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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,244 4,840 5,711
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.53% 14.76% 14.37%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.04% 39.58% 42.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,762 3,341 4,092
10th Percentile £370 £350 £345
25th Percentile £435 £423 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £730 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £497 £500
% change year-on-year +0.65% -0.65% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 38 41
10th Percentile £18.40 £18.53 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +23.50% -39.13%
75th Percentile £78.00 £77.19 £59.50
90th Percentile £95.63 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £53.23 £33.00
% change year-on-year +8.03% +61.29% -33.69%

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 18,718 12,228 13,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.25% 37.28% 33.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,357 8,194 9,320
10th Percentile £326 £313 £313
25th Percentile £420 £411 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £622 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 625 312 284
10th Percentile £16.12 £15.16 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £27.50 £23.15
Median % change year-on-year +29.09% +18.79% -33.86%
75th Percentile £69.75 £47.50 £52.18
90th Percentile £83.15 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.57 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +88.47% -10.14% -20.00%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 7,067 £525 - 3,018
London +1 3,707 £550 - 1,381
UK excluding London +3 3,553 £500 +0.65% 2,067
Work from Home -1 2,552 £525 +5.00% 1,519
North of England +8 1,023 £500 +5.26% 572
South East +2 897 £525 +5.00% 654
Midlands +4 639 £495 -0.50% 289
North West +7 535 £500 +2.83% 317
West Midlands +2 484 £493 -6.19% 181
South West +6 440 £539 +7.75% 239
Yorkshire +5 408 £500 +5.26% 178
Scotland +9 300 £500 +3.52% 102
East of England +3 180 £535 -2.73% 158
East Midlands +8 143 £488 +5.41% 108
Wales -1 96 £450 +0.90% 71
North East +1 94 £516 +5.90% 90
Northern Ireland +8 15 £644 +35.53% 33
Channel Islands +3 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
1 432 (5.24%) SharePoint
2 280 (3.40%) Confluence
3 202 (2.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 176 (2.13%) Apache Spark
5 136 (1.65%) Apache Airflow
6 117 (1.42%) Apache
7 43 (0.52%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 26 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 18 (0.22%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.097%) Mendix
15 8 (0.097%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.097%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.073%) Camunda
16 6 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 120 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.41%) Chatbot
6 31 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.097%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) PTC Creo
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 113 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.15%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.097%) Magento
8 8 (0.097%) Maximo
9 7 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
9 7 (0.085%) Shopify
10 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
10 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
11 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
11 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
12 4 (0.049%) Adobe Campaign
12 4 (0.049%) SAP MM
12 4 (0.049%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,938 (35.64%) AWS
2 1,711 (20.75%) Azure DevOps
3 1,418 (17.20%) GCP
4 1,031 (12.51%) Entra ID
5 1,027 (12.46%) Power Platform
6 816 (9.90%) Microsoft 365
7 800 (9.70%) GitHub
8 480 (5.82%) GitHub Actions
9 469 (5.69%) Azure Data Factory
10 352 (4.27%) Serverless
11 332 (4.03%) SaaS
12 314 (3.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 303 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 291 (3.53%) Azure Monitor
15 280 (3.40%) Power Automate
16 273 (3.31%) PowerApps
17 262 (3.18%) PaaS
18 256 (3.11%) Dynamics 365
19 235 (2.85%) Azure AI
20 234 (2.84%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 519 (6.30%) Firewall
2 386 (4.68%) DNS
3 318 (3.86%) VPN
4 298 (3.61%) Network Security
5 203 (2.46%) WAN
6 192 (2.33%) DHCP
7 158 (1.92%) TCP/IP
8 127 (1.54%) LAN
9 114 (1.38%) BGP
10 105 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 92 (1.12%) VLAN
12 91 (1.10%) OSPF
13 86 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.91%) SSL
15 57 (0.69%) SAN
15 57 (0.69%) Wireless
16 56 (0.68%) IPsec
17 48 (0.58%) VXLAN
18 46 (0.56%) HTTP
19 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 713 (8.65%) Power BI
2 465 (5.64%) SQL Server
3 406 (4.92%) Data Warehouse
4 361 (4.38%) Data Lake
5 309 (3.75%) PostgreSQL
6 222 (2.69%) NoSQL
7 215 (2.61%) Azure SQL Database
8 210 (2.55%) Metadata
9 138 (1.67%) Relational Database
10 132 (1.60%) Delta Lake
11 108 (1.31%) MongoDB
12 106 (1.29%) Big Data
13 99 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 90 (1.09%) MySQL
15 68 (0.82%) Tableau
16 65 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
17 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.72%) Redis
19 57 (0.69%) Oracle Database
19 57 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 649 (7.87%) Git
2 639 (7.75%) JIRA
3 440 (5.34%) Jenkins
4 333 (4.04%) GitLab
5 124 (1.50%) Selenium
6 74 (0.90%) JUnit
7 71 (0.86%) Postman
8 69 (0.84%) JMeter
9 57 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 55 (0.67%) Cypress.io
11 54 (0.66%) SonarQube
12 49 (0.59%) Maven
13 48 (0.58%) REST Assured
14 45 (0.55%) Visual Studio
15 43 (0.52%) WebDriver
16 40 (0.49%) MLflow
17 36 (0.44%) Gradle
18 31 (0.38%) Claude Code
19 30 (0.36%) Gatling
19 30 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 2,093 (25.39%) Social Skills
2 1,539 (18.67%) Finance
3 968 (11.74%) Public Sector
4 773 (9.38%) Analytical Skills
5 431 (5.23%) Banking
6 232 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 190 (2.30%) Legal
8 186 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 184 (2.23%) Retail
10 98 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 97 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 87 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
13 81 (0.98%) Manufacturing
14 75 (0.91%) Law
15 70 (0.85%) Financial Institution
16 69 (0.84%) Investment Banking
17 68 (0.82%) Marketing
18 66 (0.80%) Front Office
19 60 (0.73%) Military
20 57 (0.69%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,472 (17.86%) Architect
2 1,069 (12.97%) Developer
3 1,026 (12.45%) Senior
4 727 (8.82%) Azure Engineer
5 680 (8.25%) Lead
6 618 (7.50%) Data Engineer
7 496 (6.02%) Analyst
8 434 (5.26%) Solutions Architect
9 416 (5.05%) DevOps Engineer
10 337 (4.09%) Cloud Engineer
11 314 (3.81%) Consultant
12 302 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 247 (3.00%) Data Architect
14 219 (2.66%) Platform Engineer
15 216 (2.62%) Azure Architect
16 195 (2.37%) Technical Architect
17 189 (2.29%) Project Manager
18 188 (2.28%) Java Developer
19 187 (2.27%) Security Engineer
20 182 (2.21%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 638 (7.74%) .NET
2 614 (7.45%) REST
3 342 (4.15%) React
4 318 (3.86%) Kafka
5 295 (3.58%) RESTful
6 257 (3.12%) PySpark
7 235 (2.85%) OAuth
8 225 (2.73%) Spring
9 210 (2.55%) Node.js
10 202 (2.45%) JSON
11 189 (2.29%) Spring Boot
12 179 (2.17%) AngularJS
13 157 (1.90%) HTML
14 149 (1.81%) SAML
15 147 (1.78%) OpenID
16 138 (1.67%) .NET Framework
17 135 (1.64%) OAuth2
18 132 (1.60%) Middleware
19 129 (1.56%) Playwright
20 126 (1.53%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 873 (10.59%) Cloud Native
2 386 (4.68%) Onboarding
3 345 (4.18%) Product Ownership
4 267 (3.24%) Data Centre
5 266 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
6 249 (3.02%) Hybrid Cloud
7 247 (3.00%) AI Agents
8 232 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
9 208 (2.52%) Enterprise Software
10 167 (2.03%) Security Posture
11 141 (1.71%) Data Structures
12 140 (1.70%) Public Cloud
13 131 (1.59%) Management Information System
14 110 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
15 106 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
16 105 (1.27%) PKI
17 91 (1.10%) Replication
18 90 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
19 72 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
19 72 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 945 (11.46%) Windows
2 469 (5.69%) Linux
3 318 (3.86%) Windows Server
4 113 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 82 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 81 (0.98%) Android
6 81 (0.98%) Unix
7 73 (0.89%) Apple iOS
7 73 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.72%) VMS
9 46 (0.56%) Ubuntu
10 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
11 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
11 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
12 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
13 11 (0.13%) CentOS
14 9 (0.11%) Debian
15 7 (0.085%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.061%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,031 (36.77%) DevOps
2 2,574 (31.22%) CI/CD
3 2,088 (25.33%) Agile
4 1,288 (15.62%) AI
5 1,270 (15.41%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,203 (14.59%) Migration
7 1,135 (13.77%) Stakeholder Management
8 1,134 (13.76%) Analytics
9 1,061 (12.87%) Problem-Solving
10 932 (11.31%) Data Modelling
11 890 (10.80%) Continuous Improvement
12 788 (9.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 786 (9.53%) Data Pipeline
14 765 (9.28%) Containerisation
15 762 (9.24%) Business Intelligence
16 759 (9.21%) Roadmaps
17 757 (9.18%) Microservices
18 683 (8.28%) Test Automation
19 670 (8.13%) ETL
20 662 (8.03%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,909 (23.16%) Python
2 1,605 (19.47%) SQL
3 793 (9.62%) PowerShell
4 693 (8.41%) Java
5 616 (7.47%) C#
6 501 (6.08%) JavaScript
7 363 (4.40%) Bash
8 315 (3.82%) TypeScript
9 314 (3.81%) Bicep
10 97 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 97 (1.18%) T-SQL
11 72 (0.87%) Go
12 58 (0.70%) Scala
13 53 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (0.63%) Shell Script
15 41 (0.50%) Kotlin
15 41 (0.50%) R
16 40 (0.49%) PL/SQL
17 30 (0.36%) Groovy
18 28 (0.34%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,074 (25.16%) Security Cleared
2 1,698 (20.60%) SC Cleared
3 570 (6.91%) Degree
4 437 (5.30%) Azure Certification
5 262 (3.18%) DV Cleared
6 248 (3.01%) CISSP
7 247 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
8 213 (2.58%) Microsoft Certification
9 210 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
10 200 (2.43%) AWS Certification
11 190 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
12 121 (1.47%) CISM
13 103 (1.25%) CCNP
14 84 (1.02%) PMI Certification
14 84 (1.02%) PMP
15 81 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 64 (0.78%) ISTQB
17 60 (0.73%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.67%) CCSP
19 50 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 575 (6.97%) Data Quality
2 434 (5.26%) QA
3 324 (3.93%) GDPR
4 288 (3.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 283 (3.43%) NIST
6 202 (2.45%) Accessibility
7 118 (1.43%) NCSC
8 105 (1.27%) SLA
9 78 (0.95%) GRC
10 75 (0.91%) WCAG
11 72 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
11 72 (0.87%) PCI DSS
12 56 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 54 (0.66%) PMO
14 29 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 29 (0.35%) HIPAA
15 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 22 (0.27%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
18 16 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 965 (11.71%) Active Directory
2 899 (10.90%) Docker
3 219 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.72%) Virtual Machines
5 140 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
6 118 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.82%) vSphere
8 51 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
9 39 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.085%) Ceph
15 7 (0.085%) Varnish
16 6 (0.073%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.073%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,333 (16.17%) Terraform
2 1,236 (14.99%) Kubernetes
3 427 (5.18%) Microsoft Intune
4 412 (5.00%) Ansible
5 253 (3.07%) Grafana
6 212 (2.57%) Prometheus
7 148 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 111 (1.35%) SCCM
9 60 (0.73%) Argo
10 53 (0.64%) Progress Chef
11 46 (0.56%) Puppet
12 44 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 34 (0.41%) FortiGate
14 29 (0.35%) Istio
15 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
16 19 (0.23%) Packer
17 18 (0.22%) HP ALM
18 16 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,690 (32.63%) Microsoft
2 775 (9.40%) Databricks
3 397 (4.82%) ServiceNow
4 340 (4.12%) Google
5 320 (3.88%) VMware
6 316 (3.83%) Oracle
7 241 (2.92%) Cisco
8 224 (2.72%) SAP
9 207 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 183 (2.22%) Splunk
11 155 (1.88%) Palo Alto
12 154 (1.87%) Salesforce
13 140 (1.70%) CyberArk
14 138 (1.67%) Foundry
15 110 (1.33%) Dynatrace
16 102 (1.24%) Zscaler
17 88 (1.07%) Okta
18 87 (1.06%) Informatica
19 77 (0.93%) Fortinet
20 74 (0.90%) Citrix