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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,837 4,540 5,982
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.43% 15.15% 13.71%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.50% 40.11% 42.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,504 3,161 4,304
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year - -2.17% -2.43%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £503
% change year-on-year +1.00% -0.60% -4.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 37 54
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.25 £22.91
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +22.45% -40.58%
75th Percentile £76.75 £77.50 £61.19
90th Percentile £95.63 £93.25 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £53.23 £51.25
% change year-on-year +8.03% +3.85% -14.58%

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 18,016 11,318 14,203
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.48% 37.77% 32.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,031 7,621 9,986
10th Percentile £328 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £620 £635
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 596 281 364
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.25 £14.14
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £28.60 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.12% +30.00% -37.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.68 £72.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £19.14 £20.77
% change year-on-year +95.98% -7.87% -21.62%

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 23 June 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 23 June 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 23 June 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 6,645 £525 - 2,406
London +1 3,517 £540 -1.82% 936
UK excluding London +3 3,353 £505 +1.00% 1,974
Work from Home -1 2,426 £525 +2.44% 1,158
North of England +7 950 £500 +5.26% 484
South East +3 834 £511 +2.25% 619
Midlands +3 560 £500 - 274
North West +8 492 £500 - 278
South West +7 431 £525 +0.96% 232
West Midlands +1 419 £500 -4.76% 160
Yorkshire +5 378 £500 +5.26% 132
Scotland +10 326 £525 +5.00% 88
East of England +7 170 £550 -4.76% 186
East Midlands +4 131 £500 +9.59% 113
Wales +1 108 £425 +6.25% 65
North East +5 92 £525 +5.00% 79
Northern Ireland +12 19 £538 +13.16% 71
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 377 (4.81%) SharePoint
2 241 (3.08%) Confluence
3 191 (2.44%) Apache Spark
4 185 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
5 122 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
6 112 (1.43%) Apache
7 41 (0.52%) SAS
8 28 (0.36%) IIS
9 19 (0.24%) CMS
10 17 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.14%) Mendix
14 10 (0.13%) Camunda
14 10 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Appian
16 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.10%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 109 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
3 66 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 28 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.089%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.064%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.064%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.051%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.051%) Notion
12 4 (0.051%) Trello
13 2 (0.026%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.013%) InDesign
14 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.013%) Sketch
14 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 109 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.14%) Maximo
6 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 9 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 9 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.10%) Shopify
8 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.077%) Endur
9 6 (0.077%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.077%) SimCorp Dimension
9 6 (0.077%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.064%) SAP MM
11 4 (0.051%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.051%) Elite 3E
11 4 (0.051%) Magento
11 4 (0.051%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,725 (34.77%) AWS
2 1,612 (20.57%) Azure DevOps
3 1,313 (16.75%) GCP
4 1,022 (13.04%) Power Platform
5 958 (12.22%) Entra ID
6 773 (9.86%) Microsoft 365
7 711 (9.07%) GitHub
8 470 (6.00%) Azure Data Factory
9 434 (5.54%) GitHub Actions
10 388 (4.95%) Serverless
11 313 (3.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 306 (3.90%) SaaS
13 290 (3.70%) Azure AKS
14 264 (3.37%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.22%) Azure Monitor
16 249 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
17 240 (3.06%) PowerApps
18 237 (3.02%) PaaS
19 213 (2.72%) Azure AI
20 212 (2.71%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 459 (5.86%) Firewall
2 341 (4.35%) DNS
3 266 (3.39%) Network Security
4 261 (3.33%) VPN
5 225 (2.87%) WAN
6 175 (2.23%) DHCP
7 134 (1.71%) LAN
8 123 (1.57%) SD-WAN
9 106 (1.35%) TCP/IP
10 94 (1.20%) BGP
11 87 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
12 74 (0.94%) VLAN
13 72 (0.92%) OSPF
14 61 (0.78%) Kerberos
15 57 (0.73%) SSL
16 51 (0.65%) SAN
17 48 (0.61%) VXLAN
17 48 (0.61%) Wireless
18 44 (0.56%) IPsec
19 41 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 686 (8.75%) Power BI
2 441 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 379 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
4 373 (4.76%) Data Lake
5 276 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 228 (2.91%) Azure SQL Database
7 207 (2.64%) NoSQL
8 196 (2.50%) Metadata
9 144 (1.84%) Delta Lake
10 132 (1.68%) Relational Database
11 116 (1.48%) Big Data
12 102 (1.30%) MongoDB
13 93 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 77 (0.98%) Tableau
15 72 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
16 67 (0.85%) MySQL
17 61 (0.78%) BigQuery
17 61 (0.78%) Oracle Database
18 54 (0.69%) Star Schema
19 52 (0.66%) Redis
Development Applications
1 592 (7.55%) JIRA
2 567 (7.23%) Git
3 400 (5.10%) Jenkins
4 325 (4.15%) GitLab
5 122 (1.56%) Selenium
6 78 (1.00%) JMeter
7 77 (0.98%) Postman
8 63 (0.80%) JUnit
9 62 (0.79%) Cucumber
10 55 (0.70%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.60%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.57%) MLflow
14 42 (0.54%) Cypress.io
15 40 (0.51%) WebDriver
16 34 (0.43%) Gatling
17 32 (0.41%) Maven
18 27 (0.34%) LoadRunner
19 26 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
20 25 (0.32%) Gradle
General
1 1,980 (25.26%) Social Skills
2 1,482 (18.91%) Finance
3 876 (11.18%) Public Sector
4 702 (8.96%) Analytical Skills
5 415 (5.30%) Banking
6 225 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 203 (2.59%) Legal
8 159 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 147 (1.88%) Retail
10 95 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 77 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
12 69 (0.88%) Financial Institution
13 68 (0.87%) Law
14 66 (0.84%) Investment Banking
15 65 (0.83%) Front Office
16 63 (0.80%) Marketing
16 63 (0.80%) Telecoms
17 60 (0.77%) Manufacturing
17 60 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
18 47 (0.60%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,389 (17.72%) Architect
2 1,000 (12.76%) Developer
3 949 (12.11%) Senior
4 693 (8.84%) Azure Engineer
5 601 (7.67%) Lead
6 596 (7.60%) Data Engineer
7 475 (6.06%) Analyst
8 412 (5.26%) DevOps Engineer
9 383 (4.89%) Solutions Architect
10 332 (4.24%) Consultant
11 280 (3.57%) Cloud Engineer
12 268 (3.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 218 (2.78%) Data Architect
14 217 (2.77%) Azure Architect
15 197 (2.51%) Platform Engineer
16 195 (2.49%) Security Engineer
17 185 (2.36%) Technical Architect
18 177 (2.26%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 171 (2.18%) Project Manager
20 169 (2.16%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 628 (8.01%) .NET
2 550 (7.02%) REST
3 351 (4.48%) React
4 282 (3.60%) Kafka
5 269 (3.43%) RESTful
6 267 (3.41%) PySpark
7 227 (2.90%) OAuth
8 216 (2.76%) Node.js
9 215 (2.74%) Spring
10 183 (2.34%) Spring Boot
11 182 (2.32%) AngularJS
12 166 (2.12%) JSON
13 154 (1.97%) LDAP
14 147 (1.88%) SAML
15 143 (1.82%) HTML
16 141 (1.80%) OpenID
17 130 (1.66%) Middleware
18 125 (1.59%) SOAP
19 123 (1.57%) .NET Framework
20 117 (1.49%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 821 (10.48%) Cloud Native
2 329 (4.20%) Onboarding
3 313 (3.99%) Product Ownership
4 254 (3.24%) Data Centre
5 221 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
5 221 (2.82%) Hybrid Cloud
6 207 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (2.19%) AI Agents
8 171 (2.18%) Enterprise Software
9 165 (2.11%) Security Posture
10 156 (1.99%) Public Cloud
11 115 (1.47%) Data Structures
12 108 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
13 100 (1.28%) Management Information System
14 95 (1.21%) Replication
15 86 (1.10%) PKI
16 78 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
17 77 (0.98%) Low-Code
18 75 (0.96%) Enterprise Cloud
19 72 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 885 (11.29%) Windows
2 396 (5.05%) Linux
3 280 (3.57%) Windows Server
4 109 (1.39%) Windows 10
5 77 (0.98%) Apple iOS
6 74 (0.94%) Unix
7 69 (0.88%) Android
8 68 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 67 (0.85%) Mac OS
10 63 (0.80%) VMS
11 32 (0.41%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
14 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.14%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
17 9 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.089%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.089%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,907 (37.09%) DevOps
2 2,443 (31.17%) CI/CD
3 1,900 (24.24%) Agile
4 1,162 (14.83%) AI
5 1,157 (14.76%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,125 (14.35%) Migration
7 1,099 (14.02%) Analytics
8 1,060 (13.53%) Problem-Solving
9 884 (11.28%) Stakeholder Management
10 883 (11.27%) Data Modelling
11 784 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
12 739 (9.43%) Data Pipeline
13 733 (9.35%) Business Intelligence
14 726 (9.26%) Containerisation
15 721 (9.20%) Roadmaps
16 709 (9.05%) Microservices
17 682 (8.70%) ETL
18 681 (8.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 629 (8.03%) Data Engineering
20 624 (7.96%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,846 (23.55%) Python
2 1,583 (20.20%) SQL
3 743 (9.48%) PowerShell
4 646 (8.24%) Java
5 629 (8.03%) C#
6 466 (5.95%) JavaScript
7 316 (4.03%) TypeScript
8 265 (3.38%) Bicep
9 259 (3.30%) Bash
10 93 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 87 (1.11%) T-SQL
12 78 (1.00%) Go
13 77 (0.98%) Scala
14 48 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.56%) R
16 43 (0.55%) Shell Script
17 35 (0.45%) PL/SQL
18 31 (0.40%) C++
19 30 (0.38%) Kotlin
20 18 (0.23%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,923 (24.54%) Security Cleared
2 1,611 (20.56%) SC Cleared
3 543 (6.93%) Degree
4 406 (5.18%) Azure Certification
5 244 (3.11%) CISSP
6 200 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
7 197 (2.51%) DV Cleared
8 191 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
9 185 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
10 179 (2.28%) Microsoft Certification
11 176 (2.25%) AWS Certification
12 127 (1.62%) CISM
13 86 (1.10%) CCNP
14 82 (1.05%) PMP
15 78 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 73 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 64 (0.82%) ISTQB
18 59 (0.75%) Master's Degree
19 56 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
20 49 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 548 (6.99%) Data Quality
2 407 (5.19%) QA
3 342 (4.36%) GDPR
4 285 (3.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 268 (3.42%) NIST
6 167 (2.13%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.52%) NCSC
8 97 (1.24%) SLA
9 78 (1.00%) PCI DSS
10 74 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
11 69 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 61 (0.78%) WCAG
13 58 (0.74%) GRC
14 42 (0.54%) PMO
15 38 (0.48%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.33%) NIST 800
18 25 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 19 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
20 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 923 (11.78%) Active Directory
2 811 (10.35%) Docker
3 220 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
5 122 (1.56%) Virtual Machines
6 114 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.87%) vSphere
8 52 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (0.40%) Firmware
9 31 (0.40%) VMware NSX
10 23 (0.29%) NFS
11 17 (0.22%) Postfix
12 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
13 8 (0.10%) Varnish
14 6 (0.077%) Ceph
14 6 (0.077%) KVM
14 6 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.064%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 5 (0.064%) IAG
Systems Management
1 1,243 (15.86%) Terraform
2 1,115 (14.23%) Kubernetes
3 409 (5.22%) Microsoft Intune
4 364 (4.64%) Ansible
5 209 (2.67%) Grafana
6 183 (2.34%) Prometheus
7 166 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 102 (1.30%) SCCM
9 68 (0.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.55%) FortiGate
11 41 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
12 39 (0.50%) Argo
12 39 (0.50%) Progress Chef
13 37 (0.47%) Puppet
14 30 (0.38%) Istio
15 22 (0.28%) HP ALM
15 22 (0.28%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.20%) Packer
18 13 (0.17%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,476 (31.59%) Microsoft
2 745 (9.51%) Databricks
3 342 (4.36%) ServiceNow
4 299 (3.82%) Google
4 299 (3.82%) VMware
5 283 (3.61%) Oracle
6 217 (2.77%) SAP
7 213 (2.72%) Cisco
8 207 (2.64%) OpenAI
9 152 (1.94%) Splunk
10 142 (1.81%) Palo Alto
10 142 (1.81%) Salesforce
11 128 (1.63%) CyberArk
12 121 (1.54%) Foundry
13 105 (1.34%) Okta
14 90 (1.15%) Informatica
15 88 (1.12%) Dynatrace
16 82 (1.05%) Zscaler
17 68 (0.87%) Citrix
18 65 (0.83%) Fortinet