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 6 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,285 4,865 6,195
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.05% 15.61% 13.84%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.35% 41.94% 41.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,448 3,303 4,533
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 39 83
10th Percentile £18.61 £21.06 £17.75
25th Percentile £32.02 £23.70 £22.55
Median hourly rate £57.50 £29.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +98.28% -37.20% -9.45%
75th Percentile £67.25 £57.50 £62.25
90th Percentile £91.88 £75.84 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +109.09% -40.45% -23.48%

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 14,841 11,599 14,898
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.90% 37.22% 33.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,194 7,728 10,695
10th Percentile £308 £313 £285
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £635
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.26% -0.77% -1.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 362 173 324
10th Percentile £14.43 £16.80 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.93 £21.46 £16.29
Median hourly rate £35.00 £27.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% +22.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.75 £50.06
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.75 £72.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £24.42 £21.00
% change year-on-year +51.52% +16.29% +5.79%

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 6 February 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 6 February 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 6 February 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 5,307 £522 -1.51% 2,798
London 0 2,862 £541 -1.66% 1,052
UK excluding London 0 2,576 £500 - 2,270
Work from Home -2 1,928 £515 -1.72% 1,479
North of England 0 695 £475 - 564
South East -2 671 £500 -6.98% 754
Midlands -1 439 £500 -2.44% 317
North West -1 337 £450 -1.37% 323
South West +5 330 £508 -3.33% 258
West Midlands +1 329 £525 -4.55% 194
Yorkshire -2 312 £484 +1.79% 170
Scotland +7 289 £550 +22.22% 141
East of England -2 151 £550 +15.79% 196
East Midlands -3 109 £436 -3.11% 122
Wales -3 69 £400 -20.00% 62
North East 0 50 £500 +10.13% 73
Northern Ireland +3 10 £475 - 15
Channel Islands +3 2 £600 +101.68%

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
1 287 (4.57%) SharePoint
2 204 (3.25%) Microsoft Exchange
3 163 (2.59%) Apache Spark
4 155 (2.47%) Confluence
5 91 (1.45%) Apache
6 79 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.40%) CMS
7 25 (0.40%) OpenStack
8 21 (0.33%) SAS
9 16 (0.25%) ArcGIS
10 14 (0.22%) Appian
10 14 (0.22%) IIS
11 13 (0.21%) Camunda
12 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.18%) nginx
13 11 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.16%) GeoServer
14 10 (0.16%) SugarCRM
14 10 (0.16%) WebLogic
15 9 (0.14%) Mendix
Applications
1 136 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 106 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 47 (0.75%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.14%) Trello
8 7 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.080%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.080%) Weka
10 4 (0.064%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.032%) Windchill
12 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.016%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.016%) Revit
Business Applications
1 104 (1.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 70 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) Maximo
4 10 (0.16%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.16%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.13%) Endur
6 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.095%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.095%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.095%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.095%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.095%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.080%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.080%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.080%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.080%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,211 (35.18%) AWS
2 1,249 (19.87%) Azure DevOps
3 1,247 (19.84%) GCP
4 851 (13.54%) Power Platform
5 726 (11.55%) Entra ID
6 715 (11.38%) Microsoft 365
7 641 (10.20%) GitHub
8 448 (7.13%) Azure Data Factory
9 386 (6.14%) Serverless
10 375 (5.97%) GitHub Actions
11 289 (4.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 287 (4.57%) Dynamics 365
13 264 (4.20%) SaaS
14 255 (4.06%) Power Automate
15 246 (3.91%) Azure AKS
16 233 (3.71%) Azure Functions
17 222 (3.53%) Azure Monitor
17 222 (3.53%) Snowflake
18 218 (3.47%) Azure Logic Apps
19 202 (3.21%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 425 (6.76%) Firewall
2 271 (4.31%) DNS
3 202 (3.21%) VPN
4 180 (2.86%) Network Security
5 163 (2.59%) DHCP
6 154 (2.45%) WAN
7 100 (1.59%) LAN
8 96 (1.53%) TCP/IP
9 80 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
10 76 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 71 (1.13%) Kerberos
12 65 (1.03%) VLAN
13 58 (0.92%) HTTP
14 39 (0.62%) BGP
15 36 (0.57%) Wireless
16 35 (0.56%) Internet
17 31 (0.49%) SSL
18 30 (0.48%) MPLS
19 27 (0.43%) OSPF
19 27 (0.43%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 586 (9.32%) Power BI
2 366 (5.82%) SQL Server
3 317 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 313 (4.98%) Data Lake
5 232 (3.69%) PostgreSQL
6 221 (3.52%) Azure SQL Database
7 181 (2.88%) NoSQL
8 151 (2.40%) Metadata
9 123 (1.96%) Relational Database
10 102 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 90 (1.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 84 (1.34%) MongoDB
13 82 (1.30%) Big Data
14 79 (1.26%) MySQL
15 73 (1.16%) Tableau
16 68 (1.08%) Oracle Database
17 63 (1.00%) BigQuery
18 55 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
19 47 (0.75%) Redis
20 40 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 481 (7.65%) Git
2 445 (7.08%) JIRA
3 347 (5.52%) Jenkins
4 256 (4.07%) GitLab
5 110 (1.75%) Selenium
6 94 (1.50%) Postman
7 64 (1.02%) Cucumber
8 59 (0.94%) JMeter
9 53 (0.84%) SonarQube
10 52 (0.83%) JUnit
11 48 (0.76%) Cypress.io
11 48 (0.76%) REST Assured
12 41 (0.65%) MLflow
12 41 (0.65%) Visual Studio
13 37 (0.59%) Oracle APEX
14 30 (0.48%) Artifactory
15 29 (0.46%) TestRail
16 27 (0.43%) Bitbucket
16 27 (0.43%) ERwin
17 26 (0.41%) Gatling
General
1 1,969 (31.33%) Social Skills
2 1,124 (17.88%) Finance
3 736 (11.71%) Public Sector
4 635 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
5 366 (5.82%) Banking
6 203 (3.23%) Documentation Skills
7 133 (2.12%) Legal
8 111 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 106 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
10 97 (1.54%) Marketing
11 91 (1.45%) Retail
12 87 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
13 71 (1.13%) Investment Banking
14 64 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
15 62 (0.99%) Telecoms
16 54 (0.86%) Financial Institution
16 54 (0.86%) Law
17 50 (0.80%) Manufacturing
18 42 (0.67%) Military
19 41 (0.65%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,018 (16.20%) Architect
2 910 (14.48%) Developer
3 652 (10.37%) Senior
4 510 (8.11%) Azure Engineer
5 494 (7.86%) Data Engineer
6 443 (7.05%) Lead
7 423 (6.73%) Analyst
8 325 (5.17%) DevOps Engineer
9 316 (5.03%) Solutions Architect
10 275 (4.38%) Consultant
11 184 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 174 (2.77%) Security Engineer
13 160 (2.55%) Azure Architect
14 158 (2.51%) Cloud Engineer
14 158 (2.51%) Senior Developer
15 152 (2.42%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 135 (2.15%) Platform Engineer
17 131 (2.08%) Data Architect
18 130 (2.07%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 122 (1.94%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 516 (8.21%) .NET
2 456 (7.26%) REST
3 291 (4.63%) React
4 247 (3.93%) RESTful
5 234 (3.72%) PySpark
6 233 (3.71%) Kafka
7 215 (3.42%) Node.js
8 202 (3.21%) OAuth
9 197 (3.13%) Spring
10 179 (2.85%) Spring Boot
11 168 (2.67%) HTML
12 163 (2.59%) AngularJS
13 154 (2.45%) LDAP
14 151 (2.40%) SOAP
15 147 (2.34%) CSS
16 146 (2.32%) JSON
17 133 (2.12%) PyTorch
18 125 (1.99%) TensorFlow
19 122 (1.94%) SAML
20 112 (1.78%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 552 (8.78%) Cloud Native
2 240 (3.82%) Onboarding
3 214 (3.40%) Product Ownership
4 171 (2.72%) Hybrid Cloud
5 160 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
5 160 (2.55%) Security Posture
6 153 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
7 144 (2.29%) Data Centre
8 116 (1.85%) Public Cloud
9 100 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
10 90 (1.43%) AI Agents
11 85 (1.35%) Replication
12 75 (1.19%) Data Structures
13 74 (1.18%) Management Information System
14 72 (1.15%) Algorithms
15 66 (1.05%) Low-Code
16 65 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
17 62 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
18 60 (0.95%) NHS
19 58 (0.92%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 720 (11.46%) Windows
2 367 (5.84%) Linux
3 203 (3.23%) Windows Server
4 125 (1.99%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.38%) Unix
6 57 (0.91%) VMS
7 46 (0.73%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.72%) Mac OS
9 41 (0.65%) Android
10 38 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 22 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.30%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.18%) CentOS
15 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.11%) Solaris
18 5 (0.080%) AIX
19 3 (0.048%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,305 (36.67%) DevOps
2 1,895 (30.15%) CI/CD
3 1,564 (24.88%) Agile
4 1,192 (18.97%) Problem-Solving
5 945 (15.04%) Analytics
6 848 (13.49%) AI
7 835 (13.29%) Infrastructure as Code
8 751 (11.95%) Migration
9 661 (10.52%) Business Intelligence
10 653 (10.39%) Stakeholder Management
11 628 (9.99%) Containerisation
12 617 (9.82%) Data Modelling
13 562 (8.94%) Continuous Improvement
14 551 (8.77%) Machine Learning
15 541 (8.61%) Microservices
16 540 (8.59%) ETL
17 532 (8.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 527 (8.39%) Data Pipeline
19 508 (8.08%) Test Automation
20 475 (7.56%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,617 (25.73%) Python
2 1,361 (21.65%) SQL
3 691 (10.99%) PowerShell
4 549 (8.74%) C#
5 548 (8.72%) Java
6 479 (7.62%) JavaScript
7 270 (4.30%) TypeScript
8 260 (4.14%) Bash
9 188 (2.99%) Bicep
10 94 (1.50%) Scala
11 86 (1.37%) Go
12 84 (1.34%) PL/SQL
13 72 (1.15%) Kusto Query Language
14 67 (1.07%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 64 (1.02%) T-SQL
16 48 (0.76%) R
17 46 (0.73%) Shell Script
18 43 (0.68%) C++
19 36 (0.57%) PHP
20 22 (0.35%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,450 (23.07%) Security Cleared
2 1,206 (19.19%) SC Cleared
3 531 (8.45%) Degree
4 356 (5.66%) Azure Certification
5 204 (3.25%) Computer Science Degree
6 173 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
7 162 (2.58%) CISSP
8 129 (2.05%) AWS Certification
9 125 (1.99%) DV Cleared
10 112 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
11 105 (1.67%) CISM
12 94 (1.50%) Master's Degree
13 92 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
14 53 (0.84%) PMI Certification
15 49 (0.78%) PMP
15 49 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
16 48 (0.76%) ISTQB
17 47 (0.75%) CCNP
18 33 (0.53%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 27 (0.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 392 (6.24%) Data Quality
2 378 (6.01%) GDPR
3 338 (5.38%) QA
4 304 (4.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 229 (3.64%) NIST
6 132 (2.10%) Accessibility
7 94 (1.50%) NCSC
8 72 (1.15%) PCI DSS
9 56 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 51 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
11 50 (0.80%) SLA
12 42 (0.67%) HIPAA
13 40 (0.64%) PMO
14 39 (0.62%) SOC 2
15 38 (0.60%) WCAG
16 30 (0.48%) GRC
17 28 (0.45%) EU AI Act
18 26 (0.41%) PSD2
19 23 (0.37%) ISO 20022
20 22 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 815 (12.97%) Active Directory
2 764 (12.16%) Docker
3 195 (3.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 96 (1.53%) Hyper-V
5 76 (1.21%) Virtual Desktop
6 75 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
7 65 (1.03%) vSphere
8 20 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.19%) Squid
9 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.16%) DFS Replication
11 10 (0.16%) Firmware
12 8 (0.13%) KVM
12 8 (0.13%) NFS
12 8 (0.13%) Postfix
12 8 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.11%) Dovecot
14 6 (0.095%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 959 (15.26%) Terraform
2 902 (14.35%) Kubernetes
3 334 (5.31%) Microsoft Intune
4 306 (4.87%) Ansible
5 169 (2.69%) Single Sign-On
6 154 (2.45%) Grafana
7 148 (2.35%) SCCM
8 141 (2.24%) Prometheus
9 70 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.70%) Argo
11 29 (0.46%) Puppet
12 27 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 25 (0.40%) vRealize
14 24 (0.38%) Istio
15 23 (0.37%) Kibana
15 23 (0.37%) Nessus
16 19 (0.30%) Progress Chef
17 18 (0.29%) Nmap
17 18 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
17 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,040 (32.46%) Microsoft
2 626 (9.96%) Databricks
3 346 (5.51%) Oracle
4 334 (5.31%) Google
5 273 (4.34%) ServiceNow
6 260 (4.14%) VMware
7 180 (2.86%) SAP
8 167 (2.66%) OpenAI
9 160 (2.55%) Cisco
10 156 (2.48%) Splunk
11 123 (1.96%) Salesforce
12 115 (1.83%) CyberArk
13 102 (1.62%) Palo Alto
14 84 (1.34%) Foundry
15 75 (1.19%) Okta
16 68 (1.08%) Red Hat
17 65 (1.03%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (1.02%) Citrix
19 60 (0.95%) IBM
20 58 (0.92%) Informatica