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 21 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,389 4,508 5,785
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.31% 15.49% 13.60%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.20% 41.18% 41.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,233 3,191 4,183
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year - -2.01% -2.59%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £714 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 140 35 50
10th Percentile £20.90 £23.02 £17.80
25th Percentile £37.25 £26.45 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%
75th Percentile £64.00 £75.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £84.38 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +53.33% -22.02% -20.77%

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 17,106 10,947 13,849
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.45% 37.61% 32.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,532 7,522 9,850
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £620 £634
90th Percentile £704 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.58% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 515 245 349
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.12 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.63 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £27.76 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +35.09% +29.90% -38.94%
75th Percentile £65.13 £47.50 £38.75
90th Percentile £80.12 £73.25 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £20.89 £17.72
% change year-on-year +89.09% +17.89% -29.12%

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 21 May 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 21 May 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 21 May 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 6,252 £525 - 2,531
London +1 3,340 £538 -2.27% 913
UK excluding London +2 3,100 £500 - 2,094
Work from Home -1 2,246 £525 +2.44% 1,225
North of England +3 882 £500 +5.26% 540
South East +3 824 £500 -0.99% 615
Midlands -4 492 £493 -1.50% 268
North West +3 445 £500 +2.56% 299
South West +6 386 £525 - 259
Yorkshire +9 369 £500 +11.86% 149
West Midlands -2 356 £498 -5.24% 167
Scotland +9 305 £525 +10.53% 133
East of England +4 145 £550 -6.78% 169
East Midlands +4 126 £463 - 100
Wales -1 90 £400 - 85
North East 0 77 £525 +5.00% 94
Northern Ireland +10 18 £531 +11.84% 58
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 +51.26%

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
1 346 (4.68%) SharePoint
2 215 (2.91%) Confluence
3 200 (2.71%) Apache Spark
4 188 (2.54%) Microsoft Exchange
5 105 (1.42%) Apache
6 96 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.34%) IIS
7 25 (0.34%) SAS
8 17 (0.23%) CMS
9 15 (0.20%) Mendix
10 14 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 14 (0.19%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
11 12 (0.16%) Appian
11 12 (0.16%) Camunda
11 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
11 12 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
13 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.11%) nginx
Applications
1 102 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 64 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.095%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.095%) Trello
8 5 (0.068%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.068%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.054%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.054%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.041%) Revit
10 3 (0.041%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.027%) Notion
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
12 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 101 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 81 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.14%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.12%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.095%) NEC Housing
8 6 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.081%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.068%) NetSuite
9 5 (0.068%) Shopify
9 5 (0.068%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.054%) Magento
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.054%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 2,508 (33.94%) AWS
2 1,507 (20.40%) Azure DevOps
3 1,290 (17.46%) GCP
4 957 (12.95%) Power Platform
5 875 (11.84%) Entra ID
6 758 (10.26%) Microsoft 365
7 694 (9.39%) GitHub
8 502 (6.79%) Azure Data Factory
9 410 (5.55%) GitHub Actions
10 385 (5.21%) Serverless
11 336 (4.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 282 (3.82%) SaaS
13 274 (3.71%) Azure AKS
14 262 (3.55%) Power Automate
15 253 (3.42%) Dynamics 365
16 240 (3.25%) Azure Monitor
17 231 (3.13%) PaaS
18 226 (3.06%) PowerApps
19 211 (2.86%) Azure Functions
20 193 (2.61%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 443 (6.00%) Firewall
2 311 (4.21%) DNS
3 252 (3.41%) VPN
4 246 (3.33%) Network Security
5 204 (2.76%) WAN
6 165 (2.23%) DHCP
7 132 (1.79%) LAN
8 113 (1.53%) SD-WAN
9 91 (1.23%) TCP/IP
10 86 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
11 75 (1.02%) BGP
12 73 (0.99%) VLAN
13 71 (0.96%) Kerberos
14 64 (0.87%) OSPF
15 48 (0.65%) SAN
16 47 (0.64%) SSL
17 42 (0.57%) VXLAN
17 42 (0.57%) Wireless
18 38 (0.51%) HTTP
19 36 (0.49%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 632 (8.55%) Power BI
2 431 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 364 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 361 (4.89%) Data Lake
5 248 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
6 239 (3.23%) Azure SQL Database
7 201 (2.72%) NoSQL
8 179 (2.42%) Metadata
9 150 (2.03%) Delta Lake
10 118 (1.60%) Big Data
11 114 (1.54%) Relational Database
12 96 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 95 (1.29%) MongoDB
14 77 (1.04%) Tableau
15 68 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
16 66 (0.89%) Oracle Database
17 64 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 63 (0.85%) MySQL
19 55 (0.74%) Star Schema
20 49 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 543 (7.35%) Git
2 523 (7.08%) JIRA
3 393 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 311 (4.21%) GitLab
5 117 (1.58%) Selenium
6 80 (1.08%) Postman
7 69 (0.93%) JMeter
8 61 (0.83%) Cucumber
9 57 (0.77%) JUnit
10 53 (0.72%) MLflow
10 53 (0.72%) REST Assured
11 47 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 39 (0.53%) Cypress.io
13 38 (0.51%) Visual Studio
14 33 (0.45%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.45%) WebDriver
15 31 (0.42%) Gatling
16 30 (0.41%) Maven
17 26 (0.35%) ERwin
18 25 (0.34%) NUnit
General
1 1,862 (25.20%) Social Skills
2 1,324 (17.92%) Finance
3 806 (10.91%) Public Sector
4 653 (8.84%) Analytical Skills
5 381 (5.16%) Banking
6 197 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
7 193 (2.61%) Legal
8 107 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 104 (1.41%) Retail
10 90 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 76 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 75 (1.02%) Financial Institution
13 69 (0.93%) Marketing
14 66 (0.89%) Investment Banking
15 62 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
16 60 (0.81%) Front Office
16 60 (0.81%) Telecoms
17 59 (0.80%) Law
18 45 (0.61%) Military
19 40 (0.54%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,274 (17.24%) Architect
2 946 (12.80%) Developer
3 868 (11.75%) Senior
4 676 (9.15%) Azure Engineer
5 596 (8.07%) Data Engineer
6 552 (7.47%) Lead
7 455 (6.16%) Analyst
8 413 (5.59%) DevOps Engineer
9 331 (4.48%) Solutions Architect
10 315 (4.26%) Consultant
11 240 (3.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 237 (3.21%) Cloud Engineer
13 204 (2.76%) Azure Architect
14 196 (2.65%) Security Engineer
15 191 (2.58%) Data Architect
16 170 (2.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 170 (2.30%) Technical Architect
17 169 (2.29%) Platform Engineer
18 164 (2.22%) Project Manager
19 157 (2.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 593 (8.03%) .NET
2 502 (6.79%) REST
3 336 (4.55%) React
4 270 (3.65%) PySpark
5 269 (3.64%) Kafka
6 236 (3.19%) RESTful
7 215 (2.91%) Node.js
8 209 (2.83%) OAuth
9 195 (2.64%) Spring
10 179 (2.42%) AngularJS
11 172 (2.33%) LDAP
12 163 (2.21%) Spring Boot
13 155 (2.10%) JSON
14 139 (1.88%) HTML
15 137 (1.85%) Middleware
15 137 (1.85%) SOAP
16 132 (1.79%) OpenID
17 128 (1.73%) SAML
18 115 (1.56%) CSS
19 107 (1.45%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 709 (9.60%) Cloud Native
2 294 (3.98%) Onboarding
3 269 (3.64%) Product Ownership
4 226 (3.06%) Data Centre
5 200 (2.71%) Hybrid Cloud
6 178 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
7 170 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
8 162 (2.19%) Security Posture
9 158 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
10 151 (2.04%) Public Cloud
11 141 (1.91%) AI Agents
12 99 (1.34%) Data Structures
13 92 (1.25%) Replication
14 91 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 81 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 76 (1.03%) Management Information System
17 72 (0.97%) PKI
18 67 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
19 61 (0.83%) NHS
20 58 (0.78%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 814 (11.02%) Windows
2 380 (5.14%) Linux
3 247 (3.34%) Windows Server
4 122 (1.65%) Windows 10
5 76 (1.03%) Unix
6 69 (0.93%) Apple iOS
6 69 (0.93%) Mac OS
7 68 (0.92%) VMS
8 61 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 51 (0.69%) Android
10 30 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
11 24 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
15 9 (0.12%) CentOS
15 9 (0.12%) Debian
16 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.095%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.095%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,769 (37.47%) DevOps
2 2,305 (31.20%) CI/CD
3 1,730 (23.41%) Agile
4 1,058 (14.32%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,040 (14.07%) Analytics
6 1,031 (13.95%) Migration
7 1,027 (13.90%) Problem-Solving
8 1,012 (13.70%) AI
9 846 (11.45%) Data Modelling
10 743 (10.06%) Stakeholder Management
11 697 (9.43%) Data Pipeline
12 691 (9.35%) Business Intelligence
13 690 (9.34%) Continuous Improvement
14 685 (9.27%) Containerisation
15 666 (9.01%) ETL
16 659 (8.92%) Microservices
17 618 (8.36%) Roadmaps
18 596 (8.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 582 (7.88%) Data Engineering
20 566 (7.66%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,741 (23.56%) Python
2 1,526 (20.65%) SQL
3 727 (9.84%) PowerShell
4 612 (8.28%) C#
5 594 (8.04%) Java
6 449 (6.08%) JavaScript
7 279 (3.78%) TypeScript
8 249 (3.37%) Bash
9 240 (3.25%) Bicep
10 96 (1.30%) Scala
11 89 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 89 (1.20%) T-SQL
12 77 (1.04%) Go
13 54 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
14 51 (0.69%) Shell Script
15 45 (0.61%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.55%) R
17 31 (0.42%) C++
18 24 (0.32%) Kotlin
19 18 (0.24%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,815 (24.56%) Security Cleared
2 1,538 (20.81%) SC Cleared
3 513 (6.94%) Degree
4 375 (5.08%) Azure Certification
5 210 (2.84%) CISSP
6 188 (2.54%) Computer Science Degree
7 173 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
8 171 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
9 160 (2.17%) DV Cleared
10 152 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
11 137 (1.85%) AWS Certification
12 121 (1.64%) CISM
13 81 (1.10%) CCNP
14 77 (1.04%) PMP
15 72 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 63 (0.85%) Master's Degree
18 59 (0.80%) TOGAF Certification
19 57 (0.77%) ISTQB
20 46 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 514 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 392 (5.31%) QA
3 346 (4.68%) GDPR
4 281 (3.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 261 (3.53%) NIST
6 139 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 103 (1.39%) NCSC
8 83 (1.12%) PCI DSS
9 78 (1.06%) SLA
10 66 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
11 64 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 55 (0.74%) PMO
13 52 (0.70%) GRC
14 45 (0.61%) WCAG
15 38 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.32%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 22 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 18 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 17 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 888 (12.02%) Active Directory
2 784 (10.61%) Docker
3 210 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 122 (1.65%) Virtual Desktop
5 115 (1.56%) Hyper-V
6 112 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
7 64 (0.87%) vSphere
8 38 (0.51%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.39%) Firmware
10 24 (0.32%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.28%) NFS
12 14 (0.19%) Postfix
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.095%) Varnish
15 6 (0.081%) HDFS
15 6 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.081%) RACF
16 5 (0.068%) KVM
16 5 (0.068%) Snort
16 5 (0.068%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,151 (15.58%) Terraform
2 1,060 (14.35%) Kubernetes
3 368 (4.98%) Microsoft Intune
4 345 (4.67%) Ansible
5 208 (2.81%) Grafana
6 180 (2.44%) Prometheus
7 154 (2.08%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.49%) SCCM
9 70 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.51%) Argo
11 37 (0.50%) Puppet
12 35 (0.47%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.45%) Istio
14 32 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
15 28 (0.38%) Progress Chef
16 23 (0.31%) HP ALM
17 18 (0.24%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.23%) HAProxy
18 17 (0.23%) linkerd
19 14 (0.19%) Nmap
Vendors
1 2,347 (31.76%) Microsoft
2 750 (10.15%) Databricks
3 316 (4.28%) ServiceNow
4 290 (3.92%) VMware
5 287 (3.88%) Google
6 284 (3.84%) Oracle
7 215 (2.91%) SAP
8 200 (2.71%) Cisco
9 184 (2.49%) OpenAI
10 167 (2.26%) Splunk
11 138 (1.87%) CyberArk
12 132 (1.79%) Palo Alto
13 113 (1.53%) Salesforce
14 110 (1.49%) Foundry
15 97 (1.31%) Okta
16 79 (1.07%) Dynatrace
17 77 (1.04%) Citrix
18 73 (0.99%) Informatica
19 69 (0.93%) Zscaler
20 67 (0.91%) BeyondTrust