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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,250 4,871 5,537
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.20% 14.79% 14.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.79% 39.35% 42.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,779 3,308 3,828
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £415 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £516 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.74% -1.71% -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 178 43 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.67 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.74 £26.23 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £34.00 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +16.18% -7.48% -31.94%
75th Percentile £79.75 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.25 £88.50 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £31.01 £42.34
% change year-on-year +27.38% -26.76% -8.32%

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 18,840 12,378 13,117
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.71% 37.58% 34.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,496 8,249 8,849
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 610 299 198
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £14.52
25th Percentile £17.97 £18.87 £20.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £29.07 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.80% -6.23% -11.43%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £62.14
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £20.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +60.00% -33.33% +11.11%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 0 7,050 £525 - 8,940
London +1 3,688 £550 - 4,483
UK excluding London +2 3,513 £510 +2.00% 5,354
Work from Home -1 2,504 £525 +5.00% 4,212
North of England +8 1,000 £500 +5.26% 1,477
South East +1 900 £525 +5.00% 1,258
Midlands +2 649 £488 -4.88% 784
North West +4 493 £500 +5.26% 825
West Midlands +1 481 £479 -11.30% 490
Yorkshire +4 426 £500 +5.26% 482
South West +2 426 £550 +10.00% 591
Scotland +6 280 £520 +6.01% 498
East of England +3 187 £510 +2.00% 421
East Midlands +5 159 £500 +8.11% 294
North East +4 94 £500 - 177
Wales 0 84 £450 - 153
Northern Ireland +17 14 £650 - 199
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69% 3

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
1 471 (5.71%) SharePoint
2 257 (3.12%) Confluence
3 196 (2.38%) Microsoft Exchange
4 177 (2.15%) Apache Spark
5 163 (1.98%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.32%) Apache
7 45 (0.55%) SAS
8 28 (0.34%) IIS
8 28 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
9 25 (0.30%) CMS
10 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.17%) nginx
11 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.16%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.085%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.085%) Mendix
15 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
15 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
15 6 (0.073%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 118 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
3 65 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.50%) Chatbot
6 36 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 8 (0.097%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.097%) Revit
9 8 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.061%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Mingle
13 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 135 (1.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.097%) Magento
7 8 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.097%) Workday HCM
8 7 (0.085%) Shopify
9 6 (0.073%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.073%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.048%) Endur
11 4 (0.048%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 2,958 (35.85%) AWS
2 1,734 (21.02%) Azure DevOps
3 1,415 (17.15%) GCP
4 1,095 (13.27%) Entra ID
5 1,071 (12.98%) Power Platform
6 870 (10.55%) Microsoft 365
7 830 (10.06%) GitHub
8 484 (5.87%) GitHub Actions
9 460 (5.58%) Azure Data Factory
10 370 (4.48%) Serverless
11 361 (4.38%) SaaS
12 308 (3.73%) Azure Monitor
13 303 (3.67%) Power Automate
14 297 (3.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 296 (3.59%) Dynamics 365
16 292 (3.54%) Azure AKS
17 285 (3.45%) PowerApps
18 282 (3.42%) Snowflake
19 244 (2.96%) Microsoft Copilot
20 243 (2.95%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 522 (6.33%) Firewall
2 418 (5.07%) DNS
3 316 (3.83%) VPN
4 297 (3.60%) Network Security
5 224 (2.72%) DHCP
6 184 (2.23%) WAN
7 168 (2.04%) TCP/IP
8 107 (1.30%) LAN
9 106 (1.28%) BGP
10 97 (1.18%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.13%) VLAN
12 86 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
13 85 (1.03%) OSPF
14 77 (0.93%) SSL
15 60 (0.73%) SAN
15 60 (0.73%) Wireless
16 46 (0.56%) HTTP
17 45 (0.55%) IPsec
18 44 (0.53%) VXLAN
19 40 (0.48%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 703 (8.52%) Power BI
2 472 (5.72%) SQL Server
3 399 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
4 377 (4.57%) Data Lake
5 291 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
6 247 (2.99%) Metadata
7 210 (2.55%) NoSQL
8 196 (2.38%) Azure SQL Database
9 141 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 127 (1.54%) Delta Lake
11 111 (1.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 106 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 92 (1.12%) Big Data
14 88 (1.07%) MySQL
15 72 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.79%) Redis
17 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.72%) Tableau
19 58 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
20 56 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 718 (8.70%) Git
2 597 (7.24%) JIRA
3 468 (5.67%) Jenkins
4 365 (4.42%) GitLab
5 124 (1.50%) Selenium
6 77 (0.93%) Postman
7 61 (0.74%) JUnit
8 60 (0.73%) Cypress.io
9 56 (0.68%) Maven
9 56 (0.68%) SonarQube
10 52 (0.63%) Claude Code
11 51 (0.62%) JMeter
12 50 (0.61%) Cucumber
13 47 (0.57%) Gradle
14 45 (0.55%) REST Assured
14 45 (0.55%) Visual Studio
15 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 35 (0.42%) MLflow
17 32 (0.39%) Gatling
18 31 (0.38%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,283 (27.67%) Social Skills
2 1,547 (18.75%) Finance
3 949 (11.50%) Public Sector
4 805 (9.76%) Analytical Skills
5 464 (5.62%) Banking
6 219 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 217 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
8 209 (2.53%) Retail
9 177 (2.15%) Legal
10 105 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
11 104 (1.26%) Manufacturing
12 89 (1.08%) Marketing
12 89 (1.08%) Telecoms
13 86 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
14 84 (1.02%) Aerospace
15 79 (0.96%) Investment Banking
16 73 (0.88%) Law
16 73 (0.88%) Military
17 58 (0.70%) Financial Institution
17 58 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,550 (18.79%) Architect
2 1,037 (12.57%) Senior
3 990 (12.00%) Developer
4 725 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 676 (8.19%) Lead
6 583 (7.07%) Data Engineer
7 477 (5.78%) Analyst
8 473 (5.73%) Solutions Architect
9 468 (5.67%) DevOps Engineer
10 370 (4.48%) Cloud Engineer
11 322 (3.90%) Consultant
12 313 (3.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 266 (3.22%) Data Architect
14 239 (2.90%) Platform Engineer
15 216 (2.62%) Azure Architect
16 208 (2.52%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 198 (2.40%) Technical Architect
18 195 (2.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 194 (2.35%) Security Engineer
20 185 (2.24%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,395 (16.91%) Terraform
2 699 (8.47%) REST
3 621 (7.53%) .NET
4 380 (4.61%) Kafka
5 299 (3.62%) React
6 286 (3.47%) RESTful
7 269 (3.26%) PySpark
8 260 (3.15%) OAuth
9 229 (2.78%) JSON
10 194 (2.35%) Spring
11 181 (2.19%) Spring Boot
12 162 (1.96%) OpenID
13 154 (1.87%) Node.js
13 154 (1.87%) OAuth2
14 151 (1.83%) SAML
15 149 (1.81%) HTML
16 147 (1.78%) AngularJS
17 134 (1.62%) Middleware
18 133 (1.61%) Playwright
19 130 (1.58%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 906 (10.98%) Cloud Native
2 418 (5.07%) Onboarding
3 380 (4.61%) Product Ownership
4 302 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
5 297 (3.60%) AI Agents
6 282 (3.42%) Hybrid Cloud
7 264 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
8 248 (3.01%) Data Centre
9 223 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
10 174 (2.11%) Management Information System
10 174 (2.11%) Security Posture
11 145 (1.76%) Data Structures
12 141 (1.71%) Public Cloud
13 117 (1.42%) PKI
14 114 (1.38%) Enterprise Cloud
15 113 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
16 106 (1.28%) Replication
17 90 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
18 85 (1.03%) CMDB
19 80 (0.97%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 989 (11.99%) Windows
2 518 (6.28%) Linux
3 368 (4.46%) Windows Server
4 142 (1.72%) Windows 10
5 89 (1.08%) Android
6 87 (1.05%) Unix
7 85 (1.03%) Apple iOS
8 84 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 77 (0.93%) Mac OS
10 55 (0.67%) Ubuntu
11 52 (0.63%) VMS
12 23 (0.28%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 6 (0.073%) AIX
17 6 (0.073%) Data ONTAP
17 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,031 (36.74%) DevOps
2 2,625 (31.82%) CI/CD
3 2,062 (24.99%) Agile
4 1,436 (17.41%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,405 (17.03%) AI
6 1,393 (16.88%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,209 (14.65%) Migration
8 1,140 (13.82%) Analytics
9 1,127 (13.66%) Problem-Solving
10 947 (11.48%) Continuous Improvement
11 898 (10.88%) Data Modelling
12 842 (10.21%) Roadmaps
13 796 (9.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 778 (9.43%) Containerisation
15 755 (9.15%) Business Intelligence
16 745 (9.03%) Data Pipeline
17 741 (8.98%) Technical Leadership
18 718 (8.70%) Microservices
19 701 (8.50%) Test Automation
20 653 (7.92%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,889 (22.90%) Python
2 1,564 (18.96%) SQL
3 880 (10.67%) PowerShell
4 686 (8.32%) Java
5 593 (7.19%) C#
6 493 (5.98%) JavaScript
7 406 (4.92%) Bash
8 353 (4.28%) Bicep
9 293 (3.55%) TypeScript
10 99 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 88 (1.07%) T-SQL
12 70 (0.85%) Go
13 64 (0.78%) Scala
14 59 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
14 59 (0.72%) Shell Script
15 41 (0.50%) PL/SQL
16 38 (0.46%) R
17 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 30 (0.36%) Groovy
19 28 (0.34%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,147 (26.02%) Security Cleared
2 1,730 (20.97%) SC Cleared
3 564 (6.84%) Degree
4 477 (5.78%) Azure Certification
5 304 (3.68%) DV Cleared
6 272 (3.30%) CISSP
7 262 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
8 255 (3.09%) Microsoft Certification
9 207 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
10 202 (2.45%) AWS Certification
11 179 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
12 134 (1.62%) CISM
13 93 (1.13%) CCNP
14 91 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 91 (1.10%) PMI Certification
15 86 (1.04%) PMP
16 64 (0.78%) ISTQB
17 62 (0.75%) CCSP
18 58 (0.70%) Master's Degree
19 51 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 595 (7.21%) Data Quality
2 447 (5.42%) QA
3 301 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 300 (3.64%) NIST
5 290 (3.52%) GDPR
6 204 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.44%) NCSC
8 107 (1.30%) SLA
9 87 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
10 84 (1.02%) WCAG
11 82 (0.99%) GRC
12 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 57 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 55 (0.67%) PMO
15 48 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 29 (0.35%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.32%) HIPAA
18 25 (0.30%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,024 (12.41%) Active Directory
2 914 (11.08%) Docker
3 247 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
4 147 (1.78%) Virtual Machines
5 131 (1.59%) Hyper-V
6 71 (0.86%) vSphere
7 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
8 38 (0.46%) VMware NSX
9 24 (0.29%) Firmware
10 18 (0.22%) IAG
10 18 (0.22%) NFS
11 11 (0.13%) Postfix
12 10 (0.12%) Ceph
12 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
13 9 (0.11%) zsh
14 8 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
15 7 (0.085%) Squid
16 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,291 (15.65%) Kubernetes
2 456 (5.53%) Ansible
3 447 (5.42%) Microsoft Intune
4 260 (3.15%) Grafana
5 204 (2.47%) Prometheus
6 152 (1.84%) Single Sign-On
7 132 (1.60%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 59 (0.72%) Argo
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 39 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) SCOM
14 30 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 25 (0.30%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) QRadar
18 18 (0.22%) CASB
18 18 (0.22%) Packer
19 17 (0.21%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,965 (35.94%) Microsoft
2 849 (10.29%) Databricks
3 419 (5.08%) ServiceNow
4 364 (4.41%) VMware
5 362 (4.39%) Google
6 338 (4.10%) Oracle
7 253 (3.07%) Cisco
8 219 (2.65%) SAP
9 217 (2.63%) Splunk
10 211 (2.56%) OpenAI
11 182 (2.21%) Salesforce
12 156 (1.89%) Palo Alto
13 152 (1.84%) CyberArk
14 137 (1.66%) Foundry
15 124 (1.50%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.13%) Zscaler
17 88 (1.07%) Informatica
18 81 (0.98%) Fortinet
19 80 (0.97%) IBM
20 78 (0.95%) Okta