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

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,745 4,752 6,105
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.90% 16.07% 13.65%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.56% 42.24% 41.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,778 3,348 4,415
10th Percentile £350 £350 £340
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -0.94% -5.78%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £727 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 41 76
10th Percentile £25.30 £21.25 £17.77
25th Percentile £47.00 £23.80 £22.08
Median hourly rate £57.50 £31.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +82.54% -31.79% -16.04%
75th Percentile £64.00 £65.00 £60.40
90th Percentile £80.00 £80.00 £71.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £29.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +94.92% -36.12% -28.95%

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 15,848 11,250 14,590
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.35% 38.05% 32.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,836 7,775 10,362
10th Percentile £313 £313 £285
25th Percentile £409 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £631
90th Percentile £700 £733 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £489
% change year-on-year -4.04% +1.23% -3.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 419 189 360
10th Percentile £15.44 £15.41 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £20.30 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +47.06% +19.33% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £41.97 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £74.10 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.15 £24.09 £17.80
% change year-on-year +79.11% +35.34% -19.38%

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 10 March 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 10 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 10 March 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 5,688 £525 -2.33% 3,006
London +1 3,098 £540 -1.82% 852
UK excluding London 0 2,738 £500 - 2,448
Work from Home -2 2,061 £525 +0.19% 1,457
North of England +1 741 £492 +0.46% 623
South East -1 728 £500 -9.09% 752
Midlands -3 468 £500 -3.85% 349
North West -1 376 £484 -3.13% 324
West Midlands -3 356 £511 -4.44% 207
South West +5 328 £512 -2.57% 278
Yorkshire -3 317 £488 +5.41% 214
Scotland +9 294 £550 +15.79% 143
East of England 0 152 £565 -2.59% 251
East Midlands -3 109 £447 -3.87% 139
Wales -3 81 £400 -11.11% 79
North East -4 50 £525 +10.53% 94
Northern Ireland +1 12 £475 - 11

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
1 306 (4.54%) SharePoint
2 216 (3.20%) Microsoft Exchange
3 182 (2.70%) Confluence
4 178 (2.64%) Apache Spark
5 94 (1.39%) Apache
6 89 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 21 (0.31%) SAS
9 18 (0.27%) CMS
10 17 (0.25%) IIS
11 16 (0.24%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.22%) Appian
13 14 (0.21%) Camunda
14 13 (0.19%) Mendix
15 11 (0.16%) HCL Notes
16 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
17 8 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
17 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
18 6 (0.089%) Anypoint
18 6 (0.089%) Jupyter
Applications
1 118 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 91 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
4 45 (0.67%) MS Visio
5 43 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.089%) Trello
8 5 (0.074%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.074%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.074%) Weka
9 4 (0.059%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.015%) InDesign
11 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 109 (1.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.18%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.12%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.089%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.089%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.089%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.074%) NetSuite
9 5 (0.074%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.074%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.074%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.059%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.059%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.059%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 2,356 (34.93%) AWS
2 1,365 (20.24%) Azure DevOps
3 1,329 (19.70%) GCP
4 915 (13.57%) Power Platform
5 815 (12.08%) Entra ID
6 763 (11.31%) Microsoft 365
7 701 (10.39%) GitHub
8 484 (7.18%) Azure Data Factory
9 413 (6.12%) GitHub Actions
10 405 (6.00%) Serverless
11 315 (4.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 293 (4.34%) Dynamics 365
13 274 (4.06%) SaaS
14 265 (3.93%) Power Automate
15 261 (3.87%) Azure AKS
16 242 (3.59%) Azure Functions
17 232 (3.44%) Azure Monitor
18 228 (3.38%) PaaS
19 221 (3.28%) Snowflake
20 208 (3.08%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 443 (6.57%) Firewall
2 275 (4.08%) DNS
3 234 (3.47%) VPN
4 204 (3.02%) Network Security
5 170 (2.52%) WAN
6 159 (2.36%) DHCP
7 115 (1.70%) LAN
8 99 (1.47%) TCP/IP
9 90 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
10 88 (1.30%) SD-WAN
11 68 (1.01%) Kerberos
12 66 (0.98%) VLAN
13 55 (0.82%) HTTP
14 42 (0.62%) BGP
15 39 (0.58%) Wireless
16 36 (0.53%) OSPF
17 35 (0.52%) Internet
17 35 (0.52%) SSL
18 33 (0.49%) MPLS
19 32 (0.47%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 619 (9.18%) Power BI
2 396 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 358 (5.31%) Data Warehouse
4 329 (4.88%) Data Lake
5 265 (3.93%) PostgreSQL
6 247 (3.66%) Azure SQL Database
7 200 (2.97%) NoSQL
8 160 (2.37%) Metadata
9 128 (1.90%) Delta Lake
10 119 (1.76%) Relational Database
11 101 (1.50%) Big Data
12 100 (1.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 88 (1.30%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.10%) MySQL
15 73 (1.08%) Tableau
16 69 (1.02%) BigQuery
17 65 (0.96%) Oracle Database
18 54 (0.80%) Snowflake Schema
19 49 (0.73%) Redis
20 47 (0.70%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 531 (7.87%) Git
2 468 (6.94%) JIRA
3 362 (5.37%) Jenkins
4 271 (4.02%) GitLab
5 124 (1.84%) Selenium
6 91 (1.35%) Postman
7 79 (1.17%) Cucumber
8 74 (1.10%) JMeter
9 69 (1.02%) JUnit
10 50 (0.74%) MLflow
11 49 (0.73%) REST Assured
12 48 (0.71%) Cypress.io
13 45 (0.67%) SonarQube
14 43 (0.64%) Visual Studio
15 35 (0.52%) Oracle APEX
16 32 (0.47%) TestRail
17 31 (0.46%) Artifactory
17 31 (0.46%) SpecFlow
18 28 (0.42%) WebDriver
19 27 (0.40%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,985 (29.43%) Social Skills
2 1,208 (17.91%) Finance
3 810 (12.01%) Public Sector
4 665 (9.86%) Analytical Skills
5 370 (5.49%) Banking
6 211 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
7 150 (2.22%) Legal
8 111 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 107 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
10 88 (1.30%) Retail
11 85 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
12 81 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
13 77 (1.14%) Marketing
14 72 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 63 (0.93%) Financial Institution
16 60 (0.89%) Investment Banking
17 58 (0.86%) Law
18 53 (0.79%) Front Office
19 50 (0.74%) Manufacturing
20 38 (0.56%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,132 (16.78%) Architect
2 973 (14.43%) Developer
3 751 (11.13%) Senior
4 577 (8.55%) Azure Engineer
5 543 (8.05%) Data Engineer
6 503 (7.46%) Lead
7 431 (6.39%) Analyst
8 326 (4.83%) DevOps Engineer
9 322 (4.77%) Solutions Architect
10 302 (4.48%) Consultant
11 183 (2.71%) Cloud Engineer
11 183 (2.71%) Security Engineer
12 182 (2.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 172 (2.55%) Azure Architect
14 167 (2.48%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 157 (2.33%) Senior Developer
16 146 (2.16%) Platform Engineer
17 145 (2.15%) Data Architect
18 136 (2.02%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 133 (1.97%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 554 (8.21%) .NET
2 478 (7.09%) REST
3 334 (4.95%) React
4 261 (3.87%) RESTful
5 254 (3.77%) PySpark
6 246 (3.65%) Node.js
7 243 (3.60%) Kafka
8 212 (3.14%) Spring
9 202 (2.99%) OAuth
10 195 (2.89%) AngularJS
11 181 (2.68%) HTML
12 177 (2.62%) Spring Boot
13 152 (2.25%) CSS
14 149 (2.21%) LDAP
15 146 (2.16%) PyTorch
16 141 (2.09%) JSON
16 141 (2.09%) SOAP
17 132 (1.96%) TensorFlow
18 129 (1.91%) Middleware
19 125 (1.85%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 607 (9.00%) Cloud Native
2 268 (3.97%) Onboarding
3 244 (3.62%) Product Ownership
4 176 (2.61%) Hybrid Cloud
5 175 (2.59%) Data Centre
6 165 (2.45%) Security Posture
7 156 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
8 154 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
9 131 (1.94%) Public Cloud
10 126 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
11 109 (1.62%) AI Agents
12 83 (1.23%) Data Structures
13 82 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
14 80 (1.19%) Algorithms
15 77 (1.14%) Replication
16 70 (1.04%) Management Information System
17 69 (1.02%) Low-Code
18 65 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
18 65 (0.96%) NHS
19 59 (0.87%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 727 (10.78%) Windows
2 356 (5.28%) Linux
3 204 (3.02%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.78%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.08%) Unix
6 61 (0.90%) VMS
7 47 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 46 (0.68%) Mac OS
9 36 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 28 (0.42%) Android
11 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
13 17 (0.25%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.12%) CentOS
15 8 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.089%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.089%) Solaris
16 6 (0.089%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.074%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,486 (36.86%) DevOps
2 2,079 (30.82%) CI/CD
3 1,634 (24.23%) Agile
4 1,179 (17.48%) Problem-Solving
5 1,020 (15.12%) Analytics
6 936 (13.88%) AI
7 888 (13.17%) Infrastructure as Code
8 858 (12.72%) Migration
9 703 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
10 701 (10.39%) Data Modelling
11 687 (10.19%) Business Intelligence
12 666 (9.87%) Containerisation
13 638 (9.46%) Continuous Improvement
14 613 (9.09%) Microservices
15 610 (9.04%) Machine Learning
16 607 (9.00%) ETL
17 601 (8.91%) Data Pipeline
18 583 (8.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 556 (8.24%) Test Automation
20 541 (8.02%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,766 (26.18%) Python
2 1,512 (22.42%) SQL
3 730 (10.82%) PowerShell
4 599 (8.88%) C#
5 578 (8.57%) Java
6 510 (7.56%) JavaScript
7 309 (4.58%) TypeScript
8 258 (3.83%) Bash
9 201 (2.98%) Bicep
10 95 (1.41%) Scala
11 80 (1.19%) Go
11 80 (1.19%) Kusto Query Language
12 79 (1.17%) PL/SQL
13 77 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 76 (1.13%) T-SQL
15 45 (0.67%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.64%) R
17 39 (0.58%) C++
18 28 (0.42%) PHP
19 25 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,616 (23.96%) Security Cleared
2 1,338 (19.84%) SC Cleared
3 546 (8.09%) Degree
4 371 (5.50%) Azure Certification
5 217 (3.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 188 (2.79%) CISSP
7 166 (2.46%) Microsoft Certification
8 145 (2.15%) AWS Certification
9 132 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
9 132 (1.96%) DV Cleared
10 118 (1.75%) CISM
11 117 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
12 90 (1.33%) Master's Degree
13 66 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
14 59 (0.87%) CCNP
15 57 (0.85%) ISTQB
15 57 (0.85%) PMI Certification
16 55 (0.82%) PMP
17 42 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 35 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 458 (6.79%) Data Quality
2 396 (5.87%) GDPR
3 359 (5.32%) QA
4 300 (4.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 237 (3.51%) NIST
6 137 (2.03%) Accessibility
7 98 (1.45%) NCSC
8 82 (1.22%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 59 (0.87%) SLA
11 56 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
12 49 (0.73%) PMO
13 39 (0.58%) HIPAA
14 35 (0.52%) WCAG
15 33 (0.49%) GRC
16 32 (0.47%) SOC 2
17 25 (0.37%) EU AI Act
18 24 (0.36%) ISO 20022
19 23 (0.34%) PSD2
20 22 (0.33%) NIST 800
System Software
1 869 (12.88%) Active Directory
2 808 (11.98%) Docker
3 190 (2.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
5 91 (1.35%) Hyper-V
6 72 (1.07%) vSphere
7 70 (1.04%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
9 18 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
10 17 (0.25%) Firmware
11 15 (0.22%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Postfix
13 7 (0.10%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.10%) KVM
13 7 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.089%) GPFS
14 6 (0.089%) Lustre
14 6 (0.089%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.089%) Snort
15 5 (0.074%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 1,034 (15.33%) Terraform
2 998 (14.80%) Kubernetes
3 356 (5.28%) Microsoft Intune
4 309 (4.58%) Ansible
5 175 (2.59%) Grafana
6 160 (2.37%) Single Sign-On
7 152 (2.25%) Prometheus
8 132 (1.96%) SCCM
9 73 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 49 (0.73%) Argo
11 32 (0.47%) Istio
12 28 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 27 (0.40%) Puppet
14 25 (0.37%) vRealize
15 23 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
15 23 (0.34%) Progress Chef
16 20 (0.30%) HP ALM
17 19 (0.28%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.25%) Kibana
19 15 (0.22%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,163 (32.07%) Microsoft
2 676 (10.02%) Databricks
3 343 (5.09%) Google
4 338 (5.01%) Oracle
5 277 (4.11%) ServiceNow
6 260 (3.85%) VMware
7 196 (2.91%) SAP
8 175 (2.59%) OpenAI
9 165 (2.45%) Cisco
10 155 (2.30%) Splunk
11 123 (1.82%) CyberArk
12 107 (1.59%) Foundry
13 104 (1.54%) Palo Alto
14 99 (1.47%) Salesforce
15 86 (1.28%) Okta
16 73 (1.08%) Red Hat
17 71 (1.05%) Citrix
17 71 (1.05%) IBM
18 66 (0.98%) BeyondTrust
19 65 (0.96%) Informatica