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 27 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,634 5,465 6,834
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.60% 14.90% 15.06%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.67% 41.91% 42.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,922 3,662 5,014
10th Percentile £350 £338 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £708 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £520
% change year-on-year - -3.85% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 51 86
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.30 £17.75
25th Percentile £26.00 £23.80 £25.19
Median hourly rate £46.00 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% -32.87% +31.94%
75th Percentile £80.00 £60.38 £69.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.75 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +119.17% -35.04% +2.62%

All Cloud 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 13,854 13,039 16,005
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.35% 35.54% 35.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,375 8,581 11,462
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £703 £738 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 194 301
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.66 £14.36
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.75
Median hourly rate £26.00 £30.00 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +11.11% +21.13%
75th Percentile £51.83 £54.69 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.50 £22.00
% change year-on-year -18.18% +25.00% +16.09%

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 27 November 2025.

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 27 November 2025.

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 27 November 2025. 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 4,792 £523 -1.42% 3,221
London +1 2,573 £540 -1.82% 1,157
UK excluding London 0 2,330 £500 - 2,854
Work from Home -1 1,840 £513 -2.38% 1,646
North of England -3 594 £475 -5.00% 538
South East -3 572 £500 -4.76% 1,094
Midlands -1 427 £525 - 416
West Midlands 0 316 £550 +4.76% 263
South West +6 310 £500 - 295
North West -1 290 £470 -6.00% 290
Yorkshire -2 275 £488 -2.50% 177
Scotland +1 256 £513 +13.89% 197
East of England +3 159 £500 +25.00% 230
East Midlands -2 108 £450 -10.00% 148
Wales -1 64 £456 -8.75% 99
North East -10 33 £533 +21.02% 75
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -3 6 - - 27

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
1 262 (4.65%) SharePoint
2 192 (3.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.63%) Confluence
4 125 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 87 (1.54%) Apache
6 82 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
7 29 (0.51%) CMS
8 27 (0.48%) SAS
9 22 (0.39%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.32%) nginx
11 17 (0.30%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
13 11 (0.20%) IIS
14 10 (0.18%) Mule
14 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
15 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
17 7 (0.12%) WebSphere
Applications
1 131 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 93 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
3 41 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
6 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 10 (0.18%) Trello
8 5 (0.089%) Weka
9 2 (0.035%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.035%) Windchill
10 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
10 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
10 1 (0.018%) Revit
10 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 103 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 16 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
5 12 (0.21%) Endur
6 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
7 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.16%) Workday HCM
8 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
9 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.089%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.089%) Remedy ITSM
11 4 (0.071%) Maximo
11 4 (0.071%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.071%) SAP MDG
11 4 (0.071%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,062 (36.60%) AWS
2 1,130 (20.06%) Azure DevOps
3 1,100 (19.52%) GCP
4 719 (12.76%) Power Platform
5 644 (11.43%) Microsoft 365
6 635 (11.27%) Entra ID
7 532 (9.44%) GitHub
8 355 (6.30%) Azure Data Factory
9 318 (5.64%) GitHub Actions
10 304 (5.40%) Serverless
11 259 (4.60%) Dynamics 365
12 250 (4.44%) SaaS
13 243 (4.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 226 (4.01%) Azure AKS
15 220 (3.90%) Power Automate
16 210 (3.73%) Snowflake
17 203 (3.60%) PaaS
18 199 (3.53%) PowerApps
19 198 (3.51%) Azure Monitor
20 195 (3.46%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 417 (7.40%) Firewall
2 210 (3.73%) DNS
3 179 (3.18%) VPN
4 154 (2.73%) Network Security
5 118 (2.09%) WAN
6 105 (1.86%) DHCP
7 88 (1.56%) TCP/IP
8 76 (1.35%) LAN
9 71 (1.26%) HTTP
10 64 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 60 (1.06%) VLAN
12 59 (1.05%) SD-WAN
13 43 (0.76%) BGP
14 41 (0.73%) SAN
15 35 (0.62%) Internet
16 34 (0.60%) MPLS
17 31 (0.55%) OSPF
17 31 (0.55%) Wireless
18 27 (0.48%) SSL
19 20 (0.35%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 497 (8.82%) Power BI
2 311 (5.52%) SQL Server
3 270 (4.79%) Data Warehouse
4 248 (4.40%) Data Lake
5 244 (4.33%) PostgreSQL
6 186 (3.30%) Azure SQL Database
7 183 (3.25%) NoSQL
8 128 (2.27%) Relational Database
9 120 (2.13%) Metadata
10 103 (1.83%) MongoDB
11 83 (1.47%) MySQL
12 81 (1.44%) Big Data
13 70 (1.24%) Delta Lake
14 66 (1.17%) Tableau
15 63 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 62 (1.10%) BigQuery
17 55 (0.98%) Redis
18 52 (0.92%) Oracle Database
19 45 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
20 39 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 488 (8.66%) Git
2 421 (7.47%) JIRA
3 329 (5.84%) Jenkins
4 223 (3.96%) GitLab
5 95 (1.69%) Selenium
6 86 (1.53%) Postman
7 69 (1.22%) SonarQube
8 66 (1.17%) JUnit
9 48 (0.85%) Bitbucket
10 47 (0.83%) JMeter
11 45 (0.80%) Cucumber
11 45 (0.80%) Cypress.io
12 40 (0.71%) Maven
13 37 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
14 36 (0.64%) Visual Studio
15 33 (0.59%) ERwin
16 32 (0.57%) CircleCI
17 29 (0.51%) Gradle
17 29 (0.51%) Mockito
17 29 (0.51%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,806 (32.06%) Social Skills
2 1,077 (19.12%) Finance
3 661 (11.73%) Public Sector
4 537 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
5 370 (6.57%) Banking
6 199 (3.53%) Documentation Skills
7 131 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 96 (1.70%) Investment Banking
8 96 (1.70%) Marketing
9 92 (1.63%) Retail
10 91 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
11 89 (1.58%) Legal
12 80 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
13 76 (1.35%) Telecoms
14 70 (1.24%) Manufacturing
15 57 (1.01%) Law
16 48 (0.85%) Local Government
17 46 (0.82%) Front Office
18 44 (0.78%) Financial Institution
19 43 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 922 (16.36%) Developer
2 912 (16.19%) Architect
3 566 (10.05%) Senior
4 422 (7.49%) Analyst
5 415 (7.37%) Azure Engineer
6 392 (6.96%) Lead
7 361 (6.41%) Data Engineer
8 320 (5.68%) Solutions Architect
9 280 (4.97%) DevOps Engineer
10 224 (3.98%) Consultant
11 177 (3.14%) Security Engineer
12 171 (3.04%) Senior Developer
13 162 (2.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 159 (2.82%) Azure Architect
15 137 (2.43%) Cloud Engineer
16 132 (2.34%) Platform Engineer
17 120 (2.13%) Data Architect
18 113 (2.01%) Business Analyst
18 113 (2.01%) Java Developer
18 113 (2.01%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 479 (8.50%) .NET
2 352 (6.25%) REST
3 265 (4.70%) RESTful
4 247 (4.38%) React
5 216 (3.83%) Kafka
6 200 (3.55%) Node.js
7 197 (3.50%) Spring
8 186 (3.30%) HTML
9 177 (3.14%) OAuth
10 166 (2.95%) AngularJS
11 164 (2.91%) Spring Boot
12 160 (2.84%) JSON
13 159 (2.82%) PySpark
14 146 (2.59%) CSS
15 135 (2.40%) SOAP
16 115 (2.04%) PyTorch
17 104 (1.85%) SAML
17 104 (1.85%) TensorFlow
18 102 (1.81%) XML
19 101 (1.79%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 446 (7.92%) Cloud Native
2 202 (3.59%) Product Ownership
3 188 (3.34%) Onboarding
4 161 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
5 147 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
6 135 (2.40%) Data Centre
7 118 (2.09%) Security Posture
8 116 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
9 110 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
10 97 (1.72%) Public Cloud
11 79 (1.40%) Algorithms
12 78 (1.38%) Management Information System
13 76 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
14 69 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
15 60 (1.06%) Replication
16 58 (1.03%) Low-Code
17 57 (1.01%) AI Agents
18 54 (0.96%) Data Structures
19 52 (0.92%) NHS
20 50 (0.89%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 643 (11.41%) Windows
2 386 (6.85%) Linux
3 189 (3.35%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.97%) Unix
5 94 (1.67%) Windows 10
6 54 (0.96%) Android
7 47 (0.83%) Apple iOS
8 46 (0.82%) VMS
9 37 (0.66%) Mac OS
10 28 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.21%) Solaris
13 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
14 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
15 9 (0.16%) CentOS
16 7 (0.12%) Mac OS X
16 7 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.089%) AIX
17 5 (0.089%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,045 (36.30%) DevOps
2 1,644 (29.18%) CI/CD
3 1,528 (27.12%) Agile
4 1,030 (18.28%) Problem-Solving
5 757 (13.44%) Analytics
6 745 (13.22%) Infrastructure as Code
7 670 (11.89%) Migration
8 643 (11.41%) AI
9 570 (10.12%) Business Intelligence
10 566 (10.05%) Stakeholder Management
11 564 (10.01%) Containerisation
12 495 (8.79%) Microservices
13 480 (8.52%) Data Modelling
14 476 (8.45%) Machine Learning
15 475 (8.43%) Test Automation
16 454 (8.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 443 (7.86%) Continuous Improvement
18 422 (7.49%) Scrum
19 414 (7.35%) Cybersecurity
20 403 (7.15%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,430 (25.38%) Python
2 1,217 (21.60%) SQL
3 597 (10.60%) PowerShell
4 562 (9.98%) Java
5 520 (9.23%) C#
6 446 (7.92%) JavaScript
7 280 (4.97%) Bash
8 235 (4.17%) TypeScript
9 154 (2.73%) Bicep
10 93 (1.65%) Go
11 75 (1.33%) Kusto Query Language
12 68 (1.21%) Scala
13 64 (1.14%) PL/SQL
14 54 (0.96%) R
14 54 (0.96%) T-SQL
15 45 (0.80%) C++
16 39 (0.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 36 (0.64%) Shell Script
18 32 (0.57%) PHP
19 31 (0.55%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,166 (20.70%) Security Cleared
2 950 (16.86%) SC Cleared
3 494 (8.77%) Degree
4 338 (6.00%) Azure Certification
5 187 (3.32%) Microsoft Certification
6 181 (3.21%) CISSP
7 173 (3.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 143 (2.54%) AWS Certification
9 134 (2.38%) DV Cleared
10 100 (1.77%) CISM
11 99 (1.76%) Cisco Certification
12 86 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
13 85 (1.51%) Master's Degree
14 47 (0.83%) CCNP
15 45 (0.80%) ISTQB
16 38 (0.67%) PMI Certification
17 34 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 34 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
18 33 (0.59%) MCP
19 32 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 352 (6.25%) GDPR
2 327 (5.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 313 (5.56%) QA
4 259 (4.60%) NIST
5 253 (4.49%) Data Quality
6 136 (2.41%) Accessibility
7 74 (1.31%) NCSC
7 74 (1.31%) PCI DSS
8 54 (0.96%) HIPAA
9 51 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
10 38 (0.67%) SOC 2
11 35 (0.62%) SLA
12 32 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 32 (0.57%) WCAG
13 28 (0.50%) EU AI Act
14 26 (0.46%) GRC
15 25 (0.44%) PMO
15 25 (0.44%) PSD2
16 22 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 21 (0.37%) COBIT
System Software
1 720 (12.78%) Docker
2 687 (12.19%) Active Directory
3 170 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 75 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
5 74 (1.31%) Hyper-V
6 60 (1.06%) Virtual Desktop
7 48 (0.85%) vSphere
8 25 (0.44%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.28%) Squid
10 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
10 13 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 11 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
12 10 (0.18%) Firmware
12 10 (0.18%) Postfix
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
13 9 (0.16%) zsh
14 8 (0.14%) KVM
14 8 (0.14%) NFS
14 8 (0.14%) Snort
Systems Management
1 836 (14.84%) Terraform
2 805 (14.29%) Kubernetes
3 303 (5.38%) Ansible
4 299 (5.31%) Microsoft Intune
5 138 (2.45%) Single Sign-On
6 130 (2.31%) Grafana
6 130 (2.31%) SCCM
7 126 (2.24%) Prometheus
8 38 (0.67%) Argo
9 36 (0.64%) Puppet
10 33 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 26 (0.46%) Nessus
12 23 (0.41%) Kibana
13 20 (0.35%) NetBackup
13 20 (0.35%) Progress Chef
14 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
15 18 (0.32%) vRealize
16 16 (0.28%) Istio
16 16 (0.28%) Podman
16 16 (0.28%) QRadar
Vendors
1 1,825 (32.39%) Microsoft
2 505 (8.96%) Databricks
3 331 (5.88%) Oracle
4 274 (4.86%) Google
5 223 (3.96%) VMware
6 213 (3.78%) ServiceNow
7 173 (3.07%) Cisco
8 157 (2.79%) SAP
9 137 (2.43%) Splunk
10 124 (2.20%) Salesforce
11 113 (2.01%) OpenAI
12 92 (1.63%) Palo Alto
13 84 (1.49%) CyberArk
14 83 (1.47%) Citrix
15 62 (1.10%) Foundry
16 60 (1.06%) Red Hat
17 59 (1.05%) F5
18 58 (1.03%) Okta
19 54 (0.96%) IBM
20 53 (0.94%) Dynatrace