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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,142 4,829 6,029
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.47% 14.86% 14.14%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.82% 39.75% 42.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,708 3,352 4,336
10th Percentile £367 £350 £350
25th Percentile £437 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.72% -0.71% -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 54
10th Percentile £18.50 £25.60 £17.80
25th Percentile £29.19 £29.25 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +15.85% -22.90%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.70 £61.60
90th Percentile £95.94 £100.00 £73.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -11.54% +23.81% -6.67%

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 18,581 12,147 14,167
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.31% 37.39% 33.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,328 8,132 9,923
10th Percentile £328 £313 £310
25th Percentile £417 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.40% -4.67% -4.11%
75th Percentile £615 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £726 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 615 315 350
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.12 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.12 £27.50 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +34.98% +24.15% -36.71%
75th Percentile £70.00 £47.31 £48.11
90th Percentile £83.55 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +98.73% -10.14% -21.50%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 6,929 £525 - 2,515
London +1 3,618 £550 - 955
UK excluding London +3 3,521 £505 +1.00% 2,057
Work from Home -1 2,537 £525 +4.90% 1,158
North of England +7 1,015 £500 +2.30% 500
South East +2 866 £525 +5.00% 646
Midlands +3 619 £500 +0.50% 277
North West +7 533 £500 - 262
West Midlands +2 464 £500 -4.76% 173
South West +7 443 £538 +7.60% 270
Yorkshire +3 405 £500 +5.26% 163
Scotland +8 311 £525 +5.85% 96
East of England +3 187 £550 -2.22% 160
East Midlands +4 144 £488 +5.41% 104
Wales 0 104 £425 -4.49% 83
North East +4 90 £525 +5.00% 83
Northern Ireland +13 19 £538 +13.16% 73
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
1 410 (5.04%) SharePoint
2 273 (3.35%) Confluence
3 193 (2.37%) Microsoft Exchange
4 184 (2.26%) Apache Spark
5 127 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.41%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 34 (0.42%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 19 (0.23%) OpenStack
11 18 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 10 (0.12%) Camunda
14 10 (0.12%) nginx
15 8 (0.098%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.098%) Mendix
15 8 (0.098%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.074%) Documentum
Applications
1 122 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 75 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 31 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 6 (0.074%) Trello
12 4 (0.049%) Notion
13 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.037%) PTC Creo
14 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 1 (0.012%) Houdini
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) NUKE
15 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 112 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 83 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.14%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) 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%) Endur
10 5 (0.061%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
11 4 (0.049%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.049%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,883 (35.41%) AWS
2 1,681 (20.65%) Azure DevOps
3 1,381 (16.96%) GCP
4 1,027 (12.61%) Power Platform
5 1,019 (12.52%) Entra ID
6 801 (9.84%) Microsoft 365
7 777 (9.54%) GitHub
8 463 (5.69%) GitHub Actions
9 455 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 357 (4.38%) Serverless
11 329 (4.04%) SaaS
12 317 (3.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 289 (3.55%) Azure AKS
14 275 (3.38%) Azure Monitor
15 273 (3.35%) Power Automate
16 260 (3.19%) PowerApps
17 259 (3.18%) PaaS
18 248 (3.05%) Dynamics 365
19 227 (2.79%) Azure AI
20 212 (2.60%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 500 (6.14%) Firewall
2 376 (4.62%) DNS
3 297 (3.65%) VPN
4 278 (3.41%) Network Security
5 204 (2.51%) WAN
6 187 (2.30%) DHCP
7 137 (1.68%) TCP/IP
8 132 (1.62%) LAN
9 115 (1.41%) BGP
10 109 (1.34%) SD-WAN
11 90 (1.11%) OSPF
12 87 (1.07%) VLAN
13 85 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
14 69 (0.85%) SSL
15 58 (0.71%) IPsec
16 56 (0.69%) SAN
17 54 (0.66%) Wireless
18 52 (0.64%) Kerberos
19 46 (0.56%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.53%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 699 (8.59%) Power BI
2 467 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 392 (4.81%) Data Warehouse
4 360 (4.42%) Data Lake
5 307 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
6 219 (2.69%) Azure SQL Database
7 210 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 201 (2.47%) Metadata
9 140 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 131 (1.61%) Delta Lake
11 121 (1.49%) Big Data
12 104 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 97 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 84 (1.03%) MySQL
15 72 (0.88%) Tableau
16 68 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
17 65 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 56 (0.69%) Star Schema
20 55 (0.68%) Redis
Development Applications
1 638 (7.84%) JIRA
2 630 (7.74%) Git
3 425 (5.22%) Jenkins
4 312 (3.83%) GitLab
5 130 (1.60%) Selenium
6 76 (0.93%) Postman
7 73 (0.90%) JMeter
8 69 (0.85%) JUnit
9 58 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 53 (0.65%) Cypress.io
10 53 (0.65%) REST Assured
11 49 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
13 44 (0.54%) WebDriver
14 42 (0.52%) Maven
15 41 (0.50%) MLflow
16 33 (0.41%) Gradle
17 32 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
18 29 (0.36%) Gatling
19 26 (0.32%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,072 (25.45%) Social Skills
2 1,513 (18.58%) Finance
3 936 (11.50%) Public Sector
4 777 (9.54%) Analytical Skills
5 422 (5.18%) Banking
6 240 (2.95%) Documentation Skills
7 198 (2.43%) Legal
8 175 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 172 (2.11%) Retail
10 101 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
11 88 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
11 88 (1.08%) Telecoms
12 73 (0.90%) Law
12 73 (0.90%) Manufacturing
13 69 (0.85%) Marketing
14 68 (0.84%) Financial Institution
15 66 (0.81%) Investment Banking
16 65 (0.80%) Front Office
17 55 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
18 53 (0.65%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,441 (17.70%) Architect
2 1,065 (13.08%) Developer
3 987 (12.12%) Senior
4 717 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 657 (8.07%) Lead
6 601 (7.38%) Data Engineer
7 501 (6.15%) Analyst
8 423 (5.20%) DevOps Engineer
9 414 (5.08%) Solutions Architect
10 324 (3.98%) Consultant
11 309 (3.80%) Cloud Engineer
12 283 (3.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 233 (2.86%) Data Architect
14 220 (2.70%) Azure Architect
15 206 (2.53%) Platform Engineer
16 201 (2.47%) Technical Architect
17 188 (2.31%) Project Manager
18 185 (2.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 185 (2.27%) Java Developer
18 185 (2.27%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 641 (7.87%) .NET
2 596 (7.32%) REST
3 346 (4.25%) React
4 310 (3.81%) Kafka
5 289 (3.55%) RESTful
6 252 (3.10%) PySpark
7 237 (2.91%) OAuth
8 229 (2.81%) Spring
9 213 (2.62%) Node.js
10 196 (2.41%) Spring Boot
11 192 (2.36%) JSON
12 185 (2.27%) AngularJS
13 155 (1.90%) HTML
14 147 (1.81%) SAML
15 143 (1.76%) OpenID
16 134 (1.65%) LDAP
17 131 (1.61%) .NET Framework
17 131 (1.61%) Middleware
18 129 (1.58%) OAuth2
19 125 (1.54%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 855 (10.50%) Cloud Native
2 355 (4.36%) Onboarding
3 336 (4.13%) Product Ownership
4 268 (3.29%) Data Centre
5 256 (3.14%) Distributed Systems
6 234 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
7 231 (2.84%) Hybrid Cloud
8 210 (2.58%) AI Agents
9 180 (2.21%) Enterprise Software
10 160 (1.97%) Security Posture
11 144 (1.77%) Public Cloud
12 123 (1.51%) Data Structures
13 116 (1.42%) Management Information System
14 114 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
15 109 (1.34%) Replication
16 97 (1.19%) PKI
17 93 (1.14%) Enterprise Cloud
18 88 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
19 76 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
20 74 (0.91%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 923 (11.34%) Windows
2 428 (5.26%) Linux
3 294 (3.61%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.35%) Windows 10
5 78 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 76 (0.93%) Unix
7 75 (0.92%) Android
8 74 (0.91%) Apple iOS
9 70 (0.86%) Mac OS
10 58 (0.71%) VMS
11 40 (0.49%) Ubuntu
12 26 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
16 11 (0.14%) CentOS
17 9 (0.11%) Debian
18 8 (0.098%) Windows 7
19 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
20 6 (0.074%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,028 (37.19%) DevOps
2 2,545 (31.26%) CI/CD
3 2,043 (25.09%) Agile
4 1,243 (15.27%) AI
5 1,222 (15.01%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,191 (14.63%) Migration
7 1,114 (13.68%) Analytics
8 1,082 (13.29%) Problem-Solving
9 1,029 (12.64%) Stakeholder Management
10 913 (11.21%) Data Modelling
11 847 (10.40%) Continuous Improvement
12 769 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
13 758 (9.31%) Microservices
14 756 (9.29%) Containerisation
14 756 (9.29%) Roadmaps
15 745 (9.15%) Business Intelligence
16 729 (8.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 675 (8.29%) ETL
18 670 (8.23%) Test Automation
19 645 (7.92%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,891 (23.23%) Python
2 1,598 (19.63%) SQL
3 785 (9.64%) PowerShell
4 688 (8.45%) Java
5 623 (7.65%) C#
6 472 (5.80%) JavaScript
7 319 (3.92%) Bash
8 315 (3.87%) TypeScript
9 280 (3.44%) Bicep
10 99 (1.22%) T-SQL
11 94 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 82 (1.01%) Go
13 69 (0.85%) Scala
14 55 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
15 48 (0.59%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.52%) R
17 40 (0.49%) PL/SQL
18 37 (0.45%) Kotlin
19 26 (0.32%) Groovy
20 24 (0.29%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,021 (24.82%) Security Cleared
2 1,675 (20.57%) SC Cleared
3 572 (7.03%) Degree
4 430 (5.28%) Azure Certification
5 245 (3.01%) CISSP
6 240 (2.95%) DV Cleared
7 238 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
8 203 (2.49%) Cisco Certification
8 203 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 195 (2.39%) AWS Certification
10 192 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
11 122 (1.50%) CISM
12 98 (1.20%) CCNP
13 83 (1.02%) PMP
14 80 (0.98%) PMI Certification
15 79 (0.97%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 68 (0.84%) ISTQB
17 66 (0.81%) Master's Degree
18 54 (0.66%) CCSP
19 52 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 554 (6.80%) Data Quality
2 430 (5.28%) QA
3 338 (4.15%) GDPR
4 279 (3.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 275 (3.38%) NIST
6 193 (2.37%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.46%) NCSC
8 101 (1.24%) SLA
9 71 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
10 70 (0.86%) WCAG
11 69 (0.85%) PCI DSS
12 68 (0.84%) GRC
13 63 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 49 (0.60%) PMO
15 35 (0.43%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.29%) NIST 800
17 24 (0.29%) SOC 2
18 22 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
19 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 962 (11.82%) Active Directory
2 867 (10.65%) Docker
3 220 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.76%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 112 (1.38%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.81%) vSphere
8 53 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.37%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 12 (0.15%) IAG
14 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.098%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.098%) Varnish
16 7 (0.086%) Ceph
17 6 (0.074%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 6 (0.074%) HDFS
18 5 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,295 (15.91%) Terraform
2 1,188 (14.59%) Kubernetes
3 419 (5.15%) Microsoft Intune
4 395 (4.85%) Ansible
5 240 (2.95%) Grafana
6 203 (2.49%) Prometheus
7 165 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.29%) SCCM
9 63 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 50 (0.61%) 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%) HAProxy
16 20 (0.25%) vCenter Server
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
18 15 (0.18%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,625 (32.24%) Microsoft
2 739 (9.08%) Databricks
3 379 (4.65%) ServiceNow
4 326 (4.00%) Google
5 315 (3.87%) Oracle
6 308 (3.78%) VMware
7 232 (2.85%) SAP
8 219 (2.69%) Cisco
9 203 (2.49%) OpenAI
10 180 (2.21%) Splunk
11 158 (1.94%) Salesforce
12 141 (1.73%) Palo Alto
13 134 (1.65%) Foundry
14 132 (1.62%) CyberArk
15 101 (1.24%) Okta
16 98 (1.20%) Dynatrace
17 93 (1.14%) Zscaler
18 86 (1.06%) Informatica
19 77 (0.95%) Citrix
20 74 (0.91%) Fortinet