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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,618 4,476 5,846
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.51% 15.47% 13.63%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.60% 40.83% 42.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,362 3,142 4,233
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.72% -3.02% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £496 £500
% change year-on-year +0.81% -0.80% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 34 50
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.38 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £27.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -44.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.96 £61.19
90th Percentile £90.00 £96.25 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £51.25
% change year-on-year +53.33% -26.83% -15.46%

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 17,474 10,963 13,910
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.58% 37.89% 32.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,712 7,435 9,865
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £612 £619 £634
90th Percentile £709 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.58% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 562 262 347
10th Percentile £15.51 £15.16 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.40 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £35.96 £28.00 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.41% +30.23% -41.89%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.41 £41.63
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.38 £69.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.12 £20.24 £17.80
% change year-on-year +83.44% +13.68% -35.27%

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 5 June 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 5 June 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 5 June 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 6,446 £525 - 3,402
London +1 3,429 £540 -1.82% 1,300
UK excluding London +2 3,220 £500 +0.81% 2,568
Work from Home -1 2,354 £525 +2.44% 1,881
North of England +5 928 £500 +5.26% 649
South East +3 824 £500 - 736
Midlands +1 523 £500 +2.09% 355
North West +4 469 £500 +5.26% 369
South West +5 398 £525 +0.48% 332
Yorkshire +8 384 £500 +8.11% 178
West Midlands +1 383 £500 -4.76% 231
Scotland +10 314 £525 +8.47% 162
East of England +5 154 £550 -5.17% 216
East Midlands +2 130 £465 +0.54% 124
Wales 0 105 £425 +4.94% 82
North East +5 87 £525 +5.00% 102
Northern Ireland +16 18 £531 +11.84% 69
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
1 364 (4.78%) SharePoint
2 217 (2.85%) Confluence
3 194 (2.55%) Apache Spark
4 189 (2.48%) Microsoft Exchange
5 114 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.40%) Apache
7 36 (0.47%) SAS
8 25 (0.33%) IIS
9 20 (0.26%) CMS
10 16 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
10 16 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 13 (0.17%) Mendix
13 12 (0.16%) Appian
14 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 11 (0.14%) Camunda
15 10 (0.13%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.13%) nginx
16 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
17 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
Applications
1 103 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.26%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.092%) Spreadsheet
9 6 (0.079%) CPLEX
10 5 (0.066%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.066%) PTC Creo
10 5 (0.066%) Revit
11 4 (0.053%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.053%) Notion
11 4 (0.053%) Trello
12 2 (0.026%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.013%) InDesign
13 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.013%) Sketch
13 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 104 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 84 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
5 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.079%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.079%) Shopify
7 6 (0.079%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.066%) NEC Housing
8 5 (0.066%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.066%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.053%) Dynamics GP
9 4 (0.053%) Endur
9 4 (0.053%) Quorum
9 4 (0.053%) R3 Corda
9 4 (0.053%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,610 (34.26%) AWS
2 1,544 (20.27%) Azure DevOps
3 1,297 (17.03%) GCP
4 974 (12.79%) Power Platform
5 927 (12.17%) Entra ID
6 792 (10.40%) Microsoft 365
7 706 (9.27%) GitHub
8 489 (6.42%) Azure Data Factory
9 425 (5.58%) GitHub Actions
10 379 (4.98%) Serverless
11 323 (4.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 298 (3.91%) SaaS
13 276 (3.62%) Azure AKS
14 258 (3.39%) Power Automate
15 248 (3.26%) Dynamics 365
16 245 (3.22%) PaaS
17 239 (3.14%) Azure Monitor
18 222 (2.91%) PowerApps
19 197 (2.59%) Azure Functions
20 192 (2.52%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 452 (5.93%) Firewall
2 335 (4.40%) DNS
3 262 (3.44%) Network Security
4 260 (3.41%) VPN
5 214 (2.81%) WAN
6 178 (2.34%) DHCP
7 135 (1.77%) LAN
8 120 (1.58%) SD-WAN
9 96 (1.26%) TCP/IP
10 86 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
11 82 (1.08%) BGP
12 73 (0.96%) VLAN
13 69 (0.91%) OSPF
14 65 (0.85%) Kerberos
15 52 (0.68%) SSL
16 50 (0.66%) SAN
16 50 (0.66%) VXLAN
17 45 (0.59%) Wireless
18 44 (0.58%) IPsec
19 37 (0.49%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 643 (8.44%) Power BI
2 447 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 368 (4.83%) Data Lake
4 367 (4.82%) Data Warehouse
5 255 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 236 (3.10%) Azure SQL Database
7 199 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 174 (2.28%) Metadata
9 149 (1.96%) Delta Lake
10 121 (1.59%) Big Data
11 115 (1.51%) Relational Database
12 95 (1.25%) MongoDB
12 95 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 76 (1.00%) Tableau
14 68 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
15 67 (0.88%) MySQL
15 67 (0.88%) Oracle Database
16 63 (0.83%) BigQuery
17 52 (0.68%) Star Schema
18 50 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 538 (7.06%) Git
2 537 (7.05%) JIRA
3 382 (5.01%) Jenkins
4 320 (4.20%) GitLab
5 124 (1.63%) Selenium
6 80 (1.05%) Postman
7 75 (0.98%) JMeter
8 64 (0.84%) Cucumber
9 59 (0.77%) JUnit
10 54 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 49 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.62%) MLflow
13 40 (0.53%) Cypress.io
14 39 (0.51%) Visual Studio
14 39 (0.51%) WebDriver
15 33 (0.43%) Artifactory
16 32 (0.42%) Gatling
17 30 (0.39%) Maven
18 25 (0.33%) NUnit
18 25 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,938 (25.44%) Social Skills
2 1,384 (18.17%) Finance
3 839 (11.01%) Public Sector
4 672 (8.82%) Analytical Skills
5 385 (5.05%) Banking
6 226 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
7 195 (2.56%) Legal
8 126 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 125 (1.64%) Retail
10 91 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 74 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
12 70 (0.92%) Investment Banking
13 68 (0.89%) Financial Institution
14 66 (0.87%) Law
14 66 (0.87%) Marketing
15 65 (0.85%) Front Office
16 57 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
17 55 (0.72%) Telecoms
18 48 (0.63%) Manufacturing
19 44 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,338 (17.56%) Architect
2 947 (12.43%) Developer
3 909 (11.93%) Senior
4 669 (8.78%) Azure Engineer
5 590 (7.74%) Data Engineer
6 585 (7.68%) Lead
7 466 (6.12%) Analyst
8 409 (5.37%) DevOps Engineer
9 360 (4.73%) Solutions Architect
10 315 (4.13%) Consultant
11 261 (3.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 259 (3.40%) Cloud Engineer
13 214 (2.81%) Azure Architect
14 208 (2.73%) Data Architect
15 205 (2.69%) Security Engineer
16 178 (2.34%) Platform Engineer
17 176 (2.31%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 173 (2.27%) Technical Architect
19 163 (2.14%) Project Manager
20 160 (2.10%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 618 (8.11%) .NET
2 527 (6.92%) REST
3 339 (4.45%) React
4 268 (3.52%) Kafka
5 263 (3.45%) PySpark
6 246 (3.23%) RESTful
7 219 (2.87%) OAuth
8 211 (2.77%) Node.js
9 201 (2.64%) Spring
10 185 (2.43%) AngularJS
11 176 (2.31%) LDAP
12 168 (2.21%) Spring Boot
13 157 (2.06%) JSON
14 142 (1.86%) HTML
15 140 (1.84%) OpenID
16 138 (1.81%) SAML
17 133 (1.75%) SOAP
18 130 (1.71%) Middleware
19 119 (1.56%) CSS
20 115 (1.51%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 760 (9.98%) Cloud Native
2 312 (4.10%) Onboarding
3 286 (3.75%) Product Ownership
4 246 (3.23%) Data Centre
5 217 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
6 192 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
7 180 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
8 173 (2.27%) Security Posture
9 169 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
10 158 (2.07%) Public Cloud
11 149 (1.96%) AI Agents
12 101 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
13 98 (1.29%) Data Structures
14 90 (1.18%) Replication
15 88 (1.16%) Management Information System
16 80 (1.05%) PKI
17 78 (1.02%) Low-Code
18 68 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
18 68 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
19 67 (0.88%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 865 (11.35%) Windows
2 391 (5.13%) Linux
3 268 (3.52%) Windows Server
4 122 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 74 (0.97%) Apple iOS
5 74 (0.97%) Mac OS
6 71 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 71 (0.93%) Unix
7 68 (0.89%) VMS
8 62 (0.81%) Android
9 32 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
10 28 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 19 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
12 15 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.14%) CentOS
15 10 (0.13%) Debian
15 10 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.092%) CoreOS
16 7 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,836 (37.23%) DevOps
2 2,370 (31.11%) CI/CD
3 1,770 (23.23%) Agile
4 1,113 (14.61%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,078 (14.15%) Migration
6 1,065 (13.98%) Analytics
7 1,061 (13.93%) AI
8 1,048 (13.76%) Problem-Solving
9 852 (11.18%) Data Modelling
10 799 (10.49%) Stakeholder Management
11 734 (9.64%) Continuous Improvement
12 719 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
13 697 (9.15%) Business Intelligence
14 681 (8.94%) Roadmaps
15 680 (8.93%) Containerisation
16 678 (8.90%) ETL
17 667 (8.76%) Microservices
18 651 (8.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 602 (7.90%) Test Automation
20 591 (7.76%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,766 (23.18%) Python
2 1,569 (20.60%) SQL
3 761 (9.99%) PowerShell
4 627 (8.23%) Java
5 619 (8.13%) C#
6 450 (5.91%) JavaScript
7 294 (3.86%) TypeScript
8 255 (3.35%) Bash
8 255 (3.35%) Bicep
9 88 (1.16%) T-SQL
10 86 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 85 (1.12%) Scala
12 76 (1.00%) Go
13 51 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
14 50 (0.66%) Shell Script
15 40 (0.53%) PL/SQL
16 37 (0.49%) R
17 31 (0.41%) C++
18 27 (0.35%) Kotlin
19 16 (0.21%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,877 (24.64%) Security Cleared
2 1,587 (20.83%) SC Cleared
3 526 (6.90%) Degree
4 398 (5.22%) Azure Certification
5 234 (3.07%) CISSP
6 192 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
7 189 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
8 184 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
9 174 (2.28%) DV Cleared
10 160 (2.10%) Microsoft Certification
11 155 (2.03%) AWS Certification
12 130 (1.71%) CISM
13 88 (1.16%) CCNP
14 77 (1.01%) PMP
15 73 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 72 (0.95%) PMI Certification
17 61 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 59 (0.77%) Master's Degree
19 57 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
20 47 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 525 (6.89%) Data Quality
2 400 (5.25%) QA
3 343 (4.50%) GDPR
4 287 (3.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 269 (3.53%) NIST
6 149 (1.96%) Accessibility
7 104 (1.37%) NCSC
8 96 (1.26%) SLA
9 77 (1.01%) PCI DSS
10 71 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 53 (0.70%) GRC
12 53 (0.70%) WCAG
13 48 (0.63%) PMO
14 37 (0.49%) HIPAA
15 26 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 26 (0.34%) NIST 800
15 26 (0.34%) SOC 2
16 18 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 16 (0.21%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 928 (12.18%) Active Directory
2 788 (10.34%) Docker
3 223 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 124 (1.63%) Virtual Desktop
5 119 (1.56%) Hyper-V
6 112 (1.47%) Virtual Machines
7 70 (0.92%) vSphere
8 50 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.39%) Firmware
10 29 (0.38%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.28%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.11%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.079%) Ceph
15 6 (0.079%) HDFS
15 6 (0.079%) KVM
15 6 (0.079%) RACF
16 5 (0.066%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,185 (15.56%) Terraform
2 1,078 (14.15%) Kubernetes
3 397 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
4 354 (4.65%) Ansible
5 214 (2.81%) Grafana
6 187 (2.45%) Prometheus
7 169 (2.22%) Single Sign-On
8 106 (1.39%) SCCM
9 73 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 41 (0.54%) Argo
11 39 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.47%) FortiGate
12 36 (0.47%) Progress Chef
13 35 (0.46%) Puppet
14 33 (0.43%) Istio
15 24 (0.32%) vCenter Server
16 22 (0.29%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.21%) linkerd
19 15 (0.20%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,420 (31.77%) Microsoft
2 748 (9.82%) Databricks
3 321 (4.21%) ServiceNow
4 304 (3.99%) VMware
5 291 (3.82%) Google
6 280 (3.68%) Oracle
7 215 (2.82%) SAP
8 209 (2.74%) Cisco
9 182 (2.39%) OpenAI
10 163 (2.14%) Splunk
11 143 (1.88%) Palo Alto
12 139 (1.82%) CyberArk
13 121 (1.59%) Salesforce
14 111 (1.46%) Foundry
15 106 (1.39%) Okta
16 82 (1.08%) Dynatrace
17 78 (1.02%) Citrix
18 73 (0.96%) Informatica
19 70 (0.92%) Zscaler
20 68 (0.89%) Red Hat