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

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,155 4,812 6,258
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.02% 15.49% 13.88%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.29% 41.81% 41.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,362 3,247 4,579
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.19% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 40 85
10th Percentile £18.40 £21.15 £17.75
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.75 £22.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £30.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +86.99% -33.41% -9.45%
75th Percentile £67.25 £56.25 £62.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £75.67 £76.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +91.67% -35.04% -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 14,553 11,510 15,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.87% 37.05% 33.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,015 7,631 10,772
10th Percentile £306 £313 £288
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.26% -0.77% -1.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 172 325
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.78 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.09 £27.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +20.31% +22.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £58.75 £43.75 £49.08
90th Percentile £79.63 £68.75 £72.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.09 £24.66 £20.97
% change year-on-year +34.16% +17.60% +4.85%

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 2 February 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 2 February 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 2 February 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 5,213 £521 -0.86% 2,806
London 0 2,800 £541 -1.66% 1,075
UK excluding London 0 2,523 £500 - 2,317
Work from Home -2 1,897 £518 -0.96% 1,530
North of England -1 683 £475 +3.66% 550
South East -2 653 £496 -7.72% 800
Midlands -1 440 £513 -1.30% 308
North West -1 342 £450 - 326
West Midlands +2 331 £545 -0.91% 178
South West +4 329 £509 -3.10% 244
Yorkshire -3 297 £479 +0.74% 159
Scotland +7 279 £550 +18.41% 163
East of England -2 142 £544 +14.47% 198
East Midlands -3 108 £433 -3.78% 128
Wales -4 63 £410 -16.33% 71
North East -5 47 £500 +7.64% 68
Northern Ireland +7 10 £475 - 19
Channel Islands +3 2 £600 +101.68% 1

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
1 283 (4.60%) SharePoint
2 198 (3.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 155 (2.52%) Apache Spark
4 153 (2.49%) Confluence
5 83 (1.35%) Apache
6 81 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.42%) CMS
7 26 (0.42%) SAS
8 25 (0.41%) OpenStack
9 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
9 14 (0.23%) IIS
10 13 (0.21%) Appian
10 13 (0.21%) Camunda
11 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.18%) nginx
12 11 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 11 (0.18%) WebLogic
13 10 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 10 (0.16%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.15%) Mendix
Applications
1 134 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 103 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.78%) MS Visio
5 39 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.15%) Trello
8 7 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.081%) Weka
10 4 (0.065%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.049%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.016%) FrameMaker
13 1 (0.016%) Revit
Business Applications
1 107 (1.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.15%) Maximo
5 9 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Endur
6 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.097%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.097%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.081%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,152 (34.96%) AWS
2 1,229 (19.97%) Azure DevOps
3 1,203 (19.55%) GCP
4 836 (13.58%) Power Platform
5 715 (11.62%) Entra ID
6 709 (11.52%) Microsoft 365
7 629 (10.22%) GitHub
8 436 (7.08%) Azure Data Factory
9 380 (6.17%) Serverless
10 362 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
11 291 (4.73%) Dynamics 365
12 285 (4.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 258 (4.19%) Power Automate
13 258 (4.19%) SaaS
14 235 (3.82%) Azure AKS
15 229 (3.72%) Azure Functions
16 220 (3.57%) Snowflake
17 215 (3.49%) Azure Logic Apps
17 215 (3.49%) Azure Monitor
18 203 (3.30%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 418 (6.79%) Firewall
2 268 (4.35%) DNS
3 198 (3.22%) VPN
4 175 (2.84%) Network Security
5 161 (2.62%) DHCP
6 149 (2.42%) WAN
7 96 (1.56%) TCP/IP
8 95 (1.54%) LAN
9 76 (1.23%) SD-WAN
9 76 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
10 68 (1.10%) Kerberos
11 64 (1.04%) VLAN
12 61 (0.99%) HTTP
13 38 (0.62%) BGP
14 35 (0.57%) Internet
14 35 (0.57%) Wireless
15 30 (0.49%) MPLS
16 28 (0.45%) SSL
17 26 (0.42%) OSPF
18 24 (0.39%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 574 (9.33%) Power BI
2 358 (5.82%) SQL Server
3 310 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 303 (4.92%) Data Lake
5 222 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
6 220 (3.57%) Azure SQL Database
7 181 (2.94%) NoSQL
8 144 (2.34%) Metadata
9 129 (2.10%) Relational Database
10 100 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 88 (1.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 82 (1.33%) MongoDB
13 80 (1.30%) Big Data
14 75 (1.22%) MySQL
15 69 (1.12%) Oracle Database
16 68 (1.10%) Tableau
17 65 (1.06%) BigQuery
18 53 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
19 48 (0.78%) Redis
20 43 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 478 (7.77%) Git
2 441 (7.16%) JIRA
3 338 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 251 (4.08%) GitLab
5 106 (1.72%) Selenium
6 97 (1.58%) Postman
7 62 (1.01%) Cucumber
8 56 (0.91%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.89%) JMeter
10 52 (0.84%) JUnit
11 47 (0.76%) Cypress.io
12 44 (0.71%) REST Assured
13 40 (0.65%) Visual Studio
14 39 (0.63%) MLflow
15 37 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
16 29 (0.47%) Artifactory
17 28 (0.45%) ERwin
17 28 (0.45%) TestRail
18 27 (0.44%) Bitbucket
18 27 (0.44%) Maven
General
1 1,948 (31.65%) Social Skills
2 1,094 (17.77%) Finance
3 728 (11.83%) Public Sector
4 619 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
5 356 (5.78%) Banking
6 204 (3.31%) Documentation Skills
7 130 (2.11%) Legal
8 110 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 104 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
10 98 (1.59%) Marketing
11 89 (1.45%) Retail
12 87 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
13 71 (1.15%) Investment Banking
14 61 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
15 60 (0.97%) Telecoms
16 53 (0.86%) Financial Institution
16 53 (0.86%) Law
17 51 (0.83%) Manufacturing
18 41 (0.67%) Military
19 38 (0.62%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,002 (16.28%) Architect
2 891 (14.48%) Developer
3 631 (10.25%) Senior
4 499 (8.11%) Azure Engineer
5 478 (7.77%) Data Engineer
6 423 (6.87%) Lead
7 416 (6.76%) Analyst
8 321 (5.22%) DevOps Engineer
9 316 (5.13%) Solutions Architect
10 269 (4.37%) Consultant
11 183 (2.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 173 (2.81%) Security Engineer
13 158 (2.57%) Senior Developer
14 155 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
15 154 (2.50%) Azure Architect
16 148 (2.40%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 133 (2.16%) Platform Engineer
18 130 (2.11%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 126 (2.05%) Data Architect
20 120 (1.95%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 511 (8.30%) .NET
2 445 (7.23%) REST
3 279 (4.53%) React
4 247 (4.01%) RESTful
5 229 (3.72%) PySpark
6 223 (3.62%) Kafka
7 206 (3.35%) Node.js
8 193 (3.14%) OAuth
9 184 (2.99%) Spring
10 170 (2.76%) Spring Boot
11 166 (2.70%) HTML
12 164 (2.66%) AngularJS
13 153 (2.49%) LDAP
14 147 (2.39%) JSON
14 147 (2.39%) SOAP
15 144 (2.34%) CSS
16 132 (2.14%) PyTorch
17 124 (2.01%) TensorFlow
18 116 (1.88%) SAML
19 109 (1.77%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 538 (8.74%) Cloud Native
2 236 (3.83%) Onboarding
3 213 (3.46%) Product Ownership
4 167 (2.71%) Hybrid Cloud
5 162 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
6 160 (2.60%) Security Posture
7 154 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
8 135 (2.19%) Data Centre
9 116 (1.88%) Public Cloud
10 98 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
11 87 (1.41%) AI Agents
12 85 (1.38%) Replication
13 75 (1.22%) Management Information System
14 72 (1.17%) Data Structures
15 67 (1.09%) Algorithms
15 67 (1.09%) Low-Code
16 62 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
16 62 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
17 58 (0.94%) NHS
18 57 (0.93%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 711 (11.55%) Windows
2 364 (5.91%) Linux
3 201 (3.27%) Windows Server
4 125 (2.03%) Windows 10
5 88 (1.43%) Unix
6 53 (0.86%) VMS
7 46 (0.75%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.73%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.65%) Android
10 36 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.31%) Ubuntu
13 11 (0.18%) CentOS
14 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 7 (0.11%) Solaris
17 5 (0.081%) AIX
18 3 (0.049%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,258 (36.69%) DevOps
2 1,845 (29.98%) CI/CD
3 1,524 (24.76%) Agile
4 1,182 (19.20%) Problem-Solving
5 921 (14.96%) Analytics
6 820 (13.32%) AI
7 802 (13.03%) Infrastructure as Code
8 727 (11.81%) Migration
9 648 (10.53%) Business Intelligence
10 641 (10.41%) Stakeholder Management
11 619 (10.06%) Containerisation
12 600 (9.75%) Data Modelling
13 542 (8.81%) Continuous Improvement
14 531 (8.63%) Machine Learning
15 529 (8.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 527 (8.56%) ETL
17 516 (8.38%) Microservices
18 504 (8.19%) Data Pipeline
19 500 (8.12%) Test Automation
20 454 (7.38%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 1,568 (25.48%) Python
2 1,336 (21.71%) SQL
3 681 (11.06%) PowerShell
4 543 (8.82%) C#
5 528 (8.58%) Java
6 465 (7.55%) JavaScript
7 261 (4.24%) TypeScript
8 255 (4.14%) Bash
9 180 (2.92%) Bicep
10 94 (1.53%) Scala
11 82 (1.33%) Go
12 81 (1.32%) PL/SQL
13 69 (1.12%) Kusto Query Language
14 64 (1.04%) T-SQL
15 63 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 49 (0.80%) R
17 47 (0.76%) Shell Script
18 41 (0.67%) C++
19 34 (0.55%) PHP
20 23 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,441 (23.41%) Security Cleared
2 1,196 (19.43%) SC Cleared
3 515 (8.37%) Degree
4 345 (5.61%) Azure Certification
5 196 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 171 (2.78%) Microsoft Certification
7 162 (2.63%) CISSP
8 125 (2.03%) AWS Certification
9 124 (2.01%) DV Cleared
10 107 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
11 106 (1.72%) CISM
12 91 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
13 90 (1.46%) Master's Degree
14 50 (0.81%) PMI Certification
15 47 (0.76%) ISTQB
15 47 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
16 46 (0.75%) PMP
17 44 (0.71%) CCNP
18 32 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 28 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (6.19%) Data Quality
2 373 (6.06%) GDPR
3 331 (5.38%) QA
4 305 (4.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 231 (3.75%) NIST
6 127 (2.06%) Accessibility
7 93 (1.51%) NCSC
8 70 (1.14%) PCI DSS
9 54 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 49 (0.80%) Cyber Essentials
11 47 (0.76%) SLA
12 42 (0.68%) HIPAA
13 38 (0.62%) SOC 2
14 37 (0.60%) PMO
14 37 (0.60%) WCAG
15 28 (0.45%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.45%) PSD2
16 27 (0.44%) GRC
17 24 (0.39%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 810 (13.16%) Active Directory
2 752 (12.22%) Docker
3 192 (3.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 96 (1.56%) Hyper-V
5 75 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
6 73 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (1.01%) vSphere
8 20 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.19%) Squid
9 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.16%) DFS Replication
12 9 (0.15%) Firmware
13 8 (0.13%) KVM
13 8 (0.13%) Postfix
13 8 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) Dovecot
15 6 (0.097%) GPFS
15 6 (0.097%) zsh
Systems Management
1 930 (15.11%) Terraform
2 875 (14.22%) Kubernetes
3 328 (5.33%) Microsoft Intune
4 304 (4.94%) Ansible
5 166 (2.70%) Single Sign-On
6 147 (2.39%) Grafana
7 144 (2.34%) SCCM
8 135 (2.19%) Prometheus
9 69 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.70%) Argo
11 30 (0.49%) Puppet
12 26 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 25 (0.41%) vRealize
14 23 (0.37%) Kibana
14 23 (0.37%) Nessus
15 22 (0.36%) Istio
16 19 (0.31%) Progress Chef
17 18 (0.29%) Nmap
17 18 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
17 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,995 (32.41%) Microsoft
2 615 (9.99%) Databricks
3 352 (5.72%) Oracle
4 318 (5.17%) Google
5 266 (4.32%) ServiceNow
6 254 (4.13%) VMware
7 174 (2.83%) SAP
8 158 (2.57%) OpenAI
9 157 (2.55%) Cisco
10 152 (2.47%) Splunk
11 123 (2.00%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.84%) CyberArk
13 100 (1.62%) Palo Alto
14 82 (1.33%) Foundry
15 72 (1.17%) Okta
16 66 (1.07%) Red Hat
17 65 (1.06%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (1.04%) Citrix
19 59 (0.96%) IBM
20 56 (0.91%) Fortinet