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 2 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,620 5,331 6,815
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.62% 14.94% 14.99%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.94% 41.85% 42.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,919 3,571 4,986
10th Percentile £350 £338 £350
25th Percentile £421 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £636 £650
90th Percentile £700 £715 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 48 85
10th Percentile £16.03 £20.19 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.60 £23.75 £25.00
Median hourly rate £48.00 £31.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +51.18% -31.25% +31.94%
75th Percentile £77.44 £60.19 £70.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.00 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +110.00% -35.04% -5.76%

All Cloud 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 13,728 12,738 16,028
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.16% 35.70% 35.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,318 8,408 11,463
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £419 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £612 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 319 184 297
10th Percentile £15.45 £17.66 £14.36
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £26.30 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.33% +15.38% +18.18%
75th Percentile £52.33 £53.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.67 £27.35 £21.35
% change year-on-year -17.11% +28.10% +13.87%

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025. 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 4,782 £520 -1.89% 3,710
London +1 2,562 £538 -2.27% 1,142
UK excluding London 0 2,329 £500 - 3,469
Work from Home -1 1,827 £510 -2.86% 2,100
North of England -2 597 £475 -5.00% 795
South East -4 579 £500 -4.76% 1,185
Midlands -1 429 £534 +1.71% 506
West Midlands 0 321 £550 +4.76% 309
South West +7 311 £500 -0.99% 337
North West -1 292 £465 -7.00% 434
Yorkshire -2 277 £488 -2.50% 266
Scotland 0 250 £524 +12.81% 233
East of England +2 153 £500 +18.34% 310
East Midlands -3 105 £450 -10.00% 182
Wales +1 64 £456 -8.75% 124
North East -10 32 £515 +17.05% 104
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -3 6 - - 29

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
1 270 (4.80%) SharePoint
2 193 (3.43%) Microsoft Exchange
3 143 (2.54%) Confluence
4 127 (2.26%) Apache Spark
5 85 (1.51%) Apache
6 83 (1.48%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.48%) SAS
8 26 (0.46%) CMS
9 22 (0.39%) OpenStack
10 17 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.27%) nginx
12 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
12 12 (0.21%) IIS
13 10 (0.18%) Mule
13 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.14%) Camunda
15 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
Applications
1 130 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 97 (1.73%) Microsoft Office
3 41 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 39 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
6 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.20%) Trello
8 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.089%) Weka
10 2 (0.036%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.036%) Windchill
11 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
11 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.018%) Revit
11 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 95 (1.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 16 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.20%) Endur
5 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
6 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.16%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
7 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.12%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.089%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.089%) NEC Housing
10 5 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
11 4 (0.071%) Maximo
11 4 (0.071%) Remedy ITSM
11 4 (0.071%) SAP MDG
11 4 (0.071%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,046 (36.41%) AWS
2 1,113 (19.80%) Azure DevOps
3 1,101 (19.59%) GCP
4 717 (12.76%) Power Platform
5 641 (11.41%) Microsoft 365
6 638 (11.35%) Entra ID
7 530 (9.43%) GitHub
8 354 (6.30%) Azure Data Factory
9 318 (5.66%) GitHub Actions
10 303 (5.39%) Serverless
11 254 (4.52%) Dynamics 365
12 247 (4.40%) SaaS
13 246 (4.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 223 (3.97%) Azure AKS
14 223 (3.97%) Power Automate
15 217 (3.86%) Snowflake
16 205 (3.65%) PowerApps
17 199 (3.54%) Azure Monitor
18 198 (3.52%) PaaS
19 192 (3.42%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 409 (7.28%) Firewall
2 210 (3.74%) DNS
3 173 (3.08%) VPN
4 149 (2.65%) Network Security
5 115 (2.05%) WAN
6 106 (1.89%) DHCP
7 86 (1.53%) TCP/IP
8 73 (1.30%) HTTP
8 73 (1.30%) LAN
9 60 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
10 58 (1.03%) SD-WAN
11 55 (0.98%) VLAN
12 38 (0.68%) BGP
13 37 (0.66%) SAN
14 34 (0.60%) Internet
15 33 (0.59%) MPLS
16 30 (0.53%) Wireless
17 27 (0.48%) SSL
18 26 (0.46%) OSPF
19 20 (0.36%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 498 (8.86%) Power BI
2 310 (5.52%) SQL Server
3 265 (4.72%) Data Warehouse
4 245 (4.36%) PostgreSQL
5 240 (4.27%) Data Lake
6 186 (3.31%) Azure SQL Database
7 183 (3.26%) NoSQL
8 123 (2.19%) Relational Database
9 119 (2.12%) Metadata
10 102 (1.81%) MongoDB
11 79 (1.41%) MySQL
12 78 (1.39%) Big Data
13 74 (1.32%) Delta Lake
14 68 (1.21%) Tableau
15 60 (1.07%) BigQuery
15 60 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 54 (0.96%) Redis
17 53 (0.94%) Oracle Database
18 44 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
19 38 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 482 (8.58%) Git
2 414 (7.37%) JIRA
3 329 (5.85%) Jenkins
4 218 (3.88%) GitLab
5 95 (1.69%) Selenium
6 86 (1.53%) Postman
7 70 (1.25%) SonarQube
8 66 (1.17%) JUnit
9 47 (0.84%) JMeter
10 46 (0.82%) Bitbucket
10 46 (0.82%) Cucumber
10 46 (0.82%) Cypress.io
11 37 (0.66%) Maven
11 37 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
12 33 (0.59%) Visual Studio
13 32 (0.57%) CircleCI
14 30 (0.53%) MLflow
15 29 (0.52%) Mockito
15 29 (0.52%) SpecFlow
16 28 (0.50%) ERwin
General
1 1,802 (32.06%) Social Skills
2 1,070 (19.04%) Finance
3 662 (11.78%) Public Sector
4 533 (9.48%) Analytical Skills
5 372 (6.62%) Banking
6 193 (3.43%) Documentation Skills
7 129 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 97 (1.73%) Influencing Skills
9 94 (1.67%) Investment Banking
9 94 (1.67%) Marketing
10 89 (1.58%) Retail
11 87 (1.55%) Legal
12 78 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
13 74 (1.32%) Telecoms
14 68 (1.21%) Manufacturing
15 55 (0.98%) Law
16 48 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
17 46 (0.82%) Financial Institution
17 46 (0.82%) Front Office
18 42 (0.75%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 905 (16.10%) Architect
2 893 (15.89%) Developer
3 573 (10.20%) Senior
4 420 (7.47%) Azure Engineer
5 411 (7.31%) Analyst
6 391 (6.96%) Lead
7 372 (6.62%) Data Engineer
8 316 (5.62%) Solutions Architect
9 279 (4.96%) DevOps Engineer
10 227 (4.04%) Consultant
11 174 (3.10%) Security Engineer
12 163 (2.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 163 (2.90%) Senior Developer
13 153 (2.72%) Azure Architect
14 137 (2.44%) Cloud Engineer
15 133 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
16 117 (2.08%) Software Engineer
17 116 (2.06%) Data Architect
18 112 (1.99%) Java Developer
19 111 (1.98%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 466 (8.29%) .NET
2 353 (6.28%) REST
3 256 (4.56%) RESTful
4 245 (4.36%) React
5 216 (3.84%) Kafka
6 197 (3.51%) Node.js
6 197 (3.51%) Spring
7 177 (3.15%) OAuth
8 170 (3.02%) HTML
9 167 (2.97%) PySpark
9 167 (2.97%) Spring Boot
10 165 (2.94%) AngularJS
11 157 (2.79%) JSON
12 137 (2.44%) CSS
13 135 (2.40%) SOAP
14 119 (2.12%) PyTorch
15 107 (1.90%) TensorFlow
16 104 (1.85%) SAML
17 101 (1.80%) Middleware
18 98 (1.74%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 453 (8.06%) Cloud Native
2 197 (3.51%) Product Ownership
3 192 (3.42%) Onboarding
4 159 (2.83%) Hybrid Cloud
5 145 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
6 131 (2.33%) Data Centre
7 121 (2.15%) Security Posture
8 119 (2.12%) Distributed Systems
9 108 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
10 96 (1.71%) Public Cloud
11 78 (1.39%) Algorithms
12 77 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
13 75 (1.33%) Management Information System
14 70 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
15 60 (1.07%) AI Agents
16 59 (1.05%) Replication
17 57 (1.01%) Low-Code
18 53 (0.94%) NHS
18 53 (0.94%) PKI
19 52 (0.93%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 634 (11.28%) Windows
2 379 (6.74%) Linux
3 192 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 109 (1.94%) Unix
5 93 (1.65%) Windows 10
6 52 (0.93%) Android
7 47 (0.84%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.80%) VMS
9 38 (0.68%) Mac OS
10 27 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.20%) Solaris
14 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
14 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
15 9 (0.16%) CentOS
16 6 (0.11%) AIX
16 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.071%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,040 (36.30%) DevOps
2 1,649 (29.34%) CI/CD
3 1,506 (26.80%) Agile
4 1,024 (18.22%) Problem-Solving
5 754 (13.42%) Analytics
6 746 (13.27%) Infrastructure as Code
7 663 (11.80%) Migration
8 656 (11.67%) AI
9 569 (10.12%) Business Intelligence
10 567 (10.09%) Stakeholder Management
11 565 (10.05%) Containerisation
12 497 (8.84%) Microservices
13 484 (8.61%) Data Modelling
14 483 (8.59%) Machine Learning
15 475 (8.45%) Test Automation
16 458 (8.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 449 (7.99%) Continuous Improvement
18 413 (7.35%) Scrum
19 408 (7.26%) Cybersecurity
20 399 (7.10%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 1,435 (25.53%) Python
2 1,201 (21.37%) SQL
3 591 (10.52%) PowerShell
4 559 (9.95%) Java
5 501 (8.91%) C#
6 430 (7.65%) JavaScript
7 276 (4.91%) Bash
8 234 (4.16%) TypeScript
9 155 (2.76%) Bicep
10 90 (1.60%) Go
11 72 (1.28%) Kusto Query Language
12 70 (1.25%) Scala
13 67 (1.19%) PL/SQL
14 58 (1.03%) R
15 50 (0.89%) T-SQL
16 44 (0.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 40 (0.71%) C++
18 37 (0.66%) Shell Script
19 32 (0.57%) PHP
20 31 (0.55%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,178 (20.96%) Security Cleared
2 961 (17.10%) SC Cleared
3 487 (8.67%) Degree
4 329 (5.85%) Azure Certification
5 178 (3.17%) Microsoft Certification
6 174 (3.10%) CISSP
7 171 (3.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 140 (2.49%) AWS Certification
9 129 (2.30%) DV Cleared
10 101 (1.80%) CISM
11 91 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
12 86 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
13 85 (1.51%) Master's Degree
14 46 (0.82%) ISTQB
15 43 (0.77%) CCNP
16 37 (0.66%) PMI Certification
17 36 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
18 34 (0.60%) MCP
19 32 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
20 31 (0.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 355 (6.32%) GDPR
2 326 (5.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 319 (5.68%) QA
4 259 (4.61%) Data Quality
4 259 (4.61%) NIST
5 126 (2.24%) Accessibility
6 80 (1.42%) PCI DSS
7 75 (1.33%) NCSC
8 52 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
9 51 (0.91%) HIPAA
10 37 (0.66%) SOC 2
11 35 (0.62%) SLA
12 33 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 32 (0.57%) WCAG
14 28 (0.50%) EU AI Act
15 27 (0.48%) GRC
16 26 (0.46%) PMO
17 25 (0.44%) PSD2
18 22 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 21 (0.37%) COBIT
System Software
1 717 (12.76%) Docker
2 686 (12.21%) Active Directory
3 168 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 75 (1.33%) Hyper-V
5 73 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
6 62 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
7 45 (0.80%) vSphere
8 23 (0.41%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.28%) Squid
10 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
10 13 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 11 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
12 10 (0.18%) Postfix
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
14 8 (0.14%) Firmware
14 8 (0.14%) KVM
14 8 (0.14%) NFS
14 8 (0.14%) Snort
14 8 (0.14%) zsh
Systems Management
1 838 (14.91%) Terraform
2 794 (14.13%) Kubernetes
3 300 (5.34%) Ansible
4 298 (5.30%) Microsoft Intune
5 135 (2.40%) Single Sign-On
6 131 (2.33%) SCCM
7 128 (2.28%) Grafana
8 123 (2.19%) Prometheus
9 38 (0.68%) Argo
10 34 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 34 (0.60%) Puppet
11 26 (0.46%) Nessus
12 24 (0.43%) Kibana
13 21 (0.37%) NetBackup
14 20 (0.36%) Progress Chef
15 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
16 18 (0.32%) vRealize
17 16 (0.28%) Nmap
17 16 (0.28%) QRadar
17 16 (0.28%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,808 (32.17%) Microsoft
2 523 (9.31%) Databricks
3 330 (5.87%) Oracle
4 281 (5.00%) Google
5 223 (3.97%) VMware
6 222 (3.95%) ServiceNow
7 162 (2.88%) Cisco
8 157 (2.79%) SAP
9 144 (2.56%) Splunk
10 124 (2.21%) Salesforce
11 116 (2.06%) OpenAI
12 87 (1.55%) CyberArk
12 87 (1.55%) Palo Alto
13 79 (1.41%) Citrix
14 62 (1.10%) Foundry
15 60 (1.07%) Red Hat
16 55 (0.98%) F5
17 54 (0.96%) Okta
18 53 (0.94%) Dynatrace
18 53 (0.94%) Zscaler