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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,323 5,004 5,528
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.16% 15.11% 14.52%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.67% 39.72% 42.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,817 3,413 3,755
10th Percentile £363 £350 £341
25th Percentile £443 £415 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £530
Median % change year-on-year +1.35% -2.26% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £720 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 45 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.29 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.18% -2.86% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.50 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £92.50 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £19.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +107.89% -58.86% -

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 19,058 12,598 13,090
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.71% 38.04% 34.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,644 8,413 8,692
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £715 £720 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 630 297 188
10th Percentile £15.49 £15.50 £16.21
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £26.30 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.57% -24.86% +6.06%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.00 £64.73
90th Percentile £79.10 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.38 £19.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +59.87% -42.42% +45.05%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 7,075 £525 - 8,010
London 0 3,720 £550 +0.92% 3,892
UK excluding London 0 3,510 £510 +2.00% 4,977
Work from Home -2 2,513 £525 +5.00% 3,744
North of England +5 1,013 £500 +5.26% 1,264
South East 0 899 £525 +5.00% 1,235
Midlands +1 640 £493 -5.01% 719
North West +5 493 £500 +5.26% 661
West Midlands +2 488 £479 -12.91% 436
Yorkshire +5 434 £500 +5.26% 444
South West +2 413 £550 +7.53% 578
Scotland +3 293 £520 +4.00% 462
East of England 0 195 £505 - 406
East Midlands +3 148 £500 +8.11% 283
North East +4 100 £513 +2.50% 170
Wales -1 85 £450 - 192
Northern Ireland +17 14 £650 - 155
Channel Islands -8 3 £500 -21.88% 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
1 469 (5.63%) SharePoint
2 272 (3.27%) Confluence
3 196 (2.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 188 (2.26%) Apache Spark
5 158 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.39%) Apache
7 37 (0.44%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.072%) ThingWorx
16 6 (0.072%) Traefik
Applications
1 122 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
4 48 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.50%) Chatbot
5 42 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 8 (0.096%) Trello
8 7 (0.084%) CPLEX
8 7 (0.084%) Revit
9 5 (0.060%) Notion
10 4 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.036%) 1Password
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) Mingle
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Windchill
13 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 131 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.096%) Magento
10 7 (0.084%) Cloudability
10 7 (0.084%) Shopify
11 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 6 (0.072%) Teamcenter
11 6 (0.072%) Temenos T24
12 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
12 5 (0.060%) FLEXCUBE
12 5 (0.060%) Maximo
13 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 2,985 (35.86%) AWS
2 1,760 (21.15%) Azure DevOps
3 1,475 (17.72%) GCP
4 1,134 (13.62%) Entra ID
5 1,075 (12.92%) Power Platform
6 886 (10.65%) Microsoft 365
7 870 (10.45%) GitHub
8 497 (5.97%) GitHub Actions
9 464 (5.57%) Azure Data Factory
10 378 (4.54%) Serverless
11 362 (4.35%) SaaS
12 320 (3.84%) Azure Monitor
13 305 (3.66%) Power Automate
14 302 (3.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 302 (3.63%) Dynamics 365
15 295 (3.54%) Azure AKS
16 291 (3.50%) Snowflake
17 284 (3.41%) PowerApps
18 252 (3.03%) Microsoft Copilot
19 251 (3.02%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 516 (6.20%) Firewall
2 416 (5.00%) DNS
3 313 (3.76%) VPN
4 292 (3.51%) Network Security
5 231 (2.78%) DHCP
6 180 (2.16%) WAN
7 166 (1.99%) TCP/IP
8 106 (1.27%) LAN
9 104 (1.25%) BGP
10 97 (1.17%) SD-WAN
11 84 (1.01%) VLAN
12 83 (1.00%) OSPF
13 80 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
14 72 (0.87%) SSL
15 67 (0.80%) Wireless
16 62 (0.74%) SAN
17 46 (0.55%) HTTP
18 44 (0.53%) IPsec
19 42 (0.50%) VXLAN
20 39 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 699 (8.40%) Power BI
2 474 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 405 (4.87%) Data Warehouse
4 390 (4.69%) Data Lake
5 290 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
6 254 (3.05%) Metadata
7 215 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 201 (2.41%) Azure SQL Database
9 148 (1.78%) Relational Database
10 129 (1.55%) Delta Lake
11 115 (1.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 106 (1.27%) MySQL
13 105 (1.26%) MongoDB
14 91 (1.09%) Big Data
15 71 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.83%) Redis
17 64 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
18 61 (0.73%) BigQuery
19 58 (0.70%) Oracle Database
20 56 (0.67%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 753 (9.05%) Git
2 618 (7.43%) JIRA
3 472 (5.67%) Jenkins
4 379 (4.55%) GitLab
5 140 (1.68%) Selenium
6 90 (1.08%) Postman
7 67 (0.80%) Cucumber
8 64 (0.77%) Cypress.io
8 64 (0.77%) JUnit
9 58 (0.70%) JMeter
10 56 (0.67%) Claude Code
11 55 (0.66%) Maven
12 53 (0.64%) Gradle
12 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
13 50 (0.60%) Visual Studio
14 49 (0.59%) REST Assured
15 36 (0.43%) WebDriver
16 35 (0.42%) Bitbucket
17 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
18 31 (0.37%) MLflow
General
1 2,302 (27.66%) Social Skills
2 1,608 (19.32%) Finance
3 956 (11.49%) Public Sector
4 811 (9.74%) Analytical Skills
5 499 (6.00%) Banking
6 223 (2.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 218 (2.62%) Retail
8 204 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
9 172 (2.07%) Legal
10 114 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 114 (1.37%) Manufacturing
11 97 (1.17%) Investment Banking
12 93 (1.12%) Marketing
12 93 (1.12%) Telecoms
13 88 (1.06%) Aerospace
14 82 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
15 78 (0.94%) Military
16 65 (0.78%) Law
17 61 (0.73%) Local Government
18 60 (0.72%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,586 (19.06%) Architect
2 1,058 (12.71%) Senior
3 1,023 (12.29%) Developer
4 723 (8.69%) Azure Engineer
5 688 (8.27%) Lead
6 592 (7.11%) Data Engineer
7 491 (5.90%) Solutions Architect
8 468 (5.62%) Analyst
9 462 (5.55%) DevOps Engineer
10 384 (4.61%) Cloud Engineer
11 321 (3.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 320 (3.84%) Consultant
13 268 (3.22%) Data Architect
14 234 (2.81%) Platform Engineer
15 216 (2.60%) Azure Architect
16 210 (2.52%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 203 (2.44%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 200 (2.40%) Technical Architect
19 198 (2.38%) Security Engineer
20 181 (2.17%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,427 (17.15%) Terraform
2 763 (9.17%) REST
3 629 (7.56%) .NET
4 402 (4.83%) Kafka
5 312 (3.75%) React
6 304 (3.65%) RESTful
7 272 (3.27%) OAuth
8 264 (3.17%) PySpark
9 240 (2.88%) JSON
10 195 (2.34%) Spring
11 186 (2.23%) Spring Boot
12 164 (1.97%) HTML
13 163 (1.96%) OAuth2
14 162 (1.95%) OpenID
15 153 (1.84%) Node.js
16 150 (1.80%) Middleware
17 148 (1.78%) SAML
18 147 (1.77%) AngularJS
19 146 (1.75%) SOAP
20 134 (1.61%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 942 (11.32%) Cloud Native
2 427 (5.13%) Onboarding
3 392 (4.71%) Product Ownership
4 325 (3.90%) Enterprise Software
5 321 (3.86%) AI Agents
6 283 (3.40%) Hybrid Cloud
7 276 (3.32%) Distributed Systems
8 253 (3.04%) Data Centre
9 228 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
10 183 (2.20%) Security Posture
11 180 (2.16%) Management Information System
12 150 (1.80%) Data Structures
13 143 (1.72%) Public Cloud
14 128 (1.54%) PKI
15 112 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
16 111 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
17 99 (1.19%) Replication
18 98 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
19 89 (1.07%) Low-Code
20 88 (1.06%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 1,001 (12.03%) Windows
2 530 (6.37%) Linux
3 388 (4.66%) Windows Server
4 151 (1.81%) Windows 10
5 93 (1.12%) Android
6 89 (1.07%) Apple iOS
7 88 (1.06%) Unix
8 85 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 72 (0.87%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.67%) Ubuntu
11 53 (0.64%) VMS
12 27 (0.32%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.084%) Debian
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
19 5 (0.060%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,068 (36.86%) DevOps
2 2,709 (32.55%) CI/CD
3 2,099 (25.22%) Agile
4 1,515 (18.20%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,444 (17.35%) AI
6 1,434 (17.23%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,242 (14.92%) Migration
8 1,149 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
9 1,123 (13.49%) Analytics
10 974 (11.70%) Continuous Improvement
11 899 (10.80%) Data Modelling
12 867 (10.42%) Roadmaps
13 793 (9.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 788 (9.47%) Containerisation
15 764 (9.18%) Business Intelligence
16 760 (9.13%) Technical Leadership
17 759 (9.12%) Test Automation
18 740 (8.89%) Data Pipeline
19 737 (8.85%) Microservices
20 670 (8.05%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,924 (23.12%) Python
2 1,607 (19.31%) SQL
3 914 (10.98%) PowerShell
4 696 (8.36%) Java
5 610 (7.33%) C#
6 518 (6.22%) JavaScript
7 421 (5.06%) Bash
8 367 (4.41%) Bicep
9 310 (3.72%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 95 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 83 (1.00%) Go
13 66 (0.79%) Scala
14 62 (0.74%) Shell Script
15 59 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
16 43 (0.52%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 33 (0.40%) C++
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.38%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 2,161 (25.96%) Security Cleared
2 1,740 (20.91%) SC Cleared
3 565 (6.79%) Degree
4 475 (5.71%) Azure Certification
5 307 (3.69%) DV Cleared
6 271 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
7 267 (3.21%) CISSP
8 251 (3.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 214 (2.57%) AWS Certification
10 192 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
11 186 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
12 137 (1.65%) CISM
13 95 (1.14%) PMI Certification
14 91 (1.09%) PMP
15 90 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 83 (1.00%) CCNP
17 65 (0.78%) ISTQB
18 64 (0.77%) CCSP
18 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
19 51 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 618 (7.43%) Data Quality
2 471 (5.66%) QA
3 297 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 286 (3.44%) GDPR
4 286 (3.44%) NIST
5 209 (2.51%) Accessibility
6 113 (1.36%) NCSC
7 108 (1.30%) SLA
8 84 (1.01%) GRC
9 82 (0.99%) WCAG
10 78 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
11 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
12 52 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 49 (0.59%) PMO
14 44 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 34 (0.41%) SOC 2
16 27 (0.32%) ISO 20022
17 26 (0.31%) HIPAA
18 22 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,029 (12.36%) Active Directory
2 932 (11.20%) Docker
3 248 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 147 (1.77%) Virtual Machines
6 131 (1.57%) Hyper-V
7 74 (0.89%) vSphere
8 51 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (0.37%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.24%) Firmware
11 17 (0.20%) IAG
12 14 (0.17%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.084%) Ceph
18 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
19 5 (0.060%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,317 (15.82%) Kubernetes
2 461 (5.54%) Ansible
3 450 (5.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 271 (3.26%) Grafana
5 212 (2.55%) Prometheus
6 147 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
7 141 (1.69%) SCCM
8 62 (0.74%) Argo
9 59 (0.71%) Progress Chef
10 48 (0.58%) Puppet
11 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
11 36 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
12 34 (0.41%) SCOM
13 30 (0.36%) Istio
14 24 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.24%) CASB
16 19 (0.23%) QRadar
16 19 (0.23%) vCenter Server
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
18 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,027 (36.37%) Microsoft
2 871 (10.46%) Databricks
3 410 (4.93%) ServiceNow
4 400 (4.81%) Google
5 362 (4.35%) VMware
6 347 (4.17%) Oracle
7 237 (2.85%) Cisco
8 236 (2.84%) Splunk
9 222 (2.67%) SAP
10 220 (2.64%) OpenAI
11 190 (2.28%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.84%) Palo Alto
13 147 (1.77%) CyberArk
14 137 (1.65%) Foundry
15 129 (1.55%) Dynatrace
16 92 (1.11%) Zscaler
17 90 (1.08%) IBM
18 83 (1.00%) Informatica
19 80 (0.96%) Okta
20 78 (0.94%) Fortinet