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

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,924 4,803 6,157
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.02% 15.26% 14.25%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.16% 41.65% 42.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,192 3,225 4,492
10th Percentile £350 £347 £356
25th Percentile £419 £420 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -3.08%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -0.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 45 79
10th Percentile £16.25 £20.10 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.60 £23.59 £23.52
Median hourly rate £54.50 £28.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +91.23% -38.28% -1.74%
75th Percentile £69.69 £46.18 £62.75
90th Percentile £93.75 £72.50 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.50 £28.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +101.79% -39.37% -16.04%

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 14,050 11,532 14,608
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.00% 36.63% 33.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,672 7,661 10,469
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £730 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £498 £500
% change year-on-year -4.67% -0.35% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 173 276
10th Percentile £14.25 £17.44 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% +10.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £57.50 £43.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £26.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +3.77% +26.19% +7.69%

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 January 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 19 January 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 19 January 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 5,022 £518 -1.43% 3,789
London 0 2,715 £539 -2.05% 897
UK excluding London 0 2,405 £498 -0.50% 3,525
Work from Home -2 1,827 £513 -1.63% 1,995
North of England 0 654 £460 +1.32% 745
South East -3 619 £492 -8.47% 1,134
Midlands -1 433 £525 +3.70% 443
West Midlands +1 328 £550 - 194
North West -1 318 £450 - 365
South West +3 301 £512 -2.57% 411
Yorkshire 0 296 £475 - 264
Scotland +8 272 £550 +15.79% 184
East of England 0 134 £500 +15.94% 464
East Midlands -3 104 £437 -2.89% 240
Wales -7 54 £422 -15.60% 176
North East -6 44 £475 -2.56% 123
Northern Ireland 0 6 - - 61
Channel Islands +3 2 £600 +101.68% 1

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
1 270 (4.56%) SharePoint
2 191 (3.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 143 (2.41%) Confluence
4 133 (2.25%) Apache Spark
5 80 (1.35%) Apache
6 73 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.46%) SAS
8 23 (0.39%) CMS
8 23 (0.39%) OpenStack
9 20 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 14 (0.24%) IIS
10 14 (0.24%) nginx
11 13 (0.22%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.19%) Appian
12 11 (0.19%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.17%) GeoServer
13 10 (0.17%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.15%) Camunda
14 9 (0.15%) Mendix
Applications
1 132 (2.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 100 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 43 (0.73%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 9 (0.15%) Trello
8 5 (0.084%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.084%) Weka
9 3 (0.051%) Adobe XD
9 3 (0.051%) PTC Creo
10 2 (0.034%) Windchill
11 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.017%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.017%) Revit
11 1 (0.017%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.017%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.017%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 101 (1.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 70 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
4 9 (0.15%) Maximo
4 9 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 9 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
4 9 (0.15%) Teamcenter
5 8 (0.14%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.14%) NetSuite
5 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.12%) Endur
7 6 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.10%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.10%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.084%) Dynamics NAV
8 5 (0.084%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.084%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.068%) Oracle 11i
9 4 (0.068%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 2,113 (35.67%) AWS
2 1,169 (19.73%) Azure DevOps
3 1,167 (19.70%) GCP
4 789 (13.32%) Power Platform
5 683 (11.53%) Microsoft 365
6 665 (11.23%) Entra ID
7 604 (10.20%) GitHub
8 413 (6.97%) Azure Data Factory
9 366 (6.18%) Serverless
10 357 (6.03%) GitHub Actions
11 282 (4.76%) Dynamics 365
12 268 (4.52%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 244 (4.12%) Power Automate
14 243 (4.10%) SaaS
15 232 (3.92%) Azure AKS
16 218 (3.68%) Azure Functions
17 216 (3.65%) Azure Monitor
18 211 (3.56%) Snowflake
19 208 (3.51%) Azure Logic Apps
20 194 (3.27%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 412 (6.95%) Firewall
2 246 (4.15%) DNS
3 194 (3.27%) VPN
4 172 (2.90%) Network Security
5 147 (2.48%) WAN
6 139 (2.35%) DHCP
7 99 (1.67%) TCP/IP
8 91 (1.54%) LAN
9 75 (1.27%) SD-WAN
9 75 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
10 62 (1.05%) HTTP
10 62 (1.05%) VLAN
11 43 (0.73%) Kerberos
12 36 (0.61%) BGP
12 36 (0.61%) Wireless
13 34 (0.57%) Internet
14 27 (0.46%) SSL
15 26 (0.44%) MPLS
16 25 (0.42%) SAN
17 24 (0.41%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 552 (9.32%) Power BI
2 344 (5.81%) SQL Server
3 294 (4.96%) Data Lake
4 289 (4.88%) Data Warehouse
5 231 (3.90%) PostgreSQL
6 207 (3.49%) Azure SQL Database
7 180 (3.04%) NoSQL
8 129 (2.18%) Metadata
9 124 (2.09%) Relational Database
10 92 (1.55%) Delta Lake
11 91 (1.54%) MongoDB
12 84 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.25%) MySQL
14 67 (1.13%) Oracle Database
15 66 (1.11%) Big Data
16 60 (1.01%) Tableau
17 56 (0.95%) BigQuery
18 49 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
19 46 (0.78%) Redis
20 45 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 467 (7.88%) Git
2 422 (7.12%) JIRA
3 349 (5.89%) Jenkins
4 255 (4.30%) GitLab
5 104 (1.76%) Selenium
6 89 (1.50%) Postman
7 62 (1.05%) JUnit
8 60 (1.01%) Cucumber
8 60 (1.01%) SonarQube
9 50 (0.84%) JMeter
10 48 (0.81%) Cypress.io
11 38 (0.64%) MLflow
11 38 (0.64%) Visual Studio
12 37 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
12 37 (0.62%) REST Assured
13 33 (0.56%) Maven
14 31 (0.52%) Bitbucket
15 28 (0.47%) Artifactory
15 28 (0.47%) ERwin
16 27 (0.46%) Gradle
General
1 1,865 (31.48%) Social Skills
2 1,062 (17.93%) Finance
3 703 (11.87%) Public Sector
4 572 (9.66%) Analytical Skills
5 350 (5.91%) Banking
6 194 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
7 114 (1.92%) Legal
8 113 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 101 (1.70%) Influencing Skills
10 92 (1.55%) Marketing
11 89 (1.50%) Retail
12 82 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
13 73 (1.23%) Investment Banking
14 57 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
14 57 (0.96%) Telecoms
15 54 (0.91%) Manufacturing
16 53 (0.89%) Financial Institution
17 51 (0.86%) Law
18 41 (0.69%) Local Government
18 41 (0.69%) Military
Job Titles
1 951 (16.05%) Architect
2 848 (14.31%) Developer
3 616 (10.40%) Senior
4 461 (7.78%) Azure Engineer
5 460 (7.77%) Data Engineer
6 414 (6.99%) Lead
7 397 (6.70%) Analyst
8 326 (5.50%) DevOps Engineer
9 303 (5.11%) Solutions Architect
10 248 (4.19%) Consultant
11 173 (2.92%) Security Engineer
12 169 (2.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 154 (2.60%) Senior Developer
14 151 (2.55%) Cloud Engineer
15 141 (2.38%) Azure Architect
16 134 (2.26%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 134 (2.26%) Platform Engineer
17 120 (2.03%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 119 (2.01%) Azure Data Engineer
19 118 (1.99%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 481 (8.12%) .NET
2 411 (6.94%) REST
3 260 (4.39%) React
4 237 (4.00%) RESTful
5 221 (3.73%) Kafka
5 221 (3.73%) PySpark
6 199 (3.36%) Node.js
7 190 (3.21%) Spring
8 179 (3.02%) OAuth
9 168 (2.84%) Spring Boot
10 162 (2.73%) HTML
11 157 (2.65%) AngularJS
12 146 (2.46%) JSON
13 144 (2.43%) SOAP
14 136 (2.30%) CSS
15 131 (2.21%) PyTorch
16 127 (2.14%) LDAP
17 123 (2.08%) TensorFlow
18 106 (1.79%) Middleware
19 105 (1.77%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 520 (8.78%) Cloud Native
2 219 (3.70%) Onboarding
3 201 (3.39%) Product Ownership
4 166 (2.80%) Hybrid Cloud
5 165 (2.79%) Enterprise Software
6 156 (2.63%) Security Posture
7 145 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
8 136 (2.30%) Data Centre
9 115 (1.94%) Public Cloud
10 106 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
11 80 (1.35%) AI Agents
12 74 (1.25%) Management Information System
12 74 (1.25%) Replication
13 67 (1.13%) Algorithms
14 66 (1.11%) Data Structures
15 63 (1.06%) Low-Code
16 61 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
17 54 (0.91%) CMDB
17 54 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
17 54 (0.91%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 689 (11.63%) Windows
2 379 (6.40%) Linux
3 196 (3.31%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.01%) Windows 10
5 105 (1.77%) Unix
6 56 (0.95%) VMS
7 47 (0.79%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.76%) Android
9 43 (0.73%) Mac OS
10 36 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.34%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.17%) CentOS
15 9 (0.15%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.15%) Solaris
16 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.084%) AIX
19 4 (0.068%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,158 (36.43%) DevOps
2 1,774 (29.95%) CI/CD
3 1,470 (24.81%) Agile
4 1,123 (18.96%) Problem-Solving
5 867 (14.64%) Analytics
6 784 (13.23%) Infrastructure as Code
7 759 (12.81%) AI
8 686 (11.58%) Migration
9 627 (10.58%) Business Intelligence
10 605 (10.21%) Stakeholder Management
11 599 (10.11%) Containerisation
12 555 (9.37%) Data Modelling
13 521 (8.79%) Continuous Improvement
14 518 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 501 (8.46%) Machine Learning
16 491 (8.29%) Microservices
17 488 (8.24%) ETL
18 484 (8.17%) Test Automation
19 477 (8.05%) Data Pipeline
20 429 (7.24%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,534 (25.89%) Python
2 1,297 (21.89%) SQL
3 631 (10.65%) PowerShell
4 543 (9.17%) Java
5 502 (8.47%) C#
6 451 (7.61%) JavaScript
7 265 (4.47%) Bash
8 241 (4.07%) TypeScript
9 175 (2.95%) Bicep
10 86 (1.45%) Go
11 84 (1.42%) Scala
12 80 (1.35%) PL/SQL
13 69 (1.16%) Kusto Query Language
14 62 (1.05%) T-SQL
15 56 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 51 (0.86%) R
17 50 (0.84%) Shell Script
18 39 (0.66%) C++
19 35 (0.59%) PHP
20 24 (0.41%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,385 (23.38%) Security Cleared
2 1,147 (19.36%) SC Cleared
3 493 (8.32%) Degree
4 337 (5.69%) Azure Certification
5 187 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
6 160 (2.70%) CISSP
6 160 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
7 125 (2.11%) DV Cleared
8 123 (2.08%) AWS Certification
9 101 (1.70%) CISM
10 97 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
11 92 (1.55%) Cisco Certification
12 86 (1.45%) Master's Degree
13 49 (0.83%) PMI Certification
14 44 (0.74%) CCNP
14 44 (0.74%) MCP
14 44 (0.74%) PMP
15 43 (0.73%) ISTQB
15 43 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
16 31 (0.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 357 (6.03%) GDPR
2 354 (5.98%) Data Quality
3 324 (5.47%) QA
4 308 (5.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 230 (3.88%) NIST
6 124 (2.09%) Accessibility
7 85 (1.43%) NCSC
8 76 (1.28%) PCI DSS
9 52 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
10 50 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 43 (0.73%) SLA
12 38 (0.64%) SOC 2
13 37 (0.62%) WCAG
14 36 (0.61%) HIPAA
15 34 (0.57%) PMO
16 30 (0.51%) PSD2
17 28 (0.47%) EU AI Act
18 26 (0.44%) GRC
19 22 (0.37%) ISO 20022
20 19 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 762 (12.86%) Active Directory
2 756 (12.76%) Docker
3 184 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (1.52%) Hyper-V
5 69 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
6 67 (1.13%) Virtual Desktop
7 55 (0.93%) vSphere
8 20 (0.34%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.24%) Squid
10 12 (0.20%) DFS Replication
11 11 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
12 10 (0.17%) KVM
12 10 (0.17%) Postfix
12 10 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 10 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
13 9 (0.15%) Dovecot
14 8 (0.14%) Firmware
15 7 (0.12%) NFS
15 7 (0.12%) Snort
15 7 (0.12%) zsh
Systems Management
1 898 (15.16%) Terraform
2 860 (14.52%) Kubernetes
3 307 (5.18%) Ansible
4 306 (5.17%) Microsoft Intune
5 151 (2.55%) Grafana
6 149 (2.52%) Single Sign-On
7 136 (2.30%) SCCM
8 134 (2.26%) Prometheus
9 47 (0.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.74%) Argo
11 34 (0.57%) Puppet
12 26 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 24 (0.41%) Kibana
13 24 (0.41%) vRealize
14 23 (0.39%) Nessus
15 22 (0.37%) Istio
16 21 (0.35%) Progress Chef
17 18 (0.30%) Nmap
17 18 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
17 18 (0.30%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,893 (31.95%) Microsoft
2 594 (10.03%) Databricks
3 355 (5.99%) Oracle
4 306 (5.17%) Google
5 256 (4.32%) ServiceNow
6 242 (4.09%) VMware
7 172 (2.90%) Cisco
8 165 (2.79%) SAP
9 161 (2.72%) Splunk
10 142 (2.40%) OpenAI
11 116 (1.96%) Salesforce
12 108 (1.82%) CyberArk
13 103 (1.74%) Palo Alto
14 68 (1.15%) Okta
15 67 (1.13%) Red Hat
16 66 (1.11%) Foundry
17 65 (1.10%) Citrix
18 62 (1.05%) Dynatrace
19 61 (1.03%) BeyondTrust
20 60 (1.01%) IBM