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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,365 4,534 5,861
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.44% 15.48% 13.51%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.18% 41.22% 41.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,233 3,218 4,220
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £622 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £730 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 131 43 49
10th Percentile £25.38 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £50.63 £24.59 £22.30
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% - -39.13%
75th Percentile £68.75 £72.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £29.25 £48.09
% change year-on-year +96.58% -39.18% -19.72%

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 17,057 10,999 14,040
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.76% 37.55% 32.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,545 7,616 9,992
10th Percentile £320 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.80% -1.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £631
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.11% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 500 252 344
10th Percentile £15.48 £15.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.51 £15.88
Median hourly rate £40.25 £27.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.36% +30.95% -40.00%
75th Percentile £67.58 £48.19 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.13 £73.63 £62.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £21.59 £17.69
% change year-on-year +120.01% +22.05% -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 7 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 7 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 7 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 0 6,251 £525 - 2,863
London +1 3,342 £537 -2.36% 1,036
UK excluding London +2 3,063 £500 - 2,283
Work from Home -1 2,235 £525 +0.96% 1,374
North of England +2 847 £500 +5.26% 601
South East +2 821 £500 -5.93% 692
Midlands -2 514 £488 -2.50% 304
North West +3 451 £500 - 307
South West +6 387 £525 - 268
West Midlands 0 375 £500 -4.76% 167
Yorkshire +4 343 £500 +17.65% 196
Scotland +8 297 £525 +10.53% 125
East of England +4 149 £550 -5.17% 198
East Midlands +3 129 £450 -2.96% 136
Wales -3 78 £400 -3.03% 97
North East 0 61 £525 +7.69% 99
Northern Ireland +9 14 £475 - 34
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 (4.55%) SharePoint
2 213 (2.89%) Confluence
3 197 (2.67%) Apache Spark
4 193 (2.62%) Microsoft Exchange
5 104 (1.41%) Apache
6 94 (1.28%) 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%) Appian
11 13 (0.18%) Camunda
11 13 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
12 12 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 10 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
14 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.095%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.095%) nginx
Applications
1 114 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
3 68 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 24 (0.33%) 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
1 102 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.14%) Maximo
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 7 (0.095%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.095%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.095%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.095%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.068%) Cloudability
8 5 (0.068%) NetSuite
8 5 (0.068%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.054%) Dynamics NAV
9 4 (0.054%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.054%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.054%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.054%) Shopify
10 3 (0.041%) Oracle Payables
Cloud Services
1 2,506 (34.03%) AWS
2 1,515 (20.57%) Azure DevOps
3 1,328 (18.03%) GCP
4 962 (13.06%) Power Platform
5 873 (11.85%) Entra ID
6 762 (10.35%) Microsoft 365
7 709 (9.63%) GitHub
8 512 (6.95%) Azure Data Factory
9 420 (5.70%) GitHub Actions
10 391 (5.31%) Serverless
11 344 (4.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 290 (3.94%) SaaS
13 282 (3.83%) Azure AKS
14 266 (3.61%) Dynamics 365
15 259 (3.52%) Power Automate
16 242 (3.29%) Azure Monitor
17 240 (3.26%) PaaS
18 221 (3.00%) PowerApps
19 211 (2.86%) Azure Functions
20 193 (2.62%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 449 (6.10%) Firewall
2 310 (4.21%) DNS
3 257 (3.49%) VPN
4 246 (3.34%) Network Security
5 193 (2.62%) WAN
6 164 (2.23%) DHCP
7 131 (1.78%) LAN
8 104 (1.41%) SD-WAN
9 93 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
10 87 (1.18%) TCP/IP
11 74 (1.00%) VLAN
12 71 (0.96%) Kerberos
13 67 (0.91%) BGP
14 57 (0.77%) OSPF
15 46 (0.62%) SAN
16 45 (0.61%) SSL
17 43 (0.58%) Wireless
18 41 (0.56%) HTTP
19 35 (0.48%) VXLAN
20 34 (0.46%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 649 (8.81%) Power BI
2 426 (5.78%) SQL Server
3 372 (5.05%) Data Lake
4 370 (5.02%) Data Warehouse
5 251 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 248 (3.37%) Azure SQL Database
7 193 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 183 (2.48%) Metadata
9 153 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 119 (1.62%) Big Data
11 117 (1.59%) Relational Database
12 95 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 94 (1.28%) MongoDB
14 76 (1.03%) Tableau
15 74 (1.00%) Oracle Database
16 68 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
17 64 (0.87%) MySQL
18 63 (0.86%) BigQuery
19 56 (0.76%) Star Schema
20 49 (0.67%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 554 (7.52%) Git
2 516 (7.01%) JIRA
3 390 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 303 (4.11%) GitLab
5 119 (1.62%) Selenium
6 82 (1.11%) Postman
7 66 (0.90%) JMeter
8 65 (0.88%) Cucumber
9 62 (0.84%) JUnit
10 54 (0.73%) MLflow
11 50 (0.68%) REST Assured
12 46 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 39 (0.53%) Cypress.io
14 38 (0.52%) Artifactory
15 34 (0.46%) Visual Studio
16 33 (0.45%) WebDriver
17 31 (0.42%) Gatling
18 28 (0.38%) TestRail
19 26 (0.35%) ERwin
19 26 (0.35%) Maven
General
1 1,913 (25.97%) Social Skills
2 1,312 (17.81%) Finance
3 816 (11.08%) Public Sector
4 678 (9.21%) Analytical Skills
5 382 (5.19%) Banking
6 217 (2.95%) Documentation Skills
7 188 (2.55%) Legal
8 107 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 91 (1.24%) Retail
10 87 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
11 76 (1.03%) Marketing
12 74 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
13 71 (0.96%) Financial Institution
13 71 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
14 68 (0.92%) Telecoms
15 67 (0.91%) Law
16 64 (0.87%) Investment Banking
17 62 (0.84%) Front Office
18 42 (0.57%) Military
19 41 (0.56%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,250 (16.97%) Architect
2 955 (12.97%) Developer
3 868 (11.79%) Senior
4 669 (9.08%) Azure Engineer
5 599 (8.13%) Data Engineer
6 556 (7.55%) Lead
7 466 (6.33%) Analyst
8 408 (5.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 319 (4.33%) Solutions Architect
10 302 (4.10%) Consultant
11 236 (3.20%) Cloud Engineer
12 224 (3.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 205 (2.78%) Azure Architect
14 191 (2.59%) Security Engineer
15 173 (2.35%) Platform Engineer
16 172 (2.34%) Data Architect
17 170 (2.31%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 163 (2.21%) Technical Architect
19 155 (2.10%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 151 (2.05%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 576 (7.82%) .NET
2 492 (6.68%) REST
3 325 (4.41%) React
4 284 (3.86%) Kafka
5 267 (3.63%) PySpark
6 232 (3.15%) Node.js
7 230 (3.12%) RESTful
8 214 (2.91%) Spring
9 208 (2.82%) OAuth
10 183 (2.48%) AngularJS
11 176 (2.39%) Spring Boot
12 173 (2.35%) LDAP
13 150 (2.04%) JSON
14 144 (1.96%) HTML
15 137 (1.86%) Middleware
16 132 (1.79%) OpenID
17 129 (1.75%) SAML
18 128 (1.74%) SOAP
19 120 (1.63%) CSS
20 109 (1.48%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 714 (9.69%) Cloud Native
2 286 (3.88%) Onboarding
3 273 (3.71%) Product Ownership
4 203 (2.76%) Data Centre
5 195 (2.65%) Hybrid Cloud
6 182 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
7 165 (2.24%) Distributed Systems
8 162 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
9 158 (2.15%) Security Posture
10 156 (2.12%) Public Cloud
11 135 (1.83%) AI Agents
12 97 (1.32%) Data Structures
13 92 (1.25%) Replication
14 91 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
15 84 (1.14%) Low-Code
16 80 (1.09%) Management Information System
17 67 (0.91%) PKI
18 65 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
19 59 (0.80%) NHS
20 58 (0.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 800 (10.86%) Windows
2 379 (5.15%) Linux
3 236 (3.20%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.02%) Unix
6 73 (0.99%) VMS
7 65 (0.88%) Mac OS
8 63 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 58 (0.79%) Apple iOS
10 44 (0.60%) 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%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,756 (37.42%) DevOps
2 2,291 (31.11%) CI/CD
3 1,725 (23.42%) Agile
4 1,079 (14.65%) Problem-Solving
5 1,077 (14.62%) Analytics
6 1,047 (14.22%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,005 (13.65%) AI
8 994 (13.50%) Migration
9 827 (11.23%) Data Modelling
10 725 (9.84%) Stakeholder Management
11 711 (9.65%) Business Intelligence
12 701 (9.52%) Containerisation
13 697 (9.46%) Continuous Improvement
13 697 (9.46%) Data Pipeline
14 662 (8.99%) ETL
15 661 (8.97%) Microservices
16 603 (8.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 600 (8.15%) Roadmaps
18 584 (7.93%) Data Engineering
19 581 (7.89%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,800 (24.44%) Python
2 1,559 (21.17%) SQL
3 744 (10.10%) PowerShell
4 616 (8.36%) C#
5 615 (8.35%) Java
6 450 (6.11%) JavaScript
7 286 (3.88%) TypeScript
8 260 (3.53%) Bash
9 237 (3.22%) Bicep
10 95 (1.29%) Scala
11 88 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 84 (1.14%) Go
13 81 (1.10%) T-SQL
14 61 (0.83%) Kusto Query Language
15 58 (0.79%) PL/SQL
16 53 (0.72%) Shell Script
17 50 (0.68%) R
18 33 (0.45%) C++
19 23 (0.31%) Kotlin
20 19 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,839 (24.97%) Security Cleared
2 1,552 (21.07%) SC Cleared
3 504 (6.84%) Degree
4 388 (5.27%) Azure Certification
5 203 (2.76%) CISSP
6 191 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
7 168 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
8 164 (2.23%) Cisco Certification
9 157 (2.13%) Microsoft Certification
10 154 (2.09%) DV Cleared
11 148 (2.01%) AWS Certification
12 116 (1.58%) CISM
13 79 (1.07%) CCNP
14 70 (0.95%) PMP
15 69 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
16 68 (0.92%) PMI Certification
17 67 (0.91%) Master's Degree
18 62 (0.84%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 61 (0.83%) ISTQB
20 42 (0.57%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 514 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 394 (5.35%) QA
3 373 (5.06%) GDPR
4 293 (3.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 267 (3.63%) NIST
6 129 (1.75%) Accessibility
7 102 (1.38%) NCSC
8 83 (1.13%) 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 50 (0.68%) GRC
14 38 (0.52%) WCAG
15 36 (0.49%) HIPAA
16 22 (0.30%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 20 (0.27%) ISO 20022
17 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 19 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 898 (12.19%) Active Directory
2 813 (11.04%) Docker
3 202 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 117 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
5 116 (1.58%) Virtual Desktop
6 110 (1.49%) Hyper-V
7 60 (0.81%) vSphere
8 33 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.38%) Firmware
10 22 (0.30%) NFS
11 21 (0.29%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.16%) Postfix
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.11%) Varnish
15 7 (0.095%) BitLocker
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%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,166 (15.83%) Terraform
2 1,076 (14.61%) Kubernetes
3 374 (5.08%) Microsoft Intune
4 341 (4.63%) Ansible
5 208 (2.82%) Grafana
6 181 (2.46%) Prometheus
7 154 (2.09%) Single Sign-On
8 115 (1.56%) SCCM
9 67 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.53%) Argo
11 35 (0.48%) FortiGate
11 35 (0.48%) Istio
11 35 (0.48%) Puppet
12 30 (0.41%) Progress Chef
13 25 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
14 21 (0.29%) 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 2,358 (32.02%) Microsoft
2 734 (9.97%) Databricks
3 310 (4.21%) Google
4 304 (4.13%) ServiceNow
5 300 (4.07%) Oracle
6 285 (3.87%) VMware
7 212 (2.88%) SAP
8 192 (2.61%) Cisco
9 183 (2.48%) OpenAI
10 167 (2.27%) Splunk
11 140 (1.90%) CyberArk
12 118 (1.60%) Palo Alto
13 114 (1.55%) Salesforce
14 112 (1.52%) Foundry
15 92 (1.25%) Okta
16 79 (1.07%) Informatica
17 77 (1.05%) Citrix
18 74 (1.00%) Dynatrace
19 73 (0.99%) BeyondTrust
20 65 (0.88%) Red Hat