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 9 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,383 4,776 5,506
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.39% 14.59% 14.45%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.07% 39.06% 42.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,879 3,236 3,827
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £415 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £627 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 45 31
10th Percentile £18.25 £16.91 £19.95
25th Percentile £21.27 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £37.50 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -2.60% -28.70%
75th Percentile £78.94 £72.50 £61.00
90th Percentile £98.31 £88.25 £87.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £53.23 £42.34
% change year-on-year -28.14% +25.71% -8.32%

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 19,021 12,228 13,017
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.92% 37.35% 34.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,622 8,124 8,831
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 613 305 206
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.50 £14.21
25th Percentile £18.00 £18.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £30.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% - -14.29%
75th Percentile £68.75 £55.00 £60.95
90th Percentile £82.05 £71.78 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.13 £19.89 £30.00
% change year-on-year +56.53% -33.72% +11.11%

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 9 September 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 9 September 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 9 September 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 7,168 £525 - 5,824
London +1 3,757 £550 +0.92% 3,101
UK excluding London +2 3,586 £505 +1.00% 3,551
Work from Home 0 2,540 £525 +5.00% 2,896
North of England +8 1,038 £500 +5.26% 914
South East +2 915 £525 +5.00% 860
Midlands +4 653 £493 -3.90% 489
North West +7 530 £500 +5.26% 499
West Midlands +3 481 £488 -9.22% 298
South West +5 431 £540 +8.00% 437
Yorkshire +7 426 £500 +5.26% 296
Scotland +9 292 £500 +5.26% 328
East of England +3 182 £525 +5.00% 287
East Midlands +8 160 £500 +8.11% 190
North East +6 95 £500 - 124
Wales +1 88 £450 - 88
Northern Ireland +16 15 £650 - 181
Channel Islands 0 11 £450 -29.69% 3

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
1 456 (5.44%) SharePoint
2 261 (3.11%) Confluence
3 195 (2.33%) Microsoft Exchange
4 185 (2.21%) Apache Spark
5 165 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.38%) Apache
7 43 (0.51%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) CMS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.095%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
16 6 (0.072%) WebSphere
Applications
1 126 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 73 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.48%) Chatbot
5 39 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) 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%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 129 (1.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.095%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.095%) Magento
7 8 (0.095%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
8 7 (0.084%) Workday HCM
9 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Endur
11 4 (0.048%) FLEXCUBE
11 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 3,013 (35.94%) AWS
2 1,786 (21.31%) Azure DevOps
3 1,440 (17.18%) GCP
4 1,109 (13.23%) Entra ID
5 1,074 (12.81%) Power Platform
6 867 (10.34%) Microsoft 365
7 855 (10.20%) GitHub
8 498 (5.94%) GitHub Actions
9 481 (5.74%) Azure Data Factory
10 382 (4.56%) Serverless
11 364 (4.34%) SaaS
12 321 (3.83%) Azure Monitor
13 315 (3.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 289 (3.45%) Azure AKS
14 289 (3.45%) Power Automate
15 284 (3.39%) Snowflake
16 282 (3.36%) Dynamics 365
17 277 (3.30%) PowerApps
18 231 (2.76%) Azure AI
19 227 (2.71%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 535 (6.38%) Firewall
2 422 (5.03%) DNS
3 314 (3.75%) VPN
4 312 (3.72%) Network Security
5 225 (2.68%) DHCP
6 192 (2.29%) WAN
7 167 (1.99%) TCP/IP
8 115 (1.37%) LAN
9 110 (1.31%) BGP
10 101 (1.20%) SD-WAN
11 91 (1.09%) VLAN
12 88 (1.05%) OSPF
13 85 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.89%) SSL
15 63 (0.75%) SAN
16 60 (0.72%) Wireless
17 48 (0.57%) HTTP
18 47 (0.56%) IPsec
19 46 (0.55%) VXLAN
20 39 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 724 (8.64%) Power BI
2 477 (5.69%) SQL Server
3 415 (4.95%) Data Warehouse
4 384 (4.58%) Data Lake
5 297 (3.54%) PostgreSQL
6 251 (2.99%) Metadata
7 223 (2.66%) NoSQL
8 213 (2.54%) Azure SQL Database
9 143 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 136 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 111 (1.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 106 (1.26%) MongoDB
13 102 (1.22%) Big Data
14 92 (1.10%) MySQL
15 72 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
16 67 (0.80%) Tableau
17 64 (0.76%) Redis
18 61 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
18 61 (0.73%) BigQuery
18 61 (0.73%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 706 (8.42%) Git
2 616 (7.35%) JIRA
3 468 (5.58%) Jenkins
4 365 (4.35%) GitLab
5 134 (1.60%) Selenium
6 81 (0.97%) Postman
7 64 (0.76%) JUnit
8 62 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 60 (0.72%) JMeter
10 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 55 (0.66%) Maven
12 51 (0.61%) Cucumber
13 49 (0.58%) Claude Code
14 46 (0.55%) Gradle
14 46 (0.55%) REST Assured
15 45 (0.54%) Visual Studio
16 40 (0.48%) WebDriver
17 37 (0.44%) MLflow
18 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
19 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,290 (27.32%) Social Skills
2 1,576 (18.80%) Finance
3 963 (11.49%) Public Sector
4 828 (9.88%) Analytical Skills
5 464 (5.54%) Banking
6 228 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
7 218 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 206 (2.46%) Retail
9 186 (2.22%) Legal
10 107 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
11 100 (1.19%) Manufacturing
12 93 (1.11%) Telecoms
13 85 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
14 83 (0.99%) Marketing
15 78 (0.93%) Aerospace
15 78 (0.93%) Investment Banking
16 75 (0.89%) Law
17 73 (0.87%) Military
18 61 (0.73%) Financial Institution
19 60 (0.72%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,577 (18.81%) Architect
2 1,062 (12.67%) Senior
3 992 (11.83%) Developer
4 741 (8.84%) Azure Engineer
5 688 (8.21%) Lead
6 614 (7.32%) Data Engineer
7 496 (5.92%) Analyst
8 475 (5.67%) Solutions Architect
9 464 (5.54%) DevOps Engineer
10 366 (4.37%) Cloud Engineer
11 325 (3.88%) Consultant
12 320 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 275 (3.28%) Data Architect
14 243 (2.90%) Platform Engineer
15 226 (2.70%) Azure Architect
16 208 (2.48%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 199 (2.37%) Technical Architect
18 193 (2.30%) Security Architect
19 190 (2.27%) Project Manager
20 185 (2.21%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,409 (16.81%) Terraform
2 698 (8.33%) REST
3 634 (7.56%) .NET
4 383 (4.57%) Kafka
5 305 (3.64%) React
6 289 (3.45%) RESTful
7 281 (3.35%) PySpark
8 257 (3.07%) OAuth
9 232 (2.77%) JSON
10 203 (2.42%) Spring
11 181 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 157 (1.87%) Node.js
13 156 (1.86%) OpenID
14 153 (1.83%) AngularJS
14 153 (1.83%) SAML
15 152 (1.81%) HTML
16 150 (1.79%) OAuth2
17 140 (1.67%) Middleware
18 139 (1.66%) Playwright
19 134 (1.60%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 932 (11.12%) Cloud Native
2 409 (4.88%) Onboarding
3 373 (4.45%) Product Ownership
4 290 (3.46%) Enterprise Software
5 287 (3.42%) AI Agents
6 279 (3.33%) Hybrid Cloud
7 272 (3.24%) Distributed Systems
8 254 (3.03%) Data Centre
9 233 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
10 176 (2.10%) Security Posture
11 165 (1.97%) Management Information System
12 146 (1.74%) Data Structures
13 139 (1.66%) Public Cloud
14 118 (1.41%) PKI
15 115 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
15 115 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
16 107 (1.28%) Replication
17 95 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
18 83 (0.99%) CMDB
19 78 (0.93%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 995 (11.87%) Windows
2 520 (6.20%) Linux
3 376 (4.49%) Windows Server
4 136 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.04%) Android
5 87 (1.04%) Unix
6 84 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 83 (0.99%) Apple iOS
8 74 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 59 (0.70%) VMS
10 54 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.24%) CentOS
11 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
14 9 (0.11%) Debian
15 6 (0.072%) AIX
15 6 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
15 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,107 (37.06%) DevOps
2 2,654 (31.66%) CI/CD
3 2,101 (25.06%) Agile
4 1,414 (16.87%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,397 (16.66%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,388 (16.56%) AI
7 1,244 (14.84%) Migration
8 1,163 (13.87%) Analytics
9 1,134 (13.53%) Problem-Solving
10 951 (11.34%) Continuous Improvement
11 933 (11.13%) Data Modelling
12 828 (9.88%) Roadmaps
13 806 (9.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 781 (9.32%) Business Intelligence
15 777 (9.27%) Containerisation
15 777 (9.27%) Data Pipeline
16 735 (8.77%) Microservices
17 732 (8.73%) Technical Leadership
18 713 (8.51%) Test Automation
19 676 (8.06%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,926 (22.98%) Python
2 1,641 (19.58%) SQL
3 879 (10.49%) PowerShell
4 688 (8.21%) Java
5 602 (7.18%) C#
6 491 (5.86%) JavaScript
7 405 (4.83%) Bash
8 357 (4.26%) Bicep
9 290 (3.46%) TypeScript
10 103 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 92 (1.10%) T-SQL
12 68 (0.81%) Go
13 66 (0.79%) Scala
14 63 (0.75%) Shell Script
15 55 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.49%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.49%) R
17 34 (0.41%) Kotlin
18 32 (0.38%) Groovy
19 26 (0.31%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,175 (25.95%) Security Cleared
2 1,756 (20.95%) SC Cleared
3 567 (6.76%) Degree
4 466 (5.56%) Azure Certification
5 296 (3.53%) DV Cleared
6 273 (3.26%) CISSP
7 264 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
8 244 (2.91%) Microsoft Certification
9 208 (2.48%) Cisco Certification
10 203 (2.42%) AWS Certification
11 186 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
12 141 (1.68%) CISM
13 95 (1.13%) CCNP
14 90 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 90 (1.07%) PMI Certification
15 86 (1.03%) PMP
16 70 (0.84%) ISTQB
17 63 (0.75%) Master's Degree
18 61 (0.73%) CCSP
19 49 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 621 (7.41%) Data Quality
2 460 (5.49%) QA
3 320 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 317 (3.78%) NIST
5 313 (3.73%) GDPR
6 199 (2.37%) Accessibility
7 123 (1.47%) NCSC
8 110 (1.31%) SLA
9 82 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 80 (0.95%) WCAG
11 79 (0.94%) GRC
12 74 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 59 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 57 (0.68%) PMO
15 45 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 30 (0.36%) SOC 2
17 27 (0.32%) HIPAA
18 24 (0.29%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,032 (12.31%) Active Directory
2 920 (10.97%) Docker
3 256 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 152 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
5 144 (1.72%) Virtual Machines
6 138 (1.65%) Hyper-V
7 67 (0.80%) vSphere
8 54 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.32%) Firmware
11 18 (0.21%) IAG
11 18 (0.21%) NFS
12 13 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Ceph
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Squid
18 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,293 (15.42%) Kubernetes
2 452 (5.39%) Ansible
3 439 (5.24%) Microsoft Intune
4 263 (3.14%) Grafana
5 209 (2.49%) Prometheus
6 153 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
7 129 (1.54%) SCCM
8 62 (0.74%) Progress Chef
9 61 (0.73%) Argo
10 47 (0.56%) Puppet
11 37 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 33 (0.39%) SCOM
14 24 (0.29%) Istio
15 23 (0.27%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.24%) QRadar
17 18 (0.21%) Packer
18 17 (0.20%) CASB
18 17 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,954 (35.24%) Microsoft
2 862 (10.28%) Databricks
3 416 (4.96%) ServiceNow
4 370 (4.41%) VMware
5 369 (4.40%) Google
6 339 (4.04%) Oracle
7 251 (2.99%) Cisco
8 226 (2.70%) SAP
9 216 (2.58%) Splunk
10 203 (2.42%) OpenAI
11 181 (2.16%) Salesforce
12 157 (1.87%) CyberArk
13 155 (1.85%) Palo Alto
14 135 (1.61%) Foundry
15 115 (1.37%) Dynatrace
16 99 (1.18%) Informatica
17 91 (1.09%) Zscaler
18 84 (1.00%) Okta
19 80 (0.95%) Fortinet
20 77 (0.92%) IBM