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

6 months to
23 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,576 5,474 6,946
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.61% 14.82% 14.95%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.70% 41.94% 42.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,874 3,661 5,084
10th Percentile £350 £338 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.50% -2.70%
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 59 51 88
10th Percentile £16.18 £20.30 £17.75
25th Percentile £26.00 £23.80 £25.56
Median hourly rate £45.46 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +46.65% -32.87% +31.94%
75th Percentile £78.75 £60.38 £67.00
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 13,699 13,052 16,339
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.34% 35.33% 35.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,272 8,593 11,692
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 £709 £738 £737
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 189 305
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.44 £14.42
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.75
Median hourly rate £26.00 £30.88 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.79% +12.27% +25.00%
75th Percentile £51.25 £55.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.50 £21.82
% change year-on-year -18.18% +26.03% +14.36%

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 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 23 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 23 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 4,746 £525 -0.94% 3,001
London +1 2,553 £543 -1.32% 1,032
UK excluding London 0 2,314 £500 - 2,690
Work from Home -1 1,824 £513 -2.38% 1,557
North of England -1 588 £475 -5.00% 515
South East -3 560 £500 -4.76% 975
Midlands -2 422 £525 +0.48% 391
South West +6 316 £500 - 281
West Midlands +1 315 £550 +4.76% 259
North West -1 287 £475 -5.00% 287
Yorkshire -1 273 £489 -2.25% 163
Scotland +1 258 £500 +11.11% 207
East of England +1 157 £500 +29.03% 239
East Midlands -3 104 £450 -10.00% 127
Wales +1 65 £450 -10.00% 96
North East -7 32 £515 +17.05% 69
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -4 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 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 186 (3.34%) Microsoft Exchange
3 141 (2.53%) Confluence
4 125 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 88 (1.58%) Apache
6 83 (1.49%) Apache Airflow
7 29 (0.52%) CMS
8 27 (0.48%) SAS
9 22 (0.39%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.32%) nginx
11 17 (0.30%) 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%) Camunda
Applications
1 124 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.58%) 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 3 (0.054%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.036%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.036%) Windchill
12 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
12 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.018%) Revit
12 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 100 (1.79%) 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%) Maximo
9 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.090%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.090%) Remedy ITSM
11 4 (0.072%) Fidessa
11 4 (0.072%) Primavera
11 4 (0.072%) SAP MDG
11 4 (0.072%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,045 (36.68%) AWS
2 1,116 (20.01%) Azure DevOps
3 1,089 (19.53%) GCP
4 705 (12.64%) Power Platform
5 637 (11.42%) Microsoft 365
6 624 (11.19%) Entra ID
7 536 (9.61%) GitHub
8 345 (6.19%) Azure Data Factory
9 315 (5.65%) GitHub Actions
10 294 (5.27%) Serverless
11 251 (4.50%) Dynamics 365
12 248 (4.45%) SaaS
13 239 (4.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 220 (3.95%) Azure AKS
15 211 (3.78%) Power Automate
16 209 (3.75%) Snowflake
17 201 (3.60%) PaaS
18 197 (3.53%) Azure Monitor
19 194 (3.48%) PowerApps
20 192 (3.44%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 409 (7.34%) Firewall
2 208 (3.73%) DNS
3 176 (3.16%) VPN
4 153 (2.74%) Network Security
5 118 (2.12%) WAN
6 104 (1.87%) DHCP
7 86 (1.54%) TCP/IP
8 78 (1.40%) LAN
9 69 (1.24%) HTTP
10 62 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
11 60 (1.08%) VLAN
12 57 (1.02%) SD-WAN
13 43 (0.77%) BGP
14 41 (0.74%) SAN
15 35 (0.63%) Internet
16 33 (0.59%) MPLS
17 31 (0.56%) OSPF
18 28 (0.50%) SSL
18 28 (0.50%) Wireless
19 20 (0.36%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 486 (8.72%) Power BI
2 306 (5.49%) SQL Server
3 260 (4.66%) Data Warehouse
4 244 (4.38%) Data Lake
5 242 (4.34%) PostgreSQL
6 181 (3.25%) Azure SQL Database
7 179 (3.21%) NoSQL
8 130 (2.33%) Relational Database
9 115 (2.06%) Metadata
10 102 (1.83%) MongoDB
11 83 (1.49%) MySQL
12 82 (1.47%) Big Data
13 70 (1.26%) Delta Lake
14 65 (1.17%) Tableau
15 60 (1.08%) BigQuery
16 59 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 54 (0.97%) Redis
18 50 (0.90%) Oracle Database
19 45 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
20 38 (0.68%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 485 (8.70%) Git
2 417 (7.48%) JIRA
3 326 (5.85%) Jenkins
4 222 (3.98%) GitLab
5 95 (1.70%) Selenium
6 85 (1.52%) Postman
7 79 (1.42%) SonarQube
8 64 (1.15%) JUnit
9 47 (0.84%) JMeter
10 46 (0.82%) Bitbucket
10 46 (0.82%) Cypress.io
11 45 (0.81%) Cucumber
12 42 (0.75%) Maven
13 38 (0.68%) Visual Studio
14 37 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.59%) ERwin
16 32 (0.57%) CircleCI
17 31 (0.56%) Gradle
18 30 (0.54%) SpecFlow
19 29 (0.52%) Mockito
General
1 1,787 (32.05%) Social Skills
2 1,078 (19.33%) Finance
3 658 (11.80%) Public Sector
4 533 (9.56%) Analytical Skills
5 372 (6.67%) Banking
6 200 (3.59%) Documentation Skills
7 132 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 96 (1.72%) Investment Banking
8 96 (1.72%) Marketing
8 96 (1.72%) Retail
9 91 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
10 88 (1.58%) Legal
11 77 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
12 74 (1.33%) Telecoms
13 69 (1.24%) Manufacturing
14 59 (1.06%) Law
15 51 (0.91%) Local Government
16 47 (0.84%) Front Office
17 44 (0.79%) Financial Institution
18 42 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 914 (16.39%) Architect
2 908 (16.28%) Developer
3 560 (10.04%) Senior
4 418 (7.50%) Analyst
5 408 (7.32%) Azure Engineer
6 384 (6.89%) Lead
7 352 (6.31%) Data Engineer
8 319 (5.72%) Solutions Architect
9 273 (4.90%) DevOps Engineer
10 220 (3.95%) Consultant
11 181 (3.25%) Security Engineer
12 171 (3.07%) Senior Developer
13 162 (2.91%) Azure Architect
14 160 (2.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 136 (2.44%) Cloud Engineer
16 132 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
17 122 (2.19%) Data Architect
18 114 (2.04%) Business Analyst
18 114 (2.04%) Software Engineer
18 114 (2.04%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 470 (8.43%) .NET
2 350 (6.28%) REST
3 264 (4.73%) RESTful
4 249 (4.47%) React
5 208 (3.73%) Kafka
6 199 (3.57%) Node.js
7 190 (3.41%) Spring
8 187 (3.35%) HTML
9 175 (3.14%) OAuth
10 166 (2.98%) AngularJS
11 163 (2.92%) Spring Boot
12 158 (2.83%) JSON
13 153 (2.74%) PySpark
14 148 (2.65%) CSS
15 131 (2.35%) SOAP
16 111 (1.99%) PyTorch
17 102 (1.83%) XML
18 101 (1.81%) TensorFlow
19 100 (1.79%) SAML
20 97 (1.74%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 433 (7.77%) Cloud Native
2 197 (3.53%) Product Ownership
3 186 (3.34%) Onboarding
4 158 (2.83%) Hybrid Cloud
5 145 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
6 133 (2.39%) Data Centre
7 118 (2.12%) Security Posture
8 112 (2.01%) Distributed Systems
9 110 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
10 101 (1.81%) Public Cloud
11 79 (1.42%) Algorithms
11 79 (1.42%) Management Information System
12 77 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
13 69 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
14 57 (1.02%) Replication
15 55 (0.99%) AI Agents
15 55 (0.99%) Low-Code
16 53 (0.95%) Data Structures
17 52 (0.93%) PKI
18 48 (0.86%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 643 (11.53%) Windows
2 381 (6.83%) Linux
3 190 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.97%) Unix
5 94 (1.69%) Windows 10
6 59 (1.06%) Android
7 52 (0.93%) Apple iOS
8 46 (0.82%) VMS
9 38 (0.68%) Mac OS
10 28 (0.50%) 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 2,025 (36.32%) DevOps
2 1,629 (29.21%) CI/CD
3 1,511 (27.10%) Agile
4 1,024 (18.36%) Problem-Solving
5 752 (13.49%) Infrastructure as Code
6 747 (13.40%) Analytics
7 653 (11.71%) Migration
8 630 (11.30%) AI
9 556 (9.97%) Business Intelligence
10 548 (9.83%) Containerisation
11 544 (9.76%) Stakeholder Management
12 478 (8.57%) Test Automation
13 472 (8.46%) Microservices
14 470 (8.43%) Machine Learning
15 468 (8.39%) Data Modelling
16 448 (8.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 437 (7.84%) Continuous Improvement
18 427 (7.66%) Cybersecurity
19 418 (7.50%) Scrum
20 394 (7.07%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,421 (25.48%) Python
2 1,200 (21.52%) SQL
3 591 (10.60%) PowerShell
4 553 (9.92%) Java
5 510 (9.15%) C#
6 447 (8.02%) JavaScript
7 287 (5.15%) Bash
8 239 (4.29%) TypeScript
9 153 (2.74%) Bicep
10 94 (1.69%) Go
11 74 (1.33%) Kusto Query Language
12 65 (1.17%) Scala
13 62 (1.11%) PL/SQL
14 55 (0.99%) R
15 52 (0.93%) T-SQL
16 47 (0.84%) C++
17 40 (0.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 38 (0.68%) Shell Script
19 31 (0.56%) Perl
19 31 (0.56%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,162 (20.84%) Security Cleared
2 949 (17.02%) SC Cleared
3 483 (8.66%) Degree
4 342 (6.13%) Azure Certification
5 185 (3.32%) CISSP
6 184 (3.30%) Microsoft Certification
7 170 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 146 (2.62%) AWS Certification
9 134 (2.40%) DV Cleared
10 101 (1.81%) CISM
11 99 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
12 84 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
13 82 (1.47%) Master's Degree
14 47 (0.84%) CCNP
14 47 (0.84%) ISTQB
15 39 (0.70%) OSCP
16 36 (0.65%) PMI Certification
17 34 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 34 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
18 33 (0.59%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 345 (6.19%) GDPR
2 321 (5.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 308 (5.52%) QA
4 257 (4.61%) NIST
5 248 (4.45%) Data Quality
6 134 (2.40%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.45%) NCSC
8 71 (1.27%) PCI DSS
9 56 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
10 53 (0.95%) HIPAA
11 38 (0.68%) SOC 2
12 35 (0.63%) SLA
13 32 (0.57%) WCAG
14 31 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 28 (0.50%) EU AI Act
16 27 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.47%) GRC
18 24 (0.43%) PSD2
19 21 (0.38%) PMO
20 20 (0.36%) COBIT
System Software
1 703 (12.61%) Docker
2 680 (12.20%) Active Directory
3 170 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (1.33%) Hyper-V
5 72 (1.29%) Virtual Machines
6 61 (1.09%) Virtual Desktop
7 47 (0.84%) vSphere
8 25 (0.45%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.27%) Squid
10 14 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
11 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
11 13 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
12 10 (0.18%) Firmware
12 10 (0.18%) Postfix
13 9 (0.16%) zsh
14 8 (0.14%) KVM
14 8 (0.14%) NFS
14 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.13%) Snort
Systems Management
1 829 (14.87%) Terraform
2 787 (14.11%) Kubernetes
3 300 (5.38%) Microsoft Intune
4 296 (5.31%) Ansible
5 137 (2.46%) Single Sign-On
6 130 (2.33%) SCCM
7 129 (2.31%) Grafana
8 125 (2.24%) Prometheus
9 38 (0.68%) Argo
10 32 (0.57%) Puppet
11 31 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 27 (0.48%) Nessus
13 24 (0.43%) Kibana
14 21 (0.38%) Nmap
15 20 (0.36%) NetBackup
16 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
16 19 (0.34%) Progress Chef
17 17 (0.30%) vRealize
18 16 (0.29%) Istio
18 16 (0.29%) QRadar
Vendors
1 1,802 (32.32%) Microsoft
2 492 (8.82%) Databricks
3 327 (5.86%) Oracle
4 271 (4.86%) Google
5 223 (4.00%) VMware
6 211 (3.78%) ServiceNow
7 172 (3.08%) Cisco
8 154 (2.76%) SAP
9 136 (2.44%) Splunk
10 125 (2.24%) Salesforce
11 107 (1.92%) OpenAI
12 89 (1.60%) Palo Alto
13 83 (1.49%) Citrix
13 83 (1.49%) CyberArk
14 60 (1.08%) F5
15 59 (1.06%) Red Hat
16 58 (1.04%) Foundry
17 57 (1.02%) IBM
18 55 (0.99%) Okta
19 53 (0.95%) Dynatrace