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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,298 4,506 5,778
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.34% 15.55% 13.51%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.06% 41.39% 41.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,166 3,184 4,162
10th Percentile £361 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £729 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 137 38 50
10th Percentile £24.28 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £39.53 £25.31 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -41.57%
75th Percentile £64.00 £74.75 £59.95
90th Percentile £87.60 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £31.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +82.54% -34.50% -19.85%

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 16,950 10,887 13,856
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.63% 37.57% 32.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,444 7,495 9,847
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.82% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £602 £625 £635
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.63% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 511 245 346
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.23 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.86 £18.50 £16.02
Median hourly rate £37.58 £27.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +36.65% +28.69% -38.94%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.50 £35.50
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.25 £64.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £21.39 £17.72
% change year-on-year +99.56% +20.71% -28.58%

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 14 May 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 14 May 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 14 May 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 6,178 £525 - 2,854
London +1 3,298 £538 -2.27% 1,042
UK excluding London +2 3,054 £500 - 2,234
Work from Home -1 2,226 £525 +1.55% 1,396
North of England +3 857 £500 +5.26% 605
South East +3 829 £500 -4.76% 671
Midlands -5 490 £490 -2.00% 305
North West +3 449 £500 +0.81% 321
South West +5 378 £525 - 271
West Midlands 0 358 £498 -5.24% 173
Yorkshire +5 348 £500 +14.29% 176
Scotland +7 297 £525 +10.53% 120
East of England +4 145 £550 -6.78% 183
East Midlands +3 122 £450 -2.70% 131
Wales -3 83 £400 -1.23% 84
North East 0 69 £525 +9.09% 109
Northern Ireland +11 17 £525 +10.53% 28
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 +51.26%

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
1 335 (4.59%) SharePoint
2 216 (2.96%) Confluence
3 192 (2.63%) Apache Spark
4 191 (2.62%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (1.37%) Apache
6 93 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.32%) SAS
8 22 (0.30%) IIS
9 15 (0.21%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.21%) CMS
9 15 (0.21%) Mendix
9 15 (0.21%) OpenStack
10 13 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
11 12 (0.16%) Appian
11 12 (0.16%) Camunda
11 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
13 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.096%) nginx
Applications
1 104 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
3 64 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.096%) Trello
8 5 (0.069%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.069%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.055%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.055%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.041%) Revit
10 3 (0.041%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.014%) InDesign
11 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 100 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
5 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.082%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.069%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.055%) Dynamics NAV
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.055%) Shopify
9 4 (0.055%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,487 (34.08%) AWS
2 1,490 (20.42%) Azure DevOps
3 1,302 (17.84%) GCP
4 947 (12.98%) Power Platform
5 865 (11.85%) Entra ID
6 751 (10.29%) Microsoft 365
7 693 (9.50%) GitHub
8 500 (6.85%) Azure Data Factory
9 408 (5.59%) GitHub Actions
10 382 (5.23%) Serverless
11 340 (4.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 277 (3.80%) SaaS
13 271 (3.71%) Azure AKS
14 257 (3.52%) Dynamics 365
14 257 (3.52%) Power Automate
15 239 (3.27%) Azure Monitor
16 233 (3.19%) PaaS
17 220 (3.01%) PowerApps
18 207 (2.84%) Azure Functions
19 189 (2.59%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 445 (6.10%) Firewall
2 315 (4.32%) DNS
3 256 (3.51%) VPN
4 242 (3.32%) Network Security
5 196 (2.69%) WAN
6 167 (2.29%) DHCP
7 130 (1.78%) LAN
8 107 (1.47%) SD-WAN
9 89 (1.22%) TCP/IP
9 89 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
10 71 (0.97%) Kerberos
10 71 (0.97%) VLAN
11 69 (0.95%) BGP
12 59 (0.81%) OSPF
13 47 (0.64%) SAN
14 45 (0.62%) SSL
15 42 (0.58%) Wireless
16 38 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 37 (0.51%) HTTP
18 34 (0.47%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 635 (8.70%) Power BI
2 424 (5.81%) SQL Server
3 362 (4.96%) Data Warehouse
4 361 (4.95%) Data Lake
5 248 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
6 241 (3.30%) Azure SQL Database
7 189 (2.59%) NoSQL
8 178 (2.44%) Metadata
9 150 (2.06%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.59%) Big Data
11 114 (1.56%) Relational Database
12 94 (1.29%) MongoDB
13 91 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 72 (0.99%) Tableau
15 69 (0.95%) Snowflake Schema
16 68 (0.93%) Oracle Database
17 63 (0.86%) BigQuery
18 62 (0.85%) MySQL
19 56 (0.77%) Star Schema
20 48 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 534 (7.32%) Git
2 524 (7.18%) JIRA
3 387 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 305 (4.18%) GitLab
5 114 (1.56%) Selenium
6 78 (1.07%) Postman
7 66 (0.90%) JMeter
8 62 (0.85%) Cucumber
9 58 (0.79%) JUnit
10 54 (0.74%) MLflow
11 49 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 46 (0.63%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.48%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.47%) Artifactory
14 34 (0.47%) Visual Studio
15 33 (0.45%) WebDriver
16 30 (0.41%) Gatling
17 28 (0.38%) Maven
18 26 (0.36%) ERwin
19 24 (0.33%) NUnit
General
1 1,858 (25.46%) Social Skills
2 1,300 (17.81%) Finance
3 797 (10.92%) Public Sector
4 649 (8.89%) Analytical Skills
5 378 (5.18%) Banking
6 205 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 190 (2.60%) Legal
8 107 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 97 (1.33%) Retail
10 87 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 74 (1.01%) Financial Institution
12 71 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
13 69 (0.95%) Marketing
14 67 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
14 67 (0.92%) Telecoms
15 63 (0.86%) Investment Banking
16 60 (0.82%) Front Office
16 60 (0.82%) Law
17 43 (0.59%) Military
18 39 (0.53%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,246 (17.07%) Architect
2 932 (12.77%) Developer
3 859 (11.77%) Senior
4 662 (9.07%) Azure Engineer
5 596 (8.17%) Data Engineer
6 535 (7.33%) Lead
7 456 (6.25%) Analyst
8 405 (5.55%) DevOps Engineer
9 320 (4.38%) Solutions Architect
10 309 (4.23%) Consultant
11 228 (3.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 227 (3.11%) Cloud Engineer
13 205 (2.81%) Azure Architect
14 190 (2.60%) Security Engineer
15 177 (2.43%) Data Architect
16 173 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
17 167 (2.29%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 166 (2.27%) Technical Architect
19 156 (2.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 156 (2.14%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 575 (7.88%) .NET
2 487 (6.67%) REST
3 323 (4.43%) React
4 269 (3.69%) PySpark
5 267 (3.66%) Kafka
6 230 (3.15%) RESTful
7 220 (3.01%) Node.js
8 203 (2.78%) OAuth
9 201 (2.75%) Spring
10 176 (2.41%) AngularJS
11 173 (2.37%) LDAP
12 168 (2.30%) Spring Boot
13 150 (2.06%) JSON
14 142 (1.95%) HTML
15 134 (1.84%) Middleware
16 130 (1.78%) SOAP
17 127 (1.74%) OpenID
18 123 (1.69%) SAML
19 118 (1.62%) CSS
20 105 (1.44%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 704 (9.65%) Cloud Native
2 290 (3.97%) Onboarding
3 263 (3.60%) Product Ownership
4 214 (2.93%) Data Centre
5 193 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
6 179 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
7 166 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
8 160 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
9 157 (2.15%) Security Posture
10 153 (2.10%) Public Cloud
11 137 (1.88%) AI Agents
12 98 (1.34%) Data Structures
13 93 (1.27%) Replication
14 90 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 79 (1.08%) Low-Code
16 78 (1.07%) Management Information System
17 70 (0.96%) PKI
18 65 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
19 59 (0.81%) NHS
20 57 (0.78%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 801 (10.98%) Windows
2 375 (5.14%) Linux
3 238 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.63%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.03%) Unix
6 69 (0.95%) Mac OS
6 69 (0.95%) VMS
7 66 (0.90%) Apple iOS
8 63 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 47 (0.64%) Android
10 29 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
11 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 21 (0.29%) Ubuntu
13 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
13 11 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.11%) CentOS
14 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.096%) CoreOS
15 7 (0.096%) Debian
15 7 (0.096%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,736 (37.49%) DevOps
2 2,273 (31.15%) CI/CD
3 1,707 (23.39%) Agile
4 1,051 (14.40%) Analytics
5 1,046 (14.33%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,038 (14.22%) Problem-Solving
7 997 (13.66%) Migration
8 993 (13.61%) AI
9 825 (11.30%) Data Modelling
10 723 (9.91%) Stakeholder Management
11 695 (9.52%) Business Intelligence
12 687 (9.41%) Containerisation
13 685 (9.39%) Data Pipeline
14 678 (9.29%) Continuous Improvement
15 659 (9.03%) ETL
16 651 (8.92%) Microservices
17 598 (8.19%) Roadmaps
18 594 (8.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 581 (7.96%) Data Engineering
20 565 (7.74%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,755 (24.05%) Python
2 1,521 (20.84%) SQL
3 736 (10.08%) PowerShell
4 603 (8.26%) C#
5 590 (8.08%) Java
6 438 (6.00%) JavaScript
7 277 (3.80%) TypeScript
8 255 (3.49%) Bash
9 237 (3.25%) Bicep
10 92 (1.26%) Scala
11 88 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 87 (1.19%) T-SQL
13 80 (1.10%) Go
14 58 (0.79%) Kusto Query Language
15 51 (0.70%) Shell Script
16 48 (0.66%) PL/SQL
17 42 (0.58%) R
18 32 (0.44%) C++
19 23 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 18 (0.25%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,815 (24.87%) Security Cleared
2 1,533 (21.01%) SC Cleared
3 500 (6.85%) Degree
4 378 (5.18%) Azure Certification
5 215 (2.95%) CISSP
6 187 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 167 (2.29%) Cisco Certification
8 166 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
9 153 (2.10%) DV Cleared
10 151 (2.07%) AWS Certification
11 149 (2.04%) Microsoft Certification
12 126 (1.73%) CISM
13 78 (1.07%) CCNP
14 74 (1.01%) PMP
15 71 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
17 66 (0.90%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 64 (0.88%) Master's Degree
19 57 (0.78%) ISTQB
20 45 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 512 (7.02%) Data Quality
2 393 (5.39%) QA
3 356 (4.88%) GDPR
4 289 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 266 (3.64%) NIST
6 133 (1.82%) Accessibility
7 104 (1.43%) NCSC
8 82 (1.12%) PCI DSS
9 72 (0.99%) SLA
10 68 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 61 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 59 (0.81%) PMO
13 52 (0.71%) GRC
14 42 (0.58%) WCAG
15 37 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.33%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 22 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 19 (0.26%) ISO 20022
19 18 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 887 (12.15%) Active Directory
2 790 (10.82%) Docker
3 201 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 117 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
5 114 (1.56%) Virtual Machines
6 106 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.81%) vSphere
8 35 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.40%) Firmware
10 22 (0.30%) NFS
11 20 (0.27%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.16%) Postfix
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.096%) HDFS
14 7 (0.096%) Varnish
15 6 (0.082%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.082%) RACF
16 5 (0.069%) Ceph
16 5 (0.069%) KVM
16 5 (0.069%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,142 (15.65%) Terraform
2 1,053 (14.43%) Kubernetes
3 366 (5.02%) Microsoft Intune
4 341 (4.67%) Ansible
5 205 (2.81%) Grafana
6 178 (2.44%) Prometheus
7 151 (2.07%) Single Sign-On
8 109 (1.49%) SCCM
9 68 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (0.49%) Argo
10 36 (0.49%) Puppet
11 35 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.47%) Istio
13 30 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
14 29 (0.40%) Progress Chef
15 23 (0.32%) HP ALM
16 18 (0.25%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.22%) linkerd
18 15 (0.21%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,323 (31.83%) Microsoft
2 743 (10.18%) Databricks
3 307 (4.21%) ServiceNow
4 299 (4.10%) Google
5 285 (3.91%) Oracle
6 282 (3.86%) VMware
7 214 (2.93%) SAP
8 192 (2.63%) Cisco
9 181 (2.48%) OpenAI
10 160 (2.19%) Splunk
11 138 (1.89%) CyberArk
12 127 (1.74%) Palo Alto
13 109 (1.49%) Foundry
13 109 (1.49%) Salesforce
14 93 (1.27%) Okta
15 76 (1.04%) Citrix
16 74 (1.01%) Dynatrace
17 73 (1.00%) Informatica
18 71 (0.97%) BeyondTrust
19 66 (0.90%) Zscaler