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

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,242 4,506 5,778
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.34% 15.55% 13.51%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.01% 41.39% 41.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,131 3,184 4,162
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £729 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 38 50
10th Percentile £25.13 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £50.00 £25.31 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -41.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £74.75 £59.95
90th Percentile £89.20 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £31.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +82.54% -34.50% -19.85%

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 16,836 10,887 13,856
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.67% 37.57% 32.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,370 7,495 9,847
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £635
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 506 245 346
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.23 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.84 £18.50 £16.02
Median hourly rate £39.50 £27.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +43.64% +28.69% -38.94%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.50 £35.50
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.25 £64.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.84 £21.39 £17.72
% change year-on-year +104.97% +20.71% -28.58%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 6,131 £525 - 2,812
London +1 3,263 £538 -2.27% 1,033
UK excluding London +2 3,039 £500 - 2,217
Work from Home -1 2,201 £525 +1.55% 1,369
North of England +4 854 £500 +5.26% 600
South East +3 821 £500 -4.76% 655
Midlands -4 489 £490 -2.00% 297
North West +3 448 £500 +0.81% 317
South West +5 377 £525 - 271
West Midlands 0 357 £498 -5.24% 163
Yorkshire +5 346 £500 +14.29% 179
Scotland +7 296 £525 +10.53% 127
East of England +5 145 £550 -6.78% 187
East Midlands +3 122 £450 -2.70% 133
Wales -3 81 £400 -1.23% 85
North East 0 69 £525 +9.09% 105
Northern Ireland +13 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
1 330 (4.56%) SharePoint
2 213 (2.94%) Confluence
3 192 (2.65%) Apache Spark
4 190 (2.62%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (1.38%) Apache
6 93 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.32%) SAS
8 22 (0.30%) IIS
9 15 (0.21%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.21%) Mendix
9 15 (0.21%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.19%) CMS
11 13 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
12 12 (0.17%) Appian
12 12 (0.17%) Camunda
12 12 (0.17%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
15 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.097%) nginx
Applications
1 104 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
3 64 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.097%) Trello
8 5 (0.069%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.069%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.055%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.055%) 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
1 100 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
5 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.083%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.069%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.055%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.055%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
10 4 (0.055%) Shopify
10 4 (0.055%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,469 (34.09%) AWS
2 1,485 (20.51%) Azure DevOps
3 1,298 (17.92%) GCP
4 941 (12.99%) Power Platform
5 861 (11.89%) Entra ID
6 745 (10.29%) Microsoft 365
7 688 (9.50%) GitHub
8 497 (6.86%) Azure Data Factory
9 405 (5.59%) GitHub Actions
10 380 (5.25%) Serverless
11 339 (4.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 277 (3.82%) SaaS
13 267 (3.69%) Azure AKS
14 256 (3.53%) Dynamics 365
15 254 (3.51%) Power Automate
16 234 (3.23%) Azure Monitor
17 232 (3.20%) PaaS
18 220 (3.04%) PowerApps
19 205 (2.83%) Azure Functions
20 187 (2.58%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 443 (6.12%) Firewall
2 307 (4.24%) DNS
3 251 (3.47%) VPN
4 240 (3.31%) Network Security
5 195 (2.69%) WAN
6 164 (2.26%) DHCP
7 130 (1.80%) LAN
8 107 (1.48%) SD-WAN
9 89 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
10 86 (1.19%) TCP/IP
11 71 (0.98%) Kerberos
11 71 (0.98%) VLAN
12 69 (0.95%) BGP
13 59 (0.81%) OSPF
14 47 (0.65%) SAN
15 45 (0.62%) SSL
16 42 (0.58%) Wireless
17 38 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 36 (0.50%) HTTP
19 34 (0.47%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 630 (8.70%) Power BI
2 422 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 361 (4.98%) Data Warehouse
4 359 (4.96%) Data Lake
5 246 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
6 241 (3.33%) Azure SQL Database
7 187 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 176 (2.43%) Metadata
9 149 (2.06%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.60%) Big Data
11 113 (1.56%) Relational Database
12 92 (1.27%) MongoDB
13 90 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 72 (0.99%) Tableau
15 69 (0.95%) Snowflake Schema
16 68 (0.94%) Oracle Database
17 63 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 62 (0.86%) MySQL
19 56 (0.77%) Star Schema
20 48 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 529 (7.30%) Git
2 520 (7.18%) JIRA
3 383 (5.29%) Jenkins
4 304 (4.20%) GitLab
5 114 (1.57%) Selenium
6 78 (1.08%) Postman
7 65 (0.90%) JMeter
8 62 (0.86%) Cucumber
9 58 (0.80%) JUnit
10 54 (0.75%) MLflow
11 49 (0.68%) REST Assured
12 46 (0.64%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.48%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.47%) Artifactory
14 34 (0.47%) Visual Studio
15 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 30 (0.41%) Gatling
17 28 (0.39%) Maven
18 26 (0.36%) ERwin
19 24 (0.33%) NUnit
General
1 1,847 (25.50%) Social Skills
2 1,291 (17.83%) Finance
3 792 (10.94%) Public Sector
4 646 (8.92%) Analytical Skills
5 372 (5.14%) Banking
6 204 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 189 (2.61%) Legal
8 107 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 94 (1.30%) Retail
10 85 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
11 71 (0.98%) Financial Institution
11 71 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
12 69 (0.95%) Marketing
13 67 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
14 66 (0.91%) Telecoms
15 61 (0.84%) Investment Banking
16 60 (0.83%) Law
17 59 (0.81%) Front Office
18 42 (0.58%) Military
19 39 (0.54%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,232 (17.01%) Architect
2 927 (12.80%) Developer
3 855 (11.81%) Senior
4 655 (9.04%) Azure Engineer
5 595 (8.22%) Data Engineer
6 534 (7.37%) Lead
7 453 (6.26%) Analyst
8 404 (5.58%) DevOps Engineer
9 315 (4.35%) Solutions Architect
10 307 (4.24%) Consultant
11 228 (3.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 226 (3.12%) Cloud Engineer
13 202 (2.79%) Azure Architect
14 188 (2.60%) Security Engineer
15 173 (2.39%) Data Architect
16 172 (2.38%) Platform Engineer
17 167 (2.31%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 165 (2.28%) Technical Architect
19 155 (2.14%) Project Manager
20 154 (2.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 571 (7.88%) .NET
2 480 (6.63%) REST
3 322 (4.45%) React
4 267 (3.69%) Kafka
5 266 (3.67%) PySpark
6 224 (3.09%) RESTful
7 216 (2.98%) Node.js
8 201 (2.78%) OAuth
9 199 (2.75%) Spring
10 173 (2.39%) AngularJS
11 172 (2.38%) LDAP
12 166 (2.29%) Spring Boot
13 146 (2.02%) JSON
14 141 (1.95%) HTML
15 133 (1.84%) Middleware
16 128 (1.77%) SOAP
17 125 (1.73%) OpenID
18 123 (1.70%) SAML
19 117 (1.62%) CSS
20 104 (1.44%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 702 (9.69%) Cloud Native
2 286 (3.95%) Onboarding
3 262 (3.62%) Product Ownership
4 211 (2.91%) Data Centre
5 193 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
6 179 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
7 163 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
8 159 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
9 157 (2.17%) Security Posture
10 153 (2.11%) Public Cloud
11 134 (1.85%) AI Agents
12 98 (1.35%) Data Structures
13 91 (1.26%) Replication
14 90 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
15 78 (1.08%) Low-Code
16 77 (1.06%) Management Information System
17 70 (0.97%) PKI
18 64 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
19 58 (0.80%) NHS
20 56 (0.77%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 796 (10.99%) Windows
2 375 (5.18%) Linux
3 238 (3.29%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.64%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.04%) Unix
6 69 (0.95%) VMS
7 64 (0.88%) Mac OS
8 63 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 62 (0.86%) Apple iOS
10 47 (0.65%) Android
11 29 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.29%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.11%) CentOS
15 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.097%) CoreOS
16 7 (0.097%) Debian
16 7 (0.097%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,719 (37.54%) DevOps
2 2,251 (31.08%) CI/CD
3 1,698 (23.45%) Agile
4 1,041 (14.37%) Analytics
5 1,032 (14.25%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,032 (14.25%) Problem-Solving
6 989 (13.66%) Migration
7 978 (13.50%) AI
8 821 (11.34%) Data Modelling
9 717 (9.90%) Stakeholder Management
10 690 (9.53%) Business Intelligence
11 683 (9.43%) Containerisation
11 683 (9.43%) Data Pipeline
12 677 (9.35%) Continuous Improvement
13 656 (9.06%) ETL
14 645 (8.91%) Microservices
15 594 (8.20%) Roadmaps
16 588 (8.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 579 (8.00%) Data Engineering
18 560 (7.73%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,745 (24.10%) Python
2 1,516 (20.93%) SQL
3 731 (10.09%) PowerShell
4 599 (8.27%) C#
5 588 (8.12%) Java
6 435 (6.01%) JavaScript
7 274 (3.78%) TypeScript
8 255 (3.52%) Bash
9 232 (3.20%) Bicep
10 92 (1.27%) Scala
11 87 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 86 (1.19%) T-SQL
13 80 (1.10%) Go
14 58 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
15 51 (0.70%) Shell Script
16 48 (0.66%) PL/SQL
17 42 (0.58%) R
18 32 (0.44%) C++
19 23 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 18 (0.25%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,798 (24.83%) Security Cleared
2 1,517 (20.95%) SC Cleared
3 494 (6.82%) Degree
4 376 (5.19%) Azure Certification
5 209 (2.89%) CISSP
6 186 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 167 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
8 166 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
9 151 (2.09%) DV Cleared
10 149 (2.06%) AWS Certification
10 149 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
11 122 (1.68%) CISM
12 78 (1.08%) CCNP
13 73 (1.01%) PMP
14 70 (0.97%) PMI Certification
15 68 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
16 66 (0.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 63 (0.87%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 45 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 509 (7.03%) Data Quality
2 388 (5.36%) QA
3 356 (4.92%) GDPR
4 287 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 264 (3.65%) NIST
6 133 (1.84%) Accessibility
7 102 (1.41%) NCSC
8 82 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 72 (0.99%) SLA
10 67 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 61 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 59 (0.81%) PMO
13 51 (0.70%) GRC
14 41 (0.57%) WCAG
15 37 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.33%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 19 (0.26%) ISO 20022
20 18 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 882 (12.18%) Active Directory
2 782 (10.80%) Docker
3 201 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 117 (1.62%) Virtual Desktop
5 113 (1.56%) Virtual Machines
6 106 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.81%) vSphere
8 35 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.40%) Firmware
10 22 (0.30%) NFS
11 20 (0.28%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.17%) Postfix
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.097%) HDFS
14 7 (0.097%) Varnish
15 6 (0.083%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.083%) RACF
16 5 (0.069%) BitLocker
16 5 (0.069%) Ceph
16 5 (0.069%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,134 (15.66%) Terraform
2 1,049 (14.48%) Kubernetes
3 361 (4.98%) Microsoft Intune
4 340 (4.69%) Ansible
5 204 (2.82%) Grafana
6 178 (2.46%) Prometheus
7 151 (2.09%) Single Sign-On
8 109 (1.51%) SCCM
9 67 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (0.50%) Argo
10 36 (0.50%) Puppet
11 35 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.47%) Istio
13 29 (0.40%) Progress Chef
14 26 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
15 23 (0.32%) HP ALM
16 18 (0.25%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.22%) linkerd
18 15 (0.21%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,302 (31.79%) Microsoft
2 736 (10.16%) Databricks
3 301 (4.16%) ServiceNow
4 299 (4.13%) Google
5 284 (3.92%) Oracle
6 282 (3.89%) VMware
7 214 (2.95%) SAP
8 191 (2.64%) Cisco
9 179 (2.47%) OpenAI
10 158 (2.18%) Splunk
11 136 (1.88%) CyberArk
12 126 (1.74%) Palo Alto
13 109 (1.51%) Salesforce
14 107 (1.48%) Foundry
15 93 (1.28%) Okta
16 76 (1.05%) Citrix
17 73 (1.01%) Dynatrace
17 73 (1.01%) Informatica
18 70 (0.97%) BeyondTrust
19 65 (0.90%) Zscaler