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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,223 4,820 5,562
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.19% 14.75% 14.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.83% 39.29% 42.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,767 3,270 3,857
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £498 £500
% change year-on-year +2.41% -0.40% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 173 42 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £16.49 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.33 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £34.24 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +11.71% -6.83% -31.94%
75th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.68 £88.63 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £32.77 £42.34
% change year-on-year +16.72% -22.60% -8.32%

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 18,762 12,268 13,182
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.66% 37.53% 34.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,441 8,169 8,927
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 607 300 201
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.86 £18.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £32.50 £29.16 £30.88
Median % change year-on-year +11.45% -5.55% -11.79%
75th Percentile £67.77 £52.81 £61.06
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.28 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.27 £30.00
% change year-on-year +55.68% -35.77% +11.11%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 7,031 £525 - 7,056
London +1 3,684 £550 +0.92% 3,702
UK excluding London +2 3,508 £510 +2.41% 4,242
Work from Home -1 2,493 £525 +5.00% 4,899
North of England +8 1,002 £500 +5.26% 1,116
South East +2 896 £525 +5.00% 1,045
Midlands +2 644 £493 -3.90% 587
North West +4 500 £500 +5.26% 603
West Midlands +2 474 £488 -9.72% 368
South West +2 427 £550 +10.00% 485
Yorkshire +6 422 £500 +5.26% 371
Scotland +8 286 £520 +7.22% 407
East of England +2 182 £525 +5.00% 349
East Midlands +5 160 £500 +8.11% 218
North East +6 93 £500 - 148
Wales 0 84 £450 - 124
Northern Ireland +17 14 £650 - 162
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69% 2

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
1 467 (5.68%) SharePoint
2 255 (3.10%) Confluence
3 197 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 175 (2.13%) Apache Spark
5 161 (1.96%) Apache Airflow
6 111 (1.35%) Apache
7 45 (0.55%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) IIS
8 29 (0.35%) SharePoint Server
9 24 (0.29%) CMS
10 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.17%) nginx
11 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.16%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.085%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.085%) Mendix
15 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
15 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
15 6 (0.073%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 119 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
3 68 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.50%) Chatbot
4 41 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
7 11 (0.13%) Trello
8 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.097%) Revit
9 8 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.061%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Mingle
13 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 132 (1.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 70 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.097%) Magento
8 8 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
9 7 (0.085%) Shopify
9 7 (0.085%) Workday HCM
10 6 (0.073%) Cloudability
10 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
10 6 (0.073%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
12 4 (0.049%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.049%) Endur
12 4 (0.049%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 2,947 (35.84%) AWS
2 1,739 (21.15%) Azure DevOps
3 1,409 (17.13%) GCP
4 1,078 (13.11%) Entra ID
5 1,075 (13.07%) Power Platform
6 864 (10.51%) Microsoft 365
7 834 (10.14%) GitHub
8 485 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
9 464 (5.64%) Azure Data Factory
10 370 (4.50%) Serverless
11 354 (4.30%) SaaS
12 306 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
12 306 (3.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 301 (3.66%) Power Automate
14 291 (3.54%) Dynamics 365
15 290 (3.53%) Azure AKS
16 287 (3.49%) PowerApps
17 281 (3.42%) Snowflake
18 243 (2.96%) Azure AI
19 238 (2.89%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 513 (6.24%) Firewall
2 410 (4.99%) DNS
3 310 (3.77%) VPN
4 292 (3.55%) Network Security
5 221 (2.69%) DHCP
6 186 (2.26%) WAN
7 162 (1.97%) TCP/IP
8 107 (1.30%) LAN
9 106 (1.29%) BGP
10 100 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.14%) VLAN
12 85 (1.03%) OSPF
12 85 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 76 (0.92%) SSL
14 61 (0.74%) SAN
15 60 (0.73%) Wireless
16 46 (0.56%) HTTP
17 45 (0.55%) IPsec
18 44 (0.54%) VXLAN
19 39 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 711 (8.65%) Power BI
2 472 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 403 (4.90%) Data Warehouse
4 379 (4.61%) Data Lake
5 293 (3.56%) PostgreSQL
6 243 (2.96%) Metadata
7 214 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 202 (2.46%) Azure SQL Database
9 144 (1.75%) Relational Database
10 128 (1.56%) Delta Lake
11 111 (1.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 107 (1.30%) MongoDB
13 91 (1.11%) Big Data
14 88 (1.07%) MySQL
15 72 (0.88%) Amazon Redshift
16 64 (0.78%) Redis
17 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
17 61 (0.74%) Tableau
18 57 (0.69%) Snowflake Schema
19 56 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 709 (8.62%) Git
2 597 (7.26%) JIRA
3 465 (5.65%) Jenkins
4 362 (4.40%) GitLab
5 124 (1.51%) Selenium
6 77 (0.94%) Postman
7 61 (0.74%) JUnit
8 60 (0.73%) Cypress.io
9 56 (0.68%) Maven
9 56 (0.68%) SonarQube
10 50 (0.61%) Claude Code
10 50 (0.61%) Cucumber
10 50 (0.61%) JMeter
11 47 (0.57%) Gradle
12 45 (0.55%) REST Assured
13 43 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
15 36 (0.44%) MLflow
16 31 (0.38%) Gatling
17 30 (0.36%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,264 (27.53%) Social Skills
2 1,548 (18.83%) Finance
3 951 (11.57%) Public Sector
4 803 (9.77%) Analytical Skills
5 462 (5.62%) Banking
6 218 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
7 217 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 208 (2.53%) Retail
9 177 (2.15%) Legal
10 104 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
11 100 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 87 (1.06%) Marketing
12 87 (1.06%) Telecoms
13 84 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
14 81 (0.99%) Aerospace
15 78 (0.95%) Investment Banking
16 73 (0.89%) Law
16 73 (0.89%) Military
17 58 (0.71%) Financial Institution
18 57 (0.69%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,544 (18.78%) Architect
2 1,040 (12.65%) Senior
3 993 (12.08%) Developer
4 723 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 671 (8.16%) Lead
6 585 (7.11%) Data Engineer
7 480 (5.84%) Analyst
8 472 (5.74%) Solutions Architect
9 462 (5.62%) DevOps Engineer
10 369 (4.49%) Cloud Engineer
11 320 (3.89%) Consultant
12 313 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 266 (3.23%) Data Architect
14 241 (2.93%) Platform Engineer
15 214 (2.60%) Azure Architect
16 208 (2.53%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 197 (2.40%) Technical Architect
18 191 (2.32%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 191 (2.32%) Security Engineer
19 186 (2.26%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,391 (16.92%) Terraform
2 692 (8.42%) REST
3 624 (7.59%) .NET
4 377 (4.58%) Kafka
5 300 (3.65%) React
6 288 (3.50%) RESTful
7 270 (3.28%) PySpark
8 253 (3.08%) OAuth
9 231 (2.81%) JSON
10 191 (2.32%) Spring
11 178 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 156 (1.90%) OpenID
13 152 (1.85%) HTML
13 152 (1.85%) Node.js
14 151 (1.84%) OAuth2
15 148 (1.80%) AngularJS
15 148 (1.80%) SAML
16 137 (1.67%) Playwright
17 133 (1.62%) Middleware
18 130 (1.58%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 901 (10.96%) Cloud Native
2 407 (4.95%) Onboarding
3 380 (4.62%) Product Ownership
4 292 (3.55%) AI Agents
4 292 (3.55%) Enterprise Software
5 279 (3.39%) Hybrid Cloud
6 265 (3.22%) Distributed Systems
7 245 (2.98%) Data Centre
8 221 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
9 172 (2.09%) Security Posture
10 167 (2.03%) Management Information System
11 145 (1.76%) Data Structures
12 142 (1.73%) Public Cloud
13 114 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
14 113 (1.37%) PKI
15 111 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
16 106 (1.29%) Replication
17 90 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
18 82 (1.00%) CMDB
19 80 (0.97%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 978 (11.89%) Windows
2 513 (6.24%) Linux
3 368 (4.48%) Windows Server
4 136 (1.65%) Windows 10
5 88 (1.07%) Android
6 87 (1.06%) Unix
7 84 (1.02%) Apple iOS
8 82 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 74 (0.90%) Mac OS
10 54 (0.66%) Ubuntu
11 52 (0.63%) VMS
12 21 (0.26%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 6 (0.073%) AIX
17 6 (0.073%) Data ONTAP
17 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,034 (36.90%) DevOps
2 2,612 (31.76%) CI/CD
3 2,064 (25.10%) Agile
4 1,426 (17.34%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,396 (16.98%) AI
6 1,391 (16.92%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,201 (14.61%) Migration
8 1,138 (13.84%) Analytics
9 1,126 (13.69%) Problem-Solving
10 942 (11.46%) Continuous Improvement
11 896 (10.90%) Data Modelling
12 832 (10.12%) Roadmaps
13 791 (9.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 777 (9.45%) Containerisation
15 764 (9.29%) Business Intelligence
16 750 (9.12%) Data Pipeline
17 735 (8.94%) Technical Leadership
18 719 (8.74%) Microservices
19 701 (8.52%) Test Automation
20 653 (7.94%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,882 (22.89%) Python
2 1,579 (19.20%) SQL
3 872 (10.60%) PowerShell
4 678 (8.25%) Java
5 593 (7.21%) C#
6 492 (5.98%) JavaScript
7 406 (4.94%) Bash
8 350 (4.26%) Bicep
9 294 (3.58%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.11%) T-SQL
12 70 (0.85%) Go
13 62 (0.75%) Scala
14 59 (0.72%) Shell Script
15 56 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.50%) PL/SQL
17 38 (0.46%) R
18 34 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 30 (0.36%) Groovy
20 26 (0.32%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,145 (26.09%) Security Cleared
2 1,727 (21.00%) SC Cleared
3 562 (6.83%) Degree
4 469 (5.70%) Azure Certification
5 300 (3.65%) DV Cleared
6 268 (3.26%) CISSP
7 264 (3.21%) BPSS Clearance
8 254 (3.09%) Microsoft Certification
9 204 (2.48%) Cisco Certification
10 199 (2.42%) AWS Certification
11 182 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 134 (1.63%) CISM
13 92 (1.12%) CCNP
14 89 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 89 (1.08%) PMI Certification
15 86 (1.05%) PMP
16 64 (0.78%) ISTQB
17 61 (0.74%) CCSP
18 60 (0.73%) Master's Degree
19 50 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 596 (7.25%) Data Quality
2 457 (5.56%) QA
3 302 (3.67%) NIST
4 300 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 292 (3.55%) GDPR
6 203 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.46%) NCSC
8 107 (1.30%) SLA
9 83 (1.01%) WCAG
10 82 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
11 77 (0.94%) GRC
12 72 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 58 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 55 (0.67%) PMO
15 45 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 29 (0.35%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.32%) HIPAA
18 25 (0.30%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
20 19 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,015 (12.34%) Active Directory
2 913 (11.10%) Docker
3 242 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
5 144 (1.75%) Virtual Machines
6 129 (1.57%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.83%) vSphere
8 53 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.29%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) IAG
11 18 (0.22%) NFS
12 11 (0.13%) Postfix
13 10 (0.12%) Ceph
13 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.11%) zsh
15 8 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.085%) Squid
17 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,287 (15.65%) Kubernetes
2 454 (5.52%) Ansible
3 436 (5.30%) Microsoft Intune
4 257 (3.13%) Grafana
5 203 (2.47%) Prometheus
6 148 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
7 129 (1.57%) SCCM
8 63 (0.77%) Progress Chef
9 59 (0.72%) Argo
10 49 (0.60%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) SCOM
14 31 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 23 (0.28%) Istio
16 22 (0.27%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) QRadar
18 18 (0.22%) CASB
18 18 (0.22%) Packer
19 17 (0.21%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,932 (35.66%) Microsoft
2 847 (10.30%) Databricks
3 411 (5.00%) ServiceNow
4 364 (4.43%) Google
5 357 (4.34%) VMware
6 336 (4.09%) Oracle
7 250 (3.04%) Cisco
8 222 (2.70%) SAP
9 212 (2.58%) Splunk
10 205 (2.49%) OpenAI
11 181 (2.20%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.86%) Palo Alto
13 151 (1.84%) CyberArk
14 137 (1.67%) Foundry
15 121 (1.47%) Dynatrace
16 94 (1.14%) Informatica
17 89 (1.08%) Zscaler
18 81 (0.99%) Fortinet
19 79 (0.96%) Okta
20 78 (0.95%) IBM