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 19 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,360 4,532 5,790
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.32% 15.52% 13.60%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.16% 41.33% 41.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,221 3,204 4,178
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 135 36 50
10th Percentile £20.86 £23.05 £17.80
25th Percentile £37.25 £26.40 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -43.41%
75th Percentile £60.00 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £78.70 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +53.33% -22.02% -20.68%

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 17,053 10,966 13,869
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.50% 37.55% 32.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,507 7,533 9,862
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £623 £634
90th Percentile £703 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.16% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 508 249 350
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.14 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.32 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £36.36 £27.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +32.20% +28.69% -38.94%
75th Percentile £63.75 £47.50 £38.13
90th Percentile £77.81 £73.75 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £20.89 £17.72
% change year-on-year +79.51% +17.89% -31.49%

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 19 May 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 19 May 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 19 May 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 6,232 £525 - 2,737
London +1 3,331 £540 -1.82% 1,017
UK excluding London +2 3,077 £500 - 2,170
Work from Home -1 2,251 £525 +1.94% 1,302
North of England +3 879 £500 +5.26% 562
South East +3 818 £500 -3.29% 658
Midlands -4 489 £493 -1.50% 274
North West +3 450 £500 +0.81% 309
South West +6 386 £525 - 272
Yorkshire +7 364 £500 +15.94% 157
West Midlands -1 353 £500 -4.76% 164
Scotland +9 301 £525 +10.53% 129
East of England +3 145 £550 -8.33% 186
East Midlands +3 126 £463 - 109
Wales -3 85 £400 -0.62% 91
North East -1 74 £525 +7.69% 97
Northern Ireland +9 17 £525 +10.53% 28
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 +51.26%

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
1 344 (4.67%) SharePoint
2 216 (2.93%) Confluence
3 198 (2.69%) Apache Spark
4 189 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
5 102 (1.39%) Apache
6 94 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.34%) IIS
8 22 (0.30%) SAS
9 16 (0.22%) CMS
10 15 (0.20%) Mendix
11 14 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 13 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
13 12 (0.16%) Appian
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
13 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
17 7 (0.095%) Umbraco
Applications
1 100 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 64 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.095%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.095%) Trello
8 5 (0.068%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.068%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.054%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.054%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.041%) Revit
10 3 (0.041%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.014%) InDesign
11 1 (0.014%) Notion
11 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 102 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 9 (0.12%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.12%) Maximo
7 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.082%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.068%) NetSuite
9 5 (0.068%) Shopify
9 5 (0.068%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.054%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.054%) Magento
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.054%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 2,496 (33.91%) AWS
2 1,503 (20.42%) Azure DevOps
3 1,294 (17.58%) GCP
4 945 (12.84%) Power Platform
5 870 (11.82%) Entra ID
6 749 (10.18%) Microsoft 365
7 692 (9.40%) GitHub
8 500 (6.79%) Azure Data Factory
9 410 (5.57%) GitHub Actions
10 380 (5.16%) Serverless
11 336 (4.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 280 (3.80%) SaaS
13 277 (3.76%) Azure AKS
14 259 (3.52%) Power Automate
15 257 (3.49%) Dynamics 365
16 241 (3.27%) Azure Monitor
17 233 (3.17%) PaaS
18 223 (3.03%) PowerApps
19 207 (2.81%) Azure Functions
20 191 (2.60%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 437 (5.94%) Firewall
2 308 (4.18%) DNS
3 253 (3.44%) VPN
4 246 (3.34%) Network Security
5 202 (2.74%) WAN
6 163 (2.21%) DHCP
7 132 (1.79%) LAN
8 111 (1.51%) SD-WAN
9 90 (1.22%) TCP/IP
10 89 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
11 73 (0.99%) BGP
11 73 (0.99%) VLAN
12 71 (0.96%) Kerberos
13 62 (0.84%) OSPF
14 47 (0.64%) SAN
15 45 (0.61%) SSL
16 41 (0.56%) VXLAN
16 41 (0.56%) Wireless
17 38 (0.52%) HTTP
18 35 (0.48%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 628 (8.53%) Power BI
2 428 (5.82%) SQL Server
3 364 (4.95%) Data Warehouse
4 359 (4.88%) Data Lake
5 244 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
6 239 (3.25%) Azure SQL Database
7 195 (2.65%) NoSQL
8 177 (2.40%) Metadata
9 151 (2.05%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.58%) Big Data
11 114 (1.55%) Relational Database
12 96 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 92 (1.25%) MongoDB
14 76 (1.03%) Tableau
15 69 (0.94%) Oracle Database
16 68 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
17 65 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 61 (0.83%) MySQL
19 55 (0.75%) Star Schema
20 49 (0.67%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 537 (7.30%) Git
2 522 (7.09%) JIRA
3 392 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 309 (4.20%) GitLab
5 115 (1.56%) Selenium
6 78 (1.06%) Postman
7 69 (0.94%) JMeter
8 61 (0.83%) Cucumber
9 56 (0.76%) JUnit
10 54 (0.73%) MLflow
11 51 (0.69%) REST Assured
12 45 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 37 (0.50%) Cypress.io
13 37 (0.50%) Visual Studio
14 33 (0.45%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.45%) WebDriver
15 31 (0.42%) Gatling
16 29 (0.39%) Maven
17 26 (0.35%) ERwin
18 25 (0.34%) NUnit
General
1 1,850 (25.14%) Social Skills
2 1,324 (17.99%) Finance
3 805 (10.94%) Public Sector
4 648 (8.80%) Analytical Skills
5 385 (5.23%) Banking
6 199 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 193 (2.62%) Legal
8 107 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 101 (1.37%) Retail
10 90 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 74 (1.01%) Financial Institution
12 73 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
13 72 (0.98%) Marketing
14 65 (0.88%) Investment Banking
15 63 (0.86%) Telecoms
16 62 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
17 60 (0.82%) Front Office
18 59 (0.80%) Law
19 45 (0.61%) Military
20 40 (0.54%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,266 (17.20%) Architect
2 943 (12.81%) Developer
3 868 (11.79%) Senior
4 677 (9.20%) Azure Engineer
5 599 (8.14%) Data Engineer
6 544 (7.39%) Lead
7 451 (6.13%) Analyst
8 411 (5.58%) DevOps Engineer
9 329 (4.47%) Solutions Architect
10 314 (4.27%) Consultant
11 239 (3.25%) Cloud Engineer
12 235 (3.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 208 (2.83%) Azure Architect
14 191 (2.60%) Security Engineer
15 187 (2.54%) Data Architect
16 172 (2.34%) Platform Engineer
17 169 (2.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 166 (2.26%) Technical Architect
19 159 (2.16%) Project Manager
20 157 (2.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 591 (8.03%) .NET
2 496 (6.74%) REST
3 330 (4.48%) React
4 271 (3.68%) PySpark
5 265 (3.60%) Kafka
6 230 (3.13%) RESTful
7 215 (2.92%) Node.js
8 205 (2.79%) OAuth
9 196 (2.66%) Spring
10 180 (2.45%) AngularJS
11 170 (2.31%) LDAP
12 163 (2.21%) Spring Boot
13 155 (2.11%) JSON
14 137 (1.86%) HTML
14 137 (1.86%) Middleware
15 135 (1.83%) SOAP
16 130 (1.77%) OpenID
17 125 (1.70%) SAML
18 112 (1.52%) CSS
19 109 (1.48%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 707 (9.61%) Cloud Native
2 289 (3.93%) Onboarding
3 268 (3.64%) Product Ownership
4 223 (3.03%) Data Centre
5 196 (2.66%) Hybrid Cloud
6 178 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
7 167 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
8 158 (2.15%) Enterprise Software
8 158 (2.15%) Security Posture
9 154 (2.09%) Public Cloud
10 140 (1.90%) AI Agents
11 99 (1.35%) Data Structures
12 92 (1.25%) Replication
13 90 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
14 80 (1.09%) Low-Code
15 77 (1.05%) Management Information System
16 69 (0.94%) PKI
17 68 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
18 62 (0.84%) NHS
19 58 (0.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 801 (10.88%) Windows
2 376 (5.11%) Linux
3 239 (3.25%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.64%) Windows 10
5 76 (1.03%) Unix
6 70 (0.95%) Apple iOS
6 70 (0.95%) Mac OS
7 69 (0.94%) VMS
8 62 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 50 (0.68%) Android
10 30 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
11 22 (0.30%) Ubuntu
11 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 12 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
13 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
14 9 (0.12%) Debian
15 8 (0.11%) CentOS
15 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.095%) CoreOS
16 7 (0.095%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,755 (37.43%) DevOps
2 2,290 (31.11%) CI/CD
3 1,716 (23.32%) Agile
4 1,057 (14.36%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,040 (14.13%) Analytics
6 1,032 (14.02%) Problem-Solving
7 1,020 (13.86%) Migration
8 1,002 (13.61%) AI
9 840 (11.41%) Data Modelling
10 728 (9.89%) Stakeholder Management
11 694 (9.43%) Data Pipeline
12 690 (9.38%) Business Intelligence
13 684 (9.29%) Continuous Improvement
14 682 (9.27%) Containerisation
15 664 (9.02%) ETL
16 651 (8.85%) Microservices
17 612 (8.32%) Roadmaps
18 590 (8.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 580 (7.88%) Data Engineering
20 565 (7.68%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,744 (23.70%) Python
2 1,528 (20.76%) SQL
3 719 (9.77%) PowerShell
4 616 (8.37%) C#
5 594 (8.07%) Java
6 444 (6.03%) JavaScript
7 281 (3.82%) TypeScript
8 248 (3.37%) Bash
9 244 (3.32%) Bicep
10 95 (1.29%) Scala
11 89 (1.21%) T-SQL
12 87 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 79 (1.07%) Go
14 54 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
15 52 (0.71%) Shell Script
16 50 (0.68%) PL/SQL
17 41 (0.56%) R
18 31 (0.42%) C++
19 24 (0.33%) Kotlin
20 18 (0.24%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,815 (24.66%) Security Cleared
2 1,539 (20.91%) SC Cleared
3 508 (6.90%) Degree
4 377 (5.12%) Azure Certification
5 210 (2.85%) CISSP
6 186 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
7 170 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
8 169 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
9 158 (2.15%) DV Cleared
10 152 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
11 143 (1.94%) AWS Certification
12 122 (1.66%) CISM
13 80 (1.09%) CCNP
14 76 (1.03%) PMP
15 74 (1.01%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 64 (0.87%) Master's Degree
18 63 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
19 57 (0.77%) ISTQB
20 46 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 516 (7.01%) Data Quality
2 392 (5.33%) QA
3 346 (4.70%) GDPR
4 281 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 261 (3.55%) NIST
6 138 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 103 (1.40%) NCSC
8 82 (1.11%) PCI DSS
9 76 (1.03%) SLA
10 64 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
10 64 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 57 (0.77%) PMO
12 53 (0.72%) GRC
13 46 (0.63%) WCAG
14 38 (0.52%) HIPAA
15 24 (0.33%) NIST 800
16 22 (0.30%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 18 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 17 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 877 (11.92%) Active Directory
2 786 (10.68%) Docker
3 202 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 121 (1.64%) Virtual Desktop
5 113 (1.54%) Virtual Machines
6 106 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.84%) vSphere
8 36 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.39%) Firmware
10 23 (0.31%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 12 (0.16%) Postfix
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.095%) Varnish
15 6 (0.082%) HDFS
15 6 (0.082%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.082%) RACF
16 5 (0.068%) Ceph
16 5 (0.068%) Snort
16 5 (0.068%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,146 (15.57%) Terraform
2 1,055 (14.33%) Kubernetes
3 361 (4.90%) Microsoft Intune
4 335 (4.55%) Ansible
5 206 (2.80%) Grafana
6 180 (2.45%) Prometheus
7 152 (2.07%) Single Sign-On
8 106 (1.44%) SCCM
9 69 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.50%) Argo
11 36 (0.49%) Puppet
12 35 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 35 (0.48%) Istio
13 31 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
14 29 (0.39%) Progress Chef
15 23 (0.31%) HP ALM
16 18 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.23%) linkerd
18 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
19 15 (0.20%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,339 (31.78%) Microsoft
2 749 (10.18%) Databricks
3 310 (4.21%) ServiceNow
4 291 (3.95%) Google
5 287 (3.90%) Oracle
6 282 (3.83%) VMware
7 215 (2.92%) SAP
8 195 (2.65%) Cisco
9 183 (2.49%) OpenAI
10 164 (2.23%) Splunk
11 134 (1.82%) CyberArk
12 130 (1.77%) Palo Alto
13 112 (1.52%) Salesforce
14 109 (1.48%) Foundry
15 94 (1.28%) Okta
16 80 (1.09%) Dynatrace
17 79 (1.07%) Citrix
18 73 (0.99%) Informatica
19 69 (0.94%) Zscaler
20 67 (0.91%) BeyondTrust