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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,298 4,537 5,875
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.43% 15.47% 13.50%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.01% 41.11% 41.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,201 3,229 4,221
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £638
90th Percentile £714 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 130 41 52
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £50.31 £24.18 £22.24
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -39.13%
75th Percentile £68.75 £72.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £29.25 £50.00
% change year-on-year +96.58% -41.50% -16.53%

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 16,969 11,037 14,066
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.87% 37.63% 32.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,518 7,652 9,987
10th Percentile £320 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £631
90th Percentile £701 £737 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 491 249 348
10th Percentile £15.62 £15.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.69 £27.35 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.07% +30.24% -40.00%
75th Percentile £67.67 £48.00 £35.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £21.46 £17.71
% change year-on-year +121.34% +21.21% -28.09%

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 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 2 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 2 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 0 6,195 £525 - 2,995
London +1 3,320 £537 -2.36% 1,099
UK excluding London +2 3,034 £500 - 2,335
Work from Home -1 2,199 £525 +0.86% 1,334
North of England +4 839 £500 +5.26% 600
South East +2 810 £500 -4.76% 694
Midlands -1 509 £490 -2.00% 327
North West +3 447 £500 - 308
South West +6 383 £525 - 288
West Midlands 0 370 £500 -4.76% 184
Yorkshire +2 342 £500 +17.65% 198
Scotland +7 294 £532 +12.00% 127
East of England +4 151 £550 -6.78% 211
East Midlands +1 129 £450 -3.23% 142
Wales -2 78 £400 -5.88% 84
North East -1 59 £525 +3.70% 95
Northern Ireland +11 14 £475 - 36
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
1 332 (4.55%) SharePoint
2 208 (2.85%) Confluence
3 197 (2.70%) Apache Spark
4 196 (2.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 105 (1.44%) Apache
6 94 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.33%) SAS
8 22 (0.30%) IIS
9 17 (0.23%) CMS
10 16 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.21%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.21%) Mendix
12 13 (0.18%) Appian
12 13 (0.18%) Camunda
12 13 (0.18%) HCL Notes
13 12 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
14 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 7 (0.096%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.096%) nginx
Applications
1 114 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 23 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.096%) Trello
8 5 (0.069%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.069%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.055%) AutoCAD
9 4 (0.055%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.041%) Revit
10 3 (0.041%) Weka
11 2 (0.027%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
12 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 102 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.15%) Maximo
3 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
3 11 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
5 7 (0.096%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.096%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.096%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.069%) Cloudability
7 5 (0.069%) NetSuite
8 4 (0.055%) Dynamics NAV
8 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
8 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
8 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.055%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.055%) Shopify
8 4 (0.055%) Unit4 Business World
9 3 (0.041%) Oracle 11i
Cloud Services
1 2,484 (34.04%) AWS
2 1,503 (20.59%) Azure DevOps
3 1,327 (18.18%) GCP
4 960 (13.15%) Power Platform
5 863 (11.83%) Entra ID
6 758 (10.39%) Microsoft 365
7 697 (9.55%) GitHub
8 508 (6.96%) Azure Data Factory
9 412 (5.65%) GitHub Actions
10 398 (5.45%) Serverless
11 343 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 287 (3.93%) SaaS
13 283 (3.88%) Azure AKS
14 265 (3.63%) Dynamics 365
15 257 (3.52%) Power Automate
16 246 (3.37%) Azure Monitor
17 237 (3.25%) PaaS
18 219 (3.00%) PowerApps
19 218 (2.99%) Azure Functions
20 195 (2.67%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 449 (6.15%) Firewall
2 304 (4.17%) DNS
3 257 (3.52%) VPN
4 243 (3.33%) Network Security
5 192 (2.63%) WAN
6 161 (2.21%) DHCP
7 131 (1.80%) LAN
8 100 (1.37%) SD-WAN
9 95 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
10 87 (1.19%) TCP/IP
11 73 (1.00%) VLAN
12 71 (0.97%) Kerberos
13 63 (0.86%) BGP
14 54 (0.74%) OSPF
15 44 (0.60%) SAN
16 41 (0.56%) SSL
17 40 (0.55%) HTTP
17 40 (0.55%) Wireless
18 34 (0.47%) Internet
18 34 (0.47%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 646 (8.85%) Power BI
2 426 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 373 (5.11%) Data Lake
4 369 (5.06%) Data Warehouse
5 252 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
6 250 (3.43%) Azure SQL Database
7 195 (2.67%) NoSQL
8 187 (2.56%) Metadata
9 152 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 120 (1.64%) Big Data
11 114 (1.56%) Relational Database
12 94 (1.29%) MongoDB
12 94 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 79 (1.08%) Tableau
14 71 (0.97%) Oracle Database
15 67 (0.92%) MySQL
16 66 (0.90%) Snowflake Schema
17 64 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 56 (0.77%) Star Schema
19 49 (0.67%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 539 (7.39%) Git
2 512 (7.02%) JIRA
3 387 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 292 (4.00%) GitLab
5 123 (1.69%) Selenium
6 82 (1.12%) Postman
7 68 (0.93%) Cucumber
8 67 (0.92%) JMeter
9 66 (0.90%) JUnit
10 55 (0.75%) MLflow
11 52 (0.71%) REST Assured
12 45 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 42 (0.58%) Cypress.io
14 38 (0.52%) Artifactory
15 34 (0.47%) WebDriver
16 33 (0.45%) Visual Studio
17 31 (0.42%) Gatling
18 28 (0.38%) TestRail
19 26 (0.36%) ERwin
20 25 (0.34%) Maven
General
1 1,920 (26.31%) Social Skills
2 1,292 (17.70%) Finance
3 825 (11.30%) Public Sector
4 673 (9.22%) Analytical Skills
5 374 (5.12%) Banking
6 221 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
7 190 (2.60%) Legal
8 102 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 89 (1.22%) Retail
10 85 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
11 77 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
11 77 (1.06%) Marketing
12 72 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
13 71 (0.97%) Financial Institution
14 69 (0.95%) Telecoms
15 66 (0.90%) Law
16 63 (0.86%) Investment Banking
17 61 (0.84%) Front Office
18 43 (0.59%) Local Government
19 42 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,231 (16.87%) Architect
2 967 (13.25%) Developer
3 861 (11.80%) Senior
4 661 (9.06%) Azure Engineer
5 594 (8.14%) Data Engineer
6 556 (7.62%) Lead
7 452 (6.19%) Analyst
8 400 (5.48%) DevOps Engineer
9 312 (4.28%) Solutions Architect
10 298 (4.08%) Consultant
11 226 (3.10%) Cloud Engineer
12 222 (3.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 202 (2.77%) Azure Architect
14 183 (2.51%) Security Engineer
15 172 (2.36%) Data Architect
15 172 (2.36%) Platform Engineer
16 168 (2.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 161 (2.21%) Technical Architect
18 157 (2.15%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 151 (2.07%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 578 (7.92%) .NET
2 486 (6.66%) REST
3 330 (4.52%) React
4 276 (3.78%) Kafka
5 263 (3.60%) PySpark
6 237 (3.25%) Node.js
7 235 (3.22%) RESTful
8 216 (2.96%) Spring
9 210 (2.88%) OAuth
10 182 (2.49%) AngularJS
11 178 (2.44%) Spring Boot
12 169 (2.32%) LDAP
13 148 (2.03%) JSON
14 147 (2.01%) HTML
15 133 (1.82%) OpenID
16 131 (1.80%) SAML
17 129 (1.77%) Middleware
17 129 (1.77%) SOAP
18 124 (1.70%) CSS
19 110 (1.51%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 706 (9.67%) Cloud Native
2 283 (3.88%) Onboarding
3 274 (3.75%) Product Ownership
4 195 (2.67%) Data Centre
4 195 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
5 180 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
6 167 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
7 166 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
8 159 (2.18%) Security Posture
9 157 (2.15%) Public Cloud
10 134 (1.84%) AI Agents
11 95 (1.30%) Data Structures
12 90 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
13 88 (1.21%) Replication
14 85 (1.16%) Management Information System
15 83 (1.14%) Low-Code
16 67 (0.92%) PKI
17 64 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
18 58 (0.79%) NHS
19 54 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 789 (10.81%) Windows
2 369 (5.06%) Linux
3 240 (3.29%) Windows Server
4 117 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 72 (0.99%) Unix
6 71 (0.97%) VMS
7 63 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 61 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 54 (0.74%) Apple iOS
10 43 (0.59%) Android
11 29 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.26%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.11%) AIX
16 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.096%) CentOS
17 7 (0.096%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.082%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,735 (37.48%) DevOps
2 2,261 (30.98%) CI/CD
3 1,721 (23.58%) Agile
4 1,076 (14.74%) Problem-Solving
5 1,070 (14.66%) Analytics
6 1,028 (14.09%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,006 (13.78%) AI
8 990 (13.57%) Migration
9 823 (11.28%) Data Modelling
10 723 (9.91%) Stakeholder Management
11 708 (9.70%) Business Intelligence
12 697 (9.55%) Containerisation
13 695 (9.52%) Continuous Improvement
14 694 (9.51%) Data Pipeline
15 664 (9.10%) Microservices
16 652 (8.93%) ETL
17 604 (8.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 592 (8.11%) Roadmaps
19 584 (8.00%) Data Engineering
20 572 (7.84%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,794 (24.58%) Python
2 1,560 (21.38%) SQL
3 732 (10.03%) PowerShell
4 622 (8.52%) Java
5 621 (8.51%) C#
6 459 (6.29%) JavaScript
7 291 (3.99%) TypeScript
8 252 (3.45%) Bash
9 235 (3.22%) Bicep
10 94 (1.29%) Scala
11 87 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 84 (1.15%) Go
13 79 (1.08%) T-SQL
14 65 (0.89%) Kusto Query Language
15 62 (0.85%) PL/SQL
16 53 (0.73%) Shell Script
17 49 (0.67%) R
18 31 (0.42%) C++
19 23 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 19 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,823 (24.98%) Security Cleared
2 1,538 (21.07%) SC Cleared
3 511 (7.00%) Degree
4 378 (5.18%) Azure Certification
5 198 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 195 (2.67%) CISSP
7 165 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
8 157 (2.15%) Cisco Certification
9 153 (2.10%) Microsoft Certification
10 146 (2.00%) DV Cleared
11 143 (1.96%) AWS Certification
12 116 (1.59%) CISM
13 77 (1.06%) CCNP
14 73 (1.00%) PMP
15 71 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
17 67 (0.92%) Master's Degree
18 62 (0.85%) ISTQB
19 57 (0.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 40 (0.55%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 514 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 396 (5.43%) QA
3 372 (5.10%) GDPR
4 289 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 259 (3.55%) NIST
6 133 (1.82%) Accessibility
7 102 (1.40%) NCSC
8 82 (1.12%) PCI DSS
9 65 (0.89%) SLA
10 64 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 57 (0.78%) PMO
13 47 (0.64%) GRC
14 39 (0.53%) WCAG
15 36 (0.49%) HIPAA
16 23 (0.32%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 20 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 20 (0.27%) ISO 20022
17 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 888 (12.17%) Active Directory
2 814 (11.15%) Docker
3 195 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
5 109 (1.49%) Hyper-V
6 108 (1.48%) Virtual Desktop
7 62 (0.85%) vSphere
8 33 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.38%) Firmware
10 21 (0.29%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.27%) NFS
12 11 (0.15%) Postfix
13 8 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.096%) BitLocker
14 7 (0.096%) HDFS
14 7 (0.096%) Varnish
15 6 (0.082%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.082%) RACF
16 5 (0.069%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 5 (0.069%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,153 (15.80%) Terraform
2 1,075 (14.73%) Kubernetes
3 369 (5.06%) Microsoft Intune
4 333 (4.56%) Ansible
5 204 (2.80%) Grafana
6 177 (2.43%) Prometheus
7 150 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
8 113 (1.55%) SCCM
9 66 (0.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.52%) Argo
11 35 (0.48%) FortiGate
11 35 (0.48%) Istio
11 35 (0.48%) Puppet
12 28 (0.38%) Progress Chef
13 24 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
14 23 (0.32%) HP ALM
15 21 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.23%) Kubeflow
16 17 (0.23%) linkerd
17 15 (0.21%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,354 (32.26%) Microsoft
2 734 (10.06%) Databricks
3 317 (4.34%) Google
4 303 (4.15%) Oracle
5 297 (4.07%) ServiceNow
6 280 (3.84%) VMware
7 214 (2.93%) SAP
8 186 (2.55%) Cisco
9 183 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 157 (2.15%) Splunk
11 136 (1.86%) CyberArk
12 118 (1.62%) Foundry
13 111 (1.52%) Palo Alto
13 111 (1.52%) Salesforce
14 90 (1.23%) Okta
15 78 (1.07%) Informatica
16 75 (1.03%) Citrix
17 71 (0.97%) Dynatrace
18 70 (0.96%) BeyondTrust
19 65 (0.89%) Red Hat