Azure Contract Job Trends

Microsoft Azure
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Azure skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 4,880 5,579 7,581
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 14.81% 14.49% 15.40%
As % of the Cloud Services category 39.46% 42.28% 42.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,315 3,856 5,485
10th Percentile £350 £345 £363
25th Percentile £415 £430 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.33% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £666
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% +2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 34 100
10th Percentile £15.59 £20.34 £18.43
25th Percentile £26.11 £23.80 £35.00
Median hourly rate £34.24 £36.75 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.83% -31.94% +22.73%
75th Percentile £67.25 £59.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £88.63 £83.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.77 £42.34 £46.18
% change year-on-year -22.60% -8.32% +91.58%

All Cloud 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 12,367 13,195 17,635
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.53% 34.26% 35.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,251 8,899 12,684
10th Percentile £313 £313 £313
25th Percentile £410 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 291 196 336
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.49 £15.11
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.45 £18.50
Median hourly rate £28.00 £31.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.68% -11.43% +62.79%
75th Percentile £53.13 £62.81 £66.00
90th Percentile £67.25 £70.00 £78.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.94 £30.00 £26.25
% change year-on-year -36.88% +14.29% +36.36%

Azure
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Azure as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Azure 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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025. 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 -1 4,156 £525 -2.33% 4,031
London +1 2,362 £550 - 1,412
UK excluding London -1 1,896 £500 - 3,431
Work from Home 0 1,679 £500 -6.19% 2,067
South East 0 475 £500 -4.76% 1,159
North of England -8 452 £475 -5.00% 786
Midlands +2 373 £513 -2.38% 502
West Midlands +4 273 £540 -1.82% 266
South West +6 249 £500 -4.76% 331
North West -4 239 £475 -5.00% 434
Scotland -8 208 £500 +6.10% 242
Yorkshire -6 193 £475 -6.31% 239
East of England +9 112 £500 +48.15% 327
East Midlands -1 95 £463 -3.14% 220
Wales +4 56 £450 -10.00% 105
North East -9 23 £500 -12.66% 121
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -17 2 - - 29

Azure
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 215 (4.41%) SharePoint
2 142 (2.91%) Confluence
3 140 (2.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 114 (2.34%) Apache Spark
5 78 (1.60%) Apache Airflow
6 73 (1.50%) Apache
7 33 (0.68%) CMS
8 21 (0.43%) SAS
9 20 (0.41%) nginx
10 19 (0.39%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.31%) Anypoint
12 14 (0.29%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.27%) Mule
14 10 (0.20%) OpenStack
15 9 (0.18%) Skype for Business
15 9 (0.18%) WebSphere
16 8 (0.16%) SugarCRM
17 7 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
17 7 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
18 6 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 101 (2.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 81 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (0.82%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
5 28 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.33%) Chatbot
6 16 (0.33%) Trello
7 10 (0.20%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 3 (0.061%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.041%) Notion
9 2 (0.041%) Sketch
9 2 (0.041%) Windchill
10 1 (0.020%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.020%) FrameMaker
10 1 (0.020%) MadCap Flare
10 1 (0.020%) Revit
10 1 (0.020%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 76 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.47%) Endur
4 18 (0.37%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
5 12 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
7 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
8 7 (0.14%) SAP PM
8 7 (0.14%) Teamcenter
9 6 (0.12%) Maximo
9 6 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.10%) Avolution ABACUS
10 5 (0.10%) Workday HCM
11 4 (0.082%) Fidessa
11 4 (0.082%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.082%) thinkFolio
12 3 (0.061%) Oracle 11i
Cloud Services
1 1,708 (35.00%) AWS
2 961 (19.69%) Azure DevOps
3 903 (18.50%) GCP
4 573 (11.74%) Power Platform
5 545 (11.17%) Entra ID
5 545 (11.17%) Microsoft 365
6 365 (7.48%) GitHub
7 310 (6.35%) Azure Data Factory
8 235 (4.82%) Serverless
9 231 (4.73%) SaaS
10 224 (4.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 203 (4.16%) GitHub Actions
12 187 (3.83%) Dynamics 365
13 186 (3.81%) PaaS
14 176 (3.61%) Azure AKS
15 162 (3.32%) Azure Sentinel
16 158 (3.24%) Azure Monitor
17 157 (3.22%) PowerApps
18 156 (3.20%) Power Automate
19 152 (3.11%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 377 (7.73%) Firewall
2 176 (3.61%) DNS
3 171 (3.50%) VPN
4 141 (2.89%) Network Security
5 113 (2.32%) WAN
6 89 (1.82%) DHCP
7 84 (1.72%) TCP/IP
8 79 (1.62%) LAN
9 63 (1.29%) VLAN
10 61 (1.25%) HTTP
11 46 (0.94%) BGP
11 46 (0.94%) SD-WAN
12 42 (0.86%) SAN
13 40 (0.82%) SSL
14 38 (0.78%) MPLS
15 35 (0.72%) Wi-Fi
16 34 (0.70%) OSPF
17 31 (0.64%) Wireless
18 23 (0.47%) Internet
18 23 (0.47%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 392 (8.03%) Power BI
2 329 (6.74%) SQL Server
3 215 (4.41%) Data Lake
4 214 (4.39%) Data Warehouse
5 202 (4.14%) PostgreSQL
6 155 (3.18%) NoSQL
7 154 (3.16%) Azure SQL Database
8 113 (2.32%) MongoDB
9 107 (2.19%) Relational Database
10 92 (1.89%) Big Data
11 83 (1.70%) Metadata
12 78 (1.60%) Delta Lake
13 72 (1.48%) MySQL
14 63 (1.29%) Tableau
15 57 (1.17%) BigQuery
16 56 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 54 (1.11%) Redis
18 52 (1.07%) Oracle Database
19 42 (0.86%) Hadoop
20 40 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 403 (8.26%) Git
2 399 (8.18%) JIRA
3 297 (6.09%) Jenkins
4 208 (4.26%) GitLab
5 87 (1.78%) Selenium
6 85 (1.74%) SonarQube
7 79 (1.62%) Postman
8 51 (1.05%) JUnit
9 47 (0.96%) Maven
10 45 (0.92%) Cypress.io
11 39 (0.80%) Bitbucket
12 37 (0.76%) Cucumber
12 37 (0.76%) REST Assured
13 36 (0.74%) Gradle
14 35 (0.72%) Visual Studio
15 29 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
16 28 (0.57%) ERwin
16 28 (0.57%) JMeter
17 27 (0.55%) Visual Studio Code
18 26 (0.53%) CircleCI
General
1 1,480 (30.33%) Social Skills
2 1,000 (20.49%) Finance
3 494 (10.12%) Public Sector
4 454 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
5 349 (7.15%) Banking
6 118 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
7 109 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 100 (2.05%) Investment Banking
9 92 (1.89%) Marketing
9 92 (1.89%) Retail
10 83 (1.70%) Legal
11 70 (1.43%) Manufacturing
12 69 (1.41%) Telecoms
13 67 (1.37%) Front Office
14 54 (1.11%) Law
15 53 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
16 50 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
17 48 (0.98%) Local Government
18 47 (0.96%) Financial Institution
18 47 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 840 (17.21%) Developer
2 810 (16.60%) Architect
3 448 (9.18%) Senior
4 368 (7.54%) Azure Engineer
5 366 (7.50%) Analyst
6 308 (6.31%) Data Engineer
7 289 (5.92%) Lead
8 273 (5.59%) Solutions Architect
9 239 (4.90%) DevOps Engineer
10 179 (3.67%) Consultant
11 157 (3.22%) Security Engineer
12 150 (3.07%) Azure Architect
13 137 (2.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 137 (2.81%) Senior Developer
14 126 (2.58%) Cloud Engineer
15 120 (2.46%) Support Engineer
16 119 (2.44%) Software Engineer
17 115 (2.36%) Project Manager
18 114 (2.34%) Data Architect
19 112 (2.30%) .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 433 (8.87%) .NET
2 268 (5.49%) REST
3 237 (4.86%) React
4 217 (4.45%) RESTful
5 187 (3.83%) Kafka
6 177 (3.63%) HTML
7 146 (2.99%) CSS
7 146 (2.99%) Node.js
8 136 (2.79%) AngularJS
9 135 (2.77%) OAuth
10 131 (2.68%) JSON
11 120 (2.46%) PySpark
12 118 (2.42%) Spring
13 110 (2.25%) Spring Boot
14 109 (2.23%) SOAP
15 108 (2.21%) ARM Templates
16 101 (2.07%) .NET Core
17 93 (1.91%) Web Services
17 93 (1.91%) XML
18 88 (1.80%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 311 (6.37%) Cloud Native
2 168 (3.44%) Product Ownership
3 148 (3.03%) Onboarding
4 133 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 116 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
6 113 (2.32%) Data Centre
7 100 (2.05%) Security Posture
8 96 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
9 92 (1.89%) Public Cloud
10 78 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
11 70 (1.43%) Management Information System
12 67 (1.37%) Algorithms
13 59 (1.21%) Mobile App
14 58 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
15 57 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
16 51 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
17 50 (1.02%) PKI
17 50 (1.02%) Virtual Team
18 49 (1.00%) Data Structures
19 47 (0.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 624 (12.79%) Windows
2 327 (6.70%) Linux
3 165 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 99 (2.03%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.97%) Unix
6 78 (1.60%) Android
7 60 (1.23%) Apple iOS
8 38 (0.78%) Mac OS
9 36 (0.74%) VMS
10 25 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 20 (0.41%) Ubuntu
12 13 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.20%) Amazon Linux
13 10 (0.20%) Solaris
14 8 (0.16%) CentOS
14 8 (0.16%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.14%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.12%) AIX
16 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,742 (35.70%) DevOps
2 1,287 (26.37%) Agile
3 1,275 (26.13%) CI/CD
4 871 (17.85%) Problem-Solving
5 631 (12.93%) Infrastructure as Code
6 603 (12.36%) Migration
7 571 (11.70%) Analytics
8 447 (9.16%) Artificial Intelligence
9 443 (9.08%) Business Intelligence
10 421 (8.63%) Data Modelling
11 402 (8.24%) Containerisation
12 399 (8.18%) Stakeholder Management
13 391 (8.01%) Test Automation
14 382 (7.83%) Microservices
14 382 (7.83%) Scrum
15 372 (7.62%) ETL
16 364 (7.46%) Cybersecurity
17 341 (6.99%) Machine Learning
18 340 (6.97%) Cloud Security
19 312 (6.39%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,184 (24.26%) Python
2 1,064 (21.80%) SQL
3 508 (10.41%) PowerShell
4 500 (10.25%) C#
5 470 (9.63%) Java
6 365 (7.48%) JavaScript
7 241 (4.94%) Bash
8 201 (4.12%) TypeScript
9 160 (3.28%) Bicep
10 78 (1.60%) Go
11 62 (1.27%) Scala
12 61 (1.25%) R
13 60 (1.23%) Kusto Query Language
14 51 (1.05%) T-SQL
15 44 (0.90%) C++
16 34 (0.70%) Perl
17 33 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 33 (0.68%) Groovy
17 33 (0.68%) Shell Script
18 29 (0.59%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 823 (16.86%) Security Cleared
2 660 (13.52%) SC Cleared
3 408 (8.36%) Degree
4 298 (6.11%) Azure Certification
5 160 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
6 139 (2.85%) CISSP
7 137 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
8 120 (2.46%) AWS Certification
9 111 (2.27%) DV Cleared
10 95 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
11 67 (1.37%) Master's Degree
12 65 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
13 63 (1.29%) CISM
14 44 (0.90%) CCNP
15 34 (0.70%) PMI Certification
16 32 (0.66%) ISTQB
16 32 (0.66%) PMP
17 30 (0.61%) OSCP
18 29 (0.59%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 29 (0.59%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 277 (5.68%) GDPR
2 255 (5.23%) QA
3 236 (4.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 206 (4.22%) NIST
5 201 (4.12%) Data Quality
6 137 (2.81%) Accessibility
7 76 (1.56%) PCI DSS
8 74 (1.52%) HIPAA
9 51 (1.05%) NCSC
9 51 (1.05%) SLA
10 34 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 31 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials
12 29 (0.59%) SOC 2
13 21 (0.43%) GRC
14 19 (0.39%) WCAG
15 18 (0.37%) COBIT
16 16 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 16 (0.33%) PMO
17 15 (0.31%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 15 (0.31%) MiFID
System Software
1 574 (11.76%) Active Directory
2 529 (10.84%) Docker
3 123 (2.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 77 (1.58%) Virtual Desktop
5 76 (1.56%) Virtual Machines
6 55 (1.13%) Hyper-V
7 36 (0.74%) vSphere
8 18 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (0.31%) DFS Replication
10 14 (0.29%) Squid
11 13 (0.27%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.25%) Firmware
13 10 (0.20%) Dovecot
13 10 (0.20%) Postfix
14 9 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 9 (0.18%) zsh
15 8 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
16 7 (0.14%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.12%) KVM
17 6 (0.12%) OpenAM
Systems Management
1 698 (14.30%) Terraform
2 642 (13.16%) Kubernetes
3 272 (5.57%) Microsoft Intune
4 258 (5.29%) Ansible
5 119 (2.44%) Single Sign-On
6 114 (2.34%) SCCM
7 94 (1.93%) Grafana
8 93 (1.91%) Prometheus
9 36 (0.74%) Puppet
10 32 (0.66%) Nessus
11 23 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
12 21 (0.43%) NetBackup
13 20 (0.41%) Progress Chef
14 19 (0.39%) Nmap
14 19 (0.39%) Podman
15 18 (0.37%) Kibana
16 17 (0.35%) FortiGate
17 16 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 14 (0.29%) QRadar
19 13 (0.27%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,535 (31.45%) Microsoft
2 451 (9.24%) Databricks
3 245 (5.02%) Oracle
4 234 (4.80%) Google
5 178 (3.65%) VMware
6 155 (3.18%) Cisco
7 150 (3.07%) ServiceNow
8 131 (2.68%) SAP
9 116 (2.38%) Salesforce
10 108 (2.21%) Splunk
11 102 (2.09%) Citrix
12 80 (1.64%) OpenAI
12 80 (1.64%) Palo Alto
13 60 (1.23%) CyberArk
14 54 (1.11%) Okta
15 50 (1.02%) F5
15 50 (1.02%) IBM
16 48 (0.98%) Dynatrace
17 45 (0.92%) Informatica
17 45 (0.92%) MuleSoft