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

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,596 4,864 6,080
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.97% 15.97% 13.79%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.21% 42.36% 41.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,689 3,356 4,412
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £539
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.60% -3.75%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £713 £726 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 40 75
10th Percentile £20.91 £22.38 £17.76
25th Percentile £48.00 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%
75th Percentile £60.00 £61.81 £60.80
90th Percentile £80.00 £77.75 £71.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +109.09% -45.00% -23.08%

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 15,625 11,482 14,642
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.83% 37.69% 33.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,725 7,774 10,433
10th Percentile £312 £313 £285
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £633 £635
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -3.94% -1.10% -1.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 399 179 338
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.65 £14.09
25th Percentile £20.31 £21.46 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.58 £27.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +36.65% +27.91% -14.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £44.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £80.04 £75.84 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £24.18 £18.98
% change year-on-year +80.36% +27.43% -8.86%

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 February 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 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 February 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 5,574 £525 -2.10% 2,577
London 0 3,014 £540 -1.74% 937
UK excluding London 0 2,707 £500 - 2,149
Work from Home -2 2,042 £525 +0.19% 1,232
North of England +1 723 £492 +3.58% 552
South East -1 703 £500 -7.41% 726
Midlands -2 466 £500 - 304
North West 0 365 £476 +0.11% 293
West Midlands -2 345 £525 -2.66% 186
South West +5 340 £512 -2.57% 231
Yorkshire -3 309 £500 +8.11% 176
Scotland +7 299 £550 +15.79% 124
East of England +1 163 £550 +6.02% 183
East Midlands -3 119 £437 -2.94% 117
Wales -4 78 £388 -19.27% 52
North East -6 53 £515 +8.42% 91
Northern Ireland +4 10 £475 - 9

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
1 286 (4.34%) SharePoint
2 212 (3.21%) Microsoft Exchange
3 178 (2.70%) Confluence
4 175 (2.65%) Apache Spark
5 93 (1.41%) Apache
6 82 (1.24%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.35%) OpenStack
8 19 (0.29%) SAS
9 17 (0.26%) ArcGIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 15 (0.23%) Appian
11 12 (0.18%) Camunda
11 12 (0.18%) IIS
12 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
12 10 (0.15%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.15%) Mendix
12 10 (0.15%) SugarCRM
13 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.12%) Skype for Business
14 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
Applications
1 126 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 100 (1.52%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 48 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 43 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
5 15 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.12%) Trello
7 5 (0.076%) Acrobat
7 5 (0.076%) PTC Creo
7 5 (0.076%) Weka
8 4 (0.061%) Adobe XD
9 3 (0.045%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.015%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.015%) Revit
11 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.015%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 103 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.18%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) Endur
7 7 (0.11%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.091%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.091%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.091%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.091%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.091%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.091%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.076%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.076%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.076%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.076%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 2,317 (35.13%) AWS
2 1,299 (19.69%) Azure DevOps
3 1,295 (19.63%) GCP
4 882 (13.37%) Power Platform
5 778 (11.80%) Entra ID
6 747 (11.33%) Microsoft 365
7 674 (10.22%) GitHub
8 476 (7.22%) Azure Data Factory
9 393 (5.96%) GitHub Actions
9 393 (5.96%) Serverless
10 312 (4.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 293 (4.44%) Dynamics 365
12 272 (4.12%) SaaS
13 256 (3.88%) Power Automate
14 253 (3.84%) Azure AKS
15 237 (3.59%) Azure Functions
16 228 (3.46%) Snowflake
17 224 (3.40%) Azure Monitor
18 214 (3.24%) Azure Logic Apps
18 214 (3.24%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 447 (6.78%) Firewall
2 283 (4.29%) DNS
3 219 (3.32%) VPN
4 197 (2.99%) Network Security
5 168 (2.55%) DHCP
6 161 (2.44%) WAN
7 108 (1.64%) LAN
8 100 (1.52%) TCP/IP
9 88 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
10 81 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 73 (1.11%) VLAN
12 70 (1.06%) Kerberos
13 55 (0.83%) HTTP
14 41 (0.62%) BGP
15 39 (0.59%) Wireless
16 36 (0.55%) SSL
17 34 (0.52%) Internet
17 34 (0.52%) OSPF
18 33 (0.50%) MPLS
19 31 (0.47%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 593 (8.99%) Power BI
2 385 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 351 (5.32%) Data Warehouse
4 340 (5.15%) Data Lake
5 259 (3.93%) PostgreSQL
6 234 (3.55%) Azure SQL Database
7 186 (2.82%) NoSQL
8 164 (2.49%) Metadata
9 124 (1.88%) Relational Database
10 120 (1.82%) Delta Lake
11 96 (1.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 94 (1.43%) Big Data
13 88 (1.33%) MongoDB
14 79 (1.20%) MySQL
15 71 (1.08%) Tableau
16 69 (1.05%) Oracle Database
17 67 (1.02%) BigQuery
18 57 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
19 49 (0.74%) Redis
20 47 (0.71%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 515 (7.81%) Git
2 472 (7.16%) JIRA
3 346 (5.25%) Jenkins
4 268 (4.06%) GitLab
5 119 (1.80%) Selenium
6 96 (1.46%) Postman
7 71 (1.08%) Cucumber
8 69 (1.05%) JMeter
9 65 (0.99%) JUnit
10 49 (0.74%) MLflow
10 49 (0.74%) SonarQube
11 48 (0.73%) REST Assured
12 47 (0.71%) Cypress.io
13 40 (0.61%) Visual Studio
14 36 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.50%) TestRail
16 31 (0.47%) Artifactory
17 29 (0.44%) ERwin
18 28 (0.42%) Bitbucket
18 28 (0.42%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,004 (30.38%) Social Skills
2 1,177 (17.84%) Finance
3 763 (11.57%) Public Sector
4 660 (10.01%) Analytical Skills
5 362 (5.49%) Banking
6 212 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
7 141 (2.14%) Legal
8 110 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 107 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
10 91 (1.38%) Marketing
11 90 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
11 90 (1.36%) Retail
12 81 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
13 65 (0.99%) Investment Banking
14 64 (0.97%) Telecoms
15 60 (0.91%) Financial Institution
16 55 (0.83%) Law
17 51 (0.77%) Manufacturing
18 45 (0.68%) Front Office
19 40 (0.61%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,081 (16.39%) Architect
2 922 (13.98%) Developer
3 719 (10.90%) Senior
4 549 (8.32%) Azure Engineer
5 543 (8.23%) Data Engineer
6 477 (7.23%) Lead
7 445 (6.75%) Analyst
8 330 (5.00%) DevOps Engineer
9 329 (4.99%) Solutions Architect
10 298 (4.52%) Consultant
11 189 (2.87%) Security Engineer
12 184 (2.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 178 (2.70%) Cloud Engineer
14 162 (2.46%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 162 (2.46%) Azure Architect
15 158 (2.40%) Senior Developer
16 139 (2.11%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 139 (2.11%) Data Architect
17 138 (2.09%) Platform Engineer
18 131 (1.99%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 529 (8.02%) .NET
2 463 (7.02%) REST
3 317 (4.81%) React
4 259 (3.93%) PySpark
5 255 (3.87%) RESTful
6 242 (3.67%) Kafka
7 229 (3.47%) Node.js
8 204 (3.09%) OAuth
9 201 (3.05%) Spring
10 176 (2.67%) HTML
10 176 (2.67%) Spring Boot
11 175 (2.65%) AngularJS
12 154 (2.33%) CSS
13 152 (2.30%) LDAP
14 146 (2.21%) SOAP
15 144 (2.18%) PyTorch
16 141 (2.14%) JSON
17 130 (1.97%) TensorFlow
18 127 (1.93%) SAML
19 124 (1.88%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 584 (8.85%) Cloud Native
2 244 (3.70%) Onboarding
3 233 (3.53%) Product Ownership
4 180 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 175 (2.65%) Security Posture
6 158 (2.40%) Data Centre
7 156 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
8 155 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
9 118 (1.79%) Public Cloud
10 116 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
11 100 (1.52%) AI Agents
12 87 (1.32%) Data Structures
13 86 (1.30%) Replication
14 78 (1.18%) Algorithms
15 72 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
16 70 (1.06%) Management Information System
17 69 (1.05%) Low-Code
18 65 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
19 64 (0.97%) NHS
20 53 (0.80%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 739 (11.20%) Windows
2 377 (5.72%) Linux
3 199 (3.02%) Windows Server
4 122 (1.85%) Windows 10
5 85 (1.29%) Unix
6 60 (0.91%) VMS
7 50 (0.76%) Mac OS
8 48 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.59%) Apple iOS
10 33 (0.50%) Android
11 24 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.29%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) CentOS
15 11 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.12%) Solaris
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.091%) Data ONTAP
19 5 (0.076%) AIX
19 5 (0.076%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,401 (36.40%) DevOps
2 2,018 (30.59%) CI/CD
3 1,627 (24.67%) Agile
4 1,203 (18.24%) Problem-Solving
5 998 (15.13%) Analytics
6 914 (13.86%) AI
7 887 (13.45%) Infrastructure as Code
8 813 (12.33%) Migration
9 692 (10.49%) Stakeholder Management
10 675 (10.23%) Data Modelling
11 673 (10.20%) Business Intelligence
12 662 (10.04%) Containerisation
13 609 (9.23%) Continuous Improvement
14 593 (8.99%) Machine Learning
15 588 (8.91%) Data Pipeline
16 584 (8.85%) ETL
17 575 (8.72%) Microservices
18 547 (8.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 540 (8.19%) Test Automation
20 529 (8.02%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,739 (26.36%) Python
2 1,455 (22.06%) SQL
3 721 (10.93%) PowerShell
4 571 (8.66%) C#
5 550 (8.34%) Java
6 512 (7.76%) JavaScript
7 295 (4.47%) TypeScript
8 262 (3.97%) Bash
9 203 (3.08%) Bicep
10 96 (1.46%) Scala
11 85 (1.29%) PL/SQL
12 81 (1.23%) Go
13 72 (1.09%) T-SQL
14 70 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
15 66 (1.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 46 (0.70%) R
17 44 (0.67%) Shell Script
18 39 (0.59%) C++
18 39 (0.59%) PHP
19 22 (0.33%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,534 (23.26%) Security Cleared
2 1,269 (19.24%) SC Cleared
3 548 (8.31%) Degree
4 364 (5.52%) Azure Certification
5 214 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 184 (2.79%) CISSP
7 177 (2.68%) Microsoft Certification
8 138 (2.09%) AWS Certification
9 131 (1.99%) DV Cleared
10 126 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
11 118 (1.79%) CISM
12 106 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
13 93 (1.41%) Master's Degree
14 66 (1.00%) TOGAF Certification
15 55 (0.83%) CCNP
16 54 (0.82%) PMI Certification
17 53 (0.80%) PMP
18 52 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 36 (0.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 442 (6.70%) Data Quality
2 395 (5.99%) GDPR
3 350 (5.31%) QA
4 301 (4.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 234 (3.55%) NIST
6 135 (2.05%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.46%) NCSC
8 80 (1.21%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
9 60 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 56 (0.85%) SLA
11 47 (0.71%) PMO
12 42 (0.64%) HIPAA
13 36 (0.55%) SOC 2
13 36 (0.55%) WCAG
14 34 (0.52%) GRC
15 25 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 25 (0.38%) EU AI Act
16 23 (0.35%) ISO 20022
16 23 (0.35%) NIST 800
System Software
1 854 (12.95%) Active Directory
2 791 (11.99%) Docker
3 197 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (1.53%) Hyper-V
5 89 (1.35%) Virtual Machines
6 76 (1.15%) Virtual Desktop
7 74 (1.12%) vSphere
8 23 (0.35%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
10 12 (0.18%) Firmware
11 11 (0.17%) NFS
11 11 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
12 9 (0.14%) Postfix
13 8 (0.12%) Snort
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 6 (0.091%) DFS Replication
15 6 (0.091%) GPFS
15 6 (0.091%) Lustre
15 6 (0.091%) Squid
Systems Management
1 1,030 (15.62%) Terraform
2 955 (14.48%) Kubernetes
3 356 (5.40%) Microsoft Intune
4 301 (4.56%) Ansible
5 173 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
6 159 (2.41%) Grafana
7 141 (2.14%) Prometheus
8 139 (2.11%) SCCM
9 73 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 47 (0.71%) Argo
11 27 (0.41%) FortiGate
12 26 (0.39%) Puppet
13 25 (0.38%) vRealize
14 23 (0.35%) Istio
14 23 (0.35%) Progress Chef
15 22 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
16 20 (0.30%) Nessus
17 19 (0.29%) Kibana
17 19 (0.29%) Nmap
17 19 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,127 (32.25%) Microsoft
2 682 (10.34%) Databricks
3 348 (5.28%) Oracle
4 336 (5.09%) Google
5 281 (4.26%) ServiceNow
6 269 (4.08%) VMware
7 190 (2.88%) SAP
8 168 (2.55%) Cisco
9 161 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 157 (2.38%) Splunk
11 117 (1.77%) CyberArk
11 117 (1.77%) Salesforce
12 108 (1.64%) Palo Alto
13 97 (1.47%) Foundry
14 79 (1.20%) Okta
15 76 (1.15%) Red Hat
16 71 (1.08%) Citrix
17 66 (1.00%) IBM
18 65 (0.99%) BeyondTrust
19 63 (0.96%) Informatica