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

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,878 4,592 6,006
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.45% 15.03% 13.83%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.59% 39.79% 42.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,517 3,178 4,314
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £508 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.60% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 38 53
10th Percentile £19.25 £26.02 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.50 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% +50.65% -36.49%
75th Percentile £77.31 £78.40 £61.60
90th Percentile £95.31 £100.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £67.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -14.81% +28.57% -12.50%

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 18,073 11,540 14,257
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.44% 37.77% 32.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,038 7,736 10,011
10th Percentile £331 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.77% -3.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 600 292 360
10th Percentile £16.61 £15.25 £14.11
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £28.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.93% +27.27% -37.14%
75th Percentile £68.92 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.30 £72.38 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.88 £18.87 £20.87
% change year-on-year +100.72% -9.58% -18.87%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 0 6,688 £525 - 2,372
London +1 3,525 £544 -1.01% 906
UK excluding London +3 3,387 £508 +1.60% 1,970
Work from Home -1 2,448 £525 +2.44% 1,166
North of England +7 969 £510 +7.37% 496
South East +2 837 £513 +2.65% 619
Midlands +3 570 £500 +1.63% 268
North West +8 498 £500 +1.83% 277
South West +6 429 £528 +5.50% 244
West Midlands +1 426 £500 -4.76% 164
Yorkshire +4 390 £505 +6.37% 142
Scotland +11 325 £525 +5.00% 85
East of England +4 174 £550 - 179
East Midlands +5 134 £500 +9.59% 104
Wales 0 107 £425 +5.59% 65
North East +5 94 £525 +5.00% 84
Northern Ireland +13 19 £538 +13.16% 59
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 380 (4.82%) SharePoint
2 249 (3.16%) Confluence
3 189 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 188 (2.39%) Apache Spark
5 125 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.46%) Apache
7 40 (0.51%) SAS
8 29 (0.37%) IIS
9 20 (0.25%) CMS
10 17 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.13%) Camunda
13 10 (0.13%) Mendix
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.10%) Appian
15 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 110 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
3 66 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 28 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.089%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.063%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.063%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.051%) Notion
12 4 (0.051%) Trello
13 2 (0.025%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.013%) InDesign
14 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.013%) Sketch
14 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 108 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 9 (0.11%) Maximo
6 9 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.089%) Shopify
9 6 (0.076%) Endur
9 6 (0.076%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.063%) Magento
10 5 (0.063%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.063%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.051%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.051%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.051%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,758 (35.01%) AWS
2 1,616 (20.51%) Azure DevOps
3 1,321 (16.77%) GCP
4 1,004 (12.74%) Power Platform
5 970 (12.31%) Entra ID
6 774 (9.82%) Microsoft 365
7 726 (9.22%) GitHub
8 463 (5.88%) Azure Data Factory
9 442 (5.61%) GitHub Actions
10 381 (4.84%) Serverless
11 312 (3.96%) SaaS
12 309 (3.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 292 (3.71%) Azure AKS
14 260 (3.30%) Power Automate
15 259 (3.29%) Azure Monitor
16 245 (3.11%) Dynamics 365
17 241 (3.06%) PaaS
18 240 (3.05%) PowerApps
19 215 (2.73%) Snowflake
20 211 (2.68%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 467 (5.93%) Firewall
2 348 (4.42%) DNS
3 270 (3.43%) Network Security
4 267 (3.39%) VPN
5 224 (2.84%) WAN
6 177 (2.25%) DHCP
7 134 (1.70%) LAN
8 125 (1.59%) SD-WAN
9 107 (1.36%) TCP/IP
10 99 (1.26%) BGP
11 84 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
12 76 (0.96%) OSPF
13 74 (0.94%) VLAN
14 61 (0.77%) SSL
15 60 (0.76%) Kerberos
16 53 (0.67%) SAN
17 48 (0.61%) VXLAN
18 47 (0.60%) Wireless
19 46 (0.58%) IPsec
20 42 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 674 (8.56%) Power BI
2 452 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 376 (4.77%) Data Warehouse
4 362 (4.60%) Data Lake
5 284 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
6 221 (2.81%) Azure SQL Database
7 208 (2.64%) NoSQL
8 195 (2.48%) Metadata
9 142 (1.80%) Delta Lake
10 134 (1.70%) Relational Database
11 118 (1.50%) Big Data
12 106 (1.35%) MongoDB
13 90 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (0.96%) Tableau
15 72 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
16 71 (0.90%) MySQL
17 64 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.74%) Oracle Database
19 54 (0.69%) Star Schema
20 52 (0.66%) Redis
Development Applications
1 604 (7.67%) JIRA
2 583 (7.40%) Git
3 412 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 321 (4.07%) GitLab
5 127 (1.61%) Selenium
6 80 (1.02%) Postman
7 78 (0.99%) JMeter
8 64 (0.81%) JUnit
9 63 (0.80%) Cucumber
10 58 (0.74%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.60%) Visual Studio
13 43 (0.55%) MLflow
13 43 (0.55%) WebDriver
14 42 (0.53%) Cypress.io
15 33 (0.42%) Gatling
16 32 (0.41%) Maven
17 29 (0.37%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
19 26 (0.33%) NUnit
General
1 1,981 (25.15%) Social Skills
2 1,489 (18.90%) Finance
3 873 (11.08%) Public Sector
4 707 (8.97%) Analytical Skills
5 418 (5.31%) Banking
6 225 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 203 (2.58%) Legal
8 166 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 156 (1.98%) Retail
10 96 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 82 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
12 71 (0.90%) Investment Banking
13 69 (0.88%) Front Office
14 68 (0.86%) Financial Institution
14 68 (0.86%) Law
15 67 (0.85%) Telecoms
16 63 (0.80%) Marketing
17 62 (0.79%) Manufacturing
18 55 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
19 46 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,399 (17.76%) Architect
2 1,016 (12.90%) Developer
3 951 (12.07%) Senior
4 694 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 607 (7.71%) Lead
6 597 (7.58%) Data Engineer
7 478 (6.07%) Analyst
8 406 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 393 (4.99%) Solutions Architect
10 331 (4.20%) Consultant
11 283 (3.59%) Cloud Engineer
12 268 (3.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 224 (2.84%) Data Architect
14 218 (2.77%) Azure Architect
15 196 (2.49%) Platform Engineer
16 193 (2.45%) Security Engineer
17 192 (2.44%) Technical Architect
18 174 (2.21%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 173 (2.20%) Business Analyst
20 172 (2.18%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 642 (8.15%) .NET
2 552 (7.01%) REST
3 348 (4.42%) React
4 284 (3.60%) Kafka
5 269 (3.41%) RESTful
6 264 (3.35%) PySpark
7 232 (2.94%) OAuth
8 217 (2.75%) Spring
9 215 (2.73%) Node.js
10 188 (2.39%) AngularJS
11 185 (2.35%) Spring Boot
12 169 (2.15%) JSON
13 149 (1.89%) SAML
14 148 (1.88%) LDAP
15 144 (1.83%) HTML
16 143 (1.82%) OpenID
17 127 (1.61%) .NET Framework
17 127 (1.61%) Middleware
18 121 (1.54%) SOAP
19 120 (1.52%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 836 (10.61%) Cloud Native
2 329 (4.18%) Onboarding
3 319 (4.05%) Product Ownership
4 257 (3.26%) Data Centre
5 229 (2.91%) Distributed Systems
6 227 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
7 212 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
8 177 (2.25%) AI Agents
9 164 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
10 162 (2.06%) Security Posture
11 152 (1.93%) Public Cloud
12 114 (1.45%) Data Structures
13 107 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
14 105 (1.33%) Management Information System
15 97 (1.23%) Replication
16 88 (1.12%) PKI
17 80 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
18 79 (1.00%) Enterprise Cloud
19 75 (0.95%) Low-Code
20 72 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 885 (11.23%) Windows
2 402 (5.10%) Linux
3 286 (3.63%) Windows Server
4 104 (1.32%) Windows 10
5 74 (0.94%) Apple iOS
5 74 (0.94%) Unix
6 70 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 68 (0.86%) Android
7 68 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 60 (0.76%) VMS
9 36 (0.46%) Ubuntu
10 30 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
11 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
12 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
12 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.14%) CentOS
14 10 (0.13%) Debian
15 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.089%) CoreOS
16 7 (0.089%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,928 (37.17%) DevOps
2 2,459 (31.21%) CI/CD
3 1,934 (24.55%) Agile
4 1,183 (15.02%) AI
5 1,165 (14.79%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,130 (14.34%) Migration
7 1,100 (13.96%) Analytics
8 1,060 (13.46%) Problem-Solving
9 903 (11.46%) Stakeholder Management
10 883 (11.21%) Data Modelling
11 787 (9.99%) Continuous Improvement
12 744 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
13 740 (9.39%) Containerisation
14 731 (9.28%) Roadmaps
15 719 (9.13%) Business Intelligence
16 717 (9.10%) Microservices
17 684 (8.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 671 (8.52%) ETL
19 637 (8.09%) Test Automation
20 634 (8.05%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,849 (23.47%) Python
2 1,580 (20.06%) SQL
3 747 (9.48%) PowerShell
4 653 (8.29%) Java
5 636 (8.07%) C#
6 465 (5.90%) JavaScript
7 317 (4.02%) TypeScript
8 271 (3.44%) Bash
9 266 (3.38%) Bicep
10 90 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 89 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 79 (1.00%) Go
13 77 (0.98%) Scala
14 47 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
15 46 (0.58%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.56%) R
17 34 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 32 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.36%) C++
20 22 (0.28%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,924 (24.42%) Security Cleared
2 1,611 (20.45%) SC Cleared
3 553 (7.02%) Degree
4 398 (5.05%) Azure Certification
5 247 (3.14%) CISSP
6 203 (2.58%) DV Cleared
7 201 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
8 193 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
9 191 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
10 178 (2.26%) Microsoft Certification
11 176 (2.23%) AWS Certification
12 127 (1.61%) CISM
13 92 (1.17%) CCNP
14 80 (1.02%) PMP
15 77 (0.98%) PMI Certification
16 74 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 63 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 59 (0.75%) Master's Degree
19 56 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
20 50 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 540 (6.85%) Data Quality
2 412 (5.23%) QA
3 340 (4.32%) GDPR
4 282 (3.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 267 (3.39%) NIST
6 169 (2.15%) Accessibility
7 117 (1.49%) NCSC
8 95 (1.21%) SLA
9 76 (0.96%) PCI DSS
10 73 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 67 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 61 (0.77%) GRC
12 61 (0.77%) WCAG
13 40 (0.51%) PMO
14 38 (0.48%) HIPAA
15 29 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 23 (0.29%) NIST 800
18 19 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
19 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 927 (11.77%) Active Directory
2 827 (10.50%) Docker
3 219 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
5 129 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
6 113 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.86%) vSphere
8 51 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.37%) Firmware
11 24 (0.30%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 6 (0.076%) Ceph
15 6 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 6 (0.076%) IAG
16 5 (0.063%) Oracle RAC
16 5 (0.063%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,253 (15.91%) Terraform
2 1,143 (14.51%) Kubernetes
3 413 (5.24%) Microsoft Intune
4 364 (4.62%) Ansible
5 209 (2.65%) Grafana
6 184 (2.34%) Prometheus
7 167 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 103 (1.31%) SCCM
9 69 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.56%) FortiGate
10 44 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
11 41 (0.52%) Progress Chef
12 40 (0.51%) Argo
13 39 (0.50%) Puppet
14 31 (0.39%) Istio
15 24 (0.30%) HP ALM
16 21 (0.27%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.20%) Packer
19 13 (0.17%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,491 (31.62%) Microsoft
2 750 (9.52%) Databricks
3 350 (4.44%) ServiceNow
4 301 (3.82%) Google
4 301 (3.82%) VMware
5 285 (3.62%) Oracle
6 216 (2.74%) SAP
7 215 (2.73%) Cisco
8 201 (2.55%) OpenAI
9 155 (1.97%) Splunk
10 146 (1.85%) Salesforce
11 143 (1.82%) Palo Alto
12 129 (1.64%) CyberArk
13 120 (1.52%) Foundry
14 105 (1.33%) Okta
15 94 (1.19%) Dynatrace
16 88 (1.12%) Informatica
17 84 (1.07%) Zscaler
18 72 (0.91%) Citrix
19 68 (0.86%) Fortinet