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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,396 5,118 5,526
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.18% 15.41% 14.68%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.76% 40.12% 42.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,859 3,503 3,743
10th Percentile £363 £350 £338
25th Percentile £443 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £517 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.55% -1.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £723
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 45 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £22.58 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £45.20 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.94% -2.86% -24.21%
75th Percentile £78.81 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £93.75 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £25.89 £46.18
% change year-on-year +52.60% -43.95% -

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 19,185 12,757 13,080
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.70% 38.42% 34.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,732 8,532 8,661
10th Percentile £325 £308 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £715 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 644 291 182
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £16.41
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +7.99%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.75 £65.68
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.64 £34.47
% change year-on-year +52.79% -43.03% +53.11%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 -2 7,134 £529 +0.81% 6,409
London 0 3,779 £550 +0.92% 3,096
UK excluding London 0 3,497 £510 +2.00% 3,676
Work from Home -2 2,582 £525 +5.00% 3,375
North of England +4 1,025 £500 +5.26% 1,048
South East +1 910 £537 +7.40% 827
Midlands +1 633 £493 -5.38% 525
North West +4 497 £500 +5.26% 524
West Midlands +1 491 £477 -13.27% 338
Yorkshire +4 440 £500 - 386
South West +2 400 £550 +5.77% 388
Scotland -1 285 £500 - 340
East of England -2 184 £505 +1.00% 306
East Midlands +2 138 £500 +8.11% 187
North East -1 97 £506 +1.25% 146
Wales -1 82 £438 -2.78% 144
Northern Ireland +11 12 £650 - 120
Channel Islands -8 3 £500 -21.88% 4

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
1 475 (5.66%) SharePoint
2 275 (3.28%) Confluence
3 197 (2.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 193 (2.30%) Apache Spark
5 159 (1.89%) Apache Airflow
6 123 (1.46%) Apache
7 38 (0.45%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) IIS
9 28 (0.33%) CMS
10 23 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 13 (0.15%) OpenStack
14 9 (0.11%) Traefik
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.095%) Apache Superset
16 7 (0.083%) Mendix
17 6 (0.071%) Ethereum
17 6 (0.071%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 130 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 65 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 52 (0.62%) MS Visio
5 51 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 41 (0.49%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.095%) Trello
9 6 (0.071%) CPLEX
9 6 (0.071%) Revit
9 6 (0.071%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.060%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) 1Password
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) Mingle
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
11 3 (0.036%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 133 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.15%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 10 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 9 (0.11%) Cloudability
8 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.095%) Magento
10 7 (0.083%) Shopify
11 6 (0.071%) FLEXCUBE
11 6 (0.071%) Maximo
11 6 (0.071%) R3 Corda
11 6 (0.071%) Temenos T24
12 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
13 4 (0.048%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,974 (35.42%) AWS
2 1,799 (21.43%) Azure DevOps
3 1,490 (17.75%) GCP
4 1,173 (13.97%) Entra ID
5 1,091 (12.99%) Power Platform
6 913 (10.87%) Microsoft 365
7 905 (10.78%) GitHub
8 514 (6.12%) GitHub Actions
9 469 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 385 (4.59%) Serverless
11 368 (4.38%) SaaS
12 348 (4.14%) Azure Monitor
13 314 (3.74%) Dynamics 365
14 307 (3.66%) Power Automate
15 302 (3.60%) Snowflake
16 300 (3.57%) Azure AKS
17 296 (3.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 293 (3.49%) PowerApps
19 269 (3.20%) Azure AI
20 257 (3.06%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 527 (6.28%) Firewall
2 436 (5.19%) DNS
3 323 (3.85%) VPN
4 298 (3.55%) Network Security
5 236 (2.81%) DHCP
6 175 (2.08%) WAN
7 170 (2.02%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.30%) BGP
9 104 (1.24%) LAN
10 96 (1.14%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.05%) OSPF
12 83 (0.99%) VLAN
13 76 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
14 69 (0.82%) SSL
14 69 (0.82%) Wireless
15 63 (0.75%) SAN
16 49 (0.58%) HTTP
17 46 (0.55%) IPsec
18 41 (0.49%) Internet
19 39 (0.46%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 701 (8.35%) Power BI
2 480 (5.72%) SQL Server
3 409 (4.87%) Data Warehouse
4 398 (4.74%) Data Lake
5 300 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
6 259 (3.08%) Metadata
7 211 (2.51%) NoSQL
8 209 (2.49%) Azure SQL Database
9 151 (1.80%) Relational Database
10 131 (1.56%) Delta Lake
11 117 (1.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 113 (1.35%) MongoDB
13 112 (1.33%) MySQL
14 87 (1.04%) Big Data
15 72 (0.86%) Redis
16 70 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
17 68 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
18 66 (0.79%) BigQuery
19 63 (0.75%) Oracle Database
20 57 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 785 (9.35%) Git
2 617 (7.35%) JIRA
3 494 (5.88%) Jenkins
4 374 (4.45%) GitLab
5 147 (1.75%) Selenium
6 94 (1.12%) Postman
7 72 (0.86%) Cypress.io
8 70 (0.83%) Cucumber
9 66 (0.79%) JUnit
10 62 (0.74%) Claude Code
11 60 (0.71%) JMeter
12 56 (0.67%) Maven
13 53 (0.63%) Gradle
13 53 (0.63%) Visual Studio
14 51 (0.61%) SonarQube
15 50 (0.60%) REST Assured
16 37 (0.44%) MLflow
17 36 (0.43%) WebDriver
18 35 (0.42%) Bitbucket
19 34 (0.40%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,360 (28.11%) Social Skills
2 1,649 (19.64%) Finance
3 998 (11.89%) Public Sector
4 835 (9.95%) Analytical Skills
5 529 (6.30%) Banking
6 222 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 220 (2.62%) Retail
8 207 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
9 175 (2.08%) Legal
10 116 (1.38%) Manufacturing
11 114 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
12 100 (1.19%) Investment Banking
12 100 (1.19%) Marketing
13 90 (1.07%) Aerospace
13 90 (1.07%) Telecoms
14 84 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
15 76 (0.91%) Military
16 67 (0.80%) Law
17 64 (0.76%) Financial Institution
17 64 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,609 (19.16%) Architect
2 1,065 (12.68%) Senior
3 1,028 (12.24%) Developer
4 736 (8.77%) Azure Engineer
5 708 (8.43%) Lead
6 596 (7.10%) Data Engineer
7 510 (6.07%) Solutions Architect
8 464 (5.53%) Analyst
9 461 (5.49%) DevOps Engineer
10 388 (4.62%) Cloud Engineer
11 341 (4.06%) Consultant
12 320 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 267 (3.18%) Data Architect
14 241 (2.87%) Platform Engineer
15 220 (2.62%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 209 (2.49%) Azure Architect
17 201 (2.39%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 201 (2.39%) Technical Architect
18 198 (2.36%) Security Engineer
19 182 (2.17%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,445 (17.21%) Terraform
2 803 (9.56%) REST
3 647 (7.71%) .NET
4 412 (4.91%) Kafka
5 325 (3.87%) React
6 308 (3.67%) RESTful
7 291 (3.47%) OAuth
8 267 (3.18%) PySpark
9 245 (2.92%) JSON
10 190 (2.26%) Spring
11 184 (2.19%) OpenID
11 184 (2.19%) Spring Boot
12 177 (2.11%) OAuth2
13 167 (1.99%) HTML
14 162 (1.93%) Middleware
14 162 (1.93%) SAML
15 158 (1.88%) SOAP
16 153 (1.82%) AngularJS
17 152 (1.81%) Node.js
18 144 (1.72%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 944 (11.24%) Cloud Native
2 444 (5.29%) Onboarding
3 417 (4.97%) Product Ownership
4 348 (4.14%) Enterprise Software
5 347 (4.13%) AI Agents
6 290 (3.45%) Distributed Systems
7 288 (3.43%) Hybrid Cloud
8 259 (3.08%) Data Centre
9 229 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
10 192 (2.29%) Management Information System
11 188 (2.24%) Security Posture
12 158 (1.88%) Data Structures
13 144 (1.72%) Public Cloud
14 132 (1.57%) PKI
15 118 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
16 114 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
17 103 (1.23%) Replication
18 94 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
19 91 (1.08%) CMDB
20 90 (1.07%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 1,003 (11.95%) Windows
2 542 (6.46%) Linux
3 392 (4.67%) Windows Server
4 159 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 89 (1.06%) Unix
6 87 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 85 (1.01%) Android
8 80 (0.95%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.74%) macOS
10 58 (0.69%) Ubuntu
11 51 (0.61%) VMS
12 27 (0.32%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.083%) AIX
18 6 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
18 6 (0.071%) Debian
19 5 (0.060%) Alpine Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,136 (37.35%) DevOps
2 2,764 (32.92%) CI/CD
3 2,126 (25.32%) Agile
4 1,585 (18.88%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,486 (17.70%) AI
6 1,455 (17.33%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,267 (15.09%) Migration
8 1,163 (13.85%) Problem-Solving
9 1,152 (13.72%) Analytics
10 1,015 (12.09%) Continuous Improvement
11 906 (10.79%) Data Modelling
12 904 (10.77%) Roadmaps
13 796 (9.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 796 (9.48%) Test Automation
14 782 (9.31%) Containerisation
15 779 (9.28%) Technical Leadership
16 763 (9.09%) Business Intelligence
17 751 (8.94%) Microservices
18 743 (8.85%) Data Pipeline
19 696 (8.29%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 1,969 (23.45%) Python
2 1,615 (19.24%) SQL
3 956 (11.39%) PowerShell
4 685 (8.16%) Java
5 636 (7.58%) C#
6 540 (6.43%) JavaScript
7 434 (5.17%) Bash
8 394 (4.69%) Bicep
9 334 (3.98%) TypeScript
10 105 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.07%) T-SQL
12 75 (0.89%) Go
13 72 (0.86%) Kusto Query Language
14 71 (0.85%) Scala
15 63 (0.75%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.51%) PL/SQL
17 35 (0.42%) R
18 33 (0.39%) C++
18 33 (0.39%) Groovy
18 33 (0.39%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 2,199 (26.19%) Security Cleared
2 1,764 (21.01%) SC Cleared
3 581 (6.92%) Degree
4 486 (5.79%) Azure Certification
5 326 (3.88%) DV Cleared
6 282 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
7 270 (3.22%) CISSP
8 255 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 228 (2.72%) AWS Certification
10 195 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
11 189 (2.25%) Cisco Certification
12 140 (1.67%) CISM
13 99 (1.18%) PMI Certification
14 94 (1.12%) PMP
15 90 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 80 (0.95%) CCNP
17 71 (0.85%) ISTQB
18 66 (0.79%) Master's Degree
19 63 (0.75%) CCSP
20 56 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 633 (7.54%) Data Quality
2 491 (5.85%) QA
3 302 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 285 (3.39%) GDPR
5 283 (3.37%) NIST
6 211 (2.51%) Accessibility
7 118 (1.41%) NCSC
8 110 (1.31%) SLA
9 81 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
9 81 (0.96%) WCAG
10 79 (0.94%) GRC
11 74 (0.88%) PCI DSS
12 51 (0.61%) PMO
13 48 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 47 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 38 (0.45%) SOC 2
16 27 (0.32%) ISO 20022
17 24 (0.29%) HIPAA
18 23 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,042 (12.41%) Active Directory
2 951 (11.33%) Docker
3 248 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 152 (1.81%) Virtual Machines
5 139 (1.66%) Virtual Desktop
6 128 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.91%) vSphere
8 48 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.23%) Firmware
11 16 (0.19%) IAG
12 15 (0.18%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 7 (0.083%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.083%) Ceph
17 6 (0.071%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.060%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 1,335 (15.90%) Kubernetes
2 469 (5.59%) Ansible
3 456 (5.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 279 (3.32%) Grafana
5 209 (2.49%) Prometheus
6 151 (1.80%) SCCM
6 151 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
7 63 (0.75%) Argo
8 62 (0.74%) Progress Chef
9 48 (0.57%) Puppet
10 38 (0.45%) FortiGate
11 34 (0.40%) Istio
11 34 (0.40%) SCOM
12 33 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
13 25 (0.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.25%) CASB
15 19 (0.23%) QRadar
16 18 (0.21%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.20%) Packer
18 13 (0.15%) Kibana
Vendors
1 3,138 (37.37%) Microsoft
2 889 (10.59%) Databricks
3 422 (5.03%) Google
4 408 (4.86%) ServiceNow
5 367 (4.37%) Oracle
6 358 (4.26%) VMware
7 243 (2.89%) OpenAI
8 237 (2.82%) Splunk
9 235 (2.80%) Cisco
10 224 (2.67%) SAP
11 198 (2.36%) Salesforce
12 155 (1.85%) Palo Alto
13 153 (1.82%) Foundry
14 147 (1.75%) CyberArk
15 146 (1.74%) Dynatrace
16 91 (1.08%) IBM
17 89 (1.06%) Zscaler
18 86 (1.02%) Informatica
19 83 (0.99%) Fortinet
20 80 (0.95%) Okta