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 30 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,940 4,592 5,966
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.47% 15.01% 13.82%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.67% 39.78% 42.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,553 3,178 4,286
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £430 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.10% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 38 53
10th Percentile £19.25 £26.02 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.50 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% +50.65% -36.49%
75th Percentile £77.13 £78.40 £61.60
90th Percentile £95.00 £100.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £67.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -14.81% +28.57% -12.50%

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 18,181 11,543 14,168
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.43% 37.72% 32.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,100 7,737 9,953
10th Percentile £331 £313 £300
25th Percentile £415 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £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 605 292 358
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £14.09
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £28.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.93% +27.27% -37.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.75 £72.38 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £18.87 £20.87
% change year-on-year +102.70% -9.58% -19.73%

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 30 June 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 30 June 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 30 June 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 6,750 £525 - 2,247
London +1 3,547 £545 -1.00% 890
UK excluding London +3 3,427 £506 +1.10% 1,831
Work from Home -1 2,461 £525 +2.44% 1,178
North of England +7 987 £510 +7.37% 459
South East +2 842 £514 +2.80% 568
Midlands +3 585 £500 +1.63% 261
North West +7 509 £500 +1.83% 258
West Midlands +1 431 £500 -4.76% 163
South West +6 428 £530 +6.00% 223
Yorkshire +4 396 £505 +6.37% 141
Scotland +10 324 £525 +5.00% 82
East of England +5 177 £550 - 153
East Midlands +6 144 £500 +9.59% 98
Wales 0 109 £425 +5.59% 64
North East +6 95 £525 +5.00% 67
Northern Ireland +13 19 £538 +13.16% 63
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
1 384 (4.84%) SharePoint
2 247 (3.11%) Confluence
3 191 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 190 (2.39%) Apache Spark
5 126 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.46%) Apache
7 40 (0.50%) SAS
8 29 (0.37%) IIS
9 20 (0.25%) CMS
10 17 (0.21%) OpenStack
10 17 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.13%) Camunda
12 10 (0.13%) Mendix
12 10 (0.13%) nginx
13 9 (0.11%) ArcGIS
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.10%) Appian
14 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 110 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 28 (0.35%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.088%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.063%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.063%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.050%) Notion
12 4 (0.050%) Trello
13 2 (0.025%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.013%) InDesign
14 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.013%) Sketch
14 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 108 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 9 (0.11%) Maximo
6 9 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.088%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.088%) Shopify
9 6 (0.076%) Endur
9 6 (0.076%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.063%) Magento
10 5 (0.063%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.063%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.050%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
11 4 (0.050%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,779 (35.00%) AWS
2 1,625 (20.47%) Azure DevOps
3 1,330 (16.75%) GCP
4 1,017 (12.81%) Power Platform
5 977 (12.30%) Entra ID
6 784 (9.87%) Microsoft 365
7 726 (9.14%) GitHub
8 466 (5.87%) Azure Data Factory
9 443 (5.58%) GitHub Actions
10 382 (4.81%) Serverless
11 315 (3.97%) SaaS
12 311 (3.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 294 (3.70%) Azure AKS
14 265 (3.34%) Azure Monitor
15 263 (3.31%) Power Automate
16 248 (3.12%) Dynamics 365
17 247 (3.11%) PowerApps
18 243 (3.06%) PaaS
19 219 (2.76%) Snowflake
20 214 (2.70%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 473 (5.96%) Firewall
2 352 (4.43%) DNS
3 276 (3.48%) Network Security
4 273 (3.44%) VPN
5 228 (2.87%) WAN
6 178 (2.24%) DHCP
7 138 (1.74%) LAN
8 126 (1.59%) SD-WAN
9 110 (1.39%) TCP/IP
10 101 (1.27%) BGP
11 84 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
12 78 (0.98%) OSPF
13 75 (0.94%) VLAN
14 65 (0.82%) SSL
15 59 (0.74%) Kerberos
16 54 (0.68%) SAN
17 49 (0.62%) IPsec
17 49 (0.62%) Wireless
18 48 (0.60%) VXLAN
19 42 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 682 (8.59%) Power BI
2 460 (5.79%) SQL Server
3 380 (4.79%) Data Warehouse
4 365 (4.60%) Data Lake
5 286 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
6 222 (2.80%) Azure SQL Database
7 211 (2.66%) NoSQL
8 195 (2.46%) Metadata
9 143 (1.80%) Delta Lake
10 136 (1.71%) Relational Database
11 120 (1.51%) Big Data
12 107 (1.35%) MongoDB
13 93 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (0.96%) MySQL
14 76 (0.96%) Tableau
15 72 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
16 66 (0.83%) BigQuery
17 58 (0.73%) Oracle Database
18 54 (0.68%) Star Schema
19 52 (0.65%) Redis
Development Applications
1 604 (7.61%) JIRA
2 586 (7.38%) Git
3 413 (5.20%) Jenkins
4 320 (4.03%) GitLab
5 127 (1.60%) Selenium
6 80 (1.01%) Postman
7 78 (0.98%) JMeter
8 65 (0.82%) JUnit
9 63 (0.79%) Cucumber
10 58 (0.73%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.59%) Visual Studio
13 44 (0.55%) MLflow
14 43 (0.54%) WebDriver
15 42 (0.53%) Cypress.io
16 33 (0.42%) Gatling
17 32 (0.40%) Maven
18 29 (0.37%) LoadRunner
19 27 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
20 26 (0.33%) NUnit
General
1 1,994 (25.11%) Social Skills
2 1,499 (18.88%) Finance
3 878 (11.06%) Public Sector
4 716 (9.02%) Analytical Skills
5 419 (5.28%) Banking
6 226 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 206 (2.59%) Legal
8 167 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 158 (1.99%) Retail
10 98 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 82 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 71 (0.89%) Investment Banking
13 69 (0.87%) Financial Institution
13 69 (0.87%) Front Office
14 68 (0.86%) Law
14 68 (0.86%) Telecoms
15 64 (0.81%) Marketing
16 63 (0.79%) Manufacturing
17 55 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,411 (17.77%) Architect
2 1,023 (12.88%) Developer
3 958 (12.07%) Senior
4 702 (8.84%) Azure Engineer
5 610 (7.68%) Lead
6 603 (7.59%) Data Engineer
7 480 (6.05%) Analyst
8 406 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
9 395 (4.97%) Solutions Architect
10 335 (4.22%) Consultant
11 289 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
12 269 (3.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 228 (2.87%) Data Architect
14 222 (2.80%) Azure Architect
15 200 (2.52%) Platform Engineer
16 193 (2.43%) Security Engineer
16 193 (2.43%) Technical Architect
17 174 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 174 (2.19%) Business Analyst
18 173 (2.18%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 643 (8.10%) .NET
2 554 (6.98%) REST
3 346 (4.36%) React
4 289 (3.64%) Kafka
5 268 (3.38%) RESTful
6 265 (3.34%) PySpark
7 230 (2.90%) OAuth
8 220 (2.77%) Spring
9 215 (2.71%) Node.js
10 188 (2.37%) AngularJS
10 188 (2.37%) Spring Boot
11 171 (2.15%) JSON
12 147 (1.85%) LDAP
12 147 (1.85%) SAML
13 144 (1.81%) HTML
14 143 (1.80%) OpenID
15 127 (1.60%) .NET Framework
15 127 (1.60%) Middleware
16 121 (1.52%) SOAP
17 120 (1.51%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 839 (10.57%) Cloud Native
2 334 (4.21%) Onboarding
3 316 (3.98%) Product Ownership
4 259 (3.26%) Data Centre
5 230 (2.90%) Distributed Systems
6 229 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
7 214 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
8 180 (2.27%) AI Agents
9 170 (2.14%) Enterprise Software
10 162 (2.04%) Security Posture
11 151 (1.90%) Public Cloud
12 118 (1.49%) Data Structures
13 109 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 105 (1.32%) Management Information System
15 100 (1.26%) Replication
16 89 (1.12%) PKI
17 80 (1.01%) Enterprise Cloud
17 80 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
18 75 (0.94%) Low-Code
19 73 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 897 (11.30%) Windows
2 405 (5.10%) Linux
3 292 (3.68%) Windows Server
4 105 (1.32%) Windows 10
5 76 (0.96%) Unix
6 74 (0.93%) Apple iOS
7 70 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 68 (0.86%) Android
8 68 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 62 (0.78%) VMS
10 36 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 15 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.14%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
16 10 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.088%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.088%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,944 (37.08%) DevOps
2 2,474 (31.16%) CI/CD
3 1,939 (24.42%) Agile
4 1,192 (15.01%) AI
5 1,174 (14.79%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,138 (14.33%) Migration
7 1,108 (13.95%) Analytics
8 1,070 (13.48%) Problem-Solving
9 910 (11.46%) Stakeholder Management
10 891 (11.22%) Data Modelling
11 795 (10.01%) Continuous Improvement
12 752 (9.47%) Data Pipeline
13 745 (9.38%) Containerisation
14 736 (9.27%) Roadmaps
15 726 (9.14%) Business Intelligence
16 723 (9.11%) Microservices
17 688 (8.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 680 (8.56%) ETL
19 644 (8.11%) Data Engineering
20 639 (8.05%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,863 (23.46%) Python
2 1,589 (20.01%) SQL
3 753 (9.48%) PowerShell
4 660 (8.31%) Java
5 635 (8.00%) C#
6 464 (5.84%) JavaScript
7 319 (4.02%) TypeScript
8 276 (3.48%) Bash
9 269 (3.39%) Bicep
10 92 (1.16%) T-SQL
11 90 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 80 (1.01%) Go
13 78 (0.98%) Scala
14 47 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
15 46 (0.58%) R
16 45 (0.57%) Shell Script
17 34 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 32 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 28 (0.35%) C++
20 22 (0.28%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,935 (24.37%) Security Cleared
2 1,618 (20.38%) SC Cleared
3 564 (7.10%) Degree
4 405 (5.10%) Azure Certification
5 248 (3.12%) CISSP
6 203 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
6 203 (2.56%) DV Cleared
7 197 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
8 195 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
9 183 (2.30%) Microsoft Certification
10 178 (2.24%) AWS Certification
11 127 (1.60%) CISM
12 94 (1.18%) CCNP
13 79 (0.99%) PMP
14 76 (0.96%) PMI Certification
15 75 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 63 (0.79%) ISTQB
17 60 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
19 51 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 545 (6.86%) Data Quality
2 413 (5.20%) QA
3 343 (4.32%) GDPR
4 281 (3.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 269 (3.39%) NIST
6 171 (2.15%) Accessibility
7 116 (1.46%) NCSC
8 95 (1.20%) SLA
9 76 (0.96%) PCI DSS
10 73 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
11 66 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 61 (0.77%) GRC
12 61 (0.77%) WCAG
13 40 (0.50%) PMO
14 38 (0.48%) HIPAA
15 29 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 24 (0.30%) NIST 800
18 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 19 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 936 (11.79%) Active Directory
2 831 (10.47%) Docker
3 222 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
5 135 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
6 114 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.86%) vSphere
8 51 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.38%) Firmware
11 25 (0.31%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 7 (0.088%) IAG
16 6 (0.076%) Ceph
16 6 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.063%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
17 5 (0.063%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 1,263 (15.91%) Terraform
2 1,150 (14.48%) Kubernetes
3 418 (5.26%) Microsoft Intune
4 370 (4.66%) Ansible
5 209 (2.63%) Grafana
6 183 (2.30%) Prometheus
7 167 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
8 103 (1.30%) SCCM
9 69 (0.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.55%) FortiGate
10 44 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
11 41 (0.52%) Progress Chef
12 40 (0.50%) Argo
13 39 (0.49%) Puppet
14 31 (0.39%) Istio
15 23 (0.29%) HP ALM
16 21 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.20%) Packer
19 13 (0.16%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,523 (31.78%) Microsoft
2 755 (9.51%) Databricks
3 354 (4.46%) ServiceNow
4 306 (3.85%) Google
5 303 (3.82%) VMware
6 289 (3.64%) Oracle
7 219 (2.76%) Cisco
8 218 (2.75%) SAP
9 200 (2.52%) OpenAI
10 156 (1.96%) Splunk
11 147 (1.85%) Palo Alto
11 147 (1.85%) Salesforce
12 128 (1.61%) CyberArk
13 124 (1.56%) Foundry
14 107 (1.35%) Okta
15 94 (1.18%) Dynatrace
16 89 (1.12%) Informatica
17 84 (1.06%) Zscaler
18 73 (0.92%) Citrix
19 70 (0.88%) Fortinet