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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,303 4,542 5,824
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.37% 15.56% 13.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.14% 41.38% 41.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,178 3,216 4,197
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year - -2.01% -2.59%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 134 39 50
10th Percentile £25.13 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £47.60 £24.59 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -41.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £74.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £31.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +82.54% -34.50% -19.85%

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 16,930 10,975 13,939
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.64% 37.59% 32.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,442 7,586 9,909
10th Percentile £322 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £517 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.29% -1.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £634
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.63% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 505 249 347
10th Percentile £15.55 £15.24 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.91 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £27.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +43.64% +28.69% -38.94%
75th Percentile £67.50 £48.00 £35.50
90th Percentile £81.75 £73.75 £63.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £21.39 £17.71
% change year-on-year +110.38% +20.81% -29.18%

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 12 May 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 12 May 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 12 May 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 6,190 £525 - 2,732
London +1 3,298 £538 -2.27% 994
UK excluding London +2 3,057 £500 - 2,153
Work from Home -1 2,228 £525 +1.45% 1,278
North of England +3 860 £500 +5.26% 554
South East +3 826 £500 -4.76% 667
Midlands -3 496 £489 -2.25% 305
North West +3 450 £500 - 289
South West +6 381 £525 - 257
West Midlands 0 364 £498 -5.24% 167
Yorkshire +6 350 £500 +14.29% 161
Scotland +7 298 £525 +10.53% 109
East of England +4 146 £550 -5.17% 180
East Midlands +2 122 £450 -2.70% 136
Wales -3 79 £400 -1.23% 83
North East 0 69 £525 +7.69% 104
Northern Ireland +12 14 £475 - 31
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 +51.26%

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
1 333 (4.56%) SharePoint
2 215 (2.94%) Confluence
3 194 (2.66%) Apache Spark
4 189 (2.59%) Microsoft Exchange
5 103 (1.41%) Apache
6 94 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.31%) SAS
8 22 (0.30%) IIS
9 15 (0.21%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.21%) Mendix
9 15 (0.21%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.19%) CMS
11 13 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
12 12 (0.16%) Appian
12 12 (0.16%) Camunda
12 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
15 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.096%) nginx
Applications
1 105 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 91 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 66 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 25 (0.34%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.096%) Trello
8 5 (0.068%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.068%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.055%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.055%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.041%) Revit
11 2 (0.027%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
12 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 101 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
5 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.11%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.096%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.096%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.068%) NetSuite
9 5 (0.068%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.055%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.055%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
10 4 (0.055%) Shopify
10 4 (0.055%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,487 (34.05%) AWS
2 1,499 (20.53%) Azure DevOps
3 1,302 (17.83%) GCP
4 950 (13.01%) Power Platform
5 868 (11.89%) Entra ID
6 753 (10.31%) Microsoft 365
7 697 (9.54%) GitHub
8 503 (6.89%) Azure Data Factory
9 413 (5.66%) GitHub Actions
10 385 (5.27%) Serverless
11 340 (4.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 285 (3.90%) SaaS
13 273 (3.74%) Azure AKS
14 261 (3.57%) Dynamics 365
15 258 (3.53%) Power Automate
16 239 (3.27%) Azure Monitor
17 236 (3.23%) PaaS
18 220 (3.01%) PowerApps
19 206 (2.82%) Azure Functions
20 190 (2.60%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 450 (6.16%) Firewall
2 308 (4.22%) DNS
3 251 (3.44%) VPN
4 242 (3.31%) Network Security
5 196 (2.68%) WAN
6 165 (2.26%) DHCP
7 131 (1.79%) LAN
8 107 (1.47%) SD-WAN
9 90 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
10 86 (1.18%) TCP/IP
11 72 (0.99%) VLAN
12 71 (0.97%) Kerberos
13 69 (0.94%) BGP
14 59 (0.81%) OSPF
15 48 (0.66%) SAN
16 45 (0.62%) SSL
17 42 (0.58%) Wireless
18 40 (0.55%) HTTP
19 38 (0.52%) VXLAN
20 34 (0.47%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 642 (8.79%) Power BI
2 422 (5.78%) SQL Server
3 364 (4.98%) Data Lake
4 363 (4.97%) Data Warehouse
5 246 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
6 243 (3.33%) Azure SQL Database
7 190 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 179 (2.45%) Metadata
9 152 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.60%) Big Data
11 115 (1.57%) Relational Database
12 93 (1.27%) MongoDB
13 90 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (1.04%) Tableau
15 71 (0.97%) Oracle Database
16 69 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
17 64 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 62 (0.85%) MySQL
19 56 (0.77%) Star Schema
20 49 (0.67%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 537 (7.35%) Git
2 515 (7.05%) JIRA
3 389 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 307 (4.20%) GitLab
5 115 (1.57%) Selenium
6 78 (1.07%) Postman
7 65 (0.89%) JMeter
8 62 (0.85%) Cucumber
9 61 (0.84%) JUnit
10 54 (0.74%) MLflow
11 49 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 47 (0.64%) SonarQube
13 36 (0.49%) Artifactory
14 35 (0.48%) Cypress.io
15 34 (0.47%) Visual Studio
16 33 (0.45%) WebDriver
17 31 (0.42%) Gatling
18 28 (0.38%) Maven
19 26 (0.36%) ERwin
20 24 (0.33%) NUnit
General
1 1,869 (25.59%) Social Skills
2 1,306 (17.88%) Finance
3 806 (11.04%) Public Sector
4 653 (8.94%) Analytical Skills
5 380 (5.20%) Banking
6 209 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 189 (2.59%) Legal
8 108 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 92 (1.26%) Retail
10 85 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
11 71 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
11 71 (0.97%) Marketing
12 70 (0.96%) Financial Institution
12 70 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
13 66 (0.90%) Telecoms
14 63 (0.86%) Investment Banking
14 63 (0.86%) Law
15 60 (0.82%) Front Office
16 42 (0.58%) Military
17 38 (0.52%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,237 (16.94%) Architect
2 934 (12.79%) Developer
3 865 (11.84%) Senior
4 662 (9.06%) Azure Engineer
5 598 (8.19%) Data Engineer
6 541 (7.41%) Lead
7 461 (6.31%) Analyst
8 404 (5.53%) DevOps Engineer
9 318 (4.35%) Solutions Architect
10 306 (4.19%) Consultant
11 230 (3.15%) Cloud Engineer
12 229 (3.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 205 (2.81%) Azure Architect
14 191 (2.62%) Security Engineer
15 174 (2.38%) Platform Engineer
16 173 (2.37%) Data Architect
17 167 (2.29%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 164 (2.25%) Technical Architect
19 157 (2.15%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 154 (2.11%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 573 (7.85%) .NET
2 485 (6.64%) REST
3 324 (4.44%) React
4 274 (3.75%) Kafka
5 268 (3.67%) PySpark
6 226 (3.09%) RESTful
7 222 (3.04%) Node.js
8 206 (2.82%) Spring
9 205 (2.81%) OAuth
10 176 (2.41%) AngularJS
11 173 (2.37%) Spring Boot
12 172 (2.36%) LDAP
13 148 (2.03%) JSON
14 142 (1.94%) HTML
15 135 (1.85%) Middleware
16 130 (1.78%) SOAP
17 129 (1.77%) OpenID
18 126 (1.73%) SAML
19 118 (1.62%) CSS
20 106 (1.45%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 709 (9.71%) Cloud Native
2 286 (3.92%) Onboarding
3 267 (3.66%) Product Ownership
4 210 (2.88%) Data Centre
5 194 (2.66%) Hybrid Cloud
6 180 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
7 165 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
8 162 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
9 158 (2.16%) Security Posture
10 154 (2.11%) Public Cloud
11 134 (1.83%) AI Agents
12 100 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 92 (1.26%) Replication
14 90 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 79 (1.08%) Management Information System
16 78 (1.07%) Low-Code
17 71 (0.97%) PKI
18 64 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
19 58 (0.79%) NHS
20 56 (0.77%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 797 (10.91%) Windows
2 378 (5.18%) Linux
3 238 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.63%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.03%) Unix
6 71 (0.97%) VMS
7 64 (0.88%) Mac OS
8 63 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 61 (0.84%) Apple iOS
10 47 (0.64%) Android
11 29 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.29%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.12%) AIX
16 8 (0.11%) CentOS
16 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.096%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.096%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,735 (37.45%) DevOps
2 2,268 (31.06%) CI/CD
3 1,717 (23.51%) Agile
4 1,058 (14.49%) Analytics
5 1,043 (14.28%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,043 (14.28%) Problem-Solving
6 992 (13.58%) AI
7 989 (13.54%) Migration
8 829 (11.35%) Data Modelling
9 724 (9.91%) Stakeholder Management
10 703 (9.63%) Business Intelligence
11 694 (9.50%) Containerisation
12 692 (9.48%) Data Pipeline
13 684 (9.37%) Continuous Improvement
14 660 (9.04%) ETL
15 654 (8.96%) Microservices
16 601 (8.23%) Roadmaps
17 590 (8.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 582 (7.97%) Data Engineering
19 568 (7.78%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,764 (24.15%) Python
2 1,537 (21.05%) SQL
3 741 (10.15%) PowerShell
4 605 (8.28%) Java
5 603 (8.26%) C#
6 440 (6.02%) JavaScript
7 281 (3.85%) TypeScript
8 257 (3.52%) Bash
9 235 (3.22%) Bicep
10 93 (1.27%) Scala
11 89 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 86 (1.18%) T-SQL
13 84 (1.15%) Go
14 59 (0.81%) Kusto Query Language
15 53 (0.73%) Shell Script
16 51 (0.70%) PL/SQL
17 45 (0.62%) R
18 32 (0.44%) C++
19 23 (0.31%) Kotlin
20 18 (0.25%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,816 (24.87%) Security Cleared
2 1,530 (20.95%) SC Cleared
3 499 (6.83%) Degree
4 382 (5.23%) Azure Certification
5 207 (2.83%) CISSP
6 188 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 168 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
8 166 (2.27%) Cisco Certification
9 154 (2.11%) DV Cleared
10 153 (2.10%) Microsoft Certification
11 150 (2.05%) AWS Certification
12 120 (1.64%) CISM
13 78 (1.07%) CCNP
14 72 (0.99%) PMP
15 70 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
17 65 (0.89%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 65 (0.89%) Master's Degree
18 58 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 44 (0.60%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 510 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 390 (5.34%) QA
3 361 (4.94%) GDPR
4 289 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 264 (3.61%) NIST
6 132 (1.81%) Accessibility
7 104 (1.42%) NCSC
8 84 (1.15%) PCI DSS
9 70 (0.96%) SLA
10 68 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 59 (0.81%) PMO
13 52 (0.71%) GRC
14 39 (0.53%) WCAG
15 37 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 23 (0.31%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 21 (0.29%) SOC 2
19 19 (0.26%) ISO 20022
20 18 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 886 (12.13%) Active Directory
2 794 (10.87%) Docker
3 202 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 117 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
5 116 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
6 106 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.85%) vSphere
8 35 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.40%) Firmware
10 22 (0.30%) NFS
11 21 (0.29%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.16%) Postfix
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.096%) HDFS
14 7 (0.096%) Varnish
15 6 (0.082%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.082%) RACF
16 5 (0.068%) Ceph
16 5 (0.068%) KVM
16 5 (0.068%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,150 (15.75%) Terraform
2 1,063 (14.56%) Kubernetes
3 364 (4.98%) Microsoft Intune
4 342 (4.68%) Ansible
5 208 (2.85%) Grafana
6 182 (2.49%) Prometheus
7 152 (2.08%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.51%) SCCM
9 67 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.52%) Argo
11 35 (0.48%) FortiGate
11 35 (0.48%) Puppet
12 34 (0.47%) Istio
13 30 (0.41%) Progress Chef
14 26 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
15 22 (0.30%) HP ALM
16 19 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.22%) linkerd
18 15 (0.21%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,326 (31.85%) Microsoft
2 737 (10.09%) Databricks
3 304 (4.16%) Google
4 302 (4.14%) ServiceNow
5 285 (3.90%) Oracle
6 282 (3.86%) VMware
7 208 (2.85%) SAP
8 192 (2.63%) Cisco
9 180 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 164 (2.25%) Splunk
11 137 (1.88%) CyberArk
12 125 (1.71%) Palo Alto
13 109 (1.49%) Salesforce
14 108 (1.48%) Foundry
15 93 (1.27%) Okta
16 78 (1.07%) Citrix
17 74 (1.01%) Informatica
18 73 (1.00%) Dynatrace
19 70 (0.96%) BeyondTrust
20 65 (0.89%) Zscaler