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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,181 4,863 5,733
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.57% 14.82% 14.39%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.12% 39.68% 42.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,714 3,355 4,106
10th Percentile £370 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £425 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £633 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +0.60% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 39 41
10th Percentile £18.43 £18.65 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.38 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -40.32%
75th Percentile £77.75 £78.10 £59.50
90th Percentile £95.31 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £53.23 £33.00
% change year-on-year +8.03% +61.29% -38.14%

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 18,544 12,257 13,378
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.29% 37.35% 33.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,240 8,205 9,347
10th Percentile £326 £313 £313
25th Percentile £420 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £622 £616 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £496
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.14% -0.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 622 314 288
10th Percentile £16.50 £15.11 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.31 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £27.38 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.68% +21.67% -35.71%
75th Percentile £69.94 £47.50 £50.48
90th Percentile £82.94 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.57 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +88.47% -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 29 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 29 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 29 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 7,005 £525 - 3,067
London +1 3,663 £550 - 1,402
UK excluding London +3 3,535 £503 +0.60% 2,108
Work from Home -1 2,537 £525 +5.00% 1,549
North of England +7 1,012 £500 +3.09% 594
South East +2 895 £525 +5.00% 655
Midlands +4 634 £496 +0.25% 296
North West +6 530 £500 +2.30% 330
West Midlands +2 480 £494 -5.95% 187
South West +7 441 £538 +7.55% 245
Yorkshire +4 403 £500 +5.26% 180
Scotland +10 300 £500 +0.81% 96
East of England +3 179 £538 -2.27% 162
East Midlands +11 142 £488 +5.41% 109
Wales -1 96 £450 +0.90% 69
North East -2 94 £520 +6.67% 98
Northern Ireland +8 15 £644 +35.53% 43
Channel Islands +3 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
1 428 (5.23%) SharePoint
2 279 (3.41%) Confluence
3 199 (2.43%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.13%) Apache Spark
5 129 (1.58%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.39%) Apache
7 43 (0.53%) SAS
8 34 (0.42%) IIS
9 26 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 18 (0.22%) CMS
11 16 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 10 (0.12%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.098%) Mendix
16 8 (0.098%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.073%) Camunda
17 6 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 120 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.42%) Chatbot
6 31 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.037%) Houdini
12 3 (0.037%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) PTC Creo
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 111 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.15%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.098%) Magento
7 8 (0.098%) Maximo
8 7 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.086%) Shopify
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.049%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.049%) SAP MM
11 4 (0.049%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,916 (35.64%) AWS
2 1,692 (20.68%) Azure DevOps
3 1,403 (17.15%) GCP
4 1,022 (12.49%) Power Platform
5 1,020 (12.47%) Entra ID
6 810 (9.90%) Microsoft 365
7 781 (9.55%) GitHub
8 471 (5.76%) GitHub Actions
9 458 (5.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 349 (4.27%) Serverless
11 323 (3.95%) SaaS
12 312 (3.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 300 (3.67%) Azure AKS
14 292 (3.57%) Azure Monitor
15 276 (3.37%) Power Automate
16 267 (3.26%) PowerApps
17 254 (3.10%) PaaS
18 250 (3.06%) Dynamics 365
19 233 (2.85%) Azure AI
20 225 (2.75%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 514 (6.28%) Firewall
2 377 (4.61%) DNS
3 314 (3.84%) VPN
4 295 (3.61%) Network Security
5 203 (2.48%) WAN
6 186 (2.27%) DHCP
7 156 (1.91%) TCP/IP
8 127 (1.55%) LAN
9 114 (1.39%) BGP
10 105 (1.28%) SD-WAN
11 91 (1.11%) OSPF
12 89 (1.09%) VLAN
13 85 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.90%) SSL
15 57 (0.70%) Wireless
16 56 (0.68%) IPsec
16 56 (0.68%) SAN
17 48 (0.59%) VXLAN
18 46 (0.56%) HTTP
19 43 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 708 (8.65%) Power BI
2 462 (5.65%) SQL Server
3 395 (4.83%) Data Warehouse
4 359 (4.39%) Data Lake
5 308 (3.76%) PostgreSQL
6 220 (2.69%) NoSQL
7 215 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
8 210 (2.57%) Metadata
9 137 (1.67%) Relational Database
10 131 (1.60%) Delta Lake
11 108 (1.32%) MongoDB
12 105 (1.28%) Big Data
13 98 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 90 (1.10%) MySQL
15 68 (0.83%) Tableau
16 64 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
17 59 (0.72%) BigQuery
18 57 (0.70%) Oracle Database
18 57 (0.70%) Redis
19 56 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 640 (7.82%) JIRA
2 636 (7.77%) Git
3 429 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 320 (3.91%) GitLab
5 124 (1.52%) Selenium
6 72 (0.88%) JUnit
7 71 (0.87%) Postman
8 70 (0.86%) JMeter
9 57 (0.70%) Cucumber
10 53 (0.65%) SonarQube
11 52 (0.64%) Cypress.io
12 48 (0.59%) Maven
13 47 (0.57%) REST Assured
14 44 (0.54%) Visual Studio
14 44 (0.54%) WebDriver
15 40 (0.49%) MLflow
16 36 (0.44%) Gradle
17 32 (0.39%) Gatling
18 30 (0.37%) Claude Code
19 29 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 2,071 (25.31%) Social Skills
2 1,522 (18.60%) Finance
3 961 (11.75%) Public Sector
4 764 (9.34%) Analytical Skills
5 425 (5.19%) Banking
6 232 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 188 (2.30%) Legal
8 185 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 181 (2.21%) Retail
10 100 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 97 (1.19%) Telecoms
12 89 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
13 80 (0.98%) Manufacturing
14 74 (0.90%) Law
15 68 (0.83%) Financial Institution
16 66 (0.81%) Investment Banking
17 65 (0.79%) Front Office
18 64 (0.78%) Marketing
19 60 (0.73%) Military
20 57 (0.70%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,465 (17.91%) Architect
2 1,056 (12.91%) Developer
3 1,018 (12.44%) Senior
4 722 (8.83%) Azure Engineer
5 671 (8.20%) Lead
6 613 (7.49%) Data Engineer
7 495 (6.05%) Analyst
8 430 (5.26%) Solutions Architect
9 413 (5.05%) DevOps Engineer
10 333 (4.07%) Cloud Engineer
11 314 (3.84%) Consultant
12 298 (3.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 249 (3.04%) Data Architect
14 220 (2.69%) Azure Architect
15 219 (2.68%) Platform Engineer
16 198 (2.42%) Technical Architect
17 189 (2.31%) Project Manager
18 187 (2.29%) Security Engineer
19 185 (2.26%) Java Developer
20 180 (2.20%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 636 (7.77%) .NET
2 602 (7.36%) REST
3 339 (4.14%) React
4 315 (3.85%) Kafka
5 292 (3.57%) RESTful
6 255 (3.12%) PySpark
7 233 (2.85%) OAuth
8 222 (2.71%) Spring
9 207 (2.53%) Node.js
10 200 (2.44%) JSON
11 186 (2.27%) Spring Boot
12 179 (2.19%) AngularJS
13 156 (1.91%) HTML
14 147 (1.80%) SAML
15 146 (1.78%) OpenID
16 136 (1.66%) .NET Framework
17 135 (1.65%) OAuth2
18 129 (1.58%) Middleware
19 125 (1.53%) SOAP
20 124 (1.52%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 859 (10.50%) Cloud Native
2 383 (4.68%) Onboarding
3 342 (4.18%) Product Ownership
4 267 (3.26%) Data Centre
4 267 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
5 244 (2.98%) Hybrid Cloud
6 239 (2.92%) AI Agents
7 231 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
8 203 (2.48%) Enterprise Software
9 165 (2.02%) Security Posture
10 140 (1.71%) Public Cloud
11 138 (1.69%) Data Structures
12 129 (1.58%) Management Information System
13 111 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
14 106 (1.30%) Enterprise Cloud
15 104 (1.27%) PKI
16 90 (1.10%) Replication
16 90 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
17 73 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
18 72 (0.88%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 940 (11.49%) Windows
2 463 (5.66%) Linux
3 312 (3.81%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.34%) Windows 10
5 81 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 79 (0.97%) Unix
7 78 (0.95%) Android
8 72 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 71 (0.87%) Apple iOS
10 59 (0.72%) VMS
11 44 (0.54%) Ubuntu
12 24 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.13%) CentOS
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.061%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,001 (36.68%) DevOps
2 2,536 (31.00%) CI/CD
3 2,076 (25.38%) Agile
4 1,264 (15.45%) AI
5 1,252 (15.30%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,197 (14.63%) Migration
7 1,128 (13.79%) Analytics
8 1,113 (13.60%) Stakeholder Management
9 1,045 (12.77%) Problem-Solving
10 922 (11.27%) Data Modelling
11 884 (10.81%) Continuous Improvement
12 779 (9.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 772 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
14 760 (9.29%) Containerisation
15 756 (9.24%) Business Intelligence
16 754 (9.22%) Microservices
16 754 (9.22%) Roadmaps
17 670 (8.19%) Test Automation
18 657 (8.03%) ETL
19 651 (7.96%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,889 (23.09%) Python
2 1,588 (19.41%) SQL
3 783 (9.57%) PowerShell
4 684 (8.36%) Java
5 612 (7.48%) C#
6 492 (6.01%) JavaScript
7 352 (4.30%) Bash
8 312 (3.81%) Bicep
9 310 (3.79%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 95 (1.16%) T-SQL
11 72 (0.88%) Go
12 57 (0.70%) Scala
13 54 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
14 51 (0.62%) Shell Script
15 41 (0.50%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.49%) R
17 39 (0.48%) PL/SQL
18 30 (0.37%) Groovy
19 26 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,062 (25.20%) Security Cleared
2 1,690 (20.66%) SC Cleared
3 570 (6.97%) Degree
4 438 (5.35%) Azure Certification
5 262 (3.20%) DV Cleared
6 247 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
6 247 (3.02%) CISSP
7 209 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
7 209 (2.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 197 (2.41%) AWS Certification
9 189 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
10 122 (1.49%) CISM
11 102 (1.25%) CCNP
12 84 (1.03%) PMI Certification
12 84 (1.03%) PMP
13 81 (0.99%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 65 (0.79%) ISTQB
15 60 (0.73%) Master's Degree
16 54 (0.66%) CCSP
17 51 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 571 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 429 (5.24%) QA
3 324 (3.96%) GDPR
4 284 (3.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 278 (3.40%) NIST
6 201 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 118 (1.44%) NCSC
8 103 (1.26%) SLA
9 75 (0.92%) GRC
10 74 (0.90%) WCAG
11 72 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
11 72 (0.88%) PCI DSS
12 55 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 54 (0.66%) PMO
14 30 (0.37%) HIPAA
15 29 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 22 (0.27%) NIST 800
18 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
19 16 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 959 (11.72%) Active Directory
2 884 (10.81%) Docker
3 218 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
4 141 (1.72%) Virtual Machines
5 117 (1.43%) Hyper-V
6 68 (0.83%) vSphere
7 51 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
8 39 (0.48%) VMware NSX
9 30 (0.37%) Firmware
10 26 (0.32%) NFS
11 16 (0.20%) Postfix
12 13 (0.16%) IAG
13 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.086%) Ceph
14 7 (0.086%) Varnish
15 6 (0.073%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 6 (0.073%) HDFS
16 5 (0.061%) zsh
Systems Management
1 1,319 (16.12%) Terraform
2 1,220 (14.91%) Kubernetes
3 423 (5.17%) Microsoft Intune
4 405 (4.95%) Ansible
5 251 (3.07%) Grafana
6 211 (2.58%) Prometheus
7 148 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
8 109 (1.33%) SCCM
9 59 (0.72%) Argo
10 52 (0.64%) Progress Chef
11 46 (0.56%) Puppet
12 44 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
13 36 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 34 (0.42%) FortiGate
15 30 (0.37%) Istio
16 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 19 (0.23%) Packer
18 18 (0.22%) HP ALM
19 16 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,662 (32.54%) Microsoft
2 760 (9.29%) Databricks
3 395 (4.83%) ServiceNow
4 333 (4.07%) Google
5 318 (3.89%) VMware
6 314 (3.84%) Oracle
7 237 (2.90%) Cisco
8 225 (2.75%) SAP
9 204 (2.49%) OpenAI
10 183 (2.24%) Splunk
11 155 (1.89%) Salesforce
12 152 (1.86%) Palo Alto
13 140 (1.71%) CyberArk
14 136 (1.66%) Foundry
15 107 (1.31%) Dynatrace
16 102 (1.25%) Zscaler
17 88 (1.08%) Okta
18 87 (1.06%) Informatica
19 76 (0.93%) Fortinet
20 74 (0.90%) Citrix