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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,364 4,839 5,537
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.35% 14.67% 14.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.07% 39.21% 42.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,864 3,286 3,851
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 £627 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £498 £500
% change year-on-year +1.71% -0.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 45 32
10th Percentile £18.25 £16.91 £20.33
25th Percentile £21.33 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £37.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +5.33% +2.04% -31.94%
75th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £59.25
90th Percentile £100.34 £88.25 £86.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.88 £53.23 £42.34
% change year-on-year -26.96% +25.71% -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 18,981 12,340 13,086
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.83% 37.41% 34.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,589 8,206 8,882
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% -2.42%
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 619 306 207
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £14.21
25th Percentile £17.86 £18.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £29.63 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.70% -1.25% -14.29%
75th Percentile £68.63 £54.69 £60.83
90th Percentile £81.45 £71.73 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £20.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +50.00% -33.33% +11.11%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 7,149 £525 - 3,780
London +1 3,739 £550 +0.92% 1,770
UK excluding London +2 3,581 £506 +1.71% 2,621
Work from Home 0 2,542 £525 +5.00% 1,818
North of England +9 1,042 £500 +5.26% 652
South East +2 915 £525 +5.00% 706
Midlands +2 645 £493 -3.90% 383
North West +7 533 £500 +5.26% 343
West Midlands +3 473 £493 -8.29% 220
South West +4 434 £550 +10.00% 325
Yorkshire +6 428 £500 +5.26% 215
Scotland +6 289 £500 +5.26% 202
East of England +2 180 £525 +5.00% 206
East Midlands +6 161 £500 +8.11% 162
North East +7 94 £500 - 99
Wales 0 89 £450 - 73
Northern Ireland +17 15 £650 - 110
Channel Islands 0 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
1 458 (5.48%) SharePoint
2 259 (3.10%) Confluence
3 199 (2.38%) Microsoft Exchange
4 185 (2.21%) Apache Spark
5 166 (1.98%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.39%) Apache
7 43 (0.51%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 28 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
10 24 (0.29%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) nginx
13 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
16 7 (0.084%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.084%) Mendix
17 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
17 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 125 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
3 72 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.48%) Chatbot
5 39 (0.47%) 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
1 130 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (0.88%) 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
10 5 (0.060%) 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 3,007 (35.95%) AWS
2 1,767 (21.13%) Azure DevOps
3 1,433 (17.13%) GCP
4 1,100 (13.15%) Entra ID
5 1,076 (12.86%) Power Platform
6 867 (10.37%) Microsoft 365
7 854 (10.21%) GitHub
8 497 (5.94%) GitHub Actions
9 482 (5.76%) Azure Data Factory
10 378 (4.52%) Serverless
11 363 (4.34%) SaaS
12 318 (3.80%) Azure Monitor
13 313 (3.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 294 (3.52%) Power Automate
15 286 (3.42%) Snowflake
16 285 (3.41%) Azure AKS
17 284 (3.40%) Dynamics 365
18 283 (3.38%) PowerApps
19 237 (2.83%) Azure AI
20 234 (2.80%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 534 (6.38%) Firewall
2 421 (5.03%) DNS
3 315 (3.77%) VPN
4 310 (3.71%) Network Security
5 225 (2.69%) DHCP
6 190 (2.27%) WAN
7 164 (1.96%) TCP/IP
8 112 (1.34%) LAN
9 109 (1.30%) BGP
10 100 (1.20%) SD-WAN
11 92 (1.10%) VLAN
12 87 (1.04%) OSPF
13 84 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.90%) SSL
15 63 (0.75%) SAN
16 60 (0.72%) Wireless
17 47 (0.56%) HTTP
17 47 (0.56%) IPsec
18 46 (0.55%) VXLAN
19 39 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 719 (8.60%) Power BI
2 480 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 417 (4.99%) Data Warehouse
4 386 (4.62%) Data Lake
5 297 (3.55%) PostgreSQL
6 251 (3.00%) Metadata
7 218 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 213 (2.55%) Azure SQL Database
9 143 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 134 (1.60%) Delta Lake
11 111 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 106 (1.27%) MongoDB
13 98 (1.17%) Big Data
14 93 (1.11%) MySQL
15 73 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
16 66 (0.79%) Tableau
17 63 (0.75%) Redis
18 60 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
18 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
18 60 (0.72%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 704 (8.42%) Git
2 611 (7.31%) JIRA
3 467 (5.58%) Jenkins
4 368 (4.40%) GitLab
5 132 (1.58%) Selenium
6 79 (0.94%) Postman
7 63 (0.75%) JUnit
8 61 (0.73%) Cypress.io
9 60 (0.72%) JMeter
10 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 55 (0.66%) Maven
12 50 (0.60%) Claude Code
12 50 (0.60%) Cucumber
13 46 (0.55%) Gradle
13 46 (0.55%) REST Assured
14 45 (0.54%) Visual Studio
15 39 (0.47%) WebDriver
16 36 (0.43%) MLflow
17 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
18 31 (0.37%) Gatling
General
1 2,287 (27.34%) Social Skills
2 1,575 (18.83%) Finance
3 958 (11.45%) Public Sector
4 822 (9.83%) Analytical Skills
5 462 (5.52%) Banking
6 226 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 207 (2.47%) Retail
9 183 (2.19%) 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 76 (0.91%) Investment Banking
17 74 (0.88%) Law
17 74 (0.88%) Military
18 60 (0.72%) Financial Institution
18 60 (0.72%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,575 (18.83%) Architect
2 1,056 (12.63%) Senior
3 994 (11.88%) Developer
4 736 (8.80%) Azure Engineer
5 681 (8.14%) Lead
6 612 (7.32%) Data Engineer
7 488 (5.83%) Analyst
8 473 (5.66%) Solutions Architect
9 463 (5.54%) DevOps Engineer
10 366 (4.38%) Cloud Engineer
11 325 (3.89%) Consultant
12 319 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 273 (3.26%) Data Architect
14 243 (2.91%) Platform Engineer
15 223 (2.67%) Azure Architect
16 207 (2.47%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 199 (2.38%) Technical Architect
18 194 (2.32%) Security Architect
19 190 (2.27%) Project Manager
20 189 (2.26%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,405 (16.80%) Terraform
2 693 (8.29%) REST
3 634 (7.58%) .NET
4 384 (4.59%) Kafka
5 306 (3.66%) React
6 290 (3.47%) RESTful
7 281 (3.36%) PySpark
8 256 (3.06%) OAuth
9 230 (2.75%) JSON
10 198 (2.37%) Spring
11 180 (2.15%) Spring Boot
12 158 (1.89%) Node.js
13 156 (1.87%) OpenID
14 152 (1.82%) HTML
15 151 (1.81%) SAML
16 150 (1.79%) AngularJS
17 149 (1.78%) OAuth2
18 139 (1.66%) Playwright
19 135 (1.61%) Middleware
20 134 (1.60%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 931 (11.13%) Cloud Native
2 409 (4.89%) Onboarding
3 375 (4.48%) Product Ownership
4 291 (3.48%) Enterprise Software
5 289 (3.46%) AI Agents
6 282 (3.37%) Hybrid Cloud
7 268 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
8 249 (2.98%) Data Centre
9 231 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
10 176 (2.10%) Security Posture
11 165 (1.97%) Management Information System
12 147 (1.76%) Data Structures
13 138 (1.65%) Public Cloud
14 115 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
15 114 (1.36%) PKI
16 112 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
17 107 (1.28%) Replication
18 95 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
19 83 (0.99%) CMDB
20 79 (0.94%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 993 (11.87%) Windows
2 522 (6.24%) Linux
3 377 (4.51%) Windows Server
4 135 (1.61%) Windows 10
5 90 (1.08%) Unix
6 88 (1.05%) Android
7 84 (1.00%) Apple iOS
8 83 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 73 (0.87%) Mac OS
10 59 (0.71%) VMS
11 53 (0.63%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.24%) CentOS
12 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.16%) 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 3,092 (36.97%) DevOps
2 2,642 (31.59%) CI/CD
3 2,093 (25.02%) Agile
4 1,420 (16.98%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,397 (16.70%) AI
5 1,397 (16.70%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,236 (14.78%) Migration
7 1,163 (13.90%) Analytics
8 1,132 (13.53%) Problem-Solving
9 953 (11.39%) Continuous Improvement
10 926 (11.07%) Data Modelling
11 835 (9.98%) Roadmaps
12 803 (9.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 780 (9.33%) Containerisation
14 776 (9.28%) Business Intelligence
14 776 (9.28%) Data Pipeline
15 732 (8.75%) Microservices
16 731 (8.74%) Technical Leadership
17 712 (8.51%) Test Automation
18 675 (8.07%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,920 (22.96%) Python
2 1,631 (19.50%) SQL
3 874 (10.45%) PowerShell
4 684 (8.18%) Java
5 602 (7.20%) C#
6 496 (5.93%) JavaScript
7 401 (4.79%) Bash
8 354 (4.23%) Bicep
9 295 (3.53%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.82%) Go
13 66 (0.79%) Scala
14 63 (0.75%) Shell Script
15 55 (0.66%) 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 2,166 (25.90%) Security Cleared
2 1,747 (20.89%) SC Cleared
3 569 (6.80%) Degree
4 466 (5.57%) Azure Certification
5 299 (3.57%) DV Cleared
6 275 (3.29%) CISSP
7 266 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
8 244 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
9 210 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
10 203 (2.43%) AWS Certification
11 183 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
12 140 (1.67%) CISM
13 97 (1.16%) CCNP
14 91 (1.09%) PMI Certification
15 90 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 87 (1.04%) PMP
17 68 (0.81%) ISTQB
18 62 (0.74%) CCSP
18 62 (0.74%) Master's Degree
19 50 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 616 (7.36%) Data Quality
2 462 (5.52%) QA
3 312 (3.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 312 (3.73%) NIST
4 306 (3.66%) GDPR
5 199 (2.38%) Accessibility
6 122 (1.46%) NCSC
7 109 (1.30%) SLA
8 82 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
9 81 (0.97%) WCAG
10 79 (0.94%) GRC
11 74 (0.88%) PCI DSS
12 58 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 57 (0.68%) PMO
14 45 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 30 (0.36%) SOC 2
16 26 (0.31%) HIPAA
17 24 (0.29%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,024 (12.24%) Active Directory
2 924 (11.05%) Docker
3 253 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
5 143 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
6 137 (1.64%) Hyper-V
7 67 (0.80%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) 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%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 1,293 (15.46%) Kubernetes
2 454 (5.43%) Ansible
3 438 (5.24%) Microsoft Intune
4 259 (3.10%) Grafana
5 205 (2.45%) Prometheus
6 151 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
7 129 (1.54%) SCCM
8 62 (0.74%) Progress Chef
9 61 (0.73%) Argo
10 47 (0.56%) Puppet
11 37 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 33 (0.39%) SCOM
14 23 (0.27%) Istio
14 23 (0.27%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.24%) QRadar
16 18 (0.22%) Packer
17 17 (0.20%) CASB
17 17 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,948 (35.25%) Microsoft
2 862 (10.31%) Databricks
3 415 (4.96%) ServiceNow
4 367 (4.39%) VMware
5 364 (4.35%) Google
6 338 (4.04%) Oracle
7 251 (3.00%) Cisco
8 224 (2.68%) SAP
9 213 (2.55%) Splunk
10 204 (2.44%) OpenAI
11 181 (2.16%) Salesforce
12 157 (1.88%) Palo Alto
13 155 (1.85%) CyberArk
14 136 (1.63%) Foundry
15 116 (1.39%) Dynatrace
16 97 (1.16%) Informatica
17 89 (1.06%) Zscaler
18 83 (0.99%) Okta
19 82 (0.98%) Fortinet
20 78 (0.93%) MuleSoft