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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,830 4,922 6,144
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.99% 16.06% 13.68%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.64% 42.36% 41.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,834 3,419 4,450
10th Percentile £350 £350 £340
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.67%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £734 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 42 77
10th Percentile £24.70 £21.38 £17.77
25th Percentile £44.72 £23.80 £22.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +79.69% -30.71% -17.90%
75th Percentile £64.00 £63.94 £61.60
90th Percentile £80.00 £79.75 £73.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £29.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +94.92% -36.12% -28.95%

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 16,017 11,619 14,738
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.50% 37.91% 32.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,958 7,942 10,484
10th Percentile £313 £313 £281
25th Percentile £409 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £635
90th Percentile £700 £726 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £495
% change year-on-year -4.23% +0.20% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 415 187 359
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £21.15 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +41.51% +24.01% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.39 £43.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £74.45 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £24.18 £18.00
% change year-on-year +76.53% +34.33% -18.18%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 5,771 £525 -2.33% 2,771
London +1 3,132 £540 -1.82% 1,004
UK excluding London 0 2,783 £500 - 2,259
Work from Home -2 2,106 £525 - 1,338
North of England +2 756 £496 +0.51% 589
South East -1 731 £500 -9.09% 725
Midlands -2 474 £500 -3.85% 310
North West +2 386 £479 -4.28% 315
West Midlands -2 360 £523 -2.34% 184
South West +4 348 £504 -4.05% 250
Yorkshire -3 323 £500 +11.11% 182
Scotland +8 294 £550 +15.79% 143
East of England -3 156 £550 -4.35% 204
East Midlands 0 112 £437 -6.08% 122
Wales -3 83 £400 -11.85% 66
North East -4 51 £525 +9.09% 104
Northern Ireland +1 12 £475 - 11

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
1 312 (4.57%) SharePoint
2 220 (3.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 184 (2.69%) Confluence
4 178 (2.61%) Apache Spark
5 95 (1.39%) Apache
6 91 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.34%) OpenStack
8 21 (0.31%) SAS
9 18 (0.26%) CMS
10 17 (0.25%) IIS
11 16 (0.23%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.22%) Appian
13 13 (0.19%) Camunda
13 13 (0.19%) Mendix
14 11 (0.16%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
16 8 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
16 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
16 8 (0.12%) SugarCRM
17 6 (0.088%) WebLogic
Applications
1 122 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 93 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 45 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
5 44 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.088%) Trello
8 5 (0.073%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.073%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.073%) Weka
9 4 (0.059%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.015%) InDesign
11 1 (0.015%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 112 (1.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.18%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.088%) Dynamics NAV
7 6 (0.088%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.088%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.088%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.073%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.073%) SAP BPC
8 5 (0.073%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.059%) Oracle General Ledger
9 4 (0.059%) Oracle Payables
9 4 (0.059%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,401 (35.15%) AWS
2 1,364 (19.97%) Azure DevOps
3 1,356 (19.85%) GCP
4 924 (13.53%) Power Platform
5 818 (11.98%) Entra ID
6 776 (11.36%) Microsoft 365
7 706 (10.34%) GitHub
8 491 (7.19%) Azure Data Factory
9 416 (6.09%) GitHub Actions
10 406 (5.94%) Serverless
11 321 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 299 (4.38%) Dynamics 365
13 280 (4.10%) SaaS
14 266 (3.89%) Azure AKS
14 266 (3.89%) Power Automate
15 244 (3.57%) Azure Functions
16 231 (3.38%) PaaS
17 230 (3.37%) Azure Monitor
18 229 (3.35%) Snowflake
19 209 (3.06%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 457 (6.69%) Firewall
2 286 (4.19%) DNS
3 238 (3.48%) VPN
4 206 (3.02%) Network Security
5 168 (2.46%) WAN
6 162 (2.37%) DHCP
7 113 (1.65%) LAN
8 101 (1.48%) TCP/IP
9 91 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
10 85 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 71 (1.04%) VLAN
12 70 (1.02%) Kerberos
13 59 (0.86%) HTTP
14 44 (0.64%) BGP
15 39 (0.57%) SSL
15 39 (0.57%) Wireless
16 37 (0.54%) OSPF
17 36 (0.53%) Internet
18 34 (0.50%) MPLS
19 32 (0.47%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 623 (9.12%) Power BI
2 398 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 368 (5.39%) Data Warehouse
4 335 (4.90%) Data Lake
5 268 (3.92%) PostgreSQL
6 248 (3.63%) Azure SQL Database
7 200 (2.93%) NoSQL
8 169 (2.47%) Metadata
9 126 (1.84%) Delta Lake
10 125 (1.83%) Relational Database
11 101 (1.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 97 (1.42%) Big Data
13 91 (1.33%) MongoDB
14 81 (1.19%) MySQL
15 73 (1.07%) Tableau
16 69 (1.01%) BigQuery
17 65 (0.95%) Oracle Database
18 59 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
19 51 (0.75%) Redis
20 47 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 536 (7.85%) Git
2 479 (7.01%) JIRA
3 369 (5.40%) Jenkins
4 280 (4.10%) GitLab
5 126 (1.84%) Selenium
6 92 (1.35%) Postman
7 78 (1.14%) Cucumber
8 73 (1.07%) JMeter
9 71 (1.04%) JUnit
10 50 (0.73%) MLflow
11 49 (0.72%) Cypress.io
11 49 (0.72%) REST Assured
12 46 (0.67%) SonarQube
13 42 (0.61%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.51%) Oracle APEX
15 32 (0.47%) TestRail
16 31 (0.45%) Artifactory
17 30 (0.44%) SpecFlow
18 29 (0.42%) WebDriver
19 28 (0.41%) ERwin
General
1 2,030 (29.72%) Social Skills
2 1,223 (17.91%) Finance
3 814 (11.92%) Public Sector
4 671 (9.82%) Analytical Skills
5 376 (5.51%) Banking
6 217 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
7 148 (2.17%) Legal
8 112 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 106 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
10 93 (1.36%) Retail
11 88 (1.29%) Marketing
12 86 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
13 82 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
14 68 (1.00%) Telecoms
15 64 (0.94%) Financial Institution
16 60 (0.88%) Investment Banking
17 58 (0.85%) Law
18 52 (0.76%) Front Office
19 51 (0.75%) Manufacturing
20 38 (0.56%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,136 (16.63%) Architect
2 988 (14.47%) Developer
3 750 (10.98%) Senior
4 578 (8.46%) Azure Engineer
5 554 (8.11%) Data Engineer
6 505 (7.39%) Lead
7 438 (6.41%) Analyst
8 328 (4.80%) DevOps Engineer
9 324 (4.74%) Solutions Architect
10 305 (4.47%) Consultant
11 189 (2.77%) Security Engineer
12 184 (2.69%) Cloud Engineer
13 182 (2.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 171 (2.50%) Azure Architect
15 168 (2.46%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 159 (2.33%) Senior Developer
17 149 (2.18%) Platform Engineer
18 147 (2.15%) Data Architect
19 137 (2.01%) Tester
20 135 (1.98%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 555 (8.13%) .NET
2 479 (7.01%) REST
3 338 (4.95%) React
4 264 (3.87%) RESTful
5 260 (3.81%) PySpark
6 251 (3.67%) Node.js
7 244 (3.57%) Kafka
8 212 (3.10%) Spring
9 208 (3.05%) OAuth
10 195 (2.86%) AngularJS
11 190 (2.78%) HTML
12 181 (2.65%) Spring Boot
13 159 (2.33%) CSS
14 153 (2.24%) LDAP
15 148 (2.17%) PyTorch
15 148 (2.17%) SOAP
16 141 (2.06%) JSON
17 134 (1.96%) TensorFlow
18 130 (1.90%) SAML
19 129 (1.89%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 613 (8.98%) Cloud Native
2 266 (3.89%) Onboarding
3 244 (3.57%) Product Ownership
4 179 (2.62%) Hybrid Cloud
5 176 (2.58%) Security Posture
6 174 (2.55%) Data Centre
7 158 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
8 153 (2.24%) Legacy Systems
9 132 (1.93%) Public Cloud
10 122 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
11 110 (1.61%) AI Agents
12 87 (1.27%) Data Structures
13 82 (1.20%) Algorithms
14 79 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
14 79 (1.16%) Replication
15 73 (1.07%) Low-Code
16 72 (1.05%) Management Information System
17 66 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
18 65 (0.95%) NHS
19 55 (0.81%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 747 (10.94%) Windows
2 368 (5.39%) Linux
3 207 (3.03%) Windows Server
4 126 (1.84%) Windows 10
5 78 (1.14%) Unix
6 63 (0.92%) VMS
7 49 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 48 (0.70%) Mac OS
9 39 (0.57%) Apple iOS
10 30 (0.44%) Android
11 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.28%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 8 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.12%) Solaris
17 7 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.088%) CoreOS
19 5 (0.073%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,500 (36.60%) DevOps
2 2,097 (30.70%) CI/CD
3 1,657 (24.26%) Agile
4 1,203 (17.61%) Problem-Solving
5 1,027 (15.04%) Analytics
6 943 (13.81%) AI
7 907 (13.28%) Infrastructure as Code
8 865 (12.66%) Migration
9 710 (10.40%) Data Modelling
10 705 (10.32%) Stakeholder Management
11 698 (10.22%) Business Intelligence
12 676 (9.90%) Containerisation
13 638 (9.34%) Continuous Improvement
14 617 (9.03%) Machine Learning
14 617 (9.03%) Microservices
15 612 (8.96%) ETL
16 608 (8.90%) Data Pipeline
17 587 (8.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 562 (8.23%) Test Automation
19 547 (8.01%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,791 (26.22%) Python
2 1,518 (22.23%) SQL
3 741 (10.85%) PowerShell
4 605 (8.86%) C#
5 582 (8.52%) Java
6 526 (7.70%) JavaScript
7 314 (4.60%) TypeScript
8 268 (3.92%) Bash
9 203 (2.97%) Bicep
10 95 (1.39%) Scala
11 82 (1.20%) Go
11 82 (1.20%) Kusto Query Language
12 80 (1.17%) PL/SQL
12 80 (1.17%) T-SQL
13 78 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 46 (0.67%) R
15 45 (0.66%) Shell Script
16 39 (0.57%) C++
17 36 (0.53%) PHP
18 25 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,622 (23.75%) Security Cleared
2 1,340 (19.62%) SC Cleared
3 550 (8.05%) Degree
4 375 (5.49%) Azure Certification
5 215 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
6 189 (2.77%) CISSP
7 171 (2.50%) Microsoft Certification
8 147 (2.15%) AWS Certification
9 133 (1.95%) DV Cleared
10 132 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
11 119 (1.74%) CISM
12 118 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
13 90 (1.32%) Master's Degree
14 67 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
15 60 (0.88%) CCNP
16 57 (0.83%) PMI Certification
17 55 (0.81%) ISTQB
17 55 (0.81%) PMP
18 41 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 35 (0.51%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 457 (6.69%) Data Quality
2 397 (5.81%) GDPR
3 364 (5.33%) QA
4 301 (4.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 236 (3.46%) NIST
6 136 (1.99%) Accessibility
7 102 (1.49%) NCSC
8 82 (1.20%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 60 (0.88%) SLA
10 57 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
11 49 (0.72%) PMO
12 39 (0.57%) HIPAA
13 37 (0.54%) GRC
14 35 (0.51%) WCAG
15 34 (0.50%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.37%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.35%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.34%) PSD2
19 22 (0.32%) NIST 800
System Software
1 881 (12.90%) Active Directory
2 817 (11.96%) Docker
3 193 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 93 (1.36%) Hyper-V
5 92 (1.35%) Virtual Machines
6 74 (1.08%) vSphere
7 71 (1.04%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.35%) VMware NSX
9 18 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
10 16 (0.23%) NFS
11 15 (0.22%) Firmware
12 9 (0.13%) Postfix
13 7 (0.10%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.10%) KVM
13 7 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 7 (0.10%) Snort
14 6 (0.088%) GPFS
14 6 (0.088%) Lustre
14 6 (0.088%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.073%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,041 (15.24%) Terraform
2 1,002 (14.67%) Kubernetes
3 364 (5.33%) Microsoft Intune
4 318 (4.66%) Ansible
5 170 (2.49%) Grafana
6 165 (2.42%) Single Sign-On
7 149 (2.18%) Prometheus
8 140 (2.05%) SCCM
9 73 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 49 (0.72%) Argo
11 31 (0.45%) Istio
12 28 (0.41%) FortiGate
13 27 (0.40%) Puppet
14 25 (0.37%) vRealize
15 23 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
15 23 (0.34%) Progress Chef
16 21 (0.31%) HP ALM
17 19 (0.28%) Nmap
17 19 (0.28%) vCenter Server
18 18 (0.26%) Nessus
Vendors
1 2,190 (32.06%) Microsoft
2 685 (10.03%) Databricks
3 344 (5.04%) Oracle
4 340 (4.98%) Google
5 293 (4.29%) ServiceNow
6 263 (3.85%) VMware
7 196 (2.87%) SAP
8 176 (2.58%) OpenAI
9 167 (2.45%) Cisco
10 158 (2.31%) Splunk
11 121 (1.77%) CyberArk
12 108 (1.58%) Foundry
13 105 (1.54%) Palo Alto
14 101 (1.48%) Salesforce
15 85 (1.24%) Okta
16 75 (1.10%) Red Hat
17 72 (1.05%) Citrix
18 71 (1.04%) IBM
19 66 (0.97%) BeyondTrust
20 64 (0.94%) Fortinet