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 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 5 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,217 5,467 7,279
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.52% 14.75% 15.20%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.25% 42.23% 42.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,567 3,694 5,316
10th Percentile £350 £345 £361
25th Percentile £415 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -1.79%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £651
90th Percentile £713 £724 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% +0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 36 89
10th Percentile £15.50 £19.79 £17.74
25th Percentile £25.87 £23.80 £25.75
Median hourly rate £35.99 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +2.83% -24.21% -9.45%
75th Percentile £68.56 £61.13 £70.00
90th Percentile £93.75 £82.50 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.46 £39.34 £46.18
% change year-on-year +10.46% -14.81% -8.55%

All Cloud 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 12,963 12,946 16,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.55% 34.92% 35.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,672 8,540 12,205
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £708 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 306 173 323
10th Percentile £15.05 £17.44 £14.68
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.80 £17.88
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £32.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% +9.38% +42.22%
75th Percentile £43.75 £64.73 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.25 £70.00 £78.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.50 £34.47 £22.50
% change year-on-year -40.52% +53.18% +16.70%

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 October 2025.

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 October 2025.

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 October 2025. 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 4,426 £525 -1.87% 4,989
London +1 2,408 £545 -0.91% 2,063
UK excluding London 0 2,142 £500 - 4,113
Work from Home 0 1,743 £500 -4.76% 2,659
North of England -3 543 £475 -5.00% 878
South East -2 505 £500 -4.76% 1,749
Midlands 0 412 £519 +1.67% 480
West Midlands +3 300 £550 +4.76% 304
South West +5 275 £522 +2.25% 372
North West -1 265 £460 -6.98% 523
Yorkshire 0 246 £490 -3.16% 229
Scotland -2 239 £500 +11.11% 231
East of England +5 148 £500 +42.86% 302
East Midlands -2 106 £450 - 174
Wales +2 66 £450 -12.20% 138
North East +1 36 £500 +42.86% 139
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -19 4 - - 29

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
1 227 (4.35%) SharePoint
2 169 (3.24%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.84%) Confluence
4 116 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 82 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
6 76 (1.46%) Apache
7 29 (0.56%) CMS
8 24 (0.46%) SAS
9 21 (0.40%) nginx
10 17 (0.33%) OpenStack
10 17 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.27%) Jupyter
12 12 (0.23%) Anypoint
13 10 (0.19%) IIS
13 10 (0.19%) Mule
13 10 (0.19%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.15%) Skype for Business
16 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
17 6 (0.12%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 110 (2.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.73%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.31%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.19%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 10 (0.19%) Trello
8 3 (0.058%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.038%) Weka
9 2 (0.038%) Windchill
10 1 (0.019%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.019%) FrameMaker
10 1 (0.019%) MadCap Flare
10 1 (0.019%) Notion
10 1 (0.019%) Revit
10 1 (0.019%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 86 (1.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 51 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.44%) Endur
4 18 (0.35%) Aladdin
5 13 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
6 11 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
7 10 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
8 9 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
8 9 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 8 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
9 8 (0.15%) Workday HCM
10 7 (0.13%) SAP PM
10 7 (0.13%) Teamcenter
11 6 (0.12%) NetSuite
12 5 (0.096%) Avolution ABACUS
12 5 (0.096%) Maximo
12 5 (0.096%) Remedy ITSM
12 5 (0.096%) SAP ERP
12 5 (0.096%) SAP MDG
13 4 (0.077%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 1,876 (35.96%) AWS
2 1,029 (19.72%) Azure DevOps
3 994 (19.05%) GCP
4 636 (12.19%) Power Platform
5 588 (11.27%) Microsoft 365
6 578 (11.08%) Entra ID
7 459 (8.80%) GitHub
8 321 (6.15%) Azure Data Factory
9 258 (4.95%) GitHub Actions
10 256 (4.91%) Serverless
11 242 (4.64%) SaaS
12 232 (4.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 217 (4.16%) Dynamics 365
14 190 (3.64%) Power Automate
15 189 (3.62%) Azure AKS
15 189 (3.62%) PaaS
16 174 (3.34%) Azure Sentinel
17 173 (3.32%) PowerApps
18 165 (3.16%) Azure Monitor
19 164 (3.14%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 389 (7.46%) Firewall
2 191 (3.66%) DNS
3 166 (3.18%) VPN
4 138 (2.65%) Network Security
5 121 (2.32%) WAN
6 100 (1.92%) DHCP
7 81 (1.55%) TCP/IP
8 79 (1.51%) LAN
9 69 (1.32%) VLAN
10 67 (1.28%) HTTP
11 55 (1.05%) SD-WAN
12 50 (0.96%) BGP
13 48 (0.92%) Wi-Fi
14 39 (0.75%) SAN
15 37 (0.71%) OSPF
16 36 (0.69%) SSL
17 35 (0.67%) MPLS
17 35 (0.67%) Wireless
18 29 (0.56%) Internet
19 20 (0.38%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 436 (8.36%) Power BI
2 318 (6.10%) SQL Server
3 241 (4.62%) PostgreSQL
4 238 (4.56%) Data Warehouse
5 223 (4.27%) Data Lake
6 174 (3.34%) Azure SQL Database
7 173 (3.32%) NoSQL
8 126 (2.42%) Relational Database
9 107 (2.05%) MongoDB
10 91 (1.74%) Metadata
11 84 (1.61%) MySQL
12 82 (1.57%) Big Data
13 77 (1.48%) Delta Lake
14 64 (1.23%) Redis
15 63 (1.21%) Tableau
16 60 (1.15%) BigQuery
17 52 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 49 (0.94%) Oracle Database
19 41 (0.79%) GIS
20 39 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 447 (8.57%) Git
2 416 (7.97%) JIRA
3 321 (6.15%) Jenkins
4 211 (4.04%) GitLab
5 92 (1.76%) Selenium
6 87 (1.67%) SonarQube
7 77 (1.48%) Postman
8 56 (1.07%) JUnit
9 48 (0.92%) Maven
10 47 (0.90%) Cypress.io
11 46 (0.88%) JMeter
12 42 (0.81%) Bitbucket
13 40 (0.77%) Visual Studio
14 36 (0.69%) Gradle
15 34 (0.65%) Cucumber
16 33 (0.63%) CircleCI
17 30 (0.58%) ERwin
18 28 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
19 27 (0.52%) SoapUI
20 26 (0.50%) Artifactory
General
1 1,611 (30.88%) Social Skills
2 1,002 (19.21%) Finance
3 567 (10.87%) Public Sector
4 471 (9.03%) Analytical Skills
5 347 (6.65%) Banking
6 156 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
7 124 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 92 (1.76%) Retail
9 91 (1.74%) Investment Banking
9 91 (1.74%) Marketing
10 79 (1.51%) Legal
11 76 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
12 72 (1.38%) Telecoms
13 69 (1.32%) Manufacturing
14 62 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
15 51 (0.98%) Front Office
16 49 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
17 47 (0.90%) Law
18 46 (0.88%) Financial Institution
19 41 (0.79%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 874 (16.75%) Developer
2 867 (16.62%) Architect
3 490 (9.39%) Senior
4 401 (7.69%) Analyst
5 374 (7.17%) Azure Engineer
6 342 (6.56%) Lead
7 329 (6.31%) Data Engineer
8 300 (5.75%) Solutions Architect
9 255 (4.89%) DevOps Engineer
10 211 (4.04%) Consultant
11 166 (3.18%) Security Engineer
12 163 (3.12%) Azure Architect
13 156 (2.99%) Senior Developer
14 153 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 129 (2.47%) Cloud Engineer
16 124 (2.38%) Platform Engineer
17 112 (2.15%) Data Architect
18 111 (2.13%) Business Analyst
18 111 (2.13%) Software Engineer
19 110 (2.11%) .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 460 (8.82%) .NET
2 308 (5.90%) REST
3 254 (4.87%) RESTful
4 250 (4.79%) React
5 194 (3.72%) HTML
5 194 (3.72%) Kafka
6 177 (3.39%) Node.js
7 158 (3.03%) CSS
8 153 (2.93%) AngularJS
9 151 (2.89%) Spring
10 148 (2.84%) OAuth
11 143 (2.74%) JSON
12 141 (2.70%) PySpark
13 131 (2.51%) Spring Boot
14 128 (2.45%) SOAP
15 102 (1.96%) Web Services
16 97 (1.86%) ARM Templates
17 96 (1.84%) Middleware
18 94 (1.80%) PyTorch
19 92 (1.76%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 375 (7.19%) Cloud Native
2 175 (3.35%) Onboarding
3 174 (3.34%) Product Ownership
4 146 (2.80%) Hybrid Cloud
5 138 (2.65%) Data Centre
6 134 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
7 101 (1.94%) Security Posture
8 96 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
8 96 (1.84%) Public Cloud
9 89 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
10 79 (1.51%) Algorithms
11 72 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
11 72 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
12 61 (1.17%) Management Information System
13 53 (1.02%) Virtual Team
14 51 (0.98%) Data Structures
15 49 (0.94%) Low-Code
16 48 (0.92%) Mobile App
17 47 (0.90%) Replication
17 47 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 636 (12.19%) Windows
2 366 (7.02%) Linux
3 169 (3.24%) Windows Server
4 106 (2.03%) Unix
5 99 (1.90%) Windows 10
6 68 (1.30%) Android
7 59 (1.13%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.81%) VMS
9 36 (0.69%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 20 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.21%) Solaris
12 11 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.19%) Amazon Linux
14 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.15%) CentOS
15 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 6 (0.12%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.096%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,879 (36.02%) DevOps
2 1,473 (28.23%) CI/CD
3 1,364 (26.15%) Agile
4 941 (18.04%) Problem-Solving
5 687 (13.17%) Infrastructure as Code
6 640 (12.27%) Analytics
7 635 (12.17%) Migration
8 544 (10.43%) AI
9 509 (9.76%) Business Intelligence
10 478 (9.16%) Containerisation
11 470 (9.01%) Stakeholder Management
12 441 (8.45%) Test Automation
13 439 (8.41%) Microservices
14 438 (8.40%) Data Modelling
15 425 (8.15%) Machine Learning
16 397 (7.61%) ETL
17 395 (7.57%) Scrum
18 391 (7.49%) Cybersecurity
19 370 (7.09%) Continuous Improvement
19 370 (7.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 1,310 (25.11%) Python
2 1,148 (22.00%) SQL
3 536 (10.27%) PowerShell
4 514 (9.85%) Java
5 479 (9.18%) C#
6 410 (7.86%) JavaScript
7 268 (5.14%) Bash
8 222 (4.26%) TypeScript
9 155 (2.97%) Bicep
10 87 (1.67%) Go
11 69 (1.32%) Kusto Query Language
12 64 (1.23%) Scala
13 54 (1.04%) R
14 50 (0.96%) T-SQL
15 48 (0.92%) C++
16 39 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 35 (0.67%) Groovy
18 34 (0.65%) Perl
18 34 (0.65%) Shell Script
19 32 (0.61%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 967 (18.54%) Security Cleared
2 767 (14.70%) SC Cleared
3 443 (8.49%) Degree
4 308 (5.90%) Azure Certification
5 166 (3.18%) Microsoft Certification
6 162 (3.11%) CISSP
7 150 (2.88%) Computer Science Degree
8 126 (2.42%) DV Cleared
9 125 (2.40%) AWS Certification
10 95 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
11 81 (1.55%) CISM
12 78 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
13 75 (1.44%) Master's Degree
14 43 (0.82%) CCNP
15 41 (0.79%) ISTQB
16 38 (0.73%) OSCP
17 33 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 27 (0.52%) PMI Certification
19 23 (0.44%) CCSP
19 23 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (5.81%) GDPR
2 285 (5.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 272 (5.21%) QA
4 242 (4.64%) NIST
5 231 (4.43%) Data Quality
6 137 (2.63%) Accessibility
7 75 (1.44%) NCSC
8 72 (1.38%) PCI DSS
9 67 (1.28%) HIPAA
10 47 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
11 44 (0.84%) SLA
12 41 (0.79%) SOC 2
13 29 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 29 (0.56%) WCAG
14 28 (0.54%) EU AI Act
15 24 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 21 (0.40%) GRC
16 21 (0.40%) PSD2
17 20 (0.38%) COBIT
18 18 (0.35%) NIST 800
System Software
1 626 (12.00%) Active Directory
2 618 (11.85%) Docker
3 153 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (1.46%) Virtual Desktop
5 73 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
6 66 (1.27%) Hyper-V
7 44 (0.84%) vSphere
8 21 (0.40%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.29%) Squid
11 13 (0.25%) DFS Replication
11 13 (0.25%) Firmware
12 11 (0.21%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 10 (0.19%) Dovecot
13 10 (0.19%) Postfix
13 10 (0.19%) zsh
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.13%) NFS
15 7 (0.13%) Snort
16 6 (0.12%) KVM
Systems Management
1 743 (14.24%) Terraform
2 709 (13.59%) Kubernetes
3 281 (5.39%) Ansible
3 281 (5.39%) Microsoft Intune
4 142 (2.72%) Single Sign-On
5 118 (2.26%) SCCM
6 114 (2.19%) Prometheus
7 112 (2.15%) Grafana
8 34 (0.65%) Puppet
9 31 (0.59%) Argo
9 31 (0.59%) Nessus
10 26 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 21 (0.40%) Nmap
12 20 (0.38%) NetBackup
13 19 (0.36%) Oracle RMAN
14 18 (0.35%) Kibana
14 18 (0.35%) Progress Chef
15 17 (0.33%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
17 15 (0.29%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,644 (31.51%) Microsoft
2 473 (9.07%) Databricks
3 283 (5.42%) Oracle
4 230 (4.41%) Google
5 206 (3.95%) VMware
6 190 (3.64%) ServiceNow
7 168 (3.22%) Cisco
8 153 (2.93%) SAP
9 124 (2.38%) Salesforce
10 118 (2.26%) Splunk
11 95 (1.82%) Citrix
12 92 (1.76%) OpenAI
13 90 (1.73%) Palo Alto
14 70 (1.34%) CyberArk
15 60 (1.15%) F5
15 60 (1.15%) Red Hat
16 57 (1.09%) Okta
17 53 (1.02%) IBM
18 50 (0.96%) HP
19 49 (0.94%) Dynatrace