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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,204 4,886 5,772
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.54% 14.83% 14.37%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.98% 39.65% 42.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,732 3,376 4,154
10th Percentile £370 £350 £347
25th Percentile £437 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 39 41
10th Percentile £18.35 £18.65 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.38 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -40.32%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.10 £59.50
90th Percentile £96.25 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £53.23 £35.00
% change year-on-year +8.03% +52.07% -35.39%

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 18,656 12,322 13,457
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.33% 37.39% 33.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,322 8,252 9,412
10th Percentile £326 £313 £313
25th Percentile £419 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 617 317 296
10th Percentile £16.50 £15.13 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.71 £27.50 £22.33
Median % change year-on-year +29.85% +23.18% -36.21%
75th Percentile £70.00 £47.50 £50.48
90th Percentile £83.10 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.02 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +96.18% -10.14% -20.75%

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 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 27 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 27 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 7,016 £525 - 3,013
London +1 3,661 £550 - 1,329
UK excluding London +3 3,554 £505 +1.00% 2,168
Work from Home -1 2,549 £525 +5.00% 1,459
North of England +7 1,019 £500 +3.09% 601
South East +2 901 £525 +5.00% 677
Midlands +4 635 £493 -0.51% 296
North West +7 535 £500 +1.63% 320
West Midlands +3 477 £493 -6.19% 194
South West +6 441 £534 +6.75% 248
Yorkshire +3 405 £500 +5.26% 190
Scotland +10 306 £513 +4.49% 104
East of England +5 182 £550 - 183
East Midlands +9 147 £481 +4.05% 101
Wales -1 97 £425 -4.60% 78
North East +2 94 £520 +4.00% 102
Northern Ireland +12 17 £588 +23.68% 37
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
1 423 (5.16%) SharePoint
2 281 (3.43%) Confluence
3 202 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 179 (2.18%) Apache Spark
5 130 (1.58%) Apache Airflow
6 117 (1.43%) Apache
7 42 (0.51%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 18 (0.22%) CMS
10 18 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.098%) Mendix
15 8 (0.098%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
16 6 (0.073%) Documentum
Applications
1 119 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.037%) Houdini
12 3 (0.037%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) PTC Creo
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 112 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 15 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.15%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.098%) Magento
7 8 (0.098%) Maximo
8 7 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.085%) Shopify
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.049%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,918 (35.57%) AWS
2 1,694 (20.65%) Azure DevOps
3 1,403 (17.10%) GCP
4 1,030 (12.55%) Power Platform
5 1,023 (12.47%) Entra ID
6 809 (9.86%) Microsoft 365
7 782 (9.53%) GitHub
8 469 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
9 462 (5.63%) Azure Data Factory
10 352 (4.29%) Serverless
11 327 (3.99%) SaaS
12 312 (3.80%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 300 (3.66%) Azure AKS
14 289 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
15 271 (3.30%) Power Automate
16 266 (3.24%) PowerApps
17 256 (3.12%) PaaS
18 251 (3.06%) Dynamics 365
19 238 (2.90%) Azure AI
20 225 (2.74%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 512 (6.24%) Firewall
2 379 (4.62%) DNS
3 311 (3.79%) VPN
4 293 (3.57%) Network Security
5 203 (2.47%) WAN
6 187 (2.28%) DHCP
7 153 (1.86%) TCP/IP
8 130 (1.58%) LAN
9 115 (1.40%) BGP
10 104 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 92 (1.12%) OSPF
12 90 (1.10%) VLAN
13 87 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.90%) SSL
15 57 (0.69%) SAN
15 57 (0.69%) Wireless
16 56 (0.68%) IPsec
17 48 (0.59%) VXLAN
18 46 (0.56%) HTTP
19 42 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 707 (8.62%) Power BI
2 467 (5.69%) SQL Server
3 403 (4.91%) Data Warehouse
4 361 (4.40%) Data Lake
5 308 (3.75%) PostgreSQL
6 224 (2.73%) NoSQL
7 215 (2.62%) Azure SQL Database
8 212 (2.58%) Metadata
9 138 (1.68%) Relational Database
10 133 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 111 (1.35%) Big Data
12 107 (1.30%) MongoDB
13 99 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 89 (1.08%) MySQL
15 71 (0.87%) Tableau
16 64 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
17 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 58 (0.71%) Redis
20 54 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 646 (7.87%) JIRA
2 640 (7.80%) Git
3 430 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 314 (3.83%) GitLab
5 125 (1.52%) Selenium
6 72 (0.88%) Postman
7 71 (0.87%) JUnit
8 70 (0.85%) JMeter
9 57 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 53 (0.65%) Cypress.io
11 51 (0.62%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.57%) Maven
12 47 (0.57%) REST Assured
13 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
14 44 (0.54%) WebDriver
15 40 (0.49%) MLflow
16 36 (0.44%) Gradle
17 31 (0.38%) Gatling
17 31 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
18 29 (0.35%) Claude Code
General
1 2,084 (25.40%) Social Skills
2 1,536 (18.72%) Finance
3 967 (11.79%) Public Sector
4 778 (9.48%) Analytical Skills
5 431 (5.25%) Banking
6 239 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 193 (2.35%) Legal
8 184 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 179 (2.18%) Retail
10 99 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 96 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 89 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 80 (0.98%) Manufacturing
14 74 (0.90%) Law
15 72 (0.88%) Marketing
16 68 (0.83%) Financial Institution
17 66 (0.80%) Front Office
18 64 (0.78%) Investment Banking
19 57 (0.69%) Military
20 54 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,465 (17.86%) Architect
2 1,059 (12.91%) Developer
3 1,011 (12.32%) Senior
4 730 (8.90%) Azure Engineer
5 664 (8.09%) Lead
6 607 (7.40%) Data Engineer
7 502 (6.12%) Analyst
8 431 (5.25%) Solutions Architect
9 423 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
10 332 (4.05%) Cloud Engineer
11 316 (3.85%) Consultant
12 297 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 248 (3.02%) Data Architect
14 218 (2.66%) Platform Engineer
15 217 (2.65%) Azure Architect
16 198 (2.41%) Technical Architect
17 188 (2.29%) Project Manager
18 185 (2.25%) Security Engineer
19 184 (2.24%) Business Analyst
19 184 (2.24%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 646 (7.87%) .NET
2 607 (7.40%) REST
3 340 (4.14%) React
4 318 (3.88%) Kafka
5 297 (3.62%) RESTful
6 251 (3.06%) PySpark
7 231 (2.82%) OAuth
8 226 (2.75%) Spring
9 211 (2.57%) Node.js
10 204 (2.49%) JSON
11 191 (2.33%) Spring Boot
12 178 (2.17%) AngularJS
13 160 (1.95%) HTML
14 145 (1.77%) SAML
15 144 (1.76%) OpenID
16 140 (1.71%) .NET Framework
17 133 (1.62%) OAuth2
18 132 (1.61%) Middleware
19 129 (1.57%) CSS
20 127 (1.55%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 862 (10.51%) Cloud Native
2 379 (4.62%) Onboarding
3 350 (4.27%) Product Ownership
4 268 (3.27%) Distributed Systems
5 267 (3.25%) Data Centre
6 245 (2.99%) Hybrid Cloud
7 233 (2.84%) AI Agents
8 229 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
9 202 (2.46%) Enterprise Software
10 164 (2.00%) Security Posture
11 143 (1.74%) Public Cloud
12 140 (1.71%) Data Structures
13 128 (1.56%) Management Information System
14 112 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
15 103 (1.26%) Enterprise Cloud
16 102 (1.24%) PKI
17 94 (1.15%) Replication
18 91 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
19 76 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
20 70 (0.85%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 937 (11.42%) Windows
2 457 (5.57%) Linux
3 307 (3.74%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.34%) Windows 10
5 80 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 79 (0.96%) Unix
7 77 (0.94%) Android
8 73 (0.89%) Mac OS
9 72 (0.88%) Apple iOS
10 59 (0.72%) VMS
11 44 (0.54%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.13%) CentOS
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 7 (0.085%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
19 5 (0.061%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,024 (36.86%) DevOps
2 2,555 (31.14%) CI/CD
3 2,080 (25.35%) Agile
4 1,269 (15.47%) AI
5 1,252 (15.26%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,198 (14.60%) Migration
7 1,134 (13.82%) Analytics
8 1,099 (13.40%) Stakeholder Management
9 1,069 (13.03%) Problem-Solving
10 923 (11.25%) Data Modelling
11 878 (10.70%) Continuous Improvement
12 773 (9.42%) Data Pipeline
13 770 (9.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 769 (9.37%) Roadmaps
15 767 (9.35%) Microservices
16 763 (9.30%) Containerisation
17 754 (9.19%) Business Intelligence
18 673 (8.20%) Test Automation
19 665 (8.11%) ETL
20 652 (7.95%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,892 (23.06%) Python
2 1,603 (19.54%) SQL
3 788 (9.61%) PowerShell
4 686 (8.36%) Java
5 624 (7.61%) C#
6 483 (5.89%) JavaScript
7 346 (4.22%) Bash
8 313 (3.82%) Bicep
9 310 (3.78%) TypeScript
10 96 (1.17%) T-SQL
11 94 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 72 (0.88%) Go
13 58 (0.71%) Scala
14 54 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
15 51 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.51%) R
17 41 (0.50%) Kotlin
18 39 (0.48%) PL/SQL
19 28 (0.34%) Groovy
20 26 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,059 (25.10%) Security Cleared
2 1,684 (20.53%) SC Cleared
3 574 (7.00%) Degree
4 438 (5.34%) Azure Certification
5 259 (3.16%) DV Cleared
6 247 (3.01%) CISSP
7 242 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
8 210 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
9 207 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
10 195 (2.38%) AWS Certification
11 188 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
12 123 (1.50%) CISM
13 103 (1.26%) CCNP
14 83 (1.01%) PMI Certification
14 83 (1.01%) PMP
15 79 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 66 (0.80%) Master's Degree
17 65 (0.79%) ISTQB
18 53 (0.65%) CCSP
19 50 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 569 (6.94%) Data Quality
2 424 (5.17%) QA
3 331 (4.03%) GDPR
4 281 (3.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 278 (3.39%) NIST
6 200 (2.44%) Accessibility
7 117 (1.43%) NCSC
8 100 (1.22%) SLA
9 74 (0.90%) GRC
9 74 (0.90%) WCAG
10 72 (0.88%) PCI DSS
11 71 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
12 55 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 52 (0.63%) PMO
14 32 (0.39%) HIPAA
15 29 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 22 (0.27%) NIST 800
18 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
19 19 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 964 (11.75%) Active Directory
2 881 (10.74%) Docker
3 220 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.76%) Virtual Desktop
5 138 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 116 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.84%) vSphere
8 52 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
9 38 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.37%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.20%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.085%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.085%) Ceph
15 7 (0.085%) Varnish
16 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.073%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,323 (16.13%) Terraform
2 1,215 (14.81%) Kubernetes
3 427 (5.20%) Microsoft Intune
4 404 (4.92%) Ansible
5 248 (3.02%) Grafana
6 211 (2.57%) Prometheus
7 149 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.34%) SCCM
9 57 (0.69%) Argo
10 52 (0.63%) Progress Chef
11 46 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
11 46 (0.56%) Puppet
12 39 (0.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 34 (0.41%) FortiGate
14 30 (0.37%) Istio
15 20 (0.24%) HP ALM
15 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
16 19 (0.23%) Packer
17 16 (0.20%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,644 (32.23%) Microsoft
2 757 (9.23%) Databricks
3 395 (4.81%) ServiceNow
4 336 (4.10%) Google
5 321 (3.91%) VMware
6 316 (3.85%) Oracle
7 232 (2.83%) Cisco
8 229 (2.79%) SAP
9 212 (2.58%) OpenAI
10 182 (2.22%) Splunk
11 151 (1.84%) Salesforce
12 147 (1.79%) Palo Alto
13 142 (1.73%) Foundry
14 139 (1.69%) CyberArk
15 104 (1.27%) Dynatrace
16 101 (1.23%) Zscaler
17 89 (1.08%) Informatica
17 89 (1.08%) Okta
18 77 (0.94%) Citrix
19 75 (0.91%) Fortinet