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

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,273 4,888 6,256
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.07% 15.72% 13.85%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.39% 42.10% 41.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,446 3,312 4,576
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.81% -4.50% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £635 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £736
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.86% -2.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 40 83
10th Percentile £18.57 £21.15 £17.75
25th Percentile £31.86 £23.75 £22.55
Median hourly rate £57.50 £30.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +86.99% -33.41% -9.45%
75th Percentile £64.50 £60.19 £62.25
90th Percentile £84.80 £77.22 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +109.09% -40.45% -23.03%

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 14,798 11,611 15,039
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.91% 37.34% 33.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,163 7,737 10,787
10th Percentile £309 £313 £281
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 £632
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.09% -0.95% -1.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 364 171 325
10th Percentile £14.45 £16.75 £14.10
25th Percentile £18.98 £21.46 £16.25
Median hourly rate £35.25 £27.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.18% +22.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £60.00 £44.13 £50.25
90th Percentile £79.63 £73.75 £72.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £24.18 £20.97
% change year-on-year +53.02% +15.31% +4.85%

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 7 February 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 7 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 7 February 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 5,296 £522 -0.57% 2,740
London 0 2,860 £543 -1.36% 1,019
UK excluding London 0 2,565 £500 - 2,259
Work from Home -2 1,927 £515 -1.44% 1,453
North of England -1 690 £475 - 582
South East -2 670 £500 -5.21% 750
Midlands -1 438 £500 - 306
North West -1 334 £450 - 328
South West +5 328 £500 -4.76% 249
West Midlands 0 328 £525 -3.77% 184
Yorkshire -2 309 £485 +2.11% 179
Scotland +7 289 £550 +18.41% 137
East of England -1 151 £550 +22.22% 193
East Midlands -3 109 £436 -3.11% 121
Wales -3 69 £400 -16.67% 65
North East -1 51 £508 +9.26% 78
Northern Ireland +8 10 £475 - 17

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
1 287 (4.58%) SharePoint
2 204 (3.25%) Microsoft Exchange
3 163 (2.60%) Apache Spark
4 156 (2.49%) Confluence
5 91 (1.45%) Apache
6 79 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.40%) CMS
8 24 (0.38%) OpenStack
9 19 (0.30%) SAS
10 16 (0.26%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.22%) Appian
11 14 (0.22%) IIS
12 13 (0.21%) Camunda
13 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.16%) GeoServer
14 10 (0.16%) nginx
14 10 (0.16%) SugarCRM
14 10 (0.16%) WebLogic
15 9 (0.14%) Mendix
Applications
1 134 (2.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 107 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 46 (0.73%) MS Visio
5 43 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.14%) Trello
8 6 (0.096%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.080%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.080%) Weka
10 4 (0.064%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.032%) Windchill
12 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.016%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.016%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.016%) Revit
Business Applications
1 101 (1.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) Maximo
4 10 (0.16%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.16%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.13%) Endur
6 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.096%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.096%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.096%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.096%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.096%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.080%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.080%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.080%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.080%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,207 (35.18%) AWS
2 1,245 (19.85%) GCP
3 1,243 (19.82%) Azure DevOps
4 844 (13.45%) Power Platform
5 726 (11.57%) Entra ID
6 715 (11.40%) Microsoft 365
7 640 (10.20%) GitHub
8 451 (7.19%) Azure Data Factory
9 384 (6.12%) Serverless
10 372 (5.93%) GitHub Actions
11 290 (4.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 282 (4.50%) Dynamics 365
13 264 (4.21%) SaaS
14 250 (3.99%) Power Automate
15 248 (3.95%) Azure AKS
16 233 (3.71%) Azure Functions
17 223 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
18 220 (3.51%) Snowflake
19 216 (3.44%) Azure Logic Apps
20 197 (3.14%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 423 (6.74%) Firewall
2 271 (4.32%) DNS
3 203 (3.24%) VPN
4 177 (2.82%) Network Security
5 164 (2.61%) DHCP
6 153 (2.44%) WAN
7 99 (1.58%) LAN
8 96 (1.53%) TCP/IP
9 81 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
10 76 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 71 (1.13%) Kerberos
12 66 (1.05%) VLAN
13 57 (0.91%) HTTP
14 37 (0.59%) BGP
15 36 (0.57%) Wireless
16 33 (0.53%) Internet
17 32 (0.51%) SSL
18 29 (0.46%) MPLS
19 28 (0.45%) SAN
20 27 (0.43%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 582 (9.28%) Power BI
2 363 (5.79%) SQL Server
3 319 (5.09%) Data Warehouse
4 313 (4.99%) Data Lake
5 234 (3.73%) PostgreSQL
6 221 (3.52%) Azure SQL Database
7 182 (2.90%) NoSQL
8 152 (2.42%) Metadata
9 120 (1.91%) Relational Database
10 102 (1.63%) Delta Lake
11 89 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 85 (1.36%) MongoDB
13 83 (1.32%) Big Data
14 77 (1.23%) MySQL
15 72 (1.15%) Tableau
16 67 (1.07%) Oracle Database
17 61 (0.97%) BigQuery
18 55 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
19 46 (0.73%) Redis
20 40 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 484 (7.72%) Git
2 445 (7.09%) JIRA
3 346 (5.52%) Jenkins
4 256 (4.08%) GitLab
5 111 (1.77%) Selenium
6 95 (1.51%) Postman
7 65 (1.04%) Cucumber
8 58 (0.92%) JMeter
9 54 (0.86%) JUnit
10 53 (0.84%) SonarQube
11 49 (0.78%) REST Assured
12 46 (0.73%) Cypress.io
13 42 (0.67%) MLflow
14 41 (0.65%) Visual Studio
15 37 (0.59%) Oracle APEX
16 31 (0.49%) Artifactory
17 29 (0.46%) TestRail
18 27 (0.43%) Bitbucket
18 27 (0.43%) ERwin
19 26 (0.41%) Maven
General
1 1,969 (31.39%) Social Skills
2 1,118 (17.82%) Finance
3 740 (11.80%) Public Sector
4 633 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
5 363 (5.79%) Banking
6 202 (3.22%) Documentation Skills
7 132 (2.10%) Legal
8 111 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 108 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
10 97 (1.55%) Marketing
11 89 (1.42%) Retail
12 87 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
13 70 (1.12%) Investment Banking
14 64 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
15 61 (0.97%) Telecoms
16 54 (0.86%) Financial Institution
16 54 (0.86%) Law
17 50 (0.80%) Manufacturing
18 42 (0.67%) Military
19 41 (0.65%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,013 (16.15%) Architect
2 907 (14.46%) Developer
3 652 (10.39%) Senior
4 511 (8.15%) Azure Engineer
5 498 (7.94%) Data Engineer
6 444 (7.08%) Lead
7 423 (6.74%) Analyst
8 323 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 313 (4.99%) Solutions Architect
10 274 (4.37%) Consultant
11 185 (2.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 174 (2.77%) Security Engineer
13 159 (2.53%) Azure Architect
14 158 (2.52%) Senior Developer
15 157 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
16 154 (2.45%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 133 (2.12%) Platform Engineer
18 131 (2.09%) Data Architect
19 130 (2.07%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 123 (1.96%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 506 (8.07%) .NET
2 456 (7.27%) REST
3 289 (4.61%) React
4 246 (3.92%) RESTful
5 238 (3.79%) PySpark
6 234 (3.73%) Kafka
7 216 (3.44%) Node.js
8 201 (3.20%) OAuth
9 197 (3.14%) Spring
10 178 (2.84%) Spring Boot
11 168 (2.68%) HTML
12 159 (2.53%) AngularJS
13 153 (2.44%) LDAP
13 153 (2.44%) SOAP
14 148 (2.36%) CSS
15 145 (2.31%) JSON
16 132 (2.10%) PyTorch
17 124 (1.98%) TensorFlow
18 122 (1.94%) SAML
19 112 (1.79%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 548 (8.74%) Cloud Native
2 241 (3.84%) Onboarding
3 213 (3.40%) Product Ownership
4 171 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 159 (2.53%) Security Posture
6 158 (2.52%) Enterprise Software
7 150 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
8 145 (2.31%) Data Centre
9 114 (1.82%) Public Cloud
10 103 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
11 89 (1.42%) AI Agents
12 84 (1.34%) Replication
13 76 (1.21%) Data Structures
14 73 (1.16%) Algorithms
15 72 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 66 (1.05%) Low-Code
17 65 (1.04%) Data Protection Act
18 60 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
18 60 (0.96%) NHS
19 58 (0.92%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 721 (11.49%) Windows
2 370 (5.90%) Linux
3 203 (3.24%) Windows Server
4 126 (2.01%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.39%) Unix
6 56 (0.89%) VMS
7 47 (0.75%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.72%) Mac OS
9 42 (0.67%) Android
10 38 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 22 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.29%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.18%) CentOS
15 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.11%) Solaris
18 6 (0.096%) Amazon Linux
19 5 (0.080%) AIX
20 3 (0.048%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,293 (36.55%) DevOps
2 1,891 (30.15%) CI/CD
3 1,563 (24.92%) Agile
4 1,188 (18.94%) Problem-Solving
5 946 (15.08%) Analytics
6 845 (13.47%) AI
7 832 (13.26%) Infrastructure as Code
8 744 (11.86%) Migration
9 659 (10.51%) Business Intelligence
10 652 (10.39%) Stakeholder Management
11 625 (9.96%) Containerisation
12 618 (9.85%) Data Modelling
13 561 (8.94%) Continuous Improvement
14 553 (8.82%) Machine Learning
15 544 (8.67%) ETL
16 537 (8.56%) Microservices
17 529 (8.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 526 (8.39%) Data Pipeline
19 504 (8.03%) Test Automation
20 475 (7.57%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,617 (25.78%) Python
2 1,361 (21.70%) SQL
3 697 (11.11%) PowerShell
4 546 (8.70%) Java
5 539 (8.59%) C#
6 478 (7.62%) JavaScript
7 269 (4.29%) TypeScript
8 263 (4.19%) Bash
9 191 (3.04%) Bicep
10 93 (1.48%) Scala
11 85 (1.36%) Go
12 84 (1.34%) PL/SQL
13 72 (1.15%) Kusto Query Language
14 67 (1.07%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 63 (1.00%) T-SQL
16 48 (0.77%) R
17 45 (0.72%) Shell Script
18 43 (0.69%) C++
19 36 (0.57%) PHP
20 22 (0.35%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,457 (23.23%) Security Cleared
2 1,212 (19.32%) SC Cleared
3 530 (8.45%) Degree
4 353 (5.63%) Azure Certification
5 205 (3.27%) Computer Science Degree
6 171 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
7 162 (2.58%) CISSP
8 130 (2.07%) AWS Certification
9 124 (1.98%) DV Cleared
10 113 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
11 106 (1.69%) CISM
12 94 (1.50%) Master's Degree
13 91 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
14 53 (0.84%) PMI Certification
15 49 (0.78%) PMP
15 49 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
16 48 (0.77%) ISTQB
17 47 (0.75%) CCNP
18 33 (0.53%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 27 (0.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 391 (6.23%) Data Quality
2 378 (6.03%) GDPR
3 338 (5.39%) QA
4 303 (4.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 228 (3.63%) NIST
6 131 (2.09%) Accessibility
7 93 (1.48%) NCSC
8 73 (1.16%) PCI DSS
9 55 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 53 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
11 51 (0.81%) SLA
12 42 (0.67%) HIPAA
13 40 (0.64%) PMO
14 39 (0.62%) SOC 2
15 36 (0.57%) WCAG
16 30 (0.48%) GRC
17 28 (0.45%) EU AI Act
18 26 (0.41%) PSD2
19 23 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 23 (0.37%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 816 (13.01%) Active Directory
2 756 (12.05%) Docker
3 195 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.56%) Hyper-V
5 77 (1.23%) Virtual Machines
6 76 (1.21%) Virtual Desktop
7 65 (1.04%) vSphere
8 20 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.18%) Squid
11 10 (0.16%) Firmware
12 9 (0.14%) DFS Replication
12 9 (0.14%) Postfix
13 8 (0.13%) KVM
13 8 (0.13%) NFS
13 8 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 6 (0.096%) Lustre
15 6 (0.096%) Snort
Systems Management
1 954 (15.21%) Terraform
2 896 (14.28%) Kubernetes
3 336 (5.36%) Microsoft Intune
4 302 (4.81%) Ansible
5 169 (2.69%) Single Sign-On
6 154 (2.45%) Grafana
7 149 (2.38%) SCCM
8 139 (2.22%) Prometheus
9 70 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.70%) Argo
11 29 (0.46%) Puppet
12 27 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 26 (0.41%) vRealize
14 23 (0.37%) Istio
14 23 (0.37%) Kibana
15 22 (0.35%) Nessus
16 18 (0.29%) Nmap
16 18 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
16 18 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,036 (32.46%) Microsoft
2 629 (10.03%) Databricks
3 340 (5.42%) Oracle
4 335 (5.34%) Google
5 273 (4.35%) ServiceNow
6 262 (4.18%) VMware
7 180 (2.87%) SAP
8 162 (2.58%) OpenAI
9 161 (2.57%) Cisco
10 156 (2.49%) Splunk
11 121 (1.93%) Salesforce
12 115 (1.83%) CyberArk
13 102 (1.63%) Palo Alto
14 84 (1.34%) Foundry
15 74 (1.18%) Okta
16 68 (1.08%) Red Hat
17 65 (1.04%) BeyondTrust
17 65 (1.04%) Citrix
18 61 (0.97%) IBM
18 61 (0.97%) Informatica