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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,211 4,849 5,557
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.11% 14.85% 14.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.69% 39.33% 42.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,741 3,299 3,824
10th Percentile £363 £350 £345
25th Percentile £447 £415 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £530
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -2.83% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.03% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 42 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.59 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.31 £26.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £42.35 £34.24 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +23.69% -6.83% -31.94%
75th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.08 £88.63 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £32.77 £42.34
% change year-on-year +20.54% -22.60% -8.32%

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 12,329 13,151
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.58% 37.75% 34.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,470 8,218 8,841
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 617 291 194
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £15.64
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £20.81
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.00 £31.75
Median % change year-on-year +16.07% -11.81% -9.29%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.13 £63.44
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £19.14 £30.44
% change year-on-year +69.85% -37.13% +17.07%

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 21 September 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 21 September 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 21 September 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 7,004 £525 - 8,795
London 0 3,672 £550 - 4,509
UK excluding London +1 3,484 £510 +2.03% 5,189
Work from Home -1 2,474 £525 +5.00% 4,217
North of England +6 989 £500 +5.26% 1,410
South East 0 892 £525 +5.00% 1,210
Midlands +2 641 £493 -2.48% 769
North West +4 487 £500 +5.26% 775
West Midlands +1 481 £481 -10.93% 477
Yorkshire +6 421 £500 +5.26% 456
South West +2 417 £550 +10.00% 586
Scotland +4 283 £520 +4.00% 485
East of England +2 194 £510 +2.00% 406
East Midlands +5 154 £500 +8.11% 292
North East +2 94 £506 +1.25% 186
Wales 0 84 £438 -2.78% 142
Northern Ireland +15 12 £650 - 207
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69% 2

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
1 467 (5.69%) SharePoint
2 250 (3.04%) Confluence
3 194 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 182 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 163 (1.99%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.32%) Apache
7 45 (0.55%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) SharePoint Server
9 28 (0.34%) IIS
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.085%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.085%) Mendix
15 6 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
15 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
15 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 120 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 39 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.11%) Trello
9 8 (0.097%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.097%) Revit
10 7 (0.085%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.061%) Notion
12 3 (0.037%) Houdini
12 3 (0.037%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Mingle
14 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 136 (1.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 72 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.097%) Magento
8 8 (0.097%) Workday HCM
9 7 (0.085%) Shopify
10 6 (0.073%) Cloudability
10 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
11 5 (0.061%) Dynamics NAV
11 5 (0.061%) SAP Oil and Gas
12 4 (0.049%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.049%) NetSuite
12 4 (0.049%) SAP ERP
12 4 (0.049%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,941 (35.82%) AWS
2 1,725 (21.01%) Azure DevOps
3 1,425 (17.35%) GCP
4 1,102 (13.42%) Entra ID
5 1,066 (12.98%) Power Platform
6 859 (10.46%) Microsoft 365
7 825 (10.05%) GitHub
8 480 (5.85%) GitHub Actions
9 459 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 373 (4.54%) Serverless
11 360 (4.38%) SaaS
12 313 (3.81%) Azure Monitor
13 302 (3.68%) Power Automate
14 301 (3.67%) Dynamics 365
15 299 (3.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 287 (3.50%) Azure AKS
17 286 (3.48%) Snowflake
18 283 (3.45%) PowerApps
19 251 (3.06%) Microsoft Copilot
20 249 (3.03%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 517 (6.30%) Firewall
2 414 (5.04%) DNS
3 311 (3.79%) VPN
4 291 (3.54%) Network Security
5 228 (2.78%) DHCP
6 183 (2.23%) WAN
7 169 (2.06%) TCP/IP
8 105 (1.28%) BGP
8 105 (1.28%) LAN
9 100 (1.22%) SD-WAN
10 92 (1.12%) VLAN
11 85 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
12 83 (1.01%) OSPF
13 74 (0.90%) SSL
14 64 (0.78%) SAN
15 63 (0.77%) Wireless
16 47 (0.57%) HTTP
16 47 (0.57%) IPsec
17 44 (0.54%) VXLAN
18 41 (0.50%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 695 (8.46%) Power BI
2 460 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 397 (4.83%) Data Warehouse
4 380 (4.63%) Data Lake
5 281 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
6 252 (3.07%) Metadata
7 209 (2.55%) NoSQL
8 193 (2.35%) Azure SQL Database
9 137 (1.67%) Relational Database
10 126 (1.53%) Delta Lake
11 110 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 102 (1.24%) MongoDB
13 93 (1.13%) Big Data
14 88 (1.07%) MySQL
15 69 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.79%) Redis
17 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
18 60 (0.73%) Oracle Database
19 58 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
20 57 (0.69%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 727 (8.85%) Git
2 584 (7.11%) JIRA
3 461 (5.61%) Jenkins
4 367 (4.47%) GitLab
5 133 (1.62%) Selenium
6 84 (1.02%) Postman
7 63 (0.77%) Cypress.io
8 59 (0.72%) JUnit
9 56 (0.68%) Cucumber
10 54 (0.66%) SonarQube
11 53 (0.65%) Maven
12 52 (0.63%) Claude Code
12 52 (0.63%) JMeter
13 49 (0.60%) Visual Studio
14 46 (0.56%) Gradle
15 44 (0.54%) REST Assured
16 37 (0.45%) WebDriver
17 35 (0.43%) MLflow
18 32 (0.39%) LoadRunner
19 30 (0.37%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,270 (27.65%) Social Skills
2 1,536 (18.71%) Finance
3 946 (11.52%) Public Sector
4 805 (9.80%) Analytical Skills
5 463 (5.64%) Banking
6 222 (2.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 211 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
7 211 (2.57%) Retail
8 169 (2.06%) Legal
9 107 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
10 104 (1.27%) Manufacturing
11 91 (1.11%) Telecoms
12 88 (1.07%) Marketing
13 85 (1.04%) Aerospace
13 85 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
14 81 (0.99%) Investment Banking
15 76 (0.93%) Military
16 73 (0.89%) Law
17 57 (0.69%) Local Government
18 53 (0.65%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,568 (19.10%) Architect
2 1,025 (12.48%) Senior
3 983 (11.97%) Developer
4 725 (8.83%) Azure Engineer
5 677 (8.25%) Lead
6 583 (7.10%) Data Engineer
7 484 (5.89%) Solutions Architect
8 464 (5.65%) Analyst
9 459 (5.59%) DevOps Engineer
10 372 (4.53%) Cloud Engineer
11 316 (3.85%) Consultant
12 311 (3.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 265 (3.23%) Data Architect
14 235 (2.86%) Platform Engineer
15 215 (2.62%) Azure Architect
16 207 (2.52%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 200 (2.44%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 195 (2.37%) Security Engineer
19 193 (2.35%) Technical Architect
20 183 (2.23%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,391 (16.94%) Terraform
2 707 (8.61%) REST
3 617 (7.51%) .NET
4 388 (4.73%) Kafka
5 292 (3.56%) React
6 285 (3.47%) RESTful
7 268 (3.26%) OAuth
8 266 (3.24%) PySpark
9 229 (2.79%) JSON
10 188 (2.29%) Spring
11 178 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 162 (1.97%) OpenID
13 161 (1.96%) OAuth2
14 155 (1.89%) Node.js
15 153 (1.86%) HTML
16 152 (1.85%) SAML
17 143 (1.74%) AngularJS
17 143 (1.74%) Middleware
18 131 (1.60%) Playwright
19 129 (1.57%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 914 (11.13%) Cloud Native
2 416 (5.07%) Onboarding
3 380 (4.63%) Product Ownership
4 311 (3.79%) AI Agents
5 300 (3.65%) Enterprise Software
6 283 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
7 261 (3.18%) Distributed Systems
8 252 (3.07%) Data Centre
9 224 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
10 177 (2.16%) Security Posture
11 176 (2.14%) Management Information System
12 145 (1.77%) Data Structures
13 141 (1.72%) Public Cloud
14 120 (1.46%) PKI
15 112 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
16 110 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
17 103 (1.25%) Replication
18 97 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
19 88 (1.07%) Low-Code
20 86 (1.05%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 988 (12.03%) Windows
2 514 (6.26%) Linux
3 371 (4.52%) Windows Server
4 141 (1.72%) Windows 10
5 90 (1.10%) Android
6 86 (1.05%) Apple iOS
6 86 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 86 (1.05%) Unix
7 74 (0.90%) Mac OS
8 56 (0.68%) Ubuntu
9 55 (0.67%) VMS
10 25 (0.30%) CentOS
11 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
15 8 (0.097%) Debian
16 6 (0.073%) AIX
16 6 (0.073%) SUSE
16 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,015 (36.72%) DevOps
2 2,634 (32.08%) CI/CD
3 2,051 (24.98%) Agile
4 1,457 (17.74%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,415 (17.23%) AI
6 1,395 (16.99%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,209 (14.72%) Migration
8 1,122 (13.66%) Problem-Solving
9 1,118 (13.62%) Analytics
10 945 (11.51%) Continuous Improvement
11 893 (10.88%) Data Modelling
12 839 (10.22%) Roadmaps
13 785 (9.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 774 (9.43%) Containerisation
15 750 (9.13%) Business Intelligence
16 744 (9.06%) Technical Leadership
17 739 (9.00%) Data Pipeline
18 714 (8.70%) Microservices
18 714 (8.70%) Test Automation
19 655 (7.98%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,882 (22.92%) Python
2 1,559 (18.99%) SQL
3 876 (10.67%) PowerShell
4 680 (8.28%) Java
5 597 (7.27%) C#
6 495 (6.03%) JavaScript
7 402 (4.90%) Bash
8 351 (4.27%) Bicep
9 295 (3.59%) TypeScript
10 97 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.10%) T-SQL
12 77 (0.94%) Go
13 63 (0.77%) Scala
14 60 (0.73%) Shell Script
15 55 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.51%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.45%) R
18 32 (0.39%) Groovy
18 32 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.33%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,137 (26.03%) Security Cleared
2 1,717 (20.91%) SC Cleared
3 557 (6.78%) Degree
4 478 (5.82%) Azure Certification
5 307 (3.74%) DV Cleared
6 269 (3.28%) BPSS Clearance
6 269 (3.28%) CISSP
7 252 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
8 208 (2.53%) AWS Certification
9 201 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
10 175 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
11 135 (1.64%) CISM
12 90 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 90 (1.10%) CCNP
13 89 (1.08%) PMI Certification
14 84 (1.02%) PMP
15 67 (0.82%) ISTQB
16 63 (0.77%) Master's Degree
17 62 (0.76%) CCSP
18 52 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 601 (7.32%) Data Quality
2 456 (5.55%) QA
3 301 (3.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 297 (3.62%) NIST
5 289 (3.52%) GDPR
6 205 (2.50%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.45%) NCSC
8 108 (1.32%) SLA
9 82 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
9 82 (1.00%) WCAG
10 81 (0.99%) GRC
11 74 (0.90%) PCI DSS
12 53 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 52 (0.63%) PMO
14 46 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 31 (0.38%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.30%) ISO 20022
17 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
18 20 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,022 (12.45%) Active Directory
2 905 (11.02%) Docker
3 238 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 145 (1.77%) Virtual Machines
5 144 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
6 126 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.88%) vSphere
8 54 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.29%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) IAG
12 17 (0.21%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.085%) Ceph
18 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
19 5 (0.061%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,284 (15.64%) Kubernetes
2 451 (5.49%) Ansible
3 436 (5.31%) Microsoft Intune
4 259 (3.15%) Grafana
5 202 (2.46%) Prometheus
6 152 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
7 130 (1.58%) SCCM
8 59 (0.72%) Progress Chef
9 57 (0.69%) Argo
10 44 (0.54%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
11 37 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.43%) SCOM
13 30 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 24 (0.29%) vCenter Server
15 23 (0.28%) Istio
16 19 (0.23%) CASB
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
18 17 (0.21%) QRadar
19 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,948 (35.90%) Microsoft
2 850 (10.35%) Databricks
3 416 (5.07%) ServiceNow
4 372 (4.53%) Google
5 355 (4.32%) VMware
6 343 (4.18%) Oracle
7 247 (3.01%) Cisco
8 231 (2.81%) Splunk
9 219 (2.67%) SAP
10 218 (2.65%) OpenAI
11 187 (2.28%) Salesforce
12 154 (1.88%) CyberArk
13 149 (1.81%) Palo Alto
14 142 (1.73%) Foundry
15 127 (1.55%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.13%) Zscaler
17 87 (1.06%) Informatica
18 85 (1.04%) IBM
19 81 (0.99%) MuleSoft
20 80 (0.97%) Okta