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

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,917 4,694 6,071
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.99% 16.01% 13.65%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.89% 42.09% 41.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,907 3,320 4,388
10th Percentile £356 £350 £340
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.25%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 43 71
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £47.00 £23.80 £22.08
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -16.04%
75th Percentile £67.69 £70.63 £59.98
90th Percentile £80.00 £79.74 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +79.69% -30.71% -26.52%

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 16,126 11,152 14,515
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.27% 38.04% 32.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,998 7,743 10,306
10th Percentile £313 £313 £288
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £629 £632
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £488
% change year-on-year -2.56% - -3.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 444 205 357
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.26 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.89 £20.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.31 £26.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +40.79% +24.01% -16.88%
75th Percentile £61.44 £41.97 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.95 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £24.18 £17.80
% change year-on-year +76.53% +35.84% -20.13%

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 18 March 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 18 March 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 18 March 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 0 5,841 £523 -1.32% 2,857
London +1 3,181 £539 -2.00% 1,003
UK excluding London 0 2,818 £500 - 2,344
Work from Home -1 2,119 £525 +0.96% 1,303
North of England +3 789 £489 +0.57% 616
South East 0 742 £500 -9.09% 698
Midlands -2 462 £500 - 357
North West +1 424 £481 -3.75% 312
West Midlands -2 358 £503 -4.19% 202
South West +6 336 £500 -4.76% 277
Yorkshire -2 316 £494 +9.72% 206
Scotland +6 298 £541 +13.95% 141
East of England +3 153 £550 -8.33% 195
East Midlands -7 98 £425 -10.53% 154
Wales -2 87 £400 -1.54% 74
North East -3 51 £525 +10.53% 106
Northern Ireland +1 12 £475 - 16

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
1 307 (4.44%) SharePoint
2 218 (3.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 186 (2.69%) Apache Spark
4 183 (2.65%) Confluence
5 104 (1.50%) Apache
6 94 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.36%) IIS
8 22 (0.32%) OpenStack
9 20 (0.29%) SAS
10 17 (0.25%) ArcGIS
10 17 (0.25%) CMS
11 15 (0.22%) Appian
12 14 (0.20%) Camunda
13 13 (0.19%) Mendix
14 11 (0.16%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.14%) GeoServer
16 9 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
18 7 (0.10%) Anypoint
18 7 (0.10%) Jupyter
Applications
1 120 (1.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 50 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 41 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 15 (0.22%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.087%) Trello
7 5 (0.072%) Acrobat
7 5 (0.072%) PTC Creo
7 5 (0.072%) Weka
8 4 (0.058%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.029%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
9 2 (0.029%) Spreadsheet
10 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.014%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 108 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Maximo
4 11 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.12%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.10%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.10%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.087%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.087%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.087%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.087%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.072%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.072%) Endur
9 5 (0.072%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.072%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.058%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.058%) Oracle General Ledger
10 4 (0.058%) ResourceLink
Cloud Services
1 2,409 (34.83%) AWS
2 1,412 (20.41%) Azure DevOps
3 1,336 (19.31%) GCP
4 929 (13.43%) Power Platform
5 834 (12.06%) Entra ID
6 763 (11.03%) Microsoft 365
7 731 (10.57%) GitHub
8 501 (7.24%) Azure Data Factory
9 424 (6.13%) GitHub Actions
10 419 (6.06%) Serverless
11 326 (4.71%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 288 (4.16%) Dynamics 365
13 280 (4.05%) SaaS
14 265 (3.83%) Power Automate
15 254 (3.67%) Azure AKS
16 249 (3.60%) Azure Functions
17 248 (3.59%) Azure Monitor
18 235 (3.40%) PaaS
19 223 (3.22%) Snowflake
20 210 (3.04%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 451 (6.52%) Firewall
2 284 (4.11%) DNS
3 241 (3.48%) VPN
4 223 (3.22%) Network Security
5 181 (2.62%) WAN
6 162 (2.34%) DHCP
7 125 (1.81%) LAN
8 93 (1.34%) TCP/IP
9 92 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
10 91 (1.32%) SD-WAN
11 68 (0.98%) Kerberos
12 64 (0.93%) VLAN
13 50 (0.72%) HTTP
14 48 (0.69%) BGP
15 44 (0.64%) Wireless
16 41 (0.59%) OSPF
17 35 (0.51%) Internet
18 34 (0.49%) SAN
18 34 (0.49%) SSL
19 32 (0.46%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 636 (9.19%) Power BI
2 400 (5.78%) SQL Server
3 376 (5.44%) Data Warehouse
4 339 (4.90%) Data Lake
5 264 (3.82%) Azure SQL Database
6 263 (3.80%) PostgreSQL
7 206 (2.98%) NoSQL
8 168 (2.43%) Metadata
9 138 (2.00%) Delta Lake
10 118 (1.71%) Relational Database
11 110 (1.59%) Big Data
12 98 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 89 (1.29%) MongoDB
14 79 (1.14%) Tableau
15 78 (1.13%) MySQL
16 69 (1.00%) Oracle Database
17 66 (0.95%) BigQuery
18 56 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
19 52 (0.75%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.72%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 530 (7.66%) Git
2 480 (6.94%) JIRA
3 363 (5.25%) Jenkins
4 271 (3.92%) GitLab
5 133 (1.92%) Selenium
6 91 (1.32%) Postman
7 83 (1.20%) JMeter
8 79 (1.14%) Cucumber
9 72 (1.04%) JUnit
10 51 (0.74%) MLflow
11 49 (0.71%) REST Assured
12 48 (0.69%) Cypress.io
13 47 (0.68%) Visual Studio
14 43 (0.62%) SonarQube
15 34 (0.49%) Oracle APEX
16 32 (0.46%) TestRail
17 30 (0.43%) Artifactory
17 30 (0.43%) SpecFlow
17 30 (0.43%) WebDriver
18 27 (0.39%) Zephyr
General
1 2,003 (28.96%) Social Skills
2 1,241 (17.94%) Finance
3 829 (11.98%) Public Sector
4 690 (9.98%) Analytical Skills
5 369 (5.33%) Banking
6 224 (3.24%) Documentation Skills
7 160 (2.31%) Legal
8 112 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 106 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
10 88 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
10 88 (1.27%) Retail
11 81 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
12 76 (1.10%) Marketing
13 73 (1.06%) Telecoms
14 65 (0.94%) Financial Institution
15 57 (0.82%) Investment Banking
16 56 (0.81%) Law
17 54 (0.78%) Front Office
18 50 (0.72%) Manufacturing
19 43 (0.62%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,174 (16.97%) Architect
2 971 (14.04%) Developer
3 788 (11.39%) Senior
4 598 (8.65%) Azure Engineer
5 579 (8.37%) Data Engineer
6 529 (7.65%) Lead
7 438 (6.33%) Analyst
8 326 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
9 319 (4.61%) Solutions Architect
10 306 (4.42%) Consultant
11 191 (2.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 189 (2.73%) Cloud Engineer
13 179 (2.59%) Azure Architect
14 177 (2.56%) Security Engineer
15 163 (2.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 159 (2.30%) Senior Developer
17 156 (2.26%) Data Architect
18 151 (2.18%) Platform Engineer
19 141 (2.04%) Tester
20 135 (1.95%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 554 (8.01%) .NET
2 486 (7.03%) REST
3 338 (4.89%) React
4 268 (3.87%) PySpark
5 263 (3.80%) RESTful
6 260 (3.76%) Kafka
7 250 (3.61%) Node.js
8 222 (3.21%) Spring
9 206 (2.98%) OAuth
10 198 (2.86%) AngularJS
11 181 (2.62%) Spring Boot
12 174 (2.52%) HTML
13 150 (2.17%) CSS
13 150 (2.17%) LDAP
14 146 (2.11%) JSON
15 141 (2.04%) PyTorch
16 140 (2.02%) SOAP
17 130 (1.88%) Middleware
18 128 (1.85%) SAML
19 127 (1.84%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 632 (9.14%) Cloud Native
2 265 (3.83%) Onboarding
3 254 (3.67%) Product Ownership
4 187 (2.70%) Data Centre
5 186 (2.69%) Hybrid Cloud
6 171 (2.47%) Security Posture
7 165 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
8 159 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
9 134 (1.94%) Public Cloud
10 131 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
11 114 (1.65%) AI Agents
12 86 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
12 86 (1.24%) Data Structures
13 79 (1.14%) Algorithms
13 79 (1.14%) Replication
14 75 (1.08%) Management Information System
15 68 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
16 65 (0.94%) Low-Code
17 62 (0.90%) NHS
18 61 (0.88%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 734 (10.61%) Windows
2 361 (5.22%) Linux
3 225 (3.25%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.71%) Windows 10
5 72 (1.04%) Unix
6 66 (0.95%) VMS
7 48 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 39 (0.56%) Mac OS
9 36 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 28 (0.40%) Android
11 23 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 16 (0.23%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.087%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.087%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.072%) AIX
17 5 (0.072%) CentOS
17 5 (0.072%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,561 (37.02%) DevOps
2 2,117 (30.61%) CI/CD
3 1,667 (24.10%) Agile
4 1,188 (17.18%) Problem-Solving
5 1,040 (15.04%) Analytics
6 953 (13.78%) AI
7 919 (13.29%) Infrastructure as Code
8 901 (13.03%) Migration
9 742 (10.73%) Data Modelling
10 724 (10.47%) Stakeholder Management
11 707 (10.22%) Business Intelligence
12 664 (9.60%) Containerisation
12 664 (9.60%) Continuous Improvement
13 633 (9.15%) Data Pipeline
14 632 (9.14%) Microservices
15 631 (9.12%) ETL
16 612 (8.85%) Machine Learning
17 599 (8.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 573 (8.28%) Test Automation
19 566 (8.18%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,801 (26.04%) Python
2 1,561 (22.57%) SQL
3 742 (10.73%) PowerShell
4 602 (8.70%) C#
5 584 (8.44%) Java
6 507 (7.33%) JavaScript
7 302 (4.37%) TypeScript
8 250 (3.61%) Bash
9 212 (3.06%) Bicep
10 99 (1.43%) Scala
11 82 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 80 (1.16%) PL/SQL
13 79 (1.14%) Go
13 79 (1.14%) Kusto Query Language
14 76 (1.10%) T-SQL
15 49 (0.71%) Shell Script
16 47 (0.68%) R
17 34 (0.49%) C++
18 27 (0.39%) PHP
19 25 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,664 (24.06%) Security Cleared
2 1,380 (19.95%) SC Cleared
3 555 (8.02%) Degree
4 369 (5.33%) Azure Certification
5 221 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
6 195 (2.82%) CISSP
7 161 (2.33%) Microsoft Certification
8 144 (2.08%) AWS Certification
9 139 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
10 128 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
10 128 (1.85%) DV Cleared
11 125 (1.81%) CISM
12 92 (1.33%) Master's Degree
13 67 (0.97%) CCNP
14 66 (0.95%) TOGAF Certification
15 63 (0.91%) ISTQB
16 61 (0.88%) PMI Certification
17 60 (0.87%) PMP
18 45 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 37 (0.53%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 487 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 406 (5.87%) GDPR
3 374 (5.41%) QA
4 308 (4.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 252 (3.64%) NIST
6 136 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 102 (1.47%) NCSC
8 86 (1.24%) PCI DSS
9 62 (0.90%) SLA
10 61 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
11 59 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 53 (0.77%) PMO
13 37 (0.53%) GRC
14 36 (0.52%) HIPAA
14 36 (0.52%) WCAG
15 30 (0.43%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.35%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 23 (0.33%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 874 (12.64%) Active Directory
2 820 (11.85%) Docker
3 198 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 97 (1.40%) Hyper-V
5 94 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
6 76 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
7 75 (1.08%) vSphere
8 24 (0.35%) VMware NSX
9 23 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
10 19 (0.27%) Firmware
11 15 (0.22%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Postfix
13 7 (0.10%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.087%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.087%) GPFS
14 6 (0.087%) Lustre
14 6 (0.087%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.087%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.087%) Snort
15 5 (0.072%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,071 (15.48%) Terraform
2 1,012 (14.63%) Kubernetes
3 357 (5.16%) Microsoft Intune
4 311 (4.50%) Ansible
5 182 (2.63%) Grafana
6 163 (2.36%) Single Sign-On
7 158 (2.28%) Prometheus
8 127 (1.84%) SCCM
9 75 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 49 (0.71%) Argo
11 32 (0.46%) Istio
12 29 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 24 (0.35%) Puppet
13 24 (0.35%) vRealize
14 23 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
15 21 (0.30%) HP ALM
15 21 (0.30%) Progress Chef
15 21 (0.30%) vCenter Server
16 16 (0.23%) Nmap
17 15 (0.22%) Kibana
Vendors
1 2,197 (31.76%) Microsoft
2 692 (10.00%) Databricks
3 342 (4.94%) Google
4 337 (4.87%) Oracle
5 276 (3.99%) ServiceNow
6 268 (3.87%) VMware
7 199 (2.88%) SAP
8 178 (2.57%) OpenAI
9 169 (2.44%) Cisco
10 153 (2.21%) Splunk
11 127 (1.84%) CyberArk
12 114 (1.65%) Foundry
13 110 (1.59%) Palo Alto
14 93 (1.34%) Salesforce
15 85 (1.23%) Okta
16 75 (1.08%) Red Hat
17 73 (1.06%) Informatica
18 72 (1.04%) IBM
19 69 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
20 68 (0.98%) Fortinet