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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,330 4,884 5,574
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.19% 14.82% 14.47%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.75% 39.42% 42.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,826 3,315 3,846
10th Percentile £363 £350 £345
25th Percentile £443 £415 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £637
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £496 £500
% change year-on-year +2.93% -0.90% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 42 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.59 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.74 £26.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £42.35 £34.24 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +23.69% -6.83% -31.94%
75th Percentile £79.75 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.63 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £32.77 £42.34
% change year-on-year +20.54% -22.60% -8.32%

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 19,042 12,389 13,220
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.71% 37.60% 34.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,638 8,260 8,900
10th Percentile £325 £311 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 623 293 195
10th Percentile £15.26 £15.50 £15.69
25th Percentile £17.86 £18.87 £20.63
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.50 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.04% -8.06% -11.43%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.75 £63.13
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £19.27 £30.00
% change year-on-year +66.06% -35.77% +15.38%

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 19 September 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 19 September 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 19 September 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 7,108 £525 - 7,540
London +1 3,726 £550 - 3,731
UK excluding London +2 3,539 £510 +2.93% 4,542
Work from Home -2 2,511 £525 +5.00% 3,447
North of England +6 1,006 £500 +5.26% 1,234
South East +1 904 £525 +5.00% 1,122
Midlands +2 651 £493 -3.19% 676
North West +5 494 £500 +5.26% 664
West Midlands +2 484 £488 -9.72% 421
Yorkshire +5 431 £500 +5.26% 405
South West +2 424 £550 +10.00% 500
Scotland +7 288 £520 +4.00% 388
East of England +3 197 £510 +2.00% 354
East Midlands +4 160 £500 +8.11% 255
North East +1 94 £506 +1.25% 171
Wales 0 84 £438 -2.78% 129
Northern Ireland +14 13 £650 - 164
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69% 3

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
1 473 (5.68%) SharePoint
2 260 (3.12%) Confluence
3 195 (2.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 182 (2.18%) Apache Spark
5 164 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.30%) Apache
7 45 (0.54%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) SharePoint Server
9 28 (0.34%) IIS
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.084%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.084%) Mendix
15 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
15 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
15 6 (0.072%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 122 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.55%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.50%) Chatbot
6 39 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 8 (0.096%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.096%) Revit
9 8 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.060%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Mingle
13 1 (0.012%) 1Password
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 137 (1.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 8 (0.096%) Workday HCM
9 7 (0.084%) Shopify
10 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
10 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
11 5 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
12 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.048%) FLEXCUBE
12 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,982 (35.80%) AWS
2 1,759 (21.12%) Azure DevOps
3 1,440 (17.29%) GCP
4 1,117 (13.41%) Entra ID
5 1,075 (12.91%) Power Platform
6 874 (10.49%) Microsoft 365
7 840 (10.08%) GitHub
8 490 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
9 465 (5.58%) Azure Data Factory
10 376 (4.51%) Serverless
11 367 (4.41%) SaaS
12 319 (3.83%) Azure Monitor
13 304 (3.65%) Dynamics 365
13 304 (3.65%) Power Automate
14 302 (3.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 293 (3.52%) Azure AKS
16 288 (3.46%) Snowflake
17 285 (3.42%) PowerApps
18 251 (3.01%) Microsoft Copilot
19 249 (2.99%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 523 (6.28%) Firewall
2 421 (5.05%) DNS
3 317 (3.81%) VPN
4 297 (3.57%) Network Security
5 229 (2.75%) DHCP
6 187 (2.24%) WAN
7 171 (2.05%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.31%) LAN
9 108 (1.30%) BGP
10 100 (1.20%) SD-WAN
11 95 (1.14%) VLAN
12 86 (1.03%) OSPF
13 85 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 77 (0.92%) SSL
15 64 (0.77%) SAN
16 62 (0.74%) Wireless
17 47 (0.56%) HTTP
17 47 (0.56%) IPsec
18 44 (0.53%) VXLAN
19 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 701 (8.42%) Power BI
2 470 (5.64%) SQL Server
3 401 (4.81%) Data Warehouse
4 381 (4.57%) Data Lake
5 289 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 254 (3.05%) Metadata
7 211 (2.53%) NoSQL
8 196 (2.35%) Azure SQL Database
9 138 (1.66%) Relational Database
10 128 (1.54%) Delta Lake
11 112 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 106 (1.27%) MongoDB
13 93 (1.12%) Big Data
14 88 (1.06%) MySQL
15 72 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.78%) Redis
17 61 (0.73%) BigQuery
17 61 (0.73%) Oracle Database
18 58 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
18 58 (0.70%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 737 (8.85%) Git
2 603 (7.24%) JIRA
3 479 (5.75%) Jenkins
4 376 (4.51%) GitLab
5 134 (1.61%) Selenium
6 84 (1.01%) Postman
7 63 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 60 (0.72%) JUnit
9 57 (0.68%) Cucumber
9 57 (0.68%) Maven
10 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 52 (0.62%) Claude Code
11 52 (0.62%) JMeter
12 49 (0.59%) Visual Studio
13 48 (0.58%) Gradle
14 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
15 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 36 (0.43%) MLflow
17 33 (0.40%) Gatling
18 32 (0.38%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,303 (27.65%) Social Skills
2 1,563 (18.76%) Finance
3 958 (11.50%) Public Sector
4 815 (9.78%) Analytical Skills
5 472 (5.67%) Banking
6 224 (2.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 214 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
8 210 (2.52%) Retail
9 169 (2.03%) Legal
10 109 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
11 104 (1.25%) Manufacturing
12 92 (1.10%) Telecoms
13 90 (1.08%) Marketing
14 89 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
15 85 (1.02%) Aerospace
16 83 (1.00%) Investment Banking
17 76 (0.91%) Military
18 74 (0.89%) Law
19 60 (0.72%) Local Government
20 54 (0.65%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,581 (18.98%) Architect
2 1,046 (12.56%) Senior
3 991 (11.90%) Developer
4 734 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 684 (8.21%) Lead
6 584 (7.01%) Data Engineer
7 485 (5.82%) Solutions Architect
8 478 (5.74%) Analyst
9 474 (5.69%) DevOps Engineer
10 374 (4.49%) Cloud Engineer
11 323 (3.88%) Consultant
12 316 (3.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 266 (3.19%) Data Architect
14 241 (2.89%) Platform Engineer
15 216 (2.59%) Azure Architect
16 211 (2.53%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 200 (2.40%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 198 (2.38%) Security Engineer
19 196 (2.35%) Technical Architect
20 187 (2.24%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,412 (16.95%) Terraform
2 715 (8.58%) REST
3 624 (7.49%) .NET
4 392 (4.71%) Kafka
5 295 (3.54%) React
6 291 (3.49%) RESTful
7 270 (3.24%) OAuth
8 268 (3.22%) PySpark
9 232 (2.79%) JSON
10 189 (2.27%) Spring
11 179 (2.15%) Spring Boot
12 164 (1.97%) OpenID
13 161 (1.93%) OAuth2
14 156 (1.87%) Node.js
15 154 (1.85%) SAML
16 153 (1.84%) HTML
17 146 (1.75%) AngularJS
17 146 (1.75%) Middleware
18 137 (1.64%) Playwright
19 133 (1.60%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 920 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 427 (5.13%) Onboarding
3 384 (4.61%) Product Ownership
4 310 (3.72%) AI Agents
5 305 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
6 285 (3.42%) Hybrid Cloud
7 264 (3.17%) Distributed Systems
8 253 (3.04%) Data Centre
9 225 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
10 179 (2.15%) Management Information System
10 179 (2.15%) Security Posture
11 147 (1.76%) Data Structures
12 146 (1.75%) Public Cloud
13 122 (1.46%) PKI
14 115 (1.38%) Enterprise Cloud
15 111 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
16 106 (1.27%) Replication
17 98 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
18 87 (1.04%) CMDB
18 87 (1.04%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 1,007 (12.09%) Windows
2 527 (6.33%) Linux
3 374 (4.49%) Windows Server
4 145 (1.74%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.09%) Android
6 90 (1.08%) Unix
7 87 (1.04%) Apple iOS
7 87 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 75 (0.90%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.67%) Ubuntu
10 55 (0.66%) VMS
11 25 (0.30%) CentOS
12 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 8 (0.096%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) SUSE
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,072 (36.88%) DevOps
2 2,668 (32.03%) CI/CD
3 2,074 (24.90%) Agile
4 1,467 (17.61%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,430 (17.17%) AI
6 1,413 (16.96%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,224 (14.69%) Migration
8 1,141 (13.70%) Problem-Solving
9 1,138 (13.66%) Analytics
10 958 (11.50%) Continuous Improvement
11 902 (10.83%) Data Modelling
12 848 (10.18%) Roadmaps
13 789 (9.47%) Containerisation
13 789 (9.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 757 (9.09%) Business Intelligence
15 747 (8.97%) Technical Leadership
16 745 (8.94%) Data Pipeline
17 726 (8.72%) Test Automation
18 722 (8.67%) Microservices
19 660 (7.92%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,913 (22.97%) Python
2 1,575 (18.91%) SQL
3 892 (10.71%) PowerShell
4 693 (8.32%) Java
5 603 (7.24%) C#
6 497 (5.97%) JavaScript
7 413 (4.96%) Bash
8 357 (4.29%) Bicep
9 297 (3.57%) TypeScript
10 97 (1.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.08%) T-SQL
12 78 (0.94%) Go
13 67 (0.80%) Scala
14 62 (0.74%) Shell Script
15 59 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.49%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 34 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.38%) Groovy
20 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,167 (26.01%) Security Cleared
2 1,741 (20.90%) SC Cleared
3 564 (6.77%) Degree
4 486 (5.83%) Azure Certification
5 312 (3.75%) DV Cleared
6 276 (3.31%) CISSP
7 271 (3.25%) BPSS Clearance
8 253 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 211 (2.53%) AWS Certification
10 202 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
11 179 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
12 139 (1.67%) CISM
13 91 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 91 (1.09%) PMI Certification
14 90 (1.08%) CCNP
15 86 (1.03%) PMP
16 69 (0.83%) ISTQB
17 63 (0.76%) CCSP
17 63 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 52 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 605 (7.26%) Data Quality
2 463 (5.56%) QA
3 307 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 304 (3.65%) NIST
5 295 (3.54%) GDPR
6 208 (2.50%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.44%) NCSC
8 108 (1.30%) SLA
9 84 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
9 84 (1.01%) WCAG
10 82 (0.98%) GRC
11 75 (0.90%) PCI DSS
12 57 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 54 (0.65%) PMO
14 46 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 31 (0.37%) SOC 2
16 28 (0.34%) HIPAA
17 26 (0.31%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
19 20 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,034 (12.41%) Active Directory
2 923 (11.08%) Docker
3 244 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
5 145 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
6 132 (1.58%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.86%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.29%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) IAG
11 18 (0.22%) NFS
12 11 (0.13%) Postfix
13 10 (0.12%) Ceph
13 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.11%) zsh
15 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.084%) Squid
17 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,307 (15.69%) Kubernetes
2 466 (5.59%) Ansible
3 449 (5.39%) Microsoft Intune
4 267 (3.21%) Grafana
5 209 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 155 (1.86%) Single Sign-On
7 132 (1.58%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 58 (0.70%) Argo
10 50 (0.60%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 37 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 35 (0.42%) SCOM
14 30 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 25 (0.30%) Istio
16 24 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) QRadar
18 19 (0.23%) CASB
19 18 (0.22%) Packer
20 17 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,994 (35.94%) Microsoft
2 861 (10.34%) Databricks
3 428 (5.14%) ServiceNow
4 377 (4.53%) Google
5 363 (4.36%) VMware
6 348 (4.18%) Oracle
7 254 (3.05%) Cisco
8 233 (2.80%) Splunk
9 224 (2.69%) SAP
10 217 (2.61%) OpenAI
11 190 (2.28%) Salesforce
12 155 (1.86%) CyberArk
13 153 (1.84%) Palo Alto
14 142 (1.70%) Foundry
15 129 (1.55%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.12%) Zscaler
17 91 (1.09%) Informatica
18 84 (1.01%) IBM
19 83 (1.00%) MuleSoft
20 81 (0.97%) Okta