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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,622 4,471 5,839
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.51% 15.49% 13.61%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.47% 40.95% 41.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,377 3,146 4,234
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 33 49
10th Percentile £19.25 £24.04 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.11 £26.75 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.25 £61.60
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £51.25
% change year-on-year +53.33% -26.83% -15.46%

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 17,533 10,917 13,941
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.68% 37.81% 32.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,781 7,438 9,909
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.59% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £619 £634
90th Percentile £704 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.16% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 556 253 349
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.10 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.80 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £36.86 £28.00 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +31.63% +31.02% -42.24%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.12 £40.75
90th Percentile £81.13 £70.75 £68.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £20.89 £17.72
% change year-on-year +79.51% +17.89% -35.21%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +1 6,453 £525 - 2,414
London +1 3,441 £540 -1.82% 957
UK excluding London +2 3,213 £500 - 1,828
Work from Home 0 2,341 £525 +2.44% 1,233
North of England +5 934 £500 +5.26% 483
South East +2 823 £503 +0.60% 548
Midlands -1 512 £493 +0.10% 257
North West +3 470 £500 +5.26% 294
South West +5 398 £530 +0.95% 238
Yorkshire +6 388 £500 +11.11% 115
West Midlands 0 373 £500 -4.76% 164
Scotland +12 313 £525 +8.25% 105
East of England +6 156 £550 -5.17% 139
East Midlands +6 129 £463 - 93
Wales 0 103 £411 +2.75% 57
North East +2 86 £525 +2.44% 75
Northern Ireland +16 18 £531 +11.84% 33
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
1 363 (4.76%) SharePoint
2 215 (2.82%) Confluence
3 199 (2.61%) Apache Spark
4 192 (2.52%) Microsoft Exchange
5 109 (1.43%) Apache
6 108 (1.42%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.34%) IIS
7 26 (0.34%) SAS
8 19 (0.25%) CMS
9 16 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
10 15 (0.20%) Mendix
10 15 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 15 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.17%) Appian
12 12 (0.16%) ArcGIS
12 12 (0.16%) Camunda
12 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
15 8 (0.10%) Umbraco
Applications
1 104 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.26%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.092%) AutoCAD
7 7 (0.092%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.066%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.066%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.066%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.052%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.052%) Notion
9 4 (0.052%) Revit
9 4 (0.052%) Trello
10 3 (0.039%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.013%) InDesign
11 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.013%) Sketch
11 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 102 (1.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 84 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
5 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.092%) NEC Housing
8 6 (0.079%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.079%) Shopify
8 6 (0.079%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.066%) SAP MM
9 5 (0.066%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.052%) Dynamics GP
10 4 (0.052%) Endur
10 4 (0.052%) Magento
10 4 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,608 (34.22%) AWS
2 1,551 (20.35%) Azure DevOps
3 1,312 (17.21%) GCP
4 979 (12.84%) Power Platform
5 922 (12.10%) Entra ID
6 792 (10.39%) Microsoft 365
7 711 (9.33%) GitHub
8 500 (6.56%) Azure Data Factory
9 426 (5.59%) GitHub Actions
10 384 (5.04%) Serverless
11 328 (4.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 292 (3.83%) SaaS
13 278 (3.65%) Azure AKS
14 262 (3.44%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.31%) Dynamics 365
16 244 (3.20%) Azure Monitor
17 235 (3.08%) PaaS
18 225 (2.95%) PowerApps
19 205 (2.69%) Azure Functions
20 201 (2.64%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 456 (5.98%) Firewall
2 334 (4.38%) DNS
3 261 (3.42%) Network Security
3 261 (3.42%) VPN
4 214 (2.81%) WAN
5 178 (2.34%) DHCP
6 139 (1.82%) LAN
7 120 (1.57%) SD-WAN
8 95 (1.25%) TCP/IP
9 88 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
10 80 (1.05%) BGP
11 73 (0.96%) VLAN
12 68 (0.89%) OSPF
13 67 (0.88%) Kerberos
14 53 (0.70%) SSL
15 52 (0.68%) SAN
16 49 (0.64%) VXLAN
17 44 (0.58%) Wireless
18 43 (0.56%) IPsec
19 37 (0.49%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 646 (8.48%) Power BI
2 445 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 377 (4.95%) Data Lake
4 370 (4.85%) Data Warehouse
5 255 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 241 (3.16%) Azure SQL Database
7 200 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 175 (2.30%) Metadata
9 150 (1.97%) Delta Lake
10 122 (1.60%) Big Data
11 115 (1.51%) Relational Database
12 97 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 95 (1.25%) MongoDB
14 77 (1.01%) Tableau
15 75 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
16 69 (0.91%) MySQL
17 66 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 64 (0.84%) Oracle Database
19 53 (0.70%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 540 (7.08%) Git
2 535 (7.02%) JIRA
3 390 (5.12%) Jenkins
4 323 (4.24%) GitLab
5 123 (1.61%) Selenium
6 82 (1.08%) Postman
7 73 (0.96%) JMeter
8 66 (0.87%) Cucumber
9 59 (0.77%) JUnit
10 53 (0.70%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.63%) MLflow
12 47 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 39 (0.51%) Cypress.io
13 39 (0.51%) Visual Studio
14 37 (0.49%) WebDriver
15 33 (0.43%) Artifactory
16 32 (0.42%) Gatling
17 30 (0.39%) Maven
18 26 (0.34%) TestRail
19 25 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,929 (25.31%) Social Skills
2 1,381 (18.12%) Finance
3 836 (10.97%) Public Sector
4 676 (8.87%) Analytical Skills
5 387 (5.08%) Banking
6 219 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 195 (2.56%) Legal
8 127 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 119 (1.56%) Retail
10 92 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 75 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
12 71 (0.93%) Financial Institution
13 70 (0.92%) Investment Banking
14 67 (0.88%) Marketing
15 64 (0.84%) Front Office
15 64 (0.84%) Law
16 59 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
17 56 (0.73%) Telecoms
18 44 (0.58%) Manufacturing
18 44 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,337 (17.54%) Architect
2 959 (12.58%) Developer
3 906 (11.89%) Senior
4 670 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 601 (7.89%) Data Engineer
6 581 (7.62%) Lead
7 473 (6.21%) Analyst
8 414 (5.43%) DevOps Engineer
9 357 (4.68%) Solutions Architect
10 310 (4.07%) Consultant
11 258 (3.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 257 (3.37%) Cloud Engineer
13 212 (2.78%) Azure Architect
14 206 (2.70%) Data Architect
14 206 (2.70%) Security Engineer
15 176 (2.31%) Platform Engineer
16 173 (2.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 171 (2.24%) Technical Architect
18 163 (2.14%) Project Manager
19 157 (2.06%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 614 (8.06%) .NET
2 524 (6.87%) REST
3 343 (4.50%) React
4 266 (3.49%) Kafka
5 265 (3.48%) PySpark
6 246 (3.23%) RESTful
7 221 (2.90%) OAuth
8 214 (2.81%) Node.js
9 199 (2.61%) Spring
10 182 (2.39%) AngularJS
11 177 (2.32%) LDAP
12 169 (2.22%) Spring Boot
13 163 (2.14%) JSON
14 142 (1.86%) HTML
14 142 (1.86%) OpenID
15 138 (1.81%) SAML
16 135 (1.77%) SOAP
17 130 (1.71%) Middleware
18 119 (1.56%) CSS
19 114 (1.50%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 759 (9.96%) Cloud Native
2 309 (4.05%) Onboarding
3 293 (3.84%) Product Ownership
4 241 (3.16%) Data Centre
5 220 (2.89%) Hybrid Cloud
6 192 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
7 181 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
8 172 (2.26%) Security Posture
9 168 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
10 157 (2.06%) Public Cloud
11 146 (1.92%) AI Agents
12 101 (1.33%) Data Structures
13 97 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
14 95 (1.25%) Replication
15 87 (1.14%) Management Information System
16 83 (1.09%) PKI
17 82 (1.08%) Low-Code
18 67 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
19 65 (0.85%) Self-Motivation
20 64 (0.84%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 856 (11.23%) Windows
2 396 (5.20%) Linux
3 263 (3.45%) Windows Server
4 125 (1.64%) Windows 10
5 73 (0.96%) Mac OS
6 72 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 72 (0.94%) Unix
7 71 (0.93%) Apple iOS
8 69 (0.91%) VMS
9 59 (0.77%) Android
10 33 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
11 29 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 13 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.14%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
17 8 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.092%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,847 (37.35%) DevOps
2 2,372 (31.12%) CI/CD
3 1,783 (23.39%) Agile
4 1,107 (14.52%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,072 (14.06%) Analytics
6 1,068 (14.01%) Migration
7 1,065 (13.97%) Problem-Solving
8 1,051 (13.79%) AI
9 859 (11.27%) Data Modelling
10 788 (10.34%) Stakeholder Management
11 731 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
12 718 (9.42%) Data Pipeline
13 700 (9.18%) Business Intelligence
14 683 (8.96%) ETL
15 682 (8.95%) Containerisation
16 672 (8.82%) Roadmaps
17 668 (8.76%) Microservices
18 641 (8.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 603 (7.91%) Data Engineering
20 597 (7.83%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,789 (23.47%) Python
2 1,576 (20.68%) SQL
3 769 (10.09%) PowerShell
4 624 (8.19%) Java
5 622 (8.16%) C#
6 455 (5.97%) JavaScript
7 294 (3.86%) TypeScript
8 264 (3.46%) Bash
9 260 (3.41%) Bicep
10 90 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 90 (1.18%) T-SQL
11 87 (1.14%) Scala
12 78 (1.02%) Go
13 54 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
14 50 (0.66%) Shell Script
15 42 (0.55%) PL/SQL
16 40 (0.52%) R
17 32 (0.42%) C++
18 27 (0.35%) Kotlin
19 17 (0.22%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,858 (24.38%) Security Cleared
2 1,571 (20.61%) SC Cleared
3 531 (6.97%) Degree
4 395 (5.18%) Azure Certification
5 232 (3.04%) CISSP
6 192 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
7 189 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
8 184 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
9 171 (2.24%) DV Cleared
10 158 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
11 151 (1.98%) AWS Certification
12 128 (1.68%) CISM
13 89 (1.17%) CCNP
14 76 (1.00%) PMP
15 72 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 71 (0.93%) PMI Certification
17 62 (0.81%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.75%) ISTQB
18 57 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
19 49 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 527 (6.91%) Data Quality
2 400 (5.25%) QA
3 351 (4.61%) GDPR
4 287 (3.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 269 (3.53%) NIST
6 149 (1.95%) Accessibility
7 107 (1.40%) NCSC
8 90 (1.18%) SLA
9 80 (1.05%) PCI DSS
10 72 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 52 (0.68%) WCAG
13 51 (0.67%) GRC
13 51 (0.67%) PMO
14 37 (0.49%) HIPAA
15 26 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 26 (0.34%) NIST 800
15 26 (0.34%) SOC 2
16 17 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 16 (0.21%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 923 (12.11%) Active Directory
2 790 (10.36%) Docker
3 221 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 123 (1.61%) Virtual Desktop
5 122 (1.60%) Hyper-V
6 110 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
7 70 (0.92%) vSphere
8 47 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.39%) Firmware
10 29 (0.38%) VMware NSX
11 22 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 7 (0.092%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.079%) Ceph
16 6 (0.079%) HDFS
16 6 (0.079%) KVM
16 6 (0.079%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,196 (15.69%) Terraform
2 1,081 (14.18%) Kubernetes
3 387 (5.08%) Microsoft Intune
4 361 (4.74%) Ansible
5 215 (2.82%) Grafana
6 188 (2.47%) Prometheus
7 169 (2.22%) Single Sign-On
8 107 (1.40%) SCCM
9 74 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.52%) Argo
11 38 (0.50%) Progress Chef
12 36 (0.47%) FortiGate
12 36 (0.47%) Puppet
13 35 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
14 32 (0.42%) Istio
15 22 (0.29%) HP ALM
16 21 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.21%) linkerd
19 15 (0.20%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 2,420 (31.75%) Microsoft
2 762 (10.00%) Databricks
3 318 (4.17%) ServiceNow
4 303 (3.98%) VMware
5 299 (3.92%) Google
6 286 (3.75%) Oracle
7 215 (2.82%) SAP
8 211 (2.77%) Cisco
9 185 (2.43%) OpenAI
10 166 (2.18%) Splunk
11 143 (1.88%) CyberArk
12 141 (1.85%) Palo Alto
13 118 (1.55%) Salesforce
14 106 (1.39%) Foundry
15 105 (1.38%) Okta
16 78 (1.02%) Dynatrace
17 76 (1.00%) Citrix
18 71 (0.93%) Informatica
19 70 (0.92%) Red Hat
20 69 (0.91%) Zscaler