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

6 months to
2 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,602 4,834 6,113
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.95% 16.02% 13.70%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.38% 42.37% 41.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,681 3,332 4,428
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £421 £425 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -1.87% -4.46%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £644
90th Percentile £715 £735 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 40 74
10th Percentile £22.59 £22.38 £17.76
25th Percentile £50.63 £23.80 £22.53
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -17.90%
75th Percentile £64.00 £61.81 £61.20
90th Percentile £80.00 £77.75 £74.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +109.09% -42.82% -26.02%

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 15,579 11,410 14,683
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.64% 37.80% 32.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,687 7,755 10,431
10th Percentile £313 £313 £281
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 £631 £634
90th Percentile £700 £734 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £495
% change year-on-year -4.04% - -2.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 181 346
10th Percentile £15.30 £16.00 £14.06
25th Percentile £20.46 £21.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £27.13 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +45.62% +26.93% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.75 £46.18
90th Percentile £80.14 £75.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.18 £18.00
% change year-on-year +86.10% +34.33% -14.29%

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 March 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 2 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 March 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 5,573 £525 -2.33% 2,989
London +1 3,017 £545 -0.91% 1,017
UK excluding London 0 2,703 £500 - 2,463
Work from Home -2 2,032 £525 +0.48% 1,419
North of England 0 730 £500 +5.26% 615
South East -1 695 £500 -7.83% 791
Midlands -2 461 £500 -4.08% 352
North West 0 370 £492 -1.60% 319
West Midlands -2 347 £525 -1.87% 206
South West +4 339 £510 -2.95% 286
Yorkshire -3 313 £500 +11.11% 210
Scotland +7 296 £550 +15.79% 136
East of England -2 157 £550 +2.33% 229
East Midlands -3 112 £436 -7.23% 139
Wales -3 82 £400 -11.85% 76
North East -3 51 £515 +7.01% 97
Northern Ireland +4 12 £475 -7.32% 15

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
1 291 (4.41%) SharePoint
2 213 (3.23%) Microsoft Exchange
3 178 (2.70%) Confluence
4 176 (2.67%) Apache Spark
5 91 (1.38%) Apache
6 87 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 19 (0.29%) SAS
9 16 (0.24%) CMS
10 15 (0.23%) Appian
10 15 (0.23%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.20%) Camunda
11 13 (0.20%) IIS
12 12 (0.18%) Mendix
13 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
13 10 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 8 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
14 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
14 8 (0.12%) SugarCRM
15 7 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 122 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 96 (1.45%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.71%) MS Visio
4 46 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 13 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.12%) Trello
8 5 (0.076%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.076%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.076%) Weka
9 4 (0.061%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.015%) InDesign
11 1 (0.015%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 103 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.17%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.11%) Endur
6 7 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.091%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.091%) Dynamics NAV
7 6 (0.091%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.091%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.091%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.091%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.076%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.076%) SAP BPC
8 5 (0.076%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.076%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 4 (0.061%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 2,328 (35.26%) AWS
2 1,327 (20.10%) GCP
3 1,316 (19.93%) Azure DevOps
4 888 (13.45%) Power Platform
5 777 (11.77%) Entra ID
6 749 (11.35%) Microsoft 365
7 677 (10.25%) GitHub
8 477 (7.23%) Azure Data Factory
9 397 (6.01%) GitHub Actions
10 392 (5.94%) Serverless
11 313 (4.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 283 (4.29%) Dynamics 365
13 267 (4.04%) SaaS
14 256 (3.88%) Power Automate
15 250 (3.79%) Azure AKS
16 237 (3.59%) Azure Functions
17 231 (3.50%) Snowflake
18 211 (3.20%) Azure Monitor
19 210 (3.18%) PaaS
20 204 (3.09%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 442 (6.69%) Firewall
2 278 (4.21%) DNS
3 221 (3.35%) VPN
4 195 (2.95%) Network Security
5 163 (2.47%) DHCP
6 158 (2.39%) WAN
7 107 (1.62%) LAN
8 97 (1.47%) TCP/IP
9 89 (1.35%) Wi-Fi
10 80 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 70 (1.06%) Kerberos
12 69 (1.05%) VLAN
13 57 (0.86%) HTTP
14 40 (0.61%) BGP
15 38 (0.58%) Wireless
16 37 (0.56%) SSL
17 34 (0.51%) OSPF
18 33 (0.50%) Internet
18 33 (0.50%) MPLS
19 30 (0.45%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 601 (9.10%) Power BI
2 385 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 358 (5.42%) Data Warehouse
4 335 (5.07%) Data Lake
5 260 (3.94%) PostgreSQL
6 236 (3.57%) Azure SQL Database
7 193 (2.92%) NoSQL
8 164 (2.48%) Metadata
9 123 (1.86%) Relational Database
10 121 (1.83%) Delta Lake
11 97 (1.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 95 (1.44%) Big Data
13 89 (1.35%) MongoDB
14 81 (1.23%) MySQL
15 71 (1.08%) Tableau
16 69 (1.05%) BigQuery
17 66 (1.00%) Oracle Database
18 56 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
19 48 (0.73%) Redis
20 47 (0.71%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 524 (7.94%) Git
2 478 (7.24%) JIRA
3 359 (5.44%) Jenkins
4 273 (4.14%) GitLab
5 121 (1.83%) Selenium
6 91 (1.38%) Postman
7 76 (1.15%) Cucumber
8 74 (1.12%) JMeter
9 68 (1.03%) JUnit
10 50 (0.76%) SonarQube
11 49 (0.74%) MLflow
12 48 (0.73%) REST Assured
13 46 (0.70%) Cypress.io
14 41 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 35 (0.53%) Oracle APEX
16 32 (0.48%) TestRail
17 30 (0.45%) Artifactory
17 30 (0.45%) SpecFlow
18 29 (0.44%) WebDriver
19 28 (0.42%) ERwin
General
1 2,000 (30.29%) Social Skills
2 1,182 (17.90%) Finance
3 766 (11.60%) Public Sector
4 661 (10.01%) Analytical Skills
5 366 (5.54%) Banking
6 211 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
7 139 (2.11%) Legal
8 110 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 103 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
10 89 (1.35%) Retail
11 88 (1.33%) Marketing
12 87 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
13 83 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
14 63 (0.95%) Telecoms
15 60 (0.91%) Financial Institution
15 60 (0.91%) Investment Banking
16 56 (0.85%) Law
17 49 (0.74%) Manufacturing
18 47 (0.71%) Front Office
19 38 (0.58%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,089 (16.50%) Architect
2 938 (14.21%) Developer
3 730 (11.06%) Senior
4 550 (8.33%) Azure Engineer
5 544 (8.24%) Data Engineer
6 483 (7.32%) Lead
7 434 (6.57%) Analyst
8 325 (4.92%) Solutions Architect
9 322 (4.88%) DevOps Engineer
10 302 (4.57%) Consultant
11 186 (2.82%) Security Engineer
12 177 (2.68%) Cloud Engineer
13 171 (2.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 164 (2.48%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 163 (2.47%) Azure Architect
16 155 (2.35%) Senior Developer
17 142 (2.15%) Data Architect
18 140 (2.12%) Platform Engineer
19 134 (2.03%) Tester
20 133 (2.01%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 535 (8.10%) .NET
2 460 (6.97%) REST
3 325 (4.92%) React
4 258 (3.91%) RESTful
5 256 (3.88%) PySpark
6 242 (3.67%) Kafka
7 238 (3.60%) Node.js
8 205 (3.11%) Spring
9 199 (3.01%) OAuth
10 186 (2.82%) AngularJS
11 185 (2.80%) HTML
12 177 (2.68%) Spring Boot
13 153 (2.32%) CSS
14 152 (2.30%) LDAP
15 146 (2.21%) PyTorch
16 139 (2.11%) SOAP
17 138 (2.09%) JSON
18 131 (1.98%) TensorFlow
19 127 (1.92%) Middleware
20 126 (1.91%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 592 (8.97%) Cloud Native
2 253 (3.83%) Onboarding
3 239 (3.62%) Product Ownership
4 174 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
5 172 (2.61%) Security Posture
6 167 (2.53%) Data Centre
7 156 (2.36%) Enterprise Software
8 150 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
9 124 (1.88%) Public Cloud
10 116 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
11 100 (1.51%) AI Agents
12 84 (1.27%) Data Structures
13 82 (1.24%) Replication
14 81 (1.23%) Algorithms
15 73 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
16 72 (1.09%) Management Information System
17 68 (1.03%) Low-Code
18 66 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
19 64 (0.97%) NHS
20 53 (0.80%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 725 (10.98%) Windows
2 361 (5.47%) Linux
3 196 (2.97%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.82%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.21%) Unix
6 58 (0.88%) VMS
7 49 (0.74%) Mac OS
8 47 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.59%) Apple iOS
10 30 (0.45%) Android
11 23 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
13 17 (0.26%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.17%) CentOS
16 8 (0.12%) Solaris
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.091%) Data ONTAP
19 5 (0.076%) AIX
19 5 (0.076%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,422 (36.69%) DevOps
2 2,041 (30.91%) CI/CD
3 1,619 (24.52%) Agile
4 1,193 (18.07%) Problem-Solving
5 991 (15.01%) Analytics
6 911 (13.80%) AI
7 884 (13.39%) Infrastructure as Code
8 824 (12.48%) Migration
9 693 (10.50%) Data Modelling
10 691 (10.47%) Stakeholder Management
11 678 (10.27%) Business Intelligence
12 662 (10.03%) Containerisation
13 620 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
14 596 (9.03%) Machine Learning
15 592 (8.97%) Data Pipeline
15 592 (8.97%) ETL
16 588 (8.91%) Microservices
17 560 (8.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 547 (8.29%) Test Automation
19 535 (8.10%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,741 (26.37%) Python
2 1,467 (22.22%) SQL
3 713 (10.80%) PowerShell
4 574 (8.69%) C#
5 558 (8.45%) Java
6 518 (7.85%) JavaScript
7 303 (4.59%) TypeScript
8 262 (3.97%) Bash
9 194 (2.94%) Bicep
10 95 (1.44%) Scala
11 83 (1.26%) PL/SQL
12 81 (1.23%) Go
13 73 (1.11%) T-SQL
14 71 (1.08%) Kusto Query Language
15 70 (1.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 45 (0.68%) R
16 45 (0.68%) Shell Script
17 38 (0.58%) C++
18 36 (0.55%) PHP
19 23 (0.35%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,553 (23.52%) Security Cleared
2 1,279 (19.37%) SC Cleared
3 537 (8.13%) Degree
4 358 (5.42%) Azure Certification
5 209 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 187 (2.83%) CISSP
7 167 (2.53%) Microsoft Certification
8 139 (2.11%) AWS Certification
9 128 (1.94%) DV Cleared
10 124 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
11 118 (1.79%) CISM
12 113 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
13 90 (1.36%) Master's Degree
14 67 (1.01%) TOGAF Certification
15 59 (0.89%) CCNP
16 55 (0.83%) PMI Certification
17 54 (0.82%) PMP
18 52 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 40 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.51%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 447 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 387 (5.86%) GDPR
3 353 (5.35%) QA
4 295 (4.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 231 (3.50%) NIST
6 130 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.45%) NCSC
8 81 (1.23%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 59 (0.89%) SLA
11 57 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
12 47 (0.71%) PMO
13 41 (0.62%) HIPAA
14 35 (0.53%) GRC
15 34 (0.51%) SOC 2
15 34 (0.51%) WCAG
16 25 (0.38%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.36%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.35%) PSD2
19 22 (0.33%) NIST 800
System Software
1 851 (12.89%) Active Directory
2 797 (12.07%) Docker
3 190 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (1.38%) Hyper-V
5 86 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
6 75 (1.14%) vSphere
7 74 (1.12%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
9 18 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (0.21%) Firmware
11 12 (0.18%) NFS
12 9 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.12%) Postfix
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) KVM
14 7 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.11%) Snort
15 6 (0.091%) GPFS
15 6 (0.091%) Lustre
16 5 (0.076%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 1,009 (15.28%) Terraform
2 966 (14.63%) Kubernetes
3 355 (5.38%) Microsoft Intune
4 307 (4.65%) Ansible
5 162 (2.45%) Grafana
5 162 (2.45%) Single Sign-On
6 144 (2.18%) Prometheus
7 138 (2.09%) SCCM
8 73 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 49 (0.74%) Argo
10 28 (0.42%) FortiGate
11 26 (0.39%) Istio
11 26 (0.39%) Puppet
12 25 (0.38%) vRealize
13 22 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
13 22 (0.33%) Progress Chef
14 19 (0.29%) HP ALM
14 19 (0.29%) Nmap
14 19 (0.29%) vCenter Server
15 18 (0.27%) Kibana
Vendors
1 2,107 (31.91%) Microsoft
2 672 (10.18%) Databricks
3 343 (5.20%) Oracle
4 333 (5.04%) Google
5 286 (4.33%) ServiceNow
6 260 (3.94%) VMware
7 195 (2.95%) SAP
8 162 (2.45%) Cisco
9 160 (2.42%) OpenAI
10 155 (2.35%) Splunk
11 119 (1.80%) CyberArk
12 105 (1.59%) Palo Alto
13 104 (1.58%) Salesforce
14 101 (1.53%) Foundry
15 85 (1.29%) Okta
16 73 (1.11%) Citrix
16 73 (1.11%) Red Hat
17 68 (1.03%) IBM
18 65 (0.98%) BeyondTrust
19 63 (0.95%) Informatica