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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,018 4,710 6,021
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.01% 16.06% 13.60%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.95% 42.23% 41.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,985 3,342 4,350
10th Percentile £356 £350 £340
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.25%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 43 69
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £45.87 £23.80 £22.08
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -16.04%
75th Percentile £68.75 £70.63 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £79.74 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +79.69% -30.71% -23.03%

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 16,339 11,153 14,459
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.27% 38.02% 32.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,156 7,760 10,255
10th Percentile £313 £313 £289
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £635
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £488
% change year-on-year -1.04% -1.54% -3.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 457 207 359
10th Percentile £15.57 £15.38 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £20.12 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.00 £26.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +39.62% +24.01% -16.13%
75th Percentile £61.25 £42.49 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.20 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £24.18 £17.80
% change year-on-year +76.53% +35.84% -19.24%

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 March 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 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 March 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 5,938 £525 -0.94% 2,892
London +1 3,229 £540 -1.82% 1,009
UK excluding London +1 2,867 £500 - 2,335
Work from Home -1 2,157 £525 +1.30% 1,339
North of England +3 806 £488 +1.56% 581
South East 0 750 £500 -9.09% 700
Midlands -2 476 £500 -3.85% 370
North West +1 432 £475 -5.00% 286
West Midlands -3 361 £505 -3.90% 207
South West +6 345 £506 -3.67% 299
Yorkshire -1 327 £494 +9.72% 206
Scotland +6 298 £537 +13.05% 128
East of England +5 154 £550 -8.33% 204
East Midlands -3 107 £425 -10.53% 161
Wales -2 85 £400 -3.03% 70
North East -4 49 £525 +10.53% 94
Northern Ireland +3 14 £475 - 19

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
1 312 (4.45%) SharePoint
2 217 (3.09%) Microsoft Exchange
3 193 (2.75%) Confluence
4 186 (2.65%) Apache Spark
5 105 (1.50%) Apache
6 91 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.34%) IIS
8 22 (0.31%) OpenStack
9 20 (0.28%) SAS
10 17 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 17 (0.24%) CMS
11 15 (0.21%) Appian
11 15 (0.21%) Camunda
12 13 (0.19%) Mendix
13 11 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.14%) GeoServer
15 9 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.11%) Smallworld
17 7 (0.100%) Anypoint
Applications
1 121 (1.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 54 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 45 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 15 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.100%) Trello
8 5 (0.071%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.071%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.071%) Weka
9 4 (0.057%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.043%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.028%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.014%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 106 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Maximo
4 11 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.100%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.100%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.100%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.085%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.085%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.085%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.085%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.071%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.071%) Endur
9 5 (0.071%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.057%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.057%) ResourceLink
10 4 (0.057%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,443 (34.81%) AWS
2 1,454 (20.72%) Azure DevOps
3 1,347 (19.19%) GCP
4 937 (13.35%) Power Platform
5 842 (12.00%) Entra ID
6 779 (11.10%) Microsoft 365
7 742 (10.57%) GitHub
8 502 (7.15%) Azure Data Factory
9 432 (6.16%) GitHub Actions
10 419 (5.97%) Serverless
11 330 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 289 (4.12%) Dynamics 365
13 278 (3.96%) SaaS
14 265 (3.78%) Power Automate
15 255 (3.63%) Azure AKS
16 251 (3.58%) Azure Monitor
17 247 (3.52%) Azure Functions
18 231 (3.29%) PaaS
19 221 (3.15%) Snowflake
20 218 (3.11%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 455 (6.48%) Firewall
2 297 (4.23%) DNS
3 245 (3.49%) VPN
4 231 (3.29%) Network Security
5 183 (2.61%) WAN
6 164 (2.34%) DHCP
7 130 (1.85%) LAN
8 95 (1.35%) TCP/IP
9 92 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
10 91 (1.30%) SD-WAN
11 69 (0.98%) VLAN
12 68 (0.97%) Kerberos
13 51 (0.73%) BGP
14 49 (0.70%) HTTP
15 45 (0.64%) OSPF
16 43 (0.61%) Wireless
17 37 (0.53%) SSL
18 35 (0.50%) Internet
19 33 (0.47%) SAN
20 32 (0.46%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 640 (9.12%) Power BI
2 410 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 375 (5.34%) Data Warehouse
4 340 (4.84%) Data Lake
5 271 (3.86%) PostgreSQL
6 260 (3.70%) Azure SQL Database
7 205 (2.92%) NoSQL
8 171 (2.44%) Metadata
9 140 (1.99%) Delta Lake
10 122 (1.74%) Relational Database
11 110 (1.57%) Big Data
12 98 (1.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 91 (1.30%) MongoDB
14 79 (1.13%) Tableau
15 76 (1.08%) MySQL
16 68 (0.97%) Oracle Database
17 63 (0.90%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
19 54 (0.77%) Star Schema
20 49 (0.70%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 537 (7.65%) Git
2 500 (7.12%) JIRA
3 381 (5.43%) Jenkins
4 278 (3.96%) GitLab
5 132 (1.88%) Selenium
6 89 (1.27%) Postman
7 81 (1.15%) Cucumber
7 81 (1.15%) JMeter
8 74 (1.05%) JUnit
9 50 (0.71%) MLflow
9 50 (0.71%) REST Assured
10 47 (0.67%) Cypress.io
10 47 (0.67%) Visual Studio
11 45 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 35 (0.50%) Artifactory
13 34 (0.48%) Oracle APEX
14 32 (0.46%) TestRail
14 32 (0.46%) WebDriver
15 30 (0.43%) Gatling
15 30 (0.43%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,020 (28.78%) Social Skills
2 1,260 (17.95%) Finance
3 838 (11.94%) Public Sector
4 692 (9.86%) Analytical Skills
5 379 (5.40%) Banking
6 222 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
7 165 (2.35%) Legal
8 111 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 105 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
10 87 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
11 85 (1.21%) Retail
12 83 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
13 78 (1.11%) Marketing
14 74 (1.05%) Telecoms
15 66 (0.94%) Financial Institution
16 58 (0.83%) Investment Banking
17 57 (0.81%) Law
18 54 (0.77%) Front Office
19 50 (0.71%) Manufacturing
20 46 (0.66%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,185 (16.89%) Architect
2 985 (14.04%) Developer
3 818 (11.66%) Senior
4 602 (8.58%) Azure Engineer
5 574 (8.18%) Data Engineer
6 531 (7.57%) Lead
7 453 (6.45%) Analyst
8 343 (4.89%) DevOps Engineer
9 321 (4.57%) Solutions Architect
10 309 (4.40%) Consultant
11 193 (2.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 190 (2.71%) Cloud Engineer
13 181 (2.58%) Security Engineer
14 179 (2.55%) Azure Architect
15 163 (2.32%) Senior Developer
16 162 (2.31%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 158 (2.25%) Platform Engineer
18 156 (2.22%) Data Architect
19 140 (1.99%) Tester
20 138 (1.97%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 557 (7.94%) .NET
2 494 (7.04%) REST
3 345 (4.92%) React
4 265 (3.78%) PySpark
4 265 (3.78%) RESTful
5 264 (3.76%) Kafka
6 249 (3.55%) Node.js
7 226 (3.22%) Spring
8 205 (2.92%) OAuth
9 201 (2.86%) AngularJS
10 184 (2.62%) Spring Boot
11 173 (2.47%) HTML
12 152 (2.17%) LDAP
13 151 (2.15%) JSON
14 149 (2.12%) CSS
15 141 (2.01%) SOAP
16 134 (1.91%) PyTorch
17 130 (1.85%) Middleware
18 127 (1.81%) SAML
19 122 (1.74%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 633 (9.02%) Cloud Native
2 272 (3.88%) Onboarding
3 260 (3.70%) Product Ownership
4 189 (2.69%) Hybrid Cloud
5 183 (2.61%) Data Centre
6 170 (2.42%) Security Posture
7 167 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 164 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
9 141 (2.01%) Distributed Systems
9 141 (2.01%) Public Cloud
10 114 (1.62%) AI Agents
11 89 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
11 89 (1.27%) Data Structures
12 79 (1.13%) Management Information System
12 79 (1.13%) Replication
13 75 (1.07%) Algorithms
14 66 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
15 65 (0.93%) Low-Code
15 65 (0.93%) PKI
16 61 (0.87%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 757 (10.79%) Windows
2 375 (5.34%) Linux
3 228 (3.25%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.75%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.07%) Unix
6 67 (0.95%) VMS
7 49 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 42 (0.60%) Mac OS
9 36 (0.51%) Apple iOS
10 29 (0.41%) Android
11 23 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 16 (0.23%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.085%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.085%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.071%) AIX
17 5 (0.071%) CentOS
17 5 (0.071%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,630 (37.48%) DevOps
2 2,160 (30.78%) CI/CD
3 1,691 (24.10%) Agile
4 1,185 (16.89%) Problem-Solving
5 1,056 (15.05%) Analytics
6 966 (13.76%) AI
7 944 (13.45%) Infrastructure as Code
8 915 (13.04%) Migration
9 752 (10.72%) Data Modelling
10 723 (10.30%) Stakeholder Management
11 711 (10.13%) Business Intelligence
12 679 (9.68%) Containerisation
13 677 (9.65%) Continuous Improvement
14 651 (9.28%) Microservices
15 633 (9.02%) Data Pipeline
16 632 (9.01%) ETL
17 611 (8.71%) Machine Learning
18 600 (8.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 577 (8.22%) Data Engineering
20 573 (8.16%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,833 (26.12%) Python
2 1,564 (22.29%) SQL
3 754 (10.74%) PowerShell
4 609 (8.68%) C#
5 607 (8.65%) Java
6 505 (7.20%) JavaScript
7 302 (4.30%) TypeScript
8 261 (3.72%) Bash
9 216 (3.08%) Bicep
10 103 (1.47%) Scala
11 83 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 83 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
12 80 (1.14%) Go
13 79 (1.13%) PL/SQL
14 75 (1.07%) T-SQL
15 51 (0.73%) Shell Script
16 47 (0.67%) R
17 37 (0.53%) C++
18 27 (0.38%) PHP
19 26 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,706 (24.31%) Security Cleared
2 1,414 (20.15%) SC Cleared
3 559 (7.97%) Degree
4 376 (5.36%) Azure Certification
5 223 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 197 (2.81%) CISSP
7 165 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
8 145 (2.07%) AWS Certification
9 143 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
10 136 (1.94%) DV Cleared
11 131 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
12 125 (1.78%) CISM
13 90 (1.28%) Master's Degree
14 67 (0.95%) CCNP
15 65 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
16 62 (0.88%) ISTQB
16 62 (0.88%) PMI Certification
16 62 (0.88%) PMP
17 46 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 34 (0.48%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 492 (7.01%) Data Quality
2 406 (5.79%) GDPR
3 376 (5.36%) QA
4 308 (4.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 252 (3.59%) NIST
6 138 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 104 (1.48%) NCSC
8 86 (1.23%) PCI DSS
9 65 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
10 63 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 61 (0.87%) SLA
12 55 (0.78%) PMO
13 39 (0.56%) HIPAA
13 39 (0.56%) WCAG
14 38 (0.54%) GRC
15 31 (0.44%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 24 (0.34%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.33%) PSD2
System Software
1 882 (12.57%) Active Directory
2 838 (11.94%) Docker
3 206 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 105 (1.50%) Hyper-V
5 94 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
6 80 (1.14%) Virtual Desktop
7 75 (1.07%) vSphere
8 26 (0.37%) VMware NSX
9 23 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
10 19 (0.27%) Firmware
11 16 (0.23%) NFS
12 8 (0.11%) Postfix
13 7 (0.100%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.085%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.085%) GPFS
14 6 (0.085%) Lustre
14 6 (0.085%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.085%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.085%) Snort
15 5 (0.071%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,094 (15.59%) Terraform
2 1,038 (14.79%) Kubernetes
3 371 (5.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 327 (4.66%) Ansible
5 190 (2.71%) Grafana
6 165 (2.35%) Prometheus
7 164 (2.34%) Single Sign-On
8 128 (1.82%) SCCM
9 74 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.73%) Argo
11 34 (0.48%) Istio
12 30 (0.43%) Puppet
13 28 (0.40%) FortiGate
14 26 (0.37%) Progress Chef
15 24 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
15 24 (0.34%) vRealize
16 21 (0.30%) HP ALM
16 21 (0.30%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.23%) Nmap
18 15 (0.21%) Kibana
Vendors
1 2,245 (31.99%) Microsoft
2 699 (9.96%) Databricks
3 345 (4.92%) Google
4 336 (4.79%) Oracle
5 280 (3.99%) ServiceNow
6 278 (3.96%) VMware
7 201 (2.86%) SAP
8 177 (2.52%) Cisco
8 177 (2.52%) OpenAI
9 156 (2.22%) Splunk
10 127 (1.81%) CyberArk
11 116 (1.65%) Palo Alto
12 110 (1.57%) Foundry
13 91 (1.30%) Salesforce
14 85 (1.21%) Okta
15 77 (1.10%) Red Hat
16 75 (1.07%) Informatica
17 72 (1.03%) IBM
18 69 (0.98%) BeyondTrust
18 69 (0.98%) Fortinet