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 3 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,655 5,358 6,762
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.61% 14.96% 15.01%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.93% 41.86% 42.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,946 3,586 4,949
10th Percentile £350 £338 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £635 £650
90th Percentile £700 £720 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 49 83
10th Percentile £16.10 £20.23 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.74 £23.80 £25.38
Median hourly rate £46.00 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% -32.87% +31.94%
75th Percentile £77.38 £60.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.00 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +110.00% -35.04% -5.76%

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 13,815 12,799 15,871
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.14% 35.73% 35.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,383 8,453 11,352
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £419 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 321 185 294
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.73 £14.36
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £26.30 £30.00 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -12.33% +14.29% +19.32%
75th Percentile £52.16 £53.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.84 £27.35 £21.36
% change year-on-year -16.49% +28.07% +13.14%

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 3 December 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 3 December 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 3 December 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 4,813 £520 -2.80% 3,093
London +1 2,580 £538 -2.27% 1,105
UK excluding London 0 2,343 £500 - 2,814
Work from Home -1 1,832 £510 -2.86% 1,693
North of England -2 598 £475 -5.00% 643
South East -4 582 £500 -4.76% 1,038
Midlands -1 434 £525 - 391
West Midlands 0 326 £550 +4.76% 246
South West +6 314 £503 -1.47% 263
North West -1 293 £465 -7.00% 349
Yorkshire -2 277 £488 -2.50% 221
Scotland 0 251 £523 +12.59% 192
East of England +2 155 £500 +18.34% 210
East Midlands -2 105 £450 -10.00% 138
Wales 0 64 £456 -8.75% 100
North East -11 32 £515 +17.05% 82
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -3 6 - - 21

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
1 274 (4.85%) SharePoint
2 195 (3.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 143 (2.53%) Confluence
4 126 (2.23%) Apache Spark
5 84 (1.49%) Apache
5 84 (1.49%) Apache Airflow
6 27 (0.48%) SAS
7 26 (0.46%) CMS
8 22 (0.39%) OpenStack
9 17 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.27%) nginx
11 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
11 12 (0.21%) IIS
12 10 (0.18%) Mule
12 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
13 9 (0.16%) ArcGIS
13 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.14%) Camunda
14 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
Applications
1 130 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 98 (1.73%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (0.74%) MS Visio
4 39 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
6 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.19%) Trello
8 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.088%) Weka
10 2 (0.035%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.035%) Windchill
11 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
11 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.018%) Revit
11 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.018%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 95 (1.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 16 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.19%) Endur
5 11 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
6 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.16%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
7 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.12%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.088%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.088%) NEC Housing
10 5 (0.088%) Oracle EBS
11 4 (0.071%) Maximo
11 4 (0.071%) Remedy ITSM
11 4 (0.071%) SAP MDG
11 4 (0.071%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,059 (36.41%) AWS
2 1,116 (19.73%) Azure DevOps
3 1,105 (19.54%) GCP
4 722 (12.77%) Power Platform
5 650 (11.49%) Microsoft 365
6 643 (11.37%) Entra ID
7 533 (9.43%) GitHub
8 357 (6.31%) Azure Data Factory
9 320 (5.66%) GitHub Actions
10 307 (5.43%) Serverless
11 255 (4.51%) Dynamics 365
12 248 (4.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 247 (4.37%) SaaS
14 227 (4.01%) Power Automate
15 223 (3.94%) Azure AKS
16 218 (3.85%) Snowflake
17 209 (3.70%) PowerApps
18 202 (3.57%) Azure Monitor
19 198 (3.50%) PaaS
20 193 (3.41%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 413 (7.30%) Firewall
2 212 (3.75%) DNS
3 174 (3.08%) VPN
4 150 (2.65%) Network Security
5 116 (2.05%) WAN
6 108 (1.91%) DHCP
7 86 (1.52%) TCP/IP
8 74 (1.31%) LAN
9 73 (1.29%) HTTP
10 61 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
11 59 (1.04%) SD-WAN
12 56 (0.99%) VLAN
13 38 (0.67%) BGP
14 37 (0.65%) SAN
15 34 (0.60%) Internet
16 33 (0.58%) MPLS
17 30 (0.53%) Wireless
18 27 (0.48%) SSL
19 26 (0.46%) OSPF
20 21 (0.37%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 502 (8.88%) Power BI
2 309 (5.46%) SQL Server
3 268 (4.74%) Data Warehouse
4 246 (4.35%) PostgreSQL
5 241 (4.26%) Data Lake
6 186 (3.29%) Azure SQL Database
7 183 (3.24%) NoSQL
8 123 (2.18%) Relational Database
9 120 (2.12%) Metadata
10 103 (1.82%) MongoDB
11 79 (1.40%) MySQL
12 78 (1.38%) Big Data
13 74 (1.31%) Delta Lake
14 68 (1.20%) Tableau
15 60 (1.06%) BigQuery
15 60 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 55 (0.97%) Oracle Database
17 54 (0.95%) Redis
18 44 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
19 38 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 484 (8.56%) Git
2 414 (7.32%) JIRA
3 331 (5.85%) Jenkins
4 219 (3.87%) GitLab
5 95 (1.68%) Selenium
6 86 (1.52%) Postman
7 70 (1.24%) SonarQube
8 66 (1.17%) JUnit
9 47 (0.83%) JMeter
10 46 (0.81%) Bitbucket
10 46 (0.81%) Cucumber
10 46 (0.81%) Cypress.io
11 37 (0.65%) Maven
11 37 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
12 33 (0.58%) Visual Studio
13 32 (0.57%) CircleCI
14 30 (0.53%) MLflow
15 29 (0.51%) Mockito
15 29 (0.51%) SpecFlow
16 28 (0.50%) ERwin
General
1 1,811 (32.02%) Social Skills
2 1,077 (19.05%) Finance
3 667 (11.79%) Public Sector
4 533 (9.43%) Analytical Skills
5 374 (6.61%) Banking
6 193 (3.41%) Documentation Skills
7 129 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 97 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
9 95 (1.68%) Marketing
10 94 (1.66%) Investment Banking
11 89 (1.57%) Legal
11 89 (1.57%) Retail
12 78 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
13 74 (1.31%) Telecoms
14 68 (1.20%) Manufacturing
15 55 (0.97%) Law
16 48 (0.85%) Financial Institution
16 48 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
17 46 (0.81%) Front Office
18 44 (0.78%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 910 (16.09%) Architect
2 900 (15.92%) Developer
3 574 (10.15%) Senior
4 421 (7.44%) Azure Engineer
5 418 (7.39%) Analyst
6 395 (6.98%) Lead
7 373 (6.60%) Data Engineer
8 317 (5.61%) Solutions Architect
9 280 (4.95%) DevOps Engineer
10 227 (4.01%) Consultant
11 174 (3.08%) Security Engineer
12 163 (2.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 163 (2.88%) Senior Developer
13 154 (2.72%) Azure Architect
14 138 (2.44%) Cloud Engineer
15 133 (2.35%) Platform Engineer
16 118 (2.09%) Data Architect
17 117 (2.07%) Software Engineer
18 113 (2.00%) Java Developer
19 112 (1.98%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 468 (8.28%) .NET
2 355 (6.28%) REST
3 256 (4.53%) RESTful
4 247 (4.37%) React
5 218 (3.85%) Kafka
6 198 (3.50%) Node.js
6 198 (3.50%) Spring
7 178 (3.15%) OAuth
8 170 (3.01%) HTML
9 168 (2.97%) Spring Boot
10 167 (2.95%) PySpark
11 165 (2.92%) AngularJS
12 158 (2.79%) JSON
13 137 (2.42%) CSS
14 135 (2.39%) SOAP
15 120 (2.12%) PyTorch
16 108 (1.91%) TensorFlow
17 104 (1.84%) SAML
18 101 (1.79%) Middleware
19 98 (1.73%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 458 (8.10%) Cloud Native
2 198 (3.50%) Product Ownership
3 194 (3.43%) Onboarding
4 159 (2.81%) Hybrid Cloud
5 145 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
6 131 (2.32%) Data Centre
7 122 (2.16%) Security Posture
8 119 (2.10%) Distributed Systems
9 108 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
10 96 (1.70%) Public Cloud
11 78 (1.38%) Algorithms
12 77 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
13 76 (1.34%) Management Information System
14 70 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
15 62 (1.10%) AI Agents
16 60 (1.06%) Low-Code
17 59 (1.04%) Replication
18 53 (0.94%) NHS
18 53 (0.94%) PKI
19 52 (0.92%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 639 (11.30%) Windows
2 382 (6.76%) Linux
3 192 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.95%) Unix
5 96 (1.70%) Windows 10
6 53 (0.94%) Android
7 48 (0.85%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.80%) VMS
9 38 (0.67%) Mac OS
10 27 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.19%) Solaris
14 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
14 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
15 9 (0.16%) CentOS
16 6 (0.11%) AIX
16 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.071%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,051 (36.27%) DevOps
2 1,658 (29.32%) CI/CD
3 1,516 (26.81%) Agile
4 1,026 (18.14%) Problem-Solving
5 760 (13.44%) Analytics
6 751 (13.28%) Infrastructure as Code
7 664 (11.74%) Migration
8 661 (11.69%) AI
9 573 (10.13%) Business Intelligence
10 569 (10.06%) Stakeholder Management
11 567 (10.03%) Containerisation
12 499 (8.82%) Microservices
13 487 (8.61%) Data Modelling
14 485 (8.58%) Machine Learning
15 476 (8.42%) Test Automation
16 460 (8.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 449 (7.94%) Continuous Improvement
18 415 (7.34%) Scrum
19 412 (7.29%) Cybersecurity
20 403 (7.13%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 1,447 (25.59%) Python
2 1,206 (21.33%) SQL
3 593 (10.49%) PowerShell
4 560 (9.90%) Java
5 503 (8.89%) C#
6 433 (7.66%) JavaScript
7 277 (4.90%) Bash
8 235 (4.16%) TypeScript
9 156 (2.76%) Bicep
10 91 (1.61%) Go
11 72 (1.27%) Kusto Query Language
12 70 (1.24%) Scala
13 67 (1.18%) PL/SQL
14 59 (1.04%) R
15 50 (0.88%) T-SQL
16 45 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 40 (0.71%) C++
18 37 (0.65%) Shell Script
19 32 (0.57%) PHP
20 31 (0.55%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,185 (20.95%) Security Cleared
2 966 (17.08%) SC Cleared
3 490 (8.66%) Degree
4 332 (5.87%) Azure Certification
5 182 (3.22%) Microsoft Certification
6 175 (3.09%) CISSP
7 171 (3.02%) Computer Science Degree
8 141 (2.49%) AWS Certification
9 131 (2.32%) DV Cleared
10 101 (1.79%) CISM
11 93 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
12 87 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
13 85 (1.50%) Master's Degree
14 46 (0.81%) ISTQB
15 44 (0.78%) CCNP
16 37 (0.65%) PMI Certification
17 36 (0.64%) MCP
17 36 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
18 32 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 31 (0.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 357 (6.31%) GDPR
2 328 (5.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 319 (5.64%) QA
4 262 (4.63%) NIST
5 260 (4.60%) Data Quality
6 126 (2.23%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.43%) PCI DSS
8 76 (1.34%) NCSC
9 53 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
10 52 (0.92%) HIPAA
11 37 (0.65%) SOC 2
12 35 (0.62%) SLA
13 33 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 32 (0.57%) WCAG
15 28 (0.50%) EU AI Act
16 27 (0.48%) GRC
17 26 (0.46%) PMO
18 25 (0.44%) PSD2
19 22 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 21 (0.37%) COBIT
System Software
1 718 (12.70%) Docker
2 691 (12.22%) Active Directory
3 170 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 75 (1.33%) Hyper-V
5 73 (1.29%) Virtual Machines
6 62 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
7 47 (0.83%) vSphere
8 23 (0.41%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.28%) Squid
10 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
10 13 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 11 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
12 10 (0.18%) Postfix
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
14 8 (0.14%) Firmware
14 8 (0.14%) KVM
14 8 (0.14%) NFS
14 8 (0.14%) Snort
14 8 (0.14%) zsh
Systems Management
1 845 (14.94%) Terraform
2 799 (14.13%) Kubernetes
3 301 (5.32%) Ansible
3 301 (5.32%) Microsoft Intune
4 135 (2.39%) Single Sign-On
5 132 (2.33%) SCCM
6 129 (2.28%) Grafana
7 124 (2.19%) Prometheus
8 38 (0.67%) Argo
9 34 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 34 (0.60%) Puppet
10 27 (0.48%) Nessus
11 24 (0.42%) Kibana
12 21 (0.37%) NetBackup
13 20 (0.35%) Progress Chef
13 20 (0.35%) vRealize
14 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
15 16 (0.28%) Nmap
15 16 (0.28%) QRadar
15 16 (0.28%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,821 (32.20%) Microsoft
2 527 (9.32%) Databricks
3 333 (5.89%) Oracle
4 282 (4.99%) Google
5 226 (4.00%) ServiceNow
6 225 (3.98%) VMware
7 165 (2.92%) Cisco
8 157 (2.78%) SAP
9 146 (2.58%) Splunk
10 125 (2.21%) Salesforce
11 116 (2.05%) OpenAI
12 88 (1.56%) Palo Alto
13 87 (1.54%) CyberArk
14 79 (1.40%) Citrix
15 63 (1.11%) Foundry
16 60 (1.06%) Red Hat
17 55 (0.97%) F5
17 55 (0.97%) IBM
18 54 (0.95%) Dynatrace
18 54 (0.95%) Okta