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

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,512 4,118 5,119
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.88% 15.90% 13.66%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.22% 42.38% 41.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,926 2,800 3,785
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.98% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.37% -3.97%
Number of hourly rates quoted 96 26 69
10th Percentile £23.19 £21.78 £17.78
25th Percentile £45.87 £24.10 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £60.83 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £77.35 £66.85
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%

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 13,054 9,716 12,348
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.60% 37.50% 32.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,995 6,527 8,939
10th Percentile £306 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £419 £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 362 143 307
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.60 £14.08
25th Percentile £19.05 £21.25 £16.20
Median hourly rate £37.50 £27.50 £21.64
Median % change year-on-year +36.36% +27.08% -13.44%
75th Percentile £60.00 £48.75 £48.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.15 £66.25
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.00
% change year-on-year +34.55% +25.00% -12.00%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 2,981 £538 -2.27% 951
North of England 0 705 £475 +1.50% 550
South East -1 695 £500 -7.24% 784
Midlands -3 463 £500 -4.53% 299
South West +5 351 £500 -6.54% 241
West Midlands +2 350 £525 -4.55% 178
North West -1 346 £450 -3.85% 301
Yorkshire -2 311 £500 +5.26% 167
East of England -1 158 £550 +4.76% 207
East Midlands -3 111 £428 -5.00% 120
North East -2 52 £515 +10.87% 88
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 (4.84%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.34%) Microsoft Exchange
3 151 (2.74%) Apache Spark
4 141 (2.56%) Confluence
5 82 (1.49%) Apache
6 66 (1.20%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.38%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.27%) Appian
8 15 (0.27%) CMS
9 14 (0.25%) SAS
10 13 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.24%) Camunda
11 11 (0.20%) IIS
12 10 (0.18%) HCL Notes
13 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.16%) Mendix
13 9 (0.16%) nginx
13 9 (0.16%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.15%) Skype for Business
14 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 111 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.61%) Microsoft Office
3 45 (0.82%) MS Visio
4 43 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.091%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.091%) Weka
9 4 (0.073%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.073%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 2 (0.036%) SOLIDWORKS
10 2 (0.036%) Windchill
11 1 (0.018%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.018%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.018%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.018%) Revit
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 95 (1.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.20%) Maximo
4 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
5 7 (0.13%) Endur
5 7 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
6 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
6 6 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
6 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
6 6 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
7 5 (0.091%) Oracle Assets
7 5 (0.091%) Oracle General Ledger
7 5 (0.091%) Oracle Payables
7 5 (0.091%) Oracle Receivables
7 5 (0.091%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,944 (35.27%) AWS
2 1,148 (20.83%) GCP
3 1,074 (19.48%) Azure DevOps
4 747 (13.55%) Power Platform
5 685 (12.43%) Entra ID
6 662 (12.01%) Microsoft 365
7 551 (10.00%) GitHub
8 406 (7.37%) Azure Data Factory
9 311 (5.64%) Serverless
10 304 (5.52%) GitHub Actions
11 249 (4.52%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 249 (4.52%) Dynamics 365
12 240 (4.35%) SaaS
13 214 (3.88%) Azure AKS
14 211 (3.83%) Power Automate
15 201 (3.65%) Azure Monitor
16 195 (3.54%) Azure Functions
17 188 (3.41%) Azure Logic Apps
18 186 (3.37%) PaaS
19 177 (3.21%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 369 (6.69%) Firewall
2 247 (4.48%) DNS
3 193 (3.50%) VPN
4 163 (2.96%) Network Security
5 152 (2.76%) DHCP
6 128 (2.32%) WAN
7 94 (1.71%) LAN
8 93 (1.69%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.38%) Wi-Fi
10 68 (1.23%) VLAN
11 65 (1.18%) Kerberos
12 59 (1.07%) SD-WAN
13 38 (0.69%) HTTP
14 35 (0.63%) BGP
15 32 (0.58%) Wireless
16 28 (0.51%) Internet
16 28 (0.51%) OSPF
17 27 (0.49%) SSL
18 26 (0.47%) MPLS
19 25 (0.45%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 520 (9.43%) Power BI
2 309 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 282 (5.12%) Data Warehouse
4 266 (4.83%) Data Lake
5 204 (3.70%) PostgreSQL
6 179 (3.25%) Azure SQL Database
7 164 (2.98%) NoSQL
8 133 (2.41%) Metadata
9 106 (1.92%) Relational Database
10 102 (1.85%) Delta Lake
11 90 (1.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 75 (1.36%) MongoDB
13 66 (1.20%) Tableau
14 65 (1.18%) Big Data
15 61 (1.11%) Oracle Database
16 53 (0.96%) MySQL
17 52 (0.94%) BigQuery
18 48 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
19 46 (0.83%) Redis
20 38 (0.69%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 414 (7.51%) Git
2 373 (6.77%) JIRA
3 264 (4.79%) Jenkins
4 204 (3.70%) GitLab
5 87 (1.58%) Selenium
6 73 (1.32%) Postman
7 52 (0.94%) JUnit
8 48 (0.87%) Cucumber
9 47 (0.85%) MLflow
9 47 (0.85%) SonarQube
10 46 (0.83%) JMeter
11 37 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
13 33 (0.60%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.53%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.49%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.47%) Bitbucket
16 26 (0.47%) TestRail
17 25 (0.45%) Maven
18 23 (0.42%) ERwin
General
1 1,718 (31.17%) Social Skills
2 1,002 (18.18%) Finance
3 587 (10.65%) Public Sector
4 565 (10.25%) Analytical Skills
5 329 (5.97%) Banking
6 187 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
7 109 (1.98%) Legal
8 98 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 87 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
10 86 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
11 78 (1.42%) Retail
12 75 (1.36%) Marketing
13 73 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
14 63 (1.14%) Investment Banking
15 60 (1.09%) Telecoms
16 53 (0.96%) Law
17 52 (0.94%) Financial Institution
18 40 (0.73%) Manufacturing
19 38 (0.69%) Front Office
19 38 (0.69%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 917 (16.64%) Architect
2 760 (13.79%) Developer
3 596 (10.81%) Senior
4 452 (8.20%) Azure Engineer
5 449 (8.15%) Data Engineer
6 394 (7.15%) Lead
7 379 (6.88%) Analyst
8 284 (5.15%) Solutions Architect
9 272 (4.93%) DevOps Engineer
10 245 (4.44%) Consultant
11 167 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 144 (2.61%) Cloud Engineer
13 143 (2.59%) Security Engineer
14 136 (2.47%) Azure Architect
14 136 (2.47%) Senior Developer
15 128 (2.32%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 124 (2.25%) Platform Engineer
17 115 (2.09%) Data Architect
18 111 (2.01%) Azure Data Engineer
19 109 (1.98%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 413 (7.49%) .NET
2 378 (6.86%) REST
3 249 (4.52%) React
4 213 (3.86%) Kafka
5 209 (3.79%) PySpark
6 198 (3.59%) RESTful
7 190 (3.45%) Node.js
8 180 (3.27%) OAuth
9 166 (3.01%) Spring
10 144 (2.61%) HTML
11 143 (2.59%) LDAP
12 138 (2.50%) Spring Boot
13 135 (2.45%) AngularJS
14 126 (2.29%) CSS
15 125 (2.27%) PyTorch
16 120 (2.18%) SOAP
17 118 (2.14%) SAML
17 118 (2.14%) TensorFlow
18 117 (2.12%) Middleware
19 116 (2.10%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 473 (8.58%) Cloud Native
2 221 (4.01%) Onboarding
3 185 (3.36%) Product Ownership
4 152 (2.76%) Hybrid Cloud
5 147 (2.67%) Security Posture
6 145 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
7 143 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
8 116 (2.10%) Data Centre
9 98 (1.78%) Public Cloud
10 84 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
11 82 (1.49%) AI Agents
12 77 (1.40%) Replication
13 76 (1.38%) Data Structures
14 62 (1.12%) Algorithms
15 61 (1.11%) Management Information System
16 56 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
16 56 (1.02%) Low-Code
17 52 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
18 48 (0.87%) NHS
19 46 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 644 (11.68%) Windows
2 318 (5.77%) Linux
3 187 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 123 (2.23%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.18%) Unix
6 55 (1.00%) VMS
7 46 (0.83%) Mac OS
8 42 (0.76%) Apple iOS
9 33 (0.60%) Android
10 32 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.38%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
13 19 (0.34%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.20%) CentOS
14 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
15 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.091%) AIX
17 4 (0.073%) Amazon Linux
18 3 (0.054%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,984 (35.99%) DevOps
2 1,633 (29.63%) CI/CD
3 1,338 (24.27%) Agile
4 1,038 (18.83%) Problem-Solving
5 839 (15.22%) Analytics
6 787 (14.28%) AI
7 718 (13.03%) Infrastructure as Code
8 661 (11.99%) Migration
9 598 (10.85%) Business Intelligence
10 576 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
11 566 (10.27%) Data Modelling
12 542 (9.83%) Containerisation
13 517 (9.38%) Continuous Improvement
14 497 (9.02%) ETL
15 492 (8.93%) Machine Learning
16 483 (8.76%) Data Pipeline
17 481 (8.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 474 (8.60%) Microservices
19 457 (8.29%) Data Engineering
20 431 (7.82%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,430 (25.94%) Python
2 1,221 (22.15%) SQL
3 612 (11.10%) PowerShell
4 456 (8.27%) Java
5 453 (8.22%) C#
6 418 (7.58%) JavaScript
7 236 (4.28%) TypeScript
8 223 (4.05%) Bash
9 160 (2.90%) Bicep
10 90 (1.63%) Scala
11 78 (1.42%) Go
12 76 (1.38%) PL/SQL
13 64 (1.16%) Kusto Query Language
14 61 (1.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 58 (1.05%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.73%) R
17 32 (0.58%) C++
18 26 (0.47%) PHP
18 26 (0.47%) Shell Script
19 20 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,348 (24.46%) Security Cleared
2 1,112 (20.17%) SC Cleared
3 448 (8.13%) Degree
4 330 (5.99%) Azure Certification
5 192 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 157 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
7 151 (2.74%) CISSP
8 120 (2.18%) DV Cleared
9 119 (2.16%) AWS Certification
10 96 (1.74%) CISM
11 87 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
12 84 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
13 73 (1.32%) Master's Degree
14 52 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
15 42 (0.76%) PMI Certification
16 41 (0.74%) CCNP
17 40 (0.73%) ISTQB
18 39 (0.71%) PMP
19 32 (0.58%) Microsoft Certified Professional
20 29 (0.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 369 (6.69%) Data Quality
2 352 (6.39%) GDPR
3 292 (5.30%) QA
4 267 (4.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 209 (3.79%) NIST
6 101 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.51%) NCSC
8 78 (1.42%) PCI DSS
9 57 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
10 52 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 47 (0.85%) SLA
12 35 (0.63%) PMO
13 34 (0.62%) HIPAA
14 33 (0.60%) SOC 2
15 29 (0.53%) WCAG
16 28 (0.51%) EU AI Act
16 28 (0.51%) GRC
17 24 (0.44%) PSD2
18 23 (0.42%) ISO 20022
19 22 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 761 (13.81%) Active Directory
2 659 (11.96%) Docker
3 176 (3.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (1.54%) Hyper-V
5 79 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
6 74 (1.34%) Virtual Desktop
7 64 (1.16%) vSphere
8 21 (0.38%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.15%) Firmware
10 8 (0.15%) NFS
10 8 (0.15%) Postfix
10 8 (0.15%) Snort
10 8 (0.15%) Squid
11 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 7 (0.13%) DFS Replication
11 7 (0.13%) KVM
11 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
11 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 829 (15.04%) Terraform
2 797 (14.46%) Kubernetes
3 329 (5.97%) Microsoft Intune
4 237 (4.30%) Ansible
5 148 (2.69%) Single Sign-On
6 133 (2.41%) Grafana
7 127 (2.30%) SCCM
8 118 (2.14%) Prometheus
9 72 (1.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.71%) Argo
11 26 (0.47%) Puppet
12 20 (0.36%) Istio
12 20 (0.36%) Nessus
13 19 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
13 19 (0.34%) Nmap
14 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 17 (0.31%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.31%) vRealize
16 16 (0.29%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,798 (32.62%) Microsoft
2 568 (10.30%) Databricks
3 301 (5.46%) Oracle
4 287 (5.21%) Google
5 247 (4.48%) ServiceNow
6 230 (4.17%) VMware
7 158 (2.87%) SAP
8 152 (2.76%) OpenAI
9 141 (2.56%) Cisco
10 137 (2.49%) Splunk
11 112 (2.03%) CyberArk
12 106 (1.92%) Salesforce
13 90 (1.63%) Palo Alto
14 85 (1.54%) Foundry
15 69 (1.25%) Citrix
15 69 (1.25%) Okta
16 63 (1.14%) BeyondTrust
17 62 (1.12%) Red Hat
18 53 (0.96%) IBM
19 50 (0.91%) Fortinet