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 20 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,263 4,883 5,577
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.14% 14.84% 14.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.70% 39.31% 42.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,775 3,323 3,838
10th Percentile £363 £350 £345
25th Percentile £447 £415 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £635
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £498 £500
% change year-on-year +2.44% -0.40% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 42 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.59 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.74 £26.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £42.35 £34.24 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +23.69% -6.83% -31.94%
75th Percentile £79.75 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.63 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £32.77 £42.34
% change year-on-year +20.54% -22.60% -8.32%

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 18,909 12,423 13,211
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.64% 37.76% 34.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,539 8,291 8,880
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 623 293 195
10th Percentile £15.26 £15.50 £15.69
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £20.63
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.50 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.04% -8.06% -11.43%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.75 £63.13
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £19.27 £30.00
% change year-on-year +66.06% -35.77% +14.29%

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 20 September 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 20 September 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 20 September 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 7,049 £525 - 7,533
London 0 3,694 £550 - 3,769
UK excluding London +1 3,509 £510 +2.44% 4,543
Work from Home -1 2,496 £525 +5.00% 3,484
North of England +7 996 £500 +5.26% 1,221
South East 0 897 £525 +5.00% 1,107
Midlands +2 645 £493 -2.48% 674
North West +5 490 £500 +5.26% 656
West Midlands +1 482 £481 -10.93% 416
Yorkshire +5 425 £500 +5.26% 400
South West +2 421 £550 +10.00% 500
Scotland +4 285 £520 +4.00% 388
East of England +4 196 £510 +2.00% 349
East Midlands +5 156 £500 +8.11% 258
North East +5 94 £506 +1.25% 171
Wales 0 84 £438 -2.78% 125
Northern Ireland +16 13 £650 - 205
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69% 3

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
1 470 (5.69%) SharePoint
2 253 (3.06%) Confluence
3 193 (2.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 182 (2.20%) Apache Spark
5 163 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.31%) Apache
7 45 (0.54%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) SharePoint Server
9 28 (0.34%) IIS
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.085%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.085%) Mendix
15 6 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
15 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
15 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 119 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 39 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.097%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.097%) Revit
9 8 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.061%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Mingle
13 1 (0.012%) 1Password
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 137 (1.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.097%) Magento
8 8 (0.097%) Workday HCM
9 7 (0.085%) Shopify
10 6 (0.073%) Cloudability
10 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
11 5 (0.061%) Dynamics NAV
11 5 (0.061%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
12 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.048%) Maximo
12 4 (0.048%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,957 (35.79%) AWS
2 1,742 (21.08%) Azure DevOps
3 1,430 (17.31%) GCP
4 1,111 (13.45%) Entra ID
5 1,069 (12.94%) Power Platform
6 865 (10.47%) Microsoft 365
7 833 (10.08%) GitHub
8 486 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
9 462 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 373 (4.51%) Serverless
11 364 (4.41%) SaaS
12 316 (3.82%) Azure Monitor
13 304 (3.68%) Dynamics 365
14 303 (3.67%) Power Automate
15 300 (3.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 293 (3.55%) Azure AKS
17 286 (3.46%) Snowflake
18 284 (3.44%) PowerApps
19 251 (3.04%) Microsoft Copilot
20 248 (3.00%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 522 (6.32%) Firewall
2 413 (5.00%) DNS
3 314 (3.80%) VPN
4 294 (3.56%) Network Security
5 226 (2.74%) DHCP
6 186 (2.25%) WAN
7 170 (2.06%) TCP/IP
8 108 (1.31%) LAN
9 107 (1.29%) BGP
10 100 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.14%) VLAN
12 85 (1.03%) OSPF
12 85 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 74 (0.90%) SSL
14 64 (0.77%) SAN
15 63 (0.76%) Wireless
16 47 (0.57%) HTTP
16 47 (0.57%) IPsec
17 44 (0.53%) VXLAN
18 41 (0.50%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 698 (8.45%) Power BI
2 462 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 399 (4.83%) Data Warehouse
4 380 (4.60%) Data Lake
5 281 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
6 253 (3.06%) Metadata
7 211 (2.55%) NoSQL
8 193 (2.34%) Azure SQL Database
9 138 (1.67%) Relational Database
10 127 (1.54%) Delta Lake
11 111 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 103 (1.25%) MongoDB
13 93 (1.13%) Big Data
14 88 (1.06%) MySQL
15 72 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.79%) Redis
17 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
18 60 (0.73%) Oracle Database
19 58 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
20 57 (0.69%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 735 (8.90%) Git
2 589 (7.13%) JIRA
3 469 (5.68%) Jenkins
4 374 (4.53%) GitLab
5 134 (1.62%) Selenium
6 84 (1.02%) Postman
7 63 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 60 (0.73%) JUnit
9 57 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 56 (0.68%) SonarQube
11 54 (0.65%) Maven
12 52 (0.63%) Claude Code
12 52 (0.63%) JMeter
13 49 (0.59%) Visual Studio
14 47 (0.57%) Gradle
15 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
16 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 35 (0.42%) MLflow
18 32 (0.39%) Bitbucket
18 32 (0.39%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,288 (27.69%) Social Skills
2 1,546 (18.71%) Finance
3 949 (11.48%) Public Sector
4 812 (9.83%) Analytical Skills
5 468 (5.66%) Banking
6 222 (2.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 213 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
8 211 (2.55%) Retail
9 167 (2.02%) Legal
10 107 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
11 104 (1.26%) Manufacturing
12 91 (1.10%) Telecoms
13 88 (1.06%) Marketing
14 87 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
15 85 (1.03%) Aerospace
16 82 (0.99%) Investment Banking
17 76 (0.92%) Military
18 73 (0.88%) Law
19 59 (0.71%) Local Government
20 54 (0.65%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,576 (19.07%) Architect
2 1,035 (12.53%) Senior
3 990 (11.98%) Developer
4 728 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 677 (8.19%) Lead
6 583 (7.06%) Data Engineer
7 483 (5.85%) Solutions Architect
8 467 (5.65%) Analyst
8 467 (5.65%) DevOps Engineer
9 374 (4.53%) Cloud Engineer
10 321 (3.88%) Consultant
11 315 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 266 (3.22%) Data Architect
13 237 (2.87%) Platform Engineer
14 214 (2.59%) Azure Architect
15 209 (2.53%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 200 (2.42%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 196 (2.37%) Security Engineer
17 196 (2.37%) Technical Architect
18 185 (2.24%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,400 (16.94%) Terraform
2 710 (8.59%) REST
3 620 (7.50%) .NET
4 389 (4.71%) Kafka
5 295 (3.57%) React
6 288 (3.49%) RESTful
7 270 (3.27%) OAuth
8 266 (3.22%) PySpark
9 231 (2.80%) JSON
10 189 (2.29%) Spring
11 179 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 164 (1.98%) OpenID
13 161 (1.95%) OAuth2
14 156 (1.89%) Node.js
15 154 (1.86%) SAML
16 153 (1.85%) HTML
17 146 (1.77%) AngularJS
17 146 (1.77%) Middleware
18 132 (1.60%) ARM Templates
19 131 (1.59%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 918 (11.11%) Cloud Native
2 424 (5.13%) Onboarding
3 381 (4.61%) Product Ownership
4 310 (3.75%) AI Agents
5 303 (3.67%) Enterprise Software
6 285 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
7 263 (3.18%) Distributed Systems
8 252 (3.05%) Data Centre
9 225 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
10 179 (2.17%) Management Information System
11 177 (2.14%) Security Posture
12 147 (1.78%) Data Structures
13 145 (1.75%) Public Cloud
14 121 (1.46%) PKI
15 115 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
16 111 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
17 104 (1.26%) Replication
18 98 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
19 87 (1.05%) CMDB
19 87 (1.05%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 994 (12.03%) Windows
2 521 (6.31%) Linux
3 371 (4.49%) Windows Server
4 142 (1.72%) Windows 10
5 90 (1.09%) Android
6 89 (1.08%) Unix
7 86 (1.04%) Apple iOS
7 86 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 75 (0.91%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.68%) Ubuntu
10 55 (0.67%) VMS
11 25 (0.30%) CentOS
12 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 8 (0.097%) Debian
17 6 (0.073%) AIX
17 6 (0.073%) SUSE
17 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,039 (36.78%) DevOps
2 2,649 (32.06%) CI/CD
3 2,058 (24.91%) Agile
4 1,462 (17.69%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,419 (17.17%) AI
6 1,405 (17.00%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,219 (14.75%) Migration
8 1,134 (13.72%) Problem-Solving
9 1,124 (13.60%) Analytics
10 950 (11.50%) Continuous Improvement
11 897 (10.86%) Data Modelling
12 841 (10.18%) Roadmaps
13 787 (9.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 783 (9.48%) Containerisation
15 753 (9.11%) Business Intelligence
16 745 (9.02%) Technical Leadership
17 741 (8.97%) Data Pipeline
18 720 (8.71%) Test Automation
19 719 (8.70%) Microservices
20 657 (7.95%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,896 (22.95%) Python
2 1,563 (18.92%) SQL
3 884 (10.70%) PowerShell
4 687 (8.31%) Java
5 601 (7.27%) C#
6 497 (6.01%) JavaScript
7 409 (4.95%) Bash
8 356 (4.31%) Bicep
9 296 (3.58%) TypeScript
10 97 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 77 (0.93%) Go
13 63 (0.76%) Scala
14 61 (0.74%) Shell Script
15 56 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.51%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.45%) R
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.39%) Groovy
20 27 (0.33%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,148 (26.00%) Security Cleared
2 1,725 (20.88%) SC Cleared
3 560 (6.78%) Degree
4 485 (5.87%) Azure Certification
5 308 (3.73%) DV Cleared
6 275 (3.33%) CISSP
7 270 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
8 252 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 211 (2.55%) AWS Certification
10 202 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
11 177 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
12 139 (1.68%) CISM
13 91 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 91 (1.10%) PMI Certification
14 90 (1.09%) CCNP
15 86 (1.04%) PMP
16 68 (0.82%) ISTQB
17 63 (0.76%) CCSP
17 63 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 52 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 603 (7.30%) Data Quality
2 459 (5.55%) QA
3 305 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 302 (3.65%) NIST
5 295 (3.57%) GDPR
6 206 (2.49%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.45%) NCSC
8 108 (1.31%) SLA
9 84 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
10 82 (0.99%) GRC
10 82 (0.99%) WCAG
11 75 (0.91%) PCI DSS
12 57 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 53 (0.64%) PMO
14 46 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 31 (0.38%) SOC 2
16 28 (0.34%) HIPAA
17 25 (0.30%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
19 20 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,026 (12.42%) Active Directory
2 915 (11.07%) Docker
3 240 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 145 (1.75%) Virtual Machines
5 144 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
6 129 (1.56%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.87%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.29%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) IAG
12 17 (0.21%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.085%) Ceph
18 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
19 5 (0.061%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,296 (15.68%) Kubernetes
2 460 (5.57%) Ansible
3 440 (5.32%) Microsoft Intune
4 264 (3.19%) Grafana
5 206 (2.49%) Prometheus
6 155 (1.88%) Single Sign-On
7 131 (1.59%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 57 (0.69%) Argo
10 50 (0.61%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
11 37 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) SCOM
13 30 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 25 (0.30%) Istio
15 24 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.23%) CASB
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
17 18 (0.22%) QRadar
18 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,963 (35.86%) Microsoft
2 856 (10.36%) Databricks
3 421 (5.10%) ServiceNow
4 374 (4.53%) Google
5 359 (4.34%) VMware
6 345 (4.18%) Oracle
7 251 (3.04%) Cisco
8 232 (2.81%) Splunk
9 223 (2.70%) SAP
10 217 (2.63%) OpenAI
11 187 (2.26%) Salesforce
12 155 (1.88%) CyberArk
13 152 (1.84%) Palo Alto
14 142 (1.72%) Foundry
15 127 (1.54%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.13%) Zscaler
17 89 (1.08%) Informatica
18 85 (1.03%) IBM
19 83 (1.00%) MuleSoft
20 81 (0.98%) Okta