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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,331 4,570 5,825
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.39% 15.54% 13.55%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.18% 41.36% 41.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,203 3,233 4,197
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year - -2.01% -2.59%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £730 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 40 50
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.28 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £24.14 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £36.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.62% +3.57% -41.67%
75th Percentile £68.75 £73.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.38 £48.09
% change year-on-year +89.30% -36.84% -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 16,978 11,050 13,940
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.65% 37.58% 32.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,484 7,635 9,909
10th Percentile £322 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £633
90th Percentile £700 £730 £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 504 251 347
10th Percentile £15.54 £15.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.19 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.25 £27.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +46.36% +28.69% -38.94%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.75 £35.50
90th Percentile £81.88 £73.75 £63.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.80 £21.43 £17.71
% change year-on-year +118.44% +21.01% -28.09%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 6,216 £525 - 2,688
London +1 3,311 £538 -2.27% 978
UK excluding London +2 3,064 £500 - 2,124
Work from Home -1 2,240 £525 +1.45% 1,328
North of England +4 861 £500 +5.26% 549
South East +3 824 £500 -4.76% 663
Midlands -3 503 £488 -2.50% 293
North West +3 451 £500 +0.81% 291
South West +6 384 £525 - 249
West Midlands 0 367 £498 -5.24% 161
Yorkshire +6 351 £500 +14.29% 162
Scotland +6 297 £525 +10.53% 111
East of England +4 147 £550 -5.17% 179
East Midlands +3 126 £450 -2.96% 131
Wales -3 77 £400 -1.23% 83
North East 0 68 £525 +7.69% 96
Northern Ireland +9 14 £475 - 27
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
1 331 (4.52%) SharePoint
2 217 (2.96%) Confluence
3 194 (2.65%) Apache Spark
4 189 (2.58%) Microsoft Exchange
5 102 (1.39%) Apache
6 94 (1.28%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.33%) SAS
8 22 (0.30%) IIS
9 16 (0.22%) OpenStack
10 15 (0.20%) ArcGIS
10 15 (0.20%) Mendix
11 14 (0.19%) CMS
12 13 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
13 12 (0.16%) Appian
13 12 (0.16%) Camunda
13 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
17 7 (0.095%) nginx
Applications
1 105 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 25 (0.34%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.095%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.095%) Trello
8 5 (0.068%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.068%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.055%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.055%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.041%) Revit
11 2 (0.027%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.027%) Weka
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
12 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 103 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.12%) Maximo
7 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
7 8 (0.11%) Teamcenter
8 7 (0.095%) Dynamics AX
8 7 (0.095%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.068%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.068%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.055%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.055%) Oracle Assets
11 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
11 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
11 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
11 4 (0.055%) Shopify
11 4 (0.055%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,505 (34.17%) AWS
2 1,506 (20.54%) Azure DevOps
3 1,319 (17.99%) GCP
4 953 (13.00%) Power Platform
5 864 (11.79%) Entra ID
6 753 (10.27%) Microsoft 365
7 700 (9.55%) GitHub
8 505 (6.89%) Azure Data Factory
9 414 (5.65%) GitHub Actions
10 386 (5.27%) Serverless
11 340 (4.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 286 (3.90%) SaaS
13 276 (3.76%) Azure AKS
14 264 (3.60%) Dynamics 365
15 260 (3.55%) Power Automate
16 241 (3.29%) Azure Monitor
17 237 (3.23%) PaaS
18 221 (3.01%) PowerApps
19 207 (2.82%) Azure Functions
20 191 (2.61%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 449 (6.12%) Firewall
2 309 (4.21%) DNS
3 251 (3.42%) VPN
4 243 (3.31%) Network Security
5 196 (2.67%) WAN
6 165 (2.25%) DHCP
7 132 (1.80%) LAN
8 106 (1.45%) SD-WAN
9 91 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
10 87 (1.19%) TCP/IP
11 73 (1.00%) VLAN
12 71 (0.97%) Kerberos
13 68 (0.93%) BGP
14 58 (0.79%) OSPF
15 46 (0.63%) SAN
16 45 (0.61%) SSL
17 42 (0.57%) Wireless
18 40 (0.55%) HTTP
19 37 (0.50%) VXLAN
20 34 (0.46%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 644 (8.78%) Power BI
2 425 (5.80%) SQL Server
3 367 (5.01%) Data Warehouse
4 365 (4.98%) Data Lake
5 247 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
6 246 (3.36%) Azure SQL Database
7 191 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 181 (2.47%) Metadata
9 152 (2.07%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.60%) Big Data
11 115 (1.57%) Relational Database
12 94 (1.28%) MongoDB
12 94 (1.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 76 (1.04%) Tableau
14 71 (0.97%) Oracle Database
15 69 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
16 63 (0.86%) BigQuery
17 62 (0.85%) MySQL
18 56 (0.76%) Star Schema
19 49 (0.67%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 540 (7.37%) Git
2 517 (7.05%) JIRA
3 389 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 306 (4.17%) GitLab
5 116 (1.58%) Selenium
6 78 (1.06%) Postman
7 65 (0.89%) JMeter
8 62 (0.85%) Cucumber
9 61 (0.83%) JUnit
10 54 (0.74%) MLflow
11 49 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 47 (0.64%) SonarQube
13 37 (0.50%) Artifactory
14 36 (0.49%) Cypress.io
15 34 (0.46%) Visual Studio
16 33 (0.45%) WebDriver
17 31 (0.42%) Gatling
18 28 (0.38%) Maven
19 26 (0.35%) ERwin
20 24 (0.33%) NUnit
General
1 1,891 (25.79%) Social Skills
2 1,316 (17.95%) Finance
3 816 (11.13%) Public Sector
4 660 (9.00%) Analytical Skills
5 380 (5.18%) Banking
6 213 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 192 (2.62%) Legal
8 108 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 92 (1.25%) Retail
10 85 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
11 72 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
11 72 (0.98%) Marketing
12 71 (0.97%) Financial Institution
13 70 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
14 66 (0.90%) Telecoms
15 64 (0.87%) Investment Banking
15 64 (0.87%) Law
16 61 (0.83%) Front Office
17 42 (0.57%) Military
18 38 (0.52%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,244 (16.97%) Architect
2 941 (12.84%) Developer
3 868 (11.84%) Senior
4 663 (9.04%) Azure Engineer
5 599 (8.17%) Data Engineer
6 546 (7.45%) Lead
7 464 (6.33%) Analyst
8 406 (5.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 317 (4.32%) Solutions Architect
10 304 (4.15%) Consultant
11 230 (3.14%) Cloud Engineer
12 226 (3.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 205 (2.80%) Azure Architect
14 192 (2.62%) Security Engineer
15 174 (2.37%) Data Architect
15 174 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
16 167 (2.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 166 (2.26%) Technical Architect
18 157 (2.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 155 (2.11%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 576 (7.86%) .NET
2 488 (6.66%) REST
3 324 (4.42%) React
4 279 (3.81%) Kafka
5 267 (3.64%) PySpark
6 229 (3.12%) RESTful
7 224 (3.06%) Node.js
8 210 (2.86%) Spring
9 207 (2.82%) OAuth
10 179 (2.44%) AngularJS
11 177 (2.41%) Spring Boot
12 174 (2.37%) LDAP
13 147 (2.01%) JSON
14 143 (1.95%) HTML
15 136 (1.86%) Middleware
16 130 (1.77%) OpenID
16 130 (1.77%) SOAP
17 128 (1.75%) SAML
18 118 (1.61%) CSS
19 106 (1.45%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 713 (9.73%) Cloud Native
2 287 (3.91%) Onboarding
3 268 (3.66%) Product Ownership
4 208 (2.84%) Data Centre
5 193 (2.63%) Hybrid Cloud
6 181 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
7 166 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
8 162 (2.21%) Enterprise Software
9 158 (2.16%) Security Posture
10 153 (2.09%) Public Cloud
11 132 (1.80%) AI Agents
12 100 (1.36%) Data Structures
13 92 (1.25%) Replication
14 90 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 82 (1.12%) Management Information System
16 79 (1.08%) Low-Code
17 70 (0.95%) PKI
18 64 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
19 58 (0.79%) NHS
20 56 (0.76%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 801 (10.93%) Windows
2 379 (5.17%) Linux
3 238 (3.25%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.02%) Unix
6 71 (0.97%) VMS
7 65 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 63 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 61 (0.83%) Apple iOS
10 47 (0.64%) Android
11 29 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.27%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.12%) AIX
16 8 (0.11%) CentOS
16 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.095%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.095%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,753 (37.55%) DevOps
2 2,281 (31.11%) CI/CD
3 1,723 (23.50%) Agile
4 1,067 (14.55%) Analytics
5 1,054 (14.38%) Problem-Solving
6 1,042 (14.21%) Infrastructure as Code
7 995 (13.57%) AI
8 990 (13.50%) Migration
9 831 (11.34%) Data Modelling
10 732 (9.98%) Stakeholder Management
11 705 (9.62%) Business Intelligence
12 699 (9.53%) Containerisation
13 696 (9.49%) Data Pipeline
14 687 (9.37%) Continuous Improvement
15 662 (9.03%) ETL
16 659 (8.99%) Microservices
17 607 (8.28%) Roadmaps
18 594 (8.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 584 (7.97%) Data Engineering
20 573 (7.82%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,779 (24.27%) Python
2 1,545 (21.07%) SQL
3 742 (10.12%) PowerShell
4 611 (8.33%) Java
5 607 (8.28%) C#
6 443 (6.04%) JavaScript
7 285 (3.89%) TypeScript
8 258 (3.52%) Bash
9 236 (3.22%) Bicep
10 94 (1.28%) Scala
11 89 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 85 (1.16%) T-SQL
13 84 (1.15%) Go
14 59 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
15 53 (0.72%) Shell Script
16 52 (0.71%) PL/SQL
17 48 (0.65%) R
18 32 (0.44%) C++
19 23 (0.31%) Kotlin
20 18 (0.25%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,826 (24.91%) Security Cleared
2 1,539 (20.99%) SC Cleared
3 499 (6.81%) Degree
4 381 (5.20%) Azure Certification
5 209 (2.85%) CISSP
6 189 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
7 168 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
8 165 (2.25%) Cisco Certification
9 155 (2.11%) DV Cleared
10 153 (2.09%) Microsoft Certification
11 149 (2.03%) AWS Certification
12 122 (1.66%) CISM
13 77 (1.05%) CCNP
14 72 (0.98%) PMP
15 70 (0.95%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
17 67 (0.91%) Master's Degree
18 65 (0.89%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 58 (0.79%) ISTQB
20 44 (0.60%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 514 (7.01%) Data Quality
2 393 (5.36%) QA
3 366 (4.99%) GDPR
4 293 (4.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 266 (3.63%) NIST
6 129 (1.76%) Accessibility
7 105 (1.43%) NCSC
8 84 (1.15%) PCI DSS
9 69 (0.94%) SLA
10 67 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 59 (0.80%) PMO
13 52 (0.71%) GRC
14 39 (0.53%) WCAG
15 37 (0.50%) HIPAA
16 23 (0.31%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 21 (0.29%) SOC 2
19 20 (0.27%) ISO 20022
20 19 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 888 (12.11%) Active Directory
2 802 (10.94%) Docker
3 201 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 117 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
4 117 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
5 106 (1.45%) Hyper-V
6 61 (0.83%) vSphere
7 35 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
8 29 (0.40%) Firmware
9 22 (0.30%) NFS
10 21 (0.29%) VMware NSX
11 12 (0.16%) Postfix
12 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.095%) HDFS
13 7 (0.095%) Varnish
14 6 (0.082%) KVM
14 6 (0.082%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.082%) RACF
15 5 (0.068%) Ceph
15 5 (0.068%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,153 (15.73%) Terraform
2 1,067 (14.55%) Kubernetes
3 364 (4.97%) Microsoft Intune
4 341 (4.65%) Ansible
5 209 (2.85%) Grafana
6 182 (2.48%) Prometheus
7 151 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
8 111 (1.51%) SCCM
9 67 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.52%) Argo
11 35 (0.48%) FortiGate
11 35 (0.48%) Puppet
12 34 (0.46%) Istio
13 30 (0.41%) Progress Chef
14 26 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
15 22 (0.30%) HP ALM
16 19 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.22%) linkerd
18 15 (0.20%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,338 (31.89%) Microsoft
2 738 (10.07%) Databricks
3 307 (4.19%) Google
4 303 (4.13%) ServiceNow
5 286 (3.90%) Oracle
6 281 (3.83%) VMware
7 212 (2.89%) SAP
8 192 (2.62%) Cisco
9 179 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 164 (2.24%) Splunk
11 139 (1.90%) CyberArk
12 125 (1.71%) Palo Alto
13 111 (1.51%) Salesforce
14 109 (1.49%) Foundry
15 93 (1.27%) Okta
16 78 (1.06%) Citrix
16 78 (1.06%) Informatica
17 75 (1.02%) Dynatrace
18 72 (0.98%) BeyondTrust
19 65 (0.89%) Zscaler