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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,329 4,747 5,562
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.49% 14.51% 14.34%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.40% 39.04% 42.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,829 3,222 3,932
10th Percentile £370 £350 £343
25th Percentile £438 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £630
90th Percentile £715 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 175 46 38
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.31 £18.05
25th Percentile £21.29 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.29% +10.71% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.88 £72.50 £60.58
90th Percentile £97.75 £91.88 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year -41.15% +96.97% -28.54%

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 18,758 12,160 13,128
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.90% 37.17% 33.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,425 8,096 9,068
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 606 315 229
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.35 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.63 £18.69 £18.16
Median hourly rate £33.99 £28.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.26% +1.79% -20.28%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.88 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.75 £67.40 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £18.87 £22.25
% change year-on-year +72.23% -15.19% -17.59%

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 28 August 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 28 August 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 28 August 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 7,140 £525 - 5,859
London +1 3,739 £550 +1.29% 3,025
UK excluding London +2 3,574 £500 - 3,656
Work from Home 0 2,536 £525 +5.00% 2,811
North of England +8 1,044 £500 +5.26% 973
South East +3 927 £525 +5.00% 938
Midlands +4 643 £490 -4.62% 495
North West +6 533 £491 +3.37% 535
West Midlands +3 472 £488 -9.47% 302
Yorkshire +6 429 £500 +5.26% 305
South West +6 427 £540 +8.00% 487
Scotland +11 289 £500 +5.26% 280
East of England +3 174 £525 +3.45% 287
East Midlands +9 159 £494 +6.76% 192
North East +8 95 £506 +1.25% 142
Wales -1 88 £483 +7.22% 105
Northern Ireland +10 12 £650 +36.84% 130
Channel Islands 0 11 £450 -29.69% 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
1 454 (5.45%) SharePoint
2 268 (3.22%) Confluence
3 199 (2.39%) Microsoft Exchange
4 173 (2.08%) Apache Spark
5 155 (1.86%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.39%) Apache
7 43 (0.52%) SAS
8 36 (0.43%) IIS
9 25 (0.30%) SharePoint Server
10 23 (0.28%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.084%) Apache Superset
16 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 7 (0.084%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.072%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 125 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.46%) Chatbot
4 38 (0.46%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.12%) Trello
8 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.096%) Revit
9 8 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.060%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
13 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 127 (1.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.072%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Maximo
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Endur
11 4 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,980 (35.78%) AWS
2 1,783 (21.41%) Azure DevOps
3 1,404 (16.86%) GCP
4 1,087 (13.05%) Entra ID
5 1,066 (12.80%) Power Platform
6 862 (10.35%) Microsoft 365
7 836 (10.04%) GitHub
8 497 (5.97%) GitHub Actions
9 477 (5.73%) Azure Data Factory
10 368 (4.42%) Serverless
11 355 (4.26%) SaaS
12 323 (3.88%) Azure Monitor
13 309 (3.71%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 304 (3.65%) Azure AKS
15 291 (3.49%) Power Automate
16 283 (3.40%) Dynamics 365
17 276 (3.31%) PowerApps
18 262 (3.15%) Snowflake
19 236 (2.83%) PaaS
20 225 (2.70%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 530 (6.36%) Firewall
2 418 (5.02%) DNS
3 324 (3.89%) VPN
4 312 (3.75%) Network Security
5 220 (2.64%) DHCP
6 199 (2.39%) WAN
7 169 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.42%) LAN
9 113 (1.36%) BGP
10 104 (1.25%) SD-WAN
11 92 (1.10%) VLAN
12 90 (1.08%) OSPF
13 84 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 72 (0.86%) SSL
15 61 (0.73%) SAN
16 55 (0.66%) Wireless
17 48 (0.58%) HTTP
18 47 (0.56%) IPsec
18 47 (0.56%) VXLAN
19 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 726 (8.72%) Power BI
2 462 (5.55%) SQL Server
3 411 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 365 (4.38%) Data Lake
5 284 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 236 (2.83%) Metadata
7 220 (2.64%) Azure SQL Database
8 218 (2.62%) NoSQL
9 143 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 136 (1.63%) Delta Lake
11 102 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 101 (1.21%) MongoDB
13 97 (1.16%) Big Data
14 79 (0.95%) MySQL
15 67 (0.80%) Tableau
16 66 (0.79%) Redis
17 65 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
18 63 (0.76%) Snowflake Schema
19 61 (0.73%) Star Schema
20 58 (0.70%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 693 (8.32%) Git
2 613 (7.36%) JIRA
3 462 (5.55%) Jenkins
4 358 (4.30%) GitLab
5 136 (1.63%) Selenium
6 74 (0.89%) Postman
7 62 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 62 (0.74%) JUnit
8 56 (0.67%) JMeter
9 53 (0.64%) Maven
10 52 (0.62%) SonarQube
11 49 (0.59%) Cucumber
12 48 (0.58%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
14 44 (0.53%) Claude Code
14 44 (0.53%) Gradle
15 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 34 (0.41%) MLflow
17 31 (0.37%) LoadRunner
18 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,245 (26.95%) Social Skills
2 1,551 (18.62%) Finance
3 983 (11.80%) Public Sector
4 820 (9.85%) Analytical Skills
5 448 (5.38%) Banking
6 234 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 213 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 195 (2.34%) Retail
9 182 (2.19%) Legal
10 98 (1.18%) Manufacturing
11 97 (1.16%) Telecoms
12 95 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
13 83 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 77 (0.92%) Aerospace
14 77 (0.92%) Investment Banking
15 76 (0.91%) Marketing
16 74 (0.89%) Law
17 70 (0.84%) Military
18 64 (0.77%) Financial Institution
19 58 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,548 (18.59%) Architect
2 1,038 (12.46%) Senior
3 1,010 (12.13%) Developer
4 740 (8.88%) Azure Engineer
5 684 (8.21%) Lead
6 599 (7.19%) Data Engineer
7 497 (5.97%) Analyst
8 462 (5.55%) DevOps Engineer
9 444 (5.33%) Solutions Architect
10 356 (4.27%) Cloud Engineer
11 319 (3.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 310 (3.72%) Consultant
13 267 (3.21%) Data Architect
14 241 (2.89%) Platform Engineer
15 233 (2.80%) Azure Architect
16 204 (2.45%) Technical Architect
17 202 (2.43%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 186 (2.23%) Security Architect
18 186 (2.23%) Senior Developer
19 185 (2.22%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,390 (16.69%) Terraform
2 670 (8.04%) REST
3 633 (7.60%) .NET
4 365 (4.38%) Kafka
5 310 (3.72%) React
6 290 (3.48%) RESTful
7 274 (3.29%) PySpark
8 246 (2.95%) OAuth
9 226 (2.71%) JSON
10 206 (2.47%) Spring
11 181 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 167 (2.01%) Node.js
13 155 (1.86%) AngularJS
14 150 (1.80%) HTML
14 150 (1.80%) SAML
15 149 (1.79%) OpenID
16 142 (1.70%) OAuth2
17 139 (1.67%) .NET Framework
17 139 (1.67%) Playwright
18 137 (1.64%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 910 (10.93%) Cloud Native
2 412 (4.95%) Onboarding
3 363 (4.36%) Product Ownership
4 276 (3.31%) AI Agents
5 275 (3.30%) Hybrid Cloud
6 270 (3.24%) Enterprise Software
7 269 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
8 253 (3.04%) Data Centre
9 236 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
10 172 (2.07%) Security Posture
11 155 (1.86%) Management Information System
12 144 (1.73%) Data Structures
13 142 (1.70%) Public Cloud
14 119 (1.43%) Enterprise Cloud
15 117 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
16 114 (1.37%) PKI
17 98 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
18 96 (1.15%) Replication
19 81 (0.97%) CMDB
20 78 (0.94%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 987 (11.85%) Windows
2 509 (6.11%) Linux
3 364 (4.37%) Windows Server
4 133 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 85 (1.02%) Android
6 84 (1.01%) Unix
7 83 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 82 (0.98%) Apple iOS
9 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 63 (0.76%) VMS
11 54 (0.65%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.22%) CentOS
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 8 (0.096%) Data ONTAP
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,089 (37.09%) DevOps
2 2,613 (31.37%) CI/CD
3 2,083 (25.01%) Agile
4 1,363 (16.36%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,356 (16.28%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,334 (16.02%) AI
7 1,237 (14.85%) Migration
8 1,153 (13.84%) Analytics
9 1,120 (13.45%) Problem-Solving
10 939 (11.27%) Continuous Improvement
11 908 (10.90%) Data Modelling
12 815 (9.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 808 (9.70%) Roadmaps
14 779 (9.35%) Business Intelligence
14 779 (9.35%) Containerisation
15 769 (9.23%) Data Pipeline
16 741 (8.90%) Microservices
17 697 (8.37%) Technical Leadership
17 697 (8.37%) Test Automation
18 676 (8.12%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,896 (22.76%) Python
2 1,626 (19.52%) SQL
3 869 (10.43%) PowerShell
4 689 (8.27%) Java
5 608 (7.30%) C#
6 484 (5.81%) JavaScript
7 403 (4.84%) Bash
8 351 (4.21%) Bicep
9 288 (3.46%) TypeScript
10 104 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.08%) T-SQL
12 70 (0.84%) Go
13 62 (0.74%) Shell Script
14 59 (0.71%) Scala
15 58 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.50%) PL/SQL
17 41 (0.49%) R
18 39 (0.47%) Kotlin
19 34 (0.41%) Groovy
20 26 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,177 (26.14%) Security Cleared
2 1,766 (21.20%) SC Cleared
3 559 (6.71%) Degree
4 462 (5.55%) Azure Certification
5 287 (3.45%) DV Cleared
6 265 (3.18%) CISSP
7 256 (3.07%) BPSS Clearance
8 237 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
9 206 (2.47%) AWS Certification
9 206 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
10 185 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
11 135 (1.62%) CISM
12 94 (1.13%) CCNP
13 89 (1.07%) PMI Certification
14 86 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 84 (1.01%) PMP
16 73 (0.88%) ISTQB
17 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.67%) CCSP
19 44 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 601 (7.22%) Data Quality
2 450 (5.40%) QA
3 313 (3.76%) GDPR
3 313 (3.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 311 (3.73%) NIST
5 201 (2.41%) Accessibility
6 124 (1.49%) NCSC
7 104 (1.25%) SLA
8 79 (0.95%) WCAG
9 78 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
10 76 (0.91%) GRC
11 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
12 57 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 56 (0.67%) PMO
14 42 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.29%) SOC 2
17 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
17 20 (0.24%) ISO 20022
18 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,016 (12.20%) Active Directory
2 917 (11.01%) Docker
3 250 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
5 142 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
6 136 (1.63%) Hyper-V
7 65 (0.78%) vSphere
8 52 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.32%) Firmware
11 21 (0.25%) NFS
12 17 (0.20%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 12 (0.14%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Squid
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 6 (0.072%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,286 (15.44%) Kubernetes
2 454 (5.45%) Ansible
3 434 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
4 263 (3.16%) Grafana
5 211 (2.53%) Prometheus
6 146 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
7 126 (1.51%) SCCM
8 62 (0.74%) Progress Chef
9 61 (0.73%) Argo
10 48 (0.58%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 29 (0.35%) Istio
15 26 (0.31%) SCOM
16 22 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) Packer
18 19 (0.23%) QRadar
19 18 (0.22%) HAProxy
20 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,901 (34.83%) Microsoft
2 826 (9.92%) Databricks
3 406 (4.87%) ServiceNow
4 358 (4.30%) VMware
5 355 (4.26%) Google
6 324 (3.89%) Oracle
7 244 (2.93%) Cisco
8 222 (2.67%) SAP
9 212 (2.55%) Splunk
10 206 (2.47%) OpenAI
11 169 (2.03%) Salesforce
12 152 (1.82%) Palo Alto
13 150 (1.80%) CyberArk
14 133 (1.60%) Foundry
15 118 (1.42%) Dynatrace
16 100 (1.20%) Zscaler
17 94 (1.13%) Informatica
18 82 (0.98%) Okta
19 80 (0.96%) Fortinet
20 76 (0.91%) IBM