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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,044 4,672 5,996
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.97% 16.10% 13.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.15% 42.17% 41.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,000 3,351 4,325
10th Percentile £356 £350 £339
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.25%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 45 62
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £48.00 £23.80 £22.13
Median hourly rate £57.50 £31.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +82.54% -14.29% -33.18%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £59.95
90th Percentile £84.80 £79.48 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +79.69% -30.71% -22.78%

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 16,324 11,080 14,442
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.02% 38.17% 32.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,117 7,789 10,220
10th Percentile £313 £313 £291
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £524 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.58% -0.19% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £637
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £479 £489
% change year-on-year -0.84% -2.04% -2.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 459 217 353
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.38 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £20.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.06% +26.19% -18.64%
75th Percentile £66.88 £41.50 £40.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.80 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.09 £17.72
% change year-on-year +86.80% +35.95% -19.45%

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 27 March 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 27 March 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 27 March 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 5,969 £525 - 2,909
London +1 3,257 £540 -1.82% 1,004
UK excluding London +2 2,871 £500 - 2,332
Work from Home -1 2,156 £525 +1.50% 1,365
North of England +3 812 £487 -0.10% 604
South East 0 735 £500 -9.09% 685
Midlands -2 484 £500 - 369
North West +2 440 £474 -5.20% 303
West Midlands -2 360 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 350 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire -2 327 £488 +8.33% 208
Scotland +5 291 £537 +13.05% 115
East of England +8 155 £550 -8.33% 207
East Midlands -1 116 £433 -8.84% 163
Wales -3 84 £400 -3.03% 73
North East -5 47 £525 +9.09% 97
Northern Ireland +3 14 £475 - 24
Channel Islands +4 4 £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
1 318 (4.51%) SharePoint
2 211 (3.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 198 (2.81%) Confluence
4 186 (2.64%) Apache Spark
5 106 (1.50%) Apache
6 93 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.34%) IIS
8 22 (0.31%) OpenStack
9 20 (0.28%) SAS
10 18 (0.26%) CMS
11 17 (0.24%) ArcGIS
12 16 (0.23%) Camunda
13 15 (0.21%) Appian
14 13 (0.18%) Mendix
15 11 (0.16%) HCL Notes
16 9 (0.13%) Jupyter
16 9 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 7 (0.099%) Anypoint
17 7 (0.099%) SharePoint Server
18 5 (0.071%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 123 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 58 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 45 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.60%) 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
9 5 (0.071%) Weka
10 4 (0.057%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.043%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 110 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Maximo
4 11 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.099%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.099%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.099%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.085%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.085%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.071%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.071%) Endur
9 5 (0.071%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.071%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.057%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,440 (34.64%) AWS
2 1,477 (20.97%) Azure DevOps
3 1,337 (18.98%) GCP
4 941 (13.36%) Power Platform
5 846 (12.01%) Entra ID
6 776 (11.02%) Microsoft 365
7 732 (10.39%) GitHub
8 501 (7.11%) Azure Data Factory
9 431 (6.12%) GitHub Actions
10 416 (5.91%) Serverless
11 331 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 288 (4.09%) Dynamics 365
13 276 (3.92%) SaaS
14 262 (3.72%) Power Automate
15 255 (3.62%) Azure AKS
16 250 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
17 244 (3.46%) Azure Functions
18 226 (3.21%) PaaS
19 217 (3.08%) Azure Logic Apps
20 216 (3.07%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 456 (6.47%) Firewall
2 301 (4.27%) DNS
3 258 (3.66%) VPN
4 234 (3.32%) Network Security
5 188 (2.67%) WAN
6 162 (2.30%) DHCP
7 130 (1.85%) LAN
8 97 (1.38%) SD-WAN
8 97 (1.38%) TCP/IP
9 92 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
10 78 (1.11%) VLAN
11 69 (0.98%) Kerberos
12 54 (0.77%) BGP
13 48 (0.68%) HTTP
14 47 (0.67%) OSPF
15 43 (0.61%) Wireless
16 38 (0.54%) SAN
17 35 (0.50%) SSL
18 33 (0.47%) MPLS
19 31 (0.44%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 639 (9.07%) Power BI
2 412 (5.85%) SQL Server
3 375 (5.32%) Data Warehouse
4 341 (4.84%) Data Lake
5 262 (3.72%) Azure SQL Database
6 260 (3.69%) PostgreSQL
7 205 (2.91%) NoSQL
8 169 (2.40%) Metadata
9 143 (2.03%) Delta Lake
10 114 (1.62%) Relational Database
11 110 (1.56%) Big Data
12 97 (1.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 95 (1.35%) MongoDB
14 81 (1.15%) Tableau
15 76 (1.08%) MySQL
16 66 (0.94%) Oracle Database
17 63 (0.89%) BigQuery
18 61 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
19 56 (0.80%) Star Schema
20 48 (0.68%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 532 (7.55%) Git
2 498 (7.07%) JIRA
3 385 (5.47%) Jenkins
4 279 (3.96%) GitLab
5 134 (1.90%) Selenium
6 87 (1.24%) Postman
7 79 (1.12%) JMeter
8 77 (1.09%) Cucumber
9 72 (1.02%) JUnit
10 53 (0.75%) MLflow
11 49 (0.70%) REST Assured
12 46 (0.65%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.64%) Cypress.io
14 42 (0.60%) SonarQube
15 36 (0.51%) Artifactory
16 33 (0.47%) Oracle APEX
17 32 (0.45%) SpecFlow
17 32 (0.45%) TestRail
17 32 (0.45%) WebDriver
18 30 (0.43%) Gatling
General
1 1,997 (28.35%) Social Skills
2 1,268 (18.00%) Finance
3 829 (11.77%) Public Sector
4 699 (9.92%) Analytical Skills
5 385 (5.47%) Banking
6 220 (3.12%) Documentation Skills
7 168 (2.39%) Legal
8 115 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 104 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
10 89 (1.26%) Retail
11 87 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
12 84 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
13 82 (1.16%) Marketing
14 74 (1.05%) Telecoms
15 69 (0.98%) Financial Institution
16 60 (0.85%) Law
17 55 (0.78%) Investment Banking
18 51 (0.72%) Front Office
19 47 (0.67%) Manufacturing
20 46 (0.65%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,186 (16.84%) Architect
2 961 (13.64%) Developer
3 819 (11.63%) Senior
4 613 (8.70%) Azure Engineer
5 571 (8.11%) Data Engineer
6 534 (7.58%) Lead
7 452 (6.42%) Analyst
8 355 (5.04%) DevOps Engineer
9 324 (4.60%) Solutions Architect
10 311 (4.42%) Consultant
11 188 (2.67%) Cloud Engineer
11 188 (2.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 177 (2.51%) Azure Architect
13 172 (2.44%) Security Engineer
14 162 (2.30%) Platform Engineer
15 161 (2.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 158 (2.24%) Senior Developer
17 155 (2.20%) Data Architect
18 145 (2.06%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 140 (1.99%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 562 (7.98%) .NET
2 483 (6.86%) REST
3 337 (4.78%) React
4 276 (3.92%) Kafka
5 263 (3.73%) PySpark
6 262 (3.72%) RESTful
7 246 (3.49%) Node.js
8 218 (3.09%) Spring
9 198 (2.81%) AngularJS
9 198 (2.81%) OAuth
10 182 (2.58%) Spring Boot
11 166 (2.36%) HTML
12 151 (2.14%) JSON
13 150 (2.13%) LDAP
14 143 (2.03%) CSS
15 134 (1.90%) PyTorch
16 133 (1.89%) Middleware
17 131 (1.86%) SOAP
18 122 (1.73%) TensorFlow
19 118 (1.68%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 625 (8.87%) Cloud Native
2 274 (3.89%) Onboarding
3 265 (3.76%) Product Ownership
4 196 (2.78%) Hybrid Cloud
5 186 (2.64%) Data Centre
6 167 (2.37%) Security Posture
7 163 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
8 158 (2.24%) Legacy Systems
9 146 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
10 144 (2.04%) Public Cloud
11 117 (1.66%) AI Agents
12 91 (1.29%) Data Structures
13 86 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
13 86 (1.22%) Replication
14 76 (1.08%) Management Information System
15 74 (1.05%) Algorithms
16 67 (0.95%) Low-Code
17 66 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
18 63 (0.89%) PKI
19 59 (0.84%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 771 (10.95%) Windows
2 382 (5.42%) Linux
3 230 (3.27%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.72%) Windows 10
5 76 (1.08%) Unix
6 75 (1.06%) VMS
7 57 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 43 (0.61%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 30 (0.43%) 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 6 (0.085%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.085%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.071%) AIX
17 5 (0.071%) CentOS
17 5 (0.071%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,641 (37.49%) DevOps
2 2,162 (30.69%) CI/CD
3 1,680 (23.85%) Agile
4 1,160 (16.47%) Problem-Solving
5 1,054 (14.96%) Analytics
6 982 (13.94%) AI
7 965 (13.70%) Infrastructure as Code
8 922 (13.09%) Migration
9 760 (10.79%) Data Modelling
10 732 (10.39%) Stakeholder Management
11 707 (10.04%) Business Intelligence
12 682 (9.68%) Containerisation
13 678 (9.63%) Continuous Improvement
14 646 (9.17%) Microservices
15 643 (9.13%) Data Pipeline
16 640 (9.09%) ETL
17 616 (8.75%) Machine Learning
18 588 (8.35%) Data Engineering
19 580 (8.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 576 (8.18%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,832 (26.01%) Python
2 1,569 (22.27%) SQL
3 754 (10.70%) PowerShell
4 616 (8.75%) C#
5 594 (8.43%) Java
6 496 (7.04%) JavaScript
7 294 (4.17%) TypeScript
8 266 (3.78%) Bash
9 217 (3.08%) Bicep
10 100 (1.42%) Scala
11 83 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 80 (1.14%) Go
12 80 (1.14%) Kusto Query Language
13 78 (1.11%) PL/SQL
14 76 (1.08%) T-SQL
15 51 (0.72%) Shell Script
16 47 (0.67%) R
17 36 (0.51%) C++
18 27 (0.38%) PHP
19 20 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,700 (24.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,411 (20.03%) SC Cleared
3 546 (7.75%) Degree
4 373 (5.30%) Azure Certification
5 210 (2.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 193 (2.74%) CISSP
7 165 (2.34%) Microsoft Certification
8 146 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
9 142 (2.02%) AWS Certification
10 137 (1.94%) DV Cleared
11 136 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
12 119 (1.69%) CISM
13 86 (1.22%) Master's Degree
14 72 (1.02%) CCNP
15 63 (0.89%) ISTQB
15 63 (0.89%) PMI Certification
15 63 (0.89%) PMP
16 62 (0.88%) TOGAF Certification
17 45 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 36 (0.51%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 495 (7.03%) Data Quality
2 397 (5.64%) GDPR
3 385 (5.47%) QA
4 304 (4.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 255 (3.62%) NIST
6 135 (1.92%) Accessibility
7 102 (1.45%) NCSC
8 86 (1.22%) PCI DSS
9 64 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
10 63 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 60 (0.85%) PMO
11 60 (0.85%) SLA
12 40 (0.57%) WCAG
13 39 (0.55%) GRC
14 37 (0.53%) HIPAA
15 27 (0.38%) SOC 2
16 26 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 24 (0.34%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.33%) NIST 800
System Software
1 891 (12.65%) Active Directory
2 833 (11.83%) Docker
3 211 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 101 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
6 83 (1.18%) Virtual Desktop
7 81 (1.15%) vSphere
8 32 (0.45%) VMware NSX
9 31 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
10 22 (0.31%) Firmware
11 16 (0.23%) NFS
12 8 (0.11%) Postfix
13 7 (0.099%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.099%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.085%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.085%) GPFS
14 6 (0.085%) Lustre
14 6 (0.085%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.085%) Snort
15 5 (0.071%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,107 (15.72%) Terraform
2 1,042 (14.79%) Kubernetes
3 366 (5.20%) Microsoft Intune
4 335 (4.76%) Ansible
5 193 (2.74%) Grafana
6 165 (2.34%) Prometheus
7 161 (2.29%) Single Sign-On
8 123 (1.75%) SCCM
9 73 (1.04%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 46 (0.65%) Argo
11 34 (0.48%) Istio
12 31 (0.44%) Puppet
13 30 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 28 (0.40%) Progress Chef
15 27 (0.38%) vCenter Server
16 26 (0.37%) vRealize
17 25 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
18 21 (0.30%) HP ALM
19 16 (0.23%) Kubeflow
19 16 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 2,252 (31.97%) Microsoft
2 706 (10.02%) Databricks
3 332 (4.71%) Google
3 332 (4.71%) Oracle
4 289 (4.10%) VMware
5 283 (4.02%) ServiceNow
6 203 (2.88%) SAP
7 187 (2.65%) Cisco
8 181 (2.57%) OpenAI
9 161 (2.29%) Splunk
10 131 (1.86%) CyberArk
11 117 (1.66%) Foundry
12 112 (1.59%) Palo Alto
13 92 (1.31%) Salesforce
14 86 (1.22%) Okta
15 78 (1.11%) Informatica
16 76 (1.08%) IBM
17 73 (1.04%) Red Hat
18 72 (1.02%) BeyondTrust
19 70 (0.99%) Citrix