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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,348 4,766 5,572
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.60% 14.52% 14.37%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.48% 39.08% 42.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,843 3,242 3,960
10th Percentile £375 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 45 38
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.20 £18.05
25th Percentile £21.74 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.33% +7.14% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.69 £72.50 £60.58
90th Percentile £96.06 £92.50 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £65.00 £30.50
% change year-on-year -39.23% +113.11% -33.95%

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 18,770 12,196 13,079
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.08% 37.14% 33.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,423 8,144 9,083
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £419
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 £715 £725 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 601 317 249
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.27 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £16.50
Median hourly rate £34.13 £28.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.88% +12.00% -28.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.35 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £18.87 £21.42
% change year-on-year +80.13% -11.88% -17.63%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +1 7,178 £525 - 4,433
London +1 3,745 £550 - 2,066
UK excluding London +2 3,596 £500 - 3,077
Work from Home +1 2,552 £525 +5.00% 2,153
North of England +8 1,047 £500 +5.26% 811
South East +2 936 £525 +5.00% 864
Midlands +4 650 £498 -0.60% 399
North West +7 543 £500 +2.30% 445
West Midlands +3 479 £493 -6.19% 260
South West +6 431 £540 +10.72% 373
Yorkshire +5 420 £500 +5.26% 255
Scotland +9 280 £500 +4.38% 228
East of England +5 178 £525 +2.94% 247
East Midlands +8 159 £500 +8.11% 138
North East +7 97 £506 -2.08% 118
Wales 0 90 £475 +6.50% 94
Northern Ireland +14 15 £644 +35.53% 98
Channel Islands 0 10 £450 -29.69% 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
1 457 (5.47%) SharePoint
2 267 (3.20%) Confluence
3 200 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.08%) Apache Spark
5 151 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.39%) Apache
7 42 (0.50%) SAS
8 37 (0.44%) IIS
9 27 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 21 (0.25%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 11 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
15 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.084%) Camunda
17 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
Applications
1 124 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.46%) Chatbot
4 38 (0.46%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
7 11 (0.13%) Trello
8 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.096%) Revit
9 8 (0.096%) 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
13 1 (0.012%) CINEMA 4D
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
13 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 119 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
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%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Maximo
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.060%) Workday HCM
11 4 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
11 4 (0.048%) Quorum
11 4 (0.048%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,982 (35.72%) AWS
2 1,786 (21.39%) Azure DevOps
3 1,424 (17.06%) GCP
4 1,080 (12.94%) Entra ID
5 1,049 (12.57%) Power Platform
6 846 (10.13%) Microsoft 365
7 840 (10.06%) GitHub
8 506 (6.06%) GitHub Actions
9 478 (5.73%) Azure Data Factory
10 359 (4.30%) Serverless
11 352 (4.22%) SaaS
12 315 (3.77%) Azure Monitor
13 313 (3.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 306 (3.67%) Azure AKS
15 290 (3.47%) Power Automate
16 278 (3.33%) PowerApps
17 263 (3.15%) Dynamics 365
18 254 (3.04%) Snowflake
19 250 (2.99%) PaaS
20 225 (2.70%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 531 (6.36%) Firewall
2 425 (5.09%) DNS
3 332 (3.98%) VPN
4 309 (3.70%) Network Security
5 220 (2.64%) DHCP
6 196 (2.35%) WAN
7 171 (2.05%) TCP/IP
8 122 (1.46%) LAN
9 112 (1.34%) BGP
10 101 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 97 (1.16%) VLAN
12 90 (1.08%) OSPF
13 86 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.90%) SSL
15 64 (0.77%) SAN
16 56 (0.67%) Wireless
17 50 (0.60%) HTTP
18 48 (0.57%) IPsec
19 46 (0.55%) VXLAN
20 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 716 (8.58%) Power BI
2 469 (5.62%) SQL Server
3 407 (4.88%) Data Warehouse
4 362 (4.34%) Data Lake
5 290 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 225 (2.70%) NoSQL
7 224 (2.68%) Metadata
8 222 (2.66%) Azure SQL Database
9 143 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 131 (1.57%) Delta Lake
11 105 (1.26%) MongoDB
12 100 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 97 (1.16%) Big Data
14 82 (0.98%) MySQL
15 67 (0.80%) Redis
16 65 (0.78%) Tableau
17 64 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
18 63 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
19 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
20 58 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 692 (8.29%) Git
2 629 (7.53%) JIRA
3 467 (5.59%) Jenkins
4 365 (4.37%) GitLab
5 135 (1.62%) Selenium
6 76 (0.91%) Postman
7 64 (0.77%) JUnit
8 63 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 59 (0.71%) JMeter
10 55 (0.66%) SonarQube
11 53 (0.63%) Cucumber
12 51 (0.61%) Maven
13 49 (0.59%) Visual Studio
14 44 (0.53%) REST Assured
15 43 (0.52%) Claude Code
16 42 (0.50%) Gradle
17 39 (0.47%) WebDriver
18 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
18 32 (0.38%) MLflow
19 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,213 (26.51%) Social Skills
2 1,555 (18.63%) Finance
3 982 (11.76%) Public Sector
4 813 (9.74%) Analytical Skills
5 451 (5.40%) Banking
6 237 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 214 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 189 (2.26%) Retail
9 182 (2.18%) Legal
10 96 (1.15%) Manufacturing
11 95 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 89 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
13 85 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
14 75 (0.90%) Aerospace
15 74 (0.89%) Investment Banking
15 74 (0.89%) Law
16 73 (0.87%) Marketing
17 69 (0.83%) Financial Institution
18 60 (0.72%) Military
19 57 (0.68%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,526 (18.28%) Architect
2 1,045 (12.52%) Developer
3 1,040 (12.46%) Senior
4 742 (8.89%) Azure Engineer
5 689 (8.25%) Lead
6 596 (7.14%) Data Engineer
7 487 (5.83%) Analyst
8 445 (5.33%) DevOps Engineer
9 438 (5.25%) Solutions Architect
10 353 (4.23%) Cloud Engineer
11 320 (3.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 302 (3.62%) Consultant
13 260 (3.11%) Data Architect
14 236 (2.83%) Azure Architect
15 230 (2.76%) Platform Engineer
16 201 (2.41%) Technical Architect
17 195 (2.34%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 189 (2.26%) Project Manager
18 189 (2.26%) Security Engineer
19 185 (2.22%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,386 (16.60%) Terraform
2 671 (8.04%) REST
3 640 (7.67%) .NET
4 360 (4.31%) Kafka
5 319 (3.82%) React
6 293 (3.51%) RESTful
7 267 (3.20%) PySpark
8 243 (2.91%) OAuth
9 220 (2.64%) JSON
10 208 (2.49%) Spring
11 182 (2.18%) Node.js
12 180 (2.16%) Spring Boot
13 168 (2.01%) AngularJS
14 155 (1.86%) HTML
15 150 (1.80%) SAML
16 149 (1.78%) OpenID
17 143 (1.71%) OAuth2
18 141 (1.69%) Middleware
18 141 (1.69%) Playwright
19 137 (1.64%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 913 (10.94%) Cloud Native
2 417 (5.00%) Onboarding
3 352 (4.22%) Product Ownership
4 272 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
4 272 (3.26%) Hybrid Cloud
5 263 (3.15%) Enterprise Software
6 261 (3.13%) AI Agents
7 256 (3.07%) Data Centre
8 231 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
9 176 (2.11%) Security Posture
10 148 (1.77%) Management Information System
11 141 (1.69%) Data Structures
12 139 (1.67%) Public Cloud
13 117 (1.40%) Enterprise Cloud
14 116 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
15 114 (1.37%) PKI
16 97 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
17 94 (1.13%) Replication
18 79 (0.95%) CMDB
19 77 (0.92%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 985 (11.80%) Windows
2 511 (6.12%) Linux
3 360 (4.31%) Windows Server
4 129 (1.55%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.04%) Unix
6 85 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 83 (0.99%) Android
8 80 (0.96%) Apple iOS
9 70 (0.84%) Mac OS
10 61 (0.73%) VMS
11 51 (0.61%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 17 (0.20%) CentOS
15 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 11 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
17 9 (0.11%) Debian
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Amazon Linux
18 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,110 (37.25%) DevOps
2 2,630 (31.50%) CI/CD
3 2,078 (24.89%) Agile
4 1,346 (16.12%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,316 (15.76%) AI
6 1,284 (15.38%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,220 (14.61%) Migration
8 1,151 (13.79%) Analytics
9 1,114 (13.34%) Problem-Solving
10 929 (11.13%) Continuous Improvement
11 920 (11.02%) Data Modelling
12 824 (9.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 785 (9.40%) Roadmaps
14 776 (9.30%) Containerisation
15 774 (9.27%) Data Pipeline
16 765 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
17 750 (8.98%) Microservices
18 704 (8.43%) Test Automation
19 678 (8.12%) Technical Leadership
20 675 (8.09%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,892 (22.66%) Python
2 1,630 (19.53%) SQL
3 864 (10.35%) PowerShell
4 700 (8.39%) Java
5 618 (7.40%) C#
6 502 (6.01%) JavaScript
7 398 (4.77%) Bash
8 339 (4.06%) Bicep
9 301 (3.61%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 73 (0.87%) Go
13 64 (0.77%) Shell Script
14 57 (0.68%) Scala
15 56 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
16 46 (0.55%) PL/SQL
17 41 (0.49%) R
18 39 (0.47%) Kotlin
19 31 (0.37%) Groovy
20 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,154 (25.80%) Security Cleared
2 1,747 (20.93%) SC Cleared
3 562 (6.73%) Degree
4 453 (5.43%) Azure Certification
5 288 (3.45%) DV Cleared
6 268 (3.21%) CISSP
7 247 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
8 229 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
9 215 (2.58%) Cisco Certification
10 199 (2.38%) AWS Certification
11 184 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
12 134 (1.61%) CISM
13 104 (1.25%) CCNP
14 90 (1.08%) PMI Certification
15 88 (1.05%) PMP
16 87 (1.04%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 74 (0.89%) ISTQB
18 66 (0.79%) Master's Degree
19 56 (0.67%) CCSP
20 45 (0.54%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 586 (7.02%) Data Quality
2 448 (5.37%) QA
3 320 (3.83%) GDPR
4 308 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 305 (3.65%) NIST
6 199 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 127 (1.52%) NCSC
8 106 (1.27%) SLA
9 77 (0.92%) GRC
10 76 (0.91%) WCAG
11 71 (0.85%) PCI DSS
12 69 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
13 59 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 56 (0.67%) PMO
15 33 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 28 (0.34%) HIPAA
17 25 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 19 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
19 18 (0.22%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 1,017 (12.18%) Active Directory
2 919 (11.01%) Docker
3 248 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 143 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
6 132 (1.58%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.83%) vSphere
8 56 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.37%) Firmware
11 23 (0.28%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) IAG
13 12 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
13 12 (0.14%) Postfix
14 9 (0.11%) zsh
15 8 (0.096%) Ceph
15 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.084%) Varnish
17 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,291 (15.46%) Kubernetes
2 454 (5.44%) Ansible
3 434 (5.20%) Microsoft Intune
4 268 (3.21%) Grafana
5 216 (2.59%) Prometheus
6 153 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
7 123 (1.47%) SCCM
8 63 (0.75%) Progress Chef
9 59 (0.71%) Argo
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) Istio
14 32 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 24 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 23 (0.28%) SCOM
17 20 (0.24%) Packer
18 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
18 19 (0.23%) QRadar
19 18 (0.22%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,852 (34.16%) Microsoft
2 805 (9.64%) Databricks
3 409 (4.90%) ServiceNow
4 358 (4.29%) Google
5 354 (4.24%) VMware
6 325 (3.89%) Oracle
7 244 (2.92%) Cisco
8 225 (2.70%) SAP
9 203 (2.43%) Splunk
10 200 (2.40%) OpenAI
11 169 (2.02%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.83%) CyberArk
13 149 (1.78%) Palo Alto
14 136 (1.63%) Foundry
15 122 (1.46%) Dynatrace
16 103 (1.23%) Zscaler
17 92 (1.10%) Okta
18 91 (1.09%) Informatica
19 77 (0.92%) IBM
20 74 (0.89%) Fortinet