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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,284 4,829 5,574
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.53% 14.57% 14.37%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.20% 39.24% 42.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,781 3,316 3,987
10th Percentile £374 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 40 41
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.76 £17.80
25th Percentile £23.00 £27.24 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £43.23 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.46% +23.50% -35.78%
75th Percentile £78.00 £77.80 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.27 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £53.23 £31.00
% change year-on-year -1.36% +71.69% -32.87%

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 18,743 12,307 13,076
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.14% 37.12% 33.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,365 8,244 9,135
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £421 £411 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £623 £616 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 622 314 265
10th Percentile £15.81 £15.18 £14.20
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £27.63 £24.84
Median % change year-on-year +26.67% +11.23% -29.03%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.41 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.35 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.13 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +80.84% -11.70% -15.37%

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 August 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 August 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 10 August 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 7,125 £525 - 4,681
London +1 3,736 £550 - 2,256
UK excluding London +3 3,567 £500 - 3,046
Work from Home -1 2,558 £525 +5.00% 2,183
North of England +8 1,017 £500 +5.26% 830
South East +2 914 £525 +5.00% 853
Midlands +4 653 £493 -1.50% 405
North West +8 532 £500 +3.09% 471
West Midlands +3 492 £493 -6.19% 252
South West +6 442 £540 +8.00% 358
Yorkshire +5 403 £500 +5.26% 255
Scotland +10 290 £500 +0.81% 213
East of England +4 179 £525 -4.55% 224
East Midlands +10 149 £488 +5.41% 153
North East +5 95 £513 +2.50% 115
Wales 0 91 £455 +2.02% 102
Northern Ireland +13 15 £644 +35.53% 101
Channel Islands +1 8 £450 -29.69%

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
1 438 (5.29%) SharePoint
2 282 (3.40%) Confluence
3 204 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 171 (2.06%) Apache Spark
5 140 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.40%) Apache
7 41 (0.49%) SAS
8 35 (0.42%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 19 (0.23%) CMS
11 17 (0.21%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.12%) nginx
14 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.11%) Mendix
15 8 (0.097%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.097%) WebSphere
16 7 (0.085%) Camunda
17 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 121 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
3 75 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) Chatbot
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
7 11 (0.13%) Trello
8 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
8 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 8 (0.097%) Revit
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
13 1 (0.012%) CINEMA 4D
13 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.012%) Sketch
13 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 120 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.097%) Magento
8 7 (0.085%) Maximo
8 7 (0.085%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.060%) Payment Gateway
10 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.048%) Salesforce CRM
11 4 (0.048%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,914 (35.18%) AWS
2 1,749 (21.11%) Azure DevOps
3 1,402 (16.92%) GCP
4 1,065 (12.86%) Entra ID
5 1,034 (12.48%) Power Platform
6 843 (10.18%) Microsoft 365
7 830 (10.02%) GitHub
8 497 (6.00%) GitHub Actions
9 470 (5.67%) Azure Data Factory
10 349 (4.21%) Serverless
11 334 (4.03%) SaaS
12 313 (3.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 302 (3.65%) Azure AKS
14 300 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
15 286 (3.45%) Power Automate
16 275 (3.32%) PowerApps
17 263 (3.17%) Dynamics 365
18 258 (3.11%) PaaS
19 244 (2.95%) Snowflake
20 234 (2.82%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 522 (6.30%) Firewall
2 408 (4.93%) DNS
3 328 (3.96%) VPN
4 299 (3.61%) Network Security
5 204 (2.46%) DHCP
6 198 (2.39%) WAN
7 168 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 120 (1.45%) LAN
9 113 (1.36%) BGP
10 104 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.12%) VLAN
12 90 (1.09%) OSPF
13 83 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.89%) SSL
15 59 (0.71%) SAN
16 57 (0.69%) Wireless
17 53 (0.64%) IPsec
18 49 (0.59%) HTTP
19 46 (0.56%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 716 (8.64%) Power BI
2 464 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 405 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
4 362 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 289 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
6 220 (2.66%) Azure SQL Database
7 213 (2.57%) NoSQL
8 209 (2.52%) Metadata
9 139 (1.68%) Relational Database
10 136 (1.64%) Delta Lake
11 104 (1.26%) Big Data
12 102 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 97 (1.17%) MongoDB
14 82 (0.99%) MySQL
15 63 (0.76%) Snowflake Schema
15 63 (0.76%) Tableau
16 61 (0.74%) BigQuery
17 58 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
17 58 (0.70%) Star Schema
18 56 (0.68%) Redis
Development Applications
1 671 (8.10%) Git
2 642 (7.75%) JIRA
3 441 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 352 (4.25%) GitLab
5 132 (1.59%) Selenium
6 74 (0.89%) Postman
7 69 (0.83%) JUnit
8 65 (0.78%) JMeter
9 59 (0.71%) Cypress.io
10 57 (0.69%) Cucumber
11 56 (0.68%) SonarQube
12 50 (0.60%) Maven
13 47 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.54%) WebDriver
15 42 (0.51%) REST Assured
16 40 (0.48%) Claude Code
16 40 (0.48%) Gradle
17 32 (0.39%) MLflow
18 29 (0.35%) Gatling
18 29 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 2,140 (25.83%) Social Skills
2 1,550 (18.71%) Finance
3 970 (11.71%) Public Sector
4 793 (9.57%) Analytical Skills
5 437 (5.28%) Banking
6 230 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 199 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 188 (2.27%) Legal
9 186 (2.25%) Retail
10 96 (1.16%) Telecoms
11 95 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
12 89 (1.07%) Manufacturing
13 88 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
14 74 (0.89%) Law
15 72 (0.87%) Investment Banking
16 70 (0.85%) Aerospace
16 70 (0.85%) Financial Institution
17 68 (0.82%) Marketing
18 64 (0.77%) Front Office
19 59 (0.71%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,490 (17.99%) Architect
2 1,047 (12.64%) Developer
3 1,039 (12.54%) Senior
4 730 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 684 (8.26%) Lead
6 609 (7.35%) Data Engineer
7 496 (5.99%) Analyst
8 442 (5.34%) Solutions Architect
9 426 (5.14%) DevOps Engineer
10 348 (4.20%) Cloud Engineer
11 310 (3.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 305 (3.68%) Consultant
13 249 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 225 (2.72%) Platform Engineer
15 221 (2.67%) Azure Architect
16 196 (2.37%) Project Manager
17 193 (2.33%) Technical Architect
18 189 (2.28%) Security Engineer
19 185 (2.23%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 182 (2.20%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 645 (7.79%) .NET
2 628 (7.58%) REST
3 329 (3.97%) Kafka
4 324 (3.91%) React
5 289 (3.49%) RESTful
6 253 (3.05%) PySpark
7 238 (2.87%) OAuth
8 212 (2.56%) JSON
9 209 (2.52%) Spring
10 197 (2.38%) Node.js
11 173 (2.09%) Spring Boot
12 172 (2.08%) AngularJS
13 158 (1.91%) HTML
14 150 (1.81%) SAML
15 147 (1.77%) OpenID
16 141 (1.70%) OAuth2
17 140 (1.69%) .NET Framework
18 137 (1.65%) Middleware
19 133 (1.61%) Playwright
20 124 (1.50%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 882 (10.65%) Cloud Native
2 394 (4.76%) Onboarding
3 350 (4.23%) Product Ownership
4 265 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
5 263 (3.17%) Hybrid Cloud
6 256 (3.09%) AI Agents
7 254 (3.07%) Data Centre
8 232 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
9 228 (2.75%) Enterprise Software
10 178 (2.15%) Security Posture
11 141 (1.70%) Public Cloud
12 140 (1.69%) Data Structures
13 138 (1.67%) Management Information System
14 111 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 109 (1.32%) Enterprise Cloud
16 108 (1.30%) PKI
17 95 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
18 91 (1.10%) Replication
19 77 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
20 73 (0.88%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 974 (11.76%) Windows
2 490 (5.92%) Linux
3 341 (4.12%) Windows Server
4 124 (1.50%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 83 (1.00%) Unix
6 80 (0.97%) Android
7 73 (0.88%) Apple iOS
8 72 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 58 (0.70%) VMS
10 49 (0.59%) Ubuntu
11 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
12 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.14%) CentOS
13 12 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
14 10 (0.12%) Debian
15 6 (0.072%) AIX
15 6 (0.072%) Rocky
15 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,068 (37.04%) DevOps
2 2,592 (31.29%) CI/CD
3 2,077 (25.07%) Agile
4 1,302 (15.72%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,298 (15.67%) AI
6 1,218 (14.70%) Migration
7 1,185 (14.30%) Stakeholder Management
8 1,132 (13.66%) Analytics
9 1,073 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
10 922 (11.13%) Data Modelling
11 910 (10.99%) Continuous Improvement
12 814 (9.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 782 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
14 775 (9.36%) Roadmaps
15 774 (9.34%) Containerisation
16 762 (9.20%) Business Intelligence
17 742 (8.96%) Microservices
18 694 (8.38%) Test Automation
19 674 (8.14%) ETL
20 653 (7.88%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,901 (22.95%) Python
2 1,608 (19.41%) SQL
3 831 (10.03%) PowerShell
4 679 (8.20%) Java
5 629 (7.59%) C#
6 506 (6.11%) JavaScript
7 383 (4.62%) Bash
8 324 (3.91%) Bicep
9 309 (3.73%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 97 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 70 (0.85%) Go
13 59 (0.71%) Scala
14 57 (0.69%) Shell Script
15 56 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
16 40 (0.48%) PL/SQL
17 39 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.47%) R
18 30 (0.36%) Groovy
19 27 (0.33%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,116 (25.54%) Security Cleared
2 1,722 (20.79%) SC Cleared
3 558 (6.74%) Degree
4 443 (5.35%) Azure Certification
5 272 (3.28%) DV Cleared
6 254 (3.07%) CISSP
7 243 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
8 223 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
9 210 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
10 195 (2.35%) AWS Certification
11 183 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 124 (1.50%) CISM
13 100 (1.21%) CCNP
14 86 (1.04%) PMI Certification
15 85 (1.03%) PMP
16 84 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 71 (0.86%) ISTQB
18 58 (0.70%) Master's Degree
19 56 (0.68%) CCSP
20 53 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 571 (6.89%) Data Quality
2 434 (5.24%) QA
3 329 (3.97%) GDPR
4 302 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 295 (3.56%) NIST
6 201 (2.43%) Accessibility
7 123 (1.48%) NCSC
8 103 (1.24%) SLA
9 77 (0.93%) GRC
10 76 (0.92%) WCAG
11 73 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
11 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
12 59 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 55 (0.66%) PMO
14 31 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 29 (0.35%) HIPAA
16 26 (0.31%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 18 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
18 18 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 998 (12.05%) Active Directory
2 910 (10.99%) Docker
3 238 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.77%) Virtual Machines
5 145 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
6 128 (1.55%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.82%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 24 (0.29%) NFS
12 14 (0.17%) IAG
12 14 (0.17%) Postfix
13 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.11%) Ceph
14 9 (0.11%) zsh
15 7 (0.085%) Varnish
16 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.060%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 1,360 (16.42%) Terraform
2 1,262 (15.23%) Kubernetes
3 435 (5.25%) Microsoft Intune
4 434 (5.24%) Ansible
5 257 (3.10%) Grafana
6 216 (2.61%) Prometheus
7 147 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
8 118 (1.42%) SCCM
9 59 (0.71%) Argo
9 59 (0.71%) Progress Chef
10 48 (0.58%) Puppet
11 43 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.39%) Istio
14 21 (0.25%) SCOM
14 21 (0.25%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.24%) Packer
16 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,770 (33.44%) Microsoft
2 776 (9.37%) Databricks
3 401 (4.84%) ServiceNow
4 341 (4.12%) Google
5 338 (4.08%) VMware
6 310 (3.74%) Oracle
7 238 (2.87%) Cisco
8 224 (2.70%) SAP
9 203 (2.45%) OpenAI
10 191 (2.31%) Splunk
11 156 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 154 (1.86%) Palo Alto
13 143 (1.73%) CyberArk
14 140 (1.69%) Foundry
15 114 (1.38%) Dynatrace
16 105 (1.27%) Zscaler
17 88 (1.06%) Okta
18 84 (1.01%) Informatica
19 79 (0.95%) Citrix
20 75 (0.91%) Fortinet