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 21 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,556 4,898 6,158
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.01% 15.94% 13.79%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.35% 42.36% 41.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,654 3,363 4,474
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -3.57%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 42 79
10th Percentile £20.86 £21.38 £17.77
25th Percentile £45.46 £23.80 £23.52
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%
75th Percentile £63.32 £60.56 £61.80
90th Percentile £83.60 £77.47 £75.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.00 £48.09
% change year-on-year +91.67% -37.62% -26.02%

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 15,481 11,563 14,853
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.80% 37.62% 33.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,618 7,801 10,592
10th Percentile £311 £313 £288
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £634 £631
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.60% -1.45% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 392 178 335
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.93 £14.18
25th Percentile £20.29 £21.46 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £27.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.36% +25.00% -12.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £44.58 £50.13
90th Percentile £80.18 £76.01 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £24.42 £20.00
% change year-on-year +74.80% +22.10% -4.76%

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 21 February 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 21 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 21 February 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 5,530 £525 -2.33% 2,631
London 0 2,985 £540 -1.82% 934
UK excluding London 0 2,698 £500 - 2,225
Work from Home -2 2,028 £525 - 1,307
North of England 0 720 £488 +4.17% 548
South East -1 706 £500 -7.41% 763
Midlands -2 460 £500 - 315
North West 0 362 £465 -0.64% 299
West Midlands +1 345 £525 -2.66% 195
South West +4 335 £512 -3.49% 238
Yorkshire -3 308 £500 +8.11% 165
Scotland +6 301 £550 +17.33% 123
East of England -1 161 £550 +4.76% 203
East Midlands -3 113 £433 -3.78% 119
Wales -4 79 £400 -18.37% 60
North East -5 54 £515 +8.42% 92
Northern Ireland +5 10 £475 - 13

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
1 279 (4.26%) SharePoint
2 210 (3.20%) Microsoft Exchange
3 175 (2.67%) Apache Spark
4 174 (2.65%) Confluence
5 93 (1.42%) Apache
6 83 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.37%) OpenStack
8 19 (0.29%) SAS
9 17 (0.26%) ArcGIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 15 (0.23%) Appian
11 14 (0.21%) IIS
12 12 (0.18%) Camunda
13 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
13 10 (0.15%) HCL Notes
13 10 (0.15%) Mendix
13 10 (0.15%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.14%) nginx
14 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
15 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
Applications
1 126 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 99 (1.51%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 47 (0.72%) MS Visio
4 42 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
5 15 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.11%) Trello
7 5 (0.076%) Acrobat
7 5 (0.076%) PTC Creo
7 5 (0.076%) Weka
8 4 (0.061%) Adobe XD
8 4 (0.061%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
10 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.015%) FrameMaker
10 1 (0.015%) Revit
10 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.015%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 103 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.17%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) Endur
7 7 (0.11%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.092%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.092%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.092%) Salesforce CRM
8 6 (0.092%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.092%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.092%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.076%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.076%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.076%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 2,312 (35.27%) AWS
2 1,299 (19.81%) GCP
3 1,288 (19.65%) Azure DevOps
4 876 (13.36%) Power Platform
5 765 (11.67%) Entra ID
6 745 (11.36%) Microsoft 365
7 672 (10.25%) GitHub
8 471 (7.18%) Azure Data Factory
9 390 (5.95%) GitHub Actions
9 390 (5.95%) Serverless
10 308 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 291 (4.44%) Dynamics 365
12 274 (4.18%) SaaS
13 256 (3.90%) Azure AKS
14 252 (3.84%) Power Automate
15 233 (3.55%) Azure Functions
16 228 (3.48%) Snowflake
17 225 (3.43%) Azure Monitor
18 212 (3.23%) Azure Logic Apps
19 210 (3.20%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 442 (6.74%) Firewall
2 280 (4.27%) DNS
3 215 (3.28%) VPN
4 194 (2.96%) Network Security
5 168 (2.56%) DHCP
6 159 (2.43%) WAN
7 105 (1.60%) LAN
8 98 (1.49%) TCP/IP
9 87 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
10 80 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 74 (1.13%) VLAN
12 71 (1.08%) Kerberos
13 56 (0.85%) HTTP
14 41 (0.63%) BGP
15 38 (0.58%) Wireless
16 35 (0.53%) SSL
17 34 (0.52%) Internet
18 33 (0.50%) MPLS
19 32 (0.49%) OSPF
20 28 (0.43%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 592 (9.03%) Power BI
2 374 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 349 (5.32%) Data Warehouse
4 338 (5.16%) Data Lake
5 256 (3.90%) PostgreSQL
6 231 (3.52%) Azure SQL Database
7 187 (2.85%) NoSQL
8 169 (2.58%) Metadata
9 126 (1.92%) Relational Database
10 118 (1.80%) Delta Lake
11 94 (1.43%) Big Data
12 92 (1.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 87 (1.33%) MongoDB
14 81 (1.24%) MySQL
15 72 (1.10%) Tableau
16 70 (1.07%) Oracle Database
17 66 (1.01%) BigQuery
18 56 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
19 47 (0.72%) Hadoop
19 47 (0.72%) Redis
Development Applications
1 516 (7.87%) Git
2 463 (7.06%) JIRA
3 351 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 270 (4.12%) GitLab
5 120 (1.83%) Selenium
6 97 (1.48%) Postman
7 71 (1.08%) Cucumber
8 70 (1.07%) JMeter
9 65 (0.99%) JUnit
10 51 (0.78%) SonarQube
11 49 (0.75%) MLflow
11 49 (0.75%) REST Assured
12 47 (0.72%) Cypress.io
13 39 (0.59%) Visual Studio
14 36 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
15 32 (0.49%) TestRail
16 31 (0.47%) Artifactory
17 29 (0.44%) ERwin
17 29 (0.44%) Gatling
18 28 (0.43%) Maven
General
1 2,008 (30.63%) Social Skills
2 1,166 (17.79%) Finance
3 769 (11.73%) Public Sector
4 662 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
5 355 (5.41%) Banking
6 209 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
7 143 (2.18%) Legal
8 110 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 108 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
10 93 (1.42%) Marketing
11 92 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
12 90 (1.37%) Retail
13 78 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
14 65 (0.99%) Telecoms
15 64 (0.98%) Investment Banking
16 59 (0.90%) Financial Institution
17 55 (0.84%) Law
18 53 (0.81%) Manufacturing
19 40 (0.61%) Billing
20 39 (0.59%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,091 (16.64%) Architect
2 914 (13.94%) Developer
3 707 (10.78%) Senior
4 539 (8.22%) Azure Engineer
5 538 (8.21%) Data Engineer
6 473 (7.21%) Lead
7 445 (6.79%) Analyst
8 340 (5.19%) Solutions Architect
9 334 (5.09%) DevOps Engineer
10 296 (4.51%) Consultant
11 184 (2.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 181 (2.76%) Security Engineer
13 175 (2.67%) Cloud Engineer
14 163 (2.49%) Azure Architect
15 159 (2.43%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 158 (2.41%) Senior Developer
17 142 (2.17%) Data Architect
18 138 (2.10%) Platform Engineer
19 137 (2.09%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 129 (1.97%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 524 (7.99%) .NET
2 460 (7.02%) REST
3 308 (4.70%) React
4 259 (3.95%) PySpark
5 256 (3.90%) RESTful
6 242 (3.69%) Kafka
7 223 (3.40%) Node.js
8 209 (3.19%) OAuth
9 203 (3.10%) Spring
10 177 (2.70%) Spring Boot
11 173 (2.64%) HTML
12 170 (2.59%) AngularJS
13 155 (2.36%) CSS
14 152 (2.32%) LDAP
15 146 (2.23%) SOAP
16 144 (2.20%) PyTorch
17 143 (2.18%) JSON
18 131 (2.00%) TensorFlow
19 127 (1.94%) SAML
20 126 (1.92%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 575 (8.77%) Cloud Native
2 244 (3.72%) Onboarding
3 235 (3.58%) Product Ownership
4 176 (2.68%) Hybrid Cloud
5 169 (2.58%) Security Posture
6 157 (2.39%) Data Centre
6 157 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
7 155 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
8 117 (1.78%) Public Cloud
9 113 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
10 100 (1.53%) AI Agents
11 87 (1.33%) Data Structures
12 85 (1.30%) Replication
13 79 (1.21%) Algorithms
14 71 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
14 71 (1.08%) Management Information System
15 70 (1.07%) Low-Code
16 68 (1.04%) NHS
17 62 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
18 54 (0.82%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 732 (11.17%) Windows
2 372 (5.67%) Linux
3 202 (3.08%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.88%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.27%) Unix
6 58 (0.88%) VMS
7 50 (0.76%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 43 (0.66%) Apple iOS
10 37 (0.56%) Android
11 23 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.18%) CentOS
14 11 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.12%) Solaris
16 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.076%) AIX
18 4 (0.061%) Amazon Linux
19 3 (0.046%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,382 (36.33%) DevOps
2 2,001 (30.52%) CI/CD
3 1,613 (24.60%) Agile
4 1,210 (18.46%) Problem-Solving
5 992 (15.13%) Analytics
6 913 (13.93%) AI
7 875 (13.35%) Infrastructure as Code
8 800 (12.20%) Migration
9 691 (10.54%) Stakeholder Management
10 680 (10.37%) Business Intelligence
11 671 (10.23%) Data Modelling
12 659 (10.05%) Containerisation
13 605 (9.23%) Continuous Improvement
14 590 (9.00%) Machine Learning
15 587 (8.95%) ETL
16 581 (8.86%) Data Pipeline
17 571 (8.71%) Microservices
18 551 (8.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 538 (8.21%) Test Automation
20 532 (8.11%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,726 (26.33%) Python
2 1,441 (21.98%) SQL
3 709 (10.81%) PowerShell
4 566 (8.63%) C#
5 553 (8.44%) Java
6 499 (7.61%) JavaScript
7 286 (4.36%) TypeScript
8 259 (3.95%) Bash
9 202 (3.08%) Bicep
10 95 (1.45%) Scala
11 84 (1.28%) PL/SQL
12 79 (1.21%) Go
13 72 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
13 72 (1.10%) T-SQL
14 66 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 46 (0.70%) R
16 44 (0.67%) Shell Script
17 40 (0.61%) C++
18 36 (0.55%) PHP
19 22 (0.34%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,530 (23.34%) Security Cleared
2 1,264 (19.28%) SC Cleared
3 536 (8.18%) Degree
4 364 (5.55%) Azure Certification
5 209 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
6 176 (2.68%) CISSP
7 175 (2.67%) Microsoft Certification
8 138 (2.10%) AWS Certification
9 128 (1.95%) DV Cleared
10 124 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
11 113 (1.72%) CISM
12 105 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
13 92 (1.40%) Master's Degree
14 65 (0.99%) TOGAF Certification
15 53 (0.81%) CCNP
16 52 (0.79%) ISTQB
17 51 (0.78%) PMI Certification
18 50 (0.76%) PMP
19 35 (0.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (6.71%) Data Quality
2 389 (5.93%) GDPR
3 352 (5.37%) QA
4 301 (4.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 234 (3.57%) NIST
6 138 (2.10%) Accessibility
7 95 (1.45%) NCSC
8 80 (1.22%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
10 58 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 54 (0.82%) SLA
12 42 (0.64%) PMO
13 40 (0.61%) HIPAA
14 37 (0.56%) SOC 2
15 36 (0.55%) WCAG
16 33 (0.50%) GRC
17 26 (0.40%) EU AI Act
18 25 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 23 (0.35%) ISO 20022
19 23 (0.35%) NIST 800
System Software
1 846 (12.90%) Active Directory
2 788 (12.02%) Docker
3 195 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (1.54%) Hyper-V
5 87 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
6 78 (1.19%) Virtual Desktop
7 71 (1.08%) vSphere
8 22 (0.34%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.17%) Firmware
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.15%) Postfix
12 9 (0.14%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Snort
13 8 (0.12%) Squid
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) DFS Replication
14 7 (0.11%) KVM
14 7 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 6 (0.092%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 1,011 (15.42%) Terraform
2 946 (14.43%) Kubernetes
3 350 (5.34%) Microsoft Intune
4 302 (4.61%) Ansible
5 172 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
6 156 (2.38%) Grafana
7 139 (2.12%) Prometheus
7 139 (2.12%) SCCM
8 73 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 47 (0.72%) Argo
10 27 (0.41%) FortiGate
11 26 (0.40%) Puppet
11 26 (0.40%) vRealize
12 22 (0.34%) Istio
12 22 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
13 21 (0.32%) Nessus
13 21 (0.32%) Progress Chef
14 19 (0.29%) Kibana
14 19 (0.29%) Nmap
15 17 (0.26%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,104 (32.09%) Microsoft
2 679 (10.36%) Databricks
3 341 (5.20%) Oracle
4 337 (5.14%) Google
5 278 (4.24%) ServiceNow
6 266 (4.06%) VMware
7 192 (2.93%) SAP
8 168 (2.56%) OpenAI
9 166 (2.53%) Cisco
10 158 (2.41%) Splunk
11 123 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 115 (1.75%) CyberArk
13 109 (1.66%) Palo Alto
14 96 (1.46%) Foundry
15 77 (1.17%) Okta
16 71 (1.08%) Citrix
16 71 (1.08%) Red Hat
17 65 (0.99%) BeyondTrust
17 65 (0.99%) IBM
18 62 (0.95%) Informatica