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 2 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,080 4,653 5,987
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.82% 16.01% 13.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.82% 42.01% 41.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,039 3,323 4,325
10th Percentile £356 £350 £341
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% - -5.87%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £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 124 45 57
10th Percentile £25.41 £22.50 £17.79
25th Percentile £50.94 £24.00 £22.30
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +76.92% -7.14% -35.78%
75th Percentile £68.75 £72.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £84.20 £84.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year +79.69% -36.00% -13.04%

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 16,535 11,076 14,396
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.94% 38.11% 32.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,267 7,767 10,194
10th Percentile £313 £313 £294
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £633
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £495
% change year-on-year - -3.99% -1.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 461 219 347
10th Percentile £15.62 £15.44 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.94% +26.19% -23.64%
75th Percentile £67.50 £41.74 £35.25
90th Percentile £81.00 £76.44 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £23.00 £17.72
% change year-on-year +106.52% +29.80% -20.04%

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 2 April 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 2 April 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 2 April 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 6,002 £525 - 2,909
London +1 3,273 £538 -2.27% 1,004
UK excluding London +2 2,883 £500 - 2,332
Work from Home -1 2,171 £525 +1.45% 1,365
North of England +3 812 £488 +0.52% 604
South East +1 743 £500 -6.98% 685
Midlands 0 495 £496 -0.75% 369
North West +1 437 £476 -4.80% 303
West Midlands -2 368 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 348 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire -1 330 £488 +8.33% 208
Scotland +5 287 £546 +15.00% 115
East of England +8 147 £550 -5.17% 207
East Midlands 0 117 £433 -8.84% 163
Wales -2 84 £400 -1.54% 73
North East -4 48 £525 +9.09% 97
Northern Ireland +5 13 £475 - 24
Channel Islands +4 8 £450 +51.26% 1

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
1 326 (4.60%) SharePoint
2 205 (2.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 201 (2.84%) Confluence
4 187 (2.64%) Apache Spark
5 109 (1.54%) Apache
6 101 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
7 28 (0.40%) SAS
8 23 (0.32%) IIS
9 21 (0.30%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 17 (0.24%) CMS
12 16 (0.23%) Appian
13 15 (0.21%) Camunda
14 13 (0.18%) Mendix
15 11 (0.16%) HCL Notes
16 10 (0.14%) Jupyter
16 10 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
17 8 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
18 7 (0.099%) Anypoint
19 5 (0.071%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 125 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 86 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 47 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) Trello
8 6 (0.085%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.071%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.071%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.056%) Weka
11 3 (0.042%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.028%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
13 1 (0.014%) Revit
Business Applications
1 110 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Maximo
4 11 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.099%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.099%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.085%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.085%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.071%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.056%) Cloudability
9 4 (0.056%) Endur
9 4 (0.056%) Oracle 11i
9 4 (0.056%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.056%) Oracle ERP
9 4 (0.056%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.056%) Oracle Payables
9 4 (0.056%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 2,436 (34.41%) AWS
2 1,476 (20.85%) Azure DevOps
3 1,326 (18.73%) GCP
4 954 (13.47%) Power Platform
5 853 (12.05%) Entra ID
6 767 (10.83%) Microsoft 365
7 728 (10.28%) GitHub
8 501 (7.08%) Azure Data Factory
9 430 (6.07%) GitHub Actions
10 407 (5.75%) Serverless
11 330 (4.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 288 (4.07%) Dynamics 365
13 279 (3.94%) SaaS
14 263 (3.71%) Power Automate
15 260 (3.67%) Azure AKS
16 246 (3.47%) Azure Monitor
17 235 (3.32%) Azure Functions
18 234 (3.31%) PaaS
19 216 (3.05%) Snowflake
20 212 (2.99%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 461 (6.51%) Firewall
2 306 (4.32%) DNS
3 266 (3.76%) VPN
4 238 (3.36%) Network Security
5 189 (2.67%) WAN
6 165 (2.33%) DHCP
7 131 (1.85%) LAN
8 100 (1.41%) SD-WAN
9 98 (1.38%) TCP/IP
10 88 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
11 79 (1.12%) VLAN
12 70 (0.99%) Kerberos
13 55 (0.78%) BGP
14 48 (0.68%) OSPF
15 44 (0.62%) HTTP
16 42 (0.59%) Wireless
17 40 (0.56%) SSL
18 38 (0.54%) SAN
19 32 (0.45%) IPsec
19 32 (0.45%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 644 (9.10%) Power BI
2 416 (5.88%) SQL Server
3 379 (5.35%) Data Warehouse
4 341 (4.82%) Data Lake
5 262 (3.70%) Azure SQL Database
6 256 (3.62%) PostgreSQL
7 205 (2.90%) NoSQL
8 180 (2.54%) Metadata
9 147 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 113 (1.60%) Relational Database
11 108 (1.53%) Big Data
12 94 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 93 (1.31%) MongoDB
14 85 (1.20%) Tableau
15 71 (1.00%) MySQL
16 70 (0.99%) Oracle Database
17 65 (0.92%) BigQuery
18 62 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
19 55 (0.78%) Star Schema
20 47 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 532 (7.51%) Git
2 493 (6.96%) JIRA
3 388 (5.48%) Jenkins
4 283 (4.00%) GitLab
5 138 (1.95%) Selenium
6 89 (1.26%) Postman
7 79 (1.12%) JMeter
8 75 (1.06%) Cucumber
8 75 (1.06%) JUnit
9 51 (0.72%) MLflow
10 50 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 46 (0.65%) Cypress.io
12 44 (0.62%) Visual Studio
13 43 (0.61%) SonarQube
14 36 (0.51%) Artifactory
15 33 (0.47%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.47%) WebDriver
16 32 (0.45%) TestRail
17 28 (0.40%) Gatling
18 27 (0.38%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,960 (27.68%) Social Skills
2 1,270 (17.94%) Finance
3 829 (11.71%) Public Sector
4 694 (9.80%) Analytical Skills
5 380 (5.37%) Banking
6 225 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
7 178 (2.51%) Legal
8 114 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 101 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
10 88 (1.24%) Retail
11 86 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
12 84 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
13 79 (1.12%) Marketing
14 75 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 68 (0.96%) Financial Institution
15 68 (0.96%) Law
16 55 (0.78%) Investment Banking
17 53 (0.75%) Front Office
18 47 (0.66%) Manufacturing
19 44 (0.62%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,194 (16.86%) Architect
2 960 (13.56%) Developer
3 826 (11.67%) Senior
4 631 (8.91%) Azure Engineer
5 580 (8.19%) Data Engineer
6 538 (7.60%) Lead
7 448 (6.33%) Analyst
8 354 (5.00%) DevOps Engineer
9 320 (4.52%) Solutions Architect
10 305 (4.31%) Consultant
11 194 (2.74%) Cloud Engineer
12 190 (2.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 184 (2.60%) Azure Architect
14 173 (2.44%) Security Engineer
15 172 (2.43%) Platform Engineer
16 162 (2.29%) Senior Developer
17 155 (2.19%) Data Architect
18 154 (2.18%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 149 (2.10%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 142 (2.01%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 559 (7.90%) .NET
2 476 (6.72%) REST
3 340 (4.80%) React
4 275 (3.88%) Kafka
5 267 (3.77%) PySpark
6 253 (3.57%) RESTful
7 250 (3.53%) Node.js
8 219 (3.09%) Spring
9 207 (2.92%) OAuth
10 191 (2.70%) AngularJS
11 182 (2.57%) Spring Boot
12 156 (2.20%) HTML
13 155 (2.19%) LDAP
14 149 (2.10%) JSON
15 137 (1.94%) CSS
16 135 (1.91%) Middleware
17 127 (1.79%) SOAP
18 125 (1.77%) SAML
19 123 (1.74%) PyTorch
20 117 (1.65%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 636 (8.98%) Cloud Native
2 273 (3.86%) Onboarding
3 268 (3.79%) Product Ownership
4 192 (2.71%) Hybrid Cloud
5 185 (2.61%) Data Centre
6 164 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
7 163 (2.30%) Security Posture
8 157 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
9 153 (2.16%) Public Cloud
10 143 (2.02%) Distributed Systems
11 120 (1.69%) AI Agents
12 90 (1.27%) Data Structures
13 87 (1.23%) Replication
14 83 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
15 73 (1.03%) Management Information System
16 68 (0.96%) Algorithms
17 67 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
17 67 (0.95%) PKI
18 63 (0.89%) Low-Code
18 63 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 755 (10.66%) Windows
2 373 (5.27%) Linux
3 229 (3.23%) Windows Server
4 124 (1.75%) Windows 10
5 77 (1.09%) VMS
6 72 (1.02%) Unix
7 57 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 45 (0.64%) Mac OS
9 38 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 30 (0.42%) Android
11 23 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.27%) Ubuntu
13 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 7 (0.099%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.085%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.071%) AIX
18 5 (0.071%) CentOS
18 5 (0.071%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,650 (37.43%) DevOps
2 2,173 (30.69%) CI/CD
3 1,671 (23.60%) Agile
4 1,142 (16.13%) Problem-Solving
5 1,069 (15.10%) Analytics
6 985 (13.91%) AI
7 974 (13.76%) Infrastructure as Code
8 937 (13.23%) Migration
9 780 (11.02%) Data Modelling
10 729 (10.30%) Stakeholder Management
11 705 (9.96%) Business Intelligence
12 676 (9.55%) Continuous Improvement
13 674 (9.52%) Containerisation
14 649 (9.17%) Microservices
15 648 (9.15%) Data Pipeline
16 647 (9.14%) ETL
17 604 (8.53%) Machine Learning
18 597 (8.43%) Data Engineering
19 587 (8.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 574 (8.11%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,821 (25.72%) Python
2 1,564 (22.09%) SQL
3 746 (10.54%) PowerShell
4 614 (8.67%) C#
5 597 (8.43%) Java
6 488 (6.89%) JavaScript
7 298 (4.21%) TypeScript
8 259 (3.66%) Bash
9 224 (3.16%) Bicep
10 97 (1.37%) Scala
11 82 (1.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 78 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
13 77 (1.09%) Go
13 77 (1.09%) PL/SQL
14 75 (1.06%) T-SQL
15 54 (0.76%) Shell Script
16 47 (0.66%) R
17 31 (0.44%) C++
18 25 (0.35%) PHP
19 20 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,723 (24.34%) Security Cleared
2 1,437 (20.30%) SC Cleared
3 538 (7.60%) Degree
4 371 (5.24%) Azure Certification
5 211 (2.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 196 (2.77%) CISSP
7 163 (2.30%) Microsoft Certification
8 149 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
9 142 (2.01%) DV Cleared
10 139 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
11 137 (1.94%) AWS Certification
12 120 (1.69%) CISM
13 84 (1.19%) Master's Degree
14 75 (1.06%) CCNP
15 66 (0.93%) ISTQB
15 66 (0.93%) PMI Certification
15 66 (0.93%) PMP
16 64 (0.90%) TOGAF Certification
17 46 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 36 (0.51%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 501 (7.08%) Data Quality
2 395 (5.58%) GDPR
3 385 (5.44%) QA
4 309 (4.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 257 (3.63%) NIST
6 134 (1.89%) Accessibility
7 108 (1.53%) NCSC
8 84 (1.19%) PCI DSS
9 64 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
10 61 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 61 (0.86%) SLA
11 60 (0.85%) PMO
12 41 (0.58%) GRC
13 40 (0.56%) WCAG
14 37 (0.52%) HIPAA
15 26 (0.37%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 25 (0.35%) NIST 800
17 24 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 22 (0.31%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 897 (12.67%) Active Directory
2 827 (11.68%) Docker
3 209 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 108 (1.53%) Hyper-V
5 103 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
6 84 (1.19%) Virtual Desktop
7 81 (1.14%) vSphere
8 33 (0.47%) VMware NSX
9 32 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
10 25 (0.35%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) NFS
12 10 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.099%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.099%) Varnish
14 6 (0.085%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.085%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.085%) RACF
14 6 (0.085%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.085%) Snort
15 5 (0.071%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 1,110 (15.68%) Terraform
2 1,041 (14.70%) Kubernetes
3 366 (5.17%) Microsoft Intune
4 329 (4.65%) Ansible
5 190 (2.68%) Grafana
6 161 (2.27%) Single Sign-On
7 160 (2.26%) Prometheus
8 119 (1.68%) SCCM
9 74 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.64%) Argo
11 34 (0.48%) Istio
12 31 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 30 (0.42%) Puppet
14 28 (0.40%) Progress Chef
15 27 (0.38%) vCenter Server
16 26 (0.37%) vRealize
17 24 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
18 22 (0.31%) HP ALM
19 17 (0.24%) Kubeflow
20 16 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 2,257 (31.88%) Microsoft
2 728 (10.28%) Databricks
3 334 (4.72%) Oracle
4 329 (4.65%) Google
5 288 (4.07%) VMware
6 282 (3.98%) ServiceNow
7 206 (2.91%) SAP
8 194 (2.74%) Cisco
9 181 (2.56%) OpenAI
10 162 (2.29%) Splunk
11 132 (1.86%) CyberArk
12 117 (1.65%) Foundry
13 111 (1.57%) Palo Alto
14 94 (1.33%) Salesforce
15 88 (1.24%) Okta
16 78 (1.10%) Informatica
17 77 (1.09%) IBM
18 74 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
19 73 (1.03%) Red Hat
20 71 (1.00%) Fortinet