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

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,733 4,815 6,064
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.98% 16.03% 13.70%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.47% 42.34% 41.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,774 3,340 4,399
10th Percentile £350 £350 £340
25th Percentile £424 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -0.24% -0.94% -5.78%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £734 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 39 73
10th Percentile £23.02 £22.25 £17.76
25th Percentile £49.00 £23.80 £22.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -21.26%
75th Percentile £64.00 £62.88 £61.60
90th Percentile £80.00 £78.00 £74.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +109.09% -42.82% -26.02%

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 15,854 11,372 14,563
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.62% 37.85% 32.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,873 7,763 10,354
10th Percentile £313 £313 £281
25th Percentile £409 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £634
90th Percentile £700 £733 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £495
% change year-on-year -4.23% +0.20% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 408 178 348
10th Percentile £15.42 £15.83 £14.09
25th Percentile £20.50 £21.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.47 £27.13 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +45.49% +26.93% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.56 £46.18
90th Percentile £80.06 £74.28 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.18 £18.00
% change year-on-year +86.10% +34.33% -16.88%

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 March 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 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 March 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 -1 5,683 £525 -2.33% 3,725
London +1 3,082 £545 -0.91% 1,059
UK excluding London 0 2,749 £500 - 3,210
Work from Home -1 2,077 £525 +0.48% 1,754
North of England 0 747 £496 +2.01% 729
South East -1 706 £500 -8.26% 1,042
Midlands -2 471 £500 -4.08% 428
North West 0 380 £479 -4.28% 353
West Midlands -2 355 £525 -1.87% 220
South West +4 347 £510 -2.95% 382
Yorkshire -3 318 £500 +11.11% 266
Scotland +7 298 £550 +15.79% 156
East of England -2 156 £558 -3.04% 380
East Midlands -2 114 £437 -7.07% 201
Wales -3 82 £400 -11.85% 120
North East -4 53 £525 +9.09% 123
Northern Ireland +3 12 £475 - 36

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
1 305 (4.53%) SharePoint
2 223 (3.31%) Microsoft Exchange
3 179 (2.66%) Confluence
4 178 (2.64%) Apache Spark
5 92 (1.37%) Apache
6 90 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 20 (0.30%) SAS
9 17 (0.25%) CMS
10 15 (0.22%) Appian
10 15 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.19%) Camunda
11 13 (0.19%) IIS
12 12 (0.18%) Mendix
13 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
13 10 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 8 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
14 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
14 8 (0.12%) SugarCRM
15 7 (0.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 123 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 96 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.71%) MS Visio
4 46 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 46 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.19%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.12%) Trello
7 5 (0.074%) Acrobat
7 5 (0.074%) PTC Creo
7 5 (0.074%) Weka
8 4 (0.059%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
10 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.015%) InDesign
10 1 (0.015%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 103 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.18%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.10%) Endur
6 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.089%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.089%) Dynamics NAV
7 6 (0.089%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.089%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.089%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.074%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.074%) SAP BPC
8 5 (0.074%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.074%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 4 (0.059%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 2,369 (35.18%) AWS
2 1,348 (20.02%) GCP
3 1,340 (19.90%) Azure DevOps
4 909 (13.50%) Power Platform
5 802 (11.91%) Entra ID
6 766 (11.38%) Microsoft 365
7 696 (10.34%) GitHub
8 490 (7.28%) Azure Data Factory
9 411 (6.10%) GitHub Actions
10 400 (5.94%) Serverless
11 322 (4.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 287 (4.26%) Dynamics 365
13 276 (4.10%) SaaS
14 264 (3.92%) Azure AKS
15 258 (3.83%) Power Automate
16 243 (3.61%) Azure Functions
17 231 (3.43%) Snowflake
18 227 (3.37%) Azure Monitor
19 226 (3.36%) PaaS
20 206 (3.06%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 447 (6.64%) Firewall
2 282 (4.19%) DNS
3 227 (3.37%) VPN
4 204 (3.03%) Network Security
5 163 (2.42%) DHCP
6 162 (2.41%) WAN
7 108 (1.60%) LAN
8 97 (1.44%) TCP/IP
9 89 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
10 82 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 70 (1.04%) Kerberos
11 70 (1.04%) VLAN
12 57 (0.85%) HTTP
13 42 (0.62%) BGP
14 39 (0.58%) Wireless
15 38 (0.56%) SSL
16 35 (0.52%) OSPF
17 34 (0.50%) Internet
18 33 (0.49%) MPLS
19 31 (0.46%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 619 (9.19%) Power BI
2 394 (5.85%) SQL Server
3 368 (5.47%) Data Warehouse
4 339 (5.03%) Data Lake
5 268 (3.98%) PostgreSQL
6 246 (3.65%) Azure SQL Database
7 197 (2.93%) NoSQL
8 167 (2.48%) Metadata
9 124 (1.84%) Delta Lake
9 124 (1.84%) Relational Database
10 98 (1.46%) Big Data
10 98 (1.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 91 (1.35%) MongoDB
12 82 (1.22%) MySQL
13 72 (1.07%) Tableau
14 70 (1.04%) BigQuery
15 66 (0.98%) Oracle Database
16 57 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
17 49 (0.73%) Redis
18 47 (0.70%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 534 (7.93%) Git
2 484 (7.19%) JIRA
3 363 (5.39%) Jenkins
4 277 (4.11%) GitLab
5 123 (1.83%) Selenium
6 91 (1.35%) Postman
7 77 (1.14%) Cucumber
8 75 (1.11%) JMeter
9 70 (1.04%) JUnit
10 50 (0.74%) SonarQube
11 49 (0.73%) MLflow
12 48 (0.71%) REST Assured
13 46 (0.68%) Cypress.io
14 41 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 35 (0.52%) Oracle APEX
16 32 (0.48%) TestRail
17 30 (0.45%) Artifactory
17 30 (0.45%) SpecFlow
18 29 (0.43%) ERwin
18 29 (0.43%) WebDriver
General
1 2,020 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 1,207 (17.93%) Finance
3 789 (11.72%) Public Sector
4 669 (9.94%) Analytical Skills
5 374 (5.55%) Banking
6 214 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
7 143 (2.12%) Legal
8 113 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 103 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
10 90 (1.34%) Retail
11 88 (1.31%) Marketing
12 87 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
13 83 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
14 65 (0.97%) Telecoms
15 60 (0.89%) Financial Institution
15 60 (0.89%) Investment Banking
16 57 (0.85%) Law
17 52 (0.77%) Front Office
18 49 (0.73%) Manufacturing
19 38 (0.56%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,117 (16.59%) Architect
2 964 (14.32%) Developer
3 740 (10.99%) Senior
4 565 (8.39%) Azure Engineer
5 553 (8.21%) Data Engineer
6 499 (7.41%) Lead
7 440 (6.53%) Analyst
8 327 (4.86%) DevOps Engineer
8 327 (4.86%) Solutions Architect
9 305 (4.53%) Consultant
10 187 (2.78%) Security Engineer
11 181 (2.69%) Cloud Engineer
12 178 (2.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 167 (2.48%) Azure Architect
14 166 (2.47%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 159 (2.36%) Senior Developer
16 145 (2.15%) Data Architect
16 145 (2.15%) Platform Engineer
17 136 (2.02%) Tester
18 135 (2.01%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 552 (8.20%) .NET
2 471 (7.00%) REST
3 335 (4.98%) React
4 260 (3.86%) RESTful
5 259 (3.85%) PySpark
6 244 (3.62%) Kafka
6 244 (3.62%) Node.js
7 207 (3.07%) Spring
8 203 (3.02%) OAuth
9 190 (2.82%) AngularJS
10 188 (2.79%) HTML
11 180 (2.67%) Spring Boot
12 155 (2.30%) CSS
13 153 (2.27%) LDAP
14 149 (2.21%) PyTorch
15 147 (2.18%) SOAP
16 138 (2.05%) JSON
17 134 (1.99%) TensorFlow
18 127 (1.89%) Middleware
18 127 (1.89%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 606 (9.00%) Cloud Native
2 259 (3.85%) Onboarding
3 243 (3.61%) Product Ownership
4 178 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
5 173 (2.57%) Security Posture
6 172 (2.55%) Data Centre
7 159 (2.36%) Enterprise Software
8 155 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
9 126 (1.87%) Public Cloud
10 117 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
11 102 (1.51%) AI Agents
12 89 (1.32%) Data Structures
13 82 (1.22%) Algorithms
13 82 (1.22%) Replication
14 77 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
15 73 (1.08%) Management Information System
16 69 (1.02%) Low-Code
17 67 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
18 65 (0.97%) NHS
19 53 (0.79%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 737 (10.95%) Windows
2 363 (5.39%) Linux
3 200 (2.97%) Windows Server
4 124 (1.84%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.19%) Unix
6 61 (0.91%) VMS
7 49 (0.73%) Mac OS
8 48 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.58%) Apple iOS
10 30 (0.45%) Android
11 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.27%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 8 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.12%) Solaris
17 7 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.089%) CoreOS
19 5 (0.074%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,462 (36.57%) DevOps
2 2,076 (30.83%) CI/CD
3 1,646 (24.45%) Agile
4 1,205 (17.90%) Problem-Solving
5 1,016 (15.09%) Analytics
6 922 (13.69%) AI
7 902 (13.40%) Infrastructure as Code
8 849 (12.61%) Migration
9 706 (10.49%) Data Modelling
10 703 (10.44%) Stakeholder Management
11 693 (10.29%) Business Intelligence
12 670 (9.95%) Containerisation
13 627 (9.31%) Continuous Improvement
14 605 (8.99%) Data Pipeline
14 605 (8.99%) ETL
15 603 (8.96%) Machine Learning
16 599 (8.90%) Microservices
17 576 (8.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 558 (8.29%) Test Automation
19 542 (8.05%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,766 (26.23%) Python
2 1,498 (22.25%) SQL
3 734 (10.90%) PowerShell
4 598 (8.88%) C#
5 571 (8.48%) Java
6 527 (7.83%) JavaScript
7 311 (4.62%) TypeScript
8 264 (3.92%) Bash
9 201 (2.99%) Bicep
10 95 (1.41%) Scala
11 82 (1.22%) Go
11 82 (1.22%) PL/SQL
12 80 (1.19%) Kusto Query Language
13 76 (1.13%) T-SQL
14 74 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 46 (0.68%) R
16 45 (0.67%) Shell Script
17 39 (0.58%) C++
18 36 (0.53%) PHP
19 23 (0.34%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,594 (23.67%) Security Cleared
2 1,316 (19.55%) SC Cleared
3 548 (8.14%) Degree
4 368 (5.47%) Azure Certification
5 214 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 187 (2.78%) CISSP
7 169 (2.51%) Microsoft Certification
8 140 (2.08%) AWS Certification
9 130 (1.93%) DV Cleared
10 126 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
11 118 (1.75%) CISM
12 117 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
13 91 (1.35%) Master's Degree
14 67 (1.00%) TOGAF Certification
15 60 (0.89%) CCNP
16 58 (0.86%) PMI Certification
17 55 (0.82%) ISTQB
17 55 (0.82%) PMP
18 40 (0.59%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.50%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 455 (6.76%) Data Quality
2 395 (5.87%) GDPR
3 356 (5.29%) QA
4 296 (4.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 232 (3.45%) NIST
6 133 (1.98%) Accessibility
7 102 (1.51%) NCSC
8 81 (1.20%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 59 (0.88%) SLA
11 57 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
12 49 (0.73%) PMO
13 41 (0.61%) HIPAA
14 36 (0.53%) GRC
15 34 (0.50%) SOC 2
15 34 (0.50%) WCAG
16 25 (0.37%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.36%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.34%) PSD2
19 22 (0.33%) NIST 800
System Software
1 865 (12.85%) Active Directory
2 810 (12.03%) Docker
3 194 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.37%) Hyper-V
5 89 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
6 76 (1.13%) vSphere
7 74 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
9 18 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.22%) Firmware
11 14 (0.21%) NFS
12 9 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.12%) Postfix
14 7 (0.10%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.10%) KVM
14 7 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.10%) Snort
15 6 (0.089%) GPFS
15 6 (0.089%) Lustre
16 5 (0.074%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 1,029 (15.28%) Terraform
2 984 (14.61%) Kubernetes
3 361 (5.36%) Microsoft Intune
4 313 (4.65%) Ansible
5 169 (2.51%) Grafana
6 162 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
7 150 (2.23%) Prometheus
8 139 (2.06%) SCCM
9 73 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 50 (0.74%) Argo
11 29 (0.43%) Istio
12 28 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 26 (0.39%) Puppet
14 25 (0.37%) vRealize
15 23 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
16 22 (0.33%) Progress Chef
17 20 (0.30%) HP ALM
18 19 (0.28%) Nmap
18 19 (0.28%) vCenter Server
19 18 (0.27%) Nessus
Vendors
1 2,152 (31.96%) Microsoft
2 684 (10.16%) Databricks
3 347 (5.15%) Oracle
4 339 (5.03%) Google
5 290 (4.31%) ServiceNow
6 265 (3.94%) VMware
7 196 (2.91%) SAP
8 165 (2.45%) Cisco
9 162 (2.41%) OpenAI
10 157 (2.33%) Splunk
11 119 (1.77%) CyberArk
12 106 (1.57%) Palo Alto
13 104 (1.54%) Salesforce
14 102 (1.51%) Foundry
15 85 (1.26%) Okta
16 75 (1.11%) Red Hat
17 73 (1.08%) Citrix
18 70 (1.04%) IBM
19 65 (0.97%) BeyondTrust
20 64 (0.95%) Fortinet