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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,947 4,632 5,965
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.46% 15.06% 13.82%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.70% 39.88% 42.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,559 3,204 4,287
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £429 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 40 53
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.90 £17.80
25th Percentile £34.06 £29.19 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% +50.65% -36.57%
75th Percentile £76.94 £77.80 £61.60
90th Percentile £94.69 £100.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £67.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -14.81% +28.57% -12.50%

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 18,185 11,614 14,166
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.38% 37.76% 32.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,100 7,779 9,953
10th Percentile £331 £313 £300
25th Percentile £415 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.18% -4.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £622 £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 609 295 358
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.26 £14.09
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £28.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.93% +27.27% -37.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.49 £72.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £18.87 £20.87
% change year-on-year +102.70% -9.58% -18.87%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 6,761 £525 - 2,704
London +1 3,539 £545 -0.95% 1,072
UK excluding London +3 3,446 £505 +1.00% 2,209
Work from Home -1 2,457 £525 +2.44% 1,360
North of England +6 995 £503 +5.84% 547
South East +2 847 £514 +2.80% 634
Midlands +3 588 £500 +1.32% 314
North West +7 517 £500 +0.81% 306
West Midlands +1 434 £500 -4.76% 183
South West +7 432 £528 +5.50% 255
Yorkshire +5 397 £505 +6.37% 169
Scotland +9 321 £525 +5.00% 126
East of England +6 178 £550 - 179
East Midlands +4 144 £500 +8.11% 131
Wales 0 110 £425 +5.59% 125
North East +5 94 £525 +5.00% 79
Northern Ireland +14 19 £538 +13.16% 71
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
1 388 (4.88%) SharePoint
2 253 (3.18%) Confluence
3 191 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 188 (2.37%) Apache Spark
5 125 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.46%) Apache
7 40 (0.50%) SAS
8 29 (0.36%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 17 (0.21%) OpenStack
10 17 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.13%) Camunda
12 10 (0.13%) Mendix
12 10 (0.13%) nginx
13 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.10%) Appian
14 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 109 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
3 69 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 28 (0.35%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.088%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.063%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.063%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.050%) Notion
12 4 (0.050%) Trello
13 2 (0.025%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.013%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.013%) Houdini
14 1 (0.013%) InDesign
14 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 107 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 9 (0.11%) Maximo
6 9 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.088%) Shopify
9 6 (0.076%) Endur
9 6 (0.076%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.076%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.063%) Magento
10 5 (0.063%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.063%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.050%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.050%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.050%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,790 (35.11%) AWS
2 1,634 (20.56%) Azure DevOps
3 1,331 (16.75%) GCP
4 1,011 (12.72%) Power Platform
5 981 (12.34%) Entra ID
6 787 (9.90%) Microsoft 365
7 729 (9.17%) GitHub
8 459 (5.78%) Azure Data Factory
9 446 (5.61%) GitHub Actions
10 382 (4.81%) Serverless
11 314 (3.95%) SaaS
12 308 (3.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 293 (3.69%) Azure AKS
14 266 (3.35%) Azure Monitor
15 262 (3.30%) Power Automate
16 248 (3.12%) PowerApps
17 247 (3.11%) Dynamics 365
18 244 (3.07%) PaaS
19 219 (2.76%) Snowflake
20 213 (2.68%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 472 (5.94%) Firewall
2 354 (4.45%) DNS
3 275 (3.46%) Network Security
3 275 (3.46%) VPN
4 225 (2.83%) WAN
5 179 (2.25%) DHCP
6 137 (1.72%) LAN
7 124 (1.56%) SD-WAN
8 113 (1.42%) TCP/IP
9 102 (1.28%) BGP
10 84 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
11 79 (0.99%) OSPF
12 74 (0.93%) VLAN
13 67 (0.84%) SSL
14 58 (0.73%) Kerberos
15 54 (0.68%) SAN
16 50 (0.63%) Wireless
17 49 (0.62%) IPsec
18 48 (0.60%) VXLAN
19 42 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 677 (8.52%) Power BI
2 458 (5.76%) SQL Server
3 375 (4.72%) Data Warehouse
4 359 (4.52%) Data Lake
5 286 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
6 221 (2.78%) Azure SQL Database
7 211 (2.66%) NoSQL
8 192 (2.42%) Metadata
9 143 (1.80%) Delta Lake
10 134 (1.69%) Relational Database
11 119 (1.50%) Big Data
12 108 (1.36%) MongoDB
13 89 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (0.96%) MySQL
15 75 (0.94%) Tableau
16 71 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
17 66 (0.83%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.74%) Oracle Database
19 54 (0.68%) Star Schema
20 52 (0.65%) Redis
Development Applications
1 612 (7.70%) JIRA
2 591 (7.44%) Git
3 416 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 321 (4.04%) GitLab
5 127 (1.60%) Selenium
6 80 (1.01%) Postman
7 78 (0.98%) JMeter
8 64 (0.81%) JUnit
9 62 (0.78%) Cucumber
10 58 (0.73%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.59%) Visual Studio
13 43 (0.54%) Cypress.io
13 43 (0.54%) MLflow
14 42 (0.53%) WebDriver
15 33 (0.42%) Gatling
16 32 (0.40%) Maven
17 29 (0.36%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
19 25 (0.31%) NUnit
General
1 2,001 (25.18%) Social Skills
2 1,501 (18.89%) Finance
3 883 (11.11%) Public Sector
4 720 (9.06%) Analytical Skills
5 421 (5.30%) Banking
6 227 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 205 (2.58%) Legal
8 168 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 160 (2.01%) Retail
10 100 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
11 83 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
12 70 (0.88%) Financial Institution
12 70 (0.88%) Investment Banking
13 69 (0.87%) Front Office
13 69 (0.87%) Telecoms
14 68 (0.86%) Law
15 65 (0.82%) Marketing
16 64 (0.81%) Manufacturing
17 57 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,417 (17.83%) Architect
2 1,028 (12.94%) Developer
3 956 (12.03%) Senior
4 701 (8.82%) Azure Engineer
5 608 (7.65%) Lead
6 603 (7.59%) Data Engineer
7 479 (6.03%) Analyst
8 409 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 398 (5.01%) Solutions Architect
10 334 (4.20%) Consultant
11 290 (3.65%) Cloud Engineer
12 266 (3.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 227 (2.86%) Data Architect
14 222 (2.79%) Azure Architect
15 199 (2.50%) Platform Engineer
16 194 (2.44%) Technical Architect
17 191 (2.40%) Security Engineer
18 176 (2.21%) Business Analyst
19 175 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 173 (2.18%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 643 (8.09%) .NET
2 559 (7.03%) REST
3 343 (4.32%) React
4 293 (3.69%) Kafka
5 273 (3.44%) RESTful
6 266 (3.35%) PySpark
7 232 (2.92%) OAuth
8 221 (2.78%) Spring
9 216 (2.72%) Node.js
10 189 (2.38%) Spring Boot
11 185 (2.33%) AngularJS
12 171 (2.15%) JSON
13 149 (1.87%) SAML
14 147 (1.85%) HTML
15 145 (1.82%) LDAP
16 143 (1.80%) OpenID
17 129 (1.62%) .NET Framework
18 126 (1.59%) Middleware
19 122 (1.54%) OAuth2
20 121 (1.52%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 839 (10.56%) Cloud Native
2 337 (4.24%) Onboarding
3 317 (3.99%) Product Ownership
4 258 (3.25%) Data Centre
5 230 (2.89%) Distributed Systems
6 228 (2.87%) Hybrid Cloud
7 214 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
8 180 (2.27%) AI Agents
9 172 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
10 164 (2.06%) Security Posture
11 152 (1.91%) Public Cloud
12 115 (1.45%) Data Structures
13 109 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 107 (1.35%) Management Information System
15 102 (1.28%) Replication
16 88 (1.11%) PKI
17 81 (1.02%) Enterprise Cloud
18 80 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
19 76 (0.96%) Low-Code
20 73 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 905 (11.39%) Windows
2 406 (5.11%) Linux
3 294 (3.70%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.33%) Windows 10
5 77 (0.97%) Unix
6 73 (0.92%) Apple iOS
7 70 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 69 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 68 (0.86%) Android
10 59 (0.74%) VMS
11 36 (0.45%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 15 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
16 11 (0.14%) CentOS
17 10 (0.13%) Debian
18 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
19 7 (0.088%) CoreOS
19 7 (0.088%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,953 (37.16%) DevOps
2 2,477 (31.17%) CI/CD
3 1,948 (24.51%) Agile
4 1,189 (14.96%) AI
5 1,180 (14.85%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,136 (14.29%) Migration
7 1,106 (13.92%) Analytics
8 1,068 (13.44%) Problem-Solving
9 925 (11.64%) Stakeholder Management
10 888 (11.17%) Data Modelling
11 802 (10.09%) Continuous Improvement
12 755 (9.50%) Data Pipeline
13 746 (9.39%) Containerisation
14 734 (9.24%) Roadmaps
15 729 (9.17%) Microservices
16 722 (9.09%) Business Intelligence
17 693 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 672 (8.46%) ETL
19 644 (8.10%) Test Automation
20 641 (8.07%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,858 (23.38%) Python
2 1,587 (19.97%) SQL
3 754 (9.49%) PowerShell
4 661 (8.32%) Java
5 637 (8.02%) C#
6 467 (5.88%) JavaScript
7 319 (4.01%) TypeScript
8 276 (3.47%) Bash
8 276 (3.47%) Bicep
9 93 (1.17%) T-SQL
10 90 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.01%) Go
12 76 (0.96%) Scala
13 49 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
14 45 (0.57%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.54%) R
16 35 (0.44%) PL/SQL
17 32 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 28 (0.35%) C++
19 23 (0.29%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,942 (24.44%) Security Cleared
2 1,618 (20.36%) SC Cleared
3 566 (7.12%) Degree
4 406 (5.11%) Azure Certification
5 249 (3.13%) CISSP
6 210 (2.64%) DV Cleared
7 206 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 196 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
8 196 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
9 185 (2.33%) Microsoft Certification
10 177 (2.23%) AWS Certification
11 126 (1.59%) CISM
12 94 (1.18%) CCNP
13 79 (0.99%) PMP
14 76 (0.96%) PMI Certification
15 75 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 63 (0.79%) ISTQB
17 61 (0.77%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
19 51 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 538 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 414 (5.21%) QA
3 343 (4.32%) GDPR
4 282 (3.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 270 (3.40%) NIST
6 175 (2.20%) Accessibility
7 118 (1.48%) NCSC
8 97 (1.22%) SLA
9 77 (0.97%) PCI DSS
10 74 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 66 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 63 (0.79%) WCAG
13 61 (0.77%) GRC
14 42 (0.53%) PMO
15 38 (0.48%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 24 (0.30%) NIST 800
19 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
20 19 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 940 (11.83%) Active Directory
2 833 (10.48%) Docker
3 223 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (1.76%) Virtual Desktop
5 135 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
6 114 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.87%) vSphere
8 51 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.38%) Firmware
11 25 (0.31%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 7 (0.088%) IAG
16 6 (0.076%) Ceph
16 6 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.063%) HDFS
17 5 (0.063%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,271 (15.99%) Terraform
2 1,156 (14.55%) Kubernetes
3 422 (5.31%) Microsoft Intune
4 373 (4.69%) Ansible
5 213 (2.68%) Grafana
6 187 (2.35%) Prometheus
7 168 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
8 103 (1.30%) SCCM
9 69 (0.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 46 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
11 42 (0.53%) FortiGate
12 41 (0.52%) Argo
12 41 (0.52%) Progress Chef
13 39 (0.49%) Puppet
14 31 (0.39%) Istio
15 23 (0.29%) HP ALM
16 21 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.20%) Packer
19 13 (0.16%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,525 (31.77%) Microsoft
2 747 (9.40%) Databricks
3 358 (4.50%) ServiceNow
4 305 (3.84%) Google
5 304 (3.83%) VMware
6 290 (3.65%) Oracle
7 218 (2.74%) Cisco
7 218 (2.74%) SAP
8 199 (2.50%) OpenAI
9 156 (1.96%) Splunk
10 149 (1.87%) Salesforce
11 145 (1.82%) Palo Alto
12 128 (1.61%) CyberArk
13 125 (1.57%) Foundry
14 107 (1.35%) Okta
15 95 (1.20%) Dynatrace
16 88 (1.11%) Informatica
17 84 (1.06%) Zscaler
18 74 (0.93%) Citrix
19 70 (0.88%) Fortinet