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 14 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,538 5,409 7,010
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.58% 14.74% 15.08%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.49% 41.78% 42.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,854 3,626 5,139
10th Percentile £350 £338 £356
25th Percentile £420 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £548
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.11% -2.88%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £519
% change year-on-year - -3.61% -1.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 42 89
10th Percentile £15.67 £19.98 £17.74
25th Percentile £25.47 £23.80 £25.75
Median hourly rate £34.48 £31.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +8.60% -31.25% +10.61%
75th Percentile £72.50 £60.56 £70.00
90th Percentile £93.75 £77.25 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £32.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +39.88% -29.62% -2.78%

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 13,679 12,946 16,459
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.49% 35.28% 35.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,258 8,540 11,784
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £420 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £644
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 172 314
10th Percentile £15.23 £18.58 £14.53
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.59 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.74 £32.15
Median % change year-on-year -25.45% +4.93% +46.14%
75th Percentile £47.03 £60.15 £61.41
90th Percentile £72.35 £70.00 £78.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £31.75 £22.50
% change year-on-year -33.86% +41.11% +18.42%

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 14 November 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 14 November 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 14 November 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 4,713 £525 -2.33% 5,398
London +1 2,555 £545 -0.91% 2,377
UK excluding London 0 2,277 £500 - 3,607
Work from Home 0 1,821 £511 -2.62% 2,869
North of England -2 591 £475 -5.00% 843
South East -4 521 £500 -4.76% 1,132
Midlands -2 424 £519 +0.58% 585
South West +6 310 £500 - 391
West Midlands +2 305 £550 +4.76% 386
North West +1 285 £465 -7.00% 488
Yorkshire -3 275 £492 -1.70% 252
Scotland +4 254 £500 +11.11% 214
East of England +4 159 £500 +33.33% 317
East Midlands -3 114 £450 -5.26% 195
Wales +2 67 £450 -14.29% 112
North East -5 35 £508 +15.34% 107
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -13 6 - - 55

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
1 251 (4.53%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 141 (2.55%) Confluence
4 130 (2.35%) Apache Spark
5 87 (1.57%) Apache
6 84 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.54%) CMS
8 27 (0.49%) SAS
9 21 (0.38%) OpenStack
10 19 (0.34%) nginx
11 17 (0.31%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.22%) Anypoint
13 10 (0.18%) IIS
13 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.18%) Mule
13 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.16%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
16 7 (0.13%) Camunda
Applications
1 119 (2.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 85 (1.53%) Microsoft Office
3 36 (0.65%) MS Visio
4 35 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
5 30 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.33%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 9 (0.16%) Trello
9 5 (0.090%) Weka
10 3 (0.054%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.036%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.036%) Windchill
12 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
12 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.018%) Revit
12 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 101 (1.82%) Dynamics CRM
2 52 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 18 (0.33%) Aladdin
4 15 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
5 14 (0.25%) Endur
6 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
7 10 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
8 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 8 (0.14%) Workday HCM
9 7 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
9 7 (0.13%) SAP ERP
10 6 (0.11%) Maximo
10 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
11 5 (0.090%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.090%) Remedy ITSM
12 4 (0.072%) Cloudability
12 4 (0.072%) Primavera
12 4 (0.072%) SAP MDG
12 4 (0.072%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,018 (36.44%) AWS
2 1,116 (20.15%) Azure DevOps
3 1,063 (19.19%) GCP
4 696 (12.57%) Power Platform
5 630 (11.38%) Microsoft 365
6 620 (11.20%) Entra ID
7 517 (9.34%) GitHub
8 343 (6.19%) Azure Data Factory
9 296 (5.34%) GitHub Actions
10 284 (5.13%) Serverless
11 251 (4.53%) SaaS
12 240 (4.33%) Dynamics 365
13 239 (4.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 212 (3.83%) Azure AKS
15 204 (3.68%) Power Automate
16 200 (3.61%) PaaS
17 196 (3.54%) Snowflake
18 193 (3.49%) Azure Sentinel
19 190 (3.43%) Azure Monitor
20 186 (3.36%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 402 (7.26%) Firewall
2 199 (3.59%) DNS
3 174 (3.14%) VPN
4 152 (2.74%) Network Security
5 117 (2.11%) WAN
6 98 (1.77%) DHCP
7 87 (1.57%) TCP/IP
8 76 (1.37%) LAN
9 69 (1.25%) HTTP
10 66 (1.19%) VLAN
11 58 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
12 56 (1.01%) SD-WAN
13 46 (0.83%) BGP
14 40 (0.72%) SAN
15 34 (0.61%) Internet
15 34 (0.61%) OSPF
16 33 (0.60%) MPLS
16 33 (0.60%) SSL
17 28 (0.51%) Wireless
18 20 (0.36%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 474 (8.56%) Power BI
2 313 (5.65%) SQL Server
3 253 (4.57%) Data Warehouse
3 253 (4.57%) PostgreSQL
4 243 (4.39%) Data Lake
5 183 (3.30%) NoSQL
6 175 (3.16%) Azure SQL Database
7 131 (2.37%) Relational Database
8 109 (1.97%) MongoDB
9 106 (1.91%) Metadata
10 90 (1.63%) MySQL
11 83 (1.50%) Big Data
12 68 (1.23%) Delta Lake
13 65 (1.17%) Tableau
14 62 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 61 (1.10%) Redis
16 60 (1.08%) BigQuery
17 47 (0.85%) Oracle Database
18 42 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
19 38 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 483 (8.72%) Git
2 421 (7.60%) JIRA
3 327 (5.90%) Jenkins
4 219 (3.95%) GitLab
5 101 (1.82%) Selenium
6 87 (1.57%) Postman
7 84 (1.52%) SonarQube
8 67 (1.21%) JUnit
9 50 (0.90%) Cypress.io
10 48 (0.87%) JMeter
11 47 (0.85%) Maven
12 44 (0.79%) Bitbucket
12 44 (0.79%) Cucumber
13 39 (0.70%) Visual Studio
14 37 (0.67%) Oracle APEX
15 34 (0.61%) Gradle
16 32 (0.58%) CircleCI
17 31 (0.56%) ERwin
18 29 (0.52%) SpecFlow
19 28 (0.51%) Mockito
General
1 1,770 (31.96%) Social Skills
2 1,059 (19.12%) Finance
3 637 (11.50%) Public Sector
4 528 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
5 367 (6.63%) Banking
6 188 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
7 124 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 99 (1.79%) Retail
9 98 (1.77%) Investment Banking
10 97 (1.75%) Marketing
11 88 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
12 87 (1.57%) Legal
13 72 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
14 70 (1.26%) Manufacturing
14 70 (1.26%) Telecoms
15 58 (1.05%) Law
16 49 (0.88%) Local Government
17 47 (0.85%) Front Office
18 46 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
19 43 (0.78%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 916 (16.54%) Developer
2 899 (16.23%) Architect
3 545 (9.84%) Senior
4 418 (7.55%) Analyst
5 408 (7.37%) Azure Engineer
6 384 (6.93%) Lead
7 346 (6.25%) Data Engineer
8 311 (5.62%) Solutions Architect
9 272 (4.91%) DevOps Engineer
10 219 (3.95%) Consultant
11 182 (3.29%) Security Engineer
12 175 (3.16%) Senior Developer
13 160 (2.89%) Azure Architect
13 160 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 135 (2.44%) Cloud Engineer
15 129 (2.33%) Platform Engineer
16 119 (2.15%) Data Architect
17 114 (2.06%) Business Analyst
17 114 (2.06%) Software Engineer
18 112 (2.02%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 476 (8.60%) .NET
2 346 (6.25%) REST
3 266 (4.80%) RESTful
4 257 (4.64%) React
5 202 (3.65%) Node.js
6 201 (3.63%) Kafka
7 189 (3.41%) HTML
8 179 (3.23%) Spring
9 176 (3.18%) OAuth
10 163 (2.94%) AngularJS
11 155 (2.80%) JSON
12 153 (2.76%) Spring Boot
13 151 (2.73%) CSS
14 146 (2.64%) PySpark
15 135 (2.44%) SOAP
16 107 (1.93%) PyTorch
17 105 (1.90%) ARM Templates
18 104 (1.88%) XML
19 103 (1.86%) Web Services
20 102 (1.84%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 407 (7.35%) Cloud Native
2 194 (3.50%) Product Ownership
3 183 (3.30%) Onboarding
4 156 (2.82%) Hybrid Cloud
5 142 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
6 131 (2.37%) Data Centre
7 116 (2.09%) Security Posture
8 109 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
9 107 (1.93%) Distributed Systems
10 98 (1.77%) Public Cloud
11 83 (1.50%) Algorithms
12 76 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
13 75 (1.35%) Management Information System
14 68 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
15 54 (0.98%) Data Structures
15 54 (0.98%) Low-Code
15 54 (0.98%) Replication
16 53 (0.96%) AI Agents
17 51 (0.92%) PKI
18 50 (0.90%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 642 (11.59%) Windows
2 378 (6.83%) Linux
3 181 (3.27%) Windows Server
4 112 (2.02%) Unix
5 96 (1.73%) Windows 10
6 64 (1.16%) Android
7 55 (0.99%) Apple iOS
8 47 (0.85%) VMS
9 38 (0.69%) Mac OS
10 25 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) Solaris
13 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) CentOS
15 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
16 5 (0.090%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,021 (36.49%) DevOps
2 1,610 (29.07%) CI/CD
3 1,491 (26.92%) Agile
4 1,007 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
5 737 (13.31%) Infrastructure as Code
6 719 (12.98%) Analytics
7 656 (11.85%) Migration
8 621 (11.21%) AI
9 543 (9.80%) Business Intelligence
10 530 (9.57%) Stakeholder Management
11 522 (9.43%) Containerisation
12 479 (8.65%) Test Automation
13 476 (8.60%) Microservices
14 469 (8.47%) Data Modelling
15 463 (8.36%) Machine Learning
16 432 (7.80%) Scrum
17 429 (7.75%) Continuous Improvement
18 424 (7.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 417 (7.53%) Cybersecurity
20 393 (7.10%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,406 (25.39%) Python
2 1,202 (21.70%) SQL
3 574 (10.36%) PowerShell
4 556 (10.04%) Java
5 509 (9.19%) C#
6 453 (8.18%) JavaScript
7 279 (5.04%) Bash
8 241 (4.35%) TypeScript
9 154 (2.78%) Bicep
10 91 (1.64%) Go
11 71 (1.28%) Kusto Query Language
12 68 (1.23%) Scala
13 60 (1.08%) R
14 59 (1.07%) PL/SQL
15 51 (0.92%) T-SQL
16 47 (0.85%) C++
17 40 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 37 (0.67%) Shell Script
19 34 (0.61%) Groovy
20 32 (0.58%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,111 (20.06%) Security Cleared
2 901 (16.27%) SC Cleared
3 479 (8.65%) Degree
4 329 (5.94%) Azure Certification
5 181 (3.27%) Microsoft Certification
6 179 (3.23%) CISSP
7 170 (3.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 131 (2.37%) AWS Certification
8 131 (2.37%) DV Cleared
9 100 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
10 98 (1.77%) CISM
11 85 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
12 84 (1.52%) Master's Degree
13 48 (0.87%) CCNP
13 48 (0.87%) ISTQB
14 39 (0.70%) OSCP
15 35 (0.63%) PMI Certification
16 34 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 31 (0.56%) MCP
18 27 (0.49%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 337 (6.09%) GDPR
2 317 (5.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 300 (5.42%) QA
4 260 (4.69%) NIST
5 242 (4.37%) Data Quality
6 142 (2.56%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.50%) NCSC
8 72 (1.30%) PCI DSS
9 58 (1.05%) HIPAA
10 52 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
11 41 (0.74%) SOC 2
12 39 (0.70%) SLA
13 32 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 31 (0.56%) WCAG
15 28 (0.51%) EU AI Act
16 26 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.42%) GRC
18 22 (0.40%) PSD2
19 20 (0.36%) COBIT
19 20 (0.36%) NIST 800
System Software
1 680 (12.28%) Docker
2 679 (12.26%) Active Directory
3 163 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.28%) Hyper-V
5 70 (1.26%) Virtual Machines
6 62 (1.12%) Virtual Desktop
7 51 (0.92%) vSphere
8 26 (0.47%) VMware NSX
9 18 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.27%) Squid
11 14 (0.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
13 11 (0.20%) Firmware
14 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
14 10 (0.18%) Postfix
14 10 (0.18%) zsh
15 8 (0.14%) KVM
15 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
16 7 (0.13%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.13%) NFS
Systems Management
1 809 (14.61%) Terraform
2 765 (13.81%) Kubernetes
3 299 (5.40%) Microsoft Intune
4 292 (5.27%) Ansible
5 148 (2.67%) Single Sign-On
6 126 (2.28%) SCCM
7 125 (2.26%) Grafana
8 121 (2.18%) Prometheus
9 39 (0.70%) Argo
10 33 (0.60%) Puppet
11 31 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 27 (0.49%) Nessus
13 22 (0.40%) Kibana
14 21 (0.38%) Nmap
15 20 (0.36%) NetBackup
16 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
17 18 (0.33%) Progress Chef
18 17 (0.31%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.31%) vRealize
19 16 (0.29%) QRadar
Vendors
1 1,771 (31.98%) Microsoft
2 480 (8.67%) Databricks
3 320 (5.78%) Oracle
4 255 (4.60%) Google
5 218 (3.94%) VMware
6 208 (3.76%) ServiceNow
7 168 (3.03%) Cisco
8 151 (2.73%) SAP
9 140 (2.53%) Splunk
10 124 (2.24%) Salesforce
11 103 (1.86%) OpenAI
12 88 (1.59%) Palo Alto
13 85 (1.53%) Citrix
14 78 (1.41%) CyberArk
15 62 (1.12%) F5
16 61 (1.10%) Okta
17 59 (1.07%) IBM
18 58 (1.05%) Red Hat
19 55 (0.99%) Foundry
20 51 (0.92%) Dynatrace