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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,377 4,517 5,788
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.32% 15.49% 13.60%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.19% 41.22% 41.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,232 3,197 4,176
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £714 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 135 36 50
10th Percentile £20.86 £23.05 £17.80
25th Percentile £36.38 £26.40 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%
75th Percentile £60.00 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £76.05 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +53.33% -22.02% -20.77%

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 17,079 10,959 13,868
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.47% 37.57% 32.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,519 7,525 9,860
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £620 £634
90th Percentile £704 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.58% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 512 249 350
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.14 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.46 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +34.55% +28.69% -38.94%
75th Percentile £63.75 £47.50 £38.13
90th Percentile £77.50 £73.75 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £20.37 £17.72
% change year-on-year +84.09% +14.95% -31.49%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 6,236 £525 - 2,611
London +1 3,338 £540 -1.82% 963
UK excluding London +2 3,087 £500 - 2,111
Work from Home -1 2,252 £525 +1.94% 1,235
North of England +3 883 £500 +5.26% 548
South East +3 817 £500 -2.44% 641
Midlands -5 487 £491 -1.75% 274
North West +3 449 £500 +1.83% 301
South West +6 385 £525 - 258
Yorkshire +6 368 £500 +13.06% 154
West Midlands -1 351 £496 -5.48% 168
Scotland +8 305 £525 +10.53% 137
East of England +6 145 £550 -6.78% 169
East Midlands +4 126 £463 - 105
Wales -1 90 £400 -0.62% 84
North East -1 75 £525 +6.33% 94
Northern Ireland +9 18 £531 +11.84% 35
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
1 345 (4.68%) SharePoint
2 216 (2.93%) Confluence
3 200 (2.71%) Apache Spark
4 187 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
5 103 (1.40%) Apache
6 94 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.34%) IIS
8 22 (0.30%) SAS
9 16 (0.22%) CMS
10 15 (0.20%) Mendix
11 14 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 14 (0.19%) 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 (0.095%) Umbraco
Applications
1 100 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.18%) Microsoft Office
3 64 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.095%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.095%) Trello
8 5 (0.068%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.068%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.054%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.054%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.041%) Revit
10 3 (0.041%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.014%) InDesign
11 1 (0.014%) Notion
11 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 101 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 9 (0.12%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.12%) Maximo
7 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.081%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.068%) NetSuite
9 5 (0.068%) Shopify
9 5 (0.068%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.054%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.054%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 2,503 (33.93%) AWS
2 1,509 (20.46%) Azure DevOps
3 1,296 (17.57%) GCP
4 950 (12.88%) Power Platform
5 867 (11.75%) Entra ID
6 753 (10.21%) Microsoft 365
7 690 (9.35%) GitHub
8 501 (6.79%) Azure Data Factory
9 408 (5.53%) GitHub Actions
10 383 (5.19%) Serverless
11 336 (4.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 280 (3.80%) SaaS
13 274 (3.71%) Azure AKS
14 261 (3.54%) Power Automate
15 256 (3.47%) Dynamics 365
16 240 (3.25%) Azure Monitor
17 231 (3.13%) PaaS
18 224 (3.04%) PowerApps
19 209 (2.83%) Azure Functions
20 190 (2.58%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 436 (5.91%) Firewall
2 311 (4.22%) DNS
3 251 (3.40%) VPN
4 246 (3.33%) Network Security
5 203 (2.75%) WAN
6 166 (2.25%) DHCP
7 133 (1.80%) LAN
8 111 (1.50%) SD-WAN
9 90 (1.22%) TCP/IP
10 87 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 73 (0.99%) BGP
11 73 (0.99%) VLAN
12 71 (0.96%) Kerberos
13 62 (0.84%) OSPF
14 47 (0.64%) SAN
15 45 (0.61%) SSL
16 41 (0.56%) VXLAN
17 40 (0.54%) Wireless
18 37 (0.50%) HTTP
19 35 (0.47%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 630 (8.54%) Power BI
2 431 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 364 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 361 (4.89%) Data Lake
5 247 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 239 (3.24%) Azure SQL Database
7 199 (2.70%) NoSQL
8 179 (2.43%) Metadata
9 152 (2.06%) Delta Lake
10 118 (1.60%) Big Data
11 114 (1.55%) Relational Database
12 96 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 93 (1.26%) MongoDB
14 77 (1.04%) Tableau
15 70 (0.95%) Oracle Database
16 68 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
17 64 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 61 (0.83%) MySQL
19 55 (0.75%) Star Schema
20 49 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 541 (7.33%) Git
2 525 (7.12%) JIRA
3 394 (5.34%) Jenkins
4 309 (4.19%) GitLab
5 116 (1.57%) Selenium
6 79 (1.07%) Postman
7 69 (0.94%) JMeter
8 61 (0.83%) Cucumber
9 57 (0.77%) JUnit
10 54 (0.73%) MLflow
11 52 (0.70%) REST Assured
12 46 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 38 (0.52%) Cypress.io
14 37 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 33 (0.45%) Artifactory
15 33 (0.45%) WebDriver
16 31 (0.42%) Gatling
17 30 (0.41%) Maven
18 26 (0.35%) ERwin
19 25 (0.34%) NUnit
General
1 1,856 (25.16%) Social Skills
2 1,330 (18.03%) Finance
3 805 (10.91%) Public Sector
4 651 (8.82%) Analytical Skills
5 384 (5.21%) Banking
6 197 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
7 194 (2.63%) Legal
8 109 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 101 (1.37%) Retail
10 90 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 75 (1.02%) Financial Institution
12 74 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
13 71 (0.96%) Marketing
14 65 (0.88%) Investment Banking
15 63 (0.85%) Telecoms
16 62 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
17 60 (0.81%) Front Office
18 59 (0.80%) Law
19 44 (0.60%) Military
20 42 (0.57%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,270 (17.22%) Architect
2 946 (12.82%) Developer
3 866 (11.74%) Senior
4 677 (9.18%) Azure Engineer
5 598 (8.11%) Data Engineer
6 545 (7.39%) Lead
7 454 (6.15%) Analyst
8 414 (5.61%) DevOps Engineer
9 328 (4.45%) Solutions Architect
10 318 (4.31%) Consultant
11 240 (3.25%) Cloud Engineer
12 239 (3.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 208 (2.82%) Azure Architect
14 193 (2.62%) Security Engineer
15 189 (2.56%) Data Architect
16 171 (2.32%) Platform Engineer
17 170 (2.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 168 (2.28%) Technical Architect
19 160 (2.17%) Project Manager
20 157 (2.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 591 (8.01%) .NET
2 501 (6.79%) REST
3 334 (4.53%) React
4 272 (3.69%) PySpark
5 267 (3.62%) Kafka
6 233 (3.16%) RESTful
7 217 (2.94%) Node.js
8 205 (2.78%) OAuth
9 195 (2.64%) Spring
10 179 (2.43%) AngularJS
11 169 (2.29%) LDAP
12 162 (2.20%) Spring Boot
13 154 (2.09%) JSON
14 138 (1.87%) Middleware
15 137 (1.86%) HTML
16 135 (1.83%) SOAP
17 130 (1.76%) OpenID
18 125 (1.69%) SAML
19 113 (1.53%) CSS
20 107 (1.45%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 705 (9.56%) Cloud Native
2 291 (3.94%) Onboarding
3 268 (3.63%) Product Ownership
4 223 (3.02%) Data Centre
5 197 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
6 179 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
7 171 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
8 161 (2.18%) Security Posture
9 158 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
10 152 (2.06%) Public Cloud
11 140 (1.90%) AI Agents
12 98 (1.33%) Data Structures
13 92 (1.25%) Replication
14 91 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 80 (1.08%) Low-Code
16 78 (1.06%) Management Information System
17 69 (0.94%) PKI
18 68 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
19 62 (0.84%) NHS
20 58 (0.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 809 (10.97%) Windows
2 378 (5.12%) Linux
3 245 (3.32%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.64%) Windows 10
5 76 (1.03%) Unix
6 70 (0.95%) Apple iOS
6 70 (0.95%) Mac OS
7 68 (0.92%) VMS
8 61 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 50 (0.68%) Android
10 30 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
11 22 (0.30%) Ubuntu
11 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 12 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
13 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
14 9 (0.12%) Debian
15 8 (0.11%) CentOS
15 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.095%) CoreOS
16 7 (0.095%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,768 (37.52%) DevOps
2 2,300 (31.18%) CI/CD
3 1,722 (23.34%) Agile
4 1,054 (14.29%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,035 (14.03%) Analytics
6 1,029 (13.95%) Problem-Solving
7 1,025 (13.89%) Migration
8 1,007 (13.65%) AI
9 841 (11.40%) Data Modelling
10 734 (9.95%) Stakeholder Management
11 698 (9.46%) Data Pipeline
12 692 (9.38%) Business Intelligence
13 685 (9.29%) Continuous Improvement
14 684 (9.27%) Containerisation
15 669 (9.07%) ETL
16 657 (8.91%) Microservices
17 611 (8.28%) Roadmaps
18 589 (7.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 581 (7.88%) Data Engineering
20 565 (7.66%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,740 (23.59%) Python
2 1,535 (20.81%) SQL
3 723 (9.80%) PowerShell
4 616 (8.35%) C#
5 592 (8.02%) Java
6 447 (6.06%) JavaScript
7 276 (3.74%) TypeScript
8 249 (3.38%) Bash
9 242 (3.28%) Bicep
10 96 (1.30%) Scala
11 90 (1.22%) T-SQL
12 89 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 77 (1.04%) Go
14 53 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 51 (0.69%) Shell Script
16 50 (0.68%) PL/SQL
17 41 (0.56%) R
18 31 (0.42%) C++
19 24 (0.33%) Kotlin
20 18 (0.24%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,811 (24.55%) Security Cleared
2 1,537 (20.84%) SC Cleared
3 508 (6.89%) Degree
4 379 (5.14%) Azure Certification
5 208 (2.82%) CISSP
6 185 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
7 172 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
8 171 (2.32%) Cisco Certification
9 158 (2.14%) DV Cleared
10 151 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
11 141 (1.91%) AWS Certification
12 121 (1.64%) CISM
13 81 (1.10%) CCNP
14 77 (1.04%) PMP
15 73 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 63 (0.85%) Master's Degree
18 60 (0.81%) TOGAF Certification
19 57 (0.77%) ISTQB
20 46 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 515 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 392 (5.31%) QA
3 344 (4.66%) GDPR
4 281 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 261 (3.54%) NIST
6 139 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 103 (1.40%) NCSC
8 81 (1.10%) PCI DSS
9 76 (1.03%) SLA
10 65 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
11 64 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 56 (0.76%) PMO
13 53 (0.72%) GRC
14 46 (0.62%) WCAG
15 38 (0.52%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.33%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 18 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
20 17 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 880 (11.93%) Active Directory
2 787 (10.67%) Docker
3 209 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 122 (1.65%) Virtual Desktop
5 112 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
6 111 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 64 (0.87%) vSphere
8 38 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.39%) Firmware
10 23 (0.31%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.28%) NFS
12 13 (0.18%) Postfix
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.095%) Varnish
15 6 (0.081%) HDFS
15 6 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.081%) RACF
16 5 (0.068%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.068%) Ceph
16 5 (0.068%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,148 (15.56%) Terraform
2 1,057 (14.33%) Kubernetes
3 361 (4.89%) Microsoft Intune
4 342 (4.64%) Ansible
5 206 (2.79%) Grafana
6 179 (2.43%) Prometheus
7 152 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
8 107 (1.45%) SCCM
9 69 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.50%) Argo
11 35 (0.47%) FortiGate
11 35 (0.47%) Istio
11 35 (0.47%) Puppet
12 32 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
13 28 (0.38%) Progress Chef
14 23 (0.31%) HP ALM
15 18 (0.24%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.23%) linkerd
17 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
18 14 (0.19%) Nmap
Vendors
1 2,343 (31.76%) Microsoft
2 750 (10.17%) Databricks
3 313 (4.24%) ServiceNow
4 290 (3.93%) Oracle
5 288 (3.90%) Google
5 288 (3.90%) VMware
6 216 (2.93%) SAP
7 196 (2.66%) Cisco
8 184 (2.49%) OpenAI
9 164 (2.22%) Splunk
10 134 (1.82%) CyberArk
11 130 (1.76%) Palo Alto
12 114 (1.55%) Salesforce
13 109 (1.48%) Foundry
14 94 (1.27%) Okta
15 80 (1.08%) Dynatrace
16 79 (1.07%) Citrix
17 73 (0.99%) Informatica
18 70 (0.95%) Zscaler
19 66 (0.89%) BeyondTrust