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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,247 4,854 5,821
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.57% 14.84% 14.35%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.98% 39.72% 42.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,757 3,350 4,185
10th Percentile £370 £350 £350
25th Percentile £437 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 38 44
10th Percentile £18.43 £23.53 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.66 £27.86 £22.24
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +49.24% -44.91%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.40 £58.00
90th Percentile £95.31 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £31.00
% change year-on-year -11.54% +109.68% -44.89%

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 18,750 12,222 13,611
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.39% 37.35% 33.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,376 8,174 9,529
10th Percentile £327 £313 £313
25th Percentile £418 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 618 314 305
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.11 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.75 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £36.87 £27.50 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +34.05% +24.15% -36.71%
75th Percentile £70.00 £47.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £83.75 £67.35 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.24 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +97.35% -10.14% -20.00%

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 25 July 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 25 July 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 25 July 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 7,051 £525 - 2,973
London +1 3,677 £550 - 1,281
UK excluding London +3 3,576 £505 +1.00% 2,163
Work from Home -1 2,562 £525 +5.00% 1,364
North of England +7 1,025 £500 +3.09% 574
South East +2 910 £525 +5.00% 663
Midlands +3 636 £494 +1.46% 280
North West +5 538 £500 +1.83% 306
West Midlands +4 478 £494 -5.95% 179
South West +7 443 £534 +6.75% 305
Yorkshire +3 408 £500 +5.26% 182
Scotland +10 309 £500 +1.94% 96
East of England +7 182 £550 - 173
East Midlands +9 147 £481 +4.05% 100
Wales 0 98 £425 -4.71% 83
North East +2 94 £520 +4.00% 97
Northern Ireland +13 17 £588 +23.68% 42
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
1 425 (5.15%) SharePoint
2 283 (3.43%) Confluence
3 204 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 184 (2.23%) Apache Spark
5 132 (1.60%) Apache Airflow
6 120 (1.46%) Apache
7 42 (0.51%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 18 (0.22%) CMS
10 18 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.097%) Mendix
15 8 (0.097%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.097%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.073%) Documentum
16 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
Applications
1 122 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.41%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.11%) Trello
10 8 (0.097%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.024%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 112 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
4 15 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.15%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.097%) Magento
7 8 (0.097%) Maximo
8 7 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.085%) Shopify
8 7 (0.085%) Teamcenter
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.049%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,931 (35.54%) AWS
2 1,706 (20.69%) Azure DevOps
3 1,411 (17.11%) GCP
4 1,038 (12.59%) Entra ID
5 1,036 (12.56%) Power Platform
6 812 (9.85%) Microsoft 365
7 787 (9.54%) GitHub
8 472 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
9 464 (5.63%) Azure Data Factory
10 355 (4.30%) Serverless
11 330 (4.00%) SaaS
12 316 (3.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 303 (3.67%) Azure AKS
14 292 (3.54%) Azure Monitor
15 274 (3.32%) Power Automate
16 267 (3.24%) PowerApps
17 260 (3.15%) PaaS
18 253 (3.07%) Dynamics 365
19 240 (2.91%) Azure AI
20 227 (2.75%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 515 (6.24%) Firewall
2 381 (4.62%) DNS
3 313 (3.80%) VPN
4 292 (3.54%) Network Security
5 203 (2.46%) WAN
6 191 (2.32%) DHCP
7 153 (1.86%) TCP/IP
8 130 (1.58%) LAN
9 116 (1.41%) BGP
10 104 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.13%) OSPF
12 90 (1.09%) VLAN
13 88 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
14 73 (0.89%) SSL
15 58 (0.70%) IPsec
16 57 (0.69%) SAN
16 57 (0.69%) Wireless
17 48 (0.58%) VXLAN
18 45 (0.55%) HTTP
19 42 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 711 (8.62%) Power BI
2 468 (5.67%) SQL Server
3 404 (4.90%) Data Warehouse
4 366 (4.44%) Data Lake
5 308 (3.73%) PostgreSQL
6 225 (2.73%) NoSQL
7 217 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
8 215 (2.61%) Metadata
9 139 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 134 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 114 (1.38%) Big Data
12 106 (1.29%) MongoDB
13 99 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 88 (1.07%) MySQL
15 72 (0.87%) Tableau
16 65 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
17 63 (0.76%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 57 (0.69%) Redis
20 55 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 649 (7.87%) JIRA
2 645 (7.82%) Git
3 432 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 314 (3.81%) GitLab
5 126 (1.53%) Selenium
6 72 (0.87%) JUnit
6 72 (0.87%) Postman
7 70 (0.85%) JMeter
8 58 (0.70%) Cucumber
9 53 (0.64%) Cypress.io
10 51 (0.62%) SonarQube
11 48 (0.58%) REST Assured
12 46 (0.56%) Maven
12 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
13 44 (0.53%) WebDriver
14 41 (0.50%) MLflow
15 36 (0.44%) Gradle
16 31 (0.38%) Gatling
17 30 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
18 29 (0.35%) Claude Code
General
1 2,093 (25.38%) Social Skills
2 1,545 (18.73%) Finance
3 973 (11.80%) Public Sector
4 781 (9.47%) Analytical Skills
5 432 (5.24%) Banking
6 242 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
7 194 (2.35%) Legal
8 185 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 179 (2.17%) Retail
10 101 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 97 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 89 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 79 (0.96%) Manufacturing
14 74 (0.90%) Law
15 72 (0.87%) Marketing
16 68 (0.82%) Financial Institution
17 66 (0.80%) Front Office
18 64 (0.78%) Investment Banking
19 57 (0.69%) Military
20 54 (0.65%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,467 (17.79%) Architect
2 1,064 (12.90%) Developer
3 1,018 (12.34%) Senior
4 736 (8.92%) Azure Engineer
5 668 (8.10%) Lead
6 607 (7.36%) Data Engineer
7 504 (6.11%) Analyst
8 432 (5.24%) Solutions Architect
9 429 (5.20%) DevOps Engineer
10 333 (4.04%) Cloud Engineer
11 320 (3.88%) Consultant
12 295 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 249 (3.02%) Data Architect
14 221 (2.68%) Platform Engineer
15 218 (2.64%) Azure Architect
16 198 (2.40%) Technical Architect
17 189 (2.29%) Project Manager
18 188 (2.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 187 (2.27%) Security Engineer
20 184 (2.23%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 648 (7.86%) .NET
2 611 (7.41%) REST
3 342 (4.15%) React
4 318 (3.86%) Kafka
5 298 (3.61%) RESTful
6 253 (3.07%) PySpark
7 233 (2.83%) OAuth
8 226 (2.74%) Spring
9 213 (2.58%) Node.js
10 203 (2.46%) JSON
11 192 (2.33%) Spring Boot
12 180 (2.18%) AngularJS
13 162 (1.96%) HTML
14 146 (1.77%) OpenID
14 146 (1.77%) SAML
15 140 (1.70%) .NET Framework
16 134 (1.62%) OAuth2
17 131 (1.59%) CSS
17 131 (1.59%) Middleware
18 127 (1.54%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 870 (10.55%) Cloud Native
2 383 (4.64%) Onboarding
3 353 (4.28%) Product Ownership
4 268 (3.25%) Data Centre
4 268 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
5 245 (2.97%) Hybrid Cloud
6 235 (2.85%) AI Agents
7 231 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
8 202 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
9 166 (2.01%) Security Posture
10 144 (1.75%) Public Cloud
11 140 (1.70%) Data Structures
12 128 (1.55%) Management Information System
13 112 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
14 103 (1.25%) Enterprise Cloud
15 100 (1.21%) PKI
16 97 (1.18%) Replication
17 91 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 77 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
19 71 (0.86%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 937 (11.36%) Windows
2 460 (5.58%) Linux
3 306 (3.71%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.33%) Windows 10
5 80 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 79 (0.96%) Unix
7 77 (0.93%) Android
8 72 (0.87%) Apple iOS
8 72 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 59 (0.72%) VMS
10 44 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
12 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.13%) CentOS
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 7 (0.085%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.061%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,044 (36.91%) DevOps
2 2,576 (31.24%) CI/CD
3 2,091 (25.35%) Agile
4 1,277 (15.48%) AI
5 1,264 (15.33%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,205 (14.61%) Migration
7 1,145 (13.88%) Analytics
8 1,103 (13.37%) Stakeholder Management
9 1,080 (13.10%) Problem-Solving
10 932 (11.30%) Data Modelling
11 884 (10.72%) Continuous Improvement
12 777 (9.42%) Data Pipeline
13 772 (9.36%) Roadmaps
14 770 (9.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 768 (9.31%) Containerisation
15 768 (9.31%) Microservices
16 758 (9.19%) Business Intelligence
17 677 (8.21%) Test Automation
18 672 (8.15%) ETL
19 659 (7.99%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,905 (23.10%) Python
2 1,613 (19.56%) SQL
3 802 (9.72%) PowerShell
4 688 (8.34%) Java
5 626 (7.59%) C#
6 487 (5.91%) JavaScript
7 348 (4.22%) Bash
8 314 (3.81%) Bicep
8 314 (3.81%) TypeScript
9 96 (1.16%) T-SQL
10 95 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 72 (0.87%) Go
12 60 (0.73%) Scala
13 55 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (0.63%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.52%) R
16 40 (0.49%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.47%) PL/SQL
18 28 (0.34%) Groovy
19 24 (0.29%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,065 (25.04%) Security Cleared
2 1,690 (20.49%) SC Cleared
3 579 (7.02%) Degree
4 438 (5.31%) Azure Certification
5 258 (3.13%) DV Cleared
6 248 (3.01%) CISSP
7 243 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
8 211 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
9 208 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
10 195 (2.36%) AWS Certification
11 188 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
12 123 (1.49%) CISM
13 103 (1.25%) CCNP
14 83 (1.01%) PMI Certification
14 83 (1.01%) PMP
15 80 (0.97%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 65 (0.79%) ISTQB
16 65 (0.79%) Master's Degree
17 54 (0.65%) CCSP
18 51 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 577 (7.00%) Data Quality
2 428 (5.19%) QA
3 338 (4.10%) GDPR
4 284 (3.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 280 (3.40%) NIST
6 200 (2.43%) Accessibility
7 117 (1.42%) NCSC
8 101 (1.22%) SLA
9 75 (0.91%) GRC
10 74 (0.90%) WCAG
11 73 (0.89%) PCI DSS
12 72 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
13 55 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 53 (0.64%) PMO
15 32 (0.39%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 22 (0.27%) NIST 800
19 21 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
20 19 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 974 (11.81%) Active Directory
2 885 (10.73%) Docker
3 221 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.66%) Virtual Machines
6 115 (1.39%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.84%) vSphere
8 52 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
9 38 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.35%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.085%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.085%) Ceph
15 7 (0.085%) Varnish
16 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.073%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) zsh
Systems Management
1 1,335 (16.19%) Terraform
2 1,220 (14.79%) Kubernetes
3 429 (5.20%) Microsoft Intune
4 406 (4.92%) Ansible
5 249 (3.02%) Grafana
6 211 (2.56%) Prometheus
7 155 (1.88%) Single Sign-On
8 111 (1.35%) SCCM
9 55 (0.67%) Argo
10 52 (0.63%) Progress Chef
11 46 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
12 45 (0.55%) Puppet
13 44 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 34 (0.41%) FortiGate
15 30 (0.36%) Istio
16 20 (0.24%) HP ALM
16 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 19 (0.23%) Packer
18 16 (0.19%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,664 (32.30%) Microsoft
2 760 (9.22%) Databricks
3 398 (4.83%) ServiceNow
4 339 (4.11%) Google
5 320 (3.88%) VMware
6 318 (3.86%) Oracle
7 231 (2.80%) Cisco
7 231 (2.80%) SAP
8 213 (2.58%) OpenAI
9 184 (2.23%) Splunk
10 151 (1.83%) Salesforce
11 147 (1.78%) Palo Alto
12 143 (1.73%) Foundry
13 140 (1.70%) CyberArk
14 104 (1.26%) Dynatrace
15 101 (1.22%) Zscaler
16 92 (1.12%) Okta
17 89 (1.08%) Informatica
18 77 (0.93%) Citrix
19 74 (0.90%) Fortinet