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 19 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,577 5,342 6,953
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.62% 14.74% 15.02%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.64% 41.73% 42.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,873 3,571 5,096
10th Percentile £350 £338 £356
25th Percentile £420 £425 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £723 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £520
% change year-on-year - -3.85% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 44 88
10th Percentile £16.18 £20.05 £17.75
25th Percentile £26.00 £23.80 £25.94
Median hourly rate £45.00 £30.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +47.54% -33.95% +14.02%
75th Percentile £77.38 £60.19 £70.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £76.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £31.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +109.68% -32.87% +8.02%

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 13,723 12,801 16,326
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.44% 35.32% 35.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,292 8,430 11,680
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £419 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 172 303
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.58 £14.52
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.32 £18.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £33.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.21% +10.00% +36.36%
75th Percentile £50.81 £58.95 £61.94
90th Percentile £77.63 £70.00 £78.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £30.00 £22.25
% change year-on-year -25.00% +34.83% +17.41%

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 19 November 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 19 November 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 19 November 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 4,752 £523 -2.74% 5,438
London +1 2,556 £543 -1.36% 2,446
UK excluding London 0 2,313 £500 - 3,586
Work from Home 0 1,828 £513 -2.38% 2,867
North of England -1 594 £475 -5.00% 827
South East -4 555 £500 -4.76% 1,123
Midlands -2 427 £523 -0.24% 567
South West +5 311 £500 - 402
West Midlands +2 309 £550 +2.33% 377
North West -1 290 £463 -7.50% 492
Yorkshire -2 275 £492 -1.70% 242
Scotland +2 252 £500 +11.11% 236
East of England +2 157 £500 +29.03% 308
East Midlands -2 115 £450 -10.00% 187
Wales +2 67 £450 -14.29% 109
North East -5 33 £508 +13.53% 97
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -9 6 - - 60

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
1 255 (4.57%) SharePoint
2 187 (3.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 142 (2.55%) Confluence
4 125 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 87 (1.56%) Apache
6 83 (1.49%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.54%) CMS
8 27 (0.48%) SAS
9 22 (0.39%) OpenStack
10 19 (0.34%) nginx
11 17 (0.30%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.22%) Anypoint
13 10 (0.18%) IIS
13 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.18%) Mule
13 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.16%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
16 7 (0.13%) Camunda
Applications
1 124 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.58%) Microsoft Office
3 37 (0.66%) MS Visio
4 35 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
5 33 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.14%) Trello
9 5 (0.090%) Weka
10 3 (0.054%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.036%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.036%) Windchill
12 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
12 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.018%) Revit
12 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 100 (1.79%) Dynamics CRM
2 53 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 16 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
5 14 (0.25%) Endur
6 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
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 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
10 6 (0.11%) Maximo
10 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
10 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
11 5 (0.090%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.090%) Remedy ITSM
12 4 (0.072%) Fidessa
12 4 (0.072%) Primavera
12 4 (0.072%) SAP MDG
12 4 (0.072%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,051 (36.78%) AWS
2 1,114 (19.97%) Azure DevOps
3 1,089 (19.53%) GCP
4 703 (12.61%) Power Platform
5 637 (11.42%) Microsoft 365
6 621 (11.14%) Entra ID
7 528 (9.47%) GitHub
8 345 (6.19%) Azure Data Factory
9 305 (5.47%) GitHub Actions
10 286 (5.13%) Serverless
11 250 (4.48%) SaaS
12 246 (4.41%) Dynamics 365
13 244 (4.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 215 (3.86%) Azure AKS
15 208 (3.73%) Power Automate
16 205 (3.68%) Snowflake
17 198 (3.55%) PaaS
18 192 (3.44%) Azure Monitor
18 192 (3.44%) Azure Sentinel
19 190 (3.41%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 415 (7.44%) Firewall
2 212 (3.80%) DNS
3 177 (3.17%) VPN
4 153 (2.74%) Network Security
5 116 (2.08%) WAN
6 106 (1.90%) DHCP
7 89 (1.60%) TCP/IP
8 77 (1.38%) LAN
9 68 (1.22%) HTTP
10 64 (1.15%) VLAN
11 59 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
12 55 (0.99%) SD-WAN
13 45 (0.81%) BGP
14 42 (0.75%) SAN
15 36 (0.65%) Internet
16 34 (0.61%) MPLS
17 33 (0.59%) OSPF
17 33 (0.59%) SSL
18 28 (0.50%) Wireless
19 20 (0.36%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 481 (8.62%) Power BI
2 315 (5.65%) SQL Server
3 259 (4.64%) Data Warehouse
4 253 (4.54%) PostgreSQL
5 249 (4.46%) Data Lake
6 185 (3.32%) NoSQL
7 179 (3.21%) Azure SQL Database
8 130 (2.33%) Relational Database
9 111 (1.99%) Metadata
9 111 (1.99%) MongoDB
10 89 (1.60%) MySQL
11 83 (1.49%) Big Data
12 67 (1.20%) Delta Lake
13 64 (1.15%) Tableau
14 62 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 61 (1.09%) BigQuery
16 57 (1.02%) Redis
17 46 (0.82%) Oracle Database
18 43 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
19 39 (0.70%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 490 (8.79%) Git
2 421 (7.55%) JIRA
3 327 (5.86%) Jenkins
4 221 (3.96%) GitLab
5 99 (1.78%) Selenium
6 88 (1.58%) Postman
7 85 (1.52%) SonarQube
8 68 (1.22%) JUnit
9 49 (0.88%) Cypress.io
10 48 (0.86%) JMeter
11 46 (0.82%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.82%) Cucumber
12 45 (0.81%) Maven
13 38 (0.68%) Visual Studio
14 37 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.59%) Gradle
16 32 (0.57%) CircleCI
16 32 (0.57%) ERwin
17 30 (0.54%) Mockito
17 30 (0.54%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,792 (32.13%) Social Skills
2 1,061 (19.02%) Finance
3 642 (11.51%) Public Sector
4 534 (9.58%) Analytical Skills
5 370 (6.63%) Banking
6 196 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
7 130 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 100 (1.79%) Retail
9 98 (1.76%) Investment Banking
10 95 (1.70%) Marketing
11 89 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
12 87 (1.56%) Legal
13 77 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
14 71 (1.27%) Telecoms
15 68 (1.22%) Manufacturing
16 59 (1.06%) Law
17 49 (0.88%) Local Government
18 46 (0.82%) Front Office
19 44 (0.79%) Financial Institution
20 43 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 921 (16.51%) Developer
2 906 (16.25%) Architect
3 556 (9.97%) Senior
4 426 (7.64%) Analyst
5 406 (7.28%) Azure Engineer
6 388 (6.96%) Lead
7 348 (6.24%) Data Engineer
8 310 (5.56%) Solutions Architect
9 271 (4.86%) DevOps Engineer
10 215 (3.86%) Consultant
11 183 (3.28%) Security Engineer
12 173 (3.10%) Senior Developer
13 164 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 161 (2.89%) Azure Architect
15 136 (2.44%) Cloud Engineer
16 132 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
17 122 (2.19%) Data Architect
18 115 (2.06%) Software Engineer
19 114 (2.04%) Business Analyst
20 112 (2.01%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 472 (8.46%) .NET
2 354 (6.35%) REST
3 269 (4.82%) RESTful
4 257 (4.61%) React
5 206 (3.69%) Node.js
6 205 (3.68%) Kafka
7 191 (3.42%) HTML
8 186 (3.34%) Spring
9 177 (3.17%) OAuth
10 165 (2.96%) AngularJS
11 159 (2.85%) Spring Boot
12 156 (2.80%) JSON
13 153 (2.74%) CSS
14 146 (2.62%) PySpark
15 134 (2.40%) SOAP
16 109 (1.95%) PyTorch
17 105 (1.88%) XML
18 102 (1.83%) Web Services
19 100 (1.79%) ARM Templates
19 100 (1.79%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 423 (7.58%) Cloud Native
2 196 (3.51%) Product Ownership
3 185 (3.32%) Onboarding
4 156 (2.80%) Hybrid Cloud
5 144 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
6 133 (2.38%) Data Centre
7 118 (2.12%) Security Posture
8 110 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
9 109 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
10 98 (1.76%) Public Cloud
11 83 (1.49%) Algorithms
12 77 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
13 76 (1.36%) Management Information System
14 69 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
15 57 (1.02%) Replication
16 55 (0.99%) AI Agents
17 54 (0.97%) Data Structures
17 54 (0.97%) Low-Code
18 52 (0.93%) PKI
19 49 (0.88%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 645 (11.57%) Windows
2 377 (6.76%) Linux
3 184 (3.30%) Windows Server
4 109 (1.95%) Unix
5 94 (1.69%) Windows 10
6 60 (1.08%) Android
7 52 (0.93%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.81%) VMS
9 38 (0.68%) Mac OS
10 26 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) Solaris
13 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) CentOS
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
16 5 (0.090%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.072%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,027 (36.35%) DevOps
2 1,636 (29.33%) CI/CD
3 1,498 (26.86%) Agile
4 1,023 (18.34%) Problem-Solving
5 747 (13.39%) Infrastructure as Code
6 735 (13.18%) Analytics
7 658 (11.80%) Migration
8 627 (11.24%) AI
9 550 (9.86%) Business Intelligence
10 539 (9.66%) Stakeholder Management
11 532 (9.54%) Containerisation
12 483 (8.66%) Test Automation
13 479 (8.59%) Microservices
14 470 (8.43%) Data Modelling
15 469 (8.41%) Machine Learning
16 432 (7.75%) Continuous Improvement
17 431 (7.73%) Cybersecurity
18 430 (7.71%) Scrum
18 430 (7.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 394 (7.06%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,416 (25.39%) Python
2 1,208 (21.66%) SQL
3 593 (10.63%) PowerShell
4 558 (10.01%) Java
5 511 (9.16%) C#
6 457 (8.19%) JavaScript
7 287 (5.15%) Bash
8 240 (4.30%) TypeScript
9 149 (2.67%) Bicep
10 93 (1.67%) Go
11 72 (1.29%) Kusto Query Language
12 66 (1.18%) Scala
13 59 (1.06%) PL/SQL
14 58 (1.04%) R
15 52 (0.93%) T-SQL
16 48 (0.86%) C++
17 41 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 35 (0.63%) Shell Script
19 32 (0.57%) Perl
20 30 (0.54%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,136 (20.37%) Security Cleared
2 921 (16.51%) SC Cleared
3 482 (8.64%) Degree
4 330 (5.92%) Azure Certification
5 185 (3.32%) CISSP
6 180 (3.23%) Microsoft Certification
7 170 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 138 (2.47%) AWS Certification
9 134 (2.40%) DV Cleared
10 102 (1.83%) CISM
11 99 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
12 85 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
13 84 (1.51%) Master's Degree
14 48 (0.86%) ISTQB
15 46 (0.82%) CCNP
16 39 (0.70%) OSCP
17 35 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 35 (0.63%) PMI Certification
18 33 (0.59%) MCP
19 29 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 346 (6.20%) GDPR
2 326 (5.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 308 (5.52%) QA
4 263 (4.72%) NIST
5 245 (4.39%) Data Quality
6 142 (2.55%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.47%) NCSC
8 72 (1.29%) PCI DSS
9 56 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
10 55 (0.99%) HIPAA
11 38 (0.68%) SOC 2
12 37 (0.66%) SLA
13 31 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 31 (0.56%) WCAG
14 28 (0.50%) EU AI Act
15 27 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 25 (0.45%) GRC
17 24 (0.43%) PSD2
18 21 (0.38%) NIST 800
19 20 (0.36%) PMO
System Software
1 694 (12.44%) Docker
2 685 (12.28%) Active Directory
3 169 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 75 (1.34%) Hyper-V
5 70 (1.26%) Virtual Machines
6 62 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
7 49 (0.88%) vSphere
8 26 (0.47%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.27%) Squid
11 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
11 13 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 11 (0.20%) Firmware
13 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
13 10 (0.18%) Postfix
13 10 (0.18%) zsh
14 8 (0.14%) KVM
14 8 (0.14%) NFS
14 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.13%) Snort
Systems Management
1 819 (14.69%) Terraform
2 779 (13.97%) Kubernetes
3 302 (5.42%) Microsoft Intune
4 300 (5.38%) Ansible
5 143 (2.56%) Single Sign-On
6 129 (2.31%) SCCM
7 126 (2.26%) Grafana
8 121 (2.17%) Prometheus
9 40 (0.72%) Argo
10 32 (0.57%) Puppet
11 31 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 27 (0.48%) Nessus
13 23 (0.41%) Kibana
14 21 (0.38%) Nmap
15 20 (0.36%) NetBackup
16 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
17 17 (0.30%) Progress Chef
17 17 (0.30%) QRadar
17 17 (0.30%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.30%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,777 (31.86%) Microsoft
2 485 (8.70%) Databricks
3 322 (5.77%) Oracle
4 266 (4.77%) Google
5 226 (4.05%) VMware
6 211 (3.78%) ServiceNow
7 172 (3.08%) Cisco
8 153 (2.74%) SAP
9 138 (2.47%) Splunk
10 127 (2.28%) Salesforce
11 107 (1.92%) OpenAI
12 90 (1.61%) Palo Alto
13 87 (1.56%) Citrix
14 81 (1.45%) CyberArk
15 61 (1.09%) F5
16 59 (1.06%) IBM
16 59 (1.06%) Okta
16 59 (1.06%) Red Hat
17 56 (1.00%) Foundry
18 51 (0.91%) Dynatrace