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 31 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,048 4,647 5,996
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.83% 15.98% 13.55%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.89% 41.94% 41.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,022 3,328 4,330
10th Percentile £356 £350 £349
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% - -5.91%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 44 59
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £50.63 £23.95 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +79.69% -16.88% -29.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £69.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £84.80 £79.61 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £50.53
% change year-on-year +79.69% -36.67% -12.13%

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 16,431 11,080 14,428
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.90% 38.11% 32.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,210 7,785 10,216
10th Percentile £313 £313 £294
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £631
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £490
% change year-on-year -0.42% -2.65% -2.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 461 217 352
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.38 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.94% +26.19% -23.64%
75th Percentile £67.50 £41.50 £39.06
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.80 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.23 £23.50 £17.72
% change year-on-year +92.47% +32.62% -19.45%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 March 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 0 5,973 £525 - 2,909
London +1 3,254 £538 -2.23% 1,004
UK excluding London +1 2,874 £500 - 2,332
Work from Home -1 2,162 £525 +1.45% 1,365
North of England +3 812 £485 - 604
South East 0 739 £503 -7.80% 685
Midlands -1 485 £499 -0.25% 369
North West +1 436 £475 -5.00% 303
West Midlands -2 360 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 349 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire 0 331 £486 +8.00% 208
Scotland +6 287 £539 +13.37% 115
East of England +8 154 £550 -6.78% 207
East Midlands 0 116 £430 -9.47% 163
Wales -2 84 £400 -3.03% 73
North East -6 47 £525 +9.09% 97
Northern Ireland +3 12 £475 - 24
Channel Islands +4 7 £450 +51.26% 1

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
1 318 (4.51%) SharePoint
2 209 (2.97%) Microsoft Exchange
3 200 (2.84%) Confluence
4 185 (2.62%) Apache Spark
5 103 (1.46%) Apache
6 97 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.34%) IIS
8 23 (0.33%) SAS
9 21 (0.30%) OpenStack
10 17 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 17 (0.24%) CMS
11 16 (0.23%) Camunda
12 15 (0.21%) Appian
13 13 (0.18%) Mendix
14 11 (0.16%) HCL Notes
15 9 (0.13%) Jupyter
15 9 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 8 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
17 7 (0.099%) Anypoint
18 5 (0.071%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 124 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 85 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 45 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) Trello
8 6 (0.085%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.071%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.071%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.057%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.057%) Weka
11 3 (0.043%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 109 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Maximo
4 11 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.099%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.099%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.085%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.085%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.071%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.071%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.057%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.057%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.057%) ResourceLink
Cloud Services
1 2,432 (34.51%) AWS
2 1,473 (20.90%) Azure DevOps
3 1,329 (18.86%) GCP
4 946 (13.42%) Power Platform
5 844 (11.98%) Entra ID
6 772 (10.95%) Microsoft 365
7 726 (10.30%) GitHub
8 500 (7.09%) Azure Data Factory
9 426 (6.04%) GitHub Actions
10 411 (5.83%) Serverless
11 329 (4.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 288 (4.09%) Dynamics 365
13 276 (3.92%) SaaS
14 261 (3.70%) Power Automate
15 255 (3.62%) Azure AKS
16 245 (3.48%) Azure Monitor
17 242 (3.43%) Azure Functions
18 232 (3.29%) PaaS
19 218 (3.09%) Snowflake
20 216 (3.06%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 454 (6.44%) Firewall
2 305 (4.33%) DNS
3 258 (3.66%) VPN
4 235 (3.33%) Network Security
5 187 (2.65%) WAN
6 164 (2.33%) DHCP
7 130 (1.84%) LAN
8 98 (1.39%) SD-WAN
9 97 (1.38%) TCP/IP
10 89 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
11 78 (1.11%) VLAN
12 70 (0.99%) Kerberos
13 54 (0.77%) BGP
14 47 (0.67%) OSPF
15 46 (0.65%) HTTP
16 42 (0.60%) Wireless
17 39 (0.55%) SSL
18 38 (0.54%) SAN
19 32 (0.45%) MPLS
20 31 (0.44%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 640 (9.08%) Power BI
2 414 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 377 (5.35%) Data Warehouse
4 338 (4.80%) Data Lake
5 262 (3.72%) Azure SQL Database
6 257 (3.65%) PostgreSQL
7 207 (2.94%) NoSQL
8 176 (2.50%) Metadata
9 146 (2.07%) Delta Lake
10 112 (1.59%) Relational Database
11 108 (1.53%) Big Data
12 96 (1.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 93 (1.32%) MongoDB
14 84 (1.19%) Tableau
15 74 (1.05%) MySQL
16 68 (0.96%) Oracle Database
17 64 (0.91%) BigQuery
18 60 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
19 55 (0.78%) Star Schema
20 46 (0.65%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 531 (7.53%) Git
2 494 (7.01%) JIRA
3 388 (5.51%) Jenkins
4 280 (3.97%) GitLab
5 136 (1.93%) Selenium
6 89 (1.26%) Postman
7 80 (1.14%) JMeter
8 76 (1.08%) Cucumber
9 74 (1.05%) JUnit
10 54 (0.77%) MLflow
11 50 (0.71%) REST Assured
12 45 (0.64%) Cypress.io
12 45 (0.64%) Visual Studio
13 42 (0.60%) SonarQube
14 36 (0.51%) Artifactory
15 33 (0.47%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.47%) WebDriver
16 32 (0.45%) TestRail
17 31 (0.44%) SpecFlow
18 29 (0.41%) Gatling
General
1 1,974 (28.01%) Social Skills
2 1,264 (17.93%) Finance
3 824 (11.69%) Public Sector
4 704 (9.99%) Analytical Skills
5 378 (5.36%) Banking
6 221 (3.14%) Documentation Skills
7 173 (2.45%) Legal
8 113 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 100 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
10 90 (1.28%) Retail
11 86 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
12 84 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
13 81 (1.15%) Marketing
14 75 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 71 (1.01%) Financial Institution
16 65 (0.92%) Law
17 55 (0.78%) Investment Banking
18 52 (0.74%) Front Office
19 47 (0.67%) Manufacturing
20 45 (0.64%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,179 (16.73%) Architect
2 959 (13.61%) Developer
3 825 (11.71%) Senior
4 618 (8.77%) Azure Engineer
5 575 (8.16%) Data Engineer
6 532 (7.55%) Lead
7 445 (6.31%) Analyst
8 352 (4.99%) DevOps Engineer
9 317 (4.50%) Solutions Architect
10 311 (4.41%) Consultant
11 190 (2.70%) Cloud Engineer
12 186 (2.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 176 (2.50%) Azure Architect
14 170 (2.41%) Security Engineer
15 167 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
16 160 (2.27%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 159 (2.26%) Senior Developer
18 156 (2.21%) Data Architect
19 146 (2.07%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 139 (1.97%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 562 (7.97%) .NET
2 481 (6.82%) REST
3 340 (4.82%) React
4 275 (3.90%) Kafka
5 263 (3.73%) PySpark
6 258 (3.66%) RESTful
7 246 (3.49%) Node.js
8 219 (3.11%) Spring
9 201 (2.85%) OAuth
10 196 (2.78%) AngularJS
11 183 (2.60%) Spring Boot
12 161 (2.28%) HTML
13 154 (2.19%) LDAP
14 151 (2.14%) JSON
15 141 (2.00%) CSS
16 134 (1.90%) Middleware
17 132 (1.87%) PyTorch
18 129 (1.83%) SOAP
19 121 (1.72%) SAML
20 120 (1.70%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 632 (8.97%) Cloud Native
2 270 (3.83%) Onboarding
3 265 (3.76%) Product Ownership
4 196 (2.78%) Hybrid Cloud
5 184 (2.61%) Data Centre
6 166 (2.36%) Security Posture
7 163 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
8 156 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
9 148 (2.10%) Public Cloud
10 145 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
11 120 (1.70%) AI Agents
12 89 (1.26%) Data Structures
13 87 (1.23%) Replication
14 84 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
15 74 (1.05%) Management Information System
16 73 (1.04%) Algorithms
17 66 (0.94%) Low-Code
17 66 (0.94%) PKI
18 65 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
19 61 (0.87%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 766 (10.87%) Windows
2 376 (5.33%) Linux
3 230 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 122 (1.73%) Windows 10
5 76 (1.08%) VMS
6 74 (1.05%) Unix
7 58 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 44 (0.62%) Mac OS
9 38 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 30 (0.43%) Android
11 23 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.27%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.085%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.085%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.071%) AIX
17 5 (0.071%) CentOS
17 5 (0.071%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,647 (37.56%) DevOps
2 2,170 (30.79%) CI/CD
3 1,673 (23.74%) Agile
4 1,155 (16.39%) Problem-Solving
5 1,060 (15.04%) Analytics
6 994 (14.10%) AI
7 961 (13.64%) Infrastructure as Code
8 923 (13.10%) Migration
9 770 (10.93%) Data Modelling
10 725 (10.29%) Stakeholder Management
11 705 (10.00%) Business Intelligence
12 678 (9.62%) Continuous Improvement
13 677 (9.61%) Containerisation
14 645 (9.15%) Microservices
15 644 (9.14%) Data Pipeline
16 639 (9.07%) ETL
17 616 (8.74%) Machine Learning
18 592 (8.40%) Data Engineering
19 581 (8.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 579 (8.22%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,823 (25.87%) Python
2 1,564 (22.19%) SQL
3 751 (10.66%) PowerShell
4 613 (8.70%) C#
5 595 (8.44%) Java
6 491 (6.97%) JavaScript
7 295 (4.19%) TypeScript
8 257 (3.65%) Bash
9 218 (3.09%) Bicep
10 98 (1.39%) Scala
11 83 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 80 (1.14%) Kusto Query Language
13 78 (1.11%) Go
14 77 (1.09%) PL/SQL
15 75 (1.06%) T-SQL
16 52 (0.74%) Shell Script
17 47 (0.67%) R
18 34 (0.48%) C++
19 26 (0.37%) PHP
20 19 (0.27%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,707 (24.22%) Security Cleared
2 1,418 (20.12%) SC Cleared
3 542 (7.69%) Degree
4 366 (5.19%) Azure Certification
5 211 (2.99%) Computer Science Degree
6 195 (2.77%) CISSP
7 163 (2.31%) Microsoft Certification
8 146 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
9 142 (2.01%) DV Cleared
10 136 (1.93%) AWS Certification
10 136 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
11 120 (1.70%) CISM
12 84 (1.19%) Master's Degree
13 73 (1.04%) CCNP
14 65 (0.92%) ISTQB
14 65 (0.92%) PMI Certification
14 65 (0.92%) PMP
15 63 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
16 45 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 35 (0.50%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 496 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 398 (5.65%) GDPR
3 383 (5.43%) QA
4 306 (4.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 259 (3.67%) NIST
6 132 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 103 (1.46%) NCSC
8 86 (1.22%) PCI DSS
9 65 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
10 61 (0.87%) SLA
11 60 (0.85%) PMO
11 60 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 40 (0.57%) GRC
13 39 (0.55%) WCAG
14 37 (0.52%) HIPAA
15 27 (0.38%) SOC 2
16 26 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 24 (0.34%) ISO 20022
17 24 (0.34%) NIST 800
System Software
1 891 (12.64%) Active Directory
2 838 (11.89%) Docker
3 211 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 104 (1.48%) Virtual Machines
6 85 (1.21%) Virtual Desktop
7 81 (1.15%) vSphere
8 32 (0.45%) VMware NSX
9 31 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
10 25 (0.35%) Firmware
11 16 (0.23%) NFS
12 8 (0.11%) Postfix
13 7 (0.099%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.085%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.085%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.085%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.085%) Snort
15 5 (0.071%) Ceph
15 5 (0.071%) GPFS
15 5 (0.071%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,103 (15.65%) Terraform
2 1,041 (14.77%) Kubernetes
3 368 (5.22%) Microsoft Intune
4 330 (4.68%) Ansible
5 190 (2.70%) Grafana
6 160 (2.27%) Single Sign-On
7 159 (2.26%) Prometheus
8 123 (1.75%) SCCM
9 74 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.64%) Argo
11 34 (0.48%) Istio
12 30 (0.43%) Puppet
13 29 (0.41%) FortiGate
14 28 (0.40%) Progress Chef
15 27 (0.38%) vCenter Server
16 26 (0.37%) vRealize
17 24 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
18 22 (0.31%) HP ALM
19 17 (0.24%) Kubeflow
20 16 (0.23%) VxRail
Vendors
1 2,260 (32.07%) Microsoft
2 711 (10.09%) Databricks
3 331 (4.70%) Google
4 327 (4.64%) Oracle
5 289 (4.10%) VMware
6 284 (4.03%) ServiceNow
7 206 (2.92%) SAP
8 190 (2.70%) Cisco
9 182 (2.58%) OpenAI
10 161 (2.28%) Splunk
11 130 (1.84%) CyberArk
12 121 (1.72%) Foundry
13 112 (1.59%) Palo Alto
14 92 (1.31%) Salesforce
15 85 (1.21%) Okta
16 79 (1.12%) Informatica
17 76 (1.08%) IBM
18 74 (1.05%) Red Hat
19 73 (1.04%) BeyondTrust
20 70 (0.99%) Citrix