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

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,323 4,724 5,474
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.42% 14.52% 14.41%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.16% 38.93% 42.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,833 3,209 3,843
10th Percentile £364 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £415 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £636
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £502 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +0.35% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 44 32
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.09 £19.67
25th Percentile £21.27 £26.68 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £38.75 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year -1.29% +5.44% -31.94%
75th Percentile £78.94 £72.50 £59.25
90th Percentile £98.31 £88.38 £86.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year -41.15% +68.83% -16.63%

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 18,848 12,135 12,962
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.93% 37.31% 34.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,523 8,065 8,872
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £419
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 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 604 309 212
10th Percentile £15.27 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.25 £18.87 £19.78
Median hourly rate £33.75 £29.07 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.08% -3.10% -14.29%
75th Percentile £68.75 £53.75 £59.66
90th Percentile £81.25 £71.56 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £19.27 £28.25
% change year-on-year +68.66% -31.79% +4.63%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 7,119 £525 - 4,775
London +1 3,728 £550 +0.92% 2,422
UK excluding London +2 3,565 £502 +0.35% 3,022
Work from Home 0 2,524 £525 +5.00% 2,278
North of England +10 1,034 £500 +5.26% 746
South East +1 907 £525 +5.00% 785
Midlands +4 651 £493 -3.90% 439
North West +8 528 £500 +5.26% 406
West Midlands +3 479 £488 -9.22% 249
South West +5 427 £540 +8.00% 400
Yorkshire +7 426 £500 +5.26% 240
Scotland +8 289 £500 +5.26% 240
East of England +3 182 £525 +5.00% 254
East Midlands +8 160 £500 +8.11% 189
North East +9 93 £500 - 106
Wales -2 88 £475 +5.56% 77
Northern Ireland +17 15 £650 - 118
Channel Islands 0 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
1 453 (5.44%) SharePoint
2 261 (3.14%) Confluence
3 193 (2.32%) Microsoft Exchange
4 183 (2.20%) Apache Spark
5 163 (1.96%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.39%) Apache
7 41 (0.49%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) CMS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
16 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
Applications
1 124 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
3 73 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.46%) Chatbot
6 36 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) 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%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 129 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.096%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
7 8 (0.096%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.072%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Endur
11 4 (0.048%) FLEXCUBE
11 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,990 (35.92%) AWS
2 1,781 (21.40%) Azure DevOps
3 1,423 (17.10%) GCP
4 1,093 (13.13%) Entra ID
5 1,063 (12.77%) Power Platform
6 858 (10.31%) Microsoft 365
7 851 (10.22%) GitHub
8 494 (5.94%) GitHub Actions
9 478 (5.74%) Azure Data Factory
10 380 (4.57%) Serverless
11 359 (4.31%) SaaS
12 321 (3.86%) Azure Monitor
13 315 (3.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 288 (3.46%) Power Automate
15 287 (3.45%) Azure AKS
16 282 (3.39%) Dynamics 365
17 281 (3.38%) Snowflake
18 276 (3.32%) PowerApps
19 231 (2.78%) Azure AI
20 223 (2.68%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 531 (6.38%) Firewall
2 418 (5.02%) DNS
3 310 (3.72%) Network Security
3 310 (3.72%) VPN
4 224 (2.69%) DHCP
5 191 (2.29%) WAN
6 166 (1.99%) TCP/IP
7 114 (1.37%) LAN
8 110 (1.32%) BGP
9 101 (1.21%) SD-WAN
10 91 (1.09%) VLAN
11 88 (1.06%) OSPF
12 83 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
13 75 (0.90%) SSL
14 62 (0.74%) SAN
15 58 (0.70%) Wireless
16 47 (0.56%) HTTP
16 47 (0.56%) IPsec
17 46 (0.55%) VXLAN
18 39 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 716 (8.60%) Power BI
2 474 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 412 (4.95%) Data Warehouse
4 384 (4.61%) Data Lake
5 294 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
6 249 (2.99%) Metadata
7 222 (2.67%) NoSQL
8 210 (2.52%) Azure SQL Database
9 143 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 137 (1.65%) Delta Lake
11 107 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 105 (1.26%) MongoDB
13 102 (1.23%) Big Data
14 91 (1.09%) MySQL
15 72 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.78%) Tableau
17 64 (0.77%) Redis
18 61 (0.73%) Snowflake Schema
19 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
20 59 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 701 (8.42%) Git
2 613 (7.37%) JIRA
3 466 (5.60%) Jenkins
4 364 (4.37%) GitLab
5 133 (1.60%) Selenium
6 77 (0.93%) Postman
7 62 (0.74%) JUnit
8 61 (0.73%) Cypress.io
9 60 (0.72%) JMeter
10 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 54 (0.65%) Maven
12 50 (0.60%) Cucumber
13 47 (0.56%) Claude Code
14 46 (0.55%) Visual Studio
15 45 (0.54%) Gradle
15 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
16 39 (0.47%) WebDriver
17 36 (0.43%) MLflow
18 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
19 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,271 (27.29%) Social Skills
2 1,561 (18.76%) Finance
3 961 (11.55%) Public Sector
4 821 (9.86%) Analytical Skills
5 456 (5.48%) Banking
6 228 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
7 216 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 204 (2.45%) Retail
9 182 (2.19%) Legal
10 106 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
11 100 (1.20%) Manufacturing
12 94 (1.13%) Telecoms
13 84 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
14 82 (0.99%) Marketing
15 78 (0.94%) Aerospace
15 78 (0.94%) Investment Banking
16 75 (0.90%) Law
17 73 (0.88%) Military
18 61 (0.73%) Financial Institution
19 58 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,563 (18.78%) Architect
2 1,054 (12.66%) Senior
3 989 (11.88%) Developer
4 733 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 685 (8.23%) Lead
6 610 (7.33%) Data Engineer
7 492 (5.91%) Analyst
8 468 (5.62%) Solutions Architect
9 460 (5.53%) DevOps Engineer
10 361 (4.34%) Cloud Engineer
11 317 (3.81%) Consultant
12 316 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 273 (3.28%) Data Architect
14 243 (2.92%) Platform Engineer
15 225 (2.70%) Azure Architect
16 205 (2.46%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 199 (2.39%) Technical Architect
18 192 (2.31%) Security Architect
19 190 (2.28%) Project Manager
20 182 (2.19%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,402 (16.84%) Terraform
2 683 (8.21%) REST
3 628 (7.55%) .NET
4 377 (4.53%) Kafka
5 305 (3.66%) React
6 288 (3.46%) RESTful
7 279 (3.35%) PySpark
8 254 (3.05%) OAuth
9 229 (2.75%) JSON
10 202 (2.43%) Spring
11 180 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 158 (1.90%) Node.js
13 156 (1.87%) OpenID
14 152 (1.83%) SAML
15 151 (1.81%) AngularJS
16 150 (1.80%) HTML
17 148 (1.78%) OAuth2
18 138 (1.66%) Playwright
19 137 (1.65%) Middleware
20 134 (1.61%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 921 (11.07%) Cloud Native
2 409 (4.91%) Onboarding
3 372 (4.47%) Product Ownership
4 286 (3.44%) Enterprise Software
5 282 (3.39%) AI Agents
6 276 (3.32%) Hybrid Cloud
7 272 (3.27%) Distributed Systems
8 250 (3.00%) Data Centre
9 234 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
10 175 (2.10%) Security Posture
11 165 (1.98%) Management Information System
12 145 (1.74%) Data Structures
13 139 (1.67%) Public Cloud
14 119 (1.43%) PKI
15 115 (1.38%) Enterprise Cloud
16 112 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
17 105 (1.26%) Replication
18 92 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
19 83 (1.00%) CMDB
20 76 (0.91%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 986 (11.85%) Windows
2 517 (6.21%) Linux
3 372 (4.47%) Windows Server
4 133 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.05%) Android
5 87 (1.05%) Unix
6 84 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 83 (1.00%) Apple iOS
8 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 59 (0.71%) VMS
10 53 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.23%) CentOS
13 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 6 (0.072%) AIX
16 6 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,090 (37.13%) DevOps
2 2,640 (31.72%) CI/CD
3 2,087 (25.08%) Agile
4 1,402 (16.84%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,390 (16.70%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,369 (16.45%) AI
7 1,236 (14.85%) Migration
8 1,153 (13.85%) Analytics
9 1,126 (13.53%) Problem-Solving
10 946 (11.37%) Continuous Improvement
11 929 (11.16%) Data Modelling
12 818 (9.83%) Roadmaps
13 804 (9.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 774 (9.30%) Data Pipeline
15 773 (9.29%) Business Intelligence
15 773 (9.29%) Containerisation
16 732 (8.79%) Microservices
17 730 (8.77%) Technical Leadership
18 707 (8.49%) Test Automation
19 671 (8.06%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,912 (22.97%) Python
2 1,627 (19.55%) SQL
3 870 (10.45%) PowerShell
4 685 (8.23%) Java
5 598 (7.18%) C#
6 487 (5.85%) JavaScript
7 405 (4.87%) Bash
8 355 (4.27%) Bicep
9 290 (3.48%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 67 (0.80%) Go
13 66 (0.79%) Scala
14 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
15 55 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.49%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.49%) R
17 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 32 (0.38%) Groovy
19 26 (0.31%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,162 (25.98%) Security Cleared
2 1,745 (20.97%) SC Cleared
3 565 (6.79%) Degree
4 464 (5.57%) Azure Certification
5 293 (3.52%) DV Cleared
6 272 (3.27%) CISSP
7 263 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
8 244 (2.93%) Microsoft Certification
9 207 (2.49%) Cisco Certification
10 203 (2.44%) AWS Certification
11 185 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
12 140 (1.68%) CISM
13 95 (1.14%) CCNP
14 89 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 89 (1.07%) PMI Certification
15 85 (1.02%) PMP
16 70 (0.84%) ISTQB
17 63 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 60 (0.72%) CCSP
19 49 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 617 (7.41%) Data Quality
2 457 (5.49%) QA
3 320 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 317 (3.81%) NIST
5 311 (3.74%) GDPR
6 199 (2.39%) Accessibility
7 121 (1.45%) NCSC
8 109 (1.31%) SLA
9 82 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
10 80 (0.96%) WCAG
11 79 (0.95%) GRC
12 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
13 58 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 57 (0.68%) PMO
15 45 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 28 (0.34%) SOC 2
17 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
18 23 (0.28%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,016 (12.21%) Active Directory
2 920 (11.05%) Docker
3 251 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 153 (1.84%) Virtual Desktop
5 142 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
6 136 (1.63%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.79%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.32%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) NFS
12 17 (0.20%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 11 (0.13%) Postfix
15 10 (0.12%) Ceph
16 9 (0.11%) zsh
17 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
18 7 (0.084%) Squid
19 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
19 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,288 (15.48%) Kubernetes
2 451 (5.42%) Ansible
3 436 (5.24%) Microsoft Intune
4 262 (3.15%) Grafana
5 208 (2.50%) Prometheus
6 151 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
7 127 (1.53%) SCCM
8 62 (0.74%) Progress Chef
9 60 (0.72%) Argo
10 47 (0.56%) Puppet
11 37 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 32 (0.38%) SCOM
15 24 (0.29%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) QRadar
18 18 (0.22%) Packer
19 17 (0.20%) CASB
19 17 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,922 (35.11%) Microsoft
2 856 (10.28%) Databricks
3 412 (4.95%) ServiceNow
4 367 (4.41%) Google
5 364 (4.37%) VMware
6 334 (4.01%) Oracle
7 249 (2.99%) Cisco
8 224 (2.69%) SAP
9 216 (2.60%) Splunk
10 200 (2.40%) OpenAI
11 178 (2.14%) Salesforce
12 155 (1.86%) Palo Alto
13 154 (1.85%) CyberArk
14 135 (1.62%) Foundry
15 115 (1.38%) Dynatrace
16 98 (1.18%) Informatica
17 91 (1.09%) Zscaler
18 84 (1.01%) Okta
19 80 (0.96%) Fortinet
20 76 (0.91%) IBM