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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,314 4,931 5,552
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.15% 14.94% 14.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.68% 39.49% 42.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,801 3,368 3,798
10th Percentile £363 £350 £345
25th Percentile £447 £415 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £516 £533
Median % change year-on-year +1.74% -3.19% -3.09%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 44 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £23.00 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £45.20 £34.24 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +32.01% -6.83% -26.50%
75th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.38 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.35 £32.77 £42.34
% change year-on-year +29.23% -22.60% -8.32%

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 19,034 12,488 13,134
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.69% 37.84% 34.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,629 8,337 8,771
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.42%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 622 299 187
10th Percentile £15.32 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.31
Median hourly rate £32.00 £26.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.75% -19.70% -5.44%
75th Percentile £67.65 £52.33 £64.61
90th Percentile £81.13 £67.05 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +55.68% -41.61% +29.67%

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 25 September 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 25 September 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 25 September 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 7,085 £525 - 7,803
London 0 3,718 £550 - 3,813
UK excluding London +1 3,523 £510 +2.00% 4,733
Work from Home -2 2,510 £525 +5.00% 3,716
North of England +6 1,001 £500 +5.26% 1,270
South East +1 905 £525 +5.00% 1,169
Midlands +2 644 £493 -3.90% 709
West Midlands +1 491 £488 -11.36% 426
North West +4 489 £500 +5.26% 672
Yorkshire +5 430 £500 +2.56% 446
South West +2 419 £550 +10.00% 522
Scotland +3 286 £525 +5.00% 383
East of England 0 202 £510 +2.00% 401
East Midlands +2 147 £500 +8.11% 283
North East +2 95 £513 +2.50% 160
Wales -1 86 £450 - 138
Northern Ireland +13 12 £650 - 182
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69%

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
1 467 (5.62%) SharePoint
2 261 (3.14%) Confluence
3 195 (2.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 187 (2.25%) Apache Spark
5 164 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.37%) Apache
7 45 (0.54%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) IIS
9 28 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) nginx
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
16 6 (0.072%) Traefik
Applications
1 117 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.55%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.49%) Chatbot
6 38 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.096%) CPLEX
8 8 (0.096%) Revit
8 8 (0.096%) Trello
9 5 (0.060%) Notion
9 5 (0.060%) Spreadsheet
10 3 (0.036%) Houdini
10 3 (0.036%) NUKE
11 2 (0.024%) 1Password
11 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.024%) Mingle
11 2 (0.024%) Windchill
12 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 135 (1.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 12 (0.14%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.096%) Magento
10 7 (0.084%) Shopify
11 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
11 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
12 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
12 5 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
13 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
13 4 (0.048%) FLEXCUBE
13 4 (0.048%) Maximo
13 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,982 (35.87%) AWS
2 1,742 (20.95%) Azure DevOps
3 1,454 (17.49%) GCP
4 1,122 (13.50%) Entra ID
5 1,083 (13.03%) Power Platform
6 876 (10.54%) Microsoft 365
7 845 (10.16%) GitHub
8 487 (5.86%) GitHub Actions
9 461 (5.54%) Azure Data Factory
10 378 (4.55%) Serverless
11 358 (4.31%) SaaS
12 317 (3.81%) Azure Monitor
13 306 (3.68%) Power Automate
14 302 (3.63%) Dynamics 365
15 299 (3.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 292 (3.51%) Snowflake
17 291 (3.50%) Azure AKS
18 290 (3.49%) PowerApps
19 253 (3.04%) Microsoft Copilot
20 252 (3.03%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 522 (6.28%) Firewall
2 416 (5.00%) DNS
3 317 (3.81%) VPN
4 293 (3.52%) Network Security
5 231 (2.78%) DHCP
6 184 (2.21%) WAN
7 169 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.31%) LAN
9 106 (1.27%) BGP
10 101 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 90 (1.08%) VLAN
12 85 (1.02%) OSPF
13 83 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 76 (0.91%) SSL
15 67 (0.81%) Wireless
16 61 (0.73%) SAN
17 47 (0.57%) HTTP
17 47 (0.57%) IPsec
18 43 (0.52%) VXLAN
19 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 696 (8.37%) Power BI
2 465 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 400 (4.81%) Data Warehouse
4 384 (4.62%) Data Lake
5 285 (3.43%) PostgreSQL
6 256 (3.08%) Metadata
7 213 (2.56%) NoSQL
8 192 (2.31%) Azure SQL Database
9 140 (1.68%) Relational Database
10 124 (1.49%) Delta Lake
11 110 (1.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 106 (1.27%) MongoDB
13 100 (1.20%) MySQL
14 93 (1.12%) Big Data
15 71 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
16 68 (0.82%) Redis
17 63 (0.76%) BigQuery
18 61 (0.73%) Oracle Database
19 58 (0.70%) Tableau
20 57 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 737 (8.86%) Git
2 592 (7.12%) JIRA
3 461 (5.54%) Jenkins
4 370 (4.45%) GitLab
5 135 (1.62%) Selenium
6 85 (1.02%) Postman
7 63 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 61 (0.73%) JUnit
9 58 (0.70%) Cucumber
10 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 55 (0.66%) Claude Code
12 54 (0.65%) JMeter
12 54 (0.65%) Maven
13 51 (0.61%) Visual Studio
14 49 (0.59%) Gradle
15 46 (0.55%) REST Assured
16 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 34 (0.41%) LoadRunner
18 33 (0.40%) MLflow
19 31 (0.37%) Gatling
General
1 2,298 (27.64%) Social Skills
2 1,570 (18.88%) Finance
3 952 (11.45%) Public Sector
4 807 (9.71%) Analytical Skills
5 486 (5.85%) Banking
6 227 (2.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 216 (2.60%) Retail
8 209 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
9 170 (2.04%) Legal
10 110 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
10 110 (1.32%) Manufacturing
11 93 (1.12%) Telecoms
12 88 (1.06%) Marketing
13 87 (1.05%) Aerospace
13 87 (1.05%) Investment Banking
14 82 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
15 76 (0.91%) Military
16 73 (0.88%) Law
17 60 (0.72%) Local Government
18 58 (0.70%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,594 (19.17%) Architect
2 1,050 (12.63%) Senior
3 1,005 (12.09%) Developer
4 731 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 695 (8.36%) Lead
6 591 (7.11%) Data Engineer
7 495 (5.95%) Solutions Architect
8 467 (5.62%) Analyst
9 466 (5.61%) DevOps Engineer
10 379 (4.56%) Cloud Engineer
11 318 (3.82%) Consultant
12 314 (3.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 270 (3.25%) Data Architect
14 241 (2.90%) Platform Engineer
15 222 (2.67%) Azure Architect
16 209 (2.51%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 204 (2.45%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 203 (2.44%) Technical Architect
19 197 (2.37%) Security Engineer
20 183 (2.20%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,412 (16.98%) Terraform
2 735 (8.84%) REST
3 621 (7.47%) .NET
4 400 (4.81%) Kafka
5 303 (3.64%) React
6 294 (3.54%) RESTful
7 277 (3.33%) OAuth
8 266 (3.20%) PySpark
9 235 (2.83%) JSON
10 195 (2.35%) Spring
11 185 (2.23%) Spring Boot
12 166 (2.00%) OAuth2
13 164 (1.97%) OpenID
14 156 (1.88%) Node.js
15 154 (1.85%) HTML
15 154 (1.85%) SAML
16 150 (1.80%) Middleware
17 141 (1.70%) AngularJS
18 140 (1.68%) SOAP
19 131 (1.58%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 936 (11.26%) Cloud Native
2 418 (5.03%) Onboarding
3 388 (4.67%) Product Ownership
4 315 (3.79%) AI Agents
5 312 (3.75%) Enterprise Software
6 288 (3.46%) Hybrid Cloud
7 276 (3.32%) Distributed Systems
8 253 (3.04%) Data Centre
9 229 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
10 184 (2.21%) Security Posture
11 179 (2.15%) Management Information System
12 150 (1.80%) Data Structures
13 147 (1.77%) Public Cloud
14 124 (1.49%) PKI
15 113 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
16 110 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
17 101 (1.21%) Replication
18 99 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
19 90 (1.08%) CMDB
20 88 (1.06%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 993 (11.94%) Windows
2 517 (6.22%) Linux
3 374 (4.50%) Windows Server
4 147 (1.77%) Windows 10
5 90 (1.08%) Android
6 89 (1.07%) Unix
7 85 (1.02%) Apple iOS
8 82 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 75 (0.90%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 52 (0.63%) VMS
12 27 (0.32%) CentOS
13 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.084%) Debian
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
19 4 (0.048%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,053 (36.72%) DevOps
2 2,676 (32.19%) CI/CD
3 2,062 (24.80%) Agile
4 1,484 (17.85%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,435 (17.26%) AI
6 1,418 (17.06%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,239 (14.90%) Migration
8 1,131 (13.60%) Analytics
9 1,130 (13.59%) Problem-Solving
10 953 (11.46%) Continuous Improvement
11 912 (10.97%) Data Modelling
12 858 (10.32%) Roadmaps
13 794 (9.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 787 (9.47%) Containerisation
15 758 (9.12%) Technical Leadership
16 757 (9.11%) Business Intelligence
17 740 (8.90%) Data Pipeline
18 738 (8.88%) Test Automation
19 735 (8.84%) Microservices
20 662 (7.96%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,893 (22.77%) Python
2 1,578 (18.98%) SQL
3 895 (10.76%) PowerShell
4 698 (8.40%) Java
5 601 (7.23%) C#
6 510 (6.13%) JavaScript
7 410 (4.93%) Bash
8 363 (4.37%) Bicep
9 303 (3.64%) TypeScript
10 98 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 92 (1.11%) T-SQL
12 81 (0.97%) Go
13 65 (0.78%) Scala
14 61 (0.73%) Shell Script
15 58 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
16 43 (0.52%) PL/SQL
17 36 (0.43%) R
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.38%) Groovy
20 30 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,164 (26.03%) Security Cleared
2 1,742 (20.95%) SC Cleared
3 564 (6.78%) Degree
4 481 (5.79%) Azure Certification
5 309 (3.72%) DV Cleared
6 271 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
6 271 (3.26%) CISSP
7 253 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
8 210 (2.53%) AWS Certification
9 199 (2.39%) Cisco Certification
10 182 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
11 137 (1.65%) CISM
12 91 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 91 (1.09%) PMI Certification
13 88 (1.06%) CCNP
14 86 (1.03%) PMP
15 69 (0.83%) ISTQB
16 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
17 63 (0.76%) CCSP
18 52 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 610 (7.34%) Data Quality
2 463 (5.57%) QA
3 305 (3.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 293 (3.52%) GDPR
4 293 (3.52%) NIST
5 204 (2.45%) Accessibility
6 121 (1.46%) NCSC
7 110 (1.32%) SLA
8 83 (1.00%) GRC
9 82 (0.99%) WCAG
10 79 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
11 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
12 53 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 50 (0.60%) PMO
14 44 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 33 (0.40%) SOC 2
16 27 (0.32%) HIPAA
17 26 (0.31%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,030 (12.39%) Active Directory
2 923 (11.10%) Docker
3 243 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.78%) Virtual Machines
5 145 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
6 127 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 73 (0.88%) vSphere
8 51 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 23 (0.28%) Firmware
11 19 (0.23%) IAG
12 16 (0.19%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.084%) Ceph
18 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,309 (15.74%) Kubernetes
2 454 (5.46%) Ansible
3 447 (5.38%) Microsoft Intune
4 260 (3.13%) Grafana
5 203 (2.44%) Prometheus
6 154 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
7 135 (1.62%) SCCM
8 59 (0.71%) Argo
9 58 (0.70%) Progress Chef
10 44 (0.53%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) FortiGate
11 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) SCOM
13 29 (0.35%) Istio
14 28 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.23%) CASB
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
17 18 (0.22%) QRadar
18 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,001 (36.10%) Microsoft
2 863 (10.38%) Databricks
3 419 (5.04%) ServiceNow
4 384 (4.62%) Google
5 357 (4.29%) VMware
6 349 (4.20%) Oracle
7 247 (2.97%) Cisco
8 232 (2.79%) Splunk
9 220 (2.65%) OpenAI
9 220 (2.65%) SAP
10 186 (2.24%) Salesforce
11 149 (1.79%) Palo Alto
12 147 (1.77%) CyberArk
13 141 (1.70%) Foundry
14 130 (1.56%) Dynatrace
15 93 (1.12%) Zscaler
16 91 (1.09%) IBM
17 85 (1.02%) Informatica
18 82 (0.99%) Okta
19 81 (0.97%) Fortinet