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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,270 4,517 5,870
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.41% 15.46% 13.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.85% 41.06% 41.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,190 3,224 4,218
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £638
90th Percentile £714 £735 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 43 51
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £49.20 £24.09 £22.19
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -36.36%
75th Percentile £65.19 £72.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £29.25 £50.00
% change year-on-year +96.58% -41.50% -16.53%

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 16,965 11,000 14,096
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.96% 37.64% 32.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,535 7,642 10,006
10th Percentile £320 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £633
90th Percentile £700 £733 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +1.32% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 487 250 348
10th Percentile £15.40 £15.28 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.51 £16.05
Median hourly rate £40.78 £27.43 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.70% +30.60% -40.00%
75th Percentile £67.50 £48.56 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.75 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £21.53 £17.72
% change year-on-year +120.67% +21.47% -28.03%

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 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 30 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 30 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 6,172 £525 - 2,413
London +1 3,310 £533 -3.18% 838
UK excluding London +2 3,019 £500 - 2,018
Work from Home -1 2,185 £525 +0.77% 1,097
North of England +2 845 £500 +5.26% 516
South East +1 790 £500 -4.76% 609
Midlands 0 506 £488 -4.41% 266
North West +3 453 £500 - 270
South West +5 385 £514 -2.06% 246
West Midlands 0 368 £500 -4.76% 148
Yorkshire +2 341 £500 +17.65% 157
Scotland +6 295 £532 +12.00% 90
East of England +4 152 £550 -5.17% 202
East Midlands +1 128 £450 -5.26% 117
Wales -3 76 £400 -5.88% 72
North East 0 60 £525 +3.70% 90
Northern Ireland +11 15 £475 - 53
Channel Islands +4 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
1 332 (4.57%) SharePoint
2 206 (2.83%) Confluence
3 201 (2.76%) Microsoft Exchange
4 200 (2.75%) Apache Spark
5 107 (1.47%) Apache
6 96 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.33%) SAS
8 22 (0.30%) IIS
9 17 (0.23%) ArcGIS
9 17 (0.23%) CMS
10 15 (0.21%) Mendix
10 15 (0.21%) OpenStack
11 14 (0.19%) Appian
11 14 (0.19%) Camunda
12 13 (0.18%) HCL Notes
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 8 (0.11%) nginx
17 6 (0.083%) Jupyter
Applications
1 115 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
3 65 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 22 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.096%) Trello
8 5 (0.069%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.069%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.055%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.041%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.041%) Weka
11 2 (0.028%) Revit
11 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
12 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 105 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.15%) Maximo
3 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
3 11 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
3 11 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
4 7 (0.096%) Aladdin
4 7 (0.096%) Dynamics AX
4 7 (0.096%) Teamcenter
5 6 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.069%) Cloudability
6 5 (0.069%) NetSuite
7 4 (0.055%) Dynamics NAV
7 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
7 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
7 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
7 4 (0.055%) Unit4 Business World
8 3 (0.041%) Oracle ERP
8 3 (0.041%) SAP Oil and Gas
8 3 (0.041%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,479 (34.10%) AWS
2 1,500 (20.63%) Azure DevOps
3 1,332 (18.32%) GCP
4 956 (13.15%) Power Platform
5 861 (11.84%) Entra ID
6 749 (10.30%) Microsoft 365
7 694 (9.55%) GitHub
8 510 (7.02%) Azure Data Factory
9 411 (5.65%) GitHub Actions
10 397 (5.46%) Serverless
11 341 (4.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 282 (3.88%) Azure AKS
13 279 (3.84%) SaaS
14 269 (3.70%) Dynamics 365
15 257 (3.54%) Power Automate
16 242 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
17 232 (3.19%) PaaS
18 219 (3.01%) PowerApps
19 218 (3.00%) Azure Functions
20 197 (2.71%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 454 (6.24%) Firewall
2 304 (4.18%) DNS
3 263 (3.62%) VPN
4 242 (3.33%) Network Security
5 192 (2.64%) WAN
6 162 (2.23%) DHCP
7 132 (1.82%) LAN
8 100 (1.38%) SD-WAN
9 95 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
10 87 (1.20%) TCP/IP
11 72 (0.99%) VLAN
12 70 (0.96%) Kerberos
13 62 (0.85%) BGP
14 54 (0.74%) OSPF
15 45 (0.62%) SAN
16 41 (0.56%) HTTP
16 41 (0.56%) SSL
17 40 (0.55%) Wireless
18 35 (0.48%) Internet
18 35 (0.48%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 647 (8.90%) Power BI
2 428 (5.89%) SQL Server
3 371 (5.10%) Data Warehouse
4 367 (5.05%) Data Lake
5 256 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 249 (3.43%) Azure SQL Database
7 194 (2.67%) NoSQL
8 183 (2.52%) Metadata
9 151 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 122 (1.68%) Big Data
11 116 (1.60%) Relational Database
12 97 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 94 (1.29%) MongoDB
14 79 (1.09%) Tableau
15 72 (0.99%) Oracle Database
16 68 (0.94%) MySQL
16 68 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
17 63 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.80%) Star Schema
19 50 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 534 (7.35%) Git
2 505 (6.95%) JIRA
3 380 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 296 (4.07%) GitLab
5 124 (1.71%) Selenium
6 80 (1.10%) Postman
7 68 (0.94%) Cucumber
7 68 (0.94%) JUnit
8 67 (0.92%) JMeter
9 55 (0.76%) MLflow
10 52 (0.72%) REST Assured
11 44 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 41 (0.56%) Cypress.io
13 38 (0.52%) Artifactory
14 34 (0.47%) Visual Studio
14 34 (0.47%) WebDriver
15 31 (0.43%) Gatling
16 28 (0.39%) TestRail
17 25 (0.34%) Mockito
18 24 (0.33%) Maven
General
1 1,925 (26.48%) Social Skills
2 1,288 (17.72%) Finance
3 825 (11.35%) Public Sector
4 675 (9.28%) Analytical Skills
5 374 (5.14%) Banking
6 220 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
7 184 (2.53%) Legal
8 103 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 92 (1.27%) Retail
10 85 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
11 77 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
12 76 (1.05%) Marketing
13 72 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
14 69 (0.95%) Financial Institution
15 67 (0.92%) Telecoms
16 63 (0.87%) Investment Banking
17 62 (0.85%) Law
18 61 (0.84%) Front Office
19 44 (0.61%) Local Government
20 42 (0.58%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,218 (16.75%) Architect
2 967 (13.30%) Developer
3 853 (11.73%) Senior
4 658 (9.05%) Azure Engineer
5 598 (8.23%) Data Engineer
6 553 (7.61%) Lead
7 449 (6.18%) Analyst
8 398 (5.47%) DevOps Engineer
9 310 (4.26%) Solutions Architect
10 296 (4.07%) Consultant
11 224 (3.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 222 (3.05%) Cloud Engineer
13 205 (2.82%) Azure Architect
14 191 (2.63%) Security Engineer
15 171 (2.35%) Platform Engineer
16 168 (2.31%) Data Architect
17 166 (2.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 159 (2.19%) Technical Architect
19 157 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 148 (2.04%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 572 (7.87%) .NET
2 487 (6.70%) REST
3 331 (4.55%) React
4 276 (3.80%) Kafka
5 265 (3.65%) PySpark
6 237 (3.26%) Node.js
7 234 (3.22%) RESTful
8 218 (3.00%) Spring
9 209 (2.87%) OAuth
10 181 (2.49%) AngularJS
11 180 (2.48%) Spring Boot
12 166 (2.28%) LDAP
13 147 (2.02%) HTML
14 145 (1.99%) JSON
15 133 (1.83%) OpenID
16 131 (1.80%) SAML
17 129 (1.77%) SOAP
18 126 (1.73%) Middleware
19 123 (1.69%) CSS
20 110 (1.51%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 697 (9.59%) Cloud Native
2 281 (3.87%) Onboarding
3 272 (3.74%) Product Ownership
4 193 (2.65%) Data Centre
4 193 (2.65%) Hybrid Cloud
5 180 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
6 165 (2.27%) Security Posture
7 164 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
7 164 (2.26%) Enterprise Software
8 159 (2.19%) Public Cloud
9 129 (1.77%) AI Agents
10 94 (1.29%) Data Structures
11 93 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
12 90 (1.24%) Replication
13 85 (1.17%) Management Information System
14 82 (1.13%) Low-Code
15 67 (0.92%) PKI
16 65 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
17 59 (0.81%) NHS
18 52 (0.72%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 786 (10.81%) Windows
2 368 (5.06%) Linux
3 243 (3.34%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.64%) Windows 10
5 71 (0.98%) Unix
5 71 (0.98%) VMS
6 63 (0.87%) Mac OS
7 62 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 52 (0.72%) Apple iOS
9 42 (0.58%) Android
10 29 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
11 23 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.28%) Ubuntu
13 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.11%) AIX
15 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.096%) CentOS
16 7 (0.096%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.083%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,727 (37.51%) DevOps
2 2,247 (30.91%) CI/CD
3 1,719 (23.65%) Agile
4 1,083 (14.90%) Problem-Solving
5 1,066 (14.66%) Analytics
6 1,031 (14.18%) Infrastructure as Code
7 992 (13.65%) Migration
8 991 (13.63%) AI
9 821 (11.29%) Data Modelling
10 717 (9.86%) Stakeholder Management
11 706 (9.71%) Business Intelligence
12 704 (9.68%) Containerisation
13 692 (9.52%) Continuous Improvement
14 691 (9.50%) Data Pipeline
15 657 (9.04%) Microservices
16 648 (8.91%) ETL
17 593 (8.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 588 (8.09%) Data Engineering
19 582 (8.01%) Roadmaps
20 566 (7.79%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,796 (24.70%) Python
2 1,558 (21.43%) SQL
3 733 (10.08%) PowerShell
4 625 (8.60%) Java
5 620 (8.53%) C#
6 464 (6.38%) JavaScript
7 290 (3.99%) TypeScript
8 252 (3.47%) Bash
9 233 (3.20%) Bicep
10 97 (1.33%) Scala
11 86 (1.18%) Go
12 85 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 79 (1.09%) T-SQL
14 68 (0.94%) Kusto Query Language
15 64 (0.88%) PL/SQL
16 54 (0.74%) Shell Script
17 46 (0.63%) R
18 29 (0.40%) C++
19 23 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 19 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,807 (24.86%) Security Cleared
2 1,523 (20.95%) SC Cleared
3 512 (7.04%) Degree
4 380 (5.23%) Azure Certification
5 201 (2.76%) Computer Science Degree
6 192 (2.64%) CISSP
7 164 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
8 150 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
9 149 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
10 144 (1.98%) AWS Certification
11 142 (1.95%) DV Cleared
12 115 (1.58%) CISM
13 77 (1.06%) CCNP
14 71 (0.98%) Master's Degree
14 71 (0.98%) PMP
15 70 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
17 60 (0.83%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 37 (0.51%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 514 (7.07%) Data Quality
2 397 (5.46%) QA
3 381 (5.24%) GDPR
4 289 (3.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 256 (3.52%) NIST
6 132 (1.82%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.38%) NCSC
8 83 (1.14%) PCI DSS
9 65 (0.89%) SLA
10 63 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 58 (0.80%) PMO
12 56 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
13 48 (0.66%) GRC
14 38 (0.52%) WCAG
15 36 (0.50%) HIPAA
16 23 (0.32%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.29%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 20 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 20 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 886 (12.19%) Active Directory
2 818 (11.25%) Docker
3 196 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 114 (1.57%) Virtual Machines
5 110 (1.51%) Hyper-V
6 108 (1.49%) Virtual Desktop
7 62 (0.85%) vSphere
8 34 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.39%) Firmware
10 21 (0.29%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.28%) NFS
12 11 (0.15%) Postfix
13 8 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.096%) BitLocker
14 7 (0.096%) HDFS
14 7 (0.096%) Varnish
15 6 (0.083%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.083%) RACF
16 5 (0.069%) Ceph
16 5 (0.069%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,150 (15.82%) Terraform
2 1,085 (14.92%) Kubernetes
3 368 (5.06%) Microsoft Intune
4 334 (4.59%) Ansible
5 207 (2.85%) Grafana
6 177 (2.43%) Prometheus
7 154 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 115 (1.58%) SCCM
9 66 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (0.50%) Argo
10 36 (0.50%) Istio
11 35 (0.48%) FortiGate
11 35 (0.48%) Puppet
12 28 (0.39%) Progress Chef
13 24 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
14 23 (0.32%) HP ALM
15 21 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.23%) Kubeflow
16 17 (0.23%) linkerd
17 15 (0.21%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,347 (32.28%) Microsoft
2 727 (10.00%) Databricks
3 323 (4.44%) Google
4 308 (4.24%) Oracle
5 293 (4.03%) ServiceNow
6 283 (3.89%) VMware
7 207 (2.85%) SAP
8 185 (2.54%) Cisco
9 180 (2.48%) OpenAI
10 167 (2.30%) Splunk
11 131 (1.80%) CyberArk
12 116 (1.60%) Foundry
13 111 (1.53%) Palo Alto
14 108 (1.49%) Salesforce
15 92 (1.27%) Okta
16 75 (1.03%) Citrix
16 75 (1.03%) Informatica
17 72 (0.99%) Dynatrace
18 67 (0.92%) BeyondTrust
19 66 (0.91%) Red Hat