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

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,525 5,317 7,040
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.61% 14.75% 15.06%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.64% 41.80% 42.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,840 3,557 5,165
10th Percentile £350 £338 £356
25th Percentile £420 £425 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £723 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £515
% change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 43 88
10th Percentile £15.76 £20.02 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.60 £23.80 £25.94
Median hourly rate £35.24 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +13.68% -32.87% +10.61%
75th Percentile £71.88 £60.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £93.75 £77.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.46 £31.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +36.87% -31.25% +2.62%

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 13,594 12,721 16,500
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.41% 35.29% 35.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,210 8,376 11,811
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £419 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 168 308
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.50 £14.58
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.32 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.27 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.41% +7.32% +40.91%
75th Percentile £47.12 £59.66 £62.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £70.00 £78.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £30.94 £22.50
% change year-on-year -32.12% +37.50% +18.73%

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 18 November 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 18 November 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 18 November 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 -1 4,708 £525 -2.33% 5,484
London +1 2,540 £545 -0.91% 2,475
UK excluding London 0 2,280 £500 - 3,600
Work from Home 0 1,821 £513 -2.38% 3,136
North of England -1 590 £475 -5.00% 834
South East -4 533 £500 -4.76% 1,118
Midlands -1 426 £523 -0.48% 569
South West +5 311 £500 - 403
West Midlands +2 308 £550 - 379
North West -1 287 £465 -7.00% 500
Yorkshire -2 274 £492 -1.70% 241
Scotland +3 249 £500 +11.11% 236
East of England +1 156 £500 +29.03% 314
East Midlands -1 115 £450 -10.00% 187
Wales +1 65 £450 -14.29% 112
North East -5 33 £508 +13.53% 97
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -10 6 - - 60

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
1 252 (4.56%) SharePoint
2 186 (3.37%) Microsoft Exchange
3 140 (2.53%) Confluence
4 125 (2.26%) Apache Spark
5 86 (1.56%) Apache
6 83 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.54%) CMS
8 27 (0.49%) SAS
9 22 (0.40%) OpenStack
10 19 (0.34%) nginx
11 17 (0.31%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.22%) Anypoint
13 10 (0.18%) IIS
13 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.18%) Mule
13 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.16%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
16 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 121 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 86 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
3 37 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 35 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
5 32 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 15 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.14%) Trello
9 5 (0.090%) Weka
10 3 (0.054%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.036%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.036%) Windchill
12 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
12 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.018%) Revit
12 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 100 (1.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 53 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 15 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
5 14 (0.25%) Endur
6 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
7 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.16%) Workday HCM
8 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
8 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 7 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
10 6 (0.11%) Maximo
10 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
10 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
11 5 (0.090%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.090%) Remedy ITSM
12 4 (0.072%) Cloudability
12 4 (0.072%) Fidessa
12 4 (0.072%) Primavera
12 4 (0.072%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,024 (36.63%) AWS
2 1,109 (20.07%) Azure DevOps
3 1,076 (19.48%) GCP
4 698 (12.63%) Power Platform
5 631 (11.42%) Microsoft 365
6 615 (11.13%) Entra ID
7 523 (9.47%) GitHub
8 341 (6.17%) Azure Data Factory
9 299 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
10 285 (5.16%) Serverless
11 250 (4.52%) SaaS
12 244 (4.42%) Dynamics 365
13 241 (4.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 213 (3.86%) Azure AKS
15 207 (3.75%) Power Automate
16 203 (3.67%) Snowflake
17 198 (3.58%) PaaS
18 192 (3.48%) Azure Sentinel
19 191 (3.46%) Azure Monitor
20 190 (3.44%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 406 (7.35%) Firewall
2 202 (3.66%) DNS
3 174 (3.15%) VPN
4 152 (2.75%) Network Security
5 116 (2.10%) WAN
6 100 (1.81%) DHCP
7 85 (1.54%) TCP/IP
8 76 (1.38%) LAN
9 68 (1.23%) HTTP
10 64 (1.16%) VLAN
11 59 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
12 55 (1.00%) SD-WAN
13 45 (0.81%) BGP
14 42 (0.76%) SAN
15 36 (0.65%) Internet
16 34 (0.62%) MPLS
17 33 (0.60%) OSPF
17 33 (0.60%) SSL
18 27 (0.49%) Wireless
19 20 (0.36%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 476 (8.62%) Power BI
2 310 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 258 (4.67%) Data Warehouse
4 252 (4.56%) PostgreSQL
5 245 (4.43%) Data Lake
6 185 (3.35%) NoSQL
7 178 (3.22%) Azure SQL Database
8 128 (2.32%) Relational Database
9 111 (2.01%) MongoDB
10 110 (1.99%) Metadata
11 89 (1.61%) MySQL
12 82 (1.48%) Big Data
13 67 (1.21%) Delta Lake
14 63 (1.14%) Tableau
15 61 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 59 (1.07%) BigQuery
17 57 (1.03%) Redis
18 46 (0.83%) Oracle Database
19 42 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
20 38 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 486 (8.80%) Git
2 417 (7.55%) JIRA
3 325 (5.88%) Jenkins
4 219 (3.96%) GitLab
5 99 (1.79%) Selenium
6 85 (1.54%) Postman
6 85 (1.54%) SonarQube
7 68 (1.23%) JUnit
8 49 (0.89%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.87%) JMeter
10 46 (0.83%) Bitbucket
11 45 (0.81%) Maven
12 44 (0.80%) Cucumber
13 38 (0.69%) Visual Studio
14 37 (0.67%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.60%) Gradle
16 32 (0.58%) CircleCI
16 32 (0.58%) ERwin
17 30 (0.54%) Mockito
17 30 (0.54%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,773 (32.09%) Social Skills
2 1,055 (19.10%) Finance
3 635 (11.49%) Public Sector
4 531 (9.61%) Analytical Skills
5 366 (6.62%) Banking
6 191 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
7 130 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 100 (1.81%) Retail
9 98 (1.77%) Investment Banking
10 94 (1.70%) Marketing
11 89 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
12 86 (1.56%) Legal
13 75 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
14 68 (1.23%) Manufacturing
14 68 (1.23%) Telecoms
15 57 (1.03%) Law
16 49 (0.89%) Local Government
17 46 (0.83%) Front Office
18 43 (0.78%) Financial Institution
18 43 (0.78%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 915 (16.56%) Developer
2 898 (16.25%) Architect
3 550 (9.95%) Senior
4 421 (7.62%) Analyst
5 403 (7.29%) Azure Engineer
6 386 (6.99%) Lead
7 348 (6.30%) Data Engineer
8 309 (5.59%) Solutions Architect
9 270 (4.89%) DevOps Engineer
10 214 (3.87%) Consultant
11 183 (3.31%) Security Engineer
12 173 (3.13%) Senior Developer
13 161 (2.91%) Azure Architect
14 159 (2.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 136 (2.46%) Cloud Engineer
16 132 (2.39%) Platform Engineer
17 122 (2.21%) Data Architect
18 114 (2.06%) Software Engineer
19 113 (2.05%) Business Analyst
20 111 (2.01%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 470 (8.51%) .NET
2 350 (6.33%) REST
3 269 (4.87%) RESTful
4 255 (4.62%) React
5 204 (3.69%) Node.js
6 203 (3.67%) Kafka
7 191 (3.46%) HTML
8 183 (3.31%) Spring
9 177 (3.20%) OAuth
10 164 (2.97%) AngularJS
11 156 (2.82%) Spring Boot
12 155 (2.81%) JSON
13 153 (2.77%) CSS
14 146 (2.64%) PySpark
15 133 (2.41%) SOAP
16 108 (1.95%) PyTorch
17 105 (1.90%) XML
18 102 (1.85%) Web Services
19 101 (1.83%) ARM Templates
20 100 (1.81%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 412 (7.46%) Cloud Native
2 194 (3.51%) Product Ownership
3 182 (3.29%) Onboarding
4 153 (2.77%) Hybrid Cloud
5 140 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 133 (2.41%) Data Centre
7 118 (2.14%) Security Posture
8 110 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
9 109 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
10 98 (1.77%) Public Cloud
11 82 (1.48%) Algorithms
12 76 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
12 76 (1.38%) Management Information System
13 69 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
14 57 (1.03%) Replication
15 54 (0.98%) AI Agents
16 53 (0.96%) Data Structures
16 53 (0.96%) Low-Code
17 49 (0.89%) NHS
17 49 (0.89%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 633 (11.46%) Windows
2 372 (6.73%) Linux
3 180 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 109 (1.97%) Unix
5 93 (1.68%) Windows 10
6 60 (1.09%) Android
7 52 (0.94%) Apple iOS
8 44 (0.80%) VMS
9 38 (0.69%) Mac OS
10 26 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) Solaris
13 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) CentOS
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
16 5 (0.090%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.072%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,013 (36.43%) DevOps
2 1,616 (29.25%) CI/CD
3 1,481 (26.81%) Agile
4 1,010 (18.28%) Problem-Solving
5 739 (13.38%) Infrastructure as Code
6 731 (13.23%) Analytics
7 651 (11.78%) Migration
8 622 (11.26%) AI
9 545 (9.86%) Business Intelligence
10 533 (9.65%) Stakeholder Management
11 526 (9.52%) Containerisation
12 478 (8.65%) Microservices
12 478 (8.65%) Test Automation
13 468 (8.47%) Data Modelling
14 465 (8.42%) Machine Learning
15 427 (7.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 426 (7.71%) Scrum
17 425 (7.69%) Continuous Improvement
18 418 (7.57%) Cybersecurity
19 391 (7.08%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,400 (25.34%) Python
2 1,198 (21.68%) SQL
3 580 (10.50%) PowerShell
4 552 (9.99%) Java
5 508 (9.19%) C#
6 454 (8.22%) JavaScript
7 281 (5.09%) Bash
8 240 (4.34%) TypeScript
9 149 (2.70%) Bicep
10 93 (1.68%) Go
11 72 (1.30%) Kusto Query Language
12 66 (1.19%) Scala
13 59 (1.07%) PL/SQL
14 58 (1.05%) R
15 52 (0.94%) T-SQL
16 48 (0.87%) C++
17 40 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 35 (0.63%) Shell Script
19 32 (0.58%) Perl
20 30 (0.54%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,116 (20.20%) Security Cleared
2 905 (16.38%) SC Cleared
3 480 (8.69%) Degree
4 326 (5.90%) Azure Certification
5 181 (3.28%) CISSP
6 179 (3.24%) Microsoft Certification
7 169 (3.06%) Computer Science Degree
8 133 (2.41%) DV Cleared
9 129 (2.33%) AWS Certification
10 99 (1.79%) Cisco Certification
11 98 (1.77%) CISM
12 85 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
13 84 (1.52%) Master's Degree
14 48 (0.87%) ISTQB
15 46 (0.83%) CCNP
16 39 (0.71%) OSCP
17 35 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 35 (0.63%) PMI Certification
18 32 (0.58%) MCP
19 27 (0.49%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 338 (6.12%) GDPR
2 319 (5.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 302 (5.47%) QA
4 258 (4.67%) NIST
5 242 (4.38%) Data Quality
6 140 (2.53%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.50%) NCSC
8 72 (1.30%) PCI DSS
9 55 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
9 55 (1.00%) HIPAA
10 38 (0.69%) SOC 2
11 37 (0.67%) SLA
12 31 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 31 (0.56%) WCAG
13 28 (0.51%) EU AI Act
14 27 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 25 (0.45%) GRC
16 22 (0.40%) PSD2
17 21 (0.38%) NIST 800
18 20 (0.36%) COBIT
System Software
1 686 (12.42%) Docker
2 673 (12.18%) Active Directory
3 164 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.29%) Hyper-V
5 70 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
6 61 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
7 49 (0.89%) vSphere
8 26 (0.47%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.27%) Squid
11 13 (0.24%) DFS Replication
11 13 (0.24%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 11 (0.20%) Firmware
13 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
13 10 (0.18%) Postfix
13 10 (0.18%) zsh
14 8 (0.14%) KVM
14 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.13%) NFS
15 7 (0.13%) Snort
Systems Management
1 808 (14.62%) Terraform
2 772 (13.97%) Kubernetes
3 296 (5.36%) Microsoft Intune
4 294 (5.32%) Ansible
5 144 (2.61%) Single Sign-On
6 127 (2.30%) SCCM
7 126 (2.28%) Grafana
8 121 (2.19%) Prometheus
9 40 (0.72%) Argo
10 32 (0.58%) Puppet
11 31 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 27 (0.49%) Nessus
13 23 (0.42%) Kibana
14 21 (0.38%) Nmap
15 20 (0.36%) NetBackup
16 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
17 17 (0.31%) Progress Chef
17 17 (0.31%) QRadar
17 17 (0.31%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.31%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,763 (31.91%) Microsoft
2 480 (8.69%) Databricks
3 319 (5.77%) Oracle
4 261 (4.72%) Google
5 216 (3.91%) VMware
6 209 (3.78%) ServiceNow
7 168 (3.04%) Cisco
8 150 (2.71%) SAP
9 138 (2.50%) Splunk
10 125 (2.26%) Salesforce
11 104 (1.88%) OpenAI
12 88 (1.59%) Palo Alto
13 85 (1.54%) Citrix
14 77 (1.39%) CyberArk
15 61 (1.10%) F5
16 59 (1.07%) IBM
16 59 (1.07%) Okta
16 59 (1.07%) Red Hat
17 56 (1.01%) Foundry
18 51 (0.92%) Dynatrace