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

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,196 4,870 6,064
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.50% 15.01% 14.10%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.74% 39.98% 42.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,734 3,379 4,356
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £431 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £636 £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 185 39 54
10th Percentile £18.80 £25.80 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.63 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £62.50 £42.34
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% +47.61% -29.76%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.10 £61.60
90th Percentile £96.25 £100.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £70.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -17.86% +33.33% -12.35%

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 18,736 12,182 14,283
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.42% 37.54% 33.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,435 8,156 10,012
10th Percentile £328 £313 £306
25th Percentile £415 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.49% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £734 £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 615 312 354
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.94 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.12 £27.63 £22.23
Median % change year-on-year +34.35% +24.32% -36.50%
75th Percentile £69.10 £47.63 £49.69
90th Percentile £82.75 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +98.73% -10.14% -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 11 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 11 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 11 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 6,968 £525 - 2,604
London +1 3,650 £550 - 1,030
UK excluding London +3 3,542 £505 +1.00% 2,079
Work from Home -1 2,545 £525 +3.19% 1,348
North of England +7 1,017 £500 +4.17% 550
South East +2 872 £514 +2.80% 671
Midlands +3 615 £500 - 282
North West +8 534 £500 +1.63% 294
West Midlands +1 460 £500 -4.76% 168
South West +7 443 £538 +7.60% 217
Yorkshire +3 403 £500 +5.32% 173
Scotland +9 322 £525 +5.85% 87
East of England +4 186 £550 - 160
East Midlands +4 144 £494 +6.76% 114
Wales -1 113 £425 -4.49% 79
North East +4 93 £525 +5.00% 92
Northern Ireland +16 19 £538 +13.16% 75
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
1 405 (4.94%) SharePoint
2 273 (3.33%) Confluence
3 196 (2.39%) Microsoft Exchange
4 194 (2.37%) Apache Spark
5 130 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
6 123 (1.50%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) 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 (0.073%) Appian
Applications
1 120 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
3 72 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 29 (0.35%) 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 (0.024%) 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
1 109 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 83 (1.01%) 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 (0.085%) Magento
7 7 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.073%) Endur
8 6 (0.073%) Shopify
8 6 (0.073%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
9 5 (0.061%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.049%) Dynamics GP
10 4 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.049%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,905 (35.44%) AWS
2 1,682 (20.52%) Azure DevOps
3 1,388 (16.94%) GCP
4 1,043 (12.73%) Power Platform
5 1,021 (12.46%) Entra ID
6 807 (9.85%) Microsoft 365
7 770 (9.39%) GitHub
8 464 (5.66%) Azure Data Factory
8 464 (5.66%) GitHub Actions
9 371 (4.53%) Serverless
10 327 (3.99%) SaaS
11 325 (3.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 294 (3.59%) Azure AKS
13 278 (3.39%) Azure Monitor
14 274 (3.34%) Power Automate
15 262 (3.20%) PowerApps
16 257 (3.14%) PaaS
17 245 (2.99%) Dynamics 365
18 223 (2.72%) Azure AI
19 220 (2.68%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 489 (5.97%) Firewall
2 376 (4.59%) DNS
3 293 (3.57%) VPN
4 281 (3.43%) Network Security
5 213 (2.60%) WAN
6 188 (2.29%) DHCP
7 133 (1.62%) LAN
8 129 (1.57%) TCP/IP
9 117 (1.43%) SD-WAN
10 110 (1.34%) BGP
11 85 (1.04%) OSPF
12 83 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
13 80 (0.98%) VLAN
14 69 (0.84%) SSL
15 56 (0.68%) SAN
16 55 (0.67%) Kerberos
17 53 (0.65%) IPsec
18 50 (0.61%) Wireless
19 47 (0.57%) VXLAN
20 44 (0.54%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 705 (8.60%) Power BI
2 478 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 391 (4.77%) Data Warehouse
4 362 (4.42%) Data Lake
5 305 (3.72%) PostgreSQL
6 225 (2.75%) Azure SQL Database
7 214 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 201 (2.45%) Metadata
9 142 (1.73%) Relational Database
10 139 (1.70%) Delta Lake
11 125 (1.53%) Big Data
12 109 (1.33%) MongoDB
13 95 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 83 (1.01%) MySQL
15 76 (0.93%) Tableau
16 70 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
17 66 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 57 (0.70%) Oracle Database
18 57 (0.70%) Star Schema
19 54 (0.66%) Redis
Development Applications
1 642 (7.83%) JIRA
2 625 (7.63%) Git
3 436 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 321 (3.92%) GitLab
5 126 (1.54%) Selenium
6 82 (1.00%) Postman
7 77 (0.94%) JMeter
8 68 (0.83%) JUnit
9 60 (0.73%) Cucumber
10 56 (0.68%) REST Assured
11 49 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 48 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 48 (0.59%) Visual Studio
13 43 (0.52%) MLflow
13 43 (0.52%) WebDriver
14 38 (0.46%) Maven
15 33 (0.40%) Team Foundation Server
16 32 (0.39%) Gatling
17 30 (0.37%) LoadRunner
18 29 (0.35%) Gradle
General
1 2,070 (25.26%) Social Skills
2 1,525 (18.61%) Finance
3 934 (11.40%) Public Sector
4 768 (9.37%) Analytical Skills
5 432 (5.27%) Banking
6 238 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
7 206 (2.51%) Legal
8 175 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 166 (2.03%) Retail
10 104 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
11 84 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
12 78 (0.95%) Telecoms
13 72 (0.88%) Law
14 71 (0.87%) Manufacturing
15 70 (0.85%) Investment Banking
16 69 (0.84%) Front Office
16 69 (0.84%) Marketing
17 68 (0.83%) Financial Institution
18 57 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
19 54 (0.66%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,460 (17.81%) Architect
2 1,075 (13.12%) Developer
3 999 (12.19%) Senior
4 721 (8.80%) Azure Engineer
5 646 (7.88%) Lead
6 628 (7.66%) Data Engineer
7 496 (6.05%) Analyst
8 416 (5.08%) DevOps Engineer
8 416 (5.08%) Solutions Architect
9 335 (4.09%) Consultant
10 308 (3.76%) Cloud Engineer
11 278 (3.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 234 (2.86%) Data Architect
13 225 (2.75%) Azure Architect
14 209 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
15 202 (2.46%) Technical Architect
16 190 (2.32%) Security Engineer
17 183 (2.23%) Java Developer
18 180 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 180 (2.20%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 652 (7.96%) .NET
2 590 (7.20%) REST
3 350 (4.27%) React
4 312 (3.81%) Kafka
5 295 (3.60%) RESTful
6 267 (3.26%) PySpark
7 240 (2.93%) OAuth
8 235 (2.87%) Spring
9 223 (2.72%) Node.js
10 202 (2.46%) Spring Boot
11 190 (2.32%) JSON
12 188 (2.29%) AngularJS
13 161 (1.96%) HTML
14 152 (1.85%) SAML
15 146 (1.78%) OpenID
16 139 (1.70%) LDAP
17 131 (1.60%) .NET Framework
18 128 (1.56%) CSS
18 128 (1.56%) Middleware
18 128 (1.56%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 877 (10.70%) Cloud Native
2 356 (4.34%) Onboarding
3 331 (4.04%) Product Ownership
4 263 (3.21%) Data Centre
5 251 (3.06%) Distributed Systems
6 233 (2.84%) Hybrid Cloud
7 232 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
8 198 (2.42%) AI Agents
9 178 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
10 159 (1.94%) Security Posture
11 147 (1.79%) Public Cloud
12 118 (1.44%) Data Structures
13 117 (1.43%) Management Information System
14 113 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
15 108 (1.32%) Replication
16 94 (1.15%) PKI
17 90 (1.10%) Enterprise Cloud
18 85 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
19 76 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
20 74 (0.90%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 937 (11.43%) Windows
2 427 (5.21%) Linux
3 300 (3.66%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 77 (0.94%) Unix
6 75 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 73 (0.89%) Android
7 73 (0.89%) Apple iOS
7 73 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 58 (0.71%) VMS
9 39 (0.48%) 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 (0.13%) CentOS
15 10 (0.12%) Debian
16 8 (0.098%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.085%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.085%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,041 (37.10%) DevOps
2 2,582 (31.50%) CI/CD
3 2,022 (24.67%) Agile
4 1,235 (15.07%) AI
5 1,228 (14.98%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,182 (14.42%) Migration
7 1,150 (14.03%) Analytics
8 1,102 (13.45%) Problem-Solving
9 986 (12.03%) Stakeholder Management
10 921 (11.24%) Data Modelling
11 838 (10.22%) Continuous Improvement
12 789 (9.63%) Data Pipeline
13 774 (9.44%) Containerisation
14 764 (9.32%) Microservices
15 759 (9.26%) Roadmaps
16 751 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
17 722 (8.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 688 (8.39%) ETL
19 677 (8.26%) Test Automation
20 661 (8.06%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,921 (23.44%) Python
2 1,636 (19.96%) SQL
3 775 (9.46%) PowerShell
4 698 (8.52%) Java
5 638 (7.78%) C#
6 479 (5.84%) JavaScript
7 326 (3.98%) TypeScript
8 302 (3.68%) Bash
9 282 (3.44%) Bicep
10 98 (1.20%) T-SQL
11 94 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 84 (1.02%) Go
13 78 (0.95%) Scala
14 55 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 50 (0.61%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.54%) R
17 38 (0.46%) PL/SQL
18 36 (0.44%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.33%) Groovy
20 26 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,033 (24.80%) Security Cleared
2 1,683 (20.53%) SC Cleared
3 584 (7.13%) Degree
4 424 (5.17%) Azure Certification
5 251 (3.06%) CISSP
6 237 (2.89%) DV Cleared
7 234 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
8 205 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
9 200 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
10 199 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
11 185 (2.26%) AWS Certification
12 126 (1.54%) CISM
13 95 (1.16%) CCNP
14 82 (1.00%) PMP
15 78 (0.95%) PMI Certification
16 77 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 68 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 65 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 57 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
20 51 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 562 (6.86%) Data Quality
2 428 (5.22%) QA
3 345 (4.21%) GDPR
4 284 (3.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 278 (3.39%) NIST
6 192 (2.34%) Accessibility
7 123 (1.50%) NCSC
8 100 (1.22%) SLA
9 73 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
9 73 (0.89%) PCI DSS
10 68 (0.83%) WCAG
11 67 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 62 (0.76%) GRC
13 47 (0.57%) PMO
14 38 (0.46%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 24 (0.29%) NIST 800
18 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
19 20 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 969 (11.82%) Active Directory
2 874 (10.66%) Docker
3 228 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (1.71%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
6 115 (1.40%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.83%) 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 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.12%) IAG
15 8 (0.098%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.098%) Varnish
16 7 (0.085%) Ceph
17 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 6 (0.073%) HDFS
18 5 (0.061%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
Systems Management
1 1,305 (15.92%) Terraform
2 1,207 (14.73%) Kubernetes
3 426 (5.20%) Microsoft Intune
4 383 (4.67%) Ansible
5 237 (2.89%) Grafana
6 201 (2.45%) Prometheus
7 168 (2.05%) Single Sign-On
8 108 (1.32%) SCCM
9 66 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.62%) Argo
11 47 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
12 43 (0.52%) Progress Chef
13 41 (0.50%) Puppet
14 38 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 31 (0.38%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.24%) HAProxy
17 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.21%) Packer
19 14 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,633 (32.13%) Microsoft
2 766 (9.35%) Databricks
3 382 (4.66%) ServiceNow
4 326 (3.98%) Google
5 320 (3.90%) Oracle
6 316 (3.86%) VMware
7 229 (2.79%) SAP
8 217 (2.65%) Cisco
9 202 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 174 (2.12%) Splunk
11 154 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 144 (1.76%) Palo Alto
13 135 (1.65%) CyberArk
14 133 (1.62%) Foundry
15 105 (1.28%) Okta
16 98 (1.20%) Dynatrace
17 91 (1.11%) Informatica
18 88 (1.07%) Zscaler
19 78 (0.95%) Citrix
20 73 (0.89%) Fortinet