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 2 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,958 4,659 6,015
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.46% 15.05% 13.86%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.72% 39.84% 42.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,562 3,223 4,324
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £430 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -1.45% -3.14%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 39 53
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.80 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.13 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £62.50 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% +62.34% -36.57%
75th Percentile £76.31 £78.10 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.94 £100.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £70.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -17.86% +33.33% -12.50%

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 18,201 11,694 14,259
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.37% 37.76% 32.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,105 7,832 10,022
10th Percentile £331 £313 £303
25th Percentile £415 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.08% -3.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 610 295 359
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £14.10
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.31 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £27.76 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.09% +26.18% -37.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.43 £72.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £18.87 £20.97
% change year-on-year +102.70% -10.01% -18.48%

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 2 July 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 2 July 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 2 July 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 0 6,773 £525 - 3,281
London +1 3,545 £540 -1.82% 1,348
UK excluding London +3 3,454 £510 +2.00% 2,465
Work from Home -1 2,463 £525 +4.90% 1,631
North of England +7 996 £508 +5.73% 644
South East +2 847 £515 +3.00% 720
Midlands +3 593 £500 +1.01% 343
North West +8 520 £500 +0.81% 360
West Midlands +1 440 £500 -4.76% 195
South West +7 433 £538 +6.97% 285
Yorkshire +5 396 £510 +7.37% 195
Scotland +11 320 £525 +5.00% 122
East of England +5 179 £550 - 202
East Midlands +3 142 £500 +8.11% 148
Wales 0 111 £425 +5.59% 100
North East +3 93 £525 +5.00% 98
Northern Ireland +13 19 £538 +13.16% 94
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 389 (4.89%) SharePoint
2 254 (3.19%) Confluence
3 191 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 187 (2.35%) Apache Spark
5 125 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.46%) Apache
7 39 (0.49%) SAS
8 29 (0.36%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 17 (0.21%) OpenStack
10 17 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.13%) Camunda
13 10 (0.13%) Mendix
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.10%) Appian
15 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 112 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 74 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
3 70 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 28 (0.35%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.088%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.063%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.063%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.050%) Notion
12 4 (0.050%) Trello
13 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.013%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.013%) Houdini
14 1 (0.013%) InDesign
14 1 (0.013%) NUKE
14 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 106 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 81 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 9 (0.11%) Maximo
6 9 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.088%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.075%) Endur
9 6 (0.075%) Magento
9 6 (0.075%) Shopify
9 6 (0.075%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.063%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.063%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.050%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.050%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.050%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,789 (35.05%) AWS
2 1,628 (20.46%) Azure DevOps
3 1,328 (16.69%) GCP
4 1,013 (12.73%) Power Platform
5 988 (12.42%) Entra ID
6 787 (9.89%) Microsoft 365
7 726 (9.12%) GitHub
8 457 (5.74%) Azure Data Factory
9 442 (5.55%) GitHub Actions
10 376 (4.72%) Serverless
11 314 (3.95%) SaaS
12 306 (3.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 291 (3.66%) Azure AKS
14 267 (3.36%) Azure Monitor
15 263 (3.30%) Power Automate
16 248 (3.12%) PowerApps
17 246 (3.09%) Dynamics 365
17 246 (3.09%) PaaS
18 219 (2.75%) Snowflake
19 211 (2.65%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 473 (5.94%) Firewall
2 356 (4.47%) DNS
3 276 (3.47%) VPN
4 275 (3.46%) Network Security
5 221 (2.78%) WAN
6 180 (2.26%) DHCP
7 136 (1.71%) LAN
8 122 (1.53%) SD-WAN
9 112 (1.41%) TCP/IP
10 103 (1.29%) BGP
11 84 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
12 80 (1.01%) OSPF
13 75 (0.94%) VLAN
14 67 (0.84%) SSL
15 57 (0.72%) Kerberos
16 54 (0.68%) SAN
17 51 (0.64%) Wireless
18 50 (0.63%) IPsec
19 48 (0.60%) VXLAN
20 42 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 677 (8.51%) Power BI
2 459 (5.77%) SQL Server
3 375 (4.71%) Data Warehouse
4 355 (4.46%) Data Lake
5 286 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
6 218 (2.74%) Azure SQL Database
7 209 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 193 (2.43%) Metadata
9 143 (1.80%) Delta Lake
10 133 (1.67%) Relational Database
11 119 (1.50%) Big Data
12 107 (1.34%) MongoDB
13 90 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (0.96%) MySQL
14 76 (0.96%) Tableau
15 71 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
16 66 (0.83%) BigQuery
17 59 (0.74%) Oracle Database
18 54 (0.68%) Star Schema
19 51 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 614 (7.72%) JIRA
2 592 (7.44%) Git
3 414 (5.20%) Jenkins
4 315 (3.96%) GitLab
5 126 (1.58%) Selenium
6 79 (0.99%) Postman
7 77 (0.97%) JMeter
8 64 (0.80%) JUnit
9 61 (0.77%) Cucumber
10 57 (0.72%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 45 (0.57%) Visual Studio
13 44 (0.55%) MLflow
14 43 (0.54%) Cypress.io
15 41 (0.52%) WebDriver
16 32 (0.40%) Maven
17 31 (0.39%) Gatling
18 29 (0.36%) LoadRunner
19 27 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
20 25 (0.31%) NUnit
General
1 2,006 (25.21%) Social Skills
2 1,497 (18.81%) Finance
3 888 (11.16%) Public Sector
4 724 (9.10%) Analytical Skills
5 418 (5.25%) Banking
6 229 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 205 (2.58%) Legal
8 168 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 163 (2.05%) Retail
10 100 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
11 82 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 70 (0.88%) Investment Banking
13 69 (0.87%) Financial Institution
13 69 (0.87%) Front Office
13 69 (0.87%) Telecoms
14 67 (0.84%) Law
14 67 (0.84%) Marketing
15 66 (0.83%) Manufacturing
16 56 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
17 47 (0.59%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,419 (17.83%) Architect
2 1,027 (12.91%) Developer
3 956 (12.01%) Senior
4 702 (8.82%) Azure Engineer
5 617 (7.75%) Lead
6 601 (7.55%) Data Engineer
7 479 (6.02%) Analyst
8 406 (5.10%) DevOps Engineer
9 399 (5.01%) Solutions Architect
10 334 (4.20%) Consultant
11 295 (3.71%) Cloud Engineer
12 269 (3.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 228 (2.87%) Data Architect
14 221 (2.78%) Azure Architect
15 199 (2.50%) Platform Engineer
16 195 (2.45%) Technical Architect
17 191 (2.40%) Security Engineer
18 177 (2.22%) Business Analyst
19 174 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 173 (2.17%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 640 (8.04%) .NET
2 561 (7.05%) REST
3 342 (4.30%) React
4 290 (3.64%) Kafka
5 274 (3.44%) RESTful
6 265 (3.33%) PySpark
7 229 (2.88%) OAuth
8 220 (2.76%) Spring
9 218 (2.74%) Node.js
10 188 (2.36%) Spring Boot
11 184 (2.31%) AngularJS
12 170 (2.14%) JSON
13 149 (1.87%) SAML
14 144 (1.81%) HTML
14 144 (1.81%) LDAP
15 141 (1.77%) OpenID
16 128 (1.61%) .NET Framework
17 124 (1.56%) Middleware
18 121 (1.52%) SOAP
19 119 (1.50%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 841 (10.57%) Cloud Native
2 335 (4.21%) Onboarding
3 321 (4.03%) Product Ownership
4 259 (3.25%) Data Centre
5 230 (2.89%) Distributed Systems
6 229 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
7 213 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
8 182 (2.29%) AI Agents
9 170 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
10 164 (2.06%) Security Posture
11 149 (1.87%) Public Cloud
12 114 (1.43%) Data Structures
13 109 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 107 (1.34%) Management Information System
15 102 (1.28%) Replication
16 90 (1.13%) PKI
17 82 (1.03%) Enterprise Cloud
18 81 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
19 77 (0.97%) Low-Code
20 73 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 910 (11.44%) Windows
2 405 (5.09%) Linux
3 299 (3.76%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.33%) Windows 10
5 77 (0.97%) Unix
6 73 (0.92%) Apple iOS
7 70 (0.88%) Mac OS
7 70 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 69 (0.87%) Android
9 59 (0.74%) VMS
10 37 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 15 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.14%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
17 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.088%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.088%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,952 (37.09%) DevOps
2 2,472 (31.06%) CI/CD
3 1,947 (24.47%) Agile
4 1,191 (14.97%) AI
5 1,180 (14.83%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,145 (14.39%) Migration
7 1,106 (13.90%) Analytics
8 1,066 (13.40%) Problem-Solving
9 937 (11.77%) Stakeholder Management
10 889 (11.17%) Data Modelling
11 803 (10.09%) Continuous Improvement
12 753 (9.46%) Data Pipeline
13 744 (9.35%) Containerisation
14 738 (9.27%) Roadmaps
15 728 (9.15%) Microservices
16 722 (9.07%) Business Intelligence
17 697 (8.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 670 (8.42%) ETL
19 646 (8.12%) Test Automation
20 643 (8.08%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,858 (23.35%) Python
2 1,586 (19.93%) SQL
3 756 (9.50%) PowerShell
4 660 (8.29%) Java
5 632 (7.94%) C#
6 465 (5.84%) JavaScript
7 319 (4.01%) TypeScript
8 276 (3.47%) Bash
8 276 (3.47%) Bicep
9 93 (1.17%) T-SQL
10 91 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.01%) Go
12 76 (0.96%) Scala
13 49 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
14 44 (0.55%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.54%) R
16 34 (0.43%) PL/SQL
17 32 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 26 (0.33%) C++
19 23 (0.29%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,940 (24.38%) Security Cleared
2 1,615 (20.29%) SC Cleared
3 571 (7.18%) Degree
4 409 (5.14%) Azure Certification
5 250 (3.14%) CISSP
6 212 (2.66%) BPSS Clearance
7 211 (2.65%) DV Cleared
8 197 (2.48%) Cisco Certification
9 196 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
10 185 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
11 178 (2.24%) AWS Certification
12 127 (1.60%) CISM
13 95 (1.19%) CCNP
14 81 (1.02%) PMP
15 78 (0.98%) PMI Certification
16 75 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 63 (0.79%) ISTQB
17 63 (0.79%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
19 51 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 539 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 414 (5.20%) QA
3 343 (4.31%) GDPR
4 283 (3.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 271 (3.41%) NIST
6 175 (2.20%) Accessibility
7 117 (1.47%) NCSC
8 98 (1.23%) SLA
9 78 (0.98%) PCI DSS
10 74 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 66 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 62 (0.78%) WCAG
13 61 (0.77%) GRC
14 44 (0.55%) PMO
15 38 (0.48%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 27 (0.34%) SOC 2
18 24 (0.30%) NIST 800
19 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
20 19 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 943 (11.85%) Active Directory
2 828 (10.40%) Docker
3 223 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (1.76%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.72%) Virtual Machines
6 114 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.87%) vSphere
8 51 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.41%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.38%) Firmware
11 25 (0.31%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) IAG
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 6 (0.075%) Ceph
15 6 (0.075%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.063%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.063%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,270 (15.96%) Terraform
2 1,149 (14.44%) Kubernetes
3 421 (5.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 373 (4.69%) Ansible
5 212 (2.66%) Grafana
6 184 (2.31%) Prometheus
7 168 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
8 104 (1.31%) SCCM
9 69 (0.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 46 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
11 41 (0.52%) Argo
11 41 (0.52%) Progress Chef
12 40 (0.50%) FortiGate
13 39 (0.49%) Puppet
14 31 (0.39%) Istio
15 23 (0.29%) HP ALM
16 21 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.20%) Packer
19 13 (0.16%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,535 (31.85%) Microsoft
2 744 (9.35%) Databricks
3 364 (4.57%) ServiceNow
4 305 (3.83%) Google
5 304 (3.82%) VMware
6 291 (3.66%) Oracle
7 222 (2.79%) SAP
8 216 (2.71%) Cisco
9 196 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 155 (1.95%) Splunk
11 150 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 143 (1.80%) Palo Alto
13 128 (1.61%) CyberArk
14 126 (1.58%) Foundry
15 107 (1.34%) Okta
16 94 (1.18%) Dynatrace
17 88 (1.11%) Informatica
18 84 (1.06%) Zscaler
19 75 (0.94%) Citrix
20 70 (0.88%) Fortinet