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

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,188 4,104 5,248
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.96% 15.35% 14.01%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.99% 41.64% 41.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,706 2,749 3,918
10th Percentile £349 £350 £357
25th Percentile £418 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.19% -4.55% -4.26%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £706 £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 73
10th Percentile £16.25 £22.14 £17.76
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £56.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +61.43% -24.21% -10.76%
75th Percentile £68.75 £62.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £93.75 £76.18 £70.15
UK median hourly rate £56.50 £29.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +94.83% -37.20% -7.64%

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 12,355 9,857 12,577
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 38.00% 36.88% 33.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,589 6,539 9,182
10th Percentile £304 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £423 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £731
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 296 138 279
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.60 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £24.43
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% +12.57% +5.39%
75th Percentile £57.63 £44.90 £50.00
90th Percentile £75.50 £68.75 £68.05
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% +10.00% +8.34%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 2,795 £538 -2.27% 962
North of England -2 676 £465 +2.42% 797
South East -2 638 £492 -6.24% 1,251
Midlands -2 447 £523 +1.21% 493
West Midlands +2 341 £540 -1.82% 211
North West -1 334 £450 - 391
South West +4 316 £512 -2.57% 477
Yorkshire -1 299 £484 +1.79% 281
East of England -1 141 £503 +14.86% 498
East Midlands -3 105 £437 -0.23% 275
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
1 261 (5.03%) SharePoint
2 173 (3.33%) Microsoft Exchange
3 131 (2.53%) Apache Spark
4 120 (2.31%) Confluence
5 81 (1.56%) Apache
6 68 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.48%) OpenStack
8 23 (0.44%) CMS
9 22 (0.42%) SAS
10 19 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.25%) Camunda
11 13 (0.25%) HCL Notes
12 12 (0.23%) Appian
12 12 (0.23%) nginx
13 11 (0.21%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.21%) IIS
13 11 (0.21%) Skype for Business
14 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
14 9 (0.17%) Mendix
15 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 112 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.89%) MS Visio
4 44 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
6 10 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 8 (0.15%) Trello
8 5 (0.096%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.096%) 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 (1.89%) 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 (0.13%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.12%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.12%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.096%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.096%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.096%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.096%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.096%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,846 (35.58%) AWS
2 1,081 (20.84%) GCP
3 1,026 (19.78%) Azure DevOps
4 708 (13.65%) Power Platform
5 635 (12.24%) Entra ID
5 635 (12.24%) Microsoft 365
6 522 (10.06%) GitHub
7 359 (6.92%) Azure Data Factory
8 306 (5.90%) Serverless
9 293 (5.65%) GitHub Actions
10 248 (4.78%) Dynamics 365
11 221 (4.26%) Power Automate
11 221 (4.26%) SaaS
12 219 (4.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 201 (3.87%) Azure AKS
14 200 (3.86%) Azure Monitor
15 192 (3.70%) Azure Logic Apps
16 190 (3.66%) Azure Functions
17 181 (3.49%) PowerApps
18 180 (3.47%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 355 (6.84%) Firewall
2 230 (4.43%) DNS
3 175 (3.37%) VPN
4 154 (2.97%) Network Security
5 138 (2.66%) DHCP
6 124 (2.39%) WAN
7 95 (1.83%) TCP/IP
8 85 (1.64%) LAN
9 65 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
10 63 (1.21%) VLAN
11 60 (1.16%) SD-WAN
12 48 (0.93%) Kerberos
13 43 (0.83%) HTTP
14 35 (0.67%) BGP
15 30 (0.58%) Internet
15 30 (0.58%) Wireless
16 26 (0.50%) MPLS
17 25 (0.48%) SAN
18 22 (0.42%) OSPF
18 22 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 502 (9.68%) Power BI
2 292 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 239 (4.61%) Data Warehouse
4 238 (4.59%) Data Lake
5 182 (3.51%) PostgreSQL
6 174 (3.35%) Azure SQL Database
7 159 (3.06%) NoSQL
8 111 (2.14%) Metadata
9 107 (2.06%) Relational Database
10 84 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 82 (1.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 76 (1.46%) MongoDB
13 59 (1.14%) Oracle Database
14 58 (1.12%) Big Data
15 57 (1.10%) MySQL
16 55 (1.06%) Tableau
17 52 (1.00%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.89%) Redis
19 43 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
20 39 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 391 (7.54%) Git
2 354 (6.82%) JIRA
3 272 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 205 (3.95%) GitLab
5 85 (1.64%) Selenium
6 79 (1.52%) Postman
7 54 (1.04%) SonarQube
8 46 (0.89%) JUnit
9 39 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 37 (0.71%) MLflow
11 36 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
12 35 (0.67%) JMeter
13 34 (0.66%) Cypress.io
13 34 (0.66%) REST Assured
14 30 (0.58%) Maven
15 29 (0.56%) Artifactory
16 27 (0.52%) Bitbucket
17 26 (0.50%) CircleCI
17 26 (0.50%) Gradle
18 24 (0.46%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,661 (32.02%) Social Skills
2 930 (17.93%) Finance
3 561 (10.81%) Public Sector
4 514 (9.91%) Analytical Skills
5 322 (6.21%) Banking
6 170 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 98 (1.89%) Legal
9 81 (1.56%) Retail
10 80 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
11 79 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
12 76 (1.46%) Marketing
13 67 (1.29%) Investment Banking
14 54 (1.04%) Telecoms
15 52 (1.00%) Financial Institution
15 52 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
16 50 (0.96%) Law
17 45 (0.87%) Manufacturing
18 38 (0.73%) Military
19 37 (0.71%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 830 (16.00%) Architect
2 753 (14.51%) Developer
3 546 (10.52%) Senior
4 398 (7.67%) Azure Engineer
5 394 (7.59%) Data Engineer
6 365 (7.04%) Lead
7 348 (6.71%) Analyst
8 265 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
9 255 (4.92%) Solutions Architect
10 206 (3.97%) Consultant
11 164 (3.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 148 (2.85%) Security Engineer
13 136 (2.62%) Senior Developer
14 132 (2.54%) Cloud Engineer
15 125 (2.41%) Azure Architect
16 119 (2.29%) Platform Engineer
17 111 (2.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 107 (2.06%) Azure Data Engineer
19 103 (1.99%) Support Engineer
20 100 (1.93%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 413 (7.96%) .NET
2 362 (6.98%) REST
3 231 (4.45%) React
4 199 (3.84%) RESTful
5 197 (3.80%) Kafka
6 189 (3.64%) PySpark
7 176 (3.39%) Node.js
8 169 (3.26%) OAuth
9 158 (3.05%) Spring
10 139 (2.68%) Spring Boot
11 138 (2.66%) AngularJS
12 137 (2.64%) HTML
13 129 (2.49%) LDAP
14 123 (2.37%) SOAP
15 118 (2.27%) PyTorch
16 116 (2.24%) JSON
17 115 (2.22%) CSS
18 110 (2.12%) TensorFlow
19 107 (2.06%) SAML
20 106 (2.04%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 462 (8.91%) Cloud Native
2 201 (3.87%) Onboarding
3 169 (3.26%) Product Ownership
4 155 (2.99%) Enterprise Software
5 150 (2.89%) Hybrid Cloud
6 147 (2.83%) Security Posture
7 136 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
8 108 (2.08%) Data Centre
9 102 (1.97%) Public Cloud
10 85 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
11 76 (1.46%) Replication
12 68 (1.31%) AI Agents
12 68 (1.31%) Management Information System
13 60 (1.16%) Data Structures
14 57 (1.10%) Algorithms
15 56 (1.08%) Low-Code
16 48 (0.93%) Data Protection Act
17 47 (0.91%) CMDB
17 47 (0.91%) NHS
18 44 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 623 (12.01%) Windows
2 328 (6.32%) Linux
3 191 (3.68%) Windows Server
4 120 (2.31%) Windows 10
5 78 (1.50%) Unix
6 55 (1.06%) VMS
7 47 (0.91%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.81%) Mac OS
9 41 (0.79%) Android
10 29 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.39%) Ubuntu
13 16 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
14 11 (0.21%) CentOS
15 9 (0.17%) Solaris
16 8 (0.15%) Amazon Linux
16 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.096%) AIX
19 3 (0.058%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,891 (36.45%) DevOps
2 1,511 (29.12%) CI/CD
3 1,274 (24.56%) Agile
4 1,005 (19.37%) Problem-Solving
5 782 (15.07%) Analytics
6 682 (13.15%) AI
7 664 (12.80%) Infrastructure as Code
8 602 (11.60%) Migration
9 578 (11.14%) Business Intelligence
10 528 (10.18%) Stakeholder Management
11 507 (9.77%) Containerisation
12 498 (9.60%) Data Modelling
13 464 (8.94%) Continuous Improvement
14 463 (8.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 441 (8.50%) Machine Learning
16 430 (8.29%) Microservices
17 427 (8.23%) ETL
18 425 (8.19%) Test Automation
19 424 (8.17%) Data Pipeline
20 387 (7.46%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,323 (25.50%) Python
2 1,141 (21.99%) SQL
3 569 (10.97%) PowerShell
4 466 (8.98%) Java
5 434 (8.37%) C#
6 398 (7.67%) JavaScript
7 230 (4.43%) Bash
8 209 (4.03%) TypeScript
9 148 (2.85%) Bicep
10 92 (1.77%) Scala
11 87 (1.68%) Go
12 73 (1.41%) PL/SQL
13 62 (1.20%) Kusto Query Language
14 53 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 53 (1.02%) T-SQL
15 47 (0.91%) R
16 33 (0.64%) C++
17 30 (0.58%) Shell Script
18 25 (0.48%) PHP
19 21 (0.40%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,272 (24.52%) Security Cleared
2 1,054 (20.32%) SC Cleared
3 428 (8.25%) Degree
4 312 (6.01%) Azure Certification
5 178 (3.43%) Computer Science Degree
6 153 (2.95%) Microsoft Certification
7 142 (2.74%) CISSP
8 117 (2.26%) DV Cleared
9 114 (2.20%) AWS Certification
10 88 (1.70%) CISM
11 84 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
12 71 (1.37%) Master's Degree
13 67 (1.29%) BPSS Clearance
14 44 (0.85%) PMI Certification
15 40 (0.77%) ISTQB
16 39 (0.75%) PMP
17 38 (0.73%) MCP
18 36 (0.69%) CCNP
18 36 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
19 29 (0.56%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 329 (6.34%) GDPR
2 307 (5.92%) Data Quality
3 273 (5.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 270 (5.20%) QA
5 207 (3.99%) NIST
6 98 (1.89%) Accessibility
7 79 (1.52%) 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 (0.69%) HIPAA
13 34 (0.66%) SOC 2
14 30 (0.58%) PSD2
14 30 (0.58%) WCAG
15 28 (0.54%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.54%) PMO
16 24 (0.46%) GRC
17 22 (0.42%) ISO 20022
18 17 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 718 (13.84%) Active Directory
2 651 (12.55%) Docker
3 170 (3.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (1.52%) Hyper-V
5 67 (1.29%) Virtual Machines
6 66 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
7 54 (1.04%) vSphere
8 20 (0.39%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.25%) Squid
10 11 (0.21%) DFS Replication
10 11 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.19%) KVM
12 9 (0.17%) Postfix
12 9 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 8 (0.15%) Dovecot
14 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.13%) Firmware
14 7 (0.13%) NFS
14 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.13%) zsh
Systems Management
1 760 (14.65%) Kubernetes
2 758 (14.61%) Terraform
3 295 (5.69%) Microsoft Intune
4 245 (4.72%) Ansible
5 130 (2.51%) SCCM
6 127 (2.45%) Single Sign-On
7 126 (2.43%) Grafana
8 117 (2.26%) Prometheus
9 57 (1.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.71%) Argo
11 34 (0.66%) Puppet
12 21 (0.40%) Nessus
13 20 (0.39%) Istio
13 20 (0.39%) Kibana
13 20 (0.39%) Progress Chef
14 18 (0.35%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.35%) Nmap
14 18 (0.35%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.33%) vRealize
16 15 (0.29%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,719 (33.13%) Microsoft
2 517 (9.97%) Databricks
3 323 (6.23%) Oracle
4 288 (5.55%) Google
5 237 (4.57%) ServiceNow
6 219 (4.22%) VMware
7 150 (2.89%) Cisco
8 144 (2.78%) SAP
9 142 (2.74%) Splunk
10 130 (2.51%) OpenAI
11 114 (2.20%) Salesforce
12 105 (2.02%) CyberArk
13 86 (1.66%) Palo Alto
14 66 (1.27%) Okta
15 65 (1.25%) Foundry
16 62 (1.20%) Citrix
17 60 (1.16%) Red Hat
18 59 (1.14%) BeyondTrust
19 53 (1.02%) IBM
20 51 (0.98%) Dynatrace