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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,795 4,717 6,089
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.91% 16.03% 13.64%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.62% 42.13% 41.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,812 3,326 4,401
10th Percentile £350 £350 £340
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -0.57% -6.13%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £718 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 40 76
10th Percentile £25.15 £22.28 £17.77
25th Percentile £47.00 £23.80 £22.08
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +79.69% -30.71% -16.04%
75th Percentile £67.69 £65.00 £60.40
90th Percentile £80.00 £80.75 £71.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £31.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +82.54% -31.79% -28.95%

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 15,943 11,197 14,561
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.34% 38.05% 32.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,884 7,753 10,347
10th Percentile £313 £313 £286
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £633
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £489
% change year-on-year -3.06% +0.20% -3.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 436 188 359
10th Percentile £15.36 £15.39 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.69 £20.28 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.54 £26.00 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +44.38% +21.67% -14.52%
75th Percentile £62.13 £42.23 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £74.28 £63.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.15 £24.18 £17.80
% change year-on-year +78.44% +35.84% -19.24%

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 12 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 12 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 12 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 5,725 £525 -2.33% 2,687
London +1 3,119 £540 -1.82% 1,044
UK excluding London 0 2,754 £500 - 2,106
Work from Home -2 2,082 £525 +0.86% 1,318
North of England +2 747 £492 +3.58% 568
South East 0 734 £500 -9.09% 670
Midlands -2 467 £500 - 300
North West 0 380 £488 -2.50% 304
West Midlands -3 361 £508 -3.24% 191
South West +4 331 £510 -2.95% 236
Yorkshire -3 321 £488 +8.33% 180
Scotland +8 293 £543 +14.21% 109
East of England 0 152 £550 -5.17% 182
East Midlands -5 103 £436 -8.21% 106
Wales -3 83 £400 -8.57% 59
North East -6 48 £525 +10.53% 92
Northern Ireland +1 13 £475 - 9

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
1 305 (4.49%) SharePoint
2 215 (3.16%) Microsoft Exchange
3 184 (2.71%) Apache Spark
4 182 (2.68%) Confluence
5 96 (1.41%) Apache
6 89 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 21 (0.31%) IIS
9 20 (0.29%) SAS
10 17 (0.25%) CMS
11 16 (0.24%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.22%) Appian
13 14 (0.21%) Camunda
14 13 (0.19%) Mendix
15 11 (0.16%) HCL Notes
16 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
17 9 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
18 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
19 6 (0.088%) Anypoint
19 6 (0.088%) Jupyter
Applications
1 119 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 45 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.63%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.088%) Trello
8 5 (0.074%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.074%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.074%) Weka
9 4 (0.059%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.015%) InDesign
11 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 109 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.18%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.12%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.088%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.088%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.088%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.088%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.074%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.074%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.074%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.059%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.059%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.059%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,374 (34.94%) AWS
2 1,374 (20.22%) Azure DevOps
3 1,331 (19.59%) GCP
4 920 (13.54%) Power Platform
5 819 (12.05%) Entra ID
6 764 (11.24%) Microsoft 365
7 717 (10.55%) GitHub
8 490 (7.21%) Azure Data Factory
9 418 (6.15%) GitHub Actions
10 409 (6.02%) Serverless
11 315 (4.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 291 (4.28%) Dynamics 365
13 277 (4.08%) SaaS
14 264 (3.89%) Power Automate
15 259 (3.81%) Azure AKS
16 243 (3.58%) Azure Functions
17 240 (3.53%) Azure Monitor
18 230 (3.38%) PaaS
19 223 (3.28%) Snowflake
20 209 (3.08%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 449 (6.61%) Firewall
2 281 (4.14%) DNS
3 235 (3.46%) VPN
4 209 (3.08%) Network Security
5 175 (2.58%) WAN
6 163 (2.40%) DHCP
7 119 (1.75%) LAN
8 101 (1.49%) TCP/IP
9 92 (1.35%) Wi-Fi
10 88 (1.30%) SD-WAN
11 67 (0.99%) Kerberos
12 66 (0.97%) VLAN
13 55 (0.81%) HTTP
14 47 (0.69%) BGP
15 43 (0.63%) Wireless
16 40 (0.59%) OSPF
17 36 (0.53%) Internet
18 35 (0.52%) SSL
19 33 (0.49%) MPLS
20 31 (0.46%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 625 (9.20%) Power BI
2 402 (5.92%) SQL Server
3 362 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
4 333 (4.90%) Data Lake
5 263 (3.87%) PostgreSQL
6 251 (3.69%) Azure SQL Database
7 203 (2.99%) NoSQL
8 163 (2.40%) Metadata
9 130 (1.91%) Delta Lake
10 118 (1.74%) Relational Database
11 106 (1.56%) Big Data
12 100 (1.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 86 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 78 (1.15%) MySQL
15 76 (1.12%) Tableau
16 67 (0.99%) BigQuery
17 66 (0.97%) Oracle Database
18 57 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
19 50 (0.74%) Hadoop
20 49 (0.72%) Redis
Development Applications
1 529 (7.79%) Git
2 471 (6.93%) JIRA
3 362 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 272 (4.00%) GitLab
5 131 (1.93%) Selenium
6 90 (1.32%) Postman
7 80 (1.18%) JMeter
8 78 (1.15%) Cucumber
9 73 (1.07%) JUnit
10 49 (0.72%) MLflow
11 47 (0.69%) Cypress.io
11 47 (0.69%) REST Assured
12 46 (0.68%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.66%) SonarQube
14 35 (0.52%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.49%) TestRail
16 31 (0.46%) Artifactory
17 30 (0.44%) SpecFlow
17 30 (0.44%) WebDriver
18 27 (0.40%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,993 (29.33%) Social Skills
2 1,215 (17.88%) Finance
3 807 (11.88%) Public Sector
4 671 (9.87%) Analytical Skills
5 372 (5.47%) Banking
6 216 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
7 154 (2.27%) Legal
8 111 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 106 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
10 88 (1.30%) Retail
11 85 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
12 81 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
13 77 (1.13%) Marketing
14 73 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 65 (0.96%) Financial Institution
16 60 (0.88%) Investment Banking
17 56 (0.82%) Law
18 53 (0.78%) Front Office
19 49 (0.72%) Manufacturing
20 39 (0.57%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,144 (16.84%) Architect
2 974 (14.33%) Developer
3 769 (11.32%) Senior
4 582 (8.57%) Azure Engineer
5 556 (8.18%) Data Engineer
6 506 (7.45%) Lead
7 431 (6.34%) Analyst
8 326 (4.80%) DevOps Engineer
9 322 (4.74%) Solutions Architect
10 306 (4.50%) Consultant
11 187 (2.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 184 (2.71%) Cloud Engineer
13 179 (2.63%) Security Engineer
14 176 (2.59%) Azure Architect
15 164 (2.41%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 158 (2.33%) Senior Developer
17 149 (2.19%) Data Architect
18 145 (2.13%) Platform Engineer
19 139 (2.05%) Tester
20 135 (1.99%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 558 (8.21%) .NET
2 485 (7.14%) REST
3 333 (4.90%) React
4 260 (3.83%) RESTful
5 258 (3.80%) PySpark
6 251 (3.69%) Kafka
7 247 (3.64%) Node.js
8 216 (3.18%) Spring
9 204 (3.00%) OAuth
10 197 (2.90%) AngularJS
11 177 (2.60%) Spring Boot
12 176 (2.59%) HTML
13 151 (2.22%) CSS
14 148 (2.18%) LDAP
15 146 (2.15%) PyTorch
16 142 (2.09%) SOAP
17 139 (2.05%) JSON
18 132 (1.94%) TensorFlow
19 129 (1.90%) Middleware
20 125 (1.84%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 608 (8.95%) Cloud Native
2 270 (3.97%) Onboarding
3 242 (3.56%) Product Ownership
4 179 (2.63%) Data Centre
4 179 (2.63%) Hybrid Cloud
5 166 (2.44%) Security Posture
6 159 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
6 159 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
7 131 (1.93%) Public Cloud
8 129 (1.90%) Distributed Systems
9 109 (1.60%) AI Agents
10 86 (1.27%) Data Structures
11 83 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
12 81 (1.19%) Algorithms
13 77 (1.13%) Replication
14 71 (1.04%) Management Information System
15 67 (0.99%) Low-Code
16 65 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
17 64 (0.94%) NHS
18 60 (0.88%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 737 (10.85%) Windows
2 362 (5.33%) Linux
3 213 (3.13%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.77%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.09%) Unix
6 65 (0.96%) VMS
7 48 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 44 (0.65%) Mac OS
9 35 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 27 (0.40%) Android
11 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 17 (0.25%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.12%) CentOS
15 8 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.088%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.088%) Solaris
16 6 (0.088%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.074%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,504 (36.85%) DevOps
2 2,093 (30.80%) CI/CD
3 1,639 (24.12%) Agile
4 1,178 (17.34%) Problem-Solving
5 1,032 (15.19%) Analytics
6 940 (13.83%) AI
7 893 (13.14%) Infrastructure as Code
8 876 (12.89%) Migration
9 717 (10.55%) Data Modelling
10 710 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
11 693 (10.20%) Business Intelligence
12 668 (9.83%) Containerisation
13 643 (9.46%) Continuous Improvement
14 617 (9.08%) Microservices
15 614 (9.04%) Data Pipeline
16 612 (9.01%) Machine Learning
17 608 (8.95%) ETL
18 587 (8.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 563 (8.29%) Test Automation
20 549 (8.08%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,788 (26.31%) Python
2 1,537 (22.62%) SQL
3 737 (10.85%) PowerShell
4 601 (8.84%) C#
5 577 (8.49%) Java
6 511 (7.52%) JavaScript
7 303 (4.46%) TypeScript
8 257 (3.78%) Bash
9 203 (2.99%) Bicep
10 97 (1.43%) Scala
11 80 (1.18%) Go
11 80 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
12 79 (1.16%) PL/SQL
13 78 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 76 (1.12%) T-SQL
15 46 (0.68%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.65%) R
17 39 (0.57%) C++
18 28 (0.41%) PHP
19 25 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,627 (23.94%) Security Cleared
2 1,349 (19.85%) SC Cleared
3 551 (8.11%) Degree
4 367 (5.40%) Azure Certification
5 220 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 185 (2.72%) CISSP
7 163 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
8 146 (2.15%) AWS Certification
9 135 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
10 132 (1.94%) DV Cleared
11 121 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
12 116 (1.71%) CISM
13 92 (1.35%) Master's Degree
14 66 (0.97%) TOGAF Certification
15 61 (0.90%) CCNP
15 61 (0.90%) ISTQB
16 59 (0.87%) PMI Certification
17 56 (0.82%) PMP
18 44 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 37 (0.54%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 466 (6.86%) Data Quality
2 398 (5.86%) GDPR
3 362 (5.33%) QA
4 298 (4.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 232 (3.41%) NIST
6 135 (1.99%) Accessibility
7 97 (1.43%) NCSC
8 85 (1.25%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 60 (0.88%) SLA
10 58 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
11 51 (0.75%) PMO
12 39 (0.57%) HIPAA
13 35 (0.52%) GRC
14 34 (0.50%) WCAG
15 33 (0.49%) SOC 2
16 24 (0.35%) EU AI Act
16 24 (0.35%) ISO 20022
17 23 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.34%) PSD2
System Software
1 863 (12.70%) Active Directory
2 812 (11.95%) Docker
3 196 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 95 (1.40%) Hyper-V
5 93 (1.37%) Virtual Machines
6 73 (1.07%) vSphere
7 69 (1.02%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.35%) VMware NSX
9 20 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
10 18 (0.26%) Firmware
11 15 (0.22%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Postfix
13 7 (0.10%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.10%) KVM
13 7 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.088%) GPFS
14 6 (0.088%) Lustre
14 6 (0.088%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.088%) Snort
15 5 (0.074%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 1,046 (15.39%) Terraform
2 1,002 (14.75%) Kubernetes
3 358 (5.27%) Microsoft Intune
4 312 (4.59%) Ansible
5 178 (2.62%) Grafana
6 161 (2.37%) Single Sign-On
7 154 (2.27%) Prometheus
8 129 (1.90%) SCCM
9 73 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.75%) Argo
11 32 (0.47%) Istio
12 29 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 27 (0.40%) Puppet
14 25 (0.37%) vRealize
15 24 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 23 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
17 20 (0.29%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
18 16 (0.24%) Nmap
19 15 (0.22%) Kibana
Vendors
1 2,173 (31.98%) Microsoft
2 681 (10.02%) Databricks
3 345 (5.08%) Google
4 337 (4.96%) Oracle
5 280 (4.12%) ServiceNow
6 267 (3.93%) VMware
7 200 (2.94%) SAP
8 174 (2.56%) OpenAI
9 169 (2.49%) Cisco
10 152 (2.24%) Splunk
11 123 (1.81%) CyberArk
12 110 (1.62%) Foundry
13 109 (1.60%) Palo Alto
14 93 (1.37%) Salesforce
15 90 (1.32%) Okta
16 74 (1.09%) Red Hat
17 71 (1.04%) IBM
18 68 (1.00%) Citrix
19 66 (0.97%) BeyondTrust
19 66 (0.97%) Fortinet