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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,148 4,635 5,872
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.50% 15.75% 13.43%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.64% 41.55% 41.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,113 3,305 4,243
10th Percentile £358 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £638
90th Percentile £714 £735 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 46 53
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £51.25 £24.39 £22.30
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -35.19%
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% -8.89%

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 16,762 11,156 14,150
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.35% 37.91% 32.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,421 7,770 10,058
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 £476 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +0.21% -2.86% -3.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 472 247 343
10th Percentile £15.51 £15.78 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.46 £19.00 £16.03
Median hourly rate £42.59 £27.76 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.43% +32.19% -30.58%
75th Percentile £67.84 £48.75 £34.38
90th Percentile £82.13 £75.20 £59.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £23.00 £17.69
% change year-on-year +106.52% +30.02% -23.59%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 6,066 £523 -0.48% 2,755
London +1 3,260 £531 -3.41% 995
UK excluding London +2 2,957 £500 - 2,156
Work from Home -1 2,136 £525 +0.96% 1,256
North of England +3 837 £500 +5.26% 566
South East +1 772 £500 -4.76% 647
Midlands -3 500 £488 -6.25% 316
North West +1 449 £500 - 279
West Midlands 0 367 £500 -4.76% 175
South West +6 365 £500 -4.76% 254
Yorkshire +3 344 £500 +17.65% 200
Scotland +5 291 £550 +15.79% 126
East of England +4 152 £545 -9.17% 204
East Midlands +1 124 £449 -5.58% 139
Wales -3 75 £400 -5.88% 70
North East -2 51 £525 +3.70% 91
Northern Ireland +11 15 £475 - 16
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
1 327 (4.57%) SharePoint
2 207 (2.90%) Confluence
3 199 (2.78%) Microsoft Exchange
4 194 (2.71%) Apache Spark
5 106 (1.48%) Apache
6 93 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.38%) SAS
8 20 (0.28%) IIS
9 17 (0.24%) ArcGIS
9 17 (0.24%) CMS
10 16 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.21%) Appian
12 14 (0.20%) Camunda
13 13 (0.18%) Mendix
14 11 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
15 8 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 8 (0.11%) nginx
16 7 (0.098%) Jupyter
Applications
1 122 (1.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 85 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 49 (0.69%) 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
1 114 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.15%) Maximo
3 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.098%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.070%) Dynamics AX
8 5 (0.070%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.056%) Cloudability
9 4 (0.056%) Elite 3E
9 4 (0.056%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.056%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.056%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.056%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.042%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.042%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 2,449 (34.26%) AWS
2 1,489 (20.83%) Azure DevOps
3 1,324 (18.52%) GCP
4 937 (13.11%) Power Platform
5 858 (12.00%) Entra ID
6 759 (10.62%) Microsoft 365
7 707 (9.89%) GitHub
8 510 (7.13%) Azure Data Factory
9 421 (5.89%) GitHub Actions
10 406 (5.68%) Serverless
11 342 (4.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 284 (3.97%) SaaS
13 277 (3.88%) Dynamics 365
14 269 (3.76%) Azure AKS
15 258 (3.61%) Power Automate
16 239 (3.34%) Azure Monitor
17 235 (3.29%) PaaS
18 227 (3.18%) Azure Functions
19 207 (2.90%) PowerApps
20 202 (2.83%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 440 (6.16%) Firewall
2 301 (4.21%) DNS
3 258 (3.61%) VPN
4 243 (3.40%) Network Security
5 188 (2.63%) WAN
6 167 (2.34%) DHCP
7 136 (1.90%) LAN
8 95 (1.33%) SD-WAN
8 95 (1.33%) TCP/IP
9 87 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
10 78 (1.09%) VLAN
11 70 (0.98%) Kerberos
12 52 (0.73%) BGP
13 45 (0.63%) OSPF
14 44 (0.62%) HTTP
14 44 (0.62%) SSL
15 41 (0.57%) Wireless
16 40 (0.56%) SAN
17 36 (0.50%) Internet
18 32 (0.45%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 634 (8.87%) Power BI
2 428 (5.99%) SQL Server
3 373 (5.22%) Data Warehouse
4 345 (4.83%) Data Lake
5 263 (3.68%) Azure SQL Database
6 260 (3.64%) PostgreSQL
7 206 (2.88%) NoSQL
8 185 (2.59%) Metadata
9 150 (2.10%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.62%) Relational Database
11 115 (1.61%) Big Data
12 99 (1.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 94 (1.32%) MongoDB
14 83 (1.16%) Tableau
15 69 (0.97%) MySQL
16 68 (0.95%) Oracle Database
16 68 (0.95%) Snowflake Schema
17 62 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.81%) Star Schema
19 48 (0.67%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 527 (7.37%) Git
2 510 (7.13%) JIRA
3 384 (5.37%) Jenkins
4 282 (3.95%) GitLab
5 130 (1.82%) Selenium
6 90 (1.26%) Postman
7 73 (1.02%) Cucumber
8 72 (1.01%) JUnit
9 67 (0.94%) JMeter
10 54 (0.76%) REST Assured
11 50 (0.70%) MLflow
12 45 (0.63%) Cypress.io
13 43 (0.60%) SonarQube
14 37 (0.52%) Artifactory
15 35 (0.49%) Visual Studio
16 34 (0.48%) TestRail
17 33 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
17 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
18 31 (0.43%) Gatling
19 26 (0.36%) Zephyr
General
1 1,929 (26.99%) Social Skills
2 1,269 (17.75%) Finance
3 812 (11.36%) Public Sector
4 689 (9.64%) Analytical Skills
5 378 (5.29%) Banking
6 228 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
7 181 (2.53%) Legal
8 108 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 92 (1.29%) Retail
10 89 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
11 83 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
12 77 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
13 74 (1.04%) Marketing
14 69 (0.97%) Telecoms
15 67 (0.94%) Financial Institution
15 67 (0.94%) Law
16 61 (0.85%) Investment Banking
17 57 (0.80%) Front Office
18 45 (0.63%) Manufacturing
19 44 (0.62%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,210 (16.93%) Architect
2 959 (13.42%) Developer
3 834 (11.67%) Senior
4 652 (9.12%) Azure Engineer
5 586 (8.20%) Data Engineer
6 544 (7.61%) Lead
7 440 (6.16%) Analyst
8 378 (5.29%) DevOps Engineer
9 307 (4.29%) Solutions Architect
10 301 (4.21%) Consultant
11 209 (2.92%) Cloud Engineer
12 201 (2.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 193 (2.70%) Azure Architect
14 180 (2.52%) Security Engineer
15 174 (2.43%) Platform Engineer
16 166 (2.32%) Data Architect
17 162 (2.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 158 (2.21%) Technical Architect
19 156 (2.18%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 149 (2.08%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 562 (7.86%) .NET
2 476 (6.66%) REST
3 336 (4.70%) React
4 272 (3.81%) Kafka
5 270 (3.78%) PySpark
6 252 (3.53%) Node.js
7 246 (3.44%) RESTful
8 221 (3.09%) Spring
9 212 (2.97%) OAuth
10 191 (2.67%) AngularJS
11 184 (2.57%) Spring Boot
12 158 (2.21%) LDAP
13 157 (2.20%) JSON
14 148 (2.07%) HTML
15 129 (1.80%) SAML
16 128 (1.79%) CSS
17 127 (1.78%) Middleware
18 125 (1.75%) SOAP
19 120 (1.68%) OpenID
20 112 (1.57%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 666 (9.32%) Cloud Native
2 274 (3.83%) Onboarding
3 268 (3.75%) Product Ownership
4 185 (2.59%) Hybrid Cloud
5 184 (2.57%) Data Centre
6 172 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
7 165 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
8 162 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
9 161 (2.25%) Security Posture
10 156 (2.18%) Public Cloud
11 127 (1.78%) AI Agents
12 91 (1.27%) Data Structures
13 88 (1.23%) Replication
14 83 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
15 81 (1.13%) Management Information System
16 70 (0.98%) PKI
17 66 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
17 66 (0.92%) Low-Code
18 60 (0.84%) NHS
19 56 (0.78%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 769 (10.76%) Windows
2 371 (5.19%) Linux
3 236 (3.30%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.66%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.02%) VMS
6 70 (0.98%) Unix
7 60 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 59 (0.83%) Mac OS
9 48 (0.67%) Apple iOS
10 39 (0.55%) Android
11 25 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.27%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.098%) CentOS
17 7 (0.098%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.070%) Debian
18 5 (0.070%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,664 (37.27%) DevOps
2 2,218 (31.03%) CI/CD
3 1,689 (23.63%) Agile
4 1,104 (15.44%) Problem-Solving
5 1,046 (14.63%) Analytics
6 992 (13.88%) Infrastructure as Code
7 982 (13.74%) AI
8 963 (13.47%) Migration
9 800 (11.19%) Data Modelling
10 708 (9.90%) Stakeholder Management
11 696 (9.74%) Business Intelligence
12 689 (9.64%) Containerisation
13 686 (9.60%) Continuous Improvement
14 660 (9.23%) Data Pipeline
15 658 (9.21%) Microservices
16 642 (8.98%) ETL
17 597 (8.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 588 (8.23%) Data Engineering
19 565 (7.90%) Test Automation
20 563 (7.88%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,793 (25.08%) Python
2 1,562 (21.85%) SQL
3 728 (10.18%) PowerShell
4 616 (8.62%) C#
5 613 (8.58%) Java
6 476 (6.66%) JavaScript
7 296 (4.14%) TypeScript
8 252 (3.53%) Bash
9 228 (3.19%) Bicep
10 106 (1.48%) Scala
11 82 (1.15%) Go
12 81 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 81 (1.13%) T-SQL
13 77 (1.08%) PL/SQL
14 71 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
15 53 (0.74%) Shell Script
16 47 (0.66%) R
17 30 (0.42%) C++
18 23 (0.32%) PHP
19 19 (0.27%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,758 (24.59%) Security Cleared
2 1,471 (20.58%) SC Cleared
3 525 (7.34%) Degree
4 383 (5.36%) Azure Certification
5 207 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
6 195 (2.73%) CISSP
7 159 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
8 153 (2.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 150 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
10 141 (1.97%) AWS Certification
11 138 (1.93%) DV Cleared
12 114 (1.59%) CISM
13 78 (1.09%) CCNP
14 75 (1.05%) Master's Degree
15 70 (0.98%) PMP
16 68 (0.95%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.95%) TOGAF Certification
17 60 (0.84%) ISTQB
18 54 (0.76%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 41 (0.57%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 505 (7.06%) Data Quality
2 385 (5.39%) GDPR
3 384 (5.37%) QA
4 290 (4.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 261 (3.65%) NIST
6 135 (1.89%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.39%) NCSC
8 86 (1.20%) PCI DSS
9 62 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 61 (0.85%) SLA
11 57 (0.80%) Cyber Essentials
11 57 (0.80%) PMO
12 42 (0.59%) GRC
13 40 (0.56%) WCAG
14 32 (0.45%) HIPAA
15 24 (0.34%) NIST 800
15 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
16 23 (0.32%) ISO 20022
17 20 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 19 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 880 (12.31%) Active Directory
2 809 (11.32%) Docker
3 206 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 108 (1.51%) Hyper-V
4 108 (1.51%) Virtual Machines
5 100 (1.40%) Virtual Desktop
6 72 (1.01%) vSphere
7 35 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
8 29 (0.41%) VMware NSX
9 26 (0.36%) Firmware
10 19 (0.27%) NFS
11 11 (0.15%) Postfix
12 7 (0.098%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 7 (0.098%) BitLocker
12 7 (0.098%) HDFS
12 7 (0.098%) Varnish
13 6 (0.084%) Ceph
13 6 (0.084%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.084%) RACF
13 6 (0.084%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 1,126 (15.75%) Terraform
2 1,047 (14.65%) Kubernetes
3 363 (5.08%) Microsoft Intune
4 321 (4.49%) Ansible
5 192 (2.69%) Grafana
6 162 (2.27%) Prometheus
7 150 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
8 115 (1.61%) SCCM
9 69 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.55%) 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 2,290 (32.04%) Microsoft
2 732 (10.24%) Databricks
3 330 (4.62%) Google
4 319 (4.46%) Oracle
5 294 (4.11%) ServiceNow
6 289 (4.04%) VMware
7 203 (2.84%) SAP
8 195 (2.73%) Cisco
9 185 (2.59%) OpenAI
10 158 (2.21%) Splunk
11 137 (1.92%) CyberArk
12 117 (1.64%) Foundry
13 100 (1.40%) Palo Alto
14 99 (1.39%) Salesforce
15 87 (1.22%) Okta
16 75 (1.05%) Informatica
17 74 (1.04%) IBM
18 72 (1.01%) Citrix
19 70 (0.98%) Red Hat
20 69 (0.97%) BeyondTrust