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 7 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,320 5,036 5,444
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.15% 15.25% 14.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.71% 40.04% 42.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,815 3,438 3,680
10th Percentile £363 £350 £340
25th Percentile £445 £415 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £517 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.32% -1.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £719 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 44 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.29 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £33.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.32% -4.61% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.00 £65.99 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.38 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £19.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +107.89% -58.86% -

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 19,035 12,577 12,941
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.67% 38.09% 34.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,626 8,394 8,567
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £409 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £715 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 636 292 184
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £16.30
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £31.25 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.25% -28.14% +6.06%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.22 £65.04
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.27 £33.93
% change year-on-year +55.68% -43.21% +46.00%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 -1 7,082 £530 +0.95% 7,862
London 0 3,723 £550 - 3,831
UK excluding London 0 3,501 £510 +2.00% 4,717
Work from Home -2 2,523 £527 +5.35% 3,663
North of England +4 1,013 £500 +5.26% 1,257
South East +1 907 £525 +5.00% 1,231
Midlands +1 636 £500 -3.57% 675
North West +4 493 £500 +5.26% 641
West Midlands +2 485 £488 -11.36% 426
Yorkshire +5 430 £500 +2.04% 436
South West +3 413 £550 +7.53% 511
Scotland 0 283 £500 - 391
East of England 0 193 £510 +0.99% 380
East Midlands +3 147 £500 +8.11% 249
North East +4 104 £513 +2.50% 190
Wales -1 82 £438 -2.78% 157
Northern Ireland +15 13 £650 - 141
Channel Islands -9 3 £500 -21.88% 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 (5.64%) SharePoint
2 273 (3.28%) Confluence
3 196 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 188 (2.26%) Apache Spark
5 158 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
6 119 (1.43%) Apache
7 36 (0.43%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) CMS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 16 (0.19%) nginx
11 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
11 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
13 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.084%) Mendix
14 7 (0.084%) Traefik
15 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
15 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 126 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 65 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 48 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 45 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 42 (0.50%) Chatbot
7 12 (0.14%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.096%) Trello
9 7 (0.084%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.084%) Revit
10 5 (0.060%) Notion
10 5 (0.060%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.036%) 1Password
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) Mingle
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Windchill
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 132 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 10 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.096%) Cloudability
9 8 (0.096%) Magento
10 7 (0.084%) Shopify
11 6 (0.072%) FLEXCUBE
11 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 6 (0.072%) Teamcenter
11 6 (0.072%) Temenos T24
12 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
12 5 (0.060%) Maximo
13 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,991 (35.95%) AWS
2 1,765 (21.21%) Azure DevOps
3 1,486 (17.86%) GCP
4 1,146 (13.77%) Entra ID
5 1,073 (12.90%) Power Platform
6 890 (10.70%) Microsoft 365
7 879 (10.56%) GitHub
8 496 (5.96%) GitHub Actions
9 465 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 376 (4.52%) Serverless
11 367 (4.41%) SaaS
12 329 (3.95%) Azure Monitor
13 301 (3.62%) Dynamics 365
14 299 (3.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 297 (3.57%) Power Automate
16 295 (3.55%) Snowflake
17 292 (3.51%) Azure AKS
18 282 (3.39%) PowerApps
19 252 (3.03%) Azure AI
20 249 (2.99%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 521 (6.26%) Firewall
2 420 (5.05%) DNS
3 320 (3.85%) VPN
4 300 (3.61%) Network Security
5 233 (2.80%) DHCP
6 180 (2.16%) WAN
7 169 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 105 (1.26%) BGP
8 105 (1.26%) LAN
9 98 (1.18%) SD-WAN
10 84 (1.01%) OSPF
11 83 (1.00%) VLAN
12 80 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
13 71 (0.85%) SSL
14 67 (0.81%) Wireless
15 63 (0.76%) SAN
16 47 (0.56%) HTTP
17 45 (0.54%) IPsec
18 41 (0.49%) VXLAN
19 40 (0.48%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 697 (8.38%) Power BI
2 477 (5.73%) SQL Server
3 401 (4.82%) Data Warehouse
4 389 (4.68%) Data Lake
5 292 (3.51%) PostgreSQL
6 252 (3.03%) Metadata
7 211 (2.54%) NoSQL
8 208 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
9 150 (1.80%) Relational Database
10 130 (1.56%) Delta Lake
11 115 (1.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 111 (1.33%) MySQL
13 106 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 88 (1.06%) Big Data
15 71 (0.85%) Redis
16 70 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
17 68 (0.82%) Amazon RDS
18 63 (0.76%) BigQuery
19 61 (0.73%) Oracle Database
20 55 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 761 (9.15%) Git
2 614 (7.38%) JIRA
3 483 (5.81%) Jenkins
4 376 (4.52%) GitLab
5 139 (1.67%) Selenium
6 90 (1.08%) Postman
7 67 (0.81%) Cucumber
8 65 (0.78%) Cypress.io
9 63 (0.76%) JUnit
10 60 (0.72%) Claude Code
11 59 (0.71%) JMeter
12 53 (0.64%) Maven
12 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
13 51 (0.61%) Gradle
13 51 (0.61%) Visual Studio
14 47 (0.56%) REST Assured
15 36 (0.43%) WebDriver
16 35 (0.42%) Bitbucket
17 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
18 31 (0.37%) MLflow
General
1 2,306 (27.72%) Social Skills
2 1,605 (19.29%) Finance
3 965 (11.60%) Public Sector
4 814 (9.78%) Analytical Skills
5 504 (6.06%) Banking
6 220 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 218 (2.62%) Retail
8 204 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
9 171 (2.06%) Legal
10 115 (1.38%) Manufacturing
11 114 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
12 99 (1.19%) Investment Banking
13 95 (1.14%) Marketing
14 92 (1.11%) Telecoms
15 89 (1.07%) Aerospace
16 85 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
17 77 (0.93%) Military
18 67 (0.81%) Law
19 62 (0.75%) Local Government
20 60 (0.72%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,586 (19.06%) Architect
2 1,067 (12.82%) Senior
3 1,020 (12.26%) Developer
4 723 (8.69%) Azure Engineer
5 695 (8.35%) Lead
6 586 (7.04%) Data Engineer
7 491 (5.90%) Solutions Architect
8 463 (5.56%) DevOps Engineer
9 459 (5.52%) Analyst
10 383 (4.60%) Cloud Engineer
11 325 (3.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 324 (3.89%) Consultant
13 268 (3.22%) Data Architect
14 226 (2.72%) Platform Engineer
15 218 (2.62%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 210 (2.52%) Azure Architect
17 201 (2.42%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 199 (2.39%) Technical Architect
19 194 (2.33%) Security Engineer
20 184 (2.21%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,419 (17.06%) Terraform
2 774 (9.30%) REST
3 636 (7.64%) .NET
4 404 (4.86%) Kafka
5 317 (3.81%) React
6 301 (3.62%) RESTful
7 276 (3.32%) OAuth
8 264 (3.17%) PySpark
9 243 (2.92%) JSON
10 189 (2.27%) Spring
11 181 (2.18%) Spring Boot
12 169 (2.03%) OAuth2
13 168 (2.02%) HTML
13 168 (2.02%) OpenID
14 154 (1.85%) Middleware
15 153 (1.84%) Node.js
16 150 (1.80%) AngularJS
16 150 (1.80%) SAML
17 147 (1.77%) SOAP
18 137 (1.65%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 940 (11.30%) Cloud Native
2 423 (5.08%) Onboarding
3 397 (4.77%) Product Ownership
4 335 (4.03%) Enterprise Software
5 330 (3.97%) AI Agents
6 286 (3.44%) Distributed Systems
6 286 (3.44%) Hybrid Cloud
7 257 (3.09%) Data Centre
8 229 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
9 189 (2.27%) Management Information System
10 181 (2.18%) Security Posture
11 151 (1.81%) Data Structures
12 149 (1.79%) Public Cloud
13 134 (1.61%) PKI
14 113 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
15 109 (1.31%) Enterprise Cloud
16 101 (1.21%) Replication
17 95 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
18 91 (1.09%) CMDB
18 91 (1.09%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 1,008 (12.12%) Windows
2 540 (6.49%) Linux
3 392 (4.71%) Windows Server
4 156 (1.88%) Windows 10
5 92 (1.11%) Android
6 88 (1.06%) Apple iOS
7 86 (1.03%) Unix
8 85 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 68 (0.82%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.67%) Ubuntu
11 52 (0.63%) VMS
12 27 (0.32%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.084%) Debian
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
19 5 (0.060%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,083 (37.06%) DevOps
2 2,719 (32.68%) CI/CD
3 2,100 (25.24%) Agile
4 1,543 (18.55%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,452 (17.45%) AI
6 1,432 (17.21%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,256 (15.10%) Migration
8 1,154 (13.87%) Problem-Solving
9 1,124 (13.51%) Analytics
10 984 (11.83%) Continuous Improvement
11 899 (10.81%) Data Modelling
12 881 (10.59%) Roadmaps
13 790 (9.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 784 (9.42%) Containerisation
15 770 (9.25%) Test Automation
16 762 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
17 758 (9.11%) Technical Leadership
18 739 (8.88%) Microservices
19 733 (8.81%) Data Pipeline
20 676 (8.13%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 1,944 (23.37%) Python
2 1,596 (19.18%) SQL
3 929 (11.17%) PowerShell
4 687 (8.26%) Java
5 616 (7.40%) C#
6 523 (6.29%) JavaScript
7 431 (5.18%) Bash
8 373 (4.48%) Bicep
9 315 (3.79%) TypeScript
10 103 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 93 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 82 (0.99%) Go
13 66 (0.79%) Scala
14 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
15 61 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
16 44 (0.53%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.44%) R
18 33 (0.40%) C++
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.38%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 2,176 (26.15%) Security Cleared
2 1,752 (21.06%) SC Cleared
3 569 (6.84%) Degree
4 476 (5.72%) Azure Certification
5 316 (3.80%) DV Cleared
6 277 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 272 (3.27%) CISSP
8 252 (3.03%) Microsoft Certification
9 222 (2.67%) AWS Certification
10 194 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
11 191 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
12 140 (1.68%) CISM
13 95 (1.14%) PMI Certification
14 92 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 91 (1.09%) PMP
16 83 (1.00%) CCNP
17 66 (0.79%) CCSP
18 65 (0.78%) ISTQB
19 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
20 54 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 616 (7.40%) Data Quality
2 477 (5.73%) QA
3 305 (3.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 291 (3.50%) NIST
5 287 (3.45%) GDPR
6 214 (2.57%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.44%) NCSC
8 109 (1.31%) SLA
9 82 (0.99%) GRC
9 82 (0.99%) WCAG
10 80 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
11 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
12 51 (0.61%) PMO
13 49 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 47 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 35 (0.42%) SOC 2
16 27 (0.32%) ISO 20022
17 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
18 22 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,035 (12.44%) Active Directory
2 938 (11.27%) Docker
3 252 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 150 (1.80%) Virtual Machines
5 145 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
6 132 (1.59%) Hyper-V
7 75 (0.90%) vSphere
8 52 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (0.37%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.24%) Firmware
11 17 (0.20%) IAG
12 14 (0.17%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 7 (0.084%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.084%) Ceph
17 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.060%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,319 (15.85%) Kubernetes
2 463 (5.56%) Ansible
3 452 (5.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 278 (3.34%) Grafana
5 213 (2.56%) Prometheus
6 146 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
7 145 (1.74%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Argo
9 61 (0.73%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 37 (0.44%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.41%) SCOM
13 33 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
14 30 (0.36%) Istio
15 24 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 21 (0.25%) CASB
17 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
18 19 (0.23%) QRadar
19 17 (0.20%) Packer
20 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,047 (36.62%) Microsoft
2 868 (10.43%) Databricks
3 408 (4.90%) ServiceNow
4 407 (4.89%) Google
5 365 (4.39%) VMware
6 347 (4.17%) Oracle
7 237 (2.85%) Cisco
8 234 (2.81%) Splunk
9 228 (2.74%) OpenAI
10 222 (2.67%) SAP
11 189 (2.27%) Salesforce
12 155 (1.86%) Palo Alto
13 145 (1.74%) CyberArk
14 141 (1.69%) Foundry
15 137 (1.65%) Dynatrace
16 90 (1.08%) Zscaler
17 89 (1.07%) IBM
18 82 (0.99%) Informatica
19 81 (0.97%) MuleSoft
20 80 (0.96%) Fortinet