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

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,376 4,521 5,784
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.36% 15.52% 13.59%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.07% 41.31% 41.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,231 3,189 4,170
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 £626 £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 141 37 50
10th Percentile £20.91 £23.15 £17.80
25th Percentile £37.25 £26.25 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -42.27%
75th Percentile £64.00 £75.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £34.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +66.67% -28.26% -20.22%

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 17,124 10,944 13,829
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.65% 37.57% 32.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,559 7,525 9,823
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 £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.63% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 518 250 348
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.15 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.77 £18.50 £16.05
Median hourly rate £37.31 £27.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +35.67% +28.69% -38.94%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.50 £38.13
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.75 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.53 £21.28 £17.72
% change year-on-year +90.46% +20.09% -29.12%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 0 6,243 £525 - 2,815
London +1 3,335 £540 -1.82% 1,046
UK excluding London +2 3,084 £500 - 2,201
Work from Home -1 2,251 £525 +1.55% 2,252
North of England +3 869 £500 +5.26% 570
South East +3 837 £500 -3.29% 661
Midlands -5 490 £489 -2.25% 292
North West +3 448 £500 - 313
South West +6 381 £525 - 276
Yorkshire +8 359 £500 +15.94% 155
West Midlands -1 355 £495 -5.71% 165
Scotland +8 302 £525 +10.53% 127
East of England +4 146 £550 -8.33% 189
East Midlands +4 125 £463 - 126
Wales -2 85 £400 -1.23% 88
North East -1 71 £525 +10.53% 102
Northern Ireland +12 17 £525 +10.53% 27
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
1 341 (4.62%) SharePoint
2 218 (2.96%) Confluence
3 196 (2.66%) Apache Spark
4 191 (2.59%) Microsoft Exchange
5 102 (1.38%) Apache
6 93 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.31%) IIS
8 22 (0.30%) SAS
9 15 (0.20%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.20%) CMS
9 15 (0.20%) Mendix
9 15 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 13 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
11 12 (0.16%) Appian
11 12 (0.16%) Camunda
11 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
13 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.095%) nginx
Applications
1 104 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.18%) Microsoft Office
3 64 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 21 (0.28%) 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%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 101 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.14%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.12%) Maximo
6 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.12%) Teamcenter
7 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.081%) 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%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.054%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 2,511 (34.04%) AWS
2 1,503 (20.38%) Azure DevOps
3 1,308 (17.73%) GCP
4 953 (12.92%) Power Platform
5 872 (11.82%) Entra ID
6 754 (10.22%) Microsoft 365
7 699 (9.48%) GitHub
8 504 (6.83%) Azure Data Factory
9 416 (5.64%) GitHub Actions
10 379 (5.14%) Serverless
11 341 (4.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 284 (3.85%) SaaS
13 275 (3.73%) Azure AKS
14 259 (3.51%) Dynamics 365
14 259 (3.51%) Power Automate
15 241 (3.27%) Azure Monitor
16 235 (3.19%) PaaS
17 222 (3.01%) PowerApps
18 206 (2.79%) Azure Functions
19 189 (2.56%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 445 (6.03%) Firewall
2 320 (4.34%) DNS
3 258 (3.50%) VPN
4 244 (3.31%) Network Security
5 200 (2.71%) WAN
6 170 (2.30%) DHCP
7 133 (1.80%) LAN
8 108 (1.46%) SD-WAN
9 92 (1.25%) TCP/IP
10 88 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
11 73 (0.99%) VLAN
12 72 (0.98%) Kerberos
13 71 (0.96%) BGP
14 60 (0.81%) OSPF
15 48 (0.65%) SAN
16 44 (0.60%) SSL
17 42 (0.57%) Wireless
18 39 (0.53%) VXLAN
19 37 (0.50%) HTTP
20 35 (0.47%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 637 (8.64%) Power BI
2 428 (5.80%) SQL Server
3 367 (4.98%) Data Warehouse
4 365 (4.95%) Data Lake
5 246 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
6 240 (3.25%) Azure SQL Database
7 194 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 178 (2.41%) Metadata
9 150 (2.03%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.57%) Big Data
10 116 (1.57%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 92 (1.25%) MongoDB
13 77 (1.04%) Tableau
14 69 (0.94%) Oracle Database
15 68 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
16 66 (0.89%) BigQuery
17 60 (0.81%) MySQL
18 56 (0.76%) Star Schema
19 48 (0.65%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 537 (7.28%) Git
2 527 (7.14%) JIRA
3 393 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 310 (4.20%) GitLab
5 114 (1.55%) Selenium
6 79 (1.07%) Postman
7 67 (0.91%) JMeter
8 63 (0.85%) Cucumber
9 55 (0.75%) JUnit
10 54 (0.73%) MLflow
11 50 (0.68%) REST Assured
12 45 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 36 (0.49%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.47%) Cypress.io
15 34 (0.46%) Artifactory
16 33 (0.45%) WebDriver
17 31 (0.42%) Gatling
18 28 (0.38%) Maven
19 26 (0.35%) ERwin
20 25 (0.34%) NUnit
General
1 1,867 (25.31%) Social Skills
2 1,322 (17.92%) Finance
3 807 (10.94%) Public Sector
4 653 (8.85%) Analytical Skills
5 388 (5.26%) Banking
6 205 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 192 (2.60%) Legal
8 108 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 100 (1.36%) Retail
10 87 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
11 75 (1.02%) Financial Institution
12 73 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
13 72 (0.98%) Marketing
14 67 (0.91%) Telecoms
15 66 (0.89%) Investment Banking
16 65 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
17 60 (0.81%) Front Office
17 60 (0.81%) Law
18 45 (0.61%) Military
19 40 (0.54%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,265 (17.15%) Architect
2 942 (12.77%) Developer
3 870 (11.80%) Senior
4 674 (9.14%) Azure Engineer
5 603 (8.18%) Data Engineer
6 544 (7.38%) Lead
7 458 (6.21%) Analyst
8 409 (5.55%) DevOps Engineer
9 325 (4.41%) Solutions Architect
10 313 (4.24%) Consultant
11 234 (3.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 233 (3.16%) Cloud Engineer
13 207 (2.81%) Azure Architect
14 190 (2.58%) Security Engineer
15 186 (2.52%) Data Architect
16 174 (2.36%) Platform Engineer
17 168 (2.28%) Technical Architect
18 167 (2.26%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 158 (2.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 158 (2.14%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 586 (7.94%) .NET
2 497 (6.74%) REST
3 329 (4.46%) React
4 270 (3.66%) PySpark
5 267 (3.62%) Kafka
6 232 (3.15%) RESTful
7 220 (2.98%) Node.js
8 206 (2.79%) OAuth
9 200 (2.71%) Spring
10 175 (2.37%) AngularJS
11 174 (2.36%) LDAP
12 166 (2.25%) Spring Boot
13 153 (2.07%) JSON
14 137 (1.86%) Middleware
15 136 (1.84%) HTML
16 135 (1.83%) SOAP
17 130 (1.76%) OpenID
18 124 (1.68%) SAML
19 112 (1.52%) CSS
20 107 (1.45%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 711 (9.64%) Cloud Native
2 291 (3.95%) Onboarding
3 268 (3.63%) Product Ownership
4 219 (2.97%) Data Centre
5 197 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
6 181 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
7 166 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
8 159 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
9 158 (2.14%) Security Posture
10 154 (2.09%) Public Cloud
11 141 (1.91%) AI Agents
12 100 (1.36%) Data Structures
13 93 (1.26%) Replication
14 91 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 81 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 78 (1.06%) Management Information System
17 72 (0.98%) PKI
18 67 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
19 60 (0.81%) NHS
20 58 (0.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 811 (11.00%) Windows
2 382 (5.18%) Linux
3 242 (3.28%) 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 63 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 50 (0.68%) Android
10 29 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
11 22 (0.30%) Ubuntu
11 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
12 11 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.12%) Debian
14 8 (0.11%) CentOS
14 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.095%) CoreOS
15 7 (0.095%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,757 (37.38%) DevOps
2 2,293 (31.09%) CI/CD
3 1,723 (23.36%) Agile
4 1,054 (14.29%) Analytics
5 1,052 (14.26%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,041 (14.11%) Problem-Solving
7 1,021 (13.84%) Migration
8 1,003 (13.60%) AI
9 840 (11.39%) Data Modelling
10 733 (9.94%) Stakeholder Management
11 696 (9.44%) Business Intelligence
12 695 (9.42%) Data Pipeline
13 687 (9.31%) Containerisation
14 684 (9.27%) Continuous Improvement
15 666 (9.03%) ETL
16 652 (8.84%) Microservices
17 615 (8.34%) Roadmaps
18 597 (8.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 583 (7.90%) Data Engineering
20 570 (7.73%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,761 (23.87%) Python
2 1,538 (20.85%) SQL
3 737 (9.99%) PowerShell
4 613 (8.31%) C#
5 595 (8.07%) Java
6 442 (5.99%) JavaScript
7 282 (3.82%) TypeScript
8 256 (3.47%) Bash
9 242 (3.28%) Bicep
10 94 (1.27%) Scala
11 88 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 88 (1.19%) T-SQL
12 80 (1.08%) Go
13 55 (0.75%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 49 (0.66%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.56%) R
17 31 (0.42%) C++
18 24 (0.33%) Kotlin
19 18 (0.24%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,829 (24.80%) Security Cleared
2 1,549 (21.00%) SC Cleared
3 507 (6.87%) Degree
4 378 (5.12%) Azure Certification
5 214 (2.90%) CISSP
6 188 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
7 170 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
8 165 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
9 161 (2.18%) DV Cleared
10 152 (2.06%) AWS Certification
11 151 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
12 126 (1.71%) CISM
13 80 (1.08%) CCNP
14 76 (1.03%) PMP
15 73 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.92%) TOGAF Certification
17 67 (0.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 65 (0.88%) Master's Degree
19 57 (0.77%) ISTQB
20 46 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 519 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 397 (5.38%) QA
3 358 (4.85%) GDPR
4 292 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 268 (3.63%) NIST
6 137 (1.86%) Accessibility
7 105 (1.42%) NCSC
8 83 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 75 (1.02%) SLA
10 68 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
11 64 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 59 (0.80%) PMO
13 55 (0.75%) GRC
14 45 (0.61%) WCAG
15 38 (0.52%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.34%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 22 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 19 (0.26%) ISO 20022
19 18 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 890 (12.07%) Active Directory
2 793 (10.75%) Docker
3 206 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 120 (1.63%) Virtual Desktop
5 114 (1.55%) Virtual Machines
6 109 (1.48%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.83%) vSphere
8 35 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.39%) Firmware
10 23 (0.31%) VMware NSX
11 22 (0.30%) NFS
12 12 (0.16%) Postfix
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.095%) HDFS
14 7 (0.095%) Varnish
15 6 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.081%) RACF
16 5 (0.068%) Ceph
16 5 (0.068%) Snort
16 5 (0.068%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,151 (15.60%) Terraform
2 1,058 (14.34%) Kubernetes
3 369 (5.00%) Microsoft Intune
4 341 (4.62%) Ansible
5 205 (2.78%) Grafana
6 178 (2.41%) Prometheus
7 151 (2.05%) Single Sign-On
8 108 (1.46%) SCCM
9 69 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.52%) Argo
11 36 (0.49%) Puppet
12 35 (0.47%) FortiGate
12 35 (0.47%) 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 2,345 (31.79%) Microsoft
2 756 (10.25%) Databricks
3 313 (4.24%) ServiceNow
4 302 (4.09%) Google
5 290 (3.93%) VMware
6 288 (3.90%) Oracle
7 217 (2.94%) SAP
8 197 (2.67%) Cisco
9 184 (2.49%) OpenAI
10 163 (2.21%) Splunk
11 138 (1.87%) CyberArk
12 129 (1.75%) Palo Alto
13 113 (1.53%) Salesforce
14 110 (1.49%) Foundry
15 93 (1.26%) Okta
16 80 (1.08%) Citrix
16 80 (1.08%) Dynatrace
17 73 (0.99%) Informatica
18 71 (0.96%) BeyondTrust
19 68 (0.92%) Zscaler