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 26 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,485 4,424 5,804
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.42% 15.47% 13.61%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.46% 41.03% 41.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,275 3,114 4,203
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £638
90th Percentile £715 £730 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 154 32 48
10th Percentile £19.25 £23.92 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.06 £26.68 £22.53
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -43.41%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.49 £60.36
90th Percentile £89.40 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% -25.00% -17.05%

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 17,224 10,782 13,871
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.48% 37.70% 32.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,578 7,386 9,881
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.17% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £619 £634
90th Percentile £705 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.16% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 538 241 345
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.09 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.37 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £35.96 £27.76 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +29.52% +29.90% -40.64%
75th Percentile £66.25 £47.50 £40.00
90th Percentile £81.08 £72.50 £66.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £20.24 £17.72
% change year-on-year +85.32% +14.19% -33.08%

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 26 May 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 26 May 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 26 May 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 6,335 £525 - 2,744
London +1 3,374 £540 -1.82% 1,082
UK excluding London +2 3,156 £500 - 2,057
Work from Home -1 2,284 £525 +2.44% 1,340
North of England +4 901 £500 +5.26% 525
South East +3 827 £503 +0.50% 617
Midlands -3 502 £493 -1.01% 270
North West +3 457 £500 +5.26% 307
South West +5 398 £528 +0.48% 280
Yorkshire +8 375 £500 +11.11% 130
West Midlands 0 365 £498 -5.24% 171
Scotland +11 308 £525 +5.85% 113
East of England +4 149 £550 -5.17% 167
East Midlands +4 127 £463 - 99
Wales -1 97 £400 - 73
North East +3 80 £525 +5.00% 89
Northern Ireland +13 18 £531 +11.84% 44
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 +51.26%

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
1 355 (4.74%) SharePoint
2 212 (2.83%) Confluence
3 198 (2.65%) Apache Spark
4 189 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
5 108 (1.44%) Apache
6 105 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.36%) IIS
8 26 (0.35%) SAS
9 17 (0.23%) CMS
10 15 (0.20%) Mendix
10 15 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 15 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.16%) Appian
12 12 (0.16%) ArcGIS
12 12 (0.16%) Camunda
12 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
15 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
Applications
1 100 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 86 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
3 63 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 21 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.094%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.067%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.067%) AutoCAD
8 5 (0.067%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.067%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.067%) Trello
9 4 (0.053%) Acrobat
10 3 (0.040%) Notion
10 3 (0.040%) Revit
10 3 (0.040%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.013%) InDesign
11 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.013%) Sketch
11 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 95 (1.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.12%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.094%) NEC Housing
8 6 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.080%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.067%) Shopify
9 5 (0.067%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.053%) Dynamics GP
10 4 (0.053%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.053%) Magento
10 4 (0.053%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.053%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 2,535 (33.87%) AWS
2 1,523 (20.35%) Azure DevOps
3 1,295 (17.30%) GCP
4 961 (12.84%) Power Platform
5 904 (12.08%) Entra ID
6 777 (10.38%) Microsoft 365
7 698 (9.33%) GitHub
8 508 (6.79%) Azure Data Factory
9 413 (5.52%) GitHub Actions
10 381 (5.09%) Serverless
11 337 (4.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 293 (3.91%) SaaS
13 276 (3.69%) Azure AKS
14 257 (3.43%) Power Automate
15 241 (3.22%) Azure Monitor
15 241 (3.22%) Dynamics 365
16 234 (3.13%) PaaS
17 223 (2.98%) PowerApps
18 208 (2.78%) Azure Functions
19 194 (2.59%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 439 (5.87%) Firewall
2 315 (4.21%) DNS
3 255 (3.41%) VPN
4 252 (3.37%) Network Security
5 207 (2.77%) WAN
6 167 (2.23%) DHCP
7 137 (1.83%) LAN
8 115 (1.54%) SD-WAN
9 92 (1.23%) TCP/IP
10 88 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 79 (1.06%) BGP
12 74 (0.99%) VLAN
13 69 (0.92%) Kerberos
14 67 (0.90%) OSPF
15 50 (0.67%) SAN
16 48 (0.64%) SSL
17 45 (0.60%) VXLAN
18 42 (0.56%) Wireless
19 38 (0.51%) HTTP
19 38 (0.51%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 635 (8.48%) Power BI
2 437 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 373 (4.98%) Data Lake
4 364 (4.86%) Data Warehouse
5 251 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 241 (3.22%) Azure SQL Database
7 197 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 178 (2.38%) Metadata
9 154 (2.06%) Delta Lake
10 119 (1.59%) Big Data
11 114 (1.52%) Relational Database
12 96 (1.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 95 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 75 (1.00%) Tableau
15 73 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
16 67 (0.90%) Oracle Database
17 66 (0.88%) BigQuery
17 66 (0.88%) MySQL
18 54 (0.72%) Star Schema
19 50 (0.67%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 539 (7.20%) Git
2 528 (7.05%) JIRA
3 385 (5.14%) Jenkins
4 316 (4.22%) GitLab
5 116 (1.55%) Selenium
6 81 (1.08%) Postman
7 70 (0.94%) JMeter
8 61 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 57 (0.76%) JUnit
10 53 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 52 (0.69%) MLflow
12 46 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 38 (0.51%) Cypress.io
13 38 (0.51%) Visual Studio
14 33 (0.44%) WebDriver
15 32 (0.43%) Artifactory
15 32 (0.43%) Gatling
16 30 (0.40%) Maven
17 26 (0.35%) NUnit
18 25 (0.33%) ERwin
General
1 1,884 (25.17%) Social Skills
2 1,341 (17.92%) Finance
3 814 (10.88%) Public Sector
4 658 (8.79%) Analytical Skills
5 386 (5.16%) Banking
6 202 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 195 (2.61%) Legal
8 113 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 109 (1.46%) Retail
10 92 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 78 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
12 73 (0.98%) Financial Institution
13 69 (0.92%) Investment Banking
13 69 (0.92%) Marketing
14 62 (0.83%) Front Office
15 61 (0.81%) Law
16 60 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
17 57 (0.76%) Telecoms
18 46 (0.61%) Military
19 41 (0.55%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,299 (17.35%) Architect
2 948 (12.67%) Developer
3 878 (11.73%) Senior
4 676 (9.03%) Azure Engineer
5 601 (8.03%) Data Engineer
6 562 (7.51%) Lead
7 464 (6.20%) Analyst
8 410 (5.48%) DevOps Engineer
9 341 (4.56%) Solutions Architect
10 310 (4.14%) Consultant
11 248 (3.31%) Cloud Engineer
11 248 (3.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 209 (2.79%) Azure Architect
13 201 (2.69%) Data Architect
14 196 (2.62%) Security Engineer
15 174 (2.32%) Platform Engineer
16 172 (2.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 172 (2.30%) Technical Architect
17 165 (2.20%) Project Manager
18 158 (2.11%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 605 (8.08%) .NET
2 510 (6.81%) REST
3 338 (4.52%) React
4 271 (3.62%) Kafka
4 271 (3.62%) PySpark
5 238 (3.18%) RESTful
6 215 (2.87%) OAuth
7 213 (2.85%) Node.js
8 191 (2.55%) Spring
9 180 (2.40%) AngularJS
10 176 (2.35%) LDAP
11 162 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 158 (2.11%) JSON
13 140 (1.87%) HTML
14 135 (1.80%) OpenID
14 135 (1.80%) SOAP
15 134 (1.79%) Middleware
16 131 (1.75%) SAML
17 117 (1.56%) CSS
18 110 (1.47%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 729 (9.74%) Cloud Native
2 305 (4.07%) Onboarding
3 272 (3.63%) Product Ownership
4 230 (3.07%) Data Centre
5 211 (2.82%) Hybrid Cloud
6 181 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
7 177 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
8 162 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
8 162 (2.16%) Security Posture
9 155 (2.07%) Public Cloud
10 148 (1.98%) AI Agents
11 100 (1.34%) Data Structures
12 93 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
13 90 (1.20%) Replication
14 80 (1.07%) Low-Code
15 79 (1.06%) Management Information System
16 76 (1.02%) PKI
17 67 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
18 64 (0.86%) NHS
19 60 (0.80%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 830 (11.09%) Windows
2 382 (5.10%) Linux
3 250 (3.34%) Windows Server
4 126 (1.68%) Windows 10
5 74 (0.99%) Unix
6 72 (0.96%) Mac OS
7 71 (0.95%) Apple iOS
8 68 (0.91%) VMS
9 61 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 54 (0.72%) Android
11 33 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
12 25 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.15%) CentOS
15 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.12%) Debian
17 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.094%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.094%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,790 (37.27%) DevOps
2 2,326 (31.08%) CI/CD
3 1,731 (23.13%) Agile
4 1,080 (14.43%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,053 (14.07%) Analytics
6 1,044 (13.95%) Problem-Solving
7 1,042 (13.92%) AI
8 1,038 (13.87%) Migration
9 853 (11.40%) Data Modelling
10 751 (10.03%) Stakeholder Management
11 710 (9.49%) Data Pipeline
12 706 (9.43%) Continuous Improvement
13 691 (9.23%) Business Intelligence
14 679 (9.07%) ETL
15 673 (8.99%) Containerisation
16 654 (8.74%) Microservices
17 635 (8.48%) Roadmaps
18 607 (8.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 590 (7.88%) Data Engineering
20 574 (7.67%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,753 (23.42%) Python
2 1,558 (20.81%) SQL
3 738 (9.86%) PowerShell
4 615 (8.22%) C#
5 598 (7.99%) Java
6 446 (5.96%) JavaScript
7 283 (3.78%) TypeScript
8 250 (3.34%) Bicep
9 248 (3.31%) Bash
10 92 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 92 (1.23%) Scala
11 88 (1.18%) T-SQL
12 77 (1.03%) Go
13 54 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
14 50 (0.67%) Shell Script
15 45 (0.60%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.55%) R
17 31 (0.41%) C++
18 24 (0.32%) Kotlin
19 16 (0.21%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,831 (24.46%) Security Cleared
2 1,552 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 515 (6.88%) Degree
4 380 (5.08%) Azure Certification
5 217 (2.90%) CISSP
6 186 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
7 177 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
8 174 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
9 166 (2.22%) DV Cleared
10 154 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
11 138 (1.84%) AWS Certification
12 124 (1.66%) CISM
13 83 (1.11%) CCNP
14 74 (0.99%) PMP
15 70 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 69 (0.92%) PMI Certification
17 61 (0.81%) Master's Degree
18 59 (0.79%) TOGAF Certification
19 56 (0.75%) ISTQB
20 47 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 520 (6.95%) Data Quality
2 395 (5.28%) QA
3 348 (4.65%) GDPR
4 279 (3.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 261 (3.49%) NIST
6 140 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 106 (1.42%) NCSC
8 88 (1.18%) SLA
9 83 (1.11%) PCI DSS
10 68 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 64 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 52 (0.69%) GRC
13 51 (0.68%) PMO
14 47 (0.63%) WCAG
15 37 (0.49%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.33%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 18 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 17 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 915 (12.22%) Active Directory
2 768 (10.26%) Docker
3 210 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 125 (1.67%) Virtual Desktop
5 118 (1.58%) Hyper-V
6 109 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
7 67 (0.90%) vSphere
8 41 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.40%) Firmware
10 25 (0.33%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.28%) NFS
12 17 (0.23%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.080%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.080%) Ceph
15 6 (0.080%) HDFS
15 6 (0.080%) KVM
15 6 (0.080%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.080%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,173 (15.67%) Terraform
2 1,052 (14.05%) Kubernetes
3 379 (5.06%) Microsoft Intune
4 353 (4.72%) Ansible
5 208 (2.78%) Grafana
6 180 (2.40%) Prometheus
7 158 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
8 109 (1.46%) SCCM
9 73 (0.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.52%) Argo
11 37 (0.49%) Puppet
12 36 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 34 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
14 32 (0.43%) Istio
15 28 (0.37%) Progress Chef
16 22 (0.29%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.27%) HAProxy
18 18 (0.24%) vCenter Server
19 17 (0.23%) linkerd
20 14 (0.19%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,378 (31.77%) Microsoft
2 758 (10.13%) Databricks
3 314 (4.20%) ServiceNow
4 290 (3.87%) VMware
5 288 (3.85%) Google
6 287 (3.83%) Oracle
7 216 (2.89%) SAP
8 202 (2.70%) Cisco
9 188 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 166 (2.22%) Splunk
11 141 (1.88%) CyberArk
12 132 (1.76%) Palo Alto
13 115 (1.54%) Salesforce
14 108 (1.44%) Foundry
15 98 (1.31%) Okta
16 78 (1.04%) Dynatrace
17 74 (0.99%) Citrix
18 72 (0.96%) Informatica
19 67 (0.90%) BeyondTrust
19 67 (0.90%) Zscaler