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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,334 4,757 5,566
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.52% 14.52% 14.34%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.50% 39.09% 42.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,824 3,232 3,929
10th Percentile £375 £350 £343
25th Percentile £438 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £630
90th Percentile £718 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 172 46 38
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.31 £18.05
25th Percentile £21.25 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.29% +10.71% -35.19%
75th Percentile £79.25 £72.50 £60.58
90th Percentile £99.44 £91.88 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year -41.15% +96.97% -28.54%

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 18,730 12,170 13,109
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.88% 37.16% 33.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,406 8,107 9,047
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 600 321 228
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.28 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £17.80
Median hourly rate £33.99 £28.00 £27.86
Median % change year-on-year +21.39% +0.50% -20.40%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £55.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £18.87 £22.00
% change year-on-year +72.23% -14.23% -18.52%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 7,149 £525 - 6,031
London +1 3,739 £550 +1.29% 3,088
UK excluding London +2 3,586 £500 - 3,745
Work from Home 0 2,541 £525 +5.00% 2,831
North of England +9 1,050 £500 +5.26% 994
South East +3 928 £525 +5.00% 988
Midlands +4 643 £488 -5.34% 507
North West +6 537 £492 +3.58% 549
West Midlands +3 474 £488 -9.47% 313
Yorkshire +6 431 £500 +5.82% 312
South West +6 429 £540 +8.00% 482
Scotland +12 288 £500 +5.26% 279
East of England +3 174 £525 +3.45% 298
East Midlands +9 157 £488 +5.41% 193
North East +10 95 £506 +1.25% 142
Wales 0 92 £475 +6.03% 104
Northern Ireland +8 12 £650 +36.84% 129
Channel Islands 0 11 £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
1 454 (5.45%) SharePoint
2 268 (3.22%) Confluence
3 199 (2.39%) Microsoft Exchange
4 173 (2.08%) Apache Spark
5 153 (1.84%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.38%) Apache
7 43 (0.52%) SAS
8 37 (0.44%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 23 (0.28%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.084%) Apache Superset
16 7 (0.084%) Camunda
16 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 7 (0.084%) WebSphere
Applications
1 124 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.46%) Chatbot
6 34 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
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%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 126 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.072%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.060%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Maximo
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
11 4 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,973 (35.67%) AWS
2 1,794 (21.53%) Azure DevOps
3 1,410 (16.92%) GCP
4 1,083 (12.99%) Entra ID
5 1,066 (12.79%) Power Platform
6 858 (10.30%) Microsoft 365
7 833 (10.00%) GitHub
8 494 (5.93%) GitHub Actions
9 477 (5.72%) Azure Data Factory
10 367 (4.40%) Serverless
11 354 (4.25%) SaaS
12 322 (3.86%) Azure Monitor
13 312 (3.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 305 (3.66%) Azure AKS
15 293 (3.52%) Power Automate
16 283 (3.40%) Dynamics 365
17 277 (3.32%) PowerApps
18 259 (3.11%) Snowflake
19 238 (2.86%) PaaS
20 227 (2.72%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 525 (6.30%) Firewall
2 419 (5.03%) DNS
3 319 (3.83%) VPN
4 308 (3.70%) Network Security
5 217 (2.60%) DHCP
6 198 (2.38%) WAN
7 167 (2.00%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.42%) LAN
9 112 (1.34%) BGP
10 103 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 91 (1.09%) VLAN
12 89 (1.07%) OSPF
13 83 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 72 (0.86%) SSL
15 61 (0.73%) SAN
16 54 (0.65%) Wireless
17 52 (0.62%) HTTP
18 47 (0.56%) VXLAN
19 46 (0.55%) IPsec
20 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 726 (8.71%) Power BI
2 462 (5.54%) SQL Server
3 410 (4.92%) Data Warehouse
4 360 (4.32%) Data Lake
5 287 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 232 (2.78%) Metadata
7 220 (2.64%) Azure SQL Database
8 218 (2.62%) NoSQL
9 143 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 132 (1.58%) Delta Lake
11 102 (1.22%) MongoDB
12 101 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 97 (1.16%) Big Data
14 81 (0.97%) MySQL
15 67 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
15 67 (0.80%) Tableau
16 65 (0.78%) Redis
17 62 (0.74%) Snowflake Schema
18 59 (0.71%) BigQuery
19 58 (0.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 691 (8.29%) Git
2 619 (7.43%) JIRA
3 460 (5.52%) Jenkins
4 358 (4.30%) GitLab
5 135 (1.62%) Selenium
6 75 (0.90%) Postman
7 62 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 62 (0.74%) JUnit
8 58 (0.70%) JMeter
9 53 (0.64%) Maven
10 51 (0.61%) SonarQube
11 50 (0.60%) Cucumber
12 48 (0.58%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
14 44 (0.53%) Claude Code
14 44 (0.53%) Gradle
15 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 33 (0.40%) MLflow
17 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
18 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,237 (26.84%) Social Skills
2 1,547 (18.56%) Finance
3 985 (11.82%) Public Sector
4 821 (9.85%) Analytical Skills
5 447 (5.36%) Banking
6 236 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 214 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 192 (2.30%) Retail
9 182 (2.18%) Legal
10 98 (1.18%) Manufacturing
11 96 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 94 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
13 82 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
14 77 (0.92%) Investment Banking
15 75 (0.90%) Aerospace
16 74 (0.89%) Law
16 74 (0.89%) Marketing
17 67 (0.80%) Military
18 66 (0.79%) Financial Institution
19 57 (0.68%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,547 (18.56%) Architect
2 1,037 (12.44%) Senior
3 1,021 (12.25%) Developer
4 742 (8.90%) Azure Engineer
5 688 (8.26%) Lead
6 595 (7.14%) Data Engineer
7 495 (5.94%) Analyst
8 462 (5.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 445 (5.34%) Solutions Architect
10 355 (4.26%) Cloud Engineer
11 318 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 313 (3.76%) Consultant
13 265 (3.18%) Data Architect
14 238 (2.86%) Platform Engineer
15 234 (2.81%) Azure Architect
16 204 (2.45%) Technical Architect
17 201 (2.41%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 185 (2.22%) Project Manager
18 185 (2.22%) Senior Developer
19 184 (2.21%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,381 (16.57%) Terraform
2 675 (8.10%) REST
3 633 (7.60%) .NET
4 363 (4.36%) Kafka
5 316 (3.79%) React
6 291 (3.49%) RESTful
7 271 (3.25%) PySpark
8 249 (2.99%) OAuth
9 226 (2.71%) JSON
10 206 (2.47%) Spring
11 181 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 173 (2.08%) Node.js
13 158 (1.90%) AngularJS
14 151 (1.81%) HTML
14 151 (1.81%) SAML
15 150 (1.80%) OpenID
16 145 (1.74%) OAuth2
17 140 (1.68%) Middleware
18 137 (1.64%) .NET Framework
18 137 (1.64%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 909 (10.91%) Cloud Native
2 413 (4.96%) Onboarding
3 367 (4.40%) Product Ownership
4 273 (3.28%) AI Agents
5 272 (3.26%) Hybrid Cloud
6 270 (3.24%) Distributed Systems
7 269 (3.23%) Enterprise Software
8 255 (3.06%) Data Centre
9 236 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
10 170 (2.04%) Security Posture
11 154 (1.85%) Management Information System
12 144 (1.73%) Data Structures
13 143 (1.72%) Public Cloud
14 119 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
15 117 (1.40%) Enterprise Cloud
16 114 (1.37%) PKI
17 97 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
18 96 (1.15%) Replication
19 82 (0.98%) CMDB
20 75 (0.90%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 984 (11.81%) Windows
2 506 (6.07%) Linux
3 362 (4.34%) Windows Server
4 133 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 86 (1.03%) Android
6 84 (1.01%) Unix
7 83 (1.00%) Apple iOS
8 81 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 71 (0.85%) Mac OS
10 61 (0.73%) VMS
11 54 (0.65%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.22%) CentOS
13 18 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 8 (0.096%) Data ONTAP
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,100 (37.20%) DevOps
2 2,620 (31.44%) CI/CD
3 2,081 (24.97%) Agile
4 1,357 (16.28%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,354 (16.25%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,328 (15.93%) AI
7 1,243 (14.91%) Migration
8 1,154 (13.85%) Analytics
9 1,119 (13.43%) Problem-Solving
10 937 (11.24%) Continuous Improvement
11 914 (10.97%) Data Modelling
12 815 (9.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 802 (9.62%) Roadmaps
14 779 (9.35%) Containerisation
15 777 (9.32%) Business Intelligence
16 767 (9.20%) Data Pipeline
17 746 (8.95%) Microservices
18 699 (8.39%) Test Automation
19 696 (8.35%) Technical Leadership
20 679 (8.15%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,894 (22.73%) Python
2 1,622 (19.46%) SQL
3 862 (10.34%) PowerShell
4 693 (8.32%) Java
5 608 (7.30%) C#
6 489 (5.87%) JavaScript
7 395 (4.74%) Bash
8 350 (4.20%) Bicep
9 294 (3.53%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 71 (0.85%) Go
13 62 (0.74%) Shell Script
14 60 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 59 (0.71%) Scala
16 44 (0.53%) PL/SQL
17 41 (0.49%) R
18 39 (0.47%) Kotlin
19 34 (0.41%) Groovy
20 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,172 (26.06%) Security Cleared
2 1,757 (21.08%) SC Cleared
3 554 (6.65%) Degree
4 461 (5.53%) Azure Certification
5 288 (3.46%) DV Cleared
6 262 (3.14%) CISSP
7 252 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
8 233 (2.80%) Microsoft Certification
9 205 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
10 203 (2.44%) AWS Certification
11 183 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
12 132 (1.58%) CISM
13 95 (1.14%) CCNP
14 89 (1.07%) PMI Certification
15 84 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 84 (1.01%) PMP
16 73 (0.88%) ISTQB
17 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
18 54 (0.65%) CCSP
19 43 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 597 (7.16%) Data Quality
2 449 (5.39%) QA
3 315 (3.78%) GDPR
3 315 (3.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 312 (3.74%) NIST
5 202 (2.42%) Accessibility
6 122 (1.46%) NCSC
7 103 (1.24%) SLA
8 79 (0.95%) WCAG
9 78 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
10 77 (0.92%) GRC
11 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
12 58 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 56 (0.67%) PMO
14 42 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.29%) SOC 2
17 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
17 20 (0.24%) ISO 20022
18 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,013 (12.16%) Active Directory
2 913 (10.96%) Docker
3 245 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
5 142 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
6 132 (1.58%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.79%) vSphere
8 53 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.32%) Firmware
11 20 (0.24%) NFS
12 17 (0.20%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 12 (0.14%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Squid
18 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,279 (15.35%) Kubernetes
2 449 (5.39%) Ansible
3 434 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
4 260 (3.12%) Grafana
5 208 (2.50%) Prometheus
6 147 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
7 125 (1.50%) SCCM
8 62 (0.74%) Progress Chef
9 59 (0.71%) Argo
10 48 (0.58%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 29 (0.35%) Istio
15 23 (0.28%) SCOM
16 22 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) Packer
18 19 (0.23%) QRadar
19 18 (0.22%) HAProxy
20 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,892 (34.70%) Microsoft
2 820 (9.84%) Databricks
3 410 (4.92%) ServiceNow
4 354 (4.25%) Google
4 354 (4.25%) VMware
5 325 (3.90%) Oracle
6 242 (2.90%) Cisco
7 225 (2.70%) SAP
8 210 (2.52%) Splunk
9 206 (2.47%) OpenAI
10 168 (2.02%) Salesforce
11 152 (1.82%) CyberArk
12 150 (1.80%) Palo Alto
13 133 (1.60%) Foundry
14 119 (1.43%) Dynatrace
15 102 (1.22%) Zscaler
16 94 (1.13%) Informatica
17 82 (0.98%) Okta
18 80 (0.96%) Fortinet
19 77 (0.92%) IBM