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 24 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,183 4,844 5,861
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.51% 14.82% 14.35%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.93% 39.68% 42.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,709 3,349 4,216
10th Percentile £367 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 38 46
10th Percentile £18.43 £23.53 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.66 £27.86 £22.68
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +40.71% -41.57%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.40 £59.84
90th Percentile £95.31 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -11.54% +85.71% -37.78%

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 18,626 12,207 13,694
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.29% 37.35% 33.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,287 8,180 9,586
10th Percentile £327 £313 £313
25th Percentile £417 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 617 314 313
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.11 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.75 £18.50 £16.24
Median hourly rate £37.02 £27.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +34.62% +25.00% -37.14%
75th Percentile £70.00 £47.50 £50.00
90th Percentile £83.75 £67.35 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.37 £18.87 £20.29
% change year-on-year +98.04% -6.98% -24.17%

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 24 July 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 24 July 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 24 July 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 6,989 £525 - 3,183
London +1 3,645 £550 - 1,367
UK excluding London +3 3,552 £505 +1.00% 2,324
Work from Home -1 2,535 £525 +4.90% 1,461
North of England +7 1,020 £500 +2.04% 643
South East +2 899 £525 +5.00% 697
Midlands +3 629 £495 +0.61% 303
North West +7 536 £503 +0.50% 345
West Midlands +3 472 £495 -5.71% 195
South West +6 443 £530 +6.00% 293
Yorkshire +4 409 £500 +5.26% 201
Scotland +9 309 £500 +3.31% 116
East of England +6 181 £550 -2.22% 184
East Midlands +8 146 £481 +4.05% 107
Wales 0 98 £425 -4.71% 86
North East +2 90 £525 +5.00% 108
Northern Ireland +14 17 £588 +23.68% 56
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 419 (5.12%) SharePoint
2 282 (3.45%) Confluence
3 200 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 182 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 130 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.44%) Apache
7 42 (0.51%) SAS
8 33 (0.40%) IIS
9 20 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
10 18 (0.22%) CMS
10 18 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.16%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.098%) Mendix
15 8 (0.098%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 122 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.42%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.11%) Trello
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Houdini
13 2 (0.024%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.024%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 111 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.15%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.098%) Magento
7 8 (0.098%) Maximo
8 7 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.086%) Shopify
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.049%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,913 (35.60%) AWS
2 1,688 (20.63%) Azure DevOps
3 1,400 (17.11%) GCP
4 1,031 (12.60%) Entra ID
5 1,022 (12.49%) Power Platform
6 802 (9.80%) Microsoft 365
7 781 (9.54%) GitHub
8 472 (5.77%) GitHub Actions
9 460 (5.62%) Azure Data Factory
10 351 (4.29%) Serverless
11 330 (4.03%) SaaS
12 314 (3.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 304 (3.72%) Azure AKS
14 291 (3.56%) Azure Monitor
15 267 (3.26%) Power Automate
16 261 (3.19%) PowerApps
17 260 (3.18%) PaaS
18 250 (3.06%) Dynamics 365
19 235 (2.87%) Azure AI
20 221 (2.70%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 513 (6.27%) Firewall
2 383 (4.68%) DNS
3 311 (3.80%) VPN
4 289 (3.53%) Network Security
5 201 (2.46%) WAN
6 193 (2.36%) DHCP
7 153 (1.87%) TCP/IP
8 130 (1.59%) LAN
9 116 (1.42%) BGP
10 104 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.14%) OSPF
12 90 (1.10%) VLAN
13 88 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
14 72 (0.88%) SSL
15 58 (0.71%) IPsec
16 57 (0.70%) SAN
16 57 (0.70%) Wireless
17 48 (0.59%) VXLAN
18 45 (0.55%) HTTP
19 42 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 706 (8.63%) Power BI
2 463 (5.66%) SQL Server
3 398 (4.86%) Data Warehouse
4 364 (4.45%) Data Lake
5 306 (3.74%) PostgreSQL
6 223 (2.73%) NoSQL
7 216 (2.64%) Azure SQL Database
8 213 (2.60%) Metadata
9 137 (1.67%) Relational Database
10 131 (1.60%) Delta Lake
11 114 (1.39%) Big Data
12 105 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 98 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 87 (1.06%) MySQL
15 71 (0.87%) Tableau
16 64 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
17 62 (0.76%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 57 (0.70%) Redis
20 53 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 647 (7.91%) JIRA
2 638 (7.80%) Git
3 432 (5.28%) Jenkins
4 312 (3.81%) GitLab
5 125 (1.53%) Selenium
6 72 (0.88%) JUnit
7 71 (0.87%) Postman
8 70 (0.86%) JMeter
9 57 (0.70%) Cucumber
10 52 (0.64%) Cypress.io
11 51 (0.62%) SonarQube
12 48 (0.59%) REST Assured
13 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.55%) Maven
15 43 (0.53%) WebDriver
16 40 (0.49%) MLflow
17 36 (0.44%) Gradle
18 31 (0.38%) Gatling
19 30 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
20 29 (0.35%) Claude Code
General
1 2,068 (25.27%) Social Skills
2 1,530 (18.70%) Finance
3 964 (11.78%) Public Sector
4 775 (9.47%) Analytical Skills
5 429 (5.24%) Banking
6 241 (2.95%) Documentation Skills
7 193 (2.36%) Legal
8 179 (2.19%) Retail
9 178 (2.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 101 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 96 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 86 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
13 79 (0.97%) Manufacturing
14 74 (0.90%) Law
15 71 (0.87%) Marketing
16 66 (0.81%) Financial Institution
17 65 (0.79%) Front Office
17 65 (0.79%) Investment Banking
18 57 (0.70%) Military
19 54 (0.66%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,455 (17.78%) Architect
2 1,055 (12.89%) Developer
3 1,015 (12.40%) Senior
4 729 (8.91%) Azure Engineer
5 661 (8.08%) Lead
6 601 (7.34%) Data Engineer
7 501 (6.12%) Analyst
8 427 (5.22%) Solutions Architect
9 425 (5.19%) DevOps Engineer
10 325 (3.97%) Cloud Engineer
11 316 (3.86%) Consultant
12 291 (3.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 246 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 220 (2.69%) Platform Engineer
15 218 (2.66%) Azure Architect
16 198 (2.42%) Technical Architect
17 188 (2.30%) Project Manager
18 187 (2.29%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 187 (2.29%) Security Engineer
19 183 (2.24%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 638 (7.80%) .NET
2 607 (7.42%) REST
3 338 (4.13%) React
4 315 (3.85%) Kafka
5 294 (3.59%) RESTful
6 250 (3.06%) PySpark
7 231 (2.82%) OAuth
8 223 (2.73%) Spring
9 211 (2.58%) Node.js
10 202 (2.47%) JSON
11 189 (2.31%) Spring Boot
12 177 (2.16%) AngularJS
13 160 (1.96%) HTML
14 146 (1.78%) SAML
15 144 (1.76%) OpenID
16 138 (1.69%) .NET Framework
17 132 (1.61%) OAuth2
18 131 (1.60%) Middleware
19 129 (1.58%) CSS
20 127 (1.55%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 861 (10.52%) Cloud Native
2 374 (4.57%) Onboarding
3 347 (4.24%) Product Ownership
4 267 (3.26%) Data Centre
5 264 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
6 243 (2.97%) Hybrid Cloud
7 231 (2.82%) AI Agents
7 231 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
8 197 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
9 164 (2.00%) Security Posture
10 143 (1.75%) Public Cloud
11 138 (1.69%) Data Structures
12 127 (1.55%) Management Information System
13 112 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 102 (1.25%) Enterprise Cloud
15 100 (1.22%) PKI
16 98 (1.20%) Replication
17 90 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 76 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
19 71 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 934 (11.41%) Windows
2 455 (5.56%) Linux
3 304 (3.72%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.34%) Windows 10
5 79 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 79 (0.97%) Unix
6 77 (0.94%) Android
7 72 (0.88%) Apple iOS
8 71 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 59 (0.72%) VMS
10 43 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
12 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.13%) CentOS
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.061%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,019 (36.89%) DevOps
2 2,556 (31.24%) CI/CD
3 2,069 (25.28%) Agile
4 1,262 (15.42%) AI
5 1,251 (15.29%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,196 (14.62%) Migration
7 1,133 (13.85%) Analytics
8 1,086 (13.27%) Stakeholder Management
9 1,063 (12.99%) Problem-Solving
10 925 (11.30%) Data Modelling
11 870 (10.63%) Continuous Improvement
12 770 (9.41%) Data Pipeline
13 763 (9.32%) Microservices
13 763 (9.32%) Roadmaps
14 759 (9.28%) Containerisation
15 757 (9.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 753 (9.20%) Business Intelligence
17 673 (8.22%) Test Automation
18 666 (8.14%) ETL
19 653 (7.98%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,887 (23.06%) Python
2 1,600 (19.55%) SQL
3 792 (9.68%) PowerShell
4 681 (8.32%) Java
5 614 (7.50%) C#
6 478 (5.84%) JavaScript
7 342 (4.18%) Bash
8 308 (3.76%) Bicep
8 308 (3.76%) TypeScript
9 95 (1.16%) T-SQL
10 94 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 72 (0.88%) Go
12 59 (0.72%) Scala
13 54 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (0.64%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.53%) R
16 40 (0.49%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.48%) PL/SQL
18 28 (0.34%) Groovy
19 23 (0.28%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,052 (25.08%) Security Cleared
2 1,679 (20.52%) SC Cleared
3 573 (7.00%) Degree
4 439 (5.36%) Azure Certification
5 258 (3.15%) DV Cleared
6 248 (3.03%) CISSP
7 238 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
8 209 (2.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 208 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
10 194 (2.37%) AWS Certification
11 186 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
12 123 (1.50%) CISM
13 103 (1.26%) CCNP
14 83 (1.01%) PMI Certification
14 83 (1.01%) PMP
15 80 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 64 (0.78%) ISTQB
16 64 (0.78%) Master's Degree
17 54 (0.66%) CCSP
18 51 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 572 (6.99%) Data Quality
2 425 (5.19%) QA
3 336 (4.11%) GDPR
4 281 (3.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 278 (3.40%) NIST
6 197 (2.41%) Accessibility
7 117 (1.43%) NCSC
8 102 (1.25%) SLA
9 74 (0.90%) GRC
10 73 (0.89%) PCI DSS
10 73 (0.89%) WCAG
11 72 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
12 55 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 53 (0.65%) PMO
14 32 (0.39%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 22 (0.27%) NIST 800
18 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
19 19 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 974 (11.90%) Active Directory
2 878 (10.73%) Docker
3 222 (2.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
5 136 (1.66%) Virtual Machines
6 115 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.84%) vSphere
8 52 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 38 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.35%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.20%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.086%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.086%) Ceph
15 7 (0.086%) Varnish
16 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.073%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,321 (16.14%) Terraform
2 1,205 (14.73%) Kubernetes
3 427 (5.22%) Microsoft Intune
4 404 (4.94%) Ansible
5 247 (3.02%) Grafana
6 209 (2.55%) Prometheus
7 156 (1.91%) Single Sign-On
8 111 (1.36%) SCCM
9 54 (0.66%) Argo
10 51 (0.62%) Progress Chef
11 46 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 46 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
12 44 (0.54%) Puppet
13 34 (0.42%) FortiGate
14 29 (0.35%) Istio
15 20 (0.24%) HP ALM
15 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
16 19 (0.23%) Packer
17 16 (0.20%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,646 (32.34%) Microsoft
2 749 (9.15%) Databricks
3 396 (4.84%) ServiceNow
4 336 (4.11%) Google
5 319 (3.90%) VMware
6 317 (3.87%) Oracle
7 231 (2.82%) Cisco
7 231 (2.82%) SAP
8 212 (2.59%) OpenAI
9 183 (2.24%) Splunk
10 151 (1.85%) Salesforce
11 146 (1.78%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.71%) Foundry
13 137 (1.67%) CyberArk
14 104 (1.27%) Dynatrace
15 101 (1.23%) Zscaler
16 92 (1.12%) Okta
17 89 (1.09%) Informatica
18 75 (0.92%) Citrix
19 74 (0.90%) Fortinet