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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,754 4,520 5,947
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.41% 15.23% 13.64%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.47% 40.20% 42.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,456 3,166 4,285
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 35 51
10th Percentile £19.25 £26.45 £17.80
25th Percentile £32.19 £29.75 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -42.34%
75th Percentile £73.44 £78.10 £60.78
90th Percentile £93.06 £95.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £67.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -14.81% +28.57% -12.50%

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 17,839 11,244 14,113
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.45% 37.88% 32.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,931 7,595 9,937
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.99% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £619 £631
90th Percentile £712 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.21% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 584 280 359
10th Percentile £16.50 £15.15 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.31 £28.00 £21.64
Median % change year-on-year +33.25% +29.39% -38.17%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.94 £19.95
% change year-on-year +98.05% -5.09% -26.38%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 17 June 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 6,560 £525 - 2,868
London +1 3,487 £540 -1.82% 1,074
UK excluding London +3 3,301 £500 - 2,319
Work from Home -1 2,385 £525 +2.44% 1,469
North of England +6 940 £500 +5.26% 597
South East +3 831 £505 +1.00% 665
Midlands +1 533 £500 - 312
North West +4 478 £500 +0.81% 351
South West +6 422 £528 +2.93% 291
West Midlands +1 397 £500 -4.76% 177
Yorkshire +5 380 £500 +5.26% 159
Scotland +9 331 £525 +5.00% 133
East of England +9 165 £550 -5.17% 203
East Midlands +5 126 £494 +6.76% 134
Wales +1 106 £425 +6.25% 71
North East +5 94 £525 +5.00% 88
Northern Ireland +15 19 £538 +13.16% 89
Channel Islands +1 8 £450 -34.07%

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
1 373 (4.81%) SharePoint
2 236 (3.04%) Confluence
3 188 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
4 186 (2.40%) Apache Spark
5 119 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.39%) Apache
7 41 (0.53%) SAS
8 28 (0.36%) IIS
9 19 (0.25%) CMS
10 17 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.21%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 12 (0.15%) Mendix
14 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 10 (0.13%) Appian
15 10 (0.13%) Camunda
15 10 (0.13%) nginx
16 9 (0.12%) HCL Notes
17 8 (0.10%) Umbraco
17 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 106 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 66 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 27 (0.35%) Chatbot
7 12 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.090%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.064%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.064%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.052%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.052%) Notion
12 4 (0.052%) Trello
13 2 (0.026%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.013%) InDesign
14 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.013%) Sketch
14 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 107 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.14%) Maximo
6 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
8 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
9 7 (0.090%) Shopify
10 6 (0.077%) Oracle EBS
10 6 (0.077%) SimCorp Dimension
10 6 (0.077%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 6 (0.077%) Unit4 Business World
11 5 (0.064%) Endur
11 5 (0.064%) NEC Housing
11 5 (0.064%) SAP MM
12 4 (0.052%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.052%) Magento
12 4 (0.052%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,667 (34.40%) AWS
2 1,589 (20.49%) Azure DevOps
3 1,283 (16.55%) GCP
4 1,007 (12.99%) Power Platform
5 948 (12.23%) Entra ID
6 788 (10.16%) Microsoft 365
7 707 (9.12%) GitHub
8 472 (6.09%) Azure Data Factory
9 427 (5.51%) GitHub Actions
10 389 (5.02%) Serverless
11 308 (3.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 300 (3.87%) SaaS
13 285 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 265 (3.42%) Power Automate
15 255 (3.29%) Dynamics 365
16 245 (3.16%) Azure Monitor
17 241 (3.11%) PaaS
18 233 (3.00%) PowerApps
19 206 (2.66%) Azure AI
19 206 (2.66%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 455 (5.87%) Firewall
2 338 (4.36%) DNS
3 263 (3.39%) Network Security
4 253 (3.26%) VPN
5 224 (2.89%) WAN
6 178 (2.30%) DHCP
7 132 (1.70%) LAN
8 123 (1.59%) SD-WAN
9 99 (1.28%) TCP/IP
10 90 (1.16%) BGP
11 88 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
12 70 (0.90%) OSPF
13 69 (0.89%) VLAN
14 60 (0.77%) Kerberos
14 60 (0.77%) SSL
15 52 (0.67%) SAN
16 49 (0.63%) VXLAN
16 49 (0.63%) Wireless
17 45 (0.58%) IPsec
18 41 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 669 (8.63%) Power BI
2 441 (5.69%) SQL Server
3 376 (4.85%) Data Warehouse
4 373 (4.81%) Data Lake
5 266 (3.43%) PostgreSQL
6 228 (2.94%) Azure SQL Database
7 205 (2.64%) NoSQL
8 187 (2.41%) Metadata
9 142 (1.83%) Delta Lake
10 123 (1.59%) Relational Database
11 114 (1.47%) Big Data
12 100 (1.29%) MongoDB
13 94 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 75 (0.97%) Tableau
15 71 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
16 66 (0.85%) MySQL
17 63 (0.81%) Oracle Database
18 62 (0.80%) BigQuery
19 54 (0.70%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.64%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 568 (7.33%) JIRA
2 563 (7.26%) Git
3 391 (5.04%) Jenkins
4 322 (4.15%) GitLab
5 123 (1.59%) Selenium
6 80 (1.03%) JMeter
7 78 (1.01%) Postman
8 63 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 61 (0.79%) JUnit
10 56 (0.72%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.62%) SonarQube
12 46 (0.59%) MLflow
13 44 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 42 (0.54%) WebDriver
15 41 (0.53%) Cypress.io
16 36 (0.46%) Gatling
17 31 (0.40%) Maven
18 27 (0.35%) LoadRunner
19 26 (0.34%) Artifactory
20 25 (0.32%) NUnit
General
1 1,970 (25.41%) Social Skills
2 1,444 (18.62%) Finance
3 860 (11.09%) Public Sector
4 690 (8.90%) Analytical Skills
5 402 (5.18%) Banking
6 231 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
7 202 (2.61%) Legal
8 156 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 133 (1.72%) Retail
10 92 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 77 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
12 71 (0.92%) Financial Institution
13 70 (0.90%) Law
14 68 (0.88%) Investment Banking
15 67 (0.86%) Marketing
16 64 (0.83%) Front Office
17 62 (0.80%) Telecoms
18 58 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
19 52 (0.67%) Manufacturing
20 44 (0.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,360 (17.54%) Architect
2 982 (12.66%) Developer
3 940 (12.12%) Senior
4 693 (8.94%) Azure Engineer
5 598 (7.71%) Data Engineer
6 594 (7.66%) Lead
7 478 (6.16%) Analyst
8 417 (5.38%) DevOps Engineer
9 379 (4.89%) Solutions Architect
10 326 (4.20%) Consultant
11 283 (3.65%) Cloud Engineer
12 266 (3.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 218 (2.81%) Azure Architect
14 214 (2.76%) Data Architect
15 203 (2.62%) Security Engineer
16 194 (2.50%) Platform Engineer
17 179 (2.31%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 178 (2.30%) Technical Architect
19 171 (2.21%) Business Analyst
20 169 (2.18%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 609 (7.85%) .NET
2 544 (7.02%) REST
3 340 (4.38%) React
4 279 (3.60%) Kafka
5 265 (3.42%) RESTful
6 263 (3.39%) PySpark
7 222 (2.86%) OAuth
8 213 (2.75%) Spring
9 212 (2.73%) Node.js
10 182 (2.35%) AngularJS
11 181 (2.33%) Spring Boot
12 164 (2.12%) JSON
13 159 (2.05%) LDAP
14 146 (1.88%) SAML
15 142 (1.83%) HTML
16 138 (1.78%) OpenID
17 133 (1.72%) SOAP
18 131 (1.69%) Middleware
19 117 (1.51%) .NET Framework
19 117 (1.51%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 794 (10.24%) Cloud Native
2 326 (4.20%) Onboarding
3 300 (3.87%) Product Ownership
4 253 (3.26%) Data Centre
5 211 (2.72%) Hybrid Cloud
6 206 (2.66%) Distributed Systems
7 197 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
8 170 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
9 169 (2.18%) AI Agents
10 165 (2.13%) Security Posture
11 158 (2.04%) Public Cloud
12 112 (1.44%) Data Structures
13 108 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
14 93 (1.20%) Management Information System
14 93 (1.20%) Replication
15 83 (1.07%) PKI
16 80 (1.03%) Low-Code
17 76 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
18 72 (0.93%) Enterprise Cloud
19 70 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 890 (11.48%) Windows
2 394 (5.08%) Linux
3 281 (3.62%) Windows Server
4 114 (1.47%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.02%) Apple iOS
6 73 (0.94%) Unix
7 71 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 69 (0.89%) Android
9 66 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 65 (0.84%) VMS
11 32 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
12 30 (0.39%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
13 17 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.14%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
16 10 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.090%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.090%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,883 (37.18%) DevOps
2 2,404 (31.00%) CI/CD
3 1,857 (23.95%) Agile
4 1,144 (14.75%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,128 (14.55%) AI
6 1,106 (14.26%) Migration
7 1,082 (13.95%) Analytics
8 1,062 (13.70%) Problem-Solving
9 871 (11.23%) Data Modelling
10 861 (11.10%) Stakeholder Management
11 760 (9.80%) Continuous Improvement
12 726 (9.36%) Data Pipeline
13 720 (9.29%) Business Intelligence
14 710 (9.16%) Containerisation
15 708 (9.13%) Roadmaps
16 696 (8.98%) Microservices
17 679 (8.76%) ETL
18 668 (8.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 618 (7.97%) Test Automation
20 610 (7.87%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,815 (23.41%) Python
2 1,571 (20.26%) SQL
3 751 (9.69%) PowerShell
4 641 (8.27%) Java
5 620 (8.00%) C#
6 455 (5.87%) JavaScript
7 304 (3.92%) TypeScript
8 261 (3.37%) Bicep
9 255 (3.29%) Bash
10 91 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 88 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 79 (1.02%) Scala
13 77 (0.99%) Go
14 48 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.54%) R
17 36 (0.46%) PL/SQL
18 30 (0.39%) C++
18 30 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 17 (0.22%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,910 (24.63%) Security Cleared
2 1,607 (20.72%) SC Cleared
3 533 (6.87%) Degree
4 403 (5.20%) Azure Certification
5 239 (3.08%) CISSP
6 196 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
7 187 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
8 185 (2.39%) DV Cleared
9 184 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
10 176 (2.27%) Microsoft Certification
11 172 (2.22%) AWS Certification
12 130 (1.68%) CISM
13 87 (1.12%) CCNP
14 82 (1.06%) PMP
15 78 (1.01%) PMI Certification
16 72 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 64 (0.83%) ISTQB
18 55 (0.71%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
19 48 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 537 (6.93%) Data Quality
2 394 (5.08%) QA
3 342 (4.41%) GDPR
4 285 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 270 (3.48%) NIST
6 163 (2.10%) Accessibility
7 112 (1.44%) NCSC
8 97 (1.25%) SLA
9 78 (1.01%) PCI DSS
10 70 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
11 69 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 60 (0.77%) WCAG
13 56 (0.72%) GRC
14 44 (0.57%) PMO
15 38 (0.49%) HIPAA
16 27 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.34%) NIST 800
17 26 (0.34%) SOC 2
18 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 18 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 933 (12.03%) Active Directory
2 807 (10.41%) Docker
3 221 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 120 (1.55%) Virtual Machines
6 119 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.90%) vSphere
8 53 (0.68%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (0.40%) Firmware
10 28 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 22 (0.28%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 6 (0.077%) Ceph
15 6 (0.077%) KVM
15 6 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.077%) RACF
16 5 (0.064%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,217 (15.70%) Terraform
2 1,088 (14.03%) Kubernetes
3 410 (5.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 357 (4.60%) Ansible
5 210 (2.71%) Grafana
6 183 (2.36%) Prometheus
7 163 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
8 107 (1.38%) SCCM
9 72 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.58%) FortiGate
11 43 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
12 40 (0.52%) Argo
13 39 (0.50%) Progress Chef
14 37 (0.48%) Puppet
15 32 (0.41%) Istio
16 23 (0.30%) vCenter Server
17 21 (0.27%) HP ALM
18 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
19 16 (0.21%) Packer
20 14 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 2,464 (31.78%) Microsoft
2 747 (9.63%) Databricks
3 329 (4.24%) ServiceNow
4 300 (3.87%) VMware
5 289 (3.73%) Google
6 282 (3.64%) Oracle
7 215 (2.77%) SAP
8 213 (2.75%) Cisco
9 197 (2.54%) OpenAI
10 154 (1.99%) Splunk
11 146 (1.88%) Palo Alto
12 133 (1.72%) Salesforce
13 132 (1.70%) CyberArk
14 120 (1.55%) Foundry
15 102 (1.32%) Okta
16 86 (1.11%) Dynatrace
17 84 (1.08%) Informatica
18 77 (0.99%) Zscaler
19 70 (0.90%) Citrix
20 66 (0.85%) Fortinet