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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,265 5,066 5,533
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.14% 15.29% 14.59%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.73% 40.03% 42.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,775 3,461 3,735
10th Percentile £363 £350 £338
25th Percentile £444 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £517 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.32% -1.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £635
90th Percentile £725 £713 £724
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 189 43 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.33 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £45.20 £32.77 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.93% -6.37% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.00 £65.04 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.50 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £19.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +107.89% -58.86% -

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 18,899 12,656 13,115
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.62% 38.21% 34.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,531 8,445 8,675
10th Percentile £325 £309 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £715 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 636 287 184
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.40 £16.30
25th Percentile £17.71 £18.87 £22.38
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -28.14% +6.06%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.75 £65.04
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.00 £33.93
% change year-on-year +57.89% -44.00% +47.55%

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 -2 7,035 £530 +0.95% 7,060
London 0 3,729 £550 - 3,641
UK excluding London 0 3,449 £510 +2.00% 3,825
Work from Home -2 2,526 £525 +5.00% 3,343
North of England +4 999 £500 +5.26% 1,087
South East +1 900 £530 +5.90% 859
Midlands +1 625 £493 -5.29% 553
North West +4 487 £500 +5.26% 549
West Midlands +2 485 £480 -12.73% 356
Yorkshire +4 425 £500 +2.56% 395
South West +2 398 £550 +7.68% 398
Scotland 0 279 £500 - 368
East of England 0 188 £505 +1.00% 306
East Midlands 0 136 £500 +8.11% 197
North East -1 96 £513 +2.50% 150
Wales 0 83 £450 - 141
Northern Ireland +14 12 £650 - 139
Channel Islands -8 3 £500 -21.88% 2

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
1 469 (5.67%) SharePoint
2 266 (3.22%) Confluence
3 195 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 189 (2.29%) Apache Spark
5 159 (1.92%) Apache Airflow
6 120 (1.45%) Apache
7 36 (0.44%) SAS
8 31 (0.38%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) CMS
10 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.19%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.097%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.085%) Mendix
15 7 (0.085%) Traefik
16 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 129 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 86 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 61 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
4 49 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.57%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.50%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.097%) Trello
9 7 (0.085%) CPLEX
10 6 (0.073%) Revit
10 6 (0.073%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) 1Password
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) Mingle
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Windchill
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 132 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.11%) Cloudability
7 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.097%) Magento
9 7 (0.085%) Shopify
9 7 (0.085%) Teamcenter
10 6 (0.073%) FLEXCUBE
10 6 (0.073%) Maximo
10 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
10 6 (0.073%) Temenos T24
11 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
12 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 2,943 (35.61%) AWS
2 1,751 (21.19%) Azure DevOps
3 1,472 (17.81%) GCP
4 1,148 (13.89%) Entra ID
5 1,069 (12.93%) Power Platform
6 893 (10.80%) Microsoft 365
7 882 (10.67%) GitHub
8 503 (6.09%) GitHub Actions
9 462 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 376 (4.55%) Serverless
11 360 (4.36%) SaaS
12 338 (4.09%) Azure Monitor
13 308 (3.73%) Dynamics 365
14 299 (3.62%) Power Automate
15 298 (3.61%) Snowflake
16 293 (3.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 292 (3.53%) Azure AKS
18 285 (3.45%) PowerApps
19 257 (3.11%) Azure AI
20 250 (3.02%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 526 (6.36%) Firewall
2 430 (5.20%) DNS
3 322 (3.90%) VPN
4 294 (3.56%) Network Security
5 235 (2.84%) DHCP
6 178 (2.15%) WAN
7 170 (2.06%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.32%) BGP
9 104 (1.26%) LAN
10 98 (1.19%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.06%) OSPF
12 84 (1.02%) VLAN
13 77 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
14 68 (0.82%) SSL
14 68 (0.82%) Wireless
15 62 (0.75%) SAN
16 48 (0.58%) HTTP
17 46 (0.56%) IPsec
18 40 (0.48%) Internet
19 39 (0.47%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 687 (8.31%) Power BI
2 475 (5.75%) SQL Server
3 401 (4.85%) Data Warehouse
4 388 (4.69%) Data Lake
5 293 (3.55%) PostgreSQL
6 257 (3.11%) Metadata
7 210 (2.54%) NoSQL
8 207 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
9 149 (1.80%) Relational Database
10 128 (1.55%) Delta Lake
11 117 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 112 (1.36%) MySQL
13 109 (1.32%) MongoDB
14 88 (1.06%) Big Data
15 70 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
16 68 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
16 68 (0.82%) Redis
17 65 (0.79%) BigQuery
18 64 (0.77%) Oracle Database
19 55 (0.67%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 762 (9.22%) Git
2 599 (7.25%) JIRA
3 484 (5.86%) Jenkins
4 372 (4.50%) GitLab
5 140 (1.69%) Selenium
6 90 (1.09%) Postman
7 68 (0.82%) Cucumber
8 66 (0.80%) Cypress.io
9 65 (0.79%) JUnit
10 62 (0.75%) Claude Code
11 58 (0.70%) JMeter
12 55 (0.67%) Maven
13 53 (0.64%) Gradle
14 52 (0.63%) SonarQube
14 52 (0.63%) Visual Studio
15 46 (0.56%) REST Assured
16 36 (0.44%) WebDriver
17 34 (0.41%) Bitbucket
17 34 (0.41%) MLflow
18 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,311 (27.96%) Social Skills
2 1,615 (19.54%) Finance
3 973 (11.77%) Public Sector
4 820 (9.92%) Analytical Skills
5 514 (6.22%) Banking
6 217 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 217 (2.63%) Retail
7 204 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
8 170 (2.06%) Legal
9 115 (1.39%) Manufacturing
10 113 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
11 100 (1.21%) Investment Banking
12 99 (1.20%) Marketing
13 89 (1.08%) Aerospace
13 89 (1.08%) Telecoms
14 82 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
15 75 (0.91%) Military
16 65 (0.79%) Law
17 63 (0.76%) Financial Institution
17 63 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,585 (19.18%) Architect
2 1,055 (12.76%) Senior
3 1,015 (12.28%) Developer
4 714 (8.64%) Azure Engineer
5 699 (8.46%) Lead
6 588 (7.11%) Data Engineer
7 501 (6.06%) Solutions Architect
8 453 (5.48%) DevOps Engineer
9 451 (5.46%) Analyst
10 385 (4.66%) Cloud Engineer
11 329 (3.98%) Consultant
12 317 (3.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 265 (3.21%) Data Architect
14 227 (2.75%) Platform Engineer
15 214 (2.59%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 208 (2.52%) Azure Architect
17 197 (2.38%) Technical Architect
18 195 (2.36%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 195 (2.36%) Security Engineer
19 182 (2.20%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,417 (17.14%) Terraform
2 779 (9.43%) REST
3 637 (7.71%) .NET
4 408 (4.94%) Kafka
5 319 (3.86%) React
6 301 (3.64%) RESTful
7 284 (3.44%) OAuth
8 262 (3.17%) PySpark
9 240 (2.90%) JSON
10 187 (2.26%) Spring
11 181 (2.19%) Spring Boot
12 177 (2.14%) OpenID
13 174 (2.11%) OAuth2
14 167 (2.02%) HTML
15 157 (1.90%) SAML
16 156 (1.89%) Middleware
17 153 (1.85%) AngularJS
18 150 (1.81%) SOAP
19 147 (1.78%) Node.js
20 141 (1.71%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 927 (11.22%) Cloud Native
2 433 (5.24%) Onboarding
3 403 (4.88%) Product Ownership
4 337 (4.08%) Enterprise Software
5 333 (4.03%) AI Agents
6 289 (3.50%) Hybrid Cloud
7 283 (3.42%) Distributed Systems
8 258 (3.12%) Data Centre
9 229 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
10 188 (2.27%) Management Information System
11 184 (2.23%) Security Posture
12 154 (1.86%) Data Structures
13 143 (1.73%) Public Cloud
14 130 (1.57%) PKI
15 115 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
16 111 (1.34%) Enterprise Cloud
17 101 (1.22%) Replication
18 94 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
19 90 (1.09%) CMDB
19 90 (1.09%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 992 (12.00%) Windows
2 540 (6.53%) Linux
3 392 (4.74%) Windows Server
4 155 (1.88%) Windows 10
5 89 (1.08%) Unix
6 86 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 84 (1.02%) Android
8 79 (0.96%) Apple iOS
9 58 (0.70%) Mac OS
10 57 (0.69%) Ubuntu
11 51 (0.62%) VMS
12 27 (0.33%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 6 (0.073%) AIX
17 6 (0.073%) Debian
18 5 (0.060%) Data ONTAP
19 4 (0.048%) Alpine Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,065 (37.08%) DevOps
2 2,706 (32.74%) CI/CD
3 2,075 (25.11%) Agile
4 1,554 (18.80%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,448 (17.52%) AI
6 1,432 (17.33%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,248 (15.10%) Migration
8 1,147 (13.88%) Problem-Solving
9 1,122 (13.58%) Analytics
10 986 (11.93%) Continuous Improvement
11 893 (10.80%) Data Modelling
12 883 (10.68%) Roadmaps
13 777 (9.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 772 (9.34%) Test Automation
15 771 (9.33%) Containerisation
16 763 (9.23%) Technical Leadership
17 749 (9.06%) Business Intelligence
18 733 (8.87%) Data Pipeline
19 732 (8.86%) Microservices
20 682 (8.25%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,937 (23.44%) Python
2 1,588 (19.21%) SQL
3 941 (11.39%) PowerShell
4 681 (8.24%) Java
5 618 (7.48%) C#
6 524 (6.34%) JavaScript
7 434 (5.25%) Bash
8 380 (4.60%) Bicep
9 317 (3.84%) TypeScript
10 104 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.10%) T-SQL
12 75 (0.91%) Go
13 67 (0.81%) Kusto Query Language
14 66 (0.80%) Scala
15 62 (0.75%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.52%) PL/SQL
17 36 (0.44%) R
18 33 (0.40%) Groovy
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 31 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,167 (26.22%) Security Cleared
2 1,738 (21.03%) SC Cleared
3 568 (6.87%) Degree
4 472 (5.71%) Azure Certification
5 324 (3.92%) DV Cleared
6 276 (3.34%) BPSS Clearance
7 267 (3.23%) CISSP
8 252 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 222 (2.69%) AWS Certification
10 191 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 189 (2.29%) Cisco Certification
12 139 (1.68%) CISM
13 94 (1.14%) PMI Certification
14 89 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 89 (1.08%) PMP
15 81 (0.98%) CCNP
16 70 (0.85%) ISTQB
17 65 (0.79%) Master's Degree
18 62 (0.75%) CCSP
19 55 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 621 (7.51%) Data Quality
2 478 (5.78%) QA
3 299 (3.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 285 (3.45%) GDPR
5 281 (3.40%) NIST
6 206 (2.49%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.44%) NCSC
8 109 (1.32%) SLA
9 80 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
10 79 (0.96%) GRC
10 79 (0.96%) WCAG
11 74 (0.90%) PCI DSS
12 51 (0.62%) PMO
13 47 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 47 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 37 (0.45%) SOC 2
15 27 (0.33%) ISO 20022
16 23 (0.28%) HIPAA
17 22 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,033 (12.50%) Active Directory
2 932 (11.28%) Docker
3 249 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.80%) Virtual Machines
5 144 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
6 127 (1.54%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.92%) vSphere
8 48 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.23%) Firmware
11 16 (0.19%) IAG
12 14 (0.17%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 7 (0.085%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.085%) Ceph
17 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.060%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,314 (15.90%) Kubernetes
2 467 (5.65%) Ansible
3 452 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
4 274 (3.32%) Grafana
5 206 (2.49%) Prometheus
6 150 (1.81%) SCCM
7 149 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 64 (0.77%) Argo
9 61 (0.74%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.41%) SCOM
13 33 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
14 31 (0.38%) Istio
15 24 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 21 (0.25%) CASB
17 19 (0.23%) QRadar
18 18 (0.22%) vCenter Server
19 16 (0.19%) Packer
20 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,078 (37.24%) Microsoft
2 869 (10.51%) Databricks
3 414 (5.01%) Google
4 398 (4.82%) ServiceNow
5 362 (4.38%) Oracle
6 358 (4.33%) VMware
7 237 (2.87%) Cisco
8 233 (2.82%) Splunk
9 230 (2.78%) OpenAI
10 223 (2.70%) SAP
11 190 (2.30%) Salesforce
12 156 (1.89%) Palo Alto
13 146 (1.77%) Foundry
14 145 (1.75%) CyberArk
15 142 (1.72%) Dynatrace
16 91 (1.10%) IBM
16 91 (1.10%) Zscaler
17 84 (1.02%) Informatica
18 83 (1.00%) Fortinet
19 79 (0.96%) Okta