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 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,543 5,436 6,928
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.59% 14.86% 14.97%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.69% 41.91% 42.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,857 3,636 5,068
10th Percentile £350 £339 £350
25th Percentile £423 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -3.67% -3.33%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £520
% change year-on-year - -3.85% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 51 87
10th Percentile £16.10 £20.30 £17.75
25th Percentile £26.00 £23.80 £25.38
Median hourly rate £45.73 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +47.52% -32.87% +31.94%
75th Percentile £79.38 £60.38 £68.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.75 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +119.17% -35.04% +8.02%

All Cloud 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 13,623 12,970 16,293
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.32% 35.45% 35.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,224 8,536 11,662
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £419 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £708 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 189 303
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.44 £14.39
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.75
Median hourly rate £25.74 £30.88 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.65% +14.35% +22.28%
75th Percentile £51.13 £55.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.50 £22.00
% change year-on-year -18.18% +25.00% +15.79%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025. 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 4,718 £525 -0.94% 3,099
London +1 2,531 £543 -1.36% 1,077
UK excluding London 0 2,302 £500 - 2,747
Work from Home -1 1,816 £513 -2.38% 1,707
North of England -2 588 £475 -5.00% 528
South East -4 558 £500 -4.76% 987
Midlands -1 420 £525 +0.48% 411
South West +6 313 £500 - 287
West Midlands +1 313 £550 +4.76% 273
North West 0 287 £475 -5.00% 293
Yorkshire -1 273 £488 -2.50% 168
Scotland +1 253 £513 +12.33% 217
East of England +3 157 £500 +25.00% 233
East Midlands -2 104 £450 -10.00% 133
Wales 0 65 £450 -10.00% 95
North East -8 32 £515 +17.05% 71
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -3 6 - - 29

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
1 258 (4.65%) SharePoint
2 186 (3.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 141 (2.54%) Confluence
4 124 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 87 (1.57%) Apache
6 83 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
7 29 (0.52%) CMS
8 27 (0.49%) SAS
9 22 (0.40%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.32%) nginx
11 17 (0.31%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.22%) Anypoint
13 11 (0.20%) IIS
14 10 (0.18%) Mule
14 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
15 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 9 (0.16%) WebSphere
16 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
17 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 125 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (0.72%) MS Visio
4 35 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
5 34 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.14%) Trello
9 5 (0.090%) Weka
10 2 (0.036%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.036%) Windchill
11 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
11 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.018%) Revit
11 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 100 (1.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 54 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 16 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
5 12 (0.22%) Endur
6 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
7 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.16%) Workday HCM
8 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
8 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.090%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.090%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.090%) Remedy ITSM
11 4 (0.072%) Maximo
11 4 (0.072%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.072%) Primavera
11 4 (0.072%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 2,024 (36.51%) AWS
2 1,110 (20.03%) Azure DevOps
3 1,075 (19.39%) GCP
4 705 (12.72%) Power Platform
5 636 (11.47%) Microsoft 365
6 622 (11.22%) Entra ID
7 526 (9.49%) GitHub
8 346 (6.24%) Azure Data Factory
9 313 (5.65%) GitHub Actions
10 292 (5.27%) Serverless
11 251 (4.53%) Dynamics 365
12 248 (4.47%) SaaS
13 239 (4.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 219 (3.95%) Azure AKS
15 211 (3.81%) Power Automate
16 209 (3.77%) Snowflake
17 201 (3.63%) PaaS
18 196 (3.54%) Azure Monitor
19 194 (3.50%) PowerApps
20 192 (3.46%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 406 (7.32%) Firewall
2 205 (3.70%) DNS
3 176 (3.18%) VPN
4 152 (2.74%) Network Security
5 117 (2.11%) WAN
6 103 (1.86%) DHCP
7 86 (1.55%) TCP/IP
8 78 (1.41%) LAN
9 69 (1.24%) HTTP
10 62 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
11 60 (1.08%) VLAN
12 57 (1.03%) SD-WAN
13 43 (0.78%) BGP
14 41 (0.74%) SAN
15 35 (0.63%) Internet
16 33 (0.60%) MPLS
17 31 (0.56%) OSPF
18 28 (0.51%) SSL
18 28 (0.51%) Wireless
19 20 (0.36%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 486 (8.77%) Power BI
2 307 (5.54%) SQL Server
3 262 (4.73%) Data Warehouse
4 244 (4.40%) Data Lake
5 242 (4.37%) PostgreSQL
6 183 (3.30%) Azure SQL Database
7 179 (3.23%) NoSQL
8 130 (2.35%) Relational Database
9 116 (2.09%) Metadata
10 102 (1.84%) MongoDB
11 83 (1.50%) MySQL
12 82 (1.48%) Big Data
13 69 (1.24%) Delta Lake
14 65 (1.17%) Tableau
15 60 (1.08%) BigQuery
15 60 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 54 (0.97%) Redis
17 50 (0.90%) Oracle Database
18 45 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
19 38 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 481 (8.68%) Git
2 416 (7.50%) JIRA
3 325 (5.86%) Jenkins
4 221 (3.99%) GitLab
5 95 (1.71%) Selenium
6 85 (1.53%) Postman
7 70 (1.26%) SonarQube
8 64 (1.15%) JUnit
9 47 (0.85%) JMeter
10 46 (0.83%) Bitbucket
11 45 (0.81%) Cucumber
12 44 (0.79%) Cypress.io
13 42 (0.76%) Maven
14 37 (0.67%) Oracle APEX
15 36 (0.65%) Visual Studio
16 33 (0.60%) ERwin
17 32 (0.58%) CircleCI
18 30 (0.54%) Gradle
18 30 (0.54%) SpecFlow
19 29 (0.52%) Mockito
General
1 1,772 (31.97%) Social Skills
2 1,069 (19.29%) Finance
3 649 (11.71%) Public Sector
4 530 (9.56%) Analytical Skills
5 366 (6.60%) Banking
6 200 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
7 130 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 95 (1.71%) Investment Banking
9 94 (1.70%) Marketing
9 94 (1.70%) Retail
10 91 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (1.57%) Legal
12 77 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
13 73 (1.32%) Telecoms
14 68 (1.23%) Manufacturing
15 58 (1.05%) Law
16 48 (0.87%) Local Government
17 46 (0.83%) Front Office
18 44 (0.79%) Financial Institution
19 42 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 912 (16.45%) Architect
2 903 (16.29%) Developer
3 556 (10.03%) Senior
4 414 (7.47%) Analyst
5 406 (7.32%) Azure Engineer
6 383 (6.91%) Lead
7 351 (6.33%) Data Engineer
8 318 (5.74%) Solutions Architect
9 271 (4.89%) DevOps Engineer
10 219 (3.95%) Consultant
11 173 (3.12%) Security Engineer
12 171 (3.08%) Senior Developer
13 161 (2.90%) Azure Architect
14 159 (2.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 135 (2.44%) Cloud Engineer
16 132 (2.38%) Platform Engineer
17 122 (2.20%) Data Architect
18 113 (2.04%) Support Engineer
19 112 (2.02%) Business Analyst
19 112 (2.02%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (8.46%) .NET
2 348 (6.28%) REST
3 261 (4.71%) RESTful
4 243 (4.38%) React
5 208 (3.75%) Kafka
6 197 (3.55%) Node.js
7 190 (3.43%) Spring
8 185 (3.34%) HTML
9 175 (3.16%) OAuth
10 165 (2.98%) AngularJS
11 161 (2.90%) Spring Boot
12 158 (2.85%) JSON
13 152 (2.74%) PySpark
14 146 (2.63%) CSS
15 131 (2.36%) SOAP
16 111 (2.00%) PyTorch
17 102 (1.84%) XML
18 101 (1.82%) TensorFlow
19 100 (1.80%) SAML
20 97 (1.75%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 433 (7.81%) Cloud Native
2 198 (3.57%) Product Ownership
3 186 (3.36%) Onboarding
4 158 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 145 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
6 132 (2.38%) Data Centre
7 117 (2.11%) Security Posture
8 112 (2.02%) Distributed Systems
9 110 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
10 97 (1.75%) Public Cloud
11 79 (1.43%) Algorithms
11 79 (1.43%) Management Information System
12 77 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
13 69 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
14 57 (1.03%) Replication
15 55 (0.99%) AI Agents
15 55 (0.99%) Low-Code
16 54 (0.97%) Data Structures
17 51 (0.92%) PKI
18 48 (0.87%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 639 (11.53%) Windows
2 380 (6.86%) Linux
3 187 (3.37%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.98%) Unix
5 94 (1.70%) Windows 10
6 58 (1.05%) Android
7 51 (0.92%) Apple iOS
8 46 (0.83%) VMS
9 38 (0.69%) Mac OS
10 28 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) Solaris
13 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
14 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
15 9 (0.16%) CentOS
15 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
17 5 (0.090%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.072%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,014 (36.33%) DevOps
2 1,617 (29.17%) CI/CD
3 1,501 (27.08%) Agile
4 1,020 (18.40%) Problem-Solving
5 746 (13.46%) Analytics
6 742 (13.39%) Infrastructure as Code
7 653 (11.78%) Migration
8 627 (11.31%) AI
9 557 (10.05%) Business Intelligence
10 546 (9.85%) Containerisation
11 544 (9.81%) Stakeholder Management
12 472 (8.52%) Test Automation
13 470 (8.48%) Microservices
14 468 (8.44%) Data Modelling
15 467 (8.43%) Machine Learning
16 448 (8.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 435 (7.85%) Continuous Improvement
18 417 (7.52%) Scrum
19 416 (7.50%) Cybersecurity
20 395 (7.13%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,412 (25.47%) Python
2 1,201 (21.67%) SQL
3 590 (10.64%) PowerShell
4 550 (9.92%) Java
5 510 (9.20%) C#
6 441 (7.96%) JavaScript
7 278 (5.02%) Bash
8 232 (4.19%) TypeScript
9 152 (2.74%) Bicep
10 94 (1.70%) Go
11 74 (1.34%) Kusto Query Language
12 65 (1.17%) Scala
13 62 (1.12%) PL/SQL
14 55 (0.99%) R
15 52 (0.94%) T-SQL
16 46 (0.83%) C++
17 40 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 38 (0.69%) Shell Script
19 31 (0.56%) Perl
19 31 (0.56%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,147 (20.69%) Security Cleared
2 936 (16.89%) SC Cleared
3 483 (8.71%) Degree
4 340 (6.13%) Azure Certification
5 184 (3.32%) Microsoft Certification
6 183 (3.30%) CISSP
7 170 (3.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 143 (2.58%) AWS Certification
9 131 (2.36%) DV Cleared
10 101 (1.82%) CISM
11 98 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
12 84 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
13 82 (1.48%) Master's Degree
14 46 (0.83%) CCNP
15 45 (0.81%) ISTQB
16 36 (0.65%) PMI Certification
17 34 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 34 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
18 33 (0.60%) MCP
19 32 (0.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 343 (6.19%) GDPR
2 320 (5.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 305 (5.50%) QA
4 256 (4.62%) NIST
5 248 (4.47%) Data Quality
6 134 (2.42%) Accessibility
7 75 (1.35%) NCSC
8 71 (1.28%) PCI DSS
9 53 (0.96%) HIPAA
10 52 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
11 38 (0.69%) SOC 2
12 35 (0.63%) SLA
13 32 (0.58%) WCAG
14 31 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 28 (0.51%) EU AI Act
16 24 (0.43%) GRC
16 24 (0.43%) PSD2
17 23 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 21 (0.38%) PMO
19 20 (0.36%) COBIT
System Software
1 701 (12.65%) Docker
2 677 (12.21%) Active Directory
3 169 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 73 (1.32%) Hyper-V
5 72 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
6 61 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
7 47 (0.85%) vSphere
8 25 (0.45%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.27%) Squid
10 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
10 13 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 13 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
11 10 (0.18%) Firmware
11 10 (0.18%) Postfix
12 9 (0.16%) zsh
13 8 (0.14%) KVM
13 8 (0.14%) NFS
13 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.13%) Snort
Systems Management
1 827 (14.92%) Terraform
2 784 (14.14%) Kubernetes
3 299 (5.39%) Microsoft Intune
4 296 (5.34%) Ansible
5 137 (2.47%) Single Sign-On
6 129 (2.33%) SCCM
7 128 (2.31%) Grafana
8 124 (2.24%) Prometheus
9 38 (0.69%) Argo
10 32 (0.58%) Puppet
11 31 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 26 (0.47%) Nessus
13 23 (0.41%) Kibana
14 20 (0.36%) NetBackup
15 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
15 19 (0.34%) Progress Chef
16 17 (0.31%) vRealize
17 16 (0.29%) Istio
17 16 (0.29%) QRadar
17 16 (0.29%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,791 (32.31%) Microsoft
2 493 (8.89%) Databricks
3 327 (5.90%) Oracle
4 269 (4.85%) Google
5 222 (4.01%) VMware
6 208 (3.75%) ServiceNow
7 169 (3.05%) Cisco
8 153 (2.76%) SAP
9 136 (2.45%) Splunk
10 123 (2.22%) Salesforce
11 107 (1.93%) OpenAI
12 89 (1.61%) Palo Alto
13 83 (1.50%) Citrix
13 83 (1.50%) CyberArk
14 59 (1.06%) F5
15 58 (1.05%) Foundry
15 58 (1.05%) Red Hat
16 55 (0.99%) IBM
16 55 (0.99%) Okta
17 53 (0.96%) Dynatrace