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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,667 4,478 5,851
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.52% 15.42% 13.58%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.59% 40.72% 41.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,393 3,146 4,238
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.77% -3.07% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £496 £500
% change year-on-year +0.91% -0.90% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 170 33 50
10th Percentile £19.25 £26.29 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.06 £29.00 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.75% +14.29% -44.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £77.19 £61.19
90th Percentile £90.00 £97.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £51.25 £51.25
% change year-on-year +12.20% - -15.46%

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 17,587 10,998 13,962
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.61% 37.88% 32.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,796 7,465 9,878
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £619 £634
90th Percentile £712 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.58% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 562 262 352
10th Percentile £15.75 £15.16 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.00 £28.21 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +31.18% +31.19% -42.67%
75th Percentile £68.33 £47.41 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.15 £72.38 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £20.50 £19.00
% change year-on-year +82.93% +7.89% -30.91%

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 6 June 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 6 June 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 6 June 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 6,490 £525 - 3,262
London +1 3,451 £540 -1.82% 1,300
UK excluding London +2 3,242 £500 +0.91% 2,369
Work from Home -1 2,364 £525 +2.44% 1,617
North of England +5 939 £500 +5.26% 616
South East +3 827 £500 - 693
Midlands +1 528 £500 +2.56% 320
North West +4 471 £500 +5.26% 373
South West +5 399 £528 +2.93% 315
Yorkshire +7 391 £500 +8.11% 144
West Midlands +2 388 £500 -4.76% 221
Scotland +12 316 £525 +5.85% 131
East of England +4 154 £550 -5.17% 193
East Midlands +3 130 £465 +0.54% 99
Wales 0 105 £425 +4.94% 71
North East +6 89 £525 +5.00% 99
Northern Ireland +16 18 £531 +11.84% 63
Channel Islands +3 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
1 365 (4.76%) SharePoint
2 217 (2.83%) Confluence
3 194 (2.53%) Apache Spark
4 190 (2.48%) Microsoft Exchange
5 116 (1.51%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.40%) Apache
7 38 (0.50%) SAS
8 25 (0.33%) IIS
9 20 (0.26%) CMS
10 17 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.20%) OpenStack
13 13 (0.17%) Mendix
14 12 (0.16%) Appian
15 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 11 (0.14%) Camunda
16 10 (0.13%) HCL Notes
16 10 (0.13%) nginx
17 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
18 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
Applications
1 104 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 21 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.10%) AutoCAD
7 8 (0.10%) CPLEX
8 7 (0.091%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.065%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.065%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.065%) Revit
10 4 (0.052%) Acrobat
10 4 (0.052%) Notion
10 4 (0.052%) Trello
11 2 (0.026%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.013%) InDesign
12 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.013%) Sketch
12 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 104 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 84 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 21 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
5 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.091%) Shopify
8 6 (0.078%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.078%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.065%) NEC Housing
9 5 (0.065%) SAP MM
9 5 (0.065%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.052%) Dynamics GP
10 4 (0.052%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.052%) Endur
10 4 (0.052%) Magento
10 4 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
Cloud Services
1 2,634 (34.36%) AWS
2 1,557 (20.31%) Azure DevOps
3 1,309 (17.07%) GCP
4 979 (12.77%) Power Platform
5 936 (12.21%) Entra ID
6 796 (10.38%) Microsoft 365
7 708 (9.23%) GitHub
8 489 (6.38%) Azure Data Factory
9 427 (5.57%) GitHub Actions
10 383 (5.00%) Serverless
11 324 (4.23%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 301 (3.93%) SaaS
13 276 (3.60%) Azure AKS
14 260 (3.39%) Power Automate
15 249 (3.25%) Dynamics 365
16 245 (3.20%) PaaS
17 239 (3.12%) Azure Monitor
18 224 (2.92%) PowerApps
19 198 (2.58%) Azure Functions
20 193 (2.52%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 454 (5.92%) Firewall
2 336 (4.38%) DNS
3 264 (3.44%) Network Security
4 260 (3.39%) VPN
5 214 (2.79%) WAN
6 178 (2.32%) DHCP
7 135 (1.76%) LAN
8 120 (1.57%) SD-WAN
9 96 (1.25%) TCP/IP
10 86 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
11 82 (1.07%) BGP
12 74 (0.97%) VLAN
13 69 (0.90%) OSPF
14 66 (0.86%) Kerberos
15 52 (0.68%) SSL
16 50 (0.65%) SAN
16 50 (0.65%) VXLAN
17 45 (0.59%) Wireless
18 44 (0.57%) IPsec
19 38 (0.50%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 646 (8.43%) Power BI
2 449 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 370 (4.83%) Data Lake
4 368 (4.80%) Data Warehouse
5 256 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
6 237 (3.09%) Azure SQL Database
7 199 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 178 (2.32%) Metadata
9 149 (1.94%) Delta Lake
10 121 (1.58%) Big Data
11 116 (1.51%) Relational Database
12 95 (1.24%) MongoDB
12 95 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 77 (1.00%) Tableau
14 69 (0.90%) MySQL
15 68 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
16 67 (0.87%) Oracle Database
17 64 (0.83%) BigQuery
18 52 (0.68%) Star Schema
19 50 (0.65%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 540 (7.04%) Git
1 540 (7.04%) JIRA
2 386 (5.03%) Jenkins
3 323 (4.21%) GitLab
4 126 (1.64%) Selenium
5 82 (1.07%) Postman
6 75 (0.98%) JMeter
7 64 (0.83%) Cucumber
8 59 (0.77%) JUnit
9 56 (0.73%) REST Assured
10 50 (0.65%) SonarQube
11 47 (0.61%) MLflow
12 41 (0.53%) Cypress.io
13 40 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 39 (0.51%) WebDriver
15 33 (0.43%) Artifactory
16 32 (0.42%) Gatling
17 30 (0.39%) Maven
18 25 (0.33%) NUnit
18 25 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,950 (25.43%) Social Skills
2 1,395 (18.19%) Finance
3 845 (11.02%) Public Sector
4 676 (8.82%) Analytical Skills
5 387 (5.05%) Banking
6 227 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
7 195 (2.54%) Legal
8 131 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 128 (1.67%) Retail
10 92 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
11 75 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
12 70 (0.91%) Investment Banking
13 68 (0.89%) Financial Institution
14 67 (0.87%) Law
14 67 (0.87%) Marketing
15 65 (0.85%) Front Office
16 57 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
17 56 (0.73%) Telecoms
18 48 (0.63%) Manufacturing
19 44 (0.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,342 (17.50%) Architect
2 958 (12.50%) Developer
3 915 (11.93%) Senior
4 673 (8.78%) Azure Engineer
5 592 (7.72%) Data Engineer
6 589 (7.68%) Lead
7 469 (6.12%) Analyst
8 413 (5.39%) DevOps Engineer
9 362 (4.72%) Solutions Architect
10 315 (4.11%) Consultant
11 262 (3.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 260 (3.39%) Cloud Engineer
13 214 (2.79%) Azure Architect
14 208 (2.71%) Data Architect
15 205 (2.67%) Security Engineer
16 182 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
17 177 (2.31%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 174 (2.27%) Technical Architect
19 165 (2.15%) Project Manager
20 164 (2.14%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 622 (8.11%) .NET
2 534 (6.96%) REST
3 341 (4.45%) React
4 270 (3.52%) Kafka
5 265 (3.46%) PySpark
6 248 (3.23%) RESTful
7 223 (2.91%) OAuth
8 212 (2.77%) Node.js
9 203 (2.65%) Spring
10 187 (2.44%) AngularJS
11 177 (2.31%) LDAP
12 170 (2.22%) Spring Boot
13 159 (2.07%) JSON
14 143 (1.87%) HTML
14 143 (1.87%) OpenID
15 142 (1.85%) SAML
16 135 (1.76%) SOAP
17 131 (1.71%) Middleware
18 120 (1.57%) CSS
19 117 (1.53%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 767 (10.00%) Cloud Native
2 313 (4.08%) Onboarding
3 292 (3.81%) Product Ownership
4 246 (3.21%) Data Centre
5 216 (2.82%) Hybrid Cloud
6 191 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
7 182 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
8 173 (2.26%) Security Posture
9 171 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
10 159 (2.07%) Public Cloud
11 151 (1.97%) AI Agents
12 102 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
13 98 (1.28%) Data Structures
14 90 (1.17%) Replication
15 88 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 81 (1.06%) PKI
17 78 (1.02%) Low-Code
18 68 (0.89%) Enterprise Cloud
18 68 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
18 68 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 867 (11.31%) Windows
2 391 (5.10%) Linux
3 270 (3.52%) Windows Server
4 122 (1.59%) Windows 10
5 74 (0.97%) Apple iOS
5 74 (0.97%) Mac OS
6 71 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 71 (0.93%) Unix
7 68 (0.89%) VMS
8 62 (0.81%) Android
9 32 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
10 28 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 19 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
12 15 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.14%) CentOS
15 10 (0.13%) Debian
15 10 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.091%) CoreOS
16 7 (0.091%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,856 (37.25%) DevOps
2 2,387 (31.13%) CI/CD
3 1,782 (23.24%) Agile
4 1,119 (14.60%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,082 (14.11%) Migration
6 1,075 (14.02%) Analytics
7 1,069 (13.94%) AI
8 1,052 (13.72%) Problem-Solving
9 855 (11.15%) Data Modelling
10 810 (10.56%) Stakeholder Management
11 742 (9.68%) Continuous Improvement
12 724 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
13 704 (9.18%) Business Intelligence
14 687 (8.96%) Containerisation
14 687 (8.96%) Roadmaps
15 679 (8.86%) ETL
16 673 (8.78%) Microservices
17 658 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 606 (7.90%) Test Automation
19 592 (7.72%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,776 (23.16%) Python
2 1,577 (20.57%) SQL
3 763 (9.95%) PowerShell
4 635 (8.28%) Java
5 621 (8.10%) C#
6 454 (5.92%) JavaScript
7 297 (3.87%) TypeScript
8 256 (3.34%) Bash
9 255 (3.33%) Bicep
10 88 (1.15%) T-SQL
11 86 (1.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 85 (1.11%) Scala
13 76 (0.99%) Go
14 51 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 50 (0.65%) Shell Script
16 40 (0.52%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.48%) R
18 31 (0.40%) C++
19 27 (0.35%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.21%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,887 (24.61%) Security Cleared
2 1,594 (20.79%) SC Cleared
3 531 (6.93%) Degree
4 398 (5.19%) Azure Certification
5 233 (3.04%) CISSP
6 196 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 190 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
8 183 (2.39%) Cisco Certification
9 176 (2.30%) DV Cleared
10 161 (2.10%) Microsoft Certification
11 156 (2.03%) AWS Certification
12 129 (1.68%) CISM
13 88 (1.15%) CCNP
14 77 (1.00%) PMP
15 72 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 72 (0.94%) PMI Certification
16 61 (0.80%) ISTQB
17 60 (0.78%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
19 47 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 526 (6.86%) Data Quality
2 404 (5.27%) QA
3 343 (4.47%) GDPR
4 287 (3.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 269 (3.51%) NIST
6 150 (1.96%) Accessibility
7 104 (1.36%) NCSC
8 96 (1.25%) SLA
9 77 (1.00%) PCI DSS
10 71 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 54 (0.70%) GRC
12 54 (0.70%) WCAG
13 48 (0.63%) PMO
14 37 (0.48%) HIPAA
15 26 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 26 (0.34%) NIST 800
15 26 (0.34%) SOC 2
16 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 16 (0.21%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 934 (12.18%) Active Directory
2 794 (10.36%) Docker
3 224 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 127 (1.66%) Virtual Desktop
5 119 (1.55%) Hyper-V
6 112 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
7 70 (0.91%) vSphere
8 50 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.39%) Firmware
10 29 (0.38%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.27%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 6 (0.078%) Ceph
15 6 (0.078%) HDFS
15 6 (0.078%) KVM
15 6 (0.078%) RACF
16 5 (0.065%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,194 (15.57%) Terraform
2 1,083 (14.13%) Kubernetes
3 396 (5.16%) Microsoft Intune
4 356 (4.64%) Ansible
5 217 (2.83%) Grafana
6 190 (2.48%) Prometheus
7 171 (2.23%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.37%) SCCM
9 74 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 41 (0.53%) Argo
11 40 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.47%) FortiGate
12 36 (0.47%) Progress Chef
13 35 (0.46%) Puppet
14 33 (0.43%) Istio
15 24 (0.31%) vCenter Server
16 22 (0.29%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.21%) linkerd
19 15 (0.20%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,429 (31.68%) Microsoft
2 754 (9.83%) Databricks
3 323 (4.21%) ServiceNow
4 305 (3.98%) VMware
5 295 (3.85%) Google
6 283 (3.69%) Oracle
7 216 (2.82%) SAP
8 209 (2.73%) Cisco
9 183 (2.39%) OpenAI
10 164 (2.14%) Splunk
11 143 (1.87%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.83%) CyberArk
13 124 (1.62%) Salesforce
14 112 (1.46%) Foundry
15 107 (1.40%) Okta
16 83 (1.08%) Dynatrace
17 79 (1.03%) Citrix
18 73 (0.95%) Informatica
19 71 (0.93%) Zscaler
20 68 (0.89%) Red Hat