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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,211 4,852 6,268
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.03% 15.43% 14.01%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.23% 41.64% 41.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,399 3,273 4,586
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.13% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 41 87
10th Percentile £18.35 £21.25 £17.75
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.80 £22.55
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -9.45%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £62.25
90th Percentile £91.25 £75.50 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +91.67% -35.04% -26.52%

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 14,708 11,652 14,987
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.96% 37.06% 33.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,122 7,742 10,751
10th Percentile £306 £313 £285
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 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -1.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 172 318
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.78 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.75
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.50 £23.22
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% +18.46% -3.27%
75th Percentile £58.75 £43.94 £50.19
90th Percentile £79.75 £73.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £24.42 £21.00
% change year-on-year +33.09% +16.29% +5.40%

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 31 January 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 31 January 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 31 January 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 5,256 £520 -0.95% 2,591
London 0 2,829 £540 -1.82% 974
UK excluding London 0 2,543 £500 - 2,199
Work from Home -2 1,909 £515 -1.72% 1,407
North of England -1 689 £475 - 527
South East -2 655 £500 -6.98% 773
Midlands -1 446 £515 -2.00% 283
North West -1 346 £450 - 312
West Midlands +2 336 £550 - 157
South West +4 328 £510 -2.86% 229
Yorkshire -1 299 £484 -0.31% 154
Scotland +7 286 £550 +17.65% 149
East of England 0 143 £525 +10.53% 188
East Midlands -2 109 £433 -3.78% 125
Wales -4 62 £410 -16.33% 70
North East -6 47 £500 -1.23% 64
Northern Ireland +8 10 £475 - 18
Channel Islands +3 2 £600 +101.68% 1

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
1 286 (4.60%) SharePoint
2 197 (3.17%) Microsoft Exchange
3 156 (2.51%) Apache Spark
4 155 (2.50%) Confluence
5 84 (1.35%) Apache
6 81 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.43%) OpenStack
8 26 (0.42%) CMS
8 26 (0.42%) SAS
9 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
9 14 (0.23%) IIS
10 13 (0.21%) Appian
10 13 (0.21%) Camunda
11 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 12 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.18%) nginx
12 11 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 10 (0.16%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.14%) Mendix
Applications
1 136 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 104 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.77%) MS Visio
5 40 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.14%) Trello
8 7 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.081%) Weka
10 4 (0.064%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.016%) FrameMaker
13 1 (0.016%) Revit
Business Applications
1 110 (1.77%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Endur
6 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.097%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.097%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.081%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,172 (34.97%) AWS
2 1,243 (20.01%) Azure DevOps
3 1,214 (19.55%) GCP
4 840 (13.52%) Power Platform
5 721 (11.61%) Entra ID
6 714 (11.50%) Microsoft 365
7 640 (10.30%) GitHub
8 437 (7.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 383 (6.17%) Serverless
10 369 (5.94%) GitHub Actions
11 294 (4.73%) Dynamics 365
12 286 (4.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 260 (4.19%) Power Automate
13 260 (4.19%) SaaS
14 238 (3.83%) Azure AKS
15 229 (3.69%) Azure Functions
16 219 (3.53%) Snowflake
17 218 (3.51%) Azure Monitor
18 216 (3.48%) Azure Logic Apps
19 204 (3.28%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 424 (6.83%) Firewall
2 268 (4.31%) DNS
3 198 (3.19%) VPN
4 175 (2.82%) Network Security
5 161 (2.59%) DHCP
6 152 (2.45%) WAN
7 97 (1.56%) LAN
7 97 (1.56%) TCP/IP
8 77 (1.24%) SD-WAN
8 77 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
9 68 (1.09%) Kerberos
10 65 (1.05%) VLAN
11 61 (0.98%) HTTP
12 39 (0.63%) BGP
13 36 (0.58%) Internet
14 35 (0.56%) Wireless
15 31 (0.50%) MPLS
16 28 (0.45%) SSL
17 26 (0.42%) OSPF
17 26 (0.42%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 576 (9.27%) Power BI
2 362 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 311 (5.01%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.91%) Data Lake
5 229 (3.69%) PostgreSQL
6 222 (3.57%) Azure SQL Database
7 185 (2.98%) NoSQL
8 144 (2.32%) Metadata
9 131 (2.11%) Relational Database
10 101 (1.63%) Delta Lake
11 88 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 86 (1.38%) MongoDB
13 81 (1.30%) Big Data
14 77 (1.24%) MySQL
15 69 (1.11%) Tableau
16 68 (1.09%) Oracle Database
17 66 (1.06%) BigQuery
18 53 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
19 49 (0.79%) Redis
20 43 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 479 (7.71%) Git
2 444 (7.15%) JIRA
3 349 (5.62%) Jenkins
4 256 (4.12%) GitLab
5 110 (1.77%) Selenium
6 99 (1.59%) Postman
7 63 (1.01%) Cucumber
8 59 (0.95%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.89%) JMeter
9 55 (0.89%) JUnit
10 48 (0.77%) Cypress.io
11 44 (0.71%) REST Assured
12 41 (0.66%) Visual Studio
13 39 (0.63%) MLflow
14 37 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
15 31 (0.50%) Artifactory
16 29 (0.47%) Bitbucket
16 29 (0.47%) Maven
17 28 (0.45%) ERwin
17 28 (0.45%) TestRail
General
1 1,966 (31.65%) Social Skills
2 1,107 (17.82%) Finance
3 733 (11.80%) Public Sector
4 621 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
5 363 (5.84%) Banking
6 206 (3.32%) Documentation Skills
7 130 (2.09%) Legal
8 114 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 104 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
10 98 (1.58%) Marketing
11 90 (1.45%) Retail
12 88 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
13 73 (1.18%) Investment Banking
14 61 (0.98%) Telecoms
15 60 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
16 53 (0.85%) Financial Institution
16 53 (0.85%) Law
16 53 (0.85%) Manufacturing
17 41 (0.66%) Military
18 38 (0.61%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,011 (16.28%) Architect
2 898 (14.46%) Developer
3 638 (10.27%) Senior
4 503 (8.10%) Azure Engineer
5 479 (7.71%) Data Engineer
6 422 (6.79%) Lead
7 418 (6.73%) Analyst
8 331 (5.33%) DevOps Engineer
9 320 (5.15%) Solutions Architect
10 269 (4.33%) Consultant
11 184 (2.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 176 (2.83%) Security Engineer
13 159 (2.56%) Senior Developer
14 158 (2.54%) Cloud Engineer
15 155 (2.50%) Azure Architect
16 149 (2.40%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 134 (2.16%) Platform Engineer
18 132 (2.13%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 127 (2.04%) Data Architect
20 121 (1.95%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 513 (8.26%) .NET
2 449 (7.23%) REST
3 283 (4.56%) React
4 249 (4.01%) RESTful
5 230 (3.70%) PySpark
6 227 (3.65%) Kafka
7 207 (3.33%) Node.js
8 194 (3.12%) OAuth
9 191 (3.08%) Spring
10 177 (2.85%) Spring Boot
11 170 (2.74%) AngularJS
12 168 (2.70%) HTML
13 155 (2.50%) LDAP
14 149 (2.40%) JSON
15 147 (2.37%) SOAP
16 145 (2.33%) CSS
17 132 (2.13%) PyTorch
18 124 (2.00%) TensorFlow
19 116 (1.87%) SAML
20 111 (1.79%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 541 (8.71%) Cloud Native
2 236 (3.80%) Onboarding
3 214 (3.45%) Product Ownership
4 168 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
5 163 (2.62%) Enterprise Software
6 160 (2.58%) Security Posture
7 155 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
8 137 (2.21%) Data Centre
9 119 (1.92%) Public Cloud
10 99 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
11 89 (1.43%) Replication
12 88 (1.42%) AI Agents
13 76 (1.22%) Management Information System
14 72 (1.16%) Data Structures
15 67 (1.08%) Algorithms
15 67 (1.08%) Low-Code
16 63 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
17 61 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
18 59 (0.95%) NHS
19 57 (0.92%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 721 (11.61%) Windows
2 374 (6.02%) Linux
3 204 (3.28%) Windows Server
4 125 (2.01%) Windows 10
5 94 (1.51%) Unix
6 54 (0.87%) VMS
7 48 (0.77%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.72%) Mac OS
9 42 (0.68%) Android
10 37 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.31%) Ubuntu
13 11 (0.18%) CentOS
14 10 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.14%) Solaris
16 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
18 5 (0.081%) AIX
19 3 (0.048%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,286 (36.81%) DevOps
2 1,870 (30.11%) CI/CD
3 1,544 (24.86%) Agile
4 1,189 (19.14%) Problem-Solving
5 923 (14.86%) Analytics
6 821 (13.22%) AI
7 817 (13.15%) Infrastructure as Code
8 736 (11.85%) Migration
9 651 (10.48%) Business Intelligence
10 643 (10.35%) Stakeholder Management
11 624 (10.05%) Containerisation
12 603 (9.71%) Data Modelling
13 550 (8.86%) Continuous Improvement
14 534 (8.60%) Machine Learning
15 532 (8.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 528 (8.50%) ETL
17 523 (8.42%) Microservices
18 509 (8.20%) Test Automation
19 507 (8.16%) Data Pipeline
20 456 (7.34%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 1,581 (25.45%) Python
2 1,349 (21.72%) SQL
3 688 (11.08%) PowerShell
4 546 (8.79%) C#
5 541 (8.71%) Java
6 469 (7.55%) JavaScript
7 262 (4.22%) TypeScript
8 259 (4.17%) Bash
9 183 (2.95%) Bicep
10 95 (1.53%) Scala
11 83 (1.34%) Go
12 81 (1.30%) PL/SQL
13 70 (1.13%) Kusto Query Language
14 65 (1.05%) T-SQL
15 63 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 51 (0.82%) Shell Script
17 50 (0.81%) R
18 41 (0.66%) C++
19 34 (0.55%) PHP
20 23 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,451 (23.36%) Security Cleared
2 1,202 (19.35%) SC Cleared
3 519 (8.36%) Degree
4 352 (5.67%) Azure Certification
5 196 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
6 173 (2.79%) Microsoft Certification
7 163 (2.62%) CISSP
8 127 (2.04%) DV Cleared
9 126 (2.03%) AWS Certification
10 107 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
11 106 (1.71%) CISM
12 92 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
13 91 (1.47%) Master's Degree
14 51 (0.82%) PMI Certification
15 48 (0.77%) TOGAF Certification
16 47 (0.76%) ISTQB
16 47 (0.76%) PMP
17 44 (0.71%) CCNP
18 32 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 28 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (6.13%) Data Quality
2 374 (6.02%) GDPR
3 335 (5.39%) QA
4 305 (4.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 232 (3.74%) NIST
6 128 (2.06%) Accessibility
7 93 (1.50%) NCSC
8 70 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 54 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 50 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
11 47 (0.76%) SLA
12 42 (0.68%) HIPAA
13 38 (0.61%) PMO
13 38 (0.61%) SOC 2
13 38 (0.61%) WCAG
14 28 (0.45%) EU AI Act
14 28 (0.45%) PSD2
15 27 (0.43%) GRC
16 24 (0.39%) ISO 20022
17 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 817 (13.15%) Active Directory
2 762 (12.27%) Docker
3 195 (3.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.58%) Hyper-V
5 75 (1.21%) Virtual Desktop
6 74 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (1.00%) vSphere
8 20 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.19%) Squid
9 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.16%) DFS Replication
11 10 (0.16%) KVM
12 9 (0.14%) Firmware
13 8 (0.13%) Postfix
13 8 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) Dovecot
14 7 (0.11%) NFS
15 6 (0.097%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 945 (15.21%) Terraform
2 886 (14.27%) Kubernetes
3 330 (5.31%) Microsoft Intune
4 315 (5.07%) Ansible
5 166 (2.67%) Single Sign-On
6 155 (2.50%) Grafana
7 145 (2.33%) SCCM
8 139 (2.24%) Prometheus
9 69 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.71%) Argo
11 33 (0.53%) Puppet
12 26 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 25 (0.40%) vRealize
14 23 (0.37%) Istio
14 23 (0.37%) Kibana
14 23 (0.37%) Nessus
15 20 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 18 (0.29%) Nmap
16 18 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
16 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,012 (32.39%) Microsoft
2 621 (10.00%) Databricks
3 357 (5.75%) Oracle
4 323 (5.20%) Google
5 266 (4.28%) ServiceNow
6 258 (4.15%) VMware
7 176 (2.83%) SAP
8 161 (2.59%) Cisco
9 159 (2.56%) OpenAI
10 154 (2.48%) Splunk
11 124 (2.00%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.82%) CyberArk
13 102 (1.64%) Palo Alto
14 82 (1.32%) Foundry
15 73 (1.18%) Okta
16 66 (1.06%) Red Hat
17 65 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
17 65 (1.05%) Citrix
18 60 (0.97%) IBM
19 57 (0.92%) Fortinet