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

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,246 4,885 5,810
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.54% 14.84% 14.38%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.95% 39.67% 42.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,758 3,374 4,184
10th Percentile £369 £350 £345
25th Percentile £437 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +0.10% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 39 41
10th Percentile £18.40 £18.65 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.57 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -40.32%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.10 £59.50
90th Percentile £95.63 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £53.23 £31.00
% change year-on-year +8.03% +71.69% -42.78%

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 18,762 12,315 13,548
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.35% 37.40% 33.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,385 8,247 9,481
10th Percentile £326 £313 £313
25th Percentile £418 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 619 316 300
10th Percentile £16.60 £15.12 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.63 £18.51 £16.29
Median hourly rate £35.91 £27.50 £22.33
Median % change year-on-year +30.58% +23.18% -36.21%
75th Percentile £70.00 £47.63 £50.00
90th Percentile £83.75 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.24 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +97.35% -10.14% -19.23%

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 26 July 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 26 July 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 26 July 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 0 7,050 £525 - 2,963
London +1 3,678 £550 - 1,305
UK excluding London +2 3,574 £501 +0.10% 2,139
Work from Home -1 2,563 £525 +5.00% 1,383
North of England +7 1,024 £500 +3.09% 581
South East +2 908 £525 +5.00% 661
Midlands +3 638 £493 -0.51% 289
North West +7 538 £500 +1.63% 312
West Midlands +3 480 £493 -6.19% 187
South West +7 442 £534 +6.75% 269
Yorkshire +3 407 £500 +5.26% 182
Scotland +10 309 £500 +1.94% 101
East of England +6 182 £550 - 171
East Midlands +9 147 £481 +4.05% 101
Wales -1 98 £425 -4.60% 75
North East +2 94 £520 +4.00% 98
Northern Ireland +12 17 £588 +23.68% 45
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 426 (5.17%) SharePoint
2 283 (3.43%) Confluence
3 204 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 183 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 131 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
6 119 (1.44%) Apache
7 42 (0.51%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 18 (0.22%) CMS
10 18 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.097%) Mendix
15 8 (0.097%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.097%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.073%) Camunda
16 6 (0.073%) Documentum
Applications
1 122 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.41%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.097%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.024%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 112 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
4 15 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.15%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.097%) Magento
7 8 (0.097%) Maximo
8 7 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.085%) Shopify
8 7 (0.085%) Teamcenter
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.049%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,931 (35.54%) AWS
2 1,703 (20.65%) Azure DevOps
3 1,412 (17.12%) GCP
4 1,037 (12.58%) Entra ID
5 1,035 (12.55%) Power Platform
6 814 (9.87%) Microsoft 365
7 785 (9.52%) GitHub
8 469 (5.69%) GitHub Actions
9 464 (5.63%) Azure Data Factory
10 354 (4.29%) Serverless
11 331 (4.01%) SaaS
12 316 (3.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 302 (3.66%) Azure AKS
14 292 (3.54%) Azure Monitor
15 274 (3.32%) Power Automate
16 267 (3.24%) PowerApps
17 261 (3.17%) PaaS
18 253 (3.07%) Dynamics 365
19 240 (2.91%) Azure AI
20 225 (2.73%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 516 (6.26%) Firewall
2 381 (4.62%) DNS
3 314 (3.81%) VPN
4 293 (3.55%) Network Security
5 203 (2.46%) WAN
6 189 (2.29%) DHCP
7 153 (1.86%) TCP/IP
8 130 (1.58%) LAN
9 116 (1.41%) BGP
10 104 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.13%) OSPF
12 90 (1.09%) VLAN
13 88 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.91%) SSL
15 58 (0.70%) IPsec
16 57 (0.69%) SAN
16 57 (0.69%) Wireless
17 48 (0.58%) VXLAN
18 46 (0.56%) HTTP
19 42 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 710 (8.61%) Power BI
2 469 (5.69%) SQL Server
3 403 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
4 366 (4.44%) Data Lake
5 308 (3.74%) PostgreSQL
6 224 (2.72%) NoSQL
7 217 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
8 215 (2.61%) Metadata
9 138 (1.67%) Relational Database
10 134 (1.63%) Delta Lake
11 113 (1.37%) Big Data
12 107 (1.30%) MongoDB
13 99 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 89 (1.08%) MySQL
15 71 (0.86%) Tableau
16 64 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
17 63 (0.76%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 58 (0.70%) Redis
20 55 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 650 (7.88%) JIRA
2 647 (7.85%) Git
3 431 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 315 (3.82%) GitLab
5 126 (1.53%) Selenium
6 72 (0.87%) Postman
7 71 (0.86%) JUnit
8 70 (0.85%) JMeter
9 58 (0.70%) Cucumber
10 53 (0.64%) Cypress.io
11 52 (0.63%) SonarQube
12 48 (0.58%) REST Assured
13 47 (0.57%) Maven
14 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
15 44 (0.53%) WebDriver
16 41 (0.50%) MLflow
17 36 (0.44%) Gradle
18 31 (0.38%) Gatling
19 30 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
20 29 (0.35%) Claude Code
General
1 2,094 (25.39%) Social Skills
2 1,547 (18.76%) Finance
3 972 (11.79%) Public Sector
4 779 (9.45%) Analytical Skills
5 434 (5.26%) Banking
6 242 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
7 194 (2.35%) Legal
8 185 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 179 (2.17%) Retail
10 101 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 97 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 89 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 79 (0.96%) Manufacturing
14 74 (0.90%) Law
15 72 (0.87%) Marketing
16 68 (0.82%) Financial Institution
17 66 (0.80%) Front Office
18 64 (0.78%) Investment Banking
19 57 (0.69%) Military
20 54 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,470 (17.83%) Architect
2 1,064 (12.90%) Developer
3 1,017 (12.33%) Senior
4 737 (8.94%) Azure Engineer
5 666 (8.08%) Lead
6 608 (7.37%) Data Engineer
7 505 (6.12%) Analyst
8 432 (5.24%) Solutions Architect
9 427 (5.18%) DevOps Engineer
10 333 (4.04%) Cloud Engineer
11 319 (3.87%) Consultant
12 296 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 248 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 221 (2.68%) Platform Engineer
15 218 (2.64%) Azure Architect
16 199 (2.41%) Technical Architect
17 189 (2.29%) Project Manager
18 187 (2.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 187 (2.27%) Security Engineer
19 184 (2.23%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 648 (7.86%) .NET
2 612 (7.42%) REST
3 341 (4.14%) React
4 319 (3.87%) Kafka
5 298 (3.61%) RESTful
6 253 (3.07%) PySpark
7 235 (2.85%) OAuth
8 226 (2.74%) Spring
9 212 (2.57%) Node.js
10 204 (2.47%) JSON
11 191 (2.32%) Spring Boot
12 180 (2.18%) AngularJS
13 161 (1.95%) HTML
14 147 (1.78%) OpenID
14 147 (1.78%) SAML
15 140 (1.70%) .NET Framework
16 134 (1.63%) OAuth2
17 132 (1.60%) Middleware
18 130 (1.58%) CSS
19 128 (1.55%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 873 (10.59%) Cloud Native
2 384 (4.66%) Onboarding
3 354 (4.29%) Product Ownership
4 268 (3.25%) Data Centre
4 268 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
5 245 (2.97%) Hybrid Cloud
6 235 (2.85%) AI Agents
7 231 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
8 202 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
9 166 (2.01%) Security Posture
10 144 (1.75%) Public Cloud
11 141 (1.71%) Data Structures
12 128 (1.55%) Management Information System
13 112 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
14 103 (1.25%) Enterprise Cloud
15 102 (1.24%) PKI
16 95 (1.15%) Replication
17 91 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 78 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
19 71 (0.86%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 939 (11.39%) Windows
2 459 (5.57%) Linux
3 307 (3.72%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.33%) Windows 10
5 80 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 79 (0.96%) Unix
7 77 (0.93%) Android
8 73 (0.89%) Mac OS
9 72 (0.87%) Apple iOS
10 59 (0.72%) VMS
11 44 (0.53%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.13%) CentOS
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 7 (0.085%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
19 5 (0.061%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,040 (36.87%) DevOps
2 2,573 (31.20%) CI/CD
3 2,090 (25.35%) Agile
4 1,276 (15.47%) AI
5 1,264 (15.33%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,204 (14.60%) Migration
7 1,143 (13.86%) Analytics
8 1,104 (13.39%) Stakeholder Management
9 1,078 (13.07%) Problem-Solving
10 930 (11.28%) Data Modelling
11 882 (10.70%) Continuous Improvement
12 776 (9.41%) Data Pipeline
13 772 (9.36%) Roadmaps
14 771 (9.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 768 (9.31%) Microservices
16 767 (9.30%) Containerisation
17 757 (9.18%) Business Intelligence
18 678 (8.22%) Test Automation
19 670 (8.13%) ETL
20 658 (7.98%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,902 (23.07%) Python
2 1,610 (19.52%) SQL
3 800 (9.70%) PowerShell
4 688 (8.34%) Java
5 627 (7.60%) C#
6 486 (5.89%) JavaScript
7 348 (4.22%) Bash
8 314 (3.81%) Bicep
9 312 (3.78%) TypeScript
10 96 (1.16%) T-SQL
11 95 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 72 (0.87%) Go
13 60 (0.73%) Scala
14 55 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 51 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.51%) R
17 41 (0.50%) Kotlin
18 39 (0.47%) PL/SQL
19 28 (0.34%) Groovy
20 25 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,064 (25.03%) Security Cleared
2 1,688 (20.47%) SC Cleared
3 578 (7.01%) Degree
4 439 (5.32%) Azure Certification
5 259 (3.14%) DV Cleared
6 248 (3.01%) CISSP
7 242 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
8 211 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
9 208 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
10 196 (2.38%) AWS Certification
11 188 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
12 123 (1.49%) CISM
13 103 (1.25%) CCNP
14 83 (1.01%) PMI Certification
14 83 (1.01%) PMP
15 80 (0.97%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 65 (0.79%) ISTQB
16 65 (0.79%) Master's Degree
17 54 (0.65%) CCSP
18 51 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 576 (6.99%) Data Quality
2 425 (5.15%) QA
3 336 (4.07%) GDPR
4 284 (3.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 280 (3.40%) NIST
6 200 (2.43%) Accessibility
7 117 (1.42%) NCSC
8 101 (1.22%) SLA
9 75 (0.91%) GRC
10 74 (0.90%) WCAG
11 73 (0.89%) PCI DSS
12 72 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
13 55 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 53 (0.64%) PMO
15 32 (0.39%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 22 (0.27%) NIST 800
19 21 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
20 19 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 973 (11.80%) Active Directory
2 884 (10.72%) Docker
3 221 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.66%) Virtual Machines
6 116 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.84%) vSphere
8 52 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
9 38 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.35%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.085%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.085%) Ceph
15 7 (0.085%) Varnish
16 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.073%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,336 (16.20%) Terraform
2 1,221 (14.81%) Kubernetes
3 430 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
4 407 (4.94%) Ansible
5 248 (3.01%) Grafana
6 211 (2.56%) Prometheus
7 156 (1.89%) Single Sign-On
8 111 (1.35%) SCCM
9 57 (0.69%) Argo
10 53 (0.64%) Progress Chef
11 47 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
12 46 (0.56%) Puppet
13 42 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 34 (0.41%) FortiGate
15 30 (0.36%) Istio
16 20 (0.24%) HP ALM
16 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 19 (0.23%) Packer
18 16 (0.19%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,662 (32.28%) Microsoft
2 760 (9.22%) Databricks
3 398 (4.83%) ServiceNow
4 340 (4.12%) Google
5 322 (3.90%) VMware
6 319 (3.87%) Oracle
7 232 (2.81%) Cisco
8 231 (2.80%) SAP
9 213 (2.58%) OpenAI
10 184 (2.23%) Splunk
11 151 (1.83%) Salesforce
12 148 (1.79%) Palo Alto
13 143 (1.73%) Foundry
14 140 (1.70%) CyberArk
15 104 (1.26%) Dynatrace
16 101 (1.22%) Zscaler
17 92 (1.12%) Okta
18 89 (1.08%) Informatica
19 77 (0.93%) Citrix
20 75 (0.91%) Fortinet