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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,362 4,796 5,554
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.51% 14.56% 14.41%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.38% 39.08% 42.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,855 3,264 3,921
10th Percentile £368 £350 £343
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 £631
90th Percentile £718 £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 18,840 12,272 13,102
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.95% 37.25% 34.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,482 8,174 9,031
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 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 606 314 224
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £33.99 £28.75 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.23% -4.17% -14.29%
75th Percentile £68.75 £52.42 £55.63
90th Percentile £81.75 £70.13 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £19.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +71.05% -21.42% -10.44%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 7,167 £525 - 5,747
London +1 3,755 £550 +1.10% 2,982
UK excluding London +2 3,583 £500 - 3,610
Work from Home 0 2,547 £525 +5.00% 2,818
North of England +9 1,045 £500 +5.26% 958
South East +2 931 £525 +5.00% 932
Midlands +4 648 £493 -3.90% 488
North West +5 532 £492 +3.58% 525
West Midlands +3 477 £493 -8.54% 295
Yorkshire +6 431 £500 +5.26% 302
South West +6 427 £540 +8.00% 478
Scotland +10 288 £500 +5.26% 280
East of England +3 174 £525 +3.96% 281
East Midlands +9 159 £494 +6.76% 192
North East +9 95 £506 +1.25% 140
Wales -1 88 £483 +7.22% 103
Northern Ireland +11 12 £650 +36.84% 129
Channel Islands 0 11 £450 -29.69% 2

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
1 458 (5.48%) SharePoint
2 268 (3.20%) Confluence
3 199 (2.38%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.08%) Apache Spark
5 155 (1.85%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.39%) Apache
7 43 (0.51%) SAS
8 36 (0.43%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 23 (0.28%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.084%) Apache Superset
16 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 7 (0.084%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.072%) Documentum
Applications
1 126 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.47%) Chatbot
5 38 (0.45%) 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
1 128 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (0.87%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) 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
6 9 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
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%) SimCorp Dimension
11 4 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,995 (35.82%) AWS
2 1,792 (21.43%) Azure DevOps
3 1,412 (16.89%) GCP
4 1,093 (13.07%) Entra ID
5 1,070 (12.80%) Power Platform
6 865 (10.34%) Microsoft 365
7 846 (10.12%) GitHub
8 503 (6.02%) GitHub Actions
9 477 (5.70%) Azure Data Factory
10 374 (4.47%) Serverless
11 359 (4.29%) SaaS
12 327 (3.91%) Azure Monitor
13 311 (3.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 304 (3.64%) Azure AKS
15 290 (3.47%) Power Automate
16 286 (3.42%) Dynamics 365
17 275 (3.29%) PowerApps
18 262 (3.13%) Snowflake
19 237 (2.83%) PaaS
20 228 (2.73%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 535 (6.40%) Firewall
2 422 (5.05%) DNS
3 324 (3.87%) VPN
4 314 (3.76%) Network Security
5 223 (2.67%) DHCP
6 200 (2.39%) WAN
7 170 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.41%) LAN
9 114 (1.36%) BGP
10 105 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.12%) VLAN
12 91 (1.09%) OSPF
13 84 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 72 (0.86%) SSL
15 61 (0.73%) SAN
16 56 (0.67%) Wireless
17 49 (0.59%) HTTP
18 47 (0.56%) IPsec
18 47 (0.56%) VXLAN
19 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 727 (8.69%) Power BI
2 463 (5.54%) SQL Server
3 412 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 369 (4.41%) Data Lake
5 288 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 239 (2.86%) Metadata
7 219 (2.62%) Azure SQL Database
8 218 (2.61%) NoSQL
9 143 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 135 (1.61%) Delta Lake
11 102 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 101 (1.21%) MongoDB
13 98 (1.17%) Big Data
14 82 (0.98%) MySQL
15 67 (0.80%) Tableau
16 66 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
16 66 (0.79%) Redis
17 63 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
18 61 (0.73%) Star Schema
19 58 (0.69%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 694 (8.30%) Git
2 615 (7.35%) JIRA
3 465 (5.56%) Jenkins
4 362 (4.33%) GitLab
5 138 (1.65%) Selenium
6 76 (0.91%) Postman
7 62 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 62 (0.74%) JUnit
8 58 (0.69%) JMeter
9 53 (0.63%) Maven
9 53 (0.63%) SonarQube
10 50 (0.60%) Cucumber
11 47 (0.56%) Visual Studio
12 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
13 44 (0.53%) Claude Code
13 44 (0.53%) Gradle
14 38 (0.45%) WebDriver
15 34 (0.41%) MLflow
16 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
17 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,255 (26.97%) Social Skills
2 1,558 (18.63%) Finance
3 989 (11.83%) Public Sector
4 823 (9.84%) Analytical Skills
5 451 (5.39%) Banking
6 233 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 214 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 196 (2.34%) Retail
9 183 (2.19%) Legal
10 99 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
11 98 (1.17%) Manufacturing
12 97 (1.16%) Telecoms
13 83 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 77 (0.92%) Aerospace
14 77 (0.92%) Investment Banking
15 76 (0.91%) Marketing
16 75 (0.90%) Law
17 71 (0.85%) Military
18 64 (0.77%) Financial Institution
19 59 (0.71%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,557 (18.62%) Architect
2 1,040 (12.44%) Senior
3 1,011 (12.09%) Developer
4 741 (8.86%) Azure Engineer
5 687 (8.22%) Lead
6 598 (7.15%) Data Engineer
7 497 (5.94%) Analyst
8 464 (5.55%) DevOps Engineer
9 448 (5.36%) Solutions Architect
10 359 (4.29%) Cloud Engineer
11 321 (3.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 311 (3.72%) Consultant
13 270 (3.23%) Data Architect
14 241 (2.88%) Platform Engineer
15 231 (2.76%) Azure Architect
16 206 (2.46%) Technical Architect
17 204 (2.44%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 187 (2.24%) Project Manager
18 187 (2.24%) Security Architect
19 184 (2.20%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,403 (16.78%) Terraform
2 673 (8.05%) REST
3 637 (7.62%) .NET
4 367 (4.39%) Kafka
5 310 (3.71%) React
6 291 (3.48%) RESTful
7 274 (3.28%) PySpark
8 249 (2.98%) OAuth
9 227 (2.71%) JSON
10 206 (2.46%) Spring
11 181 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 167 (2.00%) Node.js
13 156 (1.87%) AngularJS
14 151 (1.81%) HTML
14 151 (1.81%) SAML
15 150 (1.79%) OpenID
16 144 (1.72%) OAuth2
17 141 (1.69%) Playwright
18 140 (1.67%) .NET Framework
19 139 (1.66%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 917 (10.97%) Cloud Native
2 412 (4.93%) Onboarding
3 363 (4.34%) Product Ownership
4 281 (3.36%) AI Agents
5 277 (3.31%) Hybrid Cloud
6 275 (3.29%) Enterprise Software
7 270 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
8 253 (3.03%) Data Centre
9 236 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
10 174 (2.08%) Security Posture
11 156 (1.87%) Management Information System
12 144 (1.72%) Data Structures
13 142 (1.70%) Public Cloud
14 119 (1.42%) Enterprise Cloud
15 117 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
16 116 (1.39%) PKI
17 98 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
18 97 (1.16%) Replication
19 81 (0.97%) CMDB
20 79 (0.94%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 993 (11.88%) Windows
2 513 (6.13%) Linux
3 367 (4.39%) Windows Server
4 134 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.04%) Unix
6 85 (1.02%) Android
7 83 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 82 (0.98%) Apple iOS
9 73 (0.87%) Mac OS
10 63 (0.75%) VMS
11 54 (0.65%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.22%) CentOS
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 8 (0.096%) Data ONTAP
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,102 (37.10%) DevOps
2 2,630 (31.45%) CI/CD
3 2,092 (25.02%) Agile
4 1,375 (16.44%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,366 (16.34%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,343 (16.06%) AI
7 1,243 (14.86%) Migration
8 1,157 (13.84%) Analytics
9 1,124 (13.44%) Problem-Solving
10 946 (11.31%) Continuous Improvement
11 909 (10.87%) Data Modelling
12 820 (9.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 813 (9.72%) Roadmaps
14 781 (9.34%) Containerisation
15 780 (9.33%) Business Intelligence
16 767 (9.17%) Data Pipeline
17 741 (8.86%) Microservices
18 706 (8.44%) Technical Leadership
18 706 (8.44%) Test Automation
19 674 (8.06%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,911 (22.85%) Python
2 1,627 (19.46%) SQL
3 875 (10.46%) PowerShell
4 692 (8.28%) Java
5 613 (7.33%) C#
6 487 (5.82%) JavaScript
7 405 (4.84%) Bash
8 355 (4.25%) Bicep
9 290 (3.47%) TypeScript
10 104 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 70 (0.84%) Go
13 63 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 60 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 58 (0.69%) Scala
16 42 (0.50%) PL/SQL
17 41 (0.49%) R
18 39 (0.47%) Kotlin
19 34 (0.41%) Groovy
20 26 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,188 (26.17%) Security Cleared
2 1,775 (21.23%) SC Cleared
3 563 (6.73%) Degree
4 465 (5.56%) Azure Certification
5 289 (3.46%) DV Cleared
6 265 (3.17%) CISSP
7 256 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
8 238 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
9 207 (2.48%) AWS Certification
9 207 (2.48%) Cisco Certification
10 187 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
11 135 (1.61%) CISM
12 95 (1.14%) CCNP
13 90 (1.08%) PMI Certification
14 86 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 85 (1.02%) PMP
16 73 (0.87%) ISTQB
17 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.67%) CCSP
19 45 (0.54%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 600 (7.18%) Data Quality
2 451 (5.39%) QA
3 316 (3.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 314 (3.76%) GDPR
4 314 (3.76%) NIST
5 202 (2.42%) Accessibility
6 125 (1.49%) NCSC
7 104 (1.24%) SLA
8 79 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
8 79 (0.94%) WCAG
9 76 (0.91%) GRC
10 74 (0.88%) PCI DSS
11 57 (0.68%) 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 1,020 (12.20%) Active Directory
2 921 (11.01%) Docker
3 251 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
5 143 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
6 137 (1.64%) Hyper-V
7 65 (0.78%) vSphere
8 52 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.32%) Firmware
11 21 (0.25%) 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%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 6 (0.072%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,293 (15.46%) Kubernetes
2 457 (5.47%) Ansible
3 436 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
4 267 (3.19%) Grafana
5 214 (2.56%) Prometheus
6 146 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
7 127 (1.52%) SCCM
8 62 (0.74%) Progress Chef
9 61 (0.73%) Argo
10 48 (0.57%) Puppet
11 38 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 29 (0.35%) Istio
15 27 (0.32%) SCOM
16 22 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) Packer
18 19 (0.23%) QRadar
19 18 (0.22%) HAProxy
20 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,914 (34.85%) Microsoft
2 828 (9.90%) Databricks
3 407 (4.87%) ServiceNow
4 360 (4.31%) VMware
5 358 (4.28%) Google
6 328 (3.92%) Oracle
7 246 (2.94%) Cisco
8 222 (2.65%) SAP
9 214 (2.56%) Splunk
10 208 (2.49%) OpenAI
11 169 (2.02%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.83%) Palo Alto
13 152 (1.82%) CyberArk
14 136 (1.63%) Foundry
15 119 (1.42%) Dynatrace
16 100 (1.20%) Zscaler
17 95 (1.14%) Informatica
18 82 (0.98%) Okta
19 81 (0.97%) Fortinet
20 77 (0.92%) IBM