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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,289 4,522 5,872
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.42% 15.45% 13.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.96% 41.08% 41.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,199 3,225 4,214
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £735 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 128 42 52
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £50.94 £24.05 £22.24
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.93% -5.00% -36.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £72.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £87.20 £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 16,967 11,008 14,072
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.91% 37.62% 32.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,527 7,641 9,994
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 £632
90th Percentile £700 £730 £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 489 250 346
10th Percentile £15.60 £15.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.51 £16.02
Median hourly rate £42.69 £27.35 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.07% +30.24% -40.00%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.58 £35.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £21.46 £17.72
% change year-on-year +121.34% +21.11% -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 1 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 1 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 1 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 0 6,190 £525 - 2,888
London +1 3,320 £535 -2.73% 1,056
UK excluding London +2 3,026 £500 - 2,274
Work from Home -1 2,197 £525 +0.77% 1,262
North of England +3 841 £500 +5.26% 580
South East +2 801 £500 -4.76% 681
Midlands -1 511 £488 -2.50% 316
North West +3 448 £500 - 299
South West +5 383 £525 - 280
West Midlands 0 370 £500 -4.76% 177
Yorkshire +2 343 £500 +17.65% 186
Scotland +6 294 £532 +12.00% 124
East of England +6 151 £550 -5.17% 210
East Midlands +2 131 £450 -4.26% 138
Wales -2 76 £400 -5.88% 82
North East -1 59 £525 +3.70% 96
Northern Ireland +11 14 £475 - 31
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
1 330 (4.53%) SharePoint
2 207 (2.84%) Confluence
3 201 (2.76%) Apache Spark
4 197 (2.70%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (1.45%) Apache
6 94 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.33%) SAS
8 22 (0.30%) IIS
9 17 (0.23%) CMS
10 15 (0.21%) ArcGIS
10 15 (0.21%) Mendix
10 15 (0.21%) OpenStack
11 13 (0.18%) Appian
11 13 (0.18%) Camunda
11 13 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 12 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
13 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
15 8 (0.11%) nginx
16 7 (0.096%) Jupyter
Applications
1 114 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 23 (0.32%) 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 (0.027%) Revit
11 2 (0.027%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
12 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 102 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.15%) Maximo
3 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
3 11 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
5 7 (0.096%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.096%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.096%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.069%) Cloudability
7 5 (0.069%) NetSuite
8 4 (0.055%) Dynamics NAV
8 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
8 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
8 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.055%) Shopify
8 4 (0.055%) Unit4 Business World
9 3 (0.041%) Oracle 11i
9 3 (0.041%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,484 (34.08%) AWS
2 1,504 (20.63%) Azure DevOps
3 1,326 (18.19%) GCP
4 958 (13.14%) Power Platform
5 866 (11.88%) Entra ID
6 753 (10.33%) Microsoft 365
7 698 (9.58%) GitHub
8 510 (7.00%) Azure Data Factory
9 414 (5.68%) GitHub Actions
10 399 (5.47%) Serverless
11 342 (4.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 285 (3.91%) SaaS
13 283 (3.88%) Azure AKS
14 265 (3.64%) Dynamics 365
15 258 (3.54%) Power Automate
16 243 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
17 235 (3.22%) PaaS
18 219 (3.00%) Azure Functions
18 219 (3.00%) PowerApps
19 194 (2.66%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 450 (6.17%) Firewall
2 303 (4.16%) DNS
3 257 (3.53%) VPN
4 245 (3.36%) Network Security
5 191 (2.62%) WAN
6 161 (2.21%) DHCP
7 131 (1.80%) LAN
8 100 (1.37%) SD-WAN
9 95 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
10 87 (1.19%) TCP/IP
11 73 (1.00%) VLAN
12 71 (0.97%) Kerberos
13 62 (0.85%) BGP
14 54 (0.74%) OSPF
15 44 (0.60%) SAN
16 41 (0.56%) SSL
17 40 (0.55%) HTTP
17 40 (0.55%) Wireless
18 35 (0.48%) Internet
19 34 (0.47%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 647 (8.88%) Power BI
2 427 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 371 (5.09%) Data Lake
3 371 (5.09%) Data Warehouse
4 255 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
5 251 (3.44%) Azure SQL Database
6 195 (2.68%) NoSQL
7 184 (2.52%) Metadata
8 151 (2.07%) Delta Lake
9 123 (1.69%) Big Data
10 114 (1.56%) Relational Database
11 95 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 94 (1.29%) MongoDB
13 80 (1.10%) Tableau
14 71 (0.97%) Oracle Database
15 68 (0.93%) MySQL
16 66 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
17 64 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 57 (0.78%) Star Schema
19 50 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 538 (7.38%) Git
2 507 (6.96%) JIRA
3 385 (5.28%) Jenkins
4 294 (4.03%) GitLab
5 123 (1.69%) Selenium
6 81 (1.11%) Postman
7 68 (0.93%) Cucumber
8 67 (0.92%) JMeter
8 67 (0.92%) JUnit
9 54 (0.74%) MLflow
10 52 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 44 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 42 (0.58%) Cypress.io
13 38 (0.52%) Artifactory
14 34 (0.47%) WebDriver
15 33 (0.45%) Visual Studio
16 31 (0.43%) Gatling
17 28 (0.38%) TestRail
18 24 (0.33%) Bitbucket
18 24 (0.33%) Mockito
General
1 1,914 (26.26%) Social Skills
2 1,286 (17.64%) Finance
3 831 (11.40%) Public Sector
4 673 (9.23%) Analytical Skills
5 374 (5.13%) Banking
6 221 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
7 188 (2.58%) Legal
8 104 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 90 (1.23%) Retail
10 85 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
11 77 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
11 77 (1.06%) Marketing
12 72 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
13 70 (0.96%) Financial Institution
14 68 (0.93%) Telecoms
15 65 (0.89%) Law
16 61 (0.84%) Front Office
16 61 (0.84%) Investment Banking
17 44 (0.60%) Local Government
18 42 (0.58%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,225 (16.81%) Architect
2 968 (13.28%) Developer
3 856 (11.74%) Senior
4 661 (9.07%) Azure Engineer
5 596 (8.18%) Data Engineer
6 553 (7.59%) Lead
7 450 (6.17%) Analyst
8 401 (5.50%) DevOps Engineer
9 310 (4.25%) Solutions Architect
10 299 (4.10%) Consultant
11 225 (3.09%) Cloud Engineer
12 223 (3.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 204 (2.80%) Azure Architect
14 184 (2.52%) Security Engineer
15 174 (2.39%) Platform Engineer
16 172 (2.36%) Data Architect
17 168 (2.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 160 (2.20%) Technical Architect
19 156 (2.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 149 (2.04%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 575 (7.89%) .NET
2 486 (6.67%) REST
3 334 (4.58%) React
4 276 (3.79%) Kafka
5 264 (3.62%) PySpark
6 237 (3.25%) Node.js
7 236 (3.24%) RESTful
8 217 (2.98%) Spring
9 207 (2.84%) OAuth
10 182 (2.50%) AngularJS
11 179 (2.46%) Spring Boot
12 169 (2.32%) LDAP
13 147 (2.02%) JSON
14 145 (1.99%) HTML
15 132 (1.81%) OpenID
16 131 (1.80%) SAML
17 130 (1.78%) SOAP
18 127 (1.74%) Middleware
19 123 (1.69%) CSS
20 110 (1.51%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 705 (9.67%) Cloud Native
2 282 (3.87%) Onboarding
3 274 (3.76%) Product Ownership
4 194 (2.66%) Data Centre
5 193 (2.65%) Hybrid Cloud
6 181 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
7 166 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
7 166 (2.28%) Enterprise Software
8 164 (2.25%) Security Posture
9 159 (2.18%) Public Cloud
10 131 (1.80%) AI Agents
11 95 (1.30%) Data Structures
12 91 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
13 90 (1.23%) Replication
14 85 (1.17%) Management Information System
15 82 (1.12%) Low-Code
16 67 (0.92%) PKI
17 65 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
18 60 (0.82%) NHS
19 53 (0.73%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 791 (10.85%) Windows
2 372 (5.10%) Linux
3 241 (3.31%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.00%) Unix
6 71 (0.97%) VMS
7 63 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 61 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 54 (0.74%) Apple iOS
10 43 (0.59%) Android
11 29 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.27%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.11%) AIX
16 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.096%) CentOS
17 7 (0.096%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.082%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,734 (37.51%) DevOps
2 2,259 (30.99%) CI/CD
3 1,720 (23.60%) Agile
4 1,081 (14.83%) Problem-Solving
5 1,065 (14.61%) Analytics
6 1,028 (14.10%) Infrastructure as Code
7 995 (13.65%) AI
8 989 (13.57%) Migration
9 822 (11.28%) Data Modelling
10 718 (9.85%) Stakeholder Management
11 707 (9.70%) Business Intelligence
12 698 (9.58%) Containerisation
13 695 (9.53%) Data Pipeline
14 691 (9.48%) Continuous Improvement
15 662 (9.08%) Microservices
16 655 (8.99%) ETL
17 602 (8.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 588 (8.07%) Roadmaps
19 587 (8.05%) Data Engineering
20 570 (7.82%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,800 (24.69%) Python
2 1,559 (21.39%) SQL
3 736 (10.10%) PowerShell
4 624 (8.56%) Java
5 619 (8.49%) C#
6 462 (6.34%) JavaScript
7 293 (4.02%) TypeScript
8 252 (3.46%) Bash
9 234 (3.21%) Bicep
10 96 (1.32%) Scala
11 86 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.18%) Go
12 79 (1.08%) T-SQL
13 66 (0.91%) Kusto Query Language
14 62 (0.85%) PL/SQL
15 54 (0.74%) Shell Script
16 48 (0.66%) R
17 30 (0.41%) C++
18 23 (0.32%) Kotlin
19 19 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,820 (24.97%) Security Cleared
2 1,536 (21.07%) SC Cleared
3 515 (7.07%) Degree
4 379 (5.20%) Azure Certification
5 201 (2.76%) Computer Science Degree
6 195 (2.68%) CISSP
7 163 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
8 155 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
9 151 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
10 143 (1.96%) AWS Certification
11 142 (1.95%) DV Cleared
12 116 (1.59%) CISM
13 77 (1.06%) CCNP
14 73 (1.00%) PMP
15 71 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.93%) Master's Degree
16 68 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
17 60 (0.82%) ISTQB
18 56 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 40 (0.55%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 514 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 395 (5.42%) QA
3 374 (5.13%) GDPR
4 293 (4.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 260 (3.57%) NIST
6 132 (1.81%) Accessibility
7 102 (1.40%) NCSC
8 82 (1.12%) PCI DSS
9 65 (0.89%) SLA
10 63 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 62 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
12 57 (0.78%) PMO
13 48 (0.66%) GRC
14 38 (0.52%) WCAG
15 36 (0.49%) HIPAA
16 23 (0.32%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 20 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 20 (0.27%) ISO 20022
17 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 892 (12.24%) Active Directory
2 816 (11.19%) Docker
3 194 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 114 (1.56%) Virtual Machines
5 110 (1.51%) Hyper-V
6 108 (1.48%) Virtual Desktop
7 61 (0.84%) vSphere
8 33 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.38%) Firmware
10 21 (0.29%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.27%) 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 (0.082%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.082%) RACF
16 5 (0.069%) Ceph
16 5 (0.069%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,153 (15.82%) Terraform
2 1,079 (14.80%) Kubernetes
3 368 (5.05%) Microsoft Intune
4 333 (4.57%) Ansible
5 206 (2.83%) Grafana
6 176 (2.41%) Prometheus
7 153 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
8 114 (1.56%) SCCM
9 66 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.51%) Argo
11 36 (0.49%) Istio
12 35 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 35 (0.48%) Puppet
13 28 (0.38%) Progress Chef
14 23 (0.32%) HP ALM
14 23 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
15 21 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.23%) Kubeflow
16 17 (0.23%) linkerd
17 15 (0.21%) Kibana
Vendors
1 2,351 (32.25%) Microsoft
2 732 (10.04%) Databricks
3 319 (4.38%) Google
4 306 (4.20%) Oracle
5 299 (4.10%) ServiceNow
6 281 (3.86%) VMware
7 210 (2.88%) SAP
8 184 (2.52%) Cisco
9 183 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 161 (2.21%) Splunk
11 135 (1.85%) CyberArk
12 116 (1.59%) Foundry
13 111 (1.52%) Palo Alto
14 110 (1.51%) Salesforce
15 92 (1.26%) Okta
16 76 (1.04%) Informatica
17 75 (1.03%) Citrix
18 72 (0.99%) Dynatrace
19 70 (0.96%) BeyondTrust
20 65 (0.89%) Red Hat