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 28 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,203 4,911 5,532
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.08% 14.97% 14.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.62% 39.40% 42.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,731 3,358 3,764
10th Percentile £363 £350 £344
25th Percentile £447 £415 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £517 £530
Median % change year-on-year +1.55% -2.45% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £720 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 43 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £22.16 £22.44 £23.80
Median hourly rate £45.20 £34.48 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.09% -1.49% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.50 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.50 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.20 £25.89 £46.18
% change year-on-year +74.62% -43.95% -

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 18,804 12,465 13,093
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.57% 37.99% 34.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,482 8,332 8,711
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.08%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £720 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 612 292 185
10th Percentile £15.32 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £30.00 £26.30 £33.54
Median % change year-on-year +14.07% -21.59% -3.61%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.50 £64.73
90th Percentile £79.90 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +55.68% -41.61% +29.67%

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 28 September 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 28 September 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 28 September 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 6,987 £526 +0.24% 6,170
London 0 3,659 £550 +0.92% 2,913
UK excluding London +1 3,474 £513 +2.50% 3,650
Work from Home -2 2,480 £525 +5.05% 2,957
North of England +8 988 £500 +5.26% 1,055
South East +1 899 £525 +6.33% 775
Midlands +1 641 £493 -4.37% 579
West Midlands +2 490 £488 -11.36% 344
North West +7 485 £500 +5.26% 572
Yorkshire +4 421 £500 +2.56% 362
South West +2 408 £550 +10.00% 408
Scotland +3 283 £525 +5.00% 307
East of England +1 195 £508 +1.50% 283
East Midlands +2 146 £500 +8.11% 235
North East +4 97 £513 +2.50% 128
Wales 0 84 £450 - 121
Northern Ireland +15 14 £650 - 159
Channel Islands -4 6 £500 -21.88%

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
1 463 (5.64%) SharePoint
2 258 (3.15%) Confluence
3 192 (2.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 183 (2.23%) Apache Spark
5 159 (1.94%) Apache Airflow
6 112 (1.37%) Apache
7 42 (0.51%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) IIS
9 27 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
10 23 (0.28%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) nginx
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.098%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.085%) Mendix
16 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.073%) ThingWorx
16 6 (0.073%) Traefik
Applications
1 117 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 39 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.098%) Revit
8 8 (0.098%) Trello
9 7 (0.085%) CPLEX
10 5 (0.061%) Notion
11 4 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.037%) 1Password
12 3 (0.037%) Houdini
12 3 (0.037%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Mingle
13 2 (0.024%) Windchill
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 130 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.098%) Magento
10 7 (0.085%) Shopify
11 6 (0.073%) Cloudability
11 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
12 5 (0.061%) Dynamics NAV
12 5 (0.061%) Temenos T24
13 4 (0.049%) Dynamics GP
13 4 (0.049%) Maximo
13 4 (0.049%) NetSuite
13 4 (0.049%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,942 (35.86%) AWS
2 1,721 (20.98%) Azure DevOps
3 1,437 (17.52%) GCP
4 1,107 (13.50%) Entra ID
5 1,065 (12.98%) Power Platform
6 870 (10.61%) Microsoft 365
7 841 (10.25%) GitHub
8 484 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
9 451 (5.50%) Azure Data Factory
10 374 (4.56%) Serverless
11 355 (4.33%) SaaS
12 312 (3.80%) Azure Monitor
13 305 (3.72%) Power Automate
14 299 (3.65%) Dynamics 365
15 293 (3.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 288 (3.51%) Snowflake
17 287 (3.50%) Azure AKS
18 285 (3.47%) PowerApps
19 250 (3.05%) Microsoft Copilot
20 243 (2.96%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 511 (6.23%) Firewall
2 410 (5.00%) DNS
3 311 (3.79%) VPN
4 286 (3.49%) Network Security
5 230 (2.80%) DHCP
6 181 (2.21%) WAN
7 164 (2.00%) TCP/IP
8 107 (1.30%) LAN
9 105 (1.28%) BGP
10 97 (1.18%) SD-WAN
11 84 (1.02%) OSPF
11 84 (1.02%) VLAN
12 82 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
13 72 (0.88%) SSL
14 66 (0.80%) Wireless
15 60 (0.73%) SAN
16 45 (0.55%) HTTP
16 45 (0.55%) IPsec
17 42 (0.51%) VXLAN
18 40 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 687 (8.37%) Power BI
2 461 (5.62%) SQL Server
3 394 (4.80%) Data Warehouse
4 385 (4.69%) Data Lake
5 286 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
6 247 (3.01%) Metadata
7 210 (2.56%) NoSQL
8 191 (2.33%) Azure SQL Database
9 141 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 125 (1.52%) Delta Lake
11 113 (1.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 102 (1.24%) MongoDB
13 100 (1.22%) MySQL
14 89 (1.08%) Big Data
15 70 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
16 68 (0.83%) Redis
17 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 58 (0.71%) Tableau
20 56 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 735 (8.96%) Git
2 592 (7.22%) JIRA
3 457 (5.57%) Jenkins
4 364 (4.44%) GitLab
5 134 (1.63%) Selenium
6 86 (1.05%) Postman
7 64 (0.78%) Cypress.io
8 59 (0.72%) Cucumber
8 59 (0.72%) JUnit
9 55 (0.67%) Claude Code
9 55 (0.67%) JMeter
10 53 (0.65%) Maven
11 52 (0.63%) SonarQube
12 50 (0.61%) Visual Studio
13 48 (0.59%) Gradle
14 47 (0.57%) REST Assured
15 37 (0.45%) WebDriver
16 34 (0.41%) LoadRunner
17 32 (0.39%) MLflow
18 31 (0.38%) Gatling
General
1 2,272 (27.70%) Social Skills
2 1,558 (18.99%) Finance
3 947 (11.54%) Public Sector
4 796 (9.70%) Analytical Skills
5 483 (5.89%) Banking
6 223 (2.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 214 (2.61%) Retail
8 206 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
9 166 (2.02%) Legal
10 111 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
10 111 (1.35%) Manufacturing
11 90 (1.10%) Telecoms
12 89 (1.08%) Investment Banking
13 88 (1.07%) Marketing
14 86 (1.05%) Aerospace
15 83 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
16 77 (0.94%) Military
17 68 (0.83%) Law
18 60 (0.73%) Local Government
19 58 (0.71%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,575 (19.20%) Architect
2 1,040 (12.68%) Senior
3 995 (12.13%) Developer
4 717 (8.74%) Azure Engineer
5 678 (8.27%) Lead
6 581 (7.08%) Data Engineer
7 488 (5.95%) Solutions Architect
8 463 (5.64%) Analyst
9 454 (5.53%) DevOps Engineer
10 380 (4.63%) Cloud Engineer
11 315 (3.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 312 (3.80%) Consultant
13 266 (3.24%) Data Architect
14 236 (2.88%) Platform Engineer
15 218 (2.66%) Azure Architect
16 205 (2.50%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 203 (2.47%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 202 (2.46%) Technical Architect
19 196 (2.39%) Security Engineer
20 179 (2.18%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,400 (17.07%) Terraform
2 737 (8.98%) REST
3 612 (7.46%) .NET
4 388 (4.73%) Kafka
5 299 (3.65%) React
6 296 (3.61%) RESTful
7 270 (3.29%) OAuth
8 261 (3.18%) PySpark
9 237 (2.89%) JSON
10 187 (2.28%) Spring
11 178 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 162 (1.97%) OAuth2
13 160 (1.95%) OpenID
14 155 (1.89%) HTML
15 151 (1.84%) Node.js
16 149 (1.82%) Middleware
16 149 (1.82%) SAML
17 144 (1.76%) SOAP
18 140 (1.71%) AngularJS
19 131 (1.60%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 925 (11.28%) Cloud Native
2 421 (5.13%) Onboarding
3 388 (4.73%) Product Ownership
4 316 (3.85%) Enterprise Software
5 312 (3.80%) AI Agents
6 286 (3.49%) Hybrid Cloud
7 273 (3.33%) Distributed Systems
8 251 (3.06%) Data Centre
9 228 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
10 183 (2.23%) Security Posture
11 176 (2.15%) Management Information System
12 147 (1.79%) Data Structures
13 145 (1.77%) Public Cloud
14 122 (1.49%) PKI
15 112 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
16 109 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
17 100 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
18 96 (1.17%) Replication
19 88 (1.07%) CMDB
20 87 (1.06%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 981 (11.96%) Windows
2 517 (6.30%) Linux
3 372 (4.53%) Windows Server
4 149 (1.82%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.11%) Android
6 89 (1.08%) Unix
7 86 (1.05%) Apple iOS
8 81 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 75 (0.91%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.65%) Ubuntu
11 48 (0.59%) VMS
12 27 (0.33%) CentOS
13 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.085%) Debian
18 6 (0.073%) AIX
18 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
19 4 (0.049%) Alpine Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,013 (36.73%) DevOps
2 2,648 (32.28%) CI/CD
3 2,050 (24.99%) Agile
4 1,482 (18.07%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,418 (17.29%) AI
6 1,401 (17.08%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,219 (14.86%) Migration
8 1,122 (13.68%) Problem-Solving
9 1,105 (13.47%) Analytics
10 946 (11.53%) Continuous Improvement
11 893 (10.89%) Data Modelling
12 847 (10.33%) Roadmaps
13 786 (9.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 777 (9.47%) Containerisation
15 749 (9.13%) Business Intelligence
15 749 (9.13%) Technical Leadership
16 731 (8.91%) Test Automation
17 720 (8.78%) Data Pipeline
17 720 (8.78%) Microservices
18 649 (7.91%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,878 (22.89%) Python
2 1,562 (19.04%) SQL
3 885 (10.79%) PowerShell
4 678 (8.27%) Java
5 593 (7.23%) C#
6 505 (6.16%) JavaScript
7 406 (4.95%) Bash
8 360 (4.39%) Bicep
9 301 (3.67%) TypeScript
10 97 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 92 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 81 (0.99%) Go
13 65 (0.79%) Scala
14 62 (0.76%) Shell Script
15 58 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.51%) PL/SQL
17 35 (0.43%) R
18 32 (0.39%) Groovy
18 32 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 30 (0.37%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,143 (26.12%) Security Cleared
2 1,726 (21.04%) SC Cleared
3 557 (6.79%) Degree
4 473 (5.77%) Azure Certification
5 308 (3.75%) DV Cleared
6 270 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
7 269 (3.28%) CISSP
8 249 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 211 (2.57%) AWS Certification
10 194 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
11 179 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
12 137 (1.67%) CISM
13 91 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 90 (1.10%) PMI Certification
15 85 (1.04%) PMP
16 84 (1.02%) CCNP
17 66 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 63 (0.77%) CCSP
19 62 (0.76%) Master's Degree
20 51 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 601 (7.33%) Data Quality
2 464 (5.66%) QA
3 302 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 290 (3.54%) NIST
5 285 (3.47%) GDPR
6 204 (2.49%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.45%) NCSC
8 108 (1.32%) SLA
9 85 (1.04%) GRC
10 81 (0.99%) WCAG
11 79 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
12 73 (0.89%) PCI DSS
13 52 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 49 (0.60%) PMO
15 44 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 33 (0.40%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.32%) HIPAA
17 26 (0.32%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) COBIT
System Software
1 1,017 (12.40%) Active Directory
2 907 (11.06%) Docker
3 241 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
5 142 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
6 125 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.85%) vSphere
8 48 (0.59%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 21 (0.26%) Firmware
11 17 (0.21%) IAG
12 15 (0.18%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.098%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.085%) Ceph
18 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
19 5 (0.061%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,292 (15.75%) Kubernetes
2 450 (5.49%) Ansible
3 443 (5.40%) Microsoft Intune
4 261 (3.18%) Grafana
5 205 (2.50%) Prometheus
6 147 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
7 133 (1.62%) SCCM
8 58 (0.71%) Progress Chef
9 57 (0.69%) Argo
10 45 (0.55%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
12 36 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.41%) SCOM
14 30 (0.37%) Istio
15 25 (0.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 19 (0.23%) CASB
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
17 18 (0.22%) QRadar
17 18 (0.22%) vCenter Server
18 16 (0.20%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,971 (36.22%) Microsoft
2 853 (10.40%) Databricks
3 413 (5.03%) ServiceNow
4 385 (4.69%) Google
5 352 (4.29%) VMware
6 343 (4.18%) Oracle
7 237 (2.89%) Cisco
8 232 (2.83%) Splunk
9 218 (2.66%) SAP
10 216 (2.63%) OpenAI
11 187 (2.28%) Salesforce
12 149 (1.82%) CyberArk
13 147 (1.79%) Palo Alto
14 133 (1.62%) Foundry
15 129 (1.57%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.13%) Zscaler
17 87 (1.06%) IBM
18 81 (0.99%) Informatica
18 81 (0.99%) Okta
19 79 (0.96%) Fortinet