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

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,508 4,909 6,168
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.96% 15.97% 13.82%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.32% 42.38% 41.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,625 3,367 4,484
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -3.57%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £649
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 40 76
10th Percentile £20.87 £22.38 £17.77
25th Percentile £45.60 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%
75th Percentile £62.49 £61.81 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.00 £77.75 £73.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +109.09% -45.00% -23.08%

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 15,377 11,583 14,834
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.71% 37.68% 33.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,552 7,810 10,586
10th Percentile £311 £313 £288
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £631 £633
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.55% -1.50% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 391 179 331
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.65 £14.13
25th Percentile £20.28 £21.46 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £27.50 £21.64
Median % change year-on-year +36.36% +27.08% -13.44%
75th Percentile £60.00 £44.13 £48.75
90th Percentile £80.20 £75.84 £67.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £24.18 £19.95
% change year-on-year +76.53% +21.20% -5.00%

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 22 February 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 22 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 22 February 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 5,489 £525 -1.87% 2,615
London 0 2,964 £540 -1.82% 949
UK excluding London 0 2,674 £500 - 2,183
Work from Home -2 2,011 £525 - 1,292
North of England 0 717 £488 +2.63% 552
South East -1 694 £500 -7.41% 747
Midlands -2 455 £500 - 310
North West 0 360 £472 -0.63% 299
West Midlands -1 340 £525 -2.10% 194
South West +3 335 £512 -3.49% 236
Yorkshire -3 307 £500 +5.26% 165
Scotland +7 299 £550 +17.33% 115
East of England 0 160 £550 +4.76% 195
East Midlands -4 113 £433 -3.78% 116
Wales -4 78 £388 -20.92% 55
North East -4 54 £515 +8.42% 97
Northern Ireland +5 10 £475 - 11

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
1 280 (4.30%) SharePoint
2 210 (3.23%) Microsoft Exchange
3 175 (2.69%) Apache Spark
4 173 (2.66%) Confluence
5 93 (1.43%) Apache
6 82 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.35%) OpenStack
8 19 (0.29%) SAS
9 17 (0.26%) ArcGIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 15 (0.23%) Appian
11 12 (0.18%) Camunda
11 12 (0.18%) IIS
12 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
12 10 (0.15%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.15%) Mendix
12 10 (0.15%) SugarCRM
13 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.12%) Skype for Business
14 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
Applications
1 123 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 99 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 47 (0.72%) MS Visio
4 42 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
5 15 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.11%) Trello
7 5 (0.077%) Acrobat
7 5 (0.077%) PTC Creo
7 5 (0.077%) Weka
8 4 (0.061%) Adobe XD
9 3 (0.046%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.015%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.015%) Revit
11 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.015%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 103 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.17%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) Endur
7 7 (0.11%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.092%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.092%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.092%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.092%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.092%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.077%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.077%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.077%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.077%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 2,298 (35.31%) AWS
2 1,286 (19.76%) GCP
3 1,275 (19.59%) Azure DevOps
4 875 (13.44%) Power Platform
5 761 (11.69%) Entra ID
6 742 (11.40%) Microsoft 365
7 666 (10.23%) GitHub
8 471 (7.24%) Azure Data Factory
9 388 (5.96%) GitHub Actions
10 387 (5.95%) Serverless
11 307 (4.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 292 (4.49%) Dynamics 365
13 272 (4.18%) SaaS
14 253 (3.89%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.87%) Azure AKS
16 233 (3.58%) Azure Functions
17 227 (3.49%) Snowflake
18 222 (3.41%) Azure Monitor
19 211 (3.24%) Azure Logic Apps
20 210 (3.23%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 436 (6.70%) Firewall
2 278 (4.27%) DNS
3 214 (3.29%) VPN
4 193 (2.97%) Network Security
5 167 (2.57%) DHCP
6 158 (2.43%) WAN
7 104 (1.60%) LAN
8 97 (1.49%) TCP/IP
9 86 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
10 80 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 72 (1.11%) VLAN
12 71 (1.09%) Kerberos
13 55 (0.85%) HTTP
14 39 (0.60%) BGP
15 38 (0.58%) Wireless
16 35 (0.54%) SSL
17 34 (0.52%) Internet
18 32 (0.49%) OSPF
19 31 (0.48%) MPLS
20 28 (0.43%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 590 (9.07%) Power BI
2 373 (5.73%) SQL Server
3 348 (5.35%) Data Warehouse
4 337 (5.18%) Data Lake
5 252 (3.87%) PostgreSQL
6 231 (3.55%) Azure SQL Database
7 186 (2.86%) NoSQL
8 166 (2.55%) Metadata
9 124 (1.91%) Relational Database
10 119 (1.83%) Delta Lake
11 94 (1.44%) Big Data
12 92 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 87 (1.34%) MongoDB
14 79 (1.21%) MySQL
15 72 (1.11%) Tableau
16 69 (1.06%) Oracle Database
17 66 (1.01%) BigQuery
18 56 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
19 47 (0.72%) Hadoop
19 47 (0.72%) Redis
Development Applications
1 509 (7.82%) Git
2 460 (7.07%) JIRA
3 349 (5.36%) Jenkins
4 270 (4.15%) GitLab
5 120 (1.84%) Selenium
6 97 (1.49%) Postman
7 71 (1.09%) Cucumber
8 70 (1.08%) JMeter
9 65 (1.00%) JUnit
10 49 (0.75%) MLflow
10 49 (0.75%) REST Assured
10 49 (0.75%) SonarQube
11 47 (0.72%) Cypress.io
12 38 (0.58%) Visual Studio
13 36 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
14 32 (0.49%) TestRail
15 31 (0.48%) Artifactory
16 29 (0.45%) ERwin
16 29 (0.45%) Gatling
17 28 (0.43%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,992 (30.61%) Social Skills
2 1,161 (17.84%) Finance
3 765 (11.75%) Public Sector
4 658 (10.11%) Analytical Skills
5 355 (5.45%) Banking
6 209 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
7 138 (2.12%) Legal
8 108 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 107 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
10 93 (1.43%) Marketing
11 91 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
12 90 (1.38%) Retail
13 78 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
14 65 (1.00%) Telecoms
15 64 (0.98%) Investment Banking
16 59 (0.91%) Financial Institution
17 55 (0.85%) Law
18 53 (0.81%) Manufacturing
19 40 (0.61%) Billing
20 39 (0.60%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,078 (16.56%) Architect
2 905 (13.91%) Developer
3 706 (10.85%) Senior
4 540 (8.30%) Azure Engineer
5 537 (8.25%) Data Engineer
6 471 (7.24%) Lead
7 442 (6.79%) Analyst
8 332 (5.10%) Solutions Architect
9 328 (5.04%) DevOps Engineer
10 296 (4.55%) Consultant
11 183 (2.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 181 (2.78%) Security Engineer
13 174 (2.67%) Cloud Engineer
14 163 (2.50%) Azure Architect
15 158 (2.43%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 157 (2.41%) Senior Developer
17 141 (2.17%) Data Architect
18 137 (2.11%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 136 (2.09%) Platform Engineer
20 128 (1.97%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 516 (7.93%) .NET
2 458 (7.04%) REST
3 308 (4.73%) React
4 258 (3.96%) PySpark
5 254 (3.90%) RESTful
6 241 (3.70%) Kafka
7 221 (3.40%) Node.js
8 204 (3.13%) OAuth
9 202 (3.10%) Spring
10 176 (2.70%) Spring Boot
11 171 (2.63%) HTML
12 169 (2.60%) AngularJS
13 153 (2.35%) CSS
14 151 (2.32%) LDAP
15 146 (2.24%) SOAP
16 143 (2.20%) PyTorch
17 141 (2.17%) JSON
18 130 (2.00%) TensorFlow
19 127 (1.95%) SAML
20 123 (1.89%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 569 (8.74%) Cloud Native
2 243 (3.73%) Onboarding
3 230 (3.53%) Product Ownership
4 174 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
5 168 (2.58%) Security Posture
6 156 (2.40%) Data Centre
6 156 (2.40%) Enterprise Software
7 153 (2.35%) Legacy Systems
8 117 (1.80%) Public Cloud
9 113 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
10 98 (1.51%) AI Agents
11 87 (1.34%) Data Structures
12 83 (1.28%) Replication
13 79 (1.21%) Algorithms
14 71 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
15 70 (1.08%) Management Information System
16 69 (1.06%) Low-Code
17 68 (1.04%) NHS
18 61 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
19 54 (0.83%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 727 (11.17%) Windows
2 368 (5.65%) Linux
3 198 (3.04%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 82 (1.26%) Unix
6 57 (0.88%) VMS
7 50 (0.77%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.60%) Apple iOS
10 33 (0.51%) Android
11 22 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.29%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) CentOS
15 11 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.12%) Solaris
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.077%) AIX
19 3 (0.046%) CoreOS
19 3 (0.046%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,363 (36.31%) DevOps
2 1,989 (30.56%) CI/CD
3 1,600 (24.59%) Agile
4 1,199 (18.42%) Problem-Solving
5 988 (15.18%) Analytics
6 902 (13.86%) AI
7 874 (13.43%) Infrastructure as Code
8 798 (12.26%) Migration
9 687 (10.56%) Stakeholder Management
10 672 (10.33%) Business Intelligence
11 671 (10.31%) Data Modelling
12 656 (10.08%) Containerisation
13 604 (9.28%) Continuous Improvement
14 586 (9.00%) Machine Learning
15 584 (8.97%) ETL
16 579 (8.90%) Data Pipeline
17 569 (8.74%) Microservices
18 545 (8.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 536 (8.24%) Test Automation
20 527 (8.10%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,713 (26.32%) Python
2 1,432 (22.00%) SQL
3 707 (10.86%) PowerShell
4 559 (8.59%) C#
5 549 (8.44%) Java
6 497 (7.64%) JavaScript
7 281 (4.32%) TypeScript
8 258 (3.96%) Bash
9 201 (3.09%) Bicep
10 96 (1.48%) Scala
11 84 (1.29%) PL/SQL
12 79 (1.21%) Go
13 71 (1.09%) T-SQL
14 70 (1.08%) Kusto Query Language
15 66 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 45 (0.69%) R
17 43 (0.66%) Shell Script
18 40 (0.61%) C++
19 36 (0.55%) PHP
20 22 (0.34%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,526 (23.45%) Security Cleared
2 1,260 (19.36%) SC Cleared
3 534 (8.21%) Degree
4 361 (5.55%) Azure Certification
5 208 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
6 176 (2.70%) CISSP
6 176 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
7 136 (2.09%) AWS Certification
8 128 (1.97%) DV Cleared
9 124 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
10 113 (1.74%) CISM
11 104 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
12 92 (1.41%) Master's Degree
13 65 (1.00%) TOGAF Certification
14 53 (0.81%) CCNP
15 51 (0.78%) ISTQB
16 50 (0.77%) PMI Certification
17 49 (0.75%) PMP
18 35 (0.54%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (6.76%) Data Quality
2 387 (5.95%) GDPR
3 347 (5.33%) QA
4 300 (4.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 232 (3.56%) NIST
6 135 (2.07%) Accessibility
7 95 (1.46%) NCSC
8 78 (1.20%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
10 58 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 53 (0.81%) SLA
12 42 (0.65%) PMO
13 40 (0.61%) HIPAA
14 36 (0.55%) SOC 2
14 36 (0.55%) WCAG
15 33 (0.51%) GRC
16 25 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 25 (0.38%) EU AI Act
17 23 (0.35%) ISO 20022
17 23 (0.35%) NIST 800
System Software
1 843 (12.95%) Active Directory
2 784 (12.05%) Docker
3 192 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 87 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
6 78 (1.20%) Virtual Desktop
7 70 (1.08%) vSphere
8 22 (0.34%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.15%) Firmware
12 9 (0.14%) NFS
12 9 (0.14%) Postfix
13 8 (0.12%) Snort
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 6 (0.092%) DFS Replication
15 6 (0.092%) GPFS
15 6 (0.092%) Lustre
15 6 (0.092%) Squid
Systems Management
1 1,007 (15.47%) Terraform
2 941 (14.46%) Kubernetes
3 349 (5.36%) Microsoft Intune
4 299 (4.59%) Ansible
5 172 (2.64%) Single Sign-On
6 153 (2.35%) Grafana
7 138 (2.12%) SCCM
8 136 (2.09%) Prometheus
9 73 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 47 (0.72%) Argo
11 27 (0.41%) FortiGate
12 26 (0.40%) Puppet
12 26 (0.40%) vRealize
13 22 (0.34%) Istio
13 22 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
14 21 (0.32%) Progress Chef
15 20 (0.31%) Nessus
16 19 (0.29%) Kibana
16 19 (0.29%) Nmap
17 17 (0.26%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,096 (32.21%) Microsoft
2 677 (10.40%) Databricks
3 340 (5.22%) Oracle
4 330 (5.07%) Google
5 276 (4.24%) ServiceNow
6 263 (4.04%) VMware
7 191 (2.93%) SAP
8 166 (2.55%) Cisco
9 161 (2.47%) OpenAI
10 157 (2.41%) Splunk
11 115 (1.77%) CyberArk
11 115 (1.77%) Salesforce
12 108 (1.66%) Palo Alto
13 96 (1.48%) Foundry
14 77 (1.18%) Okta
15 71 (1.09%) Red Hat
16 70 (1.08%) Citrix
17 65 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (0.98%) IBM
19 62 (0.95%) Informatica