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 29 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,262 4,520 5,824
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.43% 15.49% 13.45%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.83% 41.15% 41.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,178 3,233 4,185
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 125 44 51
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £46.80 £24.14 £22.19
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -36.36%
75th Percentile £64.00 £73.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.38 £50.00
% change year-on-year +89.30% -39.25% -16.53%

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 16,954 10,983 13,989
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.01% 37.65% 32.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,525 7,638 9,929
10th Percentile £320 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £631
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +1.32% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 486 250 346
10th Percentile £15.38 £15.42 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.51 £16.02
Median hourly rate £40.25 £27.50 £20.99
Median % change year-on-year +46.36% +31.05% -40.04%
75th Percentile £67.50 £48.75 £34.69
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.88 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £22.50 £17.71
% change year-on-year +111.11% +27.08% -28.09%

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 29 April 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 29 April 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 29 April 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 6,166 £525 - 2,305
London +1 3,308 £533 -3.18% 831
UK excluding London +2 3,015 £500 - 1,914
Work from Home -1 2,181 £525 +0.77% 1,108
North of England +3 848 £500 +5.26% 501
South East +1 794 £500 -4.76% 590
Midlands -3 503 £491 -5.85% 247
North West +2 455 £500 - 269
South West +6 380 £500 -4.76% 228
West Midlands 0 364 £500 -4.76% 148
Yorkshire +4 343 £500 +17.65% 148
Scotland +6 293 £532 +12.00% 87
East of England +2 150 £545 -6.03% 182
East Midlands +1 129 £450 -5.26% 98
Wales -3 77 £388 -8.82% 66
North East 0 59 £525 +3.70% 85
Northern Ireland +11 15 £475 - 50
Channel Islands +4 8 £450 +51.26%

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
1 327 (4.50%) SharePoint
2 205 (2.82%) Confluence
3 198 (2.73%) Apache Spark
3 198 (2.73%) Microsoft Exchange
4 106 (1.46%) Apache
5 97 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
6 26 (0.36%) SAS
7 20 (0.28%) IIS
8 17 (0.23%) ArcGIS
8 17 (0.23%) CMS
9 15 (0.21%) Mendix
9 15 (0.21%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.19%) Appian
11 13 (0.18%) Camunda
11 13 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
13 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
15 8 (0.11%) nginx
16 6 (0.083%) Umbraco
Applications
1 117 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
3 64 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 45 (0.62%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 22 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.096%) Trello
8 5 (0.069%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.069%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.055%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.041%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.041%) Weka
11 2 (0.028%) Revit
11 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 106 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.15%) Maximo
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.096%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.096%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.096%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.069%) Cloudability
8 5 (0.069%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.055%) Dynamics NAV
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.055%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.041%) Endur
10 3 (0.041%) Findur
10 3 (0.041%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,479 (34.14%) AWS
2 1,506 (20.74%) Azure DevOps
3 1,335 (18.38%) GCP
4 953 (13.12%) Power Platform
5 861 (11.86%) Entra ID
6 747 (10.29%) Microsoft 365
7 702 (9.67%) GitHub
8 511 (7.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 413 (5.69%) GitHub Actions
10 399 (5.49%) Serverless
11 341 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 281 (3.87%) Azure AKS
13 279 (3.84%) SaaS
14 272 (3.75%) Dynamics 365
15 257 (3.54%) Power Automate
16 245 (3.37%) Azure Monitor
17 232 (3.19%) PaaS
18 220 (3.03%) Azure Functions
19 218 (3.00%) PowerApps
20 200 (2.75%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 458 (6.31%) Firewall
2 303 (4.17%) DNS
3 263 (3.62%) VPN
4 247 (3.40%) Network Security
5 188 (2.59%) WAN
6 160 (2.20%) DHCP
7 130 (1.79%) LAN
8 98 (1.35%) SD-WAN
9 93 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
10 87 (1.20%) TCP/IP
11 72 (0.99%) VLAN
12 70 (0.96%) Kerberos
13 63 (0.87%) BGP
14 55 (0.76%) OSPF
15 44 (0.61%) SAN
16 41 (0.56%) HTTP
16 41 (0.56%) SSL
17 40 (0.55%) Wireless
18 36 (0.50%) VXLAN
19 34 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 644 (8.87%) Power BI
2 425 (5.85%) SQL Server
3 374 (5.15%) Data Warehouse
4 362 (4.98%) Data Lake
5 256 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
6 250 (3.44%) Azure SQL Database
7 197 (2.71%) NoSQL
8 182 (2.51%) Metadata
9 151 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 120 (1.65%) Big Data
11 117 (1.61%) Relational Database
12 98 (1.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 94 (1.29%) MongoDB
14 79 (1.09%) Tableau
15 72 (0.99%) Oracle Database
16 68 (0.94%) MySQL
16 68 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
17 64 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.80%) Star Schema
19 49 (0.67%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 537 (7.39%) Git
2 508 (7.00%) JIRA
3 382 (5.26%) Jenkins
4 297 (4.09%) GitLab
5 125 (1.72%) Selenium
6 82 (1.13%) Postman
7 69 (0.95%) JUnit
8 68 (0.94%) Cucumber
9 67 (0.92%) JMeter
10 55 (0.76%) MLflow
11 52 (0.72%) REST Assured
12 45 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 42 (0.58%) Cypress.io
14 38 (0.52%) Artifactory
15 34 (0.47%) Visual Studio
15 34 (0.47%) WebDriver
16 31 (0.43%) Gatling
17 28 (0.39%) TestRail
18 26 (0.36%) Bitbucket
19 25 (0.34%) Mockito
General
1 1,922 (26.47%) Social Skills
2 1,285 (17.69%) Finance
3 824 (11.35%) Public Sector
4 678 (9.34%) Analytical Skills
5 376 (5.18%) Banking
6 223 (3.07%) Documentation Skills
7 184 (2.53%) Legal
8 103 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 91 (1.25%) Retail
10 85 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
12 77 (1.06%) Marketing
13 74 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
14 68 (0.94%) Financial Institution
15 67 (0.92%) Telecoms
16 62 (0.85%) Investment Banking
16 62 (0.85%) Law
17 61 (0.84%) Front Office
18 44 (0.61%) Local Government
19 42 (0.58%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,221 (16.81%) Architect
2 968 (13.33%) Developer
3 854 (11.76%) Senior
4 664 (9.14%) Azure Engineer
5 596 (8.21%) Data Engineer
6 551 (7.59%) Lead
7 449 (6.18%) Analyst
8 400 (5.51%) DevOps Engineer
9 307 (4.23%) Solutions Architect
10 296 (4.08%) Consultant
11 222 (3.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 221 (3.04%) Cloud Engineer
13 203 (2.80%) Azure Architect
14 190 (2.62%) Security Engineer
15 172 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
16 167 (2.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 167 (2.30%) Data Architect
17 158 (2.18%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 158 (2.18%) Technical Architect
18 147 (2.02%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 574 (7.90%) .NET
2 484 (6.66%) REST
3 334 (4.60%) React
4 277 (3.81%) Kafka
5 265 (3.65%) PySpark
6 241 (3.32%) Node.js
7 237 (3.26%) RESTful
8 220 (3.03%) Spring
9 211 (2.91%) OAuth
10 183 (2.52%) AngularJS
11 182 (2.51%) Spring Boot
12 167 (2.30%) LDAP
13 149 (2.05%) HTML
14 146 (2.01%) JSON
15 133 (1.83%) OpenID
16 131 (1.80%) SAML
17 130 (1.79%) SOAP
18 125 (1.72%) CSS
18 125 (1.72%) Middleware
19 110 (1.51%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 691 (9.52%) Cloud Native
2 282 (3.88%) Onboarding
3 272 (3.75%) Product Ownership
4 197 (2.71%) Hybrid Cloud
5 190 (2.62%) Data Centre
6 177 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
7 166 (2.29%) Distributed Systems
7 166 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
8 163 (2.24%) Security Posture
9 160 (2.20%) Public Cloud
10 130 (1.79%) AI Agents
11 93 (1.28%) Data Structures
12 90 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
12 90 (1.24%) Replication
13 84 (1.16%) Management Information System
14 80 (1.10%) Low-Code
15 66 (0.91%) PKI
16 65 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
17 59 (0.81%) NHS
18 51 (0.70%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 779 (10.73%) Windows
2 366 (5.04%) Linux
3 243 (3.35%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 72 (0.99%) VMS
6 68 (0.94%) Unix
7 63 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 62 (0.85%) Mac OS
9 51 (0.70%) Apple iOS
10 42 (0.58%) Android
11 26 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (0.28%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.11%) AIX
15 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.096%) CentOS
16 7 (0.096%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.083%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,734 (37.65%) DevOps
2 2,257 (31.08%) CI/CD
3 1,713 (23.59%) Agile
4 1,086 (14.95%) Problem-Solving
5 1,072 (14.76%) Analytics
6 1,029 (14.17%) Infrastructure as Code
7 991 (13.65%) AI
8 987 (13.59%) Migration
9 817 (11.25%) Data Modelling
10 706 (9.72%) Stakeholder Management
11 703 (9.68%) Business Intelligence
12 702 (9.67%) Containerisation
13 687 (9.46%) Data Pipeline
14 685 (9.43%) Continuous Improvement
15 657 (9.05%) Microservices
16 643 (8.85%) ETL
17 595 (8.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 590 (8.12%) Data Engineering
19 575 (7.92%) Roadmaps
20 569 (7.84%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,800 (24.79%) Python
2 1,562 (21.51%) SQL
3 734 (10.11%) PowerShell
4 625 (8.61%) Java
5 621 (8.55%) C#
6 465 (6.40%) JavaScript
7 293 (4.03%) TypeScript
8 249 (3.43%) Bash
9 235 (3.24%) Bicep
10 99 (1.36%) Scala
11 85 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 83 (1.14%) Go
13 80 (1.10%) T-SQL
14 69 (0.95%) Kusto Query Language
15 65 (0.90%) PL/SQL
16 54 (0.74%) Shell Script
17 47 (0.65%) R
18 30 (0.41%) C++
19 23 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 19 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,804 (24.84%) Security Cleared
2 1,520 (20.93%) SC Cleared
3 512 (7.05%) Degree
4 384 (5.29%) Azure Certification
5 200 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
6 192 (2.64%) CISSP
7 163 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
8 152 (2.09%) Microsoft Certification
9 151 (2.08%) Cisco Certification
10 144 (1.98%) AWS Certification
11 141 (1.94%) DV Cleared
12 115 (1.58%) CISM
13 79 (1.09%) CCNP
14 71 (0.98%) Master's Degree
15 69 (0.95%) PMP
16 68 (0.94%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
17 60 (0.83%) ISTQB
18 50 (0.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.50%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 513 (7.06%) Data Quality
2 400 (5.51%) QA
3 381 (5.25%) GDPR
4 289 (3.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 258 (3.55%) NIST
6 130 (1.79%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.36%) NCSC
8 83 (1.14%) PCI DSS
9 63 (0.87%) SLA
10 62 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 58 (0.80%) PMO
12 54 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials
13 45 (0.62%) GRC
14 39 (0.54%) WCAG
15 34 (0.47%) HIPAA
16 23 (0.32%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.30%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.29%) SOC 2
19 20 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
20 19 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 883 (12.16%) Active Directory
2 820 (11.29%) Docker
3 196 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 114 (1.57%) Virtual Machines
5 108 (1.49%) Hyper-V
6 106 (1.46%) Virtual Desktop
7 65 (0.90%) vSphere
8 35 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.36%) Firmware
10 23 (0.32%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.28%) NFS
12 11 (0.15%) Postfix
13 7 (0.096%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.096%) HDFS
13 7 (0.096%) Varnish
14 6 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.083%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.083%) RACF
15 5 (0.069%) Ceph
15 5 (0.069%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,149 (15.82%) Terraform
2 1,084 (14.93%) Kubernetes
3 365 (5.03%) Microsoft Intune
4 337 (4.64%) Ansible
5 206 (2.84%) Grafana
6 176 (2.42%) Prometheus
7 152 (2.09%) Single Sign-On
8 112 (1.54%) SCCM
9 67 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.51%) Argo
11 36 (0.50%) Istio
12 34 (0.47%) Puppet
13 33 (0.45%) FortiGate
14 28 (0.39%) Progress Chef
15 24 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
16 23 (0.32%) HP ALM
17 22 (0.30%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.23%) Kubeflow
18 17 (0.23%) linkerd
19 15 (0.21%) vRealize
Vendors
1 2,338 (32.19%) Microsoft
2 729 (10.04%) Databricks
3 325 (4.48%) Google
4 311 (4.28%) Oracle
5 292 (4.02%) ServiceNow
6 283 (3.90%) VMware
7 208 (2.86%) SAP
8 187 (2.58%) Cisco
9 183 (2.52%) OpenAI
10 163 (2.24%) Splunk
11 133 (1.83%) CyberArk
12 116 (1.60%) Foundry
13 110 (1.51%) Palo Alto
14 108 (1.49%) Salesforce
15 91 (1.25%) Okta
16 75 (1.03%) Informatica
17 73 (1.01%) Citrix
18 71 (0.98%) Dynatrace
19 69 (0.95%) BeyondTrust
20 68 (0.94%) Red Hat