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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,327 4,913 5,509
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.17% 14.90% 14.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.74% 39.41% 42.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,811 3,351 3,774
10th Percentile £363 £350 £345
25th Percentile £447 £415 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £517 £533
Median % change year-on-year +1.55% -3.00% -3.09%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 44 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £23.00 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £45.20 £34.24 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +32.01% -6.83% -29.33%
75th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.38 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.35 £32.77 £42.34
% change year-on-year +29.23% -22.60% -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 19,038 12,465 13,039
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.68% 37.81% 34.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,627 8,314 8,713
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
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 624 298 187
10th Percentile £15.27 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.31
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.45 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.40% -16.82% -5.44%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £64.61
90th Percentile £80.88 £67.08 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.13 £19.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +61.52% -41.61% +29.67%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -1 7,105 £525 - 7,787
London 0 3,729 £550 +0.92% 3,779
UK excluding London +1 3,531 £513 +2.50% 4,796
Work from Home -2 2,513 £525 +5.00% 3,711
North of England +7 1,005 £500 +5.26% 1,273
South East 0 903 £525 +5.00% 1,163
Midlands +2 648 £496 -3.17% 728
North West +6 492 £500 +5.26% 667
West Midlands +2 491 £488 -11.36% 442
Yorkshire +5 431 £500 +4.17% 453
South West +2 421 £550 +10.00% 531
Scotland +4 286 £525 +5.00% 404
East of England 0 202 £510 +2.00% 390
East Midlands +4 151 £500 +8.11% 286
North East +1 95 £513 +2.50% 160
Wales -1 86 £450 - 139
Northern Ireland +14 12 £650 - 206
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69%

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
1 469 (5.63%) SharePoint
2 260 (3.12%) Confluence
3 195 (2.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 186 (2.23%) Apache Spark
5 166 (1.99%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.38%) Apache
7 45 (0.54%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) IIS
9 28 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) nginx
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
16 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 119 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.55%) MS Visio
5 43 (0.52%) Chatbot
6 39 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.096%) CPLEX
8 8 (0.096%) Revit
8 8 (0.096%) Trello
9 7 (0.084%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.060%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Mingle
12 2 (0.024%) Windchill
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 135 (1.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 11 (0.13%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.096%) Magento
9 7 (0.084%) Shopify
10 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
10 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
11 5 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
12 4 (0.048%) NetSuite
12 4 (0.048%) SAP BPC
12 4 (0.048%) SAP ERP
12 4 (0.048%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 2,991 (35.92%) AWS
2 1,748 (20.99%) Azure DevOps
3 1,455 (17.47%) GCP
4 1,127 (13.53%) Entra ID
5 1,086 (13.04%) Power Platform
6 875 (10.51%) Microsoft 365
7 841 (10.10%) GitHub
8 486 (5.84%) GitHub Actions
9 463 (5.56%) Azure Data Factory
10 377 (4.53%) Serverless
11 360 (4.32%) SaaS
12 318 (3.82%) Azure Monitor
13 303 (3.64%) Power Automate
14 302 (3.63%) Dynamics 365
15 299 (3.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 292 (3.51%) Azure AKS
17 291 (3.49%) Snowflake
18 289 (3.47%) PowerApps
19 252 (3.03%) Microsoft Copilot
20 251 (3.01%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 525 (6.30%) Firewall
2 419 (5.03%) DNS
3 322 (3.87%) VPN
4 294 (3.53%) Network Security
5 231 (2.77%) DHCP
6 187 (2.25%) WAN
7 171 (2.05%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.31%) LAN
9 108 (1.30%) BGP
10 103 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.12%) VLAN
12 86 (1.03%) OSPF
12 86 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 76 (0.91%) SSL
14 67 (0.80%) Wireless
15 64 (0.77%) SAN
16 47 (0.56%) HTTP
16 47 (0.56%) IPsec
17 44 (0.53%) VXLAN
18 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 703 (8.44%) Power BI
2 466 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 404 (4.85%) Data Warehouse
4 384 (4.61%) Data Lake
5 289 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 257 (3.09%) Metadata
7 215 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 193 (2.32%) Azure SQL Database
9 141 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 126 (1.51%) Delta Lake
11 110 (1.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 107 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 96 (1.15%) MySQL
14 94 (1.13%) Big Data
15 70 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
16 68 (0.82%) Redis
17 63 (0.76%) BigQuery
18 61 (0.73%) Oracle Database
18 61 (0.73%) Tableau
19 57 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 737 (8.85%) Git
2 591 (7.10%) JIRA
3 465 (5.58%) Jenkins
4 373 (4.48%) GitLab
5 137 (1.65%) Selenium
6 86 (1.03%) Postman
7 63 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 62 (0.74%) JUnit
9 59 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 54 (0.65%) Claude Code
11 54 (0.65%) Maven
12 53 (0.64%) JMeter
13 51 (0.61%) Visual Studio
14 47 (0.56%) Gradle
15 46 (0.55%) REST Assured
16 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
17 33 (0.40%) MLflow
18 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,303 (27.66%) Social Skills
2 1,570 (18.85%) Finance
3 953 (11.44%) Public Sector
4 812 (9.75%) Analytical Skills
5 484 (5.81%) Banking
6 225 (2.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 217 (2.61%) Retail
8 210 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
9 168 (2.02%) Legal
10 109 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
11 108 (1.30%) Manufacturing
12 93 (1.12%) Telecoms
13 92 (1.10%) Marketing
14 87 (1.04%) Aerospace
15 85 (1.02%) Investment Banking
16 83 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
17 76 (0.91%) Military
18 75 (0.90%) Law
19 58 (0.70%) Financial Institution
19 58 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,596 (19.17%) Architect
2 1,046 (12.56%) Senior
3 1,004 (12.06%) Developer
4 730 (8.77%) Azure Engineer
5 693 (8.32%) Lead
6 589 (7.07%) Data Engineer
7 494 (5.93%) Solutions Architect
8 472 (5.67%) Analyst
9 465 (5.58%) DevOps Engineer
10 378 (4.54%) Cloud Engineer
11 318 (3.82%) Consultant
12 315 (3.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 272 (3.27%) Data Architect
14 240 (2.88%) Platform Engineer
15 222 (2.67%) Azure Architect
16 208 (2.50%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 202 (2.43%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 202 (2.43%) Technical Architect
18 197 (2.37%) Security Engineer
19 185 (2.22%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,415 (16.99%) Terraform
2 729 (8.75%) REST
3 621 (7.46%) .NET
4 401 (4.82%) Kafka
5 302 (3.63%) React
6 295 (3.54%) RESTful
7 278 (3.34%) OAuth
8 266 (3.19%) PySpark
9 235 (2.82%) JSON
10 195 (2.34%) Spring
11 185 (2.22%) Spring Boot
12 166 (1.99%) OpenID
13 165 (1.98%) OAuth2
14 156 (1.87%) Node.js
14 156 (1.87%) SAML
15 155 (1.86%) HTML
16 147 (1.77%) Middleware
17 141 (1.69%) AngularJS
18 135 (1.62%) SOAP
19 132 (1.59%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 933 (11.20%) Cloud Native
2 421 (5.06%) Onboarding
3 386 (4.64%) Product Ownership
4 314 (3.77%) AI Agents
5 311 (3.73%) Enterprise Software
6 288 (3.46%) Hybrid Cloud
7 275 (3.30%) Distributed Systems
8 259 (3.11%) Data Centre
9 229 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
10 181 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 177 (2.13%) Management Information System
12 151 (1.81%) Data Structures
13 147 (1.77%) Public Cloud
14 125 (1.50%) PKI
15 114 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
16 110 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
17 105 (1.26%) Replication
18 99 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
19 90 (1.08%) CMDB
20 89 (1.07%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 999 (12.00%) Windows
2 524 (6.29%) Linux
3 376 (4.52%) Windows Server
4 145 (1.74%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.09%) Android
6 90 (1.08%) Unix
7 87 (1.04%) Apple iOS
7 87 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 77 (0.92%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.67%) Ubuntu
10 55 (0.66%) VMS
11 27 (0.32%) CentOS
12 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 8 (0.096%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) SUSE
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,058 (36.72%) DevOps
2 2,673 (32.10%) CI/CD
3 2,072 (24.88%) Agile
4 1,478 (17.75%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,433 (17.21%) AI
6 1,417 (17.02%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,239 (14.88%) Migration
8 1,135 (13.63%) Analytics
9 1,128 (13.55%) Problem-Solving
10 951 (11.42%) Continuous Improvement
11 916 (11.00%) Data Modelling
12 852 (10.23%) Roadmaps
13 796 (9.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 782 (9.39%) Containerisation
15 761 (9.14%) Business Intelligence
16 754 (9.05%) Technical Leadership
17 744 (8.93%) Data Pipeline
18 736 (8.84%) Microservices
19 735 (8.83%) Test Automation
20 663 (7.96%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,903 (22.85%) Python
2 1,584 (19.02%) SQL
3 892 (10.71%) PowerShell
4 699 (8.39%) Java
5 605 (7.27%) C#
6 509 (6.11%) JavaScript
7 408 (4.90%) Bash
8 358 (4.30%) Bicep
9 302 (3.63%) TypeScript
10 99 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 81 (0.97%) Go
13 66 (0.79%) Scala
14 60 (0.72%) Shell Script
15 58 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
16 43 (0.52%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 32 (0.38%) Groovy
18 32 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 30 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,161 (25.95%) Security Cleared
2 1,740 (20.90%) SC Cleared
3 566 (6.80%) Degree
4 484 (5.81%) Azure Certification
5 313 (3.76%) DV Cleared
6 272 (3.27%) CISSP
7 271 (3.25%) BPSS Clearance
8 253 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 209 (2.51%) AWS Certification
10 202 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
11 182 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
12 136 (1.63%) CISM
13 92 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 91 (1.09%) PMI Certification
15 90 (1.08%) CCNP
16 86 (1.03%) PMP
17 68 (0.82%) ISTQB
18 63 (0.76%) CCSP
18 63 (0.76%) Master's Degree
19 52 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 611 (7.34%) Data Quality
2 462 (5.55%) QA
3 309 (3.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 299 (3.59%) NIST
5 295 (3.54%) GDPR
6 205 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 121 (1.45%) NCSC
8 111 (1.33%) SLA
9 83 (1.00%) GRC
10 82 (0.98%) WCAG
11 80 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
12 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 55 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 53 (0.64%) PMO
15 45 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 33 (0.40%) SOC 2
17 27 (0.32%) HIPAA
18 26 (0.31%) ISO 20022
19 21 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
19 21 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,035 (12.43%) Active Directory
2 915 (10.99%) Docker
3 246 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.79%) Virtual Machines
5 146 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
6 128 (1.54%) Hyper-V
7 77 (0.92%) vSphere
8 56 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.29%) Firmware
11 19 (0.23%) IAG
12 17 (0.20%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Ceph
18 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
19 5 (0.060%) Squid
Systems Management
1 1,305 (15.67%) Kubernetes
2 457 (5.49%) Ansible
3 444 (5.33%) Microsoft Intune
4 263 (3.16%) Grafana
5 205 (2.46%) Prometheus
6 155 (1.86%) Single Sign-On
7 136 (1.63%) SCCM
8 59 (0.71%) Argo
9 58 (0.70%) Progress Chef
10 44 (0.53%) Puppet
11 39 (0.47%) FortiGate
12 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.42%) SCOM
14 30 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 27 (0.32%) Istio
16 24 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) CASB
18 18 (0.22%) Packer
18 18 (0.22%) QRadar
19 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,994 (35.96%) Microsoft
2 864 (10.38%) Databricks
3 421 (5.06%) ServiceNow
4 383 (4.60%) Google
5 364 (4.37%) VMware
6 349 (4.19%) Oracle
7 252 (3.03%) Cisco
8 233 (2.80%) Splunk
9 221 (2.65%) SAP
10 220 (2.64%) OpenAI
11 188 (2.26%) Salesforce
12 152 (1.83%) CyberArk
13 151 (1.81%) Palo Alto
14 141 (1.69%) Foundry
15 131 (1.57%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.12%) Zscaler
17 90 (1.08%) IBM
18 85 (1.02%) Informatica
19 82 (0.98%) Fortinet
20 81 (0.97%) Okta