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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,216 4,854 5,770
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.54% 14.82% 14.37%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.01% 39.67% 42.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,730 3,349 4,152
10th Percentile £370 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £425 £426
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 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 39 41
10th Percentile £18.40 £18.65 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.38 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -41.47%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.10 £59.50
90th Percentile £95.63 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £53.23 £35.00
% change year-on-year +8.03% +52.07% -35.39%

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 18,669 12,237 13,452
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.32% 37.37% 33.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,316 8,189 9,408
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £419 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £620 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 619 316 296
10th Percentile £16.50 £15.12 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.43 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.71 £27.50 £22.33
Median % change year-on-year +29.85% +23.18% -36.21%
75th Percentile £69.88 £47.63 £50.48
90th Percentile £83.05 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.71 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +94.54% -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 28 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 28 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 28 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 7,032 £525 - 3,108
London +1 3,674 £550 - 1,361
UK excluding London +2 3,560 £505 +1.00% 2,250
Work from Home -1 2,547 £525 +5.00% 1,506
North of England +7 1,021 £500 +3.09% 618
South East +2 903 £525 +5.00% 692
Midlands +4 638 £494 -0.25% 302
North West +7 537 £500 +2.04% 332
West Midlands +3 480 £493 -6.19% 194
South West +7 442 £534 +6.75% 268
Yorkshire +3 405 £500 +5.26% 187
Scotland +9 304 £525 +5.85% 108
East of England +3 183 £545 -0.91% 185
East Midlands +10 146 £488 +5.41% 108
Wales 0 98 £438 -1.80% 82
North East +2 94 £520 +4.00% 109
Northern Ireland +9 16 £638 +34.21% 49
Channel Islands +3 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
1 427 (5.20%) SharePoint
2 277 (3.37%) Confluence
3 203 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 177 (2.15%) Apache Spark
5 129 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.40%) Apache
7 42 (0.51%) SAS
8 34 (0.41%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 18 (0.22%) CMS
11 17 (0.21%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 10 (0.12%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.097%) Mendix
16 8 (0.097%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.097%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.073%) Camunda
17 6 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 119 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 84 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.097%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.037%) Houdini
12 3 (0.037%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) PTC Creo
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 113 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 15 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 12 (0.15%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.097%) Magento
7 8 (0.097%) Maximo
8 7 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.085%) Shopify
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.049%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,925 (35.60%) AWS
2 1,698 (20.67%) Azure DevOps
3 1,408 (17.14%) GCP
4 1,028 (12.51%) Power Platform
5 1,024 (12.46%) Entra ID
6 813 (9.90%) Microsoft 365
7 782 (9.52%) GitHub
8 470 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
9 460 (5.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 354 (4.31%) Serverless
11 328 (3.99%) SaaS
12 311 (3.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 302 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 293 (3.57%) Azure Monitor
15 273 (3.32%) Power Automate
16 265 (3.23%) PowerApps
17 256 (3.12%) PaaS
18 251 (3.06%) Dynamics 365
19 239 (2.91%) Azure AI
20 231 (2.81%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 513 (6.24%) Firewall
2 377 (4.59%) DNS
3 312 (3.80%) VPN
4 297 (3.61%) Network Security
5 204 (2.48%) WAN
6 186 (2.26%) DHCP
7 154 (1.87%) TCP/IP
8 129 (1.57%) LAN
9 115 (1.40%) BGP
10 105 (1.28%) SD-WAN
11 92 (1.12%) OSPF
12 90 (1.10%) VLAN
13 89 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.90%) SSL
15 57 (0.69%) SAN
15 57 (0.69%) Wireless
16 56 (0.68%) IPsec
17 48 (0.58%) VXLAN
18 46 (0.56%) HTTP
19 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 709 (8.63%) Power BI
2 469 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 401 (4.88%) Data Warehouse
4 361 (4.39%) Data Lake
5 308 (3.75%) PostgreSQL
6 224 (2.73%) NoSQL
7 216 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
8 209 (2.54%) Metadata
9 138 (1.68%) Relational Database
10 133 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 108 (1.31%) Big Data
11 108 (1.31%) MongoDB
12 100 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 91 (1.11%) MySQL
14 72 (0.88%) Tableau
15 64 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
16 60 (0.73%) BigQuery
17 58 (0.71%) Oracle Database
17 58 (0.71%) Redis
18 54 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 645 (7.85%) JIRA
2 640 (7.79%) Git
3 430 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 317 (3.86%) GitLab
5 124 (1.51%) Selenium
6 72 (0.88%) JUnit
7 71 (0.86%) Postman
8 70 (0.85%) JMeter
9 57 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 53 (0.65%) SonarQube
11 52 (0.63%) Cypress.io
12 48 (0.58%) Maven
13 46 (0.56%) REST Assured
13 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
14 44 (0.54%) WebDriver
15 41 (0.50%) MLflow
16 36 (0.44%) Gradle
17 32 (0.39%) Gatling
18 31 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
19 29 (0.35%) Claude Code
General
1 2,085 (25.38%) Social Skills
2 1,532 (18.65%) Finance
3 966 (11.76%) Public Sector
4 773 (9.41%) Analytical Skills
5 430 (5.23%) Banking
6 236 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 192 (2.34%) Legal
8 185 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 178 (2.17%) Retail
10 100 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 97 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 89 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 80 (0.97%) Manufacturing
14 74 (0.90%) Law
15 70 (0.85%) Marketing
16 68 (0.83%) Financial Institution
17 65 (0.79%) Front Office
17 65 (0.79%) Investment Banking
18 58 (0.71%) Military
19 55 (0.67%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,466 (17.84%) Architect
2 1,060 (12.90%) Developer
3 1,022 (12.44%) Senior
4 730 (8.89%) Azure Engineer
5 672 (8.18%) Lead
6 614 (7.47%) Data Engineer
7 498 (6.06%) Analyst
8 431 (5.25%) Solutions Architect
9 416 (5.06%) DevOps Engineer
10 335 (4.08%) Cloud Engineer
11 316 (3.85%) Consultant
12 297 (3.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 249 (3.03%) Data Architect
14 221 (2.69%) Platform Engineer
15 220 (2.68%) Azure Architect
16 199 (2.42%) Technical Architect
17 188 (2.29%) Project Manager
18 187 (2.28%) Security Engineer
19 186 (2.26%) Java Developer
20 181 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 643 (7.83%) .NET
2 609 (7.41%) REST
3 342 (4.16%) React
4 318 (3.87%) Kafka
5 296 (3.60%) RESTful
6 254 (3.09%) PySpark
7 232 (2.82%) OAuth
8 227 (2.76%) Spring
9 212 (2.58%) Node.js
10 204 (2.48%) JSON
11 192 (2.34%) Spring Boot
12 180 (2.19%) AngularJS
13 158 (1.92%) HTML
14 146 (1.78%) SAML
15 145 (1.76%) OpenID
16 138 (1.68%) .NET Framework
17 134 (1.63%) OAuth2
18 131 (1.59%) Middleware
19 127 (1.55%) CSS
19 127 (1.55%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 862 (10.49%) Cloud Native
2 382 (4.65%) Onboarding
3 346 (4.21%) Product Ownership
4 268 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
5 267 (3.25%) Data Centre
6 244 (2.97%) Hybrid Cloud
7 236 (2.87%) AI Agents
8 229 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
9 207 (2.52%) Enterprise Software
10 164 (2.00%) Security Posture
11 145 (1.76%) Public Cloud
12 139 (1.69%) Data Structures
13 129 (1.57%) Management Information System
14 112 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
15 106 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
16 103 (1.25%) PKI
17 94 (1.14%) Replication
18 91 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
19 75 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
20 71 (0.86%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 941 (11.45%) Windows
2 459 (5.59%) Linux
3 310 (3.77%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.35%) Windows 10
5 80 (0.97%) Android
5 80 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 79 (0.96%) Unix
7 73 (0.89%) Apple iOS
7 73 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.72%) VMS
9 44 (0.54%) Ubuntu
10 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
11 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
11 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
12 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.13%) CentOS
14 9 (0.11%) Debian
15 7 (0.085%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.061%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,016 (36.71%) DevOps
2 2,550 (31.04%) CI/CD
3 2,083 (25.35%) Agile
4 1,274 (15.51%) AI
5 1,258 (15.31%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,199 (14.59%) Migration
7 1,136 (13.83%) Analytics
8 1,108 (13.49%) Stakeholder Management
9 1,060 (12.90%) Problem-Solving
10 925 (11.26%) Data Modelling
11 881 (10.72%) Continuous Improvement
12 774 (9.42%) Data Pipeline
13 773 (9.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 770 (9.37%) Containerisation
15 765 (9.31%) Microservices
16 760 (9.25%) Roadmaps
17 758 (9.23%) Business Intelligence
18 671 (8.17%) Test Automation
19 666 (8.11%) ETL
20 656 (7.98%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,895 (23.06%) Python
2 1,606 (19.55%) SQL
3 787 (9.58%) PowerShell
4 689 (8.39%) Java
5 621 (7.56%) C#
6 491 (5.98%) JavaScript
7 347 (4.22%) Bash
8 313 (3.81%) Bicep
9 311 (3.79%) TypeScript
10 97 (1.18%) T-SQL
11 93 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 72 (0.88%) Go
13 58 (0.71%) Scala
14 54 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
15 51 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.51%) R
17 41 (0.50%) Kotlin
18 39 (0.47%) PL/SQL
19 28 (0.34%) Groovy
20 26 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,065 (25.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,691 (20.58%) SC Cleared
3 576 (7.01%) Degree
4 437 (5.32%) Azure Certification
5 261 (3.18%) DV Cleared
6 244 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
6 244 (2.97%) CISSP
7 211 (2.57%) Microsoft Certification
8 207 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
9 198 (2.41%) AWS Certification
10 188 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
11 120 (1.46%) CISM
12 103 (1.25%) CCNP
13 83 (1.01%) PMI Certification
13 83 (1.01%) PMP
14 79 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 64 (0.78%) ISTQB
15 64 (0.78%) Master's Degree
16 53 (0.65%) CCSP
17 50 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 573 (6.97%) Data Quality
2 429 (5.22%) QA
3 327 (3.98%) GDPR
4 281 (3.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 277 (3.37%) NIST
6 200 (2.43%) Accessibility
7 117 (1.42%) NCSC
8 105 (1.28%) SLA
9 74 (0.90%) GRC
9 74 (0.90%) WCAG
10 72 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
10 72 (0.88%) PCI DSS
11 55 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 54 (0.66%) PMO
13 32 (0.39%) HIPAA
14 29 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 22 (0.27%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
18 19 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 958 (11.66%) Active Directory
2 885 (10.77%) Docker
3 218 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
5 140 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
6 118 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.83%) vSphere
8 52 (0.63%) VMware ESXi
9 38 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.37%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.085%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.085%) Ceph
15 7 (0.085%) Varnish
16 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.073%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,324 (16.11%) Terraform
2 1,220 (14.85%) Kubernetes
3 432 (5.26%) Microsoft Intune
4 402 (4.89%) Ansible
5 251 (3.06%) Grafana
6 211 (2.57%) Prometheus
7 148 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.34%) SCCM
9 59 (0.72%) Argo
10 52 (0.63%) Progress Chef
11 46 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
11 46 (0.56%) Puppet
12 37 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 34 (0.41%) FortiGate
14 30 (0.37%) Istio
15 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
16 19 (0.23%) HP ALM
16 19 (0.23%) Packer
17 16 (0.19%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,658 (32.35%) Microsoft
2 762 (9.27%) Databricks
3 396 (4.82%) ServiceNow
4 337 (4.10%) Google
5 320 (3.89%) VMware
6 319 (3.88%) Oracle
7 236 (2.87%) Cisco
8 230 (2.80%) SAP
9 212 (2.58%) OpenAI
10 185 (2.25%) Splunk
11 154 (1.87%) Salesforce
12 150 (1.83%) Palo Alto
13 144 (1.75%) Foundry
14 137 (1.67%) CyberArk
15 107 (1.30%) Dynatrace
16 102 (1.24%) Zscaler
17 89 (1.08%) Okta
18 88 (1.07%) Informatica
19 76 (0.93%) Citrix
20 75 (0.91%) Fortinet