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 1 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,575 5,364 6,856
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.60% 14.91% 15.02%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.94% 41.78% 42.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,889 3,596 5,015
10th Percentile £350 £338 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £635 £650
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £514
% change year-on-year - -2.68% -2.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 49 85
10th Percentile £15.88 £20.23 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.47 £23.80 £25.00
Median hourly rate £45.73 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +47.52% -32.87% +31.94%
75th Percentile £78.13 £60.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +113.33% -35.04% -5.76%

All Cloud 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 13,616 12,840 16,107
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.11% 35.69% 35.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,246 8,478 11,521
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £419 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £611 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 317 187 296
10th Percentile £15.40 £17.87 £14.36
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £26.00 £30.00 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +14.29% +19.10%
75th Percentile £52.16 £53.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £79.25 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.98 £27.35 £21.36
% change year-on-year -19.63% +28.07% +12.39%

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 1 December 2025.

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 1 December 2025.

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 1 December 2025. 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 4,746 £520 -1.89% 2,947
London +1 2,542 £538 -2.27% 988
UK excluding London 0 2,310 £500 - 2,721
Work from Home -1 1,814 £510 -2.86% 1,671
North of England -3 593 £475 -5.00% 616
South East -4 571 £500 -4.76% 921
Midlands -1 428 £534 +1.71% 388
West Midlands 0 320 £550 +4.76% 246
South West +6 308 £500 -0.99% 269
North West -1 290 £465 -7.00% 337
Yorkshire -1 275 £488 -2.50% 204
Scotland 0 247 £524 +12.81% 225
East of England +1 153 £500 +18.34% 223
East Midlands -1 105 £450 -10.00% 136
Wales 0 64 £456 -8.75% 109
North East -10 32 £515 +17.05% 84
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -4 6 - - 17

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
1 267 (4.79%) SharePoint
2 191 (3.43%) Microsoft Exchange
3 143 (2.57%) Confluence
4 126 (2.26%) Apache Spark
5 84 (1.51%) Apache
6 83 (1.49%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.48%) SAS
8 26 (0.47%) CMS
9 22 (0.39%) OpenStack
10 17 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.27%) nginx
12 12 (0.22%) Anypoint
12 12 (0.22%) IIS
13 10 (0.18%) Mule
13 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
16 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 128 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 97 (1.74%) Microsoft Office
3 41 (0.74%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
6 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.20%) Trello
8 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.090%) Weka
10 2 (0.036%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.036%) Windchill
11 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
11 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.018%) Revit
11 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 96 (1.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 16 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.20%) Endur
5 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
6 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.16%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
7 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.13%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.090%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.090%) Oracle EBS
11 4 (0.072%) Maximo
11 4 (0.072%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.072%) Remedy ITSM
11 4 (0.072%) SAP MDG
11 4 (0.072%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,030 (36.41%) AWS
2 1,103 (19.78%) Azure DevOps
3 1,098 (19.70%) GCP
4 709 (12.72%) Power Platform
5 638 (11.44%) Microsoft 365
6 634 (11.37%) Entra ID
7 527 (9.45%) GitHub
8 352 (6.31%) Azure Data Factory
9 317 (5.69%) GitHub Actions
10 299 (5.36%) Serverless
11 251 (4.50%) Dynamics 365
12 245 (4.39%) SaaS
13 243 (4.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 222 (3.98%) Azure AKS
15 220 (3.95%) Power Automate
16 212 (3.80%) Snowflake
17 202 (3.62%) PowerApps
18 197 (3.53%) PaaS
19 194 (3.48%) Azure Monitor
20 190 (3.41%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 406 (7.28%) Firewall
2 208 (3.73%) DNS
3 170 (3.05%) VPN
4 149 (2.67%) Network Security
5 116 (2.08%) WAN
6 104 (1.87%) DHCP
7 87 (1.56%) TCP/IP
8 74 (1.33%) LAN
9 73 (1.31%) HTTP
10 60 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
11 58 (1.04%) SD-WAN
12 55 (0.99%) VLAN
13 38 (0.68%) BGP
14 37 (0.66%) SAN
15 35 (0.63%) Internet
16 33 (0.59%) MPLS
17 29 (0.52%) Wireless
18 26 (0.47%) OSPF
18 26 (0.47%) SSL
19 20 (0.36%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 491 (8.81%) Power BI
2 307 (5.51%) SQL Server
3 262 (4.70%) Data Warehouse
4 242 (4.34%) PostgreSQL
5 238 (4.27%) Data Lake
6 184 (3.30%) Azure SQL Database
7 181 (3.25%) NoSQL
8 123 (2.21%) Relational Database
9 118 (2.12%) Metadata
10 101 (1.81%) MongoDB
11 79 (1.42%) MySQL
12 77 (1.38%) Big Data
13 73 (1.31%) Delta Lake
14 68 (1.22%) Tableau
15 59 (1.06%) BigQuery
15 59 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 53 (0.95%) Oracle Database
16 53 (0.95%) Redis
17 44 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
18 38 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 478 (8.57%) Git
2 412 (7.39%) JIRA
3 329 (5.90%) Jenkins
4 218 (3.91%) GitLab
5 95 (1.70%) Selenium
6 86 (1.54%) Postman
7 70 (1.26%) SonarQube
8 66 (1.18%) JUnit
9 47 (0.84%) JMeter
10 46 (0.83%) Bitbucket
10 46 (0.83%) Cucumber
10 46 (0.83%) Cypress.io
11 37 (0.66%) Maven
11 37 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
12 33 (0.59%) Visual Studio
13 32 (0.57%) CircleCI
14 29 (0.52%) Mockito
14 29 (0.52%) SpecFlow
15 28 (0.50%) ERwin
15 28 (0.50%) MLflow
General
1 1,788 (32.07%) Social Skills
2 1,063 (19.07%) Finance
3 661 (11.86%) Public Sector
4 526 (9.43%) Analytical Skills
5 370 (6.64%) Banking
6 193 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
7 129 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 96 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
9 94 (1.69%) Marketing
10 92 (1.65%) Investment Banking
11 88 (1.58%) Retail
12 86 (1.54%) Legal
13 78 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
14 74 (1.33%) Telecoms
15 68 (1.22%) Manufacturing
16 55 (0.99%) Law
17 47 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
18 46 (0.83%) Financial Institution
18 46 (0.83%) Front Office
19 42 (0.75%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 898 (16.11%) Architect
2 890 (15.96%) Developer
3 567 (10.17%) Senior
4 417 (7.48%) Azure Engineer
5 409 (7.34%) Analyst
6 386 (6.92%) Lead
7 368 (6.60%) Data Engineer
8 316 (5.67%) Solutions Architect
9 278 (4.99%) DevOps Engineer
10 227 (4.07%) Consultant
11 174 (3.12%) Security Engineer
12 163 (2.92%) Senior Developer
13 160 (2.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 153 (2.74%) Azure Architect
15 137 (2.46%) Cloud Engineer
16 130 (2.33%) Platform Engineer
17 115 (2.06%) Data Architect
18 114 (2.04%) Software Engineer
19 112 (2.01%) Java Developer
20 110 (1.97%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 464 (8.32%) .NET
2 351 (6.30%) REST
3 255 (4.57%) RESTful
4 245 (4.39%) React
5 214 (3.84%) Kafka
6 196 (3.52%) Spring
7 195 (3.50%) Node.js
8 175 (3.14%) OAuth
9 171 (3.07%) HTML
10 166 (2.98%) PySpark
11 165 (2.96%) AngularJS
11 165 (2.96%) Spring Boot
12 156 (2.80%) JSON
13 138 (2.48%) CSS
14 135 (2.42%) SOAP
15 118 (2.12%) PyTorch
16 107 (1.92%) TensorFlow
17 102 (1.83%) SAML
18 100 (1.79%) Middleware
19 98 (1.76%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 448 (8.04%) Cloud Native
2 194 (3.48%) Product Ownership
3 191 (3.43%) Onboarding
4 159 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 144 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
6 131 (2.35%) Data Centre
7 120 (2.15%) Security Posture
8 116 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
9 108 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
10 96 (1.72%) Public Cloud
11 77 (1.38%) Algorithms
11 77 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
12 75 (1.35%) Management Information System
13 70 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
14 60 (1.08%) AI Agents
15 59 (1.06%) Replication
16 57 (1.02%) Low-Code
17 53 (0.95%) NHS
18 52 (0.93%) Data Structures
19 50 (0.90%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 631 (11.32%) Windows
2 378 (6.78%) Linux
3 190 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 109 (1.96%) Unix
5 93 (1.67%) Windows 10
6 52 (0.93%) Android
7 47 (0.84%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.81%) VMS
9 38 (0.68%) Mac OS
10 27 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.20%) Solaris
14 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
14 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
15 9 (0.16%) CentOS
16 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
17 6 (0.11%) AIX
17 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 5 (0.090%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,023 (36.29%) DevOps
2 1,636 (29.35%) CI/CD
3 1,497 (26.85%) Agile
4 1,011 (18.13%) Problem-Solving
5 745 (13.36%) Analytics
6 738 (13.24%) Infrastructure as Code
7 658 (11.80%) Migration
8 648 (11.62%) AI
9 564 (10.12%) Stakeholder Management
10 562 (10.08%) Business Intelligence
11 561 (10.06%) Containerisation
12 491 (8.81%) Microservices
13 476 (8.54%) Data Modelling
14 475 (8.52%) Machine Learning
15 472 (8.47%) Test Automation
16 456 (8.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 447 (8.02%) Continuous Improvement
18 410 (7.35%) Scrum
19 407 (7.30%) Cybersecurity
20 396 (7.10%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 1,422 (25.51%) Python
2 1,193 (21.40%) SQL
3 586 (10.51%) PowerShell
4 557 (9.99%) Java
5 498 (8.93%) C#
6 430 (7.71%) JavaScript
7 273 (4.90%) Bash
8 233 (4.18%) TypeScript
9 153 (2.74%) Bicep
10 90 (1.61%) Go
11 72 (1.29%) Kusto Query Language
12 70 (1.26%) Scala
13 66 (1.18%) PL/SQL
14 57 (1.02%) R
15 49 (0.88%) T-SQL
16 43 (0.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 40 (0.72%) C++
18 37 (0.66%) Shell Script
19 32 (0.57%) PHP
20 31 (0.56%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,170 (20.99%) Security Cleared
2 955 (17.13%) SC Cleared
3 485 (8.70%) Degree
4 327 (5.87%) Azure Certification
5 178 (3.19%) Microsoft Certification
6 173 (3.10%) CISSP
7 171 (3.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 140 (2.51%) AWS Certification
9 127 (2.28%) DV Cleared
10 100 (1.79%) CISM
11 91 (1.63%) Cisco Certification
12 84 (1.51%) Master's Degree
13 83 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
14 46 (0.83%) ISTQB
15 43 (0.77%) CCNP
16 37 (0.66%) PMI Certification
17 36 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
18 34 (0.61%) MCP
19 32 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
20 31 (0.56%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 349 (6.26%) GDPR
2 323 (5.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 317 (5.69%) QA
4 257 (4.61%) NIST
5 256 (4.59%) Data Quality
6 127 (2.28%) Accessibility
7 78 (1.40%) PCI DSS
8 75 (1.35%) NCSC
9 52 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
10 51 (0.91%) HIPAA
11 37 (0.66%) SOC 2
12 35 (0.63%) SLA
13 33 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 32 (0.57%) WCAG
15 28 (0.50%) EU AI Act
16 27 (0.48%) GRC
17 25 (0.45%) PSD2
18 24 (0.43%) PMO
19 22 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 21 (0.38%) COBIT
System Software
1 714 (12.81%) Docker
2 681 (12.22%) Active Directory
3 166 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 73 (1.31%) Hyper-V
4 73 (1.31%) Virtual Machines
5 61 (1.09%) Virtual Desktop
6 45 (0.81%) vSphere
7 23 (0.41%) VMware NSX
8 16 (0.29%) Squid
9 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
9 13 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 11 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
11 10 (0.18%) Postfix
12 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.14%) Firmware
13 8 (0.14%) KVM
13 8 (0.14%) NFS
13 8 (0.14%) Snort
13 8 (0.14%) zsh
Systems Management
1 827 (14.83%) Terraform
2 791 (14.19%) Kubernetes
3 298 (5.35%) Microsoft Intune
4 297 (5.33%) Ansible
5 134 (2.40%) Single Sign-On
6 132 (2.37%) SCCM
7 128 (2.30%) Grafana
8 123 (2.21%) Prometheus
9 38 (0.68%) Argo
10 34 (0.61%) Puppet
11 33 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 26 (0.47%) Nessus
13 24 (0.43%) Kibana
14 21 (0.38%) NetBackup
15 20 (0.36%) Progress Chef
16 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
17 18 (0.32%) vRealize
18 16 (0.29%) Podman
18 16 (0.29%) QRadar
18 16 (0.29%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,796 (32.22%) Microsoft
2 518 (9.29%) Databricks
3 325 (5.83%) Oracle
4 279 (5.00%) Google
5 221 (3.96%) VMware
6 219 (3.93%) ServiceNow
7 162 (2.91%) Cisco
8 156 (2.80%) SAP
9 144 (2.58%) Splunk
10 124 (2.22%) Salesforce
11 114 (2.04%) OpenAI
12 87 (1.56%) Palo Alto
13 83 (1.49%) CyberArk
14 80 (1.43%) Citrix
15 62 (1.11%) Foundry
16 60 (1.08%) Red Hat
17 55 (0.99%) F5
18 54 (0.97%) Okta
19 53 (0.95%) Dynatrace
19 53 (0.95%) IBM