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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,548 4,816 6,133
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.98% 15.94% 13.81%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.28% 42.31% 41.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,656 3,314 4,450
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
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 108 40 75
10th Percentile £20.88 £22.38 £17.76
25th Percentile £45.87 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%
75th Percentile £60.83 £61.81 £60.80
90th Percentile £81.80 £77.75 £71.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +109.09% -45.00% -23.08%

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 15,488 11,383 14,752
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.80% 37.68% 33.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,641 7,699 10,509
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 £632 £634
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £491 £500
% change year-on-year -3.26% -1.80% -1.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 395 178 338
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.60 £14.09
25th Percentile £20.31 £21.46 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £27.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +36.36% +27.91% -14.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £44.31 £46.18
90th Percentile £80.12 £76.01 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £24.18 £19.12
% change year-on-year +76.53% +26.46% -8.95%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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% 2,592
London 0 2,985 £541 -1.66% 934
UK excluding London 0 2,692 £500 - 2,163
Work from Home -2 2,030 £525 +0.43% 1,233
North of England 0 718 £492 +3.58% 548
South East -1 702 £500 -7.41% 730
Midlands -2 464 £500 - 320
North West 0 360 £475 +0.74% 293
West Midlands -2 344 £525 -2.33% 197
South West +4 336 £512 -2.57% 228
Yorkshire -3 309 £500 +5.26% 166
Scotland +6 298 £550 +17.65% 120
East of England -1 161 £550 +6.02% 189
East Midlands -2 118 £437 -2.94% 122
Wales -4 78 £388 -20.92% 52
North East -5 53 £515 +8.42% 96
Northern Ireland +7 10 £475 - 9

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
1 284 (4.34%) SharePoint
2 208 (3.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 176 (2.69%) Confluence
4 175 (2.67%) Apache Spark
5 93 (1.42%) Apache
6 82 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.35%) OpenStack
8 19 (0.29%) SAS
9 17 (0.26%) ArcGIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 15 (0.23%) Appian
11 12 (0.18%) Camunda
11 12 (0.18%) IIS
12 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
12 10 (0.15%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.15%) Mendix
12 10 (0.15%) SugarCRM
13 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.12%) Skype for Business
14 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
Applications
1 125 (1.91%) 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 8 (0.12%) Trello
7 5 (0.076%) Acrobat
7 5 (0.076%) PTC Creo
7 5 (0.076%) Weka
8 4 (0.061%) Adobe XD
9 3 (0.046%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.015%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.015%) Revit
11 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
11 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%) 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%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.076%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.076%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 2,306 (35.22%) AWS
2 1,289 (19.69%) GCP
3 1,287 (19.65%) Azure DevOps
4 878 (13.41%) Power Platform
5 769 (11.74%) Entra ID
6 742 (11.33%) Microsoft 365
7 673 (10.28%) GitHub
8 473 (7.22%) Azure Data Factory
9 394 (6.02%) GitHub Actions
10 392 (5.99%) Serverless
11 310 (4.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 292 (4.46%) Dynamics 365
13 271 (4.14%) SaaS
14 254 (3.88%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.85%) Azure AKS
16 237 (3.62%) Azure Functions
17 226 (3.45%) Snowflake
18 224 (3.42%) Azure Monitor
19 213 (3.25%) Azure Logic Apps
20 211 (3.22%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 443 (6.77%) Firewall
2 280 (4.28%) DNS
3 217 (3.31%) VPN
4 196 (2.99%) Network Security
5 167 (2.55%) DHCP
6 160 (2.44%) WAN
7 107 (1.63%) LAN
8 98 (1.50%) TCP/IP
9 88 (1.34%) Wi-Fi
10 81 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 73 (1.11%) VLAN
12 70 (1.07%) Kerberos
13 55 (0.84%) HTTP
14 40 (0.61%) BGP
15 39 (0.60%) Wireless
16 36 (0.55%) SSL
17 34 (0.52%) Internet
18 33 (0.50%) OSPF
19 32 (0.49%) MPLS
20 31 (0.47%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 591 (9.03%) Power BI
2 380 (5.80%) SQL Server
3 349 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
4 339 (5.18%) Data Lake
5 259 (3.96%) PostgreSQL
6 233 (3.56%) Azure SQL Database
7 185 (2.83%) NoSQL
8 163 (2.49%) Metadata
9 124 (1.89%) Relational Database
10 120 (1.83%) Delta Lake
11 95 (1.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 94 (1.44%) Big Data
13 87 (1.33%) MongoDB
14 79 (1.21%) MySQL
15 71 (1.08%) Tableau
16 69 (1.05%) Oracle Database
17 66 (1.01%) BigQuery
18 56 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
19 48 (0.73%) Redis
20 47 (0.72%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 509 (7.77%) Git
2 468 (7.15%) JIRA
3 347 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 269 (4.11%) GitLab
5 119 (1.82%) Selenium
6 96 (1.47%) Postman
7 70 (1.07%) Cucumber
8 69 (1.05%) JMeter
9 65 (0.99%) JUnit
10 49 (0.75%) MLflow
10 49 (0.75%) SonarQube
11 48 (0.73%) REST Assured
12 47 (0.72%) Cypress.io
13 39 (0.60%) Visual Studio
14 36 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.50%) TestRail
16 31 (0.47%) Artifactory
17 29 (0.44%) ERwin
18 28 (0.43%) Bitbucket
18 28 (0.43%) Gatling
General
1 1,997 (30.50%) Social Skills
2 1,166 (17.81%) Finance
3 758 (11.58%) Public Sector
4 657 (10.03%) Analytical Skills
5 360 (5.50%) Banking
6 212 (3.24%) Documentation Skills
7 139 (2.12%) Legal
8 110 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 107 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
10 90 (1.37%) Marketing
10 90 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
10 90 (1.37%) Retail
11 80 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
12 65 (0.99%) Investment Banking
13 64 (0.98%) Telecoms
14 60 (0.92%) Financial Institution
15 55 (0.84%) Law
16 51 (0.78%) Manufacturing
17 44 (0.67%) Front Office
18 40 (0.61%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,078 (16.46%) Architect
2 914 (13.96%) Developer
3 714 (10.90%) Senior
4 544 (8.31%) Azure Engineer
5 537 (8.20%) Data Engineer
6 474 (7.24%) Lead
7 445 (6.80%) Analyst
8 330 (5.04%) DevOps Engineer
9 329 (5.02%) Solutions Architect
10 297 (4.54%) Consultant
11 186 (2.84%) Security Engineer
12 182 (2.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 176 (2.69%) Cloud Engineer
14 162 (2.47%) Azure Architect
15 160 (2.44%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 157 (2.40%) Senior Developer
17 139 (2.12%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 139 (2.12%) Data Architect
18 137 (2.09%) Platform Engineer
19 129 (1.97%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 522 (7.97%) .NET
2 462 (7.06%) REST
3 315 (4.81%) React
4 259 (3.96%) PySpark
5 254 (3.88%) RESTful
6 239 (3.65%) Kafka
7 227 (3.47%) Node.js
8 203 (3.10%) OAuth
9 201 (3.07%) Spring
10 176 (2.69%) Spring Boot
11 173 (2.64%) HTML
12 170 (2.60%) AngularJS
13 154 (2.35%) CSS
14 152 (2.32%) LDAP
15 146 (2.23%) SOAP
16 144 (2.20%) PyTorch
17 141 (2.15%) JSON
18 130 (1.99%) TensorFlow
19 127 (1.94%) SAML
20 124 (1.89%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 579 (8.84%) Cloud Native
2 241 (3.68%) Onboarding
3 233 (3.56%) Product Ownership
4 180 (2.75%) Hybrid Cloud
5 173 (2.64%) Security Posture
6 156 (2.38%) Data Centre
6 156 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
7 155 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
8 118 (1.80%) Public Cloud
9 115 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
10 99 (1.51%) AI Agents
11 87 (1.33%) Data Structures
12 85 (1.30%) Replication
13 78 (1.19%) Algorithms
14 72 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
15 69 (1.05%) Low-Code
15 69 (1.05%) Management Information System
16 65 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
17 64 (0.98%) NHS
18 53 (0.81%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 729 (11.13%) Windows
2 374 (5.71%) Linux
3 197 (3.01%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.85%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.27%) Unix
6 60 (0.92%) VMS
7 50 (0.76%) Mac OS
8 47 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.60%) Apple iOS
10 33 (0.50%) Android
11 23 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.29%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) CentOS
15 11 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.12%) Solaris
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.092%) Data ONTAP
19 5 (0.076%) AIX
19 5 (0.076%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,382 (36.38%) DevOps
2 1,998 (30.51%) CI/CD
3 1,614 (24.65%) Agile
4 1,200 (18.33%) Problem-Solving
5 994 (15.18%) Analytics
6 909 (13.88%) AI
7 882 (13.47%) Infrastructure as Code
8 805 (12.29%) Migration
9 689 (10.52%) Stakeholder Management
10 672 (10.26%) Data Modelling
11 671 (10.25%) Business Intelligence
12 662 (10.11%) Containerisation
13 604 (9.22%) Continuous Improvement
14 587 (8.96%) Machine Learning
15 583 (8.90%) Data Pipeline
16 582 (8.89%) ETL
17 572 (8.74%) Microservices
18 547 (8.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 534 (8.16%) Test Automation
20 526 (8.03%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,728 (26.39%) Python
2 1,439 (21.98%) SQL
3 712 (10.87%) PowerShell
4 562 (8.58%) C#
5 548 (8.37%) Java
6 504 (7.70%) JavaScript
7 291 (4.44%) TypeScript
8 262 (4.00%) Bash
9 203 (3.10%) Bicep
10 96 (1.47%) Scala
11 84 (1.28%) PL/SQL
12 82 (1.25%) Go
13 71 (1.08%) T-SQL
14 70 (1.07%) Kusto Query Language
15 66 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 46 (0.70%) R
17 44 (0.67%) Shell Script
18 39 (0.60%) C++
19 38 (0.58%) PHP
20 22 (0.34%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,527 (23.32%) Security Cleared
2 1,262 (19.27%) SC Cleared
3 543 (8.29%) Degree
4 362 (5.53%) Azure Certification
5 210 (3.21%) Computer Science Degree
6 183 (2.79%) CISSP
7 176 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
8 137 (2.09%) AWS Certification
9 131 (2.00%) DV Cleared
10 126 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
11 118 (1.80%) CISM
12 105 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
13 93 (1.42%) Master's Degree
14 65 (0.99%) TOGAF Certification
15 54 (0.82%) CCNP
16 53 (0.81%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.79%) PMP
18 51 (0.78%) ISTQB
19 36 (0.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 439 (6.70%) Data Quality
2 393 (6.00%) GDPR
3 347 (5.30%) QA
4 301 (4.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 234 (3.57%) NIST
6 135 (2.06%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.47%) NCSC
8 80 (1.22%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
10 59 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 55 (0.84%) SLA
12 46 (0.70%) PMO
13 42 (0.64%) HIPAA
14 36 (0.55%) SOC 2
14 36 (0.55%) WCAG
15 34 (0.52%) GRC
16 25 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 25 (0.38%) EU AI Act
17 23 (0.35%) ISO 20022
17 23 (0.35%) NIST 800
System Software
1 844 (12.89%) Active Directory
2 788 (12.03%) Docker
3 196 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (1.54%) Hyper-V
5 89 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
6 76 (1.16%) Virtual Desktop
7 73 (1.11%) vSphere
8 23 (0.35%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.17%) NFS
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.15%) Firmware
12 9 (0.14%) Postfix
13 8 (0.12%) Snort
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 6 (0.092%) DFS Replication
15 6 (0.092%) KVM
15 6 (0.092%) Lustre
15 6 (0.092%) Squid
Systems Management
1 1,021 (15.59%) Terraform
2 950 (14.51%) Kubernetes
3 353 (5.39%) Microsoft Intune
4 301 (4.60%) Ansible
5 172 (2.63%) 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
12 25 (0.38%) vRealize
13 23 (0.35%) Istio
14 22 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
15 21 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 20 (0.31%) Nessus
17 19 (0.29%) Kibana
17 19 (0.29%) Nmap
17 19 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,114 (32.28%) Microsoft
2 676 (10.32%) Databricks
3 346 (5.28%) Oracle
4 331 (5.05%) Google
5 278 (4.25%) ServiceNow
6 267 (4.08%) VMware
7 188 (2.87%) SAP
8 168 (2.57%) Cisco
9 160 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 157 (2.40%) Splunk
11 117 (1.79%) CyberArk
12 116 (1.77%) Salesforce
13 108 (1.65%) Palo Alto
14 97 (1.48%) Foundry
15 78 (1.19%) Okta
16 75 (1.15%) Red Hat
17 70 (1.07%) Citrix
18 65 (0.99%) BeyondTrust
18 65 (0.99%) IBM
19 63 (0.96%) Informatica