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 4 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,212 4,839 5,649
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.54% 14.71% 14.41%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.12% 39.52% 42.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,737 3,337 4,039
10th Percentile £370 £350 £345
25th Percentile £435 £423 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 38 41
10th Percentile £18.38 £18.53 £17.80
25th Percentile £24.44 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £43.23 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.24% +23.50% -39.13%
75th Percentile £78.25 £77.19 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.45 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.25 £53.23 £31.00
% change year-on-year +3.80% +71.69% -32.87%

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 18,613 12,245 13,250
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.22% 37.21% 33.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,280 8,214 9,247
10th Percentile £326 £313 £313
25th Percentile £420 £410 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £623 £617 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 619 311 273
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.16 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £27.40 £24.15
Median % change year-on-year +29.56% +13.46% -31.00%
75th Percentile £69.79 £47.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £83.05 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +85.48% -11.70% -19.36%

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 4 August 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 4 August 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 4 August 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 7,058 £525 - 4,443
London +1 3,691 £550 - 2,049
UK excluding London +3 3,551 £500 - 2,966
Work from Home -1 2,545 £525 +5.00% 2,154
North of England +8 1,014 £500 +5.26% 803
South East +1 904 £525 +5.00% 847
Midlands +4 651 £494 -1.25% 403
North West +8 534 £500 +5.26% 438
West Midlands +3 492 £493 -6.19% 247
South West +7 436 £539 +7.75% 344
Yorkshire +5 400 £500 +5.26% 263
Scotland +10 297 £525 +5.85% 192
East of England +4 179 £525 -4.55% 229
East Midlands +10 147 £488 +5.41% 154
North East +5 93 £520 +4.00% 114
Wales -1 90 £450 +0.90% 94
Northern Ireland +13 15 £644 +35.53% 100
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
1 433 (5.27%) SharePoint
2 282 (3.43%) Confluence
3 200 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 171 (2.08%) Apache Spark
5 138 (1.68%) Apache Airflow
6 113 (1.38%) Apache
7 44 (0.54%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 26 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 18 (0.22%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
14 11 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.097%) Mendix
16 8 (0.097%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.097%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.073%) Camunda
17 6 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 119 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
3 72 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.43%) Chatbot
6 31 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
10 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 8 (0.097%) Revit
12 4 (0.049%) Notion
13 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.037%) Houdini
13 3 (0.037%) NUKE
14 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
15 1 (0.012%) Sketch
15 1 (0.012%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 115 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.097%) Magento
8 8 (0.097%) Maximo
9 7 (0.085%) Shopify
10 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
11 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
11 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.061%) Payment Gateway
11 5 (0.061%) Teamcenter
11 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
12 4 (0.049%) Endur
12 4 (0.049%) SAP MM
12 4 (0.049%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,893 (35.23%) AWS
2 1,722 (20.97%) Azure DevOps
3 1,384 (16.85%) GCP
4 1,035 (12.60%) Entra ID
5 1,030 (12.54%) Power Platform
6 827 (10.07%) Microsoft 365
7 801 (9.75%) GitHub
8 479 (5.83%) GitHub Actions
9 470 (5.72%) Azure Data Factory
10 346 (4.21%) Serverless
11 323 (3.93%) SaaS
12 315 (3.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 300 (3.65%) Azure AKS
14 288 (3.51%) Azure Monitor
15 283 (3.45%) Power Automate
16 271 (3.30%) PowerApps
17 261 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
18 254 (3.09%) PaaS
19 233 (2.84%) Snowflake
20 228 (2.78%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 516 (6.28%) Firewall
2 395 (4.81%) DNS
3 320 (3.90%) VPN
4 294 (3.58%) Network Security
5 199 (2.42%) WAN
6 197 (2.40%) DHCP
7 162 (1.97%) TCP/IP
8 123 (1.50%) LAN
9 113 (1.38%) BGP
10 104 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 91 (1.11%) VLAN
12 90 (1.10%) OSPF
13 84 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.91%) SSL
15 59 (0.72%) SAN
16 58 (0.71%) Wireless
17 53 (0.65%) IPsec
18 47 (0.57%) VXLAN
19 46 (0.56%) HTTP
20 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 716 (8.72%) Power BI
2 464 (5.65%) SQL Server
3 407 (4.96%) Data Warehouse
4 360 (4.38%) Data Lake
5 299 (3.64%) PostgreSQL
6 216 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
6 216 (2.63%) NoSQL
7 204 (2.48%) Metadata
8 139 (1.69%) Relational Database
9 136 (1.66%) Delta Lake
10 107 (1.30%) MongoDB
11 103 (1.25%) Big Data
12 102 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 84 (1.02%) MySQL
14 65 (0.79%) Tableau
15 64 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
16 60 (0.73%) BigQuery
17 57 (0.69%) Oracle Database
17 57 (0.69%) Redis
18 56 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 658 (8.01%) Git
2 642 (7.82%) JIRA
3 437 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 333 (4.06%) GitLab
5 124 (1.51%) Selenium
6 71 (0.86%) JUnit
6 71 (0.86%) Postman
7 66 (0.80%) JMeter
8 56 (0.68%) Cucumber
8 56 (0.68%) Cypress.io
8 56 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 49 (0.60%) Maven
10 44 (0.54%) REST Assured
10 44 (0.54%) Visual Studio
11 43 (0.52%) WebDriver
12 37 (0.45%) Gradle
12 37 (0.45%) MLflow
13 33 (0.40%) Claude Code
14 30 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
15 29 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 2,102 (25.60%) Social Skills
2 1,528 (18.61%) Finance
3 964 (11.74%) Public Sector
4 780 (9.50%) Analytical Skills
5 433 (5.27%) Banking
6 228 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 193 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 187 (2.28%) Legal
9 184 (2.24%) Retail
10 95 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
11 94 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 87 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
13 82 (1.00%) Manufacturing
14 74 (0.90%) Law
15 71 (0.86%) Financial Institution
16 70 (0.85%) Investment Banking
17 67 (0.82%) Marketing
18 65 (0.79%) Front Office
19 64 (0.78%) Aerospace
20 59 (0.72%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,479 (18.01%) Architect
2 1,053 (12.82%) Developer
3 1,028 (12.52%) Senior
4 725 (8.83%) Azure Engineer
5 677 (8.24%) Lead
6 619 (7.54%) Data Engineer
7 494 (6.02%) Analyst
8 445 (5.42%) Solutions Architect
9 418 (5.09%) DevOps Engineer
10 338 (4.12%) Cloud Engineer
11 310 (3.77%) Consultant
12 306 (3.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 248 (3.02%) Data Architect
14 220 (2.68%) Azure Architect
15 216 (2.63%) Platform Engineer
16 193 (2.35%) Technical Architect
17 188 (2.29%) Project Manager
18 185 (2.25%) Security Engineer
19 184 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 183 (2.23%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 636 (7.74%) .NET
2 608 (7.40%) REST
3 328 (3.99%) React
4 311 (3.79%) Kafka
5 294 (3.58%) RESTful
6 260 (3.17%) PySpark
7 229 (2.79%) OAuth
8 213 (2.59%) Spring
9 204 (2.48%) JSON
9 204 (2.48%) Node.js
10 177 (2.16%) Spring Boot
11 174 (2.12%) AngularJS
12 157 (1.91%) HTML
13 145 (1.77%) SAML
14 143 (1.74%) OpenID
15 137 (1.67%) .NET Framework
16 132 (1.61%) Middleware
16 132 (1.61%) OAuth2
17 130 (1.58%) Playwright
18 125 (1.52%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 868 (10.57%) Cloud Native
2 384 (4.68%) Onboarding
3 346 (4.21%) Product Ownership
4 263 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
5 258 (3.14%) Hybrid Cloud
6 257 (3.13%) Data Centre
7 244 (2.97%) AI Agents
8 233 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
9 212 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
10 170 (2.07%) Security Posture
11 141 (1.72%) Data Structures
12 138 (1.68%) Public Cloud
13 134 (1.63%) Management Information System
14 110 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 106 (1.29%) PKI
16 104 (1.27%) Enterprise Cloud
17 92 (1.12%) Replication
18 91 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
19 73 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
20 71 (0.86%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 954 (11.62%) Windows
2 479 (5.83%) Linux
3 327 (3.98%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.44%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 82 (1.00%) Android
7 81 (0.99%) Unix
8 75 (0.91%) Apple iOS
9 73 (0.89%) Mac OS
10 57 (0.69%) VMS
11 48 (0.58%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 12 (0.15%) CentOS
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 7 (0.085%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.073%) AIX
18 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,027 (36.86%) DevOps
2 2,548 (31.03%) CI/CD
3 2,066 (25.16%) Agile
4 1,277 (15.55%) AI
5 1,270 (15.47%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,199 (14.60%) Migration
7 1,150 (14.00%) Stakeholder Management
8 1,130 (13.76%) Analytics
9 1,072 (13.05%) Problem-Solving
10 930 (11.32%) Data Modelling
11 890 (10.84%) Continuous Improvement
12 803 (9.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 783 (9.53%) Data Pipeline
14 767 (9.34%) Business Intelligence
15 766 (9.33%) Roadmaps
16 765 (9.32%) Containerisation
17 740 (9.01%) Microservices
18 674 (8.21%) ETL
19 673 (8.20%) Test Automation
20 653 (7.95%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,885 (22.95%) Python
2 1,597 (19.45%) SQL
3 807 (9.83%) PowerShell
4 674 (8.21%) Java
5 614 (7.48%) C#
6 497 (6.05%) JavaScript
7 368 (4.48%) Bash
8 323 (3.93%) Bicep
9 309 (3.76%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 99 (1.21%) T-SQL
12 68 (0.83%) Go
13 56 (0.68%) Scala
14 54 (0.66%) Shell Script
15 49 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
16 40 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.49%) R
17 39 (0.47%) PL/SQL
18 30 (0.37%) Groovy
19 26 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,090 (25.45%) Security Cleared
2 1,708 (20.80%) SC Cleared
3 567 (6.90%) Degree
4 436 (5.31%) Azure Certification
5 266 (3.24%) DV Cleared
6 249 (3.03%) CISSP
7 247 (3.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 220 (2.68%) Microsoft Certification
9 210 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
10 198 (2.41%) AWS Certification
11 188 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
12 123 (1.50%) CISM
13 102 (1.24%) CCNP
14 83 (1.01%) PMI Certification
15 82 (1.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 82 (1.00%) PMP
16 65 (0.79%) ISTQB
17 59 (0.72%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.67%) CCSP
19 54 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 573 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 431 (5.25%) QA
3 324 (3.95%) GDPR
4 296 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 289 (3.52%) NIST
6 202 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 121 (1.47%) NCSC
8 103 (1.25%) SLA
9 78 (0.95%) WCAG
10 76 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 75 (0.91%) GRC
12 70 (0.85%) PCI DSS
13 55 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 54 (0.66%) PMO
15 33 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 29 (0.35%) HIPAA
17 26 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.26%) NIST 800
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
20 17 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 978 (11.91%) Active Directory
2 894 (10.89%) Docker
3 224 (2.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 146 (1.78%) Virtual Machines
5 140 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
6 124 (1.51%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.84%) vSphere
8 52 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
9 39 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.35%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
16 7 (0.085%) Varnish
16 7 (0.085%) zsh
17 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 6 (0.073%) Virtual Servers
18 5 (0.061%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 1,330 (16.20%) Terraform
2 1,230 (14.98%) Kubernetes
3 427 (5.20%) Microsoft Intune
4 420 (5.11%) Ansible
5 253 (3.08%) Grafana
6 212 (2.58%) Prometheus
7 144 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
8 111 (1.35%) SCCM
9 60 (0.73%) Argo
10 54 (0.66%) Progress Chef
11 47 (0.57%) Puppet
12 43 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 34 (0.41%) FortiGate
15 29 (0.35%) Istio
16 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 19 (0.23%) Packer
18 18 (0.22%) SCOM
19 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,710 (33.00%) Microsoft
2 780 (9.50%) Databricks
3 395 (4.81%) ServiceNow
4 332 (4.04%) Google
5 324 (3.95%) VMware
6 311 (3.79%) Oracle
7 238 (2.90%) Cisco
8 218 (2.65%) SAP
9 200 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 183 (2.23%) Splunk
11 154 (1.88%) Palo Alto
11 154 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 141 (1.72%) CyberArk
13 137 (1.67%) Foundry
14 110 (1.34%) Dynatrace
15 103 (1.25%) Zscaler
16 85 (1.04%) Okta
17 83 (1.01%) Informatica
18 78 (0.95%) Citrix
19 77 (0.94%) Fortinet