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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,585 4,433 5,876
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.53% 15.41% 13.64%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.62% 40.76% 42.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,343 3,122 4,258
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -2.70% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 33 50
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.25 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £27.40 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £77.19 £61.19
90th Percentile £90.00 £97.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £51.25
% change year-on-year +53.33% -26.83% -15.46%

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 17,388 10,875 13,987
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.60% 37.80% 32.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,663 7,407 9,934
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £619 £634
90th Percentile £706 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.16% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 557 260 348
10th Percentile £15.40 £15.15 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.31 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £35.91 £27.88 £21.46
Median % change year-on-year +28.80% +29.92% -42.77%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.22 £41.19
90th Percentile £81.65 £71.38 £69.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £19.97 £17.80
% change year-on-year +85.28% +12.19% -35.27%

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 3 June 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 3 June 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 3 June 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 6,421 £525 - 3,408
London +1 3,421 £540 -1.82% 1,294
UK excluding London +2 3,201 £500 - 2,567
Work from Home 0 2,341 £525 +2.44% 1,931
North of England +5 926 £500 +5.26% 660
South East +3 820 £502 +0.30% 711
Midlands 0 519 £499 +1.37% 375
North West +3 469 £500 +5.26% 369
South West +6 391 £525 +0.48% 336
Yorkshire +7 382 £500 +11.11% 179
West Midlands +1 380 £500 -4.76% 240
Scotland +12 312 £525 +8.47% 159
East of England +6 153 £550 -5.17% 208
East Midlands +4 129 £463 - 135
Wales 0 106 £424 +5.88% 84
North East +2 87 £525 +2.44% 112
Northern Ireland +15 18 £531 +11.84% 74
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
1 364 (4.80%) SharePoint
2 215 (2.83%) Confluence
3 197 (2.60%) Apache Spark
4 190 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
5 112 (1.48%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.41%) Apache
7 34 (0.45%) SAS
8 27 (0.36%) IIS
9 19 (0.25%) CMS
10 16 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 15 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.17%) Mendix
13 12 (0.16%) Appian
14 11 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 11 (0.15%) Camunda
15 10 (0.13%) HCL Notes
15 10 (0.13%) nginx
16 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
17 8 (0.11%) Umbraco
Applications
1 104 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.26%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.092%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.066%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.066%) CPLEX
9 5 (0.066%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.066%) Revit
10 4 (0.053%) Acrobat
10 4 (0.053%) Notion
10 4 (0.053%) Trello
11 2 (0.026%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.013%) InDesign
12 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.013%) Sketch
12 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 101 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 84 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 17 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.13%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.12%) Maximo
5 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.079%) NEC Housing
7 6 (0.079%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.079%) Shopify
7 6 (0.079%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.066%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.066%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.053%) Dynamics GP
9 4 (0.053%) Dynamics NAV
9 4 (0.053%) Endur
9 4 (0.053%) Magento
9 4 (0.053%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 2,596 (34.23%) AWS
2 1,541 (20.32%) Azure DevOps
3 1,302 (17.17%) GCP
4 972 (12.81%) Power Platform
5 921 (12.14%) Entra ID
6 785 (10.35%) Microsoft 365
7 705 (9.29%) GitHub
8 496 (6.54%) Azure Data Factory
9 424 (5.59%) GitHub Actions
10 380 (5.01%) Serverless
11 323 (4.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 298 (3.93%) SaaS
13 279 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 256 (3.38%) Power Automate
15 250 (3.30%) Dynamics 365
16 241 (3.18%) PaaS
17 237 (3.12%) Azure Monitor
18 220 (2.90%) PowerApps
19 199 (2.62%) Azure Functions
20 196 (2.58%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 452 (5.96%) Firewall
2 333 (4.39%) DNS
3 261 (3.44%) Network Security
4 260 (3.43%) VPN
5 215 (2.83%) WAN
6 175 (2.31%) DHCP
7 136 (1.79%) LAN
8 120 (1.58%) SD-WAN
9 96 (1.27%) TCP/IP
10 88 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
11 81 (1.07%) BGP
12 72 (0.95%) VLAN
13 69 (0.91%) OSPF
14 67 (0.88%) Kerberos
15 52 (0.69%) SSL
16 51 (0.67%) SAN
17 50 (0.66%) VXLAN
18 45 (0.59%) Wireless
19 43 (0.57%) IPsec
20 37 (0.49%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 642 (8.46%) Power BI
2 443 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 374 (4.93%) Data Lake
4 371 (4.89%) Data Warehouse
5 253 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
6 238 (3.14%) Azure SQL Database
7 200 (2.64%) NoSQL
8 174 (2.29%) Metadata
9 150 (1.98%) Delta Lake
10 121 (1.60%) Big Data
11 113 (1.49%) Relational Database
12 97 (1.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 94 (1.24%) MongoDB
14 76 (1.00%) Tableau
15 72 (0.95%) Snowflake Schema
16 67 (0.88%) MySQL
17 66 (0.87%) Oracle Database
18 64 (0.84%) BigQuery
19 52 (0.69%) Star Schema
20 49 (0.65%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 537 (7.08%) Git
2 533 (7.03%) JIRA
3 383 (5.05%) Jenkins
4 321 (4.23%) GitLab
5 124 (1.63%) Selenium
6 81 (1.07%) Postman
7 74 (0.98%) JMeter
8 65 (0.86%) Cucumber
9 60 (0.79%) JUnit
10 54 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.63%) SonarQube
12 47 (0.62%) MLflow
13 39 (0.51%) Cypress.io
13 39 (0.51%) Visual Studio
13 39 (0.51%) WebDriver
14 33 (0.44%) Artifactory
15 32 (0.42%) Gatling
16 30 (0.40%) Maven
17 25 (0.33%) NUnit
17 25 (0.33%) TestRail
General
1 1,923 (25.35%) Social Skills
2 1,379 (18.18%) Finance
3 836 (11.02%) Public Sector
4 673 (8.87%) Analytical Skills
5 387 (5.10%) Banking
6 222 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
7 195 (2.57%) Legal
8 128 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 119 (1.57%) Retail
10 91 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
11 74 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
12 69 (0.91%) Financial Institution
12 69 (0.91%) Investment Banking
13 66 (0.87%) Marketing
14 65 (0.86%) Front Office
15 64 (0.84%) Law
16 60 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
17 55 (0.73%) Telecoms
18 45 (0.59%) Manufacturing
19 42 (0.55%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,332 (17.56%) Architect
2 944 (12.45%) Developer
3 903 (11.91%) Senior
4 670 (8.83%) Azure Engineer
5 599 (7.90%) Data Engineer
6 581 (7.66%) Lead
7 466 (6.14%) Analyst
8 409 (5.39%) DevOps Engineer
9 356 (4.69%) Solutions Architect
10 313 (4.13%) Consultant
11 258 (3.40%) Cloud Engineer
12 254 (3.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 213 (2.81%) Azure Architect
14 206 (2.72%) Data Architect
15 205 (2.70%) Security Engineer
16 176 (2.32%) Platform Engineer
17 175 (2.31%) Technical Architect
18 174 (2.29%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 162 (2.14%) Project Manager
20 159 (2.10%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 614 (8.09%) .NET
2 521 (6.87%) REST
3 336 (4.43%) React
4 266 (3.51%) PySpark
5 262 (3.45%) Kafka
6 243 (3.20%) RESTful
7 216 (2.85%) OAuth
8 211 (2.78%) Node.js
9 197 (2.60%) Spring
10 181 (2.39%) AngularJS
11 177 (2.33%) LDAP
12 165 (2.18%) Spring Boot
13 159 (2.10%) JSON
14 141 (1.86%) HTML
15 139 (1.83%) OpenID
16 137 (1.81%) SAML
17 134 (1.77%) SOAP
18 132 (1.74%) Middleware
19 118 (1.56%) CSS
20 112 (1.48%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 756 (9.97%) Cloud Native
2 312 (4.11%) Onboarding
3 284 (3.74%) Product Ownership
4 245 (3.23%) Data Centre
5 217 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
6 192 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
7 178 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
8 172 (2.27%) Security Posture
9 169 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
10 158 (2.08%) Public Cloud
11 146 (1.92%) AI Agents
12 101 (1.33%) Data Structures
13 99 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
14 92 (1.21%) Replication
15 86 (1.13%) Management Information System
16 80 (1.05%) PKI
17 78 (1.03%) Low-Code
18 68 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
19 67 (0.88%) Enterprise Cloud
20 66 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 856 (11.29%) Windows
2 387 (5.10%) Linux
3 262 (3.45%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 75 (0.99%) Apple iOS
5 75 (0.99%) Mac OS
6 72 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 70 (0.92%) Unix
8 67 (0.88%) VMS
9 61 (0.80%) Android
10 33 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
11 28 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
13 15 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 13 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.15%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
17 9 (0.12%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.092%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,828 (37.28%) DevOps
2 2,364 (31.17%) CI/CD
3 1,768 (23.31%) Agile
4 1,106 (14.58%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,073 (14.15%) Migration
6 1,062 (14.00%) Analytics
7 1,053 (13.88%) AI
8 1,052 (13.87%) Problem-Solving
9 854 (11.26%) Data Modelling
10 792 (10.44%) Stakeholder Management
11 733 (9.66%) Continuous Improvement
12 725 (9.56%) Data Pipeline
13 696 (9.18%) Business Intelligence
14 680 (8.97%) ETL
15 677 (8.93%) Roadmaps
16 672 (8.86%) Containerisation
17 658 (8.68%) Microservices
18 647 (8.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 597 (7.87%) Test Automation
20 596 (7.86%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,768 (23.31%) Python
2 1,571 (20.71%) SQL
3 762 (10.05%) PowerShell
4 620 (8.17%) Java
5 617 (8.13%) C#
6 447 (5.89%) JavaScript
7 290 (3.82%) TypeScript
8 257 (3.39%) Bash
9 255 (3.36%) Bicep
10 89 (1.17%) T-SQL
11 87 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 87 (1.15%) Scala
12 77 (1.02%) Go
13 53 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
14 51 (0.67%) Shell Script
15 42 (0.55%) PL/SQL
16 38 (0.50%) R
17 32 (0.42%) C++
18 27 (0.36%) Kotlin
19 16 (0.21%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,865 (24.59%) Security Cleared
2 1,578 (20.80%) SC Cleared
3 530 (6.99%) Degree
4 391 (5.15%) Azure Certification
5 231 (3.05%) CISSP
6 193 (2.54%) Computer Science Degree
7 187 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
8 184 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
9 169 (2.23%) DV Cleared
10 154 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
11 152 (2.00%) AWS Certification
12 128 (1.69%) CISM
13 88 (1.16%) CCNP
14 77 (1.02%) PMP
15 73 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 72 (0.95%) PMI Certification
17 61 (0.80%) Master's Degree
18 58 (0.76%) ISTQB
19 57 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
20 47 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 527 (6.95%) Data Quality
2 402 (5.30%) QA
3 344 (4.54%) GDPR
4 283 (3.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 264 (3.48%) NIST
6 147 (1.94%) Accessibility
7 106 (1.40%) NCSC
8 92 (1.21%) SLA
9 78 (1.03%) PCI DSS
10 71 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 53 (0.70%) WCAG
13 51 (0.67%) GRC
14 49 (0.65%) PMO
15 37 (0.49%) HIPAA
16 26 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.34%) NIST 800
17 25 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 17 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 16 (0.21%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 917 (12.09%) Active Directory
2 784 (10.34%) Docker
3 218 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 121 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
5 119 (1.57%) Hyper-V
6 110 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
7 68 (0.90%) vSphere
8 47 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.40%) Firmware
10 29 (0.38%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.28%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.11%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.079%) Ceph
15 6 (0.079%) HDFS
15 6 (0.079%) KVM
15 6 (0.079%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,183 (15.60%) Terraform
2 1,066 (14.05%) Kubernetes
3 391 (5.15%) Microsoft Intune
4 357 (4.71%) Ansible
5 215 (2.83%) Grafana
6 188 (2.48%) Prometheus
7 169 (2.23%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.38%) SCCM
9 73 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 41 (0.54%) Argo
11 38 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
11 38 (0.50%) Progress Chef
12 37 (0.49%) Puppet
13 36 (0.47%) FortiGate
14 33 (0.44%) Istio
15 22 (0.29%) HP ALM
16 21 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.21%) linkerd
19 15 (0.20%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,405 (31.71%) Microsoft
2 757 (9.98%) Databricks
3 314 (4.14%) ServiceNow
4 300 (3.96%) VMware
5 294 (3.88%) Google
6 280 (3.69%) Oracle
7 216 (2.85%) SAP
8 210 (2.77%) Cisco
9 183 (2.41%) OpenAI
10 165 (2.18%) Splunk
11 142 (1.87%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.85%) CyberArk
13 120 (1.58%) Salesforce
14 107 (1.41%) Foundry
15 105 (1.38%) Okta
16 77 (1.02%) Citrix
16 77 (1.02%) Dynatrace
17 73 (0.96%) Informatica
18 69 (0.91%) Red Hat
19 68 (0.90%) Zscaler