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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,212 4,847 6,014
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.52% 14.89% 14.28%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.91% 39.78% 42.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,747 3,364 4,325
10th Percentile £370 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -0.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 37 46
10th Percentile £18.50 £25.60 £17.80
25th Percentile £28.50 £29.25 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £48.09
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +11.25% -19.58%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.70 £63.78
90th Percentile £95.94 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £52.75
% change year-on-year -11.54% +23.22% -6.22%

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 18,702 12,186 14,084
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.35% 37.44% 33.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,395 8,167 9,848
10th Percentile £329 £313 £310
25th Percentile £419 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% -4.67% -3.36%
75th Percentile £619 £619 £638
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 613 313 333
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.10 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £36.00 £27.76 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.68% +26.18% -37.14%
75th Percentile £70.00 £47.50 £50.00
90th Percentile £83.20 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £20.00
% change year-on-year +98.73% -5.65% -24.47%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 6,989 £525 - 2,322
London +1 3,646 £550 - 940
UK excluding London +3 3,558 £505 +1.00% 1,816
Work from Home -1 2,554 £525 +4.90% 1,059
North of England +7 1,016 £500 +1.83% 463
South East +2 881 £525 +5.00% 593
Midlands +2 626 £499 +0.76% 251
North West +5 532 £500 - 235
West Midlands +2 471 £498 -5.24% 157
South West +7 451 £540 +7.95% 209
Yorkshire +3 405 £500 +5.26% 157
Scotland +10 315 £500 +4.38% 92
East of England +4 189 £550 -2.22% 155
East Midlands +4 144 £488 +5.41% 94
Wales 0 104 £425 -4.60% 74
North East +4 92 £525 +5.00% 79
Northern Ireland +13 19 £538 +13.16% 24
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
1 412 (5.02%) SharePoint
2 277 (3.37%) Confluence
3 195 (2.37%) Microsoft Exchange
4 187 (2.28%) Apache Spark
5 128 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.44%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 20 (0.24%) CMS
10 19 (0.23%) OpenStack
11 18 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 12 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 10 (0.12%) Camunda
14 10 (0.12%) nginx
15 8 (0.097%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.097%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.097%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.085%) Mendix
17 6 (0.073%) Appian
Applications
1 123 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 81 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.39%) Chatbot
6 31 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.11%) Trello
10 8 (0.097%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.037%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Houdini
13 2 (0.024%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 115 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.097%) Magento
7 8 (0.097%) Maximo
7 8 (0.097%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.097%) Teamcenter
8 7 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.073%) Shopify
10 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) Endur
10 5 (0.061%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,909 (35.42%) AWS
2 1,690 (20.58%) Azure DevOps
3 1,400 (17.05%) GCP
4 1,031 (12.55%) Power Platform
5 1,030 (12.54%) Entra ID
6 805 (9.80%) Microsoft 365
7 789 (9.61%) GitHub
8 470 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
9 460 (5.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 360 (4.38%) Serverless
11 331 (4.03%) SaaS
12 318 (3.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 295 (3.59%) Azure AKS
14 283 (3.45%) Azure Monitor
15 274 (3.34%) Power Automate
16 261 (3.18%) PaaS
16 261 (3.18%) PowerApps
17 253 (3.08%) Dynamics 365
18 231 (2.81%) Azure AI
19 221 (2.69%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 507 (6.17%) Firewall
2 379 (4.62%) DNS
3 302 (3.68%) VPN
4 280 (3.41%) Network Security
5 202 (2.46%) WAN
6 190 (2.31%) DHCP
7 145 (1.77%) TCP/IP
8 132 (1.61%) LAN
9 115 (1.40%) BGP
10 106 (1.29%) SD-WAN
11 90 (1.10%) OSPF
12 86 (1.05%) VLAN
13 84 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 70 (0.85%) SSL
15 57 (0.69%) IPsec
15 57 (0.69%) SAN
16 54 (0.66%) Wireless
17 49 (0.60%) Kerberos
18 46 (0.56%) VXLAN
19 45 (0.55%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 702 (8.55%) Power BI
2 464 (5.65%) SQL Server
3 396 (4.82%) Data Warehouse
4 359 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 310 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
6 218 (2.65%) Azure SQL Database
7 214 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 206 (2.51%) Metadata
9 140 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 130 (1.58%) Delta Lake
11 121 (1.47%) Big Data
12 107 (1.30%) MongoDB
13 98 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 84 (1.02%) MySQL
15 71 (0.86%) Tableau
16 67 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
17 66 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.71%) Oracle Database
18 58 (0.71%) Redis
19 56 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 647 (7.88%) JIRA
2 634 (7.72%) Git
3 428 (5.21%) Jenkins
4 313 (3.81%) GitLab
5 130 (1.58%) Selenium
6 77 (0.94%) Postman
7 73 (0.89%) JMeter
8 70 (0.85%) JUnit
9 58 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 54 (0.66%) Cypress.io
11 52 (0.63%) REST Assured
12 49 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 47 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.55%) WebDriver
15 43 (0.52%) Maven
16 41 (0.50%) MLflow
17 34 (0.41%) Gradle
18 33 (0.40%) Team Foundation Server
19 29 (0.35%) Gatling
20 28 (0.34%) Claude Code
General
1 2,090 (25.45%) Social Skills
2 1,528 (18.61%) Finance
3 955 (11.63%) Public Sector
4 781 (9.51%) Analytical Skills
5 425 (5.18%) Banking
6 242 (2.95%) Documentation Skills
7 198 (2.41%) Legal
8 179 (2.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 173 (2.11%) Retail
10 100 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 91 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
12 90 (1.10%) Telecoms
13 72 (0.88%) Law
13 72 (0.88%) Manufacturing
14 69 (0.84%) Marketing
15 66 (0.80%) Financial Institution
15 66 (0.80%) Front Office
15 66 (0.80%) Investment Banking
16 57 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
17 55 (0.67%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,457 (17.74%) Architect
2 1,075 (13.09%) Developer
3 996 (12.13%) Senior
4 722 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 659 (8.02%) Lead
6 600 (7.31%) Data Engineer
7 503 (6.13%) Analyst
8 424 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
9 418 (5.09%) Solutions Architect
10 324 (3.95%) Consultant
11 312 (3.80%) Cloud Engineer
12 289 (3.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 241 (2.93%) Data Architect
14 221 (2.69%) Azure Architect
15 209 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
16 201 (2.45%) Technical Architect
17 192 (2.34%) Project Manager
18 187 (2.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 186 (2.26%) Java Developer
20 185 (2.25%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 645 (7.85%) .NET
2 601 (7.32%) REST
3 350 (4.26%) React
4 315 (3.84%) Kafka
5 297 (3.62%) RESTful
6 251 (3.06%) PySpark
7 238 (2.90%) OAuth
8 232 (2.83%) Spring
9 214 (2.61%) Node.js
10 198 (2.41%) Spring Boot
11 196 (2.39%) JSON
12 185 (2.25%) AngularJS
13 158 (1.92%) HTML
14 147 (1.79%) SAML
15 145 (1.77%) OpenID
16 133 (1.62%) OAuth2
17 132 (1.61%) LDAP
17 132 (1.61%) Middleware
18 131 (1.60%) .NET Framework
19 126 (1.53%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 865 (10.53%) Cloud Native
2 365 (4.44%) Onboarding
3 344 (4.19%) Product Ownership
4 268 (3.26%) Data Centre
5 259 (3.15%) Distributed Systems
6 239 (2.91%) Hybrid Cloud
7 235 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
8 218 (2.65%) AI Agents
9 182 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
10 163 (1.98%) Security Posture
11 145 (1.77%) Public Cloud
12 126 (1.53%) Data Structures
13 121 (1.47%) Management Information System
14 114 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
15 107 (1.30%) Replication
16 98 (1.19%) PKI
17 96 (1.17%) Enterprise Cloud
18 89 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
19 78 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
20 73 (0.89%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 932 (11.35%) Windows
2 443 (5.39%) Linux
3 299 (3.64%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.36%) Windows 10
5 78 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 77 (0.94%) Android
6 77 (0.94%) Unix
7 75 (0.91%) Apple iOS
8 71 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 60 (0.73%) VMS
10 41 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 26 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.13%) CentOS
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 8 (0.097%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.085%) CoreOS
19 6 (0.073%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,048 (37.12%) DevOps
2 2,567 (31.26%) CI/CD
3 2,071 (25.22%) Agile
4 1,258 (15.32%) AI
5 1,236 (15.05%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,199 (14.60%) Migration
7 1,129 (13.75%) Analytics
8 1,082 (13.18%) Problem-Solving
9 1,056 (12.86%) Stakeholder Management
10 919 (11.19%) Data Modelling
11 867 (10.56%) Continuous Improvement
12 770 (9.38%) Microservices
13 769 (9.36%) Data Pipeline
14 762 (9.28%) Containerisation
15 760 (9.25%) Roadmaps
16 750 (9.13%) Business Intelligence
17 744 (9.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 679 (8.27%) ETL
19 675 (8.22%) Test Automation
20 653 (7.95%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,898 (23.11%) Python
2 1,602 (19.51%) SQL
3 794 (9.67%) PowerShell
4 694 (8.45%) Java
5 626 (7.62%) C#
6 475 (5.78%) JavaScript
7 329 (4.01%) Bash
8 319 (3.88%) TypeScript
9 290 (3.53%) Bicep
10 98 (1.19%) T-SQL
11 94 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 82 (1.00%) Go
13 70 (0.85%) Scala
14 56 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
15 52 (0.63%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.52%) R
17 40 (0.49%) PL/SQL
18 39 (0.47%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.33%) Groovy
20 25 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,047 (24.93%) Security Cleared
2 1,686 (20.53%) SC Cleared
3 576 (7.01%) Degree
4 433 (5.27%) Azure Certification
5 251 (3.06%) DV Cleared
6 247 (3.01%) CISSP
7 241 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
8 207 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
9 204 (2.48%) Cisco Certification
10 197 (2.40%) AWS Certification
11 192 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
12 122 (1.49%) CISM
13 98 (1.19%) CCNP
14 85 (1.04%) PMI Certification
14 85 (1.04%) PMP
15 80 (0.97%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 69 (0.84%) ISTQB
17 67 (0.82%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.67%) CCSP
19 53 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 562 (6.84%) Data Quality
2 433 (5.27%) QA
3 339 (4.13%) GDPR
4 282 (3.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 277 (3.37%) NIST
6 200 (2.44%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.45%) NCSC
8 100 (1.22%) SLA
9 72 (0.88%) WCAG
10 71 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
11 70 (0.85%) GRC
11 70 (0.85%) PCI DSS
12 60 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 50 (0.61%) PMO
14 36 (0.44%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 25 (0.30%) SOC 2
17 23 (0.28%) NIST 800
18 22 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
19 19 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 975 (11.87%) Active Directory
2 881 (10.73%) Docker
3 222 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
6 115 (1.40%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.84%) vSphere
8 52 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.38%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Postfix
13 12 (0.15%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.097%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.085%) Ceph
16 7 (0.085%) Varnish
17 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 6 (0.073%) HDFS
18 5 (0.061%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,313 (15.99%) Terraform
2 1,206 (14.69%) Kubernetes
3 423 (5.15%) Microsoft Intune
4 404 (4.92%) Ansible
5 246 (3.00%) Grafana
6 210 (2.56%) Prometheus
7 164 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.34%) SCCM
9 60 (0.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 52 (0.63%) Argo
11 48 (0.58%) Progress Chef
12 47 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
13 43 (0.52%) Puppet
14 35 (0.43%) FortiGate
15 29 (0.35%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
18 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
19 18 (0.22%) Packer
20 15 (0.18%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,646 (32.22%) Microsoft
2 743 (9.05%) Databricks
3 385 (4.69%) ServiceNow
4 332 (4.04%) Google
5 314 (3.82%) Oracle
6 311 (3.79%) VMware
7 231 (2.81%) SAP
8 221 (2.69%) Cisco
9 207 (2.52%) OpenAI
10 180 (2.19%) Splunk
11 157 (1.91%) Salesforce
12 142 (1.73%) Palo Alto
13 139 (1.69%) Foundry
14 135 (1.64%) CyberArk
15 99 (1.21%) Okta
16 98 (1.19%) Dynatrace
17 95 (1.16%) Zscaler
18 86 (1.05%) Informatica
19 77 (0.94%) Citrix
20 75 (0.91%) Fortinet