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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,679 4,888 6,141
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.04% 15.97% 13.80%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.44% 42.37% 41.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,740 3,363 4,451
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -2.78% -3.57%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £713 £735 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 40 75
10th Percentile £22.59 £22.38 £17.76
25th Percentile £50.63 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%
75th Percentile £64.00 £61.81 £60.80
90th Percentile £80.00 £77.75 £71.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +109.09% -45.00% -23.08%

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 15,739 11,536 14,735
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.79% 37.70% 33.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,797 7,823 10,482
10th Percentile £313 £313 £285
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £635
90th Percentile £700 £731 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.65% -1.40% -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 181 342
10th Percentile £15.30 £16.75 £14.14
25th Percentile £20.50 £21.46 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.75 £27.35 £21.46
Median % change year-on-year +45.34% +27.45% -14.16%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.75 £46.18
90th Percentile £80.76 £75.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.18 £18.50
% change year-on-year +86.10% +30.70% -11.90%

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 28 February 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 28 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 28 February 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 5,638 £525 -2.33% 2,410
London +1 3,051 £542 -1.51% 879
UK excluding London -1 2,739 £500 - 2,012
Work from Home -2 2,063 £525 +0.48% 1,136
North of England 0 736 £500 +5.26% 513
South East -1 706 £500 -6.98% 705
Midlands -2 468 £500 - 276
North West 0 375 £488 -2.01% 271
West Midlands -1 352 £525 -1.87% 170
South West +4 344 £512 -2.57% 224
Yorkshire -3 314 £500 +8.11% 164
Scotland +7 302 £550 +15.79% 106
East of England -1 160 £550 +2.33% 164
East Midlands -2 114 £433 -5.10% 105
Wales -3 82 £400 -12.57% 53
North East -3 51 £515 +7.01% 87
Northern Ireland +4 12 £475 - 8

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
1 292 (4.37%) SharePoint
2 215 (3.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 180 (2.70%) Confluence
4 176 (2.64%) Apache Spark
5 92 (1.38%) Apache
6 87 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 19 (0.28%) SAS
9 17 (0.25%) ArcGIS
10 16 (0.24%) CMS
11 15 (0.22%) Appian
12 13 (0.19%) Camunda
12 13 (0.19%) IIS
13 12 (0.18%) Mendix
14 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
14 10 (0.15%) HCL Notes
15 8 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
15 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
15 8 (0.12%) SugarCRM
16 7 (0.10%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 124 (1.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 97 (1.45%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.72%) MS Visio
4 47 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.12%) Trello
8 5 (0.075%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.075%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.075%) Weka
9 4 (0.060%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.030%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.015%) InDesign
11 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.015%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 103 (1.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.18%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.10%) Endur
8 6 (0.090%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.090%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.090%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.090%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.090%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.075%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.075%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.075%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.075%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 4 (0.060%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 2,354 (35.24%) AWS
2 1,336 (20.00%) GCP
3 1,328 (19.88%) Azure DevOps
4 897 (13.43%) Power Platform
5 788 (11.80%) Entra ID
6 753 (11.27%) Microsoft 365
7 685 (10.26%) GitHub
8 481 (7.20%) Azure Data Factory
9 402 (6.02%) GitHub Actions
10 400 (5.99%) Serverless
11 314 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 294 (4.40%) Dynamics 365
13 272 (4.07%) SaaS
14 259 (3.88%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.77%) Azure AKS
16 240 (3.59%) Azure Functions
17 233 (3.49%) Snowflake
18 219 (3.28%) Azure Monitor
19 212 (3.17%) PaaS
20 210 (3.14%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 446 (6.68%) Firewall
2 288 (4.31%) DNS
3 225 (3.37%) VPN
4 195 (2.92%) Network Security
5 170 (2.55%) DHCP
6 162 (2.43%) WAN
7 109 (1.63%) LAN
8 104 (1.56%) TCP/IP
9 90 (1.35%) Wi-Fi
10 81 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 75 (1.12%) VLAN
12 70 (1.05%) Kerberos
13 59 (0.88%) HTTP
14 42 (0.63%) BGP
15 39 (0.58%) Wireless
16 37 (0.55%) SSL
17 35 (0.52%) OSPF
18 34 (0.51%) MPLS
19 33 (0.49%) Internet
20 31 (0.46%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 605 (9.06%) Power BI
2 389 (5.82%) SQL Server
3 359 (5.38%) Data Warehouse
4 339 (5.08%) Data Lake
5 264 (3.95%) PostgreSQL
6 234 (3.50%) Azure SQL Database
7 194 (2.90%) NoSQL
8 164 (2.46%) Metadata
9 124 (1.86%) Relational Database
10 122 (1.83%) Delta Lake
11 98 (1.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 95 (1.42%) Big Data
13 91 (1.36%) MongoDB
14 83 (1.24%) MySQL
15 71 (1.06%) Tableau
16 69 (1.03%) BigQuery
17 66 (0.99%) Oracle Database
18 56 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
19 49 (0.73%) Redis
20 47 (0.70%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 529 (7.92%) Git
2 482 (7.22%) JIRA
3 362 (5.42%) Jenkins
4 274 (4.10%) GitLab
5 121 (1.81%) Selenium
6 94 (1.41%) Postman
7 76 (1.14%) Cucumber
8 74 (1.11%) JMeter
9 68 (1.02%) JUnit
10 50 (0.75%) SonarQube
11 49 (0.73%) MLflow
12 48 (0.72%) REST Assured
13 46 (0.69%) Cypress.io
14 40 (0.60%) Visual Studio
15 36 (0.54%) Oracle APEX
16 32 (0.48%) TestRail
17 30 (0.45%) Artifactory
17 30 (0.45%) SpecFlow
18 29 (0.43%) WebDriver
19 28 (0.42%) Gatling
General
1 2,021 (30.26%) Social Skills
2 1,200 (17.97%) Finance
3 777 (11.63%) Public Sector
4 672 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
5 369 (5.52%) Banking
6 213 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
7 141 (2.11%) Legal
8 113 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 104 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
10 92 (1.38%) Retail
11 90 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
12 89 (1.33%) Marketing
13 83 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
14 64 (0.96%) Telecoms
15 61 (0.91%) Financial Institution
15 61 (0.91%) Investment Banking
16 56 (0.84%) Law
17 54 (0.81%) Manufacturing
18 47 (0.70%) Front Office
19 40 (0.60%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,095 (16.39%) Architect
2 955 (14.30%) Developer
3 737 (11.03%) Senior
4 554 (8.29%) Azure Engineer
5 550 (8.23%) Data Engineer
6 486 (7.28%) Lead
7 438 (6.56%) Analyst
8 329 (4.93%) Solutions Architect
9 326 (4.88%) DevOps Engineer
10 306 (4.58%) Consultant
11 189 (2.83%) Security Engineer
12 182 (2.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 177 (2.65%) Cloud Engineer
14 164 (2.46%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 163 (2.44%) Azure Architect
16 159 (2.38%) Senior Developer
17 142 (2.13%) Data Architect
18 140 (2.10%) Platform Engineer
19 136 (2.04%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 134 (2.01%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 541 (8.10%) .NET
2 470 (7.04%) REST
3 327 (4.90%) React
4 259 (3.88%) PySpark
4 259 (3.88%) RESTful
5 244 (3.65%) Kafka
6 239 (3.58%) Node.js
7 206 (3.08%) OAuth
7 206 (3.08%) Spring
8 189 (2.83%) AngularJS
9 185 (2.77%) HTML
10 178 (2.67%) Spring Boot
11 154 (2.31%) LDAP
12 153 (2.29%) CSS
13 147 (2.20%) PyTorch
14 143 (2.14%) JSON
15 142 (2.13%) SOAP
16 132 (1.98%) TensorFlow
17 129 (1.93%) SAML
18 128 (1.92%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 598 (8.95%) Cloud Native
2 255 (3.82%) Onboarding
3 239 (3.58%) Product Ownership
4 178 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
5 172 (2.58%) Security Posture
6 169 (2.53%) Data Centre
7 158 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
8 152 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
9 124 (1.86%) Public Cloud
10 118 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
11 100 (1.50%) AI Agents
12 86 (1.29%) Data Structures
13 83 (1.24%) Replication
14 81 (1.21%) Algorithms
15 73 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
16 72 (1.08%) Management Information System
17 70 (1.05%) Low-Code
18 66 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
19 64 (0.96%) NHS
20 55 (0.82%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 743 (11.12%) Windows
2 374 (5.60%) Linux
3 201 (3.01%) Windows Server
4 122 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.24%) Unix
6 59 (0.88%) VMS
7 50 (0.75%) Mac OS
8 48 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 41 (0.61%) Apple iOS
10 31 (0.46%) Android
11 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.27%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) CentOS
14 12 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.12%) Solaris
16 7 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.090%) Data ONTAP
18 5 (0.075%) AIX
18 5 (0.075%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,448 (36.65%) DevOps
2 2,062 (30.87%) CI/CD
3 1,637 (24.51%) Agile
4 1,208 (18.09%) Problem-Solving
5 1,005 (15.05%) Analytics
6 915 (13.70%) AI
7 895 (13.40%) Infrastructure as Code
8 828 (12.40%) Migration
9 695 (10.41%) Data Modelling
10 693 (10.38%) Stakeholder Management
11 684 (10.24%) Business Intelligence
12 666 (9.97%) Containerisation
13 625 (9.36%) Continuous Improvement
14 600 (8.98%) Machine Learning
15 599 (8.97%) ETL
16 596 (8.92%) Data Pipeline
17 590 (8.83%) Microservices
18 562 (8.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 550 (8.23%) Test Automation
20 537 (8.04%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,762 (26.38%) Python
2 1,482 (22.19%) SQL
3 722 (10.81%) PowerShell
4 585 (8.76%) C#
5 564 (8.44%) Java
6 524 (7.85%) JavaScript
7 306 (4.58%) TypeScript
8 265 (3.97%) Bash
9 198 (2.96%) Bicep
10 96 (1.44%) Scala
11 84 (1.26%) PL/SQL
12 82 (1.23%) Go
13 73 (1.09%) T-SQL
14 72 (1.08%) Kusto Query Language
15 71 (1.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 45 (0.67%) R
16 45 (0.67%) Shell Script
17 38 (0.57%) C++
18 37 (0.55%) PHP
19 23 (0.34%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,572 (23.54%) Security Cleared
2 1,297 (19.42%) SC Cleared
3 541 (8.10%) Degree
4 370 (5.54%) Azure Certification
5 210 (3.14%) Computer Science Degree
6 188 (2.81%) CISSP
7 176 (2.64%) Microsoft Certification
8 140 (2.10%) AWS Certification
9 130 (1.95%) DV Cleared
10 124 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
11 119 (1.78%) CISM
12 115 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
13 91 (1.36%) Master's Degree
14 67 (1.00%) TOGAF Certification
15 60 (0.90%) CCNP
16 55 (0.82%) PMI Certification
17 54 (0.81%) PMP
18 52 (0.78%) ISTQB
19 40 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.51%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 447 (6.69%) Data Quality
2 389 (5.82%) GDPR
3 354 (5.30%) QA
4 296 (4.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 237 (3.55%) NIST
6 132 (1.98%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.44%) NCSC
8 81 (1.21%) PCI DSS
9 61 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 59 (0.88%) SLA
11 57 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
12 47 (0.70%) PMO
13 41 (0.61%) HIPAA
14 36 (0.54%) SOC 2
15 35 (0.52%) GRC
16 34 (0.51%) WCAG
17 25 (0.37%) EU AI Act
18 24 (0.36%) ISO 20022
19 23 (0.34%) NIST 800
19 23 (0.34%) PSD2
System Software
1 863 (12.92%) Active Directory
2 803 (12.02%) Docker
3 198 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (1.50%) Hyper-V
5 88 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
6 75 (1.12%) Virtual Desktop
6 75 (1.12%) vSphere
7 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 18 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.21%) Firmware
10 12 (0.18%) NFS
11 9 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.13%) Postfix
12 7 (0.10%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 7 (0.10%) KVM
12 7 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 7 (0.10%) Snort
13 6 (0.090%) GPFS
13 6 (0.090%) Lustre
14 5 (0.075%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 1,024 (15.33%) Terraform
2 973 (14.57%) Kubernetes
3 359 (5.38%) Microsoft Intune
4 310 (4.64%) Ansible
5 168 (2.52%) Single Sign-On
6 166 (2.49%) Grafana
7 148 (2.22%) Prometheus
8 140 (2.10%) SCCM
9 73 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 49 (0.73%) Argo
11 28 (0.42%) FortiGate
12 26 (0.39%) Istio
12 26 (0.39%) Puppet
13 25 (0.37%) vRealize
14 22 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
14 22 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 19 (0.28%) HP ALM
15 19 (0.28%) Nessus
15 19 (0.28%) Nmap
15 19 (0.28%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,138 (32.01%) Microsoft
2 681 (10.20%) Databricks
3 348 (5.21%) Oracle
4 336 (5.03%) Google
5 289 (4.33%) ServiceNow
6 268 (4.01%) VMware
7 196 (2.93%) SAP
8 165 (2.47%) Cisco
9 160 (2.40%) OpenAI
10 158 (2.37%) Splunk
11 120 (1.80%) CyberArk
12 108 (1.62%) Palo Alto
13 105 (1.57%) Salesforce
14 103 (1.54%) Foundry
15 85 (1.27%) Okta
16 75 (1.12%) Red Hat
17 74 (1.11%) Citrix
18 69 (1.03%) IBM
19 65 (0.97%) BeyondTrust
20 64 (0.96%) Informatica