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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,873 4,556 6,001
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.47% 15.13% 13.78%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.59% 39.88% 42.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,520 3,166 4,316
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £508 £500 £505
% change year-on-year +1.60% -0.99% -3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 36 54
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.73 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.19 £22.91
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +34.01% -40.58%
75th Percentile £78.25 £77.80 £61.19
90th Percentile £95.31 £94.38 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £51.25
% change year-on-year -11.54% +26.83% -14.58%

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 18,062 11,423 14,244
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.49% 37.93% 32.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,063 7,684 10,016
10th Percentile £329 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.14% -4.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £733 £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 599 286 365
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.20 £14.14
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £28.25 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.74% +28.41% -37.14%
75th Percentile £69.60 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.35 £71.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £18.87 £20.77
% change year-on-year +102.70% -9.15% -21.56%

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 25 June 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 25 June 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 25 June 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 6,681 £525 - 2,220
London +1 3,522 £540 -1.82% 846
UK excluding London +3 3,387 £508 +1.60% 1,860
Work from Home -1 2,450 £525 +2.29% 1,078
North of England +7 961 £508 +6.84% 471
South East +2 842 £513 +2.50% 591
Midlands +3 566 £500 +1.01% 252
North West +8 497 £500 - 266
South West +6 432 £528 +2.18% 232
West Midlands +1 421 £500 -4.76% 152
Yorkshire +5 384 £505 +6.37% 132
Scotland +11 329 £525 +5.00% 87
East of England +4 174 £550 -4.76% 177
East Midlands +4 135 £500 +9.59% 100
Wales 0 107 £425 +6.25% 65
North East +5 92 £525 +5.00% 80
Northern Ireland +13 19 £538 +13.16% 29
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
1 377 (4.79%) SharePoint
2 242 (3.07%) Confluence
3 188 (2.39%) Apache Spark
4 186 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
5 123 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
6 112 (1.42%) Apache
7 40 (0.51%) SAS
8 28 (0.36%) IIS
9 20 (0.25%) CMS
10 17 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.14%) Mendix
14 10 (0.13%) Camunda
14 10 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Appian
15 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 110 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 28 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.089%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.064%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.064%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.051%) Notion
12 4 (0.051%) Trello
13 2 (0.025%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.013%) InDesign
14 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.013%) Sketch
14 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 109 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.14%) Maximo
6 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 9 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 9 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 7 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
9 7 (0.089%) Shopify
10 6 (0.076%) Endur
10 6 (0.076%) SimCorp Dimension
10 6 (0.076%) Unit4 Business World
11 5 (0.064%) Magento
11 5 (0.064%) SAP MM
12 4 (0.051%) Oracle FAH
12 4 (0.051%) Oracle Receivables
12 4 (0.051%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,743 (34.84%) AWS
2 1,616 (20.53%) Azure DevOps
3 1,325 (16.83%) GCP
4 1,014 (12.88%) Power Platform
5 968 (12.30%) Entra ID
6 774 (9.83%) Microsoft 365
7 716 (9.09%) GitHub
8 468 (5.94%) Azure Data Factory
9 439 (5.58%) GitHub Actions
10 384 (4.88%) Serverless
11 311 (3.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 311 (3.95%) SaaS
12 293 (3.72%) Azure AKS
13 266 (3.38%) Power Automate
14 256 (3.25%) Azure Monitor
15 250 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
16 242 (3.07%) PowerApps
17 241 (3.06%) PaaS
18 214 (2.72%) Azure AI
18 214 (2.72%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 469 (5.96%) Firewall
2 345 (4.38%) DNS
3 272 (3.45%) Network Security
4 267 (3.39%) VPN
5 226 (2.87%) WAN
6 176 (2.24%) DHCP
7 136 (1.73%) LAN
8 125 (1.59%) SD-WAN
9 107 (1.36%) TCP/IP
10 98 (1.24%) BGP
11 85 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
12 76 (0.97%) VLAN
13 75 (0.95%) OSPF
14 59 (0.75%) Kerberos
14 59 (0.75%) SSL
15 51 (0.65%) SAN
16 49 (0.62%) Wireless
17 48 (0.61%) VXLAN
18 46 (0.58%) IPsec
19 42 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 680 (8.64%) Power BI
2 440 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 376 (4.78%) Data Warehouse
4 366 (4.65%) Data Lake
5 281 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
6 225 (2.86%) Azure SQL Database
7 205 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 195 (2.48%) Metadata
9 143 (1.82%) Delta Lake
10 131 (1.66%) Relational Database
11 118 (1.50%) Big Data
12 101 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 88 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (0.97%) Tableau
15 71 (0.90%) Snowflake Schema
16 67 (0.85%) MySQL
17 63 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 60 (0.76%) Oracle Database
19 54 (0.69%) Star Schema
20 52 (0.66%) Redis
Development Applications
1 597 (7.58%) JIRA
2 574 (7.29%) Git
3 407 (5.17%) Jenkins
4 321 (4.08%) GitLab
5 128 (1.63%) Selenium
6 80 (1.02%) Postman
7 78 (0.99%) JMeter
8 64 (0.81%) JUnit
9 63 (0.80%) Cucumber
10 58 (0.74%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.60%) Visual Studio
13 44 (0.56%) MLflow
14 43 (0.55%) Cypress.io
14 43 (0.55%) WebDriver
15 33 (0.42%) Gatling
16 32 (0.41%) Maven
17 27 (0.34%) LoadRunner
18 26 (0.33%) NUnit
18 26 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,991 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 1,483 (18.84%) Finance
3 879 (11.16%) Public Sector
4 702 (8.92%) Analytical Skills
5 418 (5.31%) Banking
6 227 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 205 (2.60%) Legal
8 166 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 151 (1.92%) Retail
10 97 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 80 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
12 70 (0.89%) Financial Institution
13 68 (0.86%) Investment Banking
13 68 (0.86%) Law
14 67 (0.85%) Telecoms
15 65 (0.83%) Front Office
16 64 (0.81%) Marketing
17 62 (0.79%) Manufacturing
18 58 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
19 45 (0.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,404 (17.83%) Architect
2 1,003 (12.74%) Developer
3 948 (12.04%) Senior
4 697 (8.85%) Azure Engineer
5 609 (7.74%) Lead
6 596 (7.57%) Data Engineer
7 479 (6.08%) Analyst
8 407 (5.17%) DevOps Engineer
9 389 (4.94%) Solutions Architect
10 332 (4.22%) Consultant
11 288 (3.66%) Cloud Engineer
12 269 (3.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 223 (2.83%) Data Architect
14 217 (2.76%) Azure Architect
15 196 (2.49%) Security Engineer
16 194 (2.46%) Platform Engineer
17 191 (2.43%) Technical Architect
18 176 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 172 (2.18%) Project Manager
20 171 (2.17%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 631 (8.01%) .NET
2 551 (7.00%) REST
3 350 (4.45%) React
4 279 (3.54%) Kafka
5 269 (3.42%) RESTful
6 268 (3.40%) PySpark
7 231 (2.93%) OAuth
8 215 (2.73%) Node.js
9 214 (2.72%) Spring
10 182 (2.31%) AngularJS
10 182 (2.31%) Spring Boot
11 167 (2.12%) JSON
12 153 (1.94%) LDAP
13 149 (1.89%) SAML
14 144 (1.83%) OpenID
15 142 (1.80%) HTML
16 128 (1.63%) Middleware
17 126 (1.60%) SOAP
18 124 (1.58%) .NET Framework
19 118 (1.50%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 830 (10.54%) Cloud Native
2 329 (4.18%) Onboarding
3 317 (4.03%) Product Ownership
4 257 (3.26%) Data Centre
5 227 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
6 224 (2.85%) Distributed Systems
7 210 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
8 176 (2.24%) AI Agents
9 167 (2.12%) Enterprise Software
9 167 (2.12%) Security Posture
10 156 (1.98%) Public Cloud
11 115 (1.46%) Data Structures
12 109 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
13 103 (1.31%) Management Information System
14 96 (1.22%) Replication
15 88 (1.12%) PKI
16 79 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
17 78 (0.99%) Enterprise Cloud
18 77 (0.98%) Low-Code
19 72 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 886 (11.25%) Windows
2 399 (5.07%) Linux
3 281 (3.57%) Windows Server
4 108 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 76 (0.97%) Apple iOS
6 72 (0.91%) Unix
7 70 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 68 (0.86%) Android
9 67 (0.85%) Mac OS
10 61 (0.77%) VMS
11 35 (0.44%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 13 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
16 11 (0.14%) CentOS
17 10 (0.13%) Debian
18 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
19 7 (0.089%) CoreOS
19 7 (0.089%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,923 (37.13%) DevOps
2 2,453 (31.16%) CI/CD
3 1,917 (24.35%) Agile
4 1,178 (14.96%) AI
5 1,167 (14.82%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,130 (14.35%) Migration
7 1,106 (14.05%) Analytics
8 1,061 (13.48%) Problem-Solving
9 898 (11.41%) Stakeholder Management
10 889 (11.29%) Data Modelling
11 790 (10.03%) Continuous Improvement
12 745 (9.46%) Data Pipeline
13 728 (9.25%) Roadmaps
14 727 (9.23%) Containerisation
15 726 (9.22%) Business Intelligence
16 711 (9.03%) Microservices
17 688 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 677 (8.60%) ETL
19 635 (8.07%) Data Engineering
20 634 (8.05%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,856 (23.57%) Python
2 1,585 (20.13%) SQL
3 749 (9.51%) PowerShell
4 646 (8.21%) Java
5 633 (8.04%) C#
6 468 (5.94%) JavaScript
7 318 (4.04%) TypeScript
8 265 (3.37%) Bicep
9 264 (3.35%) Bash
10 93 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 88 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 79 (1.00%) Go
13 77 (0.98%) Scala
14 47 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.55%) R
17 35 (0.44%) PL/SQL
18 31 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 29 (0.37%) C++
20 21 (0.27%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,935 (24.58%) Security Cleared
2 1,619 (20.56%) SC Cleared
3 551 (7.00%) Degree
4 402 (5.11%) Azure Certification
5 246 (3.12%) CISSP
6 204 (2.59%) DV Cleared
7 200 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
8 192 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
9 188 (2.39%) Cisco Certification
10 179 (2.27%) Microsoft Certification
11 176 (2.24%) AWS Certification
12 127 (1.61%) CISM
13 89 (1.13%) CCNP
14 83 (1.05%) PMP
15 79 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 73 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 65 (0.83%) ISTQB
18 60 (0.76%) Master's Degree
19 57 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
20 49 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 544 (6.91%) Data Quality
2 412 (5.23%) QA
3 344 (4.37%) GDPR
4 287 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 270 (3.43%) NIST
6 170 (2.16%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.52%) NCSC
8 96 (1.22%) SLA
9 78 (0.99%) PCI DSS
10 73 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 70 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 61 (0.77%) WCAG
13 60 (0.76%) GRC
14 42 (0.53%) PMO
15 38 (0.48%) HIPAA
16 29 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.33%) NIST 800
17 26 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 19 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
19 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 926 (11.76%) Active Directory
2 808 (10.26%) Docker
3 220 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 129 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
6 114 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 67 (0.85%) vSphere
8 52 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.39%) Firmware
11 23 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 6 (0.076%) Ceph
15 6 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 6 (0.076%) IAG
15 6 (0.076%) KVM
16 5 (0.064%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,256 (15.95%) Terraform
2 1,125 (14.29%) Kubernetes
3 411 (5.22%) Microsoft Intune
4 367 (4.66%) Ansible
5 206 (2.62%) Grafana
6 181 (2.30%) Prometheus
7 169 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
8 103 (1.31%) SCCM
9 70 (0.89%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.55%) FortiGate
10 43 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
11 40 (0.51%) Argo
11 40 (0.51%) Progress Chef
12 38 (0.48%) Puppet
13 31 (0.39%) Istio
14 23 (0.29%) HP ALM
15 21 (0.27%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.20%) Packer
18 13 (0.17%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,490 (31.63%) Microsoft
2 754 (9.58%) Databricks
3 346 (4.39%) ServiceNow
4 307 (3.90%) Google
5 300 (3.81%) VMware
6 286 (3.63%) Oracle
7 219 (2.78%) SAP
8 213 (2.71%) Cisco
9 207 (2.63%) OpenAI
10 151 (1.92%) Splunk
11 144 (1.83%) Salesforce
12 142 (1.80%) Palo Alto
13 129 (1.64%) CyberArk
14 122 (1.55%) Foundry
15 106 (1.35%) Okta
16 90 (1.14%) Dynatrace
17 89 (1.13%) Informatica
18 84 (1.07%) Zscaler
19 70 (0.89%) Citrix
20 67 (0.85%) Fortinet