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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,171 4,841 5,917
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.50% 14.86% 14.32%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.95% 39.73% 42.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,706 3,351 4,263
10th Percentile £367 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 37 47
10th Percentile £18.50 £22.70 £17.80
25th Percentile £26.00 £29.25 £23.05
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -41.47%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.70 £61.60
90th Percentile £96.25 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -11.54% +40.75% -16.04%

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 18,592 12,186 13,848
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.27% 37.39% 33.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,293 8,155 9,692
10th Percentile £326 £313 £313
25th Percentile £418 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.70% -4.67% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.13% -1.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 609 314 319
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.11 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.75 £18.22 £16.06
Median hourly rate £36.71 £27.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.49% +25.00% -37.14%
75th Percentile £70.00 £47.50 £50.13
90th Percentile £83.35 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £20.00
% change year-on-year +98.73% -5.65% -25.93%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 6,968 £525 - 2,767
London +1 3,627 £550 - 1,217
UK excluding London +3 3,552 £505 +1.00% 2,005
Work from Home -1 2,534 £525 +4.90% 1,255
North of England +7 1,016 £500 +1.52% 540
South East +1 890 £525 +5.00% 641
Midlands +3 628 £493 -1.01% 276
North West +7 534 £500 - 280
West Midlands +2 472 £494 -5.95% 177
South West +7 445 £538 +7.55% 223
Yorkshire +3 404 £500 +5.26% 180
Scotland +8 311 £500 +5.26% 105
East of England +5 185 £550 -4.35% 158
East Midlands +7 145 £475 +2.70% 98
Wales -1 101 £425 -4.60% 75
North East +3 91 £525 +5.00% 90
Northern Ireland +13 18 £588 +23.68% 35
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
1 415 (5.08%) SharePoint
2 278 (3.40%) Confluence
3 200 (2.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 180 (2.20%) Apache Spark
5 128 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
6 113 (1.38%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 33 (0.40%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 18 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 17 (0.21%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 13 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 10 (0.12%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.098%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
17 7 (0.086%) Camunda
17 7 (0.086%) Mendix
18 6 (0.073%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 119 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 30 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.11%) Trello
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Houdini
13 2 (0.024%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.024%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 108 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 9 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.098%) Magento
7 8 (0.098%) Maximo
8 7 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.073%) Shopify
9 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) Endur
10 5 (0.061%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,904 (35.54%) AWS
2 1,669 (20.43%) Azure DevOps
3 1,396 (17.08%) GCP
4 1,031 (12.62%) Entra ID
5 1,019 (12.47%) Power Platform
6 807 (9.88%) Microsoft 365
7 789 (9.66%) GitHub
8 470 (5.75%) GitHub Actions
9 457 (5.59%) Azure Data Factory
10 352 (4.31%) Serverless
11 334 (4.09%) SaaS
12 311 (3.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 297 (3.63%) Azure AKS
14 286 (3.50%) Azure Monitor
15 265 (3.24%) Power Automate
16 260 (3.18%) PaaS
16 260 (3.18%) PowerApps
17 244 (2.99%) Dynamics 365
18 229 (2.80%) Azure AI
19 223 (2.73%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 513 (6.28%) Firewall
2 387 (4.74%) DNS
3 310 (3.79%) VPN
4 286 (3.50%) Network Security
5 200 (2.45%) WAN
6 196 (2.40%) DHCP
7 151 (1.85%) TCP/IP
8 130 (1.59%) LAN
9 116 (1.42%) BGP
10 105 (1.29%) SD-WAN
11 93 (1.14%) OSPF
12 90 (1.10%) VLAN
13 87 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
14 70 (0.86%) SSL
15 58 (0.71%) IPsec
16 57 (0.70%) Wireless
17 56 (0.69%) SAN
18 48 (0.59%) VXLAN
19 46 (0.56%) HTTP
20 44 (0.54%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 699 (8.55%) Power BI
2 465 (5.69%) SQL Server
3 397 (4.86%) Data Warehouse
4 356 (4.36%) Data Lake
5 310 (3.79%) PostgreSQL
6 215 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
7 213 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 206 (2.52%) Metadata
9 139 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 130 (1.59%) Delta Lake
11 119 (1.46%) Big Data
12 107 (1.31%) MongoDB
13 96 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 85 (1.04%) MySQL
15 73 (0.89%) Tableau
16 66 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
17 65 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 59 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 57 (0.70%) Redis
20 52 (0.64%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 643 (7.87%) JIRA
2 627 (7.67%) Git
3 427 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 309 (3.78%) GitLab
5 125 (1.53%) Selenium
6 72 (0.88%) JMeter
7 71 (0.87%) Postman
8 70 (0.86%) JUnit
9 58 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 52 (0.64%) Cypress.io
11 49 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.58%) REST Assured
13 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
14 44 (0.54%) Maven
15 43 (0.53%) WebDriver
16 40 (0.49%) MLflow
17 35 (0.43%) Gradle
18 31 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
19 30 (0.37%) Gatling
20 29 (0.35%) Claude Code
General
1 2,060 (25.21%) Social Skills
2 1,522 (18.63%) Finance
3 951 (11.64%) Public Sector
4 769 (9.41%) Analytical Skills
5 422 (5.16%) Banking
6 243 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
7 197 (2.41%) Legal
8 179 (2.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 173 (2.12%) Retail
10 102 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
11 92 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 91 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
13 72 (0.88%) Law
13 72 (0.88%) Manufacturing
14 70 (0.86%) Marketing
15 66 (0.81%) Financial Institution
16 65 (0.80%) Front Office
16 65 (0.80%) Investment Banking
17 57 (0.70%) Military
18 56 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,459 (17.86%) Architect
2 1,054 (12.90%) Developer
3 1,007 (12.32%) Senior
4 723 (8.85%) Azure Engineer
5 657 (8.04%) Lead
6 601 (7.36%) Data Engineer
7 500 (6.12%) Analyst
8 422 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
9 419 (5.13%) Solutions Architect
10 323 (3.95%) Cloud Engineer
11 317 (3.88%) Consultant
12 294 (3.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 242 (2.96%) Data Architect
14 219 (2.68%) Azure Architect
15 213 (2.61%) Platform Engineer
16 199 (2.44%) Technical Architect
17 189 (2.31%) Project Manager
18 187 (2.29%) Security Engineer
19 184 (2.25%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 184 (2.25%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 640 (7.83%) .NET
2 591 (7.23%) REST
3 341 (4.17%) React
4 313 (3.83%) Kafka
5 293 (3.59%) RESTful
6 247 (3.02%) PySpark
7 230 (2.81%) OAuth
8 225 (2.75%) Spring
9 211 (2.58%) Node.js
10 195 (2.39%) JSON
11 191 (2.34%) Spring Boot
12 179 (2.19%) AngularJS
13 159 (1.95%) HTML
14 143 (1.75%) SAML
15 142 (1.74%) OpenID
16 133 (1.63%) .NET Framework
16 133 (1.63%) OAuth2
17 128 (1.57%) CSS
17 128 (1.57%) Middleware
18 127 (1.55%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 857 (10.49%) Cloud Native
2 371 (4.54%) Onboarding
3 347 (4.25%) Product Ownership
4 269 (3.29%) Data Centre
5 259 (3.17%) Distributed Systems
6 242 (2.96%) Hybrid Cloud
7 235 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
8 222 (2.72%) AI Agents
9 184 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
10 164 (2.01%) Security Posture
11 142 (1.74%) Public Cloud
12 126 (1.54%) Data Structures
13 124 (1.52%) Management Information System
14 114 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
15 102 (1.25%) Replication
16 99 (1.21%) PKI
17 98 (1.20%) Enterprise Cloud
18 90 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
19 79 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
20 72 (0.88%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 932 (11.41%) Windows
2 449 (5.50%) Linux
3 303 (3.71%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.36%) Windows 10
5 79 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 78 (0.95%) Android
7 77 (0.94%) Unix
8 74 (0.91%) Apple iOS
9 73 (0.89%) Mac OS
10 59 (0.72%) VMS
11 43 (0.53%) Ubuntu
12 26 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
16 12 (0.15%) CentOS
17 9 (0.11%) Debian
18 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
19 6 (0.073%) Rocky
19 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,011 (36.85%) DevOps
2 2,549 (31.20%) CI/CD
3 2,059 (25.20%) Agile
4 1,254 (15.35%) AI
5 1,241 (15.19%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,193 (14.60%) Migration
7 1,127 (13.79%) Analytics
8 1,065 (13.03%) Problem-Solving
9 1,060 (12.97%) Stakeholder Management
10 916 (11.21%) Data Modelling
11 871 (10.66%) Continuous Improvement
12 770 (9.42%) Data Pipeline
13 763 (9.34%) Microservices
14 761 (9.31%) Roadmaps
15 755 (9.24%) Containerisation
16 746 (9.13%) Business Intelligence
17 744 (9.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 672 (8.22%) ETL
19 662 (8.10%) Test Automation
20 651 (7.97%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,884 (23.06%) Python
2 1,586 (19.41%) SQL
3 792 (9.69%) PowerShell
4 681 (8.33%) Java
5 617 (7.55%) C#
6 473 (5.79%) JavaScript
7 337 (4.12%) Bash
8 313 (3.83%) TypeScript
9 298 (3.65%) Bicep
10 95 (1.16%) T-SQL
11 94 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 78 (0.95%) Go
13 63 (0.77%) Scala
14 55 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 52 (0.64%) Shell Script
16 42 (0.51%) R
17 39 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.48%) PL/SQL
18 27 (0.33%) Groovy
19 24 (0.29%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,037 (24.93%) Security Cleared
2 1,672 (20.46%) SC Cleared
3 574 (7.02%) Degree
4 434 (5.31%) Azure Certification
5 255 (3.12%) DV Cleared
6 251 (3.07%) CISSP
7 236 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
8 209 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
9 206 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
10 197 (2.41%) AWS Certification
11 188 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
12 124 (1.52%) CISM
13 100 (1.22%) CCNP
14 83 (1.02%) PMI Certification
14 83 (1.02%) PMP
15 80 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 65 (0.80%) Master's Degree
17 64 (0.78%) ISTQB
18 54 (0.66%) CCSP
19 53 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 560 (6.85%) Data Quality
2 425 (5.20%) QA
3 332 (4.06%) GDPR
4 282 (3.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 278 (3.40%) NIST
6 199 (2.44%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.46%) NCSC
8 99 (1.21%) SLA
9 72 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
9 72 (0.88%) GRC
9 72 (0.88%) PCI DSS
9 72 (0.88%) WCAG
10 55 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 53 (0.65%) PMO
12 33 (0.40%) HIPAA
13 31 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 26 (0.32%) SOC 2
15 23 (0.28%) NIST 800
16 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
17 19 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 981 (12.01%) Active Directory
2 877 (10.73%) Docker
3 223 (2.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
5 136 (1.66%) Virtual Machines
6 115 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.86%) vSphere
8 52 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.35%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.20%) Postfix
13 13 (0.16%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.086%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.086%) Ceph
15 7 (0.086%) Varnish
16 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.073%) HDFS
17 5 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,318 (16.13%) Terraform
2 1,204 (14.74%) Kubernetes
3 427 (5.23%) Microsoft Intune
4 400 (4.90%) Ansible
5 245 (3.00%) Grafana
6 209 (2.56%) Prometheus
7 159 (1.95%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.35%) SCCM
9 54 (0.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 53 (0.65%) Argo
11 49 (0.60%) Progress Chef
12 47 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
13 42 (0.51%) Puppet
14 34 (0.42%) FortiGate
15 29 (0.35%) Istio
16 20 (0.24%) HP ALM
16 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
18 18 (0.22%) Packer
19 15 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,632 (32.21%) Microsoft
2 741 (9.07%) Databricks
3 390 (4.77%) ServiceNow
4 330 (4.04%) Google
5 318 (3.89%) Oracle
6 316 (3.87%) VMware
7 229 (2.80%) SAP
8 228 (2.79%) Cisco
9 205 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 179 (2.19%) Splunk
11 156 (1.91%) Salesforce
12 145 (1.77%) Palo Alto
13 139 (1.70%) Foundry
14 135 (1.65%) CyberArk
15 100 (1.22%) Dynatrace
16 98 (1.20%) Zscaler
17 93 (1.14%) Okta
18 87 (1.06%) Informatica
19 76 (0.93%) Citrix
19 76 (0.93%) Fortinet