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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,163 4,862 6,076
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.51% 15.02% 14.07%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.80% 40.03% 42.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,714 3,376 4,364
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -0.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 184 40 54
10th Percentile £18.73 £25.90 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.19 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £42.34
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% +36.99% -29.76%
75th Percentile £77.75 £77.80 £61.60
90th Percentile £96.56 £100.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £70.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -17.86% +33.33% -12.35%

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 18,639 12,146 14,318
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.42% 37.53% 33.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,383 8,129 10,044
10th Percentile £329 £313 £305
25th Percentile £415 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.49% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £731 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 615 313 358
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £27.76 £22.08
Median % change year-on-year +35.09% +25.75% -36.93%
75th Percentile £69.88 £47.50 £48.11
90th Percentile £83.55 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +98.73% -10.14% -20.69%

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 10 July 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 10 July 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 10 July 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 6,940 £525 - 2,675
London +1 3,631 £550 - 1,074
UK excluding London +3 3,533 £505 +1.00% 2,110
Work from Home -1 2,529 £525 +2.44% 1,383
North of England +7 1,017 £500 +4.17% 558
South East +2 866 £515 +2.90% 681
Midlands +2 613 £500 +1.01% 281
North West +7 534 £500 +1.63% 301
West Midlands +1 458 £500 -4.76% 165
South West +7 443 £540 +7.90% 222
Yorkshire +3 403 £500 +5.32% 174
Scotland +10 321 £525 +5.85% 86
East of England +3 186 £550 -2.22% 165
East Midlands +5 144 £494 +6.76% 116
Wales -1 113 £425 -4.49% 79
North East +2 93 £525 +5.00% 91
Northern Ireland +15 19 £538 +13.16% 78
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 401 (4.91%) SharePoint
2 272 (3.33%) Confluence
3 195 (2.39%) Microsoft Exchange
4 194 (2.38%) Apache Spark
5 130 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
6 123 (1.51%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 32 (0.39%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 18 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 17 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.12%) Camunda
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.098%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.098%) Mendix
15 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.074%) Appian
Applications
1 118 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
3 72 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 29 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 5 (0.061%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.061%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 4 (0.049%) Trello
13 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.012%) Houdini
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) NUKE
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 109 (1.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.098%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.086%) Magento
7 7 (0.086%) Maximo
7 7 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.074%) Endur
8 6 (0.074%) Shopify
8 6 (0.074%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
9 5 (0.061%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.049%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.049%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,887 (35.37%) AWS
2 1,674 (20.51%) Azure DevOps
3 1,373 (16.82%) GCP
4 1,040 (12.74%) Power Platform
5 1,014 (12.42%) Entra ID
6 804 (9.85%) Microsoft 365
7 765 (9.37%) GitHub
8 463 (5.67%) Azure Data Factory
8 463 (5.67%) GitHub Actions
9 371 (4.54%) Serverless
10 324 (3.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 324 (3.97%) SaaS
11 294 (3.60%) Azure AKS
12 276 (3.38%) Azure Monitor
13 274 (3.36%) Power Automate
14 262 (3.21%) PowerApps
15 255 (3.12%) PaaS
16 245 (3.00%) Dynamics 365
17 223 (2.73%) Azure AI
18 220 (2.70%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 487 (5.97%) Firewall
2 373 (4.57%) DNS
3 289 (3.54%) VPN
4 281 (3.44%) Network Security
5 214 (2.62%) WAN
6 186 (2.28%) DHCP
7 134 (1.64%) LAN
8 127 (1.56%) TCP/IP
9 117 (1.43%) SD-WAN
10 110 (1.35%) BGP
11 85 (1.04%) OSPF
12 83 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
13 79 (0.97%) VLAN
14 69 (0.85%) SSL
15 55 (0.67%) Kerberos
15 55 (0.67%) SAN
16 53 (0.65%) IPsec
17 49 (0.60%) Wireless
18 48 (0.59%) VXLAN
19 43 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 702 (8.60%) Power BI
2 473 (5.79%) SQL Server
3 390 (4.78%) Data Warehouse
4 359 (4.40%) Data Lake
5 298 (3.65%) PostgreSQL
6 223 (2.73%) Azure SQL Database
7 212 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 200 (2.45%) Metadata
9 138 (1.69%) Delta Lake
10 137 (1.68%) Relational Database
11 125 (1.53%) Big Data
12 108 (1.32%) MongoDB
13 93 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 79 (0.97%) MySQL
15 76 (0.93%) Tableau
16 70 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
17 66 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 57 (0.70%) Star Schema
19 56 (0.69%) Oracle Database
20 53 (0.65%) Redis
Development Applications
1 636 (7.79%) JIRA
2 616 (7.55%) Git
3 434 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 320 (3.92%) GitLab
5 126 (1.54%) Selenium
6 82 (1.00%) Postman
7 77 (0.94%) JMeter
8 67 (0.82%) JUnit
9 60 (0.74%) Cucumber
10 56 (0.69%) REST Assured
11 49 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 48 (0.59%) Cypress.io
13 45 (0.55%) Visual Studio
14 43 (0.53%) WebDriver
15 42 (0.51%) MLflow
16 34 (0.42%) Maven
17 32 (0.39%) Gatling
18 31 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
19 30 (0.37%) LoadRunner
20 25 (0.31%) NUnit
General
1 2,059 (25.22%) Social Skills
2 1,516 (18.57%) Finance
3 928 (11.37%) Public Sector
4 758 (9.29%) Analytical Skills
5 429 (5.26%) Banking
6 236 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
7 205 (2.51%) Legal
8 172 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 166 (2.03%) Retail
10 104 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
11 84 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 77 (0.94%) Telecoms
13 72 (0.88%) Law
14 71 (0.87%) Manufacturing
15 70 (0.86%) Investment Banking
16 69 (0.85%) Front Office
16 69 (0.85%) Marketing
17 67 (0.82%) Financial Institution
18 57 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
19 53 (0.65%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,455 (17.82%) Architect
2 1,066 (13.06%) Developer
3 996 (12.20%) Senior
4 720 (8.82%) Azure Engineer
5 641 (7.85%) Lead
6 626 (7.67%) Data Engineer
7 494 (6.05%) Analyst
8 415 (5.08%) DevOps Engineer
8 415 (5.08%) Solutions Architect
9 336 (4.12%) Consultant
10 305 (3.74%) Cloud Engineer
11 276 (3.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 232 (2.84%) Data Architect
13 225 (2.76%) Azure Architect
14 208 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
15 202 (2.47%) Technical Architect
16 188 (2.30%) Security Engineer
17 180 (2.21%) Business Analyst
18 179 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 179 (2.19%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 649 (7.95%) .NET
2 584 (7.15%) REST
3 348 (4.26%) React
4 309 (3.79%) Kafka
5 290 (3.55%) RESTful
6 264 (3.23%) PySpark
7 238 (2.92%) OAuth
8 229 (2.81%) Spring
9 223 (2.73%) Node.js
10 197 (2.41%) Spring Boot
11 187 (2.29%) AngularJS
11 187 (2.29%) JSON
12 155 (1.90%) HTML
13 150 (1.84%) SAML
14 145 (1.78%) OpenID
15 139 (1.70%) LDAP
16 129 (1.58%) .NET Framework
17 127 (1.56%) OAuth2
18 126 (1.54%) Middleware
19 124 (1.52%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 875 (10.72%) Cloud Native
2 352 (4.31%) Onboarding
3 331 (4.05%) Product Ownership
4 264 (3.23%) Data Centre
5 249 (3.05%) Distributed Systems
6 231 (2.83%) Hybrid Cloud
7 230 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
8 197 (2.41%) AI Agents
9 176 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
10 159 (1.95%) Security Posture
11 146 (1.79%) Public Cloud
12 116 (1.42%) Data Structures
13 113 (1.38%) Management Information System
14 112 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
15 106 (1.30%) Replication
16 93 (1.14%) PKI
17 89 (1.09%) Enterprise Cloud
18 85 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
19 74 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
19 74 (0.91%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 930 (11.39%) Windows
2 425 (5.21%) Linux
3 299 (3.66%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 77 (0.94%) Unix
6 74 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 73 (0.89%) Android
7 73 (0.89%) Apple iOS
8 72 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 58 (0.71%) VMS
10 38 (0.47%) Ubuntu
11 28 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.13%) CentOS
16 10 (0.12%) Debian
17 8 (0.098%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.086%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,028 (37.09%) DevOps
2 2,570 (31.48%) CI/CD
3 2,009 (24.61%) Agile
4 1,231 (15.08%) AI
5 1,224 (14.99%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,176 (14.41%) Migration
7 1,146 (14.04%) Analytics
8 1,091 (13.37%) Problem-Solving
9 985 (12.07%) Stakeholder Management
10 916 (11.22%) Data Modelling
11 834 (10.22%) Continuous Improvement
12 787 (9.64%) Data Pipeline
13 770 (9.43%) Containerisation
14 758 (9.29%) Microservices
14 758 (9.29%) Roadmaps
15 748 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
16 719 (8.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 688 (8.43%) ETL
18 675 (8.27%) Test Automation
19 659 (8.07%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,915 (23.46%) Python
2 1,622 (19.87%) SQL
3 771 (9.45%) PowerShell
4 692 (8.48%) Java
5 635 (7.78%) C#
6 476 (5.83%) JavaScript
7 324 (3.97%) TypeScript
8 301 (3.69%) Bash
9 280 (3.43%) Bicep
10 96 (1.18%) T-SQL
11 94 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 84 (1.03%) Go
13 78 (0.96%) Scala
14 55 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 50 (0.61%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.54%) R
17 36 (0.44%) PL/SQL
18 35 (0.43%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.33%) Groovy
20 26 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,019 (24.73%) Security Cleared
2 1,674 (20.51%) SC Cleared
3 581 (7.12%) Degree
4 420 (5.15%) Azure Certification
5 250 (3.06%) CISSP
6 235 (2.88%) DV Cleared
7 230 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
8 202 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
9 200 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
10 197 (2.41%) Microsoft Certification
11 183 (2.24%) AWS Certification
12 125 (1.53%) CISM
13 96 (1.18%) CCNP
14 81 (0.99%) PMP
15 77 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 77 (0.94%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.82%) Master's Degree
17 65 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 56 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
19 51 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 560 (6.86%) Data Quality
2 426 (5.22%) QA
3 343 (4.20%) GDPR
4 282 (3.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 275 (3.37%) NIST
6 191 (2.34%) Accessibility
7 122 (1.49%) NCSC
8 100 (1.23%) SLA
9 73 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
9 73 (0.89%) PCI DSS
10 67 (0.82%) WCAG
11 65 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 62 (0.76%) GRC
13 47 (0.58%) PMO
14 38 (0.47%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 24 (0.29%) NIST 800
18 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
19 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 963 (11.80%) Active Directory
2 866 (10.61%) Docker
3 227 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
5 136 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
6 115 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.83%) vSphere
8 52 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.37%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.12%) IAG
15 8 (0.098%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.098%) Varnish
16 6 (0.074%) Ceph
16 6 (0.074%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.074%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
Systems Management
1 1,301 (15.94%) Terraform
2 1,196 (14.65%) Kubernetes
3 424 (5.19%) Microsoft Intune
4 383 (4.69%) Ansible
5 237 (2.90%) Grafana
6 200 (2.45%) Prometheus
7 166 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
8 108 (1.32%) SCCM
9 66 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.62%) Argo
11 47 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
12 43 (0.53%) Progress Chef
13 41 (0.50%) Puppet
14 38 (0.47%) FortiGate
15 31 (0.38%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
17 20 (0.25%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.21%) Packer
19 14 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,620 (32.10%) Microsoft
2 764 (9.36%) Databricks
3 380 (4.66%) ServiceNow
4 320 (3.92%) Google
5 314 (3.85%) VMware
6 311 (3.81%) Oracle
7 228 (2.79%) SAP
8 217 (2.66%) Cisco
9 202 (2.47%) OpenAI
10 174 (2.13%) Splunk
11 154 (1.89%) Salesforce
12 145 (1.78%) Palo Alto
13 133 (1.63%) Foundry
14 132 (1.62%) CyberArk
15 105 (1.29%) Okta
16 98 (1.20%) Dynatrace
17 90 (1.10%) Informatica
18 88 (1.08%) Zscaler
19 78 (0.96%) Citrix
20 74 (0.91%) Fortinet