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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,581 4,438 5,836
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.50% 15.43% 13.63%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.49% 40.89% 41.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,342 3,123 4,228
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £638
90th Percentile £713 £735 £747
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 32 49
10th Percentile £19.25 £23.92 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £26.68 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.49 £61.60
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £51.25
% change year-on-year +53.33% -26.83% -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 17,432 10,854 13,937
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.64% 37.75% 32.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,707 7,409 9,915
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £619 £635
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.16% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 555 250 348
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.09 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.63 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £36.71 £28.00 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +31.11% +31.02% -40.64%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.41 £40.06
90th Percentile £81.15 £71.38 £67.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £20.24 £17.72
% change year-on-year +85.32% +14.19% -33.08%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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 29 May 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 6,419 £525 - 1,867
London +1 3,423 £538 -2.23% 654
UK excluding London +2 3,196 £500 - 1,566
Work from Home 0 2,327 £525 +2.44% 955
North of England +5 926 £500 +5.26% 410
South East +3 821 £500 -0.10% 508
Midlands -3 508 £493 +0.10% 223
North West +3 465 £500 +5.26% 245
South West +6 399 £528 +0.48% 186
Yorkshire +8 386 £500 +11.11% 98
West Midlands +1 370 £500 -4.76% 138
Scotland +12 312 £525 +8.25% 66
East of England +6 154 £550 -5.17% 136
East Midlands +5 128 £463 - 85
Wales 0 102 £400 - 56
North East +3 85 £525 +5.00% 68
Northern Ireland +14 18 £531 +11.84% 11
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
1 361 (4.76%) SharePoint
2 214 (2.82%) Confluence
3 199 (2.62%) Apache Spark
4 190 (2.51%) Microsoft Exchange
5 109 (1.44%) Apache
6 107 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.34%) IIS
8 25 (0.33%) SAS
9 19 (0.25%) CMS
10 16 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.20%) Mendix
11 15 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.17%) Appian
13 12 (0.16%) ArcGIS
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
13 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
Applications
1 104 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.26%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.092%) Spreadsheet
8 6 (0.079%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.066%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.066%) CPLEX
9 5 (0.066%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.053%) Acrobat
10 4 (0.053%) Notion
10 4 (0.053%) Revit
10 4 (0.053%) Trello
11 3 (0.040%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.013%) InDesign
12 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.013%) Sketch
12 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 101 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
5 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 7 (0.092%) NEC Housing
8 6 (0.079%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.079%) Shopify
8 6 (0.079%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.066%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.053%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.053%) Endur
10 4 (0.053%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.053%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,583 (34.07%) AWS
2 1,546 (20.39%) Azure DevOps
3 1,301 (17.16%) GCP
4 977 (12.89%) Power Platform
5 916 (12.08%) Entra ID
6 787 (10.38%) Microsoft 365
7 705 (9.30%) GitHub
8 502 (6.62%) Azure Data Factory
9 421 (5.55%) GitHub Actions
10 380 (5.01%) Serverless
11 330 (4.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 289 (3.81%) SaaS
13 276 (3.64%) Azure AKS
14 260 (3.43%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.32%) Dynamics 365
16 244 (3.22%) Azure Monitor
17 233 (3.07%) PaaS
18 224 (2.95%) PowerApps
19 204 (2.69%) Azure Functions
20 199 (2.62%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 453 (5.98%) Firewall
2 332 (4.38%) DNS
3 260 (3.43%) VPN
4 259 (3.42%) Network Security
5 213 (2.81%) WAN
6 177 (2.33%) DHCP
7 139 (1.83%) LAN
8 119 (1.57%) SD-WAN
9 95 (1.25%) TCP/IP
10 87 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
11 79 (1.04%) BGP
12 73 (0.96%) VLAN
13 67 (0.88%) Kerberos
13 67 (0.88%) OSPF
14 53 (0.70%) SSL
15 52 (0.69%) SAN
16 48 (0.63%) VXLAN
17 44 (0.58%) Wireless
18 43 (0.57%) IPsec
19 37 (0.49%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 644 (8.49%) Power BI
2 444 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 378 (4.99%) Data Lake
4 367 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
5 250 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
6 238 (3.14%) Azure SQL Database
7 200 (2.64%) NoSQL
8 175 (2.31%) Metadata
9 151 (1.99%) Delta Lake
10 122 (1.61%) Big Data
11 114 (1.50%) Relational Database
12 95 (1.25%) MongoDB
12 95 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 77 (1.02%) Tableau
14 75 (0.99%) Snowflake Schema
15 68 (0.90%) MySQL
16 66 (0.87%) BigQuery
17 64 (0.84%) Oracle Database
18 53 (0.70%) Star Schema
19 50 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 538 (7.10%) Git
2 533 (7.03%) JIRA
3 386 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 319 (4.21%) GitLab
5 120 (1.58%) Selenium
6 81 (1.07%) Postman
7 71 (0.94%) JMeter
8 64 (0.84%) Cucumber
9 57 (0.75%) JUnit
10 52 (0.69%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.63%) MLflow
12 47 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 39 (0.51%) Visual Studio
14 38 (0.50%) Cypress.io
15 35 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 33 (0.44%) Artifactory
17 32 (0.42%) Gatling
18 30 (0.40%) Maven
19 26 (0.34%) TestRail
20 25 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,917 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 1,371 (18.08%) Finance
3 827 (10.91%) Public Sector
4 673 (8.88%) Analytical Skills
5 385 (5.08%) Banking
6 218 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 194 (2.56%) Legal
8 121 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 116 (1.53%) Retail
10 90 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 74 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
12 71 (0.94%) Financial Institution
13 70 (0.92%) Investment Banking
14 67 (0.88%) Marketing
15 64 (0.84%) Front Office
16 61 (0.80%) Law
17 59 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
18 56 (0.74%) Telecoms
19 44 (0.58%) Manufacturing
19 44 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,328 (17.52%) Architect
2 955 (12.60%) Developer
3 897 (11.83%) Senior
4 672 (8.86%) Azure Engineer
5 603 (7.95%) Data Engineer
6 575 (7.58%) Lead
7 470 (6.20%) Analyst
8 414 (5.46%) DevOps Engineer
9 355 (4.68%) Solutions Architect
10 309 (4.08%) Consultant
11 258 (3.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 255 (3.36%) Cloud Engineer
13 211 (2.78%) Azure Architect
14 205 (2.70%) Data Architect
15 204 (2.69%) Security Engineer
16 175 (2.31%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 173 (2.28%) Platform Engineer
18 168 (2.22%) Technical Architect
19 163 (2.15%) Project Manager
20 156 (2.06%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 609 (8.03%) .NET
2 517 (6.82%) REST
3 339 (4.47%) React
4 266 (3.51%) PySpark
5 263 (3.47%) Kafka
6 242 (3.19%) RESTful
7 218 (2.88%) OAuth
8 213 (2.81%) Node.js
9 195 (2.57%) Spring
10 181 (2.39%) AngularJS
11 176 (2.32%) LDAP
12 166 (2.19%) Spring Boot
13 160 (2.11%) JSON
14 141 (1.86%) HTML
15 140 (1.85%) OpenID
16 137 (1.81%) SAML
17 132 (1.74%) SOAP
18 130 (1.71%) Middleware
19 118 (1.56%) CSS
20 112 (1.48%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 751 (9.91%) Cloud Native
2 307 (4.05%) Onboarding
3 289 (3.81%) Product Ownership
4 239 (3.15%) Data Centre
5 220 (2.90%) Hybrid Cloud
6 191 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
7 178 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
8 167 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
8 167 (2.20%) Security Posture
9 157 (2.07%) Public Cloud
10 145 (1.91%) AI Agents
11 100 (1.32%) Data Structures
12 95 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
13 94 (1.24%) Replication
14 85 (1.12%) Management Information System
15 82 (1.08%) Low-Code
15 82 (1.08%) PKI
16 67 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
17 64 (0.84%) Self-Motivation
18 63 (0.83%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 851 (11.23%) Windows
2 392 (5.17%) Linux
3 261 (3.44%) Windows Server
4 125 (1.65%) Windows 10
5 73 (0.96%) Mac OS
6 72 (0.95%) Apple iOS
6 72 (0.95%) Unix
7 69 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 68 (0.90%) VMS
9 57 (0.75%) Android
10 33 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
11 29 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 13 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.15%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
17 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.092%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,830 (37.33%) DevOps
2 2,353 (31.04%) CI/CD
3 1,767 (23.31%) Agile
4 1,101 (14.52%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,061 (14.00%) Analytics
6 1,060 (13.98%) Migration
7 1,058 (13.96%) Problem-Solving
8 1,039 (13.71%) AI
9 856 (11.29%) Data Modelling
10 776 (10.24%) Stakeholder Management
11 722 (9.52%) Continuous Improvement
12 717 (9.46%) Data Pipeline
13 697 (9.19%) Business Intelligence
14 684 (9.02%) ETL
15 674 (8.89%) Containerisation
16 664 (8.76%) Roadmaps
17 656 (8.65%) Microservices
18 632 (8.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 599 (7.90%) Data Engineering
20 589 (7.77%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,777 (23.44%) Python
2 1,569 (20.70%) SQL
3 761 (10.04%) PowerShell
4 620 (8.18%) C#
5 614 (8.10%) Java
6 452 (5.96%) JavaScript
7 288 (3.80%) TypeScript
8 260 (3.43%) Bash
9 257 (3.39%) Bicep
10 91 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 88 (1.16%) T-SQL
12 87 (1.15%) Scala
13 78 (1.03%) Go
14 54 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
15 50 (0.66%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.55%) PL/SQL
17 39 (0.51%) R
18 32 (0.42%) C++
19 24 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 17 (0.22%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,848 (24.38%) Security Cleared
2 1,562 (20.60%) SC Cleared
3 523 (6.90%) Degree
4 390 (5.14%) Azure Certification
5 228 (3.01%) CISSP
6 186 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
6 186 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
7 183 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
8 170 (2.24%) DV Cleared
9 157 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
10 146 (1.93%) AWS Certification
11 127 (1.68%) CISM
12 89 (1.17%) CCNP
13 76 (1.00%) PMP
14 71 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 71 (0.94%) PMI Certification
15 60 (0.79%) Master's Degree
16 57 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
17 56 (0.74%) ISTQB
18 48 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 525 (6.93%) Data Quality
2 396 (5.22%) QA
3 348 (4.59%) GDPR
4 285 (3.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 267 (3.52%) NIST
6 147 (1.94%) Accessibility
7 106 (1.40%) NCSC
8 90 (1.19%) SLA
9 79 (1.04%) PCI DSS
10 72 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 51 (0.67%) WCAG
13 50 (0.66%) GRC
13 50 (0.66%) PMO
14 37 (0.49%) HIPAA
15 26 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 26 (0.34%) NIST 800
15 26 (0.34%) SOC 2
16 17 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 16 (0.21%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 920 (12.14%) Active Directory
2 781 (10.30%) Docker
3 221 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 122 (1.61%) Hyper-V
4 122 (1.61%) Virtual Desktop
5 109 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
6 70 (0.92%) vSphere
7 47 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
8 30 (0.40%) Firmware
9 29 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 22 (0.29%) NFS
11 17 (0.22%) Postfix
12 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.11%) Varnish
14 7 (0.092%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.079%) Ceph
15 6 (0.079%) HDFS
15 6 (0.079%) KVM
15 6 (0.079%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,187 (15.66%) Terraform
2 1,066 (14.06%) Kubernetes
3 384 (5.07%) Microsoft Intune
4 359 (4.74%) Ansible
5 214 (2.82%) Grafana
6 186 (2.45%) Prometheus
7 168 (2.22%) Single Sign-On
8 108 (1.42%) SCCM
9 73 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.53%) Argo
11 36 (0.47%) FortiGate
11 36 (0.47%) Progress Chef
11 36 (0.47%) Puppet
12 35 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
13 32 (0.42%) Istio
14 22 (0.29%) HP ALM
15 21 (0.28%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.21%) linkerd
18 14 (0.18%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,411 (31.80%) Microsoft
2 759 (10.01%) Databricks
3 313 (4.13%) ServiceNow
4 301 (3.97%) VMware
5 296 (3.90%) Google
6 286 (3.77%) Oracle
7 212 (2.80%) SAP
8 211 (2.78%) Cisco
9 183 (2.41%) OpenAI
10 165 (2.18%) Splunk
11 141 (1.86%) CyberArk
11 141 (1.86%) Palo Alto
12 117 (1.54%) Salesforce
13 106 (1.40%) Foundry
14 105 (1.39%) Okta
15 77 (1.02%) Dynatrace
16 76 (1.00%) Citrix
17 71 (0.94%) Informatica
18 69 (0.91%) Zscaler
19 68 (0.90%) Red Hat