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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,371 4,855 5,579
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.33% 14.70% 14.47%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.06% 39.29% 42.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,862 3,297 3,882
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £415 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.80% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 45 33
10th Percentile £18.25 £16.91 £20.21
25th Percentile £21.74 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.88 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.67% +7.14% -35.19%
75th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £100.59 £88.25 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £53.23 £38.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% +38.25% -16.63%

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 18,997 12,357 13,191
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.79% 37.43% 34.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,598 8,222 8,954
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £419
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 614 307 208
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £14.22
25th Percentile £17.81 £18.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £29.25 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -2.50% -14.29%
75th Percentile £67.80 £54.38 £60.72
90th Percentile £81.25 £71.67 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £20.25 £29.25
% change year-on-year +48.15% -30.77% +8.33%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 7,160 £525 - 4,468
London +1 3,739 £550 +0.92% 2,187
UK excluding London +2 3,593 £509 +1.80% 2,954
Work from Home 0 2,524 £525 +5.00% 2,157
North of England +9 1,043 £500 +5.26% 723
South East +1 913 £525 +5.00% 824
Midlands +2 651 £493 -3.90% 425
North West +5 533 £500 +5.26% 371
West Midlands +2 479 £493 -8.54% 239
South West +4 436 £550 +10.00% 349
Yorkshire +6 427 £500 +5.26% 249
Scotland +6 290 £510 +6.47% 252
East of England +2 184 £525 +5.00% 244
East Midlands +6 161 £500 +9.59% 185
North East +4 96 £500 - 109
Wales 0 89 £450 - 94
Northern Ireland +15 15 £650 - 78
Channel Islands 0 11 £450 -29.69% 2

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
1 470 (5.61%) SharePoint
2 259 (3.09%) Confluence
3 200 (2.39%) Microsoft Exchange
4 181 (2.16%) Apache Spark
5 165 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.37%) Apache
7 44 (0.53%) SAS
8 33 (0.39%) IIS
9 29 (0.35%) SharePoint Server
10 24 (0.29%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 122 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
3 72 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.50%) Chatbot
5 40 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Mingle
14 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 132 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (0.87%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.096%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
7 8 (0.096%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
8 7 (0.084%) Workday HCM
9 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.072%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Endur
11 4 (0.048%) Maximo
11 4 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 3,000 (35.84%) AWS
2 1,780 (21.26%) Azure DevOps
3 1,434 (17.13%) GCP
4 1,102 (13.16%) Entra ID
5 1,090 (13.02%) Power Platform
6 872 (10.42%) Microsoft 365
7 858 (10.25%) GitHub
8 498 (5.95%) GitHub Actions
9 477 (5.70%) Azure Data Factory
10 380 (4.54%) Serverless
11 362 (4.32%) SaaS
12 317 (3.79%) Azure Monitor
13 311 (3.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 303 (3.62%) Power Automate
15 291 (3.48%) Azure AKS
16 289 (3.45%) PowerApps
17 287 (3.43%) Dynamics 365
18 285 (3.40%) Snowflake
19 242 (2.89%) Azure AI
20 241 (2.88%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 532 (6.36%) Firewall
2 419 (5.01%) DNS
3 313 (3.74%) VPN
4 311 (3.72%) Network Security
5 223 (2.66%) DHCP
6 188 (2.25%) WAN
7 164 (1.96%) TCP/IP
8 111 (1.33%) LAN
9 107 (1.28%) BGP
10 100 (1.19%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.11%) VLAN
12 86 (1.03%) OSPF
13 85 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.90%) SSL
15 63 (0.75%) SAN
16 62 (0.74%) Wireless
17 47 (0.56%) HTTP
17 47 (0.56%) IPsec
18 44 (0.53%) VXLAN
19 39 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 725 (8.66%) Power BI
2 477 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 413 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 385 (4.60%) Data Lake
5 297 (3.55%) PostgreSQL
6 248 (2.96%) Metadata
7 217 (2.59%) NoSQL
8 209 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
9 144 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 135 (1.61%) Delta Lake
11 111 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 107 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 95 (1.13%) Big Data
14 93 (1.11%) MySQL
15 72 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.78%) Tableau
17 62 (0.74%) Redis
18 60 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
18 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
19 57 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 712 (8.51%) Git
2 611 (7.30%) JIRA
3 470 (5.61%) Jenkins
4 369 (4.41%) GitLab
5 129 (1.54%) Selenium
6 78 (0.93%) Postman
7 63 (0.75%) JUnit
8 60 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 58 (0.69%) JMeter
10 57 (0.68%) SonarQube
11 56 (0.67%) Maven
12 50 (0.60%) Claude Code
12 50 (0.60%) Cucumber
13 47 (0.56%) Gradle
14 46 (0.55%) REST Assured
14 46 (0.55%) Visual Studio
15 38 (0.45%) WebDriver
16 37 (0.44%) MLflow
17 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
18 31 (0.37%) Gatling
General
1 2,294 (27.40%) Social Skills
2 1,576 (18.83%) Finance
3 959 (11.46%) Public Sector
4 824 (9.84%) Analytical Skills
5 467 (5.58%) Banking
6 222 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
7 220 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 207 (2.47%) Retail
9 180 (2.15%) Legal
10 106 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
11 102 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 89 (1.06%) Telecoms
13 86 (1.03%) Marketing
14 85 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
15 81 (0.97%) Aerospace
16 78 (0.93%) Investment Banking
17 74 (0.88%) Law
17 74 (0.88%) Military
18 60 (0.72%) Financial Institution
19 59 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,580 (18.87%) Architect
2 1,057 (12.63%) Senior
3 998 (11.92%) Developer
4 737 (8.80%) Azure Engineer
5 682 (8.15%) Lead
6 605 (7.23%) Data Engineer
7 485 (5.79%) Analyst
8 472 (5.64%) Solutions Architect
9 469 (5.60%) DevOps Engineer
10 368 (4.40%) Cloud Engineer
11 325 (3.88%) Consultant
12 320 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 270 (3.23%) Data Architect
14 244 (2.91%) Platform Engineer
15 222 (2.65%) Azure Architect
16 212 (2.53%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 200 (2.39%) Technical Architect
18 195 (2.33%) Security Architect
19 190 (2.27%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 189 (2.26%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,416 (16.92%) Terraform
2 697 (8.33%) REST
3 634 (7.57%) .NET
4 381 (4.55%) Kafka
5 306 (3.66%) React
6 292 (3.49%) RESTful
7 279 (3.33%) PySpark
8 257 (3.07%) OAuth
9 233 (2.78%) JSON
10 198 (2.37%) Spring
11 182 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 158 (1.89%) Node.js
13 157 (1.88%) OpenID
14 153 (1.83%) HTML
15 151 (1.80%) AngularJS
15 151 (1.80%) OAuth2
15 151 (1.80%) SAML
16 138 (1.65%) Playwright
17 135 (1.61%) Middleware
18 133 (1.59%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 930 (11.11%) Cloud Native
2 410 (4.90%) Onboarding
3 384 (4.59%) Product Ownership
4 295 (3.52%) AI Agents
5 292 (3.49%) Enterprise Software
6 282 (3.37%) Hybrid Cloud
7 268 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
8 247 (2.95%) Data Centre
9 229 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
10 176 (2.10%) Security Posture
11 166 (1.98%) Management Information System
12 150 (1.79%) Data Structures
13 142 (1.70%) Public Cloud
14 116 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
15 114 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
15 114 (1.36%) PKI
16 108 (1.29%) Replication
17 96 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
18 83 (0.99%) CMDB
19 80 (0.96%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 991 (11.84%) Windows
2 523 (6.25%) Linux
3 376 (4.49%) Windows Server
4 135 (1.61%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.09%) Unix
6 88 (1.05%) Android
7 84 (1.00%) Apple iOS
7 84 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 73 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 58 (0.69%) VMS
10 54 (0.65%) Ubuntu
11 21 (0.25%) CentOS
12 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 6 (0.072%) AIX
16 6 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,104 (37.08%) DevOps
2 2,659 (31.76%) CI/CD
3 2,103 (25.12%) Agile
4 1,435 (17.14%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,411 (16.86%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,406 (16.80%) AI
7 1,233 (14.73%) Migration
8 1,165 (13.92%) Analytics
9 1,143 (13.65%) Problem-Solving
10 960 (11.47%) Continuous Improvement
11 920 (10.99%) Data Modelling
12 842 (10.06%) Roadmaps
13 803 (9.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 787 (9.40%) Containerisation
15 781 (9.33%) Business Intelligence
16 770 (9.20%) Data Pipeline
17 737 (8.80%) Technical Leadership
18 733 (8.76%) Microservices
19 714 (8.53%) Test Automation
20 671 (8.02%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,917 (22.90%) Python
2 1,621 (19.36%) SQL
3 880 (10.51%) PowerShell
4 687 (8.21%) Java
5 602 (7.19%) C#
6 500 (5.97%) JavaScript
7 408 (4.87%) Bash
8 361 (4.31%) Bicep
9 297 (3.55%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.82%) Go
13 65 (0.78%) Scala
14 63 (0.75%) Shell Script
15 56 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.49%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.49%) R
17 34 (0.41%) Kotlin
18 31 (0.37%) Groovy
19 26 (0.31%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,171 (25.93%) Security Cleared
2 1,751 (20.92%) SC Cleared
3 572 (6.83%) Degree
4 469 (5.60%) Azure Certification
5 301 (3.60%) DV Cleared
6 275 (3.29%) CISSP
7 265 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
8 249 (2.97%) Microsoft Certification
9 207 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
10 203 (2.43%) AWS Certification
11 184 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
12 140 (1.67%) CISM
13 95 (1.13%) CCNP
14 91 (1.09%) PMI Certification
15 89 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 88 (1.05%) PMP
17 67 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 63 (0.75%) Master's Degree
19 61 (0.73%) CCSP
20 51 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 616 (7.36%) Data Quality
2 461 (5.51%) QA
3 312 (3.73%) NIST
4 310 (3.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 303 (3.62%) GDPR
6 200 (2.39%) Accessibility
7 124 (1.48%) NCSC
8 108 (1.29%) SLA
9 83 (0.99%) WCAG
10 81 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
11 78 (0.93%) GRC
12 73 (0.87%) PCI DSS
13 58 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 56 (0.67%) PMO
15 44 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 29 (0.35%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.31%) HIPAA
18 25 (0.30%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,028 (12.28%) Active Directory
2 930 (11.11%) Docker
3 251 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 152 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
5 144 (1.72%) Virtual Machines
6 135 (1.61%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.82%) vSphere
8 55 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 25 (0.30%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) IAG
11 18 (0.22%) NFS
12 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
12 11 (0.13%) Postfix
13 10 (0.12%) Ceph
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 1,303 (15.57%) Kubernetes
2 458 (5.47%) Ansible
3 441 (5.27%) Microsoft Intune
4 259 (3.09%) Grafana
5 205 (2.45%) Prometheus
6 151 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
7 129 (1.54%) SCCM
8 63 (0.75%) Progress Chef
9 61 (0.73%) Argo
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 37 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 33 (0.39%) SCOM
14 24 (0.29%) vCenter Server
15 23 (0.27%) Istio
16 20 (0.24%) QRadar
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
18 17 (0.20%) CASB
18 17 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,970 (35.48%) Microsoft
2 862 (10.30%) Databricks
3 417 (4.98%) ServiceNow
4 367 (4.38%) VMware
5 365 (4.36%) Google
6 338 (4.04%) Oracle
7 249 (2.97%) Cisco
8 228 (2.72%) SAP
9 214 (2.56%) Splunk
10 209 (2.50%) OpenAI
11 181 (2.16%) Salesforce
12 155 (1.85%) Palo Alto
13 154 (1.84%) CyberArk
14 138 (1.65%) Foundry
15 119 (1.42%) Dynatrace
16 96 (1.15%) Informatica
17 89 (1.06%) Zscaler
18 82 (0.98%) Okta
19 81 (0.97%) Fortinet
20 79 (0.94%) MuleSoft