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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,335 4,810 5,567
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.54% 14.58% 14.33%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.47% 39.15% 42.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,829 3,271 3,929
10th Percentile £375 £350 £340
25th Percentile £438 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £635
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 45 38
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.20 £18.05
25th Percentile £21.33 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.33% +7.14% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.75 £72.50 £60.58
90th Percentile £96.63 £92.50 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year -41.15% +96.97% -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 18,745 12,285 13,100
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.95% 37.24% 33.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,400 8,196 9,048
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £746
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 607 320 231
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.48 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £17.69
Median hourly rate £33.99 £28.00 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.39% +3.70% -22.86%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £55.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.28 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £18.87 £21.59
% change year-on-year +72.23% -12.60% -20.04%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 7,147 £525 - 2,624
London +1 3,742 £550 - 934
UK excluding London +2 3,572 £500 - 2,212
Work from Home +1 2,548 £525 +5.00% 1,209
North of England +7 1,042 £500 +5.26% 559
South East 0 922 £525 +5.00% 669
Midlands +4 644 £493 -4.69% 318
North West +6 537 £492 +0.66% 288
West Midlands +3 477 £493 -8.29% 192
South West +5 431 £540 +7.95% 308
Yorkshire +6 423 £500 +5.26% 186
Scotland +11 285 £500 +4.38% 102
East of England +5 174 £525 +2.94% 186
East Midlands +10 155 £488 +5.41% 125
North East +9 95 £506 +1.25% 93
Wales 0 90 £475 +6.50% 81
Northern Ireland +11 15 £644 +35.53% 29
Channel Islands 0 10 £450 -29.69% 1

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
1 453 (5.43%) SharePoint
2 268 (3.22%) Confluence
3 200 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 173 (2.08%) Apache Spark
5 152 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.37%) Apache
7 43 (0.52%) SAS
8 37 (0.44%) IIS
9 27 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 22 (0.26%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 11 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
15 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.084%) Camunda
17 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
Applications
1 122 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.46%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.44%) Chatbot
6 34 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.096%) 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
1 124 (1.49%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
7 8 (0.096%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Maximo
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
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 2,981 (35.76%) AWS
2 1,790 (21.48%) Azure DevOps
3 1,422 (17.06%) GCP
4 1,071 (12.85%) Entra ID
5 1,058 (12.69%) Power Platform
6 853 (10.23%) Microsoft 365
7 833 (9.99%) GitHub
8 500 (6.00%) GitHub Actions
9 476 (5.71%) Azure Data Factory
10 361 (4.33%) Serverless
11 354 (4.25%) SaaS
12 318 (3.82%) Azure Monitor
13 311 (3.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 308 (3.70%) Azure AKS
15 291 (3.49%) Power Automate
16 278 (3.34%) PowerApps
17 276 (3.31%) Dynamics 365
18 259 (3.11%) Snowflake
19 246 (2.95%) PaaS
20 226 (2.71%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 523 (6.27%) Firewall
2 419 (5.03%) DNS
3 324 (3.89%) VPN
4 308 (3.70%) Network Security
5 215 (2.58%) DHCP
6 196 (2.35%) WAN
7 170 (2.04%) TCP/IP
8 119 (1.43%) LAN
9 113 (1.36%) BGP
10 101 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 92 (1.10%) VLAN
12 90 (1.08%) OSPF
13 84 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 73 (0.88%) SSL
15 62 (0.74%) SAN
16 55 (0.66%) Wireless
17 50 (0.60%) HTTP
18 47 (0.56%) VXLAN
19 45 (0.54%) IPsec
20 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 722 (8.66%) Power BI
2 464 (5.57%) SQL Server
3 410 (4.92%) Data Warehouse
4 357 (4.28%) Data Lake
5 287 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 227 (2.72%) Metadata
7 224 (2.69%) NoSQL
8 218 (2.62%) Azure SQL Database
9 142 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 129 (1.55%) Delta Lake
11 106 (1.27%) MongoDB
12 99 (1.19%) Big Data
12 99 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 83 (1.00%) MySQL
14 67 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
15 66 (0.79%) Redis
15 66 (0.79%) Tableau
16 62 (0.74%) Snowflake Schema
17 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.71%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 694 (8.33%) Git
2 625 (7.50%) JIRA
3 467 (5.60%) Jenkins
4 359 (4.31%) GitLab
5 137 (1.64%) Selenium
6 76 (0.91%) Postman
7 63 (0.76%) JUnit
8 62 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 61 (0.73%) JMeter
10 53 (0.64%) Cucumber
10 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 50 (0.60%) Maven
12 48 (0.58%) Visual Studio
13 44 (0.53%) Claude Code
13 44 (0.53%) REST Assured
14 42 (0.50%) Gradle
15 40 (0.48%) WebDriver
16 33 (0.40%) MLflow
17 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
18 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,218 (26.61%) Social Skills
2 1,546 (18.55%) Finance
3 989 (11.87%) Public Sector
4 816 (9.79%) Analytical Skills
5 450 (5.40%) Banking
6 236 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 215 (2.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 193 (2.32%) Retail
9 180 (2.16%) Legal
10 98 (1.18%) Manufacturing
11 94 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 91 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
13 84 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
14 75 (0.90%) Aerospace
14 75 (0.90%) Investment Banking
14 75 (0.90%) Marketing
15 74 (0.89%) Law
16 65 (0.78%) Financial Institution
17 61 (0.73%) Military
18 55 (0.66%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,541 (18.49%) Architect
2 1,039 (12.47%) Developer
3 1,038 (12.45%) Senior
4 743 (8.91%) Azure Engineer
5 688 (8.25%) Lead
6 595 (7.14%) Data Engineer
7 483 (5.79%) Analyst
8 455 (5.46%) DevOps Engineer
9 443 (5.31%) Solutions Architect
10 356 (4.27%) Cloud Engineer
11 319 (3.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 304 (3.65%) Consultant
13 266 (3.19%) Data Architect
14 235 (2.82%) Azure Architect
15 233 (2.80%) Platform Engineer
16 201 (2.41%) Technical Architect
17 198 (2.38%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 188 (2.26%) Security Architect
19 185 (2.22%) Security Engineer
19 185 (2.22%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,383 (16.59%) Terraform
2 671 (8.05%) REST
3 642 (7.70%) .NET
4 362 (4.34%) Kafka
5 316 (3.79%) React
6 290 (3.48%) RESTful
7 271 (3.25%) PySpark
8 246 (2.95%) OAuth
9 224 (2.69%) JSON
10 208 (2.50%) Spring
11 180 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 175 (2.10%) Node.js
13 170 (2.04%) AngularJS
14 161 (1.93%) HTML
15 150 (1.80%) OpenID
15 150 (1.80%) SAML
16 146 (1.75%) OAuth2
17 140 (1.68%) Middleware
18 138 (1.66%) Playwright
19 137 (1.64%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 910 (10.92%) Cloud Native
2 415 (4.98%) Onboarding
3 359 (4.31%) Product Ownership
4 269 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
5 266 (3.19%) Enterprise Software
6 265 (3.18%) AI Agents
7 264 (3.17%) Hybrid Cloud
8 258 (3.10%) Data Centre
9 231 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
10 170 (2.04%) Security Posture
11 148 (1.78%) Management Information System
12 140 (1.68%) Data Structures
12 140 (1.68%) Public Cloud
13 118 (1.42%) Enterprise Cloud
14 113 (1.36%) PKI
15 112 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
16 96 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
17 93 (1.12%) Replication
18 80 (0.96%) CMDB
19 77 (0.92%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 979 (11.75%) Windows
2 503 (6.03%) Linux
3 357 (4.28%) Windows Server
4 130 (1.56%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.04%) Unix
6 85 (1.02%) Android
7 83 (1.00%) Apple iOS
8 82 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 70 (0.84%) Mac OS
10 60 (0.72%) VMS
11 51 (0.61%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 17 (0.20%) CentOS
15 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 8 (0.096%) Data ONTAP
18 7 (0.084%) Amazon Linux
19 6 (0.072%) AIX
19 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,111 (37.32%) DevOps
2 2,637 (31.64%) CI/CD
3 2,091 (25.09%) Agile
4 1,352 (16.22%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,318 (15.81%) AI
6 1,303 (15.63%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,227 (14.72%) Migration
8 1,144 (13.73%) Analytics
9 1,117 (13.40%) Problem-Solving
10 935 (11.22%) Continuous Improvement
11 908 (10.89%) Data Modelling
12 819 (9.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 784 (9.41%) Roadmaps
14 779 (9.35%) Containerisation
15 773 (9.27%) Business Intelligence
16 768 (9.21%) Data Pipeline
17 749 (8.99%) Microservices
18 711 (8.53%) Test Automation
19 691 (8.29%) Technical Leadership
20 676 (8.11%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,888 (22.65%) Python
2 1,627 (19.52%) SQL
3 863 (10.35%) PowerShell
4 698 (8.37%) Java
5 618 (7.41%) C#
6 502 (6.02%) JavaScript
7 395 (4.74%) Bash
8 348 (4.18%) Bicep
9 298 (3.58%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.08%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.83%) Go
13 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
14 57 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
15 56 (0.67%) Scala
16 45 (0.54%) PL/SQL
17 41 (0.49%) R
18 39 (0.47%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.38%) Groovy
20 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,176 (26.11%) Security Cleared
2 1,766 (21.19%) SC Cleared
3 554 (6.65%) Degree
4 459 (5.51%) Azure Certification
5 284 (3.41%) DV Cleared
6 261 (3.13%) CISSP
7 245 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 228 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
9 210 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
10 202 (2.42%) AWS Certification
11 185 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
12 129 (1.55%) CISM
13 101 (1.21%) CCNP
14 86 (1.03%) PMI Certification
15 85 (1.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 82 (0.98%) PMP
17 73 (0.88%) ISTQB
18 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
19 54 (0.65%) CCSP
20 44 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 589 (7.07%) Data Quality
2 451 (5.41%) QA
3 309 (3.71%) GDPR
3 309 (3.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 305 (3.66%) NIST
5 199 (2.39%) Accessibility
6 125 (1.50%) NCSC
7 106 (1.27%) SLA
8 76 (0.91%) GRC
9 75 (0.90%) WCAG
10 72 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
11 68 (0.82%) PCI DSS
12 58 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 53 (0.64%) PMO
14 37 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 25 (0.30%) SOC 2
16 19 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
16 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
16 19 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 1,009 (12.11%) Active Directory
2 919 (11.03%) Docker
3 243 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 150 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
5 140 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 131 (1.57%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.79%) vSphere
8 53 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 38 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.37%) Firmware
11 21 (0.25%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) IAG
13 12 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 11 (0.13%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Varnish
18 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,282 (15.38%) Kubernetes
2 450 (5.40%) Ansible
3 432 (5.18%) Microsoft Intune
4 265 (3.18%) Grafana
5 213 (2.56%) Prometheus
6 151 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
7 122 (1.46%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 60 (0.72%) Argo
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 31 (0.37%) Istio
15 22 (0.26%) SCOM
15 22 (0.26%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
16 19 (0.23%) Packer
16 19 (0.23%) QRadar
17 18 (0.22%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,855 (34.25%) Microsoft
2 813 (9.75%) Databricks
3 404 (4.85%) ServiceNow
4 356 (4.27%) Google
5 350 (4.20%) VMware
6 325 (3.90%) Oracle
7 242 (2.90%) Cisco
8 224 (2.69%) SAP
9 204 (2.45%) OpenAI
10 203 (2.44%) Splunk
11 164 (1.97%) Salesforce
12 150 (1.80%) CyberArk
12 150 (1.80%) Palo Alto
13 134 (1.61%) Foundry
14 119 (1.43%) Dynatrace
15 103 (1.24%) Zscaler
16 94 (1.13%) Informatica
17 88 (1.06%) Okta
18 78 (0.94%) IBM
19 77 (0.92%) Fortinet