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 15 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,123 4,624 5,843
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.53% 15.78% 13.42%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.68% 41.55% 41.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,077 3,293 4,218
10th Percentile £358 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.41% -3.18%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £726 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 47 54
10th Percentile £25.40 £22.50 £17.79
25th Percentile £50.63 £24.09 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -36.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £74.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £51.25
% change year-on-year +79.69% -37.56% -14.44%

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 16,690 11,128 14,092
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.40% 37.99% 32.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,388 7,749 9,989
10th Percentile £315 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £635
90th Percentile £700 £725 £733
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £490
% change year-on-year - -3.13% -2.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 474 243 344
10th Percentile £15.23 £15.55 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.36 £19.61 £16.05
Median hourly rate £40.64 £27.50 £20.99
Median % change year-on-year +47.78% +31.05% -30.91%
75th Percentile £67.75 £48.75 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.88 £75.40 £61.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £23.00 £17.69
% change year-on-year +106.52% +30.02% -25.20%

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 15 April 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 15 April 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 15 April 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 6,044 £525 - 2,490
London +1 3,248 £538 -2.27% 889
UK excluding London +2 2,956 £500 - 2,034
Work from Home -1 2,139 £525 +0.77% 1,233
North of England +3 827 £500 +5.26% 525
South East +2 772 £500 -4.76% 630
Midlands 0 498 £488 -6.25% 287
North West +1 449 £500 - 268
West Midlands -1 366 £500 -4.76% 170
South West +6 360 £500 -4.76% 238
Yorkshire 0 335 £500 +17.65% 180
Scotland +6 297 £550 +15.79% 113
East of England +9 154 £550 -8.33% 201
East Midlands 0 123 £447 -4.89% 116
Wales -2 83 £406 +1.56% 65
North East -5 50 £525 +3.70% 81
Northern Ireland +5 14 £475 - 15
Channel Islands +4 8 £450 +51.26% 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
1 320 (4.49%) SharePoint
2 207 (2.91%) Confluence
3 201 (2.82%) Microsoft Exchange
4 192 (2.70%) Apache Spark
5 104 (1.46%) Apache
6 98 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.38%) SAS
8 21 (0.29%) IIS
9 20 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 16 (0.22%) Appian
11 16 (0.22%) CMS
12 15 (0.21%) Camunda
13 13 (0.18%) Mendix
14 11 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
15 10 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
16 9 (0.13%) Jupyter
17 7 (0.098%) Anypoint
18 6 (0.084%) nginx
Applications
1 126 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
4 49 (0.69%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) Trello
8 6 (0.084%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.070%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.070%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.056%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.056%) Weka
11 3 (0.042%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.028%) Revit
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 112 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Maximo
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.098%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.084%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.070%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.056%) Dynamics AX
9 4 (0.056%) Elite 3E
9 4 (0.056%) Endur
9 4 (0.056%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.056%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.056%) ResourceLink
9 4 (0.056%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.056%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.042%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,439 (34.24%) AWS
2 1,498 (21.03%) Azure DevOps
3 1,320 (18.53%) GCP
4 952 (13.37%) Power Platform
5 853 (11.98%) Entra ID
6 763 (10.71%) Microsoft 365
7 711 (9.98%) GitHub
8 506 (7.10%) Azure Data Factory
9 416 (5.84%) GitHub Actions
10 401 (5.63%) Serverless
11 338 (4.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 285 (4.00%) Dynamics 365
12 285 (4.00%) SaaS
13 262 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 260 (3.65%) Power Automate
15 243 (3.41%) Azure Monitor
16 236 (3.31%) PaaS
17 227 (3.19%) Azure Functions
18 208 (2.92%) PowerApps
19 202 (2.84%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 442 (6.21%) Firewall
2 303 (4.25%) DNS
3 254 (3.57%) VPN
4 236 (3.31%) Network Security
5 185 (2.60%) WAN
6 165 (2.32%) DHCP
7 136 (1.91%) LAN
8 95 (1.33%) TCP/IP
9 94 (1.32%) SD-WAN
10 89 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
11 78 (1.10%) VLAN
12 70 (0.98%) Kerberos
13 52 (0.73%) BGP
14 45 (0.63%) OSPF
15 44 (0.62%) HTTP
15 44 (0.62%) SSL
16 40 (0.56%) SAN
16 40 (0.56%) Wireless
17 35 (0.49%) Internet
18 32 (0.45%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 644 (9.04%) Power BI
2 428 (6.01%) SQL Server
3 376 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
4 342 (4.80%) Data Lake
5 259 (3.64%) Azure SQL Database
6 254 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
7 204 (2.86%) NoSQL
8 186 (2.61%) Metadata
9 147 (2.06%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.63%) Relational Database
11 112 (1.57%) Big Data
12 97 (1.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 93 (1.31%) MongoDB
14 85 (1.19%) Tableau
15 69 (0.97%) MySQL
15 69 (0.97%) Oracle Database
16 66 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
17 62 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 57 (0.80%) Star Schema
19 48 (0.67%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 523 (7.34%) Git
2 504 (7.08%) JIRA
3 378 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 282 (3.96%) GitLab
5 139 (1.95%) Selenium
6 88 (1.24%) Postman
7 77 (1.08%) JMeter
8 74 (1.04%) Cucumber
9 72 (1.01%) JUnit
10 53 (0.74%) REST Assured
11 51 (0.72%) MLflow
12 44 (0.62%) Cypress.io
13 42 (0.59%) SonarQube
13 42 (0.59%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.49%) Artifactory
15 33 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.46%) TestRail
15 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 26 (0.37%) Gatling
16 26 (0.37%) Zephyr
General
1 1,933 (27.14%) Social Skills
2 1,270 (17.83%) Finance
3 810 (11.37%) Public Sector
4 692 (9.72%) Analytical Skills
5 375 (5.26%) Banking
6 223 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
7 179 (2.51%) Legal
8 110 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 93 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
9 93 (1.31%) Retail
10 86 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 77 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
12 76 (1.07%) Marketing
13 72 (1.01%) Telecoms
14 68 (0.95%) Law
15 67 (0.94%) Financial Institution
16 58 (0.81%) Front Office
16 58 (0.81%) Investment Banking
17 46 (0.65%) Manufacturing
18 44 (0.62%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,196 (16.79%) Architect
2 952 (13.37%) Developer
3 839 (11.78%) Senior
4 643 (9.03%) Azure Engineer
5 584 (8.20%) Data Engineer
6 543 (7.62%) Lead
7 448 (6.29%) Analyst
8 371 (5.21%) DevOps Engineer
9 305 (4.28%) Solutions Architect
10 301 (4.23%) Consultant
11 204 (2.86%) Cloud Engineer
12 197 (2.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 190 (2.67%) Azure Architect
14 175 (2.46%) Platform Engineer
15 173 (2.43%) Security Engineer
16 163 (2.29%) Data Architect
17 157 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 154 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 154 (2.16%) Senior Developer
19 149 (2.09%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 561 (7.88%) .NET
2 476 (6.68%) REST
3 333 (4.67%) React
4 277 (3.89%) Kafka
5 271 (3.80%) PySpark
6 249 (3.50%) Node.js
7 247 (3.47%) RESTful
8 222 (3.12%) Spring
9 202 (2.84%) OAuth
10 191 (2.68%) AngularJS
11 185 (2.60%) Spring Boot
12 155 (2.18%) LDAP
13 149 (2.09%) HTML
14 148 (2.08%) JSON
15 130 (1.83%) CSS
16 128 (1.80%) Middleware
17 124 (1.74%) SOAP
18 123 (1.73%) SAML
19 114 (1.60%) OpenID
19 114 (1.60%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 656 (9.21%) Cloud Native
2 269 (3.78%) Onboarding
2 269 (3.78%) Product Ownership
3 185 (2.60%) Data Centre
3 185 (2.60%) Hybrid Cloud
4 169 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
5 160 (2.25%) Security Posture
6 159 (2.23%) Legacy Systems
7 156 (2.19%) Public Cloud
8 154 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
9 122 (1.71%) AI Agents
10 91 (1.28%) Data Structures
11 88 (1.24%) Replication
12 84 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
13 77 (1.08%) Management Information System
14 68 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
14 68 (0.95%) PKI
15 66 (0.93%) Low-Code
16 61 (0.86%) NHS
17 60 (0.84%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 770 (10.81%) Windows
2 380 (5.33%) Linux
3 230 (3.23%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.73%) Windows 10
5 72 (1.01%) Unix
5 72 (1.01%) VMS
6 59 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 58 (0.81%) Mac OS
8 47 (0.66%) Apple iOS
9 38 (0.53%) Android
10 23 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
11 18 (0.25%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
12 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
14 9 (0.13%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.084%) CentOS
15 6 (0.084%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.070%) AIX
16 5 (0.070%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,674 (37.54%) DevOps
2 2,200 (30.89%) CI/CD
3 1,685 (23.66%) Agile
4 1,122 (15.75%) Problem-Solving
5 1,055 (14.81%) Analytics
6 987 (13.86%) Infrastructure as Code
7 986 (13.84%) AI
8 956 (13.42%) Migration
9 805 (11.30%) Data Modelling
10 718 (10.08%) Stakeholder Management
11 706 (9.91%) Business Intelligence
12 681 (9.56%) Continuous Improvement
13 677 (9.50%) Containerisation
14 655 (9.20%) Data Pipeline
15 646 (9.07%) ETL
15 646 (9.07%) Microservices
16 590 (8.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 589 (8.27%) Data Engineering
18 571 (8.02%) Machine Learning
18 571 (8.02%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,795 (25.20%) Python
2 1,567 (22.00%) SQL
3 728 (10.22%) PowerShell
4 622 (8.73%) C#
5 601 (8.44%) Java
6 483 (6.78%) JavaScript
7 296 (4.16%) TypeScript
8 258 (3.62%) Bash
9 229 (3.21%) Bicep
10 102 (1.43%) Scala
11 82 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.15%) Go
12 79 (1.11%) T-SQL
13 77 (1.08%) PL/SQL
14 70 (0.98%) Kusto Query Language
15 51 (0.72%) Shell Script
16 48 (0.67%) R
17 30 (0.42%) C++
18 24 (0.34%) PHP
19 19 (0.27%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,749 (24.55%) Security Cleared
2 1,459 (20.48%) SC Cleared
3 528 (7.41%) Degree
4 374 (5.25%) Azure Certification
5 205 (2.88%) Computer Science Degree
6 190 (2.67%) CISSP
7 155 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
8 153 (2.15%) Microsoft Certification
9 145 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
10 137 (1.92%) DV Cleared
11 136 (1.91%) AWS Certification
12 114 (1.60%) CISM
13 78 (1.10%) CCNP
14 76 (1.07%) Master's Degree
15 70 (0.98%) PMP
16 68 (0.95%) PMI Certification
17 66 (0.93%) ISTQB
18 65 (0.91%) TOGAF Certification
19 50 (0.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.51%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 507 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 384 (5.39%) GDPR
3 382 (5.36%) QA
4 294 (4.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 256 (3.59%) NIST
6 133 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 101 (1.42%) NCSC
8 83 (1.17%) PCI DSS
9 64 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 61 (0.86%) SLA
11 58 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
12 57 (0.80%) PMO
13 42 (0.59%) GRC
14 38 (0.53%) WCAG
15 31 (0.44%) HIPAA
16 26 (0.37%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 23 (0.32%) ISO 20022
18 22 (0.31%) SOC 2
19 20 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 883 (12.40%) Active Directory
2 812 (11.40%) Docker
3 212 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 108 (1.52%) Hyper-V
5 104 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
6 97 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
7 81 (1.14%) vSphere
8 35 (0.49%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 26 (0.37%) Firmware
11 19 (0.27%) NFS
12 10 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.098%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.098%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.098%) HDFS
13 7 (0.098%) Varnish
14 6 (0.084%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.084%) RACF
14 6 (0.084%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 1,124 (15.78%) Terraform
2 1,043 (14.64%) Kubernetes
3 362 (5.08%) Microsoft Intune
4 322 (4.52%) Ansible
5 190 (2.67%) Grafana
6 161 (2.26%) Prometheus
7 149 (2.09%) Single Sign-On
8 115 (1.61%) SCCM
9 71 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 42 (0.59%) Argo
11 35 (0.49%) Istio
12 31 (0.44%) FortiGate
12 31 (0.44%) Puppet
13 29 (0.41%) vCenter Server
14 27 (0.38%) Progress Chef
15 26 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
16 23 (0.32%) vRealize
17 22 (0.31%) HP ALM
18 17 (0.24%) Kubeflow
18 17 (0.24%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,272 (31.90%) Microsoft
2 730 (10.25%) Databricks
3 329 (4.62%) Google
4 326 (4.58%) Oracle
5 294 (4.13%) VMware
6 293 (4.11%) ServiceNow
7 205 (2.88%) SAP
8 192 (2.70%) Cisco
9 183 (2.57%) OpenAI
10 159 (2.23%) Splunk
11 134 (1.88%) CyberArk
12 116 (1.63%) Foundry
13 103 (1.45%) Palo Alto
14 96 (1.35%) Salesforce
15 84 (1.18%) Okta
16 76 (1.07%) IBM
17 75 (1.05%) Informatica
18 74 (1.04%) Red Hat
19 72 (1.01%) Citrix
20 69 (0.97%) BeyondTrust