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 17 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,490 5,358 7,069
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.63% 14.76% 15.05%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.69% 41.82% 42.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,815 3,588 5,184
10th Percentile £350 £338 £355
25th Percentile £420 £425 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -3.58% -3.20%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £723 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £514
% change year-on-year - -2.68% -2.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 43 88
10th Percentile £15.67 £20.02 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.47 £23.80 £25.94
Median hourly rate £34.48 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.23% -32.87% +10.61%
75th Percentile £72.50 £60.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £93.75 £77.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £31.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +43.18% -31.25% +2.62%

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 13,491 12,811 16,585
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.42% 35.30% 35.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,138 8,444 11,870
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 £613 £638 £640
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 327 168 309
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.50 £14.59
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.32 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.27 £32.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.41% +3.97% +46.19%
75th Percentile £46.94 £59.66 £62.00
90th Percentile £72.20 £70.00 £78.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £30.94 £22.50
% change year-on-year -32.12% +37.50% +18.73%

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 17 November 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 17 November 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 17 November 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 4,677 £525 -2.33% 5,633
London +1 2,521 £545 -0.91% 2,562
UK excluding London 0 2,271 £500 - 3,707
Work from Home 0 1,808 £513 -2.38% 2,994
North of England -1 589 £475 -5.00% 844
South East -4 526 £500 -4.76% 1,141
Midlands -2 425 £525 +0.48% 593
South West +6 310 £500 - 398
West Midlands +2 305 £550 +2.33% 392
North West -1 286 £465 -7.00% 499
Yorkshire -2 274 £492 -1.70% 253
Scotland +3 249 £500 +11.11% 260
East of England +3 156 £500 +29.03% 325
East Midlands -1 115 £450 -10.00% 198
Wales +1 66 £450 -14.29% 120
North East -6 33 £508 +13.53% 96
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -9 6 - - 66

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
1 251 (4.57%) SharePoint
2 183 (3.33%) Microsoft Exchange
3 140 (2.55%) Confluence
4 126 (2.30%) Apache Spark
5 86 (1.57%) Apache
6 83 (1.51%) Apache Airflow
7 30 (0.55%) CMS
8 27 (0.49%) SAS
9 21 (0.38%) OpenStack
10 19 (0.35%) nginx
11 17 (0.31%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.22%) Anypoint
13 10 (0.18%) IIS
13 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.18%) Mule
13 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.16%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.15%) GeoServer
16 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 119 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 86 (1.57%) Microsoft Office
3 37 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 35 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
5 31 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 15 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.15%) Trello
9 5 (0.091%) Weka
10 3 (0.055%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.036%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.036%) Windchill
12 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
12 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.018%) Revit
12 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 99 (1.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 52 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.35%) Aladdin
4 15 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
5 14 (0.26%) Endur
6 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
7 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.16%) Workday HCM
8 8 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
8 8 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 7 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
10 6 (0.11%) Maximo
10 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
10 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
11 5 (0.091%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.091%) Remedy ITSM
12 4 (0.073%) Cloudability
12 4 (0.073%) Primavera
12 4 (0.073%) SAP MDG
12 4 (0.073%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,012 (36.65%) AWS
2 1,099 (20.02%) Azure DevOps
3 1,072 (19.53%) GCP
4 692 (12.60%) Power Platform
5 625 (11.38%) Microsoft 365
6 612 (11.15%) Entra ID
7 518 (9.44%) GitHub
8 340 (6.19%) Azure Data Factory
9 297 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
10 283 (5.15%) Serverless
11 249 (4.54%) SaaS
12 241 (4.39%) Dynamics 365
13 239 (4.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 211 (3.84%) Azure AKS
15 204 (3.72%) Power Automate
16 199 (3.62%) Snowflake
17 197 (3.59%) PaaS
18 191 (3.48%) Azure Monitor
19 189 (3.44%) Azure Sentinel
20 188 (3.42%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 404 (7.36%) Firewall
2 198 (3.61%) DNS
3 172 (3.13%) VPN
4 151 (2.75%) Network Security
5 116 (2.11%) WAN
6 97 (1.77%) DHCP
7 85 (1.55%) TCP/IP
8 76 (1.38%) LAN
9 68 (1.24%) HTTP
10 64 (1.17%) VLAN
11 59 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
12 55 (1.00%) SD-WAN
13 45 (0.82%) BGP
14 40 (0.73%) SAN
15 36 (0.66%) Internet
16 33 (0.60%) MPLS
16 33 (0.60%) OSPF
16 33 (0.60%) SSL
17 27 (0.49%) Wireless
18 20 (0.36%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 470 (8.56%) Power BI
2 309 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 256 (4.66%) Data Warehouse
4 251 (4.57%) PostgreSQL
5 243 (4.43%) Data Lake
6 185 (3.37%) NoSQL
7 177 (3.22%) Azure SQL Database
8 128 (2.33%) Relational Database
9 111 (2.02%) MongoDB
10 109 (1.99%) Metadata
11 89 (1.62%) MySQL
12 82 (1.49%) Big Data
13 67 (1.22%) Delta Lake
14 63 (1.15%) Tableau
15 61 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 59 (1.07%) BigQuery
17 57 (1.04%) Redis
18 46 (0.84%) Oracle Database
19 42 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
20 38 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 484 (8.82%) Git
2 414 (7.54%) JIRA
3 323 (5.88%) Jenkins
4 217 (3.95%) GitLab
5 99 (1.80%) Selenium
6 85 (1.55%) Postman
7 84 (1.53%) SonarQube
8 68 (1.24%) JUnit
9 49 (0.89%) Cypress.io
10 48 (0.87%) JMeter
11 45 (0.82%) Bitbucket
11 45 (0.82%) Maven
12 44 (0.80%) Cucumber
13 38 (0.69%) Visual Studio
14 37 (0.67%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.60%) Gradle
16 32 (0.58%) CircleCI
16 32 (0.58%) ERwin
17 30 (0.55%) Mockito
17 30 (0.55%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,760 (32.06%) Social Skills
2 1,048 (19.09%) Finance
3 635 (11.57%) Public Sector
4 527 (9.60%) Analytical Skills
5 364 (6.63%) Banking
6 188 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
7 125 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 99 (1.80%) Retail
9 96 (1.75%) Investment Banking
10 94 (1.71%) Marketing
11 88 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
12 86 (1.57%) Legal
13 74 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
14 68 (1.24%) Manufacturing
15 67 (1.22%) Telecoms
16 57 (1.04%) Law
17 49 (0.89%) Local Government
18 46 (0.84%) Front Office
19 43 (0.78%) Financial Institution
20 42 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 912 (16.61%) Developer
2 897 (16.34%) Architect
3 544 (9.91%) Senior
4 416 (7.58%) Analyst
5 399 (7.27%) Azure Engineer
6 382 (6.96%) Lead
7 344 (6.27%) Data Engineer
8 307 (5.59%) Solutions Architect
9 268 (4.88%) DevOps Engineer
10 214 (3.90%) Consultant
11 181 (3.30%) Security Engineer
12 173 (3.15%) Senior Developer
13 161 (2.93%) Azure Architect
14 157 (2.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 134 (2.44%) Cloud Engineer
16 130 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
17 122 (2.22%) Data Architect
18 114 (2.08%) Software Engineer
19 113 (2.06%) Business Analyst
20 111 (2.02%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (8.54%) .NET
2 346 (6.30%) REST
3 267 (4.86%) RESTful
4 255 (4.64%) React
5 201 (3.66%) Kafka
5 201 (3.66%) Node.js
6 191 (3.48%) HTML
7 182 (3.32%) Spring
8 175 (3.19%) OAuth
9 164 (2.99%) AngularJS
10 156 (2.84%) Spring Boot
11 153 (2.79%) CSS
11 153 (2.79%) JSON
12 145 (2.64%) PySpark
13 133 (2.42%) SOAP
14 106 (1.93%) PyTorch
15 103 (1.88%) XML
16 101 (1.84%) ARM Templates
16 101 (1.84%) Web Services
17 100 (1.82%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 411 (7.49%) Cloud Native
2 193 (3.52%) Product Ownership
3 182 (3.32%) Onboarding
4 152 (2.77%) Hybrid Cloud
5 139 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
6 133 (2.42%) Data Centre
7 116 (2.11%) Security Posture
8 109 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
9 108 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
10 99 (1.80%) Public Cloud
11 81 (1.48%) Algorithms
12 76 (1.38%) Management Information System
13 75 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 69 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
15 56 (1.02%) Replication
16 54 (0.98%) Data Structures
17 53 (0.97%) Low-Code
18 52 (0.95%) AI Agents
19 49 (0.89%) NHS
19 49 (0.89%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 628 (11.44%) Windows
2 371 (6.76%) Linux
3 177 (3.22%) Windows Server
4 109 (1.99%) Unix
5 93 (1.69%) Windows 10
6 60 (1.09%) Android
7 52 (0.95%) Apple iOS
8 44 (0.80%) VMS
9 38 (0.69%) Mac OS
10 26 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) Solaris
13 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) CentOS
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
16 5 (0.091%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.073%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,000 (36.43%) DevOps
2 1,606 (29.25%) CI/CD
3 1,476 (26.89%) Agile
4 1,006 (18.32%) Problem-Solving
5 737 (13.42%) Infrastructure as Code
6 722 (13.15%) Analytics
7 649 (11.82%) Migration
8 618 (11.26%) AI
9 540 (9.84%) Business Intelligence
10 529 (9.64%) Stakeholder Management
11 522 (9.51%) Containerisation
12 474 (8.63%) Test Automation
13 473 (8.62%) Microservices
14 467 (8.51%) Data Modelling
15 462 (8.42%) Machine Learning
16 426 (7.76%) Scrum
17 423 (7.70%) Continuous Improvement
18 421 (7.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 416 (7.58%) Cybersecurity
20 391 (7.12%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,392 (25.36%) Python
2 1,189 (21.66%) SQL
3 575 (10.47%) PowerShell
4 550 (10.02%) Java
5 506 (9.22%) C#
6 453 (8.25%) JavaScript
7 278 (5.06%) Bash
8 238 (4.34%) TypeScript
9 148 (2.70%) Bicep
10 92 (1.68%) Go
11 71 (1.29%) Kusto Query Language
12 66 (1.20%) Scala
13 59 (1.07%) PL/SQL
13 59 (1.07%) R
14 52 (0.95%) T-SQL
15 47 (0.86%) C++
16 40 (0.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 35 (0.64%) Shell Script
18 32 (0.58%) Perl
19 31 (0.56%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,112 (20.26%) Security Cleared
2 901 (16.41%) SC Cleared
3 477 (8.69%) Degree
4 326 (5.94%) Azure Certification
5 180 (3.28%) CISSP
6 178 (3.24%) Microsoft Certification
7 168 (3.06%) Computer Science Degree
8 131 (2.39%) DV Cleared
9 129 (2.35%) AWS Certification
10 98 (1.79%) Cisco Certification
10 98 (1.79%) CISM
11 85 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
12 82 (1.49%) Master's Degree
13 48 (0.87%) ISTQB
14 46 (0.84%) CCNP
15 38 (0.69%) OSCP
16 35 (0.64%) PMI Certification
17 34 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 31 (0.56%) MCP
19 27 (0.49%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 333 (6.07%) GDPR
2 315 (5.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 301 (5.48%) QA
4 256 (4.66%) NIST
5 241 (4.39%) Data Quality
6 140 (2.55%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.48%) NCSC
8 71 (1.29%) PCI DSS
9 55 (1.00%) HIPAA
10 52 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
11 38 (0.69%) SOC 2
12 37 (0.67%) SLA
13 31 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 31 (0.56%) WCAG
14 28 (0.51%) EU AI Act
15 26 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 23 (0.42%) GRC
17 22 (0.40%) PSD2
18 21 (0.38%) NIST 800
19 20 (0.36%) COBIT
System Software
1 680 (12.39%) Docker
2 668 (12.17%) Active Directory
3 161 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 70 (1.28%) Hyper-V
5 68 (1.24%) Virtual Machines
6 61 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
7 49 (0.89%) vSphere
8 26 (0.47%) VMware NSX
9 16 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.27%) Squid
11 13 (0.24%) DFS Replication
11 13 (0.24%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 11 (0.20%) Firmware
13 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
13 10 (0.18%) Postfix
13 10 (0.18%) zsh
14 8 (0.15%) KVM
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.13%) NFS
15 7 (0.13%) Snort
Systems Management
1 803 (14.63%) Terraform
2 767 (13.97%) Kubernetes
3 293 (5.34%) Microsoft Intune
4 291 (5.30%) Ansible
5 144 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
6 127 (2.31%) SCCM
7 125 (2.28%) Grafana
8 121 (2.20%) Prometheus
9 39 (0.71%) Argo
10 33 (0.60%) Puppet
11 31 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 27 (0.49%) Nessus
13 22 (0.40%) Kibana
14 21 (0.38%) Nmap
15 20 (0.36%) NetBackup
16 19 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
17 17 (0.31%) Progress Chef
17 17 (0.31%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.31%) vRealize
18 16 (0.29%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,754 (31.95%) Microsoft
2 477 (8.69%) Databricks
3 319 (5.81%) Oracle
4 255 (4.64%) Google
5 213 (3.88%) VMware
6 208 (3.79%) ServiceNow
7 169 (3.08%) Cisco
8 149 (2.71%) SAP
9 137 (2.50%) Splunk
10 125 (2.28%) Salesforce
11 104 (1.89%) OpenAI
12 88 (1.60%) Palo Alto
13 84 (1.53%) Citrix
14 77 (1.40%) CyberArk
15 61 (1.11%) F5
16 59 (1.07%) IBM
16 59 (1.07%) Okta
16 59 (1.07%) Red Hat
17 56 (1.02%) Foundry
18 50 (0.91%) Dynatrace