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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,267 4,531 5,816
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.40% 15.47% 13.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.05% 41.13% 41.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,173 3,222 4,184
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £735 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 129 43 50
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £51.25 £24.59 £22.13
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -39.13%
75th Percentile £68.75 £72.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £29.25 £46.18
% change year-on-year +96.58% -36.66% -22.90%

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 16,881 11,015 13,939
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.78% 37.60% 32.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,436 7,643 9,909
10th Percentile £320 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £630
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.74% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 490 251 343
10th Percentile £15.61 £15.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.51 £15.95
Median hourly rate £42.69 £27.35 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.07% +30.24% -40.00%
75th Percentile £67.84 £46.30 £34.38
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £21.46 £17.69
% change year-on-year +121.34% +21.31% -28.15%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 6,170 £525 - 2,790
London +1 3,306 £536 -2.55% 1,053
UK excluding London +2 3,020 £500 - 2,144
Work from Home -1 2,194 £525 +0.96% 1,295
North of England +4 838 £500 +5.26% 564
South East +2 806 £500 -7.06% 654
Midlands -2 508 £490 -2.00% 288
North West +3 446 £500 - 298
South West +5 379 £525 - 265
West Midlands 0 369 £500 -4.76% 167
Yorkshire +2 341 £500 +17.65% 171
Scotland +6 290 £529 +11.26% 117
East of England +6 151 £550 -5.17% 188
East Midlands +2 129 £450 -2.96% 120
Wales -2 77 £388 -6.06% 76
North East -3 60 £525 +7.69% 96
Northern Ireland +8 14 £475 - 25
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
1 330 (4.54%) SharePoint
2 207 (2.85%) Confluence
3 196 (2.70%) Apache Spark
4 193 (2.66%) Microsoft Exchange
5 104 (1.43%) Apache
6 94 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.33%) SAS
8 22 (0.30%) IIS
9 17 (0.23%) CMS
10 16 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.21%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.21%) Mendix
12 13 (0.18%) Appian
12 13 (0.18%) Camunda
12 13 (0.18%) HCL Notes
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 7 (0.096%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.096%) nginx
Applications
1 114 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 23 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.096%) Trello
8 5 (0.069%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.069%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.055%) AutoCAD
9 4 (0.055%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.041%) Revit
10 3 (0.041%) Weka
11 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
12 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 101 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.15%) Maximo
3 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
3 11 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
5 7 (0.096%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.096%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.096%) Teamcenter
6 6 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.069%) Cloudability
7 5 (0.069%) NetSuite
8 4 (0.055%) Dynamics NAV
8 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
8 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
8 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.055%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.055%) Shopify
8 4 (0.055%) Unit4 Business World
9 3 (0.041%) Oracle 11i
Cloud Services
1 2,471 (34.00%) AWS
2 1,487 (20.46%) Azure DevOps
3 1,321 (18.18%) GCP
4 956 (13.16%) Power Platform
5 854 (11.75%) Entra ID
6 757 (10.42%) Microsoft 365
7 691 (9.51%) GitHub
8 506 (6.96%) Azure Data Factory
9 407 (5.60%) GitHub Actions
10 393 (5.41%) Serverless
11 342 (4.71%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 287 (3.95%) SaaS
13 284 (3.91%) Azure AKS
14 263 (3.62%) Dynamics 365
15 257 (3.54%) Power Automate
16 243 (3.34%) Azure Monitor
17 235 (3.23%) PaaS
18 219 (3.01%) PowerApps
19 215 (2.96%) Azure Functions
20 195 (2.68%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 444 (6.11%) Firewall
2 300 (4.13%) DNS
3 254 (3.50%) VPN
4 241 (3.32%) Network Security
5 190 (2.61%) WAN
6 160 (2.20%) DHCP
7 129 (1.78%) LAN
8 99 (1.36%) SD-WAN
9 94 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
10 86 (1.18%) TCP/IP
11 73 (1.00%) VLAN
12 70 (0.96%) Kerberos
13 63 (0.87%) BGP
14 54 (0.74%) OSPF
15 44 (0.61%) SAN
16 41 (0.56%) SSL
17 40 (0.55%) HTTP
17 40 (0.55%) Wireless
18 34 (0.47%) Internet
18 34 (0.47%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 643 (8.85%) Power BI
2 424 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 371 (5.11%) Data Lake
4 368 (5.06%) Data Warehouse
5 249 (3.43%) Azure SQL Database
6 248 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
7 195 (2.68%) NoSQL
8 187 (2.57%) Metadata
9 151 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 119 (1.64%) Big Data
11 114 (1.57%) Relational Database
12 94 (1.29%) MongoDB
12 94 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 77 (1.06%) Tableau
14 71 (0.98%) Oracle Database
15 66 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
16 65 (0.89%) MySQL
17 64 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 56 (0.77%) Star Schema
19 48 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 533 (7.33%) Git
2 508 (6.99%) JIRA
3 384 (5.28%) Jenkins
4 294 (4.05%) GitLab
5 121 (1.67%) Selenium
6 81 (1.11%) Postman
7 67 (0.92%) Cucumber
7 67 (0.92%) JMeter
8 62 (0.85%) JUnit
9 55 (0.76%) MLflow
10 52 (0.72%) REST Assured
11 45 (0.62%) SonarQube
12 41 (0.56%) Cypress.io
13 38 (0.52%) Artifactory
14 34 (0.47%) WebDriver
15 33 (0.45%) Visual Studio
16 31 (0.43%) Gatling
17 28 (0.39%) TestRail
18 26 (0.36%) ERwin
19 25 (0.34%) Maven
General
1 1,894 (26.06%) Social Skills
2 1,283 (17.66%) Finance
3 818 (11.26%) Public Sector
4 669 (9.21%) Analytical Skills
5 372 (5.12%) Banking
6 217 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
7 190 (2.61%) Legal
8 102 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 88 (1.21%) Retail
10 85 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
11 75 (1.03%) Marketing
12 74 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
13 71 (0.98%) Financial Institution
13 71 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
14 67 (0.92%) Telecoms
15 66 (0.91%) Law
16 62 (0.85%) Investment Banking
17 60 (0.83%) Front Office
18 42 (0.58%) Local Government
18 42 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,229 (16.91%) Architect
2 953 (13.11%) Developer
3 852 (11.72%) Senior
4 659 (9.07%) Azure Engineer
5 591 (8.13%) Data Engineer
6 550 (7.57%) Lead
7 450 (6.19%) Analyst
8 405 (5.57%) DevOps Engineer
9 311 (4.28%) Solutions Architect
10 298 (4.10%) Consultant
11 228 (3.14%) Cloud Engineer
12 220 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 201 (2.77%) Azure Architect
14 184 (2.53%) Security Engineer
15 171 (2.35%) Data Architect
16 170 (2.34%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 170 (2.34%) Platform Engineer
17 161 (2.22%) Technical Architect
18 154 (2.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 151 (2.08%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 571 (7.86%) .NET
2 483 (6.65%) REST
3 325 (4.47%) React
4 276 (3.80%) Kafka
5 263 (3.62%) PySpark
6 235 (3.23%) Node.js
7 230 (3.16%) RESTful
8 213 (2.93%) Spring
9 208 (2.86%) OAuth
10 180 (2.48%) AngularJS
11 175 (2.41%) Spring Boot
12 169 (2.33%) LDAP
13 147 (2.02%) JSON
14 144 (1.98%) HTML
15 132 (1.82%) OpenID
16 130 (1.79%) SAML
17 129 (1.78%) Middleware
18 128 (1.76%) SOAP
19 121 (1.67%) CSS
20 108 (1.49%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 704 (9.69%) Cloud Native
2 282 (3.88%) Onboarding
3 270 (3.72%) Product Ownership
4 195 (2.68%) Data Centre
4 195 (2.68%) Hybrid Cloud
5 177 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
6 164 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
7 163 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
8 157 (2.16%) Public Cloud
8 157 (2.16%) Security Posture
9 132 (1.82%) AI Agents
10 95 (1.31%) Data Structures
11 89 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
12 88 (1.21%) Replication
13 85 (1.17%) Management Information System
14 83 (1.14%) Low-Code
15 67 (0.92%) PKI
16 64 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
17 58 (0.80%) NHS
18 54 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 785 (10.80%) Windows
2 369 (5.08%) Linux
3 237 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 116 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 72 (0.99%) Unix
6 70 (0.96%) VMS
7 63 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 61 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 54 (0.74%) Apple iOS
10 42 (0.58%) Android
11 29 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.26%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.11%) AIX
16 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.096%) CentOS
17 7 (0.096%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.083%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,716 (37.37%) DevOps
2 2,251 (30.98%) CI/CD
3 1,702 (23.42%) Agile
4 1,067 (14.68%) Problem-Solving
5 1,064 (14.64%) Analytics
6 1,024 (14.09%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,004 (13.82%) AI
8 984 (13.54%) Migration
9 818 (11.26%) Data Modelling
10 714 (9.83%) Stakeholder Management
11 702 (9.66%) Business Intelligence
12 693 (9.54%) Containerisation
13 692 (9.52%) Data Pipeline
14 691 (9.51%) Continuous Improvement
15 658 (9.05%) Microservices
16 650 (8.94%) ETL
17 596 (8.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 590 (8.12%) Roadmaps
19 581 (8.00%) Data Engineering
20 567 (7.80%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,785 (24.56%) Python
2 1,546 (21.27%) SQL
3 728 (10.02%) PowerShell
4 617 (8.49%) Java
5 614 (8.45%) C#
6 448 (6.16%) JavaScript
7 288 (3.96%) TypeScript
8 252 (3.47%) Bash
9 232 (3.19%) Bicep
10 94 (1.29%) Scala
11 87 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 84 (1.16%) Go
13 79 (1.09%) T-SQL
14 64 (0.88%) Kusto Query Language
15 57 (0.78%) PL/SQL
16 53 (0.73%) Shell Script
17 49 (0.67%) R
18 31 (0.43%) C++
19 23 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 19 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,814 (24.96%) Security Cleared
2 1,530 (21.05%) SC Cleared
3 507 (6.98%) Degree
4 376 (5.17%) Azure Certification
5 196 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
6 195 (2.68%) CISSP
7 164 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
8 156 (2.15%) Cisco Certification
9 154 (2.12%) Microsoft Certification
10 147 (2.02%) DV Cleared
11 141 (1.94%) AWS Certification
12 116 (1.60%) CISM
13 76 (1.05%) CCNP
14 73 (1.00%) PMP
15 71 (0.98%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.92%) Master's Degree
16 67 (0.92%) TOGAF Certification
17 60 (0.83%) ISTQB
18 57 (0.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 40 (0.55%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 513 (7.06%) Data Quality
2 391 (5.38%) QA
3 371 (5.11%) GDPR
4 288 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 258 (3.55%) NIST
6 130 (1.79%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.38%) NCSC
8 82 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 65 (0.89%) SLA
10 64 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 57 (0.78%) PMO
13 47 (0.65%) GRC
14 38 (0.52%) WCAG
15 36 (0.50%) HIPAA
16 23 (0.32%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 20 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
17 20 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 881 (12.12%) Active Directory
2 807 (11.10%) Docker
3 194 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
5 108 (1.49%) Hyper-V
5 108 (1.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 61 (0.84%) vSphere
7 33 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
8 28 (0.39%) Firmware
9 21 (0.29%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.28%) NFS
11 11 (0.15%) Postfix
12 8 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.096%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.096%) HDFS
13 7 (0.096%) Varnish
14 6 (0.083%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.083%) RACF
15 5 (0.069%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.069%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,147 (15.78%) Terraform
2 1,075 (14.79%) Kubernetes
3 369 (5.08%) Microsoft Intune
4 331 (4.55%) Ansible
5 204 (2.81%) Grafana
6 177 (2.44%) Prometheus
7 150 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
8 113 (1.55%) SCCM
9 66 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.52%) Argo
11 35 (0.48%) Istio
11 35 (0.48%) Puppet
12 34 (0.47%) FortiGate
13 28 (0.39%) Progress Chef
14 24 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
15 22 (0.30%) HP ALM
16 20 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.23%) Kubeflow
17 17 (0.23%) linkerd
18 15 (0.21%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,341 (32.21%) Microsoft
2 730 (10.05%) Databricks
3 317 (4.36%) Google
4 297 (4.09%) Oracle
5 296 (4.07%) ServiceNow
6 278 (3.83%) VMware
7 209 (2.88%) SAP
8 185 (2.55%) Cisco
9 182 (2.50%) OpenAI
10 156 (2.15%) Splunk
11 135 (1.86%) CyberArk
12 116 (1.60%) Foundry
13 111 (1.53%) Palo Alto
13 111 (1.53%) Salesforce
14 90 (1.24%) Okta
15 78 (1.07%) Informatica
16 75 (1.03%) Citrix
17 71 (0.98%) Dynatrace
18 69 (0.95%) BeyondTrust
19 65 (0.89%) Red Hat