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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,294 4,827 5,645
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.56% 14.67% 14.43%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.19% 39.39% 42.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,792 3,320 4,029
10th Percentile £367 £350 £345
25th Percentile £435 £423 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.25% -1.24% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 39 42
10th Percentile £18.40 £18.65 £17.84
25th Percentile £23.63 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.69% +18.43% -39.13%
75th Percentile £78.00 £76.88 £60.58
90th Percentile £93.27 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £53.23 £33.00
% change year-on-year +3.33% +61.29% -28.54%

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 18,767 12,254 13,222
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.21% 37.23% 33.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,385 8,215 9,213
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £420 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £623 £614 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 625 310 274
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.15 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £27.45 £23.98
Median % change year-on-year +29.33% +14.49% -31.50%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.41 £52.73
90th Percentile £82.75 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +85.48% -11.70% -19.36%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 0 7,125 £525 - 4,327
London +1 3,733 £550 - 2,031
UK excluding London +3 3,577 £500 - 2,848
Work from Home -1 2,565 £525 +5.00% 1,963
North of England +8 1,024 £500 +5.26% 792
South East +1 911 £525 +5.00% 816
Midlands +4 656 £493 -1.50% 377
North West +6 541 £500 +5.26% 439
West Midlands +3 497 £493 -6.19% 231
South West +7 439 £540 +7.90% 324
Yorkshire +5 400 £500 +5.26% 255
Scotland +10 299 £500 +0.81% 171
East of England +4 177 £525 -4.55% 222
East Midlands +9 147 £488 +5.41% 146
North East +5 96 £513 -0.87% 108
Wales -1 91 £450 +1.01% 99
Northern Ireland +12 15 £644 +35.53% 83
Channel Islands +3 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
1 441 (5.32%) SharePoint
2 288 (3.47%) Confluence
3 202 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 172 (2.07%) Apache Spark
5 138 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.37%) Apache
7 44 (0.53%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 19 (0.23%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
14 11 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.096%) Mendix
16 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.072%) Camunda
17 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
Applications
1 122 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 81 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) Chatbot
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
7 11 (0.13%) Trello
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
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
1 118 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.096%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 7 (0.084%) Maximo
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.060%) Payment Gateway
10 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.048%) SAP ERP
11 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,923 (35.24%) AWS
2 1,743 (21.02%) Azure DevOps
3 1,403 (16.92%) GCP
4 1,054 (12.71%) Entra ID
5 1,032 (12.44%) Power Platform
6 841 (10.14%) Microsoft 365
7 823 (9.92%) GitHub
8 487 (5.87%) GitHub Actions
9 471 (5.68%) Azure Data Factory
10 348 (4.20%) Serverless
11 330 (3.98%) SaaS
12 312 (3.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 302 (3.64%) Azure AKS
14 294 (3.54%) Azure Monitor
15 287 (3.46%) Power Automate
16 273 (3.29%) PowerApps
17 262 (3.16%) Dynamics 365
18 257 (3.10%) PaaS
19 239 (2.88%) Snowflake
20 229 (2.76%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 520 (6.27%) Firewall
2 399 (4.81%) DNS
3 325 (3.92%) VPN
4 298 (3.59%) Network Security
5 199 (2.40%) WAN
6 198 (2.39%) DHCP
7 164 (1.98%) TCP/IP
8 122 (1.47%) LAN
9 113 (1.36%) BGP
10 104 (1.25%) SD-WAN
11 92 (1.11%) VLAN
12 90 (1.09%) OSPF
13 85 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.90%) SSL
15 58 (0.70%) SAN
16 57 (0.69%) Wireless
17 53 (0.64%) IPsec
18 49 (0.59%) HTTP
19 47 (0.57%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 716 (8.63%) Power BI
2 465 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 406 (4.90%) Data Warehouse
4 362 (4.36%) Data Lake
5 297 (3.58%) PostgreSQL
6 220 (2.65%) NoSQL
7 217 (2.62%) Azure SQL Database
8 211 (2.54%) Metadata
9 141 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 137 (1.65%) Delta Lake
11 105 (1.27%) MongoDB
12 102 (1.23%) Big Data
13 100 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 84 (1.01%) MySQL
15 64 (0.77%) Snowflake Schema
16 62 (0.75%) Tableau
17 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
18 57 (0.69%) Redis
19 56 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
19 56 (0.68%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 665 (8.02%) Git
2 650 (7.84%) JIRA
3 439 (5.29%) Jenkins
4 343 (4.14%) GitLab
5 126 (1.52%) Selenium
6 73 (0.88%) Postman
7 72 (0.87%) JUnit
8 66 (0.80%) JMeter
9 58 (0.70%) Cypress.io
9 58 (0.70%) SonarQube
10 57 (0.69%) Cucumber
11 50 (0.60%) Maven
12 45 (0.54%) Visual Studio
13 44 (0.53%) REST Assured
13 44 (0.53%) WebDriver
14 38 (0.46%) Gradle
14 38 (0.46%) MLflow
15 36 (0.43%) Claude Code
16 30 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
17 29 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 2,134 (25.73%) Social Skills
2 1,552 (18.71%) Finance
3 973 (11.73%) Public Sector
4 789 (9.51%) Analytical Skills
5 431 (5.20%) Banking
6 234 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 194 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 189 (2.28%) Legal
9 186 (2.24%) Retail
10 98 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
11 97 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 88 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
13 87 (1.05%) Manufacturing
14 74 (0.89%) Law
15 71 (0.86%) Financial Institution
15 71 (0.86%) Investment Banking
16 68 (0.82%) Aerospace
16 68 (0.82%) Marketing
17 65 (0.78%) Front Office
18 59 (0.71%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,499 (18.07%) Architect
2 1,055 (12.72%) Developer
3 1,035 (12.48%) Senior
4 733 (8.84%) Azure Engineer
5 681 (8.21%) Lead
6 616 (7.43%) Data Engineer
7 497 (5.99%) Analyst
8 449 (5.41%) Solutions Architect
9 425 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
10 343 (4.14%) Cloud Engineer
11 308 (3.71%) Consultant
12 307 (3.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 250 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 222 (2.68%) Azure Architect
15 221 (2.66%) Platform Engineer
16 196 (2.36%) Project Manager
17 194 (2.34%) Technical Architect
18 188 (2.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 187 (2.25%) Security Architect
20 186 (2.24%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 643 (7.75%) .NET
2 621 (7.49%) REST
3 329 (3.97%) React
4 319 (3.85%) Kafka
5 295 (3.56%) RESTful
6 259 (3.12%) PySpark
7 234 (2.82%) OAuth
8 208 (2.51%) JSON
8 208 (2.51%) Spring
9 203 (2.45%) Node.js
10 176 (2.12%) AngularJS
11 172 (2.07%) Spring Boot
12 156 (1.88%) HTML
13 148 (1.78%) SAML
14 145 (1.75%) OpenID
15 138 (1.66%) .NET Framework
16 135 (1.63%) Middleware
16 135 (1.63%) OAuth2
17 132 (1.59%) Playwright
18 124 (1.50%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 879 (10.60%) Cloud Native
2 396 (4.77%) Onboarding
3 350 (4.22%) Product Ownership
4 268 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
5 261 (3.15%) Hybrid Cloud
6 257 (3.10%) Data Centre
7 249 (3.00%) AI Agents
8 233 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
9 220 (2.65%) Enterprise Software
10 175 (2.11%) Security Posture
11 143 (1.72%) Data Structures
12 140 (1.69%) Public Cloud
13 137 (1.65%) Management Information System
14 110 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
15 107 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
16 106 (1.28%) PKI
17 92 (1.11%) Replication
17 92 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
18 76 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
19 72 (0.87%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 966 (11.65%) Windows
2 483 (5.82%) Linux
3 330 (3.98%) Windows Server
4 122 (1.47%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.00%) Android
6 82 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 81 (0.98%) Unix
8 76 (0.92%) Apple iOS
9 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 55 (0.66%) VMS
11 49 (0.59%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 12 (0.14%) CentOS
15 12 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 10 (0.12%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Rocky
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,059 (36.88%) DevOps
2 2,580 (31.11%) CI/CD
3 2,085 (25.14%) Agile
4 1,294 (15.60%) AI
5 1,289 (15.54%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,209 (14.58%) Migration
7 1,178 (14.20%) Stakeholder Management
8 1,138 (13.72%) Analytics
9 1,076 (12.97%) Problem-Solving
10 935 (11.27%) Data Modelling
11 900 (10.85%) Continuous Improvement
12 810 (9.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 780 (9.40%) Data Pipeline
14 776 (9.36%) Containerisation
15 775 (9.34%) Roadmaps
16 765 (9.22%) Business Intelligence
17 740 (8.92%) Microservices
18 686 (8.27%) Test Automation
19 677 (8.16%) ETL
20 655 (7.90%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,903 (22.94%) Python
2 1,609 (19.40%) SQL
3 818 (9.86%) PowerShell
4 674 (8.13%) Java
5 622 (7.50%) C#
6 502 (6.05%) JavaScript
7 377 (4.55%) Bash
8 328 (3.95%) Bicep
9 312 (3.76%) TypeScript
10 98 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 97 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.83%) Go
13 58 (0.70%) Scala
14 55 (0.66%) Shell Script
15 52 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
16 40 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.47%) R
18 37 (0.45%) PL/SQL
19 29 (0.35%) Groovy
20 27 (0.33%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,111 (25.45%) Security Cleared
2 1,719 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 566 (6.82%) Degree
4 443 (5.34%) Azure Certification
5 268 (3.23%) DV Cleared
6 256 (3.09%) CISSP
7 249 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
8 221 (2.66%) Microsoft Certification
9 212 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
10 201 (2.42%) AWS Certification
11 185 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
12 126 (1.52%) CISM
13 101 (1.22%) CCNP
14 85 (1.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 84 (1.01%) PMI Certification
16 83 (1.00%) PMP
17 67 (0.81%) ISTQB
18 58 (0.70%) Master's Degree
19 57 (0.69%) CCSP
20 55 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 579 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 432 (5.21%) QA
3 331 (3.99%) GDPR
4 298 (3.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 291 (3.51%) NIST
6 201 (2.42%) Accessibility
7 122 (1.47%) NCSC
8 104 (1.25%) SLA
9 77 (0.93%) WCAG
10 76 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
11 75 (0.90%) GRC
12 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 58 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 56 (0.68%) PMO
15 33 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 29 (0.35%) HIPAA
17 26 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.25%) NIST 800
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
20 16 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 993 (11.97%) Active Directory
2 905 (10.91%) Docker
3 224 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.74%) Virtual Machines
5 141 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
6 125 (1.51%) Hyper-V
7 67 (0.81%) vSphere
8 53 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 24 (0.29%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Postfix
13 14 (0.17%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
16 8 (0.096%) zsh
17 7 (0.084%) Varnish
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
19 5 (0.060%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 1,348 (16.25%) Terraform
2 1,247 (15.03%) Kubernetes
3 433 (5.22%) Microsoft Intune
4 431 (5.20%) Ansible
5 255 (3.07%) Grafana
6 214 (2.58%) Prometheus
7 147 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
8 113 (1.36%) SCCM
9 59 (0.71%) Argo
10 58 (0.70%) Progress Chef
11 47 (0.57%) Puppet
12 43 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
14 30 (0.36%) Istio
15 21 (0.25%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
16 19 (0.23%) Packer
17 18 (0.22%) SCOM
18 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,750 (33.16%) Microsoft
2 785 (9.46%) Databricks
3 400 (4.82%) ServiceNow
4 342 (4.12%) Google
5 326 (3.93%) VMware
6 313 (3.77%) Oracle
7 240 (2.89%) Cisco
8 221 (2.66%) SAP
9 203 (2.45%) OpenAI
10 186 (2.24%) Splunk
11 155 (1.87%) Palo Alto
12 154 (1.86%) Salesforce
13 144 (1.74%) CyberArk
14 138 (1.66%) Foundry
15 112 (1.35%) Dynatrace
16 104 (1.25%) Zscaler
17 87 (1.05%) Okta
18 85 (1.02%) Informatica
19 78 (0.94%) Citrix
19 78 (0.94%) Fortinet