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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,358 4,837 5,580
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.62% 14.61% 14.40%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.47% 39.33% 42.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,837 3,301 3,975
10th Percentile £375 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £423 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 43 38
10th Percentile £18.30 £18.87 £18.05
25th Percentile £23.00 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.66% +18.43% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.63 £74.38 £60.58
90th Percentile £94.01 £93.75 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £49.65 £65.00 £30.50
% change year-on-year -23.62% +113.11% -33.95%

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 18,793 12,300 13,078
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.12% 37.16% 33.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,415 8,210 9,113
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £411 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £615 £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 609 319 253
10th Percentile £15.70 £15.23 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £28.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% +12.00% -28.15%
75th Percentile £69.75 £47.50 £53.00
90th Percentile £82.27 £67.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +80.13% -11.70% -15.37%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +1 7,191 £525 - 4,244
London +1 3,744 £550 - 1,983
UK excluding London +3 3,606 £500 - 2,968
Work from Home -1 2,572 £525 +5.00% 2,172
North of England +8 1,050 £500 +5.26% 806
South East +1 942 £525 +5.00% 819
Midlands +4 651 £493 -1.50% 372
North West +8 547 £500 +2.30% 452
West Midlands +3 487 £488 -7.14% 252
South West +6 436 £540 +8.00% 364
Yorkshire +6 421 £500 +5.26% 242
Scotland +9 277 £500 +0.81% 226
East of England +3 176 £525 +1.45% 232
East Midlands +8 152 £500 +8.11% 120
North East +6 95 £513 -0.87% 123
Wales +1 91 £475 +6.50% 92
Northern Ireland +13 15 £644 +35.53% 94
Channel Islands +1 9 £475 -25.78%

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
1 443 (5.30%) SharePoint
2 275 (3.29%) Confluence
3 204 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.08%) Apache Spark
5 152 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
6 119 (1.42%) Apache
7 41 (0.49%) SAS
8 36 (0.43%) IIS
9 27 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 21 (0.25%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
15 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.084%) Camunda
17 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 121 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 84 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 35 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.012%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 117 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Maximo
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.060%) Workday HCM
11 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,983 (35.69%) AWS
2 1,768 (21.15%) Azure DevOps
3 1,424 (17.04%) GCP
4 1,081 (12.93%) Entra ID
5 1,048 (12.54%) Power Platform
6 845 (10.11%) Microsoft 365
7 839 (10.04%) GitHub
8 509 (6.09%) GitHub Actions
9 480 (5.74%) Azure Data Factory
10 351 (4.20%) Serverless
11 346 (4.14%) SaaS
12 312 (3.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 303 (3.63%) Azure Monitor
14 298 (3.57%) Azure AKS
15 286 (3.42%) Power Automate
16 271 (3.24%) PowerApps
17 262 (3.13%) Dynamics 365
18 255 (3.05%) PaaS
19 254 (3.04%) Snowflake
20 230 (2.75%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 530 (6.34%) Firewall
2 417 (4.99%) DNS
3 331 (3.96%) VPN
4 305 (3.65%) Network Security
5 212 (2.54%) DHCP
6 196 (2.35%) WAN
7 169 (2.02%) TCP/IP
8 121 (1.45%) LAN
9 110 (1.32%) BGP
10 103 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.11%) VLAN
12 88 (1.05%) OSPF
13 85 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.89%) SSL
15 64 (0.77%) SAN
16 56 (0.67%) Wireless
17 50 (0.60%) HTTP
18 48 (0.57%) IPsec
19 46 (0.55%) VXLAN
20 42 (0.50%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 719 (8.60%) Power BI
2 468 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 409 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
4 364 (4.36%) Data Lake
5 294 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 221 (2.64%) NoSQL
7 220 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
7 220 (2.63%) Metadata
8 143 (1.71%) Relational Database
9 132 (1.58%) Delta Lake
10 102 (1.22%) Big Data
11 101 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 100 (1.20%) MongoDB
13 82 (0.98%) MySQL
14 65 (0.78%) Tableau
15 64 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
15 64 (0.77%) BigQuery
16 63 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
17 58 (0.69%) Redis
17 58 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 683 (8.17%) Git
2 634 (7.59%) JIRA
3 460 (5.50%) Jenkins
4 361 (4.32%) GitLab
5 137 (1.64%) Selenium
6 75 (0.90%) Postman
7 71 (0.85%) JUnit
8 66 (0.79%) JMeter
9 60 (0.72%) Cucumber
10 59 (0.71%) Cypress.io
11 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 51 (0.61%) Maven
13 48 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.54%) WebDriver
15 43 (0.51%) Claude Code
16 41 (0.49%) Gradle
16 41 (0.49%) REST Assured
17 33 (0.39%) MLflow
18 31 (0.37%) LoadRunner
19 29 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 2,209 (26.43%) Social Skills
2 1,546 (18.50%) Finance
3 980 (11.73%) Public Sector
4 807 (9.66%) Analytical Skills
5 443 (5.30%) Banking
6 236 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 211 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 189 (2.26%) Retail
9 186 (2.23%) Legal
10 95 (1.14%) Manufacturing
10 95 (1.14%) Telecoms
11 91 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
12 89 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
13 73 (0.87%) Aerospace
13 73 (0.87%) Investment Banking
13 73 (0.87%) Law
14 71 (0.85%) Financial Institution
14 71 (0.85%) Marketing
15 60 (0.72%) Military
16 57 (0.68%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,513 (18.10%) Architect
2 1,045 (12.50%) Senior
3 1,040 (12.44%) Developer
4 735 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 699 (8.36%) Lead
6 603 (7.21%) Data Engineer
7 487 (5.83%) Analyst
8 438 (5.24%) Solutions Architect
9 430 (5.14%) DevOps Engineer
10 354 (4.24%) Cloud Engineer
11 317 (3.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 304 (3.64%) Consultant
13 258 (3.09%) Data Architect
14 228 (2.73%) Azure Architect
14 228 (2.73%) Platform Engineer
15 198 (2.37%) Technical Architect
16 193 (2.31%) Security Engineer
17 192 (2.30%) Project Manager
18 187 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 185 (2.21%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 655 (7.84%) REST
2 629 (7.53%) .NET
3 350 (4.19%) Kafka
4 318 (3.80%) React
5 290 (3.47%) RESTful
6 261 (3.12%) PySpark
7 240 (2.87%) OAuth
8 220 (2.63%) JSON
9 216 (2.58%) Spring
10 185 (2.21%) Node.js
11 181 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 167 (2.00%) AngularJS
13 154 (1.84%) HTML
14 153 (1.83%) SAML
15 147 (1.76%) OpenID
16 142 (1.70%) OAuth2
17 137 (1.64%) Middleware
18 133 (1.59%) .NET Framework
18 133 (1.59%) Playwright
19 122 (1.46%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 912 (10.91%) Cloud Native
2 412 (4.93%) Onboarding
3 346 (4.14%) Product Ownership
4 273 (3.27%) Hybrid Cloud
5 272 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
6 259 (3.10%) AI Agents
7 253 (3.03%) Data Centre
8 252 (3.02%) Enterprise Software
9 232 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
10 182 (2.18%) Security Posture
11 146 (1.75%) Management Information System
12 144 (1.72%) Data Structures
13 143 (1.71%) Public Cloud
14 119 (1.42%) Enterprise Cloud
15 116 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
16 111 (1.33%) PKI
17 96 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
18 95 (1.14%) Replication
19 79 (0.95%) CMDB
20 77 (0.92%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 982 (11.75%) Windows
2 506 (6.05%) Linux
3 353 (4.22%) Windows Server
4 125 (1.50%) Windows 10
5 85 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 85 (1.02%) Unix
6 84 (1.01%) Android
7 77 (0.92%) Apple iOS
8 72 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 58 (0.69%) VMS
10 51 (0.61%) Ubuntu
11 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
13 16 (0.19%) CentOS
14 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
16 10 (0.12%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Amazon Linux
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,086 (36.92%) DevOps
2 2,620 (31.35%) CI/CD
3 2,084 (24.93%) Agile
4 1,332 (15.94%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,308 (15.65%) AI
6 1,256 (15.03%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,236 (14.79%) Migration
8 1,138 (13.62%) Analytics
9 1,102 (13.18%) Problem-Solving
10 929 (11.12%) Data Modelling
11 928 (11.10%) Continuous Improvement
12 832 (9.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 786 (9.40%) Roadmaps
14 781 (9.34%) Data Pipeline
15 774 (9.26%) Containerisation
16 765 (9.15%) Business Intelligence
17 746 (8.93%) Microservices
18 703 (8.41%) Test Automation
19 678 (8.11%) ETL
20 667 (7.98%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,899 (22.72%) Python
2 1,620 (19.38%) SQL
3 850 (10.17%) PowerShell
4 699 (8.36%) Java
5 612 (7.32%) C#
6 502 (6.01%) JavaScript
7 386 (4.62%) Bash
8 331 (3.96%) Bicep
9 296 (3.54%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 94 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 72 (0.86%) Go
13 60 (0.72%) Shell Script
14 57 (0.68%) Scala
15 56 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
16 45 (0.54%) PL/SQL
17 40 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 40 (0.48%) R
18 32 (0.38%) Groovy
19 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,146 (25.68%) Security Cleared
2 1,741 (20.83%) SC Cleared
3 563 (6.74%) Degree
4 451 (5.40%) Azure Certification
5 281 (3.36%) DV Cleared
6 271 (3.24%) CISSP
7 245 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
8 228 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
9 213 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
10 196 (2.35%) AWS Certification
11 183 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
12 138 (1.65%) CISM
13 101 (1.21%) CCNP
14 90 (1.08%) PMI Certification
15 89 (1.06%) PMP
16 86 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 72 (0.86%) ISTQB
18 63 (0.75%) Master's Degree
19 56 (0.67%) CCSP
20 47 (0.56%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 582 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 438 (5.24%) QA
3 328 (3.92%) GDPR
4 308 (3.69%) NIST
5 306 (3.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 199 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 127 (1.52%) NCSC
8 104 (1.24%) SLA
9 78 (0.93%) GRC
10 76 (0.91%) WCAG
11 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
12 70 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
13 62 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 57 (0.68%) PMO
15 32 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 30 (0.36%) HIPAA
17 27 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.25%) NIST 800
19 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,012 (12.11%) Active Directory
2 909 (10.88%) Docker
3 242 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 143 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
6 130 (1.56%) Hyper-V
7 67 (0.80%) vSphere
8 55 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 23 (0.28%) NFS
12 15 (0.18%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Postfix
14 12 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Ceph
17 7 (0.084%) Varnish
17 7 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
18 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,379 (16.50%) Terraform
2 1,279 (15.30%) Kubernetes
3 447 (5.35%) Ansible
4 436 (5.22%) Microsoft Intune
5 266 (3.18%) Grafana
6 220 (2.63%) Prometheus
7 149 (1.78%) Single Sign-On
8 122 (1.46%) SCCM
9 62 (0.74%) Progress Chef
10 59 (0.71%) Argo
11 48 (0.57%) Puppet
12 41 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
13 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 33 (0.39%) Istio
15 31 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 22 (0.26%) SCOM
16 22 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) Packer
18 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
19 18 (0.22%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,827 (33.82%) Microsoft
2 799 (9.56%) Databricks
3 408 (4.88%) ServiceNow
4 360 (4.31%) Google
5 347 (4.15%) VMware
6 324 (3.88%) Oracle
7 245 (2.93%) Cisco
8 229 (2.74%) SAP
9 200 (2.39%) Splunk
10 197 (2.36%) OpenAI
11 165 (1.97%) Salesforce
12 152 (1.82%) CyberArk
13 151 (1.81%) Palo Alto
14 138 (1.65%) Foundry
15 119 (1.42%) Dynatrace
16 104 (1.24%) Zscaler
17 92 (1.10%) Okta
18 91 (1.09%) Informatica
19 78 (0.93%) IBM
20 76 (0.91%) Citrix