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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,297 5,021 5,509
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.12% 15.15% 14.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.64% 39.83% 42.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,798 3,426 3,740
10th Percentile £363 £350 £345
25th Percentile £444 £415 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £517 £530
Median % change year-on-year +2.32% -2.45% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £720 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 45 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.27 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £42.35 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.56% -2.86% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.00 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £92.50 £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 19,011 12,605 13,082
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.66% 38.03% 34.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,612 8,423 8,683
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
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 £720 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 633 295 189
10th Percentile £15.40 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £31.50 £26.30 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.77% -24.86% +6.06%
75th Percentile £67.50 £49.13 £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% +42.00%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 7,058 £530 +0.95% 8,446
London 0 3,707 £550 +0.92% 3,881
UK excluding London 0 3,501 £510 +2.00% 6,045
Work from Home -2 2,504 £529 +5.70% 4,907
North of England +4 1,008 £500 +5.26% 1,401
South East +1 899 £525 +5.00% 1,328
Midlands +1 638 £490 -5.63% 810
North West +5 489 £500 +5.26% 703
West Midlands +2 487 £477 -13.27% 485
Yorkshire +5 433 £500 +2.56% 491
South West +2 413 £550 +7.84% 647
Scotland +3 291 £520 +4.00% 821
East of England -1 196 £508 +1.00% 467
East Midlands +3 147 £500 +8.11% 325
North East +3 100 £513 +2.50% 221
Wales -1 85 £450 - 337
Northern Ireland +13 13 £650 - 281
Channel Islands -8 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
1 467 (5.63%) SharePoint
2 271 (3.27%) Confluence
3 195 (2.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 189 (2.28%) Apache Spark
5 158 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
6 117 (1.41%) Apache
7 37 (0.45%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.072%) ThingWorx
16 6 (0.072%) Traefik
Applications
1 123 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 61 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
4 48 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
5 42 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 8 (0.096%) Trello
8 7 (0.084%) CPLEX
8 7 (0.084%) Revit
9 5 (0.060%) Notion
10 4 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.036%) 1Password
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) Mingle
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Windchill
13 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 130 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.096%) Cloudability
9 8 (0.096%) Magento
10 7 (0.084%) Shopify
11 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 6 (0.072%) Teamcenter
11 6 (0.072%) Temenos T24
12 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
12 5 (0.060%) FLEXCUBE
12 5 (0.060%) Maximo
13 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 2,980 (35.92%) AWS
2 1,751 (21.10%) Azure DevOps
3 1,478 (17.81%) GCP
4 1,130 (13.62%) Entra ID
5 1,069 (12.88%) Power Platform
6 885 (10.67%) Microsoft 365
7 865 (10.43%) GitHub
8 493 (5.94%) GitHub Actions
9 465 (5.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 378 (4.56%) Serverless
11 360 (4.34%) SaaS
12 318 (3.83%) Azure Monitor
13 301 (3.63%) Dynamics 365
13 301 (3.63%) Power Automate
14 300 (3.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 295 (3.56%) Snowflake
16 288 (3.47%) Azure AKS
17 283 (3.41%) PowerApps
18 251 (3.03%) Azure AI
19 250 (3.01%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 516 (6.22%) Firewall
2 418 (5.04%) DNS
3 314 (3.78%) VPN
4 294 (3.54%) Network Security
5 232 (2.80%) DHCP
6 181 (2.18%) WAN
7 166 (2.00%) TCP/IP
8 107 (1.29%) LAN
9 105 (1.27%) BGP
10 98 (1.18%) SD-WAN
11 84 (1.01%) OSPF
12 83 (1.00%) VLAN
13 80 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
14 72 (0.87%) SSL
15 67 (0.81%) Wireless
16 63 (0.76%) SAN
17 46 (0.55%) HTTP
18 44 (0.53%) IPsec
19 42 (0.51%) VXLAN
20 39 (0.47%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 696 (8.39%) Power BI
2 475 (5.72%) SQL Server
3 404 (4.87%) Data Warehouse
4 390 (4.70%) Data Lake
5 289 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
6 251 (3.03%) Metadata
7 213 (2.57%) NoSQL
8 200 (2.41%) Azure SQL Database
9 147 (1.77%) Relational Database
10 129 (1.55%) Delta Lake
11 115 (1.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 106 (1.28%) MySQL
13 105 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 91 (1.10%) Big Data
15 72 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.83%) Redis
17 64 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
18 63 (0.76%) BigQuery
19 58 (0.70%) Oracle Database
20 56 (0.67%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 752 (9.06%) Git
2 612 (7.38%) JIRA
3 470 (5.66%) Jenkins
4 377 (4.54%) GitLab
5 139 (1.68%) Selenium
6 89 (1.07%) Postman
7 67 (0.81%) Cucumber
8 63 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 63 (0.76%) JUnit
9 58 (0.70%) JMeter
10 57 (0.69%) Claude Code
11 54 (0.65%) Maven
12 52 (0.63%) Gradle
12 52 (0.63%) SonarQube
13 50 (0.60%) Visual Studio
14 49 (0.59%) REST Assured
15 36 (0.43%) WebDriver
16 35 (0.42%) Bitbucket
17 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
18 31 (0.37%) MLflow
General
1 2,294 (27.65%) Social Skills
2 1,605 (19.34%) Finance
3 954 (11.50%) Public Sector
4 813 (9.80%) Analytical Skills
5 500 (6.03%) Banking
6 220 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 218 (2.63%) Retail
8 201 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
9 168 (2.02%) Legal
10 114 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
11 113 (1.36%) Manufacturing
12 98 (1.18%) Investment Banking
13 94 (1.13%) Marketing
14 92 (1.11%) Telecoms
15 87 (1.05%) Aerospace
16 84 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
17 79 (0.95%) Military
18 65 (0.78%) Law
19 61 (0.74%) Financial Institution
19 61 (0.74%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,580 (19.04%) Architect
2 1,059 (12.76%) Senior
3 1,017 (12.26%) Developer
4 722 (8.70%) Azure Engineer
5 689 (8.30%) Lead
6 589 (7.10%) Data Engineer
7 489 (5.89%) Solutions Architect
8 463 (5.58%) Analyst
8 463 (5.58%) DevOps Engineer
9 384 (4.63%) Cloud Engineer
10 322 (3.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 319 (3.84%) Consultant
12 269 (3.24%) Data Architect
13 229 (2.76%) Platform Engineer
14 213 (2.57%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 213 (2.57%) Azure Architect
15 203 (2.45%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 198 (2.39%) Technical Architect
17 196 (2.36%) Security Engineer
18 180 (2.17%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,416 (17.07%) Terraform
2 761 (9.17%) REST
3 628 (7.57%) .NET
4 403 (4.86%) Kafka
5 313 (3.77%) React
6 301 (3.63%) RESTful
7 271 (3.27%) OAuth
8 261 (3.15%) PySpark
9 240 (2.89%) JSON
10 189 (2.28%) Spring
11 181 (2.18%) Spring Boot
12 165 (1.99%) HTML
13 163 (1.96%) OAuth2
13 163 (1.96%) OpenID
14 151 (1.82%) Middleware
15 150 (1.81%) Node.js
16 149 (1.80%) SAML
17 148 (1.78%) AngularJS
18 145 (1.75%) SOAP
19 134 (1.62%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 937 (11.29%) Cloud Native
2 424 (5.11%) Onboarding
3 393 (4.74%) Product Ownership
4 326 (3.93%) AI Agents
5 325 (3.92%) Enterprise Software
6 283 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
7 278 (3.35%) Distributed Systems
8 255 (3.07%) Data Centre
9 229 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
10 183 (2.21%) Security Posture
11 180 (2.17%) Management Information System
12 152 (1.83%) Data Structures
13 148 (1.78%) Public Cloud
14 128 (1.54%) PKI
15 113 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
16 111 (1.34%) Enterprise Cloud
17 100 (1.21%) Replication
18 98 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
19 89 (1.07%) Low-Code
20 88 (1.06%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 1,000 (12.05%) Windows
2 533 (6.42%) Linux
3 387 (4.66%) Windows Server
4 150 (1.81%) Windows 10
5 93 (1.12%) Android
6 89 (1.07%) Apple iOS
7 88 (1.06%) Unix
8 85 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 72 (0.87%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.67%) Ubuntu
11 52 (0.63%) VMS
12 27 (0.33%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.084%) Debian
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
19 5 (0.060%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,052 (36.78%) DevOps
2 2,697 (32.51%) CI/CD
3 2,094 (25.24%) Agile
4 1,517 (18.28%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,448 (17.45%) AI
6 1,424 (17.16%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,240 (14.95%) Migration
8 1,145 (13.80%) Problem-Solving
9 1,118 (13.47%) Analytics
10 973 (11.73%) Continuous Improvement
11 898 (10.82%) Data Modelling
12 869 (10.47%) Roadmaps
13 794 (9.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 783 (9.44%) Containerisation
15 762 (9.18%) Business Intelligence
16 757 (9.12%) Test Automation
17 755 (9.10%) Technical Leadership
18 738 (8.89%) Data Pipeline
19 730 (8.80%) Microservices
20 671 (8.09%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,926 (23.21%) Python
2 1,599 (19.27%) SQL
3 914 (11.02%) PowerShell
4 690 (8.32%) Java
5 610 (7.35%) C#
6 519 (6.26%) JavaScript
7 420 (5.06%) Bash
8 362 (4.36%) Bicep
9 309 (3.72%) TypeScript
10 103 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 93 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 83 (1.00%) Go
13 66 (0.80%) Scala
14 62 (0.75%) 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 2,152 (25.94%) Security Cleared
2 1,730 (20.85%) SC Cleared
3 561 (6.76%) Degree
4 472 (5.69%) Azure Certification
5 309 (3.72%) DV Cleared
6 271 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
7 267 (3.22%) CISSP
8 250 (3.01%) Microsoft Certification
9 215 (2.59%) AWS Certification
10 193 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
11 184 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
12 137 (1.65%) CISM
13 95 (1.14%) PMI Certification
14 91 (1.10%) PMP
15 90 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 84 (1.01%) CCNP
17 65 (0.78%) ISTQB
18 64 (0.77%) CCSP
18 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
19 50 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 618 (7.45%) Data Quality
2 471 (5.68%) QA
3 298 (3.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 288 (3.47%) NIST
5 287 (3.46%) GDPR
6 209 (2.52%) Accessibility
7 113 (1.36%) NCSC
8 109 (1.31%) SLA
9 84 (1.01%) GRC
10 83 (1.00%) WCAG
11 79 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
12 75 (0.90%) PCI DSS
13 51 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 50 (0.60%) PMO
15 45 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 34 (0.41%) SOC 2
17 27 (0.33%) ISO 20022
18 26 (0.31%) HIPAA
19 22 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
20 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,027 (12.38%) Active Directory
2 929 (11.20%) Docker
3 250 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.78%) Virtual Machines
5 147 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
6 131 (1.58%) Hyper-V
7 74 (0.89%) vSphere
8 51 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.39%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.24%) Firmware
11 17 (0.20%) 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 8 (0.096%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.084%) Ceph
18 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
19 5 (0.060%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,309 (15.78%) Kubernetes
2 462 (5.57%) Ansible
3 449 (5.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 270 (3.25%) Grafana
5 212 (2.56%) Prometheus
6 147 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
7 140 (1.69%) SCCM
8 62 (0.75%) Argo
9 60 (0.72%) Progress Chef
10 48 (0.58%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
12 36 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.41%) SCOM
14 30 (0.36%) 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 (0.20%) Packer
19 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,025 (36.46%) Microsoft
2 865 (10.43%) Databricks
3 409 (4.93%) ServiceNow
4 402 (4.85%) Google
5 364 (4.39%) VMware
6 345 (4.16%) Oracle
7 239 (2.88%) Cisco
8 236 (2.84%) Splunk
9 223 (2.69%) OpenAI
10 221 (2.66%) SAP
11 191 (2.30%) Salesforce
12 155 (1.87%) Palo Alto
13 147 (1.77%) CyberArk
14 138 (1.66%) Foundry
15 129 (1.55%) Dynatrace
16 92 (1.11%) Zscaler
17 90 (1.08%) IBM
18 83 (1.00%) Informatica
19 80 (0.96%) Fortinet
20 78 (0.94%) MuleSoft