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 1 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,587 4,502 5,868
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.50% 15.45% 13.65%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.53% 40.83% 42.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,351 3,163 4,253
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 34 50
10th Percentile £19.25 £24.16 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £26.91 £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 £76.96 £61.19
90th Percentile £90.00 £96.25 £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 17,428 11,025 13,965
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.61% 37.84% 32.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,704 7,509 9,922
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.34% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £619 £634
90th Percentile £705 £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 555 261 348
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.16 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.32 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £35.91 £27.76 £21.46
Median % change year-on-year +29.36% +29.36% -43.15%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.12 £41.19
90th Percentile £81.15 £71.25 £69.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.06 £19.97 £17.80
% change year-on-year +85.58% +12.19% -35.27%

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 1 June 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 1 June 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 1 June 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 6,424 £525 - 3,407
London +1 3,424 £539 -2.00% 1,350
UK excluding London +2 3,199 £500 - 2,513
Work from Home 0 2,333 £525 +2.44% 1,617
North of England +5 932 £500 +5.26% 650
South East +2 815 £500 - 681
Midlands 0 513 £493 +0.10% 357
North West +3 470 £500 +5.26% 373
South West +6 396 £525 - 337
Yorkshire +7 386 £500 +11.11% 165
West Midlands +1 374 £500 -4.76% 230
Scotland +12 310 £525 +8.47% 166
East of England +4 155 £550 -5.17% 202
East Midlands +5 129 £463 - 127
Wales 0 104 £411 +2.75% 84
North East 0 86 £525 +2.44% 112
Northern Ireland +15 18 £531 +11.84% 72
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
2 215 (2.83%) Confluence
3 198 (2.61%) Apache Spark
4 190 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
5 108 (1.42%) Apache
5 108 (1.42%) Apache Airflow
6 26 (0.34%) IIS
6 26 (0.34%) SAS
7 19 (0.25%) CMS
8 16 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
9 15 (0.20%) Mendix
9 15 (0.20%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
10 12 (0.16%) Appian
10 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
11 11 (0.14%) Camunda
12 10 (0.13%) nginx
13 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
Applications
1 103 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.26%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.092%) AutoCAD
7 7 (0.092%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.066%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.066%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.066%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.053%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.053%) Notion
9 4 (0.053%) Revit
9 4 (0.053%) Trello
10 3 (0.040%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.013%) InDesign
11 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.013%) Sketch
11 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 102 (1.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 84 (1.11%) 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%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.079%) NEC Housing
7 6 (0.079%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.079%) Shopify
7 6 (0.079%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.066%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.066%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.053%) Dynamics GP
9 4 (0.053%) Endur
9 4 (0.053%) Magento
9 4 (0.053%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,596 (34.22%) AWS
2 1,541 (20.31%) Azure DevOps
3 1,311 (17.28%) GCP
4 971 (12.80%) Power Platform
5 919 (12.11%) Entra ID
6 790 (10.41%) Microsoft 365
7 707 (9.32%) GitHub
8 499 (6.58%) Azure Data Factory
9 424 (5.59%) GitHub Actions
10 380 (5.01%) Serverless
11 326 (4.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 293 (3.86%) SaaS
13 277 (3.65%) Azure AKS
14 259 (3.41%) Power Automate
15 249 (3.28%) Dynamics 365
16 239 (3.15%) Azure Monitor
17 233 (3.07%) PaaS
18 222 (2.93%) PowerApps
19 204 (2.69%) Azure Functions
20 199 (2.62%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 453 (5.97%) Firewall
2 333 (4.39%) DNS
3 261 (3.44%) Network Security
4 258 (3.40%) VPN
5 213 (2.81%) WAN
6 177 (2.33%) DHCP
7 138 (1.82%) LAN
8 120 (1.58%) SD-WAN
9 96 (1.27%) TCP/IP
10 88 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
11 80 (1.05%) BGP
12 73 (0.96%) VLAN
13 68 (0.90%) OSPF
14 67 (0.88%) Kerberos
15 52 (0.69%) SAN
15 52 (0.69%) SSL
16 49 (0.65%) VXLAN
17 43 (0.57%) IPsec
17 43 (0.57%) Wireless
18 36 (0.47%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 639 (8.42%) Power BI
2 442 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 375 (4.94%) Data Lake
4 368 (4.85%) Data Warehouse
5 252 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
6 239 (3.15%) Azure SQL Database
7 198 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 174 (2.29%) Metadata
9 150 (1.98%) Delta Lake
10 121 (1.59%) Big Data
11 115 (1.52%) Relational Database
12 97 (1.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 94 (1.24%) MongoDB
14 77 (1.01%) Tableau
15 74 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
16 69 (0.91%) MySQL
17 65 (0.86%) BigQuery
18 64 (0.84%) Oracle Database
19 53 (0.70%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 535 (7.05%) Git
2 532 (7.01%) JIRA
3 389 (5.13%) Jenkins
4 323 (4.26%) GitLab
5 122 (1.61%) Selenium
6 81 (1.07%) Postman
7 73 (0.96%) JMeter
8 65 (0.86%) Cucumber
9 59 (0.78%) JUnit
10 53 (0.70%) REST Assured
11 47 (0.62%) MLflow
11 47 (0.62%) SonarQube
12 39 (0.51%) Cypress.io
12 39 (0.51%) Visual Studio
13 37 (0.49%) WebDriver
14 33 (0.43%) Artifactory
15 32 (0.42%) Gatling
16 30 (0.40%) Maven
17 25 (0.33%) NUnit
17 25 (0.33%) TestRail
General
1 1,920 (25.31%) Social Skills
2 1,375 (18.12%) Finance
3 836 (11.02%) Public Sector
4 670 (8.83%) Analytical Skills
5 386 (5.09%) Banking
6 220 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
7 194 (2.56%) Legal
8 127 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 119 (1.57%) Retail
10 90 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 74 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
12 71 (0.94%) Financial Institution
13 68 (0.90%) Investment Banking
14 67 (0.88%) Marketing
15 64 (0.84%) Front Office
15 64 (0.84%) Law
16 60 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
17 56 (0.74%) Telecoms
18 44 (0.58%) Manufacturing
19 43 (0.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,331 (17.54%) Architect
2 955 (12.59%) Developer
3 899 (11.85%) Senior
4 670 (8.83%) Azure Engineer
5 598 (7.88%) Data Engineer
6 577 (7.61%) Lead
7 471 (6.21%) Analyst
8 413 (5.44%) DevOps Engineer
9 358 (4.72%) Solutions Architect
10 312 (4.11%) Consultant
11 257 (3.39%) Cloud Engineer
12 255 (3.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 212 (2.79%) Azure Architect
14 207 (2.73%) Security Engineer
15 206 (2.72%) Data Architect
16 173 (2.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 173 (2.28%) Platform Engineer
17 170 (2.24%) Technical Architect
18 162 (2.14%) Project Manager
19 157 (2.07%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 612 (8.07%) .NET
2 521 (6.87%) REST
3 343 (4.52%) React
4 265 (3.49%) Kafka
5 264 (3.48%) PySpark
6 245 (3.23%) RESTful
7 219 (2.89%) OAuth
8 212 (2.79%) Node.js
9 198 (2.61%) Spring
10 182 (2.40%) AngularJS
11 177 (2.33%) LDAP
12 167 (2.20%) Spring Boot
13 161 (2.12%) JSON
14 142 (1.87%) HTML
15 140 (1.85%) OpenID
16 136 (1.79%) SAML
17 135 (1.78%) SOAP
18 129 (1.70%) Middleware
19 119 (1.57%) CSS
20 113 (1.49%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 755 (9.95%) Cloud Native
2 311 (4.10%) Onboarding
3 290 (3.82%) Product Ownership
4 242 (3.19%) Data Centre
5 220 (2.90%) Hybrid Cloud
6 191 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
7 178 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
8 172 (2.27%) Security Posture
9 168 (2.21%) Enterprise Software
10 156 (2.06%) Public Cloud
11 146 (1.92%) AI Agents
12 101 (1.33%) Data Structures
13 98 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
14 95 (1.25%) Replication
15 87 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 82 (1.08%) Low-Code
17 80 (1.05%) PKI
18 67 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
19 66 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
20 64 (0.84%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 854 (11.26%) Windows
2 395 (5.21%) Linux
3 261 (3.44%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 74 (0.98%) Mac OS
6 72 (0.95%) Apple iOS
6 72 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 72 (0.95%) Unix
7 69 (0.91%) VMS
8 60 (0.79%) Android
9 33 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
10 29 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 21 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
12 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.14%) CentOS
15 10 (0.13%) Debian
16 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.092%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,829 (37.29%) DevOps
2 2,357 (31.07%) CI/CD
3 1,772 (23.36%) Agile
4 1,099 (14.49%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,064 (14.02%) Analytics
6 1,063 (14.01%) Migration
7 1,054 (13.89%) Problem-Solving
8 1,046 (13.79%) AI
9 851 (11.22%) Data Modelling
10 786 (10.36%) Stakeholder Management
11 729 (9.61%) Continuous Improvement
12 719 (9.48%) Data Pipeline
13 693 (9.13%) Business Intelligence
14 679 (8.95%) ETL
15 678 (8.94%) Containerisation
16 672 (8.86%) Roadmaps
17 662 (8.73%) Microservices
18 640 (8.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 597 (7.87%) Data Engineering
20 594 (7.83%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,775 (23.40%) Python
2 1,569 (20.68%) SQL
3 764 (10.07%) PowerShell
4 621 (8.19%) Java
5 618 (8.15%) C#
6 454 (5.98%) JavaScript
7 293 (3.86%) TypeScript
8 261 (3.44%) Bash
9 258 (3.40%) Bicep
10 89 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 89 (1.17%) T-SQL
11 86 (1.13%) Scala
12 78 (1.03%) Go
13 54 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
14 50 (0.66%) Shell Script
15 41 (0.54%) PL/SQL
16 39 (0.51%) R
17 32 (0.42%) C++
18 27 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 17 (0.22%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,850 (24.38%) Security Cleared
2 1,565 (20.63%) SC Cleared
3 528 (6.96%) Degree
4 393 (5.18%) Azure Certification
5 232 (3.06%) CISSP
6 192 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
7 186 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
8 185 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
9 169 (2.23%) DV Cleared
10 157 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
11 151 (1.99%) AWS Certification
12 128 (1.69%) CISM
13 89 (1.17%) CCNP
14 76 (1.00%) PMP
15 73 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 71 (0.94%) PMI Certification
17 61 (0.80%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.75%) ISTQB
18 57 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
19 49 (0.65%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 525 (6.92%) Data Quality
2 398 (5.25%) QA
3 345 (4.55%) GDPR
4 284 (3.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 267 (3.52%) NIST
6 149 (1.96%) Accessibility
7 107 (1.41%) NCSC
8 91 (1.20%) SLA
9 78 (1.03%) PCI DSS
10 72 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 52 (0.69%) GRC
12 52 (0.69%) WCAG
13 49 (0.65%) 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
1 919 (12.11%) Active Directory
2 787 (10.37%) Docker
3 219 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 121 (1.59%) Virtual Desktop
5 120 (1.58%) Hyper-V
6 110 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
7 70 (0.92%) vSphere
8 47 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.40%) Firmware
10 29 (0.38%) VMware NSX
11 22 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.11%) Varnish
15 7 (0.092%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.079%) Ceph
16 6 (0.079%) HDFS
16 6 (0.079%) KVM
16 6 (0.079%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,186 (15.63%) Terraform
2 1,078 (14.21%) Kubernetes
3 389 (5.13%) Microsoft Intune
4 358 (4.72%) Ansible
5 215 (2.83%) Grafana
6 188 (2.48%) Prometheus
7 168 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
8 108 (1.42%) SCCM
9 73 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.53%) Argo
11 38 (0.50%) Progress Chef
12 36 (0.47%) FortiGate
12 36 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.47%) Puppet
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 15 (0.20%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 2,414 (31.82%) Microsoft
2 759 (10.00%) Databricks
3 316 (4.17%) ServiceNow
4 301 (3.97%) VMware
5 297 (3.91%) Google
6 281 (3.70%) Oracle
7 214 (2.82%) SAP
8 212 (2.79%) Cisco
9 183 (2.41%) OpenAI
10 166 (2.19%) Splunk
11 141 (1.86%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.85%) CyberArk
13 118 (1.56%) Salesforce
14 106 (1.40%) Foundry
15 105 (1.38%) Okta
16 78 (1.03%) Dynatrace
17 76 (1.00%) Citrix
18 72 (0.95%) Informatica
19 70 (0.92%) Red Hat
20 67 (0.88%) Zscaler