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

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,391 4,836 5,577
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.63% 14.62% 14.38%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.45% 39.32% 42.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,860 3,301 3,974
10th Percentile £375 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £423 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +0.10% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 184 43 38
10th Percentile £18.33 £18.87 £18.05
25th Percentile £23.00 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.66% +18.43% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.56 £74.38 £60.58
90th Percentile £93.82 £93.75 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £30.50
% change year-on-year -19.23% +113.11% -33.95%

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 18,879 12,299 13,099
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.16% 37.17% 33.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,472 8,209 9,119
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £411 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.60% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 610 319 262
10th Percentile £15.75 £15.23 £14.17
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £28.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% +15.80% -30.51%
75th Percentile £69.50 £47.50 £52.73
90th Percentile £82.26 £67.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +80.13% -11.70% -15.37%

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 16 August 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 16 August 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 16 August 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 7,219 £525 - 4,184
London +1 3,756 £550 - 2,033
UK excluding London +3 3,624 £501 +0.10% 2,753
Work from Home -1 2,585 £525 +5.00% 2,015
North of England +8 1,054 £500 +5.26% 741
South East +2 945 £525 +5.00% 797
Midlands +4 659 £495 -1.05% 342
North West +7 551 £500 +2.30% 428
West Midlands +3 494 £493 -6.19% 224
South West +6 437 £540 +8.00% 328
Yorkshire +6 421 £500 +5.26% 218
Scotland +9 279 £500 +0.81% 171
East of England +3 176 £525 +1.45% 197
East Midlands +8 152 £494 +6.76% 118
North East +6 95 £513 -0.87% 104
Wales +1 91 £475 +6.50% 88
Northern Ireland +13 15 £644 +35.53% 125
Channel Islands +1 9 £475 -25.78%

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
1 442 (5.27%) SharePoint
2 277 (3.30%) Confluence
3 203 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
4 175 (2.09%) Apache Spark
5 152 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
6 119 (1.42%) Apache
7 41 (0.49%) SAS
8 36 (0.43%) IIS
9 27 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 21 (0.25%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
15 8 (0.095%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.095%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.083%) Camunda
17 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 121 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 84 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 34 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.095%) Revit
10 8 (0.095%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.012%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 119 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.095%) Magento
8 7 (0.083%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Maximo
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.060%) Workday HCM
11 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,989 (35.62%) AWS
2 1,777 (21.18%) Azure DevOps
3 1,427 (17.01%) GCP
4 1,080 (12.87%) Entra ID
5 1,051 (12.53%) Power Platform
6 847 (10.09%) Microsoft 365
7 843 (10.05%) GitHub
8 510 (6.08%) GitHub Actions
9 485 (5.78%) Azure Data Factory
10 353 (4.21%) Serverless
11 350 (4.17%) SaaS
12 316 (3.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 304 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
14 302 (3.60%) Azure AKS
15 286 (3.41%) Power Automate
16 271 (3.23%) PowerApps
17 265 (3.16%) Dynamics 365
18 256 (3.05%) PaaS
19 254 (3.03%) Snowflake
20 230 (2.74%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 530 (6.32%) Firewall
2 419 (4.99%) DNS
3 331 (3.94%) VPN
4 303 (3.61%) Network Security
5 214 (2.55%) DHCP
6 198 (2.36%) WAN
7 168 (2.00%) TCP/IP
8 123 (1.47%) LAN
9 110 (1.31%) BGP
10 103 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.12%) VLAN
12 88 (1.05%) OSPF
13 86 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.88%) SSL
15 65 (0.77%) SAN
16 56 (0.67%) Wireless
17 50 (0.60%) HTTP
18 48 (0.57%) IPsec
19 46 (0.55%) VXLAN
20 42 (0.50%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 719 (8.57%) Power BI
2 470 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 414 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 366 (4.36%) Data Lake
5 295 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 221 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
6 221 (2.63%) Metadata
6 221 (2.63%) NoSQL
7 142 (1.69%) Relational Database
8 135 (1.61%) Delta Lake
9 102 (1.22%) Big Data
10 101 (1.20%) MongoDB
10 101 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 81 (0.97%) MySQL
12 65 (0.77%) BigQuery
12 65 (0.77%) Tableau
13 64 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
14 63 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
15 58 (0.69%) Redis
15 58 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 683 (8.14%) Git
2 637 (7.59%) JIRA
3 461 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 361 (4.30%) GitLab
5 138 (1.64%) Selenium
6 75 (0.89%) Postman
7 71 (0.85%) JUnit
8 66 (0.79%) JMeter
9 60 (0.72%) Cucumber
10 59 (0.70%) Cypress.io
11 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 51 (0.61%) Maven
13 48 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 46 (0.55%) WebDriver
15 43 (0.51%) Claude Code
16 41 (0.49%) Gradle
16 41 (0.49%) REST Assured
17 34 (0.41%) MLflow
18 31 (0.37%) LoadRunner
19 29 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 2,216 (26.41%) Social Skills
2 1,562 (18.62%) Finance
3 981 (11.69%) Public Sector
4 813 (9.69%) Analytical Skills
5 447 (5.33%) Banking
6 236 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 209 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 188 (2.24%) Retail
9 187 (2.23%) Legal
10 97 (1.16%) Telecoms
11 95 (1.13%) Manufacturing
12 93 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
13 91 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
14 76 (0.91%) Law
15 73 (0.87%) Aerospace
15 73 (0.87%) Investment Banking
16 71 (0.85%) Financial Institution
16 71 (0.85%) Marketing
17 60 (0.72%) Military
18 57 (0.68%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,518 (18.09%) Architect
2 1,047 (12.48%) Senior
3 1,039 (12.38%) Developer
4 735 (8.76%) Azure Engineer
5 702 (8.37%) Lead
6 609 (7.26%) Data Engineer
7 495 (5.90%) Analyst
8 443 (5.28%) Solutions Architect
9 433 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
10 351 (4.18%) Cloud Engineer
11 320 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 307 (3.66%) Consultant
13 257 (3.06%) Data Architect
14 229 (2.73%) Platform Engineer
15 228 (2.72%) Azure Architect
16 198 (2.36%) Technical Architect
17 195 (2.32%) Project Manager
18 193 (2.30%) Security Engineer
19 188 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 185 (2.20%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 656 (7.82%) REST
2 630 (7.51%) .NET
3 350 (4.17%) Kafka
4 321 (3.83%) React
5 289 (3.44%) RESTful
6 265 (3.16%) PySpark
7 240 (2.86%) OAuth
8 220 (2.62%) JSON
9 216 (2.57%) Spring
10 187 (2.23%) Node.js
11 181 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 169 (2.01%) AngularJS
13 154 (1.84%) HTML
14 153 (1.82%) SAML
15 147 (1.75%) OpenID
16 142 (1.69%) OAuth2
17 139 (1.66%) Middleware
18 134 (1.60%) Playwright
19 133 (1.59%) .NET Framework
20 122 (1.45%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 914 (10.89%) Cloud Native
2 413 (4.92%) Onboarding
3 349 (4.16%) Product Ownership
4 272 (3.24%) Hybrid Cloud
5 271 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
6 260 (3.10%) AI Agents
7 256 (3.05%) Data Centre
8 252 (3.00%) Enterprise Software
9 232 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
10 182 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 145 (1.73%) Management Information System
12 143 (1.70%) Data Structures
12 143 (1.70%) Public Cloud
13 119 (1.42%) Enterprise Cloud
14 116 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
15 111 (1.32%) PKI
16 97 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
17 95 (1.13%) Replication
18 79 (0.94%) CMDB
19 77 (0.92%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 987 (11.76%) Windows
2 507 (6.04%) Linux
3 356 (4.24%) Windows Server
4 124 (1.48%) Windows 10
5 85 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 85 (1.01%) Unix
6 83 (0.99%) Android
7 76 (0.91%) Apple iOS
8 71 (0.85%) Mac OS
9 58 (0.69%) VMS
10 51 (0.61%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
13 16 (0.19%) CentOS
14 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
16 10 (0.12%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Amazon Linux
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,102 (36.97%) DevOps
2 2,635 (31.40%) CI/CD
3 2,091 (24.92%) Agile
4 1,336 (15.92%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,316 (15.68%) AI
6 1,257 (14.98%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,239 (14.77%) Migration
8 1,141 (13.60%) Analytics
9 1,102 (13.13%) Problem-Solving
10 935 (11.14%) Data Modelling
11 932 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
12 836 (9.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 791 (9.43%) Roadmaps
14 785 (9.36%) Data Pipeline
15 777 (9.26%) Containerisation
16 765 (9.12%) Business Intelligence
17 749 (8.93%) Microservices
18 705 (8.40%) Test Automation
19 680 (8.10%) ETL
20 666 (7.94%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,916 (22.83%) Python
2 1,632 (19.45%) SQL
3 854 (10.18%) PowerShell
4 700 (8.34%) Java
5 614 (7.32%) C#
6 504 (6.01%) JavaScript
7 387 (4.61%) Bash
8 331 (3.94%) Bicep
9 298 (3.55%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 95 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 72 (0.86%) Go
13 60 (0.72%) Shell Script
14 59 (0.70%) Scala
15 58 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
16 45 (0.54%) PL/SQL
17 40 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 40 (0.48%) R
18 32 (0.38%) Groovy
19 26 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,151 (25.63%) Security Cleared
2 1,745 (20.80%) SC Cleared
3 566 (6.75%) Degree
4 453 (5.40%) Azure Certification
5 281 (3.35%) DV Cleared
6 271 (3.23%) CISSP
7 246 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
8 228 (2.72%) Microsoft Certification
9 212 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
10 197 (2.35%) AWS Certification
11 185 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
12 138 (1.64%) CISM
13 101 (1.20%) CCNP
14 90 (1.07%) PMI Certification
15 89 (1.06%) PMP
16 86 (1.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 72 (0.86%) ISTQB
18 63 (0.75%) Master's Degree
19 56 (0.67%) CCSP
20 49 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 588 (7.01%) Data Quality
2 441 (5.26%) QA
3 330 (3.93%) GDPR
4 307 (3.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 307 (3.66%) NIST
5 200 (2.38%) Accessibility
6 127 (1.51%) NCSC
7 106 (1.26%) SLA
8 78 (0.93%) GRC
9 76 (0.91%) WCAG
10 74 (0.88%) PCI DSS
11 72 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
12 62 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 58 (0.69%) PMO
14 32 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 30 (0.36%) HIPAA
16 27 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 21 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,014 (12.08%) Active Directory
2 915 (10.90%) Docker
3 244 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 143 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
6 130 (1.55%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.82%) vSphere
8 55 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 23 (0.27%) NFS
12 15 (0.18%) IAG
13 13 (0.15%) Postfix
14 12 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.095%) Ceph
17 7 (0.083%) Varnish
17 7 (0.083%) Virtual Servers
18 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,387 (16.53%) Terraform
2 1,288 (15.35%) Kubernetes
3 447 (5.33%) Ansible
4 436 (5.20%) Microsoft Intune
5 266 (3.17%) Grafana
6 220 (2.62%) Prometheus
7 149 (1.78%) Single Sign-On
8 122 (1.45%) SCCM
9 61 (0.73%) Progress Chef
10 59 (0.70%) Argo
11 48 (0.57%) Puppet
12 41 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
13 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 33 (0.39%) Istio
15 31 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 22 (0.26%) SCOM
16 22 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) Packer
18 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
19 18 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,835 (33.79%) Microsoft
2 808 (9.63%) Databricks
3 409 (4.87%) ServiceNow
4 360 (4.29%) Google
5 350 (4.17%) VMware
6 325 (3.87%) Oracle
7 245 (2.92%) Cisco
8 231 (2.75%) SAP
9 202 (2.41%) Splunk
10 200 (2.38%) OpenAI
11 166 (1.98%) Salesforce
12 152 (1.81%) CyberArk
12 152 (1.81%) Palo Alto
13 138 (1.64%) Foundry
14 121 (1.44%) Dynatrace
15 105 (1.25%) Zscaler
16 92 (1.10%) Okta
17 91 (1.08%) Informatica
18 78 (0.93%) IBM
19 76 (0.91%) Citrix