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

6 months to
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,401 4,093 5,205
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.94% 15.79% 13.75%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.22% 42.13% 41.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,852 2,764 3,877
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £517 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.48% -2.78% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 24 71
10th Percentile £18.87 £21.06 £17.78
25th Percentile £35.75 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £65.88 £65.00 £59.98
90th Percentile £86.00 £76.68 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £30.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +86.99% -33.41% -13.44%

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 12,793 9,716 12,521
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.77% 37.49% 33.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,847 6,481 9,111
10th Percentile £305 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £420 £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 344 141 299
10th Percentile £14.45 £15.44 £14.10
25th Percentile £18.98 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £36.00 £27.50 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +30.91% +24.15% -11.40%
75th Percentile £58.99 £47.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £66.11
UK median hourly rate £35.71 £27.43 £22.50
% change year-on-year +30.21% +21.89% -10.00%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 2,916 £540 -1.82% 964
North of England -1 705 £475 - 534
South East -2 685 £500 -5.21% 769
Midlands -2 448 £500 -3.15% 300
North West -1 347 £450 - 302
West Midlands +1 336 £525 -4.55% 182
South West +5 334 £500 -4.76% 244
Yorkshire -2 310 £486 +2.32% 164
East of England 0 152 £550 +15.79% 192
East Midlands -3 111 £433 -3.78% 118
North East 0 52 £515 +10.87% 71
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
1 272 (5.04%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 150 (2.78%) Apache Spark
4 132 (2.44%) Confluence
5 82 (1.52%) Apache
6 68 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.43%) CMS
7 23 (0.43%) OpenStack
8 17 (0.31%) SAS
9 15 (0.28%) Appian
10 13 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.24%) Camunda
11 11 (0.20%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.20%) IIS
11 11 (0.20%) nginx
11 11 (0.20%) Skype for Business
12 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
12 9 (0.17%) Mendix
12 9 (0.17%) WebLogic
13 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 119 (2.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 94 (1.74%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 46 (0.85%) MS Visio
4 39 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
5 12 (0.22%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.15%) Trello
7 6 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 5 (0.093%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.093%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.093%) Weka
9 4 (0.074%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.037%) SOLIDWORKS
10 2 (0.037%) Windchill
11 1 (0.019%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.019%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.019%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.019%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.019%) Revit
Business Applications
1 94 (1.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.19%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.19%) Maximo
4 10 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.17%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.15%) Endur
7 7 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.093%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.093%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.093%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.093%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.093%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.093%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,904 (35.25%) AWS
2 1,120 (20.74%) GCP
3 1,062 (19.66%) Azure DevOps
4 731 (13.53%) Power Platform
5 677 (12.53%) Entra ID
6 649 (12.02%) Microsoft 365
7 532 (9.85%) GitHub
8 391 (7.24%) Azure Data Factory
9 313 (5.80%) Serverless
10 291 (5.39%) GitHub Actions
11 245 (4.54%) Dynamics 365
12 238 (4.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 232 (4.30%) SaaS
14 215 (3.98%) Azure AKS
14 215 (3.98%) Power Automate
15 205 (3.80%) Azure Monitor
16 199 (3.68%) Azure Functions
17 197 (3.65%) Azure Logic Apps
18 180 (3.33%) PaaS
19 177 (3.28%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 359 (6.65%) Firewall
2 246 (4.55%) DNS
3 185 (3.43%) VPN
4 152 (2.81%) DHCP
5 151 (2.80%) Network Security
6 127 (2.35%) WAN
7 92 (1.70%) TCP/IP
8 90 (1.67%) LAN
9 72 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.20%) Kerberos
11 64 (1.18%) VLAN
12 60 (1.11%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.72%) HTTP
14 33 (0.61%) BGP
15 31 (0.57%) Wireless
16 28 (0.52%) Internet
17 27 (0.50%) SAN
18 26 (0.48%) MPLS
18 26 (0.48%) SSL
19 25 (0.46%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 513 (9.50%) Power BI
2 303 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 264 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
4 254 (4.70%) Data Lake
5 189 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
6 182 (3.37%) Azure SQL Database
7 166 (3.07%) NoSQL
8 127 (2.35%) Metadata
9 103 (1.91%) Relational Database
10 90 (1.67%) Delta Lake
11 87 (1.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 77 (1.43%) MongoDB
13 68 (1.26%) Tableau
14 63 (1.17%) Oracle Database
15 62 (1.15%) Big Data
16 54 (1.00%) MySQL
17 53 (0.98%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
19 45 (0.83%) Redis
20 39 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 399 (7.39%) Git
2 373 (6.91%) JIRA
3 265 (4.91%) Jenkins
4 201 (3.72%) GitLab
5 80 (1.48%) Selenium
6 73 (1.35%) Postman
7 50 (0.93%) SonarQube
8 45 (0.83%) MLflow
9 42 (0.78%) JUnit
10 40 (0.74%) Cucumber
11 37 (0.69%) JMeter
11 37 (0.69%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.67%) Oracle APEX
13 32 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.54%) Artifactory
15 28 (0.52%) Visual Studio
16 25 (0.46%) Bitbucket
16 25 (0.46%) Maven
16 25 (0.46%) TestRail
17 24 (0.44%) ERwin
General
1 1,709 (31.64%) Social Skills
2 979 (18.13%) Finance
3 577 (10.68%) Public Sector
4 553 (10.24%) Analytical Skills
5 335 (6.20%) Banking
6 179 (3.31%) Documentation Skills
7 108 (2.00%) Legal
8 100 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
10 83 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
10 83 (1.54%) Retail
11 78 (1.44%) Marketing
12 65 (1.20%) Investment Banking
13 63 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
14 57 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 54 (1.00%) Law
16 53 (0.98%) Financial Institution
17 40 (0.74%) Manufacturing
18 39 (0.72%) Front Office
19 37 (0.69%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 889 (16.46%) Architect
2 766 (14.18%) Developer
3 572 (10.59%) Senior
4 435 (8.05%) Azure Engineer
5 423 (7.83%) Data Engineer
6 389 (7.20%) Lead
7 373 (6.91%) Analyst
8 273 (5.05%) Solutions Architect
9 269 (4.98%) DevOps Engineer
10 230 (4.26%) Consultant
11 168 (3.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 141 (2.61%) Security Engineer
13 136 (2.52%) Senior Developer
14 135 (2.50%) Azure Architect
15 133 (2.46%) Cloud Engineer
16 129 (2.39%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 120 (2.22%) Platform Engineer
18 108 (2.00%) Azure Data Engineer
18 108 (2.00%) Data Architect
19 105 (1.94%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 408 (7.55%) .NET
2 385 (7.13%) REST
3 244 (4.52%) React
4 210 (3.89%) Kafka
5 200 (3.70%) PySpark
6 199 (3.68%) RESTful
7 188 (3.48%) Node.js
8 179 (3.31%) OAuth
9 158 (2.93%) Spring
10 144 (2.67%) HTML
10 144 (2.67%) LDAP
11 139 (2.57%) Spring Boot
12 132 (2.44%) AngularJS
13 130 (2.41%) SOAP
14 125 (2.31%) CSS
15 124 (2.30%) PyTorch
16 121 (2.24%) JSON
17 117 (2.17%) SAML
18 116 (2.15%) TensorFlow
19 109 (2.02%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 474 (8.78%) Cloud Native
2 218 (4.04%) Onboarding
3 176 (3.26%) Product Ownership
4 154 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 148 (2.74%) Enterprise Software
6 145 (2.68%) Security Posture
7 138 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
8 116 (2.15%) Data Centre
9 100 (1.85%) Public Cloud
10 83 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
11 79 (1.46%) Replication
12 74 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 72 (1.33%) AI Agents
14 63 (1.17%) Management Information System
15 61 (1.13%) Algorithms
16 57 (1.06%) Low-Code
17 52 (0.96%) Data Protection Act
18 50 (0.93%) CMDB
19 48 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
20 47 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 641 (11.87%) Windows
2 319 (5.91%) Linux
3 190 (3.52%) Windows Server
4 122 (2.26%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.22%) Unix
6 55 (1.02%) VMS
7 47 (0.87%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.83%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.74%) Android
10 31 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.20%) CentOS
14 10 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
15 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 5 (0.093%) AIX
18 3 (0.056%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,954 (36.18%) DevOps
2 1,583 (29.31%) CI/CD
3 1,325 (24.53%) Agile
4 1,034 (19.14%) Problem-Solving
5 837 (15.50%) Analytics
6 751 (13.90%) AI
7 694 (12.85%) Infrastructure as Code
8 635 (11.76%) Migration
9 590 (10.92%) Business Intelligence
10 562 (10.41%) Stakeholder Management
11 555 (10.28%) Data Modelling
12 528 (9.78%) Containerisation
13 490 (9.07%) Continuous Improvement
14 480 (8.89%) Machine Learning
15 475 (8.79%) ETL
16 468 (8.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 458 (8.48%) Microservices
18 456 (8.44%) Data Pipeline
19 431 (7.98%) Data Engineering
20 417 (7.72%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,379 (25.53%) Python
2 1,193 (22.09%) SQL
3 606 (11.22%) PowerShell
4 459 (8.50%) Java
5 445 (8.24%) C#
6 409 (7.57%) JavaScript
7 228 (4.22%) Bash
8 227 (4.20%) TypeScript
9 158 (2.93%) Bicep
10 89 (1.65%) Scala
11 81 (1.50%) Go
12 76 (1.41%) PL/SQL
13 63 (1.17%) Kusto Query Language
14 62 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 53 (0.98%) T-SQL
16 43 (0.80%) R
17 33 (0.61%) C++
18 26 (0.48%) PHP
18 26 (0.48%) Shell Script
19 19 (0.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,311 (24.27%) Security Cleared
2 1,083 (20.05%) SC Cleared
3 454 (8.41%) Degree
4 324 (6.00%) Azure Certification
5 192 (3.55%) Computer Science Degree
6 156 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
7 147 (2.72%) CISSP
8 115 (2.13%) AWS Certification
8 115 (2.13%) DV Cleared
9 93 (1.72%) CISM
10 82 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
10 82 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
11 73 (1.35%) Master's Degree
12 46 (0.85%) PMI Certification
13 44 (0.81%) TOGAF Certification
14 41 (0.76%) PMP
15 40 (0.74%) CCNP
15 40 (0.74%) ISTQB
16 32 (0.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 27 (0.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 350 (6.48%) GDPR
2 345 (6.39%) Data Quality
3 280 (5.18%) QA
4 267 (4.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 205 (3.80%) NIST
6 98 (1.81%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.50%) NCSC
8 72 (1.33%) PCI DSS
9 53 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 51 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 44 (0.81%) SLA
12 36 (0.67%) HIPAA
13 34 (0.63%) SOC 2
14 33 (0.61%) PMO
15 29 (0.54%) EU AI Act
15 29 (0.54%) WCAG
16 27 (0.50%) GRC
17 26 (0.48%) PSD2
18 23 (0.43%) ISO 20022
19 22 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 754 (13.96%) Active Directory
2 644 (11.92%) Docker
3 178 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (1.57%) Hyper-V
5 72 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
6 69 (1.28%) Virtual Desktop
7 61 (1.13%) vSphere
8 20 (0.37%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.20%) Squid
11 9 (0.17%) DFS Replication
11 9 (0.17%) Postfix
12 8 (0.15%) KVM
12 8 (0.15%) NFS
13 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.13%) Firmware
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.11%) GPFS
14 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 797 (14.76%) Terraform
2 772 (14.29%) Kubernetes
3 318 (5.89%) Microsoft Intune
4 237 (4.39%) Ansible
5 140 (2.59%) Single Sign-On
6 137 (2.54%) SCCM
7 130 (2.41%) Grafana
8 117 (2.17%) Prometheus
9 70 (1.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.72%) Argo
11 28 (0.52%) Puppet
12 22 (0.41%) Nessus
13 21 (0.39%) Istio
14 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.33%) Kibana
14 18 (0.33%) Nmap
14 18 (0.33%) Progress Chef
14 18 (0.33%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.31%) vRealize
16 16 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,793 (33.20%) Microsoft
2 547 (10.13%) Databricks
3 304 (5.63%) Oracle
4 292 (5.41%) Google
5 254 (4.70%) ServiceNow
6 233 (4.31%) VMware
7 150 (2.78%) SAP
8 149 (2.76%) OpenAI
9 141 (2.61%) Cisco
10 137 (2.54%) Splunk
11 111 (2.06%) CyberArk
12 109 (2.02%) Salesforce
13 86 (1.59%) Palo Alto
14 79 (1.46%) Foundry
15 68 (1.26%) Okta
16 64 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
17 63 (1.17%) Red Hat
18 62 (1.15%) Citrix
19 53 (0.98%) IBM
20 51 (0.94%) Fortinet