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 20 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,802 4,527 6,013
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.40% 15.16% 13.70%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.44% 40.10% 42.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,476 3,157 4,329
10th Percentile £363 £350 £354
25th Percentile £425 £425 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £507
% change year-on-year +1.00% -1.38% -3.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 36 53
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.73 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.19 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +27.92% -37.75%
75th Percentile £76.75 £77.80 £61.60
90th Percentile £95.63 £94.38 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -11.54% +23.81% -12.50%

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 17,960 11,288 14,248
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.46% 37.80% 32.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,998 7,611 10,028
10th Percentile £328 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £620 £636
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 594 277 365
10th Percentile £16.54 £15.13 £14.05
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £28.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.58% +29.55% -37.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.81 £72.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £19.14 £20.77
% change year-on-year +95.98% -7.87% -22.36%

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 20 June 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 20 June 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 20 June 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 6,615 £525 - 2,297
London +1 3,502 £540 -1.74% 886
UK excluding London +3 3,337 £505 +1.00% 1,907
Work from Home -1 2,408 £525 +2.44% 1,167
North of England +7 943 £500 +5.26% 461
South East +2 838 £510 +2.00% 613
Midlands +3 552 £500 - 258
North West +7 484 £500 +1.63% 276
South West +7 429 £525 +0.96% 238
West Midlands +1 411 £500 -4.76% 155
Yorkshire +7 379 £500 +5.26% 117
Scotland +9 326 £525 +5.00% 89
East of England +4 168 £550 -4.76% 168
East Midlands +4 131 £494 +6.76% 102
Wales +1 107 £425 +6.25% 62
North East +4 92 £525 +5.00% 70
Northern Ireland +13 19 £538 +13.16% 63
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 376 (4.82%) SharePoint
2 238 (3.05%) Confluence
3 187 (2.40%) Apache Spark
4 184 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
5 121 (1.55%) Apache Airflow
6 110 (1.41%) Apache
7 42 (0.54%) SAS
8 28 (0.36%) IIS
9 19 (0.24%) CMS
10 17 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.21%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.14%) Mendix
14 10 (0.13%) Camunda
14 10 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.12%) Appian
16 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.10%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 109 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 28 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.090%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.064%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.064%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.051%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.051%) Notion
12 4 (0.051%) Trello
13 2 (0.026%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.013%) InDesign
14 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.013%) Sketch
14 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 106 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.14%) Maximo
6 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
8 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.10%) Shopify
8 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.077%) Endur
9 6 (0.077%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.077%) SimCorp Dimension
9 6 (0.077%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.064%) SAP MM
11 4 (0.051%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.051%) Elite 3E
11 4 (0.051%) R3 Corda
11 4 (0.051%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,702 (34.63%) AWS
2 1,601 (20.52%) Azure DevOps
3 1,299 (16.65%) GCP
4 1,016 (13.02%) Power Platform
5 961 (12.32%) Entra ID
6 775 (9.93%) Microsoft 365
7 707 (9.06%) GitHub
8 466 (5.97%) Azure Data Factory
9 430 (5.51%) GitHub Actions
10 387 (4.96%) Serverless
11 306 (3.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 306 (3.92%) SaaS
12 286 (3.67%) Azure AKS
13 263 (3.37%) Power Automate
14 250 (3.20%) Azure Monitor
15 248 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
16 241 (3.09%) PaaS
17 236 (3.02%) PowerApps
18 211 (2.70%) Azure AI
19 210 (2.69%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 453 (5.81%) Firewall
2 337 (4.32%) DNS
3 265 (3.40%) Network Security
4 260 (3.33%) VPN
5 226 (2.90%) WAN
6 171 (2.19%) DHCP
7 133 (1.70%) LAN
8 124 (1.59%) SD-WAN
9 101 (1.29%) TCP/IP
10 92 (1.18%) BGP
11 87 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
12 74 (0.95%) VLAN
13 71 (0.91%) OSPF
14 61 (0.78%) Kerberos
15 58 (0.74%) SSL
16 51 (0.65%) SAN
17 48 (0.62%) VXLAN
17 48 (0.62%) Wireless
18 45 (0.58%) IPsec
19 40 (0.51%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 682 (8.74%) Power BI
2 438 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 377 (4.83%) Data Warehouse
4 371 (4.76%) Data Lake
5 273 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
6 227 (2.91%) Azure SQL Database
7 205 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 194 (2.49%) Metadata
9 141 (1.81%) Delta Lake
10 129 (1.65%) Relational Database
11 116 (1.49%) Big Data
12 104 (1.33%) MongoDB
13 92 (1.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 77 (0.99%) Tableau
15 72 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
16 65 (0.83%) MySQL
17 61 (0.78%) BigQuery
18 60 (0.77%) Oracle Database
19 54 (0.69%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.64%) Redis
Development Applications
1 585 (7.50%) JIRA
2 563 (7.22%) Git
3 396 (5.08%) Jenkins
4 324 (4.15%) GitLab
5 121 (1.55%) Selenium
6 78 (1.00%) JMeter
7 75 (0.96%) Postman
8 61 (0.78%) Cucumber
8 61 (0.78%) JUnit
9 54 (0.69%) REST Assured
10 47 (0.60%) SonarQube
10 47 (0.60%) Visual Studio
11 45 (0.58%) MLflow
12 41 (0.53%) Cypress.io
13 40 (0.51%) WebDriver
14 34 (0.44%) Gatling
15 31 (0.40%) Maven
16 27 (0.35%) LoadRunner
17 25 (0.32%) NUnit
18 24 (0.31%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,971 (25.26%) Social Skills
2 1,471 (18.85%) Finance
3 864 (11.07%) Public Sector
4 694 (8.90%) Analytical Skills
5 408 (5.23%) Banking
6 223 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 201 (2.58%) Legal
8 157 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 140 (1.79%) Retail
10 93 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 78 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
12 69 (0.88%) Financial Institution
12 69 (0.88%) Law
13 67 (0.86%) Investment Banking
14 65 (0.83%) Front Office
15 62 (0.79%) Marketing
15 62 (0.79%) Telecoms
16 59 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
17 53 (0.68%) Manufacturing
18 47 (0.60%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,384 (17.74%) Architect
2 997 (12.78%) Developer
3 945 (12.11%) Senior
4 691 (8.86%) Azure Engineer
5 598 (7.66%) Lead
6 592 (7.59%) Data Engineer
7 470 (6.02%) Analyst
8 413 (5.29%) DevOps Engineer
9 381 (4.88%) Solutions Architect
10 329 (4.22%) Consultant
11 281 (3.60%) Cloud Engineer
12 267 (3.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 216 (2.77%) Azure Architect
13 216 (2.77%) Data Architect
14 196 (2.51%) Platform Engineer
14 196 (2.51%) Security Engineer
15 186 (2.38%) Technical Architect
16 178 (2.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 170 (2.18%) Project Manager
18 169 (2.17%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 620 (7.95%) .NET
2 546 (7.00%) REST
3 347 (4.45%) React
4 277 (3.55%) Kafka
5 266 (3.41%) RESTful
6 263 (3.37%) PySpark
7 224 (2.87%) OAuth
8 215 (2.76%) Node.js
9 212 (2.72%) Spring
10 183 (2.35%) AngularJS
11 180 (2.31%) Spring Boot
12 166 (2.13%) JSON
13 157 (2.01%) LDAP
14 148 (1.90%) SAML
15 142 (1.82%) HTML
15 142 (1.82%) OpenID
16 129 (1.65%) Middleware
16 129 (1.65%) SOAP
17 122 (1.56%) .NET Framework
18 117 (1.50%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 814 (10.43%) Cloud Native
2 327 (4.19%) Onboarding
3 306 (3.92%) Product Ownership
4 251 (3.22%) Data Centre
5 221 (2.83%) Hybrid Cloud
6 213 (2.73%) Distributed Systems
7 200 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
8 174 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
9 170 (2.18%) AI Agents
10 167 (2.14%) Security Posture
11 157 (2.01%) Public Cloud
12 114 (1.46%) Data Structures
13 107 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 99 (1.27%) Management Information System
15 93 (1.19%) Replication
16 86 (1.10%) PKI
17 78 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
18 77 (0.99%) Low-Code
19 75 (0.96%) Enterprise Cloud
20 71 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 885 (11.34%) Windows
2 390 (5.00%) Linux
3 280 (3.59%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.42%) Windows 10
5 78 (1.00%) Apple iOS
6 73 (0.94%) Unix
7 69 (0.88%) Android
8 68 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 66 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 64 (0.82%) VMS
11 30 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
13 15 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.14%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
16 10 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.090%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.090%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,892 (37.07%) DevOps
2 2,427 (31.11%) CI/CD
3 1,881 (24.11%) Agile
4 1,155 (14.80%) AI
5 1,147 (14.70%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,116 (14.30%) Migration
7 1,093 (14.01%) Analytics
8 1,059 (13.57%) Problem-Solving
9 873 (11.19%) Data Modelling
10 866 (11.10%) Stakeholder Management
11 776 (9.95%) Continuous Improvement
12 730 (9.36%) Data Pipeline
13 729 (9.34%) Business Intelligence
14 720 (9.23%) Roadmaps
15 714 (9.15%) Containerisation
16 705 (9.04%) Microservices
17 682 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 678 (8.69%) ETL
19 619 (7.93%) Data Engineering
20 615 (7.88%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,830 (23.46%) Python
2 1,583 (20.29%) SQL
3 745 (9.55%) PowerShell
4 641 (8.22%) Java
5 624 (8.00%) C#
6 464 (5.95%) JavaScript
7 313 (4.01%) TypeScript
8 260 (3.33%) Bicep
9 251 (3.22%) Bash
10 91 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.10%) T-SQL
12 78 (1.00%) Go
12 78 (1.00%) Scala
13 48 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
14 44 (0.56%) R
15 43 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 35 (0.45%) PL/SQL
17 31 (0.40%) C++
18 30 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 18 (0.23%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,921 (24.62%) Security Cleared
2 1,611 (20.65%) SC Cleared
3 539 (6.91%) Degree
4 402 (5.15%) Azure Certification
5 246 (3.15%) CISSP
6 198 (2.54%) DV Cleared
7 193 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
8 189 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
9 184 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
10 177 (2.27%) Microsoft Certification
11 176 (2.26%) AWS Certification
12 129 (1.65%) CISM
13 86 (1.10%) CCNP
14 82 (1.05%) PMP
15 78 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 73 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 65 (0.83%) ISTQB
18 58 (0.74%) Master's Degree
19 56 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
20 49 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 542 (6.95%) Data Quality
2 402 (5.15%) QA
3 340 (4.36%) GDPR
4 286 (3.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 271 (3.47%) NIST
6 164 (2.10%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.53%) NCSC
8 98 (1.26%) SLA
9 78 (1.00%) PCI DSS
10 72 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
11 69 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 60 (0.77%) WCAG
13 58 (0.74%) GRC
14 43 (0.55%) PMO
15 38 (0.49%) HIPAA
16 29 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.33%) NIST 800
18 25 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 19 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
20 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 929 (11.91%) Active Directory
2 804 (10.31%) Docker
3 222 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 121 (1.55%) Virtual Machines
6 116 (1.49%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.87%) vSphere
8 52 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (0.40%) Firmware
9 31 (0.40%) VMware NSX
10 22 (0.28%) NFS
11 17 (0.22%) Postfix
12 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
13 8 (0.10%) Varnish
14 6 (0.077%) Ceph
14 6 (0.077%) KVM
14 6 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.077%) RACF
15 5 (0.064%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,225 (15.70%) Terraform
2 1,101 (14.11%) Kubernetes
3 410 (5.26%) Microsoft Intune
4 363 (4.65%) Ansible
5 208 (2.67%) Grafana
6 182 (2.33%) Prometheus
7 166 (2.13%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.35%) SCCM
9 72 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.58%) FortiGate
11 41 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
12 39 (0.50%) Argo
12 39 (0.50%) Progress Chef
13 37 (0.47%) Puppet
14 30 (0.38%) Istio
15 22 (0.28%) HP ALM
15 22 (0.28%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.21%) Packer
18 13 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 2,470 (31.66%) Microsoft
2 740 (9.48%) Databricks
3 339 (4.35%) ServiceNow
4 301 (3.86%) VMware
5 292 (3.74%) Google
6 281 (3.60%) Oracle
7 215 (2.76%) SAP
8 214 (2.74%) Cisco
9 205 (2.63%) OpenAI
10 151 (1.94%) Splunk
11 143 (1.83%) Palo Alto
12 136 (1.74%) Salesforce
13 133 (1.70%) CyberArk
14 120 (1.54%) Foundry
15 103 (1.32%) Okta
16 88 (1.13%) Informatica
17 87 (1.12%) Dynatrace
18 81 (1.04%) Zscaler
19 68 (0.87%) Citrix
20 64 (0.82%) Fortinet