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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,250 4,863 5,733
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.57% 14.82% 14.39%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.11% 39.68% 42.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,763 3,355 4,106
10th Percentile £367 £350 £345
25th Percentile £437 £425 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £633 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 39 41
10th Percentile £18.43 £18.65 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.38 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -40.32%
75th Percentile £77.75 £78.10 £59.50
90th Percentile £95.31 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £53.23 £33.00
% change year-on-year +8.03% +61.29% -38.14%

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 18,704 12,257 13,378
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.31% 37.35% 33.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,355 8,205 9,347
10th Percentile £326 £313 £313
25th Percentile £420 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £621 £616 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £496
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.14% -0.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 623 314 288
10th Percentile £16.50 £15.11 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.31 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £27.38 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.68% +21.67% -35.71%
75th Percentile £69.88 £47.50 £50.48
90th Percentile £82.87 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.91 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +90.30% -10.14% -20.75%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 7,065 £525 - 2,978
London +1 3,698 £550 - 1,359
UK excluding London +3 3,559 £500 - 2,041
Work from Home -1 2,558 £525 +5.00% 1,509
North of England +7 1,020 £500 +3.09% 572
South East +2 900 £525 +5.00% 636
Midlands +4 640 £496 +0.25% 294
North West +6 534 £500 +2.30% 316
West Midlands +2 485 £494 -5.95% 185
South West +7 444 £538 +7.50% 236
Yorkshire +4 407 £500 +5.26% 175
Scotland +10 301 £500 +0.81% 94
East of England +3 180 £535 -2.73% 158
East Midlands +11 143 £488 +5.41% 109
Wales -1 96 £450 +0.90% 68
North East -2 94 £520 +6.67% 93
Northern Ireland +7 15 £644 +35.53% 32
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
1 434 (5.26%) SharePoint
2 282 (3.42%) Confluence
3 201 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 177 (2.15%) Apache Spark
5 132 (1.60%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.39%) Apache
7 43 (0.52%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 26 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 18 (0.22%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) 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%) Camunda
16 6 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 121 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.41%) Chatbot
6 31 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.097%) Revit
11 4 (0.048%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) PTC Creo
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 111 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.15%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.097%) Magento
8 8 (0.097%) Maximo
9 7 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
9 7 (0.085%) Shopify
10 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
10 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
11 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
11 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
12 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
12 4 (0.048%) SAP MM
12 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,940 (35.64%) AWS
2 1,707 (20.69%) Azure DevOps
3 1,416 (17.16%) GCP
4 1,031 (12.50%) Entra ID
5 1,029 (12.47%) Power Platform
6 821 (9.95%) Microsoft 365
7 791 (9.59%) GitHub
8 476 (5.77%) GitHub Actions
9 467 (5.66%) Azure Data Factory
10 352 (4.27%) Serverless
11 331 (4.01%) SaaS
12 315 (3.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 304 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 292 (3.54%) Azure Monitor
15 280 (3.39%) Power Automate
16 271 (3.28%) PowerApps
17 260 (3.15%) PaaS
18 252 (3.05%) Dynamics 365
19 234 (2.84%) Azure AI
20 231 (2.80%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 521 (6.32%) Firewall
2 385 (4.67%) DNS
3 317 (3.84%) VPN
4 296 (3.59%) Network Security
5 203 (2.46%) WAN
6 192 (2.33%) DHCP
7 158 (1.92%) TCP/IP
8 127 (1.54%) LAN
9 114 (1.38%) BGP
10 105 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 91 (1.10%) OSPF
11 91 (1.10%) VLAN
12 86 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
13 74 (0.90%) SSL
14 57 (0.69%) SAN
14 57 (0.69%) Wireless
15 56 (0.68%) IPsec
16 48 (0.58%) VXLAN
17 46 (0.56%) HTTP
18 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 714 (8.65%) Power BI
2 465 (5.64%) SQL Server
3 405 (4.91%) Data Warehouse
4 361 (4.38%) Data Lake
5 308 (3.73%) PostgreSQL
6 220 (2.67%) NoSQL
7 217 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
8 212 (2.57%) Metadata
9 139 (1.68%) Relational Database
10 132 (1.60%) Delta Lake
11 108 (1.31%) MongoDB
12 107 (1.30%) Big Data
13 98 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 90 (1.09%) MySQL
15 69 (0.84%) Tableau
16 64 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
17 60 (0.73%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.70%) Star Schema
19 57 (0.69%) Oracle Database
19 57 (0.69%) Redis
Development Applications
1 643 (7.79%) Git
2 642 (7.78%) JIRA
3 436 (5.28%) Jenkins
4 329 (3.99%) GitLab
5 124 (1.50%) Selenium
6 74 (0.90%) JUnit
7 72 (0.87%) Postman
8 70 (0.85%) JMeter
9 59 (0.72%) Cucumber
10 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 52 (0.63%) Cypress.io
12 48 (0.58%) Maven
12 48 (0.58%) REST Assured
13 44 (0.53%) Visual Studio
13 44 (0.53%) WebDriver
14 40 (0.48%) MLflow
15 36 (0.44%) Gradle
16 32 (0.39%) Gatling
17 31 (0.38%) Claude Code
18 30 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 2,096 (25.41%) Social Skills
2 1,538 (18.64%) Finance
3 968 (11.73%) Public Sector
4 773 (9.37%) Analytical Skills
5 431 (5.22%) Banking
6 234 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 191 (2.32%) Legal
8 185 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 184 (2.23%) Retail
10 100 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 97 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 89 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 80 (0.97%) Manufacturing
14 76 (0.92%) Law
15 69 (0.84%) Financial Institution
16 67 (0.81%) Investment Banking
16 67 (0.81%) Marketing
17 65 (0.79%) Front Office
18 61 (0.74%) Military
19 57 (0.69%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,476 (17.89%) Architect
2 1,065 (12.91%) Developer
3 1,024 (12.41%) Senior
4 733 (8.88%) Azure Engineer
5 677 (8.21%) Lead
6 618 (7.49%) Data Engineer
7 499 (6.05%) Analyst
8 434 (5.26%) Solutions Architect
9 417 (5.05%) DevOps Engineer
10 336 (4.07%) Cloud Engineer
11 315 (3.82%) Consultant
12 302 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 249 (3.02%) Data Architect
14 220 (2.67%) Azure Architect
14 220 (2.67%) Platform Engineer
15 198 (2.40%) Technical Architect
16 189 (2.29%) Project Manager
17 188 (2.28%) Security Engineer
18 187 (2.27%) Java Developer
19 183 (2.22%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 638 (7.73%) .NET
2 612 (7.42%) REST
3 340 (4.12%) React
4 316 (3.83%) Kafka
5 294 (3.56%) RESTful
6 256 (3.10%) PySpark
7 234 (2.84%) OAuth
8 225 (2.73%) Spring
9 208 (2.52%) Node.js
10 202 (2.45%) JSON
11 189 (2.29%) Spring Boot
12 179 (2.17%) AngularJS
13 157 (1.90%) HTML
14 148 (1.79%) SAML
15 147 (1.78%) OpenID
16 137 (1.66%) .NET Framework
17 136 (1.65%) OAuth2
18 130 (1.58%) Middleware
19 126 (1.53%) Playwright
20 125 (1.52%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 871 (10.56%) Cloud Native
2 387 (4.69%) Onboarding
3 345 (4.18%) Product Ownership
4 268 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
5 267 (3.24%) Data Centre
6 248 (3.01%) Hybrid Cloud
7 241 (2.92%) AI Agents
8 231 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
9 207 (2.51%) Enterprise Software
10 168 (2.04%) Security Posture
11 140 (1.70%) Public Cloud
12 139 (1.68%) Data Structures
13 130 (1.58%) Management Information System
14 111 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
15 106 (1.28%) Enterprise Cloud
16 104 (1.26%) PKI
17 91 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 90 (1.09%) Replication
19 73 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
20 72 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 949 (11.50%) Windows
2 464 (5.62%) Linux
3 319 (3.87%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.36%) Windows 10
5 81 (0.98%) Android
5 81 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 79 (0.96%) Unix
7 73 (0.88%) Apple iOS
7 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.72%) VMS
9 44 (0.53%) Ubuntu
10 24 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
11 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
11 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
11 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
12 11 (0.13%) CentOS
13 9 (0.11%) Debian
14 7 (0.085%) CoreOS
15 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.061%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,026 (36.68%) DevOps
2 2,564 (31.08%) CI/CD
3 2,090 (25.33%) Agile
4 1,277 (15.48%) AI
5 1,262 (15.30%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,204 (14.59%) Migration
7 1,136 (13.77%) Analytics
8 1,130 (13.70%) Stakeholder Management
9 1,063 (12.88%) Problem-Solving
10 931 (11.28%) Data Modelling
11 889 (10.78%) Continuous Improvement
12 787 (9.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 785 (9.52%) Data Pipeline
14 766 (9.28%) Containerisation
15 762 (9.24%) Business Intelligence
16 759 (9.20%) Microservices
17 758 (9.19%) Roadmaps
18 679 (8.23%) Test Automation
19 671 (8.13%) ETL
20 663 (8.04%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,902 (23.05%) Python
2 1,604 (19.44%) SQL
3 793 (9.61%) PowerShell
4 695 (8.42%) Java
5 616 (7.47%) C#
6 496 (6.01%) JavaScript
7 355 (4.30%) Bash
8 314 (3.81%) Bicep
9 312 (3.78%) TypeScript
10 99 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 97 (1.18%) T-SQL
12 72 (0.87%) Go
13 59 (0.72%) Scala
14 55 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 51 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 41 (0.50%) Kotlin
17 40 (0.48%) R
18 39 (0.47%) PL/SQL
19 30 (0.36%) Groovy
20 27 (0.33%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,076 (25.16%) Security Cleared
2 1,703 (20.64%) SC Cleared
3 573 (6.95%) Degree
4 442 (5.36%) Azure Certification
5 264 (3.20%) DV Cleared
6 249 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
7 248 (3.01%) CISSP
8 212 (2.57%) Microsoft Certification
9 209 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
10 199 (2.41%) AWS Certification
11 191 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
12 122 (1.48%) CISM
13 102 (1.24%) CCNP
14 84 (1.02%) PMI Certification
14 84 (1.02%) PMP
15 81 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 65 (0.79%) ISTQB
17 60 (0.73%) Master's Degree
18 54 (0.65%) CCSP
19 51 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 576 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 436 (5.28%) QA
3 327 (3.96%) GDPR
4 287 (3.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 281 (3.41%) NIST
6 203 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.44%) NCSC
8 104 (1.26%) SLA
9 77 (0.93%) GRC
10 75 (0.91%) WCAG
11 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
12 72 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
13 56 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 54 (0.65%) PMO
15 30 (0.36%) HIPAA
16 29 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 22 (0.27%) NIST 800
19 21 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
20 16 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 968 (11.73%) Active Directory
2 893 (10.82%) Docker
3 220 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
5 141 (1.71%) Virtual Desktop
6 120 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.84%) vSphere
8 51 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
9 39 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) 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%) Ceph
15 7 (0.085%) Varnish
16 6 (0.073%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.073%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,331 (16.13%) Terraform
2 1,231 (14.92%) Kubernetes
3 428 (5.19%) Microsoft Intune
4 409 (4.96%) Ansible
5 252 (3.05%) Grafana
6 211 (2.56%) Prometheus
7 149 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
8 112 (1.36%) SCCM
9 60 (0.73%) Argo
10 53 (0.64%) Progress Chef
11 46 (0.56%) Puppet
12 44 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
13 36 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 34 (0.41%) FortiGate
15 30 (0.36%) Istio
16 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 19 (0.23%) Packer
18 18 (0.22%) HP ALM
19 16 (0.19%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,690 (32.61%) Microsoft
2 772 (9.36%) Databricks
3 396 (4.80%) ServiceNow
4 338 (4.10%) Google
5 321 (3.89%) VMware
6 316 (3.83%) Oracle
7 240 (2.91%) Cisco
8 225 (2.73%) SAP
9 204 (2.47%) OpenAI
10 184 (2.23%) Splunk
11 155 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 154 (1.87%) Palo Alto
13 140 (1.70%) CyberArk
14 138 (1.67%) Foundry
15 109 (1.32%) Dynatrace
16 102 (1.24%) Zscaler
17 88 (1.07%) Okta
18 87 (1.05%) Informatica
19 77 (0.93%) Fortinet
20 74 (0.90%) Citrix