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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,317 4,796 5,563
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.47% 14.55% 14.41%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.37% 39.07% 42.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,822 3,265 3,910
10th Percentile £366 £350 £345
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 £715 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 175 46 36
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.31 £18.33
25th Percentile £21.29 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.29% +10.71% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.88 £72.50 £58.53
90th Percentile £97.75 £91.88 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -41.15% +85.71% -24.21%

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 18,745 12,275 13,109
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.88% 37.25% 33.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,407 8,176 9,007
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £739
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 609 314 223
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.25 £18.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £33.12 £28.75 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.20% -4.17% -14.29%
75th Percentile £68.75 £52.42 £57.75
90th Percentile £81.45 £70.13 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.50 £19.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +65.79% -21.42% -10.77%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 +2 7,126 £525 - 3,818
London +1 3,728 £550 +1.10% 1,787
UK excluding London +2 3,570 £500 - 2,640
Work from Home 0 2,537 £525 +5.00% 1,877
North of England +9 1,043 £500 +5.26% 705
South East +2 926 £525 +5.00% 716
Midlands +4 643 £493 -3.90% 383
North West +6 529 £492 +3.58% 386
West Midlands +3 473 £490 -9.01% 217
Yorkshire +6 432 £500 +5.26% 224
South West +6 424 £540 +8.00% 351
Scotland +11 289 £500 +5.26% 181
East of England +3 174 £525 +3.96% 196
East Midlands +9 158 £500 +8.11% 165
North East +9 95 £506 +1.25% 102
Wales -1 88 £483 +7.22% 78
Northern Ireland +11 12 £650 +36.84% 65
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
1 457 (5.49%) SharePoint
2 267 (3.21%) Confluence
3 198 (2.38%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.09%) Apache Spark
5 154 (1.85%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.39%) Apache
7 42 (0.50%) SAS
8 36 (0.43%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) CMS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) nginx
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.084%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
15 7 (0.084%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.072%) Documentum
Applications
1 125 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.47%) Chatbot
5 37 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 35 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.096%) 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%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 129 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.072%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Maximo
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Endur
11 4 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,977 (35.79%) AWS
2 1,786 (21.47%) Azure DevOps
3 1,400 (16.83%) GCP
4 1,091 (13.12%) Entra ID
5 1,064 (12.79%) Power Platform
6 866 (10.41%) Microsoft 365
7 839 (10.09%) GitHub
8 499 (6.00%) GitHub Actions
9 469 (5.64%) Azure Data Factory
10 373 (4.48%) Serverless
11 355 (4.27%) SaaS
12 325 (3.91%) Azure Monitor
13 305 (3.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 298 (3.58%) Azure AKS
15 291 (3.50%) Power Automate
16 286 (3.44%) Dynamics 365
17 275 (3.31%) PowerApps
18 262 (3.15%) Snowflake
19 233 (2.80%) PaaS
20 227 (2.73%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 535 (6.43%) Firewall
2 422 (5.07%) DNS
3 323 (3.88%) VPN
4 311 (3.74%) Network Security
5 224 (2.69%) DHCP
6 199 (2.39%) WAN
7 170 (2.04%) TCP/IP
8 119 (1.43%) LAN
9 113 (1.36%) BGP
10 104 (1.25%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.13%) VLAN
12 90 (1.08%) OSPF
13 85 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 71 (0.85%) SSL
15 63 (0.76%) SAN
16 57 (0.69%) Wireless
17 49 (0.59%) HTTP
18 47 (0.57%) IPsec
19 46 (0.55%) VXLAN
20 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 722 (8.68%) Power BI
2 458 (5.51%) SQL Server
3 406 (4.88%) Data Warehouse
4 367 (4.41%) Data Lake
5 283 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
6 236 (2.84%) Metadata
7 217 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 214 (2.57%) Azure SQL Database
9 142 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 133 (1.60%) Delta Lake
11 101 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 100 (1.20%) MongoDB
13 95 (1.14%) Big Data
14 82 (0.99%) MySQL
15 66 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
15 66 (0.79%) Tableau
16 65 (0.78%) Redis
17 63 (0.76%) Snowflake Schema
18 58 (0.70%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 691 (8.31%) Git
2 613 (7.37%) JIRA
3 463 (5.57%) Jenkins
4 360 (4.33%) GitLab
5 136 (1.64%) Selenium
6 76 (0.91%) Postman
7 62 (0.75%) Cypress.io
8 61 (0.73%) JUnit
9 58 (0.70%) JMeter
10 53 (0.64%) Maven
10 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 49 (0.59%) Cucumber
12 47 (0.57%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
14 44 (0.53%) Claude Code
14 44 (0.53%) Gradle
15 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 34 (0.41%) MLflow
17 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
18 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,249 (27.04%) Social Skills
2 1,546 (18.59%) Finance
3 982 (11.81%) Public Sector
4 819 (9.85%) Analytical Skills
5 447 (5.37%) Banking
6 232 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 214 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 195 (2.34%) Retail
9 181 (2.18%) Legal
10 99 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
11 98 (1.18%) Manufacturing
12 97 (1.17%) Telecoms
13 83 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 77 (0.93%) Aerospace
14 77 (0.93%) Investment Banking
15 76 (0.91%) Marketing
16 74 (0.89%) Law
17 70 (0.84%) Military
18 64 (0.77%) Financial Institution
19 58 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,545 (18.58%) Architect
2 1,037 (12.47%) Senior
3 1,002 (12.05%) Developer
4 736 (8.85%) Azure Engineer
5 683 (8.21%) Lead
6 592 (7.12%) Data Engineer
7 496 (5.96%) Analyst
8 462 (5.55%) DevOps Engineer
9 448 (5.39%) Solutions Architect
10 357 (4.29%) Cloud Engineer
11 318 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 313 (3.76%) Consultant
13 267 (3.21%) Data Architect
14 241 (2.90%) Platform Engineer
15 229 (2.75%) Azure Architect
16 206 (2.48%) Technical Architect
17 204 (2.45%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 187 (2.25%) Project Manager
18 187 (2.25%) Security Architect
19 181 (2.18%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,396 (16.78%) Terraform
2 672 (8.08%) REST
3 635 (7.63%) .NET
4 366 (4.40%) Kafka
5 302 (3.63%) React
6 290 (3.49%) RESTful
7 272 (3.27%) PySpark
8 247 (2.97%) OAuth
9 227 (2.73%) JSON
10 205 (2.46%) Spring
11 180 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 162 (1.95%) Node.js
13 153 (1.84%) AngularJS
14 150 (1.80%) HTML
14 150 (1.80%) SAML
15 148 (1.78%) OpenID
16 142 (1.71%) OAuth2
17 140 (1.68%) .NET Framework
17 140 (1.68%) Playwright
18 139 (1.67%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 912 (10.97%) Cloud Native
2 410 (4.93%) Onboarding
3 362 (4.35%) Product Ownership
4 279 (3.35%) AI Agents
5 275 (3.31%) Hybrid Cloud
6 273 (3.28%) Enterprise Software
7 270 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
8 251 (3.02%) Data Centre
9 232 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
10 174 (2.09%) Security Posture
11 155 (1.86%) Management Information System
12 142 (1.71%) Data Structures
13 141 (1.70%) Public Cloud
14 117 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
15 116 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
15 116 (1.39%) PKI
16 98 (1.18%) Replication
17 95 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
18 82 (0.99%) CMDB
19 79 (0.95%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 993 (11.94%) Windows
2 514 (6.18%) Linux
3 369 (4.44%) Windows Server
4 135 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.05%) Unix
6 86 (1.03%) Android
7 83 (1.00%) Apple iOS
7 83 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 64 (0.77%) VMS
10 53 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.22%) CentOS
13 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 7 (0.084%) Data ONTAP
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,090 (37.15%) DevOps
2 2,612 (31.41%) CI/CD
3 2,076 (24.96%) Agile
4 1,369 (16.46%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,362 (16.38%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,336 (16.06%) AI
7 1,233 (14.83%) Migration
8 1,148 (13.80%) Analytics
9 1,119 (13.45%) Problem-Solving
10 944 (11.35%) Continuous Improvement
11 900 (10.82%) Data Modelling
12 814 (9.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 806 (9.69%) Roadmaps
14 776 (9.33%) Containerisation
15 775 (9.32%) Business Intelligence
16 760 (9.14%) Data Pipeline
17 739 (8.89%) Microservices
18 703 (8.45%) Technical Leadership
19 700 (8.42%) Test Automation
20 667 (8.02%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,899 (22.83%) Python
2 1,611 (19.37%) SQL
3 870 (10.46%) PowerShell
4 689 (8.28%) Java
5 608 (7.31%) C#
6 480 (5.77%) JavaScript
7 404 (4.86%) Bash
8 353 (4.24%) Bicep
9 284 (3.41%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.08%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.83%) Go
13 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
14 60 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 58 (0.70%) Scala
16 42 (0.50%) PL/SQL
17 40 (0.48%) R
18 39 (0.47%) Kotlin
19 34 (0.41%) Groovy
20 26 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,174 (26.14%) Security Cleared
2 1,763 (21.20%) SC Cleared
3 557 (6.70%) Degree
4 460 (5.53%) Azure Certification
5 287 (3.45%) DV Cleared
6 265 (3.19%) CISSP
7 257 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
8 237 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
9 207 (2.49%) AWS Certification
10 205 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
11 184 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 135 (1.62%) CISM
13 94 (1.13%) CCNP
14 88 (1.06%) PMI Certification
15 86 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 85 (1.02%) PMP
17 71 (0.85%) ISTQB
18 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
19 56 (0.67%) CCSP
20 45 (0.54%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 595 (7.15%) Data Quality
2 450 (5.41%) QA
3 315 (3.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 313 (3.76%) GDPR
4 313 (3.76%) NIST
5 201 (2.42%) Accessibility
6 125 (1.50%) NCSC
7 105 (1.26%) SLA
8 79 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
8 79 (0.95%) WCAG
9 76 (0.91%) GRC
10 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
11 57 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 56 (0.67%) PMO
13 42 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 26 (0.31%) SOC 2
15 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
16 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
16 20 (0.24%) ISO 20022
17 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,021 (12.28%) Active Directory
2 915 (11.00%) Docker
3 250 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
5 141 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
6 137 (1.65%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.79%) vSphere
8 53 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.32%) Firmware
11 20 (0.24%) NFS
12 17 (0.20%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 12 (0.14%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Squid
18 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.072%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,283 (15.43%) Kubernetes
2 454 (5.46%) Ansible
3 436 (5.24%) Microsoft Intune
4 263 (3.16%) Grafana
5 211 (2.54%) Prometheus
6 146 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
7 127 (1.53%) SCCM
8 62 (0.75%) Progress Chef
9 60 (0.72%) Argo
10 48 (0.58%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 28 (0.34%) Istio
15 27 (0.32%) SCOM
16 23 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) Packer
17 19 (0.23%) QRadar
18 18 (0.22%) HAProxy
19 15 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,902 (34.89%) Microsoft
2 822 (9.88%) Databricks
3 408 (4.91%) ServiceNow
4 360 (4.33%) VMware
5 357 (4.29%) Google
6 324 (3.90%) Oracle
7 245 (2.95%) Cisco
8 222 (2.67%) SAP
9 212 (2.55%) Splunk
10 206 (2.48%) OpenAI
11 169 (2.03%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.84%) Palo Alto
13 152 (1.83%) CyberArk
14 135 (1.62%) Foundry
15 118 (1.42%) Dynatrace
16 99 (1.19%) Zscaler
17 95 (1.14%) Informatica
18 82 (0.99%) Okta
19 80 (0.96%) Fortinet
20 76 (0.91%) IBM