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

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,379 4,815 5,585
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.62% 14.61% 14.38%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.43% 39.33% 42.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,847 3,283 3,981
10th Percentile £375 £350 £340
25th Percentile £438 £423 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 43 39
10th Percentile £18.35 £18.87 £18.09
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 £78.50 £74.38 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.64 £93.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £31.00
% change year-on-year -19.23% +109.68% -32.87%

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 18,857 12,243 13,106
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.15% 37.15% 33.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,454 8,169 9,129
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £411 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.60% -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 610 319 263
10th Percentile £15.75 £15.23 £14.18
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £28.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% +15.80% -26.73%
75th Percentile £69.50 £47.50 £53.38
90th Percentile £82.26 £67.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +80.13% -11.70% -14.95%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 7,207 £525 - 5,321
London +1 3,751 £550 - 2,894
UK excluding London +3 3,617 £500 - 3,083
Work from Home -1 2,584 £525 +5.00% 2,491
North of England +8 1,050 £500 +5.26% 819
South East +2 943 £525 +5.00% 887
Midlands +4 659 £495 -1.05% 392
North West +6 548 £500 +2.56% 469
West Midlands +3 494 £493 -6.19% 268
South West +5 437 £540 +8.00% 347
Yorkshire +6 420 £500 +5.26% 250
Scotland +10 279 £500 +0.81% 218
East of England +3 175 £525 - 231
East Midlands +8 152 £494 +6.76% 124
North East +5 95 £513 +2.50% 110
Wales +2 91 £475 +6.50% 88
Northern Ireland +12 15 £644 +35.53% 137
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
1 442 (5.28%) SharePoint
2 277 (3.31%) Confluence
3 203 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.08%) Apache Spark
5 151 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.41%) 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
13 13 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 11 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 9 (0.11%) Mendix
16 8 (0.095%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.095%) WebSphere
17 7 (0.084%) Camunda
18 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 121 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 84 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 34 (0.41%) 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 (0.095%) Revit
10 8 (0.095%) 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
1 119 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (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 (0.095%) 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 2,985 (35.62%) AWS
2 1,774 (21.17%) Azure DevOps
3 1,425 (17.01%) GCP
4 1,079 (12.88%) Entra ID
5 1,048 (12.51%) Power Platform
6 845 (10.08%) Microsoft 365
7 843 (10.06%) GitHub
8 510 (6.09%) GitHub Actions
9 485 (5.79%) Azure Data Factory
10 353 (4.21%) Serverless
11 350 (4.18%) SaaS
12 316 (3.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 303 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
14 300 (3.58%) Azure AKS
15 286 (3.41%) Power Automate
16 271 (3.23%) PowerApps
17 265 (3.16%) Dynamics 365
18 256 (3.06%) PaaS
19 254 (3.03%) Snowflake
20 229 (2.73%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 532 (6.35%) Firewall
2 419 (5.00%) DNS
3 332 (3.96%) VPN
4 304 (3.63%) Network Security
5 214 (2.55%) DHCP
6 199 (2.37%) WAN
7 168 (2.01%) TCP/IP
8 124 (1.48%) LAN
9 111 (1.32%) BGP
10 104 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 95 (1.13%) VLAN
12 89 (1.06%) OSPF
13 86 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.88%) SSL
15 65 (0.78%) SAN
16 56 (0.67%) Wireless
17 50 (0.60%) HTTP
18 48 (0.57%) IPsec
19 46 (0.55%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 719 (8.58%) Power BI
2 470 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 414 (4.94%) Data Warehouse
4 366 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 295 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 221 (2.64%) Azure SQL Database
6 221 (2.64%) Metadata
6 221 (2.64%) NoSQL
7 142 (1.69%) Relational Database
8 135 (1.61%) Delta Lake
9 101 (1.21%) Big Data
9 101 (1.21%) MongoDB
9 101 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 81 (0.97%) MySQL
11 65 (0.78%) BigQuery
11 65 (0.78%) Tableau
12 64 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
13 63 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
14 58 (0.69%) Redis
14 58 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 682 (8.14%) Git
2 637 (7.60%) JIRA
3 461 (5.50%) Jenkins
4 361 (4.31%) 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 (0.70%) Cypress.io
11 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 51 (0.61%) Maven
13 48 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 46 (0.55%) WebDriver
15 43 (0.51%) Claude Code
16 41 (0.49%) Gradle
16 41 (0.49%) REST Assured
17 34 (0.41%) MLflow
18 31 (0.37%) LoadRunner
19 28 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 2,211 (26.39%) Social Skills
2 1,560 (18.62%) Finance
3 978 (11.67%) Public Sector
4 813 (9.70%) Analytical Skills
5 447 (5.33%) Banking
6 236 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 209 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 188 (2.24%) Retail
9 187 (2.23%) Legal
10 97 (1.16%) Telecoms
11 94 (1.12%) Manufacturing
12 93 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
13 91 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
14 76 (0.91%) Law
15 73 (0.87%) Aerospace
15 73 (0.87%) Investment Banking
16 71 (0.85%) Financial Institution
16 71 (0.85%) Marketing
17 60 (0.72%) Military
18 57 (0.68%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,513 (18.06%) Architect
2 1,047 (12.50%) Senior
3 1,039 (12.40%) Developer
4 734 (8.76%) Azure Engineer
5 701 (8.37%) Lead
6 609 (7.27%) Data Engineer
7 495 (5.91%) Analyst
8 441 (5.26%) Solutions Architect
9 432 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
10 349 (4.17%) Cloud Engineer
11 320 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 305 (3.64%) Consultant
13 255 (3.04%) Data Architect
14 230 (2.74%) Platform Engineer
15 227 (2.71%) Azure Architect
16 198 (2.36%) Technical Architect
17 195 (2.33%) Project Manager
18 192 (2.29%) Security Engineer
19 187 (2.23%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 185 (2.21%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 655 (7.82%) REST
2 630 (7.52%) .NET
3 350 (4.18%) Kafka
4 321 (3.83%) React
5 288 (3.44%) RESTful
6 265 (3.16%) PySpark
7 240 (2.86%) OAuth
8 220 (2.63%) JSON
9 216 (2.58%) Spring
10 187 (2.23%) Node.js
11 181 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 169 (2.02%) AngularJS
13 154 (1.84%) HTML
14 153 (1.83%) SAML
15 147 (1.75%) OpenID
16 142 (1.69%) OAuth2
17 139 (1.66%) Middleware
18 134 (1.60%) Playwright
19 133 (1.59%) .NET Framework
20 122 (1.46%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 911 (10.87%) Cloud Native
2 413 (4.93%) Onboarding
3 349 (4.17%) Product Ownership
4 270 (3.22%) Distributed Systems
4 270 (3.22%) Hybrid Cloud
5 260 (3.10%) AI Agents
6 256 (3.06%) Data Centre
7 251 (3.00%) Enterprise Software
8 232 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
9 182 (2.17%) Security Posture
10 145 (1.73%) Management Information System
11 143 (1.71%) Public Cloud
12 142 (1.69%) Data Structures
13 118 (1.41%) Enterprise Cloud
14 116 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
15 111 (1.32%) PKI
16 97 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
17 95 (1.13%) Replication
18 79 (0.94%) CMDB
19 77 (0.92%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 987 (11.78%) Windows
2 507 (6.05%) Linux
3 356 (4.25%) Windows Server
4 124 (1.48%) Windows 10
5 85 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 85 (1.01%) Unix
6 83 (0.99%) Android
7 76 (0.91%) Apple iOS
8 71 (0.85%) Mac OS
9 58 (0.69%) VMS
10 51 (0.61%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.30%) 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 3,100 (37.00%) DevOps
2 2,632 (31.41%) CI/CD
3 2,089 (24.93%) Agile
4 1,335 (15.93%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,312 (15.66%) AI
6 1,253 (14.95%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,239 (14.79%) Migration
8 1,139 (13.59%) Analytics
9 1,101 (13.14%) Problem-Solving
10 934 (11.15%) Data Modelling
11 930 (11.10%) Continuous Improvement
12 834 (9.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 789 (9.42%) Roadmaps
14 784 (9.36%) Data Pipeline
15 777 (9.27%) Containerisation
16 765 (9.13%) Business Intelligence
17 749 (8.94%) Microservices
18 704 (8.40%) Test Automation
19 680 (8.12%) ETL
20 664 (7.92%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,914 (22.84%) Python
2 1,632 (19.48%) SQL
3 851 (10.16%) PowerShell
4 698 (8.33%) Java
5 614 (7.33%) C#
6 503 (6.00%) JavaScript
7 387 (4.62%) Bash
8 331 (3.95%) Bicep
9 298 (3.56%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 95 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 72 (0.86%) Go
13 60 (0.72%) Shell Script
14 59 (0.70%) Scala
15 58 (0.69%) 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 26 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,146 (25.61%) Security Cleared
2 1,741 (20.78%) SC Cleared
3 564 (6.73%) Degree
4 453 (5.41%) Azure Certification
5 279 (3.33%) DV Cleared
6 269 (3.21%) CISSP
7 246 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 227 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
9 212 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
10 195 (2.33%) AWS Certification
11 184 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
12 137 (1.64%) CISM
13 101 (1.21%) CCNP
14 90 (1.07%) PMI Certification
15 89 (1.06%) PMP
16 85 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 72 (0.86%) ISTQB
18 63 (0.75%) Master's Degree
19 55 (0.66%) CCSP
20 48 (0.57%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 588 (7.02%) Data Quality
2 440 (5.25%) QA
3 330 (3.94%) GDPR
4 306 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 306 (3.65%) NIST
5 200 (2.39%) Accessibility
6 127 (1.52%) NCSC
7 106 (1.27%) SLA
8 78 (0.93%) GRC
9 76 (0.91%) WCAG
10 74 (0.88%) PCI DSS
11 71 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
12 62 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 58 (0.69%) PMO
14 31 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 30 (0.36%) HIPAA
16 27 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 21 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,012 (12.08%) Active Directory
2 914 (10.91%) Docker
3 244 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 149 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 143 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
6 130 (1.55%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.82%) vSphere
8 55 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 23 (0.27%) 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 (0.095%) 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 1,386 (16.54%) Terraform
2 1,286 (15.35%) Kubernetes
3 447 (5.33%) Ansible
4 436 (5.20%) Microsoft Intune
5 266 (3.17%) Grafana
6 220 (2.63%) Prometheus
7 150 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
8 122 (1.46%) SCCM
9 61 (0.73%) Progress Chef
10 59 (0.70%) 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 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,829 (33.76%) Microsoft
2 806 (9.62%) Databricks
3 409 (4.88%) ServiceNow
4 360 (4.30%) Google
5 350 (4.18%) VMware
6 325 (3.88%) Oracle
7 245 (2.92%) Cisco
8 231 (2.76%) SAP
9 201 (2.40%) Splunk
10 200 (2.39%) OpenAI
11 166 (1.98%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.83%) Palo Alto
13 152 (1.81%) CyberArk
14 137 (1.64%) Foundry
15 121 (1.44%) Dynatrace
16 107 (1.28%) Zscaler
17 92 (1.10%) Okta
18 91 (1.09%) Informatica
19 78 (0.93%) IBM
20 76 (0.91%) Citrix