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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,551 4,419 5,802
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.49% 15.47% 13.60%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.55% 41.01% 41.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,317 3,110 4,203
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £638
90th Percentile £715 £735 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 32 47
10th Percentile £19.25 £23.92 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £26.68 £22.45
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -43.41%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.49 £60.78
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £51.25
% change year-on-year +53.33% -26.83% -14.97%

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 17,337 10,775 13,871
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.57% 37.71% 32.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,646 7,387 9,882
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.98% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £609 £619 £634
90th Percentile £705 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £491 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.37% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 547 238 344
10th Percentile £15.40 £15.09 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.22 £16.05
Median hourly rate £36.00 £28.00 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +28.57% +31.02% -39.80%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.50 £40.06
90th Percentile £81.10 £72.50 £66.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £20.24 £17.72
% change year-on-year +85.32% +14.19% -33.08%

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 27 May 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 27 May 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 27 May 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 6,395 £525 - 2,798
London +1 3,407 £540 -1.82% 1,114
UK excluding London +2 3,191 £500 - 2,098
Work from Home -1 2,307 £525 +2.44% 1,387
North of England +4 913 £500 +5.26% 530
South East +3 835 £503 +0.50% 624
Midlands -2 505 £493 -0.20% 286
North West +3 461 £500 +5.26% 316
South West +5 401 £525 - 284
Yorkshire +8 381 £500 +11.11% 131
West Midlands 0 368 £500 -4.76% 183
Scotland +11 312 £525 +5.85% 128
East of England +6 151 £550 -5.17% 167
East Midlands +5 127 £463 - 103
Wales 0 101 £400 - 70
North East +3 82 £525 +5.00% 84
Northern Ireland +13 18 £531 +11.84% 43
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 +51.26%

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
1 359 (4.75%) SharePoint
2 211 (2.79%) Confluence
3 200 (2.65%) Apache Spark
4 190 (2.52%) Microsoft Exchange
5 109 (1.44%) Apache
6 106 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.36%) IIS
8 26 (0.34%) SAS
9 18 (0.24%) CMS
10 15 (0.20%) Mendix
10 15 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 15 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
10 15 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
11 12 (0.16%) Appian
11 12 (0.16%) ArcGIS
11 12 (0.16%) Camunda
11 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.13%) nginx
13 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
Applications
1 101 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 85 (1.13%) Microsoft Office
3 63 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.26%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.093%) Spreadsheet
8 6 (0.079%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.066%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.066%) CPLEX
9 5 (0.066%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.066%) Trello
10 4 (0.053%) Acrobat
10 4 (0.053%) Revit
11 3 (0.040%) Notion
11 3 (0.040%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.013%) InDesign
12 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.013%) Sketch
12 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 98 (1.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
5 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 7 (0.093%) NEC Housing
8 6 (0.079%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.079%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.066%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.053%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.053%) Magento
10 4 (0.053%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.053%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.053%) SAP BPC
10 4 (0.053%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 2,560 (33.90%) AWS
2 1,532 (20.29%) Azure DevOps
3 1,299 (17.20%) GCP
4 971 (12.86%) Power Platform
5 912 (12.08%) Entra ID
6 783 (10.37%) Microsoft 365
7 700 (9.27%) GitHub
8 509 (6.74%) Azure Data Factory
9 413 (5.47%) GitHub Actions
10 377 (4.99%) Serverless
11 335 (4.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 293 (3.88%) SaaS
13 274 (3.63%) Azure AKS
14 259 (3.43%) Power Automate
15 244 (3.23%) Dynamics 365
16 242 (3.20%) Azure Monitor
17 233 (3.09%) PaaS
18 226 (2.99%) PowerApps
19 204 (2.70%) Azure Functions
20 196 (2.60%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 447 (5.92%) Firewall
2 324 (4.29%) DNS
3 258 (3.42%) VPN
4 254 (3.36%) Network Security
5 214 (2.83%) WAN
6 170 (2.25%) DHCP
7 140 (1.85%) LAN
8 119 (1.58%) SD-WAN
9 94 (1.24%) TCP/IP
10 88 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
11 79 (1.05%) BGP
12 74 (0.98%) VLAN
13 68 (0.90%) Kerberos
14 67 (0.89%) OSPF
15 52 (0.69%) SSL
16 50 (0.66%) SAN
17 48 (0.64%) VXLAN
18 43 (0.57%) Wireless
19 42 (0.56%) IPsec
20 37 (0.49%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 642 (8.50%) Power BI
2 443 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 376 (4.98%) Data Lake
4 368 (4.87%) Data Warehouse
5 251 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
6 242 (3.20%) Azure SQL Database
7 200 (2.65%) NoSQL
8 179 (2.37%) Metadata
9 154 (2.04%) Delta Lake
10 121 (1.60%) Big Data
11 113 (1.50%) Relational Database
12 95 (1.26%) MongoDB
12 95 (1.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 76 (1.01%) Tableau
14 74 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
15 68 (0.90%) MySQL
16 66 (0.87%) BigQuery
16 66 (0.87%) Oracle Database
17 54 (0.72%) Star Schema
18 51 (0.68%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 542 (7.18%) Git
2 531 (7.03%) JIRA
3 383 (5.07%) Jenkins
4 314 (4.16%) GitLab
5 116 (1.54%) Selenium
6 81 (1.07%) Postman
7 71 (0.94%) JMeter
8 61 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 56 (0.74%) JUnit
10 53 (0.70%) REST Assured
11 50 (0.66%) MLflow
12 47 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 39 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 38 (0.50%) Cypress.io
15 33 (0.44%) WebDriver
16 32 (0.42%) Artifactory
16 32 (0.42%) Gatling
17 30 (0.40%) Maven
18 26 (0.34%) NUnit
19 25 (0.33%) ERwin
General
1 1,909 (25.28%) Social Skills
2 1,359 (18.00%) Finance
3 818 (10.83%) Public Sector
4 671 (8.89%) Analytical Skills
5 386 (5.11%) Banking
6 209 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
7 196 (2.60%) Legal
8 118 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 114 (1.51%) Retail
10 93 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 79 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
12 74 (0.98%) Financial Institution
13 68 (0.90%) Investment Banking
13 68 (0.90%) Marketing
14 63 (0.83%) Front Office
15 62 (0.82%) Law
16 60 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
17 56 (0.74%) Telecoms
18 46 (0.61%) Military
19 44 (0.58%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,317 (17.44%) Architect
2 949 (12.57%) Developer
3 890 (11.79%) Senior
4 677 (8.97%) Azure Engineer
5 604 (8.00%) Data Engineer
6 571 (7.56%) Lead
7 468 (6.20%) Analyst
8 412 (5.46%) DevOps Engineer
9 347 (4.60%) Solutions Architect
10 313 (4.15%) Consultant
11 253 (3.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 248 (3.28%) Cloud Engineer
13 210 (2.78%) Azure Architect
14 205 (2.71%) Data Architect
15 196 (2.60%) Security Engineer
16 174 (2.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 174 (2.30%) Platform Engineer
17 173 (2.29%) Technical Architect
18 166 (2.20%) Project Manager
19 157 (2.08%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 609 (8.07%) .NET
2 513 (6.79%) REST
3 340 (4.50%) React
4 273 (3.62%) PySpark
5 266 (3.52%) Kafka
6 242 (3.20%) RESTful
7 216 (2.86%) OAuth
8 215 (2.85%) Node.js
9 191 (2.53%) Spring
10 182 (2.41%) AngularJS
11 176 (2.33%) LDAP
12 163 (2.16%) Spring Boot
13 158 (2.09%) JSON
14 141 (1.87%) HTML
15 138 (1.83%) OpenID
16 136 (1.80%) SAML
16 136 (1.80%) SOAP
17 133 (1.76%) Middleware
18 119 (1.58%) CSS
19 110 (1.46%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 732 (9.69%) Cloud Native
2 309 (4.09%) Onboarding
3 278 (3.68%) Product Ownership
4 235 (3.11%) Data Centre
5 213 (2.82%) Hybrid Cloud
6 187 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
7 177 (2.34%) Distributed Systems
8 168 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
9 162 (2.15%) Security Posture
10 158 (2.09%) Public Cloud
11 147 (1.95%) AI Agents
12 100 (1.32%) Data Structures
13 96 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
14 90 (1.19%) Replication
15 80 (1.06%) Low-Code
15 80 (1.06%) Management Information System
16 79 (1.05%) PKI
17 67 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
18 64 (0.85%) Self-Motivation
19 62 (0.82%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 840 (11.12%) Windows
2 384 (5.09%) Linux
3 253 (3.35%) Windows Server
4 125 (1.66%) Windows 10
5 74 (0.98%) Mac OS
6 73 (0.97%) Unix
7 72 (0.95%) Apple iOS
8 68 (0.90%) VMS
9 61 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 56 (0.74%) Android
11 33 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
12 25 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.15%) CentOS
15 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
17 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.093%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.093%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,815 (37.28%) DevOps
2 2,340 (30.99%) CI/CD
3 1,751 (23.19%) Agile
4 1,090 (14.44%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,068 (14.14%) Analytics
6 1,058 (14.01%) Problem-Solving
7 1,050 (13.91%) AI
8 1,047 (13.87%) Migration
9 861 (11.40%) Data Modelling
10 763 (10.10%) Stakeholder Management
11 719 (9.52%) Continuous Improvement
12 717 (9.50%) Data Pipeline
13 697 (9.23%) Business Intelligence
14 683 (9.05%) ETL
15 673 (8.91%) Containerisation
16 655 (8.67%) Microservices
17 651 (8.62%) Roadmaps
18 620 (8.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 599 (7.93%) Data Engineering
20 581 (7.69%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,776 (23.52%) Python
2 1,569 (20.78%) SQL
3 751 (9.95%) PowerShell
4 616 (8.16%) C#
5 604 (8.00%) Java
6 452 (5.99%) JavaScript
7 283 (3.75%) TypeScript
8 251 (3.32%) Bash
8 251 (3.32%) Bicep
9 94 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 91 (1.21%) Scala
11 88 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 78 (1.03%) Go
13 55 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
14 49 (0.65%) Shell Script
15 44 (0.58%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.54%) R
17 31 (0.41%) C++
18 24 (0.32%) Kotlin
19 17 (0.23%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,846 (24.45%) Security Cleared
2 1,566 (20.74%) SC Cleared
3 521 (6.90%) Degree
4 384 (5.09%) Azure Certification
5 219 (2.90%) CISSP
6 188 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
7 182 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
8 180 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
9 168 (2.22%) DV Cleared
10 155 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
11 138 (1.83%) AWS Certification
12 126 (1.67%) CISM
13 87 (1.15%) CCNP
14 74 (0.98%) PMP
15 70 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 69 (0.91%) PMI Certification
17 61 (0.81%) Master's Degree
18 59 (0.78%) TOGAF Certification
19 56 (0.74%) ISTQB
20 47 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 527 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 396 (5.24%) QA
3 351 (4.65%) GDPR
4 284 (3.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 265 (3.51%) NIST
6 144 (1.91%) Accessibility
7 106 (1.40%) NCSC
8 89 (1.18%) SLA
9 84 (1.11%) PCI DSS
10 70 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 64 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 52 (0.69%) GRC
13 51 (0.68%) WCAG
14 50 (0.66%) PMO
15 36 (0.48%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 25 (0.33%) NIST 800
17 24 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 18 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 16 (0.21%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 918 (12.16%) Active Directory
2 770 (10.20%) Docker
3 213 (2.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 126 (1.67%) Virtual Desktop
5 118 (1.56%) Hyper-V
6 109 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
7 66 (0.87%) vSphere
8 42 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.40%) Firmware
10 27 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.28%) NFS
12 17 (0.23%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.11%) Varnish
15 7 (0.093%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.079%) Ceph
16 6 (0.079%) HDFS
16 6 (0.079%) KVM
16 6 (0.079%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,178 (15.60%) Terraform
2 1,054 (13.96%) Kubernetes
3 381 (5.05%) Microsoft Intune
4 355 (4.70%) Ansible
5 211 (2.79%) Grafana
6 183 (2.42%) Prometheus
7 166 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
8 109 (1.44%) SCCM
9 73 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.52%) Argo
11 37 (0.49%) Puppet
12 36 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 35 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
14 32 (0.42%) Istio
15 29 (0.38%) Progress Chef
16 22 (0.29%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
18 18 (0.24%) vCenter Server
19 17 (0.23%) linkerd
20 15 (0.20%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,399 (31.77%) Microsoft
2 765 (10.13%) Databricks
3 318 (4.21%) ServiceNow
4 296 (3.92%) VMware
5 292 (3.87%) Google
6 288 (3.81%) Oracle
7 216 (2.86%) SAP
8 209 (2.77%) Cisco
9 188 (2.49%) OpenAI
10 167 (2.21%) Splunk
11 142 (1.88%) CyberArk
12 139 (1.84%) Palo Alto
13 121 (1.60%) Salesforce
14 108 (1.43%) Foundry
15 101 (1.34%) Okta
16 79 (1.05%) Dynatrace
17 77 (1.02%) Citrix
18 72 (0.95%) Informatica
19 71 (0.94%) Zscaler
20 67 (0.89%) BeyondTrust