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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,351 4,777 5,589
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.59% 14.56% 14.38%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.45% 39.19% 42.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,844 3,254 3,970
10th Percentile £375 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £423 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £517 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.55% -1.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +0.05% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 43 38
10th Percentile £18.25 £17.97 £18.05
25th Percentile £22.58 £26.60 £23.80
Median hourly rate £43.15 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.88% +14.29% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.75 £74.38 £60.58
90th Percentile £94.94 £93.75 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £65.00 £30.50
% change year-on-year -39.23% +113.11% -33.95%

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 18,789 12,188 13,110
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.08% 37.14% 33.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,436 8,138 9,107
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £411 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £615 £638
90th Percentile £714 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 605 316 250
10th Percentile £15.60 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £16.50
Median hourly rate £34.38 £27.88 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.30% +11.52% -28.57%
75th Percentile £69.75 £47.50 £53.56
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +80.13% -11.70% -17.81%

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 19 August 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 19 August 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 19 August 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 7,183 £525 - 4,219
London +1 3,738 £550 - 1,946
UK excluding London +2 3,607 £500 +0.05% 3,025
Work from Home +1 2,560 £525 +5.00% 2,062
North of England +8 1,054 £500 +5.26% 803
South East +2 941 £525 +5.00% 842
Midlands +4 648 £500 - 384
North West +7 550 £500 +2.56% 437
West Midlands +3 481 £493 -6.19% 253
South West +6 431 £539 +7.75% 350
Yorkshire +6 421 £500 +5.26% 252
Scotland +9 280 £500 +3.31% 243
East of England +2 179 £525 +1.45% 244
East Midlands +9 155 £500 +8.11% 131
North East +5 96 £500 -3.29% 122
Wales 0 90 £475 +6.50% 98
Northern Ireland +15 15 £644 +35.53% 97
Channel Islands +1 10 £450 -29.69% 1

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
1 452 (5.41%) SharePoint
2 269 (3.22%) Confluence
3 201 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 175 (2.10%) Apache Spark
5 154 (1.84%) Apache Airflow
6 117 (1.40%) Apache
7 42 (0.50%) SAS
8 37 (0.44%) IIS
9 27 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 21 (0.25%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 11 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
15 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.084%) Camunda
17 6 (0.072%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 123 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.46%) Chatbot
5 37 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.012%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 117 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 7 (0.084%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Maximo
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.060%) Workday HCM
11 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
11 4 (0.048%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,993 (35.84%) AWS
2 1,783 (21.35%) Azure DevOps
3 1,423 (17.04%) GCP
4 1,079 (12.92%) Entra ID
5 1,044 (12.50%) Power Platform
6 845 (10.12%) Microsoft 365
7 836 (10.01%) GitHub
8 505 (6.05%) GitHub Actions
9 478 (5.72%) Azure Data Factory
10 353 (4.23%) Serverless
11 350 (4.19%) SaaS
12 315 (3.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 311 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
14 306 (3.66%) Azure AKS
15 287 (3.44%) Power Automate
16 275 (3.29%) PowerApps
17 261 (3.13%) Dynamics 365
18 256 (3.07%) Snowflake
19 252 (3.02%) PaaS
20 228 (2.73%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 533 (6.38%) Firewall
2 424 (5.08%) DNS
3 331 (3.96%) VPN
4 307 (3.68%) Network Security
5 219 (2.62%) DHCP
6 196 (2.35%) WAN
7 170 (2.04%) TCP/IP
8 121 (1.45%) LAN
9 112 (1.34%) BGP
10 102 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 97 (1.16%) VLAN
12 90 (1.08%) OSPF
13 86 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.90%) SSL
15 65 (0.78%) SAN
16 56 (0.67%) Wireless
17 50 (0.60%) HTTP
18 49 (0.59%) IPsec
19 46 (0.55%) VXLAN
20 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 714 (8.55%) Power BI
2 469 (5.62%) SQL Server
3 408 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
4 364 (4.36%) Data Lake
5 289 (3.46%) PostgreSQL
6 226 (2.71%) NoSQL
7 225 (2.69%) Metadata
8 223 (2.67%) Azure SQL Database
9 143 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 127 (1.52%) Delta Lake
11 105 (1.26%) MongoDB
12 99 (1.19%) Big Data
12 99 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 82 (0.98%) MySQL
14 65 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
14 65 (0.78%) Tableau
15 64 (0.77%) BigQuery
16 63 (0.75%) Redis
16 63 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
17 58 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 687 (8.23%) Git
2 629 (7.53%) JIRA
3 465 (5.57%) Jenkins
4 364 (4.36%) GitLab
5 133 (1.59%) Selenium
6 76 (0.91%) Postman
7 64 (0.77%) JUnit
8 63 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 59 (0.71%) JMeter
10 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 53 (0.63%) Cucumber
12 51 (0.61%) Maven
13 48 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 44 (0.53%) REST Assured
15 43 (0.51%) Claude Code
16 41 (0.49%) Gradle
17 39 (0.47%) WebDriver
18 33 (0.40%) MLflow
19 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
20 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,206 (26.42%) Social Skills
2 1,555 (18.62%) Finance
3 980 (11.74%) Public Sector
4 811 (9.71%) Analytical Skills
5 449 (5.38%) Banking
6 236 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 215 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 192 (2.30%) Retail
9 184 (2.20%) Legal
10 96 (1.15%) Manufacturing
11 95 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 90 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 86 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
14 75 (0.90%) Aerospace
15 74 (0.89%) Investment Banking
15 74 (0.89%) Law
16 73 (0.87%) Marketing
17 71 (0.85%) Financial Institution
18 60 (0.72%) Military
19 57 (0.68%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,519 (18.19%) Architect
2 1,047 (12.54%) Senior
3 1,041 (12.47%) Developer
4 739 (8.85%) Azure Engineer
5 692 (8.29%) Lead
6 599 (7.17%) Data Engineer
7 489 (5.86%) Analyst
8 439 (5.26%) DevOps Engineer
9 436 (5.22%) Solutions Architect
10 355 (4.25%) Cloud Engineer
11 320 (3.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 301 (3.60%) Consultant
13 259 (3.10%) Data Architect
14 233 (2.79%) Azure Architect
15 226 (2.71%) Platform Engineer
16 200 (2.39%) Technical Architect
17 197 (2.36%) Security Engineer
18 191 (2.29%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 189 (2.26%) Project Manager
20 186 (2.23%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 666 (7.98%) REST
2 637 (7.63%) .NET
3 358 (4.29%) Kafka
4 320 (3.83%) React
5 292 (3.50%) RESTful
6 262 (3.14%) PySpark
7 244 (2.92%) OAuth
8 221 (2.65%) JSON
9 209 (2.50%) Spring
10 184 (2.20%) Node.js
11 182 (2.18%) Spring Boot
12 170 (2.04%) AngularJS
13 154 (1.84%) HTML
14 151 (1.81%) OpenID
14 151 (1.81%) SAML
15 143 (1.71%) OAuth2
16 139 (1.66%) Middleware
17 136 (1.63%) Playwright
18 134 (1.60%) .NET Framework
19 124 (1.48%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 927 (11.10%) Cloud Native
2 413 (4.95%) Onboarding
3 354 (4.24%) Product Ownership
4 274 (3.28%) Distributed Systems
5 272 (3.26%) Hybrid Cloud
6 263 (3.15%) Enterprise Software
7 261 (3.13%) AI Agents
8 257 (3.08%) Data Centre
9 232 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
10 182 (2.18%) Security Posture
11 151 (1.81%) Management Information System
12 143 (1.71%) Data Structures
13 141 (1.69%) Public Cloud
14 118 (1.41%) Enterprise Cloud
15 116 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
16 112 (1.34%) PKI
17 96 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
18 95 (1.14%) Replication
19 79 (0.95%) CMDB
20 78 (0.93%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 987 (11.82%) Windows
2 517 (6.19%) Linux
3 361 (4.32%) Windows Server
4 129 (1.54%) Windows 10
5 88 (1.05%) Unix
6 87 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 83 (0.99%) Android
8 80 (0.96%) Apple iOS
9 70 (0.84%) Mac OS
10 59 (0.71%) VMS
11 52 (0.62%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.22%) CentOS
13 18 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Amazon Linux
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,105 (37.18%) DevOps
2 2,631 (31.51%) CI/CD
3 2,082 (24.93%) Agile
4 1,346 (16.12%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,311 (15.70%) AI
6 1,274 (15.26%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,224 (14.66%) Migration
8 1,147 (13.73%) Analytics
9 1,115 (13.35%) Problem-Solving
10 928 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
11 924 (11.06%) Data Modelling
12 822 (9.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 789 (9.45%) Roadmaps
14 780 (9.34%) Containerisation
15 777 (9.30%) Data Pipeline
16 759 (9.09%) Business Intelligence
17 751 (8.99%) Microservices
18 703 (8.42%) Test Automation
19 680 (8.14%) Technical Leadership
20 677 (8.11%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,898 (22.73%) Python
2 1,631 (19.53%) SQL
3 867 (10.38%) PowerShell
4 704 (8.43%) Java
5 617 (7.39%) C#
6 501 (6.00%) JavaScript
7 398 (4.77%) Bash
8 338 (4.05%) Bicep
9 298 (3.57%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 92 (1.10%) T-SQL
12 72 (0.86%) Go
13 63 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 57 (0.68%) Scala
15 56 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
16 45 (0.54%) PL/SQL
17 40 (0.48%) Kotlin
18 39 (0.47%) R
19 31 (0.37%) Groovy
20 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,154 (25.79%) Security Cleared
2 1,751 (20.97%) SC Cleared
3 564 (6.75%) Degree
4 455 (5.45%) Azure Certification
5 285 (3.41%) DV Cleared
6 271 (3.25%) CISSP
7 246 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
8 229 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
9 216 (2.59%) Cisco Certification
10 201 (2.41%) AWS Certification
11 185 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
12 135 (1.62%) CISM
13 104 (1.25%) CCNP
14 90 (1.08%) PMI Certification
15 88 (1.05%) PMP
16 87 (1.04%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 75 (0.90%) ISTQB
18 63 (0.75%) Master's Degree
19 57 (0.68%) CCSP
20 45 (0.54%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 584 (6.99%) Data Quality
2 444 (5.32%) QA
3 325 (3.89%) GDPR
4 308 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 307 (3.68%) NIST
6 200 (2.39%) Accessibility
7 128 (1.53%) NCSC
8 104 (1.25%) SLA
9 77 (0.92%) GRC
10 76 (0.91%) WCAG
11 71 (0.85%) PCI DSS
12 69 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
13 60 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 56 (0.67%) PMO
15 33 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 30 (0.36%) HIPAA
17 26 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
19 19 (0.23%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,015 (12.15%) Active Directory
2 920 (11.02%) Docker
3 249 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 152 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
5 143 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
6 132 (1.58%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.84%) vSphere
8 57 (0.68%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.37%) Firmware
11 23 (0.28%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Postfix
14 12 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Ceph
16 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Varnish
18 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,386 (16.60%) Terraform
2 1,294 (15.50%) Kubernetes
3 452 (5.41%) Ansible
4 432 (5.17%) Microsoft Intune
5 265 (3.17%) Grafana
6 215 (2.57%) Prometheus
7 152 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
8 124 (1.48%) SCCM
9 65 (0.78%) Progress Chef
10 59 (0.71%) Argo
11 49 (0.59%) Puppet
12 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
13 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 33 (0.40%) Istio
15 32 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 24 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 23 (0.28%) SCOM
18 20 (0.24%) Packer
19 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
20 18 (0.22%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,848 (34.10%) Microsoft
2 798 (9.56%) Databricks
3 410 (4.91%) ServiceNow
4 364 (4.36%) Google
5 355 (4.25%) VMware
6 326 (3.90%) Oracle
7 244 (2.92%) Cisco
8 228 (2.73%) SAP
9 203 (2.43%) Splunk
10 200 (2.39%) OpenAI
11 167 (2.00%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.83%) CyberArk
13 149 (1.78%) Palo Alto
14 137 (1.64%) Foundry
15 122 (1.46%) Dynatrace
16 103 (1.23%) Zscaler
17 92 (1.10%) Informatica
17 92 (1.10%) Okta
18 79 (0.95%) IBM
19 74 (0.89%) Red Hat