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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,415 4,447 5,791
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.34% 15.43% 13.64%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.25% 40.96% 41.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,246 3,145 4,190
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £714 £725 £746
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 146 33 49
10th Percentile £20.04 £24.04 £17.80
25th Percentile £37.25 £29.00 £22.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% -25.00% -17.63%

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 17,144 10,856 13,877
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.48% 37.68% 32.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,542 7,455 9,874
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £620 £633
90th Percentile £704 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.58% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 525 240 347
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.21 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.00 £28.60 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +29.37% +33.83% -38.94%
75th Percentile £66.25 £48.19 £38.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.75 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.65 £21.28 £17.72
% change year-on-year +81.60% +20.09% -29.12%

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 22 May 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 22 May 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 22 May 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 6,275 £525 - 2,763
London +1 3,354 £538 -2.27% 1,059
UK excluding London +2 3,108 £500 - 2,112
Work from Home -1 2,256 £525 +2.44% 1,345
North of England +4 884 £500 +5.26% 589
South East +3 826 £500 -1.72% 610
Midlands -3 492 £491 -1.75% 267
North West +3 447 £500 +5.26% 338
South West +6 385 £525 - 262
Yorkshire +5 368 £500 +11.11% 158
West Midlands 0 355 £496 -5.48% 170
Scotland +10 303 £525 +10.53% 117
East of England +5 148 £550 -6.78% 162
East Midlands +4 127 £463 - 96
Wales -1 93 £400 - 78
North East +1 78 £525 +5.00% 95
Northern Ireland +11 18 £531 +11.84% 56
Channel Islands +3 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
1 345 (4.65%) SharePoint
2 217 (2.93%) Confluence
3 197 (2.66%) Apache Spark
4 189 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (1.43%) Apache
6 99 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.34%) IIS
7 25 (0.34%) SAS
8 17 (0.23%) CMS
9 15 (0.20%) Mendix
10 14 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 14 (0.19%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
11 12 (0.16%) Appian
11 12 (0.16%) Camunda
11 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
11 12 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
13 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.11%) nginx
Applications
1 102 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 63 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 21 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.094%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.094%) Trello
8 5 (0.067%) AutoCAD
8 5 (0.067%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.067%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.054%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.040%) Notion
10 3 (0.040%) Revit
10 3 (0.040%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.013%) InDesign
11 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 98 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.12%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.094%) NEC Housing
8 6 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.081%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.067%) Shopify
9 5 (0.067%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.054%) Magento
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.054%) SAP BPC
10 4 (0.054%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,513 (33.89%) AWS
2 1,510 (20.36%) Azure DevOps
3 1,291 (17.41%) GCP
4 952 (12.84%) Power Platform
5 886 (11.95%) Entra ID
6 765 (10.32%) Microsoft 365
7 692 (9.33%) GitHub
8 501 (6.76%) Azure Data Factory
9 409 (5.52%) GitHub Actions
10 382 (5.15%) Serverless
11 334 (4.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 284 (3.83%) SaaS
13 273 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 258 (3.48%) Power Automate
15 248 (3.34%) Dynamics 365
16 238 (3.21%) Azure Monitor
17 232 (3.13%) PaaS
18 223 (3.01%) PowerApps
19 209 (2.82%) Azure Functions
20 191 (2.58%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 443 (5.97%) Firewall
2 313 (4.22%) DNS
3 254 (3.43%) VPN
4 250 (3.37%) Network Security
5 205 (2.76%) WAN
6 167 (2.25%) DHCP
7 133 (1.79%) LAN
8 114 (1.54%) SD-WAN
9 91 (1.23%) TCP/IP
10 87 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
11 76 (1.02%) BGP
12 73 (0.98%) VLAN
13 71 (0.96%) Kerberos
14 65 (0.88%) OSPF
15 48 (0.65%) SAN
16 46 (0.62%) SSL
17 44 (0.59%) Wireless
18 43 (0.58%) VXLAN
19 38 (0.51%) HTTP
20 37 (0.50%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 626 (8.44%) Power BI
2 431 (5.81%) SQL Server
3 362 (4.88%) Data Lake
3 362 (4.88%) Data Warehouse
4 247 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
5 237 (3.20%) Azure SQL Database
6 197 (2.66%) NoSQL
7 177 (2.39%) Metadata
8 150 (2.02%) Delta Lake
9 118 (1.59%) Big Data
10 113 (1.52%) Relational Database
11 96 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 95 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 76 (1.02%) Tableau
14 68 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
15 66 (0.89%) Oracle Database
16 64 (0.86%) BigQuery
16 64 (0.86%) MySQL
17 55 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 49 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 538 (7.26%) Git
2 525 (7.08%) JIRA
3 389 (5.25%) Jenkins
4 311 (4.19%) GitLab
5 117 (1.58%) Selenium
6 81 (1.09%) Postman
7 69 (0.93%) JMeter
8 61 (0.82%) Cucumber
9 57 (0.77%) JUnit
10 53 (0.71%) MLflow
10 53 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 47 (0.63%) SonarQube
12 39 (0.53%) Cypress.io
13 37 (0.50%) Visual Studio
14 33 (0.45%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.45%) WebDriver
15 31 (0.42%) Gatling
16 30 (0.40%) Maven
17 25 (0.34%) ERwin
17 25 (0.34%) NUnit
General
1 1,863 (25.12%) Social Skills
2 1,320 (17.80%) Finance
3 808 (10.90%) Public Sector
4 651 (8.78%) Analytical Skills
5 381 (5.14%) Banking
6 195 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
7 194 (2.62%) Legal
8 108 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 104 (1.40%) Retail
10 91 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
11 76 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
12 73 (0.98%) Financial Institution
13 69 (0.93%) Marketing
14 68 (0.92%) Investment Banking
15 62 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
16 61 (0.82%) Telecoms
17 60 (0.81%) Front Office
17 60 (0.81%) Law
18 46 (0.62%) Military
19 39 (0.53%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,282 (17.29%) Architect
2 950 (12.81%) Developer
3 870 (11.73%) Senior
4 674 (9.09%) Azure Engineer
5 595 (8.02%) Data Engineer
6 560 (7.55%) Lead
7 460 (6.20%) Analyst
8 411 (5.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 332 (4.48%) Solutions Architect
10 308 (4.15%) Consultant
11 244 (3.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 242 (3.26%) Cloud Engineer
13 207 (2.79%) Azure Architect
14 198 (2.67%) Security Engineer
15 194 (2.62%) Data Architect
16 172 (2.32%) Platform Engineer
17 170 (2.29%) Technical Architect
18 169 (2.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 163 (2.20%) Project Manager
20 158 (2.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 600 (8.09%) .NET
2 499 (6.73%) REST
3 335 (4.52%) React
4 269 (3.63%) PySpark
5 266 (3.59%) Kafka
6 235 (3.17%) RESTful
7 215 (2.90%) Node.js
8 213 (2.87%) OAuth
9 193 (2.60%) Spring
10 179 (2.41%) AngularJS
11 174 (2.35%) LDAP
12 161 (2.17%) Spring Boot
13 154 (2.08%) JSON
14 139 (1.87%) HTML
15 137 (1.85%) SOAP
16 136 (1.83%) Middleware
17 135 (1.82%) OpenID
18 131 (1.77%) SAML
19 115 (1.55%) CSS
20 108 (1.46%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 712 (9.60%) Cloud Native
2 296 (3.99%) Onboarding
3 271 (3.65%) Product Ownership
4 228 (3.07%) Data Centre
5 200 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
6 178 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
7 171 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
8 163 (2.20%) Security Posture
9 158 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
10 152 (2.05%) Public Cloud
11 143 (1.93%) AI Agents
12 99 (1.34%) Data Structures
13 91 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
13 91 (1.23%) Replication
14 82 (1.11%) Low-Code
15 77 (1.04%) Management Information System
16 72 (0.97%) PKI
17 67 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
18 63 (0.85%) NHS
19 57 (0.77%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 818 (11.03%) Windows
2 377 (5.08%) Linux
3 247 (3.33%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.66%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.01%) Unix
6 69 (0.93%) Apple iOS
6 69 (0.93%) Mac OS
7 68 (0.92%) VMS
8 60 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 52 (0.70%) Android
10 30 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
11 23 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
15 9 (0.12%) CentOS
15 9 (0.12%) Debian
16 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.094%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.094%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,773 (37.40%) DevOps
2 2,308 (31.13%) CI/CD
3 1,719 (23.18%) Agile
4 1,062 (14.32%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,038 (14.00%) Analytics
5 1,038 (14.00%) Migration
6 1,024 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
7 1,017 (13.72%) AI
8 844 (11.38%) Data Modelling
9 746 (10.06%) Stakeholder Management
10 696 (9.39%) Data Pipeline
11 689 (9.29%) Continuous Improvement
12 684 (9.22%) Business Intelligence
13 679 (9.16%) Containerisation
14 666 (8.98%) ETL
15 656 (8.85%) Microservices
16 623 (8.40%) Roadmaps
17 600 (8.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 578 (7.80%) Data Engineering
19 566 (7.63%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,738 (23.44%) Python
2 1,528 (20.61%) SQL
3 728 (9.82%) PowerShell
4 615 (8.29%) C#
5 593 (8.00%) Java
6 445 (6.00%) JavaScript
7 278 (3.75%) TypeScript
8 246 (3.32%) Bash
9 243 (3.28%) Bicep
10 94 (1.27%) Scala
11 89 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 88 (1.19%) T-SQL
13 76 (1.02%) Go
14 54 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
15 49 (0.66%) Shell Script
16 45 (0.61%) PL/SQL
17 40 (0.54%) R
18 31 (0.42%) C++
19 24 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.22%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,823 (24.59%) Security Cleared
2 1,545 (20.84%) SC Cleared
3 510 (6.88%) Degree
4 374 (5.04%) Azure Certification
5 214 (2.89%) CISSP
6 187 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
7 173 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
8 171 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
9 162 (2.18%) DV Cleared
10 151 (2.04%) Microsoft Certification
11 137 (1.85%) AWS Certification
12 123 (1.66%) CISM
13 82 (1.11%) CCNP
14 75 (1.01%) PMP
15 70 (0.94%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 63 (0.85%) Master's Degree
18 59 (0.80%) TOGAF Certification
19 56 (0.76%) ISTQB
20 47 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 510 (6.88%) Data Quality
2 392 (5.29%) QA
3 349 (4.71%) GDPR
4 282 (3.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 262 (3.53%) NIST
6 139 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 105 (1.42%) NCSC
8 84 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 79 (1.07%) SLA
10 67 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
11 64 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 54 (0.73%) PMO
13 53 (0.71%) GRC
14 45 (0.61%) WCAG
15 38 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.34%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 18 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 17 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 898 (12.11%) Active Directory
2 774 (10.44%) Docker
3 209 (2.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 121 (1.63%) Virtual Desktop
5 115 (1.55%) Hyper-V
6 111 (1.50%) Virtual Machines
7 66 (0.89%) vSphere
8 40 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.40%) Firmware
10 25 (0.34%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.28%) NFS
12 15 (0.20%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.081%) HDFS
15 6 (0.081%) KVM
15 6 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.081%) RACF
16 5 (0.067%) Snort
16 5 (0.067%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,156 (15.59%) Terraform
2 1,053 (14.20%) Kubernetes
3 374 (5.04%) Microsoft Intune
4 347 (4.68%) Ansible
5 206 (2.78%) Grafana
6 178 (2.40%) Prometheus
7 157 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 111 (1.50%) SCCM
9 72 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.53%) Argo
11 38 (0.51%) Puppet
12 36 (0.49%) FortiGate
13 34 (0.46%) Istio
14 33 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
15 29 (0.39%) Progress Chef
16 23 (0.31%) HP ALM
17 18 (0.24%) HAProxy
17 18 (0.24%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.23%) linkerd
19 14 (0.19%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,353 (31.73%) Microsoft
2 752 (10.14%) Databricks
3 315 (4.25%) ServiceNow
4 289 (3.90%) VMware
5 287 (3.87%) Google
6 283 (3.82%) Oracle
7 214 (2.89%) SAP
8 200 (2.70%) Cisco
9 187 (2.52%) OpenAI
10 167 (2.25%) Splunk
11 138 (1.86%) CyberArk
12 132 (1.78%) Palo Alto
13 113 (1.52%) Salesforce
14 108 (1.46%) Foundry
15 99 (1.34%) Okta
16 79 (1.07%) Dynatrace
17 76 (1.02%) Citrix
18 72 (0.97%) Informatica
19 68 (0.92%) Zscaler
20 67 (0.90%) BeyondTrust