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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,269 4,884 5,574
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.20% 14.82% 14.47%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.80% 39.42% 42.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,782 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 181 42 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.59 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.33 £26.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £34.24 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +15.36% -6.83% -31.94%
75th Percentile £80.00 £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 18,878 12,389 13,220
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.70% 37.60% 34.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,523 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 617 293 195
10th Percentile £15.29 £15.50 £15.69
25th Percentile £17.97 £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 £31.50 £19.27 £30.00
% change year-on-year +63.47% -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 18 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 18 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 18 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 7,054 £525 - 7,291
London +1 3,696 £550 - 3,558
UK excluding London +2 3,512 £510 +2.93% 4,460
Work from Home -2 2,498 £525 +5.00% 3,339
North of England +6 1,001 £500 +5.26% 1,205
South East +1 899 £525 +5.00% 1,136
Midlands +2 646 £493 -3.19% 662
North West +5 493 £500 +5.26% 648
West Midlands +2 480 £488 -9.72% 403
Yorkshire +5 428 £500 +5.26% 395
South West +2 423 £550 +10.00% 479
Scotland +8 285 £523 +4.50% 373
East of England +1 190 £510 +2.00% 342
East Midlands +4 159 £500 +8.11% 259
North East 0 93 £500 - 168
Wales 0 83 £450 - 130
Northern Ireland +14 13 £650 - 157
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
1 471 (5.70%) SharePoint
2 258 (3.12%) Confluence
3 195 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 181 (2.19%) Apache Spark
5 164 (1.98%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.31%) Apache
7 45 (0.54%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) SharePoint Server
9 27 (0.33%) IIS
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) nginx
13 13 (0.16%) OpenStack
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.085%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.085%) Mendix
16 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
16 6 (0.073%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 121 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
3 61 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 39 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 8 (0.097%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.097%) Revit
9 8 (0.097%) 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%) Mozilla Thunderbird
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 136 (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 (0.097%) Magento
8 8 (0.097%) Workday HCM
9 7 (0.085%) Shopify
10 6 (0.073%) Cloudability
10 6 (0.073%) 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%) FLEXCUBE
12 4 (0.048%) Maximo
12 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,958 (35.77%) AWS
2 1,739 (21.03%) Azure DevOps
3 1,423 (17.21%) GCP
4 1,112 (13.45%) Entra ID
5 1,069 (12.93%) Power Platform
6 867 (10.48%) Microsoft 365
7 830 (10.04%) GitHub
8 486 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
9 462 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 369 (4.46%) Serverless
11 363 (4.39%) SaaS
12 318 (3.85%) Azure Monitor
13 302 (3.65%) Power Automate
14 301 (3.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 300 (3.63%) Dynamics 365
16 293 (3.54%) Azure AKS
17 287 (3.47%) Snowflake
18 285 (3.45%) PowerApps
19 249 (3.01%) Microsoft Copilot
20 246 (2.97%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 520 (6.29%) Firewall
2 420 (5.08%) DNS
3 316 (3.82%) VPN
4 295 (3.57%) Network Security
5 228 (2.76%) DHCP
6 186 (2.25%) WAN
7 169 (2.04%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.32%) LAN
9 107 (1.29%) BGP
10 99 (1.20%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.14%) VLAN
12 86 (1.04%) OSPF
13 85 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 76 (0.92%) SSL
15 64 (0.77%) SAN
16 62 (0.75%) Wireless
17 47 (0.57%) HTTP
18 46 (0.56%) IPsec
19 44 (0.53%) VXLAN
20 41 (0.50%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 699 (8.45%) Power BI
2 467 (5.65%) SQL Server
3 397 (4.80%) Data Warehouse
4 377 (4.56%) Data Lake
5 287 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 253 (3.06%) Metadata
7 210 (2.54%) NoSQL
8 195 (2.36%) Azure SQL Database
9 137 (1.66%) Relational Database
10 128 (1.55%) Delta Lake
11 112 (1.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 104 (1.26%) MongoDB
13 93 (1.12%) Big Data
14 87 (1.05%) MySQL
15 72 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.79%) Redis
17 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.71%) Oracle Database
19 58 (0.70%) Snowflake Schema
19 58 (0.70%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 730 (8.83%) Git
2 598 (7.23%) JIRA
3 475 (5.74%) Jenkins
4 373 (4.51%) GitLab
5 130 (1.57%) Selenium
6 82 (0.99%) Postman
7 62 (0.75%) Cypress.io
8 59 (0.71%) JUnit
9 56 (0.68%) Maven
9 56 (0.68%) SonarQube
10 52 (0.63%) Claude Code
10 52 (0.63%) Cucumber
10 52 (0.63%) JMeter
11 47 (0.57%) Gradle
12 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
14 37 (0.45%) WebDriver
15 36 (0.44%) MLflow
16 33 (0.40%) Gatling
17 32 (0.39%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,289 (27.68%) Social Skills
2 1,545 (18.68%) Finance
3 954 (11.54%) Public Sector
4 810 (9.80%) Analytical Skills
5 467 (5.65%) Banking
6 221 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 214 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
8 209 (2.53%) Retail
9 169 (2.04%) Legal
10 106 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
11 104 (1.26%) Manufacturing
12 90 (1.09%) Marketing
13 89 (1.08%) Telecoms
14 88 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
15 85 (1.03%) Aerospace
16 82 (0.99%) Investment Banking
17 75 (0.91%) Military
18 73 (0.88%) Law
19 60 (0.73%) Local Government
20 54 (0.65%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,570 (18.99%) Architect
2 1,037 (12.54%) Senior
3 984 (11.90%) Developer
4 731 (8.84%) Azure Engineer
5 677 (8.19%) Lead
6 582 (7.04%) Data Engineer
7 479 (5.79%) Solutions Architect
8 474 (5.73%) Analyst
9 471 (5.70%) DevOps Engineer
10 373 (4.51%) Cloud Engineer
11 320 (3.87%) Consultant
12 314 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 266 (3.22%) Data Architect
14 239 (2.89%) Platform Engineer
15 216 (2.61%) Azure Architect
16 210 (2.54%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 199 (2.41%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 196 (2.37%) Security Engineer
18 196 (2.37%) Technical Architect
19 186 (2.25%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,405 (16.99%) Terraform
2 708 (8.56%) REST
3 617 (7.46%) .NET
4 387 (4.68%) Kafka
5 293 (3.54%) React
6 287 (3.47%) RESTful
7 267 (3.23%) OAuth
7 267 (3.23%) PySpark
8 232 (2.81%) JSON
9 188 (2.27%) Spring
10 178 (2.15%) Spring Boot
11 164 (1.98%) OpenID
12 159 (1.92%) OAuth2
13 156 (1.89%) Node.js
14 153 (1.85%) SAML
15 151 (1.83%) HTML
16 146 (1.77%) AngularJS
17 142 (1.72%) Middleware
18 137 (1.66%) Playwright
19 133 (1.61%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 913 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 423 (5.12%) Onboarding
3 379 (4.58%) Product Ownership
4 303 (3.66%) AI Agents
4 303 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
5 282 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
6 263 (3.18%) Distributed Systems
7 250 (3.02%) Data Centre
8 225 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
9 179 (2.16%) Security Posture
10 177 (2.14%) Management Information System
11 147 (1.78%) Data Structures
12 142 (1.72%) Public Cloud
13 121 (1.46%) PKI
14 115 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
15 111 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
16 106 (1.28%) Replication
17 95 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
18 85 (1.03%) CMDB
19 83 (1.00%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 996 (12.04%) Windows
2 517 (6.25%) Linux
3 369 (4.46%) Windows Server
4 145 (1.75%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.10%) Android
6 87 (1.05%) Apple iOS
6 87 (1.05%) Unix
7 84 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 75 (0.91%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.68%) Ubuntu
10 55 (0.67%) VMS
11 25 (0.30%) CentOS
12 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 8 (0.097%) Debian
17 6 (0.073%) AIX
17 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.060%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,038 (36.74%) DevOps
2 2,645 (31.99%) CI/CD
3 2,057 (24.88%) Agile
4 1,452 (17.56%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,416 (17.12%) AI
6 1,405 (16.99%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,216 (14.71%) Migration
8 1,137 (13.75%) Analytics
9 1,130 (13.67%) Problem-Solving
10 948 (11.46%) Continuous Improvement
11 898 (10.86%) Data Modelling
12 843 (10.19%) Roadmaps
13 787 (9.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 781 (9.44%) Containerisation
15 755 (9.13%) Business Intelligence
16 744 (9.00%) Technical Leadership
17 743 (8.99%) Data Pipeline
18 716 (8.66%) Microservices
19 713 (8.62%) Test Automation
20 654 (7.91%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,898 (22.95%) Python
2 1,566 (18.94%) SQL
3 886 (10.71%) PowerShell
4 681 (8.24%) Java
5 591 (7.15%) C#
6 493 (5.96%) JavaScript
7 410 (4.96%) Bash
8 357 (4.32%) Bicep
9 294 (3.56%) TypeScript
10 97 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 74 (0.89%) Go
13 66 (0.80%) Scala
14 61 (0.74%) Shell Script
15 59 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.50%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.45%) R
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 31 (0.37%) Groovy
20 26 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,157 (26.09%) Security Cleared
2 1,732 (20.95%) SC Cleared
3 557 (6.74%) Degree
4 483 (5.84%) Azure Certification
5 312 (3.77%) DV Cleared
6 275 (3.33%) CISSP
7 270 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
8 252 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 208 (2.52%) AWS Certification
10 201 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
11 178 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
12 138 (1.67%) CISM
13 90 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 90 (1.09%) CCNP
13 90 (1.09%) PMI Certification
14 85 (1.03%) PMP
15 67 (0.81%) ISTQB
16 62 (0.75%) CCSP
17 60 (0.73%) Master's Degree
18 52 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 605 (7.32%) Data Quality
2 456 (5.51%) QA
3 305 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 301 (3.64%) NIST
5 293 (3.54%) GDPR
6 207 (2.50%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.44%) NCSC
8 108 (1.31%) SLA
9 84 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
10 83 (1.00%) WCAG
11 81 (0.98%) GRC
12 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 57 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 54 (0.65%) PMO
15 46 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 31 (0.37%) SOC 2
17 28 (0.34%) HIPAA
18 25 (0.30%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
19 20 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,029 (12.44%) Active Directory
2 915 (11.07%) Docker
3 243 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.78%) Virtual Machines
5 145 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
6 132 (1.60%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.87%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.45%) 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 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.085%) Squid
17 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,297 (15.69%) Kubernetes
2 464 (5.61%) Ansible
3 448 (5.42%) Microsoft Intune
4 265 (3.20%) Grafana
5 207 (2.50%) Prometheus
6 155 (1.87%) Single Sign-On
7 132 (1.60%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 58 (0.70%) Argo
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 37 (0.45%) 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 18 (0.22%) CASB
18 18 (0.22%) Packer
19 17 (0.21%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,968 (35.89%) Microsoft
2 856 (10.35%) Databricks
3 425 (5.14%) ServiceNow
4 370 (4.47%) Google
5 361 (4.37%) VMware
6 342 (4.14%) Oracle
7 252 (3.05%) Cisco
8 227 (2.75%) Splunk
9 224 (2.71%) SAP
10 212 (2.56%) OpenAI
11 187 (2.26%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.85%) CyberArk
13 152 (1.84%) Palo Alto
14 138 (1.67%) Foundry
15 127 (1.54%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.12%) Zscaler
17 91 (1.10%) Informatica
18 83 (1.00%) MuleSoft
19 81 (0.98%) Okta
20 80 (0.97%) IBM