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

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,660 4,783 6,101
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.97% 16.02% 13.69%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.39% 42.31% 41.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,721 3,313 4,424
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £423 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -1.41% -5.33%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £735 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 40 73
10th Percentile £22.59 £22.38 £17.76
25th Percentile £50.63 £23.80 £22.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%
75th Percentile £64.00 £61.81 £61.60
90th Percentile £80.00 £77.75 £74.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +109.09% -42.82% -26.02%

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 15,710 11,304 14,651
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.66% 37.86% 32.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,781 7,713 10,409
10th Percentile £313 £313 £281
25th Percentile £408 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £631 £634
90th Percentile £700 £734 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £495
% change year-on-year -4.09% +0.05% -1.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 178 348
10th Percentile £15.33 £15.83 £14.09
25th Percentile £20.50 £21.30 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £27.13 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +45.62% +26.93% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.56 £46.18
90th Percentile £80.12 £74.28 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.18 £18.00
% change year-on-year +86.10% +34.33% -15.53%

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 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 3 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 3 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 -1 5,625 £525 -2.10% 3,256
London +1 3,049 £548 -0.45% 1,023
UK excluding London 0 2,723 £500 - 2,746
Work from Home -2 2,046 £525 +0.48% 1,473
North of England 0 735 £500 +5.26% 662
South East -1 702 £500 -8.26% 890
Midlands -2 468 £500 -4.08% 379
North West 0 374 £492 -1.60% 340
West Midlands -1 353 £525 -1.87% 207
South West +3 342 £512 -2.57% 326
Yorkshire -3 314 £500 +11.11% 233
Scotland +7 296 £550 +15.79% 141
East of England -2 156 £558 +3.72% 282
East Midlands -2 113 £437 -7.07% 163
Wales -3 82 £400 -11.85% 90
North East -3 51 £515 +7.01% 101
Northern Ireland +5 12 £475 -7.32% 29

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
1 294 (4.41%) SharePoint
2 215 (3.23%) Microsoft Exchange
3 179 (2.69%) Confluence
4 176 (2.64%) Apache Spark
5 91 (1.37%) Apache
6 88 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 20 (0.30%) SAS
9 16 (0.24%) CMS
10 15 (0.23%) Appian
10 15 (0.23%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.20%) Camunda
11 13 (0.20%) IIS
12 12 (0.18%) Mendix
13 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
13 10 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 8 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
14 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
14 8 (0.12%) SugarCRM
15 7 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 123 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 96 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.72%) MS Visio
4 46 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 46 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (0.20%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.12%) Trello
7 5 (0.075%) Acrobat
7 5 (0.075%) PTC Creo
7 5 (0.075%) Weka
8 4 (0.060%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
10 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.015%) InDesign
10 1 (0.015%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 103 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.17%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.11%) Endur
6 7 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.090%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.090%) Dynamics NAV
7 6 (0.090%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.090%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.090%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.090%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.075%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.075%) SAP BPC
8 5 (0.075%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.075%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 4 (0.060%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,349 (35.27%) AWS
2 1,339 (20.11%) GCP
3 1,322 (19.85%) Azure DevOps
4 895 (13.44%) Power Platform
5 783 (11.76%) Entra ID
6 752 (11.29%) Microsoft 365
7 684 (10.27%) GitHub
8 485 (7.28%) Azure Data Factory
9 401 (6.02%) GitHub Actions
10 394 (5.92%) Serverless
11 319 (4.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 284 (4.26%) Dynamics 365
13 271 (4.07%) SaaS
14 256 (3.84%) Azure AKS
14 256 (3.84%) Power Automate
15 238 (3.57%) Azure Functions
16 231 (3.47%) Snowflake
17 214 (3.21%) Azure Monitor
17 214 (3.21%) PaaS
18 204 (3.06%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 444 (6.67%) Firewall
2 279 (4.19%) DNS
3 222 (3.33%) VPN
4 198 (2.97%) Network Security
5 163 (2.45%) DHCP
6 159 (2.39%) WAN
7 107 (1.61%) LAN
8 97 (1.46%) TCP/IP
9 89 (1.34%) Wi-Fi
10 81 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 70 (1.05%) Kerberos
11 70 (1.05%) VLAN
12 57 (0.86%) HTTP
13 41 (0.62%) BGP
14 38 (0.57%) SSL
14 38 (0.57%) Wireless
15 35 (0.53%) OSPF
16 33 (0.50%) Internet
16 33 (0.50%) MPLS
17 30 (0.45%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 607 (9.11%) Power BI
2 389 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 363 (5.45%) Data Warehouse
4 336 (5.05%) Data Lake
5 266 (3.99%) PostgreSQL
6 241 (3.62%) Azure SQL Database
7 194 (2.91%) NoSQL
8 167 (2.51%) Metadata
9 124 (1.86%) Relational Database
10 123 (1.85%) Delta Lake
11 98 (1.47%) Big Data
12 97 (1.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 89 (1.34%) MongoDB
14 81 (1.22%) MySQL
15 72 (1.08%) Tableau
16 69 (1.04%) BigQuery
17 66 (0.99%) Oracle Database
18 56 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
19 49 (0.74%) Redis
20 47 (0.71%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 527 (7.91%) Git
2 480 (7.21%) JIRA
3 361 (5.42%) Jenkins
4 275 (4.13%) GitLab
5 123 (1.85%) Selenium
6 91 (1.37%) Postman
7 77 (1.16%) Cucumber
8 74 (1.11%) JMeter
9 69 (1.04%) JUnit
10 50 (0.75%) SonarQube
11 49 (0.74%) MLflow
12 48 (0.72%) REST Assured
13 46 (0.69%) Cypress.io
14 41 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 35 (0.53%) Oracle APEX
16 32 (0.48%) TestRail
17 30 (0.45%) Artifactory
17 30 (0.45%) SpecFlow
18 29 (0.44%) ERwin
18 29 (0.44%) WebDriver
General
1 2,009 (30.17%) Social Skills
2 1,195 (17.94%) Finance
3 775 (11.64%) Public Sector
4 666 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
5 370 (5.56%) Banking
6 213 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
7 141 (2.12%) Legal
8 110 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 103 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
10 90 (1.35%) Retail
11 88 (1.32%) Marketing
12 87 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
13 83 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
14 63 (0.95%) Telecoms
15 60 (0.90%) Financial Institution
15 60 (0.90%) Investment Banking
16 57 (0.86%) Law
17 51 (0.77%) Front Office
18 49 (0.74%) Manufacturing
19 38 (0.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,103 (16.56%) Architect
2 947 (14.22%) Developer
3 736 (11.05%) Senior
4 556 (8.35%) Azure Engineer
5 550 (8.26%) Data Engineer
6 489 (7.34%) Lead
7 435 (6.53%) Analyst
8 326 (4.89%) Solutions Architect
9 324 (4.86%) DevOps Engineer
10 303 (4.55%) Consultant
11 186 (2.79%) Security Engineer
12 180 (2.70%) Cloud Engineer
13 174 (2.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 166 (2.49%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 165 (2.48%) Azure Architect
16 158 (2.37%) Senior Developer
17 145 (2.18%) Data Architect
18 142 (2.13%) Platform Engineer
19 134 (2.01%) Tester
20 133 (2.00%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 539 (8.09%) .NET
2 462 (6.94%) REST
3 333 (5.00%) React
4 259 (3.89%) RESTful
5 258 (3.87%) PySpark
6 243 (3.65%) Kafka
6 243 (3.65%) Node.js
7 206 (3.09%) Spring
8 201 (3.02%) OAuth
9 189 (2.84%) AngularJS
10 186 (2.79%) HTML
11 178 (2.67%) Spring Boot
12 154 (2.31%) CSS
13 153 (2.30%) LDAP
14 147 (2.21%) PyTorch
15 139 (2.09%) SOAP
16 138 (2.07%) JSON
17 132 (1.98%) TensorFlow
18 127 (1.91%) Middleware
18 127 (1.91%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 598 (8.98%) Cloud Native
2 255 (3.83%) Onboarding
3 241 (3.62%) Product Ownership
4 176 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
5 172 (2.58%) Security Posture
6 171 (2.57%) Data Centre
7 159 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
8 154 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
9 125 (1.88%) Public Cloud
10 116 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
11 102 (1.53%) AI Agents
12 86 (1.29%) Data Structures
13 82 (1.23%) Algorithms
13 82 (1.23%) Replication
14 74 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
15 73 (1.10%) Management Information System
16 68 (1.02%) Low-Code
17 67 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
18 65 (0.98%) NHS
19 53 (0.80%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 729 (10.95%) Windows
2 362 (5.44%) Linux
3 196 (2.94%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.82%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.20%) Unix
6 58 (0.87%) VMS
7 49 (0.74%) Mac OS
8 47 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.59%) Apple iOS
10 30 (0.45%) Android
11 23 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.27%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.17%) CentOS
16 8 (0.12%) Solaris
17 7 (0.11%) Data ONTAP
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.075%) AIX
18 5 (0.075%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,434 (36.55%) DevOps
2 2,061 (30.95%) CI/CD
3 1,637 (24.58%) Agile
4 1,199 (18.00%) Problem-Solving
5 1,000 (15.02%) Analytics
6 918 (13.78%) AI
7 892 (13.39%) Infrastructure as Code
8 834 (12.52%) Migration
9 702 (10.54%) Data Modelling
10 696 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
11 683 (10.26%) Business Intelligence
12 667 (10.02%) Containerisation
13 624 (9.37%) Continuous Improvement
14 599 (8.99%) Data Pipeline
14 599 (8.99%) Machine Learning
15 598 (8.98%) ETL
16 590 (8.86%) Microservices
17 566 (8.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 553 (8.30%) Test Automation
19 540 (8.11%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,754 (26.34%) Python
2 1,482 (22.25%) SQL
3 719 (10.80%) PowerShell
4 580 (8.71%) C#
5 561 (8.42%) Java
6 525 (7.88%) JavaScript
7 309 (4.64%) TypeScript
8 263 (3.95%) Bash
9 197 (2.96%) Bicep
10 95 (1.43%) Scala
11 82 (1.23%) Go
11 82 (1.23%) PL/SQL
12 74 (1.11%) T-SQL
13 73 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 71 (1.07%) Kusto Query Language
15 46 (0.69%) R
16 45 (0.68%) Shell Script
17 38 (0.57%) C++
18 36 (0.54%) PHP
19 23 (0.35%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,567 (23.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,291 (19.38%) SC Cleared
3 543 (8.15%) Degree
4 362 (5.44%) Azure Certification
5 212 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 187 (2.81%) CISSP
7 168 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
8 139 (2.09%) AWS Certification
9 130 (1.95%) DV Cleared
10 124 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
11 118 (1.77%) CISM
12 115 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
13 90 (1.35%) Master's Degree
14 67 (1.01%) TOGAF Certification
15 60 (0.90%) CCNP
16 57 (0.86%) PMI Certification
17 54 (0.81%) ISTQB
17 54 (0.81%) PMP
18 40 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.51%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 452 (6.79%) Data Quality
2 388 (5.83%) GDPR
3 354 (5.32%) QA
4 296 (4.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 232 (3.48%) NIST
6 131 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.44%) NCSC
8 81 (1.22%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 59 (0.89%) SLA
11 57 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
12 47 (0.71%) PMO
13 41 (0.62%) HIPAA
14 35 (0.53%) GRC
15 34 (0.51%) SOC 2
15 34 (0.51%) WCAG
16 25 (0.38%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.36%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.35%) PSD2
19 22 (0.33%) NIST 800
System Software
1 855 (12.84%) Active Directory
2 803 (12.06%) Docker
3 192 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (1.37%) Hyper-V
5 88 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
6 75 (1.13%) vSphere
7 74 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
9 18 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.23%) Firmware
11 13 (0.20%) NFS
12 9 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.12%) Postfix
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) KVM
14 7 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.11%) Snort
15 6 (0.090%) GPFS
15 6 (0.090%) Lustre
16 5 (0.075%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 1,018 (15.29%) Terraform
2 976 (14.65%) Kubernetes
3 356 (5.35%) Microsoft Intune
4 311 (4.67%) Ansible
5 166 (2.49%) Grafana
6 162 (2.43%) Single Sign-On
7 147 (2.21%) Prometheus
8 138 (2.07%) SCCM
9 73 (1.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 50 (0.75%) Argo
11 28 (0.42%) FortiGate
12 27 (0.41%) Istio
13 26 (0.39%) Puppet
14 25 (0.38%) vRealize
15 22 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
15 22 (0.33%) Progress Chef
16 20 (0.30%) HP ALM
17 19 (0.29%) Nmap
17 19 (0.29%) vCenter Server
18 18 (0.27%) Nessus
Vendors
1 2,125 (31.91%) Microsoft
2 678 (10.18%) Databricks
3 346 (5.20%) Oracle
4 334 (5.02%) Google
5 286 (4.29%) ServiceNow
6 263 (3.95%) VMware
7 195 (2.93%) SAP
8 164 (2.46%) Cisco
9 162 (2.43%) OpenAI
10 157 (2.36%) Splunk
11 119 (1.79%) CyberArk
12 105 (1.58%) Palo Alto
13 104 (1.56%) Salesforce
14 102 (1.53%) Foundry
15 85 (1.28%) Okta
16 74 (1.11%) Red Hat
17 73 (1.10%) Citrix
18 69 (1.04%) IBM
19 65 (0.98%) BeyondTrust
20 64 (0.96%) Fortinet