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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,718 4,519 5,935
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.47% 15.39% 13.60%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.57% 40.60% 42.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,424 3,173 4,285
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -2.79% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 33 50
10th Percentile £19.25 £26.45 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.25 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -43.41%
75th Percentile £71.94 £78.70 £61.19
90th Percentile £93.06 £97.75 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £51.25
% change year-on-year -11.54% +26.83% -14.97%

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 17,713 11,130 14,126
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.50% 37.89% 32.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,857 7,532 9,982
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £619 £634
90th Percentile £712 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.79% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 574 270 357
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.15 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.84 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.31 £28.00 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.25% +30.23% -41.89%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £19.14 £19.09
% change year-on-year +95.98% +0.26% -30.60%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 6,541 £525 - 2,428
London +1 3,478 £540 -1.82% 880
UK excluding London +2 3,289 £500 - 1,982
Work from Home -1 2,371 £525 +2.44% 1,325
North of England +5 943 £500 +5.26% 487
South East +3 841 £505 +1.00% 606
Midlands +1 533 £500 +1.01% 282
North West +4 475 £500 +5.26% 288
South West +5 409 £530 +3.41% 268
West Midlands +2 391 £500 -4.76% 185
Yorkshire +8 386 £500 +8.11% 122
Scotland +10 327 £525 +5.00% 93
East of England +7 157 £550 -5.17% 178
East Midlands +3 132 £470 +1.62% 97
Wales +1 106 £425 +6.25% 59
North East +5 94 £525 +5.00% 77
Northern Ireland +15 18 £531 +11.84% 45
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
1 373 (4.83%) SharePoint
2 224 (2.90%) Confluence
3 192 (2.49%) Apache Spark
4 190 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
5 116 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.39%) Apache
7 39 (0.51%) SAS
8 25 (0.32%) IIS
9 19 (0.25%) CMS
10 17 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 11 (0.14%) Appian
12 11 (0.14%) Mendix
13 10 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.13%) Camunda
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 8 (0.10%) HCL Notes
14 8 (0.10%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 105 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 65 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 25 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.14%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.10%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.091%) Revit
9 7 (0.091%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.065%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.065%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.052%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.052%) Notion
11 4 (0.052%) Trello
12 2 (0.026%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.013%) InDesign
13 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.013%) Sketch
13 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 106 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 22 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.14%) Maximo
5 10 (0.13%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
8 7 (0.091%) Shopify
9 6 (0.078%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.078%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.065%) Endur
10 5 (0.065%) NEC Housing
10 5 (0.065%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.065%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.065%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 4 (0.052%) Quorum
11 4 (0.052%) R3 Corda
11 4 (0.052%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,651 (34.35%) AWS
2 1,571 (20.36%) Azure DevOps
3 1,304 (16.90%) GCP
4 986 (12.78%) Power Platform
5 944 (12.23%) Entra ID
6 793 (10.27%) Microsoft 365
7 705 (9.13%) GitHub
8 479 (6.21%) Azure Data Factory
9 428 (5.55%) GitHub Actions
10 382 (4.95%) Serverless
11 312 (4.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 306 (3.96%) SaaS
13 280 (3.63%) Azure AKS
14 261 (3.38%) Power Automate
15 253 (3.28%) Dynamics 365
16 243 (3.15%) PaaS
17 238 (3.08%) Azure Monitor
18 226 (2.93%) PowerApps
19 199 (2.58%) Azure Functions
20 198 (2.57%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 452 (5.86%) Firewall
2 338 (4.38%) DNS
3 264 (3.42%) Network Security
4 256 (3.32%) VPN
5 217 (2.81%) WAN
6 179 (2.32%) DHCP
7 133 (1.72%) LAN
8 125 (1.62%) SD-WAN
9 97 (1.26%) TCP/IP
10 88 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 82 (1.06%) BGP
12 70 (0.91%) VLAN
13 68 (0.88%) OSPF
14 64 (0.83%) Kerberos
15 57 (0.74%) SSL
16 51 (0.66%) SAN
17 50 (0.65%) VXLAN
18 48 (0.62%) Wireless
19 44 (0.57%) IPsec
20 38 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 654 (8.47%) Power BI
2 444 (5.75%) SQL Server
3 368 (4.77%) Data Lake
4 365 (4.73%) Data Warehouse
5 257 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
6 231 (2.99%) Azure SQL Database
7 201 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 180 (2.33%) Metadata
9 146 (1.89%) Delta Lake
10 118 (1.53%) Big Data
11 113 (1.46%) Relational Database
12 96 (1.24%) MongoDB
12 96 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 76 (0.98%) Tableau
14 68 (0.88%) MySQL
14 68 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
15 64 (0.83%) BigQuery
16 61 (0.79%) Oracle Database
17 52 (0.67%) Star Schema
18 49 (0.63%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 551 (7.14%) JIRA
2 546 (7.07%) Git
3 387 (5.01%) Jenkins
4 320 (4.15%) GitLab
5 126 (1.63%) Selenium
6 82 (1.06%) Postman
7 74 (0.96%) JMeter
8 66 (0.86%) Cucumber
9 60 (0.78%) REST Assured
10 59 (0.76%) JUnit
11 46 (0.60%) MLflow
12 45 (0.58%) SonarQube
13 42 (0.54%) Visual Studio
14 39 (0.51%) WebDriver
15 38 (0.49%) Cypress.io
16 31 (0.40%) Artifactory
16 31 (0.40%) Gatling
17 29 (0.38%) Maven
18 25 (0.32%) NUnit
18 25 (0.32%) TestRail
General
1 1,975 (25.59%) Social Skills
2 1,410 (18.27%) Finance
3 851 (11.03%) Public Sector
4 680 (8.81%) Analytical Skills
5 392 (5.08%) Banking
6 231 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
7 196 (2.54%) Legal
8 143 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 127 (1.65%) Retail
10 91 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
11 76 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
12 69 (0.89%) Investment Banking
12 69 (0.89%) Law
12 69 (0.89%) Marketing
13 67 (0.87%) Financial Institution
14 64 (0.83%) Front Office
15 60 (0.78%) Telecoms
16 56 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
17 49 (0.63%) Manufacturing
18 45 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,357 (17.58%) Architect
2 967 (12.53%) Developer
3 928 (12.02%) Senior
4 684 (8.86%) Azure Engineer
5 594 (7.70%) Lead
6 589 (7.63%) Data Engineer
7 476 (6.17%) Analyst
8 412 (5.34%) DevOps Engineer
9 373 (4.83%) Solutions Architect
10 315 (4.08%) Consultant
11 276 (3.58%) Cloud Engineer
12 271 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 213 (2.76%) Azure Architect
14 206 (2.67%) Data Architect
15 204 (2.64%) Security Engineer
16 191 (2.47%) Platform Engineer
17 178 (2.31%) Technical Architect
18 176 (2.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 168 (2.18%) Business Analyst
19 168 (2.18%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 619 (8.02%) .NET
2 543 (7.04%) REST
3 339 (4.39%) React
4 276 (3.58%) Kafka
5 258 (3.34%) PySpark
6 254 (3.29%) RESTful
7 224 (2.90%) OAuth
8 211 (2.73%) Node.js
9 207 (2.68%) Spring
10 185 (2.40%) AngularJS
11 180 (2.33%) LDAP
12 175 (2.27%) Spring Boot
13 159 (2.06%) JSON
14 150 (1.94%) SAML
15 149 (1.93%) OpenID
16 144 (1.87%) HTML
17 138 (1.79%) SOAP
18 133 (1.72%) Middleware
19 119 (1.54%) CSS
20 116 (1.50%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 772 (10.00%) Cloud Native
2 318 (4.12%) Onboarding
3 296 (3.84%) Product Ownership
4 255 (3.30%) Data Centre
5 215 (2.79%) Hybrid Cloud
6 195 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
7 192 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
8 174 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
9 171 (2.22%) Security Posture
10 161 (2.09%) Public Cloud
11 160 (2.07%) AI Agents
12 106 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
13 102 (1.32%) Data Structures
14 90 (1.17%) Management Information System
15 87 (1.13%) Replication
16 80 (1.04%) PKI
17 79 (1.02%) Low-Code
18 72 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
19 71 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
20 70 (0.91%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 875 (11.34%) Windows
2 384 (4.98%) Linux
3 275 (3.56%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.53%) Windows 10
5 78 (1.01%) Apple iOS
6 75 (0.97%) Mac OS
7 71 (0.92%) Unix
8 67 (0.87%) VMS
9 66 (0.86%) Android
10 63 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 33 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
12 28 (0.36%) Ubuntu
13 18 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
14 17 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
16 11 (0.14%) CentOS
17 10 (0.13%) Debian
17 10 (0.13%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.091%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.091%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,866 (37.13%) DevOps
2 2,384 (30.89%) CI/CD
3 1,813 (23.49%) Agile
4 1,133 (14.68%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,097 (14.21%) AI
5 1,097 (14.21%) Migration
6 1,072 (13.89%) Analytics
7 1,063 (13.77%) Problem-Solving
8 855 (11.08%) Data Modelling
9 833 (10.79%) Stakeholder Management
10 747 (9.68%) Continuous Improvement
11 723 (9.37%) Data Pipeline
12 707 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
13 694 (8.99%) Containerisation
14 690 (8.94%) Roadmaps
15 683 (8.85%) ETL
16 681 (8.82%) Microservices
17 669 (8.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 611 (7.92%) Test Automation
19 589 (7.63%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,792 (23.22%) Python
2 1,571 (20.36%) SQL
3 767 (9.94%) PowerShell
4 638 (8.27%) Java
5 627 (8.12%) C#
6 456 (5.91%) JavaScript
7 300 (3.89%) TypeScript
8 257 (3.33%) Bash
9 255 (3.30%) Bicep
10 90 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 88 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 83 (1.08%) Scala
13 76 (0.98%) Go
14 49 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
15 45 (0.58%) Shell Script
16 39 (0.51%) PL/SQL
16 39 (0.51%) R
17 31 (0.40%) C++
18 28 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 16 (0.21%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,909 (24.73%) Security Cleared
2 1,615 (20.93%) SC Cleared
3 536 (6.94%) Degree
4 396 (5.13%) Azure Certification
5 234 (3.03%) CISSP
6 198 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
7 191 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
8 181 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
9 180 (2.33%) DV Cleared
10 170 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
11 164 (2.12%) AWS Certification
12 129 (1.67%) CISM
13 84 (1.09%) CCNP
14 80 (1.04%) PMP
15 75 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 72 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 63 (0.82%) ISTQB
18 57 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
19 56 (0.73%) Master's Degree
20 48 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 525 (6.80%) Data Quality
2 399 (5.17%) QA
3 336 (4.35%) GDPR
4 288 (3.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 272 (3.52%) NIST
6 152 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 112 (1.45%) NCSC
8 97 (1.26%) SLA
9 78 (1.01%) PCI DSS
10 69 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 55 (0.71%) GRC
12 55 (0.71%) WCAG
13 48 (0.62%) PMO
14 37 (0.48%) HIPAA
15 27 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.34%) NIST 800
17 25 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 17 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 940 (12.18%) Active Directory
2 790 (10.24%) Docker
3 228 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 134 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
5 123 (1.59%) Hyper-V
6 117 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
7 72 (0.93%) vSphere
8 53 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.39%) Firmware
10 28 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 22 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 6 (0.078%) Ceph
15 6 (0.078%) KVM
15 6 (0.078%) RACF
16 5 (0.065%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.065%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,206 (15.63%) Terraform
2 1,080 (13.99%) Kubernetes
3 407 (5.27%) Microsoft Intune
4 361 (4.68%) Ansible
5 214 (2.77%) Grafana
6 187 (2.42%) Prometheus
7 166 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.43%) SCCM
9 74 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
11 42 (0.54%) Argo
12 38 (0.49%) Progress Chef
13 36 (0.47%) FortiGate
13 36 (0.47%) Puppet
14 33 (0.43%) Istio
15 24 (0.31%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
16 20 (0.26%) HP ALM
17 16 (0.21%) linkerd
17 16 (0.21%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,452 (31.77%) Microsoft
2 748 (9.69%) Databricks
3 331 (4.29%) ServiceNow
4 313 (4.06%) VMware
5 295 (3.82%) Google
6 281 (3.64%) Oracle
7 214 (2.77%) SAP
8 211 (2.73%) Cisco
9 188 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 157 (2.03%) Splunk
11 144 (1.87%) Palo Alto
12 143 (1.85%) CyberArk
13 130 (1.68%) Salesforce
14 117 (1.52%) Foundry
15 101 (1.31%) Okta
16 84 (1.09%) Dynatrace
17 75 (0.97%) Citrix
18 73 (0.95%) Informatica
19 70 (0.91%) Zscaler
20 67 (0.87%) Red Hat