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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,169 4,616 5,932
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.66% 15.80% 13.50%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.84% 41.62% 41.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,110 3,293 4,294
10th Percentile £358 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 47 54
10th Percentile £25.40 £22.50 £17.79
25th Percentile £50.63 £24.09 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -35.19%
75th Percentile £68.75 £74.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £51.25
% change year-on-year +79.69% -37.56% -8.89%

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 16,733 11,092 14,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.56% 37.96% 32.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,425 7,746 10,122
10th Percentile £313 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £634
90th Percentile £702 £725 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 473 236 343
10th Percentile £15.30 £15.72 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.99 £16.03
Median hourly rate £40.00 £27.43 £20.97
Median % change year-on-year +45.85% +30.78% -27.69%
75th Percentile £67.50 £46.30 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.88 £61.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £23.00 £17.70
% change year-on-year +97.65% +29.94% -22.20%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 0 6,080 £525 - 2,909
London +1 3,272 £538 -2.27% 1,004
UK excluding London +2 2,965 £500 - 2,332
Work from Home -1 2,167 £525 +0.86% 1,365
North of England +3 829 £500 +5.26% 604
South East +1 770 £500 -4.76% 685
Midlands -1 507 £488 -6.25% 369
North West +2 446 £491 -1.80% 303
West Midlands 0 372 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 361 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire +2 339 £500 +17.65% 208
Scotland +5 298 £550 +15.79% 115
East of England +8 153 £545 -9.17% 207
East Midlands 0 126 £447 -4.89% 163
Wales -2 85 £411 +2.81% 73
North East -3 52 £525 +3.70% 97
Northern Ireland +4 14 £475 - 24
Channel Islands +4 8 £450 +51.26% 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
1 326 (4.55%) SharePoint
2 209 (2.92%) Microsoft Exchange
3 207 (2.89%) Confluence
4 190 (2.65%) Apache Spark
5 106 (1.48%) Apache
6 99 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.38%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) IIS
9 20 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 16 (0.22%) Appian
11 16 (0.22%) CMS
12 15 (0.21%) Camunda
13 13 (0.18%) Mendix
14 11 (0.15%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
15 10 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
16 9 (0.13%) Jupyter
17 7 (0.098%) Anypoint
18 5 (0.070%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 125 (1.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
3 61 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 49 (0.68%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) Trello
8 6 (0.084%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.070%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.070%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.056%) Weka
11 3 (0.042%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.042%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.028%) Revit
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 113 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Maximo
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.098%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.098%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.056%) Dynamics AX
8 4 (0.056%) Endur
8 4 (0.056%) Oracle FAH
8 4 (0.056%) Oracle Receivables
8 4 (0.056%) Primavera
8 4 (0.056%) ResourceLink
8 4 (0.056%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
8 4 (0.056%) Unit4 Business World
9 3 (0.042%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 2,466 (34.40%) AWS
2 1,502 (20.95%) Azure DevOps
3 1,331 (18.57%) GCP
4 956 (13.34%) Power Platform
5 867 (12.09%) Entra ID
6 775 (10.81%) Microsoft 365
7 722 (10.07%) GitHub
8 507 (7.07%) Azure Data Factory
9 421 (5.87%) GitHub Actions
10 406 (5.66%) Serverless
11 337 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 288 (4.02%) SaaS
13 285 (3.98%) Dynamics 365
14 264 (3.68%) Azure AKS
15 262 (3.65%) Power Automate
16 247 (3.45%) Azure Monitor
17 237 (3.31%) PaaS
18 231 (3.22%) Azure Functions
19 211 (2.94%) PowerApps
20 207 (2.89%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 450 (6.28%) Firewall
2 308 (4.30%) DNS
3 257 (3.58%) VPN
4 241 (3.36%) Network Security
5 185 (2.58%) WAN
6 168 (2.34%) DHCP
7 135 (1.88%) LAN
8 96 (1.34%) TCP/IP
9 92 (1.28%) SD-WAN
10 90 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
11 78 (1.09%) VLAN
12 70 (0.98%) Kerberos
13 54 (0.75%) BGP
14 47 (0.66%) OSPF
15 45 (0.63%) SSL
16 44 (0.61%) HTTP
17 41 (0.57%) Wireless
18 40 (0.56%) SAN
19 36 (0.50%) Internet
20 32 (0.45%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 645 (9.00%) Power BI
2 422 (5.89%) SQL Server
3 382 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
4 347 (4.84%) Data Lake
5 259 (3.61%) Azure SQL Database
6 258 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
7 204 (2.85%) NoSQL
8 185 (2.58%) Metadata
9 149 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.62%) Relational Database
11 110 (1.53%) Big Data
12 95 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 92 (1.28%) MongoDB
14 83 (1.16%) Tableau
15 69 (0.96%) MySQL
16 68 (0.95%) Oracle Database
17 65 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
18 62 (0.86%) BigQuery
19 56 (0.78%) Star Schema
20 49 (0.68%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 533 (7.43%) Git
2 505 (7.04%) JIRA
3 382 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 282 (3.93%) GitLab
5 139 (1.94%) Selenium
6 88 (1.23%) Postman
7 78 (1.09%) JMeter
8 74 (1.03%) Cucumber
9 72 (1.00%) JUnit
10 53 (0.74%) REST Assured
11 51 (0.71%) MLflow
12 45 (0.63%) Cypress.io
13 43 (0.60%) SonarQube
14 41 (0.57%) Visual Studio
15 36 (0.50%) Artifactory
16 33 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
16 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 32 (0.45%) TestRail
18 27 (0.38%) Gatling
19 26 (0.36%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,959 (27.33%) Social Skills
2 1,282 (17.88%) Finance
3 819 (11.42%) Public Sector
4 694 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
5 380 (5.30%) Banking
6 227 (3.17%) Documentation Skills
7 181 (2.52%) Legal
8 114 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 95 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
10 90 (1.26%) Retail
11 86 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
12 81 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
13 78 (1.09%) Marketing
14 74 (1.03%) Telecoms
15 68 (0.95%) Financial Institution
15 68 (0.95%) Law
16 58 (0.81%) Front Office
17 57 (0.80%) Investment Banking
18 44 (0.61%) Local Government
18 44 (0.61%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,205 (16.81%) Architect
2 957 (13.35%) Developer
3 847 (11.81%) Senior
4 648 (9.04%) Azure Engineer
5 592 (8.26%) Data Engineer
6 545 (7.60%) Lead
7 447 (6.24%) Analyst
8 369 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 311 (4.34%) Solutions Architect
10 305 (4.25%) Consultant
11 202 (2.82%) Cloud Engineer
12 201 (2.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 190 (2.65%) Azure Architect
14 177 (2.47%) Platform Engineer
14 177 (2.47%) Security Engineer
15 163 (2.27%) Data Architect
16 159 (2.22%) Senior Developer
17 156 (2.18%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 156 (2.18%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 149 (2.08%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 563 (7.85%) .NET
2 480 (6.70%) REST
3 337 (4.70%) React
4 278 (3.88%) Kafka
5 273 (3.81%) PySpark
6 253 (3.53%) Node.js
7 250 (3.49%) RESTful
8 225 (3.14%) Spring
9 204 (2.85%) OAuth
10 189 (2.64%) AngularJS
11 187 (2.61%) Spring Boot
12 160 (2.23%) LDAP
13 154 (2.15%) HTML
14 147 (2.05%) JSON
15 135 (1.88%) CSS
16 128 (1.79%) Middleware
17 124 (1.73%) SAML
17 124 (1.73%) SOAP
18 116 (1.62%) PyTorch
19 115 (1.60%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 658 (9.18%) Cloud Native
2 274 (3.82%) Onboarding
3 271 (3.78%) Product Ownership
4 189 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
5 187 (2.61%) Data Centre
6 169 (2.36%) Enterprise Software
7 162 (2.26%) Security Posture
8 157 (2.19%) Public Cloud
9 156 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
10 154 (2.15%) Distributed Systems
11 123 (1.72%) AI Agents
12 91 (1.27%) Data Structures
13 88 (1.23%) Replication
14 86 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
15 76 (1.06%) Management Information System
16 71 (0.99%) PKI
17 66 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
18 65 (0.91%) Low-Code
19 63 (0.88%) NHS
20 60 (0.84%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 773 (10.78%) Windows
2 379 (5.29%) Linux
3 229 (3.19%) Windows Server
4 124 (1.73%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.03%) VMS
6 72 (1.00%) Unix
7 58 (0.81%) Mac OS
7 58 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 49 (0.68%) Apple iOS
9 39 (0.54%) Android
10 23 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
11 18 (0.25%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
12 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
14 9 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.084%) CentOS
15 6 (0.084%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.070%) Debian
16 5 (0.070%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,691 (37.54%) DevOps
2 2,220 (30.97%) CI/CD
3 1,695 (23.64%) Agile
4 1,135 (15.83%) Problem-Solving
5 1,073 (14.97%) Analytics
6 996 (13.89%) AI
7 987 (13.77%) Infrastructure as Code
8 960 (13.39%) Migration
9 803 (11.20%) Data Modelling
10 725 (10.11%) Stakeholder Management
11 710 (9.90%) Business Intelligence
12 686 (9.57%) Continuous Improvement
13 681 (9.50%) Containerisation
14 660 (9.21%) Data Pipeline
15 653 (9.11%) Microservices
16 650 (9.07%) ETL
17 595 (8.30%) Data Engineering
18 594 (8.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 581 (8.10%) Machine Learning
20 577 (8.05%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,818 (25.36%) Python
2 1,574 (21.96%) SQL
3 749 (10.45%) PowerShell
4 623 (8.69%) C#
5 604 (8.43%) Java
6 489 (6.82%) JavaScript
7 298 (4.16%) TypeScript
8 256 (3.57%) Bash
9 229 (3.19%) Bicep
10 101 (1.41%) Scala
11 82 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.14%) Go
12 77 (1.07%) T-SQL
13 76 (1.06%) PL/SQL
14 72 (1.00%) Kusto Query Language
15 52 (0.73%) Shell Script
16 47 (0.66%) R
17 32 (0.45%) C++
18 25 (0.35%) PHP
19 20 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,758 (24.52%) Security Cleared
2 1,466 (20.45%) SC Cleared
3 533 (7.43%) Degree
4 379 (5.29%) Azure Certification
5 207 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 199 (2.78%) CISSP
7 158 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
8 154 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
9 144 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
10 140 (1.95%) DV Cleared
11 135 (1.88%) AWS Certification
12 120 (1.67%) CISM
13 78 (1.09%) Master's Degree
14 77 (1.07%) CCNP
15 71 (0.99%) PMP
16 69 (0.96%) PMI Certification
17 65 (0.91%) ISTQB
17 65 (0.91%) TOGAF Certification
18 50 (0.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.50%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 508 (7.09%) Data Quality
2 390 (5.44%) GDPR
3 384 (5.36%) QA
4 305 (4.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 262 (3.65%) NIST
6 137 (1.91%) Accessibility
7 102 (1.42%) NCSC
8 84 (1.17%) PCI DSS
9 64 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 60 (0.84%) SLA
11 59 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
12 57 (0.80%) PMO
13 42 (0.59%) GRC
14 41 (0.57%) WCAG
15 33 (0.46%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.35%) NIST 800
17 24 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 23 (0.32%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 21 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 904 (12.61%) Active Directory
2 820 (11.44%) Docker
3 213 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.53%) Hyper-V
5 105 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
6 92 (1.28%) Virtual Desktop
7 81 (1.13%) vSphere
8 35 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.38%) Firmware
11 19 (0.27%) NFS
12 10 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.098%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.098%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.098%) Varnish
14 6 (0.084%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.084%) RACF
14 6 (0.084%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.070%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,124 (15.68%) Terraform
2 1,048 (14.62%) Kubernetes
3 368 (5.13%) Microsoft Intune
4 322 (4.49%) Ansible
5 189 (2.64%) Grafana
6 160 (2.23%) Prometheus
7 153 (2.13%) Single Sign-On
8 119 (1.66%) SCCM
9 72 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 42 (0.59%) Argo
11 35 (0.49%) Istio
12 31 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 29 (0.40%) Puppet
13 29 (0.40%) vCenter Server
14 27 (0.38%) Progress Chef
15 26 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
16 25 (0.35%) vRealize
17 21 (0.29%) HP ALM
18 17 (0.24%) Kubeflow
19 16 (0.22%) VxRail
Vendors
1 2,290 (31.94%) Microsoft
2 735 (10.25%) Databricks
3 330 (4.60%) Google
4 323 (4.51%) Oracle
5 297 (4.14%) VMware
6 292 (4.07%) ServiceNow
7 204 (2.85%) SAP
8 193 (2.69%) Cisco
9 182 (2.54%) OpenAI
10 160 (2.23%) Splunk
11 139 (1.94%) CyberArk
12 118 (1.65%) Foundry
13 105 (1.46%) Palo Alto
14 96 (1.34%) Salesforce
15 85 (1.19%) Okta
16 77 (1.07%) IBM
17 75 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
17 75 (1.05%) Informatica
18 74 (1.03%) Red Hat
19 72 (1.00%) Citrix