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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,163 4,831 6,007
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.50% 14.85% 14.24%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.87% 39.74% 42.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,713 3,355 4,316
10th Percentile £370 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £524 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.19% -0.19% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 37 46
10th Percentile £18.50 £25.60 £17.80
25th Percentile £28.50 £29.25 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £48.09
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +11.25% -19.72%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.70 £63.78
90th Percentile £95.94 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £52.75
% change year-on-year -11.54% +23.22% -6.22%

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 18,606 12,157 14,075
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.33% 37.38% 33.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,329 8,147 9,841
10th Percentile £329 £313 £310
25th Percentile £419 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.60% -4.67% -3.67%
75th Percentile £619 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £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 611 312 333
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.10 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.41 £16.06
Median hourly rate £36.71 £27.63 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.86% +25.59% -37.14%
75th Percentile £70.00 £47.50 £50.00
90th Percentile £83.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £20.00
% change year-on-year +98.73% -5.65% -25.23%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 6,947 £525 - 2,340
London +1 3,622 £550 - 944
UK excluding London +3 3,538 £505 +1.00% 1,831
Work from Home -1 2,541 £525 +4.90% 1,064
North of England +7 1,011 £500 +2.04% 474
South East +2 873 £525 +5.00% 592
Midlands +3 623 £500 +1.01% 252
North West +7 530 £503 +0.50% 240
West Midlands +1 468 £499 -5.00% 158
South West +7 450 £540 +7.95% 210
Yorkshire +3 404 £500 +5.26% 159
Scotland +9 312 £500 +1.94% 94
East of England +6 189 £550 -2.22% 156
East Midlands +3 144 £488 +5.41% 94
Wales 0 104 £425 -4.60% 73
North East +4 90 £525 +5.00% 83
Northern Ireland +13 19 £538 +13.16% 24
Channel Islands +3 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
1 408 (5.00%) SharePoint
2 276 (3.38%) Confluence
3 194 (2.38%) Microsoft Exchange
4 184 (2.25%) Apache Spark
5 127 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.41%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 34 (0.42%) IIS
9 20 (0.25%) CMS
10 19 (0.23%) OpenStack
11 18 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 12 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 10 (0.12%) Camunda
14 10 (0.12%) nginx
15 8 (0.098%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.098%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.086%) Mendix
17 6 (0.074%) Appian
Applications
1 123 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 81 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
3 75 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.38%) Chatbot
5 31 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
8 9 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.098%) Revit
10 4 (0.049%) Notion
11 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.037%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.025%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.025%) Houdini
12 2 (0.025%) NUKE
12 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.012%) InDesign
13 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 113 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.098%) Magento
7 8 (0.098%) Maximo
7 8 (0.098%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.098%) Teamcenter
8 7 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.074%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.074%) Shopify
10 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) Endur
10 5 (0.061%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
11 4 (0.049%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,896 (35.48%) AWS
2 1,682 (20.61%) Azure DevOps
3 1,389 (17.02%) GCP
4 1,026 (12.57%) Power Platform
5 1,021 (12.51%) Entra ID
6 801 (9.81%) Microsoft 365
7 785 (9.62%) GitHub
8 466 (5.71%) GitHub Actions
9 457 (5.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 352 (4.31%) Serverless
11 329 (4.03%) SaaS
12 317 (3.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 290 (3.55%) Azure AKS
14 276 (3.38%) Azure Monitor
15 271 (3.32%) Power Automate
16 259 (3.17%) PowerApps
17 257 (3.15%) PaaS
18 250 (3.06%) Dynamics 365
19 228 (2.79%) Azure AI
20 214 (2.62%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 502 (6.15%) Firewall
2 375 (4.59%) DNS
3 296 (3.63%) VPN
4 277 (3.39%) Network Security
5 201 (2.46%) WAN
6 186 (2.28%) DHCP
7 140 (1.72%) TCP/IP
8 132 (1.62%) LAN
9 115 (1.41%) BGP
10 105 (1.29%) SD-WAN
11 90 (1.10%) OSPF
12 86 (1.05%) VLAN
13 84 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 70 (0.86%) SSL
15 57 (0.70%) IPsec
15 57 (0.70%) SAN
16 54 (0.66%) Wireless
17 50 (0.61%) Kerberos
18 46 (0.56%) VXLAN
19 45 (0.55%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 699 (8.56%) Power BI
2 462 (5.66%) SQL Server
3 392 (4.80%) Data Warehouse
4 359 (4.40%) Data Lake
5 308 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
6 218 (2.67%) Azure SQL Database
7 211 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 202 (2.47%) Metadata
9 140 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 130 (1.59%) Delta Lake
11 121 (1.48%) Big Data
12 106 (1.30%) MongoDB
13 98 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 84 (1.03%) MySQL
15 71 (0.87%) Tableau
16 67 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
17 65 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.71%) Oracle Database
19 56 (0.69%) Redis
19 56 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 642 (7.86%) JIRA
2 629 (7.71%) Git
3 428 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 313 (3.83%) GitLab
5 129 (1.58%) Selenium
6 76 (0.93%) Postman
7 73 (0.89%) JMeter
8 69 (0.85%) JUnit
9 57 (0.70%) Cucumber
10 53 (0.65%) Cypress.io
11 52 (0.64%) REST Assured
12 49 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
14 44 (0.54%) WebDriver
15 43 (0.53%) Maven
16 41 (0.50%) MLflow
17 34 (0.42%) Gradle
18 33 (0.40%) Team Foundation Server
19 29 (0.36%) Gatling
20 26 (0.32%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,076 (25.43%) Social Skills
2 1,519 (18.61%) Finance
3 947 (11.60%) Public Sector
4 780 (9.56%) Analytical Skills
5 423 (5.18%) Banking
6 241 (2.95%) Documentation Skills
7 194 (2.38%) Legal
8 176 (2.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 172 (2.11%) Retail
10 100 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 90 (1.10%) Telecoms
12 89 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
13 72 (0.88%) Law
13 72 (0.88%) Manufacturing
14 69 (0.85%) Marketing
15 66 (0.81%) Financial Institution
15 66 (0.81%) Front Office
15 66 (0.81%) Investment Banking
16 55 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
17 53 (0.65%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,443 (17.68%) Architect
2 1,068 (13.08%) Developer
3 988 (12.10%) Senior
4 718 (8.80%) Azure Engineer
5 657 (8.05%) Lead
6 599 (7.34%) Data Engineer
7 501 (6.14%) Analyst
8 422 (5.17%) DevOps Engineer
9 416 (5.10%) Solutions Architect
10 324 (3.97%) Consultant
11 310 (3.80%) Cloud Engineer
12 284 (3.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 236 (2.89%) Data Architect
14 219 (2.68%) Azure Architect
15 206 (2.52%) Platform Engineer
16 200 (2.45%) Technical Architect
17 189 (2.32%) Project Manager
18 186 (2.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 185 (2.27%) Business Analyst
19 185 (2.27%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 641 (7.85%) .NET
2 596 (7.30%) REST
3 347 (4.25%) React
4 312 (3.82%) Kafka
5 294 (3.60%) RESTful
6 250 (3.06%) PySpark
7 237 (2.90%) OAuth
8 231 (2.83%) Spring
9 214 (2.62%) Node.js
10 197 (2.41%) Spring Boot
11 193 (2.36%) JSON
12 185 (2.27%) AngularJS
13 158 (1.94%) HTML
14 147 (1.80%) SAML
15 143 (1.75%) OpenID
16 133 (1.63%) LDAP
17 132 (1.62%) Middleware
18 131 (1.60%) OAuth2
19 130 (1.59%) .NET Framework
20 126 (1.54%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 859 (10.52%) Cloud Native
2 359 (4.40%) Onboarding
3 341 (4.18%) Product Ownership
4 267 (3.27%) Data Centre
5 257 (3.15%) Distributed Systems
6 234 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
7 233 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
8 212 (2.60%) AI Agents
9 182 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
10 162 (1.98%) Security Posture
11 144 (1.76%) Public Cloud
12 126 (1.54%) Data Structures
13 117 (1.43%) Management Information System
14 114 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
15 108 (1.32%) Replication
16 98 (1.20%) PKI
17 95 (1.16%) Enterprise Cloud
18 89 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
19 77 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
20 73 (0.89%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 923 (11.31%) Windows
2 433 (5.30%) Linux
3 294 (3.60%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 77 (0.94%) Android
5 77 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 75 (0.92%) Apple iOS
6 75 (0.92%) Unix
7 71 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 58 (0.71%) VMS
9 41 (0.50%) Ubuntu
10 26 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
11 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
12 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.13%) CentOS
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 8 (0.098%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.074%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,031 (37.13%) DevOps
2 2,551 (31.25%) CI/CD
3 2,059 (25.22%) Agile
4 1,247 (15.28%) AI
5 1,224 (14.99%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,195 (14.64%) Migration
7 1,118 (13.70%) Analytics
8 1,080 (13.23%) Problem-Solving
9 1,044 (12.79%) Stakeholder Management
10 915 (11.21%) Data Modelling
11 861 (10.55%) Continuous Improvement
12 767 (9.40%) Data Pipeline
12 767 (9.40%) Microservices
13 758 (9.29%) Containerisation
14 755 (9.25%) Roadmaps
15 745 (9.13%) Business Intelligence
16 736 (9.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 673 (8.24%) ETL
18 671 (8.22%) Test Automation
19 649 (7.95%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,890 (23.15%) Python
2 1,596 (19.55%) SQL
3 786 (9.63%) PowerShell
4 692 (8.48%) Java
5 621 (7.61%) C#
6 472 (5.78%) JavaScript
7 320 (3.92%) Bash
8 316 (3.87%) TypeScript
9 281 (3.44%) Bicep
10 98 (1.20%) T-SQL
11 94 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 82 (1.00%) Go
13 69 (0.85%) Scala
14 56 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
15 50 (0.61%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.53%) R
17 40 (0.49%) PL/SQL
18 39 (0.48%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.33%) Groovy
20 25 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,035 (24.93%) Security Cleared
2 1,681 (20.59%) SC Cleared
3 573 (7.02%) Degree
4 429 (5.26%) Azure Certification
5 246 (3.01%) CISSP
6 245 (3.00%) DV Cleared
7 239 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
8 205 (2.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 204 (2.50%) Cisco Certification
10 195 (2.39%) AWS Certification
11 191 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
12 122 (1.49%) CISM
13 98 (1.20%) CCNP
14 83 (1.02%) PMI Certification
14 83 (1.02%) PMP
15 80 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 68 (0.83%) ISTQB
17 67 (0.82%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.67%) CCSP
19 52 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 554 (6.79%) Data Quality
2 429 (5.26%) QA
3 337 (4.13%) GDPR
4 282 (3.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 277 (3.39%) NIST
6 194 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 118 (1.45%) NCSC
8 100 (1.23%) SLA
9 71 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
10 70 (0.86%) GRC
10 70 (0.86%) PCI DSS
10 70 (0.86%) WCAG
11 61 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 50 (0.61%) PMO
13 36 (0.44%) HIPAA
14 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 25 (0.31%) SOC 2
16 23 (0.28%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
18 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 964 (11.81%) Active Directory
2 877 (10.74%) Docker
3 222 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
5 136 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
6 115 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.85%) vSphere
8 52 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.38%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.20%) Postfix
13 12 (0.15%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.098%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.086%) Ceph
16 7 (0.086%) Varnish
17 6 (0.074%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 6 (0.074%) HDFS
18 5 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,298 (15.90%) Terraform
2 1,199 (14.69%) Kubernetes
3 420 (5.15%) Microsoft Intune
4 400 (4.90%) Ansible
5 243 (2.98%) Grafana
6 207 (2.54%) Prometheus
7 163 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
8 107 (1.31%) SCCM
9 61 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.62%) Argo
11 47 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
11 47 (0.58%) Progress Chef
12 43 (0.53%) Puppet
13 35 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 29 (0.36%) Istio
15 23 (0.28%) HP ALM
16 20 (0.25%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
18 18 (0.22%) Packer
19 15 (0.18%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,626 (32.17%) Microsoft
2 740 (9.07%) Databricks
3 381 (4.67%) ServiceNow
4 329 (4.03%) Google
5 311 (3.81%) Oracle
6 309 (3.79%) VMware
7 230 (2.82%) SAP
8 219 (2.68%) Cisco
9 205 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 180 (2.21%) Splunk
11 157 (1.92%) Salesforce
12 141 (1.73%) Palo Alto
13 136 (1.67%) Foundry
14 134 (1.64%) CyberArk
15 98 (1.20%) Dynatrace
15 98 (1.20%) Okta
16 94 (1.15%) Zscaler
17 85 (1.04%) Informatica
18 77 (0.94%) Citrix
19 75 (0.92%) Fortinet