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 4 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,695 5,398 6,693
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.60% 15.00% 14.97%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.87% 41.92% 42.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,974 3,612 4,902
10th Percentile £350 £338 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £722 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £514
% change year-on-year - -2.68% -2.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 49 82
10th Percentile £16.10 £20.23 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.74 £23.80 £25.19
Median hourly rate £46.00 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% -32.87% +31.94%
75th Percentile £77.38 £60.00 £66.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.00 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +110.00% -35.04% -5.76%

All Cloud 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 13,933 12,878 15,727
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.18% 35.79% 35.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,463 8,506 11,249
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £419 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 322 185 293
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.73 £14.36
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £26.30 £30.00 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.33% +15.38% +17.33%
75th Percentile £52.42 £53.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.42 £27.35 £21.35
% change year-on-year -14.37% +28.10% +10.91%

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 4 December 2025.

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 4 December 2025.

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 4 December 2025. 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 4,849 £520 -3.26% 2,889
London +1 2,597 £538 -2.27% 989
UK excluding London 0 2,362 £500 - 2,579
Work from Home -1 1,841 £510 -2.86% 1,510
North of England -2 611 £475 -5.00% 611
South East -4 585 £500 -4.76% 891
Midlands -1 434 £525 - 369
West Midlands 0 326 £550 +4.76% 235
South West +6 317 £506 -0.74% 250
North West 0 298 £460 -8.00% 335
Yorkshire -2 285 £485 -3.00% 207
Scotland 0 252 £518 +11.46% 184
East of England +2 155 £500 +18.34% 206
East Midlands -2 105 £450 -10.00% 129
Wales -1 63 £463 -7.50% 91
North East -15 32 £515 +17.05% 79
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -3 6 - - 18

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
1 275 (4.83%) SharePoint
2 195 (3.42%) Microsoft Exchange
3 145 (2.55%) Confluence
4 128 (2.25%) Apache Spark
5 85 (1.49%) Apache
6 84 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.47%) SAS
8 26 (0.46%) CMS
9 22 (0.39%) OpenStack
10 17 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.26%) nginx
12 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
12 12 (0.21%) IIS
13 10 (0.18%) Mule
13 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.14%) Camunda
15 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
Applications
1 130 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 100 (1.76%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (0.74%) MS Visio
4 39 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
6 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.19%) Trello
8 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.088%) Weka
10 2 (0.035%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.035%) Windchill
11 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
11 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.018%) Revit
11 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.018%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 96 (1.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.33%) Aladdin
4 16 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
6 10 (0.18%) Endur
7 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.16%) Workday HCM
8 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
8 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 7 (0.12%) NetSuite
10 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
10 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
11 5 (0.088%) Cloudability
11 5 (0.088%) NEC Housing
11 5 (0.088%) Oracle EBS
12 4 (0.070%) Maximo
12 4 (0.070%) Primavera
12 4 (0.070%) Remedy ITSM
12 4 (0.070%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 2,076 (36.45%) AWS
2 1,121 (19.68%) GCP
3 1,119 (19.65%) Azure DevOps
4 730 (12.82%) Power Platform
5 653 (11.47%) Microsoft 365
6 643 (11.29%) Entra ID
7 538 (9.45%) GitHub
8 359 (6.30%) Azure Data Factory
9 321 (5.64%) GitHub Actions
10 310 (5.44%) Serverless
11 256 (4.50%) Dynamics 365
12 250 (4.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 248 (4.35%) SaaS
14 228 (4.00%) Power Automate
15 224 (3.93%) Azure AKS
16 219 (3.85%) Snowflake
17 210 (3.69%) PowerApps
18 204 (3.58%) Azure Monitor
19 198 (3.48%) PaaS
20 194 (3.41%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 413 (7.25%) Firewall
2 213 (3.74%) DNS
3 174 (3.06%) VPN
4 152 (2.67%) Network Security
5 115 (2.02%) WAN
6 109 (1.91%) DHCP
7 87 (1.53%) TCP/IP
8 74 (1.30%) LAN
9 73 (1.28%) HTTP
10 61 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
11 59 (1.04%) SD-WAN
12 56 (0.98%) VLAN
13 38 (0.67%) BGP
13 38 (0.67%) SAN
14 34 (0.60%) Internet
15 33 (0.58%) MPLS
16 30 (0.53%) Wireless
17 27 (0.47%) SSL
18 26 (0.46%) OSPF
19 21 (0.37%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 508 (8.92%) Power BI
2 311 (5.46%) SQL Server
3 270 (4.74%) Data Warehouse
4 247 (4.34%) Data Lake
4 247 (4.34%) PostgreSQL
5 187 (3.28%) Azure SQL Database
6 183 (3.21%) NoSQL
7 125 (2.19%) Relational Database
8 120 (2.11%) Metadata
9 103 (1.81%) MongoDB
10 81 (1.42%) MySQL
11 78 (1.37%) Big Data
12 74 (1.30%) Delta Lake
13 69 (1.21%) Tableau
14 62 (1.09%) BigQuery
15 60 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 55 (0.97%) Oracle Database
17 54 (0.95%) Redis
18 44 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
19 39 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 489 (8.59%) Git
2 416 (7.30%) JIRA
3 337 (5.92%) Jenkins
4 226 (3.97%) GitLab
5 95 (1.67%) Selenium
6 87 (1.53%) Postman
7 70 (1.23%) SonarQube
8 66 (1.16%) JUnit
9 47 (0.83%) Cucumber
9 47 (0.83%) JMeter
10 46 (0.81%) Bitbucket
10 46 (0.81%) Cypress.io
11 37 (0.65%) Maven
11 37 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
12 33 (0.58%) Visual Studio
13 32 (0.56%) CircleCI
14 30 (0.53%) MLflow
15 29 (0.51%) Mockito
15 29 (0.51%) SpecFlow
16 28 (0.49%) ERwin
General
1 1,821 (31.98%) Social Skills
2 1,084 (19.03%) Finance
3 672 (11.80%) Public Sector
4 534 (9.38%) Analytical Skills
5 377 (6.62%) Banking
6 193 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
7 131 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 97 (1.70%) Influencing Skills
9 95 (1.67%) Marketing
10 94 (1.65%) Investment Banking
11 89 (1.56%) Legal
11 89 (1.56%) Retail
12 78 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
13 75 (1.32%) Telecoms
14 68 (1.19%) Manufacturing
15 57 (1.00%) Law
16 48 (0.84%) Financial Institution
16 48 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
17 46 (0.81%) Front Office
18 44 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 916 (16.08%) Architect
2 910 (15.98%) Developer
3 578 (10.15%) Senior
4 425 (7.46%) Azure Engineer
5 420 (7.37%) Analyst
6 398 (6.99%) Lead
7 374 (6.57%) Data Engineer
8 319 (5.60%) Solutions Architect
9 286 (5.02%) DevOps Engineer
10 228 (4.00%) Consultant
11 177 (3.11%) Security Engineer
12 165 (2.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 163 (2.86%) Senior Developer
14 154 (2.70%) Azure Architect
15 141 (2.48%) Cloud Engineer
16 134 (2.35%) Platform Engineer
17 118 (2.07%) Data Architect
18 117 (2.05%) Software Engineer
19 116 (2.04%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 115 (2.02%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 470 (8.25%) .NET
2 356 (6.25%) REST
3 260 (4.57%) RESTful
4 252 (4.42%) React
5 221 (3.88%) Kafka
6 200 (3.51%) Spring
7 199 (3.49%) Node.js
8 180 (3.16%) OAuth
9 172 (3.02%) HTML
10 170 (2.99%) Spring Boot
11 168 (2.95%) PySpark
12 167 (2.93%) AngularJS
13 159 (2.79%) JSON
14 139 (2.44%) CSS
15 136 (2.39%) SOAP
16 121 (2.12%) PyTorch
17 109 (1.91%) TensorFlow
18 104 (1.83%) SAML
19 102 (1.79%) Middleware
20 99 (1.74%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 463 (8.13%) Cloud Native
2 206 (3.62%) Product Ownership
3 195 (3.42%) Onboarding
4 164 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
5 145 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
6 131 (2.30%) Data Centre
7 122 (2.14%) Security Posture
8 119 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
9 108 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
10 96 (1.69%) Public Cloud
11 78 (1.37%) Algorithms
12 77 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
12 77 (1.35%) Management Information System
13 70 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
14 63 (1.11%) AI Agents
15 62 (1.09%) Replication
16 61 (1.07%) Low-Code
17 53 (0.93%) NHS
17 53 (0.93%) PKI
18 52 (0.91%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 642 (11.27%) Windows
2 388 (6.81%) Linux
3 193 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.95%) Unix
5 97 (1.70%) Windows 10
6 53 (0.93%) Android
7 48 (0.84%) Apple iOS
8 47 (0.83%) VMS
9 38 (0.67%) Mac OS
10 27 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 22 (0.39%) Ubuntu
12 13 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.19%) Solaris
14 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
14 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
15 9 (0.16%) CentOS
16 6 (0.11%) AIX
16 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.070%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,068 (36.31%) DevOps
2 1,672 (29.36%) CI/CD
3 1,526 (26.80%) Agile
4 1,034 (18.16%) Problem-Solving
5 771 (13.54%) Analytics
6 756 (13.27%) Infrastructure as Code
7 669 (11.75%) AI
8 668 (11.73%) Migration
9 579 (10.17%) Business Intelligence
10 578 (10.15%) Containerisation
11 573 (10.06%) Stakeholder Management
12 507 (8.90%) Microservices
13 492 (8.64%) Data Modelling
14 488 (8.57%) Machine Learning
15 478 (8.39%) Test Automation
16 461 (8.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 450 (7.90%) Continuous Improvement
18 419 (7.36%) Scrum
19 414 (7.27%) Cybersecurity
20 405 (7.11%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 1,459 (25.62%) Python
2 1,212 (21.28%) SQL
3 596 (10.47%) PowerShell
4 563 (9.89%) Java
5 506 (8.88%) C#
6 439 (7.71%) JavaScript
7 280 (4.92%) Bash
8 238 (4.18%) TypeScript
9 159 (2.79%) Bicep
10 91 (1.60%) Go
11 73 (1.28%) Kusto Query Language
12 71 (1.25%) Scala
13 67 (1.18%) PL/SQL
14 59 (1.04%) R
15 51 (0.90%) T-SQL
16 46 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 40 (0.70%) C++
18 37 (0.65%) Shell Script
19 32 (0.56%) PHP
20 31 (0.54%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,187 (20.84%) Security Cleared
2 968 (17.00%) SC Cleared
3 491 (8.62%) Degree
4 334 (5.86%) Azure Certification
5 183 (3.21%) Microsoft Certification
6 176 (3.09%) CISSP
7 171 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
8 141 (2.48%) AWS Certification
9 131 (2.30%) DV Cleared
10 102 (1.79%) CISM
11 94 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
12 88 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
13 85 (1.49%) Master's Degree
14 46 (0.81%) ISTQB
15 44 (0.77%) CCNP
16 38 (0.67%) MCP
17 37 (0.65%) PMI Certification
18 36 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
19 32 (0.56%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 32 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.30%) GDPR
2 329 (5.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 320 (5.62%) QA
4 264 (4.64%) Data Quality
5 263 (4.62%) NIST
6 129 (2.27%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.42%) PCI DSS
8 76 (1.33%) NCSC
9 53 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
10 52 (0.91%) HIPAA
11 38 (0.67%) SOC 2
12 35 (0.61%) SLA
13 34 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 32 (0.56%) WCAG
15 29 (0.51%) GRC
16 28 (0.49%) EU AI Act
17 26 (0.46%) PMO
18 25 (0.44%) PSD2
19 22 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 21 (0.37%) COBIT
System Software
1 725 (12.73%) Docker
2 693 (12.17%) Active Directory
3 172 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (1.33%) Hyper-V
5 75 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
6 63 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
7 47 (0.83%) vSphere
8 23 (0.40%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.28%) Squid
10 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
10 13 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 11 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
12 10 (0.18%) Postfix
13 9 (0.16%) NFS
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
14 8 (0.14%) Firmware
14 8 (0.14%) KVM
14 8 (0.14%) Snort
14 8 (0.14%) zsh
Systems Management
1 854 (15.00%) Terraform
2 814 (14.29%) Kubernetes
3 306 (5.37%) Ansible
4 302 (5.30%) Microsoft Intune
5 135 (2.37%) SCCM
5 135 (2.37%) Single Sign-On
6 131 (2.30%) Grafana
7 126 (2.21%) Prometheus
8 38 (0.67%) Argo
9 34 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 34 (0.60%) Puppet
10 27 (0.47%) Nessus
11 24 (0.42%) Kibana
12 21 (0.37%) NetBackup
13 20 (0.35%) Progress Chef
13 20 (0.35%) vRealize
14 19 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
15 16 (0.28%) Nmap
15 16 (0.28%) QRadar
15 16 (0.28%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,834 (32.20%) Microsoft
2 532 (9.34%) Databricks
3 335 (5.88%) Oracle
4 284 (4.99%) Google
5 228 (4.00%) ServiceNow
6 227 (3.99%) VMware
7 164 (2.88%) Cisco
8 157 (2.76%) SAP
9 146 (2.56%) Splunk
10 125 (2.19%) Salesforce
11 119 (2.09%) OpenAI
12 88 (1.55%) Palo Alto
13 87 (1.53%) CyberArk
14 79 (1.39%) Citrix
15 63 (1.11%) Foundry
16 61 (1.07%) Red Hat
17 56 (0.98%) IBM
18 55 (0.97%) F5
19 54 (0.95%) Dynatrace
19 54 (0.95%) Okta