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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,323 4,991 5,488
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.16% 15.10% 14.51%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.65% 39.68% 42.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,813 3,402 3,723
10th Percentile £363 £350 £343
25th Percentile £440 £415 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £530
Median % change year-on-year +1.40% -2.31% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £721 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 44 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.29 £24.22 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £34.24 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.36% -2.17% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.50 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.38 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £25.89 £46.18
% change year-on-year +52.60% -43.95% -

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 19,068 12,578 12,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.73% 38.05% 34.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,647 8,397 8,617
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £719 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 628 296 185
10th Percentile £15.46 £15.50 £16.12
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.00 £26.30 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.67% -24.86% +6.06%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.25 £64.73
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.14 £33.00
% change year-on-year +56.78% -42.02% +42.00%

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 1 October 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 October 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 October 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 7,076 £525 - 7,985
London 0 3,718 £550 - 3,890
UK excluding London +1 3,514 £510 +2.00% 4,901
Work from Home -2 2,521 £525 +5.00% 3,742
North of England +5 1,009 £500 +5.26% 1,260
South East +1 900 £525 +5.00% 1,224
Midlands +1 645 £488 -6.11% 714
West Midlands +2 494 £477 -13.27% 435
North West +5 492 £500 +5.26% 661
Yorkshire +5 432 £500 +2.56% 440
South West +2 412 £550 +8.11% 574
Scotland +2 294 £520 +4.00% 408
East of England +2 197 £505 +1.00% 404
East Midlands +3 146 £500 +8.11% 279
North East +4 100 £516 +3.25% 170
Wales -1 84 £450 - 195
Northern Ireland +17 14 £650 - 157
Channel Islands -7 4 £500 -21.88% 1

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
1 475 (5.71%) SharePoint
2 269 (3.23%) Confluence
3 195 (2.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 186 (2.23%) Apache Spark
5 161 (1.93%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.42%) Apache
7 40 (0.48%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) IIS
9 27 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 23 (0.28%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) nginx
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.072%) ThingWorx
16 6 (0.072%) Traefik
Applications
1 122 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 50 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.50%) Chatbot
5 42 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
7 8 (0.096%) Revit
7 8 (0.096%) Trello
8 7 (0.084%) CPLEX
9 5 (0.060%) Notion
10 4 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.036%) 1Password
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) Mingle
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Windchill
13 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 131 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.096%) Magento
10 7 (0.084%) Cloudability
10 7 (0.084%) Shopify
11 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 6 (0.072%) Temenos T24
12 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
12 5 (0.060%) FLEXCUBE
12 5 (0.060%) Maximo
12 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
13 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,981 (35.82%) AWS
2 1,753 (21.06%) Azure DevOps
3 1,469 (17.65%) GCP
4 1,134 (13.62%) Entra ID
5 1,080 (12.98%) Power Platform
6 889 (10.68%) Microsoft 365
7 860 (10.33%) GitHub
8 494 (5.94%) GitHub Actions
9 465 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 376 (4.52%) Serverless
11 360 (4.33%) SaaS
12 319 (3.83%) Azure Monitor
13 305 (3.66%) Power Automate
14 300 (3.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 300 (3.60%) Dynamics 365
15 295 (3.54%) Snowflake
16 291 (3.50%) Azure AKS
17 285 (3.42%) PowerApps
18 252 (3.03%) Microsoft Copilot
19 248 (2.98%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 516 (6.20%) Firewall
2 419 (5.03%) DNS
3 319 (3.83%) VPN
4 293 (3.52%) Network Security
5 233 (2.80%) DHCP
6 182 (2.19%) WAN
7 166 (1.99%) TCP/IP
8 107 (1.29%) LAN
9 105 (1.26%) BGP
10 99 (1.19%) SD-WAN
11 85 (1.02%) VLAN
12 84 (1.01%) OSPF
13 81 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
14 72 (0.87%) SSL
15 67 (0.80%) Wireless
16 62 (0.74%) SAN
17 45 (0.54%) HTTP
17 45 (0.54%) IPsec
18 42 (0.50%) VXLAN
19 40 (0.48%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 702 (8.43%) Power BI
2 475 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 406 (4.88%) Data Warehouse
4 391 (4.70%) Data Lake
5 291 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
6 253 (3.04%) Metadata
7 212 (2.55%) NoSQL
8 199 (2.39%) Azure SQL Database
9 145 (1.74%) Relational Database
10 128 (1.54%) Delta Lake
11 115 (1.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 105 (1.26%) MongoDB
13 104 (1.25%) MySQL
14 91 (1.09%) Big Data
15 71 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.83%) Redis
17 63 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
18 62 (0.74%) BigQuery
19 59 (0.71%) Oracle Database
20 57 (0.68%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 750 (9.01%) Git
2 612 (7.35%) JIRA
3 470 (5.65%) Jenkins
4 377 (4.53%) GitLab
5 141 (1.69%) Selenium
6 89 (1.07%) Postman
7 65 (0.78%) Cucumber
8 63 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 63 (0.76%) JUnit
9 57 (0.68%) Claude Code
10 56 (0.67%) JMeter
11 53 (0.64%) Maven
11 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 50 (0.60%) Visual Studio
13 49 (0.59%) Gradle
14 47 (0.56%) REST Assured
15 36 (0.43%) WebDriver
16 34 (0.41%) Bitbucket
17 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
18 31 (0.37%) Gatling
General
1 2,299 (27.62%) Social Skills
2 1,604 (19.27%) Finance
3 961 (11.55%) Public Sector
4 806 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
5 498 (5.98%) Banking
6 223 (2.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 217 (2.61%) Retail
8 208 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
9 170 (2.04%) Legal
10 113 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
11 112 (1.35%) Manufacturing
12 96 (1.15%) Investment Banking
13 93 (1.12%) Telecoms
14 90 (1.08%) Marketing
15 87 (1.05%) Aerospace
16 83 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
17 77 (0.93%) Military
18 65 (0.78%) Law
19 60 (0.72%) Local Government
20 58 (0.70%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,590 (19.10%) Architect
2 1,053 (12.65%) Senior
3 1,017 (12.22%) Developer
4 724 (8.70%) Azure Engineer
5 688 (8.27%) Lead
6 594 (7.14%) Data Engineer
7 491 (5.90%) Solutions Architect
8 470 (5.65%) Analyst
9 460 (5.53%) DevOps Engineer
10 384 (4.61%) Cloud Engineer
11 323 (3.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 318 (3.82%) Consultant
13 269 (3.23%) Data Architect
14 234 (2.81%) Platform Engineer
15 221 (2.66%) Azure Architect
16 208 (2.50%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 204 (2.45%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 204 (2.45%) Technical Architect
18 199 (2.39%) Security Engineer
19 182 (2.19%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,420 (17.06%) Terraform
2 762 (9.16%) REST
3 628 (7.55%) .NET
4 401 (4.82%) Kafka
5 309 (3.71%) React
6 302 (3.63%) RESTful
7 276 (3.32%) OAuth
8 264 (3.17%) PySpark
9 241 (2.90%) JSON
10 190 (2.28%) Spring
11 181 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 165 (1.98%) OAuth2
12 165 (1.98%) OpenID
13 162 (1.95%) HTML
14 153 (1.84%) Node.js
15 151 (1.81%) SAML
16 150 (1.80%) Middleware
16 150 (1.80%) SOAP
17 148 (1.78%) AngularJS
18 134 (1.61%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 933 (11.21%) Cloud Native
2 428 (5.14%) Onboarding
3 394 (4.73%) Product Ownership
4 324 (3.89%) Enterprise Software
5 316 (3.80%) AI Agents
6 285 (3.42%) Hybrid Cloud
7 278 (3.34%) Distributed Systems
8 254 (3.05%) Data Centre
9 228 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
10 184 (2.21%) Security Posture
11 180 (2.16%) Management Information System
12 150 (1.80%) Data Structures
13 146 (1.75%) Public Cloud
14 127 (1.53%) PKI
15 112 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
16 111 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
17 99 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
18 98 (1.18%) Replication
19 89 (1.07%) Low-Code
20 88 (1.06%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 1,001 (12.03%) Windows
2 530 (6.37%) Linux
3 385 (4.63%) Windows Server
4 152 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 92 (1.11%) Android
6 91 (1.09%) Unix
7 89 (1.07%) Apple iOS
8 84 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 55 (0.66%) Ubuntu
11 50 (0.60%) VMS
12 27 (0.32%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.084%) Debian
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
19 5 (0.060%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,059 (36.75%) DevOps
2 2,698 (32.42%) CI/CD
3 2,093 (25.15%) Agile
4 1,514 (18.19%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,435 (17.24%) AI
6 1,427 (17.15%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,246 (14.97%) Migration
8 1,142 (13.72%) Problem-Solving
9 1,127 (13.54%) Analytics
10 966 (11.61%) Continuous Improvement
11 903 (10.85%) Data Modelling
12 859 (10.32%) Roadmaps
13 797 (9.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 789 (9.48%) Containerisation
15 766 (9.20%) Business Intelligence
16 756 (9.08%) Technical Leadership
17 754 (9.06%) Test Automation
18 741 (8.90%) Data Pipeline
19 736 (8.84%) Microservices
20 667 (8.01%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,924 (23.12%) Python
2 1,601 (19.24%) SQL
3 908 (10.91%) PowerShell
4 692 (8.31%) Java
5 609 (7.32%) C#
6 515 (6.19%) JavaScript
7 417 (5.01%) Bash
8 367 (4.41%) Bicep
9 309 (3.71%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 93 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 83 (1.00%) Go
13 66 (0.79%) Scala
14 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
15 59 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
16 43 (0.52%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.38%) C++
19 32 (0.38%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 2,162 (25.98%) Security Cleared
2 1,743 (20.94%) SC Cleared
3 564 (6.78%) Degree
4 478 (5.74%) Azure Certification
5 307 (3.69%) DV Cleared
6 273 (3.28%) BPSS Clearance
7 269 (3.23%) CISSP
8 252 (3.03%) Microsoft Certification
9 216 (2.60%) AWS Certification
10 196 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
11 184 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 138 (1.66%) CISM
13 92 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 92 (1.11%) PMI Certification
14 88 (1.06%) PMP
15 85 (1.02%) CCNP
16 66 (0.79%) ISTQB
17 64 (0.77%) CCSP
17 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
18 51 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 615 (7.39%) Data Quality
2 472 (5.67%) QA
3 301 (3.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 291 (3.50%) NIST
5 286 (3.44%) GDPR
6 208 (2.50%) Accessibility
7 118 (1.42%) NCSC
8 108 (1.30%) SLA
9 85 (1.02%) GRC
10 83 (1.00%) WCAG
11 78 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
12 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
13 52 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 49 (0.59%) PMO
15 44 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 34 (0.41%) SOC 2
17 27 (0.32%) ISO 20022
18 26 (0.31%) HIPAA
19 22 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
20 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,032 (12.40%) Active Directory
2 925 (11.11%) Docker
3 247 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.78%) Virtual Machines
5 147 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
6 130 (1.56%) Hyper-V
7 74 (0.89%) vSphere
8 51 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.24%) Firmware
11 17 (0.20%) IAG
12 16 (0.19%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
13 11 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.084%) Ceph
18 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
19 5 (0.060%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,309 (15.73%) Kubernetes
2 458 (5.50%) Ansible
3 454 (5.45%) Microsoft Intune
4 267 (3.21%) Grafana
5 210 (2.52%) Prometheus
6 148 (1.78%) Single Sign-On
7 139 (1.67%) SCCM
8 59 (0.71%) Argo
8 59 (0.71%) Progress Chef
9 48 (0.58%) Puppet
10 38 (0.46%) FortiGate
11 36 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
12 34 (0.41%) SCOM
13 30 (0.36%) Istio
14 24 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.24%) CASB
16 19 (0.23%) QRadar
16 19 (0.23%) vCenter Server
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
18 15 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,013 (36.20%) Microsoft
2 869 (10.44%) Databricks
3 415 (4.99%) ServiceNow
4 398 (4.78%) Google
5 362 (4.35%) VMware
6 346 (4.16%) Oracle
7 241 (2.90%) Cisco
8 235 (2.82%) Splunk
9 221 (2.66%) SAP
10 220 (2.64%) OpenAI
11 192 (2.31%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.84%) Palo Alto
13 149 (1.79%) CyberArk
14 135 (1.62%) Foundry
15 129 (1.55%) Dynatrace
16 94 (1.13%) Zscaler
17 91 (1.09%) IBM
18 82 (0.99%) Informatica
19 81 (0.97%) Fortinet
20 80 (0.96%) Okta