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 9 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,250 5,071 5,521
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.14% 15.29% 14.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.72% 40.03% 42.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,769 3,462 3,732
10th Percentile £363 £350 £338
25th Percentile £444 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.03% -1.24% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £717 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 43 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.31 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £42.35 £32.77 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.23% -6.37% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.00 £65.04 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.50 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £19.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +107.89% -58.86% -

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 18,872 12,667 13,115
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.63% 38.19% 34.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,527 8,448 8,687
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £715 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 633 288 184
10th Percentile £15.27 £15.43 £16.30
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.87 £22.38
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -28.14% +6.06%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.84 £65.04
90th Percentile £78.95 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.00 £33.93
% change year-on-year +57.89% -44.00% +46.00%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 7,025 £530 +0.95% 7,304
London 0 3,714 £550 - 3,832
UK excluding London 0 3,449 £510 +2.00% 3,865
Work from Home -2 2,517 £525 +5.00% 3,435
North of England +5 1,003 £500 +5.26% 1,106
South East +1 897 £525 +5.00% 869
Midlands +1 623 £493 -5.38% 551
North West +4 486 £500 +5.26% 570
West Midlands +2 483 £479 -12.91% 357
Yorkshire +4 429 £500 +1.73% 397
South West +3 400 £550 +7.53% 412
Scotland -1 279 £500 - 378
East of England -1 187 £503 +0.50% 304
East Midlands -1 136 £500 +8.11% 193
North East -1 97 £506 +1.25% 146
Wales -1 83 £450 - 142
Northern Ireland +14 12 £650 - 128
Channel Islands -9 3 £500 -21.88% 2

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
1 466 (5.65%) SharePoint
2 268 (3.25%) Confluence
3 195 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 185 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 157 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.43%) Apache
7 36 (0.44%) SAS
8 31 (0.38%) IIS
9 26 (0.32%) CMS
10 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.19%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.097%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.085%) Mendix
15 7 (0.085%) Traefik
16 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 125 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 61 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
4 47 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (0.56%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.50%) Chatbot
7 12 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.097%) Trello
9 7 (0.085%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.085%) Revit
10 5 (0.061%) Notion
10 5 (0.061%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.036%) 1Password
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) Mingle
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Windchill
13 1 (0.012%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 132 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 10 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.097%) Cloudability
9 8 (0.097%) Magento
10 7 (0.085%) Shopify
10 7 (0.085%) Teamcenter
11 6 (0.073%) FLEXCUBE
11 6 (0.073%) Maximo
11 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
11 6 (0.073%) Temenos T24
12 5 (0.061%) Dynamics NAV
13 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 2,941 (35.65%) AWS
2 1,745 (21.15%) Azure DevOps
3 1,467 (17.78%) GCP
4 1,145 (13.88%) Entra ID
5 1,069 (12.96%) Power Platform
6 892 (10.81%) Microsoft 365
7 879 (10.65%) GitHub
8 502 (6.08%) GitHub Actions
9 461 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 377 (4.57%) Serverless
11 360 (4.36%) SaaS
12 334 (4.05%) Azure Monitor
13 306 (3.71%) Dynamics 365
14 297 (3.60%) Power Automate
15 294 (3.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 292 (3.54%) Snowflake
17 288 (3.49%) Azure AKS
18 284 (3.44%) PowerApps
19 256 (3.10%) Azure AI
20 248 (3.01%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 524 (6.35%) Firewall
2 425 (5.15%) DNS
3 322 (3.90%) VPN
4 296 (3.59%) Network Security
5 233 (2.82%) DHCP
6 178 (2.16%) WAN
7 170 (2.06%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.32%) BGP
9 102 (1.24%) LAN
10 98 (1.19%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.07%) OSPF
12 83 (1.01%) VLAN
13 77 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
14 68 (0.82%) SSL
15 66 (0.80%) Wireless
16 61 (0.74%) SAN
17 47 (0.57%) HTTP
18 45 (0.55%) IPsec
19 40 (0.48%) Internet
20 39 (0.47%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 690 (8.36%) Power BI
2 473 (5.73%) SQL Server
3 403 (4.88%) Data Warehouse
4 386 (4.68%) Data Lake
5 287 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
6 254 (3.08%) Metadata
7 212 (2.57%) NoSQL
8 206 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
9 147 (1.78%) Relational Database
10 127 (1.54%) Delta Lake
11 116 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 110 (1.33%) MySQL
13 106 (1.28%) MongoDB
14 88 (1.07%) Big Data
15 72 (0.87%) Redis
16 69 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
17 68 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
18 64 (0.78%) BigQuery
19 62 (0.75%) Oracle Database
20 56 (0.68%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 761 (9.22%) Git
2 600 (7.27%) JIRA
3 484 (5.87%) Jenkins
4 374 (4.53%) GitLab
5 140 (1.70%) Selenium
6 90 (1.09%) Postman
7 67 (0.81%) Cucumber
8 66 (0.80%) Cypress.io
9 64 (0.78%) JUnit
10 61 (0.74%) Claude Code
11 58 (0.70%) JMeter
12 54 (0.65%) Maven
13 52 (0.63%) Gradle
13 52 (0.63%) Visual Studio
14 51 (0.62%) SonarQube
15 46 (0.56%) REST Assured
16 36 (0.44%) WebDriver
17 34 (0.41%) Bitbucket
18 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
18 33 (0.40%) MLflow
General
1 2,304 (27.93%) Social Skills
2 1,606 (19.47%) Finance
3 972 (11.78%) Public Sector
4 816 (9.89%) Analytical Skills
5 507 (6.15%) Banking
6 217 (2.63%) Retail
7 216 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 206 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
9 171 (2.07%) Legal
10 115 (1.39%) Manufacturing
11 113 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
12 98 (1.19%) Investment Banking
12 98 (1.19%) Marketing
13 89 (1.08%) Aerospace
13 89 (1.08%) Telecoms
14 82 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
15 76 (0.92%) Military
16 65 (0.79%) Law
17 63 (0.76%) Local Government
18 60 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,582 (19.18%) Architect
2 1,054 (12.78%) Senior
3 1,018 (12.34%) Developer
4 715 (8.67%) Azure Engineer
5 695 (8.42%) Lead
6 587 (7.12%) Data Engineer
7 495 (6.00%) Solutions Architect
8 455 (5.52%) DevOps Engineer
9 449 (5.44%) Analyst
10 383 (4.64%) Cloud Engineer
11 323 (3.92%) Consultant
12 316 (3.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 266 (3.22%) Data Architect
14 227 (2.75%) Platform Engineer
15 215 (2.61%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 210 (2.55%) Azure Architect
17 199 (2.41%) Technical Architect
18 198 (2.40%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 193 (2.34%) Security Engineer
20 184 (2.23%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,413 (17.13%) Terraform
2 777 (9.42%) REST
3 637 (7.72%) .NET
4 405 (4.91%) Kafka
5 321 (3.89%) React
6 300 (3.64%) RESTful
7 284 (3.44%) OAuth
8 261 (3.16%) PySpark
9 240 (2.91%) JSON
10 187 (2.27%) Spring
11 180 (2.18%) Spring Boot
12 175 (2.12%) OAuth2
12 175 (2.12%) OpenID
13 168 (2.04%) HTML
14 156 (1.89%) AngularJS
14 156 (1.89%) SAML
15 155 (1.88%) Middleware
16 150 (1.82%) Node.js
17 149 (1.81%) SOAP
18 141 (1.71%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 926 (11.22%) Cloud Native
2 428 (5.19%) Onboarding
3 403 (4.88%) Product Ownership
4 335 (4.06%) Enterprise Software
5 329 (3.99%) AI Agents
6 288 (3.49%) Hybrid Cloud
7 283 (3.43%) Distributed Systems
8 259 (3.14%) Data Centre
9 225 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
10 188 (2.28%) Management Information System
11 182 (2.21%) Security Posture
12 151 (1.83%) Data Structures
13 143 (1.73%) Public Cloud
14 130 (1.58%) PKI
15 114 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
16 111 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
17 99 (1.20%) Replication
18 95 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
19 90 (1.09%) CMDB
19 90 (1.09%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 990 (12.00%) Windows
2 536 (6.50%) Linux
3 390 (4.73%) Windows Server
4 155 (1.88%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.05%) Unix
6 84 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 83 (1.01%) Android
8 78 (0.95%) Apple iOS
9 57 (0.69%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.68%) Ubuntu
11 51 (0.62%) VMS
12 26 (0.32%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 6 (0.073%) AIX
17 6 (0.073%) Debian
18 5 (0.061%) Data ONTAP
19 4 (0.048%) Alpine Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,058 (37.07%) DevOps
2 2,697 (32.69%) CI/CD
3 2,071 (25.10%) Agile
4 1,546 (18.74%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,441 (17.47%) AI
6 1,430 (17.33%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,241 (15.04%) Migration
8 1,142 (13.84%) Problem-Solving
9 1,118 (13.55%) Analytics
10 981 (11.89%) Continuous Improvement
11 894 (10.84%) Data Modelling
12 875 (10.61%) Roadmaps
13 783 (9.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 775 (9.39%) Containerisation
15 772 (9.36%) Test Automation
16 763 (9.25%) Technical Leadership
17 752 (9.12%) Business Intelligence
18 733 (8.88%) Microservices
19 732 (8.87%) Data Pipeline
20 680 (8.24%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,932 (23.42%) Python
2 1,581 (19.16%) SQL
3 934 (11.32%) PowerShell
4 682 (8.27%) Java
5 620 (7.52%) C#
6 527 (6.39%) JavaScript
7 432 (5.24%) Bash
8 377 (4.57%) Bicep
9 320 (3.88%) TypeScript
10 103 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.10%) T-SQL
12 76 (0.92%) Go
13 67 (0.81%) Scala
14 64 (0.78%) Kusto Query Language
15 62 (0.75%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.52%) PL/SQL
17 36 (0.44%) R
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.39%) Groovy
20 31 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,158 (26.16%) Security Cleared
2 1,731 (20.98%) SC Cleared
3 566 (6.86%) Degree
4 472 (5.72%) Azure Certification
5 320 (3.88%) DV Cleared
6 276 (3.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 269 (3.26%) CISSP
8 251 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 220 (2.67%) AWS Certification
10 191 (2.32%) Cisco Certification
11 190 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
12 140 (1.70%) CISM
13 94 (1.14%) PMI Certification
14 91 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 90 (1.09%) PMP
16 81 (0.98%) CCNP
17 66 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 64 (0.78%) CCSP
18 64 (0.78%) Master's Degree
19 55 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 616 (7.47%) Data Quality
2 474 (5.75%) QA
3 303 (3.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 285 (3.45%) GDPR
5 283 (3.43%) NIST
6 210 (2.55%) Accessibility
7 121 (1.47%) NCSC
8 108 (1.31%) SLA
9 82 (0.99%) WCAG
10 80 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
10 80 (0.97%) GRC
11 74 (0.90%) PCI DSS
12 51 (0.62%) PMO
13 48 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 47 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 35 (0.42%) SOC 2
16 27 (0.33%) ISO 20022
17 24 (0.29%) HIPAA
18 22 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,034 (12.53%) Active Directory
2 930 (11.27%) Docker
3 247 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.81%) Virtual Machines
5 144 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
6 127 (1.54%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.92%) vSphere
8 49 (0.59%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.23%) Firmware
11 16 (0.19%) IAG
12 13 (0.16%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 7 (0.085%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.085%) Ceph
17 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.061%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,310 (15.88%) Kubernetes
2 464 (5.62%) Ansible
3 451 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
4 273 (3.31%) Grafana
5 207 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 150 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
7 149 (1.81%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Argo
9 61 (0.74%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.41%) SCOM
13 33 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
14 31 (0.38%) Istio
15 24 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 21 (0.25%) CASB
17 19 (0.23%) QRadar
17 19 (0.23%) vCenter Server
18 16 (0.19%) Packer
19 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,066 (37.16%) Microsoft
2 865 (10.48%) Databricks
3 411 (4.98%) Google
4 401 (4.86%) ServiceNow
5 357 (4.33%) Oracle
6 356 (4.32%) VMware
7 235 (2.85%) Cisco
8 232 (2.81%) Splunk
9 228 (2.76%) OpenAI
10 223 (2.70%) SAP
11 191 (2.32%) Salesforce
12 156 (1.89%) Palo Alto
13 146 (1.77%) CyberArk
14 144 (1.75%) Foundry
15 141 (1.71%) Dynatrace
16 91 (1.10%) Zscaler
17 90 (1.09%) IBM
18 83 (1.01%) Informatica
19 81 (0.98%) Fortinet
20 80 (0.97%) Okta