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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,284 4,721 5,566
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.46% 14.51% 14.41%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.25% 38.94% 42.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,810 3,213 3,907
10th Percentile £365 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £635
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 172 46 37
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.31 £18.36
25th Percentile £21.25 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.29% +10.71% -35.19%
75th Percentile £79.25 £72.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £99.44 £91.88 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -41.15% +85.71% -24.21%

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 18,719 12,123 13,111
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.93% 37.27% 33.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,419 8,074 8,999
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £741
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 606 310 224
10th Percentile £15.41 £15.48 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.25 £18.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.75 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -14.29%
75th Percentile £68.75 £52.50 £57.63
90th Percentile £81.75 £71.27 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.50 £19.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +65.79% -21.42% -10.44%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +2 7,098 £525 - 5,884
London +1 3,713 £550 +0.92% 3,134
UK excluding London +2 3,560 £500 - 3,578
Work from Home 0 2,522 £525 +5.00% 3,017
North of England +11 1,035 £500 +5.26% 914
South East +2 920 £525 +5.00% 884
Midlands +4 648 £493 -3.90% 484
North West +7 528 £498 +4.74% 520
West Midlands +3 477 £488 -9.22% 288
Yorkshire +7 427 £500 +5.26% 278
South West +5 420 £540 +8.00% 467
Scotland +10 287 £500 +5.26% 323
East of England +5 178 £525 +5.00% 289
East Midlands +9 159 £500 +8.11% 195
North East +6 93 £500 - 121
Wales -1 88 £483 +7.22% 96
Northern Ireland +13 13 £650 +36.84% 156
Channel Islands 0 11 £450 -29.69% 3

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
1 451 (5.44%) SharePoint
2 267 (3.22%) Confluence
3 192 (2.32%) Microsoft Exchange
4 178 (2.15%) Apache Spark
5 156 (1.88%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.42%) Apache
7 42 (0.51%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 22 (0.27%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) nginx
13 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
14 8 (0.097%) Apache Superset
14 8 (0.097%) Mendix
14 8 (0.097%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.085%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.085%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.072%) Documentum
Applications
1 125 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.46%) Chatbot
6 36 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.097%) Revit
10 8 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.012%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 128 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.097%) Magento
7 8 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.085%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.072%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.048%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.048%) Endur
11 4 (0.048%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 2,982 (36.00%) AWS
2 1,773 (21.40%) Azure DevOps
3 1,407 (16.98%) GCP
4 1,080 (13.04%) Entra ID
5 1,059 (12.78%) Power Platform
6 858 (10.36%) Microsoft 365
7 834 (10.07%) GitHub
8 489 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
9 466 (5.63%) Azure Data Factory
10 374 (4.51%) Serverless
11 355 (4.29%) SaaS
12 314 (3.79%) Azure Monitor
13 306 (3.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 290 (3.50%) Power Automate
15 287 (3.46%) Azure AKS
16 284 (3.43%) Dynamics 365
17 276 (3.33%) PowerApps
18 269 (3.25%) Snowflake
19 230 (2.78%) Azure AI
20 221 (2.67%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 532 (6.42%) Firewall
2 415 (5.01%) DNS
3 315 (3.80%) VPN
4 308 (3.72%) Network Security
5 224 (2.70%) DHCP
6 196 (2.37%) WAN
7 167 (2.02%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.42%) LAN
9 111 (1.34%) BGP
10 103 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.13%) VLAN
12 89 (1.07%) OSPF
13 85 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.91%) SSL
15 62 (0.75%) SAN
16 57 (0.69%) Wireless
17 47 (0.57%) IPsec
18 46 (0.56%) HTTP
19 45 (0.54%) VXLAN
20 40 (0.48%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 718 (8.67%) Power BI
2 469 (5.66%) SQL Server
3 405 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
4 371 (4.48%) Data Lake
5 291 (3.51%) PostgreSQL
6 245 (2.96%) Metadata
7 218 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 208 (2.51%) Azure SQL Database
9 142 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 135 (1.63%) Delta Lake
11 108 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 104 (1.26%) MongoDB
13 99 (1.20%) Big Data
14 88 (1.06%) MySQL
15 69 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
16 66 (0.80%) Redis
16 66 (0.80%) Tableau
17 61 (0.74%) Snowflake Schema
18 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
19 58 (0.70%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 686 (8.28%) Git
2 614 (7.41%) JIRA
3 466 (5.63%) Jenkins
4 359 (4.33%) GitLab
5 134 (1.62%) Selenium
6 78 (0.94%) Postman
7 63 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 60 (0.72%) JUnit
9 59 (0.71%) JMeter
10 54 (0.65%) Maven
11 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 50 (0.60%) Cucumber
13 47 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 46 (0.56%) Claude Code
15 45 (0.54%) Gradle
15 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
16 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 37 (0.45%) MLflow
18 32 (0.39%) LoadRunner
19 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,246 (27.11%) Social Skills
2 1,548 (18.69%) Finance
3 965 (11.65%) Public Sector
4 822 (9.92%) Analytical Skills
5 448 (5.41%) Banking
6 232 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 211 (2.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 192 (2.32%) Retail
9 177 (2.14%) Legal
10 105 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
11 101 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 94 (1.13%) Telecoms
13 83 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 78 (0.94%) Investment Banking
15 77 (0.93%) Aerospace
15 77 (0.93%) Marketing
16 73 (0.88%) Law
17 72 (0.87%) Military
18 65 (0.78%) Financial Institution
19 58 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,543 (18.63%) Architect
2 1,039 (12.54%) Senior
3 986 (11.90%) Developer
4 727 (8.78%) Azure Engineer
5 676 (8.16%) Lead
6 595 (7.18%) Data Engineer
7 493 (5.95%) Analyst
8 455 (5.49%) DevOps Engineer
9 452 (5.46%) Solutions Architect
10 360 (4.35%) Cloud Engineer
11 314 (3.79%) Consultant
11 314 (3.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 274 (3.31%) Data Architect
13 243 (2.93%) Platform Engineer
14 227 (2.74%) Azure Architect
15 201 (2.43%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 199 (2.40%) Technical Architect
17 188 (2.27%) Project Manager
17 188 (2.27%) Security Architect
18 180 (2.17%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,387 (16.74%) Terraform
2 672 (8.11%) REST
3 627 (7.57%) .NET
4 371 (4.48%) Kafka
5 305 (3.68%) React
6 287 (3.46%) RESTful
7 276 (3.33%) PySpark
8 249 (3.01%) OAuth
9 226 (2.73%) JSON
10 203 (2.45%) Spring
11 179 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 161 (1.94%) Node.js
13 152 (1.83%) AngularJS
14 151 (1.82%) OpenID
15 150 (1.81%) HTML
16 149 (1.80%) SAML
17 145 (1.75%) OAuth2
18 141 (1.70%) Playwright
19 140 (1.69%) Middleware
20 133 (1.61%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 913 (11.02%) Cloud Native
2 411 (4.96%) Onboarding
3 365 (4.41%) Product Ownership
4 285 (3.44%) Enterprise Software
5 284 (3.43%) AI Agents
6 272 (3.28%) Distributed Systems
6 272 (3.28%) Hybrid Cloud
7 247 (2.98%) Data Centre
8 232 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
9 176 (2.12%) Security Posture
10 160 (1.93%) Management Information System
11 142 (1.71%) Data Structures
12 140 (1.69%) Public Cloud
13 117 (1.41%) PKI
14 115 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
15 114 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
16 104 (1.26%) Replication
17 92 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
18 82 (0.99%) CMDB
19 78 (0.94%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 991 (11.96%) Windows
2 516 (6.23%) Linux
3 369 (4.45%) Windows Server
4 134 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.05%) Unix
6 86 (1.04%) Android
7 84 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 83 (1.00%) Apple iOS
9 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 61 (0.74%) VMS
11 54 (0.65%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 19 (0.23%) CentOS
14 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,073 (37.10%) DevOps
2 2,614 (31.55%) CI/CD
3 2,080 (25.11%) Agile
4 1,380 (16.66%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,369 (16.53%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,361 (16.43%) AI
7 1,229 (14.84%) Migration
8 1,139 (13.75%) Analytics
9 1,112 (13.42%) Problem-Solving
10 939 (11.34%) Continuous Improvement
11 913 (11.02%) Data Modelling
12 819 (9.89%) Roadmaps
13 806 (9.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 774 (9.34%) Business Intelligence
15 768 (9.27%) Containerisation
16 760 (9.17%) Data Pipeline
17 731 (8.82%) Microservices
18 712 (8.59%) Technical Leadership
19 697 (8.41%) Test Automation
20 665 (8.03%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,905 (23.00%) Python
2 1,618 (19.53%) SQL
3 863 (10.42%) PowerShell
4 689 (8.32%) Java
5 593 (7.16%) C#
6 485 (5.85%) JavaScript
7 402 (4.85%) Bash
8 350 (4.23%) Bicep
9 287 (3.46%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 92 (1.11%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.83%) Go
13 63 (0.76%) Scala
13 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
14 53 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
15 41 (0.49%) PL/SQL
15 41 (0.49%) R
16 37 (0.45%) Kotlin
17 32 (0.39%) Groovy
18 25 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,159 (26.06%) Security Cleared
2 1,745 (21.06%) SC Cleared
3 560 (6.76%) Degree
4 460 (5.55%) Azure Certification
5 292 (3.52%) DV Cleared
6 271 (3.27%) CISSP
7 262 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
8 239 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
9 209 (2.52%) AWS Certification
10 205 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
11 184 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
12 139 (1.68%) CISM
13 93 (1.12%) CCNP
14 89 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 87 (1.05%) PMI Certification
16 84 (1.01%) PMP
17 69 (0.83%) ISTQB
18 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
19 59 (0.71%) CCSP
20 46 (0.56%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 606 (7.32%) Data Quality
2 451 (5.44%) QA
3 316 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 316 (3.81%) NIST
4 308 (3.72%) GDPR
5 197 (2.38%) Accessibility
6 119 (1.44%) NCSC
7 108 (1.30%) SLA
8 80 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
9 78 (0.94%) WCAG
10 77 (0.93%) GRC
11 75 (0.91%) PCI DSS
12 58 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 54 (0.65%) PMO
14 43 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 26 (0.31%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
17 21 (0.25%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,012 (12.22%) Active Directory
2 913 (11.02%) Docker
3 251 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
5 142 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
6 137 (1.65%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.80%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.33%) Firmware
11 19 (0.23%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 12 (0.14%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.085%) Squid
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 6 (0.072%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,281 (15.46%) Kubernetes
2 451 (5.44%) Ansible
3 432 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
4 263 (3.17%) Grafana
5 208 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 147 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
7 128 (1.55%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 60 (0.72%) Argo
10 48 (0.58%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 32 (0.39%) SCOM
15 26 (0.31%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) Packer
17 19 (0.23%) QRadar
18 18 (0.22%) HAProxy
19 16 (0.19%) CASB
Vendors
1 2,892 (34.91%) Microsoft
2 832 (10.04%) Databricks
3 411 (4.96%) ServiceNow
4 363 (4.38%) VMware
5 359 (4.33%) Google
6 331 (4.00%) Oracle
7 245 (2.96%) Cisco
8 222 (2.68%) SAP
9 214 (2.58%) Splunk
10 206 (2.49%) OpenAI
11 173 (2.09%) Salesforce
12 154 (1.86%) CyberArk
13 152 (1.83%) Palo Alto
14 136 (1.64%) Foundry
15 117 (1.41%) Dynatrace
16 96 (1.16%) Informatica
17 94 (1.13%) Zscaler
18 83 (1.00%) Okta
19 80 (0.97%) Fortinet
20 75 (0.91%) IBM