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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,314 5,047 5,505
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.14% 15.33% 14.68%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.68% 39.97% 42.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,806 3,452 3,725
10th Percentile £363 £350 £338
25th Percentile £444 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.54% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £724
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 44 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £22.16 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £45.20 £33.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.39% -4.61% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.00 £65.99 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £92.25 £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 19,036 12,626 13,016
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.66% 38.34% 34.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,626 8,444 8,605
10th Percentile £325 £308 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £716 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 638 289 181
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £16.30
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +7.99%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.75 £66.00
90th Percentile £78.83 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +57.89% -45.71% +55.42%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -2 7,080 £530 +0.95% 6,354
London 0 3,750 £550 +0.92% 3,135
UK excluding London 0 3,470 £510 +2.00% 3,597
Work from Home -2 2,545 £525 +5.00% 3,065
North of England +4 1,011 £500 +5.26% 1,031
South East +1 906 £537 +7.45% 812
Midlands +1 627 £490 -5.77% 511
North West +3 492 £500 +5.26% 519
West Midlands +1 487 £477 -13.27% 324
Yorkshire +5 431 £500 +1.42% 381
South West +2 401 £550 +7.42% 379
Scotland -2 278 £500 - 332
East of England -2 187 £505 +1.00% 285
East Midlands +1 136 £500 +8.11% 187
North East -1 97 £513 +2.50% 139
Wales -2 82 £438 -2.78% 147
Northern Ireland +12 12 £650 - 122
Channel Islands -8 3 £500 -21.88% 4

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
1 474 (5.70%) SharePoint
2 273 (3.28%) Confluence
3 195 (2.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 190 (2.29%) Apache Spark
5 159 (1.91%) Apache Airflow
6 121 (1.46%) Apache
7 37 (0.45%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) IIS
9 27 (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 (0.096%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
15 7 (0.084%) Traefik
16 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 130 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 64 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 51 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 50 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 41 (0.49%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.096%) Trello
9 7 (0.084%) CPLEX
10 6 (0.072%) Revit
10 6 (0.072%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) 1Password
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) Mingle
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.024%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 133 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.94%) 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%) Payment Gateway
6 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.11%) Cloudability
7 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 9 (0.11%) Teamcenter
8 8 (0.096%) Magento
9 7 (0.084%) Shopify
10 6 (0.072%) FLEXCUBE
10 6 (0.072%) Maximo
10 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 6 (0.072%) Temenos T24
11 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
12 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 2,950 (35.48%) AWS
2 1,773 (21.33%) Azure DevOps
3 1,475 (17.74%) GCP
4 1,159 (13.94%) Entra ID
5 1,077 (12.95%) Power Platform
6 905 (10.89%) Microsoft 365
7 888 (10.68%) GitHub
8 507 (6.10%) GitHub Actions
9 467 (5.62%) Azure Data Factory
10 380 (4.57%) Serverless
11 361 (4.34%) SaaS
12 340 (4.09%) Azure Monitor
13 311 (3.74%) Dynamics 365
14 303 (3.64%) Power Automate
15 302 (3.63%) Snowflake
16 295 (3.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 294 (3.54%) Azure AKS
18 289 (3.48%) PowerApps
19 262 (3.15%) Azure AI
20 254 (3.06%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 529 (6.36%) Firewall
2 434 (5.22%) DNS
3 324 (3.90%) VPN
4 296 (3.56%) Network Security
5 235 (2.83%) DHCP
6 178 (2.14%) WAN
7 171 (2.06%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.31%) BGP
9 105 (1.26%) LAN
10 98 (1.18%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.06%) OSPF
12 84 (1.01%) VLAN
13 77 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
14 69 (0.83%) SSL
14 69 (0.83%) Wireless
15 62 (0.75%) SAN
16 49 (0.59%) HTTP
17 46 (0.55%) IPsec
18 40 (0.48%) Internet
19 39 (0.47%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 694 (8.35%) Power BI
2 477 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 405 (4.87%) Data Warehouse
4 392 (4.71%) Data Lake
5 296 (3.56%) PostgreSQL
6 258 (3.10%) Metadata
7 210 (2.53%) NoSQL
8 208 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
9 151 (1.82%) Relational Database
10 129 (1.55%) Delta Lake
11 119 (1.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 112 (1.35%) MySQL
13 111 (1.34%) MongoDB
14 88 (1.06%) Big Data
15 70 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
17 68 (0.82%) Redis
18 65 (0.78%) BigQuery
19 64 (0.77%) Oracle Database
20 56 (0.67%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 767 (9.23%) Git
2 612 (7.36%) JIRA
3 487 (5.86%) Jenkins
4 373 (4.49%) GitLab
5 141 (1.70%) Selenium
6 92 (1.11%) Postman
7 68 (0.82%) Cucumber
8 66 (0.79%) Cypress.io
8 66 (0.79%) JUnit
9 62 (0.75%) Claude Code
10 58 (0.70%) JMeter
11 55 (0.66%) Maven
12 53 (0.64%) Gradle
12 53 (0.64%) Visual Studio
13 52 (0.63%) SonarQube
14 48 (0.58%) REST Assured
15 36 (0.43%) WebDriver
16 35 (0.42%) Bitbucket
16 35 (0.42%) MLflow
17 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,333 (28.06%) Social Skills
2 1,627 (19.57%) Finance
3 985 (11.85%) Public Sector
4 832 (10.01%) Analytical Skills
5 519 (6.24%) Banking
6 220 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 219 (2.63%) Retail
8 205 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
9 174 (2.09%) Legal
10 116 (1.40%) Manufacturing
11 113 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
12 100 (1.20%) Investment Banking
12 100 (1.20%) Marketing
13 90 (1.08%) Aerospace
13 90 (1.08%) Telecoms
14 83 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
15 75 (0.90%) Military
16 65 (0.78%) Law
17 64 (0.77%) Financial Institution
18 63 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,589 (19.11%) Architect
2 1,057 (12.71%) Senior
3 1,015 (12.21%) Developer
4 727 (8.74%) Azure Engineer
5 702 (8.44%) Lead
6 589 (7.08%) Data Engineer
7 502 (6.04%) Solutions Architect
8 458 (5.51%) Analyst
9 455 (5.47%) DevOps Engineer
10 389 (4.68%) Cloud Engineer
11 338 (4.07%) Consultant
12 320 (3.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 265 (3.19%) Data Architect
14 232 (2.79%) Platform Engineer
15 215 (2.59%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 209 (2.51%) Azure Architect
17 198 (2.38%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 198 (2.38%) Technical Architect
18 195 (2.35%) Security Engineer
19 181 (2.18%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,425 (17.14%) Terraform
2 786 (9.45%) REST
3 639 (7.69%) .NET
4 408 (4.91%) Kafka
5 318 (3.82%) React
6 300 (3.61%) RESTful
7 286 (3.44%) OAuth
8 262 (3.15%) PySpark
9 242 (2.91%) JSON
10 187 (2.25%) Spring
11 181 (2.18%) OpenID
11 181 (2.18%) Spring Boot
12 174 (2.09%) OAuth2
13 167 (2.01%) HTML
14 159 (1.91%) SAML
15 158 (1.90%) Middleware
16 154 (1.85%) SOAP
17 153 (1.84%) AngularJS
18 146 (1.76%) Node.js
19 142 (1.71%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 933 (11.22%) Cloud Native
2 440 (5.29%) Onboarding
3 407 (4.90%) Product Ownership
4 341 (4.10%) Enterprise Software
5 337 (4.05%) AI Agents
6 289 (3.48%) Hybrid Cloud
7 283 (3.40%) Distributed Systems
8 259 (3.12%) Data Centre
9 229 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
10 189 (2.27%) Management Information System
11 184 (2.21%) Security Posture
12 156 (1.88%) Data Structures
13 144 (1.73%) Public Cloud
14 130 (1.56%) PKI
15 118 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
16 112 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
17 102 (1.23%) Replication
18 94 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
19 91 (1.09%) CMDB
19 91 (1.09%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 999 (12.02%) Windows
2 543 (6.53%) Linux
3 392 (4.71%) Windows Server
4 158 (1.90%) Windows 10
5 89 (1.07%) Unix
6 86 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 85 (1.02%) Android
8 80 (0.96%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.75%) macOS
10 57 (0.69%) Ubuntu
11 51 (0.61%) VMS
12 27 (0.32%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.084%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Debian
19 5 (0.060%) Data ONTAP
20 4 (0.048%) Alpine Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,093 (37.20%) DevOps
2 2,725 (32.78%) CI/CD
3 2,097 (25.22%) Agile
4 1,570 (18.88%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,459 (17.55%) AI
6 1,439 (17.31%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,260 (15.16%) Migration
8 1,159 (13.94%) Problem-Solving
9 1,127 (13.56%) Analytics
10 998 (12.00%) Continuous Improvement
11 900 (10.83%) Data Modelling
12 889 (10.69%) Roadmaps
13 785 (9.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 774 (9.31%) Containerisation
14 774 (9.31%) Test Automation
15 768 (9.24%) Technical Leadership
16 757 (9.11%) Business Intelligence
17 738 (8.88%) Data Pipeline
18 734 (8.83%) Microservices
19 685 (8.24%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,947 (23.42%) Python
2 1,596 (19.20%) SQL
3 948 (11.40%) PowerShell
4 682 (8.20%) Java
5 622 (7.48%) C#
6 524 (6.30%) JavaScript
7 437 (5.26%) Bash
8 383 (4.61%) Bicep
9 318 (3.82%) TypeScript
10 105 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 75 (0.90%) Go
13 67 (0.81%) Kusto Query Language
14 66 (0.79%) Scala
15 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.52%) PL/SQL
17 36 (0.43%) R
18 33 (0.40%) Groovy
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,178 (26.20%) Security Cleared
2 1,747 (21.01%) SC Cleared
3 574 (6.90%) Degree
4 475 (5.71%) Azure Certification
5 325 (3.91%) DV Cleared
6 280 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 268 (3.22%) CISSP
8 254 (3.06%) Microsoft Certification
9 225 (2.71%) AWS Certification
10 192 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 190 (2.29%) Cisco Certification
12 139 (1.67%) CISM
13 97 (1.17%) PMI Certification
14 92 (1.11%) PMP
15 90 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 81 (0.97%) CCNP
17 71 (0.85%) ISTQB
18 65 (0.78%) Master's Degree
19 63 (0.76%) CCSP
20 55 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 624 (7.51%) Data Quality
2 482 (5.80%) QA
3 300 (3.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 286 (3.44%) GDPR
5 283 (3.40%) NIST
6 206 (2.48%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.44%) NCSC
8 109 (1.31%) SLA
9 81 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
10 79 (0.95%) GRC
10 79 (0.95%) WCAG
11 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
12 51 (0.61%) PMO
13 48 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 47 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 37 (0.45%) SOC 2
16 27 (0.32%) ISO 20022
17 23 (0.28%) HIPAA
18 22 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,038 (12.48%) Active Directory
2 937 (11.27%) Docker
3 249 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 152 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
5 140 (1.68%) Virtual Desktop
6 127 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.91%) vSphere
8 48 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.23%) Firmware
11 16 (0.19%) IAG
12 14 (0.17%) 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 (0.084%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.084%) Ceph
17 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.060%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,320 (15.88%) Kubernetes
2 470 (5.65%) Ansible
3 455 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
4 277 (3.33%) Grafana
5 209 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 151 (1.82%) SCCM
7 150 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 63 (0.76%) Argo
9 61 (0.73%) 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 (0.37%) Istio
15 24 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 21 (0.25%) CASB
17 19 (0.23%) QRadar
18 18 (0.22%) vCenter Server
19 17 (0.20%) Packer
20 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,103 (37.32%) Microsoft
2 878 (10.56%) Databricks
3 414 (4.98%) Google
4 400 (4.81%) ServiceNow
5 366 (4.40%) Oracle
6 358 (4.31%) VMware
7 237 (2.85%) Cisco
8 234 (2.81%) OpenAI
8 234 (2.81%) Splunk
9 224 (2.69%) SAP
10 191 (2.30%) Salesforce
11 156 (1.88%) Palo Alto
12 149 (1.79%) Foundry
13 145 (1.74%) CyberArk
14 142 (1.71%) Dynatrace
15 91 (1.09%) Zscaler
16 90 (1.08%) IBM
17 85 (1.02%) Informatica
18 83 (1.00%) Fortinet
19 79 (0.95%) Okta