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

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,102 4,647 5,974
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.83% 15.98% 13.53%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.89% 41.92% 41.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,049 3,318 4,313
10th Percentile £356 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -0.94% -4.42%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 45 56
10th Percentile £25.41 £22.50 £17.79
25th Percentile £50.94 £24.00 £22.45
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +76.92% -11.56% -32.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £72.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £84.20 £84.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £50.53
% change year-on-year +79.69% -36.67% -12.13%

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 16,559 11,085 14,355
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.91% 38.12% 32.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,284 7,774 10,164
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 £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £476 £495
% change year-on-year -0.21% -3.84% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 461 219 343
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.94% +26.19% -23.64%
75th Percentile £67.50 £42.49 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £76.44 £61.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £23.00 £17.72
% change year-on-year +106.52% +29.80% -20.48%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 6,026 £524 -0.24% 2,909
London +1 3,270 £537 -2.36% 1,004
UK excluding London +2 2,910 £500 - 2,332
Work from Home -1 2,170 £525 +0.96% 1,365
North of England +3 819 £488 +0.26% 604
South East +1 748 £500 -7.02% 685
Midlands -1 504 £490 -2.00% 369
North West +2 440 £476 -4.80% 303
West Midlands 0 375 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 351 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire -1 334 £500 +11.11% 208
Scotland +6 287 £546 +15.00% 115
East of England +4 150 £540 -6.90% 207
East Midlands -2 119 £433 -8.95% 163
Wales -2 84 £400 -1.54% 73
North East -4 48 £525 +7.69% 97
Northern Ireland +2 13 £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
1 329 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 207 (2.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 198 (2.79%) Confluence
4 189 (2.66%) Apache Spark
5 109 (1.53%) Apache
6 103 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
7 28 (0.39%) SAS
8 23 (0.32%) IIS
9 21 (0.30%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 17 (0.24%) CMS
12 16 (0.23%) Appian
13 15 (0.21%) Camunda
14 13 (0.18%) Mendix
15 11 (0.15%) HCL Notes
16 10 (0.14%) Jupyter
16 10 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
17 8 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
18 7 (0.099%) Anypoint
19 5 (0.070%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 125 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
4 47 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.23%) 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%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.028%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
13 1 (0.014%) Revit
Business Applications
1 111 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Maximo
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.099%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.099%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.084%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.070%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.056%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.056%) Oracle ERP
10 4 (0.056%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.056%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.056%) Primavera
10 4 (0.056%) ResourceLink
Cloud Services
1 2,444 (34.41%) AWS
2 1,482 (20.87%) Azure DevOps
3 1,321 (18.60%) GCP
4 955 (13.45%) Power Platform
5 861 (12.12%) Entra ID
6 772 (10.87%) Microsoft 365
7 723 (10.18%) GitHub
8 506 (7.12%) Azure Data Factory
9 430 (6.05%) GitHub Actions
10 411 (5.79%) Serverless
11 333 (4.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 291 (4.10%) Dynamics 365
13 279 (3.93%) SaaS
14 264 (3.72%) Power Automate
15 260 (3.66%) Azure AKS
16 248 (3.49%) Azure Monitor
17 236 (3.32%) PaaS
18 235 (3.31%) Azure Functions
19 213 (3.00%) Snowflake
20 210 (2.96%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 458 (6.45%) Firewall
2 307 (4.32%) DNS
3 264 (3.72%) VPN
4 239 (3.37%) Network Security
5 187 (2.63%) WAN
6 167 (2.35%) DHCP
7 134 (1.89%) LAN
8 98 (1.38%) TCP/IP
9 96 (1.35%) SD-WAN
10 90 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
11 78 (1.10%) VLAN
12 70 (0.99%) Kerberos
13 54 (0.76%) BGP
14 47 (0.66%) OSPF
15 44 (0.62%) HTTP
16 42 (0.59%) SSL
16 42 (0.59%) Wireless
17 38 (0.54%) SAN
18 32 (0.45%) Internet
18 32 (0.45%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 645 (9.08%) Power BI
2 418 (5.89%) SQL Server
3 379 (5.34%) Data Warehouse
4 344 (4.84%) Data Lake
5 260 (3.66%) Azure SQL Database
6 258 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
7 208 (2.93%) NoSQL
8 182 (2.56%) Metadata
9 147 (2.07%) Delta Lake
10 114 (1.61%) Relational Database
11 110 (1.55%) Big Data
12 95 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 94 (1.32%) MongoDB
14 85 (1.20%) Tableau
15 71 (1.00%) MySQL
16 70 (0.99%) Oracle Database
17 65 (0.92%) BigQuery
18 64 (0.90%) Snowflake Schema
19 56 (0.79%) Star Schema
20 47 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 535 (7.53%) Git
2 491 (6.91%) JIRA
3 385 (5.42%) Jenkins
4 280 (3.94%) GitLab
5 141 (1.99%) Selenium
6 90 (1.27%) Postman
7 78 (1.10%) JMeter
8 76 (1.07%) Cucumber
8 76 (1.07%) JUnit
9 52 (0.73%) REST Assured
10 51 (0.72%) MLflow
11 47 (0.66%) Cypress.io
12 43 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 43 (0.61%) Visual Studio
13 36 (0.51%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
14 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
15 32 (0.45%) TestRail
16 27 (0.38%) Gatling
17 26 (0.37%) Zephyr
General
1 1,964 (27.65%) Social Skills
2 1,278 (17.99%) Finance
3 832 (11.72%) Public Sector
4 698 (9.83%) Analytical Skills
5 380 (5.35%) Banking
6 225 (3.17%) Documentation Skills
7 177 (2.49%) Legal
8 115 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 99 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
10 89 (1.25%) Retail
11 85 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
12 83 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
13 78 (1.10%) Marketing
14 75 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 68 (0.96%) Financial Institution
15 68 (0.96%) Law
16 56 (0.79%) Investment Banking
17 54 (0.76%) Front Office
18 47 (0.66%) Manufacturing
19 44 (0.62%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,196 (16.84%) Architect
2 962 (13.55%) Developer
3 829 (11.67%) Senior
4 632 (8.90%) Azure Engineer
5 584 (8.22%) Data Engineer
6 542 (7.63%) Lead
7 449 (6.32%) Analyst
8 358 (5.04%) DevOps Engineer
9 319 (4.49%) Solutions Architect
10 309 (4.35%) Consultant
11 196 (2.76%) Cloud Engineer
12 189 (2.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 184 (2.59%) Azure Architect
14 174 (2.45%) Security Engineer
15 171 (2.41%) Platform Engineer
16 164 (2.31%) Senior Developer
17 157 (2.21%) Data Architect
18 153 (2.15%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 150 (2.11%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 145 (2.04%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 556 (7.83%) .NET
2 477 (6.72%) REST
3 342 (4.82%) React
4 278 (3.91%) Kafka
5 266 (3.75%) PySpark
6 255 (3.59%) RESTful
7 250 (3.52%) Node.js
8 223 (3.14%) Spring
9 206 (2.90%) OAuth
10 191 (2.69%) AngularJS
11 186 (2.62%) Spring Boot
12 156 (2.20%) HTML
12 156 (2.20%) LDAP
13 149 (2.10%) JSON
14 137 (1.93%) CSS
15 132 (1.86%) Middleware
16 127 (1.79%) SOAP
17 126 (1.77%) SAML
18 122 (1.72%) PyTorch
19 116 (1.63%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 641 (9.03%) Cloud Native
2 276 (3.89%) Onboarding
3 266 (3.75%) Product Ownership
4 193 (2.72%) Hybrid Cloud
5 186 (2.62%) Data Centre
6 166 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
7 164 (2.31%) Security Posture
8 159 (2.24%) Legacy Systems
9 151 (2.13%) Public Cloud
10 144 (2.03%) Distributed Systems
11 120 (1.69%) AI Agents
12 89 (1.25%) Data Structures
13 87 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
13 87 (1.23%) Replication
14 73 (1.03%) Management Information System
15 68 (0.96%) PKI
16 67 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
17 66 (0.93%) Algorithms
18 63 (0.89%) Low-Code
18 63 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 763 (10.74%) Windows
2 376 (5.29%) Linux
3 229 (3.22%) Windows Server
4 126 (1.77%) Windows 10
5 77 (1.08%) VMS
6 74 (1.04%) Unix
7 57 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 49 (0.69%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.56%) Apple iOS
10 31 (0.44%) Android
11 23 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.27%) Ubuntu
13 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 7 (0.099%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.084%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.070%) AIX
18 5 (0.070%) CentOS
18 5 (0.070%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,660 (37.45%) DevOps
2 2,181 (30.71%) CI/CD
3 1,671 (23.53%) Agile
4 1,145 (16.12%) Problem-Solving
5 1,070 (15.07%) Analytics
6 990 (13.94%) AI
7 971 (13.67%) Infrastructure as Code
8 943 (13.28%) Migration
9 781 (11.00%) Data Modelling
10 732 (10.31%) Stakeholder Management
11 707 (9.95%) Business Intelligence
12 681 (9.59%) Containerisation
13 680 (9.57%) Continuous Improvement
14 653 (9.19%) ETL
15 652 (9.18%) Data Pipeline
16 651 (9.17%) Microservices
17 602 (8.48%) Machine Learning
18 598 (8.42%) Data Engineering
19 590 (8.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 573 (8.07%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,809 (25.47%) Python
2 1,569 (22.09%) SQL
3 752 (10.59%) PowerShell
4 615 (8.66%) C#
5 601 (8.46%) Java
6 488 (6.87%) JavaScript
7 298 (4.20%) TypeScript
8 259 (3.65%) Bash
9 226 (3.18%) Bicep
10 97 (1.37%) Scala
11 81 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 77 (1.08%) Go
12 77 (1.08%) Kusto Query Language
13 76 (1.07%) PL/SQL
13 76 (1.07%) T-SQL
14 54 (0.76%) Shell Script
15 46 (0.65%) R
16 30 (0.42%) C++
17 25 (0.35%) PHP
18 20 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,733 (24.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,445 (20.35%) SC Cleared
3 538 (7.58%) Degree
4 374 (5.27%) Azure Certification
5 209 (2.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 199 (2.80%) CISSP
7 163 (2.30%) Microsoft Certification
8 151 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
9 143 (2.01%) DV Cleared
10 140 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
11 138 (1.94%) AWS Certification
12 121 (1.70%) CISM
13 83 (1.17%) Master's Degree
14 76 (1.07%) CCNP
15 67 (0.94%) ISTQB
16 66 (0.93%) PMI Certification
16 66 (0.93%) PMP
16 66 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
17 46 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 35 (0.49%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 506 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 396 (5.58%) GDPR
3 386 (5.44%) QA
4 310 (4.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 259 (3.65%) NIST
6 135 (1.90%) Accessibility
7 108 (1.52%) NCSC
8 85 (1.20%) PCI DSS
9 65 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
10 62 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 61 (0.86%) SLA
12 60 (0.84%) PMO
13 41 (0.58%) WCAG
14 40 (0.56%) GRC
15 38 (0.54%) HIPAA
16 26 (0.37%) SOC 2
17 25 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 25 (0.35%) NIST 800
18 24 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 23 (0.32%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 904 (12.73%) Active Directory
2 832 (11.72%) Docker
3 208 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 108 (1.52%) Hyper-V
5 103 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
6 87 (1.23%) Virtual Desktop
7 81 (1.14%) vSphere
8 34 (0.48%) VMware NSX
9 32 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
10 25 (0.35%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) NFS
12 10 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.099%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.099%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.099%) Varnish
14 6 (0.084%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.084%) RACF
14 6 (0.084%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.084%) Snort
15 5 (0.070%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 1,108 (15.60%) Terraform
2 1,046 (14.73%) Kubernetes
3 371 (5.22%) Microsoft Intune
4 324 (4.56%) Ansible
5 189 (2.66%) Grafana
6 163 (2.30%) Single Sign-On
7 159 (2.24%) Prometheus
8 121 (1.70%) SCCM
9 74 (1.04%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.63%) Argo
11 34 (0.48%) Istio
12 31 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 30 (0.42%) Puppet
14 28 (0.39%) Progress Chef
15 27 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
15 27 (0.38%) vCenter Server
16 26 (0.37%) vRealize
17 22 (0.31%) HP ALM
18 17 (0.24%) Kubeflow
19 16 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 2,272 (31.99%) Microsoft
2 729 (10.26%) Databricks
3 335 (4.72%) Oracle
4 326 (4.59%) Google
5 290 (4.08%) VMware
6 282 (3.97%) ServiceNow
7 206 (2.90%) SAP
8 191 (2.69%) Cisco
9 182 (2.56%) OpenAI
10 162 (2.28%) Splunk
11 133 (1.87%) CyberArk
12 117 (1.65%) Foundry
13 112 (1.58%) Palo Alto
14 95 (1.34%) Salesforce
15 88 (1.24%) Okta
16 79 (1.11%) Informatica
17 78 (1.10%) IBM
18 74 (1.04%) BeyondTrust
18 74 (1.04%) Red Hat
19 71 (1.00%) Citrix