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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,188 4,842 6,135
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.08% 15.38% 14.00%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.29% 41.58% 41.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,389 3,263 4,477
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £516
% change year-on-year - -3.15% -1.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 42 85
10th Percentile £18.30 £20.39 £17.75
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.64 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £28.25 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +103.54% -38.83% -9.45%
75th Percentile £68.00 £52.80 £62.50
90th Percentile £92.50 £74.38 £76.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +109.09% -40.45% -28.95%

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 14,631 11,646 14,699
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.02% 36.99% 33.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,078 7,737 10,540
10th Percentile £306 £313 £285
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -1.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 169 304
10th Percentile £14.25 £17.35 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £27.50 £23.43
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% +17.40% -0.32%
75th Percentile £58.75 £43.75 £52.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £69.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £24.66 £21.00
% change year-on-year +31.79% +17.43% +7.69%

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 29 January 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 29 January 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 29 January 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 5,235 £520 -0.95% 3,189
London 0 2,817 £540 -1.82% 971
UK excluding London 0 2,535 £500 - 2,856
Work from Home -2 1,900 £515 -1.15% 1,630
North of England -1 683 £468 +1.14% 628
South East -2 648 £492 -7.17% 995
Midlands -2 448 £515 -1.67% 368
West Midlands +2 338 £550 - 182
North West -1 338 £450 - 348
South West +5 324 £512 -2.57% 310
Yorkshire -1 301 £479 +0.74% 199
Scotland +8 288 £550 +18.41% 165
East of England 0 141 £520 +17.18% 302
East Midlands -3 109 £433 -3.78% 183
Wales -4 62 £410 -16.33% 112
North East -5 47 £475 -6.17% 85
Northern Ireland +4 9 £430 - 35
Channel Islands +3 2 £600 +101.68% 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
1 285 (4.61%) SharePoint
2 197 (3.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 155 (2.50%) Confluence
4 154 (2.49%) Apache Spark
5 83 (1.34%) Apache
6 81 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.44%) OpenStack
8 26 (0.42%) CMS
8 26 (0.42%) SAS
9 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
9 14 (0.23%) IIS
10 13 (0.21%) Appian
10 13 (0.21%) Camunda
10 13 (0.21%) nginx
11 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 12 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 10 (0.16%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.15%) Mendix
Applications
1 134 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 102 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 47 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 40 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
6 13 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.15%) Trello
8 8 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.081%) Weka
10 4 (0.065%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.016%) FrameMaker
13 1 (0.016%) Revit
Business Applications
1 110 (1.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Maximo
5 9 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
5 9 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.13%) Endur
6 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.097%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.097%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,170 (35.07%) AWS
2 1,237 (19.99%) Azure DevOps
3 1,211 (19.57%) GCP
4 840 (13.57%) Power Platform
5 724 (11.70%) Entra ID
6 716 (11.57%) Microsoft 365
7 641 (10.36%) GitHub
8 435 (7.03%) Azure Data Factory
9 378 (6.11%) Serverless
10 368 (5.95%) GitHub Actions
11 297 (4.80%) Dynamics 365
12 282 (4.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 262 (4.23%) Power Automate
14 257 (4.15%) SaaS
15 238 (3.85%) Azure AKS
16 225 (3.64%) Azure Functions
17 219 (3.54%) Azure Monitor
18 217 (3.51%) Snowflake
19 212 (3.43%) Azure Logic Apps
20 205 (3.31%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 420 (6.79%) Firewall
2 266 (4.30%) DNS
3 199 (3.22%) VPN
4 173 (2.80%) Network Security
5 160 (2.59%) DHCP
6 152 (2.46%) WAN
7 96 (1.55%) LAN
7 96 (1.55%) TCP/IP
8 77 (1.24%) SD-WAN
9 76 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
10 67 (1.08%) Kerberos
11 64 (1.03%) VLAN
12 62 (1.00%) HTTP
13 38 (0.61%) BGP
14 36 (0.58%) Internet
15 35 (0.57%) Wireless
16 30 (0.48%) MPLS
17 28 (0.45%) SSL
18 25 (0.40%) OSPF
18 25 (0.40%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 578 (9.34%) Power BI
2 359 (5.80%) SQL Server
3 308 (4.98%) Data Lake
3 308 (4.98%) Data Warehouse
4 229 (3.70%) PostgreSQL
5 220 (3.56%) Azure SQL Database
6 183 (2.96%) NoSQL
7 141 (2.28%) Metadata
8 128 (2.07%) Relational Database
9 100 (1.62%) Delta Lake
10 88 (1.42%) MongoDB
11 86 (1.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 78 (1.26%) Big Data
12 78 (1.26%) MySQL
13 69 (1.12%) Oracle Database
14 65 (1.05%) Tableau
15 64 (1.03%) BigQuery
16 53 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
17 48 (0.78%) Redis
18 44 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 480 (7.76%) Git
2 441 (7.13%) JIRA
3 354 (5.72%) Jenkins
4 259 (4.19%) GitLab
5 108 (1.75%) Selenium
6 98 (1.58%) Postman
7 61 (0.99%) Cucumber
8 60 (0.97%) SonarQube
9 56 (0.90%) JUnit
10 55 (0.89%) JMeter
11 48 (0.78%) Cypress.io
12 43 (0.69%) REST Assured
13 39 (0.63%) MLflow
13 39 (0.63%) Visual Studio
14 37 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
15 31 (0.50%) Artifactory
15 31 (0.50%) Bitbucket
15 31 (0.50%) Maven
16 28 (0.45%) ERwin
16 28 (0.45%) TestRail
General
1 1,953 (31.56%) Social Skills
2 1,104 (17.84%) Finance
3 732 (11.83%) Public Sector
4 612 (9.89%) Analytical Skills
5 363 (5.87%) Banking
6 204 (3.30%) Documentation Skills
7 126 (2.04%) Legal
8 117 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 104 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
10 94 (1.52%) Marketing
11 90 (1.45%) Retail
12 86 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
13 74 (1.20%) Investment Banking
14 61 (0.99%) Telecoms
15 58 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
16 54 (0.87%) Manufacturing
17 53 (0.86%) Financial Institution
18 52 (0.84%) Law
19 40 (0.65%) Local Government
19 40 (0.65%) Military
Job Titles
1 999 (16.14%) Architect
2 905 (14.63%) Developer
3 629 (10.16%) Senior
4 492 (7.95%) Azure Engineer
5 474 (7.66%) Data Engineer
6 421 (6.80%) Lead
7 415 (6.71%) Analyst
8 336 (5.43%) DevOps Engineer
9 315 (5.09%) Solutions Architect
10 265 (4.28%) Consultant
11 181 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 180 (2.91%) Security Engineer
13 159 (2.57%) Senior Developer
14 158 (2.55%) Cloud Engineer
15 149 (2.41%) Azure Architect
16 141 (2.28%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 132 (2.13%) Platform Engineer
18 130 (2.10%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 124 (2.00%) Data Architect
20 122 (1.97%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 508 (8.21%) .NET
2 442 (7.14%) REST
3 282 (4.56%) React
4 248 (4.01%) RESTful
5 230 (3.72%) PySpark
6 224 (3.62%) Kafka
7 203 (3.28%) Node.js
8 195 (3.15%) OAuth
9 191 (3.09%) Spring
10 178 (2.88%) Spring Boot
11 171 (2.76%) AngularJS
12 169 (2.73%) HTML
13 154 (2.49%) LDAP
14 147 (2.38%) SOAP
15 145 (2.34%) JSON
16 144 (2.33%) CSS
17 134 (2.17%) PyTorch
18 126 (2.04%) TensorFlow
19 116 (1.87%) SAML
20 112 (1.81%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 540 (8.73%) Cloud Native
2 232 (3.75%) Onboarding
3 213 (3.44%) Product Ownership
4 167 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
5 161 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
6 159 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
6 159 (2.57%) Security Posture
7 138 (2.23%) Data Centre
8 118 (1.91%) Public Cloud
9 97 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
10 90 (1.45%) Replication
11 86 (1.39%) AI Agents
12 77 (1.24%) Management Information System
13 72 (1.16%) Data Structures
14 68 (1.10%) Algorithms
14 68 (1.10%) Low-Code
15 62 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
16 59 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
16 59 (0.95%) NHS
17 56 (0.90%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 712 (11.51%) Windows
2 377 (6.09%) Linux
3 202 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 125 (2.02%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.55%) Unix
6 56 (0.90%) VMS
7 49 (0.79%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.73%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.69%) Android
10 37 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.18%) CentOS
14 9 (0.15%) Solaris
14 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.081%) AIX
17 3 (0.048%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,282 (36.88%) DevOps
2 1,867 (30.17%) CI/CD
3 1,548 (25.02%) Agile
4 1,184 (19.13%) Problem-Solving
5 907 (14.66%) Analytics
6 817 (13.20%) Infrastructure as Code
7 807 (13.04%) AI
8 736 (11.89%) Migration
9 651 (10.52%) Business Intelligence
10 642 (10.37%) Stakeholder Management
11 620 (10.02%) Containerisation
12 597 (9.65%) Data Modelling
13 549 (8.87%) Continuous Improvement
14 532 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 525 (8.48%) Machine Learning
16 514 (8.31%) ETL
16 514 (8.31%) Microservices
17 509 (8.23%) Test Automation
18 505 (8.16%) Data Pipeline
19 450 (7.27%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 1,583 (25.58%) Python
2 1,340 (21.65%) SQL
3 682 (11.02%) PowerShell
4 546 (8.82%) Java
5 536 (8.66%) C#
6 472 (7.63%) JavaScript
7 263 (4.25%) Bash
7 263 (4.25%) TypeScript
8 181 (2.93%) Bicep
9 97 (1.57%) Scala
10 85 (1.37%) Go
11 81 (1.31%) PL/SQL
12 69 (1.12%) Kusto Query Language
13 67 (1.08%) T-SQL
14 60 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 52 (0.84%) R
15 52 (0.84%) Shell Script
16 41 (0.66%) C++
17 34 (0.55%) PHP
18 25 (0.40%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,439 (23.25%) Security Cleared
2 1,193 (19.28%) SC Cleared
3 516 (8.34%) Degree
4 346 (5.59%) Azure Certification
5 196 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 170 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
7 163 (2.63%) CISSP
8 128 (2.07%) AWS Certification
9 124 (2.00%) DV Cleared
10 107 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
11 106 (1.71%) CISM
12 92 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
13 90 (1.45%) Master's Degree
14 51 (0.82%) PMI Certification
15 47 (0.76%) PMP
15 47 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
16 46 (0.74%) ISTQB
17 43 (0.69%) CCNP
18 40 (0.65%) MCP
19 29 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (6.08%) Data Quality
2 370 (5.98%) GDPR
3 331 (5.35%) QA
4 309 (4.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 232 (3.75%) NIST
6 130 (2.10%) Accessibility
7 91 (1.47%) NCSC
8 70 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 55 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 52 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
11 48 (0.78%) SLA
12 40 (0.65%) HIPAA
13 38 (0.61%) PMO
13 38 (0.61%) SOC 2
13 38 (0.61%) WCAG
14 28 (0.45%) EU AI Act
15 27 (0.44%) GRC
15 27 (0.44%) PSD2
16 23 (0.37%) ISO 20022
17 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 816 (13.19%) Active Directory
2 767 (12.39%) Docker
3 194 (3.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (1.52%) Hyper-V
5 75 (1.21%) Virtual Machines
6 73 (1.18%) Virtual Desktop
7 60 (0.97%) vSphere
8 20 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.21%) Squid
10 11 (0.18%) DFS Replication
10 11 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.16%) KVM
12 9 (0.15%) Firmware
12 9 (0.15%) Postfix
12 9 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 8 (0.13%) Dovecot
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) NFS
15 6 (0.097%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 943 (15.24%) Terraform
2 891 (14.40%) Kubernetes
3 324 (5.24%) Microsoft Intune
4 320 (5.17%) Ansible
5 165 (2.67%) Single Sign-On
6 155 (2.50%) Grafana
7 144 (2.33%) SCCM
8 139 (2.25%) Prometheus
9 67 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.73%) Argo
11 33 (0.53%) Puppet
12 26 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 24 (0.39%) Nessus
13 24 (0.39%) vRealize
14 23 (0.37%) Istio
14 23 (0.37%) Kibana
15 20 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 18 (0.29%) Nmap
16 18 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
16 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,005 (32.40%) Microsoft
2 615 (9.94%) Databricks
3 363 (5.87%) Oracle
4 325 (5.25%) Google
5 264 (4.27%) ServiceNow
6 255 (4.12%) VMware
7 174 (2.81%) SAP
8 161 (2.60%) Cisco
9 156 (2.52%) Splunk
10 152 (2.46%) OpenAI
11 126 (2.04%) Salesforce
12 114 (1.84%) CyberArk
13 102 (1.65%) Palo Alto
14 75 (1.21%) Okta
15 72 (1.16%) Foundry
16 66 (1.07%) Red Hat
17 65 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
17 65 (1.05%) Citrix
18 60 (0.97%) IBM
19 58 (0.94%) Fortinet