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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,339 4,759 5,568
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.55% 14.54% 14.33%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.52% 39.07% 42.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,830 3,227 3,928
10th Percentile £375 £350 £342
25th Percentile £438 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £635
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 45 38
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.20 £18.05
25th Percentile £21.31 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% +7.14% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.75 £72.50 £60.58
90th Percentile £97.19 £92.50 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year -41.15% +96.97% -28.54%

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 18,732 12,180 13,099
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.92% 37.21% 33.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,400 8,119 9,044
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £747
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 606 319 229
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.46 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.06 £18.51 £17.80
Median hourly rate £33.99 £28.00 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.39% +3.70% -22.86%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £55.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £18.87 £22.00
% change year-on-year +72.23% -14.23% -18.52%

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 25 August 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 25 August 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 25 August 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 +1 7,148 £525 - 2,616
London +1 3,742 £550 - 922
UK excluding London +2 3,577 £500 - 2,237
Work from Home +1 2,546 £525 +5.00% 1,220
North of England +7 1,040 £500 +5.26% 550
South East +2 923 £525 +5.00% 663
Midlands +4 649 £493 -4.37% 325
North West +6 535 £494 +2.81% 286
West Midlands +3 481 £493 -8.29% 195
South West +6 429 £540 +8.00% 343
Yorkshire +5 423 £500 +5.26% 181
Scotland +11 287 £500 +5.26% 101
East of England +3 174 £525 +2.94% 187
East Midlands +10 156 £488 +5.41% 129
North East +9 95 £506 +1.25% 91
Wales +1 91 £475 +6.03% 71
Northern Ireland +11 15 £644 +35.53% 37
Channel Islands 0 10 £450 -29.69% 1

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
1 454 (5.44%) SharePoint
2 270 (3.24%) Confluence
3 197 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.09%) Apache Spark
5 154 (1.85%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.37%) Apache
7 43 (0.52%) SAS
8 37 (0.44%) IIS
9 27 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 22 (0.26%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 13 (0.16%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
15 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.084%) Camunda
17 6 (0.072%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 122 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 73 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.46%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.44%) Chatbot
6 33 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 125 (1.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
7 8 (0.096%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Maximo
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.060%) Workday HCM
11 4 (0.048%) Quorum
11 4 (0.048%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,985 (35.80%) AWS
2 1,786 (21.42%) Azure DevOps
3 1,422 (17.05%) GCP
4 1,077 (12.92%) Entra ID
5 1,064 (12.76%) Power Platform
6 859 (10.30%) Microsoft 365
7 833 (9.99%) GitHub
8 500 (6.00%) GitHub Actions
9 475 (5.70%) Azure Data Factory
10 364 (4.37%) Serverless
11 355 (4.26%) SaaS
12 318 (3.81%) Azure Monitor
13 311 (3.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 309 (3.71%) Azure AKS
15 293 (3.51%) Power Automate
16 280 (3.36%) Dynamics 365
16 280 (3.36%) PowerApps
17 261 (3.13%) Snowflake
18 243 (2.91%) PaaS
19 225 (2.70%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 524 (6.28%) Firewall
2 420 (5.04%) DNS
3 325 (3.90%) VPN
4 308 (3.69%) Network Security
5 216 (2.59%) DHCP
6 196 (2.35%) WAN
7 169 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.42%) LAN
9 112 (1.34%) BGP
10 101 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 92 (1.10%) VLAN
12 89 (1.07%) OSPF
13 84 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 73 (0.88%) SSL
15 62 (0.74%) SAN
16 55 (0.66%) Wireless
17 53 (0.64%) HTTP
18 47 (0.56%) VXLAN
19 46 (0.55%) IPsec
20 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 726 (8.71%) Power BI
2 463 (5.55%) SQL Server
3 410 (4.92%) Data Warehouse
4 360 (4.32%) Data Lake
5 290 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
6 229 (2.75%) Metadata
7 223 (2.67%) NoSQL
8 220 (2.64%) Azure SQL Database
9 142 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 131 (1.57%) Delta Lake
11 105 (1.26%) MongoDB
12 100 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 99 (1.19%) Big Data
14 84 (1.01%) MySQL
15 68 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
16 67 (0.80%) Tableau
17 65 (0.78%) Redis
18 61 (0.73%) Snowflake Schema
19 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
20 58 (0.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 694 (8.32%) Git
2 627 (7.52%) JIRA
3 470 (5.64%) Jenkins
4 359 (4.31%) GitLab
5 137 (1.64%) Selenium
6 76 (0.91%) Postman
7 63 (0.76%) JUnit
8 62 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 61 (0.73%) JMeter
10 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 52 (0.62%) Cucumber
12 50 (0.60%) Maven
13 47 (0.56%) Visual Studio
14 44 (0.53%) Claude Code
14 44 (0.53%) REST Assured
15 42 (0.50%) Gradle
16 40 (0.48%) WebDriver
17 33 (0.40%) MLflow
18 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
19 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,233 (26.78%) Social Skills
2 1,545 (18.53%) Finance
3 986 (11.82%) Public Sector
4 817 (9.80%) Analytical Skills
5 448 (5.37%) Banking
6 236 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 216 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 193 (2.31%) Retail
9 180 (2.16%) Legal
10 101 (1.21%) Manufacturing
11 94 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 91 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
13 85 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
14 75 (0.90%) Aerospace
14 75 (0.90%) Investment Banking
15 74 (0.89%) Law
15 74 (0.89%) Marketing
16 65 (0.78%) Financial Institution
17 62 (0.74%) Military
18 56 (0.67%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,547 (18.55%) Architect
2 1,038 (12.45%) Developer
3 1,037 (12.44%) Senior
4 741 (8.89%) Azure Engineer
5 689 (8.26%) Lead
6 594 (7.12%) Data Engineer
7 488 (5.85%) Analyst
8 458 (5.49%) DevOps Engineer
9 446 (5.35%) Solutions Architect
10 355 (4.26%) Cloud Engineer
11 317 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 308 (3.69%) Consultant
13 266 (3.19%) Data Architect
14 238 (2.85%) Azure Architect
15 236 (2.83%) Platform Engineer
16 201 (2.41%) Technical Architect
17 199 (2.39%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 188 (2.25%) Security Architect
19 184 (2.21%) Senior Developer
20 182 (2.18%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,378 (16.52%) Terraform
2 676 (8.11%) REST
3 640 (7.67%) .NET
4 360 (4.32%) Kafka
5 315 (3.78%) React
6 292 (3.50%) RESTful
7 272 (3.26%) PySpark
8 247 (2.96%) OAuth
9 225 (2.70%) JSON
10 208 (2.49%) Spring
11 180 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 174 (2.09%) Node.js
13 167 (2.00%) AngularJS
14 159 (1.91%) HTML
15 151 (1.81%) SAML
16 150 (1.80%) OpenID
17 146 (1.75%) OAuth2
18 140 (1.68%) Middleware
19 137 (1.64%) .NET Framework
20 136 (1.63%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 908 (10.89%) Cloud Native
2 415 (4.98%) Onboarding
3 362 (4.34%) Product Ownership
4 269 (3.23%) Enterprise Software
5 268 (3.21%) Distributed Systems
6 266 (3.19%) AI Agents
6 266 (3.19%) Hybrid Cloud
7 257 (3.08%) Data Centre
8 231 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
9 169 (2.03%) Security Posture
10 149 (1.79%) Management Information System
11 142 (1.70%) Data Structures
12 140 (1.68%) Public Cloud
13 117 (1.40%) Enterprise Cloud
14 115 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
15 113 (1.36%) PKI
16 96 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
17 94 (1.13%) Replication
18 81 (0.97%) CMDB
19 78 (0.94%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 982 (11.78%) Windows
2 503 (6.03%) Linux
3 358 (4.29%) Windows Server
4 134 (1.61%) Windows 10
5 85 (1.02%) Android
5 85 (1.02%) Unix
6 83 (1.00%) Apple iOS
7 81 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 70 (0.84%) Mac OS
9 61 (0.73%) VMS
10 54 (0.65%) Ubuntu
11 21 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.22%) CentOS
12 18 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
14 9 (0.11%) Debian
15 8 (0.096%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.072%) AIX
16 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,106 (37.25%) DevOps
2 2,630 (31.54%) CI/CD
3 2,088 (25.04%) Agile
4 1,352 (16.21%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,318 (15.81%) AI
6 1,315 (15.77%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,233 (14.79%) Migration
8 1,145 (13.73%) Analytics
9 1,123 (13.47%) Problem-Solving
10 934 (11.20%) Continuous Improvement
11 913 (10.95%) Data Modelling
12 822 (9.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 787 (9.44%) Roadmaps
14 781 (9.37%) Containerisation
15 777 (9.32%) Business Intelligence
16 769 (9.22%) Data Pipeline
17 747 (8.96%) Microservices
18 707 (8.48%) Test Automation
19 694 (8.32%) Technical Leadership
20 678 (8.13%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,887 (22.63%) Python
2 1,625 (19.49%) SQL
3 857 (10.28%) PowerShell
4 698 (8.37%) Java
5 613 (7.35%) C#
6 497 (5.96%) JavaScript
7 394 (4.72%) Bash
8 349 (4.19%) Bicep
9 296 (3.55%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.08%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.83%) Go
13 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
14 57 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
14 57 (0.68%) Scala
15 44 (0.53%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.49%) R
17 39 (0.47%) Kotlin
18 34 (0.41%) Groovy
19 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,180 (26.14%) Security Cleared
2 1,769 (21.21%) SC Cleared
3 552 (6.62%) Degree
4 460 (5.52%) Azure Certification
5 285 (3.42%) DV Cleared
6 261 (3.13%) CISSP
7 245 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 228 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
9 209 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
10 203 (2.43%) AWS Certification
11 182 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
12 130 (1.56%) CISM
13 100 (1.20%) CCNP
14 85 (1.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 85 (1.02%) PMI Certification
15 81 (0.97%) PMP
16 72 (0.86%) ISTQB
17 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
18 54 (0.65%) CCSP
19 43 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 593 (7.11%) Data Quality
2 450 (5.40%) QA
3 313 (3.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 311 (3.73%) GDPR
5 309 (3.71%) NIST
6 200 (2.40%) Accessibility
7 125 (1.50%) NCSC
8 105 (1.26%) SLA
9 77 (0.92%) GRC
10 75 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
10 75 (0.90%) WCAG
11 70 (0.84%) PCI DSS
12 58 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 52 (0.62%) PMO
14 40 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 25 (0.30%) SOC 2
16 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
17 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
17 19 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 1,011 (12.12%) Active Directory
2 919 (11.02%) Docker
3 245 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
5 141 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
6 131 (1.57%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.79%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 38 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.35%) Firmware
11 21 (0.25%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Postfix
14 12 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Squid
17 7 (0.084%) Varnish
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,279 (15.34%) Kubernetes
2 451 (5.41%) Ansible
3 434 (5.20%) Microsoft Intune
4 263 (3.15%) Grafana
5 212 (2.54%) Prometheus
6 150 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
7 125 (1.50%) SCCM
8 61 (0.73%) Progress Chef
9 60 (0.72%) Argo
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 31 (0.37%) Istio
15 22 (0.26%) SCOM
15 22 (0.26%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
16 19 (0.23%) Packer
16 19 (0.23%) QRadar
17 18 (0.22%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,871 (34.43%) Microsoft
2 816 (9.79%) Databricks
3 404 (4.84%) ServiceNow
4 352 (4.22%) Google
4 352 (4.22%) VMware
5 324 (3.89%) Oracle
6 242 (2.90%) Cisco
7 224 (2.69%) SAP
8 205 (2.46%) Splunk
9 204 (2.45%) OpenAI
10 165 (1.98%) Salesforce
11 151 (1.81%) CyberArk
11 151 (1.81%) Palo Alto
12 134 (1.61%) Foundry
13 118 (1.42%) Dynatrace
14 103 (1.24%) Zscaler
15 95 (1.14%) Informatica
16 88 (1.06%) Okta
17 79 (0.95%) Fortinet
18 77 (0.92%) IBM