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 26 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,626 5,424 6,871
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.61% 14.87% 15.03%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.68% 41.88% 42.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,918 3,631 5,039
10th Percentile £350 £338 £350
25th Percentile £422 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £712 £714 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £520
% change year-on-year - -3.85% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 51 85
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.30 £17.75
25th Percentile £26.00 £23.80 £25.00
Median hourly rate £46.00 £31.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% -32.87% +31.94%
75th Percentile £80.00 £60.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.75 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +119.17% -35.04% +2.62%

All Cloud 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 13,831 12,951 16,129
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.37% 35.51% 35.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,367 8,522 11,553
10th Percentile £306 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £708 £738 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 190 300
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.44 £14.36
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.72 £17.75
Median hourly rate £26.00 £30.73 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.40% +13.82% +22.50%
75th Percentile £51.67 £55.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.50 £22.00
% change year-on-year -18.18% +25.00% +16.40%

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 26 November 2025.

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 26 November 2025.

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 26 November 2025. 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 4,791 £525 -0.94% 3,175
London +1 2,576 £540 -1.82% 1,134
UK excluding London 0 2,327 £500 - 2,835
Work from Home -1 1,841 £513 -2.38% 1,754
North of England -3 593 £475 -5.00% 531
South East -4 570 £500 -4.76% 1,052
Midlands -1 426 £525 - 413
West Midlands 0 315 £550 +4.76% 269
South West +6 313 £500 - 297
North West -1 289 £475 -5.00% 289
Yorkshire -1 275 £488 -2.50% 176
Scotland +1 255 £513 +13.89% 224
East of England +3 158 £500 +25.00% 234
East Midlands -2 108 £450 -10.00% 139
Wales +2 64 £456 -8.75% 97
North East -8 33 £533 +21.02% 70
Channel Islands - 7 £640 -
Northern Ireland -3 6 - - 30

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
1 262 (4.66%) SharePoint
2 192 (3.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 147 (2.61%) Confluence
4 126 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 87 (1.55%) Apache
6 83 (1.48%) Apache Airflow
7 29 (0.52%) CMS
8 27 (0.48%) SAS
9 22 (0.39%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.32%) nginx
11 17 (0.30%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.21%) Anypoint
13 11 (0.20%) IIS
14 10 (0.18%) Mule
14 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
15 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 9 (0.16%) WebSphere
16 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.14%) GeoServer
Applications
1 129 (2.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 92 (1.64%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (0.71%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
6 16 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 10 (0.18%) Trello
8 5 (0.089%) Weka
9 2 (0.036%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.036%) Windchill
10 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
10 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
10 1 (0.018%) Revit
10 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 103 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 54 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 16 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
5 12 (0.21%) Endur
6 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
7 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 9 (0.16%) Workday HCM
8 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
9 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.089%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.089%) Remedy ITSM
11 4 (0.071%) Fidessa
11 4 (0.071%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.071%) Primavera
11 4 (0.071%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 2,057 (36.56%) AWS
2 1,128 (20.05%) Azure DevOps
3 1,095 (19.46%) GCP
4 715 (12.71%) Power Platform
5 644 (11.45%) Microsoft 365
6 631 (11.22%) Entra ID
7 535 (9.51%) GitHub
8 352 (6.26%) Azure Data Factory
9 319 (5.67%) GitHub Actions
10 297 (5.28%) Serverless
11 259 (4.60%) Dynamics 365
12 249 (4.43%) SaaS
13 242 (4.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 223 (3.96%) Azure AKS
15 217 (3.86%) Power Automate
16 209 (3.71%) Snowflake
17 203 (3.61%) PaaS
18 198 (3.52%) PowerApps
19 196 (3.48%) Azure Monitor
20 194 (3.45%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 418 (7.43%) Firewall
2 211 (3.75%) DNS
3 179 (3.18%) VPN
4 155 (2.76%) Network Security
5 119 (2.12%) WAN
6 106 (1.88%) DHCP
7 88 (1.56%) TCP/IP
8 78 (1.39%) LAN
9 69 (1.23%) HTTP
10 64 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 60 (1.07%) VLAN
12 59 (1.05%) SD-WAN
13 43 (0.76%) BGP
14 41 (0.73%) SAN
15 36 (0.64%) Internet
16 34 (0.60%) MPLS
17 31 (0.55%) OSPF
17 31 (0.55%) Wireless
18 28 (0.50%) SSL
19 20 (0.36%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 493 (8.76%) Power BI
2 311 (5.53%) SQL Server
3 269 (4.78%) Data Warehouse
4 247 (4.39%) Data Lake
5 242 (4.30%) PostgreSQL
6 185 (3.29%) Azure SQL Database
7 183 (3.25%) NoSQL
8 130 (2.31%) Relational Database
9 119 (2.12%) Metadata
10 103 (1.83%) MongoDB
11 83 (1.48%) Big Data
11 83 (1.48%) MySQL
12 69 (1.23%) Delta Lake
13 66 (1.17%) Tableau
14 61 (1.08%) BigQuery
14 61 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 55 (0.98%) Redis
16 51 (0.91%) Oracle Database
17 45 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
18 39 (0.69%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 486 (8.64%) Git
2 422 (7.50%) JIRA
3 332 (5.90%) Jenkins
4 225 (4.00%) GitLab
5 97 (1.72%) Selenium
6 86 (1.53%) Postman
7 71 (1.26%) SonarQube
8 65 (1.16%) JUnit
9 48 (0.85%) Bitbucket
10 47 (0.84%) JMeter
11 46 (0.82%) Cypress.io
12 45 (0.80%) Cucumber
13 42 (0.75%) Maven
14 37 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
15 36 (0.64%) Visual Studio
16 33 (0.59%) ERwin
17 32 (0.57%) CircleCI
18 30 (0.53%) Gradle
18 30 (0.53%) SpecFlow
19 29 (0.52%) Mockito
General
1 1,798 (31.96%) Social Skills
2 1,077 (19.14%) Finance
3 657 (11.68%) Public Sector
4 538 (9.56%) Analytical Skills
5 369 (6.56%) Banking
6 201 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
7 131 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 95 (1.69%) Investment Banking
8 95 (1.69%) Marketing
8 95 (1.69%) Retail
9 91 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
10 88 (1.56%) Legal
11 80 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
12 77 (1.37%) Telecoms
13 68 (1.21%) Manufacturing
14 58 (1.03%) Law
15 48 (0.85%) Local Government
16 46 (0.82%) Front Office
17 44 (0.78%) Financial Institution
18 42 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 919 (16.33%) Architect
2 917 (16.30%) Developer
3 567 (10.08%) Senior
4 421 (7.48%) Analyst
5 414 (7.36%) Azure Engineer
6 391 (6.95%) Lead
7 360 (6.40%) Data Engineer
8 320 (5.69%) Solutions Architect
9 278 (4.94%) DevOps Engineer
10 222 (3.95%) Consultant
11 176 (3.13%) Security Engineer
12 173 (3.08%) Senior Developer
13 163 (2.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 161 (2.86%) Azure Architect
15 137 (2.44%) Cloud Engineer
16 133 (2.36%) Platform Engineer
17 122 (2.17%) Data Architect
18 113 (2.01%) Business Analyst
19 112 (1.99%) Java Developer
19 112 (1.99%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 476 (8.46%) .NET
2 354 (6.29%) REST
3 263 (4.67%) RESTful
4 245 (4.35%) React
5 213 (3.79%) Kafka
6 199 (3.54%) Node.js
7 195 (3.47%) Spring
8 186 (3.31%) HTML
9 177 (3.15%) OAuth
10 166 (2.95%) AngularJS
11 163 (2.90%) Spring Boot
12 160 (2.84%) JSON
13 157 (2.79%) PySpark
14 146 (2.60%) CSS
15 134 (2.38%) SOAP
16 113 (2.01%) PyTorch
17 103 (1.83%) SAML
18 102 (1.81%) TensorFlow
18 102 (1.81%) XML
19 100 (1.78%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 439 (7.80%) Cloud Native
2 205 (3.64%) Product Ownership
3 187 (3.32%) Onboarding
4 160 (2.84%) Hybrid Cloud
5 146 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
6 134 (2.38%) Data Centre
7 120 (2.13%) Security Posture
8 114 (2.03%) Distributed Systems
9 110 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
10 97 (1.72%) Public Cloud
11 79 (1.40%) Algorithms
11 79 (1.40%) Management Information System
12 77 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
13 69 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
14 59 (1.05%) Replication
15 57 (1.01%) Low-Code
16 55 (0.98%) AI Agents
17 54 (0.96%) Data Structures
18 51 (0.91%) PKI
19 49 (0.87%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 646 (11.48%) Windows
2 385 (6.84%) Linux
3 192 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.97%) Unix
5 94 (1.67%) Windows 10
6 58 (1.03%) Android
7 51 (0.91%) Apple iOS
8 46 (0.82%) VMS
9 38 (0.68%) Mac OS
10 28 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.21%) Solaris
13 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
14 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
15 9 (0.16%) CentOS
15 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 7 (0.12%) Mac OS X
17 5 (0.089%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.071%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,041 (36.28%) DevOps
2 1,636 (29.08%) CI/CD
3 1,529 (27.18%) Agile
4 1,030 (18.31%) Problem-Solving
5 755 (13.42%) Analytics
6 745 (13.24%) Infrastructure as Code
7 670 (11.91%) Migration
8 636 (11.30%) AI
9 566 (10.06%) Business Intelligence
10 561 (9.97%) Stakeholder Management
11 559 (9.94%) Containerisation
12 487 (8.66%) Microservices
13 478 (8.50%) Data Modelling
14 476 (8.46%) Test Automation
15 473 (8.41%) Machine Learning
16 453 (8.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 443 (7.87%) Continuous Improvement
18 425 (7.55%) Scrum
19 419 (7.45%) Cybersecurity
20 402 (7.15%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,433 (25.47%) Python
2 1,213 (21.56%) SQL
3 600 (10.66%) PowerShell
4 558 (9.92%) Java
5 517 (9.19%) C#
6 447 (7.95%) JavaScript
7 282 (5.01%) Bash
8 233 (4.14%) TypeScript
9 152 (2.70%) Bicep
10 94 (1.67%) Go
11 75 (1.33%) Kusto Query Language
12 67 (1.19%) Scala
13 63 (1.12%) PL/SQL
14 55 (0.98%) R
15 54 (0.96%) T-SQL
16 46 (0.82%) C++
17 40 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 38 (0.68%) Shell Script
19 32 (0.57%) PHP
20 31 (0.55%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,167 (20.74%) Security Cleared
2 952 (16.92%) SC Cleared
3 492 (8.75%) Degree
4 340 (6.04%) Azure Certification
5 187 (3.32%) Microsoft Certification
6 183 (3.25%) CISSP
7 173 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
8 143 (2.54%) AWS Certification
9 133 (2.36%) DV Cleared
10 101 (1.80%) CISM
11 99 (1.76%) Cisco Certification
12 85 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
12 85 (1.51%) Master's Degree
13 47 (0.84%) CCNP
14 45 (0.80%) ISTQB
15 37 (0.66%) PMI Certification
16 34 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 34 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
17 33 (0.59%) MCP
18 32 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 351 (6.24%) GDPR
2 326 (5.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 312 (5.55%) QA
4 258 (4.59%) NIST
5 253 (4.50%) Data Quality
6 136 (2.42%) Accessibility
7 74 (1.32%) NCSC
7 74 (1.32%) PCI DSS
8 54 (0.96%) HIPAA
9 51 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
10 38 (0.68%) SOC 2
11 35 (0.62%) SLA
12 32 (0.57%) WCAG
13 31 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 28 (0.50%) EU AI Act
15 26 (0.46%) GRC
16 24 (0.43%) PMO
16 24 (0.43%) PSD2
17 22 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 21 (0.37%) COBIT
System Software
1 719 (12.78%) Docker
2 684 (12.16%) Active Directory
3 172 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 75 (1.33%) Hyper-V
4 75 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
5 62 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
6 47 (0.84%) vSphere
7 25 (0.44%) VMware NSX
8 16 (0.28%) Squid
9 13 (0.23%) DFS Replication
9 13 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 13 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
10 10 (0.18%) Firmware
10 10 (0.18%) Postfix
11 9 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.16%) zsh
12 8 (0.14%) KVM
12 8 (0.14%) NFS
12 8 (0.14%) Snort
Systems Management
1 833 (14.81%) Terraform
2 803 (14.27%) Kubernetes
3 302 (5.37%) Microsoft Intune
4 300 (5.33%) Ansible
5 139 (2.47%) Single Sign-On
6 132 (2.35%) SCCM
7 129 (2.29%) Grafana
8 125 (2.22%) Prometheus
9 38 (0.68%) Argo
10 35 (0.62%) Puppet
11 33 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 27 (0.48%) Nessus
13 23 (0.41%) Kibana
14 20 (0.36%) NetBackup
14 20 (0.36%) Progress Chef
15 19 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
16 18 (0.32%) Istio
17 17 (0.30%) vRealize
18 16 (0.28%) QRadar
18 16 (0.28%) SCOM
Vendors
1 1,822 (32.39%) Microsoft
2 501 (8.91%) Databricks
3 329 (5.85%) Oracle
4 272 (4.83%) Google
5 225 (4.00%) VMware
6 213 (3.79%) ServiceNow
7 172 (3.06%) Cisco
8 154 (2.74%) SAP
9 138 (2.45%) Splunk
10 124 (2.20%) Salesforce
11 110 (1.96%) OpenAI
12 92 (1.64%) Palo Alto
13 85 (1.51%) Citrix
14 84 (1.49%) CyberArk
15 60 (1.07%) Foundry
16 59 (1.05%) F5
17 58 (1.03%) Red Hat
18 57 (1.01%) Okta
19 55 (0.98%) IBM
20 54 (0.96%) Dynatrace