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

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,224 4,589 5,853
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.49% 15.55% 13.41%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.83% 41.22% 41.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,159 3,275 4,207
10th Percentile £358 £351 £339
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 44 54
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.79
25th Percentile £49.20 £24.14 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -36.36%
75th Percentile £65.19 £73.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.38 £51.25
% change year-on-year +89.30% -40.73% -14.30%

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 16,867 11,134 14,074
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.17% 37.72% 32.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,484 7,745 10,000
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £631
90th Percentile £704 £732 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +1.05% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 478 252 349
10th Percentile £15.59 £15.44 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.36 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £41.64 £27.43 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.83% +30.60% -38.95%
75th Percentile £67.50 £48.75 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.38 £73.75 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £22.50 £17.72
% change year-on-year +111.11% +27.01% -27.13%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 6,136 £523 -0.48% 2,387
London +1 3,295 £530 -3.64% 823
UK excluding London +2 3,000 £500 - 1,990
Work from Home -1 2,163 £525 +0.77% 1,851
North of England +3 835 £500 +5.26% 519
South East +2 799 £500 -4.76% 612
Midlands 0 495 £488 -6.70% 290
North West +2 448 £500 - 270
South West +6 374 £500 -4.76% 231
West Midlands +1 358 £500 -4.76% 173
Yorkshire +3 342 £500 +17.65% 158
Scotland +6 296 £539 +13.37% 77
East of England +4 153 £540 -6.90% 199
East Midlands +1 127 £450 -5.26% 116
Wales -2 77 £400 -6.81% 61
North East -2 52 £525 +3.70% 93
Northern Ireland +10 15 £475 - 42
Channel Islands +4 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
1 326 (4.51%) SharePoint
2 203 (2.81%) Confluence
3 197 (2.73%) Microsoft Exchange
4 195 (2.70%) Apache Spark
5 106 (1.47%) Apache
6 98 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.37%) SAS
8 20 (0.28%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) CMS
10 17 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 17 (0.24%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.21%) Mendix
12 14 (0.19%) Appian
13 13 (0.18%) Camunda
13 13 (0.18%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
15 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
16 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
17 8 (0.11%) nginx
18 6 (0.083%) Umbraco
Applications
1 116 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 84 (1.16%) Microsoft Office
3 61 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) Trello
8 7 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.069%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.069%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.055%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.055%) Weka
11 3 (0.042%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.028%) Revit
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 109 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 72 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.15%) Maximo
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.097%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.097%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.069%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.055%) Cloudability
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.055%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.055%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.055%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.055%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.042%) Fidessa
10 3 (0.042%) Oracle 11i
10 3 (0.042%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,470 (34.19%) AWS
2 1,510 (20.90%) Azure DevOps
3 1,339 (18.54%) GCP
4 950 (13.15%) Power Platform
5 864 (11.96%) Entra ID
6 743 (10.29%) Microsoft 365
7 705 (9.76%) GitHub
8 510 (7.06%) Azure Data Factory
9 415 (5.74%) GitHub Actions
10 406 (5.62%) Serverless
11 344 (4.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 280 (3.88%) Azure AKS
13 278 (3.85%) SaaS
14 274 (3.79%) Dynamics 365
15 259 (3.59%) Power Automate
16 252 (3.49%) Azure Monitor
17 235 (3.25%) PaaS
18 224 (3.10%) Azure Functions
19 217 (3.00%) PowerApps
20 201 (2.78%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 441 (6.10%) Firewall
2 300 (4.15%) DNS
3 258 (3.57%) VPN
4 244 (3.38%) Network Security
5 182 (2.52%) WAN
6 160 (2.21%) DHCP
7 131 (1.81%) LAN
8 90 (1.25%) SD-WAN
9 89 (1.23%) TCP/IP
10 85 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 73 (1.01%) VLAN
12 72 (1.00%) Kerberos
13 50 (0.69%) BGP
14 44 (0.61%) HTTP
15 43 (0.60%) SAN
15 43 (0.60%) SSL
16 42 (0.58%) OSPF
17 37 (0.51%) Wireless
18 35 (0.48%) Internet
19 33 (0.46%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 641 (8.87%) Power BI
2 427 (5.91%) SQL Server
3 376 (5.20%) Data Warehouse
4 360 (4.98%) Data Lake
5 254 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 249 (3.45%) Azure SQL Database
7 199 (2.75%) NoSQL
8 184 (2.55%) Metadata
9 150 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 120 (1.66%) Big Data
11 114 (1.58%) Relational Database
12 99 (1.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 93 (1.29%) MongoDB
14 82 (1.14%) Tableau
15 72 (1.00%) Oracle Database
16 70 (0.97%) MySQL
17 68 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
18 64 (0.89%) BigQuery
19 58 (0.80%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 532 (7.36%) Git
2 512 (7.09%) JIRA
3 383 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 286 (3.96%) GitLab
5 128 (1.77%) Selenium
6 87 (1.20%) Postman
7 72 (1.00%) Cucumber
8 69 (0.96%) JUnit
9 66 (0.91%) JMeter
10 54 (0.75%) MLflow
11 51 (0.71%) REST Assured
12 44 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 43 (0.60%) Cypress.io
14 37 (0.51%) Artifactory
15 36 (0.50%) Visual Studio
16 34 (0.47%) TestRail
16 34 (0.47%) WebDriver
17 31 (0.43%) Gatling
18 28 (0.39%) Oracle APEX
19 27 (0.37%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,942 (26.88%) Social Skills
2 1,281 (17.73%) Finance
3 818 (11.32%) Public Sector
4 689 (9.54%) Analytical Skills
5 381 (5.27%) Banking
6 225 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
7 182 (2.52%) Legal
8 106 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 93 (1.29%) Retail
10 84 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
12 75 (1.04%) Marketing
13 74 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
14 68 (0.94%) Financial Institution
15 67 (0.93%) Telecoms
16 65 (0.90%) Law
17 62 (0.86%) Investment Banking
18 60 (0.83%) Front Office
19 44 (0.61%) Local Government
20 43 (0.60%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,218 (16.86%) Architect
2 958 (13.26%) Developer
3 840 (11.63%) Senior
4 662 (9.16%) Azure Engineer
5 593 (8.21%) Data Engineer
6 549 (7.60%) Lead
7 437 (6.05%) Analyst
8 401 (5.55%) DevOps Engineer
9 309 (4.28%) Solutions Architect
10 303 (4.19%) Consultant
11 220 (3.05%) Cloud Engineer
12 214 (2.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 198 (2.74%) Azure Architect
14 185 (2.56%) Security Engineer
15 172 (2.38%) Platform Engineer
16 169 (2.34%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 167 (2.31%) Data Architect
18 159 (2.20%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 159 (2.20%) Technical Architect
19 145 (2.01%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 575 (7.96%) .NET
2 487 (6.74%) REST
3 332 (4.60%) React
4 274 (3.79%) Kafka
5 262 (3.63%) PySpark
6 244 (3.38%) Node.js
7 232 (3.21%) RESTful
8 220 (3.05%) Spring
9 213 (2.95%) OAuth
10 184 (2.55%) AngularJS
10 184 (2.55%) Spring Boot
11 169 (2.34%) LDAP
12 151 (2.09%) JSON
13 150 (2.08%) HTML
14 134 (1.85%) SAML
15 132 (1.83%) OpenID
16 131 (1.81%) SOAP
17 126 (1.74%) CSS
18 125 (1.73%) Middleware
19 110 (1.52%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 686 (9.50%) Cloud Native
2 278 (3.85%) Onboarding
3 266 (3.68%) Product Ownership
4 189 (2.62%) Hybrid Cloud
5 180 (2.49%) Data Centre
6 172 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
7 171 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
8 168 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
9 163 (2.26%) Security Posture
10 160 (2.21%) Public Cloud
11 129 (1.79%) AI Agents
12 93 (1.29%) Data Structures
13 90 (1.25%) Replication
14 88 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
15 84 (1.16%) Management Information System
16 77 (1.07%) Low-Code
17 69 (0.96%) PKI
18 64 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
19 59 (0.82%) NHS
20 51 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 780 (10.80%) Windows
2 371 (5.14%) Linux
3 244 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.63%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.01%) VMS
6 70 (0.97%) Unix
7 63 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 62 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 50 (0.69%) Apple iOS
10 42 (0.58%) Android
11 26 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (0.28%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
15 9 (0.12%) Windows 7
16 8 (0.11%) AIX
16 8 (0.11%) CentOS
17 7 (0.097%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.069%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,725 (37.72%) DevOps
2 2,245 (31.08%) CI/CD
3 1,701 (23.55%) Agile
4 1,093 (15.13%) Problem-Solving
5 1,075 (14.88%) Analytics
6 1,017 (14.08%) Infrastructure as Code
7 995 (13.77%) AI
8 982 (13.59%) Migration
9 812 (11.24%) Data Modelling
10 709 (9.81%) Stakeholder Management
11 701 (9.70%) Business Intelligence
12 690 (9.55%) Containerisation
13 688 (9.52%) Continuous Improvement
14 683 (9.45%) Data Pipeline
15 659 (9.12%) Microservices
16 642 (8.89%) ETL
17 595 (8.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 587 (8.13%) Data Engineering
19 570 (7.89%) Roadmaps
20 566 (7.83%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,790 (24.78%) Python
2 1,562 (21.62%) SQL
3 741 (10.26%) PowerShell
4 626 (8.67%) C#
5 621 (8.60%) Java
6 471 (6.52%) JavaScript
7 288 (3.99%) TypeScript
8 256 (3.54%) Bash
9 235 (3.25%) Bicep
10 98 (1.36%) Scala
11 82 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.14%) Go
12 80 (1.11%) T-SQL
13 71 (0.98%) PL/SQL
14 69 (0.96%) Kusto Query Language
15 54 (0.75%) Shell Script
16 48 (0.66%) R
17 30 (0.42%) C++
18 23 (0.32%) Kotlin
19 22 (0.30%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,791 (24.79%) Security Cleared
2 1,512 (20.93%) SC Cleared
3 515 (7.13%) Degree
4 382 (5.29%) Azure Certification
5 204 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 192 (2.66%) CISSP
7 164 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
8 153 (2.12%) Microsoft Certification
9 148 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
10 143 (1.98%) AWS Certification
11 142 (1.97%) DV Cleared
12 114 (1.58%) CISM
13 77 (1.07%) CCNP
14 72 (1.00%) Master's Degree
15 71 (0.98%) PMP
16 68 (0.94%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
17 59 (0.82%) ISTQB
18 49 (0.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.50%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 514 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 396 (5.48%) QA
3 387 (5.36%) GDPR
4 287 (3.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 256 (3.54%) NIST
6 128 (1.77%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.38%) NCSC
8 82 (1.14%) PCI DSS
9 62 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 62 (0.86%) SLA
10 58 (0.80%) PMO
11 54 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
12 43 (0.60%) GRC
13 38 (0.53%) WCAG
14 34 (0.47%) HIPAA
15 23 (0.32%) ISO 20022
15 23 (0.32%) NIST 800
16 21 (0.29%) SOC 2
17 20 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 19 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 888 (12.29%) Active Directory
2 818 (11.32%) Docker
3 198 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 115 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
5 108 (1.50%) Hyper-V
6 105 (1.45%) Virtual Desktop
7 65 (0.90%) vSphere
8 35 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.36%) Firmware
10 24 (0.33%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.28%) NFS
12 11 (0.15%) Postfix
13 7 (0.097%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.097%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.097%) HDFS
13 7 (0.097%) Varnish
14 6 (0.083%) Ceph
14 6 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.083%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.083%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 1,146 (15.86%) Terraform
2 1,073 (14.85%) Kubernetes
3 363 (5.02%) Microsoft Intune
4 330 (4.57%) Ansible
5 203 (2.81%) Grafana
6 173 (2.39%) Prometheus
7 152 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
8 113 (1.56%) SCCM
9 69 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.53%) Argo
11 36 (0.50%) Istio
12 34 (0.47%) Puppet
13 32 (0.44%) FortiGate
14 28 (0.39%) Progress Chef
15 24 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
16 23 (0.32%) vCenter Server
17 22 (0.30%) HP ALM
18 17 (0.24%) Kubeflow
18 17 (0.24%) linkerd
19 15 (0.21%) vRealize
Vendors
1 2,332 (32.28%) Microsoft
2 724 (10.02%) Databricks
3 328 (4.54%) Google
4 320 (4.43%) Oracle
5 292 (4.04%) ServiceNow
6 283 (3.92%) VMware
7 205 (2.84%) SAP
8 186 (2.57%) Cisco
9 183 (2.53%) OpenAI
10 158 (2.19%) Splunk
11 135 (1.87%) CyberArk
12 116 (1.61%) Foundry
13 106 (1.47%) Salesforce
14 96 (1.33%) Palo Alto
15 86 (1.19%) Okta
16 74 (1.02%) Informatica
17 73 (1.01%) Citrix
18 68 (0.94%) BeyondTrust
18 68 (0.94%) Dynatrace
19 67 (0.93%) Red Hat