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 6 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,671 5,411 6,765
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.56% 15.04% 14.95%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.88% 41.91% 42.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,965 3,625 4,956
10th Percentile £350 £338 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £720 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £519
% change year-on-year - -3.61% -1.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 49 82
10th Percentile £16.03 £20.23 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.60 £23.80 £25.19
Median hourly rate £45.73 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +47.52% -32.87% +31.94%
75th Percentile £77.44 £60.00 £66.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.50 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +88.33% -35.04% -5.76%

All Cloud 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 13,871 12,911 15,900
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.05% 35.88% 35.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,439 8,540 11,385
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £417 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 324 184 295
10th Percentile £15.23 £17.66 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £26.15 £30.00 £25.38
Median % change year-on-year -12.83% +18.20% +12.80%
75th Percentile £51.67 £53.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.84 £27.24 £21.05
% change year-on-year -16.15% +29.39% +9.18%

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025. 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 4,823 £520 -3.26% 5,227
London +1 2,587 £538 -2.27% 1,127
UK excluding London 0 2,351 £500 - 4,973
Work from Home -1 1,812 £510 -2.86% 2,564
North of England -2 610 £475 -5.00% 1,139
South East -4 578 £500 -4.76% 1,462
Midlands -1 434 £534 +2.20% 799
West Midlands 0 327 £550 +4.76% 445
South West +7 312 £506 -0.74% 515
North West -1 300 £450 -10.00% 575
Yorkshire -3 282 £482 -3.60% 464
Scotland +1 255 £513 +10.81% 294
East of England +3 153 £500 +17.65% 598
East Midlands -2 104 £450 -10.00% 322
Wales -1 63 £463 -7.50% 167
North East -8 32 £515 +13.44% 110
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -3 6 - - 71

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
1 274 (4.83%) SharePoint
2 195 (3.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 143 (2.52%) Confluence
4 125 (2.20%) Apache Spark
5 82 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
6 81 (1.43%) Apache
7 28 (0.49%) SAS
8 24 (0.42%) CMS
9 22 (0.39%) OpenStack
10 17 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.26%) nginx
12 14 (0.25%) IIS
13 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
14 10 (0.18%) Mule
14 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
15 9 (0.16%) ArcGIS
15 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.14%) Camunda
16 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
Applications
1 127 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 101 (1.78%) Microsoft Office
3 43 (0.76%) MS Visio
4 40 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
6 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.19%) Trello
8 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.088%) Weka
10 2 (0.035%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.035%) Windchill
11 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
11 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.018%) Revit
11 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.018%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 93 (1.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 55 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 18 (0.32%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
6 10 (0.18%) Workday HCM
7 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.16%) Endur
7 9 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
8 8 (0.14%) NetSuite
8 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.11%) NEC Housing
9 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.088%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.088%) Oracle EBS
11 4 (0.071%) Oracle General Ledger
11 4 (0.071%) Oracle Payables
11 4 (0.071%) SAP MDG
11 4 (0.071%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,065 (36.41%) AWS
2 1,117 (19.70%) Azure DevOps
3 1,115 (19.66%) GCP
4 730 (12.87%) Power Platform
5 646 (11.39%) Microsoft 365
6 637 (11.23%) Entra ID
7 538 (9.49%) GitHub
8 363 (6.40%) Azure Data Factory
9 322 (5.68%) GitHub Actions
10 310 (5.47%) Serverless
11 253 (4.46%) Dynamics 365
12 248 (4.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 247 (4.36%) SaaS
14 228 (4.02%) Azure AKS
15 226 (3.99%) Power Automate
16 222 (3.91%) Snowflake
17 208 (3.67%) PowerApps
18 202 (3.56%) Azure Monitor
19 196 (3.46%) PaaS
20 195 (3.44%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 412 (7.27%) Firewall
2 213 (3.76%) DNS
3 174 (3.07%) VPN
4 148 (2.61%) Network Security
5 115 (2.03%) WAN
6 110 (1.94%) DHCP
7 87 (1.53%) TCP/IP
8 74 (1.30%) LAN
9 73 (1.29%) HTTP
10 63 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
11 59 (1.04%) SD-WAN
12 56 (0.99%) VLAN
13 39 (0.69%) SAN
14 38 (0.67%) BGP
15 35 (0.62%) Internet
16 34 (0.60%) MPLS
17 31 (0.55%) Wireless
18 27 (0.48%) SSL
19 26 (0.46%) OSPF
20 22 (0.39%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 511 (9.01%) Power BI
2 307 (5.41%) SQL Server
3 266 (4.69%) Data Warehouse
4 249 (4.39%) PostgreSQL
5 243 (4.28%) Data Lake
6 186 (3.28%) Azure SQL Database
7 185 (3.26%) NoSQL
8 125 (2.20%) Relational Database
9 121 (2.13%) Metadata
10 102 (1.80%) MongoDB
11 81 (1.43%) MySQL
12 76 (1.34%) Big Data
12 76 (1.34%) Delta Lake
13 68 (1.20%) Tableau
14 63 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 60 (1.06%) BigQuery
16 57 (1.01%) Oracle Database
17 52 (0.92%) Redis
18 43 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
18 43 (0.76%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 494 (8.71%) Git
2 414 (7.30%) JIRA
3 338 (5.96%) Jenkins
4 228 (4.02%) GitLab
5 96 (1.69%) Selenium
6 89 (1.57%) Postman
7 70 (1.23%) SonarQube
8 67 (1.18%) JUnit
9 49 (0.86%) Cucumber
10 47 (0.83%) JMeter
11 46 (0.81%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.81%) Cypress.io
12 37 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
13 36 (0.63%) Maven
14 33 (0.58%) CircleCI
15 32 (0.56%) Visual Studio
16 30 (0.53%) MLflow
16 30 (0.53%) SpecFlow
17 29 (0.51%) Mockito
18 28 (0.49%) ERwin
General
1 1,814 (31.99%) Social Skills
2 1,074 (18.94%) Finance
3 675 (11.90%) Public Sector
4 533 (9.40%) Analytical Skills
5 375 (6.61%) Banking
6 192 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
7 130 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 96 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
9 93 (1.64%) Investment Banking
9 93 (1.64%) Marketing
10 89 (1.57%) Legal
11 88 (1.55%) Retail
12 81 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
13 75 (1.32%) Telecoms
14 68 (1.20%) Manufacturing
15 53 (0.93%) Law
16 49 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
17 48 (0.85%) Financial Institution
18 47 (0.83%) Front Office
19 42 (0.74%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 910 (16.05%) Architect
2 902 (15.91%) Developer
3 579 (10.21%) Senior
4 421 (7.42%) Azure Engineer
5 420 (7.41%) Analyst
6 396 (6.98%) Lead
7 380 (6.70%) Data Engineer
8 320 (5.64%) Solutions Architect
9 284 (5.01%) DevOps Engineer
10 229 (4.04%) Consultant
11 169 (2.98%) Security Engineer
12 162 (2.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 162 (2.86%) Senior Developer
13 151 (2.66%) Azure Architect
14 140 (2.47%) Cloud Engineer
15 133 (2.35%) Platform Engineer
16 117 (2.06%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 116 (2.05%) Data Architect
17 116 (2.05%) Java Developer
18 112 (1.97%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 465 (8.20%) .NET
2 351 (6.19%) REST
3 257 (4.53%) RESTful
4 249 (4.39%) React
5 221 (3.90%) Kafka
6 199 (3.51%) Spring
7 193 (3.40%) Node.js
8 178 (3.14%) OAuth
9 171 (3.02%) Spring Boot
10 170 (3.00%) HTML
10 170 (3.00%) PySpark
11 166 (2.93%) AngularJS
12 161 (2.84%) JSON
13 136 (2.40%) CSS
14 135 (2.38%) SOAP
15 123 (2.17%) PyTorch
16 112 (1.97%) TensorFlow
17 103 (1.82%) SAML
18 102 (1.80%) XML
19 100 (1.76%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 464 (8.18%) Cloud Native
2 203 (3.58%) Product Ownership
3 195 (3.44%) Onboarding
4 162 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
5 146 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
6 129 (2.27%) Data Centre
7 122 (2.15%) Security Posture
8 118 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
9 108 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
10 95 (1.68%) Public Cloud
11 76 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
11 76 (1.34%) Management Information System
12 75 (1.32%) Algorithms
13 69 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
14 64 (1.13%) Replication
15 63 (1.11%) AI Agents
16 61 (1.08%) Low-Code
17 56 (0.99%) Data Structures
18 53 (0.93%) PKI
19 52 (0.92%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 640 (11.29%) Windows
2 390 (6.88%) Linux
3 194 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.96%) Unix
5 96 (1.69%) Windows 10
6 50 (0.88%) Android
7 47 (0.83%) Apple iOS
7 47 (0.83%) VMS
8 38 (0.67%) Mac OS
9 29 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
12 11 (0.19%) Solaris
12 11 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
14 9 (0.16%) CentOS
15 6 (0.11%) AIX
15 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
16 4 (0.071%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,053 (36.20%) DevOps
2 1,669 (29.43%) CI/CD
3 1,521 (26.82%) Agile
4 1,031 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
5 763 (13.45%) Analytics
6 742 (13.08%) Infrastructure as Code
7 673 (11.87%) AI
8 671 (11.83%) Migration
9 583 (10.28%) Stakeholder Management
10 582 (10.26%) Business Intelligence
11 576 (10.16%) Containerisation
12 498 (8.78%) Microservices
13 492 (8.68%) Data Modelling
14 488 (8.61%) Machine Learning
15 475 (8.38%) Test Automation
16 460 (8.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 452 (7.97%) Continuous Improvement
18 418 (7.37%) Scrum
19 407 (7.18%) Data Pipeline
20 402 (7.09%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,457 (25.69%) Python
2 1,212 (21.37%) SQL
3 594 (10.47%) PowerShell
4 565 (9.96%) Java
5 507 (8.94%) C#
6 433 (7.64%) JavaScript
7 275 (4.85%) Bash
8 235 (4.14%) TypeScript
9 153 (2.70%) Bicep
10 91 (1.60%) Go
11 75 (1.32%) Kusto Query Language
12 73 (1.29%) Scala
13 69 (1.22%) PL/SQL
14 59 (1.04%) R
15 52 (0.92%) T-SQL
16 46 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 40 (0.71%) C++
18 39 (0.69%) Shell Script
19 32 (0.56%) PHP
20 31 (0.55%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,196 (21.09%) Security Cleared
2 974 (17.18%) SC Cleared
3 493 (8.69%) Degree
4 333 (5.87%) Azure Certification
5 180 (3.17%) Microsoft Certification
6 174 (3.07%) CISSP
7 173 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 142 (2.50%) AWS Certification
9 129 (2.27%) DV Cleared
10 100 (1.76%) CISM
11 94 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
12 87 (1.53%) Master's Degree
13 85 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
14 47 (0.83%) ISTQB
15 44 (0.78%) CCNP
16 39 (0.69%) MCP
17 38 (0.67%) PMI Certification
18 35 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
19 33 (0.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
20 32 (0.56%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.33%) GDPR
2 324 (5.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 320 (5.64%) QA
4 270 (4.76%) Data Quality
5 259 (4.57%) NIST
6 127 (2.24%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.45%) PCI DSS
8 76 (1.34%) NCSC
9 52 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
10 50 (0.88%) HIPAA
11 35 (0.62%) SLA
11 35 (0.62%) SOC 2
12 34 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 32 (0.56%) WCAG
14 29 (0.51%) GRC
15 28 (0.49%) EU AI Act
16 27 (0.48%) PMO
17 25 (0.44%) PSD2
18 21 (0.37%) COBIT
18 21 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 725 (12.78%) Docker
2 691 (12.18%) Active Directory
3 172 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 75 (1.32%) Hyper-V
5 72 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
6 64 (1.13%) Virtual Desktop
7 49 (0.86%) vSphere
8 23 (0.41%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.28%) Squid
10 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
10 13 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 11 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
12 10 (0.18%) Postfix
13 9 (0.16%) NFS
14 8 (0.14%) Firmware
14 8 (0.14%) KVM
14 8 (0.14%) Snort
14 8 (0.14%) zsh
Systems Management
1 850 (14.99%) Terraform
2 812 (14.32%) Kubernetes
3 306 (5.40%) Ansible
4 295 (5.20%) Microsoft Intune
5 134 (2.36%) SCCM
6 133 (2.35%) Single Sign-On
7 131 (2.31%) Grafana
8 127 (2.24%) Prometheus
9 37 (0.65%) Argo
10 36 (0.63%) Puppet
11 33 (0.58%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 26 (0.46%) Nessus
13 25 (0.44%) Kibana
14 22 (0.39%) Progress Chef
15 21 (0.37%) NetBackup
15 21 (0.37%) vRealize
16 20 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
17 17 (0.30%) Nmap
18 16 (0.28%) QRadar
18 16 (0.28%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,824 (32.16%) Microsoft
2 535 (9.43%) Databricks
3 341 (6.01%) Oracle
4 281 (4.96%) Google
5 231 (4.07%) ServiceNow
6 229 (4.04%) VMware
7 164 (2.89%) Cisco
8 157 (2.77%) SAP
9 150 (2.65%) Splunk
10 124 (2.19%) Salesforce
11 120 (2.12%) OpenAI
12 87 (1.53%) Palo Alto
13 86 (1.52%) CyberArk
14 81 (1.43%) Citrix
15 60 (1.06%) Foundry
16 59 (1.04%) Red Hat
17 57 (1.01%) IBM
18 55 (0.97%) F5
19 54 (0.95%) HP
20 53 (0.93%) Dynatrace