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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,368 5,098 5,498
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.14% 15.37% 14.67%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.64% 40.03% 42.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,843 3,489 3,721
10th Percentile £363 £350 £338
25th Percentile £440 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 44 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £22.58 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £46.00 £33.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.79% -4.61% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.00 £65.99 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £92.25 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.35 £19.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +122.89% -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 19,177 12,735 13,006
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.70% 38.39% 34.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,727 8,519 8,599
10th Percentile £325 £308 £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 646 288 181
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.20 £16.30
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +7.99%
75th Percentile £67.80 £43.75 £66.00
90th Percentile £78.88 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.27 £35.00
% change year-on-year +55.68% -44.94% +55.49%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 7,116 £530 +0.95% 6,357
London 0 3,764 £550 +0.92% 3,119
UK excluding London 0 3,498 £510 +2.00% 3,628
Work from Home -2 2,564 £525 +5.00% 3,093
North of England +4 1,023 £500 +5.26% 1,031
South East +1 915 £537 +7.40% 824
Midlands +1 627 £490 -5.77% 510
North West +4 498 £500 +5.26% 522
West Midlands +1 487 £477 -13.27% 326
Yorkshire +4 436 £500 +0.70% 380
South West +2 401 £550 +7.42% 380
Scotland -2 285 £500 - 347
East of England -2 187 £505 +1.00% 291
East Midlands +1 136 £500 +8.11% 184
North East -1 98 £513 +2.50% 137
Wales -1 82 £438 -2.78% 146
Northern Ireland +14 12 £650 - 123
Channel Islands -8 3 £500 -21.88% 4

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
1 476 (5.69%) SharePoint
2 273 (3.26%) Confluence
3 197 (2.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 193 (2.31%) Apache Spark
5 159 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
6 121 (1.45%) Apache
7 37 (0.44%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) IIS
9 28 (0.33%) CMS
10 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.19%) nginx
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
16 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 7 (0.084%) Traefik
17 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
17 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 130 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 65 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 51 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 51 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.49%) Chatbot
6 11 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 8 (0.096%) Trello
8 7 (0.084%) CPLEX
9 6 (0.072%) Revit
9 6 (0.072%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.060%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) 1Password
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) Mingle
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
11 3 (0.036%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 134 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 10 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 9 (0.11%) Cloudability
8 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.096%) Magento
10 7 (0.084%) Shopify
11 6 (0.072%) FLEXCUBE
11 6 (0.072%) Maximo
11 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 6 (0.072%) Temenos T24
12 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
13 4 (0.048%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,968 (35.47%) AWS
2 1,790 (21.39%) Azure DevOps
3 1,492 (17.83%) GCP
4 1,167 (13.95%) Entra ID
5 1,086 (12.98%) Power Platform
6 909 (10.86%) Microsoft 365
7 896 (10.71%) GitHub
8 511 (6.11%) GitHub Actions
9 470 (5.62%) Azure Data Factory
10 382 (4.57%) Serverless
11 366 (4.37%) SaaS
12 345 (4.12%) Azure Monitor
13 312 (3.73%) Dynamics 365
14 304 (3.63%) Power Automate
14 304 (3.63%) Snowflake
15 297 (3.55%) Azure AKS
15 297 (3.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 291 (3.48%) PowerApps
17 263 (3.14%) Azure AI
18 255 (3.05%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 528 (6.31%) Firewall
2 435 (5.20%) DNS
3 324 (3.87%) VPN
4 298 (3.56%) Network Security
5 235 (2.81%) DHCP
6 176 (2.10%) WAN
7 171 (2.04%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.30%) BGP
9 104 (1.24%) LAN
10 97 (1.16%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.05%) OSPF
12 83 (0.99%) VLAN
13 76 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
14 69 (0.82%) SSL
14 69 (0.82%) Wireless
15 62 (0.74%) SAN
16 49 (0.59%) HTTP
17 46 (0.55%) IPsec
18 41 (0.49%) Internet
19 39 (0.47%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 699 (8.35%) Power BI
2 479 (5.72%) SQL Server
3 409 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
4 395 (4.72%) Data Lake
5 300 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
6 261 (3.12%) Metadata
7 214 (2.56%) NoSQL
8 209 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
9 152 (1.82%) Relational Database
10 130 (1.55%) Delta Lake
11 119 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 112 (1.34%) MongoDB
12 112 (1.34%) MySQL
13 89 (1.06%) Big Data
14 72 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
15 69 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
16 68 (0.81%) Redis
17 66 (0.79%) BigQuery
18 64 (0.76%) Oracle Database
19 56 (0.67%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 780 (9.32%) Git
2 615 (7.35%) JIRA
3 490 (5.86%) Jenkins
4 375 (4.48%) GitLab
5 144 (1.72%) Selenium
6 93 (1.11%) Postman
7 70 (0.84%) Cypress.io
8 69 (0.82%) Cucumber
9 66 (0.79%) JUnit
10 62 (0.74%) Claude Code
11 58 (0.69%) JMeter
12 55 (0.66%) Maven
13 53 (0.63%) Gradle
13 53 (0.63%) Visual Studio
14 52 (0.62%) SonarQube
15 49 (0.59%) REST Assured
16 36 (0.43%) WebDriver
17 35 (0.42%) Bitbucket
17 35 (0.42%) MLflow
18 33 (0.39%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,347 (28.05%) Social Skills
2 1,637 (19.56%) Finance
3 993 (11.87%) Public Sector
4 836 (9.99%) Analytical Skills
5 526 (6.29%) Banking
6 221 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 221 (2.64%) Retail
7 207 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
8 174 (2.08%) Legal
9 116 (1.39%) Manufacturing
10 112 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 100 (1.20%) Marketing
12 99 (1.18%) Investment Banking
13 90 (1.08%) Aerospace
13 90 (1.08%) Telecoms
14 83 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
15 75 (0.90%) Military
16 66 (0.79%) Law
17 64 (0.76%) Financial Institution
17 64 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,601 (19.13%) Architect
2 1,065 (12.73%) Senior
3 1,026 (12.26%) Developer
4 733 (8.76%) Azure Engineer
5 704 (8.41%) Lead
6 594 (7.10%) Data Engineer
7 504 (6.02%) Solutions Architect
8 462 (5.52%) Analyst
9 458 (5.47%) DevOps Engineer
10 391 (4.67%) Cloud Engineer
11 340 (4.06%) Consultant
12 320 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 266 (3.18%) Data Architect
14 236 (2.82%) Platform Engineer
15 215 (2.57%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 210 (2.51%) Azure Architect
17 200 (2.39%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 200 (2.39%) Technical Architect
18 197 (2.35%) Security Engineer
19 183 (2.19%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,437 (17.17%) Terraform
2 795 (9.50%) REST
3 643 (7.68%) .NET
4 411 (4.91%) Kafka
5 323 (3.86%) React
6 305 (3.64%) RESTful
7 288 (3.44%) OAuth
8 265 (3.17%) PySpark
9 243 (2.90%) JSON
10 188 (2.25%) Spring
11 183 (2.19%) OpenID
12 182 (2.17%) Spring Boot
13 175 (2.09%) OAuth2
14 168 (2.01%) HTML
15 162 (1.94%) Middleware
16 161 (1.92%) SAML
17 155 (1.85%) SOAP
18 154 (1.84%) AngularJS
19 150 (1.79%) Node.js
20 143 (1.71%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 940 (11.23%) Cloud Native
2 442 (5.28%) Onboarding
3 413 (4.94%) Product Ownership
4 344 (4.11%) Enterprise Software
5 338 (4.04%) AI Agents
6 289 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
7 287 (3.43%) Distributed Systems
8 260 (3.11%) Data Centre
9 230 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
10 191 (2.28%) Management Information System
11 186 (2.22%) Security Posture
12 156 (1.86%) Data Structures
13 144 (1.72%) Public Cloud
14 130 (1.55%) PKI
15 118 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
16 114 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
17 102 (1.22%) Replication
18 94 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
19 92 (1.10%) CMDB
20 91 (1.09%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 1,003 (11.99%) Windows
2 545 (6.51%) Linux
3 392 (4.68%) Windows Server
4 158 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 89 (1.06%) Unix
6 87 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 85 (1.02%) Android
8 80 (0.96%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.74%) macOS
10 58 (0.69%) Ubuntu
11 51 (0.61%) VMS
12 27 (0.32%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.084%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Debian
19 5 (0.060%) Alpine Linux
19 5 (0.060%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,120 (37.28%) DevOps
2 2,747 (32.83%) CI/CD
3 2,111 (25.23%) Agile
4 1,579 (18.87%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,468 (17.54%) AI
6 1,449 (17.32%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,269 (15.16%) Migration
8 1,164 (13.91%) Problem-Solving
9 1,137 (13.59%) Analytics
10 1,003 (11.99%) Continuous Improvement
11 908 (10.85%) Data Modelling
12 899 (10.74%) Roadmaps
13 794 (9.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 784 (9.37%) Test Automation
15 778 (9.30%) Containerisation
16 769 (9.19%) Technical Leadership
17 762 (9.11%) Business Intelligence
18 743 (8.88%) Data Pipeline
19 741 (8.86%) Microservices
20 689 (8.23%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,963 (23.46%) Python
2 1,611 (19.25%) SQL
3 957 (11.44%) PowerShell
4 686 (8.20%) Java
5 627 (7.49%) C#
6 532 (6.36%) JavaScript
7 439 (5.25%) Bash
8 391 (4.67%) Bicep
9 325 (3.88%) TypeScript
10 106 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 77 (0.92%) Go
13 71 (0.85%) Scala
14 68 (0.81%) Kusto Query Language
15 63 (0.75%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.51%) PL/SQL
17 36 (0.43%) R
18 33 (0.39%) C++
18 33 (0.39%) Groovy
18 33 (0.39%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 2,191 (26.18%) Security Cleared
2 1,757 (21.00%) SC Cleared
3 576 (6.88%) Degree
4 478 (5.71%) Azure Certification
5 327 (3.91%) DV Cleared
6 281 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
7 270 (3.23%) CISSP
8 255 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 227 (2.71%) AWS Certification
10 191 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
11 190 (2.27%) Cisco Certification
12 140 (1.67%) CISM
13 99 (1.18%) PMI Certification
14 94 (1.12%) PMP
15 90 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 81 (0.97%) CCNP
17 71 (0.85%) ISTQB
18 65 (0.78%) Master's Degree
19 63 (0.75%) CCSP
20 56 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 630 (7.53%) Data Quality
2 484 (5.78%) QA
3 303 (3.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 287 (3.43%) GDPR
5 286 (3.42%) NIST
6 208 (2.49%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.43%) NCSC
8 109 (1.30%) SLA
9 81 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
10 80 (0.96%) WCAG
11 79 (0.94%) GRC
12 74 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 51 (0.61%) PMO
14 48 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 47 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 38 (0.45%) SOC 2
17 27 (0.32%) ISO 20022
18 24 (0.29%) HIPAA
19 23 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
20 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,041 (12.44%) Active Directory
2 945 (11.29%) Docker
3 249 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 152 (1.82%) Virtual Machines
5 140 (1.67%) Virtual Desktop
6 128 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.91%) vSphere
8 48 (0.57%) 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 (0.084%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.084%) Ceph
17 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.060%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,331 (15.91%) Kubernetes
2 472 (5.64%) Ansible
3 455 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 280 (3.35%) Grafana
5 210 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 151 (1.80%) SCCM
7 150 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
8 63 (0.75%) Argo
9 62 (0.74%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 38 (0.45%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.41%) SCOM
13 33 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
14 32 (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 17 (0.20%) Packer
20 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,121 (37.30%) Microsoft
2 886 (10.59%) Databricks
3 421 (5.03%) Google
4 405 (4.84%) ServiceNow
5 367 (4.39%) Oracle
6 358 (4.28%) VMware
7 237 (2.83%) Splunk
8 236 (2.82%) Cisco
9 235 (2.81%) OpenAI
10 226 (2.70%) SAP
11 196 (2.34%) Salesforce
12 156 (1.86%) Palo Alto
13 150 (1.79%) Foundry
14 146 (1.74%) CyberArk
15 145 (1.73%) Dynatrace
16 90 (1.08%) IBM
16 90 (1.08%) Zscaler
17 86 (1.03%) Informatica
18 83 (0.99%) Fortinet
19 80 (0.96%) Okta