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 21 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,185 4,634 5,820
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.53% 15.74% 13.40%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.78% 41.49% 41.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,134 3,305 4,183
10th Percentile £358 £351 £340
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £732 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 46 52
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £50.31 £24.39 £22.24
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -36.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £74.75 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £51.25
% change year-on-year +79.69% -37.56% -14.30%

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 16,796 11,169 14,044
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.29% 37.93% 32.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,432 7,781 9,965
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £635
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £479 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +0.84% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 479 248 344
10th Percentile £15.20 £15.44 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.29 £18.68 £16.05
Median hourly rate £40.78 £27.63 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +47.59% +31.57% -37.31%
75th Percentile £67.50 £48.75 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.15 £61.57
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £23.00 £17.70
% change year-on-year +106.52% +29.94% -26.25%

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 21 April 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 21 April 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 21 April 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 6,100 £523 -0.48% 2,761
London +1 3,284 £530 -3.64% 1,028
UK excluding London +2 2,966 £500 - 2,163
Work from Home -1 2,140 £525 +0.77% 1,299
North of England +3 834 £500 +5.26% 571
South East +1 778 £500 -4.76% 627
Midlands -1 502 £488 -6.83% 312
North West +2 447 £500 - 291
South West +5 371 £500 -4.76% 256
West Midlands 0 367 £500 -4.76% 169
Yorkshire +1 343 £500 +17.65% 185
Scotland +5 292 £550 +15.79% 119
East of England +6 150 £545 -7.63% 213
East Midlands +2 125 £450 -5.26% 142
Wales -3 74 £400 -5.88% 64
North East -1 51 £525 +3.70% 98
Northern Ireland +10 15 £475 - 42
Channel Islands +4 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
1 329 (4.58%) SharePoint
2 208 (2.89%) Confluence
3 198 (2.76%) Microsoft Exchange
4 195 (2.71%) Apache Spark
5 107 (1.49%) Apache
6 94 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.38%) SAS
8 20 (0.28%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) CMS
10 17 (0.24%) ArcGIS
11 16 (0.22%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.21%) Appian
13 14 (0.19%) Camunda
13 14 (0.19%) Mendix
14 12 (0.17%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
15 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
16 8 (0.11%) Anypoint
16 8 (0.11%) nginx
17 6 (0.084%) Umbraco
Applications
1 122 (1.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 49 (0.68%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.25%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) Trello
8 6 (0.084%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.070%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.070%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.056%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.056%) Weka
11 3 (0.042%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.028%) Revit
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 110 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 72 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.15%) Maximo
3 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
6 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.097%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.070%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.070%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.056%) Elite 3E
10 4 (0.056%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.056%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.056%) SAP BPC
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) Unit4 Business World
11 3 (0.042%) Oracle Assets
11 3 (0.042%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,457 (34.20%) AWS
2 1,494 (20.79%) Azure DevOps
3 1,328 (18.48%) GCP
4 940 (13.08%) Power Platform
5 861 (11.98%) Entra ID
6 759 (10.56%) Microsoft 365
7 711 (9.90%) GitHub
8 514 (7.15%) Azure Data Factory
9 424 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
10 406 (5.65%) Serverless
11 345 (4.80%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 281 (3.91%) SaaS
13 274 (3.81%) Dynamics 365
14 272 (3.79%) Azure AKS
15 260 (3.62%) Power Automate
16 241 (3.35%) Azure Monitor
17 234 (3.26%) PaaS
18 227 (3.16%) Azure Functions
19 208 (2.89%) PowerApps
20 202 (2.81%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 442 (6.15%) Firewall
2 300 (4.18%) DNS
3 259 (3.60%) VPN
4 245 (3.41%) Network Security
5 188 (2.62%) WAN
6 165 (2.30%) DHCP
7 136 (1.89%) LAN
8 96 (1.34%) SD-WAN
9 94 (1.31%) TCP/IP
10 86 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
11 77 (1.07%) VLAN
12 70 (0.97%) Kerberos
13 53 (0.74%) BGP
14 46 (0.64%) OSPF
15 44 (0.61%) HTTP
15 44 (0.61%) SSL
16 41 (0.57%) Wireless
17 40 (0.56%) SAN
18 36 (0.50%) Internet
19 32 (0.45%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 637 (8.87%) Power BI
2 429 (5.97%) SQL Server
3 375 (5.22%) Data Warehouse
4 349 (4.86%) Data Lake
5 262 (3.65%) Azure SQL Database
5 262 (3.65%) PostgreSQL
6 204 (2.84%) NoSQL
7 187 (2.60%) Metadata
8 154 (2.14%) Delta Lake
9 115 (1.60%) Big Data
9 115 (1.60%) Relational Database
10 99 (1.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 95 (1.32%) MongoDB
12 83 (1.16%) Tableau
13 70 (0.97%) MySQL
14 69 (0.96%) Oracle Database
15 68 (0.95%) Snowflake Schema
16 61 (0.85%) BigQuery
17 58 (0.81%) Star Schema
18 49 (0.68%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 525 (7.31%) Git
2 511 (7.11%) JIRA
3 385 (5.36%) Jenkins
4 283 (3.94%) GitLab
5 128 (1.78%) Selenium
6 89 (1.24%) Postman
7 72 (1.00%) Cucumber
8 71 (0.99%) JUnit
9 67 (0.93%) JMeter
10 53 (0.74%) REST Assured
11 51 (0.71%) MLflow
12 45 (0.63%) Cypress.io
13 43 (0.60%) SonarQube
14 37 (0.51%) Artifactory
15 35 (0.49%) Visual Studio
16 34 (0.47%) TestRail
17 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
18 32 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
19 31 (0.43%) Gatling
20 25 (0.35%) Zephyr
General
1 1,934 (26.92%) Social Skills
2 1,275 (17.75%) Finance
3 811 (11.29%) Public Sector
4 689 (9.59%) Analytical Skills
5 379 (5.27%) Banking
6 226 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
7 181 (2.52%) Legal
8 109 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 93 (1.29%) Retail
10 88 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
11 84 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
12 77 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
13 74 (1.03%) Marketing
14 68 (0.95%) Telecoms
15 67 (0.93%) Financial Institution
16 66 (0.92%) Law
17 62 (0.86%) Investment Banking
18 60 (0.84%) Front Office
19 44 (0.61%) Local Government
19 44 (0.61%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,218 (16.95%) Architect
2 956 (13.31%) Developer
3 836 (11.64%) Senior
4 660 (9.19%) Azure Engineer
5 589 (8.20%) Data Engineer
6 545 (7.59%) Lead
7 441 (6.14%) Analyst
8 388 (5.40%) DevOps Engineer
9 311 (4.33%) Solutions Architect
10 302 (4.20%) Consultant
11 213 (2.96%) Cloud Engineer
12 202 (2.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 192 (2.67%) Azure Architect
14 182 (2.53%) Security Engineer
15 171 (2.38%) Platform Engineer
16 167 (2.32%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 167 (2.32%) Data Architect
17 160 (2.23%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 159 (2.21%) Technical Architect
19 148 (2.06%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 565 (7.86%) .NET
2 478 (6.65%) REST
3 337 (4.69%) React
4 275 (3.83%) Kafka
5 272 (3.79%) PySpark
6 251 (3.49%) Node.js
7 242 (3.37%) RESTful
8 218 (3.03%) Spring
9 214 (2.98%) OAuth
10 190 (2.64%) AngularJS
11 183 (2.55%) Spring Boot
12 162 (2.25%) JSON
13 160 (2.23%) LDAP
14 149 (2.07%) HTML
15 131 (1.82%) SAML
16 129 (1.80%) CSS
17 127 (1.77%) Middleware
18 126 (1.75%) SOAP
19 122 (1.70%) OpenID
20 112 (1.56%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 666 (9.27%) Cloud Native
2 275 (3.83%) Onboarding
3 266 (3.70%) Product Ownership
4 188 (2.62%) Hybrid Cloud
5 185 (2.57%) Data Centre
6 176 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
7 167 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
8 162 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
9 161 (2.24%) Security Posture
10 158 (2.20%) Public Cloud
11 127 (1.77%) AI Agents
12 90 (1.25%) Data Structures
13 89 (1.24%) Replication
14 85 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
15 82 (1.14%) Management Information System
16 70 (0.97%) PKI
17 66 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
17 66 (0.92%) Low-Code
18 59 (0.82%) NHS
19 55 (0.77%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 774 (10.77%) Windows
2 375 (5.22%) Linux
3 237 (3.30%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.66%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.02%) VMS
6 71 (0.99%) Unix
7 60 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 59 (0.82%) Mac OS
9 49 (0.68%) Apple iOS
10 40 (0.56%) Android
11 26 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.26%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.097%) CentOS
17 7 (0.097%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.070%) Debian
18 5 (0.070%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,680 (37.30%) DevOps
2 2,233 (31.08%) CI/CD
3 1,690 (23.52%) Agile
4 1,103 (15.35%) Problem-Solving
5 1,053 (14.66%) Analytics
6 995 (13.85%) AI
6 995 (13.85%) Infrastructure as Code
7 964 (13.42%) Migration
8 808 (11.25%) Data Modelling
9 710 (9.88%) Stakeholder Management
10 698 (9.71%) Business Intelligence
11 692 (9.63%) Containerisation
12 689 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
13 668 (9.30%) Data Pipeline
14 657 (9.14%) Microservices
15 643 (8.95%) ETL
16 594 (8.27%) Data Engineering
16 594 (8.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 565 (7.86%) Test Automation
18 564 (7.85%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,799 (25.04%) Python
2 1,564 (21.77%) SQL
3 734 (10.22%) PowerShell
4 619 (8.62%) C#
5 612 (8.52%) Java
6 476 (6.62%) JavaScript
7 297 (4.13%) TypeScript
8 252 (3.51%) Bash
9 228 (3.17%) Bicep
10 105 (1.46%) Scala
11 82 (1.14%) Go
12 81 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 81 (1.13%) T-SQL
13 75 (1.04%) PL/SQL
14 71 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
15 54 (0.75%) Shell Script
16 47 (0.65%) R
17 30 (0.42%) C++
18 23 (0.32%) PHP
19 19 (0.26%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,771 (24.65%) Security Cleared
2 1,485 (20.67%) SC Cleared
3 525 (7.31%) Degree
4 389 (5.41%) Azure Certification
5 208 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 201 (2.80%) CISSP
7 160 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
8 153 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
8 153 (2.13%) Microsoft Certification
9 144 (2.00%) AWS Certification
10 139 (1.93%) DV Cleared
11 117 (1.63%) CISM
12 80 (1.11%) CCNP
13 75 (1.04%) Master's Degree
14 70 (0.97%) PMP
15 68 (0.95%) PMI Certification
15 68 (0.95%) TOGAF Certification
16 60 (0.84%) ISTQB
17 56 (0.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 42 (0.58%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 510 (7.10%) Data Quality
2 390 (5.43%) GDPR
3 380 (5.29%) QA
4 293 (4.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 263 (3.66%) NIST
6 133 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.38%) NCSC
8 88 (1.22%) PCI DSS
9 63 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 60 (0.84%) SLA
11 57 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
11 57 (0.79%) PMO
12 43 (0.60%) GRC
13 40 (0.56%) WCAG
14 35 (0.49%) HIPAA
15 25 (0.35%) NIST 800
16 24 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 23 (0.32%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 19 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 882 (12.28%) Active Directory
2 814 (11.33%) Docker
3 208 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.52%) Hyper-V
4 109 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
5 103 (1.43%) Virtual Desktop
6 72 (1.00%) vSphere
7 35 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
8 29 (0.40%) VMware NSX
9 26 (0.36%) Firmware
10 19 (0.26%) NFS
11 11 (0.15%) Postfix
12 7 (0.097%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 7 (0.097%) BitLocker
12 7 (0.097%) HDFS
12 7 (0.097%) Varnish
13 6 (0.084%) Ceph
13 6 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.084%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.084%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 1,134 (15.78%) Terraform
2 1,053 (14.66%) Kubernetes
3 365 (5.08%) Microsoft Intune
4 322 (4.48%) Ansible
5 194 (2.70%) Grafana
6 164 (2.28%) Prometheus
7 151 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
8 115 (1.60%) SCCM
9 69 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.56%) Argo
11 36 (0.50%) Istio
12 32 (0.45%) Puppet
13 31 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 27 (0.38%) Progress Chef
15 26 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
16 25 (0.35%) vCenter Server
17 22 (0.31%) HP ALM
17 22 (0.31%) vRealize
18 17 (0.24%) Kubeflow
18 17 (0.24%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,298 (31.98%) Microsoft
2 736 (10.24%) Databricks
3 331 (4.61%) Google
4 320 (4.45%) Oracle
5 297 (4.13%) ServiceNow
6 291 (4.05%) VMware
7 203 (2.83%) SAP
8 197 (2.74%) Cisco
9 185 (2.57%) OpenAI
10 159 (2.21%) Splunk
11 137 (1.91%) CyberArk
12 117 (1.63%) Foundry
13 101 (1.41%) Palo Alto
14 99 (1.38%) Salesforce
15 87 (1.21%) Okta
16 75 (1.04%) Informatica
17 74 (1.03%) IBM
18 73 (1.02%) Citrix
19 69 (0.96%) BeyondTrust
20 68 (0.95%) Red Hat