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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,272 4,688 5,492
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.42% 14.51% 14.42%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.13% 38.88% 42.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,803 3,187 3,859
10th Percentile £363 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £635
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £496 £500
% change year-on-year +0.91% -0.90% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 173 43 33
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.87 £18.73
25th Percentile £21.25 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.38% +14.29% -35.19%
75th Percentile £79.00 £72.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £98.88 £88.50 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.75 £34.75
% change year-on-year -41.83% +89.21% -24.75%

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 18,744 12,058 12,963
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.94% 37.32% 34.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,461 8,019 8,883
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 603 308 214
10th Percentile £15.26 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.25 £18.87 £19.69
Median hourly rate £33.99 £29.16 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.56% -2.80% -14.29%
75th Percentile £68.75 £54.06 £59.18
90th Percentile £81.25 £71.62 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £19.27 £28.00
% change year-on-year +68.66% -31.18% +3.70%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 4 September 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 +2 7,081 £525 - 5,891
London +1 3,705 £550 +0.92% 3,115
UK excluding London +2 3,547 £500 +0.91% 3,603
Work from Home 0 2,514 £525 +5.00% 2,895
North of England +10 1,032 £500 +5.26% 912
South East +2 902 £525 +5.00% 872
Midlands +4 648 £493 -4.14% 507
North West +8 527 £500 +5.26% 516
West Midlands +3 477 £488 -9.22% 306
South West +5 427 £540 +8.00% 462
Yorkshire +7 425 £500 +5.26% 280
Scotland +9 285 £500 +5.26% 335
East of England +3 179 £525 +5.00% 298
East Midlands +8 159 £500 +8.11% 200
North East +10 93 £500 - 122
Wales -2 87 £483 +7.22% 91
Northern Ireland +17 15 £650 - 160
Channel Islands 0 11 £450 -29.69% 3

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
1 453 (5.48%) SharePoint
2 261 (3.16%) Confluence
3 193 (2.33%) Microsoft Exchange
4 181 (2.19%) Apache Spark
5 161 (1.95%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.40%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 33 (0.40%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) CMS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.097%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.085%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.085%) Mendix
16 6 (0.073%) Camunda
16 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
Applications
1 124 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
3 73 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.46%) Chatbot
6 36 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.097%) Revit
10 8 (0.097%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.012%) Mingle
14 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 126 (1.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.097%) Magento
7 8 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.085%) Shopify
9 6 (0.073%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.073%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.073%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.060%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Endur
11 4 (0.048%) Maximo
11 4 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,970 (35.90%) AWS
2 1,769 (21.39%) Azure DevOps
3 1,409 (17.03%) GCP
4 1,085 (13.12%) Entra ID
5 1,058 (12.79%) Power Platform
6 856 (10.35%) Microsoft 365
7 841 (10.17%) GitHub
8 491 (5.94%) GitHub Actions
9 477 (5.77%) Azure Data Factory
10 376 (4.55%) Serverless
11 359 (4.34%) SaaS
12 317 (3.83%) Azure Monitor
13 312 (3.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 287 (3.47%) Azure AKS
14 287 (3.47%) Power Automate
15 280 (3.38%) Dynamics 365
16 279 (3.37%) Snowflake
17 274 (3.31%) PowerApps
18 229 (2.77%) Azure AI
19 222 (2.68%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 529 (6.40%) Firewall
2 413 (4.99%) DNS
3 308 (3.72%) Network Security
3 308 (3.72%) VPN
4 224 (2.71%) DHCP
5 190 (2.30%) WAN
6 166 (2.01%) TCP/IP
7 114 (1.38%) LAN
8 109 (1.32%) BGP
9 100 (1.21%) SD-WAN
10 91 (1.10%) VLAN
11 87 (1.05%) OSPF
12 83 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
13 74 (0.89%) SSL
14 61 (0.74%) SAN
15 58 (0.70%) Wireless
16 47 (0.57%) HTTP
16 47 (0.57%) IPsec
17 46 (0.56%) VXLAN
18 39 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 716 (8.66%) Power BI
2 469 (5.67%) SQL Server
3 412 (4.98%) Data Warehouse
4 382 (4.62%) Data Lake
5 289 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
6 246 (2.97%) Metadata
7 221 (2.67%) NoSQL
8 210 (2.54%) Azure SQL Database
9 143 (1.73%) Relational Database
10 137 (1.66%) Delta Lake
11 105 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 103 (1.25%) MongoDB
13 100 (1.21%) Big Data
14 88 (1.06%) MySQL
15 71 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.79%) Tableau
17 64 (0.77%) Redis
18 61 (0.74%) Snowflake Schema
19 60 (0.73%) BigQuery
20 56 (0.68%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 695 (8.40%) Git
2 611 (7.39%) JIRA
3 466 (5.63%) Jenkins
4 362 (4.38%) GitLab
5 132 (1.60%) Selenium
6 77 (0.93%) Postman
7 62 (0.75%) JUnit
8 61 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 59 (0.71%) JMeter
10 56 (0.68%) SonarQube
11 54 (0.65%) Maven
12 50 (0.60%) Cucumber
13 46 (0.56%) Claude Code
13 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.54%) Gradle
14 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
15 39 (0.47%) WebDriver
16 36 (0.44%) MLflow
17 32 (0.39%) LoadRunner
18 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,257 (27.28%) Social Skills
2 1,549 (18.73%) Finance
3 956 (11.56%) Public Sector
4 815 (9.85%) Analytical Skills
5 448 (5.42%) Banking
6 228 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 216 (2.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 203 (2.45%) Retail
9 180 (2.18%) Legal
10 106 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
11 100 (1.21%) Manufacturing
12 94 (1.14%) Telecoms
13 83 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 81 (0.98%) Marketing
15 78 (0.94%) Aerospace
16 77 (0.93%) Investment Banking
17 75 (0.91%) Law
18 73 (0.88%) Military
19 61 (0.74%) Financial Institution
20 58 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,546 (18.69%) Architect
2 1,047 (12.66%) Senior
3 985 (11.91%) Developer
4 727 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 683 (8.26%) Lead
6 607 (7.34%) Data Engineer
7 490 (5.92%) Analyst
8 461 (5.57%) Solutions Architect
9 456 (5.51%) DevOps Engineer
10 360 (4.35%) Cloud Engineer
11 314 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 312 (3.77%) Consultant
13 271 (3.28%) Data Architect
14 242 (2.93%) Platform Engineer
15 225 (2.72%) Azure Architect
16 202 (2.44%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 198 (2.39%) Technical Architect
18 190 (2.30%) Security Architect
19 189 (2.28%) Project Manager
20 181 (2.19%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,387 (16.77%) Terraform
2 676 (8.17%) REST
3 625 (7.56%) .NET
4 374 (4.52%) Kafka
5 303 (3.66%) React
6 287 (3.47%) RESTful
7 279 (3.37%) PySpark
8 252 (3.05%) OAuth
9 228 (2.76%) JSON
10 201 (2.43%) Spring
11 179 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 158 (1.91%) Node.js
13 155 (1.87%) OpenID
14 152 (1.84%) SAML
15 151 (1.83%) AngularJS
16 149 (1.80%) HTML
17 147 (1.78%) OAuth2
18 138 (1.67%) Playwright
19 137 (1.66%) Middleware
20 133 (1.61%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 913 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 408 (4.93%) Onboarding
3 368 (4.45%) Product Ownership
4 286 (3.46%) Enterprise Software
5 282 (3.41%) AI Agents
6 274 (3.31%) Hybrid Cloud
7 270 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
8 249 (3.01%) Data Centre
9 233 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
10 174 (2.10%) Security Posture
11 164 (1.98%) Management Information System
12 145 (1.75%) Data Structures
13 136 (1.64%) Public Cloud
14 117 (1.41%) PKI
15 114 (1.38%) Enterprise Cloud
16 111 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
17 104 (1.26%) Replication
18 92 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
19 82 (0.99%) CMDB
20 76 (0.92%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 981 (11.86%) Windows
2 512 (6.19%) Linux
3 369 (4.46%) Windows Server
4 132 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.05%) Android
5 87 (1.05%) Unix
6 83 (1.00%) Apple iOS
6 83 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.71%) VMS
9 53 (0.64%) Ubuntu
10 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
11 19 (0.23%) CentOS
12 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
14 9 (0.11%) Debian
15 6 (0.073%) AIX
15 6 (0.073%) Data ONTAP
15 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,063 (37.03%) DevOps
2 2,621 (31.69%) CI/CD
3 2,078 (25.12%) Agile
4 1,389 (16.79%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,378 (16.66%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,363 (16.48%) AI
7 1,224 (14.80%) Migration
8 1,146 (13.85%) Analytics
9 1,116 (13.49%) Problem-Solving
10 941 (11.38%) Continuous Improvement
11 925 (11.18%) Data Modelling
12 813 (9.83%) Roadmaps
13 802 (9.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 773 (9.34%) Business Intelligence
15 771 (9.32%) Data Pipeline
16 770 (9.31%) Containerisation
17 726 (8.78%) Microservices
18 724 (8.75%) Technical Leadership
19 704 (8.51%) Test Automation
20 666 (8.05%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,900 (22.97%) Python
2 1,618 (19.56%) SQL
3 867 (10.48%) PowerShell
4 682 (8.24%) Java
5 595 (7.19%) C#
6 484 (5.85%) JavaScript
7 403 (4.87%) Bash
8 353 (4.27%) Bicep
9 287 (3.47%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.10%) T-SQL
12 67 (0.81%) Go
13 66 (0.80%) Scala
14 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
15 53 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.50%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.50%) R
17 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 32 (0.39%) Groovy
19 26 (0.31%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,151 (26.00%) Security Cleared
2 1,735 (20.97%) SC Cleared
3 562 (6.79%) Degree
4 460 (5.56%) Azure Certification
5 292 (3.53%) DV Cleared
6 271 (3.28%) CISSP
7 260 (3.14%) BPSS Clearance
8 244 (2.95%) Microsoft Certification
9 205 (2.48%) Cisco Certification
10 201 (2.43%) AWS Certification
11 183 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 139 (1.68%) CISM
13 94 (1.14%) CCNP
14 88 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 88 (1.06%) PMI Certification
15 84 (1.02%) PMP
16 69 (0.83%) ISTQB
17 62 (0.75%) Master's Degree
18 59 (0.71%) CCSP
19 47 (0.57%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 611 (7.39%) Data Quality
2 452 (5.46%) QA
3 318 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 314 (3.80%) NIST
5 309 (3.74%) GDPR
6 198 (2.39%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.45%) NCSC
8 109 (1.32%) SLA
9 82 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
10 80 (0.97%) WCAG
11 78 (0.94%) GRC
12 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 58 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 57 (0.69%) PMO
15 45 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
18 22 (0.27%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,011 (12.22%) Active Directory
2 914 (11.05%) Docker
3 250 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.83%) Virtual Desktop
5 140 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
6 135 (1.63%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.80%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.33%) Firmware
11 17 (0.21%) IAG
11 17 (0.21%) NFS
12 13 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Ceph
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.085%) Squid
18 6 (0.073%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,280 (15.47%) Kubernetes
2 448 (5.42%) Ansible
3 434 (5.25%) Microsoft Intune
4 262 (3.17%) Grafana
5 208 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 150 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
7 125 (1.51%) SCCM
8 62 (0.75%) Progress Chef
9 60 (0.73%) Argo
10 47 (0.57%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 32 (0.39%) SCOM
15 24 (0.29%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) QRadar
18 18 (0.22%) Packer
19 17 (0.21%) HAProxy
20 16 (0.19%) CASB
Vendors
1 2,902 (35.08%) Microsoft
2 847 (10.24%) Databricks
3 412 (4.98%) ServiceNow
4 362 (4.38%) Google
4 362 (4.38%) VMware
5 332 (4.01%) Oracle
6 246 (2.97%) Cisco
7 223 (2.70%) SAP
8 214 (2.59%) Splunk
9 200 (2.42%) OpenAI
10 177 (2.14%) Salesforce
11 154 (1.86%) Palo Alto
12 153 (1.85%) CyberArk
13 134 (1.62%) Foundry
14 115 (1.39%) Dynatrace
15 96 (1.16%) Informatica
16 89 (1.08%) Zscaler
17 84 (1.02%) Okta
18 80 (0.97%) Fortinet
19 74 (0.89%) IBM