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 28 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,630 5,460 6,864
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.60% 14.92% 15.04%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.76% 41.97% 42.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,922 3,657 5,032
10th Percentile £350 £338 £350
25th Percentile £423 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £712 £720 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £520
% change year-on-year - -3.85% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 51 86
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.30 £17.75
25th Percentile £26.00 £23.80 £25.19
Median hourly rate £46.00 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% -32.87% +31.94%
75th Percentile £80.00 £60.38 £69.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.75 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +119.17% -35.04% -7.64%

All Cloud 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 13,814 13,010 16,097
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.27% 35.54% 35.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,358 8,562 11,528
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £705 £738 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 330 192 302
10th Percentile £15.48 £17.51 £14.36
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.75
Median hourly rate £26.00 £30.00 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +11.11% +22.50%
75th Percentile £52.00 £55.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.88 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.43 £22.00
% change year-on-year -17.96% +24.66% +15.79%

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025. 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 4,790 £525 -0.94% 3,200
London +1 2,570 £540 -1.82% 1,153
UK excluding London 0 2,327 £500 - 2,878
Work from Home -1 1,844 £513 -2.38% 1,423
North of England -2 597 £475 -5.00% 562
South East -4 570 £500 -4.76% 1,075
Midlands -2 430 £525 +0.24% 429
West Midlands 0 320 £550 +4.76% 261
South West +6 310 £500 - 296
North West 0 292 £465 -7.00% 297
Yorkshire -1 276 £489 -2.25% 183
Scotland +1 250 £523 +16.22% 181
East of England +2 159 £500 +25.00% 252
East Midlands 0 107 £450 -10.00% 160
Wales +1 64 £456 -8.75% 103
North East -9 33 £533 +21.02% 86
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -2 6 - - 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
1 262 (4.65%) SharePoint
2 191 (3.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.63%) Confluence
4 129 (2.29%) Apache Spark
5 88 (1.56%) Apache
6 83 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
7 28 (0.50%) SAS
8 27 (0.48%) CMS
9 22 (0.39%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.32%) nginx
11 17 (0.30%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
12 12 (0.21%) IIS
13 10 (0.18%) Mule
13 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
16 7 (0.12%) WebSphere
Applications
1 129 (2.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 92 (1.63%) Microsoft Office
3 41 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
6 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 10 (0.18%) Trello
8 5 (0.089%) Weka
9 2 (0.036%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.036%) Windchill
10 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
10 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
10 1 (0.018%) Revit
10 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 99 (1.76%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 16 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
5 12 (0.21%) Endur
6 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
7 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.16%) Workday HCM
8 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
9 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.089%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.089%) Remedy ITSM
11 4 (0.071%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.071%) Primavera
11 4 (0.071%) SAP MDG
11 4 (0.071%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,071 (36.79%) AWS
2 1,120 (19.89%) Azure DevOps
3 1,111 (19.73%) GCP
4 710 (12.61%) Power Platform
5 640 (11.37%) Microsoft 365
6 635 (11.28%) Entra ID
7 530 (9.41%) GitHub
8 351 (6.23%) Azure Data Factory
9 317 (5.63%) GitHub Actions
10 303 (5.38%) Serverless
11 253 (4.49%) Dynamics 365
12 249 (4.42%) SaaS
13 239 (4.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 225 (4.00%) Azure AKS
15 218 (3.87%) Power Automate
16 210 (3.73%) Snowflake
17 201 (3.57%) PaaS
18 199 (3.53%) PowerApps
19 198 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
20 192 (3.41%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 416 (7.39%) Firewall
2 210 (3.73%) DNS
3 178 (3.16%) VPN
4 154 (2.74%) Network Security
5 118 (2.10%) WAN
6 105 (1.87%) DHCP
7 89 (1.58%) TCP/IP
8 75 (1.33%) LAN
9 71 (1.26%) HTTP
10 61 (1.08%) VLAN
10 61 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
11 59 (1.05%) SD-WAN
12 43 (0.76%) BGP
13 39 (0.69%) SAN
14 35 (0.62%) Internet
15 34 (0.60%) MPLS
16 31 (0.55%) OSPF
16 31 (0.55%) Wireless
17 27 (0.48%) SSL
18 20 (0.36%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 491 (8.72%) Power BI
2 311 (5.52%) SQL Server
3 268 (4.76%) Data Warehouse
4 246 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 245 (4.35%) PostgreSQL
6 183 (3.25%) Azure SQL Database
7 181 (3.21%) NoSQL
8 127 (2.26%) Relational Database
9 121 (2.15%) Metadata
10 102 (1.81%) MongoDB
11 83 (1.47%) MySQL
12 80 (1.42%) Big Data
13 74 (1.31%) Delta Lake
14 66 (1.17%) Tableau
15 61 (1.08%) BigQuery
15 61 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 54 (0.96%) Redis
17 53 (0.94%) Oracle Database
18 45 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
19 39 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 489 (8.69%) Git
2 418 (7.42%) JIRA
3 333 (5.91%) Jenkins
4 226 (4.01%) GitLab
5 95 (1.69%) Selenium
6 86 (1.53%) Postman
7 69 (1.23%) SonarQube
8 66 (1.17%) JUnit
9 48 (0.85%) Bitbucket
10 47 (0.83%) JMeter
11 45 (0.80%) Cucumber
11 45 (0.80%) Cypress.io
12 40 (0.71%) Maven
13 37 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
14 35 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 32 (0.57%) CircleCI
15 32 (0.57%) ERwin
16 29 (0.52%) Gradle
16 29 (0.52%) Mockito
16 29 (0.52%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,805 (32.06%) Social Skills
2 1,072 (19.04%) Finance
3 663 (11.78%) Public Sector
4 535 (9.50%) Analytical Skills
5 369 (6.55%) Banking
6 198 (3.52%) Documentation Skills
7 129 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 94 (1.67%) Investment Banking
8 94 (1.67%) Marketing
9 93 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
10 89 (1.58%) Retail
11 88 (1.56%) Legal
12 80 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
13 74 (1.31%) Telecoms
14 69 (1.23%) Manufacturing
15 58 (1.03%) Law
16 46 (0.82%) Front Office
17 45 (0.80%) Financial Institution
17 45 (0.80%) Local Government
18 43 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 919 (16.32%) Developer
2 908 (16.13%) Architect
3 569 (10.11%) Senior
4 418 (7.42%) Azure Engineer
5 415 (7.37%) Analyst
6 391 (6.94%) Lead
7 366 (6.50%) Data Engineer
8 316 (5.61%) Solutions Architect
9 279 (4.96%) DevOps Engineer
10 228 (4.05%) Consultant
11 177 (3.14%) Security Engineer
12 169 (3.00%) Senior Developer
13 161 (2.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 157 (2.79%) Azure Architect
15 137 (2.43%) Cloud Engineer
16 133 (2.36%) Platform Engineer
17 118 (2.10%) Data Architect
18 114 (2.02%) Software Engineer
19 113 (2.01%) Java Developer
20 112 (1.99%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 473 (8.40%) .NET
2 350 (6.22%) REST
3 261 (4.64%) RESTful
4 247 (4.39%) React
5 218 (3.87%) Kafka
6 197 (3.50%) Node.js
6 197 (3.50%) Spring
7 178 (3.16%) HTML
8 176 (3.13%) OAuth
9 167 (2.97%) AngularJS
10 165 (2.93%) PySpark
11 164 (2.91%) Spring Boot
12 159 (2.82%) JSON
13 141 (2.50%) CSS
14 134 (2.38%) SOAP
15 118 (2.10%) PyTorch
16 107 (1.90%) TensorFlow
17 103 (1.83%) SAML
18 101 (1.79%) Middleware
19 100 (1.78%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 449 (7.98%) Cloud Native
2 198 (3.52%) Product Ownership
3 190 (3.37%) Onboarding
4 162 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
5 146 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
6 135 (2.40%) Data Centre
7 121 (2.15%) Security Posture
8 116 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
9 110 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
10 98 (1.74%) Public Cloud
11 79 (1.40%) Algorithms
12 77 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
13 76 (1.35%) Management Information System
14 69 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
15 60 (1.07%) AI Agents
15 60 (1.07%) Replication
16 57 (1.01%) Low-Code
17 53 (0.94%) Data Structures
17 53 (0.94%) NHS
18 50 (0.89%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 638 (11.33%) Windows
2 384 (6.82%) Linux
3 191 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.97%) Unix
5 93 (1.65%) Windows 10
6 54 (0.96%) Android
7 47 (0.83%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.80%) VMS
9 37 (0.66%) Mac OS
10 29 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.21%) Solaris
13 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
14 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
15 9 (0.16%) CentOS
16 7 (0.12%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.089%) AIX
17 5 (0.089%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,044 (36.31%) DevOps
2 1,651 (29.33%) CI/CD
3 1,529 (27.16%) Agile
4 1,030 (18.29%) Problem-Solving
5 760 (13.50%) Analytics
6 744 (13.21%) Infrastructure as Code
7 666 (11.83%) Migration
8 655 (11.63%) AI
9 568 (10.09%) Containerisation
9 568 (10.09%) Stakeholder Management
10 564 (10.02%) Business Intelligence
11 492 (8.74%) Microservices
12 483 (8.58%) Machine Learning
13 479 (8.51%) Data Modelling
14 475 (8.44%) Test Automation
15 456 (8.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 444 (7.89%) Continuous Improvement
17 421 (7.48%) Scrum
18 412 (7.32%) Cybersecurity
19 403 (7.16%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,440 (25.58%) Python
2 1,210 (21.49%) SQL
3 594 (10.55%) PowerShell
4 563 (10.00%) Java
5 518 (9.20%) C#
6 442 (7.85%) JavaScript
7 280 (4.97%) Bash
8 234 (4.16%) TypeScript
9 153 (2.72%) Bicep
10 93 (1.65%) Go
11 72 (1.28%) Kusto Query Language
12 71 (1.26%) Scala
13 65 (1.15%) PL/SQL
14 56 (0.99%) R
15 52 (0.92%) T-SQL
16 45 (0.80%) C++
17 39 (0.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 36 (0.64%) Shell Script
19 32 (0.57%) PHP
20 31 (0.55%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,170 (20.78%) Security Cleared
2 954 (16.94%) SC Cleared
3 488 (8.67%) Degree
4 335 (5.95%) Azure Certification
5 182 (3.23%) Microsoft Certification
6 176 (3.13%) CISSP
7 172 (3.06%) Computer Science Degree
8 143 (2.54%) AWS Certification
9 131 (2.33%) DV Cleared
10 100 (1.78%) CISM
11 96 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
12 86 (1.53%) Master's Degree
13 85 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
14 46 (0.82%) CCNP
15 45 (0.80%) ISTQB
16 38 (0.67%) PMI Certification
17 34 (0.60%) MCP
17 34 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
18 33 (0.59%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 32 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 354 (6.29%) GDPR
2 329 (5.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 317 (5.63%) QA
4 261 (4.64%) NIST
5 257 (4.56%) Data Quality
6 134 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 75 (1.33%) PCI DSS
8 74 (1.31%) NCSC
9 53 (0.94%) HIPAA
10 51 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 38 (0.67%) SOC 2
12 36 (0.64%) SLA
13 32 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 32 (0.57%) WCAG
14 28 (0.50%) EU AI Act
14 28 (0.50%) GRC
15 25 (0.44%) PMO
15 25 (0.44%) PSD2
16 22 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 21 (0.37%) COBIT
System Software
1 721 (12.81%) Docker
2 684 (12.15%) Active Directory
3 170 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (1.31%) Hyper-V
5 73 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
6 60 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
7 47 (0.83%) vSphere
8 25 (0.44%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.28%) Squid
10 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
10 13 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 11 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
12 10 (0.18%) Firmware
12 10 (0.18%) Postfix
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
13 9 (0.16%) zsh
14 8 (0.14%) KVM
14 8 (0.14%) NFS
14 8 (0.14%) Snort
Systems Management
1 839 (14.90%) Terraform
2 806 (14.32%) Kubernetes
3 307 (5.45%) Ansible
4 298 (5.29%) Microsoft Intune
5 136 (2.42%) Single Sign-On
6 130 (2.31%) SCCM
7 128 (2.27%) Grafana
8 124 (2.20%) Prometheus
9 38 (0.67%) Argo
9 38 (0.67%) Puppet
10 33 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 26 (0.46%) Nessus
12 23 (0.41%) Kibana
13 21 (0.37%) NetBackup
14 20 (0.36%) Progress Chef
15 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
16 18 (0.32%) vRealize
17 17 (0.30%) Podman
18 16 (0.28%) QRadar
18 16 (0.28%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,816 (32.26%) Microsoft
2 512 (9.09%) Databricks
3 331 (5.88%) Oracle
4 276 (4.90%) Google
5 224 (3.98%) VMware
6 219 (3.89%) ServiceNow
7 172 (3.06%) Cisco
8 157 (2.79%) SAP
9 143 (2.54%) Splunk
10 122 (2.17%) Salesforce
11 115 (2.04%) OpenAI
12 92 (1.63%) Palo Alto
13 85 (1.51%) CyberArk
14 84 (1.49%) Citrix
15 64 (1.14%) Foundry
16 62 (1.10%) Red Hat
17 59 (1.05%) F5
18 57 (1.01%) Okta
19 54 (0.96%) Dynatrace
19 54 (0.96%) IBM