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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,300 4,848 5,681
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.57% 14.74% 14.40%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.10% 39.56% 42.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,794 3,343 4,082
10th Percentile £370 £350 £343
25th Percentile £435 £425 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £720 £725 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 38 40
10th Percentile £18.40 £18.53 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +23.50% -40.32%
75th Percentile £78.00 £77.19 £58.53
90th Percentile £95.63 £100.00 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £53.23 £31.00
% change year-on-year +8.03% +71.69% -32.87%

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 18,822 12,256 13,281
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.30% 37.26% 33.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,428 8,209 9,287
10th Percentile £325 £313 £311
25th Percentile £420 £411 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £622 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 626 312 280
10th Percentile £16.15 £15.16 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.70 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £27.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +29.09% +15.55% -32.00%
75th Percentile £69.67 £47.50 £52.18
90th Percentile £83.13 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.57 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +88.47% -10.14% -20.75%

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 1 August 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 1 August 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 1 August 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 7,119 £525 - 3,530
London +1 3,737 £550 - 1,608
UK excluding London +3 3,576 £500 - 2,396
Work from Home -1 2,571 £525 +5.00% 1,838
North of England +8 1,026 £500 +5.26% 651
South East +2 905 £525 +5.00% 738
Midlands +4 648 £493 -1.50% 315
North West +7 536 £500 +4.17% 368
West Midlands +2 491 £493 -6.19% 199
South West +7 441 £539 +7.75% 299
Yorkshire +5 410 £500 +5.26% 206
Scotland +8 303 £500 +3.52% 132
East of England +3 180 £535 -2.73% 164
East Midlands +9 145 £488 +5.41% 116
Wales 0 95 £450 +0.90% 85
North East +5 94 £516 +3.25% 91
Northern Ireland +8 15 £644 +35.53% 60
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 433 (5.22%) SharePoint
2 283 (3.41%) Confluence
3 203 (2.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 177 (2.13%) Apache Spark
5 141 (1.70%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.42%) Apache
7 43 (0.52%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 18 (0.22%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.13%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.096%) Mendix
15 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.072%) Camunda
16 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 121 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.41%) Chatbot
6 31 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
10 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 8 (0.096%) Revit
12 4 (0.048%) Notion
13 3 (0.036%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.036%) Houdini
13 3 (0.036%) NUKE
14 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) PTC Creo
15 1 (0.012%) Sketch
15 1 (0.012%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 115 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.14%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.096%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 8 (0.096%) Maximo
9 7 (0.084%) Payment Gateway
9 7 (0.084%) Shopify
10 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 6 (0.072%) Teamcenter
11 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
11 5 (0.060%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
12 4 (0.048%) Endur
12 4 (0.048%) SAP MM
12 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,952 (35.57%) AWS
2 1,726 (20.80%) Azure DevOps
3 1,426 (17.18%) GCP
4 1,039 (12.52%) Entra ID
5 1,038 (12.51%) Power Platform
6 823 (9.92%) Microsoft 365
7 807 (9.72%) GitHub
8 486 (5.86%) GitHub Actions
9 474 (5.71%) Azure Data Factory
10 356 (4.29%) Serverless
11 333 (4.01%) SaaS
12 317 (3.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 306 (3.69%) Azure AKS
14 292 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
15 285 (3.43%) Power Automate
16 275 (3.31%) PowerApps
17 263 (3.17%) PaaS
18 260 (3.13%) Dynamics 365
19 237 (2.86%) Snowflake
20 235 (2.83%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 522 (6.29%) Firewall
2 391 (4.71%) DNS
3 320 (3.86%) VPN
4 299 (3.60%) Network Security
5 204 (2.46%) WAN
6 194 (2.34%) DHCP
7 159 (1.92%) TCP/IP
8 128 (1.54%) LAN
9 114 (1.37%) BGP
10 105 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 92 (1.11%) VLAN
12 91 (1.10%) OSPF
13 87 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
14 78 (0.94%) SSL
15 59 (0.71%) SAN
16 58 (0.70%) Wireless
17 56 (0.67%) IPsec
18 48 (0.58%) VXLAN
19 46 (0.55%) HTTP
20 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 719 (8.66%) Power BI
2 467 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 410 (4.94%) Data Warehouse
4 362 (4.36%) Data Lake
5 313 (3.77%) PostgreSQL
6 222 (2.67%) NoSQL
7 214 (2.58%) Azure SQL Database
8 211 (2.54%) Metadata
9 140 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 134 (1.61%) Delta Lake
11 109 (1.31%) MongoDB
12 106 (1.28%) Big Data
13 100 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 92 (1.11%) MySQL
15 68 (0.82%) Tableau
16 65 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
17 62 (0.75%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.71%) Redis
19 57 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
19 57 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 657 (7.92%) Git
2 644 (7.76%) JIRA
3 442 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 334 (4.02%) GitLab
5 127 (1.53%) Selenium
6 74 (0.89%) JUnit
7 72 (0.87%) Postman
8 69 (0.83%) JMeter
9 58 (0.70%) Cucumber
10 57 (0.69%) Cypress.io
11 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 50 (0.60%) Maven
13 48 (0.58%) REST Assured
14 45 (0.54%) Visual Studio
15 44 (0.53%) WebDriver
16 40 (0.48%) MLflow
17 37 (0.45%) Gradle
18 31 (0.37%) Claude Code
19 30 (0.36%) Gatling
19 30 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 2,119 (25.53%) Social Skills
2 1,549 (18.66%) Finance
3 976 (11.76%) Public Sector
4 782 (9.42%) Analytical Skills
5 436 (5.25%) Banking
6 233 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 190 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 190 (2.29%) Legal
8 185 (2.23%) Retail
9 97 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
9 97 (1.17%) Telecoms
10 88 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
11 83 (1.00%) Manufacturing
12 75 (0.90%) Law
13 71 (0.86%) Financial Institution
14 70 (0.84%) Investment Banking
15 68 (0.82%) Front Office
15 68 (0.82%) Marketing
16 60 (0.72%) Aerospace
16 60 (0.72%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,489 (17.94%) Architect
2 1,075 (12.95%) Developer
3 1,038 (12.51%) Senior
4 730 (8.80%) Azure Engineer
5 687 (8.28%) Lead
6 622 (7.49%) Data Engineer
7 499 (6.01%) Analyst
8 442 (5.33%) Solutions Architect
9 418 (5.04%) DevOps Engineer
10 339 (4.08%) Cloud Engineer
11 314 (3.78%) Consultant
12 304 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 250 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 222 (2.67%) Azure Architect
15 219 (2.64%) Platform Engineer
16 197 (2.37%) Technical Architect
17 190 (2.29%) Project Manager
18 188 (2.27%) Java Developer
18 188 (2.27%) Security Engineer
19 184 (2.22%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 641 (7.72%) .NET
2 618 (7.45%) REST
3 344 (4.14%) React
4 321 (3.87%) Kafka
5 297 (3.58%) RESTful
6 261 (3.14%) PySpark
7 236 (2.84%) OAuth
8 225 (2.71%) Spring
9 212 (2.55%) Node.js
10 206 (2.48%) JSON
11 189 (2.28%) Spring Boot
12 179 (2.16%) AngularJS
13 157 (1.89%) HTML
14 149 (1.80%) SAML
15 148 (1.78%) OpenID
16 137 (1.65%) .NET Framework
17 136 (1.64%) OAuth2
18 133 (1.60%) Middleware
19 130 (1.57%) Playwright
20 126 (1.52%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 876 (10.55%) Cloud Native
2 387 (4.66%) Onboarding
3 349 (4.20%) Product Ownership
4 268 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
5 267 (3.22%) Data Centre
6 252 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
7 247 (2.98%) AI Agents
8 232 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
9 210 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
10 170 (2.05%) Security Posture
11 143 (1.72%) Data Structures
12 140 (1.69%) Public Cloud
13 133 (1.60%) Management Information System
14 110 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
15 106 (1.28%) Enterprise Cloud
15 106 (1.28%) PKI
16 92 (1.11%) Replication
17 91 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 72 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
18 72 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 951 (11.46%) Windows
2 477 (5.75%) Linux
3 320 (3.86%) Windows Server
4 114 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 81 (0.98%) Android
6 81 (0.98%) Unix
7 73 (0.88%) Apple iOS
8 72 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 59 (0.71%) VMS
10 47 (0.57%) Ubuntu
11 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
12 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 11 (0.13%) CentOS
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 7 (0.084%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,054 (36.80%) DevOps
2 2,593 (31.24%) CI/CD
3 2,104 (25.35%) Agile
4 1,299 (15.65%) AI
5 1,281 (15.43%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,216 (14.65%) Migration
7 1,155 (13.92%) Stakeholder Management
8 1,142 (13.76%) Analytics
9 1,071 (12.90%) Problem-Solving
10 937 (11.29%) Data Modelling
11 897 (10.81%) Continuous Improvement
12 797 (9.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 790 (9.52%) Data Pipeline
14 771 (9.29%) Containerisation
15 768 (9.25%) Business Intelligence
16 767 (9.24%) Roadmaps
17 761 (9.17%) Microservices
18 688 (8.29%) Test Automation
19 676 (8.14%) ETL
20 666 (8.02%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,924 (23.18%) Python
2 1,620 (19.52%) SQL
3 802 (9.66%) PowerShell
4 696 (8.39%) Java
5 620 (7.47%) C#
6 511 (6.16%) JavaScript
7 365 (4.40%) Bash
8 319 (3.84%) Bicep
9 317 (3.82%) TypeScript
10 99 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 98 (1.18%) T-SQL
12 72 (0.87%) Go
13 58 (0.70%) Scala
14 53 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
14 53 (0.64%) Shell Script
15 42 (0.51%) Kotlin
16 41 (0.49%) R
17 40 (0.48%) PL/SQL
18 30 (0.36%) Groovy
19 28 (0.34%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,091 (25.19%) Security Cleared
2 1,712 (20.63%) SC Cleared
3 576 (6.94%) Degree
4 440 (5.30%) Azure Certification
5 263 (3.17%) DV Cleared
6 252 (3.04%) CISSP
7 249 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
8 218 (2.63%) Microsoft Certification
9 211 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
10 202 (2.43%) AWS Certification
11 192 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
12 124 (1.49%) CISM
13 104 (1.25%) CCNP
14 84 (1.01%) PMI Certification
14 84 (1.01%) PMP
15 81 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 66 (0.80%) ISTQB
17 62 (0.75%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.66%) CCSP
19 53 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 579 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 437 (5.27%) QA
3 326 (3.93%) GDPR
4 295 (3.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 289 (3.48%) NIST
6 206 (2.48%) Accessibility
7 118 (1.42%) NCSC
8 106 (1.28%) SLA
9 78 (0.94%) GRC
10 76 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
10 76 (0.92%) WCAG
11 72 (0.87%) PCI DSS
12 56 (0.67%) PMO
12 56 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 33 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 29 (0.35%) HIPAA
15 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 22 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
16 22 (0.27%) NIST 800
17 17 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 971 (11.70%) Active Directory
2 906 (10.92%) Docker
3 222 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
5 141 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
6 121 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.82%) vSphere
8 51 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
9 39 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 26 (0.31%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
16 7 (0.084%) Varnish
17 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 6 (0.072%) HDFS
18 5 (0.060%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 1,344 (16.19%) Terraform
2 1,245 (15.00%) Kubernetes
3 428 (5.16%) Microsoft Intune
4 416 (5.01%) Ansible
5 253 (3.05%) Grafana
6 212 (2.55%) Prometheus
7 148 (1.78%) Single Sign-On
8 113 (1.36%) SCCM
9 60 (0.72%) Argo
10 53 (0.64%) Progress Chef
11 46 (0.55%) Puppet
12 44 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
14 29 (0.35%) Istio
15 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
16 19 (0.23%) Packer
17 18 (0.22%) HP ALM
17 18 (0.22%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,716 (32.72%) Microsoft
2 781 (9.41%) Databricks
3 402 (4.84%) ServiceNow
4 341 (4.11%) Google
5 323 (3.89%) VMware
6 318 (3.83%) Oracle
7 241 (2.90%) Cisco
8 225 (2.71%) SAP
9 207 (2.49%) OpenAI
10 186 (2.24%) Splunk
11 155 (1.87%) Palo Alto
12 154 (1.86%) Salesforce
13 142 (1.71%) CyberArk
14 138 (1.66%) Foundry
15 110 (1.33%) Dynatrace
16 103 (1.24%) Zscaler
17 88 (1.06%) Okta
18 87 (1.05%) Informatica
19 77 (0.93%) Fortinet
20 76 (0.92%) Citrix