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

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,986 4,751 6,044
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.47% 15.06% 13.91%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.75% 39.87% 42.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,577 3,291 4,347
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £425 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £717 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 40 52
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.90 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.19 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £42.34
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% +36.99% -30.25%
75th Percentile £75.88 £77.80 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.50 £100.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £70.00 £52.75
% change year-on-year -17.86% +32.70% -12.08%

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 18,253 11,915 14,291
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.37% 37.77% 32.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,121 7,976 10,034
10th Percentile £331 £313 £304
25th Percentile £415 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £730 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 611 299 358
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £28.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.93% +27.27% -37.14%
75th Percentile £69.10 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.37 £71.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £18.87 £20.99
% change year-on-year +102.70% -10.08% -20.75%

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 4 July 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 4 July 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 4 July 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 6,793 £525 - 3,227
London +1 3,558 £545 -0.91% 1,329
UK excluding London +3 3,459 £510 +2.00% 2,425
Work from Home -1 2,473 £525 +3.45% 1,622
North of England +7 1,000 £501 +5.37% 633
South East +2 842 £520 +4.00% 706
Midlands +3 599 £500 +1.32% 344
North West +8 524 £500 - 349
West Midlands +1 447 £500 -4.76% 193
South West +7 434 £540 +7.36% 281
Yorkshire +4 396 £510 +7.37% 194
Scotland +11 317 £525 +5.00% 121
East of England +4 181 £550 - 199
East Midlands +4 141 £500 +8.11% 151
Wales -1 111 £425 +5.59% 97
North East +3 93 £525 +5.00% 98
Northern Ireland +13 19 £538 +13.16% 89
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 391 (4.90%) SharePoint
2 258 (3.23%) Confluence
3 191 (2.39%) Microsoft Exchange
4 186 (2.33%) Apache Spark
5 127 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
6 117 (1.47%) Apache
7 41 (0.51%) SAS
8 29 (0.36%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 18 (0.23%) OpenStack
11 17 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.13%) Camunda
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.088%) Appian
Applications
1 110 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
3 69 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.36%) Chatbot
5 29 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
8 8 (0.10%) Revit
9 7 (0.088%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.063%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.063%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.050%) Notion
11 4 (0.050%) Trello
12 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.013%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.013%) Houdini
13 1 (0.013%) InDesign
13 1 (0.013%) NUKE
13 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 105 (1.31%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.13%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.088%) Maximo
7 7 (0.088%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.075%) Endur
8 6 (0.075%) Magento
8 6 (0.075%) Shopify
8 6 (0.075%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.063%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.050%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.050%) Dynamics GP
10 4 (0.050%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.050%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,815 (35.25%) AWS
2 1,628 (20.39%) Azure DevOps
3 1,334 (16.70%) GCP
4 1,010 (12.65%) Power Platform
5 990 (12.40%) Entra ID
6 792 (9.92%) Microsoft 365
7 746 (9.34%) GitHub
8 455 (5.70%) GitHub Actions
9 452 (5.66%) Azure Data Factory
10 370 (4.63%) Serverless
11 318 (3.98%) SaaS
12 306 (3.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 291 (3.64%) Azure AKS
14 267 (3.34%) Azure Monitor
15 264 (3.31%) Power Automate
16 251 (3.14%) PowerApps
17 246 (3.08%) PaaS
18 240 (3.01%) Dynamics 365
19 219 (2.74%) Snowflake
20 217 (2.72%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 473 (5.92%) Firewall
2 359 (4.50%) DNS
3 278 (3.48%) VPN
4 273 (3.42%) Network Security
5 222 (2.78%) WAN
6 182 (2.28%) DHCP
7 136 (1.70%) LAN
8 124 (1.55%) SD-WAN
9 114 (1.43%) TCP/IP
10 104 (1.30%) BGP
11 82 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
12 81 (1.01%) OSPF
13 75 (0.94%) VLAN
14 68 (0.85%) SSL
15 57 (0.71%) Kerberos
16 53 (0.66%) SAN
17 51 (0.64%) IPsec
18 49 (0.61%) Wireless
19 48 (0.60%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.54%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 675 (8.45%) Power BI
2 460 (5.76%) SQL Server
3 376 (4.71%) Data Warehouse
4 353 (4.42%) Data Lake
5 288 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
6 215 (2.69%) Azure SQL Database
7 209 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 195 (2.44%) Metadata
9 143 (1.79%) Delta Lake
10 133 (1.67%) Relational Database
11 119 (1.49%) Big Data
12 107 (1.34%) MongoDB
13 87 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (0.95%) MySQL
14 76 (0.95%) Tableau
15 70 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
16 66 (0.83%) BigQuery
17 58 (0.73%) Oracle Database
18 54 (0.68%) Star Schema
19 51 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 612 (7.66%) JIRA
2 595 (7.45%) Git
3 420 (5.26%) Jenkins
4 318 (3.98%) GitLab
5 126 (1.58%) Selenium
6 80 (1.00%) Postman
7 77 (0.96%) JMeter
8 65 (0.81%) JUnit
9 61 (0.76%) Cucumber
10 57 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 44 (0.55%) MLflow
13 43 (0.54%) Cypress.io
13 43 (0.54%) Visual Studio
14 41 (0.51%) WebDriver
15 32 (0.40%) Gatling
15 32 (0.40%) Maven
16 30 (0.38%) LoadRunner
17 27 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
18 25 (0.31%) NUnit
General
1 2,006 (25.12%) Social Skills
2 1,497 (18.75%) Finance
3 892 (11.17%) Public Sector
4 734 (9.19%) Analytical Skills
5 419 (5.25%) Banking
6 226 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 210 (2.63%) Legal
8 169 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 164 (2.05%) Retail
10 99 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
11 82 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 72 (0.90%) Telecoms
13 70 (0.88%) Investment Banking
14 69 (0.86%) Front Office
15 67 (0.84%) Financial Institution
15 67 (0.84%) Law
16 66 (0.83%) Manufacturing
17 65 (0.81%) Marketing
18 54 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
19 50 (0.63%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,432 (17.93%) Architect
2 1,030 (12.90%) Developer
3 967 (12.11%) Senior
4 701 (8.78%) Azure Engineer
5 625 (7.83%) Lead
6 603 (7.55%) Data Engineer
7 480 (6.01%) Analyst
8 408 (5.11%) Solutions Architect
9 405 (5.07%) DevOps Engineer
10 333 (4.17%) Consultant
11 293 (3.67%) Cloud Engineer
12 268 (3.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 230 (2.88%) Data Architect
14 220 (2.75%) Azure Architect
15 201 (2.52%) Platform Engineer
16 199 (2.49%) Technical Architect
17 189 (2.37%) Security Engineer
18 176 (2.20%) Business Analyst
19 173 (2.17%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 172 (2.15%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 637 (7.98%) .NET
2 567 (7.10%) REST
3 340 (4.26%) React
4 293 (3.67%) Kafka
5 277 (3.47%) RESTful
6 261 (3.27%) PySpark
7 233 (2.92%) OAuth
8 223 (2.79%) Spring
9 218 (2.73%) Node.js
10 191 (2.39%) Spring Boot
11 184 (2.30%) AngularJS
12 173 (2.17%) JSON
13 152 (1.90%) SAML
14 144 (1.80%) HTML
15 143 (1.79%) OpenID
16 141 (1.77%) LDAP
17 129 (1.62%) .NET Framework
18 126 (1.58%) Middleware
19 122 (1.53%) OAuth2
19 122 (1.53%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 843 (10.56%) Cloud Native
2 338 (4.23%) Onboarding
3 319 (3.99%) Product Ownership
4 257 (3.22%) Data Centre
5 234 (2.93%) Distributed Systems
6 228 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
7 217 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
8 187 (2.34%) AI Agents
9 170 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
10 158 (1.98%) Security Posture
11 146 (1.83%) Public Cloud
12 114 (1.43%) Data Structures
13 109 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
14 107 (1.34%) Management Information System
15 103 (1.29%) Replication
16 89 (1.11%) PKI
17 84 (1.05%) Enterprise Cloud
17 84 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
18 75 (0.94%) Low-Code
19 73 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 911 (11.41%) Windows
2 410 (5.13%) Linux
3 300 (3.76%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.33%) Windows 10
5 77 (0.96%) Unix
6 74 (0.93%) Apple iOS
7 72 (0.90%) Android
8 71 (0.89%) Mac OS
9 70 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 58 (0.73%) VMS
11 37 (0.46%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
14 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.14%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
17 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.088%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.088%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,950 (36.94%) DevOps
2 2,495 (31.24%) CI/CD
3 1,955 (24.48%) Agile
4 1,201 (15.04%) AI
5 1,191 (14.91%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,145 (14.34%) Migration
7 1,111 (13.91%) Analytics
8 1,070 (13.40%) Problem-Solving
9 944 (11.82%) Stakeholder Management
10 892 (11.17%) Data Modelling
11 802 (10.04%) Continuous Improvement
12 753 (9.43%) Data Pipeline
13 747 (9.35%) Containerisation
14 744 (9.32%) Roadmaps
15 733 (9.18%) Microservices
16 719 (9.00%) Business Intelligence
17 699 (8.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 668 (8.36%) ETL
19 651 (8.15%) Test Automation
20 642 (8.04%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,866 (23.37%) Python
2 1,587 (19.87%) SQL
3 756 (9.47%) PowerShell
4 672 (8.41%) Java
5 629 (7.88%) C#
6 464 (5.81%) JavaScript
7 317 (3.97%) TypeScript
8 288 (3.61%) Bash
9 277 (3.47%) Bicep
10 90 (1.13%) T-SQL
11 89 (1.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 82 (1.03%) Go
13 76 (0.95%) Scala
14 49 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 46 (0.58%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.55%) R
17 35 (0.44%) Kotlin
18 33 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 25 (0.31%) C++
20 23 (0.29%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,954 (24.47%) Security Cleared
2 1,624 (20.34%) SC Cleared
3 568 (7.11%) Degree
4 408 (5.11%) Azure Certification
5 249 (3.12%) CISSP
6 218 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 213 (2.67%) DV Cleared
8 197 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
9 196 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
10 186 (2.33%) Microsoft Certification
11 178 (2.23%) AWS Certification
12 125 (1.57%) CISM
13 96 (1.20%) CCNP
14 80 (1.00%) PMP
15 76 (0.95%) PMI Certification
16 75 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 64 (0.80%) Master's Degree
18 63 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 56 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
20 51 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 541 (6.77%) Data Quality
2 412 (5.16%) QA
3 340 (4.26%) GDPR
4 282 (3.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 271 (3.39%) NIST
6 179 (2.24%) Accessibility
7 114 (1.43%) NCSC
8 98 (1.23%) SLA
9 74 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
9 74 (0.93%) PCI DSS
10 65 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 64 (0.80%) WCAG
12 61 (0.76%) GRC
13 41 (0.51%) PMO
14 38 (0.48%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 27 (0.34%) SOC 2
17 22 (0.28%) NIST 800
18 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 19 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 947 (11.86%) Active Directory
2 842 (10.54%) Docker
3 223 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 137 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 113 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.85%) vSphere
8 50 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.41%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.36%) Firmware
11 25 (0.31%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) IAG
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 6 (0.075%) Ceph
15 6 (0.075%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.063%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.063%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,280 (16.03%) Terraform
2 1,154 (14.45%) Kubernetes
3 420 (5.26%) Microsoft Intune
4 371 (4.65%) Ansible
5 225 (2.82%) Grafana
6 188 (2.35%) Prometheus
7 167 (2.09%) Single Sign-On
8 106 (1.33%) SCCM
9 68 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 49 (0.61%) Argo
11 46 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
12 43 (0.54%) Progress Chef
13 42 (0.53%) FortiGate
14 41 (0.51%) Puppet
15 31 (0.39%) Istio
16 23 (0.29%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
17 20 (0.25%) vCenter Server
18 16 (0.20%) Packer
19 13 (0.16%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,541 (31.82%) Microsoft
2 749 (9.38%) Databricks
3 373 (4.67%) ServiceNow
4 307 (3.84%) Google
5 303 (3.79%) VMware
6 300 (3.76%) Oracle
7 224 (2.80%) SAP
8 219 (2.74%) Cisco
9 196 (2.45%) OpenAI
10 161 (2.02%) Splunk
11 150 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 144 (1.80%) Palo Alto
13 127 (1.59%) CyberArk
13 127 (1.59%) Foundry
14 108 (1.35%) Okta
15 95 (1.19%) Dynatrace
16 89 (1.11%) Informatica
17 86 (1.08%) Zscaler
18 76 (0.95%) Citrix
19 73 (0.91%) Fortinet