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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,282 4,839 5,649
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.57% 14.71% 14.41%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.16% 39.52% 42.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,786 3,337 4,039
10th Percentile £370 £350 £345
25th Percentile £435 £423 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £720 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 38 41
10th Percentile £18.40 £18.53 £17.80
25th Percentile £24.63 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £43.23 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.24% +23.50% -39.13%
75th Percentile £78.00 £77.19 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.27 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £53.23 £31.00
% change year-on-year +3.33% +71.69% -32.87%

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 18,753 12,245 13,250
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.25% 37.21% 33.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,377 8,214 9,247
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £420 £410 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £623 £617 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 624 311 273
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.16 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £27.40 £24.15
Median % change year-on-year +29.56% +13.46% -31.00%
75th Percentile £69.00 £47.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.81 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +85.48% -11.70% -19.36%

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 5 August 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 5 August 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 5 August 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 7,114 £525 - 4,477
London +1 3,723 £550 - 2,077
UK excluding London +3 3,580 £500 - 2,960
Work from Home -1 2,563 £525 +5.00% 2,131
North of England +8 1,021 £500 +5.26% 846
South East +2 912 £525 +5.00% 819
Midlands +4 654 £493 -1.50% 409
North West +8 537 £500 +5.26% 476
West Midlands +3 495 £493 -6.19% 255
South West +7 438 £539 +7.75% 343
Yorkshire +5 404 £500 +5.26% 264
Scotland +10 301 £513 +3.33% 176
East of England +4 182 £525 -4.55% 228
East Midlands +10 147 £488 +5.41% 153
North East +6 93 £520 +4.00% 117
Wales -1 92 £450 +0.90% 96
Northern Ireland +13 15 £644 +35.53% 88
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
1 435 (5.25%) SharePoint
2 287 (3.47%) Confluence
3 200 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.10%) Apache Spark
5 140 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.40%) Apache
7 44 (0.53%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 19 (0.23%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
14 11 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.097%) Mendix
16 8 (0.097%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.097%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
17 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 120 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.42%) Chatbot
6 31 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
10 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 8 (0.097%) Revit
12 5 (0.060%) Notion
13 3 (0.036%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.036%) Houdini
13 3 (0.036%) NUKE
14 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
15 1 (0.012%) Sketch
15 1 (0.012%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 117 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.097%) Magento
8 8 (0.097%) Maximo
9 7 (0.085%) Shopify
10 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
11 5 (0.060%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.060%) Payment Gateway
11 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
11 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
12 4 (0.048%) Endur
12 4 (0.048%) SAP MM
12 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,918 (35.23%) AWS
2 1,737 (20.97%) Azure DevOps
3 1,398 (16.88%) GCP
4 1,047 (12.64%) Entra ID
5 1,034 (12.48%) Power Platform
6 833 (10.06%) Microsoft 365
7 812 (9.80%) GitHub
8 484 (5.84%) GitHub Actions
9 474 (5.72%) Azure Data Factory
10 351 (4.24%) Serverless
11 328 (3.96%) SaaS
12 315 (3.80%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 305 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 291 (3.51%) Azure Monitor
15 285 (3.44%) Power Automate
16 271 (3.27%) PowerApps
17 263 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
18 255 (3.08%) PaaS
19 237 (2.86%) Snowflake
20 228 (2.75%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 519 (6.27%) Firewall
2 395 (4.77%) DNS
3 321 (3.88%) VPN
4 298 (3.60%) Network Security
5 200 (2.41%) WAN
6 197 (2.38%) DHCP
7 162 (1.96%) TCP/IP
8 123 (1.49%) LAN
9 113 (1.36%) BGP
10 105 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 91 (1.10%) VLAN
12 90 (1.09%) OSPF
13 85 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.91%) SSL
15 59 (0.71%) SAN
16 58 (0.70%) Wireless
17 53 (0.64%) IPsec
18 47 (0.57%) HTTP
18 47 (0.57%) VXLAN
19 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 718 (8.67%) Power BI
2 466 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 408 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 362 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 300 (3.62%) PostgreSQL
6 218 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
6 218 (2.63%) NoSQL
7 209 (2.52%) Metadata
8 140 (1.69%) Relational Database
9 137 (1.65%) Delta Lake
10 107 (1.29%) MongoDB
11 104 (1.26%) Big Data
12 102 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 84 (1.01%) MySQL
14 65 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
14 65 (0.78%) Tableau
15 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
16 57 (0.69%) Oracle Database
16 57 (0.69%) Redis
17 56 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 667 (8.05%) Git
2 650 (7.85%) JIRA
3 441 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 337 (4.07%) GitLab
5 126 (1.52%) Selenium
6 72 (0.87%) Postman
7 71 (0.86%) JUnit
8 66 (0.80%) JMeter
9 57 (0.69%) SonarQube
10 56 (0.68%) Cucumber
10 56 (0.68%) Cypress.io
11 50 (0.60%) Maven
12 44 (0.53%) REST Assured
12 44 (0.53%) Visual Studio
12 44 (0.53%) WebDriver
13 38 (0.46%) Gradle
14 37 (0.45%) MLflow
15 36 (0.43%) Claude Code
16 30 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
17 29 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 2,124 (25.65%) Social Skills
2 1,546 (18.67%) Finance
3 968 (11.69%) Public Sector
4 789 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
5 438 (5.29%) Banking
6 232 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 193 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 188 (2.27%) Legal
9 187 (2.26%) Retail
10 97 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
11 96 (1.16%) Telecoms
12 87 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
13 86 (1.04%) Manufacturing
14 74 (0.89%) Law
15 71 (0.86%) Financial Institution
15 71 (0.86%) Investment Banking
16 67 (0.81%) Aerospace
16 67 (0.81%) Marketing
17 65 (0.78%) Front Office
18 59 (0.71%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,493 (18.03%) Architect
2 1,058 (12.77%) Developer
3 1,035 (12.50%) Senior
4 730 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 683 (8.25%) Lead
6 623 (7.52%) Data Engineer
7 497 (6.00%) Analyst
8 449 (5.42%) Solutions Architect
9 419 (5.06%) DevOps Engineer
10 342 (4.13%) Cloud Engineer
11 312 (3.77%) Consultant
12 307 (3.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 249 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 222 (2.68%) Azure Architect
15 221 (2.67%) Platform Engineer
16 193 (2.33%) Project Manager
16 193 (2.33%) Technical Architect
17 187 (2.26%) Security Architect
18 186 (2.25%) Security Engineer
19 185 (2.23%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 640 (7.73%) .NET
2 618 (7.46%) REST
3 330 (3.98%) React
4 318 (3.84%) Kafka
5 297 (3.59%) RESTful
6 261 (3.15%) PySpark
7 232 (2.80%) OAuth
8 215 (2.60%) Spring
9 207 (2.50%) JSON
10 204 (2.46%) Node.js
11 179 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 177 (2.14%) AngularJS
13 157 (1.90%) HTML
14 147 (1.77%) SAML
15 145 (1.75%) OpenID
16 137 (1.65%) .NET Framework
17 134 (1.62%) OAuth2
18 133 (1.61%) Middleware
19 130 (1.57%) Playwright
20 125 (1.51%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 879 (10.61%) Cloud Native
2 391 (4.72%) Onboarding
3 350 (4.23%) Product Ownership
4 265 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
5 263 (3.18%) Hybrid Cloud
6 257 (3.10%) Data Centre
7 247 (2.98%) AI Agents
8 233 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
9 218 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
10 175 (2.11%) Security Posture
11 143 (1.73%) Data Structures
12 140 (1.69%) Public Cloud
13 135 (1.63%) Management Information System
14 112 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
15 107 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
16 106 (1.28%) PKI
17 92 (1.11%) Replication
17 92 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
18 74 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
19 71 (0.86%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 958 (11.57%) Windows
2 482 (5.82%) Linux
3 328 (3.96%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.44%) Windows 10
5 84 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 82 (0.99%) Android
7 81 (0.98%) Unix
8 75 (0.91%) Apple iOS
9 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 57 (0.69%) VMS
11 49 (0.59%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 12 (0.14%) CentOS
16 10 (0.12%) Debian
17 7 (0.085%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.072%) Rocky
18 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,052 (36.85%) DevOps
2 2,567 (30.99%) CI/CD
3 2,087 (25.20%) Agile
4 1,288 (15.55%) AI
5 1,287 (15.54%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,207 (14.57%) Migration
7 1,169 (14.11%) Stakeholder Management
8 1,141 (13.78%) Analytics
9 1,080 (13.04%) Problem-Solving
10 936 (11.30%) Data Modelling
11 898 (10.84%) Continuous Improvement
12 809 (9.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 788 (9.51%) Data Pipeline
14 774 (9.35%) Containerisation
15 773 (9.33%) Roadmaps
16 769 (9.29%) Business Intelligence
17 744 (8.98%) Microservices
18 678 (8.19%) ETL
19 676 (8.16%) Test Automation
20 657 (7.93%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,901 (22.95%) Python
2 1,613 (19.48%) SQL
3 815 (9.84%) PowerShell
4 680 (8.21%) Java
5 618 (7.46%) C#
6 501 (6.05%) JavaScript
7 372 (4.49%) Bash
8 328 (3.96%) Bicep
9 310 (3.74%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 99 (1.20%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.83%) Go
13 57 (0.69%) Scala
14 55 (0.66%) Shell Script
15 51 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
16 40 (0.48%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.48%) R
17 39 (0.47%) PL/SQL
18 30 (0.36%) Groovy
19 26 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,102 (25.38%) Security Cleared
2 1,717 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 573 (6.92%) Degree
4 438 (5.29%) Azure Certification
5 266 (3.21%) DV Cleared
6 253 (3.05%) CISSP
7 248 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
8 220 (2.66%) Microsoft Certification
9 212 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
10 199 (2.40%) AWS Certification
11 190 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
12 124 (1.50%) CISM
13 102 (1.23%) CCNP
14 84 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 84 (1.01%) PMI Certification
15 83 (1.00%) PMP
16 66 (0.80%) ISTQB
17 59 (0.71%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.68%) CCSP
19 55 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 577 (6.97%) Data Quality
2 434 (5.24%) QA
3 328 (3.96%) GDPR
4 297 (3.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 291 (3.51%) NIST
6 203 (2.45%) Accessibility
7 121 (1.46%) NCSC
8 103 (1.24%) SLA
9 78 (0.94%) WCAG
10 76 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
11 75 (0.91%) GRC
12 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 57 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 55 (0.66%) PMO
15 33 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 29 (0.35%) HIPAA
17 26 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.25%) NIST 800
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
20 17 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 987 (11.92%) Active Directory
2 901 (10.88%) Docker
3 225 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 146 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
5 141 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
6 124 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.83%) vSphere
8 53 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 26 (0.31%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Postfix
13 14 (0.17%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
16 8 (0.097%) zsh
17 7 (0.085%) Varnish
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
19 5 (0.060%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 1,343 (16.22%) Terraform
2 1,246 (15.04%) Kubernetes
3 429 (5.18%) Microsoft Intune
4 428 (5.17%) Ansible
5 254 (3.07%) Grafana
6 213 (2.57%) Prometheus
7 144 (1.74%) Single Sign-On
8 111 (1.34%) SCCM
9 60 (0.72%) Argo
10 56 (0.68%) Progress Chef
11 47 (0.57%) Puppet
12 43 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
14 30 (0.36%) Istio
15 21 (0.25%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
16 19 (0.23%) Packer
17 18 (0.22%) SCOM
18 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,734 (33.01%) Microsoft
2 786 (9.49%) Databricks
3 397 (4.79%) ServiceNow
4 342 (4.13%) Google
5 326 (3.94%) VMware
6 314 (3.79%) Oracle
7 240 (2.90%) Cisco
8 222 (2.68%) SAP
9 201 (2.43%) OpenAI
10 186 (2.25%) Splunk
11 155 (1.87%) Palo Alto
11 155 (1.87%) Salesforce
12 144 (1.74%) CyberArk
13 137 (1.65%) Foundry
14 112 (1.35%) Dynatrace
15 104 (1.26%) Zscaler
16 87 (1.05%) Okta
17 84 (1.01%) Informatica
18 78 (0.94%) Citrix
18 78 (0.94%) Fortinet