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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,215 4,595 5,858
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.53% 15.56% 13.42%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.79% 41.17% 41.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,154 3,278 4,204
10th Percentile £358 £350 £338
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 44 54
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.79
25th Percentile £49.20 £24.14 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -36.36%
75th Percentile £65.19 £73.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.38 £51.25
% change year-on-year +89.30% -40.73% -14.30%

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 16,863 11,160 14,098
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.29% 37.78% 32.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,484 7,770 10,006
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £631
90th Percentile £702 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +1.05% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 476 251 348
10th Percentile £15.56 £15.44 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.46 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £42.59 £27.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.88% +30.95% -37.78%
75th Percentile £67.50 £48.75 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.63 £73.75 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £22.50 £17.72
% change year-on-year +111.11% +27.01% -26.19%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 6,130 £523 -0.48% 2,206
London +1 3,296 £530 -3.64% 806
UK excluding London +2 2,991 £500 - 1,810
Work from Home -1 2,156 £525 +0.77% 1,144
North of England +3 833 £500 +5.26% 480
South East +2 795 £500 -4.76% 568
Midlands 0 490 £488 -2.50% 252
North West +2 448 £500 - 253
South West +6 377 £500 -4.76% 210
West Midlands +1 353 £500 -4.76% 150
Yorkshire +3 339 £500 +17.65% 144
Scotland +6 296 £539 +13.37% 67
East of England +5 153 £540 -8.47% 174
East Midlands +2 127 £450 -4.26% 101
Wales -2 77 £400 -5.88% 55
North East -1 53 £525 +3.70% 85
Northern Ireland +9 15 £475 - 40
Channel Islands +4 8 £450 +51.26%

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
1 326 (4.52%) SharePoint
2 200 (2.77%) Confluence
3 198 (2.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 194 (2.69%) Apache Spark
5 106 (1.47%) Apache
6 97 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.37%) SAS
8 20 (0.28%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) CMS
10 17 (0.24%) ArcGIS
11 16 (0.22%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.21%) Mendix
13 14 (0.19%) Appian
14 13 (0.18%) Camunda
14 13 (0.18%) HCL Notes
15 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
16 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
17 8 (0.11%) Anypoint
17 8 (0.11%) nginx
18 6 (0.083%) Jupyter
Applications
1 116 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 85 (1.18%) Microsoft Office
3 61 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.25%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) Trello
8 7 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.069%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.069%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.055%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.055%) Weka
11 3 (0.042%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.028%) Revit
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 109 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 72 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.15%) Maximo
3 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.097%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.097%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.069%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.055%) Cloudability
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.055%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.055%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.042%) Fidessa
10 3 (0.042%) Oracle 11i
10 3 (0.042%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,462 (34.12%) AWS
2 1,511 (20.94%) Azure DevOps
3 1,331 (18.45%) GCP
4 950 (13.17%) Power Platform
5 865 (11.99%) Entra ID
6 747 (10.35%) Microsoft 365
7 704 (9.76%) GitHub
8 510 (7.07%) Azure Data Factory
9 414 (5.74%) GitHub Actions
10 406 (5.63%) Serverless
11 342 (4.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 280 (3.88%) SaaS
13 279 (3.87%) Azure AKS
14 274 (3.80%) Dynamics 365
15 259 (3.59%) Power Automate
16 252 (3.49%) Azure Monitor
17 234 (3.24%) PaaS
18 224 (3.10%) Azure Functions
19 217 (3.01%) PowerApps
20 203 (2.81%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 440 (6.10%) Firewall
2 297 (4.12%) DNS
3 255 (3.53%) VPN
4 244 (3.38%) Network Security
5 181 (2.51%) WAN
6 161 (2.23%) DHCP
7 131 (1.82%) LAN
8 91 (1.26%) TCP/IP
9 89 (1.23%) SD-WAN
10 87 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
11 73 (1.01%) VLAN
12 72 (1.00%) Kerberos
13 49 (0.68%) BGP
14 43 (0.60%) HTTP
14 43 (0.60%) SSL
15 42 (0.58%) OSPF
16 40 (0.55%) SAN
17 37 (0.51%) Wireless
18 35 (0.49%) Internet
19 33 (0.46%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 643 (8.91%) Power BI
2 430 (5.96%) SQL Server
3 378 (5.24%) Data Warehouse
4 361 (5.00%) Data Lake
5 255 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
6 250 (3.47%) Azure SQL Database
7 200 (2.77%) NoSQL
8 184 (2.55%) Metadata
9 150 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 120 (1.66%) Big Data
11 115 (1.59%) Relational Database
12 100 (1.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 94 (1.30%) MongoDB
14 82 (1.14%) Tableau
15 72 (1.00%) Oracle Database
16 70 (0.97%) MySQL
17 67 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
18 63 (0.87%) BigQuery
19 58 (0.80%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 531 (7.36%) Git
2 509 (7.05%) JIRA
3 381 (5.28%) Jenkins
4 284 (3.94%) GitLab
5 126 (1.75%) Selenium
6 87 (1.21%) Postman
7 72 (1.00%) Cucumber
8 69 (0.96%) JUnit
9 66 (0.91%) JMeter
10 53 (0.73%) MLflow
11 51 (0.71%) REST Assured
12 43 (0.60%) Cypress.io
12 43 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 38 (0.53%) Artifactory
14 36 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 34 (0.47%) TestRail
16 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 31 (0.43%) Gatling
18 30 (0.42%) Oracle APEX
19 25 (0.35%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,940 (26.89%) Social Skills
2 1,281 (17.75%) Finance
3 816 (11.31%) Public Sector
4 691 (9.58%) Analytical Skills
5 379 (5.25%) Banking
6 227 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
7 182 (2.52%) Legal
8 105 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 94 (1.30%) Retail
10 84 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
11 80 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
12 75 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
13 73 (1.01%) Marketing
14 68 (0.94%) Financial Institution
15 66 (0.91%) Law
15 66 (0.91%) Telecoms
16 61 (0.85%) Investment Banking
17 60 (0.83%) Front Office
18 44 (0.61%) Local Government
19 43 (0.60%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,215 (16.84%) Architect
2 959 (13.29%) Developer
3 839 (11.63%) Senior
4 666 (9.23%) Azure Engineer
5 595 (8.25%) Data Engineer
6 551 (7.64%) Lead
7 438 (6.07%) Analyst
8 399 (5.53%) DevOps Engineer
9 308 (4.27%) Solutions Architect
10 301 (4.17%) Consultant
11 220 (3.05%) Cloud Engineer
12 213 (2.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 198 (2.74%) Azure Architect
14 183 (2.54%) Security Engineer
15 171 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
16 170 (2.36%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 168 (2.33%) Data Architect
18 160 (2.22%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 159 (2.20%) Technical Architect
20 147 (2.04%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 577 (8.00%) .NET
2 484 (6.71%) REST
3 334 (4.63%) React
4 273 (3.78%) Kafka
5 261 (3.62%) PySpark
6 243 (3.37%) Node.js
7 234 (3.24%) RESTful
8 219 (3.04%) Spring
9 215 (2.98%) OAuth
10 185 (2.56%) AngularJS
11 183 (2.54%) Spring Boot
12 169 (2.34%) LDAP
13 152 (2.11%) JSON
14 149 (2.07%) HTML
15 134 (1.86%) SAML
16 131 (1.82%) OpenID
17 130 (1.80%) SOAP
18 127 (1.76%) CSS
19 124 (1.72%) Middleware
20 110 (1.52%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 682 (9.45%) Cloud Native
2 280 (3.88%) Onboarding
3 266 (3.69%) Product Ownership
4 188 (2.61%) Hybrid Cloud
5 178 (2.47%) Data Centre
6 173 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
8 167 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
9 163 (2.26%) Security Posture
10 160 (2.22%) Public Cloud
11 129 (1.79%) AI Agents
12 94 (1.30%) Data Structures
13 90 (1.25%) Replication
14 87 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
15 85 (1.18%) Management Information System
16 77 (1.07%) Low-Code
17 69 (0.96%) PKI
18 64 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
19 60 (0.83%) NHS
20 52 (0.72%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 783 (10.85%) Windows
2 372 (5.16%) Linux
3 243 (3.37%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.65%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.01%) VMS
6 70 (0.97%) Unix
7 63 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 62 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 50 (0.69%) Apple iOS
10 43 (0.60%) Android
11 26 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (0.28%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
15 9 (0.12%) Windows 7
16 8 (0.11%) CentOS
17 7 (0.097%) AIX
17 7 (0.097%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.069%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,722 (37.73%) DevOps
2 2,243 (31.09%) CI/CD
3 1,699 (23.55%) Agile
4 1,097 (15.20%) Problem-Solving
5 1,073 (14.87%) Analytics
6 1,016 (14.08%) Infrastructure as Code
7 996 (13.80%) AI
8 983 (13.62%) Migration
9 813 (11.27%) Data Modelling
10 711 (9.85%) Stakeholder Management
11 703 (9.74%) Business Intelligence
12 690 (9.56%) Containerisation
13 686 (9.51%) Continuous Improvement
14 684 (9.48%) Data Pipeline
15 655 (9.08%) Microservices
16 645 (8.94%) ETL
17 596 (8.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 589 (8.16%) Data Engineering
19 571 (7.91%) Roadmaps
20 562 (7.79%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,796 (24.89%) Python
2 1,563 (21.66%) SQL
3 746 (10.34%) PowerShell
4 628 (8.70%) C#
5 617 (8.55%) Java
6 470 (6.51%) JavaScript
7 289 (4.01%) TypeScript
8 258 (3.58%) Bash
9 234 (3.24%) Bicep
10 98 (1.36%) Scala
11 83 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 83 (1.15%) Go
12 80 (1.11%) T-SQL
13 73 (1.01%) PL/SQL
14 69 (0.96%) Kusto Query Language
15 54 (0.75%) Shell Script
16 48 (0.67%) R
17 30 (0.42%) C++
18 22 (0.30%) PHP
19 21 (0.29%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,794 (24.86%) Security Cleared
2 1,515 (21.00%) SC Cleared
3 520 (7.21%) Degree
4 384 (5.32%) Azure Certification
5 207 (2.87%) Computer Science Degree
6 192 (2.66%) CISSP
7 164 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
8 155 (2.15%) Microsoft Certification
9 148 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
10 143 (1.98%) AWS Certification
10 143 (1.98%) DV Cleared
11 115 (1.59%) CISM
12 78 (1.08%) CCNP
13 73 (1.01%) Master's Degree
14 71 (0.98%) PMP
15 68 (0.94%) PMI Certification
15 68 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
16 59 (0.82%) ISTQB
17 49 (0.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 36 (0.50%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 515 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 394 (5.46%) QA
3 384 (5.32%) GDPR
4 288 (3.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 257 (3.56%) NIST
6 129 (1.79%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.37%) NCSC
8 80 (1.11%) PCI DSS
9 62 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 62 (0.86%) SLA
10 58 (0.80%) PMO
11 54 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
12 43 (0.60%) GRC
13 39 (0.54%) WCAG
14 34 (0.47%) HIPAA
15 23 (0.32%) ISO 20022
15 23 (0.32%) NIST 800
16 21 (0.29%) SOC 2
17 20 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 19 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 890 (12.34%) Active Directory
2 818 (11.34%) Docker
3 197 (2.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 113 (1.57%) Virtual Machines
5 108 (1.50%) Hyper-V
6 105 (1.46%) Virtual Desktop
7 65 (0.90%) vSphere
8 35 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.36%) Firmware
10 24 (0.33%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.26%) NFS
12 11 (0.15%) Postfix
13 7 (0.097%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.097%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.097%) HDFS
13 7 (0.097%) Varnish
14 6 (0.083%) Ceph
14 6 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.083%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.083%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 1,146 (15.88%) Terraform
2 1,068 (14.80%) Kubernetes
3 363 (5.03%) Microsoft Intune
4 330 (4.57%) Ansible
5 201 (2.79%) Grafana
6 172 (2.38%) Prometheus
7 154 (2.13%) Single Sign-On
8 113 (1.57%) SCCM
9 69 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.54%) Argo
11 37 (0.51%) Istio
12 34 (0.47%) Puppet
13 32 (0.44%) FortiGate
14 28 (0.39%) Progress Chef
15 25 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
16 23 (0.32%) vCenter Server
17 22 (0.30%) HP ALM
18 17 (0.24%) Kubeflow
18 17 (0.24%) linkerd
19 16 (0.22%) Kibana
Vendors
1 2,333 (32.34%) Microsoft
2 726 (10.06%) Databricks
3 327 (4.53%) Google
4 321 (4.45%) Oracle
5 292 (4.05%) ServiceNow
6 281 (3.89%) VMware
7 204 (2.83%) SAP
8 187 (2.59%) Cisco
9 184 (2.55%) OpenAI
10 157 (2.18%) Splunk
11 135 (1.87%) CyberArk
12 116 (1.61%) Foundry
13 102 (1.41%) Salesforce
14 95 (1.32%) Palo Alto
15 89 (1.23%) Okta
16 74 (1.03%) Informatica
17 72 (1.00%) Citrix
18 69 (0.96%) BeyondTrust
19 67 (0.93%) Dynatrace
19 67 (0.93%) Red Hat