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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,172 4,836 5,891
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.50% 14.81% 14.34%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.92% 39.64% 42.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,698 3,346 4,237
10th Percentile £365 £350 £350
25th Percentile £437 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 37 48
10th Percentile £18.50 £22.70 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.81 £29.25 £23.43
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -41.47%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.70 £60.36
90th Percentile £95.94 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year -11.54% +68.83% -30.00%

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 18,607 12,201 13,784
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.29% 37.35% 33.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,276 8,161 9,644
10th Percentile £326 £313 £313
25th Percentile £417 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% -4.67% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 614 313 316
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.10 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.75 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £36.31 £27.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.04% +25.00% -37.14%
75th Percentile £70.00 £47.50 £50.00
90th Percentile £83.75 £67.40 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.37 £18.87 £20.29
% change year-on-year +98.04% -6.98% -24.87%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 6,972 £525 - 3,044
London +1 3,635 £550 - 1,353
UK excluding London +3 3,547 £505 +1.00% 2,128
Work from Home -1 2,534 £525 +2.44% 1,430
North of England +7 1,016 £500 +1.83% 582
South East +2 898 £525 +5.00% 674
Midlands +3 622 £493 -0.51% 289
North West +7 536 £500 - 303
West Midlands +4 466 £493 -6.19% 177
South West +7 444 £530 +6.00% 234
Yorkshire +4 404 £500 +5.26% 189
Scotland +11 312 £500 +3.09% 107
East of England +5 181 £550 -2.22% 181
East Midlands +6 145 £481 +4.05% 111
Wales 0 99 £425 -4.71% 75
North East +2 89 £525 +5.00% 100
Northern Ireland +16 17 £588 +23.68% 39
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 419 (5.13%) SharePoint
2 279 (3.41%) Confluence
3 200 (2.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 181 (2.21%) Apache Spark
5 127 (1.55%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.42%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 33 (0.40%) IIS
9 19 (0.23%) CMS
10 18 (0.22%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.16%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 8 (0.098%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.098%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
15 7 (0.086%) Camunda
15 7 (0.086%) Mendix
16 6 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 121 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 77 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 31 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.11%) Trello
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Houdini
13 2 (0.024%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.024%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 109 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.098%) Magento
7 8 (0.098%) Maximo
8 7 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.086%) Shopify
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.049%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,898 (35.46%) AWS
2 1,682 (20.58%) Azure DevOps
3 1,397 (17.09%) GCP
4 1,034 (12.65%) Entra ID
5 1,020 (12.48%) Power Platform
6 809 (9.90%) Microsoft 365
7 781 (9.56%) GitHub
8 469 (5.74%) GitHub Actions
9 461 (5.64%) Azure Data Factory
10 349 (4.27%) Serverless
11 337 (4.12%) SaaS
12 314 (3.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 303 (3.71%) Azure AKS
14 290 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
15 267 (3.27%) Power Automate
16 262 (3.21%) PowerApps
17 261 (3.19%) PaaS
18 248 (3.03%) Dynamics 365
19 232 (2.84%) Azure AI
20 220 (2.69%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 512 (6.27%) Firewall
2 384 (4.70%) DNS
3 313 (3.83%) VPN
4 288 (3.52%) Network Security
5 202 (2.47%) WAN
6 195 (2.39%) DHCP
7 154 (1.88%) TCP/IP
8 131 (1.60%) LAN
9 116 (1.42%) BGP
10 106 (1.30%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.14%) OSPF
12 90 (1.10%) VLAN
13 89 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
14 71 (0.87%) SSL
15 59 (0.72%) IPsec
16 57 (0.70%) SAN
16 57 (0.70%) Wireless
17 48 (0.59%) VXLAN
18 45 (0.55%) HTTP
19 41 (0.50%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 702 (8.59%) Power BI
2 464 (5.68%) SQL Server
3 395 (4.83%) Data Warehouse
4 360 (4.41%) Data Lake
5 308 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
6 223 (2.73%) NoSQL
7 218 (2.67%) Azure SQL Database
8 208 (2.55%) Metadata
9 138 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 131 (1.60%) Delta Lake
11 115 (1.41%) Big Data
12 107 (1.31%) MongoDB
13 97 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 89 (1.09%) MySQL
15 71 (0.87%) Tableau
16 64 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
17 61 (0.75%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 57 (0.70%) Redis
20 52 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 644 (7.88%) JIRA
2 639 (7.82%) Git
3 430 (5.26%) Jenkins
4 311 (3.81%) GitLab
5 127 (1.55%) Selenium
6 74 (0.91%) Postman
7 72 (0.88%) JMeter
7 72 (0.88%) JUnit
8 58 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 53 (0.65%) Cypress.io
10 50 (0.61%) SonarQube
11 48 (0.59%) REST Assured
12 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.55%) Maven
14 44 (0.54%) WebDriver
15 40 (0.49%) MLflow
16 36 (0.44%) Gradle
17 30 (0.37%) Gatling
17 30 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
18 29 (0.35%) Claude Code
General
1 2,057 (25.17%) Social Skills
2 1,526 (18.67%) Finance
3 960 (11.75%) Public Sector
4 776 (9.50%) Analytical Skills
5 422 (5.16%) Banking
6 243 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
7 196 (2.40%) Legal
8 177 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 175 (2.14%) Retail
10 100 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 96 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 90 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
13 75 (0.92%) Manufacturing
14 73 (0.89%) Law
15 70 (0.86%) Marketing
16 66 (0.81%) Financial Institution
17 65 (0.80%) Front Office
18 64 (0.78%) Investment Banking
19 57 (0.70%) Military
20 55 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,455 (17.80%) Architect
2 1,051 (12.86%) Developer
3 1,008 (12.33%) Senior
4 728 (8.91%) Azure Engineer
5 657 (8.04%) Lead
6 600 (7.34%) Data Engineer
7 502 (6.14%) Analyst
8 424 (5.19%) DevOps Engineer
8 424 (5.19%) Solutions Architect
9 324 (3.96%) Cloud Engineer
10 316 (3.87%) Consultant
11 293 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 242 (2.96%) Data Architect
13 217 (2.66%) Azure Architect
14 214 (2.62%) Platform Engineer
15 196 (2.40%) Technical Architect
16 187 (2.29%) Project Manager
17 185 (2.26%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 184 (2.25%) Business Analyst
18 184 (2.25%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 639 (7.82%) .NET
2 604 (7.39%) REST
3 339 (4.15%) React
4 315 (3.85%) Kafka
5 296 (3.62%) RESTful
6 250 (3.06%) PySpark
7 232 (2.84%) OAuth
8 224 (2.74%) Spring
9 209 (2.56%) Node.js
10 199 (2.44%) JSON
11 190 (2.33%) Spring Boot
12 180 (2.20%) AngularJS
13 159 (1.95%) HTML
14 146 (1.79%) SAML
15 144 (1.76%) OpenID
16 138 (1.69%) .NET Framework
17 133 (1.63%) OAuth2
18 129 (1.58%) Middleware
19 128 (1.57%) CSS
20 126 (1.54%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 857 (10.49%) Cloud Native
2 373 (4.56%) Onboarding
3 347 (4.25%) Product Ownership
4 268 (3.28%) Data Centre
5 262 (3.21%) Distributed Systems
6 244 (2.99%) Hybrid Cloud
7 234 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
8 226 (2.77%) AI Agents
9 192 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
10 163 (1.99%) Security Posture
11 146 (1.79%) Public Cloud
12 138 (1.69%) Data Structures
13 126 (1.54%) Management Information System
14 112 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
15 100 (1.22%) Enterprise Cloud
15 100 (1.22%) PKI
16 98 (1.20%) Replication
17 90 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 76 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
19 71 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 937 (11.47%) Windows
2 455 (5.57%) Linux
3 304 (3.72%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.35%) Windows 10
5 80 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 79 (0.97%) Unix
7 78 (0.95%) Android
8 73 (0.89%) Apple iOS
9 71 (0.87%) Mac OS
10 59 (0.72%) VMS
11 44 (0.54%) Ubuntu
12 26 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
16 12 (0.15%) CentOS
17 9 (0.11%) Debian
18 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
19 6 (0.073%) Rocky
19 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,013 (36.87%) DevOps
2 2,546 (31.16%) CI/CD
3 2,066 (25.28%) Agile
4 1,258 (15.39%) AI
5 1,241 (15.19%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,200 (14.68%) Migration
7 1,134 (13.88%) Analytics
8 1,069 (13.08%) Stakeholder Management
9 1,060 (12.97%) Problem-Solving
10 919 (11.25%) Data Modelling
11 871 (10.66%) Continuous Improvement
12 770 (9.42%) Data Pipeline
13 763 (9.34%) Roadmaps
14 760 (9.30%) Microservices
15 754 (9.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 752 (9.20%) Containerisation
17 749 (9.17%) Business Intelligence
18 676 (8.27%) Test Automation
19 665 (8.14%) ETL
20 651 (7.97%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,884 (23.05%) Python
2 1,595 (19.52%) SQL
3 795 (9.73%) PowerShell
4 680 (8.32%) Java
5 616 (7.54%) C#
6 475 (5.81%) JavaScript
7 339 (4.15%) Bash
8 311 (3.81%) TypeScript
9 306 (3.74%) Bicep
10 95 (1.16%) T-SQL
11 93 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 75 (0.92%) Go
13 59 (0.72%) Scala
14 54 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
15 53 (0.65%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.51%) R
17 39 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.48%) PL/SQL
18 28 (0.34%) Groovy
19 24 (0.29%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,040 (24.96%) Security Cleared
2 1,670 (20.44%) SC Cleared
3 573 (7.01%) Degree
4 439 (5.37%) Azure Certification
5 256 (3.13%) DV Cleared
6 249 (3.05%) CISSP
7 236 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
8 210 (2.57%) Cisco Certification
8 210 (2.57%) Microsoft Certification
9 192 (2.35%) AWS Certification
10 187 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
11 123 (1.51%) CISM
12 103 (1.26%) CCNP
13 83 (1.02%) PMI Certification
13 83 (1.02%) PMP
14 81 (0.99%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 64 (0.78%) ISTQB
15 64 (0.78%) Master's Degree
16 55 (0.67%) CCSP
17 51 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 569 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 427 (5.23%) QA
3 335 (4.10%) GDPR
4 283 (3.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 279 (3.41%) NIST
6 197 (2.41%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.46%) NCSC
8 102 (1.25%) SLA
9 73 (0.89%) GRC
9 73 (0.89%) PCI DSS
9 73 (0.89%) WCAG
10 72 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
11 54 (0.66%) PMO
11 54 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 32 (0.39%) HIPAA
13 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 26 (0.32%) SOC 2
15 23 (0.28%) NIST 800
16 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
17 19 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 982 (12.02%) Active Directory
2 870 (10.65%) Docker
3 224 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.76%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 115 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.86%) vSphere
8 52 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 38 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.35%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.20%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.086%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.086%) Ceph
15 7 (0.086%) Varnish
16 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.073%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,314 (16.08%) Terraform
2 1,204 (14.73%) Kubernetes
3 430 (5.26%) Microsoft Intune
4 402 (4.92%) Ansible
5 247 (3.02%) Grafana
6 209 (2.56%) Prometheus
7 157 (1.92%) Single Sign-On
8 111 (1.36%) SCCM
9 53 (0.65%) Argo
10 51 (0.62%) Progress Chef
11 50 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 46 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
13 44 (0.54%) Puppet
14 34 (0.42%) FortiGate
15 29 (0.35%) Istio
16 20 (0.24%) HP ALM
16 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 19 (0.23%) Packer
18 16 (0.20%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,652 (32.45%) Microsoft
2 747 (9.14%) Databricks
3 392 (4.80%) ServiceNow
4 332 (4.06%) Google
5 319 (3.90%) VMware
6 318 (3.89%) Oracle
7 231 (2.83%) Cisco
7 231 (2.83%) SAP
8 208 (2.55%) OpenAI
9 181 (2.21%) Splunk
10 154 (1.88%) Salesforce
11 146 (1.79%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.71%) Foundry
13 136 (1.66%) CyberArk
14 103 (1.26%) Dynatrace
15 101 (1.24%) Zscaler
16 92 (1.13%) Okta
17 88 (1.08%) Informatica
18 76 (0.93%) Citrix
19 75 (0.92%) Fortinet