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 8 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,091 4,816 6,047
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.51% 15.08% 14.02%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.84% 39.97% 42.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,654 3,332 4,345
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 40 53
10th Percentile £18.65 £25.90 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.19 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% +25.60% -23.38%
75th Percentile £75.88 £77.80 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.50 £100.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £70.00 £52.75
% change year-on-year -17.86% +32.70% -11.94%

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 18,455 12,049 14,273
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.37% 37.72% 33.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,256 8,059 10,019
10th Percentile £328 £313 £300
25th Percentile £415 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 613 302 358
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £27.63 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.72% +25.59% -37.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £46.18
90th Percentile £82.34 £70.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £20.99
% change year-on-year +98.73% -10.08% -20.75%

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 8 July 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 8 July 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 8 July 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 6,881 £525 - 2,906
London +1 3,600 £550 - 1,244
UK excluding London +3 3,507 £510 +2.00% 2,224
Work from Home -1 2,501 £525 +2.44% 1,903
North of England +7 1,016 £500 +2.83% 571
South East +2 857 £520 +4.00% 668
Midlands +3 606 £500 +1.32% 291
North West +8 531 £500 - 320
West Midlands +1 453 £500 -4.76% 168
South West +6 438 £540 +8.00% 256
Yorkshire +4 404 £500 +5.32% 178
Scotland +12 319 £525 +5.85% 98
East of England +3 184 £550 - 182
East Midlands +4 142 £500 +8.11% 122
Wales -1 113 £425 +1.37% 90
North East +1 94 £525 +5.00% 82
Northern Ireland +16 19 £538 +13.16% 110
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 396 (4.89%) SharePoint
2 267 (3.30%) Confluence
3 194 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 190 (2.35%) Apache Spark
5 130 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
6 122 (1.51%) Apache
7 41 (0.51%) SAS
8 30 (0.37%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 18 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 17 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.12%) Camunda
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.099%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.099%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.087%) Appian
Applications
1 114 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 74 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 29 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.099%) Revit
9 8 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.062%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.062%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
11 4 (0.049%) Trello
12 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.012%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.012%) Houdini
13 1 (0.012%) InDesign
13 1 (0.012%) NUKE
13 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 105 (1.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 81 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.099%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.099%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.087%) Maximo
8 7 (0.087%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.074%) Endur
9 6 (0.074%) Magento
9 6 (0.074%) Shopify
9 6 (0.074%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.062%) SAP MM
11 4 (0.049%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.049%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.049%) Remedy AR System
11 4 (0.049%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,860 (35.35%) AWS
2 1,653 (20.43%) Azure DevOps
3 1,361 (16.82%) GCP
4 1,027 (12.69%) Power Platform
5 1,001 (12.37%) Entra ID
6 801 (9.90%) Microsoft 365
7 758 (9.37%) GitHub
8 462 (5.71%) GitHub Actions
9 455 (5.62%) Azure Data Factory
10 371 (4.59%) Serverless
11 321 (3.97%) SaaS
12 317 (3.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 292 (3.61%) Azure AKS
14 272 (3.36%) Azure Monitor
15 269 (3.32%) Power Automate
16 256 (3.16%) PowerApps
17 251 (3.10%) PaaS
18 240 (2.97%) Dynamics 365
19 220 (2.72%) Azure AI
19 220 (2.72%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 480 (5.93%) Firewall
2 369 (4.56%) DNS
3 288 (3.56%) VPN
4 279 (3.45%) Network Security
5 216 (2.67%) WAN
6 185 (2.29%) DHCP
7 137 (1.69%) LAN
8 119 (1.47%) TCP/IP
9 117 (1.45%) SD-WAN
10 108 (1.33%) BGP
11 83 (1.03%) OSPF
11 83 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
12 77 (0.95%) VLAN
13 68 (0.84%) SSL
14 57 (0.70%) Kerberos
15 54 (0.67%) SAN
16 53 (0.66%) IPsec
17 50 (0.62%) Wireless
18 48 (0.59%) VXLAN
19 43 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 692 (8.55%) Power BI
2 465 (5.75%) SQL Server
3 379 (4.68%) Data Warehouse
4 355 (4.39%) Data Lake
5 294 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
6 217 (2.68%) Azure SQL Database
7 212 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 199 (2.46%) Metadata
9 142 (1.76%) Delta Lake
10 134 (1.66%) Relational Database
11 121 (1.50%) Big Data
12 108 (1.33%) MongoDB
13 88 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 77 (0.95%) MySQL
15 75 (0.93%) Tableau
16 70 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
17 66 (0.82%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 56 (0.69%) Star Schema
20 53 (0.66%) Redis
Development Applications
1 624 (7.71%) JIRA
2 604 (7.47%) Git
3 429 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 320 (3.96%) GitLab
5 126 (1.56%) Selenium
6 81 (1.00%) Postman
7 77 (0.95%) JMeter
8 65 (0.80%) JUnit
9 61 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 58 (0.72%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.59%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.58%) Cypress.io
13 43 (0.53%) MLflow
13 43 (0.53%) Visual Studio
14 41 (0.51%) WebDriver
15 32 (0.40%) Gatling
15 32 (0.40%) Maven
16 30 (0.37%) LoadRunner
17 28 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
18 25 (0.31%) NUnit
General
1 2,040 (25.21%) Social Skills
2 1,507 (18.63%) Finance
3 911 (11.26%) Public Sector
4 742 (9.17%) Analytical Skills
5 423 (5.23%) Banking
6 230 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 208 (2.57%) Legal
8 169 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 165 (2.04%) Retail
10 101 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
11 83 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 76 (0.94%) Telecoms
13 70 (0.87%) Investment Banking
14 69 (0.85%) Front Office
14 69 (0.85%) Marketing
15 68 (0.84%) Manufacturing
16 67 (0.83%) Financial Institution
16 67 (0.83%) Law
17 56 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
18 52 (0.64%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,451 (17.93%) Architect
2 1,048 (12.95%) Developer
3 981 (12.12%) Senior
4 713 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 629 (7.77%) Lead
6 618 (7.64%) Data Engineer
7 488 (6.03%) Analyst
8 412 (5.09%) DevOps Engineer
9 411 (5.08%) Solutions Architect
10 336 (4.15%) Consultant
11 299 (3.70%) Cloud Engineer
12 269 (3.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 233 (2.88%) Data Architect
14 226 (2.79%) Azure Architect
15 206 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
16 203 (2.51%) Technical Architect
17 187 (2.31%) Security Engineer
18 178 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 178 (2.20%) Business Analyst
19 174 (2.15%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 642 (7.93%) .NET
2 577 (7.13%) REST
3 348 (4.30%) React
4 303 (3.74%) Kafka
5 283 (3.50%) RESTful
6 262 (3.24%) PySpark
7 239 (2.95%) OAuth
8 225 (2.78%) Spring
9 221 (2.73%) Node.js
10 193 (2.39%) Spring Boot
11 187 (2.31%) AngularJS
12 180 (2.22%) JSON
13 151 (1.87%) HTML
13 151 (1.87%) SAML
14 146 (1.80%) OpenID
15 141 (1.74%) LDAP
16 130 (1.61%) .NET Framework
17 126 (1.56%) OAuth2
18 124 (1.53%) Middleware
18 124 (1.53%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 857 (10.59%) Cloud Native
2 347 (4.29%) Onboarding
3 322 (3.98%) Product Ownership
4 258 (3.19%) Data Centre
5 245 (3.03%) Distributed Systems
6 231 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
7 222 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
8 193 (2.39%) AI Agents
9 173 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
10 158 (1.95%) Security Posture
11 147 (1.82%) Public Cloud
12 114 (1.41%) Data Structures
13 112 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
14 109 (1.35%) Management Information System
15 105 (1.30%) Replication
16 89 (1.10%) PKI
17 88 (1.09%) Enterprise Cloud
18 84 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
19 75 (0.93%) Low-Code
20 74 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 922 (11.40%) Windows
2 419 (5.18%) Linux
3 300 (3.71%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 77 (0.95%) Unix
6 74 (0.91%) Apple iOS
7 73 (0.90%) Android
7 73 (0.90%) Mac OS
7 73 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 58 (0.72%) VMS
9 37 (0.46%) Ubuntu
10 31 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
11 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
12 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
12 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.14%) CentOS
14 10 (0.12%) Debian
15 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.087%) CoreOS
16 7 (0.087%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,993 (36.99%) DevOps
2 2,540 (31.39%) CI/CD
3 1,982 (24.50%) Agile
4 1,226 (15.15%) AI
5 1,214 (15.00%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,161 (14.35%) Migration
7 1,134 (14.02%) Analytics
8 1,079 (13.34%) Problem-Solving
9 963 (11.90%) Stakeholder Management
10 911 (11.26%) Data Modelling
11 817 (10.10%) Continuous Improvement
12 775 (9.58%) Data Pipeline
13 765 (9.45%) Containerisation
14 752 (9.29%) Roadmaps
15 748 (9.24%) Microservices
16 737 (9.11%) Business Intelligence
17 709 (8.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 678 (8.38%) ETL
19 668 (8.26%) Test Automation
20 653 (8.07%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,892 (23.38%) Python
2 1,607 (19.86%) SQL
3 765 (9.45%) PowerShell
4 680 (8.40%) Java
5 631 (7.80%) C#
6 471 (5.82%) JavaScript
7 324 (4.00%) TypeScript
8 292 (3.61%) Bash
9 279 (3.45%) Bicep
10 93 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 92 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 83 (1.03%) Go
13 77 (0.95%) Scala
14 52 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
15 49 (0.61%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.54%) R
17 35 (0.43%) Kotlin
18 34 (0.42%) PL/SQL
19 26 (0.32%) Groovy
20 25 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,992 (24.62%) Security Cleared
2 1,650 (20.39%) SC Cleared
3 574 (7.09%) Degree
4 413 (5.10%) Azure Certification
5 249 (3.08%) CISSP
6 227 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
7 218 (2.69%) DV Cleared
8 198 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
9 197 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
10 190 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
11 180 (2.22%) AWS Certification
12 125 (1.54%) CISM
13 96 (1.19%) CCNP
14 80 (0.99%) PMP
15 76 (0.94%) PMI Certification
16 75 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 65 (0.80%) Master's Degree
18 64 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 56 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
20 51 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 552 (6.82%) Data Quality
2 416 (5.14%) QA
3 344 (4.25%) GDPR
4 282 (3.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 272 (3.36%) NIST
6 184 (2.27%) Accessibility
7 116 (1.43%) NCSC
8 97 (1.20%) SLA
9 74 (0.91%) PCI DSS
10 73 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
11 66 (0.82%) WCAG
12 65 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 62 (0.77%) GRC
14 45 (0.56%) PMO
15 38 (0.47%) HIPAA
16 29 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 23 (0.28%) NIST 800
19 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 20 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 957 (11.83%) Active Directory
2 859 (10.62%) Docker
3 226 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
5 135 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
6 114 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.85%) vSphere
8 52 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.41%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.36%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.11%) IAG
15 8 (0.099%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.099%) Varnish
16 6 (0.074%) Ceph
16 6 (0.074%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.062%) RACF
17 5 (0.062%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,294 (15.99%) Terraform
2 1,179 (14.57%) Kubernetes
3 425 (5.25%) Microsoft Intune
4 376 (4.65%) Ansible
5 237 (2.93%) Grafana
6 199 (2.46%) Prometheus
7 167 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
8 106 (1.31%) SCCM
9 68 (0.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.63%) Argo
11 48 (0.59%) Jamf Pro
12 43 (0.53%) Progress Chef
13 41 (0.51%) Puppet
14 38 (0.47%) FortiGate
15 31 (0.38%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
17 20 (0.25%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.21%) Packer
19 13 (0.16%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,583 (31.92%) Microsoft
2 759 (9.38%) Databricks
3 377 (4.66%) ServiceNow
4 317 (3.92%) Google
5 308 (3.81%) VMware
6 306 (3.78%) Oracle
7 226 (2.79%) SAP
8 213 (2.63%) Cisco
9 200 (2.47%) OpenAI
10 167 (2.06%) Splunk
11 152 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 143 (1.77%) Palo Alto
13 130 (1.61%) Foundry
14 125 (1.54%) CyberArk
15 107 (1.32%) Okta
16 96 (1.19%) Dynatrace
17 90 (1.11%) Informatica
18 88 (1.09%) Zscaler
19 77 (0.95%) Citrix
20 74 (0.91%) Fortinet