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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,205 5,021 5,485
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.09% 15.21% 14.43%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.63% 40.01% 41.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,731 3,432 3,714
10th Percentile £363 £350 £344
25th Percentile £445 £415 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £517 £528
Median % change year-on-year +2.27% -1.94% -4.09%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £719 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 44 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.27 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £42.35 £33.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.85% -4.61% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.00 £65.99 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.38 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £19.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +107.89% -58.86% -

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 18,808 12,548 13,065
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.58% 38.02% 34.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,469 8,378 8,657
10th Percentile £325 £311 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £715 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 631 295 188
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £30.00 £26.00 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% -24.56% +4.44%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.50 £64.73
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +55.68% -41.61% +40.88%

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 5 October 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 5 October 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 5 October 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 6,981 £530 +0.95% 8,908
London 0 3,676 £550 - 3,745
UK excluding London 0 3,448 £510 +2.00% 6,543
Work from Home -2 2,483 £526 +5.10% 5,559
North of England +4 996 £500 +5.26% 1,545
South East +1 890 £525 +5.00% 1,478
Midlands +1 625 £500 -3.24% 895
North West +5 484 £500 +5.26% 745
West Midlands +2 478 £488 -11.36% 516
Yorkshire +5 426 £500 +2.04% 538
South West +2 406 £550 +7.84% 719
Scotland +1 282 £500 - 813
East of England 0 193 £510 +1.49% 606
East Midlands +2 143 £500 +8.11% 379
North East +3 100 £513 +2.50% 278
Wales -1 82 £438 -2.78% 381
Northern Ireland +13 13 £650 - 159
Channel Islands -9 3 £500 -21.88% 2

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
1 463 (5.64%) SharePoint
2 267 (3.25%) Confluence
3 192 (2.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 186 (2.27%) Apache Spark
5 156 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
6 117 (1.43%) Apache
7 36 (0.44%) SAS
8 30 (0.37%) IIS
9 26 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.098%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.085%) Mendix
16 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
16 6 (0.073%) Traefik
Applications
1 123 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 61 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
5 42 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.15%) AutoCAD
7 8 (0.098%) Trello
8 7 (0.085%) CPLEX
8 7 (0.085%) Revit
9 5 (0.061%) Notion
10 4 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.037%) 1Password
11 3 (0.037%) Houdini
11 3 (0.037%) Mingle
11 3 (0.037%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Windchill
13 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 129 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.098%) Cloudability
8 8 (0.098%) Magento
9 7 (0.085%) Shopify
10 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
10 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
10 6 (0.073%) Temenos T24
11 5 (0.061%) Dynamics NAV
11 5 (0.061%) FLEXCUBE
11 5 (0.061%) Maximo
12 4 (0.049%) Adobe Campaign
Cloud Services
1 2,947 (35.92%) AWS
2 1,729 (21.07%) Azure DevOps
3 1,464 (17.84%) GCP
4 1,116 (13.60%) Entra ID
5 1,058 (12.89%) Power Platform
6 874 (10.65%) Microsoft 365
7 861 (10.49%) GitHub
8 492 (6.00%) GitHub Actions
9 459 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 371 (4.52%) Serverless
11 357 (4.35%) SaaS
12 316 (3.85%) Azure Monitor
13 297 (3.62%) Dynamics 365
14 296 (3.61%) Power Automate
15 295 (3.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 291 (3.55%) Snowflake
17 289 (3.52%) Azure AKS
18 279 (3.40%) PowerApps
19 250 (3.05%) Azure AI
20 247 (3.01%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 513 (6.25%) Firewall
2 414 (5.05%) DNS
3 309 (3.77%) VPN
4 292 (3.56%) Network Security
5 229 (2.79%) DHCP
6 177 (2.16%) WAN
7 164 (2.00%) TCP/IP
8 105 (1.28%) BGP
9 103 (1.26%) LAN
10 96 (1.17%) SD-WAN
11 84 (1.02%) OSPF
12 82 (1.00%) VLAN
13 78 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
14 70 (0.85%) SSL
15 66 (0.80%) Wireless
16 63 (0.77%) SAN
17 46 (0.56%) HTTP
18 44 (0.54%) IPsec
19 41 (0.50%) VXLAN
20 39 (0.48%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 687 (8.37%) Power BI
2 471 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 397 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
4 384 (4.68%) Data Lake
5 285 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 248 (3.02%) Metadata
7 209 (2.55%) NoSQL
8 200 (2.44%) Azure SQL Database
9 144 (1.76%) Relational Database
10 129 (1.57%) Delta Lake
11 113 (1.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 106 (1.29%) MySQL
13 104 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 88 (1.07%) Big Data
15 70 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.84%) Redis
17 64 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
18 63 (0.77%) BigQuery
19 58 (0.71%) Oracle Database
20 54 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 749 (9.13%) Git
2 604 (7.36%) JIRA
3 469 (5.72%) Jenkins
4 372 (4.53%) GitLab
5 136 (1.66%) Selenium
6 87 (1.06%) Postman
7 65 (0.79%) Cucumber
8 62 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 62 (0.76%) JUnit
9 57 (0.69%) Claude Code
9 57 (0.69%) JMeter
10 52 (0.63%) Maven
10 52 (0.63%) SonarQube
11 50 (0.61%) Gradle
11 50 (0.61%) Visual Studio
12 47 (0.57%) REST Assured
13 36 (0.44%) WebDriver
14 35 (0.43%) Bitbucket
15 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
16 31 (0.38%) MLflow
General
1 2,272 (27.69%) Social Skills
2 1,586 (19.33%) Finance
3 942 (11.48%) Public Sector
4 803 (9.79%) Analytical Skills
5 497 (6.06%) Banking
6 218 (2.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 216 (2.63%) Retail
8 199 (2.43%) Documentation Skills
9 168 (2.05%) Legal
10 114 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
11 113 (1.38%) Manufacturing
12 96 (1.17%) Investment Banking
13 94 (1.15%) Marketing
14 91 (1.11%) Telecoms
15 87 (1.06%) Aerospace
16 83 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
17 76 (0.93%) Military
18 66 (0.80%) Law
19 61 (0.74%) Local Government
20 60 (0.73%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,563 (19.05%) Architect
2 1,045 (12.74%) Senior
3 1,012 (12.33%) Developer
4 715 (8.71%) Azure Engineer
5 681 (8.30%) Lead
6 580 (7.07%) Data Engineer
7 485 (5.91%) Solutions Architect
8 456 (5.56%) Analyst
8 456 (5.56%) DevOps Engineer
9 380 (4.63%) Cloud Engineer
10 319 (3.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 312 (3.80%) Consultant
12 264 (3.22%) Data Architect
13 226 (2.75%) Platform Engineer
14 213 (2.60%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 208 (2.54%) Azure Architect
16 200 (2.44%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 195 (2.38%) Security Engineer
18 193 (2.35%) Technical Architect
19 179 (2.18%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,400 (17.06%) Terraform
2 756 (9.21%) REST
3 626 (7.63%) .NET
4 398 (4.85%) Kafka
5 312 (3.80%) React
6 298 (3.63%) RESTful
7 270 (3.29%) OAuth
8 260 (3.17%) PySpark
9 240 (2.93%) JSON
10 185 (2.25%) Spring
11 177 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 165 (2.01%) HTML
13 163 (1.99%) OAuth2
14 162 (1.97%) OpenID
15 151 (1.84%) Middleware
16 148 (1.80%) AngularJS
16 148 (1.80%) Node.js
17 146 (1.78%) SAML
18 144 (1.76%) SOAP
19 132 (1.61%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 928 (11.31%) Cloud Native
2 419 (5.11%) Onboarding
3 387 (4.72%) Product Ownership
4 325 (3.96%) AI Agents
5 324 (3.95%) Enterprise Software
6 280 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
7 277 (3.38%) Distributed Systems
8 253 (3.08%) Data Centre
9 226 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
10 181 (2.21%) Security Posture
11 179 (2.18%) Management Information System
12 150 (1.83%) Data Structures
13 145 (1.77%) Public Cloud
14 129 (1.57%) PKI
15 109 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
15 109 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
16 100 (1.22%) Replication
17 95 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
18 89 (1.08%) Low-Code
19 88 (1.07%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 990 (12.07%) Windows
2 528 (6.44%) Linux
3 385 (4.69%) Windows Server
4 148 (1.80%) Windows 10
5 92 (1.12%) Android
6 87 (1.06%) Apple iOS
7 85 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 85 (1.04%) Unix
8 68 (0.83%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.68%) Ubuntu
10 51 (0.62%) VMS
11 27 (0.33%) CentOS
12 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 7 (0.085%) Debian
17 6 (0.073%) AIX
17 6 (0.073%) Data ONTAP
18 5 (0.061%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,021 (36.82%) DevOps
2 2,668 (32.52%) CI/CD
3 2,072 (25.25%) Agile
4 1,510 (18.40%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,436 (17.50%) AI
6 1,409 (17.17%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,228 (14.97%) Migration
8 1,133 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
9 1,106 (13.48%) Analytics
10 961 (11.71%) Continuous Improvement
11 888 (10.82%) Data Modelling
12 861 (10.49%) Roadmaps
13 783 (9.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 774 (9.43%) Containerisation
15 752 (9.17%) Business Intelligence
16 749 (9.13%) Technical Leadership
17 748 (9.12%) Test Automation
18 728 (8.87%) Data Pipeline
19 725 (8.84%) Microservices
20 665 (8.10%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,915 (23.34%) Python
2 1,580 (19.26%) SQL
3 906 (11.04%) PowerShell
4 682 (8.31%) Java
5 608 (7.41%) C#
6 516 (6.29%) JavaScript
7 421 (5.13%) Bash
8 360 (4.39%) Bicep
9 308 (3.75%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 92 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 81 (0.99%) Go
13 64 (0.78%) Scala
14 62 (0.76%) Shell Script
15 61 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
16 43 (0.52%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.45%) R
18 33 (0.40%) C++
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.39%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 2,129 (25.95%) Security Cleared
2 1,710 (20.84%) SC Cleared
3 557 (6.79%) Degree
4 465 (5.67%) Azure Certification
5 309 (3.77%) DV Cleared
6 270 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
7 263 (3.21%) CISSP
8 250 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 214 (2.61%) AWS Certification
10 191 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
11 184 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
12 137 (1.67%) CISM
13 93 (1.13%) PMI Certification
14 90 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 89 (1.08%) PMP
16 82 (1.00%) CCNP
17 64 (0.78%) CCSP
17 64 (0.78%) ISTQB
17 64 (0.78%) Master's Degree
18 49 (0.60%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 608 (7.41%) Data Quality
2 467 (5.69%) QA
3 296 (3.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 286 (3.49%) NIST
5 283 (3.45%) GDPR
6 208 (2.54%) Accessibility
7 114 (1.39%) NCSC
8 109 (1.33%) SLA
9 82 (1.00%) GRC
9 82 (1.00%) WCAG
10 78 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
11 74 (0.90%) PCI DSS
12 50 (0.61%) PMO
13 49 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 45 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 34 (0.41%) SOC 2
16 26 (0.32%) ISO 20022
17 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
18 22 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,018 (12.41%) Active Directory
2 922 (11.24%) Docker
3 249 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.80%) Virtual Machines
5 141 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
6 131 (1.60%) Hyper-V
7 74 (0.90%) vSphere
8 51 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.24%) Firmware
11 17 (0.21%) IAG
12 14 (0.17%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 7 (0.085%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.085%) Ceph
17 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.061%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,301 (15.86%) Kubernetes
2 457 (5.57%) Ansible
3 441 (5.37%) Microsoft Intune
4 268 (3.27%) Grafana
5 210 (2.56%) Prometheus
6 144 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
7 138 (1.68%) SCCM
8 62 (0.76%) Argo
9 60 (0.73%) Progress Chef
10 48 (0.59%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.41%) SCOM
13 33 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
14 30 (0.37%) Istio
15 24 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 20 (0.24%) CASB
17 19 (0.23%) QRadar
17 19 (0.23%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.21%) Packer
19 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,996 (36.51%) Microsoft
2 858 (10.46%) Databricks
3 406 (4.95%) ServiceNow
4 399 (4.86%) Google
5 360 (4.39%) VMware
6 343 (4.18%) Oracle
7 235 (2.86%) Cisco
8 233 (2.84%) Splunk
9 222 (2.71%) OpenAI
10 220 (2.68%) SAP
11 187 (2.28%) Salesforce
12 154 (1.88%) Palo Alto
13 144 (1.76%) CyberArk
14 138 (1.68%) Foundry
15 129 (1.57%) Dynatrace
16 89 (1.08%) IBM
16 89 (1.08%) Zscaler
17 82 (1.00%) Informatica
18 79 (0.96%) Fortinet
19 78 (0.95%) MuleSoft