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

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,728 4,516 5,946
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.39% 15.24% 13.65%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.43% 40.22% 42.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,430 3,164 4,285
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £524 £535
Median % change year-on-year +0.19% -2.06% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £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 173 34 51
10th Percentile £19.25 £26.45 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.50 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +40.71% -42.34%
75th Percentile £72.50 £78.40 £60.78
90th Percentile £93.50 £96.63 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £67.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -14.81% +28.57% -12.50%

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 17,796 11,228 14,111
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.45% 37.90% 32.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,899 7,582 9,936
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.89% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £619 £631
90th Percentile £712 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.21% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 582 279 359
10th Percentile £16.50 £15.14 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.31 £28.00 £21.64
Median % change year-on-year +33.25% +29.39% -38.17%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £19.00 £19.95
% change year-on-year +97.37% -4.76% -26.38%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 6,545 £525 - 3,070
London +1 3,487 £540 -1.82% 1,234
UK excluding London +3 3,283 £500 - 2,285
Work from Home -1 2,371 £525 +2.44% 1,434
North of England +5 937 £500 +5.26% 561
South East +3 831 £505 +1.00% 670
Midlands -1 529 £500 - 321
North West +5 476 £500 +3.09% 317
South West +5 418 £528 +4.46% 312
West Midlands +2 394 £500 -4.76% 204
Yorkshire +5 379 £500 +5.26% 148
Scotland +11 328 £525 +5.00% 123
East of England +5 161 £550 -5.17% 208
East Midlands +5 125 £488 +5.41% 117
Wales +1 106 £425 +6.25% 64
North East +5 94 £525 +5.00% 97
Northern Ireland +14 19 £538 +13.16% 68
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -25.00%

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
2 232 (3.00%) Confluence
3 187 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
4 185 (2.39%) Apache Spark
5 118 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.38%) Apache
7 40 (0.52%) SAS
8 28 (0.36%) 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%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.14%) Mendix
13 10 (0.13%) Appian
13 10 (0.13%) Camunda
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.10%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 104 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 74 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
3 66 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 26 (0.34%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.14%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.091%) Revit
9 7 (0.091%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.065%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.052%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.052%) Adobe XD
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
1 108 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.14%) Maximo
6 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
8 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
9 7 (0.091%) Shopify
10 6 (0.078%) Oracle EBS
10 6 (0.078%) SimCorp Dimension
10 6 (0.078%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 6 (0.078%) Unit4 Business World
11 5 (0.065%) Endur
11 5 (0.065%) NEC Housing
11 5 (0.065%) SAP MM
12 4 (0.052%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.052%) Dynamics NAV
12 4 (0.052%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,652 (34.32%) AWS
2 1,585 (20.51%) Azure DevOps
3 1,276 (16.51%) GCP
4 1,008 (13.04%) Power Platform
5 941 (12.18%) Entra ID
6 781 (10.11%) Microsoft 365
7 714 (9.24%) GitHub
8 476 (6.16%) Azure Data Factory
9 432 (5.59%) GitHub Actions
10 388 (5.02%) Serverless
11 310 (4.01%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 298 (3.86%) SaaS
13 283 (3.66%) Azure AKS
14 264 (3.42%) Power Automate
15 255 (3.30%) Dynamics 365
16 243 (3.14%) Azure Monitor
17 241 (3.12%) PaaS
18 232 (3.00%) PowerApps
19 208 (2.69%) Snowflake
20 205 (2.65%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 447 (5.78%) Firewall
2 338 (4.37%) DNS
3 266 (3.44%) Network Security
4 250 (3.23%) VPN
5 223 (2.89%) WAN
6 178 (2.30%) DHCP
7 131 (1.70%) LAN
8 125 (1.62%) SD-WAN
9 98 (1.27%) TCP/IP
10 89 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
11 88 (1.14%) BGP
12 69 (0.89%) OSPF
12 69 (0.89%) VLAN
13 60 (0.78%) Kerberos
14 59 (0.76%) SSL
15 51 (0.66%) SAN
16 49 (0.63%) VXLAN
17 48 (0.62%) Wireless
18 45 (0.58%) IPsec
19 42 (0.54%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 669 (8.66%) Power BI
2 440 (5.69%) SQL Server
3 377 (4.88%) Data Lake
4 375 (4.85%) Data Warehouse
5 269 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
6 226 (2.92%) Azure SQL Database
7 202 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 186 (2.41%) Metadata
9 144 (1.86%) Delta Lake
10 122 (1.58%) Relational Database
11 115 (1.49%) Big Data
12 99 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 94 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (0.98%) Tableau
15 72 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
16 66 (0.85%) MySQL
17 62 (0.80%) Oracle Database
18 61 (0.79%) BigQuery
19 54 (0.70%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.65%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 560 (7.25%) Git
1 560 (7.25%) JIRA
2 386 (4.99%) Jenkins
3 321 (4.15%) GitLab
4 122 (1.58%) Selenium
5 78 (1.01%) JMeter
6 76 (0.98%) Postman
7 62 (0.80%) Cucumber
8 60 (0.78%) JUnit
9 55 (0.71%) REST Assured
10 48 (0.62%) SonarQube
11 47 (0.61%) MLflow
12 44 (0.57%) Visual Studio
13 42 (0.54%) WebDriver
14 41 (0.53%) Cypress.io
15 36 (0.47%) Gatling
16 31 (0.40%) Maven
17 30 (0.39%) Artifactory
18 27 (0.35%) LoadRunner
19 25 (0.32%) NUnit
General
1 1,963 (25.40%) Social Skills
2 1,444 (18.69%) Finance
3 847 (10.96%) Public Sector
4 686 (8.88%) Analytical Skills
5 398 (5.15%) Banking
6 231 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
7 201 (2.60%) Legal
8 152 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 134 (1.73%) Retail
10 90 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
11 76 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
12 71 (0.92%) Financial Institution
13 70 (0.91%) Law
14 68 (0.88%) Investment Banking
15 67 (0.87%) Marketing
16 64 (0.83%) Front Office
17 61 (0.79%) Telecoms
18 57 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
19 52 (0.67%) Manufacturing
20 43 (0.56%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,358 (17.57%) Architect
2 978 (12.66%) Developer
3 935 (12.10%) Senior
4 689 (8.92%) Azure Engineer
5 593 (7.67%) Data Engineer
6 590 (7.63%) Lead
7 480 (6.21%) Analyst
8 416 (5.38%) DevOps Engineer
9 374 (4.84%) Solutions Architect
10 325 (4.21%) Consultant
11 280 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
12 267 (3.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 218 (2.82%) Azure Architect
14 217 (2.81%) Data Architect
15 204 (2.64%) Security Engineer
16 195 (2.52%) Platform Engineer
17 177 (2.29%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 177 (2.29%) Technical Architect
18 171 (2.21%) Business Analyst
19 168 (2.17%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 609 (7.88%) .NET
2 540 (6.99%) REST
3 340 (4.40%) React
4 280 (3.62%) Kafka
5 260 (3.36%) PySpark
5 260 (3.36%) RESTful
6 220 (2.85%) OAuth
7 213 (2.76%) Node.js
8 210 (2.72%) Spring
9 183 (2.37%) AngularJS
10 178 (2.30%) Spring Boot
11 163 (2.11%) JSON
12 159 (2.06%) LDAP
13 144 (1.86%) SAML
14 140 (1.81%) HTML
15 136 (1.76%) OpenID
16 134 (1.73%) SOAP
17 131 (1.70%) Middleware
18 115 (1.49%) .NET Framework
18 115 (1.49%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 785 (10.16%) Cloud Native
2 325 (4.21%) Onboarding
3 298 (3.86%) Product Ownership
4 250 (3.23%) Data Centre
5 211 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
6 201 (2.60%) Distributed Systems
7 192 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
8 169 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
9 168 (2.17%) Security Posture
10 166 (2.15%) AI Agents
11 160 (2.07%) Public Cloud
12 110 (1.42%) Data Structures
13 108 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
14 93 (1.20%) Replication
15 91 (1.18%) Management Information System
16 82 (1.06%) PKI
17 80 (1.04%) Low-Code
18 76 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
19 71 (0.92%) Enterprise Cloud
19 71 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 878 (11.36%) Windows
2 394 (5.10%) Linux
3 277 (3.58%) Windows Server
4 113 (1.46%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.02%) Apple iOS
6 72 (0.93%) Unix
7 71 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 68 (0.88%) Android
9 66 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 62 (0.80%) VMS
11 32 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
12 30 (0.39%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
13 17 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.14%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
16 10 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.091%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.091%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,874 (37.19%) DevOps
2 2,398 (31.03%) CI/CD
3 1,834 (23.73%) Agile
4 1,139 (14.74%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,126 (14.57%) AI
6 1,103 (14.27%) Migration
7 1,082 (14.00%) Analytics
8 1,057 (13.68%) Problem-Solving
9 867 (11.22%) Data Modelling
10 853 (11.04%) Stakeholder Management
11 756 (9.78%) Continuous Improvement
12 727 (9.41%) Data Pipeline
13 722 (9.34%) Business Intelligence
14 706 (9.14%) Containerisation
15 702 (9.08%) Roadmaps
16 688 (8.90%) Microservices
17 681 (8.81%) ETL
18 664 (8.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 613 (7.93%) Test Automation
20 601 (7.78%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,809 (23.41%) Python
2 1,568 (20.29%) SQL
3 750 (9.70%) PowerShell
4 635 (8.22%) Java
5 620 (8.02%) C#
6 451 (5.84%) JavaScript
7 301 (3.89%) TypeScript
8 256 (3.31%) Bicep
9 253 (3.27%) Bash
10 92 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.16%) T-SQL
12 79 (1.02%) Scala
13 75 (0.97%) Go
14 48 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
15 43 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.54%) R
17 39 (0.50%) PL/SQL
18 30 (0.39%) C++
18 30 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 17 (0.22%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,906 (24.66%) Security Cleared
2 1,609 (20.82%) SC Cleared
3 529 (6.85%) Degree
4 402 (5.20%) Azure Certification
5 237 (3.07%) CISSP
6 198 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
7 186 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
7 186 (2.41%) DV Cleared
8 183 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
9 174 (2.25%) Microsoft Certification
10 172 (2.23%) AWS Certification
11 129 (1.67%) CISM
12 86 (1.11%) CCNP
13 81 (1.05%) PMP
14 77 (1.00%) PMI Certification
15 72 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 63 (0.82%) ISTQB
17 54 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
18 53 (0.69%) Master's Degree
19 48 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 532 (6.88%) Data Quality
2 392 (5.07%) QA
3 337 (4.36%) GDPR
4 287 (3.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 273 (3.53%) NIST
6 158 (2.04%) Accessibility
7 110 (1.42%) NCSC
8 96 (1.24%) SLA
9 78 (1.01%) PCI DSS
10 70 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 67 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 58 (0.75%) WCAG
13 56 (0.72%) GRC
14 45 (0.58%) PMO
15 38 (0.49%) HIPAA
16 27 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.34%) NIST 800
18 25 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
20 17 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 926 (11.98%) Active Directory
2 801 (10.36%) Docker
3 220 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 137 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
5 118 (1.53%) Hyper-V
5 118 (1.53%) Virtual Machines
6 70 (0.91%) vSphere
7 53 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
8 30 (0.39%) Firmware
9 28 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 22 (0.28%) NFS
11 17 (0.22%) Postfix
12 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
13 8 (0.10%) Varnish
14 6 (0.078%) Ceph
14 6 (0.078%) KVM
14 6 (0.078%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.078%) RACF
15 5 (0.065%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,212 (15.68%) Terraform
2 1,086 (14.05%) Kubernetes
3 407 (5.27%) Microsoft Intune
4 359 (4.65%) Ansible
5 212 (2.74%) Grafana
6 186 (2.41%) Prometheus
7 163 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
8 106 (1.37%) SCCM
9 71 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.57%) FortiGate
11 43 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
12 42 (0.54%) Argo
13 39 (0.50%) Progress Chef
14 37 (0.48%) Puppet
15 35 (0.45%) Istio
16 23 (0.30%) vCenter Server
17 21 (0.27%) HP ALM
18 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
19 17 (0.22%) linkerd
20 16 (0.21%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,455 (31.77%) Microsoft
2 745 (9.64%) Databricks
3 329 (4.26%) ServiceNow
4 302 (3.91%) VMware
5 290 (3.75%) Google
6 279 (3.61%) Oracle
7 214 (2.77%) SAP
8 210 (2.72%) Cisco
9 197 (2.55%) OpenAI
10 156 (2.02%) Splunk
11 144 (1.86%) Palo Alto
12 134 (1.73%) CyberArk
13 131 (1.70%) Salesforce
14 120 (1.55%) Foundry
15 101 (1.31%) Okta
16 85 (1.10%) Dynatrace
17 83 (1.07%) Informatica
18 77 (1.00%) Zscaler
19 71 (0.92%) Citrix
20 67 (0.87%) Red Hat