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

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,296 4,138 5,272
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.90% 15.80% 13.75%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.18% 42.21% 41.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,771 2,788 3,936
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -3.08%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £516 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.81% -4.50% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 24 74
10th Percentile £19.85 £21.06 £17.75
25th Percentile £35.63 £23.80 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £67.25 £65.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £89.88 £76.68 £69.60
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £30.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +86.99% -33.41% -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 12,556 9,803 12,667
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.70% 37.43% 33.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,684 6,519 9,245
10th Percentile £305 £313 £270
25th Percentile £406 £420 £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 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 332 140 303
10th Percentile £14.43 £15.44 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.20 £16.28
Median hourly rate £35.71 £27.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.85% +22.22% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58.75 £47.63 £47.47
90th Percentile £77.50 £69.25 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £35.25 £27.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +28.18% +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 7 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 7 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 7 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 2,860 £543 -1.36% 1,071
North of England -1 690 £475 - 600
South East -2 670 £500 -5.21% 759
Midlands -1 438 £500 - 311
North West -1 334 £450 - 340
South West +5 328 £500 -4.76% 252
West Midlands 0 328 £525 -3.77% 186
Yorkshire -2 309 £485 +2.11% 185
East of England -1 151 £550 +22.22% 198
East Midlands -3 109 £436 -3.11% 124
North East -1 51 £508 +9.26% 78
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 (5.04%) SharePoint
2 182 (3.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 143 (2.70%) Apache Spark
4 128 (2.42%) Confluence
5 81 (1.53%) Apache
6 67 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.43%) CMS
7 23 (0.43%) OpenStack
8 14 (0.26%) Appian
8 14 (0.26%) SAS
9 13 (0.25%) Camunda
10 12 (0.23%) ArcGIS
11 11 (0.21%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.21%) IIS
11 11 (0.21%) Skype for Business
12 10 (0.19%) nginx
12 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
13 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.17%) Mendix
14 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 117 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 94 (1.77%) Microsoft Office
3 45 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 45 (0.85%) MS Visio
4 39 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
5 12 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.15%) Trello
7 6 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 5 (0.094%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.094%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.094%) Weka
9 4 (0.076%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.038%) SOLIDWORKS
10 2 (0.038%) Windchill
11 1 (0.019%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.019%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.019%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.019%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.019%) Revit
Business Applications
1 93 (1.76%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (1.06%) 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 1,870 (35.31%) AWS
2 1,103 (20.83%) GCP
3 1,041 (19.66%) Azure DevOps
4 716 (13.52%) Power Platform
5 661 (12.48%) Entra ID
6 637 (12.03%) Microsoft 365
7 525 (9.91%) GitHub
8 380 (7.18%) Azure Data Factory
9 311 (5.87%) Serverless
10 290 (5.48%) GitHub Actions
11 240 (4.53%) Dynamics 365
12 232 (4.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 230 (4.34%) SaaS
14 212 (4.00%) Azure AKS
15 209 (3.95%) Power Automate
16 198 (3.74%) Azure Functions
16 198 (3.74%) Azure Monitor
17 195 (3.68%) Azure Logic Apps
18 177 (3.34%) PaaS
19 172 (3.25%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 358 (6.76%) Firewall
2 244 (4.61%) DNS
3 181 (3.42%) VPN
4 152 (2.87%) DHCP
5 149 (2.81%) Network Security
6 125 (2.36%) WAN
7 92 (1.74%) TCP/IP
8 88 (1.66%) LAN
9 71 (1.34%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.23%) Kerberos
11 63 (1.19%) VLAN
12 59 (1.11%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.74%) HTTP
14 32 (0.60%) BGP
15 30 (0.57%) Wireless
16 28 (0.53%) Internet
17 27 (0.51%) SAN
18 26 (0.49%) SSL
19 25 (0.47%) MPLS
20 23 (0.43%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 503 (9.50%) Power BI
2 297 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 255 (4.81%) Data Warehouse
4 246 (4.65%) Data Lake
5 183 (3.46%) PostgreSQL
6 176 (3.32%) Azure SQL Database
7 159 (3.00%) NoSQL
8 121 (2.28%) Metadata
9 102 (1.93%) Relational Database
10 88 (1.66%) Delta Lake
11 85 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 75 (1.42%) MongoDB
13 66 (1.25%) Tableau
14 60 (1.13%) Big Data
15 59 (1.11%) Oracle Database
16 52 (0.98%) MySQL
17 50 (0.94%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
19 44 (0.83%) Redis
20 38 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 393 (7.42%) Git
2 364 (6.87%) JIRA
3 264 (4.98%) Jenkins
4 198 (3.74%) GitLab
5 80 (1.51%) Selenium
6 74 (1.40%) Postman
7 49 (0.93%) SonarQube
8 43 (0.81%) JUnit
9 42 (0.79%) MLflow
10 41 (0.77%) Cucumber
11 37 (0.70%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
13 35 (0.66%) JMeter
14 31 (0.59%) Cypress.io
15 29 (0.55%) Artifactory
16 28 (0.53%) Visual Studio
17 25 (0.47%) Maven
18 24 (0.45%) Bitbucket
18 24 (0.45%) TestRail
19 22 (0.42%) CircleCI
General
1 1,682 (31.76%) Social Skills
2 956 (18.05%) Finance
3 570 (10.76%) Public Sector
4 541 (10.22%) Analytical Skills
5 330 (6.23%) Banking
6 179 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (1.98%) Legal
8 99 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 83 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
9 83 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
10 81 (1.53%) Retail
11 78 (1.47%) Marketing
12 66 (1.25%) Investment Banking
13 59 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
14 55 (1.04%) Telecoms
15 53 (1.00%) Law
16 52 (0.98%) Financial Institution
17 40 (0.76%) Front Office
17 40 (0.76%) Manufacturing
18 38 (0.72%) Military
Job Titles
1 854 (16.13%) Architect
2 752 (14.20%) Developer
3 563 (10.63%) Senior
4 427 (8.06%) Azure Engineer
5 416 (7.85%) Data Engineer
6 382 (7.21%) Lead
7 364 (6.87%) Analyst
8 265 (5.00%) DevOps Engineer
9 261 (4.93%) Solutions Architect
10 221 (4.17%) Consultant
11 168 (3.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 141 (2.66%) Security Engineer
13 136 (2.57%) Senior Developer
14 133 (2.51%) Azure Architect
15 132 (2.49%) Cloud Engineer
16 124 (2.34%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 119 (2.25%) Platform Engineer
18 107 (2.02%) Azure Data Engineer
19 104 (1.96%) Support Engineer
20 101 (1.91%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 403 (7.61%) .NET
2 379 (7.16%) REST
3 240 (4.53%) React
4 208 (3.93%) Kafka
5 196 (3.70%) RESTful
6 194 (3.66%) PySpark
7 187 (3.53%) Node.js
8 174 (3.29%) OAuth
9 159 (3.00%) Spring
10 144 (2.72%) LDAP
11 140 (2.64%) HTML
11 140 (2.64%) Spring Boot
12 131 (2.47%) AngularJS
13 129 (2.44%) SOAP
14 121 (2.28%) CSS
15 120 (2.27%) JSON
16 119 (2.25%) PyTorch
17 114 (2.15%) SAML
18 111 (2.10%) TensorFlow
19 105 (1.98%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 466 (8.80%) Cloud Native
2 215 (4.06%) Onboarding
3 172 (3.25%) Product Ownership
4 152 (2.87%) Hybrid Cloud
5 148 (2.79%) Enterprise Software
6 146 (2.76%) Security Posture
7 134 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
8 112 (2.11%) Data Centre
9 99 (1.87%) Public Cloud
10 81 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
11 77 (1.45%) Replication
12 72 (1.36%) AI Agents
13 68 (1.28%) Data Structures
14 64 (1.21%) Management Information System
15 59 (1.11%) Algorithms
16 55 (1.04%) Low-Code
17 51 (0.96%) Data Protection Act
18 50 (0.94%) CMDB
19 47 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
19 47 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 629 (11.88%) Windows
2 316 (5.97%) Linux
3 189 (3.57%) Windows Server
4 120 (2.27%) Windows 10
5 67 (1.27%) Unix
6 54 (1.02%) VMS
7 45 (0.85%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.79%) Mac OS
9 38 (0.72%) Android
10 29 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.34%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.21%) CentOS
15 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 7 (0.13%) Solaris
16 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
18 5 (0.094%) AIX
19 3 (0.057%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,929 (36.42%) DevOps
2 1,551 (29.29%) CI/CD
3 1,301 (24.57%) Agile
4 1,014 (19.15%) Problem-Solving
5 811 (15.31%) Analytics
6 730 (13.78%) AI
7 686 (12.95%) Infrastructure as Code
8 621 (11.73%) Migration
9 576 (10.88%) Business Intelligence
10 552 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
11 527 (9.95%) Data Modelling
12 516 (9.74%) Containerisation
13 482 (9.10%) Continuous Improvement
14 467 (8.82%) Machine Learning
15 463 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 457 (8.63%) ETL
17 448 (8.46%) Microservices
18 445 (8.40%) Data Pipeline
19 420 (7.93%) Data Engineering
20 411 (7.76%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,348 (25.45%) Python
2 1,162 (21.94%) SQL
3 604 (11.40%) PowerShell
4 453 (8.55%) Java
5 437 (8.25%) C#
6 399 (7.53%) JavaScript
7 228 (4.31%) Bash
8 220 (4.15%) TypeScript
9 157 (2.96%) Bicep
10 88 (1.66%) Scala
11 80 (1.51%) Go
12 76 (1.44%) PL/SQL
13 63 (1.19%) Kusto Query Language
14 62 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 51 (0.96%) T-SQL
16 43 (0.81%) R
17 34 (0.64%) C++
18 26 (0.49%) PHP
18 26 (0.49%) Shell Script
19 20 (0.38%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,285 (24.26%) Security Cleared
2 1,063 (20.07%) SC Cleared
3 442 (8.35%) Degree
4 321 (6.06%) Azure Certification
5 186 (3.51%) Computer Science Degree
6 154 (2.91%) Microsoft Certification
7 142 (2.68%) CISSP
8 112 (2.11%) AWS Certification
8 112 (2.11%) DV Cleared
9 91 (1.72%) CISM
10 78 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
11 75 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
12 73 (1.38%) Master's Degree
13 46 (0.87%) PMI Certification
14 41 (0.77%) PMP
15 40 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
16 39 (0.74%) CCNP
16 39 (0.74%) ISTQB
17 30 (0.57%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 25 (0.47%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 343 (6.48%) GDPR
2 328 (6.19%) Data Quality
3 275 (5.19%) QA
4 267 (5.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 204 (3.85%) NIST
6 98 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.53%) NCSC
8 71 (1.34%) PCI DSS
9 50 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
9 50 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 45 (0.85%) SLA
11 36 (0.68%) HIPAA
12 34 (0.64%) SOC 2
13 32 (0.60%) PMO
14 28 (0.53%) EU AI Act
14 28 (0.53%) WCAG
15 27 (0.51%) GRC
16 26 (0.49%) PSD2
17 23 (0.43%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 739 (13.95%) Active Directory
2 635 (11.99%) Docker
3 178 (3.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 84 (1.59%) Hyper-V
5 71 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
6 70 (1.32%) Virtual Desktop
7 61 (1.15%) vSphere
8 20 (0.38%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.21%) Squid
11 9 (0.17%) DFS Replication
11 9 (0.17%) Postfix
12 8 (0.15%) KVM
12 8 (0.15%) NFS
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%) GPFS
14 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 786 (14.84%) Terraform
2 763 (14.41%) Kubernetes
3 312 (5.89%) Microsoft Intune
4 237 (4.48%) Ansible
5 139 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
6 138 (2.61%) SCCM
7 129 (2.44%) Grafana
8 117 (2.21%) Prometheus
9 69 (1.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.72%) Argo
11 29 (0.55%) Puppet
12 21 (0.40%) Istio
12 21 (0.40%) Nessus
13 18 (0.34%) FortiGate
13 18 (0.34%) Kibana
13 18 (0.34%) Nmap
13 18 (0.34%) Progress Chef
13 18 (0.34%) vCenter Server
14 17 (0.32%) vRealize
15 16 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,760 (33.23%) Microsoft
2 531 (10.03%) Databricks
3 298 (5.63%) Oracle
4 292 (5.51%) Google
5 251 (4.74%) ServiceNow
6 232 (4.38%) VMware
7 150 (2.83%) SAP
8 144 (2.72%) OpenAI
9 139 (2.62%) Cisco
10 137 (2.59%) Splunk
11 110 (2.08%) CyberArk
12 108 (2.04%) Salesforce
13 85 (1.60%) Palo Alto
14 76 (1.44%) Foundry
15 68 (1.28%) Okta
16 63 (1.19%) BeyondTrust
16 63 (1.19%) Citrix
17 62 (1.17%) Red Hat
18 53 (1.00%) IBM
19 48 (0.91%) Fortinet