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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,069 4,137 5,154
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.92% 15.35% 14.26%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.88% 41.67% 42.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,598 2,781 3,847
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £418 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -4.26%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £712 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.43% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 30 61
10th Percentile £16.25 £19.97 £17.75
25th Percentile £26.43 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £54.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +55.71% -24.21% -9.45%
75th Percentile £73.20 £60.56 £55.00
90th Percentile £93.75 £75.67 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £51.25 £28.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +83.04% -39.37% -1.74%

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 12,105 9,927 12,268
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 38.02% 36.83% 33.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,391 6,617 8,951
10th Percentile £302 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £420 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £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 277 136 239
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.51 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.41 £17.72
Median hourly rate £30.00 £28.75 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +27.78% -0.32%
75th Percentile £57.25 £47.81 £52.63
90th Percentile £76.90 £68.75 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £28.22 £27.50 £23.22
% change year-on-year +2.62% +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 16 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 16 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 16 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 2,736 £541 -1.66% 870
North of England -1 658 £465 +2.42% 626
South East -2 628 £492 -6.73% 955
Midlands +1 437 £525 +3.70% 362
West Midlands +2 331 £550 - 177
North West -1 319 £450 - 326
South West +3 306 £517 -1.48% 321
Yorkshire 0 299 £475 - 205
East of England -3 131 £500 +17.65% 330
East Midlands -3 105 £437 -3.00% 177
North East -8 44 £475 -2.56% 103
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
1 255 (5.03%) SharePoint
2 171 (3.37%) Microsoft Exchange
3 123 (2.43%) Apache Spark
4 119 (2.35%) Confluence
5 75 (1.48%) Apache
6 70 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.45%) OpenStack
8 22 (0.43%) SAS
9 19 (0.37%) CMS
9 19 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.28%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.26%) nginx
12 11 (0.22%) Appian
12 11 (0.22%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.22%) IIS
12 11 (0.22%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.18%) Camunda
13 9 (0.18%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.18%) Mendix
14 8 (0.16%) Smallworld
Applications
1 115 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 86 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
3 44 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 41 (0.81%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.16%) Trello
9 5 (0.099%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.099%) Weka
10 3 (0.059%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.039%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.039%) Windchill
12 1 (0.020%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.020%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.020%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.020%) Revit
12 1 (0.020%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.020%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.020%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 92 (1.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 58 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.20%) 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
6 8 (0.16%) Teamcenter
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 (0.099%) Cloudability
9 5 (0.099%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.099%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.099%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.079%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,834 (36.18%) AWS
2 1,062 (20.95%) GCP
3 994 (19.61%) Azure DevOps
4 686 (13.53%) Power Platform
5 610 (12.03%) Microsoft 365
6 598 (11.80%) Entra ID
7 518 (10.22%) GitHub
8 347 (6.85%) Azure Data Factory
9 299 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
10 296 (5.84%) Serverless
11 243 (4.79%) Dynamics 365
12 219 (4.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 217 (4.28%) SaaS
14 211 (4.16%) Power Automate
15 200 (3.95%) Azure AKS
16 197 (3.89%) Azure Monitor
17 191 (3.77%) Azure Logic Apps
18 183 (3.61%) Azure Functions
19 179 (3.53%) PowerApps
20 175 (3.45%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 354 (6.98%) Firewall
2 213 (4.20%) DNS
3 170 (3.35%) VPN
4 153 (3.02%) Network Security
5 122 (2.41%) WAN
6 121 (2.39%) DHCP
7 95 (1.87%) TCP/IP
8 82 (1.62%) LAN
9 64 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.18%) VLAN
11 59 (1.16%) SD-WAN
12 44 (0.87%) HTTP
13 32 (0.63%) BGP
13 32 (0.63%) Kerberos
14 30 (0.59%) Wireless
15 29 (0.57%) Internet
16 24 (0.47%) MPLS
16 24 (0.47%) SAN
17 22 (0.43%) SSL
18 21 (0.41%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 493 (9.73%) Power BI
2 286 (5.64%) SQL Server
3 240 (4.73%) Data Lake
4 234 (4.62%) Data Warehouse
5 187 (3.69%) PostgreSQL
6 168 (3.31%) Azure SQL Database
7 159 (3.14%) NoSQL
8 109 (2.15%) Metadata
9 107 (2.11%) Relational Database
10 79 (1.56%) Delta Lake
10 79 (1.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 78 (1.54%) MongoDB
12 59 (1.16%) Oracle Database
13 57 (1.12%) Big Data
14 56 (1.10%) MySQL
14 56 (1.10%) Tableau
15 50 (0.99%) BigQuery
16 46 (0.91%) Redis
17 41 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
17 41 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 387 (7.63%) Git
2 348 (6.87%) JIRA
3 277 (5.46%) Jenkins
4 203 (4.00%) GitLab
5 80 (1.58%) Selenium
6 73 (1.44%) Postman
7 54 (1.07%) SonarQube
8 46 (0.91%) JUnit
9 40 (0.79%) Cucumber
10 37 (0.73%) MLflow
11 36 (0.71%) Oracle APEX
12 33 (0.65%) CircleCI
13 32 (0.63%) Maven
14 30 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 30 (0.59%) JMeter
14 30 (0.59%) REST Assured
15 28 (0.55%) Bitbucket
16 27 (0.53%) Gradle
17 26 (0.51%) Artifactory
18 23 (0.45%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,623 (32.02%) Social Skills
2 927 (18.29%) Finance
3 563 (11.11%) Public Sector
4 489 (9.65%) Analytical Skills
5 322 (6.35%) Banking
6 166 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
7 109 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 90 (1.78%) Legal
9 81 (1.60%) Retail
10 78 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
11 77 (1.52%) Marketing
12 76 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
13 70 (1.38%) Investment Banking
14 53 (1.05%) Telecoms
15 51 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
16 50 (0.99%) Financial Institution
17 49 (0.97%) Law
18 48 (0.95%) Manufacturing
19 41 (0.81%) Military
20 40 (0.79%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 812 (16.02%) Architect
2 724 (14.28%) Developer
3 545 (10.75%) Senior
4 387 (7.63%) Data Engineer
5 385 (7.60%) Azure Engineer
6 366 (7.22%) Lead
7 350 (6.90%) Analyst
8 269 (5.31%) DevOps Engineer
9 252 (4.97%) Solutions Architect
10 196 (3.87%) Consultant
11 155 (3.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 148 (2.92%) Security Engineer
13 135 (2.66%) Senior Developer
14 129 (2.54%) Cloud Engineer
15 124 (2.45%) Azure Architect
16 121 (2.39%) Platform Engineer
17 106 (2.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 104 (2.05%) Azure Data Engineer
19 98 (1.93%) Support Engineer
20 96 (1.89%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 410 (8.09%) .NET
2 343 (6.77%) REST
3 216 (4.26%) React
4 191 (3.77%) Kafka
5 190 (3.75%) RESTful
6 184 (3.63%) PySpark
7 174 (3.43%) Node.js
8 154 (3.04%) OAuth
9 152 (3.00%) Spring
10 136 (2.68%) HTML
11 129 (2.54%) AngularJS
12 128 (2.53%) Spring Boot
13 121 (2.39%) SOAP
14 119 (2.35%) JSON
15 114 (2.25%) LDAP
15 114 (2.25%) PyTorch
16 112 (2.21%) CSS
17 106 (2.09%) TensorFlow
18 103 (2.03%) Middleware
19 94 (1.85%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 458 (9.04%) Cloud Native
2 191 (3.77%) Onboarding
3 165 (3.26%) Product Ownership
4 155 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
5 152 (3.00%) Hybrid Cloud
6 145 (2.86%) Security Posture
7 135 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
8 113 (2.23%) Data Centre
9 98 (1.93%) Public Cloud
10 86 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.34%) Management Information System
12 64 (1.26%) AI Agents
13 62 (1.22%) Replication
14 61 (1.20%) Data Structures
15 60 (1.18%) Algorithms
16 56 (1.10%) Low-Code
17 51 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
18 47 (0.93%) CMDB
19 46 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
20 45 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 597 (11.78%) Windows
2 326 (6.43%) Linux
3 178 (3.51%) Windows Server
4 115 (2.27%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.56%) Unix
6 55 (1.09%) VMS
7 45 (0.89%) Apple iOS
8 41 (0.81%) Android
9 40 (0.79%) Mac OS
10 27 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 20 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
12 14 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.18%) CentOS
13 9 (0.18%) Solaris
14 6 (0.12%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
15 5 (0.099%) AIX
16 4 (0.079%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,847 (36.44%) DevOps
2 1,488 (29.35%) CI/CD
3 1,241 (24.48%) Agile
4 974 (19.21%) Problem-Solving
5 759 (14.97%) Analytics
6 663 (13.08%) Infrastructure as Code
7 645 (12.72%) AI
8 585 (11.54%) Migration
9 566 (11.17%) Business Intelligence
10 518 (10.22%) Stakeholder Management
11 502 (9.90%) Containerisation
12 483 (9.53%) Data Modelling
13 456 (9.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 446 (8.80%) Continuous Improvement
15 425 (8.38%) Machine Learning
16 422 (8.33%) Microservices
17 413 (8.15%) ETL
18 412 (8.13%) Data Pipeline
19 410 (8.09%) Test Automation
20 374 (7.38%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,298 (25.61%) Python
2 1,113 (21.96%) SQL
3 545 (10.75%) PowerShell
4 461 (9.09%) Java
5 422 (8.33%) C#
6 386 (7.61%) JavaScript
7 231 (4.56%) Bash
8 196 (3.87%) TypeScript
9 151 (2.98%) Bicep
10 83 (1.64%) Go
11 80 (1.58%) Scala
12 72 (1.42%) PL/SQL
13 65 (1.28%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (1.03%) T-SQL
15 51 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 50 (0.99%) R
17 32 (0.63%) C++
18 30 (0.59%) Shell Script
19 27 (0.53%) PHP
20 23 (0.45%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,237 (24.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,019 (20.10%) SC Cleared
3 424 (8.36%) Degree
4 304 (6.00%) Azure Certification
5 171 (3.37%) Computer Science Degree
6 146 (2.88%) CISSP
7 145 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
8 116 (2.29%) DV Cleared
9 109 (2.15%) AWS Certification
10 91 (1.80%) CISM
11 85 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
12 72 (1.42%) Master's Degree
13 52 (1.03%) BPSS Clearance
14 40 (0.79%) MCP
14 40 (0.79%) PMI Certification
15 36 (0.71%) CCNP
15 36 (0.71%) PMP
15 36 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
16 35 (0.69%) ISTQB
17 32 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (6.43%) GDPR
2 298 (5.88%) Data Quality
3 277 (5.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 268 (5.29%) QA
5 212 (4.18%) NIST
6 94 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 75 (1.48%) NCSC
7 75 (1.48%) PCI DSS
8 48 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
9 38 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 37 (0.73%) SLA
11 35 (0.69%) SOC 2
12 34 (0.67%) HIPAA
13 30 (0.59%) PSD2
14 29 (0.57%) PMO
15 28 (0.55%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.55%) WCAG
16 23 (0.45%) GRC
17 22 (0.43%) ISO 20022
18 16 (0.32%) SEPA
System Software
1 684 (13.49%) Active Directory
2 657 (12.96%) Docker
3 166 (3.27%) VMware Infrastructure
4 77 (1.52%) Hyper-V
5 62 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
5 62 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
6 52 (1.03%) vSphere
7 19 (0.37%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.28%) Squid
9 12 (0.24%) DFS Replication
10 10 (0.20%) KVM
10 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 9 (0.18%) Dovecot
11 9 (0.18%) Postfix
12 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 7 (0.14%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.14%) NFS
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.14%) Snort
13 7 (0.14%) zsh
Systems Management
1 758 (14.95%) Kubernetes
2 753 (14.86%) Terraform
3 282 (5.56%) Microsoft Intune
4 241 (4.75%) Ansible
5 128 (2.53%) Grafana
6 126 (2.49%) SCCM
7 122 (2.41%) Prometheus
8 114 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
9 40 (0.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.73%) Argo
11 34 (0.67%) Puppet
12 22 (0.43%) Nessus
13 21 (0.41%) Progress Chef
14 19 (0.37%) FortiGate
14 19 (0.37%) Istio
14 19 (0.37%) Kibana
15 18 (0.36%) Nmap
15 18 (0.36%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.34%) vRealize
17 15 (0.30%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,648 (32.51%) Microsoft
2 503 (9.92%) Databricks
3 316 (6.23%) Oracle
4 282 (5.56%) Google
5 240 (4.73%) ServiceNow
6 214 (4.22%) VMware
7 153 (3.02%) Cisco
8 146 (2.88%) Splunk
9 142 (2.80%) SAP
10 122 (2.41%) OpenAI
11 105 (2.07%) Salesforce
12 104 (2.05%) CyberArk
13 84 (1.66%) Palo Alto
14 65 (1.28%) Citrix
15 61 (1.20%) Red Hat
16 59 (1.16%) BeyondTrust
16 59 (1.16%) Foundry
17 55 (1.09%) IBM
17 55 (1.09%) Okta
18 52 (1.03%) Dynatrace