
7 54 (1.05%) SonarQube
8 46 (0.89%) JUnit
9 40 (0.77%) Cucumber
10 38 (0.74%) MLflow
11 36 (0.70%) Oracle APEX
12 35 (0.68%) REST Assured
13 34 (0.66%) Cypress.io
14 32 (0.62%) JMeter
15 31 (0.60%) Maven
16 29 (0.56%) Artifactory
17 27 (0.52%) Bitbucket
18 26 (0.50%) CircleCI
18 26 (0.50%) Gradle
19 24 (0.46%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,657 (32.08%) Social Skills
2 930 (18.01%) Finance
3 560 (10.84%) Public Sector
4 513 (9.93%) Analytical Skills
5 323 (6.25%) Banking
6 168 (3.25%) Documentation Skills
7 106 (2.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 95 (1.84%) Legal
9 82 (1.59%) Retail
10 80 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
11 77 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
12 76 (1.47%) Marketing
13 67 (1.30%) Investment Banking
14 55 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 52 (1.01%) Financial Institution
15 52 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
16 50 (0.97%) Law
17 45 (0.87%) Manufacturing
18 38 (0.74%) Military
19 37 (0.72%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 820 (15.88%) Architect
2 754 (14.60%) Developer
3 545 (10.55%) Senior
4 396 (7.67%) Azure Engineer
5 394 (7.63%) Data Engineer
6 364 (7.05%) Lead
7 346 (6.70%) Analyst
8 268 (5.19%) DevOps Engineer
9 255 (4.94%) Solutions Architect
10 204 (3.95%) Consultant
11 162 (3.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 148 (2.87%) Security Engineer
13 136 (2.63%) Senior Developer
14 131 (2.54%) Cloud Engineer
15 125 (2.42%) Azure Architect
16 120 (2.32%) Platform Engineer
17 111 (2.15%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 105 (2.03%) Azure Data Engineer
19 104 (2.01%) Support Engineer
20 98 (1.90%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 413 (8.00%) .NET
2 360 (6.97%) REST
3 228 (4.41%) React
4 197 (3.81%) RESTful
5 194 (3.76%) Kafka
6 189 (3.66%) PySpark
7 176 (3.41%) Node.js
8 169 (3.27%) OAuth
9 155 (3.00%) Spring
10 138 (2.67%) HTML
11 136 (2.63%) AngularJS
11 136 (2.63%) Spring Boot
12 127 (2.46%) LDAP
13 123 (2.38%) SOAP
14 118 (2.28%) JSON
14 118 (2.28%) PyTorch
15 115 (2.23%) CSS
16 110 (2.13%) TensorFlow
17 107 (2.07%) SAML
18 105 (2.03%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 462 (8.94%) Cloud Native
2 200 (3.87%) Onboarding
3 171 (3.31%) Product Ownership
4 155 (3.00%) Enterprise Software
5 148 (2.87%) Hybrid Cloud
6 147 (2.85%) Security Posture
7 134 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
8 107 (2.07%) Data Centre
9 101 (1.96%) Public Cloud
10 87 (1.68%) Distributed Systems
11 75 (1.45%) Replication
12 68 (1.32%) Management Information System
13 67 (1.30%) AI Agents
14 60 (1.16%) Data Structures
15 57 (1.10%) Algorithms
16 56 (1.08%) Low-Code
17 49 (0.95%) Data Protection Act
18 47 (0.91%) CMDB
18 47 (0.91%) NHS
19 45 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 619 (11.98%) Windows
2 328 (6.35%) Linux
3 190 (3.68%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.30%) Windows 10
5 78 (1.51%) Unix
6 56 (1.08%) VMS
7 47 (0.91%) Apple iOS
8 44 (0.85%) Mac OS
9 41 (0.79%) Android
10 28 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.39%) Ubuntu
13 15 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.19%) CentOS
15 9 (0.17%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.17%) Solaris
16 7 (0.14%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.097%) AIX
18 3 (0.058%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,893 (36.65%) DevOps
2 1,514 (29.31%) CI/CD
3 1,269 (24.57%) Agile
4 1,007 (19.50%) Problem-Solving
5 776 (15.02%) Analytics
6 676 (13.09%) AI
7 667 (12.91%) Infrastructure as Code
8 595 (11.52%) Migration
9 578 (11.19%) Business Intelligence
10 528 (10.22%) Stakeholder Management
11 510 (9.87%) Containerisation
12 495 (9.58%) Data Modelling
13 463 (8.96%) Continuous Improvement
14 460 (8.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 439 (8.50%) Machine Learning
16 429 (8.31%) Microservices
17 428 (8.29%) ETL
18 424 (8.21%) Test Automation
19 423 (8.19%) Data Pipeline
20 386 (7.47%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,322 (25.60%) Python
2 1,139 (22.05%) SQL
3 564 (10.92%) PowerShell
4 464 (8.98%) Java
5 434 (8.40%) C#
6 395 (7.65%) JavaScript
7 230 (4.45%) Bash
8 204 (3.95%) TypeScript
9 148 (2.87%) Bicep
10 92 (1.78%) Scala
11 85 (1.65%) Go
12 73 (1.41%) PL/SQL
13 62 (1.20%) Kusto Query Language
14 53 (1.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 53 (1.03%) T-SQL
15 47 (0.91%) R
16 33 (0.64%) C++
17 30 (0.58%) Shell Script
18 26 (0.50%) PHP
19 21 (0.41%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,270 (24.59%) Security Cleared
2 1,053 (20.39%) SC Cleared
3 428 (8.29%) Degree
4 313 (6.06%) Azure Certification
5 178 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 150 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
7 141 (2.73%) CISSP
8 117 (2.27%) DV Cleared
9 115 (2.23%) AWS Certification
10 88 (1.70%) CISM
11 82 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
12 71 (1.37%) Master's Degree
13 68 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
14 43 (0.83%) PMI Certification
15 40 (0.77%) ISTQB
16 38 (0.74%) MCP
16 38 (0.74%) PMP
17 36 (0.70%) CCNP
18 35 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
19 28 (0.54%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 330 (6.39%) GDPR
2 307 (5.94%) Data Quality
3 271 (5.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 270 (5.23%) QA
5 204 (3.95%) NIST
6 97 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 76 (1.47%) NCSC
8 74 (1.43%) PCI DSS
9 48 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 47 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 40 (0.77%) SLA
12 36 (0.70%) HIPAA
13 34 (0.66%) SOC 2
14 30 (0.58%) PSD2
15 29 (0.56%) WCAG
16 28 (0.54%) EU AI Act
17 27 (0.52%) PMO
18 23 (0.45%) GRC
19 22 (0.43%) ISO 20022
20 17 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 708 (13.71%) Active Directory
2 653 (12.64%) Docker
3 168 (3.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.51%) Hyper-V
5 66 (1.28%) Virtual Machines
6 65 (1.26%) Virtual Desktop
7 53 (1.03%) vSphere
8 20 (0.39%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.27%) Squid
10 12 (0.23%) DFS Replication
11 11 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.19%) KVM
12 10 (0.19%) Postfix
13 9 (0.17%) Dovecot
14 8 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 7 (0.14%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 7 (0.14%) Firmware
15 7 (0.14%) NFS
15 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.14%) zsh
Systems Management
1 762 (14.75%) Terraform
2 755 (14.62%) Kubernetes
3 293 (5.67%) Microsoft Intune
4 245 (4.74%) Ansible
5 128 (2.48%) SCCM
6 126 (2.44%) Single Sign-On
7 125 (2.42%) Grafana
8 116 (2.25%) Prometheus
9 53 (1.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.72%) Argo
11 35 (0.68%) Puppet
12 22 (0.43%) Nessus
13 21 (0.41%) Progress Chef
14 20 (0.39%) Kibana
15 19 (0.37%) Istio
16 18 (0.35%) FortiGate
16 18 (0.35%) Nmap
16 18 (0.35%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.33%) vRealize
18 15 (0.29%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,698 (32.88%) Microsoft
2 515 (9.97%) Databricks
3 321 (6.21%) Oracle
4 287 (5.56%) Google
5 237 (4.59%) ServiceNow
6 217 (4.20%) VMware
7 150 (2.90%) Cisco
8 143 (2.77%) SAP
9 142 (2.75%) Splunk
10 129 (2.50%) OpenAI
11 109 (2.11%) Salesforce
12 105 (2.03%) CyberArk
13 86 (1.67%) Palo Alto
14 66 (1.28%) Okta
15 65 (1.26%) Foundry
16 61 (1.18%) Citrix
17 60 (1.16%) Red Hat
18 59 (1.14%) BeyondTrust
19 53 (1.03%) IBM
20 51 (0.99%) Dynatrace