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 23 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,392 4,807 5,564
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.58% 14.58% 14.35%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.41% 39.16% 42.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,873 3,270 3,943
10th Percentile £375 £350 £341
25th Percentile £438 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £635
90th Percentile £720 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 45 38
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.20 £18.05
25th Percentile £21.74 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.33% +7.14% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.75 £72.50 £60.58
90th Percentile £96.06 £92.50 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year -41.15% +96.97% -28.54%

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 18,896 12,276 13,082
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.07% 37.22% 33.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,515 8,192 9,059
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 608 320 239
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.48 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £17.57
Median hourly rate £34.13 £28.00 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year +21.88% +3.82% -22.94%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £54.38
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.28 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £18.87 £21.46
% change year-on-year +74.88% -12.07% -20.52%

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 23 August 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 23 August 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 23 August 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 7,200 £525 - 2,614
London +1 3,770 £550 - 926
UK excluding London +2 3,595 £500 - 2,226
Work from Home +1 2,572 £525 +5.00% 1,194
North of England +7 1,048 £500 +5.26% 568
South East +1 931 £525 +5.00% 670
Midlands +4 652 £495 -4.21% 309
North West +6 542 £500 +2.30% 291
West Midlands +3 480 £493 -8.29% 184
South West +5 432 £540 +8.00% 317
Yorkshire +6 424 £500 +5.26% 191
Scotland +11 285 £500 +4.38% 105
East of England +5 173 £525 +2.94% 185
East Midlands +10 160 £494 +6.76% 124
North East +8 95 £506 +1.25% 95
Wales 0 90 £475 +6.50% 82
Northern Ireland +10 15 £644 +35.53% 29
Channel Islands 0 10 £450 -29.69% 1

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
1 455 (5.42%) SharePoint
2 271 (3.23%) Confluence
3 201 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.07%) Apache Spark
5 152 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.37%) Apache
7 43 (0.51%) SAS
8 37 (0.44%) IIS
9 27 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 22 (0.26%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 11 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
15 8 (0.095%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.095%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.095%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.083%) Camunda
17 6 (0.071%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 124 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.44%) Chatbot
6 34 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.095%) Revit
10 8 (0.095%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.012%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 124 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.095%) Magento
7 8 (0.095%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.083%) Shopify
9 6 (0.071%) Maximo
9 6 (0.071%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.060%) Workday HCM
11 4 (0.048%) Quorum
11 4 (0.048%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 3,003 (35.78%) AWS
2 1,801 (21.46%) Azure DevOps
3 1,432 (17.06%) GCP
4 1,080 (12.87%) Entra ID
5 1,065 (12.69%) Power Platform
6 856 (10.20%) Microsoft 365
7 838 (9.99%) GitHub
8 505 (6.02%) GitHub Actions
9 481 (5.73%) Azure Data Factory
10 364 (4.34%) Serverless
11 356 (4.24%) SaaS
12 320 (3.81%) Azure Monitor
13 317 (3.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 309 (3.68%) Azure AKS
15 292 (3.48%) Power Automate
16 279 (3.32%) PowerApps
17 275 (3.28%) Dynamics 365
18 259 (3.09%) Snowflake
19 247 (2.94%) PaaS
20 229 (2.73%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 530 (6.32%) Firewall
2 422 (5.03%) DNS
3 327 (3.90%) VPN
4 311 (3.71%) Network Security
5 217 (2.59%) DHCP
6 198 (2.36%) WAN
7 171 (2.04%) TCP/IP
8 121 (1.44%) LAN
9 114 (1.36%) BGP
10 102 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.12%) VLAN
12 91 (1.08%) OSPF
13 85 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 73 (0.87%) SSL
15 65 (0.77%) SAN
16 56 (0.67%) Wireless
17 50 (0.60%) HTTP
18 47 (0.56%) VXLAN
19 45 (0.54%) IPsec
20 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 726 (8.65%) Power BI
2 469 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 414 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 360 (4.29%) Data Lake
5 292 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
6 227 (2.70%) Metadata
7 223 (2.66%) NoSQL
8 221 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
9 143 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 130 (1.55%) Delta Lake
11 105 (1.25%) MongoDB
12 102 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 99 (1.18%) Big Data
14 82 (0.98%) MySQL
15 67 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
15 67 (0.80%) Redis
16 66 (0.79%) Tableau
17 62 (0.74%) Snowflake Schema
18 60 (0.71%) BigQuery
19 59 (0.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 697 (8.31%) Git
2 633 (7.54%) JIRA
3 467 (5.56%) Jenkins
4 360 (4.29%) GitLab
5 138 (1.64%) Selenium
6 76 (0.91%) Postman
7 63 (0.75%) JUnit
8 62 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 61 (0.73%) JMeter
10 53 (0.63%) Cucumber
10 53 (0.63%) SonarQube
11 50 (0.60%) Maven
12 49 (0.58%) Visual Studio
13 44 (0.52%) Claude Code
13 44 (0.52%) REST Assured
14 42 (0.50%) Gradle
15 40 (0.48%) WebDriver
16 33 (0.39%) MLflow
17 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
18 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,235 (26.63%) Social Skills
2 1,559 (18.58%) Finance
3 993 (11.83%) Public Sector
4 818 (9.75%) Analytical Skills
5 456 (5.43%) Banking
6 239 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 217 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 193 (2.30%) Retail
9 182 (2.17%) Legal
10 98 (1.17%) Manufacturing
11 95 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 91 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 86 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
14 76 (0.91%) Investment Banking
15 75 (0.89%) Aerospace
15 75 (0.89%) Marketing
16 74 (0.88%) Law
17 67 (0.80%) Financial Institution
18 61 (0.73%) Military
19 57 (0.68%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,544 (18.40%) Architect
2 1,050 (12.51%) Developer
3 1,043 (12.43%) Senior
4 745 (8.88%) Azure Engineer
5 695 (8.28%) Lead
6 597 (7.11%) Data Engineer
7 488 (5.82%) Analyst
8 457 (5.45%) DevOps Engineer
9 442 (5.27%) Solutions Architect
10 358 (4.27%) Cloud Engineer
11 319 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 305 (3.63%) Consultant
13 266 (3.17%) Data Architect
14 235 (2.80%) Azure Architect
15 234 (2.79%) Platform Engineer
16 202 (2.41%) Technical Architect
17 200 (2.38%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 190 (2.26%) Security Engineer
19 189 (2.25%) Security Architect
20 187 (2.23%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,396 (16.63%) Terraform
2 675 (8.04%) REST
3 648 (7.72%) .NET
4 361 (4.30%) Kafka
5 322 (3.84%) React
6 292 (3.48%) RESTful
7 272 (3.24%) PySpark
8 245 (2.92%) OAuth
9 225 (2.68%) JSON
10 207 (2.47%) Spring
11 181 (2.16%) Node.js
12 179 (2.13%) Spring Boot
13 170 (2.03%) AngularJS
14 162 (1.93%) HTML
15 150 (1.79%) OpenID
15 150 (1.79%) SAML
16 145 (1.73%) OAuth2
17 142 (1.69%) Playwright
18 141 (1.68%) Middleware
19 137 (1.63%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 919 (10.95%) Cloud Native
2 416 (4.96%) Onboarding
3 361 (4.30%) Product Ownership
4 271 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
5 269 (3.21%) Hybrid Cloud
6 266 (3.17%) AI Agents
7 264 (3.15%) Enterprise Software
8 259 (3.09%) Data Centre
9 234 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
10 175 (2.09%) Security Posture
11 149 (1.78%) Management Information System
12 141 (1.68%) Data Structures
12 141 (1.68%) Public Cloud
13 118 (1.41%) Enterprise Cloud
14 113 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
14 113 (1.35%) PKI
15 97 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
16 95 (1.13%) Replication
17 80 (0.95%) CMDB
18 77 (0.92%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 984 (11.73%) Windows
2 509 (6.07%) Linux
3 358 (4.27%) Windows Server
4 130 (1.55%) Windows 10
5 89 (1.06%) Unix
6 85 (1.01%) Android
6 85 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 83 (0.99%) Apple iOS
8 70 (0.83%) Mac OS
9 63 (0.75%) VMS
10 51 (0.61%) Ubuntu
11 22 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
13 17 (0.20%) CentOS
14 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 7 (0.083%) Amazon Linux
18 6 (0.071%) AIX
18 6 (0.071%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,131 (37.31%) DevOps
2 2,651 (31.59%) CI/CD
3 2,109 (25.13%) Agile
4 1,362 (16.23%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,325 (15.79%) AI
6 1,305 (15.55%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,234 (14.70%) Migration
8 1,150 (13.70%) Analytics
9 1,121 (13.36%) Problem-Solving
10 940 (11.20%) Continuous Improvement
11 912 (10.87%) Data Modelling
12 825 (9.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 788 (9.39%) Roadmaps
14 786 (9.37%) Containerisation
15 777 (9.26%) Business Intelligence
16 774 (9.22%) Data Pipeline
17 753 (8.97%) Microservices
18 713 (8.50%) Test Automation
19 694 (8.27%) Technical Leadership
20 677 (8.07%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,906 (22.71%) Python
2 1,637 (19.51%) SQL
3 869 (10.36%) PowerShell
4 699 (8.33%) Java
5 623 (7.42%) C#
6 508 (6.05%) JavaScript
7 399 (4.75%) Bash
8 351 (4.18%) Bicep
9 307 (3.66%) TypeScript
10 103 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.07%) T-SQL
12 72 (0.86%) Go
13 64 (0.76%) Shell Script
14 57 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
15 56 (0.67%) Scala
16 45 (0.54%) PL/SQL
17 42 (0.50%) R
18 39 (0.46%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.38%) Groovy
20 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,180 (25.98%) Security Cleared
2 1,770 (21.09%) SC Cleared
3 562 (6.70%) Degree
4 461 (5.49%) Azure Certification
5 286 (3.41%) DV Cleared
6 267 (3.18%) CISSP
7 249 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
8 229 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
9 212 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
10 202 (2.41%) AWS Certification
11 187 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
12 133 (1.58%) CISM
13 102 (1.22%) CCNP
14 89 (1.06%) PMI Certification
15 86 (1.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 85 (1.01%) PMP
17 73 (0.87%) ISTQB
18 65 (0.77%) Master's Degree
19 55 (0.66%) CCSP
20 44 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 591 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 452 (5.39%) QA
3 315 (3.75%) GDPR
4 311 (3.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 307 (3.66%) NIST
6 200 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 126 (1.50%) NCSC
8 108 (1.29%) SLA
9 77 (0.92%) GRC
10 76 (0.91%) WCAG
11 72 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
12 70 (0.83%) PCI DSS
13 59 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 57 (0.68%) PMO
15 37 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 27 (0.32%) HIPAA
17 25 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 19 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
18 19 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 1,014 (12.08%) Active Directory
2 925 (11.02%) Docker
3 246 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 150 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
5 142 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
6 132 (1.57%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.81%) vSphere
8 54 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 39 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.37%) Firmware
11 23 (0.27%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) IAG
13 12 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 11 (0.13%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.083%) Varnish
18 6 (0.071%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.071%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,293 (15.41%) Kubernetes
2 452 (5.39%) Ansible
3 435 (5.18%) Microsoft Intune
4 268 (3.19%) Grafana
5 216 (2.57%) Prometheus
6 153 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
7 123 (1.47%) SCCM
8 63 (0.75%) Progress Chef
9 60 (0.71%) Argo
10 49 (0.58%) Puppet
11 38 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 32 (0.38%) Istio
14 23 (0.27%) vCenter Server
15 22 (0.26%) SCOM
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
16 19 (0.23%) Packer
16 19 (0.23%) QRadar
17 18 (0.21%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,875 (34.26%) Microsoft
2 813 (9.69%) Databricks
3 406 (4.84%) ServiceNow
4 360 (4.29%) Google
5 354 (4.22%) VMware
6 331 (3.94%) Oracle
7 244 (2.91%) Cisco
8 224 (2.67%) SAP
9 204 (2.43%) OpenAI
9 204 (2.43%) Splunk
10 165 (1.97%) Salesforce
11 153 (1.82%) CyberArk
12 150 (1.79%) Palo Alto
13 137 (1.63%) Foundry
14 120 (1.43%) Dynatrace
15 103 (1.23%) Zscaler
16 95 (1.13%) Informatica
17 91 (1.08%) Okta
18 79 (0.94%) IBM
19 77 (0.92%) Fortinet