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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,350 4,749 5,563
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.57% 14.51% 14.32%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.57% 39.04% 42.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,834 3,226 3,925
10th Percentile £375 £350 £343
25th Percentile £438 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £635
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 45 38
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.20 £18.05
25th Percentile £21.31 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% +7.14% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.81 £72.50 £60.58
90th Percentile £97.19 £92.50 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year -41.15% +96.97% -28.54%

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 18,735 12,164 13,087
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.93% 37.18% 33.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,407 8,112 9,037
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 607 320 227
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.48 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.13 £18.51 £17.80
Median hourly rate £33.99 £28.00 £27.72
Median % change year-on-year +21.39% +1.01% -20.80%
75th Percentile £69.25 £47.50 £55.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.28 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £18.87 £22.00
% change year-on-year +72.23% -14.23% -18.52%

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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 7,157 £525 - 2,172
London +1 3,749 £550 +0.92% 882
UK excluding London +2 3,585 £500 - 1,532
Work from Home +1 2,548 £525 +5.00% 1,115
North of England +8 1,051 £500 +5.26% 412
South East +3 926 £525 +5.00% 324
Midlands +4 644 £490 -4.85% 260
North West +6 538 £495 +3.13% 210
West Midlands +3 476 £488 -9.22% 150
Yorkshire +6 431 £500 +5.26% 148
South West +6 426 £540 +7.95% 275
Scotland +12 287 £500 +5.26% 91
East of England +3 175 £525 +3.96% 127
East Midlands +10 156 £488 +5.41% 109
North East +10 95 £506 +1.25% 60
Wales 0 91 £475 +6.03% 47
Northern Ireland +10 15 £644 +35.53% 34
Channel Islands 0 11 £450 -29.69% 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
1 454 (5.44%) SharePoint
2 270 (3.23%) Confluence
3 197 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 172 (2.06%) Apache Spark
5 155 (1.86%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.38%) Apache
7 43 (0.51%) SAS
8 37 (0.44%) IIS
9 27 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 22 (0.26%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.16%) nginx
13 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
13 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
14 7 (0.084%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.084%) Camunda
14 7 (0.084%) Mendix
Applications
1 124 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.46%) Chatbot
5 37 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 33 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 126 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 8 (0.096%) Payment Gateway
9 7 (0.084%) Shopify
10 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
10 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 5 (0.060%) Cloudability
11 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
11 5 (0.060%) Maximo
11 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 5 (0.060%) Workday HCM
12 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
12 4 (0.048%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,989 (35.80%) AWS
2 1,788 (21.41%) Azure DevOps
3 1,422 (17.03%) GCP
4 1,080 (12.93%) Entra ID
5 1,064 (12.74%) Power Platform
6 857 (10.26%) Microsoft 365
7 836 (10.01%) GitHub
8 500 (5.99%) GitHub Actions
9 475 (5.69%) Azure Data Factory
10 361 (4.32%) Serverless
11 357 (4.28%) SaaS
12 319 (3.82%) Azure Monitor
13 311 (3.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 303 (3.63%) Azure AKS
15 293 (3.51%) Power Automate
16 284 (3.40%) Dynamics 365
17 279 (3.34%) PowerApps
18 261 (3.13%) Snowflake
19 240 (2.87%) PaaS
20 224 (2.68%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 528 (6.32%) Firewall
2 423 (5.07%) DNS
3 324 (3.88%) VPN
4 311 (3.72%) Network Security
5 218 (2.61%) DHCP
6 198 (2.37%) WAN
7 169 (2.02%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.41%) LAN
9 113 (1.35%) BGP
10 102 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.11%) VLAN
12 90 (1.08%) OSPF
13 84 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 72 (0.86%) SSL
15 62 (0.74%) SAN
16 54 (0.65%) HTTP
16 54 (0.65%) Wireless
17 47 (0.56%) VXLAN
18 46 (0.55%) IPsec
19 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 726 (8.69%) Power BI
2 465 (5.57%) SQL Server
3 411 (4.92%) Data Warehouse
4 360 (4.31%) Data Lake
5 289 (3.46%) PostgreSQL
6 230 (2.75%) Metadata
7 220 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
8 218 (2.61%) NoSQL
9 141 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 132 (1.58%) Delta Lake
11 103 (1.23%) MongoDB
12 100 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 97 (1.16%) Big Data
14 83 (0.99%) MySQL
15 68 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
16 67 (0.80%) Tableau
17 65 (0.78%) Redis
18 61 (0.73%) Snowflake Schema
19 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
20 58 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 689 (8.25%) Git
2 628 (7.52%) JIRA
3 467 (5.59%) Jenkins
4 360 (4.31%) GitLab
5 138 (1.65%) Selenium
6 75 (0.90%) Postman
7 64 (0.77%) JUnit
8 62 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 61 (0.73%) JMeter
10 53 (0.63%) Cucumber
10 53 (0.63%) SonarQube
11 51 (0.61%) Maven
12 47 (0.56%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
14 44 (0.53%) Claude Code
15 42 (0.50%) Gradle
16 41 (0.49%) WebDriver
17 34 (0.41%) MLflow
18 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
19 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,246 (26.90%) Social Skills
2 1,550 (18.56%) Finance
3 992 (11.88%) Public Sector
4 822 (9.84%) Analytical Skills
5 452 (5.41%) Banking
6 237 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 214 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 192 (2.30%) Retail
9 181 (2.17%) Legal
10 101 (1.21%) Manufacturing
11 95 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 92 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
13 84 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
14 77 (0.92%) Investment Banking
15 76 (0.91%) Aerospace
16 75 (0.90%) Marketing
17 74 (0.89%) Law
18 66 (0.79%) Financial Institution
19 64 (0.77%) Military
20 56 (0.67%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,552 (18.59%) Architect
2 1,039 (12.44%) Senior
3 1,023 (12.25%) Developer
4 740 (8.86%) Azure Engineer
5 695 (8.32%) Lead
6 594 (7.11%) Data Engineer
7 492 (5.89%) Analyst
8 459 (5.50%) DevOps Engineer
9 443 (5.31%) Solutions Architect
10 354 (4.24%) Cloud Engineer
11 315 (3.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 313 (3.75%) Consultant
13 265 (3.17%) Data Architect
14 239 (2.86%) Platform Engineer
15 237 (2.84%) Azure Architect
16 203 (2.43%) Technical Architect
17 198 (2.37%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 188 (2.25%) Security Architect
19 184 (2.20%) Project Manager
19 184 (2.20%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,378 (16.50%) Terraform
2 674 (8.07%) REST
3 638 (7.64%) .NET
4 360 (4.31%) Kafka
5 312 (3.74%) React
6 292 (3.50%) RESTful
7 271 (3.25%) PySpark
8 248 (2.97%) OAuth
9 223 (2.67%) JSON
10 207 (2.48%) Spring
11 179 (2.14%) Spring Boot
12 170 (2.04%) Node.js
13 163 (1.95%) AngularJS
14 156 (1.87%) HTML
15 152 (1.82%) SAML
16 150 (1.80%) OpenID
17 146 (1.75%) OAuth2
18 141 (1.69%) Middleware
19 138 (1.65%) .NET Framework
20 137 (1.64%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 906 (10.85%) Cloud Native
2 421 (5.04%) Onboarding
3 365 (4.37%) Product Ownership
4 271 (3.25%) AI Agents
5 270 (3.23%) Enterprise Software
5 270 (3.23%) Hybrid Cloud
6 268 (3.21%) Distributed Systems
7 257 (3.08%) Data Centre
8 233 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
9 170 (2.04%) Security Posture
10 152 (1.82%) Management Information System
11 144 (1.72%) Data Structures
11 144 (1.72%) Public Cloud
12 117 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
12 117 (1.40%) Enterprise Cloud
13 114 (1.37%) PKI
14 97 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
15 94 (1.13%) Replication
16 82 (0.98%) CMDB
17 75 (0.90%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 989 (11.84%) Windows
2 507 (6.07%) Linux
3 361 (4.32%) Windows Server
4 133 (1.59%) Windows 10
5 86 (1.03%) Android
6 85 (1.02%) Unix
7 84 (1.01%) Apple iOS
8 81 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 70 (0.84%) Mac OS
10 61 (0.73%) VMS
11 54 (0.65%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.22%) CentOS
13 18 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 8 (0.096%) Data ONTAP
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,106 (37.20%) DevOps
2 2,622 (31.40%) CI/CD
3 2,092 (25.05%) Agile
4 1,355 (16.23%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,346 (16.12%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,319 (15.80%) AI
7 1,237 (14.81%) Migration
8 1,151 (13.78%) Analytics
9 1,126 (13.49%) Problem-Solving
10 939 (11.25%) Continuous Improvement
11 910 (10.90%) Data Modelling
12 822 (9.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 803 (9.62%) Roadmaps
14 781 (9.35%) Containerisation
15 777 (9.31%) Business Intelligence
16 770 (9.22%) Data Pipeline
17 748 (8.96%) Microservices
18 707 (8.47%) Test Automation
19 697 (8.35%) Technical Leadership
20 679 (8.13%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,887 (22.60%) Python
2 1,622 (19.43%) SQL
3 861 (10.31%) PowerShell
4 691 (8.28%) Java
5 608 (7.28%) C#
6 489 (5.86%) JavaScript
7 395 (4.73%) Bash
8 350 (4.19%) Bicep
9 294 (3.52%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.83%) Go
13 63 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 59 (0.71%) Scala
15 58 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
16 44 (0.53%) PL/SQL
17 41 (0.49%) R
18 39 (0.47%) Kotlin
19 34 (0.41%) Groovy
20 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,182 (26.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,769 (21.19%) SC Cleared
3 552 (6.61%) Degree
4 461 (5.52%) Azure Certification
5 285 (3.41%) DV Cleared
6 265 (3.17%) CISSP
7 251 (3.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 230 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
9 210 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
10 203 (2.43%) AWS Certification
11 182 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
12 133 (1.59%) CISM
13 99 (1.19%) CCNP
14 88 (1.05%) PMI Certification
15 86 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 83 (0.99%) PMP
17 72 (0.86%) ISTQB
18 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
19 55 (0.66%) CCSP
20 43 (0.51%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 596 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 455 (5.45%) QA
3 316 (3.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 312 (3.74%) NIST
5 311 (3.72%) GDPR
6 202 (2.42%) Accessibility
7 124 (1.49%) NCSC
8 104 (1.25%) SLA
9 77 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
9 77 (0.92%) GRC
9 77 (0.92%) WCAG
10 71 (0.85%) PCI DSS
11 58 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 55 (0.66%) PMO
13 42 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 24 (0.29%) SOC 2
16 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
17 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
17 19 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 1,016 (12.17%) Active Directory
2 915 (10.96%) Docker
3 245 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 152 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
5 141 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
6 131 (1.57%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.79%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 38 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.35%) Firmware
11 21 (0.25%) NFS
12 17 (0.20%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
13 13 (0.16%) Postfix
14 9 (0.11%) Ceph
14 9 (0.11%) zsh
15 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.084%) Squid
16 7 (0.084%) Varnish
17 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,278 (15.31%) Kubernetes
2 450 (5.39%) Ansible
3 438 (5.25%) Microsoft Intune
4 265 (3.17%) Grafana
5 213 (2.55%) Prometheus
6 151 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
7 126 (1.51%) SCCM
8 61 (0.73%) Progress Chef
9 60 (0.72%) Argo
10 48 (0.57%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 31 (0.37%) Istio
15 22 (0.26%) SCOM
15 22 (0.26%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.24%) Packer
17 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 19 (0.23%) HP ALM
17 19 (0.23%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,882 (34.51%) Microsoft
2 821 (9.83%) Databricks
3 407 (4.87%) ServiceNow
4 353 (4.23%) Google
4 353 (4.23%) VMware
5 326 (3.90%) Oracle
6 242 (2.90%) Cisco
7 225 (2.69%) SAP
8 208 (2.49%) Splunk
9 204 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 166 (1.99%) Salesforce
11 153 (1.83%) CyberArk
12 150 (1.80%) Palo Alto
13 131 (1.57%) Foundry
14 119 (1.43%) Dynatrace
15 103 (1.23%) Zscaler
16 95 (1.14%) Informatica
17 83 (0.99%) Okta
18 81 (0.97%) Fortinet
19 77 (0.92%) IBM