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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,977 4,703 6,034
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.48% 15.04% 13.88%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.78% 39.77% 42.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,575 3,257 4,341
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £425 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 40 53
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.90 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.19 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% +50.65% -36.57%
75th Percentile £75.88 £77.80 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.50 £100.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £70.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -17.86% +33.33% -12.50%

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 18,222 11,826 14,300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.37% 37.82% 32.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,117 7,916 10,043
10th Percentile £331 £313 £301
25th Percentile £415 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £622 £638
90th Percentile £713 £726 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 611 298 360
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £28.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.93% +27.27% -37.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.37 £71.63 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £18.87 £20.99
% change year-on-year +102.70% -10.08% -18.43%

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 3 July 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 3 July 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 3 July 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 0 6,792 £525 - 3,227
London +1 3,559 £545 -0.95% 1,329
UK excluding London +3 3,453 £510 +2.00% 2,425
Work from Home -1 2,471 £525 +4.90% 1,622
North of England +7 1,000 £503 +4.74% 633
South East +2 841 £515 +3.00% 706
Midlands +3 597 £500 +1.01% 344
North West +8 525 £500 +0.81% 349
West Midlands +1 445 £500 -4.76% 193
South West +7 434 £539 +7.21% 281
Yorkshire +3 395 £505 +6.37% 194
Scotland +12 316 £525 +5.00% 121
East of England +5 179 £550 - 199
East Midlands +4 141 £500 +8.11% 151
Wales 0 111 £425 +5.59% 97
North East +2 93 £525 +5.00% 98
Northern Ireland +15 19 £538 +13.16% 89
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 389 (4.88%) SharePoint
2 259 (3.25%) Confluence
3 190 (2.38%) Microsoft Exchange
4 186 (2.33%) Apache Spark
5 125 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.45%) Apache
7 41 (0.51%) SAS
8 29 (0.36%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 18 (0.23%) OpenStack
11 17 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.13%) Camunda
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.088%) Appian
Applications
1 112 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
3 70 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 29 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.088%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.063%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.063%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.050%) Notion
12 4 (0.050%) Trello
13 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.013%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.013%) Houdini
14 1 (0.013%) InDesign
14 1 (0.013%) NUKE
14 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 106 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.13%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.088%) Maximo
7 7 (0.088%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.088%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.075%) Endur
8 6 (0.075%) Magento
8 6 (0.075%) Shopify
8 6 (0.075%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.063%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.050%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.050%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.050%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.050%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,813 (35.26%) AWS
2 1,623 (20.35%) Azure DevOps
3 1,335 (16.74%) GCP
4 1,010 (12.66%) Power Platform
5 982 (12.31%) Entra ID
6 788 (9.88%) Microsoft 365
7 737 (9.24%) GitHub
8 456 (5.72%) Azure Data Factory
9 452 (5.67%) GitHub Actions
10 373 (4.68%) Serverless
11 315 (3.95%) SaaS
12 306 (3.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 290 (3.64%) Azure AKS
14 264 (3.31%) Azure Monitor
15 263 (3.30%) Power Automate
16 250 (3.13%) PowerApps
17 244 (3.06%) PaaS
18 241 (3.02%) Dynamics 365
19 220 (2.76%) Snowflake
20 213 (2.67%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 476 (5.97%) Firewall
2 357 (4.48%) DNS
3 276 (3.46%) VPN
4 275 (3.45%) Network Security
5 220 (2.76%) WAN
6 180 (2.26%) DHCP
7 135 (1.69%) LAN
8 122 (1.53%) SD-WAN
9 112 (1.40%) TCP/IP
10 104 (1.30%) BGP
11 83 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
12 81 (1.02%) OSPF
13 75 (0.94%) VLAN
14 67 (0.84%) SSL
15 57 (0.71%) Kerberos
16 54 (0.68%) SAN
17 51 (0.64%) IPsec
17 51 (0.64%) Wireless
18 48 (0.60%) VXLAN
19 42 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 676 (8.47%) Power BI
2 458 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 377 (4.73%) Data Warehouse
4 353 (4.43%) Data Lake
5 287 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
6 217 (2.72%) Azure SQL Database
7 210 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 192 (2.41%) Metadata
9 142 (1.78%) Delta Lake
10 132 (1.65%) Relational Database
11 119 (1.49%) Big Data
12 107 (1.34%) MongoDB
13 87 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (0.95%) MySQL
14 76 (0.95%) Tableau
15 70 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
16 66 (0.83%) BigQuery
17 58 (0.73%) Oracle Database
18 55 (0.69%) Star Schema
19 52 (0.65%) Redis
Development Applications
1 614 (7.70%) JIRA
2 594 (7.45%) Git
3 417 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 315 (3.95%) GitLab
5 126 (1.58%) Selenium
6 80 (1.00%) Postman
7 78 (0.98%) JMeter
8 65 (0.81%) JUnit
9 61 (0.76%) Cucumber
10 57 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 44 (0.55%) MLflow
13 43 (0.54%) Cypress.io
13 43 (0.54%) Visual Studio
14 41 (0.51%) WebDriver
15 32 (0.40%) Gatling
15 32 (0.40%) Maven
16 30 (0.38%) LoadRunner
17 27 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
18 25 (0.31%) NUnit
General
1 2,013 (25.24%) Social Skills
2 1,491 (18.69%) Finance
3 892 (11.18%) Public Sector
4 731 (9.16%) Analytical Skills
5 418 (5.24%) Banking
6 228 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 207 (2.59%) Legal
8 168 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 164 (2.06%) Retail
10 100 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
12 70 (0.88%) Investment Banking
13 69 (0.86%) Front Office
13 69 (0.86%) Telecoms
14 67 (0.84%) Financial Institution
14 67 (0.84%) Law
15 66 (0.83%) Manufacturing
16 65 (0.81%) Marketing
17 56 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
18 48 (0.60%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,423 (17.84%) Architect
2 1,028 (12.89%) Developer
3 961 (12.05%) Senior
4 699 (8.76%) Azure Engineer
5 628 (7.87%) Lead
6 601 (7.53%) Data Engineer
7 482 (6.04%) Analyst
8 406 (5.09%) DevOps Engineer
9 404 (5.06%) Solutions Architect
10 333 (4.17%) Consultant
11 293 (3.67%) Cloud Engineer
12 268 (3.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 229 (2.87%) Data Architect
14 221 (2.77%) Azure Architect
15 198 (2.48%) Platform Engineer
16 197 (2.47%) Technical Architect
17 189 (2.37%) Security Engineer
18 177 (2.22%) Business Analyst
19 173 (2.17%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 172 (2.16%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 636 (7.97%) .NET
2 562 (7.05%) REST
3 340 (4.26%) React
4 292 (3.66%) Kafka
5 277 (3.47%) RESTful
6 263 (3.30%) PySpark
7 230 (2.88%) OAuth
8 223 (2.80%) Spring
9 218 (2.73%) Node.js
10 191 (2.39%) Spring Boot
11 184 (2.31%) AngularJS
12 170 (2.13%) JSON
13 150 (1.88%) SAML
14 144 (1.81%) HTML
15 143 (1.79%) LDAP
16 142 (1.78%) OpenID
17 128 (1.60%) .NET Framework
18 124 (1.55%) Middleware
19 121 (1.52%) SOAP
20 120 (1.50%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 846 (10.61%) Cloud Native
2 338 (4.24%) Onboarding
3 319 (4.00%) Product Ownership
4 259 (3.25%) Data Centre
5 231 (2.90%) Distributed Systems
6 228 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
7 218 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
8 185 (2.32%) AI Agents
9 168 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
10 163 (2.04%) Security Posture
11 150 (1.88%) Public Cloud
12 113 (1.42%) Data Structures
13 109 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 107 (1.34%) Management Information System
15 101 (1.27%) Replication
16 89 (1.12%) PKI
17 82 (1.03%) Enterprise Cloud
17 82 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
18 75 (0.94%) Low-Code
19 73 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 913 (11.45%) Windows
2 408 (5.11%) Linux
3 299 (3.75%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.33%) Windows 10
5 77 (0.97%) Unix
6 73 (0.92%) Apple iOS
7 71 (0.89%) Android
8 70 (0.88%) Mac OS
8 70 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 60 (0.75%) VMS
10 37 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
13 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.14%) CentOS
15 10 (0.13%) Debian
16 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.088%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.088%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,947 (36.94%) DevOps
2 2,484 (31.14%) CI/CD
3 1,952 (24.47%) Agile
4 1,198 (15.02%) AI
5 1,190 (14.92%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,148 (14.39%) Migration
7 1,107 (13.88%) Analytics
8 1,068 (13.39%) Problem-Solving
9 943 (11.82%) Stakeholder Management
10 892 (11.18%) Data Modelling
11 806 (10.10%) Continuous Improvement
12 753 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
13 747 (9.36%) Containerisation
14 739 (9.26%) Roadmaps
15 732 (9.18%) Microservices
16 721 (9.04%) Business Intelligence
17 699 (8.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 669 (8.39%) ETL
19 649 (8.14%) Test Automation
20 640 (8.02%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,865 (23.38%) Python
2 1,584 (19.86%) SQL
3 754 (9.45%) PowerShell
4 668 (8.37%) Java
5 628 (7.87%) C#
6 466 (5.84%) JavaScript
7 320 (4.01%) TypeScript
8 284 (3.56%) Bash
9 274 (3.43%) Bicep
10 92 (1.15%) T-SQL
11 91 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 80 (1.00%) Go
13 76 (0.95%) Scala
14 49 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 45 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.55%) R
17 34 (0.43%) Kotlin
18 33 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 25 (0.31%) C++
20 23 (0.29%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,954 (24.50%) Security Cleared
2 1,627 (20.40%) SC Cleared
3 573 (7.18%) Degree
4 405 (5.08%) Azure Certification
5 249 (3.12%) CISSP
6 214 (2.68%) BPSS Clearance
7 211 (2.65%) DV Cleared
8 197 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
8 197 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
9 184 (2.31%) Microsoft Certification
10 178 (2.23%) AWS Certification
11 125 (1.57%) CISM
12 96 (1.20%) CCNP
13 80 (1.00%) PMP
14 77 (0.97%) PMI Certification
15 75 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 64 (0.80%) ISTQB
17 63 (0.79%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
19 51 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 541 (6.78%) Data Quality
2 416 (5.21%) QA
3 342 (4.29%) GDPR
4 285 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 272 (3.41%) NIST
6 177 (2.22%) Accessibility
7 115 (1.44%) NCSC
8 99 (1.24%) SLA
9 77 (0.97%) PCI DSS
10 74 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 65 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 64 (0.80%) WCAG
13 61 (0.76%) GRC
14 43 (0.54%) PMO
15 38 (0.48%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 27 (0.34%) SOC 2
18 22 (0.28%) NIST 800
19 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
20 19 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 945 (11.85%) Active Directory
2 839 (10.52%) Docker
3 223 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 137 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
5 136 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
6 114 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.85%) vSphere
8 51 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.41%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.36%) Firmware
11 25 (0.31%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) IAG
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 6 (0.075%) Ceph
15 6 (0.075%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.063%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.063%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 1,279 (16.03%) Terraform
2 1,151 (14.43%) Kubernetes
3 419 (5.25%) Microsoft Intune
4 374 (4.69%) Ansible
5 223 (2.80%) Grafana
6 186 (2.33%) Prometheus
7 165 (2.07%) Single Sign-On
8 106 (1.33%) SCCM
9 68 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 49 (0.61%) Argo
11 46 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
12 41 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 41 (0.51%) Progress Chef
13 39 (0.49%) Puppet
14 31 (0.39%) Istio
15 23 (0.29%) HP ALM
16 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
16 20 (0.25%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.20%) Packer
18 13 (0.16%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,536 (31.79%) Microsoft
2 747 (9.36%) Databricks
3 372 (4.66%) ServiceNow
4 307 (3.85%) Google
5 303 (3.80%) VMware
6 297 (3.72%) Oracle
7 224 (2.81%) SAP
8 218 (2.73%) Cisco
9 194 (2.43%) OpenAI
10 158 (1.98%) Splunk
11 150 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 143 (1.79%) Palo Alto
13 129 (1.62%) CyberArk
14 127 (1.59%) Foundry
15 108 (1.35%) Okta
16 95 (1.19%) Dynatrace
17 88 (1.10%) Informatica
18 84 (1.05%) Zscaler
19 75 (0.94%) Citrix
20 72 (0.90%) Fortinet