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

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,176 4,851 6,260
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.03% 15.44% 13.94%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.24% 41.69% 41.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,374 3,272 4,573
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.19% -4.55% -2.31%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 41 85
10th Percentile £18.38 £21.25 £17.75
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.80 £22.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -9.45%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £62.00
90th Percentile £90.63 £75.50 £76.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +91.67% -35.04% -23.92%

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 14,620 11,635 15,008
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.94% 37.04% 33.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,061 7,723 10,764
10th Percentile £306 £313 £288
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £497 £500
% change year-on-year -4.43% -0.60% -1.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 173 318
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.80 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.36
Median hourly rate £32.75 £27.50 £22.75
Median % change year-on-year +19.09% +20.88% -5.21%
75th Percentile £58.75 £43.75 £50.19
90th Percentile £79.63 £72.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £24.66 £21.00
% change year-on-year +33.82% +17.43% +5.00%

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 1 February 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 1 February 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 1 February 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 5,230 £520 -0.90% 2,856
London 0 2,813 £540 -1.74% 1,114
UK excluding London 0 2,528 £500 - 2,315
Work from Home -2 1,902 £518 -1.43% 1,529
North of England -1 684 £475 +1.33% 551
South East -2 654 £500 -6.98% 804
Midlands -1 444 £513 -1.30% 307
North West -1 342 £450 - 324
West Midlands +2 334 £545 -0.91% 176
South West +4 328 £509 -3.10% 245
Yorkshire -1 298 £484 +0.73% 162
Scotland +7 280 £550 +18.03% 157
East of England 0 141 £538 +13.16% 201
East Midlands -3 109 £433 -3.78% 131
Wales -4 63 £410 -16.33% 69
North East -6 47 £500 +7.64% 68
Northern Ireland +8 10 £475 - 19
Channel Islands +3 2 £600 +101.68% 1

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
1 285 (4.61%) SharePoint
2 198 (3.21%) Microsoft Exchange
3 156 (2.53%) Apache Spark
4 153 (2.48%) Confluence
5 84 (1.36%) Apache
6 81 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.42%) CMS
7 26 (0.42%) OpenStack
7 26 (0.42%) SAS
8 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
8 14 (0.23%) IIS
9 13 (0.21%) Appian
9 13 (0.21%) Camunda
10 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
10 12 (0.19%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.18%) nginx
11 11 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 10 (0.16%) GeoServer
12 10 (0.16%) SugarCRM
13 9 (0.15%) Mendix
Applications
1 134 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 104 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.78%) MS Visio
5 40 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.15%) Trello
8 7 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.081%) Weka
10 4 (0.065%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.049%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.016%) FrameMaker
13 1 (0.016%) Revit
Business Applications
1 108 (1.75%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.15%) Maximo
5 9 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Endur
6 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.097%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.097%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,164 (35.04%) AWS
2 1,236 (20.01%) Azure DevOps
3 1,208 (19.56%) GCP
4 838 (13.57%) Power Platform
5 718 (11.63%) Entra ID
6 713 (11.54%) Microsoft 365
7 636 (10.30%) GitHub
8 437 (7.08%) Azure Data Factory
9 380 (6.15%) Serverless
10 366 (5.93%) GitHub Actions
11 293 (4.74%) Dynamics 365
12 285 (4.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 259 (4.19%) Power Automate
14 258 (4.18%) SaaS
15 236 (3.82%) Azure AKS
16 228 (3.69%) Azure Functions
17 220 (3.56%) Snowflake
18 216 (3.50%) Azure Monitor
19 215 (3.48%) Azure Logic Apps
20 204 (3.30%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 420 (6.80%) Firewall
2 267 (4.32%) DNS
3 198 (3.21%) VPN
4 175 (2.83%) Network Security
5 161 (2.61%) DHCP
6 150 (2.43%) WAN
7 96 (1.55%) TCP/IP
8 95 (1.54%) LAN
9 77 (1.25%) SD-WAN
9 77 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
10 68 (1.10%) Kerberos
11 64 (1.04%) VLAN
12 61 (0.99%) HTTP
13 38 (0.62%) BGP
14 35 (0.57%) Internet
14 35 (0.57%) Wireless
15 30 (0.49%) MPLS
16 28 (0.45%) SSL
17 26 (0.42%) OSPF
18 24 (0.39%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 575 (9.31%) Power BI
2 358 (5.80%) SQL Server
3 311 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 303 (4.91%) Data Lake
5 224 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
6 220 (3.56%) Azure SQL Database
7 182 (2.95%) NoSQL
8 144 (2.33%) Metadata
9 129 (2.09%) Relational Database
10 100 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 88 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 82 (1.33%) MongoDB
13 80 (1.30%) Big Data
14 75 (1.21%) MySQL
15 69 (1.12%) Oracle Database
16 68 (1.10%) Tableau
17 65 (1.05%) BigQuery
18 53 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
19 48 (0.78%) Redis
20 43 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 479 (7.76%) Git
2 443 (7.17%) JIRA
3 344 (5.57%) Jenkins
4 255 (4.13%) GitLab
5 109 (1.76%) Selenium
6 98 (1.59%) Postman
7 62 (1.00%) Cucumber
8 58 (0.94%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.89%) JMeter
10 53 (0.86%) JUnit
11 48 (0.78%) Cypress.io
12 44 (0.71%) REST Assured
13 41 (0.66%) Visual Studio
14 39 (0.63%) MLflow
15 37 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
16 31 (0.50%) Artifactory
17 29 (0.47%) Bitbucket
17 29 (0.47%) Maven
18 28 (0.45%) ERwin
18 28 (0.45%) TestRail
General
1 1,955 (31.65%) Social Skills
2 1,099 (17.79%) Finance
3 730 (11.82%) Public Sector
4 620 (10.04%) Analytical Skills
5 361 (5.85%) Banking
6 204 (3.30%) Documentation Skills
7 130 (2.10%) Legal
8 112 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 104 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
10 98 (1.59%) Marketing
11 89 (1.44%) Retail
12 88 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
13 72 (1.17%) Investment Banking
14 61 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
15 60 (0.97%) Telecoms
16 53 (0.86%) Financial Institution
16 53 (0.86%) Law
17 52 (0.84%) Manufacturing
18 41 (0.66%) Military
19 38 (0.62%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,005 (16.27%) Architect
2 892 (14.44%) Developer
3 632 (10.23%) Senior
4 499 (8.08%) Azure Engineer
5 479 (7.76%) Data Engineer
6 424 (6.87%) Lead
7 416 (6.74%) Analyst
8 325 (5.26%) DevOps Engineer
9 317 (5.13%) Solutions Architect
10 268 (4.34%) Consultant
11 184 (2.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 173 (2.80%) Security Engineer
13 159 (2.57%) Senior Developer
14 156 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
15 155 (2.51%) Azure Architect
16 149 (2.41%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 133 (2.15%) Platform Engineer
18 131 (2.12%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 127 (2.06%) Data Architect
20 120 (1.94%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 512 (8.29%) .NET
2 447 (7.24%) REST
3 280 (4.53%) React
4 248 (4.02%) RESTful
5 230 (3.72%) PySpark
6 224 (3.63%) Kafka
7 206 (3.34%) Node.js
8 194 (3.14%) OAuth
9 186 (3.01%) Spring
10 173 (2.80%) Spring Boot
11 167 (2.70%) HTML
12 166 (2.69%) AngularJS
13 154 (2.49%) LDAP
14 148 (2.40%) JSON
15 147 (2.38%) SOAP
16 145 (2.35%) CSS
17 132 (2.14%) PyTorch
18 124 (2.01%) TensorFlow
19 116 (1.88%) SAML
20 110 (1.78%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 538 (8.71%) Cloud Native
2 236 (3.82%) Onboarding
3 214 (3.47%) Product Ownership
4 167 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
5 162 (2.62%) Enterprise Software
6 160 (2.59%) Security Posture
7 154 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
8 135 (2.19%) Data Centre
9 116 (1.88%) Public Cloud
10 99 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
11 88 (1.42%) AI Agents
12 86 (1.39%) Replication
13 75 (1.21%) Management Information System
14 72 (1.17%) Data Structures
15 67 (1.08%) Algorithms
15 67 (1.08%) Low-Code
16 63 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
17 62 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
18 59 (0.96%) NHS
19 57 (0.92%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 715 (11.58%) Windows
2 369 (5.97%) Linux
3 202 (3.27%) Windows Server
4 125 (2.02%) Windows 10
5 89 (1.44%) Unix
6 53 (0.86%) VMS
7 47 (0.76%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.73%) Mac OS
9 41 (0.66%) Android
10 36 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.31%) Ubuntu
13 11 (0.18%) CentOS
14 10 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.13%) Solaris
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 5 (0.081%) AIX
18 3 (0.049%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,271 (36.77%) DevOps
2 1,856 (30.05%) CI/CD
3 1,535 (24.85%) Agile
4 1,185 (19.19%) Problem-Solving
5 924 (14.96%) Analytics
6 822 (13.31%) AI
7 810 (13.12%) Infrastructure as Code
8 732 (11.85%) Migration
9 650 (10.52%) Business Intelligence
10 641 (10.38%) Stakeholder Management
11 622 (10.07%) Containerisation
12 602 (9.75%) Data Modelling
13 546 (8.84%) Continuous Improvement
14 533 (8.63%) Machine Learning
15 529 (8.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 527 (8.53%) ETL
17 519 (8.40%) Microservices
18 505 (8.18%) Data Pipeline
19 504 (8.16%) Test Automation
20 455 (7.37%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 1,575 (25.50%) Python
2 1,340 (21.70%) SQL
3 684 (11.08%) PowerShell
4 546 (8.84%) C#
5 534 (8.65%) Java
6 466 (7.55%) JavaScript
7 263 (4.26%) TypeScript
8 258 (4.18%) Bash
9 181 (2.93%) Bicep
10 94 (1.52%) Scala
11 83 (1.34%) Go
12 81 (1.31%) PL/SQL
13 69 (1.12%) Kusto Query Language
14 64 (1.04%) T-SQL
15 63 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 49 (0.79%) R
17 48 (0.78%) Shell Script
18 41 (0.66%) C++
19 34 (0.55%) PHP
20 23 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,445 (23.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,199 (19.41%) SC Cleared
3 519 (8.40%) Degree
4 347 (5.62%) Azure Certification
5 196 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 172 (2.78%) Microsoft Certification
7 162 (2.62%) CISSP
8 126 (2.04%) AWS Certification
9 125 (2.02%) DV Cleared
10 107 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
11 106 (1.72%) CISM
12 91 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
12 91 (1.47%) Master's Degree
13 51 (0.83%) PMI Certification
14 47 (0.76%) ISTQB
14 47 (0.76%) PMP
14 47 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
15 44 (0.71%) CCNP
16 32 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 28 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (6.17%) Data Quality
2 373 (6.04%) GDPR
3 334 (5.41%) QA
4 305 (4.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 231 (3.74%) NIST
6 127 (2.06%) Accessibility
7 93 (1.51%) NCSC
8 70 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 54 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 49 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
11 47 (0.76%) SLA
12 42 (0.68%) HIPAA
13 38 (0.62%) PMO
13 38 (0.62%) SOC 2
14 37 (0.60%) WCAG
15 28 (0.45%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.45%) PSD2
16 27 (0.44%) GRC
17 24 (0.39%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 814 (13.18%) Active Directory
2 755 (12.22%) Docker
3 193 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 97 (1.57%) Hyper-V
5 75 (1.21%) Virtual Desktop
6 73 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (1.00%) vSphere
8 20 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.19%) Squid
9 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.16%) DFS Replication
12 9 (0.15%) Firmware
12 9 (0.15%) KVM
13 8 (0.13%) Postfix
13 8 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) Dovecot
15 6 (0.097%) Snort
15 6 (0.097%) zsh
Systems Management
1 938 (15.19%) Terraform
2 879 (14.23%) Kubernetes
3 328 (5.31%) Microsoft Intune
4 309 (5.00%) Ansible
5 166 (2.69%) Single Sign-On
6 149 (2.41%) Grafana
7 144 (2.33%) SCCM
8 137 (2.22%) Prometheus
9 69 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.70%) Argo
11 31 (0.50%) Puppet
12 26 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 25 (0.40%) vRealize
14 23 (0.37%) Kibana
14 23 (0.37%) Nessus
15 22 (0.36%) Istio
16 20 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 18 (0.29%) Nmap
17 18 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
17 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,003 (32.43%) Microsoft
2 618 (10.01%) Databricks
3 354 (5.73%) Oracle
4 319 (5.17%) Google
5 266 (4.31%) ServiceNow
6 255 (4.13%) VMware
7 176 (2.85%) SAP
8 159 (2.57%) Cisco
8 159 (2.57%) OpenAI
9 154 (2.49%) Splunk
10 123 (1.99%) Salesforce
11 113 (1.83%) CyberArk
12 101 (1.64%) Palo Alto
13 82 (1.33%) Foundry
14 72 (1.17%) Okta
15 66 (1.07%) Red Hat
16 65 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
17 64 (1.04%) Citrix
18 59 (0.96%) IBM
19 56 (0.91%) Fortinet