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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,127 4,837 6,036
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.45% 14.91% 14.12%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.74% 39.80% 42.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,694 3,361 4,338
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 37 55
10th Percentile £18.50 £25.60 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £29.25 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +15.85% -22.90%
75th Percentile £78.00 £78.70 £61.60
90th Percentile £96.88 £100.00 £72.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £52.75
% change year-on-year -11.54% +23.22% -6.22%

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 18,579 12,154 14,189
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.31% 37.45% 33.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,330 8,142 9,946
10th Percentile £328 £313 £308
25th Percentile £416 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.20% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £615 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £730 £742
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 615 310 353
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.24 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.30
Median % change year-on-year +34.55% +23.32% -36.29%
75th Percentile £69.88 £47.50 £50.00
90th Percentile £83.55 £67.05 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +98.73% -10.14% -21.50%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 6,907 £525 - 3,887
London +1 3,618 £550 - 1,182
UK excluding London +3 3,507 £505 +1.00% 3,657
Work from Home -1 2,531 £525 +4.90% 2,870
North of England +7 1,009 £500 +2.30% 849
South East +2 856 £525 +5.00% 955
Midlands +2 616 £500 - 467
North West +8 533 £500 - 446
West Midlands +2 460 £500 -4.76% 248
South West +7 440 £539 +7.75% 430
Yorkshire +1 397 £500 +5.26% 287
Scotland +10 317 £525 +8.47% 332
East of England +2 187 £550 - 347
East Midlands +4 145 £488 +5.41% 217
Wales -1 106 £425 -1.96% 184
North East +4 92 £525 +5.00% 124
Northern Ireland +14 19 £538 +13.16% 162
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 411 (5.06%) SharePoint
2 274 (3.37%) Confluence
3 193 (2.37%) Microsoft Exchange
4 187 (2.30%) Apache Spark
5 130 (1.60%) Apache Airflow
6 117 (1.44%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 34 (0.42%) IIS
9 22 (0.27%) CMS
10 19 (0.23%) OpenStack
11 18 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 10 (0.12%) Camunda
14 10 (0.12%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.098%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.098%) Mendix
16 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.074%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 118 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
3 73 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.37%) Chatbot
6 29 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 5 (0.062%) Trello
12 4 (0.049%) Notion
13 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.037%) PTC Creo
14 2 (0.025%) SOLIDWORKS
15 1 (0.012%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 1 (0.012%) Houdini
15 1 (0.012%) InDesign
15 1 (0.012%) NUKE
15 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 112 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 83 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.14%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.098%) Maximo
7 8 (0.098%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.098%) Teamcenter
8 7 (0.086%) Magento
8 7 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.074%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.074%) Shopify
10 5 (0.062%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.062%) Endur
10 5 (0.062%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.062%) SimCorp Dimension
11 4 (0.049%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.049%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,875 (35.38%) AWS
2 1,680 (20.67%) Azure DevOps
3 1,371 (16.87%) GCP
4 1,031 (12.69%) Power Platform
5 1,009 (12.42%) Entra ID
6 804 (9.89%) Microsoft 365
7 776 (9.55%) GitHub
8 465 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
9 454 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 364 (4.48%) Serverless
11 322 (3.96%) SaaS
12 308 (3.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 289 (3.56%) Azure AKS
14 276 (3.40%) Power Automate
15 275 (3.38%) Azure Monitor
16 261 (3.21%) PowerApps
17 254 (3.13%) PaaS
18 246 (3.03%) Dynamics 365
19 228 (2.81%) Azure AI
20 214 (2.63%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 495 (6.09%) Firewall
2 373 (4.59%) DNS
3 296 (3.64%) VPN
4 278 (3.42%) Network Security
5 203 (2.50%) WAN
6 184 (2.26%) DHCP
7 133 (1.64%) TCP/IP
8 132 (1.62%) LAN
9 114 (1.40%) BGP
10 109 (1.34%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.10%) OSPF
12 85 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
13 84 (1.03%) VLAN
14 69 (0.85%) SSL
15 57 (0.70%) IPsec
16 55 (0.68%) SAN
17 53 (0.65%) Wireless
18 52 (0.64%) Kerberos
19 46 (0.57%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 697 (8.58%) Power BI
2 473 (5.82%) SQL Server
3 390 (4.80%) Data Warehouse
4 355 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 307 (3.78%) PostgreSQL
6 218 (2.68%) Azure SQL Database
7 209 (2.57%) NoSQL
8 202 (2.49%) Metadata
9 141 (1.73%) Relational Database
10 133 (1.64%) Delta Lake
11 123 (1.51%) Big Data
12 106 (1.30%) MongoDB
13 95 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 83 (1.02%) MySQL
15 72 (0.89%) Tableau
16 69 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
17 65 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.73%) Oracle Database
19 56 (0.69%) Redis
19 56 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 638 (7.85%) JIRA
2 626 (7.70%) Git
3 429 (5.28%) Jenkins
4 314 (3.86%) GitLab
5 127 (1.56%) Selenium
6 77 (0.95%) Postman
7 73 (0.90%) JMeter
8 69 (0.85%) JUnit
9 58 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 54 (0.66%) REST Assured
11 50 (0.62%) Cypress.io
12 49 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 46 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 43 (0.53%) WebDriver
15 42 (0.52%) Maven
16 40 (0.49%) MLflow
17 33 (0.41%) Gradle
18 32 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
19 29 (0.36%) Gatling
20 26 (0.32%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,063 (25.38%) Social Skills
2 1,508 (18.56%) Finance
3 932 (11.47%) Public Sector
4 766 (9.43%) Analytical Skills
5 423 (5.20%) Banking
6 234 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 199 (2.45%) Legal
8 176 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 170 (2.09%) Retail
10 101 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
11 86 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
12 80 (0.98%) Telecoms
13 73 (0.90%) Law
14 72 (0.89%) Manufacturing
15 70 (0.86%) Marketing
16 68 (0.84%) Financial Institution
17 67 (0.82%) Investment Banking
18 66 (0.81%) Front Office
19 55 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
20 52 (0.64%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,439 (17.71%) Architect
2 1,072 (13.19%) Developer
3 984 (12.11%) Senior
4 716 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 650 (8.00%) Lead
6 602 (7.41%) Data Engineer
7 496 (6.10%) Analyst
8 422 (5.19%) DevOps Engineer
9 412 (5.07%) Solutions Architect
10 324 (3.99%) Consultant
11 308 (3.79%) Cloud Engineer
12 281 (3.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 233 (2.87%) Data Architect
14 217 (2.67%) Azure Architect
15 205 (2.52%) Platform Engineer
16 201 (2.47%) Technical Architect
17 188 (2.31%) Security Engineer
18 186 (2.29%) Java Developer
19 183 (2.25%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 181 (2.23%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 647 (7.96%) .NET
2 593 (7.30%) REST
3 343 (4.22%) React
4 309 (3.80%) Kafka
5 291 (3.58%) RESTful
6 251 (3.09%) PySpark
7 235 (2.89%) OAuth
8 232 (2.85%) Spring
9 214 (2.63%) Node.js
10 199 (2.45%) Spring Boot
11 190 (2.34%) JSON
12 184 (2.26%) AngularJS
13 157 (1.93%) HTML
14 147 (1.81%) SAML
15 140 (1.72%) OpenID
16 133 (1.64%) .NET Framework
17 131 (1.61%) LDAP
18 130 (1.60%) Middleware
19 126 (1.55%) OAuth2
19 126 (1.55%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 865 (10.64%) Cloud Native
2 354 (4.36%) Onboarding
3 330 (4.06%) Product Ownership
4 266 (3.27%) Data Centre
5 253 (3.11%) Distributed Systems
6 235 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
7 231 (2.84%) Hybrid Cloud
8 206 (2.53%) AI Agents
9 181 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
10 157 (1.93%) Security Posture
11 145 (1.78%) Public Cloud
12 120 (1.48%) Data Structures
13 113 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
13 113 (1.39%) Management Information System
14 108 (1.33%) Replication
15 93 (1.14%) PKI
16 92 (1.13%) Enterprise Cloud
17 86 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
18 77 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
19 75 (0.92%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 922 (11.34%) Windows
2 427 (5.25%) Linux
3 296 (3.64%) Windows Server
4 109 (1.34%) Windows 10
5 78 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 74 (0.91%) Android
6 74 (0.91%) Unix
7 73 (0.90%) Apple iOS
8 70 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 58 (0.71%) VMS
10 39 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 27 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.14%) CentOS
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 8 (0.098%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
19 6 (0.074%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,024 (37.21%) DevOps
2 2,544 (31.30%) CI/CD
3 2,028 (24.95%) Agile
4 1,231 (15.15%) AI
5 1,218 (14.99%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,189 (14.63%) Migration
7 1,116 (13.73%) Analytics
8 1,080 (13.29%) Problem-Solving
9 1,001 (12.32%) Stakeholder Management
10 915 (11.26%) Data Modelling
11 840 (10.34%) Continuous Improvement
12 771 (9.49%) Data Pipeline
13 760 (9.35%) Containerisation
14 759 (9.34%) Microservices
15 757 (9.31%) Roadmaps
16 740 (9.11%) Business Intelligence
17 722 (8.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 672 (8.27%) Test Automation
19 670 (8.24%) ETL
20 643 (7.91%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,893 (23.29%) Python
2 1,599 (19.68%) SQL
3 780 (9.60%) PowerShell
4 691 (8.50%) Java
5 629 (7.74%) C#
6 473 (5.82%) JavaScript
7 316 (3.89%) Bash
8 315 (3.88%) TypeScript
9 276 (3.40%) Bicep
10 97 (1.19%) T-SQL
11 93 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 81 (1.00%) Go
13 69 (0.85%) Scala
14 55 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
15 50 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.53%) R
17 40 (0.49%) PL/SQL
18 37 (0.46%) Kotlin
19 26 (0.32%) Groovy
20 24 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,010 (24.73%) Security Cleared
2 1,667 (20.51%) SC Cleared
3 573 (7.05%) Degree
4 427 (5.25%) Azure Certification
5 246 (3.03%) CISSP
6 239 (2.94%) DV Cleared
7 237 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
8 198 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
8 198 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
9 195 (2.40%) AWS Certification
10 193 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
11 122 (1.50%) CISM
12 96 (1.18%) CCNP
13 82 (1.01%) PMP
14 77 (0.95%) PMI Certification
15 76 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 67 (0.82%) ISTQB
17 66 (0.81%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
19 51 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 553 (6.80%) Data Quality
2 424 (5.22%) QA
3 335 (4.12%) GDPR
4 272 (3.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 271 (3.33%) NIST
6 192 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.46%) NCSC
8 99 (1.22%) SLA
9 70 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
9 70 (0.86%) PCI DSS
9 70 (0.86%) WCAG
10 64 (0.79%) GRC
10 64 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 49 (0.60%) PMO
12 36 (0.44%) HIPAA
13 29 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 24 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 24 (0.30%) SOC 2
15 22 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
16 20 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 953 (11.73%) Active Directory
2 869 (10.69%) Docker
3 221 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
5 135 (1.66%) Virtual Machines
6 113 (1.39%) Hyper-V
7 67 (0.82%) vSphere
8 53 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.37%) Firmware
11 25 (0.31%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) Postfix
13 11 (0.14%) IAG
13 11 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.098%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.098%) Varnish
15 7 (0.086%) Ceph
16 6 (0.074%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.074%) HDFS
17 5 (0.062%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,292 (15.90%) Terraform
2 1,194 (14.69%) Kubernetes
3 418 (5.14%) Microsoft Intune
4 391 (4.81%) Ansible
5 241 (2.97%) Grafana
6 204 (2.51%) Prometheus
7 166 (2.04%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.29%) SCCM
9 64 (0.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 50 (0.62%) Argo
10 50 (0.62%) Progress Chef
11 47 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
12 46 (0.57%) Puppet
13 35 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 30 (0.37%) Istio
15 23 (0.28%) HP ALM
16 20 (0.25%) HAProxy
16 20 (0.25%) vCenter Server
17 18 (0.22%) Packer
18 15 (0.18%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,612 (32.14%) Microsoft
2 738 (9.08%) Databricks
3 375 (4.61%) ServiceNow
4 325 (4.00%) Google
5 319 (3.93%) Oracle
6 309 (3.80%) VMware
7 231 (2.84%) SAP
8 216 (2.66%) Cisco
9 204 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 180 (2.21%) Splunk
11 156 (1.92%) Salesforce
12 140 (1.72%) Palo Alto
13 133 (1.64%) Foundry
14 132 (1.62%) CyberArk
15 101 (1.24%) Okta
16 97 (1.19%) Dynatrace
17 92 (1.13%) Zscaler
18 89 (1.10%) Informatica
19 76 (0.94%) Citrix
20 75 (0.92%) Fortinet