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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,327 4,814 5,598
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.60% 14.63% 14.38%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.41% 39.37% 42.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,810 3,286 3,987
10th Percentile £374 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £423 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -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 - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 43 39
10th Percentile £18.38 £18.87 £18.09
25th Percentile £23.00 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.66% +18.43% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.25 £74.38 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.45 £93.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £31.00
% change year-on-year -19.23% +109.68% -32.87%

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 18,751 12,228 13,119
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.12% 37.15% 33.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,380 8,158 9,133
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £411 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.60% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 609 320 262
10th Percentile £15.80 £15.24 £14.27
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £16.35
Median hourly rate £35.00 £28.00 £24.92
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% +12.36% -24.48%
75th Percentile £69.75 £47.50 £54.69
90th Percentile £82.27 £67.28 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.13 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +80.84% -11.70% -14.52%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 7,168 £525 - 5,903
London +1 3,735 £550 - 3,141
UK excluding London +3 3,593 £500 - 3,517
Work from Home -1 2,567 £525 +5.00% 2,862
North of England +8 1,045 £500 +5.26% 962
South East +2 934 £525 +5.00% 940
Midlands +3 654 £494 -1.25% 442
North West +8 544 £500 +2.56% 564
West Midlands +3 491 £493 -6.19% 295
South West +5 435 £540 +8.00% 414
Yorkshire +6 419 £500 +5.26% 278
Scotland +10 279 £500 +0.81% 290
East of England +3 174 £525 -2.33% 257
East Midlands +8 150 £500 +8.11% 147
North East +5 95 £513 +2.50% 131
Wales -1 90 £475 +6.03% 107
Northern Ireland +13 15 £644 +35.53% 142
Channel Islands +1 8 £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
1 443 (5.32%) SharePoint
2 276 (3.31%) Confluence
3 202 (2.43%) Microsoft Exchange
4 173 (2.08%) Apache Spark
5 150 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.42%) Apache
7 41 (0.49%) SAS
8 36 (0.43%) IIS
9 27 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 20 (0.24%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 13 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 11 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 9 (0.11%) Mendix
16 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
17 7 (0.084%) Camunda
18 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 121 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.44%) Chatbot
5 34 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.36%) 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
1 119 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) 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%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Maximo
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
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
Cloud Services
1 2,959 (35.54%) AWS
2 1,759 (21.12%) Azure DevOps
3 1,413 (16.97%) GCP
4 1,076 (12.92%) Entra ID
5 1,045 (12.55%) Power Platform
6 841 (10.10%) GitHub
7 840 (10.09%) Microsoft 365
8 510 (6.12%) GitHub Actions
9 480 (5.76%) Azure Data Factory
10 353 (4.24%) Serverless
11 345 (4.14%) SaaS
12 313 (3.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 301 (3.61%) Azure Monitor
14 299 (3.59%) Azure AKS
15 286 (3.43%) Power Automate
16 271 (3.25%) PowerApps
17 266 (3.19%) Dynamics 365
18 253 (3.04%) Snowflake
19 252 (3.03%) PaaS
20 226 (2.71%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 528 (6.34%) Firewall
2 416 (5.00%) DNS
3 332 (3.99%) VPN
4 302 (3.63%) Network Security
5 212 (2.55%) DHCP
6 198 (2.38%) WAN
7 168 (2.02%) TCP/IP
8 124 (1.49%) LAN
9 111 (1.33%) BGP
10 103 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 95 (1.14%) VLAN
12 89 (1.07%) OSPF
13 85 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.89%) SSL
15 62 (0.74%) SAN
16 56 (0.67%) Wireless
17 49 (0.59%) HTTP
18 48 (0.58%) IPsec
19 46 (0.55%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 718 (8.62%) Power BI
2 465 (5.58%) SQL Server
3 411 (4.94%) Data Warehouse
4 363 (4.36%) Data Lake
5 293 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 219 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
6 219 (2.63%) Metadata
6 219 (2.63%) NoSQL
7 141 (1.69%) Relational Database
8 134 (1.61%) Delta Lake
9 101 (1.21%) Big Data
9 101 (1.21%) MongoDB
9 101 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 81 (0.97%) MySQL
11 65 (0.78%) BigQuery
12 64 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
12 64 (0.77%) Tableau
13 63 (0.76%) Snowflake Schema
14 58 (0.70%) Redis
14 58 (0.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 676 (8.12%) Git
2 633 (7.60%) JIRA
3 458 (5.50%) Jenkins
4 358 (4.30%) GitLab
5 135 (1.62%) Selenium
6 75 (0.90%) Postman
7 70 (0.84%) JUnit
8 66 (0.79%) JMeter
9 60 (0.72%) Cucumber
10 59 (0.71%) Cypress.io
11 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 51 (0.61%) Maven
13 48 (0.58%) Visual Studio
14 46 (0.55%) WebDriver
15 42 (0.50%) Claude Code
16 41 (0.49%) Gradle
16 41 (0.49%) REST Assured
17 33 (0.40%) MLflow
18 31 (0.37%) LoadRunner
19 28 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,199 (26.41%) Social Skills
2 1,552 (18.64%) Finance
3 967 (11.61%) Public Sector
4 811 (9.74%) Analytical Skills
5 444 (5.33%) Banking
6 234 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 208 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 188 (2.26%) Retail
9 185 (2.22%) Legal
10 95 (1.14%) Telecoms
11 93 (1.12%) Manufacturing
11 93 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
12 90 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 76 (0.91%) Law
14 73 (0.88%) Aerospace
14 73 (0.88%) Investment Banking
15 71 (0.85%) Financial Institution
15 71 (0.85%) Marketing
16 60 (0.72%) Military
17 57 (0.68%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,499 (18.00%) Architect
2 1,041 (12.50%) Senior
3 1,037 (12.45%) Developer
4 730 (8.77%) Azure Engineer
5 698 (8.38%) Lead
6 608 (7.30%) Data Engineer
7 493 (5.92%) Analyst
8 438 (5.26%) Solutions Architect
9 428 (5.14%) DevOps Engineer
10 348 (4.18%) Cloud Engineer
11 317 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 305 (3.66%) Consultant
13 254 (3.05%) Data Architect
14 230 (2.76%) Platform Engineer
15 225 (2.70%) Azure Architect
16 195 (2.34%) Project Manager
17 194 (2.33%) Technical Architect
18 192 (2.31%) Security Engineer
19 186 (2.23%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 185 (2.22%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 650 (7.81%) REST
2 628 (7.54%) .NET
3 347 (4.17%) Kafka
4 320 (3.84%) React
5 286 (3.43%) RESTful
6 263 (3.16%) PySpark
7 238 (2.86%) OAuth
8 218 (2.62%) JSON
9 215 (2.58%) Spring
10 187 (2.25%) Node.js
11 180 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 168 (2.02%) AngularJS
13 152 (1.83%) HTML
14 151 (1.81%) SAML
15 146 (1.75%) OpenID
16 141 (1.69%) OAuth2
17 137 (1.65%) Middleware
18 133 (1.60%) .NET Framework
18 133 (1.60%) Playwright
19 121 (1.45%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 900 (10.81%) Cloud Native
2 408 (4.90%) Onboarding
3 349 (4.19%) Product Ownership
4 269 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
5 268 (3.22%) Hybrid Cloud
6 257 (3.09%) AI Agents
7 255 (3.06%) Data Centre
8 246 (2.95%) Enterprise Software
9 232 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
10 181 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 144 (1.73%) Management Information System
12 143 (1.72%) Public Cloud
13 142 (1.71%) Data Structures
14 115 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
14 115 (1.38%) Enterprise Cloud
15 111 (1.33%) PKI
16 97 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
17 94 (1.13%) Replication
18 79 (0.95%) CMDB
19 76 (0.91%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 979 (11.76%) Windows
2 502 (6.03%) Linux
3 351 (4.22%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.48%) Windows 10
5 85 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 84 (1.01%) Unix
7 82 (0.98%) Android
8 75 (0.90%) Apple iOS
9 70 (0.84%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.67%) VMS
11 50 (0.60%) Ubuntu
12 24 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 15 (0.18%) CentOS
15 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 11 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
17 10 (0.12%) Debian
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Amazon Linux
18 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,075 (36.93%) DevOps
2 2,616 (31.42%) CI/CD
3 2,077 (24.94%) Agile
4 1,324 (15.90%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,302 (15.64%) AI
6 1,238 (14.87%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,233 (14.81%) Migration
8 1,129 (13.56%) Analytics
9 1,095 (13.15%) Problem-Solving
10 930 (11.17%) Data Modelling
11 925 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
12 828 (9.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 783 (9.40%) Roadmaps
14 780 (9.37%) Data Pipeline
15 769 (9.24%) Containerisation
16 763 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
17 744 (8.93%) Microservices
18 697 (8.37%) Test Automation
19 678 (8.14%) ETL
20 659 (7.91%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,906 (22.89%) Python
2 1,619 (19.44%) SQL
3 846 (10.16%) PowerShell
4 693 (8.32%) Java
5 612 (7.35%) C#
6 500 (6.00%) JavaScript
7 386 (4.64%) Bash
8 329 (3.95%) Bicep
9 297 (3.57%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 95 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 72 (0.86%) Go
13 59 (0.71%) Scala
13 59 (0.71%) Shell Script
14 56 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 45 (0.54%) PL/SQL
16 40 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.47%) R
18 32 (0.38%) Groovy
19 26 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,122 (25.48%) Security Cleared
2 1,724 (20.70%) SC Cleared
3 561 (6.74%) Degree
4 451 (5.42%) Azure Certification
5 276 (3.31%) DV Cleared
6 261 (3.13%) CISSP
7 245 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 226 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
9 211 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
10 194 (2.33%) AWS Certification
11 182 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
12 131 (1.57%) CISM
13 101 (1.21%) CCNP
14 90 (1.08%) PMI Certification
15 89 (1.07%) PMP
16 84 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 71 (0.85%) ISTQB
18 61 (0.73%) Master's Degree
19 54 (0.65%) CCSP
20 48 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 585 (7.03%) Data Quality
2 435 (5.22%) QA
3 327 (3.93%) GDPR
4 305 (3.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 305 (3.66%) NIST
5 197 (2.37%) Accessibility
6 127 (1.53%) NCSC
7 105 (1.26%) SLA
8 77 (0.92%) GRC
9 76 (0.91%) WCAG
10 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
11 71 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
12 61 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 58 (0.70%) PMO
14 31 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 30 (0.36%) HIPAA
16 27 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 21 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,006 (12.08%) Active Directory
2 909 (10.92%) Docker
3 245 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
5 140 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 128 (1.54%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.84%) vSphere
8 55 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 23 (0.28%) NFS
12 15 (0.18%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Postfix
14 12 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Ceph
17 7 (0.084%) Varnish
17 7 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
18 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,377 (16.54%) Terraform
2 1,276 (15.32%) Kubernetes
3 444 (5.33%) Ansible
4 434 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
5 264 (3.17%) Grafana
6 218 (2.62%) Prometheus
7 149 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
8 121 (1.45%) SCCM
9 60 (0.72%) Progress Chef
10 58 (0.70%) Argo
11 48 (0.58%) Puppet
12 41 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
13 37 (0.44%) FortiGate
14 33 (0.40%) Istio
15 31 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 22 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 21 (0.25%) SCOM
18 20 (0.24%) Packer
19 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
20 18 (0.22%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,807 (33.71%) Microsoft
2 800 (9.61%) Databricks
3 407 (4.89%) ServiceNow
4 353 (4.24%) Google
5 349 (4.19%) VMware
6 322 (3.87%) Oracle
7 244 (2.93%) Cisco
8 231 (2.77%) SAP
9 198 (2.38%) OpenAI
9 198 (2.38%) Splunk
10 165 (1.98%) Salesforce
11 152 (1.83%) Palo Alto
12 150 (1.80%) CyberArk
13 136 (1.63%) Foundry
14 120 (1.44%) Dynatrace
15 106 (1.27%) Zscaler
16 91 (1.09%) Okta
17 90 (1.08%) Informatica
18 77 (0.92%) Citrix
19 76 (0.91%) IBM