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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,064 4,641 5,999
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.81% 15.98% 13.55%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.87% 41.95% 41.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,032 3,318 4,332
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% - -5.83%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 45 59
10th Percentile £25.39 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £24.00 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +76.92% -15.58% -29.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £72.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £84.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £50.53
% change year-on-year +79.69% -36.67% -12.13%

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 16,478 11,063 14,427
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.88% 38.10% 32.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,241 7,764 10,218
10th Percentile £313 £313 £294
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.42% -0.36% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £631
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 460 217 352
10th Percentile £15.61 £15.38 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.94% +26.19% -23.64%
75th Percentile £67.50 £41.50 £39.06
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.80 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £23.00 £17.72
% change year-on-year +106.52% +29.80% -20.04%

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 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 1 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 1 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 5,989 £525 - 2,909
London +1 3,264 £538 -2.27% 1,004
UK excluding London +1 2,879 £500 - 2,332
Work from Home -1 2,171 £525 +1.50% 1,365
North of England +2 811 £488 - 604
South East +1 739 £500 -6.98% 685
Midlands -1 493 £498 -0.50% 369
North West +1 435 £476 -4.80% 303
West Midlands -2 367 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +5 351 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire 0 331 £500 +11.11% 208
Scotland +6 286 £541 +13.95% 115
East of England +9 150 £550 -5.17% 207
East Midlands 0 116 £433 -8.84% 163
Wales -2 84 £400 -3.03% 73
North East -4 48 £525 +9.09% 97
Northern Ireland +5 12 £475 - 24
Channel Islands +4 8 £450 +51.26% 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
1 323 (4.57%) SharePoint
2 206 (2.92%) Microsoft Exchange
3 202 (2.86%) Confluence
4 185 (2.62%) Apache Spark
5 107 (1.51%) Apache
6 101 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.38%) SAS
8 24 (0.34%) IIS
9 21 (0.30%) OpenStack
10 17 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 17 (0.24%) CMS
11 16 (0.23%) Appian
11 16 (0.23%) Camunda
12 13 (0.18%) Mendix
13 11 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
15 9 (0.13%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
17 7 (0.099%) Anypoint
18 5 (0.071%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 124 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 85 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 47 (0.67%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) Trello
8 6 (0.085%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.071%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.071%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.057%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.057%) Weka
11 3 (0.042%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.028%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
13 1 (0.014%) Revit
Business Applications
1 110 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Maximo
4 11 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.099%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.099%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.085%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.071%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.057%) Dynamics AX
10 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.057%) Endur
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle General Ledger
10 4 (0.057%) Primavera
10 4 (0.057%) ResourceLink
10 4 (0.057%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,438 (34.51%) AWS
2 1,474 (20.87%) Azure DevOps
3 1,327 (18.79%) GCP
4 951 (13.46%) Power Platform
5 847 (11.99%) Entra ID
6 769 (10.89%) Microsoft 365
7 725 (10.26%) GitHub
8 503 (7.12%) Azure Data Factory
9 428 (6.06%) GitHub Actions
10 407 (5.76%) Serverless
11 330 (4.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 288 (4.08%) Dynamics 365
13 276 (3.91%) SaaS
14 261 (3.69%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.57%) Azure AKS
16 245 (3.47%) Azure Monitor
17 240 (3.40%) Azure Functions
18 233 (3.30%) PaaS
19 217 (3.07%) Snowflake
20 214 (3.03%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 458 (6.48%) Firewall
2 306 (4.33%) DNS
3 265 (3.75%) VPN
4 237 (3.36%) Network Security
5 189 (2.68%) WAN
6 166 (2.35%) DHCP
7 131 (1.85%) LAN
8 100 (1.42%) SD-WAN
9 98 (1.39%) TCP/IP
10 87 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
11 78 (1.10%) VLAN
12 70 (0.99%) Kerberos
13 55 (0.78%) BGP
14 48 (0.68%) OSPF
15 46 (0.65%) HTTP
16 42 (0.59%) Wireless
17 40 (0.57%) SSL
18 38 (0.54%) SAN
19 32 (0.45%) IPsec
19 32 (0.45%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 644 (9.12%) Power BI
2 417 (5.90%) SQL Server
3 377 (5.34%) Data Warehouse
4 341 (4.83%) Data Lake
5 263 (3.72%) Azure SQL Database
6 255 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
7 205 (2.90%) NoSQL
8 175 (2.48%) Metadata
9 147 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 112 (1.59%) Relational Database
11 107 (1.51%) Big Data
12 95 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 92 (1.30%) MongoDB
14 85 (1.20%) Tableau
15 72 (1.02%) MySQL
16 70 (0.99%) Oracle Database
17 65 (0.92%) BigQuery
18 60 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
19 55 (0.78%) Star Schema
20 46 (0.65%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 534 (7.56%) Git
2 495 (7.01%) JIRA
3 390 (5.52%) Jenkins
4 281 (3.98%) GitLab
5 137 (1.94%) Selenium
6 90 (1.27%) Postman
7 79 (1.12%) JMeter
8 76 (1.08%) Cucumber
9 74 (1.05%) JUnit
10 53 (0.75%) MLflow
11 50 (0.71%) REST Assured
12 45 (0.64%) Cypress.io
13 44 (0.62%) Visual Studio
14 42 (0.59%) SonarQube
15 36 (0.51%) Artifactory
16 33 (0.47%) Oracle APEX
16 33 (0.47%) WebDriver
17 32 (0.45%) TestRail
18 30 (0.42%) SpecFlow
19 28 (0.40%) Gatling
General
1 1,965 (27.82%) Social Skills
2 1,262 (17.87%) Finance
3 834 (11.81%) Public Sector
4 700 (9.91%) Analytical Skills
5 380 (5.38%) Banking
6 223 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
7 173 (2.45%) Legal
8 112 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 100 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
10 90 (1.27%) Retail
11 86 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
12 84 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
13 80 (1.13%) Marketing
14 74 (1.05%) Telecoms
15 69 (0.98%) Financial Institution
16 66 (0.93%) Law
17 56 (0.79%) Investment Banking
18 53 (0.75%) Front Office
19 46 (0.65%) Manufacturing
20 44 (0.62%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,188 (16.82%) Architect
2 958 (13.56%) Developer
3 823 (11.65%) Senior
4 623 (8.82%) Azure Engineer
5 575 (8.14%) Data Engineer
6 536 (7.59%) Lead
7 446 (6.31%) Analyst
8 354 (5.01%) DevOps Engineer
9 317 (4.49%) Solutions Architect
10 306 (4.33%) Consultant
11 191 (2.70%) Cloud Engineer
12 188 (2.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 182 (2.58%) Azure Architect
14 171 (2.42%) Security Engineer
15 167 (2.36%) Platform Engineer
16 161 (2.28%) Senior Developer
17 158 (2.24%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 157 (2.22%) Data Architect
19 148 (2.10%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 141 (2.00%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 561 (7.94%) .NET
2 483 (6.84%) REST
3 340 (4.81%) React
4 274 (3.88%) Kafka
5 263 (3.72%) PySpark
6 255 (3.61%) RESTful
7 247 (3.50%) Node.js
8 215 (3.04%) Spring
9 206 (2.92%) OAuth
10 196 (2.77%) AngularJS
11 179 (2.53%) Spring Boot
12 161 (2.28%) HTML
13 155 (2.19%) LDAP
14 152 (2.15%) JSON
15 142 (2.01%) CSS
16 134 (1.90%) Middleware
17 132 (1.87%) SOAP
18 129 (1.83%) PyTorch
19 125 (1.77%) SAML
20 117 (1.66%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 628 (8.89%) Cloud Native
2 274 (3.88%) Onboarding
3 268 (3.79%) Product Ownership
4 192 (2.72%) Hybrid Cloud
5 185 (2.62%) Data Centre
6 166 (2.35%) Security Posture
7 164 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
8 157 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
9 153 (2.17%) Public Cloud
10 143 (2.02%) Distributed Systems
11 120 (1.70%) AI Agents
12 90 (1.27%) Data Structures
13 87 (1.23%) Replication
14 84 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
15 75 (1.06%) Management Information System
16 70 (0.99%) Algorithms
17 67 (0.95%) PKI
18 65 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
19 64 (0.91%) Low-Code
20 61 (0.86%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 762 (10.79%) Windows
2 375 (5.31%) Linux
3 230 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.74%) Windows 10
5 76 (1.08%) VMS
6 75 (1.06%) Unix
7 57 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 45 (0.64%) Mac OS
9 38 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 30 (0.42%) Android
11 23 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.27%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 7 (0.099%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.085%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.071%) AIX
18 5 (0.071%) CentOS
18 5 (0.071%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,647 (37.47%) DevOps
2 2,175 (30.79%) CI/CD
3 1,675 (23.71%) Agile
4 1,147 (16.24%) Problem-Solving
5 1,062 (15.03%) Analytics
6 986 (13.96%) AI
7 967 (13.69%) Infrastructure as Code
8 932 (13.19%) Migration
9 776 (10.99%) Data Modelling
10 730 (10.33%) Stakeholder Management
11 706 (9.99%) Business Intelligence
12 677 (9.58%) Continuous Improvement
13 676 (9.57%) Containerisation
14 648 (9.17%) Microservices
15 645 (9.13%) Data Pipeline
16 642 (9.09%) ETL
17 610 (8.64%) Machine Learning
18 595 (8.42%) Data Engineering
19 587 (8.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 574 (8.13%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,826 (25.85%) Python
2 1,567 (22.18%) SQL
3 751 (10.63%) PowerShell
4 615 (8.71%) C#
5 594 (8.41%) Java
6 494 (6.99%) JavaScript
7 297 (4.20%) TypeScript
8 258 (3.65%) Bash
9 219 (3.10%) Bicep
10 97 (1.37%) Scala
11 83 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 79 (1.12%) Kusto Query Language
13 78 (1.10%) Go
14 77 (1.09%) PL/SQL
15 75 (1.06%) T-SQL
16 54 (0.76%) Shell Script
17 47 (0.67%) R
18 33 (0.47%) C++
19 26 (0.37%) PHP
20 20 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,723 (24.39%) Security Cleared
2 1,435 (20.31%) SC Cleared
3 538 (7.62%) Degree
4 369 (5.22%) Azure Certification
5 210 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 197 (2.79%) CISSP
7 163 (2.31%) Microsoft Certification
8 150 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
9 143 (2.02%) DV Cleared
10 140 (1.98%) Cisco Certification
11 136 (1.93%) AWS Certification
12 121 (1.71%) CISM
13 84 (1.19%) Master's Degree
14 75 (1.06%) CCNP
15 66 (0.93%) ISTQB
16 65 (0.92%) PMI Certification
16 65 (0.92%) PMP
17 63 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
18 47 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.51%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 497 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 397 (5.62%) GDPR
3 384 (5.44%) QA
4 310 (4.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 260 (3.68%) NIST
6 132 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 108 (1.53%) NCSC
8 85 (1.20%) PCI DSS
9 64 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
10 61 (0.86%) SLA
11 60 (0.85%) PMO
11 60 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 41 (0.58%) GRC
13 40 (0.57%) WCAG
14 37 (0.52%) HIPAA
15 27 (0.38%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 25 (0.35%) NIST 800
17 24 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 23 (0.33%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 894 (12.66%) Active Directory
2 833 (11.79%) Docker
3 209 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 108 (1.53%) Hyper-V
5 105 (1.49%) Virtual Machines
6 86 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 81 (1.15%) vSphere
8 33 (0.47%) VMware NSX
9 32 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
10 25 (0.35%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) NFS
12 10 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.099%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.099%) Varnish
14 6 (0.085%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.085%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.085%) RACF
14 6 (0.085%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.085%) Snort
15 5 (0.071%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 1,105 (15.64%) Terraform
2 1,040 (14.72%) Kubernetes
3 368 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
4 327 (4.63%) Ansible
5 189 (2.68%) Grafana
6 161 (2.28%) Single Sign-On
7 158 (2.24%) Prometheus
8 119 (1.68%) SCCM
9 74 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.64%) Argo
11 34 (0.48%) Istio
12 31 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 30 (0.42%) Puppet
14 28 (0.40%) Progress Chef
15 27 (0.38%) vCenter Server
16 26 (0.37%) vRealize
17 24 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
18 22 (0.31%) HP ALM
19 17 (0.24%) Kubeflow
20 16 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 2,259 (31.98%) Microsoft
2 718 (10.16%) Databricks
3 332 (4.70%) Oracle
4 329 (4.66%) Google
5 288 (4.08%) VMware
6 287 (4.06%) ServiceNow
7 204 (2.89%) SAP
8 193 (2.73%) Cisco
9 182 (2.58%) OpenAI
10 162 (2.29%) Splunk
11 132 (1.87%) CyberArk
12 119 (1.68%) Foundry
13 111 (1.57%) Palo Alto
14 94 (1.33%) Salesforce
15 85 (1.20%) Okta
16 78 (1.10%) Informatica
17 77 (1.09%) IBM
18 74 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
19 73 (1.03%) Red Hat
20 71 (1.01%) Fortinet