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 30 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,298 4,944 5,445
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.12% 15.06% 14.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.57% 39.60% 42.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,800 3,378 3,699
10th Percentile £363 £350 £340
25th Percentile £445 £415 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £519 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.11% -1.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £720 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.02% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 44 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £22.16 £24.22 £23.80
Median hourly rate £45.20 £34.24 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.01% -2.17% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.50 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.38 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.20 £25.89 £46.18
% change year-on-year +74.62% -43.95% -

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 19,046 12,484 12,895
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.70% 38.02% 34.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,648 8,342 8,561
10th Percentile £325 £308 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £715 £719 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 617 292 180
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £30.00 £26.40 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.64% -24.57% +6.06%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.50 £65.04
90th Percentile £79.40 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +55.68% -41.61% +39.86%

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 30 September 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 30 September 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 30 September 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 7,059 £525 - 6,229
London 0 3,703 £550 - 2,930
UK excluding London +1 3,505 £510 +2.02% 3,690
Work from Home -2 2,518 £525 +5.00% 3,044
North of England +5 1,001 £500 +5.26% 1,039
South East +1 903 £525 +5.53% 780
Midlands +1 645 £490 -4.85% 574
West Midlands +1 494 £481 -12.55% 343
North West +5 488 £500 +5.26% 553
Yorkshire +5 428 £500 +2.30% 358
South West +2 411 £550 +9.45% 441
Scotland +1 288 £520 +4.00% 319
East of England +1 197 £505 +1.00% 295
East Midlands +3 146 £500 +8.11% 231
North East +4 100 £516 +3.25% 135
Wales 0 85 £450 - 124
Northern Ireland +13 14 £650 - 154
Channel Islands -6 5 £500 -21.88%

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
1 473 (5.70%) SharePoint
2 265 (3.19%) Confluence
3 198 (2.39%) Microsoft Exchange
4 185 (2.23%) Apache Spark
5 160 (1.93%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.37%) Apache
7 42 (0.51%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) IIS
9 27 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
10 23 (0.28%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) nginx
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
16 6 (0.072%) Traefik
Applications
1 119 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
4 48 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 40 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.096%) Revit
8 8 (0.096%) Trello
9 7 (0.084%) CPLEX
10 5 (0.060%) Notion
11 4 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.036%) 1Password
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) Mingle
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Windchill
14 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 131 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.096%) Magento
10 7 (0.084%) Cloudability
10 7 (0.084%) Shopify
11 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 6 (0.072%) Temenos T24
12 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
12 5 (0.060%) FLEXCUBE
12 5 (0.060%) Maximo
13 4 (0.048%) SAP Oil and Gas
13 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,980 (35.91%) AWS
2 1,740 (20.97%) Azure DevOps
3 1,463 (17.63%) GCP
4 1,129 (13.61%) Entra ID
5 1,075 (12.95%) Power Platform
6 883 (10.64%) Microsoft 365
7 854 (10.29%) GitHub
8 489 (5.89%) GitHub Actions
9 457 (5.51%) Azure Data Factory
10 375 (4.52%) Serverless
11 360 (4.34%) SaaS
12 315 (3.80%) Azure Monitor
13 305 (3.68%) Power Automate
14 300 (3.62%) Dynamics 365
15 298 (3.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 292 (3.52%) Snowflake
17 288 (3.47%) Azure AKS
18 286 (3.45%) PowerApps
19 252 (3.04%) Microsoft Copilot
20 247 (2.98%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 516 (6.22%) Firewall
2 415 (5.00%) DNS
3 318 (3.83%) VPN
4 291 (3.51%) Network Security
5 231 (2.78%) DHCP
6 182 (2.19%) WAN
7 165 (1.99%) TCP/IP
8 106 (1.28%) LAN
9 105 (1.27%) BGP
10 99 (1.19%) SD-WAN
11 84 (1.01%) OSPF
11 84 (1.01%) VLAN
12 81 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
13 73 (0.88%) SSL
14 66 (0.80%) Wireless
15 62 (0.75%) SAN
16 45 (0.54%) HTTP
16 45 (0.54%) IPsec
17 42 (0.51%) VXLAN
18 40 (0.48%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 696 (8.39%) Power BI
2 471 (5.68%) SQL Server
3 405 (4.88%) Data Warehouse
4 391 (4.71%) Data Lake
5 288 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 249 (3.00%) Metadata
7 211 (2.54%) NoSQL
8 195 (2.35%) Azure SQL Database
9 143 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 128 (1.54%) Delta Lake
11 114 (1.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 102 (1.23%) MongoDB
12 102 (1.23%) MySQL
13 90 (1.08%) Big Data
14 71 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
15 68 (0.82%) Redis
16 62 (0.75%) BigQuery
17 59 (0.71%) Oracle Database
17 59 (0.71%) Tableau
18 56 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 745 (8.98%) Git
2 602 (7.25%) JIRA
3 463 (5.58%) Jenkins
4 370 (4.46%) GitLab
5 137 (1.65%) Selenium
6 85 (1.02%) Postman
7 63 (0.76%) Cypress.io
7 63 (0.76%) JUnit
8 61 (0.74%) Cucumber
9 56 (0.67%) Claude Code
10 55 (0.66%) JMeter
11 53 (0.64%) Maven
11 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 50 (0.60%) Visual Studio
13 49 (0.59%) Gradle
14 47 (0.57%) REST Assured
15 37 (0.45%) WebDriver
16 33 (0.40%) Bitbucket
16 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
17 31 (0.37%) MLflow
General
1 2,289 (27.58%) Social Skills
2 1,586 (19.11%) Finance
3 959 (11.56%) Public Sector
4 804 (9.69%) Analytical Skills
5 494 (5.95%) Banking
6 224 (2.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 217 (2.62%) Retail
8 210 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
9 171 (2.06%) Legal
10 112 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
11 111 (1.34%) Manufacturing
12 94 (1.13%) Investment Banking
13 92 (1.11%) Telecoms
14 90 (1.08%) Marketing
15 87 (1.05%) Aerospace
16 82 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
17 78 (0.94%) Military
18 68 (0.82%) Law
19 60 (0.72%) Local Government
20 59 (0.71%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,590 (19.16%) Architect
2 1,050 (12.65%) Senior
3 1,012 (12.20%) Developer
4 725 (8.74%) Azure Engineer
5 686 (8.27%) Lead
6 589 (7.10%) Data Engineer
7 492 (5.93%) Solutions Architect
8 470 (5.66%) Analyst
9 456 (5.50%) DevOps Engineer
10 386 (4.65%) Cloud Engineer
11 324 (3.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 317 (3.82%) Consultant
13 269 (3.24%) Data Architect
14 235 (2.83%) Platform Engineer
15 221 (2.66%) Azure Architect
16 208 (2.51%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 203 (2.45%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 203 (2.45%) Technical Architect
18 199 (2.40%) Security Engineer
19 181 (2.18%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,415 (17.05%) Terraform
2 749 (9.03%) REST
3 624 (7.52%) .NET
4 394 (4.75%) Kafka
5 305 (3.68%) React
6 300 (3.62%) RESTful
7 275 (3.31%) OAuth
8 264 (3.18%) PySpark
9 237 (2.86%) JSON
10 190 (2.29%) Spring
11 181 (2.18%) Spring Boot
12 165 (1.99%) OAuth2
13 164 (1.98%) OpenID
14 159 (1.92%) HTML
15 154 (1.86%) Node.js
16 151 (1.82%) SAML
17 149 (1.80%) Middleware
18 147 (1.77%) SOAP
19 146 (1.76%) AngularJS
20 133 (1.60%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 933 (11.24%) Cloud Native
2 428 (5.16%) Onboarding
3 392 (4.72%) Product Ownership
4 319 (3.84%) Enterprise Software
5 317 (3.82%) AI Agents
6 287 (3.46%) Hybrid Cloud
7 275 (3.31%) Distributed Systems
8 255 (3.07%) Data Centre
9 230 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
10 184 (2.22%) Security Posture
11 179 (2.16%) Management Information System
12 150 (1.81%) Data Structures
13 149 (1.80%) Public Cloud
14 125 (1.51%) PKI
15 112 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
16 110 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
17 100 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
18 96 (1.16%) Replication
19 88 (1.06%) CMDB
20 87 (1.05%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 994 (11.98%) Windows
2 526 (6.34%) Linux
3 381 (4.59%) Windows Server
4 149 (1.80%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.10%) Android
6 89 (1.07%) Unix
7 86 (1.04%) Apple iOS
8 83 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 74 (0.89%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 50 (0.60%) VMS
12 27 (0.33%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.084%) Debian
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
19 5 (0.060%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,044 (36.68%) DevOps
2 2,682 (32.32%) CI/CD
3 2,076 (25.02%) Agile
4 1,504 (18.12%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,433 (17.27%) AI
6 1,424 (17.16%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,243 (14.98%) Migration
8 1,128 (13.59%) Problem-Solving
9 1,124 (13.55%) Analytics
10 957 (11.53%) Continuous Improvement
11 902 (10.87%) Data Modelling
12 859 (10.35%) Roadmaps
13 794 (9.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 785 (9.46%) Containerisation
15 759 (9.15%) Business Intelligence
16 754 (9.09%) Technical Leadership
17 747 (9.00%) Test Automation
18 735 (8.86%) Data Pipeline
19 732 (8.82%) Microservices
20 661 (7.97%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,908 (22.99%) Python
2 1,594 (19.21%) SQL
3 900 (10.85%) PowerShell
4 689 (8.30%) Java
5 604 (7.28%) C#
6 511 (6.16%) JavaScript
7 413 (4.98%) Bash
8 365 (4.40%) Bicep
9 308 (3.71%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 93 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 82 (0.99%) Go
13 66 (0.80%) Scala
14 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
15 59 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.51%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.45%) R
18 34 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.39%) Groovy
20 31 (0.37%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,161 (26.04%) Security Cleared
2 1,742 (20.99%) SC Cleared
3 562 (6.77%) Degree
4 476 (5.74%) Azure Certification
5 309 (3.72%) DV Cleared
6 273 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
7 270 (3.25%) CISSP
8 250 (3.01%) Microsoft Certification
9 217 (2.62%) AWS Certification
10 195 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
11 183 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 138 (1.66%) CISM
13 92 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 91 (1.10%) PMI Certification
15 86 (1.04%) PMP
16 84 (1.01%) CCNP
17 66 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 64 (0.77%) CCSP
19 63 (0.76%) Master's Degree
20 51 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 611 (7.36%) Data Quality
2 471 (5.68%) QA
3 303 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 293 (3.53%) NIST
5 291 (3.51%) GDPR
6 208 (2.51%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.45%) NCSC
8 108 (1.30%) SLA
9 86 (1.04%) GRC
10 83 (1.00%) WCAG
11 79 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
12 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
13 52 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 49 (0.59%) PMO
15 44 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 34 (0.41%) SOC 2
17 27 (0.33%) ISO 20022
18 26 (0.31%) HIPAA
19 23 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
20 20 (0.24%) COBIT
System Software
1 1,029 (12.40%) Active Directory
2 918 (11.06%) Docker
3 243 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.78%) Virtual Machines
5 142 (1.71%) Virtual Desktop
6 126 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 71 (0.86%) vSphere
8 49 (0.59%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.39%) VMware NSX
10 23 (0.28%) Firmware
11 17 (0.20%) IAG
12 16 (0.19%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.084%) Ceph
18 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
19 5 (0.060%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,303 (15.70%) Kubernetes
2 454 (5.47%) Ansible
3 448 (5.40%) Microsoft Intune
4 264 (3.18%) Grafana
5 208 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 150 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
7 134 (1.61%) SCCM
8 59 (0.71%) Argo
8 59 (0.71%) Progress Chef
9 46 (0.55%) Puppet
10 38 (0.46%) FortiGate
11 36 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
12 34 (0.41%) SCOM
13 30 (0.36%) Istio
14 25 (0.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.24%) CASB
16 19 (0.23%) QRadar
16 19 (0.23%) vCenter Server
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
18 15 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,006 (36.23%) Microsoft
2 867 (10.45%) Databricks
3 414 (4.99%) ServiceNow
4 397 (4.78%) Google
5 357 (4.30%) VMware
6 346 (4.17%) Oracle
7 243 (2.93%) Cisco
8 234 (2.82%) Splunk
9 220 (2.65%) OpenAI
9 220 (2.65%) SAP
10 191 (2.30%) Salesforce
11 151 (1.82%) Palo Alto
12 150 (1.81%) CyberArk
13 135 (1.63%) Foundry
14 129 (1.55%) Dynatrace
15 94 (1.13%) Zscaler
16 90 (1.08%) IBM
17 81 (0.98%) Informatica
17 81 (0.98%) Okta
18 80 (0.96%) Fortinet