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 20 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,863 5,186 6,540
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.90% 15.22% 14.86%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.74% 41.94% 42.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,119 3,489 4,818
10th Percentile £350 £330 £350
25th Percentile £423 £422 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £635 £650
90th Percentile £700 £723 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 49 76
10th Percentile £16.25 £19.97 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.47 £23.59 £22.19
Median hourly rate £45.73 £28.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +60.46% -38.28% +5.84%
75th Percentile £69.69 £55.00 £62.63
90th Percentile £94.38 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.50 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +98.18% -40.45% -12.87%

All Cloud 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 14,046 12,364 15,370
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.10% 36.28% 34.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,589 8,222 11,017
10th Percentile £307 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £415 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £603 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £732 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £498 £500
% change year-on-year -4.67% -0.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 330 174 272
10th Percentile £14.75 £17.65 £14.37
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £26.50 £27.50 £25.81
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% +6.55% +14.71%
75th Percentile £55.00 £44.90 £58.19
90th Percentile £76.73 £68.75 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £24.18 £21.00
% change year-on-year +3.39% +15.14% +7.69%

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 20 December 2025.

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 20 December 2025.

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 20 December 2025. 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 4,985 £520 -0.95% 2,213
London 0 2,671 £540 -1.82% 801
UK excluding London 0 2,400 £500 - 1,945
Work from Home -1 1,856 £513 -1.44% 1,126
North of England 0 653 £470 -1.05% 489
South East -4 608 £500 -4.76% 681
Midlands -2 433 £525 +5.00% 270
West Midlands +1 325 £550 +4.76% 171
North West -1 318 £450 - 254
South West +5 309 £523 +3.56% 206
Yorkshire 0 302 £484 -1.07% 166
Scotland +1 252 £523 +14.63% 110
East of England -3 148 £500 +17.65% 161
East Midlands -2 105 £450 -0.11% 98
Wales -3 58 £475 -5.00% 58
North East -8 37 £500 +10.13% 81
Northern Ireland -3 6 - - 11
Channel Islands +3 2 £600 +101.68%

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
1 270 (4.61%) SharePoint
2 198 (3.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 139 (2.37%) Confluence
4 131 (2.23%) Apache Spark
5 82 (1.40%) Apache
5 82 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
6 25 (0.43%) SAS
7 24 (0.41%) CMS
8 23 (0.39%) OpenStack
9 17 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.26%) nginx
11 14 (0.24%) Anypoint
11 14 (0.24%) IIS
12 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.19%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.17%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.15%) Camunda
14 9 (0.15%) Mule
15 8 (0.14%) Appian
Applications
1 128 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 96 (1.64%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
6 17 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 10 (0.17%) Trello
8 5 (0.085%) Weka
9 2 (0.034%) Windchill
10 1 (0.017%) Acrobat
10 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.017%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.017%) FrameMaker
10 1 (0.017%) Revit
10 1 (0.017%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.017%) SOLIDWORKS
10 1 (0.017%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 98 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 17 (0.29%) Aladdin
4 13 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.14%) Endur
6 8 (0.14%) NetSuite
6 8 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.12%) NEC Housing
7 7 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
7 7 (0.12%) Workday HCM
8 6 (0.10%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.10%) Teamcenter
9 5 (0.085%) Cloudability
9 5 (0.085%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.068%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.068%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,162 (36.88%) AWS
2 1,177 (20.08%) GCP
3 1,151 (19.63%) Azure DevOps
4 735 (12.54%) Power Platform
5 677 (11.55%) Microsoft 365
6 662 (11.29%) Entra ID
7 587 (10.01%) GitHub
8 390 (6.65%) Azure Data Factory
9 353 (6.02%) GitHub Actions
10 335 (5.71%) Serverless
11 271 (4.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 266 (4.54%) Dynamics 365
13 257 (4.38%) SaaS
14 236 (4.03%) Power Automate
15 232 (3.96%) Azure AKS
16 216 (3.68%) Snowflake
17 207 (3.53%) Azure Monitor
18 202 (3.45%) Azure Sentinel
19 201 (3.43%) PowerApps
20 200 (3.41%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 433 (7.39%) Firewall
2 238 (4.06%) DNS
3 195 (3.33%) VPN
4 167 (2.85%) Network Security
5 128 (2.18%) DHCP
6 122 (2.08%) WAN
7 98 (1.67%) TCP/IP
8 82 (1.40%) LAN
9 73 (1.25%) HTTP
10 68 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
11 63 (1.07%) SD-WAN
12 58 (0.99%) VLAN
13 43 (0.73%) BGP
14 38 (0.65%) Internet
15 36 (0.61%) MPLS
16 34 (0.58%) Wireless
17 33 (0.56%) SAN
18 31 (0.53%) OSPF
19 28 (0.48%) SSL
20 25 (0.43%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 515 (8.78%) Power BI
2 331 (5.65%) SQL Server
3 279 (4.76%) Data Warehouse
4 263 (4.49%) Data Lake
5 259 (4.42%) PostgreSQL
6 199 (3.39%) Azure SQL Database
7 181 (3.09%) NoSQL
8 127 (2.17%) Relational Database
9 120 (2.05%) Metadata
10 101 (1.72%) MongoDB
11 86 (1.47%) MySQL
12 82 (1.40%) Delta Lake
13 74 (1.26%) Big Data
14 69 (1.18%) Tableau
15 67 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 65 (1.11%) Oracle Database
17 61 (1.04%) BigQuery
18 52 (0.89%) Redis
19 48 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
20 44 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 507 (8.65%) Git
2 427 (7.28%) JIRA
3 361 (6.16%) Jenkins
4 250 (4.26%) GitLab
5 103 (1.76%) Selenium
6 99 (1.69%) Postman
7 72 (1.23%) SonarQube
8 65 (1.11%) JUnit
9 58 (0.99%) Cucumber
10 51 (0.87%) Cypress.io
11 49 (0.84%) JMeter
12 45 (0.77%) Bitbucket
13 38 (0.65%) CircleCI
13 38 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
14 37 (0.63%) Maven
15 36 (0.61%) REST Assured
16 31 (0.53%) MLflow
17 29 (0.49%) Mockito
17 29 (0.49%) SpecFlow
17 29 (0.49%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,877 (32.01%) Social Skills
2 1,068 (18.22%) Finance
3 688 (11.73%) Public Sector
4 563 (9.60%) Analytical Skills
5 373 (6.36%) Banking
6 196 (3.34%) Documentation Skills
7 125 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 99 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
9 94 (1.60%) Marketing
10 92 (1.57%) Legal
11 91 (1.55%) Retail
12 90 (1.54%) Investment Banking
13 78 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
14 69 (1.18%) Telecoms
15 60 (1.02%) Manufacturing
16 54 (0.92%) Law
17 51 (0.87%) Financial Institution
18 50 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
19 45 (0.77%) Front Office
20 42 (0.72%) Military
Job Titles
1 942 (16.07%) Architect
2 891 (15.20%) Developer
3 602 (10.27%) Senior
4 446 (7.61%) Azure Engineer
5 410 (6.99%) Data Engineer
6 409 (6.98%) Analyst
7 406 (6.92%) Lead
8 319 (5.44%) Solutions Architect
9 302 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
10 230 (3.92%) Consultant
11 175 (2.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 175 (2.98%) Security Engineer
12 159 (2.71%) Senior Developer
13 153 (2.61%) Azure Architect
14 147 (2.51%) Cloud Engineer
15 136 (2.32%) Platform Engineer
16 123 (2.10%) Data Architect
17 122 (2.08%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 117 (2.00%) Software Engineer
19 112 (1.91%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 484 (8.26%) .NET
2 380 (6.48%) REST
3 255 (4.35%) React
4 252 (4.30%) RESTful
5 229 (3.91%) Kafka
6 200 (3.41%) Node.js
7 198 (3.38%) Spring
8 195 (3.33%) PySpark
9 181 (3.09%) OAuth
10 172 (2.93%) HTML
10 172 (2.93%) Spring Boot
11 166 (2.83%) AngularJS
12 159 (2.71%) JSON
13 143 (2.44%) SOAP
14 140 (2.39%) CSS
15 131 (2.23%) PyTorch
16 120 (2.05%) TensorFlow
17 105 (1.79%) Middleware
18 102 (1.74%) SAML
19 101 (1.72%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 485 (8.27%) Cloud Native
2 209 (3.56%) Onboarding
3 200 (3.41%) Product Ownership
4 170 (2.90%) Hybrid Cloud
5 150 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
6 144 (2.46%) Data Centre
7 139 (2.37%) Security Posture
8 127 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
9 117 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
10 98 (1.67%) Public Cloud
11 75 (1.28%) Management Information System
12 74 (1.26%) Algorithms
13 69 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
14 68 (1.16%) Replication
15 65 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
15 65 (1.11%) Low-Code
16 64 (1.09%) AI Agents
17 56 (0.96%) Data Structures
18 54 (0.92%) NHS
19 51 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 663 (11.31%) Windows
2 404 (6.89%) Linux
3 191 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.89%) Unix
5 107 (1.83%) Windows 10
6 51 (0.87%) VMS
7 48 (0.82%) Mac OS
8 47 (0.80%) Android
9 46 (0.78%) Apple iOS
10 35 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 22 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.17%) Amazon Linux
14 10 (0.17%) CentOS
14 10 (0.17%) Solaris
15 7 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
16 6 (0.10%) AIX
16 6 (0.10%) Mac OS X
17 4 (0.068%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,135 (36.41%) DevOps
2 1,743 (29.73%) CI/CD
3 1,513 (25.81%) Agile
4 1,072 (18.28%) Problem-Solving
5 800 (13.64%) Analytics
6 795 (13.56%) Infrastructure as Code
7 701 (11.96%) Migration
8 694 (11.84%) AI
9 596 (10.17%) Stakeholder Management
10 592 (10.10%) Containerisation
11 590 (10.06%) Business Intelligence
12 521 (8.89%) Data Modelling
13 517 (8.82%) Microservices
14 499 (8.51%) Test Automation
15 488 (8.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 486 (8.29%) Machine Learning
17 480 (8.19%) Continuous Improvement
18 439 (7.49%) Data Pipeline
19 433 (7.39%) ETL
20 415 (7.08%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,515 (25.84%) Python
2 1,265 (21.58%) SQL
3 635 (10.83%) PowerShell
4 582 (9.93%) Java
5 513 (8.75%) C#
6 436 (7.44%) JavaScript
7 288 (4.91%) Bash
8 241 (4.11%) TypeScript
9 172 (2.93%) Bicep
10 93 (1.59%) Go
11 79 (1.35%) Kusto Query Language
11 79 (1.35%) PL/SQL
12 76 (1.30%) Scala
13 56 (0.96%) T-SQL
14 53 (0.90%) R
15 48 (0.82%) Shell Script
16 47 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 38 (0.65%) C++
17 38 (0.65%) PHP
18 26 (0.44%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,282 (21.87%) Security Cleared
2 1,053 (17.96%) SC Cleared
3 507 (8.65%) Degree
4 350 (5.97%) Azure Certification
5 191 (3.26%) Computer Science Degree
6 178 (3.04%) CISSP
7 175 (2.98%) Microsoft Certification
8 141 (2.40%) AWS Certification
9 126 (2.15%) DV Cleared
10 105 (1.79%) CISM
11 104 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
12 93 (1.59%) Master's Degree
13 92 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
14 50 (0.85%) CCNP
15 45 (0.77%) ISTQB
16 41 (0.70%) MCP
17 40 (0.68%) PMI Certification
18 38 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
19 35 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 32 (0.55%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 368 (6.28%) GDPR
2 340 (5.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 328 (5.59%) QA
4 300 (5.12%) Data Quality
5 259 (4.42%) NIST
6 127 (2.17%) Accessibility
7 79 (1.35%) PCI DSS
8 77 (1.31%) NCSC
9 53 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
10 44 (0.75%) HIPAA
11 40 (0.68%) SLA
12 37 (0.63%) SOC 2
13 36 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 33 (0.56%) WCAG
15 30 (0.51%) GRC
15 30 (0.51%) PMO
16 28 (0.48%) EU AI Act
17 26 (0.44%) PSD2
18 21 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 19 (0.32%) NIST 800
System Software
1 760 (12.96%) Docker
2 735 (12.54%) Active Directory
3 176 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (1.36%) Hyper-V
5 73 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
6 59 (1.01%) Virtual Desktop
7 51 (0.87%) vSphere
8 23 (0.39%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.27%) Squid
10 12 (0.20%) DFS Replication
11 10 (0.17%) Dovecot
11 10 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.17%) Postfix
11 10 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 8 (0.14%) Firmware
12 8 (0.14%) KVM
12 8 (0.14%) Snort
12 8 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
12 8 (0.14%) zsh
13 7 (0.12%) NFS
Systems Management
1 913 (15.57%) Terraform
2 852 (14.53%) Kubernetes
3 325 (5.54%) Ansible
4 304 (5.19%) Microsoft Intune
5 150 (2.56%) Grafana
6 142 (2.42%) Prometheus
6 142 (2.42%) SCCM
7 137 (2.34%) Single Sign-On
8 42 (0.72%) Argo
9 38 (0.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.63%) Puppet
11 29 (0.49%) Kibana
12 26 (0.44%) Nessus
13 23 (0.39%) Progress Chef
14 22 (0.38%) vRealize
15 21 (0.36%) Oracle RMAN
16 20 (0.34%) Istio
17 17 (0.29%) Nmap
18 16 (0.27%) NetBackup
18 16 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,886 (32.17%) Microsoft
2 572 (9.76%) Databricks
3 367 (6.26%) Oracle
4 299 (5.10%) Google
5 255 (4.35%) ServiceNow
6 238 (4.06%) VMware
7 173 (2.95%) Splunk
8 169 (2.88%) SAP
9 164 (2.80%) Cisco
10 121 (2.06%) OpenAI
10 121 (2.06%) Salesforce
11 102 (1.74%) CyberArk
12 94 (1.60%) Palo Alto
13 81 (1.38%) Citrix
14 65 (1.11%) Red Hat
15 63 (1.07%) Foundry
16 62 (1.06%) Dynatrace
17 61 (1.04%) IBM
18 60 (1.02%) Okta
19 57 (0.97%) HP