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

 6 months to
8 Jan 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 4,995 4,193 5,186
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.83% 15.32% 14.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.67% 41.83% 42.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,541 2,835 3,879
10th Percentile £350 £350 £356
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 £713 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 30 63
10th Percentile £15.95 £19.97 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.47 £23.80 £20.62
Median hourly rate £52.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -24.21% -8.55%
75th Percentile £74.26 £60.56 £52.67
90th Percentile £94.25 £77.75 £74.40
UK median hourly rate £46.00 £28.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +61.40% -38.28% +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 11,987 10,023 12,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.99% 36.63% 34.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,290 6,704 8,958
10th Percentile £304 £313 £279
25th Percentile £406 £425 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £645 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 279 134 232
10th Percentile £14.49 £16.41 £14.26
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.71 £28.46 £22.75
Median % change year-on-year -2.62% +25.08% +0.79%
75th Percentile £57.25 £46.18 £51.69
90th Percentile £77.55 £67.63 £77.25
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £27.50 £23.22
% change year-on-year - +18.46% +3.18%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 2,701 £545 -0.91% 947
North of England -1 637 £465 +2.42% 743
South East -3 610 £492 -6.24% 1,063
Midlands -1 430 £525 +5.00% 451
West Midlands +2 325 £550 +1.63% 206
South West +4 314 £524 +4.80% 390
North West -2 312 £450 - 339
Yorkshire -1 289 £475 -2.31% 286
East of England -3 136 £500 +17.65% 525
East Midlands -3 104 £437 -2.89% 239
North East -7 40 £488 +2.63% 127
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 (5.05%) SharePoint
2 167 (3.34%) Microsoft Exchange
3 123 (2.46%) Apache Spark
4 119 (2.38%) Confluence
5 73 (1.46%) Apache
6 70 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.46%) OpenStack
8 22 (0.44%) SAS
9 20 (0.40%) CMS
10 16 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.28%) nginx
12 13 (0.26%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.22%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.22%) IIS
13 11 (0.22%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.20%) Appian
15 9 (0.18%) Camunda
15 9 (0.18%) GeoServer
16 8 (0.16%) Mendix
16 8 (0.16%) Smallworld
Applications
1 115 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (1.64%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 39 (0.78%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.20%) 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%) 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 93 (1.86%) Dynamics CRM
2 54 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.22%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.18%) Maximo
5 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
6 8 (0.16%) Endur
6 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.14%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.12%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.12%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.10%) Cloudability
9 5 (0.10%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.10%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.080%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,793 (35.90%) AWS
2 1,035 (20.72%) GCP
3 991 (19.84%) Azure DevOps
4 685 (13.71%) Power Platform
5 601 (12.03%) Microsoft 365
6 586 (11.73%) Entra ID
7 504 (10.09%) GitHub
8 340 (6.81%) Azure Data Factory
9 293 (5.87%) GitHub Actions
10 287 (5.75%) Serverless
11 243 (4.86%) Dynamics 365
12 216 (4.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 212 (4.24%) Power Automate
13 212 (4.24%) SaaS
14 201 (4.02%) Azure AKS
15 197 (3.94%) Azure Monitor
16 188 (3.76%) Azure Logic Apps
17 183 (3.66%) Azure Functions
17 183 (3.66%) PowerApps
18 172 (3.44%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 361 (7.23%) Firewall
2 208 (4.16%) DNS
3 166 (3.32%) VPN
4 153 (3.06%) Network Security
5 118 (2.36%) WAN
6 112 (2.24%) DHCP
7 96 (1.92%) TCP/IP
8 79 (1.58%) LAN
9 63 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.20%) VLAN
11 58 (1.16%) SD-WAN
12 45 (0.90%) HTTP
13 33 (0.66%) BGP
14 30 (0.60%) Wireless
15 28 (0.56%) Internet
16 27 (0.54%) MPLS
17 26 (0.52%) Kerberos
18 24 (0.48%) SAN
19 22 (0.44%) OSPF
19 22 (0.44%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 495 (9.91%) Power BI
2 279 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 239 (4.78%) Data Lake
4 234 (4.68%) Data Warehouse
5 193 (3.86%) PostgreSQL
6 171 (3.42%) Azure SQL Database
7 157 (3.14%) NoSQL
8 107 (2.14%) Metadata
9 105 (2.10%) Relational Database
10 80 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 74 (1.48%) MongoDB
12 72 (1.44%) Delta Lake
13 60 (1.20%) Oracle Database
14 59 (1.18%) Big Data
15 58 (1.16%) Tableau
16 55 (1.10%) MySQL
17 52 (1.04%) BigQuery
18 48 (0.96%) Redis
19 42 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
20 41 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 393 (7.87%) Git
2 337 (6.75%) JIRA
3 269 (5.39%) Jenkins
4 194 (3.88%) GitLab
5 73 (1.46%) Selenium
6 67 (1.34%) Postman
7 57 (1.14%) SonarQube
8 47 (0.94%) JUnit
9 37 (0.74%) Oracle APEX
10 36 (0.72%) Cucumber
11 33 (0.66%) CircleCI
11 33 (0.66%) Maven
11 33 (0.66%) MLflow
12 31 (0.62%) Bitbucket
13 30 (0.60%) Cypress.io
14 27 (0.54%) Gradle
14 27 (0.54%) REST Assured
15 26 (0.52%) JMeter
16 25 (0.50%) Artifactory
17 21 (0.42%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,611 (32.25%) Social Skills
2 922 (18.46%) Finance
3 565 (11.31%) Public Sector
4 476 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
5 320 (6.41%) Banking
6 165 (3.30%) Documentation Skills
7 110 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 84 (1.68%) Legal
9 79 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
10 77 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
10 77 (1.54%) Marketing
11 76 (1.52%) Investment Banking
11 76 (1.52%) Retail
12 57 (1.14%) Telecoms
13 51 (1.02%) Manufacturing
14 50 (1.00%) Law
15 49 (0.98%) Financial Institution
16 46 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
17 40 (0.80%) Military
18 37 (0.74%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 809 (16.20%) Architect
2 730 (14.61%) Developer
3 532 (10.65%) Senior
4 383 (7.67%) Azure Engineer
5 362 (7.25%) Data Engineer
6 361 (7.23%) Lead
7 340 (6.81%) Analyst
8 265 (5.31%) DevOps Engineer
9 263 (5.27%) Solutions Architect
10 189 (3.78%) Consultant
11 159 (3.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 149 (2.98%) Security Engineer
13 137 (2.74%) Senior Developer
14 125 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
15 120 (2.40%) Platform Engineer
16 119 (2.38%) Azure Architect
17 103 (2.06%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 103 (2.06%) Data Architect
18 101 (2.02%) Azure Data Engineer
19 99 (1.98%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 409 (8.19%) .NET
2 330 (6.61%) REST
3 215 (4.30%) React
4 192 (3.84%) RESTful
5 191 (3.82%) Kafka
6 177 (3.54%) PySpark
7 167 (3.34%) Node.js
8 147 (2.94%) Spring
9 146 (2.92%) OAuth
10 134 (2.68%) HTML
11 128 (2.56%) AngularJS
12 124 (2.48%) JSON
13 121 (2.42%) SOAP
13 121 (2.42%) Spring Boot
14 111 (2.22%) PyTorch
15 108 (2.16%) CSS
16 104 (2.08%) Middleware
16 104 (2.08%) TensorFlow
17 102 (2.04%) LDAP
18 89 (1.78%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 436 (8.73%) Cloud Native
2 181 (3.62%) Onboarding
3 160 (3.20%) Product Ownership
4 154 (3.08%) Enterprise Software
5 147 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
6 144 (2.88%) Security Posture
7 133 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
8 114 (2.28%) Data Centre
9 88 (1.76%) Public Cloud
10 84 (1.68%) Distributed Systems
11 65 (1.30%) Management Information System
12 63 (1.26%) Algorithms
13 61 (1.22%) AI Agents
14 59 (1.18%) Replication
15 57 (1.14%) Data Structures
16 55 (1.10%) Low-Code
17 50 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
17 50 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
18 46 (0.92%) CMDB
19 44 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 574 (11.49%) Windows
2 325 (6.51%) Linux
3 167 (3.34%) Windows Server
4 108 (2.16%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.50%) Unix
6 57 (1.14%) VMS
7 48 (0.96%) Apple iOS
8 46 (0.92%) Android
9 39 (0.78%) Mac OS
10 26 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 20 (0.40%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.38%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.20%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.18%) CentOS
15 9 (0.18%) Solaris
16 6 (0.12%) AIX
16 6 (0.12%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.10%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,832 (36.68%) DevOps
2 1,444 (28.91%) CI/CD
3 1,234 (24.70%) Agile
4 943 (18.88%) Problem-Solving
5 740 (14.81%) Analytics
6 653 (13.07%) Infrastructure as Code
7 610 (12.21%) AI
8 589 (11.79%) Migration
9 571 (11.43%) Business Intelligence
10 512 (10.25%) Stakeholder Management
11 492 (9.85%) Containerisation
12 481 (9.63%) Data Modelling
13 455 (9.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 425 (8.51%) Microservices
15 423 (8.47%) Continuous Improvement
16 416 (8.33%) Machine Learning
17 400 (8.01%) ETL
18 397 (7.95%) Data Pipeline
19 396 (7.93%) Test Automation
20 364 (7.29%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,267 (25.37%) Python
2 1,091 (21.84%) SQL
3 542 (10.85%) PowerShell
4 448 (8.97%) Java
5 425 (8.51%) C#
6 378 (7.57%) JavaScript
7 241 (4.82%) Bash
8 191 (3.82%) TypeScript
9 147 (2.94%) Bicep
10 80 (1.60%) Go
11 75 (1.50%) PL/SQL
11 75 (1.50%) Scala
12 67 (1.34%) Kusto Query Language
13 52 (1.04%) T-SQL
14 51 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 49 (0.98%) R
16 33 (0.66%) C++
17 28 (0.56%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.54%) PHP
19 23 (0.46%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,206 (24.14%) Security Cleared
2 996 (19.94%) SC Cleared
3 416 (8.33%) Degree
4 309 (6.19%) Azure Certification
5 161 (3.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 147 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
7 144 (2.88%) CISSP
8 115 (2.30%) AWS Certification
8 115 (2.30%) DV Cleared
9 88 (1.76%) CISM
10 83 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
11 73 (1.46%) Master's Degree
12 49 (0.98%) BPSS Clearance
13 41 (0.82%) MCP
14 39 (0.78%) PMI Certification
15 36 (0.72%) CCNP
16 35 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
17 33 (0.66%) PMP
18 32 (0.64%) ISTQB
19 30 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 314 (6.29%) GDPR
2 279 (5.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 277 (5.55%) Data Quality
4 254 (5.09%) QA
5 215 (4.30%) NIST
6 92 (1.84%) Accessibility
7 72 (1.44%) NCSC
8 71 (1.42%) PCI DSS
9 49 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 36 (0.72%) SLA
11 34 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 32 (0.64%) SOC 2
13 31 (0.62%) HIPAA
14 28 (0.56%) EU AI Act
14 28 (0.56%) PMO
14 28 (0.56%) PSD2
15 27 (0.54%) WCAG
16 26 (0.52%) GRC
17 20 (0.40%) ISO 20022
18 18 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 662 (13.25%) Active Directory
2 648 (12.97%) Docker
3 159 (3.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (1.48%) Hyper-V
5 62 (1.24%) Virtual Machines
6 61 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 50 (1.00%) vSphere
8 21 (0.42%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.30%) Squid
10 13 (0.26%) DFS Replication
11 10 (0.20%) Dovecot
11 10 (0.20%) KVM
11 10 (0.20%) Postfix
11 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 8 (0.16%) zsh
13 7 (0.14%) Firmware
13 7 (0.14%) Snort
14 6 (0.12%) NFS
Systems Management
1 742 (14.85%) Terraform
2 737 (14.75%) Kubernetes
3 272 (5.45%) Microsoft Intune
4 245 (4.90%) Ansible
5 131 (2.62%) Grafana
6 127 (2.54%) SCCM
7 125 (2.50%) Prometheus
8 110 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (0.72%) Argo
11 32 (0.64%) Puppet
12 23 (0.46%) Nessus
13 21 (0.42%) Kibana
14 19 (0.38%) Nmap
15 18 (0.36%) Progress Chef
16 17 (0.34%) Istio
16 17 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.34%) vRealize
17 16 (0.32%) FortiGate
17 16 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,632 (32.67%) Microsoft
2 485 (9.71%) Databricks
3 311 (6.23%) Oracle
4 271 (5.43%) Google
5 229 (4.58%) ServiceNow
6 206 (4.12%) VMware
7 152 (3.04%) Cisco
7 152 (3.04%) Splunk
8 136 (2.72%) SAP
9 116 (2.32%) OpenAI
10 105 (2.10%) Salesforce
11 101 (2.02%) CyberArk
12 85 (1.70%) Palo Alto
13 65 (1.30%) Citrix
14 61 (1.22%) Red Hat
15 58 (1.16%) BeyondTrust
16 56 (1.12%) Foundry
17 55 (1.10%) IBM
18 52 (1.04%) Okta
19 50 (1.00%) Dynatrace
3,863 Azure jobs in England