Azure Contract Job Trends

Microsoft Azure
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs 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 6,120 4,832 6,225
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.11% 15.28% 14.12%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.27% 41.58% 41.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,345 3,250 4,550
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £422 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 43 82
10th Percentile £17.25 £20.49 £17.75
25th Percentile £27.15 £23.70 £24.57
Median hourly rate £56.50 £29.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +94.83% -37.20% -7.64%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.59 £62.88
90th Percentile £93.75 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +91.67% -35.04% -16.04%

All Cloud Computing Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for cloud computing skills 14,478 11,621 14,846
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.10% 36.76% 33.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,985 7,717 10,638
10th Percentile £306 £313 £288
25th Percentile £406 £413 £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 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 327 168 299
10th Percentile £14.25 £17.31 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.69 £21.46 £17.61
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% +10.00% +8.34%
75th Percentile £58.65 £43.75 £52.63
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.75 £72.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £25.75 £21.00
% change year-on-year +6.80% +22.62% +7.69%

Azure
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Azure relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Azure job vacancy trend in the UK

Azure
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Azure.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Azure

Azure
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Azure over the 6 months to 24 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Azure.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Azure

Azure
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Azure over the 6 months to 24 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Azure within the UK 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
England -1 5,188 £519 -1.19% 4,198
London 0 2,795 £538 -2.27% 958
UK excluding London 0 2,494 £500 - 3,976
Work from Home -2 1,882 £513 -1.44% 2,076
North of England -2 676 £465 +2.42% 815
South East -2 638 £492 -6.24% 1,270
Midlands -2 447 £523 +1.21% 507
West Midlands +2 341 £540 -1.82% 216
North West -1 334 £450 - 399
South West +4 316 £512 -2.57% 486
Yorkshire -1 299 £484 +1.79% 290
Scotland +8 278 £550 +17.65% 222
East of England -1 141 £503 +14.86% 516
East Midlands -3 105 £437 -0.23% 284
Wales -5 59 £410 -18.00% 190
North East -6 47 £475 -2.56% 131
Northern Ireland +2 8 £385 - 69
Channel Islands +3 2 £600 +101.68% 1

Azure
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 282 (4.61%) SharePoint
2 193 (3.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 146 (2.39%) Confluence
4 144 (2.35%) Apache Spark
5 88 (1.44%) Apache
6 76 (1.24%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.44%) SAS
8 25 (0.41%) CMS
8 25 (0.41%) OpenStack
9 20 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
10 14 (0.23%) IIS
11 13 (0.21%) Camunda
11 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.21%) nginx
12 12 (0.20%) Appian
13 11 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.16%) GeoServer
14 10 (0.16%) SugarCRM
15 9 (0.15%) Mendix
Applications
1 130 (2.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 102 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 47 (0.77%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.15%) Trello
8 8 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.082%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.082%) Weka
10 3 (0.049%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.049%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.033%) Windchill
12 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.016%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.016%) Revit
12 1 (0.016%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.016%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.016%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 107 (1.75%) Dynamics CRM
2 72 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Maximo
5 9 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
5 9 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.13%) Endur
6 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
6 8 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 6 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.098%) Dynamics NAV
7 6 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.098%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.098%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.098%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.082%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.082%) Oracle Payables
8 5 (0.082%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,167 (35.41%) AWS
2 1,216 (19.87%) Azure DevOps
3 1,205 (19.69%) GCP
4 827 (13.51%) Power Platform
5 715 (11.68%) Microsoft 365
6 699 (11.42%) Entra ID
7 624 (10.20%) GitHub
8 428 (6.99%) Azure Data Factory
9 379 (6.19%) Serverless
10 363 (5.93%) GitHub Actions
11 290 (4.74%) Dynamics 365
12 277 (4.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 260 (4.25%) Power Automate
14 251 (4.10%) SaaS
15 235 (3.84%) Azure AKS
16 225 (3.68%) Azure Functions
17 223 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
18 216 (3.53%) Snowflake
19 210 (3.43%) Azure Logic Apps
20 203 (3.32%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 421 (6.88%) Firewall
2 256 (4.18%) DNS
3 197 (3.22%) VPN
4 178 (2.91%) Network Security
5 151 (2.47%) WAN
6 149 (2.43%) DHCP
7 99 (1.62%) TCP/IP
8 95 (1.55%) LAN
9 77 (1.26%) SD-WAN
10 75 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
11 65 (1.06%) VLAN
12 62 (1.01%) HTTP
13 54 (0.88%) Kerberos
14 39 (0.64%) BGP
15 36 (0.59%) Internet
15 36 (0.59%) Wireless
16 29 (0.47%) MPLS
17 27 (0.44%) SSL
18 26 (0.42%) SAN
19 25 (0.41%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 571 (9.33%) Power BI
2 356 (5.82%) SQL Server
3 301 (4.92%) Data Lake
4 298 (4.87%) Data Warehouse
5 231 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
6 217 (3.55%) Azure SQL Database
7 180 (2.94%) NoSQL
8 133 (2.17%) Metadata
9 127 (2.08%) Relational Database
10 98 (1.60%) Delta Lake
11 88 (1.44%) MongoDB
12 86 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 77 (1.26%) MySQL
14 70 (1.14%) Big Data
15 67 (1.09%) Oracle Database
16 61 (1.00%) BigQuery
16 61 (1.00%) Tableau
17 52 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
18 48 (0.78%) Redis
19 44 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 477 (7.79%) Git
2 432 (7.06%) JIRA
3 348 (5.69%) Jenkins
4 259 (4.23%) GitLab
5 112 (1.83%) Selenium
6 97 (1.58%) Postman
7 60 (0.98%) Cucumber
7 60 (0.98%) JUnit
8 59 (0.96%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.90%) JMeter
10 50 (0.82%) Cypress.io
11 41 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 39 (0.64%) Visual Studio
13 38 (0.62%) MLflow
14 37 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
15 32 (0.52%) Bitbucket
16 31 (0.51%) Artifactory
16 31 (0.51%) Maven
17 29 (0.47%) ERwin
18 27 (0.44%) TestRail
General
1 1,934 (31.60%) Social Skills
2 1,089 (17.79%) Finance
3 717 (11.72%) Public Sector
4 600 (9.80%) Analytical Skills
5 356 (5.82%) Banking
6 197 (3.22%) Documentation Skills
7 123 (2.01%) Legal
8 115 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 104 (1.70%) Influencing Skills
10 91 (1.49%) Marketing
11 90 (1.47%) Retail
12 84 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
13 73 (1.19%) Investment Banking
14 60 (0.98%) Telecoms
15 57 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
16 54 (0.88%) Financial Institution
17 53 (0.87%) Manufacturing
18 51 (0.83%) Law
19 41 (0.67%) Military
20 38 (0.62%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 983 (16.06%) Architect
2 895 (14.62%) Developer
3 626 (10.23%) Senior
4 477 (7.79%) Azure Engineer
5 473 (7.73%) Data Engineer
6 420 (6.86%) Lead
7 403 (6.58%) Analyst
8 326 (5.33%) DevOps Engineer
9 305 (4.98%) Solutions Architect
10 261 (4.26%) Consultant
11 180 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 179 (2.92%) Security Engineer
13 157 (2.57%) Senior Developer
14 156 (2.55%) Cloud Engineer
15 147 (2.40%) Azure Architect
16 139 (2.27%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 134 (2.19%) Platform Engineer
18 123 (2.01%) Azure Data Engineer
18 123 (2.01%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 121 (1.98%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 502 (8.20%) .NET
2 434 (7.09%) REST
3 276 (4.51%) React
4 246 (4.02%) RESTful
5 228 (3.73%) PySpark
6 224 (3.66%) Kafka
7 204 (3.33%) Node.js
8 196 (3.20%) Spring
9 194 (3.17%) OAuth
10 177 (2.89%) Spring Boot
11 169 (2.76%) AngularJS
12 165 (2.70%) HTML
13 145 (2.37%) SOAP
14 144 (2.35%) JSON
15 140 (2.29%) CSS
16 137 (2.24%) LDAP
17 133 (2.17%) PyTorch
18 125 (2.04%) TensorFlow
19 114 (1.86%) SAML
20 110 (1.80%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 535 (8.74%) Cloud Native
2 227 (3.71%) Onboarding
3 204 (3.33%) Product Ownership
4 169 (2.76%) Hybrid Cloud
5 165 (2.70%) Enterprise Software
6 160 (2.61%) Security Posture
7 155 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
8 136 (2.22%) Data Centre
9 119 (1.94%) Public Cloud
10 105 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
11 84 (1.37%) AI Agents
12 83 (1.36%) Replication
13 75 (1.23%) Management Information System
14 68 (1.11%) Algorithms
14 68 (1.11%) Data Structures
15 66 (1.08%) Low-Code
16 60 (0.98%) Data Protection Act
17 57 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
18 56 (0.92%) NHS
19 55 (0.90%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 716 (11.70%) Windows
2 384 (6.27%) Linux
3 203 (3.32%) Windows Server
4 126 (2.06%) Windows 10
5 104 (1.70%) Unix
6 56 (0.92%) VMS
7 49 (0.80%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.74%) Android
8 45 (0.74%) Mac OS
9 38 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
11 20 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 18 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.18%) CentOS
14 9 (0.15%) Solaris
14 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.082%) AIX
17 3 (0.049%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,239 (36.58%) DevOps
2 1,828 (29.87%) CI/CD
3 1,524 (24.90%) Agile
4 1,164 (19.02%) Problem-Solving
5 901 (14.72%) Analytics
6 803 (13.12%) Infrastructure as Code
7 796 (13.01%) AI
8 714 (11.67%) Migration
9 651 (10.64%) Business Intelligence
10 623 (10.18%) Stakeholder Management
11 613 (10.02%) Containerisation
12 579 (9.46%) Data Modelling
13 543 (8.87%) Continuous Improvement
14 530 (8.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 519 (8.48%) Machine Learning
16 511 (8.35%) Microservices
17 504 (8.24%) ETL
17 504 (8.24%) Test Automation
18 493 (8.06%) Data Pipeline
19 435 (7.11%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,573 (25.70%) Python
2 1,335 (21.81%) SQL
3 659 (10.77%) PowerShell
4 553 (9.04%) Java
5 531 (8.68%) C#
6 469 (7.66%) JavaScript
7 266 (4.35%) Bash
8 256 (4.18%) TypeScript
9 179 (2.92%) Bicep
10 95 (1.55%) Scala
11 93 (1.52%) Go
12 81 (1.32%) PL/SQL
13 68 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
14 65 (1.06%) T-SQL
15 58 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 51 (0.83%) R
17 50 (0.82%) Shell Script
18 41 (0.67%) C++
19 34 (0.56%) PHP
20 23 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,428 (23.33%) Security Cleared
2 1,187 (19.40%) SC Cleared
3 501 (8.19%) Degree
4 344 (5.62%) Azure Certification
5 195 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
6 170 (2.78%) Microsoft Certification
7 163 (2.66%) CISSP
8 131 (2.14%) AWS Certification
9 128 (2.09%) DV Cleared
10 105 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
11 103 (1.68%) CISM
12 96 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
13 86 (1.41%) Master's Degree
14 52 (0.85%) PMI Certification
15 48 (0.78%) ISTQB
15 48 (0.78%) PMP
16 46 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
17 44 (0.72%) CCNP
18 42 (0.69%) MCP
19 32 (0.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (5.96%) Data Quality
2 360 (5.88%) GDPR
3 329 (5.38%) QA
4 312 (5.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 233 (3.81%) NIST
6 129 (2.11%) Accessibility
7 90 (1.47%) NCSC
8 76 (1.24%) PCI DSS
9 55 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 51 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
11 45 (0.74%) SLA
12 40 (0.65%) HIPAA
13 38 (0.62%) SOC 2
13 38 (0.62%) WCAG
14 36 (0.59%) PMO
15 30 (0.49%) PSD2
16 28 (0.46%) EU AI Act
17 27 (0.44%) GRC
18 22 (0.36%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 794 (12.97%) Active Directory
2 771 (12.60%) Docker
3 188 (3.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.50%) Hyper-V
5 74 (1.21%) Virtual Machines
6 71 (1.16%) Virtual Desktop
7 57 (0.93%) vSphere
8 20 (0.33%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.21%) Squid
10 11 (0.18%) DFS Replication
10 11 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 11 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.16%) Firmware
11 10 (0.16%) KVM
12 9 (0.15%) Postfix
13 8 (0.13%) Dovecot
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) Lustre
14 7 (0.11%) zsh
Systems Management
1 920 (15.03%) Terraform
2 887 (14.49%) Kubernetes
3 320 (5.23%) Microsoft Intune
4 316 (5.16%) Ansible
5 156 (2.55%) Single Sign-On
6 155 (2.53%) Grafana
7 141 (2.30%) SCCM
8 139 (2.27%) Prometheus
9 58 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.72%) Argo
11 34 (0.56%) Puppet
12 27 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 25 (0.41%) Kibana
14 24 (0.39%) vRealize
15 23 (0.38%) Istio
16 22 (0.36%) Nessus
17 20 (0.33%) Progress Chef
18 18 (0.29%) Nmap
18 18 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
18 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,978 (32.32%) Microsoft
2 612 (10.00%) Databricks
3 363 (5.93%) Oracle
4 319 (5.21%) Google
5 257 (4.20%) ServiceNow
6 247 (4.04%) VMware
7 173 (2.83%) Cisco
8 171 (2.79%) SAP
9 160 (2.61%) Splunk
10 149 (2.43%) OpenAI
11 127 (2.08%) Salesforce
12 110 (1.80%) CyberArk
13 104 (1.70%) Palo Alto
14 72 (1.18%) Okta
15 71 (1.16%) Foundry
16 66 (1.08%) Red Hat
17 64 (1.05%) Citrix
18 62 (1.01%) Dynatrace
19 61 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
20 60 (0.98%) IBM