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 8 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,263 5,057 5,492
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.15% 15.30% 14.51%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.75% 40.07% 42.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,772 3,448 3,714
10th Percentile £363 £350 £340
25th Percentile £443 £415 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.93% -1.24% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £720 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 44 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.29 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £33.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.32% -4.61% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.00 £65.99 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.38 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £19.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +107.89% -58.86% -

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 18,886 12,619 13,040
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.63% 38.18% 34.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,525 8,413 8,640
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £715 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 633 288 184
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.43 £16.30
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -28.14% +6.06%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.12 £65.04
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.00 £33.93
% change year-on-year +57.89% -44.00% +46.00%

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 7,043 £530 +0.95% 7,113
London 0 3,721 £550 - 3,556
UK excluding London 0 3,458 £510 +2.00% 3,935
Work from Home -2 2,520 £525 +5.00% 3,378
North of England +4 1,012 £500 +5.26% 1,118
South East +1 897 £525 +5.00% 877
Midlands +1 627 £500 -4.03% 582
North West +4 489 £500 +5.26% 577
West Midlands +2 482 £488 -11.36% 379
Yorkshire +5 433 £500 +1.73% 394
South West +2 401 £550 +7.42% 435
Scotland -1 277 £500 - 376
East of England -1 188 £505 +0.50% 304
East Midlands +2 141 £500 +8.11% 203
North East +2 103 £506 +1.25% 154
Wales -1 82 £438 -2.78% 142
Northern Ireland +17 12 £650 - 132
Channel Islands -9 3 £500 -21.88% 2

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
1 466 (5.64%) SharePoint
2 267 (3.23%) Confluence
3 193 (2.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 186 (2.25%) Apache Spark
5 157 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
6 119 (1.44%) Apache
7 36 (0.44%) SAS
8 31 (0.38%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) CMS
10 25 (0.30%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.19%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.097%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.085%) Mendix
15 7 (0.085%) Traefik
16 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 126 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 64 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 47 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 46 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
7 12 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.097%) Trello
9 7 (0.085%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.085%) Revit
10 5 (0.061%) Notion
10 5 (0.061%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.036%) 1Password
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) Mingle
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Windchill
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 132 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 10 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.097%) Cloudability
9 8 (0.097%) Magento
10 7 (0.085%) Shopify
11 6 (0.073%) FLEXCUBE
11 6 (0.073%) Maximo
11 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
11 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
11 6 (0.073%) Temenos T24
12 5 (0.061%) Dynamics NAV
13 4 (0.048%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,961 (35.83%) AWS
2 1,746 (21.13%) Azure DevOps
3 1,475 (17.85%) GCP
4 1,142 (13.82%) Entra ID
5 1,070 (12.95%) Power Platform
6 883 (10.69%) Microsoft 365
7 878 (10.63%) GitHub
8 498 (6.03%) GitHub Actions
9 463 (5.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 375 (4.54%) Serverless
11 359 (4.34%) SaaS
12 334 (4.04%) Azure Monitor
13 301 (3.64%) Dynamics 365
14 298 (3.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 297 (3.59%) Power Automate
16 295 (3.57%) Snowflake
17 289 (3.50%) Azure AKS
18 283 (3.42%) PowerApps
19 254 (3.07%) Azure AI
20 250 (3.03%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 523 (6.33%) Firewall
2 423 (5.12%) DNS
3 322 (3.90%) VPN
4 298 (3.61%) Network Security
5 233 (2.82%) DHCP
6 178 (2.15%) WAN
7 170 (2.06%) TCP/IP
8 105 (1.27%) BGP
9 102 (1.23%) LAN
10 98 (1.19%) SD-WAN
11 84 (1.02%) OSPF
12 83 (1.00%) VLAN
13 77 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
14 68 (0.82%) SSL
15 66 (0.80%) Wireless
16 61 (0.74%) SAN
17 47 (0.57%) HTTP
18 45 (0.54%) IPsec
19 41 (0.50%) VXLAN
20 39 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 696 (8.42%) Power BI
2 472 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 404 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
4 385 (4.66%) Data Lake
5 288 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
6 253 (3.06%) Metadata
7 211 (2.55%) NoSQL
8 208 (2.52%) Azure SQL Database
9 147 (1.78%) Relational Database
10 130 (1.57%) Delta Lake
11 114 (1.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 109 (1.32%) MySQL
13 106 (1.28%) MongoDB
14 87 (1.05%) Big Data
15 72 (0.87%) Redis
16 69 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
17 68 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
18 63 (0.76%) BigQuery
19 61 (0.74%) Oracle Database
20 56 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 767 (9.28%) Git
2 608 (7.36%) JIRA
3 483 (5.85%) Jenkins
4 377 (4.56%) GitLab
5 140 (1.69%) Selenium
6 90 (1.09%) Postman
7 67 (0.81%) Cucumber
8 65 (0.79%) Cypress.io
9 64 (0.77%) JUnit
10 60 (0.73%) Claude Code
11 59 (0.71%) JMeter
12 54 (0.65%) Maven
13 52 (0.63%) Gradle
13 52 (0.63%) SonarQube
14 51 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 47 (0.57%) REST Assured
16 36 (0.44%) WebDriver
17 34 (0.41%) Bitbucket
18 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
18 33 (0.40%) MLflow
General
1 2,306 (27.91%) Social Skills
2 1,606 (19.44%) Finance
3 964 (11.67%) Public Sector
4 814 (9.85%) Analytical Skills
5 506 (6.12%) Banking
6 220 (2.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 217 (2.63%) Retail
8 200 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
9 172 (2.08%) Legal
10 115 (1.39%) Manufacturing
11 114 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
12 99 (1.20%) Investment Banking
13 96 (1.16%) Marketing
14 89 (1.08%) Aerospace
14 89 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 82 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
16 78 (0.94%) Military
17 65 (0.79%) Law
18 62 (0.75%) Local Government
19 60 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,581 (19.13%) Architect
2 1,062 (12.85%) Senior
3 1,013 (12.26%) Developer
4 718 (8.69%) Azure Engineer
5 689 (8.34%) Lead
6 589 (7.13%) Data Engineer
7 494 (5.98%) Solutions Architect
8 457 (5.53%) DevOps Engineer
9 452 (5.47%) Analyst
10 383 (4.64%) Cloud Engineer
11 322 (3.90%) Consultant
12 320 (3.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 268 (3.24%) Data Architect
14 227 (2.75%) Platform Engineer
15 215 (2.60%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 210 (2.54%) Azure Architect
17 198 (2.40%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 197 (2.38%) Technical Architect
19 193 (2.34%) Security Engineer
20 183 (2.21%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,420 (17.19%) Terraform
2 775 (9.38%) REST
3 630 (7.62%) .NET
4 406 (4.91%) Kafka
5 320 (3.87%) React
6 299 (3.62%) RESTful
7 282 (3.41%) OAuth
8 263 (3.18%) PySpark
9 241 (2.92%) JSON
10 188 (2.28%) Spring
11 180 (2.18%) Spring Boot
12 174 (2.11%) OpenID
13 173 (2.09%) OAuth2
14 167 (2.02%) HTML
15 155 (1.88%) SAML
16 154 (1.86%) AngularJS
16 154 (1.86%) Middleware
17 150 (1.82%) Node.js
18 146 (1.77%) SOAP
19 141 (1.71%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 930 (11.25%) Cloud Native
2 426 (5.16%) Onboarding
3 399 (4.83%) Product Ownership
4 335 (4.05%) Enterprise Software
5 330 (3.99%) AI Agents
6 288 (3.49%) Hybrid Cloud
7 285 (3.45%) Distributed Systems
8 257 (3.11%) Data Centre
9 226 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
10 188 (2.28%) Management Information System
11 182 (2.20%) Security Posture
12 150 (1.82%) Data Structures
13 144 (1.74%) Public Cloud
14 130 (1.57%) PKI
15 113 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
16 109 (1.32%) Enterprise Cloud
17 100 (1.21%) Replication
18 95 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
19 92 (1.11%) CMDB
20 90 (1.09%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 996 (12.05%) Windows
2 541 (6.55%) Linux
3 390 (4.72%) Windows Server
4 156 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.05%) Unix
6 85 (1.03%) Android
6 85 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 81 (0.98%) Apple iOS
8 60 (0.73%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.68%) Ubuntu
10 51 (0.62%) VMS
11 27 (0.33%) CentOS
12 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 6 (0.073%) AIX
16 6 (0.073%) Debian
17 5 (0.061%) Data ONTAP
17 5 (0.061%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,064 (37.08%) DevOps
2 2,704 (32.72%) CI/CD
3 2,081 (25.18%) Agile
4 1,543 (18.67%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,444 (17.48%) AI
6 1,431 (17.32%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,243 (15.04%) Migration
8 1,153 (13.95%) Problem-Solving
9 1,125 (13.61%) Analytics
10 986 (11.93%) Continuous Improvement
11 892 (10.80%) Data Modelling
12 880 (10.65%) Roadmaps
13 789 (9.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 775 (9.38%) Containerisation
15 772 (9.34%) Test Automation
16 760 (9.20%) Business Intelligence
16 760 (9.20%) Technical Leadership
17 734 (8.88%) Data Pipeline
17 734 (8.88%) Microservices
18 677 (8.19%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,937 (23.44%) Python
2 1,591 (19.25%) SQL
3 932 (11.28%) PowerShell
4 688 (8.33%) Java
5 613 (7.42%) C#
6 522 (6.32%) JavaScript
7 432 (5.23%) Bash
8 375 (4.54%) Bicep
9 317 (3.84%) TypeScript
10 103 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 92 (1.11%) T-SQL
12 79 (0.96%) Go
13 66 (0.80%) Scala
14 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
15 62 (0.75%) Kusto Query Language
16 44 (0.53%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.45%) R
18 33 (0.40%) C++
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.39%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 2,158 (26.12%) Security Cleared
2 1,734 (20.99%) SC Cleared
3 567 (6.86%) Degree
4 473 (5.72%) Azure Certification
5 317 (3.84%) DV Cleared
6 277 (3.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 271 (3.28%) CISSP
8 250 (3.03%) Microsoft Certification
9 222 (2.69%) AWS Certification
10 191 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
11 190 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
12 140 (1.69%) CISM
13 94 (1.14%) PMI Certification
14 91 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 90 (1.09%) PMP
16 81 (0.98%) CCNP
17 65 (0.79%) CCSP
17 65 (0.79%) ISTQB
18 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
19 54 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 615 (7.44%) Data Quality
2 473 (5.72%) QA
3 303 (3.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 287 (3.47%) GDPR
5 285 (3.45%) NIST
6 210 (2.54%) Accessibility
7 121 (1.46%) NCSC
8 109 (1.32%) SLA
9 82 (0.99%) GRC
9 82 (0.99%) WCAG
10 80 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
11 74 (0.90%) PCI DSS
12 51 (0.62%) PMO
13 48 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 47 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 35 (0.42%) SOC 2
16 27 (0.33%) ISO 20022
17 24 (0.29%) HIPAA
18 22 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,030 (12.47%) Active Directory
2 933 (11.29%) Docker
3 248 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.79%) Virtual Machines
5 143 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
6 128 (1.55%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.92%) vSphere
8 49 (0.59%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 21 (0.25%) Firmware
11 17 (0.21%) IAG
12 13 (0.16%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 7 (0.085%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.085%) Ceph
17 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.061%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,314 (15.90%) Kubernetes
2 464 (5.62%) Ansible
3 451 (5.46%) Microsoft Intune
4 274 (3.32%) Grafana
5 208 (2.52%) Prometheus
6 149 (1.80%) SCCM
6 149 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
7 63 (0.76%) Argo
8 61 (0.74%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.59%) Puppet
10 38 (0.46%) FortiGate
11 34 (0.41%) SCOM
12 33 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
13 31 (0.38%) Istio
14 24 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.25%) CASB
16 19 (0.23%) QRadar
16 19 (0.23%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.21%) Packer
18 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,047 (36.88%) Microsoft
2 869 (10.52%) Databricks
3 411 (4.97%) ServiceNow
4 409 (4.95%) Google
5 358 (4.33%) VMware
6 351 (4.25%) Oracle
7 237 (2.87%) Cisco
8 233 (2.82%) Splunk
9 228 (2.76%) OpenAI
10 223 (2.70%) SAP
11 191 (2.31%) Salesforce
12 156 (1.89%) Palo Alto
13 148 (1.79%) CyberArk
14 142 (1.72%) Foundry
15 140 (1.69%) Dynatrace
16 91 (1.10%) Zscaler
17 90 (1.09%) IBM
18 81 (0.98%) Fortinet
18 81 (0.98%) Informatica
19 80 (0.97%) Okta