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

6 months to
10 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,378 4,571 5,813
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.44% 15.55% 13.50%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.19% 41.37% 41.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,239 3,234 4,186
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £733 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 40 50
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.28 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £24.14 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £36.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.62% +3.57% -41.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £73.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.38 £48.09
% change year-on-year +89.30% -36.84% -19.85%

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 17,081 11,048 13,928
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.75% 37.59% 32.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,563 7,634 9,903
10th Percentile £320 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £634
90th Percentile £700 £730 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.53% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 508 250 344
10th Percentile £15.59 £15.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.50 £15.97
Median hourly rate £40.25 £27.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +46.36% +28.69% -38.94%
75th Percentile £67.84 £47.88 £35.13
90th Percentile £81.38 £73.75 £62.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.90 £21.46 £17.69
% change year-on-year +113.89% +21.31% -28.15%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 6,256 £525 - 2,806
London +1 3,338 £537 -2.36% 1,044
UK excluding London +2 3,076 £500 - 2,172
Work from Home -1 2,253 £525 +1.45% 1,358
North of England +3 857 £500 +5.26% 571
South East +3 830 £500 -4.76% 666
Midlands -3 507 £488 -2.50% 294
North West +3 450 £500 +0.81% 302
South West +6 387 £525 - 265
West Midlands 0 368 £498 -5.24% 158
Yorkshire +7 349 £500 +14.29% 171
Scotland +6 298 £525 +10.53% 115
East of England +6 148 £550 -5.17% 184
East Midlands +4 129 £450 -2.96% 135
Wales -3 77 £400 -1.23% 83
North East -1 67 £525 +7.69% 98
Northern Ireland +10 15 £475 - 29
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 +51.26%

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
1 335 (4.54%) SharePoint
2 217 (2.94%) Confluence
3 196 (2.66%) Apache Spark
4 189 (2.56%) Microsoft Exchange
5 101 (1.37%) Apache
6 94 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.33%) SAS
8 22 (0.30%) IIS
9 16 (0.22%) OpenStack
10 15 (0.20%) ArcGIS
10 15 (0.20%) CMS
10 15 (0.20%) Mendix
11 13 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
12 12 (0.16%) Appian
12 12 (0.16%) Camunda
12 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
15 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.095%) nginx
Applications
1 105 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 25 (0.34%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.095%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.095%) Trello
8 5 (0.068%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.068%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.054%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.054%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.041%) Revit
11 2 (0.027%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.027%) Weka
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
12 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 103 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.12%) Maximo
7 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
7 8 (0.11%) Teamcenter
8 7 (0.095%) Dynamics AX
8 7 (0.095%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.068%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.068%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.054%) Cloudability
11 4 (0.054%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.054%) Oracle FAH
11 4 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
11 4 (0.054%) SAP BPC
11 4 (0.054%) Shopify
11 4 (0.054%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,528 (34.26%) AWS
2 1,522 (20.63%) Azure DevOps
3 1,330 (18.03%) GCP
4 962 (13.04%) Power Platform
5 869 (11.78%) Entra ID
6 752 (10.19%) Microsoft 365
7 708 (9.60%) GitHub
8 509 (6.90%) Azure Data Factory
9 421 (5.71%) GitHub Actions
10 387 (5.25%) Serverless
11 342 (4.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 287 (3.89%) SaaS
13 280 (3.80%) Azure AKS
14 266 (3.61%) Dynamics 365
15 260 (3.52%) Power Automate
16 243 (3.29%) Azure Monitor
17 238 (3.23%) PaaS
18 221 (3.00%) PowerApps
19 208 (2.82%) Azure Functions
20 193 (2.62%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 450 (6.10%) Firewall
2 310 (4.20%) DNS
3 250 (3.39%) VPN
4 244 (3.31%) Network Security
5 195 (2.64%) WAN
6 165 (2.24%) DHCP
7 132 (1.79%) LAN
8 105 (1.42%) SD-WAN
9 91 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
10 87 (1.18%) TCP/IP
11 73 (0.99%) VLAN
12 71 (0.96%) Kerberos
13 67 (0.91%) BGP
14 57 (0.77%) OSPF
15 46 (0.62%) SAN
16 44 (0.60%) SSL
17 42 (0.57%) Wireless
18 40 (0.54%) HTTP
19 36 (0.49%) VXLAN
20 34 (0.46%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 648 (8.78%) Power BI
2 428 (5.80%) SQL Server
3 369 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
4 368 (4.99%) Data Lake
5 250 (3.39%) PostgreSQL
6 247 (3.35%) Azure SQL Database
7 194 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 183 (2.48%) Metadata
9 152 (2.06%) Delta Lake
10 119 (1.61%) Big Data
11 116 (1.57%) Relational Database
12 95 (1.29%) MongoDB
13 94 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 76 (1.03%) Tableau
15 72 (0.98%) Oracle Database
16 69 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
17 64 (0.87%) MySQL
18 63 (0.85%) BigQuery
19 56 (0.76%) Star Schema
20 49 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 550 (7.45%) Git
2 519 (7.03%) JIRA
3 392 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 306 (4.15%) GitLab
5 116 (1.57%) Selenium
6 78 (1.06%) Postman
7 65 (0.88%) JMeter
8 62 (0.84%) Cucumber
9 61 (0.83%) JUnit
10 54 (0.73%) MLflow
11 49 (0.66%) REST Assured
12 47 (0.64%) SonarQube
13 37 (0.50%) Artifactory
13 37 (0.50%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.46%) Visual Studio
15 33 (0.45%) WebDriver
16 31 (0.42%) Gatling
17 27 (0.37%) Maven
18 26 (0.35%) ERwin
19 24 (0.33%) NUnit
General
1 1,909 (25.87%) Social Skills
2 1,322 (17.92%) Finance
3 823 (11.15%) Public Sector
4 670 (9.08%) Analytical Skills
5 383 (5.19%) Banking
6 215 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 192 (2.60%) Legal
8 108 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 92 (1.25%) Retail
10 86 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
11 73 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
11 73 (0.99%) Marketing
12 72 (0.98%) Financial Institution
13 71 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
14 66 (0.89%) Telecoms
15 64 (0.87%) Investment Banking
15 64 (0.87%) Law
16 62 (0.84%) Front Office
17 42 (0.57%) Military
18 38 (0.52%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,250 (16.94%) Architect
2 955 (12.94%) Developer
3 872 (11.82%) Senior
4 669 (9.07%) Azure Engineer
5 599 (8.12%) Data Engineer
6 554 (7.51%) Lead
7 462 (6.26%) Analyst
8 409 (5.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 318 (4.31%) Solutions Architect
10 306 (4.15%) Consultant
11 233 (3.16%) Cloud Engineer
12 227 (3.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 206 (2.79%) Azure Architect
14 191 (2.59%) Security Engineer
15 176 (2.39%) Data Architect
16 173 (2.34%) Platform Engineer
17 169 (2.29%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 168 (2.28%) Technical Architect
19 157 (2.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 155 (2.10%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 582 (7.89%) .NET
2 490 (6.64%) REST
3 329 (4.46%) React
4 282 (3.82%) Kafka
5 267 (3.62%) PySpark
6 233 (3.16%) RESTful
7 230 (3.12%) Node.js
8 211 (2.86%) Spring
9 209 (2.83%) OAuth
10 183 (2.48%) AngularJS
11 177 (2.40%) Spring Boot
12 174 (2.36%) LDAP
13 149 (2.02%) JSON
14 144 (1.95%) HTML
15 137 (1.86%) Middleware
16 132 (1.79%) OpenID
17 131 (1.78%) SOAP
18 130 (1.76%) SAML
19 120 (1.63%) CSS
20 109 (1.48%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 716 (9.70%) Cloud Native
2 289 (3.92%) Onboarding
3 273 (3.70%) Product Ownership
4 207 (2.81%) Data Centre
5 192 (2.60%) Hybrid Cloud
6 186 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
7 166 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
8 162 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
9 158 (2.14%) Security Posture
10 156 (2.11%) Public Cloud
11 134 (1.82%) AI Agents
12 99 (1.34%) Data Structures
13 92 (1.25%) Replication
14 91 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 83 (1.12%) Low-Code
16 82 (1.11%) Management Information System
17 71 (0.96%) PKI
18 65 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
19 58 (0.79%) NHS
19 58 (0.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 805 (10.91%) Windows
2 379 (5.14%) Linux
3 237 (3.21%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.63%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.02%) Unix
6 71 (0.96%) VMS
7 65 (0.88%) Mac OS
8 63 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 62 (0.84%) Apple iOS
10 47 (0.64%) Android
11 29 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.27%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.12%) AIX
16 8 (0.11%) CentOS
16 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.095%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.095%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,773 (37.58%) DevOps
2 2,305 (31.24%) CI/CD
3 1,737 (23.54%) Agile
4 1,073 (14.54%) Problem-Solving
5 1,072 (14.53%) Analytics
6 1,050 (14.23%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,002 (13.58%) AI
8 995 (13.49%) Migration
9 831 (11.26%) Data Modelling
10 736 (9.98%) Stakeholder Management
11 708 (9.60%) Business Intelligence
12 705 (9.56%) Containerisation
13 698 (9.46%) Data Pipeline
14 697 (9.45%) Continuous Improvement
15 666 (9.03%) Microservices
16 663 (8.99%) ETL
17 609 (8.25%) Roadmaps
18 600 (8.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 585 (7.93%) Data Engineering
20 577 (7.82%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,795 (24.33%) Python
2 1,556 (21.09%) SQL
3 746 (10.11%) PowerShell
4 614 (8.32%) C#
4 614 (8.32%) Java
5 450 (6.10%) JavaScript
6 288 (3.90%) TypeScript
7 260 (3.52%) Bash
8 239 (3.24%) Bicep
9 94 (1.27%) Scala
10 88 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 85 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 84 (1.14%) Go
13 59 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
14 55 (0.75%) PL/SQL
15 53 (0.72%) Shell Script
16 50 (0.68%) R
17 33 (0.45%) C++
18 24 (0.33%) Kotlin
19 19 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,847 (25.03%) Security Cleared
2 1,560 (21.14%) SC Cleared
3 504 (6.83%) Degree
4 383 (5.19%) Azure Certification
5 209 (2.83%) CISSP
6 191 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
7 170 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
8 165 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
9 155 (2.10%) Microsoft Certification
10 154 (2.09%) DV Cleared
11 150 (2.03%) AWS Certification
12 122 (1.65%) CISM
13 77 (1.04%) CCNP
14 71 (0.96%) PMP
15 69 (0.94%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.92%) TOGAF Certification
17 67 (0.91%) Master's Degree
18 65 (0.88%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 58 (0.79%) ISTQB
20 44 (0.60%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 517 (7.01%) Data Quality
2 395 (5.35%) QA
3 369 (5.00%) GDPR
4 296 (4.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 268 (3.63%) NIST
6 130 (1.76%) Accessibility
7 106 (1.44%) NCSC
8 84 (1.14%) PCI DSS
9 69 (0.94%) SLA
10 67 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 60 (0.81%) PMO
13 51 (0.69%) GRC
14 40 (0.54%) WCAG
15 37 (0.50%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.33%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 21 (0.28%) SOC 2
19 20 (0.27%) ISO 20022
20 19 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 895 (12.13%) Active Directory
2 809 (10.97%) Docker
3 204 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 118 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
5 116 (1.57%) Virtual Machines
6 111 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 60 (0.81%) vSphere
8 34 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.39%) Firmware
10 22 (0.30%) NFS
11 21 (0.28%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.16%) Postfix
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.11%) Varnish
15 7 (0.095%) HDFS
16 6 (0.081%) KVM
16 6 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.081%) RACF
17 5 (0.068%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
17 5 (0.068%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 1,164 (15.78%) Terraform
2 1,076 (14.58%) Kubernetes
3 366 (4.96%) Microsoft Intune
4 342 (4.64%) Ansible
5 210 (2.85%) Grafana
6 183 (2.48%) Prometheus
7 152 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.49%) SCCM
9 67 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.54%) Argo
11 35 (0.47%) FortiGate
11 35 (0.47%) Istio
11 35 (0.47%) Puppet
12 30 (0.41%) Progress Chef
13 26 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
14 22 (0.30%) HP ALM
15 19 (0.26%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.23%) linkerd
17 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.20%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,349 (31.84%) Microsoft
2 741 (10.04%) Databricks
3 311 (4.22%) Google
4 303 (4.11%) ServiceNow
5 294 (3.98%) Oracle
6 287 (3.89%) VMware
7 211 (2.86%) SAP
8 191 (2.59%) Cisco
9 181 (2.45%) OpenAI
10 165 (2.24%) Splunk
11 141 (1.91%) CyberArk
12 124 (1.68%) Palo Alto
13 113 (1.53%) Foundry
14 111 (1.50%) Salesforce
15 93 (1.26%) Okta
16 78 (1.06%) Citrix
16 78 (1.06%) Informatica
17 76 (1.03%) Dynatrace
18 73 (0.99%) BeyondTrust
19 65 (0.88%) Zscaler