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

6 months to
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,400 4,842 6,176
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.12% 15.73% 13.85%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.42% 42.05% 41.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,538 3,289 4,507
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% -2.78% -4.00%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £646
90th Percentile £700 £725 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 40 80
10th Percentile £18.45 £21.15 £17.78
25th Percentile £32.18 £23.75 £23.97
Median hourly rate £57.50 £30.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +86.99% -33.41% -13.44%
75th Percentile £64.00 £60.19 £63.31
90th Percentile £81.20 £77.22 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +109.09% -40.45% -23.92%

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 15,086 11,514 14,860
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.01% 37.41% 33.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,363 7,692 10,630
10th Percentile £308 £313 £288
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £631
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.26% -0.77% -1.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 377 172 321
10th Percentile £14.47 £16.78 £14.13
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.46 £16.25
Median hourly rate £35.71 £27.43 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.21% +21.89% -10.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.94 £51.58
90th Percentile £78.75 £73.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £24.18 £20.77
% change year-on-year +53.02% +16.42% +3.85%

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 February 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 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 February 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 5,401 £522 -0.57% 2,618
London 0 2,916 £540 -1.82% 927
UK excluding London 0 2,624 £500 - 2,218
Work from Home -2 1,959 £520 -0.95% 1,376
North of England -1 705 £475 - 548
South East -2 685 £500 -5.21% 755
Midlands -2 448 £500 -3.15% 302
North West -1 347 £450 - 304
West Midlands +1 336 £525 -4.55% 186
South West +5 334 £500 -4.76% 253
Yorkshire -2 310 £486 +2.32% 168
Scotland +7 299 £550 +18.41% 131
East of England 0 152 £550 +15.79% 196
East Midlands -3 111 £433 -3.78% 116
Wales -3 71 £400 -16.67% 60
North East 0 52 £515 +10.87% 81
Northern Ireland +6 10 £475 - 15

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
1 293 (4.58%) SharePoint
2 206 (3.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 171 (2.67%) Apache Spark
4 162 (2.53%) Confluence
5 92 (1.44%) Apache
6 80 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.39%) CMS
7 25 (0.39%) OpenStack
8 22 (0.34%) SAS
9 17 (0.27%) ArcGIS
10 15 (0.23%) Appian
11 14 (0.22%) IIS
12 13 (0.20%) Camunda
13 12 (0.19%) nginx
14 11 (0.17%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.17%) Skype for Business
15 10 (0.16%) GeoServer
15 10 (0.16%) SugarCRM
16 9 (0.14%) Mendix
16 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 136 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 107 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
3 50 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 47 (0.73%) MS Visio
5 44 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.14%) Trello
8 6 (0.094%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.078%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.078%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.078%) Weka
10 4 (0.063%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.031%) Windchill
12 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.016%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.016%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.016%) Revit
Business Applications
1 102 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.16%) Maximo
4 10 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Endur
6 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.094%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.094%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.094%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.094%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.094%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.078%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.078%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.078%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.078%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,248 (35.13%) AWS
2 1,269 (19.83%) Azure DevOps
3 1,267 (19.80%) GCP
4 860 (13.44%) Power Platform
5 744 (11.63%) Entra ID
6 729 (11.39%) Microsoft 365
7 653 (10.20%) GitHub
8 462 (7.22%) Azure Data Factory
9 385 (6.02%) Serverless
10 377 (5.89%) GitHub Actions
11 297 (4.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 288 (4.50%) Dynamics 365
13 267 (4.17%) SaaS
14 257 (4.02%) Power Automate
15 251 (3.92%) Azure AKS
16 234 (3.66%) Azure Functions
17 230 (3.59%) Azure Monitor
18 225 (3.52%) Snowflake
19 218 (3.41%) Azure Logic Apps
20 203 (3.17%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 425 (6.64%) Firewall
2 274 (4.28%) DNS
3 207 (3.23%) VPN
4 180 (2.81%) Network Security
5 164 (2.56%) DHCP
6 155 (2.42%) WAN
7 101 (1.58%) LAN
8 96 (1.50%) TCP/IP
9 82 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
10 77 (1.20%) SD-WAN
11 71 (1.11%) Kerberos
12 67 (1.05%) VLAN
13 57 (0.89%) HTTP
14 38 (0.59%) BGP
15 37 (0.58%) Wireless
16 33 (0.52%) Internet
17 32 (0.50%) SSL
18 30 (0.47%) MPLS
19 29 (0.45%) OSPF
20 28 (0.44%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 592 (9.25%) Power BI
2 369 (5.77%) SQL Server
3 328 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
4 322 (5.03%) Data Lake
5 244 (3.81%) PostgreSQL
6 228 (3.56%) Azure SQL Database
7 192 (3.00%) NoSQL
8 159 (2.48%) Metadata
9 124 (1.94%) Relational Database
10 104 (1.63%) Delta Lake
11 91 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 89 (1.39%) MongoDB
13 86 (1.34%) Big Data
14 82 (1.28%) MySQL
15 74 (1.16%) Tableau
16 72 (1.13%) Oracle Database
17 64 (1.00%) BigQuery
18 56 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
19 47 (0.73%) Redis
20 42 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 493 (7.70%) Git
2 459 (7.17%) JIRA
3 351 (5.48%) Jenkins
4 260 (4.06%) GitLab
5 111 (1.73%) Selenium
6 95 (1.48%) Postman
7 64 (1.00%) Cucumber
8 60 (0.94%) JMeter
9 54 (0.84%) JUnit
9 54 (0.84%) SonarQube
10 49 (0.77%) REST Assured
11 47 (0.73%) Cypress.io
12 45 (0.70%) MLflow
13 41 (0.64%) Visual Studio
14 37 (0.58%) Oracle APEX
15 31 (0.48%) Artifactory
16 30 (0.47%) ERwin
16 30 (0.47%) TestRail
17 28 (0.44%) Gatling
17 28 (0.44%) Zephyr
General
1 2,002 (31.28%) Social Skills
2 1,143 (17.86%) Finance
3 749 (11.70%) Public Sector
4 645 (10.08%) Analytical Skills
5 369 (5.77%) Banking
6 202 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
7 135 (2.11%) Legal
8 112 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 107 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
10 97 (1.52%) Marketing
11 91 (1.42%) Retail
12 89 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
13 69 (1.08%) Investment Banking
14 68 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
15 63 (0.98%) Telecoms
16 55 (0.86%) Financial Institution
16 55 (0.86%) Law
17 50 (0.78%) Manufacturing
18 41 (0.64%) Military
19 40 (0.63%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,052 (16.44%) Architect
2 922 (14.41%) Developer
3 664 (10.38%) Senior
4 522 (8.16%) Azure Engineer
5 507 (7.92%) Data Engineer
6 452 (7.06%) Lead
7 434 (6.78%) Analyst
8 330 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
9 326 (5.09%) Solutions Architect
10 283 (4.42%) Consultant
11 185 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 174 (2.72%) Security Engineer
13 162 (2.53%) Azure Architect
14 159 (2.48%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 159 (2.48%) Senior Developer
15 158 (2.47%) Cloud Engineer
16 138 (2.16%) Data Architect
17 136 (2.13%) Platform Engineer
18 135 (2.11%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 124 (1.94%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 513 (8.02%) .NET
2 467 (7.30%) REST
3 297 (4.64%) React
4 252 (3.94%) RESTful
5 247 (3.86%) PySpark
6 237 (3.70%) Kafka
7 220 (3.44%) Node.js
8 207 (3.23%) OAuth
9 196 (3.06%) Spring
10 177 (2.77%) Spring Boot
11 173 (2.70%) HTML
12 161 (2.52%) AngularJS
13 154 (2.41%) SOAP
14 153 (2.39%) LDAP
15 152 (2.38%) CSS
16 146 (2.28%) JSON
17 137 (2.14%) PyTorch
18 129 (2.02%) TensorFlow
19 125 (1.95%) SAML
20 115 (1.80%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 559 (8.73%) Cloud Native
2 245 (3.83%) Onboarding
3 222 (3.47%) Product Ownership
4 175 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 159 (2.48%) Security Posture
6 158 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
7 154 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
8 151 (2.36%) Data Centre
9 115 (1.80%) Public Cloud
10 105 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
11 90 (1.41%) AI Agents
12 86 (1.34%) Replication
13 82 (1.28%) Data Structures
14 75 (1.17%) Algorithms
15 71 (1.11%) Management Information System
16 69 (1.08%) Low-Code
17 67 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
18 61 (0.95%) NHS
19 59 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
20 58 (0.91%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 735 (11.48%) Windows
2 377 (5.89%) Linux
3 204 (3.19%) Windows Server
4 128 (2.00%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.36%) Unix
6 57 (0.89%) VMS
7 49 (0.77%) Apple iOS
7 49 (0.77%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.69%) Android
9 41 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
11 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 11 (0.17%) CentOS
14 10 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.13%) Solaris
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.094%) Amazon Linux
17 5 (0.078%) AIX
18 3 (0.047%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,331 (36.42%) DevOps
2 1,931 (30.17%) CI/CD
3 1,597 (24.95%) Agile
4 1,212 (18.94%) Problem-Solving
5 977 (15.27%) Analytics
6 867 (13.55%) AI
7 842 (13.16%) Infrastructure as Code
8 762 (11.91%) Migration
9 674 (10.53%) Business Intelligence
10 667 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
11 651 (10.17%) Data Modelling
12 641 (10.02%) Containerisation
13 569 (8.89%) Continuous Improvement
14 566 (8.84%) Machine Learning
15 563 (8.80%) ETL
16 550 (8.59%) Microservices
17 540 (8.44%) Data Pipeline
18 536 (8.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 514 (8.03%) Test Automation
20 491 (7.67%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,657 (25.89%) Python
2 1,396 (21.81%) SQL
3 700 (10.94%) PowerShell
4 552 (8.63%) Java
5 547 (8.55%) C#
6 493 (7.70%) JavaScript
7 280 (4.38%) TypeScript
8 265 (4.14%) Bash
9 194 (3.03%) Bicep
10 94 (1.47%) Scala
11 86 (1.34%) Go
12 84 (1.31%) PL/SQL
13 73 (1.14%) Kusto Query Language
14 67 (1.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 65 (1.02%) T-SQL
16 48 (0.75%) R
17 45 (0.70%) Shell Script
18 43 (0.67%) C++
19 36 (0.56%) PHP
20 22 (0.34%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,489 (23.27%) Security Cleared
2 1,237 (19.33%) SC Cleared
3 543 (8.48%) Degree
4 357 (5.58%) Azure Certification
5 211 (3.30%) Computer Science Degree
6 173 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
7 168 (2.63%) CISSP
8 133 (2.08%) AWS Certification
9 127 (1.98%) DV Cleared
10 122 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
11 109 (1.70%) CISM
12 95 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
13 93 (1.45%) Master's Degree
14 55 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
15 53 (0.83%) PMI Certification
16 50 (0.78%) ISTQB
17 49 (0.77%) PMP
18 48 (0.75%) CCNP
19 35 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
20 30 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 411 (6.42%) Data Quality
2 386 (6.03%) GDPR
3 344 (5.38%) QA
4 303 (4.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 229 (3.58%) NIST
6 131 (2.05%) Accessibility
7 93 (1.45%) NCSC
8 74 (1.16%) PCI DSS
9 56 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
9 56 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 50 (0.78%) SLA
11 42 (0.66%) HIPAA
12 41 (0.64%) PMO
13 39 (0.61%) SOC 2
14 37 (0.58%) WCAG
15 30 (0.47%) GRC
16 29 (0.45%) EU AI Act
17 26 (0.41%) PSD2
18 25 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 23 (0.36%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 833 (13.02%) Active Directory
2 769 (12.02%) Docker
3 195 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 99 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 78 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
6 75 (1.17%) Virtual Desktop
7 65 (1.02%) vSphere
8 20 (0.31%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
9 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.17%) Squid
11 10 (0.16%) Firmware
12 9 (0.14%) DFS Replication
12 9 (0.14%) Postfix
13 8 (0.13%) KVM
13 8 (0.13%) NFS
13 8 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 6 (0.094%) GPFS
15 6 (0.094%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 968 (15.13%) Terraform
2 909 (14.20%) Kubernetes
3 343 (5.36%) Microsoft Intune
4 303 (4.73%) Ansible
5 171 (2.67%) Single Sign-On
6 156 (2.44%) Grafana
7 148 (2.31%) SCCM
8 141 (2.20%) Prometheus
9 71 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 46 (0.72%) Argo
11 28 (0.44%) Puppet
12 27 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 26 (0.41%) vRealize
14 23 (0.36%) Istio
14 23 (0.36%) Kibana
14 23 (0.36%) Nessus
15 19 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
16 18 (0.28%) Nmap
16 18 (0.28%) Progress Chef
16 18 (0.28%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,080 (32.50%) Microsoft
2 649 (10.14%) Databricks
3 348 (5.44%) Oracle
4 336 (5.25%) Google
5 277 (4.33%) ServiceNow
6 263 (4.11%) VMware
7 179 (2.80%) SAP
8 168 (2.63%) OpenAI
9 163 (2.55%) Cisco
10 156 (2.44%) Splunk
11 122 (1.91%) Salesforce
12 116 (1.81%) CyberArk
13 103 (1.61%) Palo Alto
14 87 (1.36%) Foundry
15 75 (1.17%) Okta
16 70 (1.09%) Red Hat
17 66 (1.03%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (1.00%) Citrix
19 61 (0.95%) IBM
19 61 (0.95%) Informatica