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

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,263 4,826 5,502
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.14% 14.86% 14.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.73% 39.37% 42.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,776 3,284 3,784
10th Percentile £363 £350 £347
25th Percentile £447 £415 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £517 £530
Median % change year-on-year +1.55% -2.45% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.02% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 42 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.59 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.31 £26.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £42.35 £34.24 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +23.69% -6.83% -31.94%
75th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.08 £88.63 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £32.77 £42.34
% change year-on-year +20.54% -22.60% -8.32%

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 18,897 12,259 13,036
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.63% 37.75% 34.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,538 8,167 8,755
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 619 290 193
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £15.98
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.07% -13.85% -7.14%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.44 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £19.27 £30.88
% change year-on-year +66.06% -37.59% +20.02%

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 22 September 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 22 September 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 22 September 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 7,050 £525 - 7,247
London 0 3,694 £550 - 3,300
UK excluding London +1 3,505 £510 +2.02% 4,666
Work from Home -1 2,489 £525 +5.00% 3,497
North of England +7 998 £500 +5.26% 1,276
South East +1 898 £525 +5.00% 1,136
Midlands +2 642 £493 -3.90% 720
North West +5 491 £500 +5.26% 675
West Midlands +2 483 £484 -10.32% 429
Yorkshire +6 426 £500 +5.26% 441
South West +2 419 £550 +10.00% 516
Scotland +3 283 £520 +4.00% 391
East of England +2 198 £510 +2.00% 362
East Midlands +4 153 £500 +8.11% 291
North East +6 94 £506 +1.25% 166
Wales 0 84 £438 -2.78% 146
Northern Ireland +15 12 £650 - 153
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69% 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
1 467 (5.65%) SharePoint
2 255 (3.09%) Confluence
3 195 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 184 (2.23%) Apache Spark
5 164 (1.98%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.32%) Apache
7 45 (0.54%) SAS
8 28 (0.34%) IIS
8 28 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
9 25 (0.30%) CMS
10 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
10 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.17%) nginx
11 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
13 7 (0.085%) Apache Superset
13 7 (0.085%) Mendix
14 6 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
14 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
14 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 120 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 39 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.097%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.097%) Revit
10 7 (0.085%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.061%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Mingle
13 2 (0.024%) Windchill
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 136 (1.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 10 (0.12%) Workday HCM
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.097%) Magento
9 7 (0.085%) Shopify
10 6 (0.073%) Cloudability
10 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
11 5 (0.061%) Dynamics NAV
11 5 (0.061%) SAP Oil and Gas
12 4 (0.048%) FLEXCUBE
12 4 (0.048%) Maximo
12 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
12 4 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,960 (35.82%) AWS
2 1,738 (21.03%) Azure DevOps
3 1,437 (17.39%) GCP
4 1,117 (13.52%) Entra ID
5 1,075 (13.01%) Power Platform
6 865 (10.47%) Microsoft 365
7 829 (10.03%) GitHub
8 482 (5.83%) GitHub Actions
9 462 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 373 (4.51%) Serverless
11 361 (4.37%) SaaS
12 316 (3.82%) Azure Monitor
13 303 (3.67%) Dynamics 365
14 302 (3.65%) Power Automate
15 300 (3.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 290 (3.51%) Azure AKS
16 290 (3.51%) Snowflake
17 284 (3.44%) PowerApps
18 252 (3.05%) Microsoft Copilot
19 250 (3.03%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 521 (6.31%) Firewall
2 418 (5.06%) DNS
3 316 (3.82%) VPN
4 293 (3.55%) Network Security
5 230 (2.78%) DHCP
6 185 (2.24%) WAN
7 170 (2.06%) TCP/IP
8 108 (1.31%) LAN
9 106 (1.28%) BGP
10 101 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.13%) VLAN
12 85 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 84 (1.02%) OSPF
14 74 (0.90%) SSL
15 66 (0.80%) Wireless
16 64 (0.77%) SAN
17 47 (0.57%) HTTP
17 47 (0.57%) IPsec
18 44 (0.53%) VXLAN
19 41 (0.50%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 702 (8.50%) Power BI
2 461 (5.58%) SQL Server
3 402 (4.87%) Data Warehouse
4 382 (4.62%) Data Lake
5 284 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 253 (3.06%) Metadata
7 211 (2.55%) NoSQL
8 194 (2.35%) Azure SQL Database
9 139 (1.68%) Relational Database
10 126 (1.52%) Delta Lake
11 110 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 104 (1.26%) MongoDB
13 94 (1.14%) Big Data
14 90 (1.09%) MySQL
15 69 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.79%) Redis
17 62 (0.75%) BigQuery
18 61 (0.74%) Tableau
19 60 (0.73%) Oracle Database
20 58 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 734 (8.88%) Git
2 589 (7.13%) JIRA
3 465 (5.63%) Jenkins
4 369 (4.47%) GitLab
5 135 (1.63%) Selenium
6 84 (1.02%) Postman
7 63 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 60 (0.73%) JUnit
9 57 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 56 (0.68%) SonarQube
11 54 (0.65%) Maven
12 53 (0.64%) JMeter
13 52 (0.63%) Claude Code
14 49 (0.59%) Visual Studio
15 47 (0.57%) Gradle
16 44 (0.53%) REST Assured
17 37 (0.45%) WebDriver
18 35 (0.42%) MLflow
19 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
20 30 (0.36%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,286 (27.67%) Social Skills
2 1,547 (18.72%) Finance
3 947 (11.46%) Public Sector
4 812 (9.83%) Analytical Skills
5 470 (5.69%) Banking
6 222 (2.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 215 (2.60%) Retail
8 210 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
9 169 (2.05%) Legal
10 107 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
10 107 (1.29%) Manufacturing
11 93 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 89 (1.08%) Marketing
13 86 (1.04%) Aerospace
14 85 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
15 83 (1.00%) Investment Banking
16 76 (0.92%) Military
17 74 (0.90%) Law
18 58 (0.70%) Local Government
19 56 (0.68%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,577 (19.09%) Architect
2 1,033 (12.50%) Senior
3 991 (11.99%) Developer
4 731 (8.85%) Azure Engineer
5 681 (8.24%) Lead
6 585 (7.08%) Data Engineer
7 486 (5.88%) Solutions Architect
8 468 (5.66%) Analyst
9 462 (5.59%) DevOps Engineer
10 377 (4.56%) Cloud Engineer
11 318 (3.85%) Consultant
12 313 (3.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 266 (3.22%) Data Architect
14 238 (2.88%) Platform Engineer
15 215 (2.60%) Azure Architect
16 209 (2.53%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 200 (2.42%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 197 (2.38%) Security Engineer
19 195 (2.36%) Technical Architect
20 184 (2.23%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,400 (16.94%) Terraform
2 711 (8.60%) REST
3 618 (7.48%) .NET
4 392 (4.74%) Kafka
5 295 (3.57%) React
6 288 (3.49%) RESTful
7 273 (3.30%) OAuth
8 266 (3.22%) PySpark
9 231 (2.80%) JSON
10 189 (2.29%) Spring
11 179 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 166 (2.01%) OpenID
13 164 (1.98%) OAuth2
14 159 (1.92%) Node.js
15 155 (1.88%) SAML
16 154 (1.86%) HTML
17 148 (1.79%) Middleware
18 145 (1.75%) AngularJS
19 132 (1.60%) Playwright
20 129 (1.56%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 917 (11.10%) Cloud Native
2 417 (5.05%) Onboarding
3 380 (4.60%) Product Ownership
4 311 (3.76%) AI Agents
5 303 (3.67%) Enterprise Software
6 285 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
7 265 (3.21%) Distributed Systems
8 255 (3.09%) Data Centre
9 226 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
10 179 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 176 (2.13%) Management Information System
12 145 (1.75%) Data Structures
13 143 (1.73%) Public Cloud
14 122 (1.48%) PKI
15 113 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
16 110 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
17 103 (1.25%) Replication
18 98 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
19 90 (1.09%) Low-Code
20 88 (1.06%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 993 (12.02%) Windows
2 518 (6.27%) Linux
3 373 (4.51%) Windows Server
4 143 (1.73%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.10%) Android
6 88 (1.06%) Unix
7 87 (1.05%) Apple iOS
7 87 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 76 (0.92%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.68%) Ubuntu
9 56 (0.68%) VMS
10 26 (0.31%) CentOS
11 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
15 8 (0.097%) Debian
16 6 (0.073%) AIX
16 6 (0.073%) SUSE
16 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,036 (36.74%) DevOps
2 2,650 (32.07%) CI/CD
3 2,058 (24.91%) Agile
4 1,467 (17.75%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,421 (17.20%) AI
6 1,406 (17.02%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,221 (14.78%) Migration
8 1,127 (13.64%) Analytics
8 1,127 (13.64%) Problem-Solving
9 948 (11.47%) Continuous Improvement
10 902 (10.92%) Data Modelling
11 842 (10.19%) Roadmaps
12 787 (9.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 780 (9.44%) Containerisation
14 757 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
15 749 (9.06%) Technical Leadership
16 745 (9.02%) Data Pipeline
17 722 (8.74%) Test Automation
18 721 (8.73%) Microservices
19 659 (7.98%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,890 (22.87%) Python
2 1,569 (18.99%) SQL
3 885 (10.71%) PowerShell
4 684 (8.28%) Java
5 599 (7.25%) C#
6 500 (6.05%) JavaScript
7 404 (4.89%) Bash
8 354 (4.28%) Bicep
9 295 (3.57%) TypeScript
10 98 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 79 (0.96%) Go
13 63 (0.76%) Scala
14 60 (0.73%) Shell Script
15 56 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.51%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.45%) R
18 32 (0.39%) Groovy
18 32 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.34%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,146 (25.97%) Security Cleared
2 1,724 (20.86%) SC Cleared
3 561 (6.79%) Degree
4 479 (5.80%) Azure Certification
5 309 (3.74%) DV Cleared
6 271 (3.28%) CISSP
7 270 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
8 253 (3.06%) Microsoft Certification
9 209 (2.53%) AWS Certification
10 202 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
11 178 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
12 136 (1.65%) CISM
13 91 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 90 (1.09%) CCNP
14 90 (1.09%) PMI Certification
15 85 (1.03%) PMP
16 67 (0.81%) ISTQB
17 63 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 62 (0.75%) CCSP
19 52 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 605 (7.32%) Data Quality
2 459 (5.55%) QA
3 308 (3.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 298 (3.61%) NIST
5 292 (3.53%) GDPR
6 205 (2.48%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.45%) NCSC
8 109 (1.32%) SLA
9 82 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
9 82 (0.99%) GRC
9 82 (0.99%) WCAG
10 74 (0.90%) PCI DSS
11 55 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 53 (0.64%) PMO
13 46 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 33 (0.40%) SOC 2
15 27 (0.33%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.30%) ISO 20022
17 21 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 21 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,029 (12.45%) Active Directory
2 910 (11.01%) Docker
3 242 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.80%) Virtual Machines
5 145 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
6 127 (1.54%) Hyper-V
7 75 (0.91%) vSphere
8 55 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.29%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) IAG
12 17 (0.21%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.085%) Ceph
18 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
19 5 (0.061%) Squid
Systems Management
1 1,293 (15.65%) Kubernetes
2 453 (5.48%) Ansible
3 442 (5.35%) Microsoft Intune
4 260 (3.15%) Grafana
5 202 (2.44%) Prometheus
6 154 (1.86%) Single Sign-On
7 134 (1.62%) SCCM
8 59 (0.71%) Progress Chef
9 58 (0.70%) Argo
10 44 (0.53%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
11 37 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) SCOM
13 30 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 24 (0.29%) vCenter Server
15 23 (0.28%) Istio
16 19 (0.23%) CASB
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
18 17 (0.21%) QRadar
19 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,969 (35.93%) Microsoft
2 856 (10.36%) Databricks
3 421 (5.10%) ServiceNow
4 378 (4.57%) Google
5 360 (4.36%) VMware
6 343 (4.15%) Oracle
7 249 (3.01%) Cisco
8 232 (2.81%) Splunk
9 221 (2.67%) SAP
10 218 (2.64%) OpenAI
11 189 (2.29%) Salesforce
12 154 (1.86%) CyberArk
13 150 (1.82%) Palo Alto
14 143 (1.73%) Foundry
15 128 (1.55%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.13%) Zscaler
17 87 (1.05%) IBM
17 87 (1.05%) Informatica
18 82 (0.99%) Okta
19 81 (0.98%) MuleSoft