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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,509 4,833 6,110
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.05% 15.76% 13.77%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.31% 42.10% 41.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,618 3,304 4,438
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £418 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% -3.57%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £711 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 42 80
10th Percentile £18.73 £21.38 £17.78
25th Percentile £35.63 £23.80 £23.97
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%
75th Percentile £60.00 £60.56 £62.13
90th Percentile £80.00 £77.47 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +91.67% -40.00% -23.08%

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 15,384 11,479 14,763
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.93% 37.42% 33.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,559 7,701 10,517
10th Percentile £310 £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 £631 £631
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 390 173 331
10th Percentile £14.95 £17.00 £14.13
25th Percentile £19.05 £21.46 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +34.55% +24.15% -11.40%
75th Percentile £59.93 £45.00 £52.29
90th Percentile £78.83 £76.85 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £24.18 £20.25
% change year-on-year +65.43% +19.41% -1.89%

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 18 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 18 February 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 18 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 5,488 £520 -3.26% 2,665
London 0 2,969 £538 -2.27% 959
UK excluding London 0 2,669 £500 - 2,234
Work from Home -2 2,004 £523 -0.48% 1,373
North of England -1 701 £475 +0.74% 555
South East -1 696 £500 -7.24% 773
Midlands -2 459 £500 -4.31% 303
South West +5 349 £500 -6.54% 244
North West -1 347 £450 -3.28% 301
West Midlands +2 344 £525 -4.55% 180
Yorkshire -2 306 £488 +2.63% 172
Scotland +7 301 £550 +18.28% 120
East of England -1 157 £550 +4.76% 204
East Midlands -4 113 £433 -3.78% 122
Wales -4 78 £400 -20.00% 61
North East 0 52 £515 +10.87% 88
Northern Ireland +6 10 £475 - 14

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
1 292 (4.49%) SharePoint
2 208 (3.20%) Microsoft Exchange
3 171 (2.63%) Apache Spark
4 167 (2.57%) Confluence
5 89 (1.37%) Apache
6 77 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.37%) OpenStack
8 19 (0.29%) SAS
9 17 (0.26%) ArcGIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 15 (0.23%) Appian
11 14 (0.22%) IIS
12 13 (0.20%) Camunda
13 11 (0.17%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
14 10 (0.15%) Mendix
14 10 (0.15%) nginx
14 10 (0.15%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.15%) SugarCRM
15 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 132 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 104 (1.60%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 43 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.077%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.077%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.077%) Weka
9 4 (0.061%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.061%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
10 2 (0.031%) Windchill
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.015%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.015%) Revit
11 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 102 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.17%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.11%) Endur
6 7 (0.11%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 6 (0.092%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.092%) Dynamics NAV
7 6 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.092%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.092%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.092%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.077%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.077%) Oracle Payables
8 5 (0.077%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,281 (35.04%) AWS
2 1,291 (19.83%) GCP
3 1,279 (19.65%) Azure DevOps
4 865 (13.29%) Power Platform
5 754 (11.58%) Entra ID
6 741 (11.38%) Microsoft 365
7 666 (10.23%) GitHub
8 470 (7.22%) Azure Data Factory
9 384 (5.90%) Serverless
10 383 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
11 305 (4.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 291 (4.47%) Dynamics 365
13 274 (4.21%) SaaS
14 256 (3.93%) Azure AKS
15 251 (3.86%) Power Automate
16 231 (3.55%) Azure Functions
17 228 (3.50%) Snowflake
18 226 (3.47%) Azure Monitor
19 211 (3.24%) Azure Logic Apps
20 207 (3.18%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 435 (6.68%) Firewall
2 274 (4.21%) DNS
3 218 (3.35%) VPN
4 192 (2.95%) Network Security
5 165 (2.53%) DHCP
6 159 (2.44%) WAN
7 105 (1.61%) LAN
8 98 (1.51%) TCP/IP
9 87 (1.34%) Wi-Fi
10 79 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 71 (1.09%) Kerberos
12 70 (1.08%) VLAN
13 56 (0.86%) HTTP
14 41 (0.63%) BGP
15 39 (0.60%) Wireless
16 33 (0.51%) Internet
16 33 (0.51%) SSL
17 32 (0.49%) OSPF
18 29 (0.45%) MPLS
19 27 (0.41%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 590 (9.06%) Power BI
2 372 (5.72%) SQL Server
3 343 (5.27%) Data Warehouse
4 331 (5.09%) Data Lake
5 251 (3.86%) PostgreSQL
6 228 (3.50%) Azure SQL Database
7 191 (2.93%) NoSQL
8 165 (2.53%) Metadata
9 125 (1.92%) Relational Database
10 113 (1.74%) Delta Lake
11 94 (1.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 88 (1.35%) Big Data
13 86 (1.32%) MongoDB
14 80 (1.23%) MySQL
15 71 (1.09%) Tableau
16 70 (1.08%) Oracle Database
17 63 (0.97%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
19 48 (0.74%) Redis
20 44 (0.68%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 502 (7.71%) Git
2 457 (7.02%) JIRA
3 346 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 263 (4.04%) GitLab
5 114 (1.75%) Selenium
6 95 (1.46%) Postman
7 66 (1.01%) Cucumber
8 65 (1.00%) JMeter
9 58 (0.89%) JUnit
10 51 (0.78%) SonarQube
11 49 (0.75%) REST Assured
12 48 (0.74%) Cypress.io
13 46 (0.71%) MLflow
14 39 (0.60%) Visual Studio
15 37 (0.57%) Oracle APEX
16 31 (0.48%) Artifactory
16 31 (0.48%) TestRail
17 30 (0.46%) ERwin
18 29 (0.45%) Gatling
19 27 (0.41%) Zephyr
General
1 2,007 (30.83%) Social Skills
2 1,165 (17.90%) Finance
3 762 (11.71%) Public Sector
4 657 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
5 366 (5.62%) Banking
6 210 (3.23%) Documentation Skills
7 140 (2.15%) Legal
8 109 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 109 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
9 95 (1.46%) Marketing
10 92 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
11 85 (1.31%) Retail
12 75 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
13 67 (1.03%) Investment Banking
14 66 (1.01%) Telecoms
15 55 (0.84%) Financial Institution
15 55 (0.84%) Law
16 51 (0.78%) Manufacturing
17 40 (0.61%) Billing
17 40 (0.61%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,080 (16.59%) Architect
2 917 (14.09%) Developer
3 687 (10.55%) Senior
4 541 (8.31%) Azure Engineer
5 531 (8.16%) Data Engineer
6 461 (7.08%) Lead
7 440 (6.76%) Analyst
8 335 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
8 335 (5.15%) Solutions Architect
9 295 (4.53%) Consultant
10 185 (2.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 176 (2.70%) Security Engineer
12 170 (2.61%) Cloud Engineer
13 163 (2.50%) Azure Architect
14 157 (2.41%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 156 (2.40%) Senior Developer
16 143 (2.20%) Data Architect
17 140 (2.15%) Platform Engineer
18 139 (2.14%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 126 (1.94%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 526 (8.08%) .NET
2 461 (7.08%) REST
3 303 (4.66%) React
4 256 (3.93%) PySpark
5 255 (3.92%) RESTful
6 240 (3.69%) Kafka
7 221 (3.40%) Node.js
8 210 (3.23%) OAuth
9 199 (3.06%) Spring
10 177 (2.72%) Spring Boot
11 170 (2.61%) HTML
12 166 (2.55%) AngularJS
13 153 (2.35%) LDAP
14 151 (2.32%) CSS
15 143 (2.20%) JSON
16 142 (2.18%) SOAP
17 137 (2.10%) PyTorch
18 130 (2.00%) TensorFlow
19 127 (1.95%) SAML
20 122 (1.87%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 560 (8.60%) Cloud Native
2 247 (3.79%) Onboarding
3 228 (3.50%) Product Ownership
4 174 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
5 162 (2.49%) Security Posture
6 156 (2.40%) Data Centre
6 156 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
7 155 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
8 113 (1.74%) Public Cloud
9 107 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
10 97 (1.49%) AI Agents
11 83 (1.28%) Data Structures
11 83 (1.28%) Replication
12 76 (1.17%) Algorithms
13 71 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
14 69 (1.06%) Low-Code
14 69 (1.06%) Management Information System
15 66 (1.01%) NHS
16 62 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
17 52 (0.80%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 740 (11.37%) Windows
2 372 (5.72%) Linux
3 202 (3.10%) Windows Server
4 130 (2.00%) Windows 10
5 86 (1.32%) Unix
6 58 (0.89%) VMS
7 49 (0.75%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.68%) Apple iOS
9 42 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 38 (0.58%) Android
11 24 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.28%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.17%) CentOS
14 11 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.12%) Solaris
15 8 (0.12%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.077%) AIX
17 4 (0.061%) Amazon Linux
18 3 (0.046%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,366 (36.35%) DevOps
2 1,970 (30.27%) CI/CD
3 1,606 (24.67%) Agile
4 1,218 (18.71%) Problem-Solving
5 979 (15.04%) Analytics
6 901 (13.84%) AI
7 871 (13.38%) Infrastructure as Code
8 786 (12.08%) Migration
9 675 (10.37%) Stakeholder Management
10 672 (10.32%) Business Intelligence
11 656 (10.08%) Containerisation
11 656 (10.08%) Data Modelling
12 593 (9.11%) Continuous Improvement
13 579 (8.90%) ETL
14 575 (8.83%) Machine Learning
15 563 (8.65%) Data Pipeline
15 563 (8.65%) Microservices
16 538 (8.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 531 (8.16%) Test Automation
18 513 (7.88%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,704 (26.18%) Python
2 1,418 (21.79%) SQL
3 707 (10.86%) PowerShell
4 562 (8.63%) C#
5 550 (8.45%) Java
6 497 (7.64%) JavaScript
7 289 (4.44%) TypeScript
8 261 (4.01%) Bash
9 199 (3.06%) Bicep
10 94 (1.44%) Scala
11 84 (1.29%) PL/SQL
12 82 (1.26%) Go
13 75 (1.15%) Kusto Query Language
14 69 (1.06%) T-SQL
15 65 (1.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 45 (0.69%) R
17 44 (0.68%) Shell Script
18 42 (0.65%) C++
19 36 (0.55%) PHP
20 23 (0.35%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,523 (23.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,262 (19.39%) SC Cleared
3 540 (8.30%) Degree
4 365 (5.61%) Azure Certification
5 212 (3.26%) Computer Science Degree
6 175 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
7 172 (2.64%) CISSP
8 136 (2.09%) AWS Certification
9 132 (2.03%) DV Cleared
10 126 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
11 111 (1.71%) CISM
12 102 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
13 92 (1.41%) Master's Degree
14 64 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
15 51 (0.78%) CCNP
16 50 (0.77%) ISTQB
17 49 (0.75%) PMI Certification
18 47 (0.72%) PMP
19 35 (0.54%) Microsoft Certified Professional
20 33 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 434 (6.67%) Data Quality
2 391 (6.01%) GDPR
3 356 (5.47%) QA
4 305 (4.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 233 (3.58%) NIST
6 138 (2.12%) Accessibility
7 93 (1.43%) NCSC
8 79 (1.21%) PCI DSS
9 59 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
10 56 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 53 (0.81%) SLA
12 42 (0.65%) PMO
13 41 (0.63%) HIPAA
14 38 (0.58%) SOC 2
15 37 (0.57%) WCAG
16 31 (0.48%) GRC
17 28 (0.43%) EU AI Act
18 26 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 26 (0.40%) PSD2
19 25 (0.38%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 843 (12.95%) Active Directory
2 784 (12.04%) Docker
3 194 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 99 (1.52%) Hyper-V
5 86 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
6 77 (1.18%) Virtual Desktop
7 70 (1.08%) vSphere
8 20 (0.31%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
9 12 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.17%) Firmware
11 9 (0.14%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Postfix
12 8 (0.12%) Snort
12 8 (0.12%) Squid
13 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.11%) DFS Replication
13 7 (0.11%) KVM
13 7 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.092%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 1,003 (15.41%) Terraform
2 933 (14.33%) Kubernetes
3 352 (5.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 301 (4.62%) Ansible
5 175 (2.69%) Single Sign-On
6 151 (2.32%) Grafana
7 141 (2.17%) SCCM
8 135 (2.07%) Prometheus
9 74 (1.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 47 (0.72%) Argo
11 27 (0.41%) FortiGate
11 27 (0.41%) Puppet
12 26 (0.40%) vRealize
13 21 (0.32%) Istio
13 21 (0.32%) Kibana
13 21 (0.32%) Nessus
14 20 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
15 19 (0.29%) Nmap
15 19 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
15 19 (0.29%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 2,093 (32.16%) Microsoft
2 666 (10.23%) Databricks
3 346 (5.32%) Oracle
4 339 (5.21%) Google
5 272 (4.18%) ServiceNow
6 260 (3.99%) VMware
7 185 (2.84%) SAP
8 173 (2.66%) OpenAI
9 164 (2.52%) Cisco
10 156 (2.40%) Splunk
11 119 (1.83%) Salesforce
12 116 (1.78%) CyberArk
13 109 (1.67%) Palo Alto
14 94 (1.44%) Foundry
15 75 (1.15%) Okta
16 70 (1.08%) Red Hat
17 69 (1.06%) Citrix
18 65 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
19 62 (0.95%) Fortinet
20 61 (0.94%) IBM