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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,142 4,858 6,103
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.51% 15.04% 14.07%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.86% 39.98% 42.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,696 3,366 4,385
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.43% -0.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 40 53
10th Percentile £18.80 £25.90 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.19 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% +25.60% -23.38%
75th Percentile £77.50 £77.80 £61.60
90th Percentile £96.25 £100.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £70.00 £52.75
% change year-on-year -17.86% +32.70% -11.94%

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 18,565 12,152 14,372
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.37% 37.62% 33.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,331 8,124 10,096
10th Percentile £331 £313 £300
25th Percentile £415 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.34% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £620 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £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 615 312 357
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £27.63 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.72% +25.59% -37.14%
75th Percentile £69.88 £47.63 £46.18
90th Percentile £83.55 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +102.70% -10.14% -20.69%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 6,921 £525 - 2,694
London +1 3,624 £550 - 1,132
UK excluding London +3 3,526 £510 +2.00% 2,071
Work from Home -1 2,514 £525 +2.44% 1,399
North of England +7 1,016 £500 +5.26% 553
South East +2 860 £520 +4.00% 647
Midlands +3 611 £500 +1.01% 269
North West +8 532 £500 +1.63% 297
West Midlands +1 457 £500 -4.76% 154
South West +7 442 £540 +8.00% 228
Yorkshire +4 403 £501 +5.37% 177
Scotland +11 324 £525 +5.42% 89
East of England +5 186 £550 - 164
East Midlands +4 143 £500 +8.11% 114
Wales -1 113 £425 -4.49% 88
North East +4 94 £525 +5.00% 88
Northern Ireland +17 19 £538 +13.16% 74
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
1 400 (4.91%) SharePoint
2 271 (3.33%) Confluence
3 195 (2.39%) Microsoft Exchange
4 191 (2.35%) Apache Spark
5 131 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
6 123 (1.51%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 31 (0.38%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 18 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 17 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.12%) Camunda
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.098%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.098%) Mendix
15 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.074%) Appian
Applications
1 117 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 29 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 5 (0.061%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.061%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 4 (0.049%) Trello
13 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.012%) Houdini
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) NUKE
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 108 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.098%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.086%) Magento
7 7 (0.086%) Maximo
7 7 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.074%) Endur
8 6 (0.074%) Shopify
8 6 (0.074%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.061%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.049%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.049%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.049%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,874 (35.30%) AWS
2 1,668 (20.49%) Azure DevOps
3 1,365 (16.76%) GCP
4 1,036 (12.72%) Power Platform
5 1,005 (12.34%) Entra ID
6 800 (9.83%) Microsoft 365
7 765 (9.40%) GitHub
8 464 (5.70%) GitHub Actions
9 460 (5.65%) Azure Data Factory
10 372 (4.57%) Serverless
11 323 (3.97%) SaaS
12 322 (3.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 293 (3.60%) Azure AKS
14 275 (3.38%) Azure Monitor
15 272 (3.34%) Power Automate
16 260 (3.19%) PowerApps
17 255 (3.13%) PaaS
18 245 (3.01%) Dynamics 365
19 220 (2.70%) Azure AI
19 220 (2.70%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 486 (5.97%) Firewall
2 371 (4.56%) DNS
3 290 (3.56%) VPN
4 282 (3.46%) Network Security
5 217 (2.67%) WAN
6 186 (2.28%) DHCP
7 137 (1.68%) LAN
8 124 (1.52%) TCP/IP
9 117 (1.44%) SD-WAN
10 110 (1.35%) BGP
11 85 (1.04%) OSPF
12 82 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
13 78 (0.96%) VLAN
14 69 (0.85%) SSL
15 55 (0.68%) Kerberos
16 54 (0.66%) SAN
17 53 (0.65%) IPsec
18 50 (0.61%) Wireless
19 48 (0.59%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 698 (8.57%) Power BI
2 467 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 384 (4.72%) Data Warehouse
4 356 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 294 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
6 222 (2.73%) Azure SQL Database
7 212 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 200 (2.46%) Metadata
9 138 (1.69%) Delta Lake
10 134 (1.65%) Relational Database
11 122 (1.50%) Big Data
12 108 (1.33%) MongoDB
13 90 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 77 (0.95%) MySQL
15 76 (0.93%) Tableau
16 70 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
17 66 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 57 (0.70%) Oracle Database
18 57 (0.70%) Star Schema
19 53 (0.65%) Redis
Development Applications
1 635 (7.80%) JIRA
2 609 (7.48%) Git
3 432 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 321 (3.94%) GitLab
5 128 (1.57%) Selenium
6 82 (1.01%) Postman
7 77 (0.95%) JMeter
8 66 (0.81%) JUnit
9 62 (0.76%) Cucumber
10 58 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.59%) Cypress.io
11 48 (0.59%) SonarQube
12 44 (0.54%) Visual Studio
13 43 (0.53%) WebDriver
14 42 (0.52%) MLflow
15 32 (0.39%) Gatling
15 32 (0.39%) Maven
16 30 (0.37%) LoadRunner
17 29 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
18 25 (0.31%) NUnit
General
1 2,051 (25.19%) Social Skills
2 1,510 (18.55%) Finance
3 921 (11.31%) Public Sector
4 748 (9.19%) Analytical Skills
5 425 (5.22%) Banking
6 234 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 208 (2.55%) Legal
8 171 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 166 (2.04%) Retail
10 102 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
11 84 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 77 (0.95%) Telecoms
13 70 (0.86%) Investment Banking
13 70 (0.86%) Law
14 69 (0.85%) Front Office
14 69 (0.85%) Marketing
15 68 (0.84%) Manufacturing
16 67 (0.82%) Financial Institution
17 57 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
18 52 (0.64%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,454 (17.86%) Architect
2 1,059 (13.01%) Developer
3 991 (12.17%) Senior
4 717 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 636 (7.81%) Lead
6 624 (7.66%) Data Engineer
7 491 (6.03%) Analyst
8 414 (5.08%) DevOps Engineer
9 412 (5.06%) Solutions Architect
10 337 (4.14%) Consultant
11 302 (3.71%) Cloud Engineer
12 272 (3.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 232 (2.85%) Data Architect
14 226 (2.78%) Azure Architect
15 208 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
16 203 (2.49%) Technical Architect
17 188 (2.31%) Security Engineer
18 180 (2.21%) Business Analyst
19 178 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 175 (2.15%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 647 (7.95%) .NET
2 581 (7.14%) REST
3 347 (4.26%) React
4 307 (3.77%) Kafka
5 285 (3.50%) RESTful
6 262 (3.22%) PySpark
7 237 (2.91%) OAuth
8 226 (2.78%) Spring
9 223 (2.74%) Node.js
10 194 (2.38%) Spring Boot
11 187 (2.30%) AngularJS
12 185 (2.27%) JSON
13 152 (1.87%) HTML
14 150 (1.84%) SAML
15 146 (1.79%) OpenID
16 139 (1.71%) LDAP
17 130 (1.60%) .NET Framework
18 126 (1.55%) OAuth2
19 125 (1.54%) Middleware
19 125 (1.54%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 867 (10.65%) Cloud Native
2 350 (4.30%) Onboarding
3 330 (4.05%) Product Ownership
4 261 (3.21%) Data Centre
5 248 (3.05%) Distributed Systems
6 231 (2.84%) Hybrid Cloud
7 228 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
8 196 (2.41%) AI Agents
9 174 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
10 158 (1.94%) Security Posture
11 145 (1.78%) Public Cloud
12 116 (1.42%) Data Structures
13 112 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
13 112 (1.38%) Management Information System
14 104 (1.28%) Replication
15 92 (1.13%) PKI
16 89 (1.09%) Enterprise Cloud
17 84 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
18 74 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
19 73 (0.90%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 928 (11.40%) Windows
2 423 (5.20%) Linux
3 302 (3.71%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.36%) Windows 10
5 77 (0.95%) Unix
6 74 (0.91%) Android
6 74 (0.91%) Apple iOS
7 73 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 72 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 58 (0.71%) VMS
10 38 (0.47%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.14%) CentOS
15 10 (0.12%) Debian
16 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.086%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,022 (37.12%) DevOps
2 2,557 (31.41%) CI/CD
3 2,003 (24.60%) Agile
4 1,229 (15.09%) AI
5 1,221 (15.00%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,167 (14.33%) Migration
7 1,141 (14.01%) Analytics
8 1,084 (13.31%) Problem-Solving
9 977 (12.00%) Stakeholder Management
10 914 (11.23%) Data Modelling
11 825 (10.13%) Continuous Improvement
12 782 (9.60%) Data Pipeline
13 766 (9.41%) Containerisation
14 755 (9.27%) Roadmaps
15 751 (9.22%) Microservices
16 744 (9.14%) Business Intelligence
17 715 (8.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 682 (8.38%) ETL
19 672 (8.25%) Test Automation
20 658 (8.08%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,907 (23.42%) Python
2 1,617 (19.86%) SQL
3 770 (9.46%) PowerShell
4 688 (8.45%) Java
5 636 (7.81%) C#
6 473 (5.81%) JavaScript
7 324 (3.98%) TypeScript
8 299 (3.67%) Bash
9 280 (3.44%) Bicep
10 95 (1.17%) T-SQL
11 94 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 83 (1.02%) Go
13 78 (0.96%) Scala
14 53 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
15 49 (0.60%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.54%) R
17 35 (0.43%) Kotlin
17 35 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 26 (0.32%) Groovy
19 25 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,014 (24.74%) Security Cleared
2 1,669 (20.50%) SC Cleared
3 579 (7.11%) Degree
4 416 (5.11%) Azure Certification
5 250 (3.07%) CISSP
6 231 (2.84%) DV Cleared
7 228 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
8 199 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
8 199 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
9 195 (2.39%) Microsoft Certification
10 180 (2.21%) AWS Certification
11 126 (1.55%) CISM
12 96 (1.18%) CCNP
13 81 (0.99%) PMP
14 77 (0.95%) PMI Certification
15 76 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 66 (0.81%) ISTQB
17 65 (0.80%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
19 51 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 556 (6.83%) Data Quality
2 423 (5.20%) QA
3 344 (4.23%) GDPR
4 282 (3.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 272 (3.34%) NIST
6 189 (2.32%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.46%) NCSC
8 98 (1.20%) SLA
9 74 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
9 74 (0.91%) PCI DSS
10 67 (0.82%) WCAG
11 64 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 62 (0.76%) GRC
13 47 (0.58%) PMO
14 38 (0.47%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 23 (0.28%) NIST 800
18 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 20 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 960 (11.79%) Active Directory
2 860 (10.56%) Docker
3 229 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
5 135 (1.66%) Virtual Machines
6 115 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.88%) vSphere
8 52 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.36%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.12%) IAG
15 8 (0.098%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.098%) Varnish
16 6 (0.074%) Ceph
16 6 (0.074%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.074%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,302 (15.99%) Terraform
2 1,187 (14.58%) Kubernetes
3 424 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
4 381 (4.68%) Ansible
5 238 (2.92%) Grafana
6 200 (2.46%) Prometheus
7 166 (2.04%) Single Sign-On
8 106 (1.30%) SCCM
9 66 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.63%) Argo
11 48 (0.59%) Jamf Pro
12 43 (0.53%) Progress Chef
13 41 (0.50%) Puppet
14 38 (0.47%) FortiGate
15 31 (0.38%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
17 20 (0.25%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.21%) Packer
19 13 (0.16%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,604 (31.98%) Microsoft
2 759 (9.32%) Databricks
3 380 (4.67%) ServiceNow
4 320 (3.93%) Google
5 315 (3.87%) VMware
6 308 (3.78%) Oracle
7 229 (2.81%) SAP
8 217 (2.67%) Cisco
9 200 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 168 (2.06%) Splunk
11 156 (1.92%) Salesforce
12 144 (1.77%) Palo Alto
13 131 (1.61%) Foundry
14 128 (1.57%) CyberArk
15 106 (1.30%) Okta
16 97 (1.19%) Dynatrace
17 90 (1.11%) Informatica
18 88 (1.08%) Zscaler
19 78 (0.96%) Citrix
20 74 (0.91%) Fortinet