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 23 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,471 4,419 5,799
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.38% 15.45% 13.67%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.30% 41.03% 41.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,278 3,121 4,201
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £638
90th Percentile £715 £730 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 151 30 49
10th Percentile £19.25 £23.42 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £26.69 £22.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%
75th Percentile £66.38 £76.96 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £88.75 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% -25.00% -17.63%

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 17,253 10,771 13,874
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.51% 37.65% 32.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,607 7,395 9,878
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £619 £633
90th Percentile £705 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.58% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 535 236 346
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.12 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.31 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £36.00 £27.88 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +29.12% +30.46% -38.94%
75th Percentile £64.00 £47.22 £39.69
90th Percentile £81.00 £72.50 £66.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £20.89 £17.72
% change year-on-year +79.51% +17.89% -29.47%

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 23 May 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 23 May 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 23 May 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 +1 6,326 £525 - 2,546
London +1 3,376 £538 -2.27% 957
UK excluding London +2 3,138 £500 - 2,000
Work from Home -1 2,275 £525 +2.44% 1,271
North of England +3 896 £500 +5.26% 540
South East +3 831 £500 -0.10% 590
Midlands -3 498 £493 -1.50% 260
North West +3 453 £500 +5.26% 319
South West +6 389 £528 +0.48% 250
Yorkshire +7 372 £500 +11.11% 138
West Midlands 0 358 £496 -5.48% 165
Scotland +9 304 £525 +5.85% 105
East of England +4 149 £550 -6.78% 154
East Midlands +3 130 £464 +0.27% 94
Wales -1 94 £400 - 74
North East +3 80 £525 +5.00% 85
Northern Ireland +12 18 £531 +11.84% 57
Channel Islands +3 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
1 351 (4.70%) SharePoint
2 218 (2.92%) Confluence
3 198 (2.65%) Apache Spark
4 192 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (1.42%) Apache
6 102 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.35%) SAS
8 25 (0.33%) IIS
9 17 (0.23%) CMS
10 15 (0.20%) Mendix
11 14 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 14 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
12 12 (0.16%) Appian
12 12 (0.16%) Camunda
12 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.11%) nginx
Applications
1 104 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 63 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 21 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.094%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.094%) Trello
8 5 (0.067%) AutoCAD
8 5 (0.067%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.067%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.054%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.040%) Notion
10 3 (0.040%) Revit
10 3 (0.040%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.013%) InDesign
11 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 98 (1.31%) Dynamics CRM
2 81 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.12%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.094%) NEC Housing
8 6 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.080%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.067%) Shopify
9 5 (0.067%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.054%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.054%) Magento
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.054%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 2,532 (33.89%) AWS
2 1,521 (20.36%) Azure DevOps
3 1,299 (17.39%) GCP
4 962 (12.88%) Power Platform
5 898 (12.02%) Entra ID
6 775 (10.37%) Microsoft 365
7 698 (9.34%) GitHub
8 507 (6.79%) Azure Data Factory
9 414 (5.54%) GitHub Actions
10 383 (5.13%) Serverless
11 337 (4.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 287 (3.84%) SaaS
13 274 (3.67%) Azure AKS
14 260 (3.48%) Power Automate
15 248 (3.32%) Dynamics 365
16 240 (3.21%) Azure Monitor
17 233 (3.12%) PaaS
18 224 (3.00%) PowerApps
19 210 (2.81%) Azure Functions
20 192 (2.57%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 443 (5.93%) Firewall
2 316 (4.23%) DNS
3 255 (3.41%) VPN
4 251 (3.36%) Network Security
5 206 (2.76%) WAN
6 168 (2.25%) DHCP
7 135 (1.81%) LAN
8 114 (1.53%) SD-WAN
9 93 (1.24%) TCP/IP
10 87 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
11 76 (1.02%) BGP
12 74 (0.99%) VLAN
13 71 (0.95%) Kerberos
14 65 (0.87%) OSPF
15 48 (0.64%) SAN
15 48 (0.64%) SSL
16 45 (0.60%) Wireless
17 43 (0.58%) VXLAN
18 38 (0.51%) HTTP
19 37 (0.50%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 634 (8.49%) Power BI
2 436 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 369 (4.94%) Data Lake
4 367 (4.91%) Data Warehouse
5 250 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 241 (3.23%) Azure SQL Database
7 198 (2.65%) NoSQL
8 178 (2.38%) Metadata
9 154 (2.06%) Delta Lake
10 119 (1.59%) Big Data
11 113 (1.51%) Relational Database
12 98 (1.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 96 (1.28%) MongoDB
14 76 (1.02%) Tableau
15 70 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
16 67 (0.90%) Oracle Database
17 65 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 64 (0.86%) MySQL
19 55 (0.74%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.67%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 541 (7.24%) Git
2 529 (7.08%) JIRA
3 391 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 316 (4.23%) GitLab
5 117 (1.57%) Selenium
6 81 (1.08%) Postman
7 69 (0.92%) JMeter
8 61 (0.82%) Cucumber
9 58 (0.78%) JUnit
10 53 (0.71%) MLflow
10 53 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 47 (0.63%) SonarQube
12 39 (0.52%) Cypress.io
13 37 (0.50%) Visual Studio
14 33 (0.44%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.44%) WebDriver
15 31 (0.41%) Gatling
16 30 (0.40%) Maven
17 26 (0.35%) NUnit
18 25 (0.33%) ERwin
General
1 1,882 (25.19%) Social Skills
2 1,333 (17.84%) Finance
3 812 (10.87%) Public Sector
4 657 (8.79%) Analytical Skills
5 384 (5.14%) Banking
6 200 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 194 (2.60%) Legal
8 110 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 106 (1.42%) Retail
10 92 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 76 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
12 73 (0.98%) Financial Institution
13 69 (0.92%) Marketing
14 68 (0.91%) Investment Banking
15 63 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
16 61 (0.82%) Law
16 61 (0.82%) Telecoms
17 60 (0.80%) Front Office
18 46 (0.62%) Military
19 40 (0.54%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,286 (17.21%) Architect
2 955 (12.78%) Developer
3 878 (11.75%) Senior
4 676 (9.05%) Azure Engineer
5 602 (8.06%) Data Engineer
6 564 (7.55%) Lead
7 465 (6.22%) Analyst
8 411 (5.50%) DevOps Engineer
9 334 (4.47%) Solutions Architect
10 310 (4.15%) Consultant
11 245 (3.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 244 (3.27%) Cloud Engineer
13 208 (2.78%) Azure Architect
14 198 (2.65%) Security Engineer
15 196 (2.62%) Data Architect
16 172 (2.30%) Platform Engineer
17 170 (2.28%) Technical Architect
18 169 (2.26%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 166 (2.22%) Project Manager
20 160 (2.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 603 (8.07%) .NET
2 507 (6.79%) REST
3 337 (4.51%) React
4 274 (3.67%) PySpark
5 271 (3.63%) Kafka
6 237 (3.17%) RESTful
7 215 (2.88%) Node.js
7 215 (2.88%) OAuth
8 195 (2.61%) Spring
9 179 (2.40%) AngularJS
10 176 (2.36%) LDAP
11 163 (2.18%) Spring Boot
12 158 (2.11%) JSON
13 139 (1.86%) HTML
14 137 (1.83%) SOAP
15 136 (1.82%) Middleware
15 136 (1.82%) OpenID
16 131 (1.75%) SAML
17 115 (1.54%) CSS
18 109 (1.46%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 715 (9.57%) Cloud Native
2 301 (4.03%) Onboarding
3 274 (3.67%) Product Ownership
4 229 (3.07%) Data Centre
5 202 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
6 179 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
7 173 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
8 164 (2.20%) Security Posture
9 161 (2.15%) Enterprise Software
10 152 (2.03%) Public Cloud
11 144 (1.93%) AI Agents
12 99 (1.33%) Data Structures
13 92 (1.23%) Replication
14 91 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
15 82 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 77 (1.03%) Management Information System
17 72 (0.96%) PKI
18 67 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
19 65 (0.87%) NHS
20 58 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 826 (11.06%) Windows
2 380 (5.09%) Linux
3 250 (3.35%) Windows Server
4 124 (1.66%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.00%) Unix
6 72 (0.96%) Mac OS
7 71 (0.95%) Apple iOS
8 68 (0.91%) VMS
9 60 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 54 (0.72%) Android
11 31 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (0.31%) Ubuntu
13 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.12%) CentOS
16 9 (0.12%) Debian
17 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.094%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.094%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,787 (37.30%) DevOps
2 2,318 (31.03%) CI/CD
3 1,728 (23.13%) Agile
4 1,071 (14.34%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,048 (14.03%) Analytics
6 1,045 (13.99%) Migration
7 1,038 (13.89%) Problem-Solving
8 1,028 (13.76%) AI
9 851 (11.39%) Data Modelling
10 750 (10.04%) Stakeholder Management
11 703 (9.41%) Data Pipeline
12 694 (9.29%) Continuous Improvement
13 692 (9.26%) Business Intelligence
14 681 (9.12%) Containerisation
15 676 (9.05%) ETL
16 661 (8.85%) Microservices
17 627 (8.39%) Roadmaps
18 606 (8.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 589 (7.88%) Data Engineering
20 572 (7.66%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,754 (23.48%) Python
2 1,549 (20.73%) SQL
3 738 (9.88%) PowerShell
4 616 (8.25%) C#
5 598 (8.00%) Java
6 446 (5.97%) JavaScript
7 281 (3.76%) TypeScript
8 249 (3.33%) Bash
9 247 (3.31%) Bicep
10 94 (1.26%) Scala
11 90 (1.20%) T-SQL
12 89 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 76 (1.02%) Go
14 55 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
15 49 (0.66%) Shell Script
16 45 (0.60%) PL/SQL
17 40 (0.54%) R
18 31 (0.41%) C++
19 24 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.21%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,833 (24.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,553 (20.79%) SC Cleared
3 515 (6.89%) Degree
4 375 (5.02%) Azure Certification
5 215 (2.88%) CISSP
6 188 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
7 175 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
8 172 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
9 165 (2.21%) DV Cleared
10 152 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
11 137 (1.83%) AWS Certification
12 123 (1.65%) CISM
13 83 (1.11%) CCNP
14 75 (1.00%) PMP
15 70 (0.94%) PMI Certification
16 69 (0.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 63 (0.84%) Master's Degree
18 59 (0.79%) TOGAF Certification
19 56 (0.75%) ISTQB
20 47 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 516 (6.91%) Data Quality
2 396 (5.30%) QA
3 351 (4.70%) GDPR
4 284 (3.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 262 (3.51%) NIST
6 140 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 105 (1.41%) NCSC
8 84 (1.12%) PCI DSS
9 81 (1.08%) SLA
10 67 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
11 64 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 54 (0.72%) PMO
13 53 (0.71%) GRC
14 45 (0.60%) WCAG
15 38 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.33%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 18 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 17 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 908 (12.15%) Active Directory
2 780 (10.44%) Docker
3 211 (2.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 121 (1.62%) Virtual Desktop
5 117 (1.57%) Hyper-V
6 112 (1.50%) Virtual Machines
7 66 (0.88%) vSphere
8 40 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.40%) Firmware
10 25 (0.33%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.28%) NFS
12 15 (0.20%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.080%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.080%) Ceph
15 6 (0.080%) HDFS
15 6 (0.080%) KVM
15 6 (0.080%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.080%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,163 (15.57%) Terraform
2 1,058 (14.16%) Kubernetes
3 380 (5.09%) Microsoft Intune
4 348 (4.66%) Ansible
5 207 (2.77%) Grafana
6 179 (2.40%) Prometheus
7 157 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
8 112 (1.50%) SCCM
9 72 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.52%) Argo
10 39 (0.52%) Puppet
11 36 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.46%) Istio
12 34 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
13 29 (0.39%) Progress Chef
14 23 (0.31%) HP ALM
15 18 (0.24%) HAProxy
15 18 (0.24%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.23%) linkerd
17 14 (0.19%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,375 (31.79%) Microsoft
2 760 (10.17%) Databricks
3 317 (4.24%) ServiceNow
4 291 (3.90%) VMware
5 290 (3.88%) Google
6 285 (3.81%) Oracle
7 215 (2.88%) SAP
8 202 (2.70%) Cisco
9 188 (2.52%) OpenAI
10 167 (2.24%) Splunk
11 141 (1.89%) CyberArk
12 132 (1.77%) Palo Alto
13 114 (1.53%) Salesforce
14 110 (1.47%) Foundry
15 99 (1.33%) Okta
16 79 (1.06%) Dynatrace
17 76 (1.02%) Citrix
18 73 (0.98%) Informatica
19 68 (0.91%) Zscaler
20 67 (0.90%) BeyondTrust