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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,331 4,871 5,537
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.24% 14.79% 14.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.84% 39.35% 42.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,836 3,308 3,828
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £440 £415 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £516 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.74% -1.71% -4.55%
75th Percentile £633 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 180 43 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.67 £20.34
25th Percentile £22.58 £26.23 £23.80
Median hourly rate £42.35 £34.00 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +24.56% -7.48% -31.94%
75th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.08 £88.50 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £31.01 £42.34
% change year-on-year +27.38% -26.76% -8.32%

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 19,002 12,378 13,117
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.77% 37.58% 34.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,607 8,249 8,849
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 616 299 198
10th Percentile £15.28 £15.50 £14.52
25th Percentile £17.99 £18.87 £20.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £29.07 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.80% -6.23% -11.43%
75th Percentile £68.00 £52.50 £62.14
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £20.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +62.50% -33.33% +11.11%

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 17 September 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 7,119 £525 - 8,946
London +1 3,729 £550 - 4,501
UK excluding London +2 3,544 £510 +2.00% 5,403
Work from Home 0 2,523 £525 +5.00% 4,274
North of England +8 1,011 £500 +5.26% 1,463
South East +1 906 £525 +5.00% 1,259
Midlands +2 653 £488 -4.88% 775
North West +4 500 £500 +5.26% 817
West Midlands +1 483 £484 -10.32% 486
Yorkshire +4 430 £500 +5.26% 474
South West +2 430 £550 +10.00% 603
Scotland +7 284 £520 +6.01% 521
East of England +2 190 £510 +2.00% 413
East Midlands +5 161 £500 +8.11% 289
North East +4 94 £500 - 179
Wales 0 84 £450 - 154
Northern Ireland +16 14 £650 - 245
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69% 3

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
1 473 (5.68%) SharePoint
2 259 (3.11%) Confluence
3 197 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 178 (2.14%) Apache Spark
5 163 (1.96%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.31%) Apache
7 45 (0.54%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) IIS
9 28 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 14 (0.17%) nginx
14 13 (0.16%) OpenStack
15 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 7 (0.084%) Apache Superset
16 7 (0.084%) Mendix
17 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
17 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
17 6 (0.072%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 120 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 65 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.50%) Chatbot
6 36 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 8 (0.096%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.096%) Revit
9 8 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.060%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Mingle
13 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 136 (1.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.14%) SAP MDG
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 8 (0.096%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.096%) Workday HCM
9 7 (0.084%) Shopify
10 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
10 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 6 (0.072%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 5 (0.060%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
12 4 (0.048%) Dynamics NAV
12 4 (0.048%) Endur
12 4 (0.048%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 2,988 (35.87%) AWS
2 1,748 (20.98%) Azure DevOps
3 1,431 (17.18%) GCP
4 1,109 (13.31%) Entra ID
5 1,075 (12.90%) Power Platform
6 875 (10.50%) Microsoft 365
7 834 (10.01%) GitHub
8 487 (5.85%) GitHub Actions
9 464 (5.57%) Azure Data Factory
10 372 (4.47%) Serverless
11 362 (4.35%) SaaS
12 316 (3.79%) Azure Monitor
13 303 (3.64%) Power Automate
14 300 (3.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 298 (3.58%) Dynamics 365
16 293 (3.52%) Azure AKS
17 285 (3.42%) PowerApps
18 284 (3.41%) Snowflake
19 246 (2.95%) Microsoft Copilot
20 245 (2.94%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 526 (6.31%) Firewall
2 424 (5.09%) DNS
3 319 (3.83%) VPN
4 299 (3.59%) Network Security
5 228 (2.74%) DHCP
6 188 (2.26%) WAN
7 171 (2.05%) TCP/IP
8 111 (1.33%) LAN
9 109 (1.31%) BGP
10 100 (1.20%) SD-WAN
11 96 (1.15%) VLAN
12 88 (1.06%) OSPF
13 86 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 78 (0.94%) SSL
15 62 (0.74%) Wireless
16 61 (0.73%) SAN
17 47 (0.56%) HTTP
18 46 (0.55%) IPsec
19 45 (0.54%) VXLAN
20 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 706 (8.47%) Power BI
2 475 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 399 (4.79%) Data Warehouse
4 377 (4.53%) Data Lake
5 293 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 251 (3.01%) Metadata
7 210 (2.52%) NoSQL
8 197 (2.36%) Azure SQL Database
9 145 (1.74%) Relational Database
10 130 (1.56%) Delta Lake
11 112 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 107 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 92 (1.10%) Big Data
14 88 (1.06%) MySQL
15 72 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.78%) Redis
17 61 (0.73%) BigQuery
18 60 (0.72%) Tableau
19 59 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
20 58 (0.70%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 733 (8.80%) Git
2 604 (7.25%) JIRA
3 472 (5.67%) Jenkins
4 368 (4.42%) GitLab
5 126 (1.51%) Selenium
6 79 (0.95%) Postman
7 61 (0.73%) Cypress.io
7 61 (0.73%) JUnit
8 56 (0.67%) Maven
8 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
9 52 (0.62%) Claude Code
10 51 (0.61%) JMeter
11 50 (0.60%) Cucumber
12 47 (0.56%) Gradle
13 46 (0.55%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
15 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 36 (0.43%) MLflow
17 32 (0.38%) Gatling
18 31 (0.37%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,302 (27.63%) Social Skills
2 1,560 (18.73%) Finance
3 960 (11.52%) Public Sector
4 812 (9.75%) Analytical Skills
5 473 (5.68%) Banking
6 219 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 218 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
8 210 (2.52%) Retail
9 177 (2.12%) Legal
10 106 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
11 104 (1.25%) Manufacturing
12 90 (1.08%) Marketing
13 89 (1.07%) Telecoms
14 86 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
15 85 (1.02%) Aerospace
16 82 (0.98%) Investment Banking
17 74 (0.89%) Law
17 74 (0.89%) Military
18 58 (0.70%) Financial Institution
18 58 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,570 (18.85%) Architect
2 1,052 (12.63%) Senior
3 996 (11.96%) Developer
4 733 (8.80%) Azure Engineer
5 681 (8.17%) Lead
6 591 (7.09%) Data Engineer
7 484 (5.81%) Solutions Architect
8 482 (5.79%) Analyst
9 474 (5.69%) DevOps Engineer
10 371 (4.45%) Cloud Engineer
11 323 (3.88%) Consultant
12 314 (3.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 267 (3.20%) Data Architect
14 240 (2.88%) Platform Engineer
15 217 (2.60%) Azure Architect
16 210 (2.52%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 201 (2.41%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 199 (2.39%) Technical Architect
19 197 (2.36%) Security Engineer
20 189 (2.27%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,409 (16.91%) Terraform
2 709 (8.51%) REST
3 626 (7.51%) .NET
4 383 (4.60%) Kafka
5 301 (3.61%) React
6 289 (3.47%) RESTful
7 272 (3.26%) PySpark
8 265 (3.18%) OAuth
9 234 (2.81%) JSON
10 195 (2.34%) Spring
11 182 (2.18%) Spring Boot
12 163 (1.96%) OpenID
13 159 (1.91%) Node.js
14 158 (1.90%) OAuth2
15 153 (1.84%) SAML
16 150 (1.80%) AngularJS
16 150 (1.80%) HTML
17 138 (1.66%) Middleware
18 135 (1.62%) Playwright
19 132 (1.58%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 920 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 426 (5.11%) Onboarding
3 383 (4.60%) Product Ownership
4 305 (3.66%) Enterprise Software
5 304 (3.65%) AI Agents
6 283 (3.40%) Hybrid Cloud
7 269 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
8 250 (3.00%) Data Centre
9 225 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
10 175 (2.10%) Management Information System
10 175 (2.10%) Security Posture
11 148 (1.78%) Data Structures
12 142 (1.70%) Public Cloud
13 119 (1.43%) PKI
14 114 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
15 113 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
16 107 (1.28%) Replication
17 92 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 87 (1.04%) CMDB
19 82 (0.98%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 1,002 (12.03%) Windows
2 521 (6.25%) Linux
3 372 (4.47%) Windows Server
4 146 (1.75%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.09%) Android
6 87 (1.04%) Apple iOS
6 87 (1.04%) Unix
7 85 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 77 (0.92%) Mac OS
9 55 (0.66%) Ubuntu
10 53 (0.64%) VMS
11 23 (0.28%) CentOS
12 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 6 (0.072%) AIX
16 6 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,060 (36.73%) DevOps
2 2,657 (31.89%) CI/CD
3 2,078 (24.94%) Agile
4 1,457 (17.49%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,420 (17.04%) AI
6 1,410 (16.92%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,223 (14.68%) Migration
8 1,146 (13.76%) Analytics
9 1,134 (13.61%) Problem-Solving
10 958 (11.50%) Continuous Improvement
11 908 (10.90%) Data Modelling
12 848 (10.18%) Roadmaps
13 799 (9.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 784 (9.41%) Containerisation
15 759 (9.11%) Business Intelligence
16 750 (9.00%) Data Pipeline
17 747 (8.97%) Technical Leadership
18 727 (8.73%) Microservices
19 711 (8.53%) Test Automation
20 657 (7.89%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,917 (23.01%) Python
2 1,582 (18.99%) SQL
3 893 (10.72%) PowerShell
4 693 (8.32%) Java
5 599 (7.19%) C#
6 498 (5.98%) JavaScript
7 410 (4.92%) Bash
8 356 (4.27%) Bicep
9 295 (3.54%) TypeScript
10 99 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.08%) T-SQL
12 74 (0.89%) Go
13 65 (0.78%) Scala
14 59 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
14 59 (0.71%) Shell Script
15 43 (0.52%) PL/SQL
16 38 (0.46%) R
17 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 31 (0.37%) Groovy
19 29 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,174 (26.10%) Security Cleared
2 1,751 (21.02%) SC Cleared
3 566 (6.79%) Degree
4 483 (5.80%) Azure Certification
5 311 (3.73%) DV Cleared
6 275 (3.30%) CISSP
7 268 (3.22%) BPSS Clearance
8 256 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
9 208 (2.50%) Cisco Certification
10 204 (2.45%) AWS Certification
11 180 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
12 137 (1.64%) CISM
13 94 (1.13%) CCNP
14 91 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 91 (1.09%) PMI Certification
15 86 (1.03%) PMP
16 64 (0.77%) ISTQB
17 62 (0.74%) CCSP
18 59 (0.71%) Master's Degree
19 51 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 603 (7.24%) Data Quality
2 454 (5.45%) QA
3 306 (3.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 305 (3.66%) NIST
5 291 (3.49%) GDPR
6 208 (2.50%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.44%) NCSC
8 108 (1.30%) SLA
9 88 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
10 84 (1.01%) WCAG
11 82 (0.98%) GRC
12 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 57 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 55 (0.66%) PMO
15 48 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 30 (0.36%) SOC 2
17 27 (0.32%) HIPAA
18 25 (0.30%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,033 (12.40%) Active Directory
2 922 (11.07%) Docker
3 249 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.78%) Virtual Machines
5 147 (1.76%) Virtual Desktop
6 132 (1.58%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.86%) vSphere
8 55 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 38 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.29%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) IAG
11 18 (0.22%) NFS
12 11 (0.13%) Postfix
13 10 (0.12%) Ceph
13 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.11%) zsh
15 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.084%) Squid
17 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,301 (15.62%) Kubernetes
2 463 (5.56%) Ansible
3 451 (5.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 264 (3.17%) Grafana
5 205 (2.46%) Prometheus
6 153 (1.84%) Single Sign-On
7 134 (1.61%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 59 (0.71%) Argo
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 39 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
12 37 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 34 (0.41%) SCOM
14 30 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 25 (0.30%) Istio
16 24 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) QRadar
18 18 (0.22%) CASB
18 18 (0.22%) Packer
19 17 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,988 (35.87%) Microsoft
2 858 (10.30%) Databricks
3 424 (5.09%) ServiceNow
4 368 (4.42%) Google
5 366 (4.39%) VMware
6 343 (4.12%) Oracle
7 256 (3.07%) Cisco
8 224 (2.69%) SAP
9 223 (2.68%) Splunk
10 214 (2.57%) OpenAI
11 186 (2.23%) Salesforce
12 157 (1.88%) Palo Alto
13 153 (1.84%) CyberArk
14 141 (1.69%) Foundry
15 127 (1.52%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.12%) Zscaler
17 90 (1.08%) Informatica
18 82 (0.98%) Fortinet
18 82 (0.98%) MuleSoft
19 81 (0.97%) IBM