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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,306 4,819 5,584
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.56% 14.62% 14.34%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.27% 39.34% 42.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,802 3,304 3,986
10th Percentile £373 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £423 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 41 41
10th Percentile £18.40 £18.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £23.00 £27.40 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.66% +18.43% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.00 £77.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.27 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £53.23 £31.00
% change year-on-year -1.36% +71.69% -32.87%

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 18,763 12,249 13,112
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.16% 37.16% 33.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,394 8,203 9,135
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £411 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £623 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 616 315 265
10th Percentile £15.81 £15.19 £14.20
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £28.00 £24.84
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% +12.72% -29.03%
75th Percentile £69.00 £47.31 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.31 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.13 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +80.84% -11.70% -15.37%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 7,143 £525 - 6,069
London +1 3,731 £550 - 3,160
UK excluding London +3 3,584 £500 - 3,701
Work from Home -1 2,569 £525 +5.00% 2,954
North of England +8 1,038 £500 +5.26% 1,023
South East +2 918 £525 +5.00% 974
Midlands +4 655 £493 -2.76% 475
North West +7 539 £500 +2.83% 608
West Midlands +3 493 £493 -6.19% 318
South West +7 439 £540 +8.00% 440
Yorkshire +5 417 £500 +5.26% 290
Scotland +9 286 £500 +3.09% 297
East of England +3 176 £525 -4.55% 271
East Midlands +11 149 £488 +5.41% 157
North East +5 95 £513 +2.50% 138
Wales 0 93 £475 +6.50% 110
Northern Ireland +14 15 £644 +35.53% 152
Channel Islands +1 8 £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
1 438 (5.27%) SharePoint
2 281 (3.38%) Confluence
3 202 (2.43%) Microsoft Exchange
4 169 (2.03%) Apache Spark
5 146 (1.76%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.42%) Apache
7 41 (0.49%) SAS
8 35 (0.42%) IIS
9 27 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
10 19 (0.23%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.13%) nginx
14 10 (0.12%) Mendix
15 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
17 7 (0.084%) Camunda
18 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 120 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 36 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.012%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 120 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.14%) 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
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Maximo
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.060%) Payment Gateway
10 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.060%) Workday HCM
11 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.048%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,921 (35.17%) AWS
2 1,758 (21.17%) Azure DevOps
3 1,397 (16.82%) GCP
4 1,070 (12.88%) Entra ID
5 1,039 (12.51%) Power Platform
6 841 (10.13%) Microsoft 365
7 836 (10.07%) GitHub
8 506 (6.09%) GitHub Actions
9 476 (5.73%) Azure Data Factory
10 344 (4.14%) Serverless
11 336 (4.05%) SaaS
12 310 (3.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 302 (3.64%) Azure AKS
14 301 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
15 279 (3.36%) Power Automate
16 269 (3.24%) PowerApps
17 264 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
18 252 (3.03%) PaaS
19 250 (3.01%) Snowflake
20 231 (2.78%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 527 (6.34%) Firewall
2 411 (4.95%) DNS
3 332 (4.00%) VPN
4 303 (3.65%) Network Security
5 210 (2.53%) DHCP
6 201 (2.42%) WAN
7 167 (2.01%) TCP/IP
8 123 (1.48%) LAN
9 112 (1.35%) BGP
10 105 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.12%) VLAN
12 89 (1.07%) OSPF
13 83 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 73 (0.88%) SSL
15 60 (0.72%) SAN
16 56 (0.67%) Wireless
17 50 (0.60%) HTTP
17 50 (0.60%) IPsec
18 47 (0.57%) VXLAN
19 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 716 (8.62%) Power BI
2 462 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 405 (4.88%) Data Warehouse
4 365 (4.39%) Data Lake
5 293 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
6 215 (2.59%) Azure SQL Database
6 215 (2.59%) Metadata
7 213 (2.56%) NoSQL
8 140 (1.69%) Relational Database
9 137 (1.65%) Delta Lake
10 102 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 101 (1.22%) Big Data
12 98 (1.18%) MongoDB
13 81 (0.98%) MySQL
14 64 (0.77%) Snowflake Schema
15 62 (0.75%) Tableau
16 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
17 58 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
17 58 (0.70%) Star Schema
18 57 (0.69%) Redis
Development Applications
1 672 (8.09%) Git
2 637 (7.67%) JIRA
3 455 (5.48%) Jenkins
4 353 (4.25%) GitLab
5 135 (1.63%) Selenium
6 74 (0.89%) Postman
7 69 (0.83%) JUnit
8 66 (0.79%) JMeter
9 60 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 60 (0.72%) Cypress.io
10 57 (0.69%) SonarQube
11 51 (0.61%) Maven
12 47 (0.57%) Visual Studio
13 46 (0.55%) WebDriver
14 42 (0.51%) REST Assured
15 41 (0.49%) Claude Code
16 40 (0.48%) Gradle
17 33 (0.40%) MLflow
18 31 (0.37%) LoadRunner
19 29 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 2,162 (26.03%) Social Skills
2 1,544 (18.59%) Finance
3 971 (11.69%) Public Sector
4 804 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
5 439 (5.29%) Banking
6 233 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 200 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 190 (2.29%) Legal
9 186 (2.24%) Retail
10 94 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
10 94 (1.13%) Telecoms
11 91 (1.10%) Manufacturing
12 90 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 76 (0.92%) Law
14 71 (0.85%) Aerospace
14 71 (0.85%) Investment Banking
15 70 (0.84%) Financial Institution
15 70 (0.84%) Marketing
16 61 (0.73%) Front Office
17 60 (0.72%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,489 (17.93%) Architect
2 1,040 (12.52%) Senior
3 1,037 (12.48%) Developer
4 732 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 692 (8.33%) Lead
6 612 (7.37%) Data Engineer
7 495 (5.96%) Analyst
8 441 (5.31%) Solutions Architect
9 429 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
10 350 (4.21%) Cloud Engineer
11 314 (3.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 306 (3.68%) Consultant
13 249 (3.00%) Data Architect
14 228 (2.75%) Platform Engineer
15 224 (2.70%) Azure Architect
16 195 (2.35%) Project Manager
16 195 (2.35%) Technical Architect
17 194 (2.34%) Security Engineer
18 188 (2.26%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 182 (2.19%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 636 (7.66%) .NET
2 635 (7.65%) REST
3 337 (4.06%) Kafka
4 322 (3.88%) React
5 287 (3.46%) RESTful
6 258 (3.11%) PySpark
7 236 (2.84%) OAuth
8 212 (2.55%) JSON
9 211 (2.54%) Spring
10 192 (2.31%) Node.js
11 175 (2.11%) Spring Boot
12 170 (2.05%) AngularJS
13 154 (1.85%) HTML
14 148 (1.78%) SAML
15 146 (1.76%) OpenID
16 140 (1.69%) OAuth2
17 137 (1.65%) Middleware
18 136 (1.64%) .NET Framework
19 135 (1.63%) Playwright
20 122 (1.47%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 889 (10.70%) Cloud Native
2 397 (4.78%) Onboarding
3 351 (4.23%) Product Ownership
4 269 (3.24%) Distributed Systems
4 269 (3.24%) Hybrid Cloud
5 257 (3.09%) AI Agents
6 253 (3.05%) Data Centre
7 239 (2.88%) Enterprise Software
8 235 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
9 178 (2.14%) Security Posture
10 141 (1.70%) Data Structures
10 141 (1.70%) Public Cloud
11 138 (1.66%) Management Information System
12 112 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
13 110 (1.32%) PKI
14 109 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
15 95 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
16 93 (1.12%) Replication
17 76 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
18 75 (0.90%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 975 (11.74%) Windows
2 495 (5.96%) Linux
3 349 (4.20%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.48%) Windows 10
5 84 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 82 (0.99%) Unix
7 81 (0.98%) Android
8 74 (0.89%) Apple iOS
9 69 (0.83%) Mac OS
10 58 (0.70%) VMS
11 48 (0.58%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 12 (0.14%) CentOS
15 12 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 10 (0.12%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Amazon Linux
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,077 (37.05%) DevOps
2 2,601 (31.31%) CI/CD
3 2,086 (25.11%) Agile
4 1,313 (15.81%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,299 (15.64%) AI
6 1,228 (14.78%) Migration
7 1,217 (14.65%) Stakeholder Management
8 1,129 (13.59%) Analytics
9 1,086 (13.07%) Problem-Solving
10 922 (11.10%) Continuous Improvement
10 922 (11.10%) Data Modelling
11 817 (9.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 782 (9.41%) Data Pipeline
13 777 (9.35%) Roadmaps
14 768 (9.25%) Containerisation
15 758 (9.13%) Business Intelligence
16 738 (8.89%) Microservices
17 693 (8.34%) Test Automation
18 673 (8.10%) ETL
19 648 (7.80%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,907 (22.96%) Python
2 1,609 (19.37%) SQL
3 844 (10.16%) PowerShell
4 688 (8.28%) Java
5 619 (7.45%) C#
6 504 (6.07%) JavaScript
7 384 (4.62%) Bash
8 328 (3.95%) Bicep
9 304 (3.66%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 95 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 73 (0.88%) Go
13 59 (0.71%) Scala
14 58 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 55 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
16 40 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.48%) PL/SQL
17 39 (0.47%) R
18 32 (0.39%) Groovy
19 28 (0.34%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,117 (25.49%) Security Cleared
2 1,725 (20.77%) SC Cleared
3 556 (6.69%) Degree
4 446 (5.37%) Azure Certification
5 272 (3.27%) DV Cleared
6 252 (3.03%) CISSP
7 245 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
8 225 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
9 211 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
10 195 (2.35%) AWS Certification
11 181 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
12 124 (1.49%) CISM
13 102 (1.23%) CCNP
14 87 (1.05%) PMI Certification
15 86 (1.04%) PMP
16 83 (1.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 71 (0.85%) ISTQB
18 59 (0.71%) Master's Degree
19 54 (0.65%) CCSP
20 51 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 575 (6.92%) Data Quality
2 437 (5.26%) QA
3 326 (3.92%) GDPR
4 305 (3.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 301 (3.62%) NIST
6 199 (2.40%) Accessibility
7 123 (1.48%) NCSC
8 105 (1.26%) SLA
9 77 (0.93%) GRC
9 77 (0.93%) WCAG
10 72 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
10 72 (0.87%) PCI DSS
11 60 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 55 (0.66%) PMO
13 31 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 30 (0.36%) HIPAA
15 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 21 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 18 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,001 (12.05%) Active Directory
2 911 (10.97%) Docker
3 242 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
5 145 (1.75%) Virtual Machines
6 129 (1.55%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.84%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.35%) Firmware
11 24 (0.29%) NFS
12 15 (0.18%) IAG
13 14 (0.17%) Postfix
14 12 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Ceph
17 7 (0.084%) Varnish
17 7 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
18 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,372 (16.52%) Terraform
2 1,273 (15.33%) Kubernetes
3 438 (5.27%) Ansible
4 433 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
5 264 (3.18%) Grafana
6 218 (2.62%) Prometheus
7 150 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
8 120 (1.44%) SCCM
9 60 (0.72%) Progress Chef
10 58 (0.70%) Argo
11 49 (0.59%) Puppet
12 42 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
13 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
14 34 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 33 (0.40%) Istio
16 21 (0.25%) SCOM
16 21 (0.25%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) Packer
18 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
19 16 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,783 (33.51%) Microsoft
2 792 (9.54%) Databricks
3 404 (4.86%) ServiceNow
4 343 (4.13%) VMware
5 342 (4.12%) Google
6 311 (3.74%) Oracle
7 242 (2.91%) Cisco
8 225 (2.71%) SAP
9 200 (2.41%) OpenAI
10 196 (2.36%) Splunk
11 161 (1.94%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.84%) Palo Alto
13 145 (1.75%) CyberArk
14 139 (1.67%) Foundry
15 119 (1.43%) Dynatrace
16 107 (1.29%) Zscaler
17 91 (1.10%) Okta
18 86 (1.04%) Informatica
19 79 (0.95%) Citrix
20 77 (0.93%) Fortinet