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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,359 4,801 5,606
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.59% 14.60% 14.39%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.23% 39.25% 42.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,838 3,296 4,001
10th Percentile £370 £350 £350
25th Percentile £437 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 190 40 41
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.76 £17.80
25th Percentile £23.00 £27.24 £23.80
Median hourly rate £53.75 £43.23 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.35% +23.50% -37.78%
75th Percentile £77.50 £77.80 £61.60
90th Percentile £92.71 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £53.23 £31.00
% change year-on-year -1.36% +71.69% -32.87%

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 18,899 12,233 13,147
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.26% 37.19% 33.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,480 8,192 9,158
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £420 £410 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.86%
75th Percentile £623 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 627 312 274
10th Percentile £15.81 £15.16 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £27.63 £24.17
Median % change year-on-year +26.67% +14.34% -30.96%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £52.73
90th Percentile £82.30 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.38 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +82.17% -11.70% -20.11%

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 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 8 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 8 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 0 7,181 £525 - 4,320
London +1 3,766 £550 - 2,058
UK excluding London +3 3,601 £500 - 2,828
Work from Home -1 2,582 £525 +5.00% 1,925
North of England +8 1,028 £500 +5.26% 771
South East +1 919 £525 +5.00% 807
Midlands +4 659 £493 -1.50% 374
North West +7 542 £500 +4.17% 436
West Midlands +3 497 £493 -6.19% 227
South West +7 444 £540 +8.00% 333
Yorkshire +5 404 £500 +5.26% 248
Scotland +10 299 £500 +0.81% 186
East of England +3 178 £525 -4.55% 225
East Midlands +11 150 £488 +5.41% 147
North East +6 95 £513 +2.50% 99
Wales 0 93 £450 +0.90% 99
Northern Ireland +13 15 £644 +35.53% 76
Channel Islands +1 8 £450 -29.69%

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
1 441 (5.28%) SharePoint
2 284 (3.40%) Confluence
3 205 (2.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.08%) Apache Spark
5 140 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.39%) Apache
7 44 (0.53%) SAS
8 35 (0.42%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 19 (0.23%) CMS
11 17 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
14 12 (0.14%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 9 (0.11%) Mendix
16 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
17 7 (0.084%) Camunda
18 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 123 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
3 75 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.44%) Chatbot
4 37 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
7 11 (0.13%) Trello
8 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
8 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 5 (0.060%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.012%) CINEMA 4D
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
13 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 121 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 7 (0.084%) Maximo
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.060%) Payment Gateway
10 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) SAP ERP
11 4 (0.048%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,937 (35.14%) AWS
2 1,763 (21.09%) Azure DevOps
3 1,420 (16.99%) GCP
4 1,072 (12.82%) Entra ID
5 1,042 (12.47%) Power Platform
6 848 (10.14%) Microsoft 365
7 842 (10.07%) GitHub
8 503 (6.02%) GitHub Actions
9 479 (5.73%) Azure Data Factory
10 349 (4.18%) Serverless
11 335 (4.01%) SaaS
12 318 (3.80%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 306 (3.66%) Azure Monitor
14 305 (3.65%) Azure AKS
15 290 (3.47%) Power Automate
16 278 (3.33%) PowerApps
17 266 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
18 260 (3.11%) PaaS
19 245 (2.93%) Snowflake
20 237 (2.84%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 526 (6.29%) Firewall
2 410 (4.90%) DNS
3 330 (3.95%) VPN
4 300 (3.59%) Network Security
5 204 (2.44%) DHCP
6 199 (2.38%) WAN
7 168 (2.01%) TCP/IP
8 121 (1.45%) LAN
9 113 (1.35%) BGP
10 104 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.11%) VLAN
12 90 (1.08%) OSPF
13 83 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.89%) SSL
15 59 (0.71%) SAN
16 57 (0.68%) Wireless
17 53 (0.63%) IPsec
18 49 (0.59%) HTTP
19 47 (0.56%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 721 (8.63%) Power BI
2 469 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 411 (4.92%) Data Warehouse
4 369 (4.41%) Data Lake
5 298 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
6 223 (2.67%) Azure SQL Database
7 220 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 213 (2.55%) Metadata
9 142 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 137 (1.64%) Delta Lake
11 104 (1.24%) Big Data
12 103 (1.23%) MongoDB
12 103 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 86 (1.03%) MySQL
14 64 (0.77%) Snowflake Schema
14 64 (0.77%) Tableau
15 62 (0.74%) BigQuery
16 59 (0.71%) Star Schema
17 57 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
17 57 (0.68%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 673 (8.05%) Git
2 648 (7.75%) JIRA
3 448 (5.36%) Jenkins
4 352 (4.21%) GitLab
5 133 (1.59%) Selenium
6 74 (0.89%) Postman
7 69 (0.83%) JUnit
8 67 (0.80%) JMeter
9 60 (0.72%) Cypress.io
10 57 (0.68%) Cucumber
10 57 (0.68%) SonarQube
11 50 (0.60%) Maven
12 47 (0.56%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.54%) WebDriver
14 43 (0.51%) REST Assured
15 40 (0.48%) Claude Code
15 40 (0.48%) Gradle
16 36 (0.43%) MLflow
17 31 (0.37%) Gatling
18 30 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 2,159 (25.83%) Social Skills
2 1,565 (18.72%) Finance
3 978 (11.70%) Public Sector
4 802 (9.59%) Analytical Skills
5 439 (5.25%) Banking
6 232 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 198 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 190 (2.27%) Legal
9 186 (2.23%) Retail
10 99 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
11 97 (1.16%) Telecoms
12 89 (1.06%) Manufacturing
13 88 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
14 75 (0.90%) Law
15 71 (0.85%) Financial Institution
15 71 (0.85%) Investment Banking
16 70 (0.84%) Aerospace
17 68 (0.81%) Marketing
18 64 (0.77%) Front Office
19 59 (0.71%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,513 (18.10%) Architect
2 1,055 (12.62%) Developer
3 1,043 (12.48%) Senior
4 733 (8.77%) Azure Engineer
5 688 (8.23%) Lead
6 617 (7.38%) Data Engineer
7 502 (6.01%) Analyst
8 452 (5.41%) Solutions Architect
9 430 (5.14%) DevOps Engineer
10 349 (4.18%) Cloud Engineer
11 310 (3.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 308 (3.68%) Consultant
13 252 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 226 (2.70%) Platform Engineer
15 223 (2.67%) Azure Architect
16 197 (2.36%) Project Manager
17 194 (2.32%) Technical Architect
18 188 (2.25%) Security Architect
18 188 (2.25%) Security Engineer
19 187 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 647 (7.74%) .NET
2 635 (7.60%) REST
3 331 (3.96%) Kafka
3 331 (3.96%) React
4 296 (3.54%) RESTful
5 260 (3.11%) PySpark
6 241 (2.88%) OAuth
7 213 (2.55%) JSON
8 209 (2.50%) Spring
9 202 (2.42%) Node.js
10 175 (2.09%) AngularJS
11 173 (2.07%) Spring Boot
12 159 (1.90%) HTML
13 151 (1.81%) SAML
14 149 (1.78%) OpenID
15 142 (1.70%) OAuth2
16 140 (1.67%) .NET Framework
17 138 (1.65%) Middleware
18 134 (1.60%) Playwright
19 125 (1.50%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 891 (10.66%) Cloud Native
2 396 (4.74%) Onboarding
3 355 (4.25%) Product Ownership
4 267 (3.19%) Distributed Systems
5 266 (3.18%) Hybrid Cloud
6 259 (3.10%) Data Centre
7 256 (3.06%) AI Agents
8 235 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
9 227 (2.72%) Enterprise Software
10 178 (2.13%) Security Posture
11 142 (1.70%) Data Structures
12 141 (1.69%) Public Cloud
13 137 (1.64%) Management Information System
14 112 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 109 (1.30%) Enterprise Cloud
16 108 (1.29%) PKI
17 95 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
18 92 (1.10%) Replication
19 77 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
20 73 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 981 (11.74%) Windows
2 495 (5.92%) Linux
3 342 (4.09%) Windows Server
4 125 (1.50%) Windows 10
5 85 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 83 (0.99%) Unix
7 82 (0.98%) Android
8 75 (0.90%) Apple iOS
9 73 (0.87%) Mac OS
10 58 (0.69%) VMS
11 49 (0.59%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.14%) CentOS
14 12 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
15 10 (0.12%) Debian
16 6 (0.072%) AIX
16 6 (0.072%) Rocky
16 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,094 (37.01%) DevOps
2 2,619 (31.33%) CI/CD
3 2,098 (25.10%) Agile
4 1,313 (15.71%) AI
5 1,312 (15.70%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,224 (14.64%) Migration
7 1,194 (14.28%) Stakeholder Management
8 1,157 (13.84%) Analytics
9 1,087 (13.00%) Problem-Solving
10 945 (11.31%) Data Modelling
11 912 (10.91%) Continuous Improvement
12 818 (9.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 788 (9.43%) Data Pipeline
14 784 (9.38%) Containerisation
15 783 (9.37%) Roadmaps
16 770 (9.21%) Business Intelligence
17 752 (9.00%) Microservices
18 701 (8.39%) Test Automation
19 681 (8.15%) ETL
20 664 (7.94%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,931 (23.10%) Python
2 1,627 (19.46%) SQL
3 832 (9.95%) PowerShell
4 684 (8.18%) Java
5 632 (7.56%) C#
6 516 (6.17%) JavaScript
7 384 (4.59%) Bash
8 327 (3.91%) Bicep
9 316 (3.78%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 98 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 70 (0.84%) Go
13 60 (0.72%) Scala
14 57 (0.68%) Shell Script
15 56 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
16 40 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.48%) PL/SQL
17 39 (0.47%) R
18 30 (0.36%) Groovy
19 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,132 (25.51%) Security Cleared
2 1,733 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 567 (6.78%) Degree
4 447 (5.35%) Azure Certification
5 273 (3.27%) DV Cleared
6 259 (3.10%) CISSP
7 250 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
8 224 (2.68%) Microsoft Certification
9 213 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
10 199 (2.38%) AWS Certification
11 187 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
12 127 (1.52%) CISM
13 101 (1.21%) CCNP
14 86 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 86 (1.03%) PMI Certification
15 85 (1.02%) PMP
16 71 (0.85%) ISTQB
17 58 (0.69%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.68%) CCSP
18 57 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 583 (6.97%) Data Quality
2 436 (5.22%) QA
3 332 (3.97%) GDPR
4 302 (3.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 297 (3.55%) NIST
6 202 (2.42%) Accessibility
7 123 (1.47%) NCSC
8 103 (1.23%) SLA
9 77 (0.92%) GRC
9 77 (0.92%) WCAG
10 74 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
10 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
11 59 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 56 (0.67%) PMO
13 32 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 29 (0.35%) HIPAA
15 26 (0.31%) SOC 2
16 21 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
18 18 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,006 (12.03%) Active Directory
2 920 (11.01%) Docker
3 238 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
5 145 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
6 128 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.81%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 24 (0.29%) NFS
12 14 (0.17%) IAG
12 14 (0.17%) Postfix
13 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.11%) Ceph
14 9 (0.11%) zsh
15 7 (0.084%) Varnish
16 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.060%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 1,372 (16.41%) Terraform
2 1,273 (15.23%) Kubernetes
3 438 (5.24%) Microsoft Intune
4 436 (5.22%) Ansible
5 258 (3.09%) Grafana
6 217 (2.60%) Prometheus
7 148 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
8 118 (1.41%) SCCM
9 60 (0.72%) Argo
10 59 (0.71%) Progress Chef
11 48 (0.57%) Puppet
12 43 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
14 32 (0.38%) Istio
15 21 (0.25%) SCOM
15 21 (0.25%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.24%) Packer
17 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,792 (33.40%) Microsoft
2 792 (9.47%) Databricks
3 403 (4.82%) ServiceNow
4 344 (4.12%) Google
5 339 (4.06%) VMware
6 318 (3.80%) Oracle
7 239 (2.86%) Cisco
8 224 (2.68%) SAP
9 208 (2.49%) OpenAI
10 191 (2.28%) Splunk
11 156 (1.87%) Salesforce
12 155 (1.85%) Palo Alto
13 144 (1.72%) CyberArk
14 142 (1.70%) Foundry
15 114 (1.36%) Dynatrace
16 105 (1.26%) Zscaler
17 89 (1.06%) Okta
18 84 (1.00%) Informatica
19 79 (0.95%) Citrix
20 78 (0.93%) Fortinet