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

6 months to
27 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,243 4,939 5,552
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.08% 14.95% 14.51%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.58% 39.38% 42.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,758 3,372 3,781
10th Percentile £363 £350 £345
25th Percentile £447 £415 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £519 £530
Median % change year-on-year +1.25% -2.17% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £720 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £512 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.44% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 43 33
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.21
25th Percentile £22.16 £22.44 £23.80
Median hourly rate £45.20 £34.48 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.09% -1.49% -32.69%
75th Percentile £79.50 £67.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.50 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.20 £25.89 £46.18
% change year-on-year +74.62% -43.95% -

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 18,915 12,541 13,120
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.61% 37.95% 34.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,557 8,377 8,732
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £720 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 616 295 187
10th Percentile £15.28 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.31
Median hourly rate £30.00 £26.30 £33.54
Median % change year-on-year +14.07% -21.59% -4.17%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.33 £64.61
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +55.68% -41.61% +26.92%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -1 7,017 £525 - 7,332
London 0 3,671 £550 +0.92% 3,357
UK excluding London +1 3,494 £512 +2.44% 4,746
Work from Home -2 2,496 £525 +5.00% 3,524
North of England +8 994 £500 +5.26% 1,257
South East +1 901 £525 +6.06% 1,180
Midlands +2 643 £493 -4.37% 715
West Midlands +2 491 £488 -11.36% 436
North West +7 487 £500 +5.26% 666
Yorkshire +5 425 £500 +2.56% 442
South West +2 411 £550 +10.00% 527
Scotland +4 285 £523 +4.50% 383
East of England +1 196 £505 +1.00% 389
East Midlands +1 146 £500 +8.11% 279
North East +4 95 £513 +2.50% 156
Wales 0 85 £450 - 139
Northern Ireland +14 14 £650 - 195
Channel Islands -4 7 £500 -21.88%

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
1 464 (5.63%) SharePoint
2 261 (3.17%) Confluence
3 193 (2.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 185 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 162 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
6 113 (1.37%) Apache
7 44 (0.53%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) IIS
9 28 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
10 24 (0.29%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) nginx
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.097%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.085%) Mendix
16 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
16 6 (0.073%) Traefik
Applications
1 118 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 39 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.097%) Revit
8 8 (0.097%) Trello
9 7 (0.085%) CPLEX
10 5 (0.061%) Notion
11 4 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.036%) 1Password
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
13 2 (0.024%) Windchill
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 129 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.097%) Magento
10 7 (0.085%) Shopify
11 6 (0.073%) Cloudability
11 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
12 5 (0.061%) Dynamics NAV
13 4 (0.049%) Adobe Campaign
13 4 (0.049%) NetSuite
13 4 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
13 4 (0.049%) SAP BPC
13 4 (0.049%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,960 (35.91%) AWS
2 1,725 (20.93%) Azure DevOps
3 1,447 (17.55%) GCP
4 1,113 (13.50%) Entra ID
5 1,071 (12.99%) Power Platform
6 871 (10.57%) Microsoft 365
7 842 (10.21%) GitHub
8 485 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
9 452 (5.48%) Azure Data Factory
10 376 (4.56%) Serverless
11 356 (4.32%) SaaS
12 311 (3.77%) Azure Monitor
13 306 (3.71%) Power Automate
14 300 (3.64%) Dynamics 365
15 295 (3.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 289 (3.51%) Snowflake
17 288 (3.49%) Azure AKS
18 287 (3.48%) PowerApps
19 252 (3.06%) Microsoft Copilot
20 247 (3.00%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 512 (6.21%) Firewall
2 412 (5.00%) DNS
3 312 (3.79%) VPN
4 289 (3.51%) Network Security
5 232 (2.81%) DHCP
6 181 (2.20%) WAN
7 165 (2.00%) TCP/IP
8 108 (1.31%) LAN
9 105 (1.27%) BGP
10 98 (1.19%) SD-WAN
11 84 (1.02%) OSPF
11 84 (1.02%) VLAN
12 83 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
13 75 (0.91%) SSL
14 66 (0.80%) Wireless
15 60 (0.73%) SAN
16 46 (0.56%) IPsec
17 45 (0.55%) HTTP
18 42 (0.51%) VXLAN
19 41 (0.50%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 690 (8.37%) Power BI
2 465 (5.64%) SQL Server
3 395 (4.79%) Data Warehouse
4 386 (4.68%) Data Lake
5 286 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 254 (3.08%) Metadata
7 211 (2.56%) NoSQL
8 191 (2.32%) Azure SQL Database
9 142 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 127 (1.54%) Delta Lake
11 113 (1.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 101 (1.23%) MongoDB
13 100 (1.21%) MySQL
14 91 (1.10%) Big Data
15 70 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
16 67 (0.81%) Redis
17 62 (0.75%) BigQuery
18 60 (0.73%) Oracle Database
19 58 (0.70%) Tableau
20 56 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 737 (8.94%) Git
2 594 (7.21%) JIRA
3 460 (5.58%) Jenkins
4 369 (4.48%) GitLab
5 135 (1.64%) Selenium
6 86 (1.04%) Postman
7 64 (0.78%) Cypress.io
8 61 (0.74%) JUnit
9 59 (0.72%) Cucumber
10 55 (0.67%) Claude Code
10 55 (0.67%) JMeter
11 54 (0.66%) Maven
12 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
13 50 (0.61%) Visual Studio
14 49 (0.59%) Gradle
15 47 (0.57%) REST Assured
16 37 (0.45%) WebDriver
17 34 (0.41%) LoadRunner
18 32 (0.39%) MLflow
19 31 (0.38%) Gatling
General
1 2,281 (27.67%) Social Skills
2 1,564 (18.97%) Finance
3 953 (11.56%) Public Sector
4 802 (9.73%) Analytical Skills
5 480 (5.82%) Banking
6 223 (2.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 215 (2.61%) Retail
8 209 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
9 170 (2.06%) Legal
10 111 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
11 110 (1.33%) Manufacturing
12 91 (1.10%) Telecoms
13 88 (1.07%) Investment Banking
13 88 (1.07%) Marketing
14 86 (1.04%) Aerospace
15 83 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
16 77 (0.93%) Military
17 70 (0.85%) Law
18 60 (0.73%) Local Government
19 59 (0.72%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,579 (19.16%) Architect
2 1,043 (12.65%) Senior
3 1,002 (12.16%) Developer
4 718 (8.71%) Azure Engineer
5 678 (8.23%) Lead
6 587 (7.12%) Data Engineer
7 488 (5.92%) Solutions Architect
8 465 (5.64%) Analyst
9 456 (5.53%) DevOps Engineer
10 380 (4.61%) Cloud Engineer
11 315 (3.82%) Consultant
11 315 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 267 (3.24%) Data Architect
13 238 (2.89%) Platform Engineer
14 220 (2.67%) Azure Architect
15 204 (2.47%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 203 (2.46%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 200 (2.43%) Technical Architect
18 196 (2.38%) Security Engineer
19 183 (2.22%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,401 (17.00%) Terraform
2 737 (8.94%) REST
3 616 (7.47%) .NET
4 388 (4.71%) Kafka
5 302 (3.66%) React
6 295 (3.58%) RESTful
7 276 (3.35%) OAuth
8 261 (3.17%) PySpark
9 238 (2.89%) JSON
10 189 (2.29%) Spring
11 180 (2.18%) Spring Boot
12 166 (2.01%) OAuth2
13 164 (1.99%) OpenID
14 156 (1.89%) HTML
15 153 (1.86%) SAML
16 152 (1.84%) Node.js
17 149 (1.81%) Middleware
18 144 (1.75%) SOAP
19 139 (1.69%) AngularJS
20 132 (1.60%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 933 (11.32%) Cloud Native
2 421 (5.11%) Onboarding
3 388 (4.71%) Product Ownership
4 314 (3.81%) Enterprise Software
5 313 (3.80%) AI Agents
6 285 (3.46%) Hybrid Cloud
7 275 (3.34%) Distributed Systems
8 252 (3.06%) Data Centre
9 227 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
10 184 (2.23%) Security Posture
11 176 (2.14%) Management Information System
12 148 (1.80%) Data Structures
13 147 (1.78%) Public Cloud
14 123 (1.49%) PKI
15 113 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
16 109 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
17 100 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
18 97 (1.18%) Replication
19 88 (1.07%) CMDB
20 87 (1.06%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 984 (11.94%) Windows
2 518 (6.28%) Linux
3 373 (4.53%) Windows Server
4 150 (1.82%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.10%) Android
6 88 (1.07%) Unix
7 86 (1.04%) Apple iOS
8 81 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 75 (0.91%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 48 (0.58%) VMS
12 27 (0.33%) CentOS
13 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.085%) Debian
18 6 (0.073%) AIX
18 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
19 4 (0.049%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,025 (36.70%) DevOps
2 2,662 (32.29%) CI/CD
3 2,058 (24.97%) Agile
4 1,482 (17.98%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,427 (17.31%) AI
6 1,405 (17.04%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,224 (14.85%) Migration
8 1,128 (13.68%) Problem-Solving
9 1,113 (13.50%) Analytics
10 952 (11.55%) Continuous Improvement
11 902 (10.94%) Data Modelling
12 851 (10.32%) Roadmaps
13 793 (9.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 785 (9.52%) Containerisation
15 752 (9.12%) Business Intelligence
16 750 (9.10%) Technical Leadership
17 736 (8.93%) Test Automation
18 727 (8.82%) Data Pipeline
18 727 (8.82%) Microservices
19 655 (7.95%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,884 (22.86%) Python
2 1,571 (19.06%) SQL
3 886 (10.75%) PowerShell
4 684 (8.30%) Java
5 598 (7.25%) C#
6 508 (6.16%) JavaScript
7 405 (4.91%) Bash
8 360 (4.37%) Bicep
9 304 (3.69%) TypeScript
10 97 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 92 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 81 (0.98%) Go
13 65 (0.79%) Scala
14 61 (0.74%) Shell Script
15 58 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.51%) PL/SQL
17 35 (0.42%) R
18 32 (0.39%) Groovy
18 32 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 30 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,155 (26.14%) Security Cleared
2 1,737 (21.07%) SC Cleared
3 559 (6.78%) Degree
4 474 (5.75%) Azure Certification
5 310 (3.76%) DV Cleared
6 272 (3.30%) CISSP
7 269 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
8 249 (3.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 210 (2.55%) AWS Certification
10 195 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
11 181 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
12 140 (1.70%) CISM
13 91 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 90 (1.09%) PMI Certification
15 85 (1.03%) CCNP
15 85 (1.03%) PMP
16 68 (0.82%) ISTQB
17 63 (0.76%) CCSP
18 62 (0.75%) Master's Degree
19 52 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 606 (7.35%) Data Quality
2 464 (5.63%) QA
3 304 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 292 (3.54%) NIST
5 289 (3.51%) GDPR
6 204 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.46%) NCSC
8 109 (1.32%) SLA
9 85 (1.03%) GRC
10 81 (0.98%) WCAG
11 79 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
12 73 (0.89%) PCI DSS
13 52 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 49 (0.59%) PMO
15 44 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 33 (0.40%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.32%) HIPAA
17 26 (0.32%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.25%) COBIT
System Software
1 1,023 (12.41%) Active Directory
2 918 (11.14%) Docker
3 242 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.75%) Virtual Machines
5 142 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
6 126 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.85%) vSphere
8 48 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 21 (0.25%) Firmware
11 17 (0.21%) IAG
12 15 (0.18%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.097%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.085%) Ceph
18 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
19 5 (0.061%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,298 (15.75%) Kubernetes
2 450 (5.46%) Ansible
3 443 (5.37%) Microsoft Intune
4 260 (3.15%) Grafana
5 205 (2.49%) Prometheus
6 151 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
7 133 (1.61%) SCCM
8 58 (0.70%) Progress Chef
9 57 (0.69%) Argo
10 45 (0.55%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
12 36 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.41%) SCOM
14 30 (0.36%) Istio
15 28 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 19 (0.23%) CASB
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
17 18 (0.22%) QRadar
17 18 (0.22%) vCenter Server
18 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,984 (36.20%) Microsoft
2 857 (10.40%) Databricks
3 417 (5.06%) ServiceNow
4 389 (4.72%) Google
5 353 (4.28%) VMware
6 345 (4.19%) Oracle
7 238 (2.89%) Cisco
8 231 (2.80%) Splunk
9 220 (2.67%) SAP
10 217 (2.63%) OpenAI
11 187 (2.27%) Salesforce
12 149 (1.81%) CyberArk
13 148 (1.80%) Palo Alto
14 136 (1.65%) Foundry
15 130 (1.58%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.13%) Zscaler
17 87 (1.06%) IBM
18 82 (0.99%) Informatica
19 81 (0.98%) Okta
20 79 (0.96%) Fortinet