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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,054 4,794 6,049
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.47% 15.06% 13.98%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.79% 39.92% 42.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,622 3,318 4,349
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.43% -0.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 184 40 53
10th Percentile £18.73 £25.90 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.19 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% +25.60% -23.73%
75th Percentile £75.44 £77.80 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.06 £100.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £70.00 £52.75
% change year-on-year -17.86% +32.70% -11.94%

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 18,392 12,008 14,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.33% 37.73% 33.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,208 8,033 10,031
10th Percentile £330 £313 £300
25th Percentile £415 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 614 302 358
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.06 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £27.63 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.72% +25.59% -37.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £46.18
90th Percentile £82.33 £70.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £20.99
% change year-on-year +98.73% -10.08% -20.78%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 6,851 £525 - 3,420
London +1 3,595 £550 - 1,264
UK excluding London +3 3,480 £510 +2.00% 2,859
Work from Home -1 2,492 £525 +4.43% 3,919
North of England +6 1,011 £500 +5.26% 703
South East +2 849 £520 +4.00% 794
Midlands +3 603 £500 +1.63% 396
North West +8 527 £500 - 374
West Midlands +1 450 £500 -4.76% 208
South West +6 433 £539 +7.75% 311
Yorkshire +3 403 £505 +6.37% 230
Scotland +12 316 £525 +5.42% 192
East of England +3 181 £550 - 262
East Midlands +4 142 £500 +8.11% 187
Wales -1 112 £425 +4.94% 127
North East +1 94 £525 +5.00% 108
Northern Ireland +16 19 £538 +13.16% 120
Channel Islands +2 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
1 393 (4.88%) SharePoint
2 262 (3.25%) Confluence
3 195 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
4 189 (2.35%) Apache Spark
5 129 (1.60%) Apache Airflow
6 120 (1.49%) Apache
7 41 (0.51%) SAS
8 29 (0.36%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 18 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 17 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.12%) Camunda
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.099%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.099%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.087%) Appian
Applications
1 112 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (0.89%) Microsoft Office
3 70 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.36%) Chatbot
5 29 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.17%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 8 (0.099%) Revit
9 7 (0.087%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.062%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.062%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.050%) Notion
11 4 (0.050%) Trello
12 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.012%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.012%) Houdini
13 1 (0.012%) InDesign
13 1 (0.012%) NUKE
13 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 105 (1.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.099%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.099%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.087%) Maximo
8 7 (0.087%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.074%) Endur
9 6 (0.074%) Magento
9 6 (0.074%) Shopify
9 6 (0.074%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.062%) SAP MM
11 4 (0.050%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.050%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.050%) Remedy AR System
11 4 (0.050%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,841 (35.27%) AWS
2 1,639 (20.35%) Azure DevOps
3 1,352 (16.79%) GCP
4 1,022 (12.69%) Power Platform
5 999 (12.40%) Entra ID
6 802 (9.96%) Microsoft 365
7 754 (9.36%) GitHub
8 461 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
9 454 (5.64%) Azure Data Factory
10 371 (4.61%) Serverless
11 322 (4.00%) SaaS
12 313 (3.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 292 (3.63%) Azure AKS
14 269 (3.34%) Azure Monitor
15 266 (3.30%) Power Automate
16 253 (3.14%) PowerApps
17 250 (3.10%) PaaS
18 239 (2.97%) Dynamics 365
19 219 (2.72%) Azure AI
19 219 (2.72%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 480 (5.96%) Firewall
2 366 (4.54%) DNS
3 284 (3.53%) VPN
4 276 (3.43%) Network Security
5 219 (2.72%) WAN
6 185 (2.30%) DHCP
7 137 (1.70%) LAN
8 121 (1.50%) SD-WAN
9 118 (1.47%) TCP/IP
10 107 (1.33%) BGP
11 83 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
12 82 (1.02%) OSPF
13 77 (0.96%) VLAN
14 68 (0.84%) SSL
15 57 (0.71%) Kerberos
16 54 (0.67%) SAN
17 52 (0.65%) IPsec
18 50 (0.62%) Wireless
19 48 (0.60%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 687 (8.53%) Power BI
2 463 (5.75%) SQL Server
3 380 (4.72%) Data Warehouse
4 357 (4.43%) Data Lake
5 289 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
6 215 (2.67%) Azure SQL Database
7 211 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 199 (2.47%) Metadata
9 143 (1.78%) Delta Lake
10 133 (1.65%) Relational Database
11 120 (1.49%) Big Data
12 107 (1.33%) MongoDB
13 88 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (0.94%) MySQL
15 75 (0.93%) Tableau
16 70 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
17 66 (0.82%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 56 (0.70%) Star Schema
20 51 (0.63%) Redis
Development Applications
1 618 (7.67%) JIRA
2 597 (7.41%) Git
3 425 (5.28%) Jenkins
4 319 (3.96%) GitLab
5 126 (1.56%) Selenium
6 80 (0.99%) Postman
7 77 (0.96%) JMeter
8 65 (0.81%) JUnit
9 61 (0.76%) Cucumber
10 58 (0.72%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 45 (0.56%) Cypress.io
13 44 (0.55%) MLflow
14 42 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 41 (0.51%) WebDriver
16 32 (0.40%) Gatling
16 32 (0.40%) Maven
17 30 (0.37%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
19 25 (0.31%) NUnit
General
1 2,030 (25.20%) Social Skills
2 1,510 (18.75%) Finance
3 904 (11.22%) Public Sector
4 737 (9.15%) Analytical Skills
5 422 (5.24%) Banking
6 227 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 209 (2.59%) Legal
8 169 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 165 (2.05%) Retail
10 101 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
11 83 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 76 (0.94%) Telecoms
13 70 (0.87%) Investment Banking
14 69 (0.86%) Front Office
15 67 (0.83%) Financial Institution
15 67 (0.83%) Law
15 67 (0.83%) Manufacturing
15 67 (0.83%) Marketing
16 55 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
17 51 (0.63%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,445 (17.94%) Architect
2 1,035 (12.85%) Developer
3 978 (12.14%) Senior
4 709 (8.80%) Azure Engineer
5 628 (7.80%) Lead
6 616 (7.65%) Data Engineer
7 485 (6.02%) Analyst
8 410 (5.09%) Solutions Architect
9 408 (5.07%) DevOps Engineer
10 335 (4.16%) Consultant
11 298 (3.70%) Cloud Engineer
12 269 (3.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 233 (2.89%) Data Architect
14 226 (2.81%) Azure Architect
15 204 (2.53%) Platform Engineer
16 201 (2.50%) Technical Architect
17 189 (2.35%) Security Engineer
18 176 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 176 (2.19%) Business Analyst
19 172 (2.14%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 639 (7.93%) .NET
2 570 (7.08%) REST
3 344 (4.27%) React
4 297 (3.69%) Kafka
5 280 (3.48%) RESTful
6 261 (3.24%) PySpark
7 233 (2.89%) OAuth
8 223 (2.77%) Spring
9 219 (2.72%) Node.js
10 191 (2.37%) Spring Boot
11 185 (2.30%) AngularJS
12 175 (2.17%) JSON
13 151 (1.87%) SAML
14 148 (1.84%) HTML
15 143 (1.78%) OpenID
16 141 (1.75%) LDAP
17 130 (1.61%) .NET Framework
18 127 (1.58%) Middleware
19 123 (1.53%) OAuth2
20 122 (1.51%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 850 (10.55%) Cloud Native
2 343 (4.26%) Onboarding
3 320 (3.97%) Product Ownership
4 257 (3.19%) Data Centre
5 240 (2.98%) Distributed Systems
6 231 (2.87%) Hybrid Cloud
7 219 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
8 189 (2.35%) AI Agents
9 170 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
10 157 (1.95%) Security Posture
11 146 (1.81%) Public Cloud
12 114 (1.42%) Data Structures
13 110 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 107 (1.33%) Management Information System
15 103 (1.28%) Replication
16 90 (1.12%) PKI
17 86 (1.07%) Enterprise Cloud
18 84 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
19 75 (0.93%) Low-Code
20 74 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 918 (11.40%) Windows
2 415 (5.15%) Linux
3 302 (3.75%) Windows Server
4 108 (1.34%) Windows 10
5 77 (0.96%) Unix
6 74 (0.92%) Apple iOS
7 73 (0.91%) Android
7 73 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 72 (0.89%) Mac OS
9 58 (0.72%) VMS
10 37 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.14%) CentOS
15 10 (0.12%) Debian
16 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.087%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.087%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,973 (36.91%) DevOps
2 2,521 (31.30%) CI/CD
3 1,972 (24.48%) Agile
4 1,218 (15.12%) AI
5 1,200 (14.90%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,158 (14.38%) Migration
7 1,131 (14.04%) Analytics
8 1,078 (13.38%) Problem-Solving
9 956 (11.87%) Stakeholder Management
10 908 (11.27%) Data Modelling
11 814 (10.11%) Continuous Improvement
12 771 (9.57%) Data Pipeline
13 755 (9.37%) Containerisation
14 750 (9.31%) Roadmaps
15 744 (9.24%) Microservices
16 733 (9.10%) Business Intelligence
17 704 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 678 (8.42%) ETL
19 659 (8.18%) Test Automation
20 653 (8.11%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,883 (23.38%) Python
2 1,601 (19.88%) SQL
3 760 (9.44%) PowerShell
4 673 (8.36%) Java
5 630 (7.82%) C#
6 468 (5.81%) JavaScript
7 321 (3.99%) TypeScript
8 289 (3.59%) Bash
9 277 (3.44%) Bicep
10 92 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 83 (1.03%) Go
13 78 (0.97%) Scala
14 50 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
15 48 (0.60%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.55%) R
17 35 (0.43%) Kotlin
18 33 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 25 (0.31%) C++
19 25 (0.31%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,972 (24.48%) Security Cleared
2 1,636 (20.31%) SC Cleared
3 573 (7.11%) Degree
4 411 (5.10%) Azure Certification
5 249 (3.09%) CISSP
6 224 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
7 215 (2.67%) DV Cleared
8 197 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
8 197 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
9 189 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 179 (2.22%) AWS Certification
11 125 (1.55%) CISM
12 96 (1.19%) CCNP
13 80 (0.99%) PMP
14 76 (0.94%) PMI Certification
15 75 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 64 (0.79%) Master's Degree
17 63 (0.78%) ISTQB
18 56 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
19 51 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 551 (6.84%) Data Quality
2 416 (5.17%) QA
3 341 (4.23%) GDPR
4 282 (3.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 271 (3.36%) NIST
6 183 (2.27%) Accessibility
7 116 (1.44%) NCSC
8 99 (1.23%) SLA
9 74 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
9 74 (0.92%) PCI DSS
10 66 (0.82%) WCAG
11 65 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 62 (0.77%) GRC
13 44 (0.55%) PMO
14 38 (0.47%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 27 (0.34%) SOC 2
17 23 (0.29%) NIST 800
18 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 19 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 954 (11.85%) Active Directory
2 851 (10.57%) Docker
3 225 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.71%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.66%) Virtual Machines
6 114 (1.42%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.84%) vSphere
8 52 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.40%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.36%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.11%) IAG
15 8 (0.099%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.099%) Varnish
16 6 (0.074%) Ceph
16 6 (0.074%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.062%) RACF
17 5 (0.062%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,283 (15.93%) Terraform
2 1,167 (14.49%) Kubernetes
3 425 (5.28%) Microsoft Intune
4 373 (4.63%) Ansible
5 234 (2.91%) Grafana
6 196 (2.43%) Prometheus
7 166 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.30%) SCCM
9 68 (0.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 50 (0.62%) Argo
11 47 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
12 43 (0.53%) Progress Chef
13 41 (0.51%) Puppet
14 38 (0.47%) FortiGate
15 31 (0.38%) Istio
16 23 (0.29%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
17 20 (0.25%) vCenter Server
18 16 (0.20%) Packer
19 13 (0.16%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,563 (31.82%) Microsoft
2 759 (9.42%) Databricks
3 377 (4.68%) ServiceNow
4 312 (3.87%) Google
5 306 (3.80%) VMware
6 303 (3.76%) Oracle
7 226 (2.81%) SAP
8 216 (2.68%) Cisco
9 198 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 167 (2.07%) Splunk
11 151 (1.87%) Salesforce
12 142 (1.76%) Palo Alto
13 128 (1.59%) Foundry
14 125 (1.55%) CyberArk
15 108 (1.34%) Okta
16 96 (1.19%) Dynatrace
17 90 (1.12%) Informatica
18 88 (1.09%) Zscaler
19 76 (0.94%) Citrix
20 74 (0.92%) Fortinet