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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,322 4,864 5,462
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.17% 14.88% 14.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.76% 39.38% 42.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,810 3,317 3,758
10th Percentile £363 £350 £345
25th Percentile £447 £415 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £517 £530
Median % change year-on-year +1.55% -2.45% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £512 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.44% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 42 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.59 £20.34
25th Percentile £22.16 £26.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £34.24 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +15.36% -6.83% -29.33%
75th Percentile £79.50 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.63 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £32.77 £42.34
% change year-on-year +20.54% -22.60% -8.32%

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 19,019 12,350 12,910
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.67% 37.77% 34.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,616 8,238 8,668
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.41%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 625 291 186
10th Percentile £15.27 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.28
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.00 £33.27
Median % change year-on-year +16.07% -15.84% -4.94%
75th Percentile £67.70 £53.13 £64.67
90th Percentile £80.75 £67.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.75 £19.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +59.57% -41.61% +29.67%

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 23 September 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 23 September 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 23 September 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 7,103 £525 - 7,920
London 0 3,728 £550 - 3,826
UK excluding London +1 3,527 £512 +2.44% 4,839
Work from Home -1 2,513 £525 +5.00% 3,655
North of England +5 1,007 £500 +5.26% 1,301
South East 0 902 £525 +5.00% 1,185
Midlands +2 646 £493 -3.90% 743
North West +5 495 £500 +5.26% 680
West Midlands +2 487 £484 -10.32% 448
Yorkshire +5 430 £500 +4.17% 462
South West +2 421 £550 +10.00% 541
Scotland +5 286 £525 +5.00% 412
East of England +1 198 £510 +2.00% 401
East Midlands +5 153 £500 +8.11% 295
North East +4 95 £513 +2.50% 166
Wales -1 86 £450 - 139
Northern Ireland +14 12 £650 - 158
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69%

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
1 469 (5.64%) SharePoint
2 257 (3.09%) Confluence
3 196 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 185 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 166 (1.99%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.37%) Apache
7 45 (0.54%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) IIS
9 28 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) nginx
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
16 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 120 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 43 (0.52%) Chatbot
6 39 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.096%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 7 (0.084%) 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
13 2 (0.024%) Mingle
13 2 (0.024%) Windchill
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 136 (1.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 11 (0.13%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.096%) Magento
9 7 (0.084%) Shopify
10 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
10 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
11 5 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
12 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.048%) Maximo
12 4 (0.048%) NetSuite
12 4 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,981 (35.82%) AWS
2 1,751 (21.04%) Azure DevOps
3 1,447 (17.39%) GCP
4 1,130 (13.58%) Entra ID
5 1,084 (13.03%) Power Platform
6 876 (10.53%) Microsoft 365
7 839 (10.08%) GitHub
8 487 (5.85%) GitHub Actions
9 466 (5.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 377 (4.53%) Serverless
11 361 (4.34%) SaaS
12 319 (3.83%) Azure Monitor
13 304 (3.65%) Dynamics 365
14 303 (3.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 303 (3.64%) Power Automate
15 292 (3.51%) Azure AKS
15 292 (3.51%) Snowflake
16 287 (3.45%) PowerApps
17 254 (3.05%) Microsoft Copilot
18 251 (3.02%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 526 (6.32%) Firewall
2 421 (5.06%) DNS
3 321 (3.86%) VPN
4 296 (3.56%) Network Security
5 232 (2.79%) DHCP
6 185 (2.22%) WAN
7 171 (2.05%) TCP/IP
8 108 (1.30%) LAN
9 106 (1.27%) BGP
10 101 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.12%) VLAN
12 86 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 84 (1.01%) OSPF
14 76 (0.91%) SSL
15 66 (0.79%) Wireless
16 64 (0.77%) SAN
17 47 (0.56%) HTTP
17 47 (0.56%) IPsec
18 44 (0.53%) VXLAN
19 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 704 (8.46%) Power BI
2 465 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 403 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
4 384 (4.61%) Data Lake
5 287 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
6 253 (3.04%) Metadata
7 214 (2.57%) NoSQL
8 196 (2.36%) Azure SQL Database
9 140 (1.68%) Relational Database
10 126 (1.51%) Delta Lake
11 110 (1.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 105 (1.26%) MongoDB
13 95 (1.14%) Big Data
14 93 (1.12%) MySQL
15 70 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
16 67 (0.81%) Redis
17 62 (0.75%) BigQuery
18 61 (0.73%) Oracle Database
18 61 (0.73%) Tableau
19 58 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 740 (8.89%) Git
2 592 (7.11%) JIRA
3 470 (5.65%) Jenkins
4 373 (4.48%) GitLab
5 138 (1.66%) Selenium
6 86 (1.03%) Postman
7 63 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 62 (0.75%) JUnit
9 59 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 54 (0.65%) Maven
12 53 (0.64%) JMeter
13 52 (0.62%) Claude Code
14 50 (0.60%) Visual Studio
15 47 (0.56%) Gradle
16 46 (0.55%) REST Assured
17 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
18 35 (0.42%) MLflow
19 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
20 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,301 (27.65%) Social Skills
2 1,565 (18.81%) Finance
3 952 (11.44%) Public Sector
4 814 (9.78%) Analytical Skills
5 481 (5.78%) Banking
6 223 (2.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 215 (2.58%) Retail
8 210 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
9 169 (2.03%) Legal
10 108 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
11 107 (1.29%) Manufacturing
12 93 (1.12%) Telecoms
13 89 (1.07%) Marketing
14 86 (1.03%) Aerospace
15 85 (1.02%) Investment Banking
15 85 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
16 76 (0.91%) Military
17 75 (0.90%) Law
18 59 (0.71%) Financial Institution
19 58 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,591 (19.12%) Architect
2 1,043 (12.53%) Senior
3 1,000 (12.02%) Developer
4 731 (8.78%) Azure Engineer
5 689 (8.28%) Lead
6 589 (7.08%) Data Engineer
7 490 (5.89%) Solutions Architect
8 470 (5.65%) Analyst
9 465 (5.59%) DevOps Engineer
10 378 (4.54%) Cloud Engineer
11 318 (3.82%) Consultant
12 315 (3.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 268 (3.22%) Data Architect
14 240 (2.88%) Platform Engineer
15 217 (2.61%) Azure Architect
16 208 (2.50%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 201 (2.42%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 198 (2.38%) Technical Architect
19 197 (2.37%) Security Engineer
20 187 (2.25%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,415 (17.00%) Terraform
2 723 (8.69%) REST
3 624 (7.50%) .NET
4 398 (4.78%) Kafka
5 297 (3.57%) React
6 291 (3.50%) RESTful
7 279 (3.35%) OAuth
8 267 (3.21%) PySpark
9 233 (2.80%) JSON
10 193 (2.32%) Spring
11 183 (2.20%) Spring Boot
12 168 (2.02%) OpenID
13 165 (1.98%) OAuth2
14 160 (1.92%) Node.js
15 157 (1.89%) SAML
16 155 (1.86%) HTML
17 149 (1.79%) Middleware
18 145 (1.74%) AngularJS
19 133 (1.60%) Playwright
20 132 (1.59%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 926 (11.13%) Cloud Native
2 421 (5.06%) Onboarding
3 383 (4.60%) Product Ownership
4 312 (3.75%) AI Agents
5 311 (3.74%) Enterprise Software
6 287 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
7 271 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
8 257 (3.09%) Data Centre
9 228 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
10 180 (2.16%) Security Posture
11 176 (2.11%) Management Information System
12 149 (1.79%) Data Structures
13 144 (1.73%) Public Cloud
14 125 (1.50%) PKI
15 114 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
16 111 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
17 105 (1.26%) Replication
18 98 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
19 90 (1.08%) CMDB
19 90 (1.08%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 998 (11.99%) Windows
2 523 (6.28%) Linux
3 376 (4.52%) Windows Server
4 145 (1.74%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.09%) Android
6 90 (1.08%) Unix
7 88 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 87 (1.05%) Apple iOS
9 77 (0.93%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.67%) Ubuntu
10 56 (0.67%) VMS
11 27 (0.32%) CentOS
12 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 8 (0.096%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) SUSE
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,057 (36.73%) DevOps
2 2,675 (32.14%) CI/CD
3 2,069 (24.86%) Agile
4 1,478 (17.76%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,432 (17.21%) AI
6 1,416 (17.02%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,237 (14.86%) Migration
8 1,133 (13.61%) Analytics
9 1,130 (13.58%) Problem-Solving
10 953 (11.45%) Continuous Improvement
11 910 (10.93%) Data Modelling
12 852 (10.24%) Roadmaps
13 793 (9.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 786 (9.44%) Containerisation
15 760 (9.13%) Business Intelligence
16 756 (9.08%) Technical Leadership
17 749 (9.00%) Data Pipeline
18 736 (8.84%) Test Automation
19 730 (8.77%) Microservices
20 664 (7.98%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,900 (22.83%) Python
2 1,582 (19.01%) SQL
3 893 (10.73%) PowerShell
4 693 (8.33%) Java
5 607 (7.29%) C#
6 506 (6.08%) JavaScript
7 406 (4.88%) Bash
8 357 (4.29%) Bicep
9 297 (3.57%) TypeScript
10 98 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 79 (0.95%) Go
13 65 (0.78%) Scala
14 61 (0.73%) Shell Script
15 57 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
16 43 (0.52%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 32 (0.38%) Groovy
18 32 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 29 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,161 (25.97%) Security Cleared
2 1,738 (20.88%) SC Cleared
3 563 (6.77%) Degree
4 485 (5.83%) Azure Certification
5 310 (3.73%) DV Cleared
6 274 (3.29%) CISSP
7 270 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
8 253 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 210 (2.52%) AWS Certification
10 204 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
11 180 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
12 137 (1.65%) CISM
13 93 (1.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 90 (1.08%) CCNP
14 90 (1.08%) PMI Certification
15 85 (1.02%) PMP
16 68 (0.82%) ISTQB
17 63 (0.76%) CCSP
17 63 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 52 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 609 (7.32%) Data Quality
2 466 (5.60%) QA
3 309 (3.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 298 (3.58%) NIST
5 293 (3.52%) GDPR
6 205 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 122 (1.47%) NCSC
8 109 (1.31%) SLA
9 82 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
9 82 (0.99%) GRC
9 82 (0.99%) WCAG
10 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
11 55 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 54 (0.65%) PMO
13 46 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 33 (0.40%) SOC 2
15 27 (0.32%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.30%) ISO 20022
17 21 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 21 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,038 (12.47%) Active Directory
2 919 (11.04%) Docker
3 245 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.79%) Virtual Machines
5 146 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
6 128 (1.54%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.91%) vSphere
8 56 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.29%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) IAG
12 17 (0.20%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Ceph
18 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
19 5 (0.060%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,307 (15.71%) Kubernetes
2 456 (5.48%) Ansible
3 446 (5.36%) Microsoft Intune
4 263 (3.16%) Grafana
5 205 (2.46%) Prometheus
6 156 (1.87%) Single Sign-On
7 136 (1.63%) SCCM
8 60 (0.72%) Progress Chef
9 59 (0.71%) Argo
10 45 (0.54%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 37 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 35 (0.42%) SCOM
14 30 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 25 (0.30%) Istio
16 24 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) CASB
18 18 (0.22%) Packer
19 17 (0.20%) QRadar
20 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,996 (36.00%) Microsoft
2 863 (10.37%) Databricks
3 423 (5.08%) ServiceNow
4 380 (4.57%) Google
5 363 (4.36%) VMware
6 348 (4.18%) Oracle
7 249 (2.99%) Cisco
8 233 (2.80%) Splunk
9 224 (2.69%) SAP
10 219 (2.63%) OpenAI
11 190 (2.28%) Salesforce
12 155 (1.86%) CyberArk
13 150 (1.80%) Palo Alto
14 144 (1.73%) Foundry
15 131 (1.57%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.12%) Zscaler
17 88 (1.06%) IBM
18 87 (1.05%) Informatica
19 82 (0.99%) Okta
20 81 (0.97%) MuleSoft