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 7 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,313 4,819 5,611
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.56% 14.67% 14.38%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.21% 39.39% 42.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,810 3,313 4,005
10th Percentile £367 £350 £345
25th Percentile £435 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £736
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 40 42
10th Percentile £18.43 £18.76 £17.84
25th Percentile £23.00 £27.24 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £43.23 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.24% +23.50% -39.13%
75th Percentile £77.75 £77.80 £60.58
90th Percentile £93.08 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £53.23 £33.00
% change year-on-year +3.33% +61.29% -28.54%

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 18,803 12,233 13,146
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.20% 37.23% 33.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,416 8,198 9,163
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £420 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £623 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 625 312 273
10th Percentile £15.86 £15.16 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £27.63 £24.15
Median % change year-on-year +26.67% +14.41% -31.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £53.00
90th Percentile £82.32 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +85.48% -11.70% -18.59%

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 7 August 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 7 August 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 7 August 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 7,143 £525 - 4,290
London +1 3,741 £550 - 2,015
UK excluding London +3 3,586 £500 - 2,823
Work from Home -1 2,569 £525 +5.00% 1,941
North of England +7 1,023 £500 +5.26% 795
South East +1 917 £525 +5.00% 800
Midlands +4 655 £493 -1.50% 370
North West +8 539 £500 +3.09% 445
West Midlands +3 495 £493 -6.19% 226
South West +7 442 £540 +8.00% 324
Yorkshire +5 402 £500 +5.26% 256
Scotland +9 299 £500 +0.81% 174
East of England +2 178 £525 -4.55% 224
East Midlands +8 148 £488 +5.41% 144
North East +7 95 £513 +2.50% 105
Wales -1 91 £450 +0.90% 96
Northern Ireland +13 15 £644 +35.53% 79
Channel Islands +1 8 £450 -29.69%

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
1 439 (5.28%) SharePoint
2 284 (3.42%) Confluence
3 203 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 173 (2.08%) Apache Spark
5 139 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.37%) Apache
7 44 (0.53%) SAS
8 35 (0.42%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 19 (0.23%) CMS
11 17 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
14 11 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 9 (0.11%) Mendix
16 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
17 7 (0.084%) Camunda
18 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
Applications
1 122 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
3 75 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) Chatbot
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
7 11 (0.13%) Trello
8 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
8 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 5 (0.060%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.012%) CINEMA 4D
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
13 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 121 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 7 (0.084%) Maximo
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.060%) Payment Gateway
10 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.048%) SAP ERP
11 4 (0.048%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,922 (35.15%) AWS
2 1,753 (21.09%) Azure DevOps
3 1,409 (16.95%) GCP
4 1,059 (12.74%) Entra ID
5 1,037 (12.47%) Power Platform
6 842 (10.13%) Microsoft 365
7 827 (9.95%) GitHub
8 492 (5.92%) GitHub Actions
9 473 (5.69%) Azure Data Factory
10 348 (4.19%) Serverless
11 331 (3.98%) SaaS
12 314 (3.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 301 (3.62%) Azure AKS
13 301 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
14 289 (3.48%) Power Automate
15 277 (3.33%) PowerApps
16 264 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
17 257 (3.09%) PaaS
18 242 (2.91%) Snowflake
19 230 (2.77%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 524 (6.30%) Firewall
2 403 (4.85%) DNS
3 327 (3.93%) VPN
4 300 (3.61%) Network Security
5 201 (2.42%) DHCP
6 199 (2.39%) WAN
7 166 (2.00%) TCP/IP
8 122 (1.47%) LAN
9 113 (1.36%) BGP
10 104 (1.25%) SD-WAN
11 92 (1.11%) VLAN
12 90 (1.08%) OSPF
13 84 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.89%) SSL
15 58 (0.70%) SAN
16 57 (0.69%) Wireless
17 53 (0.64%) IPsec
18 49 (0.59%) HTTP
19 47 (0.57%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 718 (8.64%) Power BI
2 469 (5.64%) SQL Server
3 407 (4.90%) Data Warehouse
4 365 (4.39%) Data Lake
5 295 (3.55%) PostgreSQL
6 220 (2.65%) Azure SQL Database
7 218 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 212 (2.55%) Metadata
9 142 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 137 (1.65%) Delta Lake
11 104 (1.25%) Big Data
12 103 (1.24%) MongoDB
13 102 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 85 (1.02%) MySQL
15 64 (0.77%) Snowflake Schema
16 62 (0.75%) BigQuery
16 62 (0.75%) Tableau
17 57 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
17 57 (0.69%) Oracle Database
17 57 (0.69%) Redis
Development Applications
1 666 (8.01%) Git
2 648 (7.80%) JIRA
3 442 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 345 (4.15%) GitLab
5 129 (1.55%) Selenium
6 72 (0.87%) Postman
7 69 (0.83%) JUnit
8 65 (0.78%) JMeter
9 58 (0.70%) Cypress.io
10 57 (0.69%) SonarQube
11 56 (0.67%) Cucumber
12 50 (0.60%) Maven
13 47 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.54%) WebDriver
15 43 (0.52%) REST Assured
16 40 (0.48%) Gradle
17 38 (0.46%) Claude Code
18 36 (0.43%) MLflow
19 30 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
20 29 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 2,138 (25.72%) Social Skills
2 1,559 (18.75%) Finance
3 971 (11.68%) Public Sector
4 796 (9.58%) Analytical Skills
5 435 (5.23%) Banking
6 232 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 197 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 187 (2.25%) Legal
9 186 (2.24%) Retail
10 98 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
11 97 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 88 (1.06%) Manufacturing
13 87 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
14 74 (0.89%) Law
15 71 (0.85%) Financial Institution
15 71 (0.85%) Investment Banking
16 70 (0.84%) Aerospace
17 68 (0.82%) Marketing
18 64 (0.77%) Front Office
19 59 (0.71%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,506 (18.12%) Architect
2 1,052 (12.65%) Developer
3 1,042 (12.53%) Senior
4 734 (8.83%) Azure Engineer
5 688 (8.28%) Lead
6 614 (7.39%) Data Engineer
7 498 (5.99%) Analyst
8 451 (5.43%) Solutions Architect
9 429 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
10 345 (4.15%) Cloud Engineer
11 310 (3.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 308 (3.71%) Consultant
13 251 (3.02%) Data Architect
14 224 (2.69%) Platform Engineer
15 222 (2.67%) Azure Architect
16 197 (2.37%) Project Manager
17 194 (2.33%) Technical Architect
18 189 (2.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 186 (2.24%) Security Architect
20 185 (2.23%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 646 (7.77%) .NET
2 627 (7.54%) REST
3 329 (3.96%) React
4 322 (3.87%) Kafka
5 295 (3.55%) RESTful
6 259 (3.12%) PySpark
7 236 (2.84%) OAuth
8 209 (2.51%) JSON
9 207 (2.49%) Spring
10 202 (2.43%) Node.js
11 173 (2.08%) AngularJS
12 171 (2.06%) Spring Boot
13 157 (1.89%) HTML
14 148 (1.78%) SAML
15 147 (1.77%) OpenID
16 139 (1.67%) .NET Framework
17 137 (1.65%) OAuth2
18 136 (1.64%) Middleware
19 132 (1.59%) Playwright
20 124 (1.49%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 882 (10.61%) Cloud Native
2 395 (4.75%) Onboarding
3 352 (4.23%) Product Ownership
4 267 (3.21%) Distributed Systems
5 265 (3.19%) Hybrid Cloud
6 257 (3.09%) Data Centre
7 251 (3.02%) AI Agents
8 234 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
9 223 (2.68%) Enterprise Software
10 175 (2.11%) Security Posture
11 143 (1.72%) Data Structures
12 141 (1.70%) Public Cloud
13 137 (1.65%) Management Information System
14 112 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
15 109 (1.31%) Enterprise Cloud
16 108 (1.30%) PKI
17 94 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
18 92 (1.11%) Replication
19 76 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
20 73 (0.88%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 975 (11.73%) Windows
2 489 (5.88%) Linux
3 339 (4.08%) Windows Server
4 122 (1.47%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 82 (0.99%) Android
7 81 (0.97%) Unix
8 75 (0.90%) Apple iOS
9 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.67%) VMS
11 49 (0.59%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.14%) CentOS
14 12 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
15 10 (0.12%) Debian
16 6 (0.072%) AIX
16 6 (0.072%) Rocky
16 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,075 (36.99%) DevOps
2 2,596 (31.23%) CI/CD
3 2,083 (25.06%) Agile
4 1,299 (15.63%) AI
5 1,298 (15.61%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,213 (14.59%) Migration
7 1,187 (14.28%) Stakeholder Management
8 1,146 (13.79%) Analytics
9 1,079 (12.98%) Problem-Solving
10 937 (11.27%) Data Modelling
11 904 (10.87%) Continuous Improvement
12 810 (9.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 784 (9.43%) Data Pipeline
14 779 (9.37%) Roadmaps
15 777 (9.35%) Containerisation
16 767 (9.23%) Business Intelligence
17 744 (8.95%) Microservices
18 690 (8.30%) Test Automation
19 676 (8.13%) ETL
20 659 (7.93%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,910 (22.98%) Python
2 1,617 (19.45%) SQL
3 826 (9.94%) PowerShell
4 678 (8.16%) Java
5 627 (7.54%) C#
6 509 (6.12%) JavaScript
7 381 (4.58%) Bash
8 327 (3.93%) Bicep
9 314 (3.78%) TypeScript
10 100 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 98 (1.18%) T-SQL
12 71 (0.85%) Go
13 59 (0.71%) Scala
14 56 (0.67%) Shell Script
15 55 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
16 40 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.47%) R
18 38 (0.46%) PL/SQL
19 30 (0.36%) Groovy
20 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,117 (25.47%) Security Cleared
2 1,723 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 564 (6.78%) Degree
4 445 (5.35%) Azure Certification
5 271 (3.26%) DV Cleared
6 257 (3.09%) CISSP
7 249 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
8 222 (2.67%) Microsoft Certification
9 212 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
10 199 (2.39%) AWS Certification
11 185 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
12 125 (1.50%) CISM
13 101 (1.21%) CCNP
14 85 (1.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 85 (1.02%) PMI Certification
15 84 (1.01%) PMP
16 69 (0.83%) ISTQB
17 58 (0.70%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.69%) CCSP
18 57 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 579 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 432 (5.20%) QA
3 331 (3.98%) GDPR
4 299 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 292 (3.51%) NIST
6 201 (2.42%) Accessibility
7 122 (1.47%) NCSC
8 103 (1.24%) SLA
9 77 (0.93%) WCAG
10 76 (0.91%) GRC
11 74 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
11 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
12 59 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 56 (0.67%) PMO
14 32 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 29 (0.35%) HIPAA
16 26 (0.31%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
19 17 (0.20%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 998 (12.01%) Active Directory
2 912 (10.97%) Docker
3 234 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 146 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
5 144 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
6 127 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.82%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 24 (0.29%) NFS
12 14 (0.17%) IAG
12 14 (0.17%) Postfix
13 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.11%) Ceph
14 9 (0.11%) zsh
15 7 (0.084%) Varnish
16 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.060%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 1,359 (16.35%) Terraform
2 1,258 (15.13%) Kubernetes
3 435 (5.23%) Ansible
3 435 (5.23%) Microsoft Intune
4 254 (3.06%) Grafana
5 215 (2.59%) Prometheus
6 147 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
7 113 (1.36%) SCCM
8 60 (0.72%) Argo
9 59 (0.71%) Progress Chef
10 47 (0.57%) Puppet
11 43 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 30 (0.36%) Istio
14 21 (0.25%) SCOM
14 21 (0.25%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.24%) Packer
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,766 (33.27%) Microsoft
2 784 (9.43%) Databricks
3 400 (4.81%) ServiceNow
4 340 (4.09%) Google
5 334 (4.02%) VMware
6 318 (3.83%) Oracle
7 239 (2.88%) Cisco
8 223 (2.68%) SAP
9 203 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 187 (2.25%) Splunk
11 155 (1.86%) Palo Alto
12 154 (1.85%) Salesforce
13 144 (1.73%) CyberArk
14 138 (1.66%) Foundry
15 111 (1.34%) Dynatrace
16 105 (1.26%) Zscaler
17 87 (1.05%) Okta
18 83 (1.00%) Informatica
19 78 (0.94%) Fortinet
20 77 (0.93%) Citrix