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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,290 4,843 5,577
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.25% 14.71% 14.47%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.92% 39.24% 42.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,814 3,286 3,869
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £413 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £496 £501
% change year-on-year +2.82% -1.05% -4.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 172 43 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £16.63 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.31 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.88 £34.48 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +12.75% -6.18% -31.94%
75th Percentile £80.31 £69.88 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.76 £88.50 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £37.11 £42.34
% change year-on-year +3.07% -12.35% -8.32%

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 18,875 12,342 13,214
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.72% 37.50% 34.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,517 8,222 8,956
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 608 305 203
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £14.44
25th Percentile £17.97 £18.87 £20.15
Median hourly rate £32.50 £29.25 £30.88
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -5.26% -11.79%
75th Percentile £67.73 £53.75 £60.83
90th Percentile £81.25 £69.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +52.79% -34.55% +11.11%

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 13 September 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 13 September 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 13 September 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 7,094 £525 - 5,180
London +1 3,709 £550 +0.92% 2,624
UK excluding London +2 3,546 £510 +2.82% 3,254
Work from Home -1 2,506 £525 +5.00% 4,264
North of England +9 1,032 £500 +5.26% 810
South East +1 899 £525 +5.00% 879
Midlands +2 647 £493 -3.90% 458
North West +5 528 £500 +5.26% 413
West Midlands +2 476 £488 -9.72% 270
South West +2 427 £550 +10.00% 382
Yorkshire +6 424 £500 +5.26% 280
Scotland +4 287 £520 +7.22% 279
East of England +3 182 £525 +5.00% 285
East Midlands +5 160 £500 +8.11% 187
North East +6 93 £500 - 123
Wales 0 85 £450 - 101
Northern Ireland +16 14 £650 - 95
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69% 2

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
1 469 (5.66%) SharePoint
2 258 (3.11%) Confluence
3 200 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 176 (2.12%) Apache Spark
5 162 (1.95%) Apache Airflow
6 112 (1.35%) Apache
7 45 (0.54%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) IIS
8 29 (0.35%) SharePoint Server
9 24 (0.29%) CMS
10 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.17%) nginx
11 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.16%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.084%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.084%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.084%) Mendix
15 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
15 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 121 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 91 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
5 41 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.097%) Revit
10 8 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Mingle
14 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 132 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (0.86%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.097%) Magento
8 8 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
9 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 7 (0.084%) Workday HCM
10 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
10 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 6 (0.072%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 5 (0.060%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
12 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.048%) Endur
12 4 (0.048%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 2,968 (35.80%) AWS
2 1,754 (21.16%) Azure DevOps
3 1,418 (17.10%) GCP
4 1,094 (13.20%) Entra ID
5 1,077 (12.99%) Power Platform
6 865 (10.43%) Microsoft 365
7 842 (10.16%) GitHub
8 493 (5.95%) GitHub Actions
9 469 (5.66%) Azure Data Factory
10 376 (4.54%) Serverless
11 358 (4.32%) SaaS
12 311 (3.75%) Azure Monitor
13 309 (3.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 301 (3.63%) Power Automate
15 291 (3.51%) Azure AKS
15 291 (3.51%) Dynamics 365
16 287 (3.46%) PowerApps
17 282 (3.40%) Snowflake
18 244 (2.94%) Azure AI
19 240 (2.90%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 524 (6.32%) Firewall
2 411 (4.96%) DNS
3 312 (3.76%) VPN
4 301 (3.63%) Network Security
5 222 (2.68%) DHCP
6 188 (2.27%) WAN
7 162 (1.95%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.31%) LAN
9 106 (1.28%) BGP
10 101 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.13%) VLAN
12 85 (1.03%) OSPF
12 85 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 76 (0.92%) SSL
14 62 (0.75%) SAN
15 60 (0.72%) Wireless
16 46 (0.55%) HTTP
17 45 (0.54%) IPsec
18 44 (0.53%) VXLAN
19 39 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 712 (8.59%) Power BI
2 474 (5.72%) SQL Server
3 406 (4.90%) Data Warehouse
4 381 (4.60%) Data Lake
5 296 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
6 243 (2.93%) Metadata
7 216 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 207 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
9 144 (1.74%) Relational Database
10 131 (1.58%) Delta Lake
11 111 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 108 (1.30%) MongoDB
13 92 (1.11%) Big Data
14 90 (1.09%) MySQL
15 72 (0.87%) Amazon Redshift
16 64 (0.77%) Redis
17 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
17 61 (0.74%) Tableau
18 59 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
19 57 (0.69%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 712 (8.59%) Git
2 604 (7.29%) JIRA
3 470 (5.67%) Jenkins
4 365 (4.40%) GitLab
5 126 (1.52%) Selenium
6 80 (0.97%) Postman
7 62 (0.75%) Cypress.io
8 61 (0.74%) JUnit
9 57 (0.69%) SonarQube
10 56 (0.68%) Maven
11 52 (0.63%) JMeter
12 51 (0.62%) Cucumber
13 50 (0.60%) Claude Code
14 47 (0.57%) Gradle
14 47 (0.57%) REST Assured
15 43 (0.52%) Visual Studio
16 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 37 (0.45%) MLflow
18 32 (0.39%) LoadRunner
19 31 (0.37%) Gatling
General
1 2,274 (27.43%) Social Skills
2 1,559 (18.81%) Finance
3 954 (11.51%) Public Sector
4 809 (9.76%) Analytical Skills
5 470 (5.67%) Banking
6 220 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
7 218 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 207 (2.50%) Retail
9 178 (2.15%) Legal
10 105 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
11 102 (1.23%) Manufacturing
12 88 (1.06%) Marketing
13 87 (1.05%) Telecoms
14 85 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
15 81 (0.98%) Aerospace
16 78 (0.94%) Investment Banking
17 73 (0.88%) Law
17 73 (0.88%) Military
18 59 (0.71%) Financial Institution
19 57 (0.69%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,565 (18.88%) Architect
2 1,044 (12.59%) Senior
3 995 (12.00%) Developer
4 729 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 679 (8.19%) Lead
6 592 (7.14%) Data Engineer
7 480 (5.79%) Analyst
8 474 (5.72%) Solutions Architect
9 464 (5.60%) DevOps Engineer
10 371 (4.48%) Cloud Engineer
11 320 (3.86%) Consultant
12 316 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 267 (3.22%) Data Architect
14 244 (2.94%) Platform Engineer
15 219 (2.64%) Azure Architect
16 208 (2.51%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 199 (2.40%) Technical Architect
18 192 (2.32%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 190 (2.29%) Security Engineer
20 189 (2.28%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,406 (16.96%) Terraform
2 698 (8.42%) REST
3 625 (7.54%) .NET
4 379 (4.57%) Kafka
5 301 (3.63%) React
6 289 (3.49%) RESTful
7 273 (3.29%) PySpark
8 258 (3.11%) OAuth
9 233 (2.81%) JSON
10 194 (2.34%) Spring
11 180 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 157 (1.89%) OpenID
13 155 (1.87%) Node.js
14 152 (1.83%) HTML
14 152 (1.83%) OAuth2
15 151 (1.82%) SAML
16 148 (1.79%) AngularJS
17 139 (1.68%) Playwright
18 134 (1.62%) Middleware
19 131 (1.58%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 913 (11.01%) Cloud Native
2 409 (4.93%) Onboarding
3 384 (4.63%) Product Ownership
4 294 (3.55%) AI Agents
5 293 (3.53%) Enterprise Software
6 281 (3.39%) Hybrid Cloud
7 266 (3.21%) Distributed Systems
8 247 (2.98%) Data Centre
9 221 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
10 172 (2.07%) Security Posture
11 167 (2.01%) Management Information System
12 145 (1.75%) Data Structures
13 143 (1.72%) Public Cloud
14 115 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
15 113 (1.36%) PKI
16 112 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
17 107 (1.29%) Replication
18 92 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
19 82 (0.99%) CMDB
20 80 (0.97%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 981 (11.83%) Windows
2 517 (6.24%) Linux
3 370 (4.46%) Windows Server
4 135 (1.63%) Windows 10
5 88 (1.06%) Android
6 87 (1.05%) Unix
7 84 (1.01%) Apple iOS
8 83 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 74 (0.89%) Mac OS
10 55 (0.66%) VMS
11 54 (0.65%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.25%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,063 (36.95%) DevOps
2 2,636 (31.80%) CI/CD
3 2,079 (25.08%) Agile
4 1,433 (17.29%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,404 (16.94%) AI
6 1,403 (16.92%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,209 (14.58%) Migration
8 1,146 (13.82%) Analytics
9 1,132 (13.66%) Problem-Solving
10 951 (11.47%) Continuous Improvement
11 903 (10.89%) Data Modelling
12 838 (10.11%) Roadmaps
13 797 (9.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 782 (9.43%) Containerisation
15 765 (9.23%) Business Intelligence
16 756 (9.12%) Data Pipeline
17 737 (8.89%) Technical Leadership
18 724 (8.73%) Microservices
19 708 (8.54%) Test Automation
20 658 (7.94%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,896 (22.87%) Python
2 1,592 (19.20%) SQL
3 878 (10.59%) PowerShell
4 686 (8.28%) Java
5 594 (7.17%) C#
6 493 (5.95%) JavaScript
7 407 (4.91%) Bash
8 358 (4.32%) Bicep
9 294 (3.55%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.10%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.83%) Go
13 63 (0.76%) Scala
14 59 (0.71%) Shell Script
15 56 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.49%) PL/SQL
17 39 (0.47%) R
18 34 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 30 (0.36%) Groovy
20 26 (0.31%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,151 (25.95%) Security Cleared
2 1,731 (20.88%) SC Cleared
3 561 (6.77%) Degree
4 472 (5.69%) Azure Certification
5 301 (3.63%) DV Cleared
6 270 (3.26%) CISSP
7 264 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
8 253 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 207 (2.50%) Cisco Certification
10 200 (2.41%) AWS Certification
11 182 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
12 136 (1.64%) CISM
13 95 (1.15%) CCNP
14 89 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 89 (1.07%) PMI Certification
15 86 (1.04%) PMP
16 64 (0.77%) ISTQB
17 61 (0.74%) CCSP
18 60 (0.72%) Master's Degree
19 51 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 602 (7.26%) Data Quality
2 460 (5.55%) QA
3 313 (3.78%) NIST
4 306 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 295 (3.56%) GDPR
6 204 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 124 (1.50%) NCSC
8 107 (1.29%) SLA
9 84 (1.01%) WCAG
10 82 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
11 77 (0.93%) GRC
12 72 (0.87%) PCI DSS
13 58 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 56 (0.68%) PMO
15 45 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 29 (0.35%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.31%) HIPAA
18 25 (0.30%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
20 19 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,025 (12.36%) Active Directory
2 922 (11.12%) Docker
3 245 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
5 146 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
6 131 (1.58%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.82%) vSphere
8 53 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.29%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) IAG
11 18 (0.22%) NFS
12 11 (0.13%) Postfix
13 10 (0.12%) Ceph
13 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.11%) zsh
15 8 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.084%) Squid
17 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,296 (15.63%) Kubernetes
2 457 (5.51%) Ansible
3 438 (5.28%) Microsoft Intune
4 259 (3.12%) Grafana
5 205 (2.47%) Prometheus
6 151 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
7 129 (1.56%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 59 (0.71%) Argo
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 33 (0.40%) SCOM
14 23 (0.28%) Istio
15 22 (0.27%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.24%) QRadar
17 18 (0.22%) CASB
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
18 17 (0.21%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,952 (35.61%) Microsoft
2 853 (10.29%) Databricks
3 414 (4.99%) ServiceNow
4 364 (4.39%) Google
5 360 (4.34%) VMware
6 336 (4.05%) Oracle
7 250 (3.02%) Cisco
8 223 (2.69%) SAP
9 214 (2.58%) Splunk
10 207 (2.50%) OpenAI
11 182 (2.20%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.85%) Palo Alto
13 152 (1.83%) CyberArk
14 137 (1.65%) Foundry
15 122 (1.47%) Dynatrace
16 95 (1.15%) Informatica
17 89 (1.07%) Zscaler
18 81 (0.98%) Fortinet
19 79 (0.95%) MuleSoft
19 79 (0.95%) Okta