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 13 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,140 4,889 6,035
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.45% 14.96% 14.12%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.69% 39.86% 42.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,694 3,393 4,338
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £433 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £634 £638
90th Percentile £718 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 39 55
10th Percentile £18.50 £25.80 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.63 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £62.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% +35.34% -23.03%
75th Percentile £77.13 £78.10 £61.60
90th Percentile £95.63 £100.00 £72.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £70.00 £52.75
% change year-on-year -17.86% +32.70% -8.26%

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 18,631 12,266 14,180
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.36% 37.53% 33.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,358 8,213 9,943
10th Percentile £328 £313 £309
25th Percentile £415 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.99% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £617 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £734 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 618 313 353
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.78 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.06 £27.76 £22.30
Median % change year-on-year +33.50% +24.48% -36.29%
75th Percentile £69.27 £48.00 £50.00
90th Percentile £82.56 £70.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.94 £21.00
% change year-on-year +98.05% -9.83% -20.75%

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 13 July 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 13 July 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 13 July 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 6,913 £525 - 3,041
London +1 3,624 £550 - 1,250
UK excluding London +3 3,518 £505 +1.00% 2,392
Work from Home -1 2,530 £525 +2.44% 1,474
North of England +6 1,012 £500 +3.09% 608
South East +2 862 £515 +3.00% 702
Midlands +3 609 £500 +0.50% 310
North West +7 531 £500 +0.81% 331
West Midlands +1 454 £500 -4.76% 190
South West +6 441 £539 +7.75% 383
Yorkshire +3 402 £500 +5.26% 189
Scotland +9 321 £525 +8.25% 102
East of England +2 186 £550 - 160
East Midlands +5 144 £494 +6.76% 119
Wales -1 113 £425 -4.49% 82
North East +4 92 £525 +5.00% 97
Northern Ireland +14 19 £538 +13.16% 88
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
1 404 (4.96%) SharePoint
2 273 (3.35%) Confluence
3 193 (2.37%) Microsoft Exchange
4 191 (2.35%) Apache Spark
5 128 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.45%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 34 (0.42%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 19 (0.23%) OpenStack
11 17 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.12%) Camunda
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.098%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.098%) Mendix
15 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.074%) Appian
Applications
1 120 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
3 73 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 29 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 5 (0.061%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.061%) PTC Creo
11 5 (0.061%) Trello
12 4 (0.049%) Notion
13 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.012%) Houdini
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) NUKE
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 108 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 83 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.098%) Maximo
6 8 (0.098%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.086%) Magento
7 7 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.074%) Endur
8 6 (0.074%) Shopify
8 6 (0.074%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
9 5 (0.061%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.049%) Dynamics GP
10 4 (0.049%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,887 (35.47%) AWS
2 1,671 (20.53%) Azure DevOps
3 1,378 (16.93%) GCP
4 1,035 (12.71%) Power Platform
5 1,016 (12.48%) Entra ID
6 803 (9.86%) Microsoft 365
7 768 (9.43%) GitHub
8 463 (5.69%) GitHub Actions
9 458 (5.63%) Azure Data Factory
10 368 (4.52%) Serverless
11 325 (3.99%) SaaS
12 320 (3.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 293 (3.60%) Azure AKS
14 277 (3.40%) Azure Monitor
15 274 (3.37%) Power Automate
16 261 (3.21%) PowerApps
17 255 (3.13%) PaaS
18 243 (2.99%) Dynamics 365
19 224 (2.75%) Azure AI
20 214 (2.63%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 487 (5.98%) Firewall
2 374 (4.59%) DNS
3 291 (3.57%) VPN
4 277 (3.40%) Network Security
5 209 (2.57%) WAN
6 187 (2.30%) DHCP
7 133 (1.63%) LAN
8 130 (1.60%) TCP/IP
9 114 (1.40%) SD-WAN
10 111 (1.36%) BGP
11 86 (1.06%) OSPF
12 84 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 80 (0.98%) VLAN
14 69 (0.85%) SSL
15 55 (0.68%) Kerberos
15 55 (0.68%) SAN
16 54 (0.66%) IPsec
17 51 (0.63%) Wireless
18 46 (0.57%) VXLAN
19 43 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 699 (8.59%) Power BI
2 476 (5.85%) SQL Server
3 388 (4.77%) Data Warehouse
4 357 (4.39%) Data Lake
5 304 (3.73%) PostgreSQL
6 223 (2.74%) Azure SQL Database
7 211 (2.59%) NoSQL
8 200 (2.46%) Metadata
9 140 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 138 (1.70%) Delta Lake
11 124 (1.52%) Big Data
12 107 (1.31%) MongoDB
13 95 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 83 (1.02%) MySQL
15 75 (0.92%) Tableau
16 70 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
17 65 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 57 (0.70%) Oracle Database
19 56 (0.69%) Star Schema
20 55 (0.68%) Redis
Development Applications
1 639 (7.85%) JIRA
2 620 (7.62%) Git
3 432 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 317 (3.89%) GitLab
5 123 (1.51%) Selenium
6 78 (0.96%) Postman
7 77 (0.95%) JMeter
8 68 (0.84%) JUnit
9 58 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 54 (0.66%) REST Assured
11 49 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.58%) Cypress.io
12 47 (0.58%) Visual Studio
13 42 (0.52%) MLflow
13 42 (0.52%) WebDriver
14 39 (0.48%) Maven
15 32 (0.39%) Gatling
15 32 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
16 30 (0.37%) Gradle
16 30 (0.37%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,060 (25.31%) Social Skills
2 1,514 (18.60%) Finance
3 930 (11.43%) Public Sector
4 765 (9.40%) Analytical Skills
5 427 (5.25%) Banking
6 238 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
7 206 (2.53%) Legal
8 174 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 166 (2.04%) Retail
10 102 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
11 84 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 78 (0.96%) Telecoms
13 72 (0.88%) Law
14 71 (0.87%) Manufacturing
15 69 (0.85%) Front Office
15 69 (0.85%) Investment Banking
16 68 (0.84%) Financial Institution
16 68 (0.84%) Marketing
17 57 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
18 54 (0.66%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,452 (17.84%) Architect
2 1,074 (13.19%) Developer
3 991 (12.17%) Senior
4 715 (8.78%) Azure Engineer
5 645 (7.92%) Lead
6 616 (7.57%) Data Engineer
7 494 (6.07%) Analyst
8 416 (5.11%) Solutions Architect
9 413 (5.07%) DevOps Engineer
10 332 (4.08%) Consultant
11 306 (3.76%) Cloud Engineer
12 279 (3.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 233 (2.86%) Data Architect
14 223 (2.74%) Azure Architect
15 206 (2.53%) Platform Engineer
16 201 (2.47%) Technical Architect
17 188 (2.31%) Security Engineer
18 184 (2.26%) Java Developer
19 179 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 179 (2.20%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 646 (7.94%) .NET
2 588 (7.22%) REST
3 348 (4.28%) React
4 309 (3.80%) Kafka
5 296 (3.64%) RESTful
6 262 (3.22%) PySpark
7 240 (2.95%) OAuth
8 234 (2.87%) Spring
9 221 (2.71%) Node.js
10 201 (2.47%) Spring Boot
11 188 (2.31%) AngularJS
11 188 (2.31%) JSON
12 160 (1.97%) HTML
13 152 (1.87%) SAML
14 146 (1.79%) OpenID
15 139 (1.71%) LDAP
16 131 (1.61%) .NET Framework
17 128 (1.57%) Middleware
17 128 (1.57%) OAuth2
18 127 (1.56%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 870 (10.69%) Cloud Native
2 352 (4.32%) Onboarding
3 329 (4.04%) Product Ownership
4 263 (3.23%) Data Centre
5 251 (3.08%) Distributed Systems
6 232 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
7 231 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
8 199 (2.44%) AI Agents
9 177 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
10 157 (1.93%) Security Posture
11 144 (1.77%) Public Cloud
12 117 (1.44%) Data Structures
12 117 (1.44%) Management Information System
13 111 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
14 108 (1.33%) Replication
15 93 (1.14%) PKI
16 91 (1.12%) Enterprise Cloud
17 85 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
18 75 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
19 74 (0.91%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 931 (11.44%) Windows
2 424 (5.21%) Linux
3 297 (3.65%) Windows Server
4 108 (1.33%) Windows 10
5 74 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 74 (0.91%) Unix
6 73 (0.90%) Android
6 73 (0.90%) Apple iOS
7 72 (0.88%) Mac OS
8 58 (0.71%) VMS
9 38 (0.47%) Ubuntu
10 28 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
11 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
12 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.14%) CentOS
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 8 (0.098%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.074%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,026 (37.17%) DevOps
2 2,562 (31.47%) CI/CD
3 2,011 (24.71%) Agile
4 1,223 (15.02%) AI
5 1,221 (15.00%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,172 (14.40%) Migration
7 1,137 (13.97%) Analytics
8 1,094 (13.44%) Problem-Solving
9 984 (12.09%) Stakeholder Management
10 916 (11.25%) Data Modelling
11 831 (10.21%) Continuous Improvement
12 781 (9.59%) Data Pipeline
13 768 (9.43%) Containerisation
14 763 (9.37%) Microservices
15 755 (9.28%) Roadmaps
16 746 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
17 721 (8.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 680 (8.35%) ETL
19 667 (8.19%) Test Automation
20 652 (8.01%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,904 (23.39%) Python
2 1,620 (19.90%) SQL
3 768 (9.43%) PowerShell
4 697 (8.56%) Java
5 631 (7.75%) C#
6 474 (5.82%) JavaScript
7 324 (3.98%) TypeScript
8 302 (3.71%) Bash
9 280 (3.44%) Bicep
10 96 (1.18%) T-SQL
11 93 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 83 (1.02%) Go
13 76 (0.93%) Scala
14 55 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
15 49 (0.60%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.54%) R
17 38 (0.47%) PL/SQL
18 36 (0.44%) Kotlin
19 26 (0.32%) Groovy
20 25 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,017 (24.78%) Security Cleared
2 1,671 (20.53%) SC Cleared
3 581 (7.14%) Degree
4 423 (5.20%) Azure Certification
5 248 (3.05%) CISSP
6 236 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 235 (2.89%) DV Cleared
8 202 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
9 199 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
9 199 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
10 185 (2.27%) AWS Certification
11 124 (1.52%) CISM
12 96 (1.18%) CCNP
13 81 (1.00%) PMP
14 77 (0.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 77 (0.95%) PMI Certification
15 68 (0.84%) Master's Degree
16 62 (0.76%) ISTQB
17 55 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
18 51 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 554 (6.81%) Data Quality
2 421 (5.17%) QA
3 339 (4.16%) GDPR
4 279 (3.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 277 (3.40%) NIST
6 192 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.47%) NCSC
8 99 (1.22%) SLA
9 72 (0.88%) PCI DSS
10 71 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
11 68 (0.84%) WCAG
12 66 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 62 (0.76%) GRC
14 48 (0.59%) PMO
15 38 (0.47%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 24 (0.29%) NIST 800
19 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
20 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 964 (11.84%) Active Directory
2 869 (10.68%) Docker
3 225 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.71%) Virtual Desktop
5 136 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
6 114 (1.40%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.84%) vSphere
8 53 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.37%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.12%) IAG
15 8 (0.098%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.098%) Varnish
16 7 (0.086%) Ceph
17 6 (0.074%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 6 (0.074%) HDFS
18 5 (0.061%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,293 (15.88%) Terraform
2 1,198 (14.72%) Kubernetes
3 420 (5.16%) Microsoft Intune
4 382 (4.69%) Ansible
5 236 (2.90%) Grafana
6 200 (2.46%) Prometheus
7 168 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
8 106 (1.30%) SCCM
9 66 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.63%) Argo
11 46 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
12 43 (0.53%) Progress Chef
13 40 (0.49%) Puppet
14 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
15 31 (0.38%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
17 20 (0.25%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.21%) Packer
19 14 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,618 (32.16%) Microsoft
2 752 (9.24%) Databricks
3 381 (4.68%) ServiceNow
4 325 (3.99%) Google
5 319 (3.92%) Oracle
6 313 (3.85%) VMware
7 227 (2.79%) SAP
8 217 (2.67%) Cisco
9 202 (2.48%) OpenAI
10 174 (2.14%) Splunk
11 153 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 144 (1.77%) Palo Alto
13 134 (1.65%) CyberArk
13 134 (1.65%) Foundry
14 105 (1.29%) Okta
15 96 (1.18%) Dynatrace
16 90 (1.11%) Informatica
17 87 (1.07%) Zscaler
18 77 (0.95%) Citrix
19 73 (0.90%) Fortinet