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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,250 4,565 5,824
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.43% 15.55% 13.45%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.82% 41.26% 41.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,174 3,261 4,185
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £735 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 44 51
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £49.20 £24.14 £22.19
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -36.36%
75th Percentile £65.19 £73.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.38 £50.00
% change year-on-year +89.30% -39.25% -16.53%

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 16,931 11,063 13,993
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.04% 37.69% 32.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,508 7,699 9,928
10th Percentile £320 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £631
90th Percentile £700 £735 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +1.05% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 485 251 346
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.44 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.51 £16.02
Median hourly rate £40.00 £27.50 £20.99
Median % change year-on-year +45.45% +31.05% -40.04%
75th Percentile £67.50 £48.75 £34.69
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.75 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £22.50 £17.71
% change year-on-year +111.11% +27.08% -28.09%

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 April 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 28 April 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 28 April 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 6,152 £523 -0.48% 2,747
London +1 3,305 £530 -3.64% 977
UK excluding London +2 3,008 £500 - 2,302
Work from Home -1 2,169 £525 +0.77% 1,364
North of England +3 844 £500 +5.26% 602
South East +1 796 £500 -4.76% 660
Midlands -2 498 £489 -6.46% 320
North West +2 453 £500 - 332
South West +5 373 £500 -4.76% 280
West Midlands 0 360 £500 -4.76% 190
Yorkshire +3 343 £500 +17.65% 170
Scotland +5 298 £529 +11.26% 94
East of England +4 152 £545 -6.03% 216
East Midlands +2 128 £450 -5.26% 128
Wales -3 77 £400 -5.88% 111
North East -1 57 £525 +3.70% 101
Northern Ireland +12 15 £475 - 59
Channel Islands +4 8 £450 +51.26%

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
1 328 (4.52%) SharePoint
2 205 (2.83%) Confluence
3 198 (2.73%) Microsoft Exchange
4 196 (2.70%) Apache Spark
5 107 (1.48%) Apache
6 96 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.37%) SAS
8 20 (0.28%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) CMS
10 17 (0.23%) ArcGIS
10 17 (0.23%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.21%) Mendix
12 14 (0.19%) Appian
13 13 (0.18%) Camunda
13 13 (0.18%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
15 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
16 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
17 8 (0.11%) nginx
18 6 (0.083%) Jupyter
Applications
1 117 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 63 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 45 (0.62%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 22 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) Trello
8 7 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.069%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.069%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.055%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.055%) Weka
11 3 (0.041%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.028%) Revit
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 107 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 72 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.15%) Maximo
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.097%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.097%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.069%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.055%) Cloudability
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.055%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.041%) Endur
10 3 (0.041%) Findur
10 3 (0.041%) Primavera
10 3 (0.041%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,470 (34.07%) AWS
2 1,513 (20.87%) Azure DevOps
3 1,331 (18.36%) GCP
4 950 (13.10%) Power Platform
5 865 (11.93%) Entra ID
6 747 (10.30%) Microsoft 365
7 707 (9.75%) GitHub
8 508 (7.01%) Azure Data Factory
9 415 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
10 405 (5.59%) Serverless
11 344 (4.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 280 (3.86%) Azure AKS
13 278 (3.83%) SaaS
14 271 (3.74%) Dynamics 365
15 261 (3.60%) Power Automate
16 249 (3.43%) Azure Monitor
17 235 (3.24%) PaaS
18 223 (3.08%) Azure Functions
19 220 (3.03%) PowerApps
20 198 (2.73%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 455 (6.28%) Firewall
2 303 (4.18%) DNS
3 263 (3.63%) VPN
4 246 (3.39%) Network Security
5 185 (2.55%) WAN
6 159 (2.19%) DHCP
7 131 (1.81%) LAN
8 94 (1.30%) SD-WAN
9 90 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
10 88 (1.21%) TCP/IP
11 73 (1.01%) VLAN
12 70 (0.97%) Kerberos
13 59 (0.81%) BGP
14 51 (0.70%) OSPF
15 44 (0.61%) SAN
15 44 (0.61%) SSL
16 42 (0.58%) HTTP
17 40 (0.55%) Wireless
18 35 (0.48%) Internet
19 33 (0.46%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 641 (8.84%) Power BI
2 427 (5.89%) SQL Server
3 374 (5.16%) Data Warehouse
4 361 (4.98%) Data Lake
5 256 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
6 247 (3.41%) Azure SQL Database
7 200 (2.76%) NoSQL
8 184 (2.54%) Metadata
9 150 (2.07%) Delta Lake
10 120 (1.66%) Big Data
11 116 (1.60%) Relational Database
12 98 (1.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 93 (1.28%) MongoDB
14 81 (1.12%) Tableau
15 72 (0.99%) Oracle Database
16 69 (0.95%) MySQL
17 67 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
18 63 (0.87%) BigQuery
19 58 (0.80%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 533 (7.35%) Git
2 515 (7.10%) JIRA
3 384 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 293 (4.04%) GitLab
5 127 (1.75%) Selenium
6 84 (1.16%) Postman
7 70 (0.97%) Cucumber
8 68 (0.94%) JUnit
9 66 (0.91%) JMeter
10 54 (0.74%) MLflow
11 52 (0.72%) REST Assured
12 45 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 42 (0.58%) Cypress.io
14 38 (0.52%) Artifactory
15 36 (0.50%) Visual Studio
16 34 (0.47%) WebDriver
17 31 (0.43%) Gatling
17 31 (0.43%) TestRail
18 26 (0.36%) Bitbucket
19 24 (0.33%) Oracle APEX
General
1 1,932 (26.65%) Social Skills
2 1,284 (17.71%) Finance
3 824 (11.37%) Public Sector
4 686 (9.46%) Analytical Skills
5 381 (5.26%) Banking
6 224 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
7 183 (2.52%) Legal
8 101 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 92 (1.27%) Retail
10 85 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
12 76 (1.05%) Marketing
13 74 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
14 68 (0.94%) Financial Institution
15 66 (0.91%) Telecoms
16 63 (0.87%) Investment Banking
17 61 (0.84%) Law
18 60 (0.83%) Front Office
19 44 (0.61%) Local Government
20 42 (0.58%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,225 (16.90%) Architect
2 965 (13.31%) Developer
3 847 (11.68%) Senior
4 666 (9.19%) Azure Engineer
5 589 (8.12%) Data Engineer
6 548 (7.56%) Lead
7 443 (6.11%) Analyst
8 404 (5.57%) DevOps Engineer
9 311 (4.29%) Solutions Architect
10 300 (4.14%) Consultant
11 220 (3.03%) Cloud Engineer
12 218 (3.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 202 (2.79%) Azure Architect
14 187 (2.58%) Security Engineer
15 172 (2.37%) Azure DevOps Engineer
15 172 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
16 168 (2.32%) Data Architect
17 159 (2.19%) Technical Architect
18 157 (2.17%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 144 (1.99%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 577 (7.96%) .NET
2 489 (6.74%) REST
3 332 (4.58%) React
4 278 (3.83%) Kafka
5 264 (3.64%) PySpark
6 243 (3.35%) Node.js
7 233 (3.21%) RESTful
8 221 (3.05%) Spring
9 213 (2.94%) OAuth
10 184 (2.54%) Spring Boot
11 182 (2.51%) AngularJS
12 167 (2.30%) LDAP
13 149 (2.06%) HTML
14 148 (2.04%) JSON
15 134 (1.85%) SAML
16 132 (1.82%) OpenID
17 131 (1.81%) SOAP
18 125 (1.72%) CSS
18 125 (1.72%) Middleware
19 111 (1.53%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 688 (9.49%) Cloud Native
2 280 (3.86%) Onboarding
3 270 (3.72%) Product Ownership
4 192 (2.65%) Hybrid Cloud
5 187 (2.58%) Data Centre
6 171 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
7 169 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
7 169 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
8 163 (2.25%) Security Posture
9 160 (2.21%) Public Cloud
10 129 (1.78%) AI Agents
11 93 (1.28%) Data Structures
12 90 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
12 90 (1.24%) Replication
13 85 (1.17%) Management Information System
14 79 (1.09%) Low-Code
15 67 (0.92%) PKI
16 65 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
17 59 (0.81%) NHS
18 52 (0.72%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 780 (10.76%) Windows
2 372 (5.13%) Linux
3 244 (3.37%) Windows Server
4 117 (1.61%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.01%) VMS
6 71 (0.98%) Unix
7 64 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 62 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 51 (0.70%) Apple iOS
10 42 (0.58%) Android
11 26 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.29%) Ubuntu
13 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.12%) Windows 7
17 8 (0.11%) AIX
17 8 (0.11%) CentOS
18 7 (0.097%) CoreOS
19 6 (0.083%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,735 (37.72%) DevOps
2 2,251 (31.05%) CI/CD
3 1,712 (23.61%) Agile
4 1,091 (15.05%) Problem-Solving
5 1,073 (14.80%) Analytics
6 1,025 (14.14%) Infrastructure as Code
7 990 (13.66%) AI
8 989 (13.64%) Migration
9 812 (11.20%) Data Modelling
10 710 (9.79%) Stakeholder Management
11 700 (9.66%) Business Intelligence
12 697 (9.61%) Containerisation
13 687 (9.48%) Continuous Improvement
14 682 (9.41%) Data Pipeline
15 659 (9.09%) Microservices
16 640 (8.83%) ETL
17 596 (8.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 585 (8.07%) Data Engineering
19 572 (7.89%) Roadmaps
20 569 (7.85%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,796 (24.77%) Python
2 1,555 (21.45%) SQL
3 736 (10.15%) PowerShell
4 626 (8.63%) Java
5 623 (8.59%) C#
6 469 (6.47%) JavaScript
7 290 (4.00%) TypeScript
8 253 (3.49%) Bash
9 232 (3.20%) Bicep
10 98 (1.35%) Scala
11 83 (1.14%) Go
12 82 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 80 (1.10%) T-SQL
14 69 (0.95%) Kusto Query Language
15 67 (0.92%) PL/SQL
16 54 (0.74%) Shell Script
17 48 (0.66%) R
18 30 (0.41%) C++
19 23 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 22 (0.30%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,800 (24.83%) Security Cleared
2 1,519 (20.95%) SC Cleared
3 510 (7.03%) Degree
4 381 (5.26%) Azure Certification
5 201 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
6 193 (2.66%) CISSP
7 165 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
8 152 (2.10%) Microsoft Certification
9 151 (2.08%) Cisco Certification
10 143 (1.97%) AWS Certification
11 141 (1.94%) DV Cleared
12 115 (1.59%) CISM
13 79 (1.09%) CCNP
14 71 (0.98%) Master's Degree
14 71 (0.98%) PMP
15 70 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
17 59 (0.81%) ISTQB
18 50 (0.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.50%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 513 (7.08%) Data Quality
2 400 (5.52%) QA
3 385 (5.31%) GDPR
4 289 (3.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 257 (3.54%) NIST
6 128 (1.77%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.38%) NCSC
8 82 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 62 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 62 (0.86%) SLA
10 58 (0.80%) PMO
11 54 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials
12 45 (0.62%) GRC
13 38 (0.52%) WCAG
14 34 (0.47%) HIPAA
15 23 (0.32%) ISO 20022
15 23 (0.32%) NIST 800
16 21 (0.29%) SOC 2
17 20 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 19 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 885 (12.21%) Active Directory
2 822 (11.34%) Docker
3 198 (2.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 115 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
5 108 (1.49%) Hyper-V
6 105 (1.45%) Virtual Desktop
7 65 (0.90%) vSphere
8 35 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.36%) Firmware
10 24 (0.33%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.28%) NFS
12 11 (0.15%) Postfix
13 7 (0.097%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.097%) HDFS
13 7 (0.097%) Varnish
14 6 (0.083%) Ceph
14 6 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.083%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.083%) RACF
14 6 (0.083%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 1,149 (15.85%) Terraform
2 1,084 (14.95%) Kubernetes
3 364 (5.02%) Microsoft Intune
4 337 (4.65%) Ansible
5 207 (2.86%) Grafana
6 177 (2.44%) Prometheus
7 153 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
8 113 (1.56%) SCCM
9 67 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.52%) Argo
11 36 (0.50%) Istio
12 34 (0.47%) Puppet
13 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 28 (0.39%) Progress Chef
15 24 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
16 23 (0.32%) HP ALM
16 23 (0.32%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.23%) Kubeflow
17 17 (0.23%) linkerd
18 15 (0.21%) vRealize
Vendors
1 2,340 (32.28%) Microsoft
2 725 (10.00%) Databricks
3 326 (4.50%) Google
4 314 (4.33%) Oracle
5 292 (4.03%) ServiceNow
6 284 (3.92%) VMware
7 205 (2.83%) SAP
8 188 (2.59%) Cisco
9 182 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 163 (2.25%) Splunk
11 133 (1.83%) CyberArk
12 117 (1.61%) Foundry
13 106 (1.46%) Salesforce
14 105 (1.45%) Palo Alto
15 90 (1.24%) Okta
16 75 (1.03%) Informatica
17 74 (1.02%) Citrix
18 72 (0.99%) Dynatrace
19 68 (0.94%) BeyondTrust
20 67 (0.92%) Red Hat