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

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 4,916 4,087 5,218
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.85% 15.30% 14.33%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.71% 41.67% 42.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,482 2,746 3,899
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £420 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -3.41%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £711 £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 62
10th Percentile £16.03 £19.96 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.60 £23.80 £22.53
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 £74.70
UK median hourly rate £48.00 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +74.55% -40.45% +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 11,786 9,808 12,405
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 38.00% 36.72% 34.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,146 6,531 9,054
10th Percentile £304 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £423 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £640 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £735
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 273 130 239
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% -
75th Percentile £56.50 £45.89 £50.79
90th Percentile £78.45 £64.78 £75.50
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £27.43 £23.11
% change year-on-year +0.27% +18.68% +2.70%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 2,648 £545 -0.91% 876
North of England -1 631 £465 -2.11% 654
South East -2 611 £492 -6.29% 992
Midlands 0 427 £525 +5.00% 397
West Midlands +2 323 £550 +0.81% 183
North West -2 308 £450 - 321
South West +4 305 £525 +0.96% 345
Yorkshire 0 286 £475 -1.04% 230
East of England -3 129 £500 +15.94% 367
East Midlands -2 103 £436 -3.11% 207
North East -6 41 £500 +2.56% 113
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
1 251 (5.11%) SharePoint
2 166 (3.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 117 (2.38%) Apache Spark
4 115 (2.34%) Confluence
5 68 (1.38%) Apache
6 67 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.47%) OpenStack
8 22 (0.45%) SAS
9 19 (0.39%) CMS
10 16 (0.33%) 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
1 114 (2.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 43 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.77%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.71%) 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 (0.041%) 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 90 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 55 (1.12%) 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 (0.081%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,768 (35.96%) AWS
2 1,016 (20.67%) GCP
3 967 (19.67%) Azure DevOps
4 670 (13.63%) Power Platform
5 588 (11.96%) Microsoft 365
6 576 (11.72%) Entra ID
7 503 (10.23%) GitHub
8 334 (6.79%) Azure Data Factory
9 291 (5.92%) GitHub Actions
10 285 (5.80%) Serverless
11 239 (4.86%) Dynamics 365
12 210 (4.27%) Power Automate
12 210 (4.27%) SaaS
13 208 (4.23%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 199 (4.05%) Azure AKS
15 194 (3.95%) Azure Monitor
16 186 (3.78%) Azure Logic Apps
17 183 (3.72%) Azure Functions
18 180 (3.66%) PowerApps
19 172 (3.50%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 353 (7.18%) Firewall
2 205 (4.17%) DNS
3 162 (3.30%) VPN
4 148 (3.01%) Network Security
5 116 (2.36%) WAN
6 113 (2.30%) DHCP
7 95 (1.93%) TCP/IP
8 80 (1.63%) LAN
9 63 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.22%) VLAN
11 56 (1.14%) SD-WAN
12 43 (0.87%) HTTP
13 32 (0.65%) BGP
14 30 (0.61%) Wireless
15 28 (0.57%) Internet
15 28 (0.57%) Kerberos
16 25 (0.51%) MPLS
17 24 (0.49%) SAN
18 22 (0.45%) SSL
19 21 (0.43%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 484 (9.85%) Power BI
2 274 (5.57%) SQL Server
3 235 (4.78%) Data Lake
4 226 (4.60%) Data Warehouse
5 186 (3.78%) PostgreSQL
6 166 (3.38%) Azure SQL Database
7 153 (3.11%) NoSQL
8 104 (2.12%) Metadata
8 104 (2.12%) Relational Database
9 78 (1.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 74 (1.51%) MongoDB
11 72 (1.46%) Delta Lake
12 62 (1.26%) Oracle Database
13 56 (1.14%) Big Data
14 55 (1.12%) Tableau
15 54 (1.10%) MySQL
16 48 (0.98%) BigQuery
17 46 (0.94%) Redis
18 40 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
19 39 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 381 (7.75%) Git
2 333 (6.77%) JIRA
3 263 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 189 (3.84%) GitLab
5 74 (1.51%) Selenium
6 65 (1.32%) Postman
7 55 (1.12%) SonarQube
8 47 (0.96%) JUnit
9 38 (0.77%) Cucumber
10 37 (0.75%) Oracle APEX
11 34 (0.69%) MLflow
12 33 (0.67%) CircleCI
12 33 (0.67%) Maven
13 29 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 28 (0.57%) Bitbucket
14 28 (0.57%) REST Assured
15 27 (0.55%) Gradle
16 26 (0.53%) JMeter
17 25 (0.51%) Artifactory
18 22 (0.45%) ERwin
General
1 1,577 (32.08%) Social Skills
2 899 (18.29%) Finance
3 547 (11.13%) Public Sector
4 472 (9.60%) Analytical Skills
5 311 (6.33%) Banking
6 162 (3.30%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 79 (1.61%) Legal
9 76 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
10 75 (1.53%) Marketing
10 75 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
10 75 (1.53%) Retail
11 72 (1.46%) Investment Banking
12 53 (1.08%) Telecoms
13 50 (1.02%) Financial Institution
13 50 (1.02%) Law
14 48 (0.98%) Manufacturing
15 46 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
16 39 (0.79%) Military
17 38 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 782 (15.91%) Architect
2 716 (14.56%) Developer
3 523 (10.64%) Senior
4 383 (7.79%) Azure Engineer
5 361 (7.34%) Data Engineer
6 360 (7.32%) Lead
7 341 (6.94%) Analyst
8 266 (5.41%) DevOps Engineer
9 247 (5.02%) Solutions Architect
10 184 (3.74%) Consultant
11 157 (3.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 144 (2.93%) Security Engineer
13 134 (2.73%) Senior Developer
14 123 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
15 117 (2.38%) Platform Engineer
16 116 (2.36%) Azure Architect
17 104 (2.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 104 (2.12%) Azure Data Engineer
18 97 (1.97%) Data Architect
19 96 (1.95%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 402 (8.18%) .NET
2 333 (6.77%) REST
3 214 (4.35%) React
4 187 (3.80%) Kafka
5 186 (3.78%) RESTful
6 175 (3.56%) PySpark
7 165 (3.36%) Node.js
8 147 (2.99%) OAuth
9 146 (2.97%) Spring
10 133 (2.71%) HTML
11 127 (2.58%) AngularJS
12 122 (2.48%) JSON
13 120 (2.44%) SOAP
13 120 (2.44%) Spring Boot
14 112 (2.28%) PyTorch
15 108 (2.20%) CSS
16 105 (2.14%) LDAP
17 104 (2.12%) TensorFlow
18 102 (2.07%) Middleware
19 89 (1.81%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 430 (8.75%) Cloud Native
2 179 (3.64%) Onboarding
3 158 (3.21%) Product Ownership
4 154 (3.13%) Enterprise Software
5 145 (2.95%) Hybrid Cloud
6 143 (2.91%) Security Posture
7 132 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
8 110 (2.24%) Data Centre
9 91 (1.85%) Public Cloud
10 83 (1.69%) Distributed Systems
11 63 (1.28%) Algorithms
11 63 (1.28%) Management Information System
12 62 (1.26%) AI Agents
13 59 (1.20%) Replication
14 57 (1.16%) Data Structures
15 54 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 49 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
17 47 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
18 46 (0.94%) CMDB
19 44 (0.90%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 566 (11.51%) Windows
2 321 (6.53%) Linux
3 167 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 108 (2.20%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.53%) Unix
6 56 (1.14%) VMS
7 44 (0.90%) Apple iOS
8 40 (0.81%) Android
9 37 (0.75%) Mac OS
10 26 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 20 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
13 12 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
14 9 (0.18%) CentOS
14 9 (0.18%) Solaris
15 6 (0.12%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
16 5 (0.10%) AIX
17 4 (0.081%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,795 (36.51%) DevOps
2 1,417 (28.82%) CI/CD
3 1,205 (24.51%) Agile
4 933 (18.98%) Problem-Solving
5 721 (14.67%) Analytics
6 634 (12.90%) Infrastructure as Code
7 609 (12.39%) AI
8 570 (11.59%) Migration
9 556 (11.31%) Business Intelligence
10 505 (10.27%) Stakeholder Management
11 483 (9.83%) Containerisation
12 468 (9.52%) Data Modelling
13 447 (9.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 422 (8.58%) Continuous Improvement
15 413 (8.40%) Machine Learning
16 411 (8.36%) Microservices
17 392 (7.97%) ETL
18 390 (7.93%) Data Pipeline
19 386 (7.85%) Test Automation
20 356 (7.24%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,245 (25.33%) Python
2 1,078 (21.93%) SQL
3 531 (10.80%) PowerShell
4 441 (8.97%) Java
5 419 (8.52%) C#
6 377 (7.67%) JavaScript
7 232 (4.72%) Bash
8 188 (3.82%) TypeScript
9 143 (2.91%) Bicep
10 78 (1.59%) Go
11 75 (1.53%) PL/SQL
11 75 (1.53%) Scala
12 65 (1.32%) Kusto Query Language
13 51 (1.04%) T-SQL
14 50 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 49 (1.00%) R
16 31 (0.63%) C++
17 28 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.55%) PHP
19 23 (0.47%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,192 (24.25%) Security Cleared
2 987 (20.08%) SC Cleared
3 412 (8.38%) Degree
4 301 (6.12%) Azure Certification
5 161 (3.28%) Computer Science Degree
6 141 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
7 138 (2.81%) CISSP
8 111 (2.26%) DV Cleared
9 109 (2.22%) AWS Certification
10 86 (1.75%) CISM
11 82 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
12 73 (1.48%) Master's Degree
13 47 (0.96%) BPSS Clearance
14 40 (0.81%) MCP
15 39 (0.79%) PMI Certification
16 35 (0.71%) CCNP
17 34 (0.69%) PMP
18 33 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
19 32 (0.65%) ISTQB
20 30 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (6.35%) GDPR
2 277 (5.63%) Data Quality
3 267 (5.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 254 (5.17%) QA
5 207 (4.21%) NIST
6 91 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 70 (1.42%) PCI DSS
8 69 (1.40%) NCSC
9 45 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
10 35 (0.71%) SLA
11 34 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 32 (0.65%) SOC 2
13 31 (0.63%) HIPAA
14 29 (0.59%) PMO
15 28 (0.57%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.57%) PSD2
16 27 (0.55%) WCAG
17 23 (0.47%) GRC
18 20 (0.41%) ISO 20022
19 15 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 653 (13.28%) Active Directory
2 637 (12.96%) Docker
3 159 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (1.51%) Hyper-V
5 61 (1.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 60 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
7 50 (1.02%) vSphere
8 19 (0.39%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.28%) Squid
10 12 (0.24%) DFS Replication
11 10 (0.20%) KVM
11 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 9 (0.18%) Dovecot
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
12 9 (0.18%) Postfix
13 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 8 (0.16%) zsh
14 7 (0.14%) Snort
15 6 (0.12%) Firmware
15 6 (0.12%) NFS
Systems Management
1 725 (14.75%) Kubernetes
1 725 (14.75%) Terraform
2 267 (5.43%) Microsoft Intune
3 238 (4.84%) Ansible
4 126 (2.56%) Grafana
5 124 (2.52%) SCCM
6 119 (2.42%) Prometheus
7 111 (2.26%) Single Sign-On
8 37 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 36 (0.73%) Argo
10 31 (0.63%) Puppet
11 22 (0.45%) Nessus
12 20 (0.41%) Kibana
13 18 (0.37%) Nmap
13 18 (0.37%) Progress Chef
13 18 (0.37%) vCenter Server
14 17 (0.35%) Istio
14 17 (0.35%) vRealize
15 16 (0.33%) FortiGate
15 16 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,601 (32.57%) Microsoft
2 479 (9.74%) Databricks
3 312 (6.35%) Oracle
4 267 (5.43%) Google
5 231 (4.70%) ServiceNow
6 207 (4.21%) VMware
7 151 (3.07%) Cisco
8 148 (3.01%) Splunk
9 137 (2.79%) SAP
10 117 (2.38%) OpenAI
11 105 (2.14%) Salesforce
12 99 (2.01%) CyberArk
13 82 (1.67%) Palo Alto
14 64 (1.30%) Citrix
15 61 (1.24%) Red Hat
16 57 (1.16%) BeyondTrust
17 56 (1.14%) Foundry
18 54 (1.10%) IBM
19 52 (1.06%) Okta
20 50 (1.02%) Dynatrace