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

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,870 4,557 5,995
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.47% 15.07% 13.79%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.61% 39.78% 42.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,519 3,161 4,304
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £428 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 36 54
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.73 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.19 £22.91
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +34.01% -40.58%
75th Percentile £77.31 £77.80 £61.19
90th Percentile £95.31 £94.38 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £51.25
% change year-on-year -11.54% +26.83% -14.58%

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 18,048 11,456 14,248
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.47% 37.87% 32.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,047 7,701 10,004
10th Percentile £331 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £730 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 600 286 363
10th Percentile £16.61 £15.20 £14.13
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £28.00 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +33.93% +26.41% -36.71%
75th Percentile £68.92 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.30 £71.88 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.88 £18.87 £20.97
% change year-on-year +100.72% -10.01% -20.81%

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 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 26 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 26 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 0 6,681 £525 - 2,410
London +1 3,524 £541 -1.66% 962
UK excluding London +3 3,376 £505 +1.00% 1,926
Work from Home -1 2,449 £525 +2.44% 1,190
North of England +6 962 £501 +5.37% 493
South East +2 837 £513 +2.65% 622
Midlands +3 569 £500 +1.63% 261
North West +8 496 £500 +0.81% 278
South West +7 429 £528 +4.98% 236
West Midlands +1 424 £500 -4.76% 159
Yorkshire +5 386 £500 +5.26% 138
Scotland +11 323 £525 +5.00% 88
East of England +4 173 £550 -5.17% 181
East Midlands +4 135 £500 +9.59% 102
Wales 0 107 £425 +6.25% 64
North East +6 93 £525 +5.00% 85
Northern Ireland +15 19 £538 +13.16% 27
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 377 (4.79%) SharePoint
2 249 (3.16%) Confluence
3 189 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 188 (2.39%) Apache Spark
5 124 (1.58%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.45%) Apache
7 40 (0.51%) SAS
8 29 (0.37%) IIS
9 20 (0.25%) CMS
10 17 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.13%) Camunda
13 10 (0.13%) Mendix
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.10%) Appian
15 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 112 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 28 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.089%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.064%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.064%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.051%) Notion
12 4 (0.051%) Trello
13 2 (0.025%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.013%) InDesign
14 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.013%) Sketch
14 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 109 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 9 (0.11%) Maximo
6 9 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.089%) Shopify
9 6 (0.076%) Endur
9 6 (0.076%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.064%) Magento
10 5 (0.064%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.064%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.051%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.051%) Oracle Receivables
11 4 (0.051%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,757 (35.03%) AWS
2 1,613 (20.50%) Azure DevOps
3 1,326 (16.85%) GCP
4 1,006 (12.78%) Power Platform
5 964 (12.25%) Entra ID
6 775 (9.85%) Microsoft 365
7 721 (9.16%) GitHub
8 469 (5.96%) Azure Data Factory
9 442 (5.62%) GitHub Actions
10 384 (4.88%) Serverless
11 311 (3.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 311 (3.95%) SaaS
12 291 (3.70%) Azure AKS
13 262 (3.33%) Power Automate
14 252 (3.20%) Azure Monitor
15 246 (3.13%) Dynamics 365
16 240 (3.05%) PowerApps
17 238 (3.02%) PaaS
18 215 (2.73%) Snowflake
19 211 (2.68%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 470 (5.97%) Firewall
2 348 (4.42%) DNS
3 271 (3.44%) Network Security
4 264 (3.35%) VPN
5 223 (2.83%) WAN
6 177 (2.25%) DHCP
7 133 (1.69%) LAN
8 125 (1.59%) SD-WAN
9 107 (1.36%) TCP/IP
10 99 (1.26%) BGP
11 83 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
12 76 (0.97%) OSPF
13 74 (0.94%) VLAN
14 59 (0.75%) Kerberos
14 59 (0.75%) SSL
15 53 (0.67%) SAN
16 49 (0.62%) Wireless
17 48 (0.61%) VXLAN
18 46 (0.58%) IPsec
19 42 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 675 (8.58%) Power BI
2 443 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 377 (4.79%) Data Warehouse
4 362 (4.60%) Data Lake
5 283 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
6 225 (2.86%) Azure SQL Database
7 206 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 194 (2.47%) Metadata
9 142 (1.80%) Delta Lake
10 130 (1.65%) Relational Database
11 118 (1.50%) Big Data
12 104 (1.32%) MongoDB
13 87 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (0.97%) Tableau
15 72 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
16 68 (0.86%) MySQL
17 64 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.74%) Oracle Database
19 55 (0.70%) Star Schema
20 53 (0.67%) Redis
Development Applications
1 607 (7.71%) JIRA
2 580 (7.37%) Git
3 412 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 320 (4.07%) GitLab
5 128 (1.63%) Selenium
6 80 (1.02%) Postman
7 78 (0.99%) JMeter
8 64 (0.81%) JUnit
9 63 (0.80%) Cucumber
10 58 (0.74%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.60%) Visual Studio
13 43 (0.55%) MLflow
13 43 (0.55%) WebDriver
14 42 (0.53%) Cypress.io
15 33 (0.42%) Gatling
16 32 (0.41%) Maven
17 27 (0.34%) LoadRunner
17 27 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
18 26 (0.33%) NUnit
General
1 1,990 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 1,482 (18.83%) Finance
3 879 (11.17%) Public Sector
4 705 (8.96%) Analytical Skills
5 418 (5.31%) Banking
6 225 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 205 (2.60%) Legal
8 166 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 154 (1.96%) Retail
10 97 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 69 (0.88%) Investment Banking
13 68 (0.86%) Financial Institution
13 68 (0.86%) Law
14 67 (0.85%) Telecoms
15 66 (0.84%) Front Office
16 63 (0.80%) Marketing
17 62 (0.79%) Manufacturing
18 58 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
19 45 (0.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,397 (17.75%) Architect
2 1,013 (12.87%) Developer
3 949 (12.06%) Senior
4 695 (8.83%) Azure Engineer
5 610 (7.75%) Lead
6 597 (7.59%) Data Engineer
7 481 (6.11%) Analyst
8 406 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
9 392 (4.98%) Solutions Architect
10 330 (4.19%) Consultant
11 285 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
12 268 (3.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 223 (2.83%) Data Architect
14 215 (2.73%) Azure Architect
15 193 (2.45%) Platform Engineer
15 193 (2.45%) Security Engineer
16 191 (2.43%) Technical Architect
17 174 (2.21%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 174 (2.21%) Business Analyst
18 172 (2.19%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 636 (8.08%) .NET
2 553 (7.03%) REST
3 346 (4.40%) React
4 280 (3.56%) Kafka
5 269 (3.42%) RESTful
6 267 (3.39%) PySpark
7 232 (2.95%) OAuth
8 215 (2.73%) Node.js
9 214 (2.72%) Spring
10 185 (2.35%) AngularJS
11 182 (2.31%) Spring Boot
12 169 (2.15%) JSON
13 151 (1.92%) LDAP
14 150 (1.91%) SAML
15 144 (1.83%) HTML
15 144 (1.83%) OpenID
16 126 (1.60%) Middleware
17 125 (1.59%) .NET Framework
17 125 (1.59%) SOAP
18 120 (1.52%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 835 (10.61%) Cloud Native
2 329 (4.18%) Onboarding
3 318 (4.04%) Product Ownership
4 258 (3.28%) Data Centre
5 225 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
5 225 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
6 212 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
7 178 (2.26%) AI Agents
8 167 (2.12%) Security Posture
9 166 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
10 156 (1.98%) Public Cloud
11 114 (1.45%) Data Structures
12 108 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
13 104 (1.32%) Management Information System
14 95 (1.21%) Replication
15 87 (1.11%) PKI
16 80 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
17 78 (0.99%) Enterprise Cloud
18 75 (0.95%) Low-Code
19 72 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 890 (11.31%) Windows
2 400 (5.08%) Linux
3 284 (3.61%) Windows Server
4 107 (1.36%) Windows 10
5 76 (0.97%) Apple iOS
6 72 (0.91%) Unix
7 70 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 68 (0.86%) Android
8 68 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 61 (0.78%) VMS
10 36 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
13 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.14%) CentOS
15 10 (0.13%) Debian
16 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.089%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.089%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,919 (37.09%) DevOps
2 2,449 (31.12%) CI/CD
3 1,930 (24.52%) Agile
4 1,180 (14.99%) AI
5 1,168 (14.84%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,132 (14.38%) Migration
7 1,101 (13.99%) Analytics
8 1,064 (13.52%) Problem-Solving
9 902 (11.46%) Stakeholder Management
10 886 (11.26%) Data Modelling
11 795 (10.10%) Continuous Improvement
12 740 (9.40%) Data Pipeline
13 735 (9.34%) Containerisation
14 726 (9.22%) Roadmaps
15 721 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
16 715 (9.09%) Microservices
17 687 (8.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 672 (8.54%) ETL
19 637 (8.09%) Test Automation
20 632 (8.03%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,851 (23.52%) Python
2 1,583 (20.11%) SQL
3 749 (9.52%) PowerShell
4 647 (8.22%) Java
5 633 (8.04%) C#
6 468 (5.95%) JavaScript
7 320 (4.07%) TypeScript
8 265 (3.37%) Bash
9 262 (3.33%) Bicep
10 92 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 88 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 79 (1.00%) Go
13 77 (0.98%) Scala
14 47 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
15 46 (0.58%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.55%) R
17 34 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 31 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.36%) C++
20 22 (0.28%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,926 (24.47%) Security Cleared
2 1,613 (20.50%) SC Cleared
3 554 (7.04%) Degree
4 397 (5.04%) Azure Certification
5 245 (3.11%) CISSP
6 202 (2.57%) DV Cleared
7 200 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
8 193 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
9 189 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
10 177 (2.25%) AWS Certification
11 174 (2.21%) Microsoft Certification
12 126 (1.60%) CISM
13 91 (1.16%) CCNP
14 81 (1.03%) PMP
15 78 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 73 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 65 (0.83%) ISTQB
18 60 (0.76%) Master's Degree
19 57 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
20 49 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 541 (6.87%) Data Quality
2 415 (5.27%) QA
3 342 (4.35%) GDPR
4 285 (3.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 267 (3.39%) NIST
6 169 (2.15%) Accessibility
7 118 (1.50%) NCSC
8 96 (1.22%) SLA
9 78 (0.99%) PCI DSS
10 73 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 68 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 61 (0.78%) GRC
12 61 (0.78%) WCAG
13 41 (0.52%) PMO
14 38 (0.48%) HIPAA
15 29 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 27 (0.34%) SOC 2
17 23 (0.29%) NIST 800
18 19 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
19 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 928 (11.79%) Active Directory
2 816 (10.37%) Docker
3 221 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 137 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
5 129 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
6 115 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.86%) vSphere
8 52 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.38%) Firmware
11 23 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 6 (0.076%) Ceph
15 6 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 6 (0.076%) IAG
15 6 (0.076%) KVM
16 5 (0.064%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,254 (15.93%) Terraform
2 1,132 (14.38%) Kubernetes
3 411 (5.22%) Microsoft Intune
4 368 (4.68%) Ansible
5 209 (2.66%) Grafana
6 184 (2.34%) Prometheus
7 168 (2.13%) Single Sign-On
8 104 (1.32%) SCCM
9 69 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.56%) FortiGate
11 43 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
12 41 (0.52%) Progress Chef
13 40 (0.51%) Argo
14 39 (0.50%) Puppet
15 31 (0.39%) Istio
16 24 (0.30%) HP ALM
17 21 (0.27%) vCenter Server
18 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
19 16 (0.20%) Packer
20 13 (0.17%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,489 (31.63%) Microsoft
2 752 (9.56%) Databricks
3 349 (4.43%) ServiceNow
4 306 (3.89%) Google
5 303 (3.85%) VMware
6 285 (3.62%) Oracle
7 218 (2.77%) SAP
8 215 (2.73%) Cisco
9 201 (2.55%) OpenAI
10 152 (1.93%) Splunk
11 146 (1.86%) Salesforce
12 142 (1.80%) Palo Alto
13 130 (1.65%) CyberArk
14 121 (1.54%) Foundry
15 105 (1.33%) Okta
16 90 (1.14%) Dynatrace
17 88 (1.12%) Informatica
18 84 (1.07%) Zscaler
19 71 (0.90%) Citrix
20 67 (0.85%) Fortinet