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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,862 4,546 5,975
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.44% 15.14% 13.75%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.57% 40.01% 42.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,524 3,164 4,301
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £501
% change year-on-year +1.00% -0.20% -4.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 37 54
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.25 £22.91
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +22.45% -40.58%
75th Percentile £76.94 £77.50 £61.19
90th Percentile £95.94 £93.25 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £53.23 £51.25
% change year-on-year +8.03% +3.85% -14.58%

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 18,044 11,362 14,183
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.44% 37.83% 32.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,061 7,650 9,974
10th Percentile £328 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £621 £635
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 596 285 364
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.19 £14.14
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 £82.68 £72.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £20.77
% change year-on-year +98.73% -9.15% -21.56%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 6,668 £525 - 2,448
London +1 3,524 £540 -1.74% 966
UK excluding London +3 3,370 £505 +1.00% 1,985
Work from Home -1 2,445 £525 +2.44% 1,146
North of England +7 957 £500 +5.26% 491
South East +2 837 £511 +2.25% 614
Midlands +3 565 £500 - 276
North West +8 495 £500 - 280
South West +7 431 £525 +0.96% 245
West Midlands +1 423 £500 -4.76% 162
Yorkshire +4 381 £501 +5.37% 135
Scotland +10 328 £525 +5.00% 90
East of England +6 171 £550 -4.35% 187
East Midlands +4 132 £500 +9.59% 113
Wales +1 107 £425 +6.25% 61
North East +5 93 £525 +5.00% 81
Northern Ireland +12 19 £538 +13.16% 68
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
1 377 (4.80%) SharePoint
2 241 (3.07%) Confluence
3 189 (2.40%) Apache Spark
4 185 (2.35%) Microsoft Exchange
5 123 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
6 112 (1.42%) Apache
7 41 (0.52%) SAS
8 28 (0.36%) IIS
9 19 (0.24%) CMS
10 17 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.14%) Mendix
14 10 (0.13%) Camunda
14 10 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Appian
16 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.10%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 109 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
3 66 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 28 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.089%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.064%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.064%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.051%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.051%) Notion
12 4 (0.051%) Trello
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
1 109 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.14%) Maximo
6 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 9 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 9 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.10%) Shopify
8 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 7 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
10 6 (0.076%) Endur
10 6 (0.076%) SimCorp Dimension
10 6 (0.076%) Unit4 Business World
11 5 (0.064%) SAP MM
12 4 (0.051%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.051%) Elite 3E
12 4 (0.051%) Magento
12 4 (0.051%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,737 (34.81%) AWS
2 1,620 (20.61%) Azure DevOps
3 1,321 (16.80%) GCP
4 1,017 (12.94%) Power Platform
5 962 (12.24%) Entra ID
6 772 (9.82%) Microsoft 365
7 714 (9.08%) GitHub
8 468 (5.95%) Azure Data Factory
9 436 (5.55%) GitHub Actions
10 390 (4.96%) Serverless
11 314 (3.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 308 (3.92%) SaaS
13 292 (3.71%) Azure AKS
14 266 (3.38%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.21%) Azure Monitor
16 249 (3.17%) Dynamics 365
17 241 (3.07%) PowerApps
18 238 (3.03%) PaaS
19 215 (2.73%) Azure AI
20 213 (2.71%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 464 (5.90%) Firewall
2 345 (4.39%) DNS
3 271 (3.45%) Network Security
4 266 (3.38%) VPN
5 228 (2.90%) WAN
6 176 (2.24%) DHCP
7 136 (1.73%) LAN
8 126 (1.60%) SD-WAN
9 108 (1.37%) TCP/IP
10 97 (1.23%) BGP
11 87 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
12 75 (0.95%) VLAN
13 74 (0.94%) OSPF
14 60 (0.76%) Kerberos
15 59 (0.75%) SSL
16 51 (0.65%) SAN
17 49 (0.62%) Wireless
18 48 (0.61%) VXLAN
19 45 (0.57%) IPsec
20 42 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 682 (8.67%) Power BI
2 438 (5.57%) SQL Server
3 377 (4.80%) Data Warehouse
4 369 (4.69%) Data Lake
5 276 (3.51%) PostgreSQL
6 227 (2.89%) Azure SQL Database
7 207 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 193 (2.45%) Metadata
9 144 (1.83%) Delta Lake
10 131 (1.67%) Relational Database
11 116 (1.48%) Big Data
12 101 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 90 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (0.97%) Tableau
15 71 (0.90%) Snowflake Schema
16 67 (0.85%) MySQL
17 63 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 61 (0.78%) Oracle Database
19 54 (0.69%) Star Schema
20 52 (0.66%) Redis
Development Applications
1 595 (7.57%) JIRA
2 572 (7.28%) Git
3 405 (5.15%) Jenkins
4 326 (4.15%) GitLab
5 126 (1.60%) Selenium
6 80 (1.02%) Postman
7 78 (0.99%) JMeter
8 64 (0.81%) JUnit
9 63 (0.80%) Cucumber
10 56 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.61%) SonarQube
11 48 (0.61%) Visual Studio
12 44 (0.56%) MLflow
13 43 (0.55%) Cypress.io
13 43 (0.55%) WebDriver
14 34 (0.43%) Gatling
15 32 (0.41%) Maven
16 27 (0.34%) LoadRunner
17 26 (0.33%) NUnit
17 26 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,986 (25.26%) Social Skills
2 1,483 (18.86%) Finance
3 881 (11.21%) Public Sector
4 705 (8.97%) Analytical Skills
5 419 (5.33%) Banking
6 226 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 205 (2.61%) Legal
8 165 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 148 (1.88%) Retail
10 95 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 78 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
12 70 (0.89%) Financial Institution
13 68 (0.86%) Investment Banking
13 68 (0.86%) Law
14 66 (0.84%) Telecoms
15 65 (0.83%) Front Office
16 62 (0.79%) Marketing
17 61 (0.78%) Manufacturing
18 59 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
19 45 (0.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,397 (17.77%) Architect
2 1,004 (12.77%) Developer
3 948 (12.06%) Senior
4 697 (8.87%) Azure Engineer
5 604 (7.68%) Lead
6 596 (7.58%) Data Engineer
7 479 (6.09%) Analyst
8 413 (5.25%) DevOps Engineer
9 386 (4.91%) Solutions Architect
10 333 (4.24%) Consultant
11 284 (3.61%) Cloud Engineer
12 268 (3.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 219 (2.79%) Data Architect
14 218 (2.77%) Azure Architect
15 196 (2.49%) Security Engineer
16 194 (2.47%) Platform Engineer
17 187 (2.38%) Technical Architect
18 177 (2.25%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 171 (2.18%) Business Analyst
19 171 (2.18%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 630 (8.01%) .NET
2 551 (7.01%) REST
3 352 (4.48%) React
4 282 (3.59%) Kafka
5 270 (3.43%) RESTful
6 268 (3.41%) PySpark
7 229 (2.91%) OAuth
8 216 (2.75%) Node.js
9 215 (2.73%) Spring
10 183 (2.33%) Spring Boot
11 182 (2.31%) AngularJS
12 168 (2.14%) JSON
13 152 (1.93%) LDAP
14 147 (1.87%) SAML
15 144 (1.83%) HTML
16 142 (1.81%) OpenID
17 131 (1.67%) Middleware
18 126 (1.60%) SOAP
19 124 (1.58%) .NET Framework
20 118 (1.50%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 825 (10.49%) Cloud Native
2 328 (4.17%) Onboarding
3 314 (3.99%) Product Ownership
4 255 (3.24%) Data Centre
5 225 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
6 224 (2.85%) Distributed Systems
7 207 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
8 176 (2.24%) AI Agents
9 172 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
10 166 (2.11%) Security Posture
11 158 (2.01%) Public Cloud
12 116 (1.48%) Data Structures
13 108 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 102 (1.30%) Management Information System
15 96 (1.22%) Replication
16 86 (1.09%) PKI
17 78 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
18 77 (0.98%) Low-Code
19 76 (0.97%) Enterprise Cloud
20 72 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 885 (11.26%) Windows
2 398 (5.06%) Linux
3 280 (3.56%) Windows Server
4 108 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 76 (0.97%) Apple iOS
6 73 (0.93%) Unix
7 69 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 68 (0.86%) Android
9 67 (0.85%) Mac OS
10 60 (0.76%) VMS
11 33 (0.42%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
14 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.14%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
17 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.089%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.089%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,920 (37.14%) DevOps
2 2,452 (31.19%) CI/CD
3 1,913 (24.33%) Agile
4 1,171 (14.89%) AI
5 1,165 (14.82%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,129 (14.36%) Migration
7 1,099 (13.98%) Analytics
8 1,063 (13.52%) Problem-Solving
9 895 (11.38%) Stakeholder Management
10 884 (11.24%) Data Modelling
11 788 (10.02%) Continuous Improvement
12 743 (9.45%) Data Pipeline
13 728 (9.26%) Business Intelligence
14 726 (9.23%) Containerisation
15 723 (9.20%) Roadmaps
16 711 (9.04%) Microservices
17 682 (8.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 678 (8.62%) ETL
19 631 (8.03%) Data Engineering
20 630 (8.01%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,856 (23.61%) Python
2 1,586 (20.17%) SQL
3 749 (9.53%) PowerShell
4 648 (8.24%) Java
5 632 (8.04%) C#
6 469 (5.97%) JavaScript
7 319 (4.06%) TypeScript
8 267 (3.40%) Bicep
9 263 (3.35%) Bash
10 92 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 87 (1.11%) T-SQL
12 79 (1.00%) Go
13 77 (0.98%) Scala
14 48 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.55%) R
17 36 (0.46%) PL/SQL
18 31 (0.39%) C++
19 30 (0.38%) Kotlin
20 21 (0.27%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,932 (24.57%) Security Cleared
2 1,617 (20.57%) SC Cleared
3 546 (6.94%) Degree
4 405 (5.15%) Azure Certification
5 245 (3.12%) CISSP
6 202 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
6 202 (2.57%) DV Cleared
7 192 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
8 187 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
9 180 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
10 175 (2.23%) AWS Certification
11 127 (1.62%) CISM
12 88 (1.12%) CCNP
13 82 (1.04%) PMP
14 78 (0.99%) PMI Certification
15 73 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 65 (0.83%) ISTQB
17 59 (0.75%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
19 49 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 546 (6.94%) Data Quality
2 408 (5.19%) QA
3 343 (4.36%) GDPR
4 286 (3.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 268 (3.41%) NIST
6 169 (2.15%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.51%) NCSC
8 96 (1.22%) SLA
9 78 (0.99%) PCI DSS
10 73 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 70 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 62 (0.79%) WCAG
13 59 (0.75%) GRC
14 42 (0.53%) PMO
15 38 (0.48%) HIPAA
16 29 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.33%) NIST 800
18 25 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 19 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
20 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 922 (11.73%) Active Directory
2 808 (10.28%) Docker
3 220 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
5 125 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
6 114 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.86%) vSphere
8 52 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.41%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.39%) Firmware
11 23 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 6 (0.076%) Ceph
15 6 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 6 (0.076%) KVM
15 6 (0.076%) Oracle RAC
16 5 (0.064%) IAG
Systems Management
1 1,253 (15.94%) Terraform
2 1,121 (14.26%) Kubernetes
3 411 (5.23%) Microsoft Intune
4 366 (4.66%) Ansible
5 210 (2.67%) Grafana
6 185 (2.35%) Prometheus
7 168 (2.14%) Single Sign-On
8 102 (1.30%) SCCM
9 68 (0.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.57%) FortiGate
11 42 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
12 40 (0.51%) Argo
12 40 (0.51%) Progress Chef
13 38 (0.48%) Puppet
14 31 (0.39%) Istio
15 23 (0.29%) HP ALM
16 22 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.20%) Packer
19 13 (0.17%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,481 (31.56%) Microsoft
2 745 (9.48%) Databricks
3 344 (4.38%) ServiceNow
4 306 (3.89%) Google
5 300 (3.82%) VMware
6 285 (3.63%) Oracle
7 218 (2.77%) SAP
8 216 (2.75%) Cisco
9 210 (2.67%) OpenAI
10 152 (1.93%) Splunk
11 144 (1.83%) Salesforce
12 143 (1.82%) Palo Alto
13 127 (1.62%) CyberArk
14 121 (1.54%) Foundry
15 106 (1.35%) Okta
16 92 (1.17%) Dynatrace
17 89 (1.13%) Informatica
18 84 (1.07%) Zscaler
19 68 (0.86%) Citrix
20 67 (0.85%) Fortinet