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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,174 4,840 5,919
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.50% 14.83% 14.33%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.93% 39.70% 42.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,706 3,345 4,265
10th Percentile £367 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 37 47
10th Percentile £18.50 £22.70 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.75 £29.25 £23.05
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -41.47%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.70 £61.60
90th Percentile £96.25 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -11.54% +40.75% -16.04%

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 18,608 12,192 13,849
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.28% 37.37% 33.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,309 8,153 9,694
10th Percentile £326 £313 £313
25th Percentile £417 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 610 312 318
10th Percentile £16.61 £15.10 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.56 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £36.31 £27.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.04% +25.00% -37.14%
75th Percentile £70.00 £47.50 £50.19
90th Percentile £83.75 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £20.00
% change year-on-year +98.73% -5.65% -25.93%

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 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 22 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 22 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 6,970 £525 - 3,046
London +1 3,629 £550 - 1,347
UK excluding London +3 3,554 £505 +1.00% 2,141
Work from Home -1 2,537 £525 +5.00% 1,444
North of England +7 1,011 £500 +1.63% 578
South East +2 895 £525 +5.00% 667
Midlands +3 629 £495 - 295
North West +8 532 £500 - 301
West Midlands +4 474 £495 -5.71% 185
South West +6 446 £534 +6.75% 245
Yorkshire +4 403 £500 +5.26% 194
Scotland +8 314 £500 +3.52% 115
East of England +7 184 £550 -4.35% 176
East Midlands +7 144 £481 +4.05% 109
Wales 0 100 £425 -4.71% 76
North East +3 89 £525 +5.00% 94
Northern Ireland +14 17 £588 +23.68% 37
Channel Islands +3 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
1 417 (5.10%) SharePoint
2 280 (3.43%) Confluence
3 201 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 181 (2.21%) Apache Spark
5 126 (1.54%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.39%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 33 (0.40%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 18 (0.22%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.16%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.098%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.086%) Camunda
16 7 (0.086%) Mendix
17 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
Applications
1 120 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 31 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.11%) Trello
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Houdini
13 2 (0.024%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.024%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 108 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.098%) Magento
7 8 (0.098%) Maximo
8 7 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.086%) Shopify
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.061%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,900 (35.48%) AWS
2 1,681 (20.57%) Azure DevOps
3 1,397 (17.09%) GCP
4 1,035 (12.66%) Entra ID
5 1,014 (12.41%) Power Platform
6 809 (9.90%) Microsoft 365
7 785 (9.60%) GitHub
8 471 (5.76%) GitHub Actions
9 461 (5.64%) Azure Data Factory
10 350 (4.28%) Serverless
11 336 (4.11%) SaaS
12 313 (3.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 301 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 290 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
15 265 (3.24%) Power Automate
16 261 (3.19%) PaaS
17 259 (3.17%) PowerApps
18 245 (3.00%) Dynamics 365
19 230 (2.81%) Azure AI
20 221 (2.70%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 516 (6.31%) Firewall
2 387 (4.73%) DNS
3 313 (3.83%) VPN
4 291 (3.56%) Network Security
5 202 (2.47%) WAN
6 197 (2.41%) DHCP
7 154 (1.88%) TCP/IP
8 131 (1.60%) LAN
9 117 (1.43%) BGP
10 106 (1.30%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.15%) OSPF
12 91 (1.11%) VLAN
13 89 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
14 71 (0.87%) SSL
15 59 (0.72%) IPsec
16 57 (0.70%) SAN
16 57 (0.70%) Wireless
17 49 (0.60%) VXLAN
18 45 (0.55%) HTTP
19 41 (0.50%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 696 (8.51%) Power BI
2 466 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 396 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
4 357 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 310 (3.79%) PostgreSQL
6 219 (2.68%) Azure SQL Database
6 219 (2.68%) NoSQL
7 207 (2.53%) Metadata
8 139 (1.70%) Relational Database
9 130 (1.59%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.42%) Big Data
11 108 (1.32%) MongoDB
12 98 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 89 (1.09%) MySQL
14 71 (0.87%) Tableau
15 65 (0.80%) BigQuery
16 64 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
17 59 (0.72%) Oracle Database
18 57 (0.70%) Redis
19 51 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 644 (7.88%) JIRA
2 634 (7.76%) Git
3 430 (5.26%) Jenkins
4 312 (3.82%) GitLab
5 126 (1.54%) Selenium
6 72 (0.88%) Postman
7 71 (0.87%) JMeter
7 71 (0.87%) JUnit
8 58 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 53 (0.65%) Cypress.io
10 50 (0.61%) SonarQube
11 47 (0.57%) REST Assured
12 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.55%) Maven
14 43 (0.53%) WebDriver
15 40 (0.49%) MLflow
16 36 (0.44%) Gradle
17 31 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
18 29 (0.35%) Claude Code
18 29 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 2,060 (25.20%) Social Skills
2 1,528 (18.69%) Finance
3 956 (11.70%) Public Sector
4 776 (9.49%) Analytical Skills
5 424 (5.19%) Banking
6 243 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
7 198 (2.42%) Legal
8 178 (2.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 175 (2.14%) Retail
10 101 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
11 94 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 90 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
13 73 (0.89%) Law
13 73 (0.89%) Manufacturing
14 70 (0.86%) Marketing
15 66 (0.81%) Financial Institution
16 65 (0.80%) Front Office
17 64 (0.78%) Investment Banking
18 57 (0.70%) Military
19 56 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,463 (17.90%) Architect
2 1,048 (12.82%) Developer
3 1,007 (12.32%) Senior
4 725 (8.87%) Azure Engineer
5 656 (8.03%) Lead
6 597 (7.30%) Data Engineer
7 502 (6.14%) Analyst
8 425 (5.20%) Solutions Architect
9 424 (5.19%) DevOps Engineer
10 322 (3.94%) Cloud Engineer
11 319 (3.90%) Consultant
12 294 (3.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 244 (2.99%) Data Architect
14 217 (2.65%) Azure Architect
15 214 (2.62%) Platform Engineer
16 197 (2.41%) Technical Architect
17 188 (2.30%) Project Manager
18 186 (2.28%) Security Engineer
19 185 (2.26%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 184 (2.25%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 638 (7.81%) .NET
2 597 (7.30%) REST
3 337 (4.12%) React
4 314 (3.84%) Kafka
5 295 (3.61%) RESTful
6 249 (3.05%) PySpark
7 232 (2.84%) OAuth
8 225 (2.75%) Spring
9 210 (2.57%) Node.js
10 198 (2.42%) JSON
11 191 (2.34%) Spring Boot
12 179 (2.19%) AngularJS
13 158 (1.93%) HTML
14 147 (1.80%) SAML
15 145 (1.77%) OpenID
16 135 (1.65%) .NET Framework
17 133 (1.63%) OAuth2
18 129 (1.58%) Middleware
19 127 (1.55%) CSS
20 126 (1.54%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 857 (10.48%) Cloud Native
2 371 (4.54%) Onboarding
3 348 (4.26%) Product Ownership
4 269 (3.29%) Data Centre
5 260 (3.18%) Distributed Systems
6 246 (3.01%) Hybrid Cloud
7 234 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
8 225 (2.75%) AI Agents
9 189 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
10 165 (2.02%) Security Posture
11 147 (1.80%) Public Cloud
12 132 (1.61%) Data Structures
13 127 (1.55%) Management Information System
14 114 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
15 101 (1.24%) Replication
16 100 (1.22%) PKI
17 99 (1.21%) Enterprise Cloud
18 90 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
19 76 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
20 71 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 937 (11.46%) Windows
2 453 (5.54%) Linux
3 304 (3.72%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.36%) Windows 10
5 80 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 78 (0.95%) Unix
7 77 (0.94%) Android
8 73 (0.89%) Apple iOS
9 72 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 59 (0.72%) VMS
11 44 (0.54%) Ubuntu
12 26 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
16 12 (0.15%) CentOS
17 9 (0.11%) Debian
18 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
19 6 (0.073%) Rocky
19 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,018 (36.92%) DevOps
2 2,547 (31.16%) CI/CD
3 2,068 (25.30%) Agile
4 1,255 (15.35%) AI
5 1,242 (15.19%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,198 (14.66%) Migration
7 1,134 (13.87%) Analytics
8 1,069 (13.08%) Stakeholder Management
9 1,064 (13.02%) Problem-Solving
10 919 (11.24%) Data Modelling
11 875 (10.70%) Continuous Improvement
12 768 (9.40%) Data Pipeline
13 764 (9.35%) Roadmaps
14 761 (9.31%) Microservices
15 754 (9.22%) Containerisation
16 752 (9.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 745 (9.11%) Business Intelligence
18 671 (8.21%) Test Automation
19 666 (8.15%) ETL
20 651 (7.96%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,887 (23.09%) Python
2 1,591 (19.46%) SQL
3 797 (9.75%) PowerShell
4 682 (8.34%) Java
5 613 (7.50%) C#
6 471 (5.76%) JavaScript
7 341 (4.17%) Bash
8 309 (3.78%) TypeScript
9 303 (3.71%) Bicep
10 96 (1.17%) T-SQL
11 93 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 78 (0.95%) Go
13 59 (0.72%) Scala
14 54 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
15 52 (0.64%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.51%) R
17 39 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.48%) PL/SQL
18 28 (0.34%) Groovy
19 24 (0.29%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,034 (24.88%) Security Cleared
2 1,666 (20.38%) SC Cleared
3 578 (7.07%) Degree
4 438 (5.36%) Azure Certification
5 255 (3.12%) DV Cleared
6 250 (3.06%) CISSP
7 236 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
8 209 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
8 209 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
9 193 (2.36%) AWS Certification
10 189 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 124 (1.52%) CISM
12 102 (1.25%) CCNP
13 84 (1.03%) PMP
14 83 (1.02%) PMI Certification
15 81 (0.99%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 65 (0.80%) Master's Degree
17 64 (0.78%) ISTQB
18 55 (0.67%) CCSP
19 53 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 565 (6.91%) Data Quality
2 425 (5.20%) QA
3 333 (4.07%) GDPR
4 282 (3.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 279 (3.41%) NIST
6 196 (2.40%) Accessibility
7 117 (1.43%) NCSC
8 101 (1.24%) SLA
9 73 (0.89%) PCI DSS
10 72 (0.88%) GRC
10 72 (0.88%) WCAG
11 71 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
12 54 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 53 (0.65%) PMO
14 32 (0.39%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 23 (0.28%) NIST 800
18 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
19 19 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 985 (12.05%) Active Directory
2 872 (10.67%) Docker
3 224 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.76%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 115 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 71 (0.87%) vSphere
8 52 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 38 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.35%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.20%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.086%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.086%) Ceph
15 7 (0.086%) Varnish
16 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.073%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) zsh
Systems Management
1 1,317 (16.11%) Terraform
2 1,205 (14.74%) Kubernetes
3 431 (5.27%) Microsoft Intune
4 403 (4.93%) Ansible
5 246 (3.01%) Grafana
6 210 (2.57%) Prometheus
7 157 (1.92%) Single Sign-On
8 111 (1.36%) SCCM
9 53 (0.65%) Argo
10 52 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 51 (0.62%) Progress Chef
12 47 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
13 44 (0.54%) Puppet
14 34 (0.42%) FortiGate
15 29 (0.35%) Istio
16 20 (0.24%) HP ALM
16 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 19 (0.23%) Packer
18 16 (0.20%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,651 (32.43%) Microsoft
2 740 (9.05%) Databricks
3 391 (4.78%) ServiceNow
4 333 (4.07%) Google
5 322 (3.94%) Oracle
6 320 (3.91%) VMware
7 231 (2.83%) Cisco
7 231 (2.83%) SAP
8 206 (2.52%) OpenAI
9 181 (2.21%) Splunk
10 157 (1.92%) Salesforce
11 146 (1.79%) Palo Alto
12 139 (1.70%) Foundry
13 134 (1.64%) CyberArk
14 102 (1.25%) Dynatrace
15 101 (1.24%) Zscaler
16 91 (1.11%) Okta
17 87 (1.06%) Informatica
18 76 (0.93%) Citrix
18 76 (0.93%) Fortinet