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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,316 4,513 5,785
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.34% 15.53% 13.56%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.03% 41.33% 41.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,184 3,188 4,164
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year - -2.17% -2.43%
75th Percentile £625 £627 £638
90th Percentile £714 £727 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 140 38 50
10th Percentile £22.79 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £38.00 £25.31 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -41.93%
75th Percentile £65.19 £74.75 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £31.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +82.54% -34.50% -19.85%

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 17,001 10,920 13,848
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.65% 37.57% 32.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,473 7,513 9,833
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.97% -1.97% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £623 £634
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.63% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 516 247 347
10th Percentile £15.38 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.50 £16.03
Median hourly rate £37.54 £27.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +36.51% +28.69% -38.94%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.50 £36.81
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.87 £21.39 £17.72
% change year-on-year +95.76% +20.71% -29.12%

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 15 May 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 15 May 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 15 May 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 6,190 £525 - 2,854
London +1 3,303 £540 -1.82% 1,044
UK excluding London +2 3,061 £500 - 2,256
Work from Home -1 2,231 £525 +1.55% 1,371
North of England +3 862 £500 +5.26% 590
South East +3 830 £500 -3.66% 667
Midlands -4 486 £488 -2.50% 297
North West +3 448 £500 - 318
South West +6 379 £525 - 285
Yorkshire +8 354 £500 +14.29% 167
West Midlands -1 353 £495 -5.71% 169
Scotland +8 298 £525 +10.53% 136
East of England +2 146 £550 -6.78% 190
East Midlands 0 123 £463 - 127
Wales -2 85 £400 -1.23% 92
North East -2 69 £525 +10.53% 105
Northern Ireland +9 17 £525 +10.53% 29
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 +51.26%

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
1 336 (4.59%) SharePoint
2 218 (2.98%) Confluence
3 195 (2.67%) Apache Spark
4 190 (2.60%) Microsoft Exchange
5 101 (1.38%) Apache
6 93 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.30%) IIS
7 22 (0.30%) SAS
8 15 (0.21%) ArcGIS
8 15 (0.21%) CMS
8 15 (0.21%) Mendix
8 15 (0.21%) OpenStack
9 13 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
10 12 (0.16%) Appian
10 12 (0.16%) Camunda
10 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
12 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
13 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.096%) nginx
Applications
1 104 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
3 64 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 21 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.096%) Trello
8 5 (0.068%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.068%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.055%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.055%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.041%) Revit
10 3 (0.041%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.014%) InDesign
11 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 101 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
5 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.082%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.068%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.055%) Dynamics NAV
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.055%) Shopify
9 4 (0.055%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,491 (34.05%) AWS
2 1,493 (20.41%) Azure DevOps
3 1,299 (17.76%) GCP
4 947 (12.94%) Power Platform
5 865 (11.82%) Entra ID
6 747 (10.21%) Microsoft 365
7 692 (9.46%) GitHub
8 500 (6.83%) Azure Data Factory
9 409 (5.59%) GitHub Actions
10 376 (5.14%) Serverless
11 337 (4.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 280 (3.83%) SaaS
13 272 (3.72%) Azure AKS
14 259 (3.54%) Power Automate
15 258 (3.53%) Dynamics 365
16 235 (3.21%) Azure Monitor
16 235 (3.21%) PaaS
17 221 (3.02%) PowerApps
18 203 (2.77%) Azure Functions
19 188 (2.57%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 442 (6.04%) Firewall
2 317 (4.33%) DNS
3 256 (3.50%) VPN
4 241 (3.29%) Network Security
5 199 (2.72%) WAN
6 167 (2.28%) DHCP
7 132 (1.80%) LAN
8 108 (1.48%) SD-WAN
9 91 (1.24%) TCP/IP
10 88 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
11 72 (0.98%) Kerberos
12 71 (0.97%) BGP
12 71 (0.97%) VLAN
13 60 (0.82%) OSPF
14 47 (0.64%) SAN
15 45 (0.62%) SSL
16 42 (0.57%) Wireless
17 39 (0.53%) VXLAN
18 37 (0.51%) HTTP
19 35 (0.48%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 634 (8.67%) Power BI
2 426 (5.82%) SQL Server
3 363 (4.96%) Data Lake
3 363 (4.96%) Data Warehouse
4 246 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
5 238 (3.25%) Azure SQL Database
6 190 (2.60%) NoSQL
7 177 (2.42%) Metadata
8 150 (2.05%) Delta Lake
9 116 (1.59%) Big Data
10 115 (1.57%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 91 (1.24%) MongoDB
13 75 (1.03%) Tableau
14 68 (0.93%) Oracle Database
14 68 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
15 66 (0.90%) BigQuery
16 60 (0.82%) MySQL
17 56 (0.77%) Star Schema
18 48 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 532 (7.27%) Git
2 526 (7.19%) JIRA
3 387 (5.29%) Jenkins
4 306 (4.18%) GitLab
5 114 (1.56%) Selenium
6 78 (1.07%) Postman
7 66 (0.90%) JMeter
8 63 (0.86%) Cucumber
9 55 (0.75%) JUnit
10 54 (0.74%) MLflow
11 50 (0.68%) REST Assured
12 45 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.48%) Cypress.io
13 35 (0.48%) Visual Studio
14 34 (0.46%) Artifactory
15 33 (0.45%) WebDriver
16 31 (0.42%) Gatling
17 28 (0.38%) Maven
18 26 (0.36%) ERwin
19 25 (0.34%) NUnit
General
1 1,859 (25.41%) Social Skills
2 1,307 (17.86%) Finance
3 801 (10.95%) Public Sector
4 649 (8.87%) Analytical Skills
5 383 (5.24%) Banking
6 205 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 191 (2.61%) Legal
8 105 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 98 (1.34%) Retail
10 87 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 74 (1.01%) Financial Institution
12 73 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
13 72 (0.98%) Marketing
14 67 (0.92%) Telecoms
15 66 (0.90%) Investment Banking
16 65 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
17 60 (0.82%) Front Office
17 60 (0.82%) Law
18 45 (0.62%) Military
19 40 (0.55%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,258 (17.20%) Architect
2 931 (12.73%) Developer
3 858 (11.73%) Senior
4 666 (9.10%) Azure Engineer
5 600 (8.20%) Data Engineer
6 536 (7.33%) Lead
7 457 (6.25%) Analyst
8 406 (5.55%) DevOps Engineer
9 320 (4.37%) Solutions Architect
10 310 (4.24%) Consultant
11 230 (3.14%) Cloud Engineer
12 229 (3.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 208 (2.84%) Azure Architect
14 188 (2.57%) Security Engineer
15 186 (2.54%) Data Architect
16 173 (2.36%) Platform Engineer
17 167 (2.28%) Technical Architect
18 166 (2.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 157 (2.15%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 157 (2.15%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 578 (7.90%) .NET
2 490 (6.70%) REST
3 323 (4.41%) React
4 269 (3.68%) PySpark
5 266 (3.64%) Kafka
6 228 (3.12%) RESTful
7 219 (2.99%) Node.js
8 204 (2.79%) OAuth
9 199 (2.72%) Spring
10 174 (2.38%) LDAP
11 173 (2.36%) AngularJS
12 165 (2.26%) Spring Boot
13 151 (2.06%) JSON
14 137 (1.87%) Middleware
15 136 (1.86%) HTML
16 134 (1.83%) SOAP
17 129 (1.76%) OpenID
18 124 (1.69%) SAML
19 112 (1.53%) CSS
20 106 (1.45%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 705 (9.64%) Cloud Native
2 290 (3.96%) Onboarding
3 262 (3.58%) Product Ownership
4 216 (2.95%) Data Centre
5 193 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
6 181 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
7 165 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
8 159 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
9 156 (2.13%) Security Posture
10 151 (2.06%) Public Cloud
11 139 (1.90%) AI Agents
12 98 (1.34%) Data Structures
13 93 (1.27%) Replication
14 90 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 81 (1.11%) Low-Code
16 78 (1.07%) Management Information System
17 71 (0.97%) PKI
18 67 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
19 60 (0.82%) NHS
20 58 (0.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 801 (10.95%) Windows
2 376 (5.14%) Linux
3 238 (3.25%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.64%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.03%) Unix
6 70 (0.96%) Mac OS
7 69 (0.94%) VMS
8 68 (0.93%) Apple iOS
9 63 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 48 (0.66%) Android
11 29 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.29%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.11%) CentOS
15 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.096%) CoreOS
16 7 (0.096%) Debian
16 7 (0.096%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,738 (37.42%) DevOps
2 2,273 (31.07%) CI/CD
3 1,710 (23.37%) Agile
4 1,046 (14.30%) Analytics
5 1,044 (14.27%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,036 (14.16%) Problem-Solving
7 1,006 (13.75%) Migration
8 995 (13.60%) AI
9 834 (11.40%) Data Modelling
10 730 (9.98%) Stakeholder Management
11 694 (9.49%) Business Intelligence
12 689 (9.42%) Data Pipeline
13 683 (9.34%) Containerisation
14 679 (9.28%) Continuous Improvement
15 661 (9.03%) ETL
16 646 (8.83%) Microservices
17 605 (8.27%) Roadmaps
18 593 (8.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 582 (7.96%) Data Engineering
20 564 (7.71%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,750 (23.92%) Python
2 1,526 (20.86%) SQL
3 732 (10.01%) PowerShell
4 604 (8.26%) C#
5 591 (8.08%) Java
6 436 (5.96%) JavaScript
7 278 (3.80%) TypeScript
8 256 (3.50%) Bash
9 237 (3.24%) Bicep
10 94 (1.28%) Scala
11 87 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 87 (1.19%) T-SQL
12 80 (1.09%) Go
13 55 (0.75%) Kusto Query Language
14 51 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 49 (0.67%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.56%) R
17 31 (0.42%) C++
18 23 (0.31%) Kotlin
19 18 (0.25%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,819 (24.86%) Security Cleared
2 1,540 (21.05%) SC Cleared
3 504 (6.89%) Degree
4 375 (5.13%) Azure Certification
5 212 (2.90%) CISSP
6 188 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 168 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
8 165 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
9 156 (2.13%) DV Cleared
10 151 (2.06%) AWS Certification
11 150 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
12 125 (1.71%) CISM
13 79 (1.08%) CCNP
14 75 (1.03%) PMP
15 72 (0.98%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
17 66 (0.90%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 65 (0.89%) Master's Degree
19 57 (0.78%) ISTQB
20 45 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 514 (7.03%) Data Quality
2 390 (5.33%) QA
3 357 (4.88%) GDPR
4 289 (3.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 266 (3.64%) NIST
6 134 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 104 (1.42%) NCSC
8 82 (1.12%) PCI DSS
9 73 (1.00%) SLA
10 68 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 59 (0.81%) PMO
13 53 (0.72%) GRC
14 43 (0.59%) WCAG
15 37 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.34%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 22 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 19 (0.26%) ISO 20022
19 18 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 886 (12.11%) Active Directory
2 787 (10.76%) Docker
3 201 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 117 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
5 114 (1.56%) Virtual Machines
6 106 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.81%) vSphere
8 35 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.40%) Firmware
10 22 (0.30%) NFS
11 21 (0.29%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.16%) Postfix
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.096%) HDFS
14 7 (0.096%) Varnish
15 6 (0.082%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.082%) RACF
16 5 (0.068%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.068%) Ceph
16 5 (0.068%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,144 (15.64%) Terraform
2 1,050 (14.35%) Kubernetes
3 367 (5.02%) Microsoft Intune
4 340 (4.65%) Ansible
5 204 (2.79%) Grafana
6 177 (2.42%) Prometheus
7 150 (2.05%) Single Sign-On
8 107 (1.46%) SCCM
9 69 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.52%) Argo
11 36 (0.49%) Puppet
12 35 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 35 (0.48%) Istio
13 31 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
14 29 (0.40%) Progress Chef
15 23 (0.31%) HP ALM
16 18 (0.25%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.23%) linkerd
18 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
19 15 (0.21%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,324 (31.77%) Microsoft
2 752 (10.28%) Databricks
3 311 (4.25%) ServiceNow
4 298 (4.07%) Google
5 285 (3.90%) Oracle
6 283 (3.87%) VMware
7 216 (2.95%) SAP
8 195 (2.67%) Cisco
9 182 (2.49%) OpenAI
10 161 (2.20%) Splunk
11 137 (1.87%) CyberArk
12 128 (1.75%) Palo Alto
13 111 (1.52%) Salesforce
14 109 (1.49%) Foundry
15 93 (1.27%) Okta
16 78 (1.07%) Dynatrace
17 76 (1.04%) Citrix
18 73 (1.00%) Informatica
19 71 (0.97%) BeyondTrust
20 68 (0.93%) Zscaler