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 30 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,190 4,838 6,210
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.01% 15.38% 14.00%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.16% 41.60% 41.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,386 3,271 4,539
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £736
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 41 86
10th Percentile £18.33 £21.25 £17.75
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £29.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +98.28% -37.20% -9.45%
75th Percentile £67.63 £55.00 £62.38
90th Percentile £91.88 £75.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +91.67% -35.04% -28.95%

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 14,682 11,631 14,864
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.98% 36.98% 33.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,107 7,731 10,660
10th Percentile £306 £313 £285
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -1.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 169 313
10th Percentile £14.25 £17.35 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.54
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.50 £23.22
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% +18.46% -3.27%
75th Percentile £58.75 £43.75 £51.58
90th Percentile £79.88 £69.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.00 £21.00
% change year-on-year +30.00% +19.05% +5.79%

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 30 January 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 30 January 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 30 January 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 5,240 £520 -1.89% 3,056
London 0 2,819 £540 -1.82% 977
UK excluding London 0 2,539 £500 - 2,732
Work from Home -2 1,897 £515 -1.44% 1,572
North of England 0 689 £475 - 615
South East -2 653 £492 -8.47% 928
Midlands -1 448 £515 -1.90% 355
North West -1 346 £450 - 348
West Midlands +1 337 £550 - 177
South West +3 324 £512 -2.57% 301
Yorkshire -2 300 £475 - 186
Scotland +7 286 £550 +18.03% 180
East of England 0 143 £525 +16.67% 275
East Midlands -3 110 £436 -3.11% 174
Wales -3 62 £410 -16.33% 103
North East -4 46 £488 -3.70% 85
Northern Ireland +6 10 £475 - 31
Channel Islands +3 2 £600 +101.68% 1

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
1 284 (4.59%) SharePoint
2 198 (3.20%) Microsoft Exchange
3 155 (2.50%) Apache Spark
3 155 (2.50%) Confluence
4 83 (1.34%) Apache
5 81 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
6 27 (0.44%) OpenStack
7 26 (0.42%) CMS
7 26 (0.42%) SAS
8 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
8 14 (0.23%) IIS
9 13 (0.21%) Appian
9 13 (0.21%) Camunda
9 13 (0.21%) nginx
10 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
10 12 (0.19%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 10 (0.16%) GeoServer
12 10 (0.16%) SugarCRM
13 9 (0.15%) Mendix
Applications
1 135 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 103 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.78%) MS Visio
5 40 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
6 13 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.15%) Trello
8 8 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.081%) Weka
10 4 (0.065%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.016%) FrameMaker
13 1 (0.016%) Revit
Business Applications
1 110 (1.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.15%) Maximo
5 9 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Endur
6 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.097%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.097%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle ERP
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,174 (35.12%) AWS
2 1,237 (19.98%) Azure DevOps
3 1,214 (19.61%) GCP
4 835 (13.49%) Power Platform
5 721 (11.65%) Entra ID
6 714 (11.53%) Microsoft 365
7 639 (10.32%) GitHub
8 433 (7.00%) Azure Data Factory
9 383 (6.19%) Serverless
10 366 (5.91%) GitHub Actions
11 294 (4.75%) Dynamics 365
12 282 (4.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 260 (4.20%) SaaS
14 258 (4.17%) Power Automate
15 237 (3.83%) Azure AKS
16 228 (3.68%) Azure Functions
17 219 (3.54%) Snowflake
18 217 (3.51%) Azure Monitor
19 213 (3.44%) Azure Logic Apps
20 204 (3.30%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 421 (6.80%) Firewall
2 267 (4.31%) DNS
3 200 (3.23%) VPN
4 175 (2.83%) Network Security
5 160 (2.58%) DHCP
6 152 (2.46%) WAN
7 97 (1.57%) LAN
8 96 (1.55%) TCP/IP
9 77 (1.24%) SD-WAN
9 77 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
10 67 (1.08%) Kerberos
11 65 (1.05%) VLAN
12 62 (1.00%) HTTP
13 39 (0.63%) BGP
14 36 (0.58%) Internet
15 35 (0.57%) Wireless
16 31 (0.50%) MPLS
17 28 (0.45%) SSL
18 26 (0.42%) OSPF
18 26 (0.42%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 571 (9.22%) Power BI
2 363 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 307 (4.96%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.88%) Data Lake
5 229 (3.70%) PostgreSQL
6 219 (3.54%) Azure SQL Database
7 185 (2.99%) NoSQL
8 140 (2.26%) Metadata
9 129 (2.08%) Relational Database
10 100 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 88 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (1.41%) MongoDB
13 79 (1.28%) Big Data
14 78 (1.26%) MySQL
15 68 (1.10%) Oracle Database
15 68 (1.10%) Tableau
16 65 (1.05%) BigQuery
17 53 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
18 49 (0.79%) Redis
19 44 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 480 (7.75%) Git
2 443 (7.16%) JIRA
3 351 (5.67%) Jenkins
4 257 (4.15%) GitLab
5 108 (1.74%) Selenium
6 98 (1.58%) Postman
7 61 (0.99%) Cucumber
8 59 (0.95%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.89%) JUnit
10 54 (0.87%) JMeter
11 48 (0.78%) Cypress.io
12 43 (0.69%) REST Assured
13 41 (0.66%) Visual Studio
14 40 (0.65%) MLflow
15 37 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
16 31 (0.50%) Artifactory
17 30 (0.48%) Maven
18 29 (0.47%) Bitbucket
19 28 (0.45%) ERwin
19 28 (0.45%) TestRail
General
1 1,960 (31.66%) Social Skills
2 1,101 (17.79%) Finance
3 729 (11.78%) Public Sector
4 616 (9.95%) Analytical Skills
5 361 (5.83%) Banking
6 204 (3.30%) Documentation Skills
7 129 (2.08%) Legal
8 116 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 102 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
10 97 (1.57%) Marketing
11 90 (1.45%) Retail
12 87 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
13 73 (1.18%) Investment Banking
14 61 (0.99%) Telecoms
15 58 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
16 53 (0.86%) Financial Institution
16 53 (0.86%) Law
16 53 (0.86%) Manufacturing
17 40 (0.65%) Military
18 39 (0.63%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,001 (16.17%) Architect
2 900 (14.54%) Developer
3 633 (10.23%) Senior
4 497 (8.03%) Azure Engineer
5 477 (7.71%) Data Engineer
6 421 (6.80%) Lead
7 415 (6.70%) Analyst
8 334 (5.40%) DevOps Engineer
9 318 (5.14%) Solutions Architect
10 265 (4.28%) Consultant
11 184 (2.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 175 (2.83%) Security Engineer
13 160 (2.58%) Cloud Engineer
14 159 (2.57%) Senior Developer
15 150 (2.42%) Azure Architect
16 146 (2.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 133 (2.15%) Platform Engineer
18 130 (2.10%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 123 (1.99%) Data Architect
20 121 (1.95%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 511 (8.26%) .NET
2 446 (7.21%) REST
3 284 (4.59%) React
4 249 (4.02%) RESTful
5 229 (3.70%) PySpark
6 226 (3.65%) Kafka
7 207 (3.34%) Node.js
8 195 (3.15%) OAuth
9 191 (3.09%) Spring
10 177 (2.86%) Spring Boot
11 171 (2.76%) AngularJS
12 169 (2.73%) HTML
13 154 (2.49%) LDAP
14 148 (2.39%) JSON
14 148 (2.39%) SOAP
15 146 (2.36%) CSS
16 133 (2.15%) PyTorch
17 125 (2.02%) TensorFlow
18 116 (1.87%) SAML
19 111 (1.79%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 542 (8.76%) Cloud Native
2 231 (3.73%) Onboarding
3 213 (3.44%) Product Ownership
4 170 (2.75%) Hybrid Cloud
5 163 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
6 159 (2.57%) Security Posture
7 158 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 137 (2.21%) Data Centre
9 119 (1.92%) Public Cloud
10 99 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
11 90 (1.45%) Replication
12 86 (1.39%) AI Agents
13 76 (1.23%) Management Information System
14 72 (1.16%) Data Structures
15 68 (1.10%) Algorithms
16 67 (1.08%) Low-Code
17 62 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
18 60 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
19 59 (0.95%) NHS
20 56 (0.90%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 714 (11.53%) Windows
2 374 (6.04%) Linux
3 202 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 125 (2.02%) Windows 10
5 95 (1.53%) Unix
6 56 (0.90%) VMS
7 50 (0.81%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.73%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.71%) Android
10 37 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.18%) CentOS
14 9 (0.15%) Solaris
14 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.081%) AIX
17 3 (0.048%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,281 (36.85%) DevOps
2 1,872 (30.24%) CI/CD
3 1,538 (24.85%) Agile
4 1,185 (19.14%) Problem-Solving
5 913 (14.75%) Analytics
6 819 (13.23%) Infrastructure as Code
7 815 (13.17%) AI
8 734 (11.86%) Migration
9 646 (10.44%) Business Intelligence
10 641 (10.36%) Stakeholder Management
11 623 (10.06%) Containerisation
12 599 (9.68%) Data Modelling
13 549 (8.87%) Continuous Improvement
14 532 (8.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 531 (8.58%) Machine Learning
16 520 (8.40%) ETL
17 518 (8.37%) Microservices
18 509 (8.22%) Test Automation
19 504 (8.14%) Data Pipeline
20 451 (7.29%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,583 (25.57%) Python
2 1,343 (21.70%) SQL
3 687 (11.10%) PowerShell
4 543 (8.77%) Java
5 542 (8.76%) C#
6 470 (7.59%) JavaScript
7 263 (4.25%) TypeScript
8 262 (4.23%) Bash
9 182 (2.94%) Bicep
10 96 (1.55%) Scala
11 86 (1.39%) Go
12 81 (1.31%) PL/SQL
13 68 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
14 66 (1.07%) T-SQL
15 61 (0.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 51 (0.82%) R
16 51 (0.82%) Shell Script
17 41 (0.66%) C++
18 34 (0.55%) PHP
19 24 (0.39%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,439 (23.25%) Security Cleared
2 1,191 (19.24%) SC Cleared
3 517 (8.35%) Degree
4 348 (5.62%) Azure Certification
5 196 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 173 (2.79%) Microsoft Certification
7 162 (2.62%) CISSP
8 128 (2.07%) AWS Certification
9 124 (2.00%) DV Cleared
10 106 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
11 105 (1.70%) CISM
12 91 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
12 91 (1.47%) Master's Degree
13 51 (0.82%) PMI Certification
14 47 (0.76%) PMP
14 47 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
15 46 (0.74%) ISTQB
16 44 (0.71%) CCNP
17 32 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 27 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (6.07%) Data Quality
2 371 (5.99%) GDPR
3 332 (5.36%) QA
4 305 (4.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 231 (3.73%) NIST
6 130 (2.10%) Accessibility
7 92 (1.49%) NCSC
8 70 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 54 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 50 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
11 47 (0.76%) SLA
12 42 (0.68%) HIPAA
13 38 (0.61%) PMO
13 38 (0.61%) SOC 2
13 38 (0.61%) WCAG
14 28 (0.45%) EU AI Act
15 27 (0.44%) GRC
15 27 (0.44%) PSD2
16 23 (0.37%) ISO 20022
17 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 814 (13.15%) Active Directory
2 764 (12.34%) Docker
3 194 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 96 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 74 (1.20%) Virtual Desktop
5 74 (1.20%) Virtual Machines
6 61 (0.99%) vSphere
7 20 (0.32%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.21%) Squid
9 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.18%) DFS Replication
10 11 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.16%) KVM
12 9 (0.15%) Firmware
12 9 (0.15%) Postfix
13 8 (0.13%) Dovecot
13 8 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) NFS
15 6 (0.097%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 945 (15.27%) Terraform
2 886 (14.31%) Kubernetes
3 329 (5.32%) Microsoft Intune
4 319 (5.15%) Ansible
5 165 (2.67%) Single Sign-On
6 156 (2.52%) Grafana
7 144 (2.33%) SCCM
8 140 (2.26%) Prometheus
9 67 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.73%) Argo
11 33 (0.53%) Puppet
12 26 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 24 (0.39%) Nessus
13 24 (0.39%) vRealize
14 23 (0.37%) Istio
14 23 (0.37%) Kibana
15 20 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 18 (0.29%) Nmap
16 18 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
16 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,002 (32.34%) Microsoft
2 616 (9.95%) Databricks
3 359 (5.80%) Oracle
4 325 (5.25%) Google
5 265 (4.28%) ServiceNow
6 256 (4.14%) VMware
7 175 (2.83%) SAP
8 161 (2.60%) Cisco
9 159 (2.57%) OpenAI
10 154 (2.49%) Splunk
11 123 (1.99%) Salesforce
12 114 (1.84%) CyberArk
13 102 (1.65%) Palo Alto
14 80 (1.29%) Foundry
15 74 (1.20%) Okta
16 66 (1.07%) Red Hat
17 65 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
17 65 (1.05%) Citrix
18 60 (0.97%) IBM
19 57 (0.92%) Fortinet