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

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,559 4,471 5,874
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.50% 15.45% 13.64%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.54% 40.82% 42.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,329 3,146 4,256
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £714 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 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% -15.36%

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 17,360 10,953 13,980
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.59% 37.85% 32.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,646 7,460 9,928
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.69% -3.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £609 £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 553 260 348
10th Percentile £15.30 £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% -43.53%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.22 £41.19
90th Percentile £81.20 £71.38 £69.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £19.97 £17.80
% change year-on-year +85.28% +12.19% -36.04%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 6,400 £525 - 3,302
London +1 3,408 £540 -1.82% 1,260
UK excluding London +2 3,190 £500 - 2,495
Work from Home 0 2,330 £525 +2.44% 1,898
North of England +5 934 £500 +5.26% 637
South East +3 813 £502 +0.30% 688
Midlands -1 509 £493 +0.10% 354
North West +3 471 £500 +5.26% 361
South West +6 393 £525 +0.48% 345
Yorkshire +7 387 £500 +11.11% 166
West Midlands +1 370 £500 -4.76% 230
Scotland +12 309 £525 +8.47% 154
East of England +4 153 £550 -5.17% 198
East Midlands +5 129 £463 - 124
Wales 0 104 £411 +2.75% 82
North East 0 86 £525 +2.44% 110
Northern Ireland +15 18 £531 +11.84% 73
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
1 357 (4.72%) SharePoint
2 217 (2.87%) Confluence
3 198 (2.62%) Apache Spark
4 188 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
5 108 (1.43%) Apache
6 107 (1.42%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.36%) IIS
7 27 (0.36%) SAS
8 19 (0.25%) CMS
9 16 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
10 15 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 15 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.17%) Mendix
12 12 (0.16%) Appian
13 11 (0.15%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.15%) Camunda
14 10 (0.13%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
Applications
1 104 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (1.05%) 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 7 (0.093%) AutoCAD
7 7 (0.093%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.066%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.066%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.066%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.053%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.053%) Notion
9 4 (0.053%) Revit
9 4 (0.053%) Trello
10 2 (0.026%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.013%) InDesign
11 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.013%) Sketch
11 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 102 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 84 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.21%) 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 Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,586 (34.21%) AWS
2 1,539 (20.36%) Azure DevOps
3 1,309 (17.32%) GCP
4 968 (12.81%) Power Platform
5 914 (12.09%) Entra ID
6 781 (10.33%) Microsoft 365
7 706 (9.34%) GitHub
8 497 (6.57%) Azure Data Factory
9 424 (5.61%) GitHub Actions
10 378 (5.00%) Serverless
11 324 (4.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 293 (3.88%) SaaS
13 278 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 255 (3.37%) Power Automate
15 249 (3.29%) Dynamics 365
16 236 (3.12%) Azure Monitor
17 233 (3.08%) PaaS
18 218 (2.88%) PowerApps
19 201 (2.66%) Azure Functions
20 197 (2.61%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 449 (5.94%) Firewall
2 331 (4.38%) DNS
3 260 (3.44%) Network Security
4 257 (3.40%) VPN
5 212 (2.80%) WAN
6 175 (2.32%) DHCP
7 137 (1.81%) LAN
8 119 (1.57%) SD-WAN
9 96 (1.27%) TCP/IP
10 87 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
11 80 (1.06%) BGP
12 72 (0.95%) VLAN
13 68 (0.90%) OSPF
14 67 (0.89%) Kerberos
15 52 (0.69%) SAN
15 52 (0.69%) SSL
16 49 (0.65%) VXLAN
17 43 (0.57%) IPsec
17 43 (0.57%) Wireless
18 36 (0.48%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 638 (8.44%) Power BI
2 442 (5.85%) SQL Server
3 376 (4.97%) Data Lake
4 367 (4.86%) Data Warehouse
5 252 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
6 239 (3.16%) Azure SQL Database
7 198 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 173 (2.29%) Metadata
9 150 (1.98%) Delta Lake
10 121 (1.60%) Big Data
11 115 (1.52%) Relational Database
12 97 (1.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 93 (1.23%) MongoDB
14 77 (1.02%) Tableau
15 74 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
16 69 (0.91%) MySQL
17 66 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 62 (0.82%) Oracle Database
19 53 (0.70%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 535 (7.08%) Git
2 534 (7.06%) JIRA
3 388 (5.13%) Jenkins
4 324 (4.29%) GitLab
5 123 (1.63%) Selenium
6 81 (1.07%) Postman
7 74 (0.98%) JMeter
8 66 (0.87%) Cucumber
9 60 (0.79%) JUnit
10 53 (0.70%) REST Assured
11 47 (0.62%) MLflow
11 47 (0.62%) SonarQube
12 39 (0.52%) Cypress.io
12 39 (0.52%) Visual Studio
13 38 (0.50%) WebDriver
14 33 (0.44%) Artifactory
15 32 (0.42%) Gatling
16 30 (0.40%) Maven
17 25 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
17 25 (0.33%) TestRail
General
1 1,912 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 1,369 (18.11%) Finance
3 833 (11.02%) Public Sector
4 669 (8.85%) Analytical Skills
5 384 (5.08%) Banking
6 220 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 192 (2.54%) Legal
8 127 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 119 (1.57%) Retail
10 90 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 74 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
12 69 (0.91%) Financial Institution
13 68 (0.90%) Investment Banking
14 66 (0.87%) Marketing
15 64 (0.85%) Front Office
15 64 (0.85%) Law
16 60 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
17 56 (0.74%) Telecoms
18 45 (0.60%) Manufacturing
19 42 (0.56%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,327 (17.56%) Architect
2 948 (12.54%) Developer
3 899 (11.89%) Senior
4 669 (8.85%) Azure Engineer
5 597 (7.90%) Data Engineer
6 576 (7.62%) Lead
7 464 (6.14%) Analyst
8 412 (5.45%) DevOps Engineer
9 357 (4.72%) Solutions Architect
10 312 (4.13%) Consultant
11 256 (3.39%) Cloud Engineer
12 255 (3.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 211 (2.79%) Azure Architect
14 207 (2.74%) Security Engineer
15 204 (2.70%) Data Architect
16 173 (2.29%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 173 (2.29%) Platform Engineer
17 171 (2.26%) Technical Architect
18 162 (2.14%) Project Manager
19 157 (2.08%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 610 (8.07%) .NET
2 520 (6.88%) REST
3 341 (4.51%) React
4 266 (3.52%) PySpark
5 263 (3.48%) Kafka
6 245 (3.24%) RESTful
7 218 (2.88%) OAuth
8 211 (2.79%) Node.js
9 198 (2.62%) Spring
10 182 (2.41%) AngularJS
11 177 (2.34%) LDAP
12 166 (2.20%) Spring Boot
13 160 (2.12%) JSON
14 142 (1.88%) HTML
15 139 (1.84%) OpenID
16 136 (1.80%) SAML
17 135 (1.79%) SOAP
18 130 (1.72%) Middleware
19 119 (1.57%) CSS
20 112 (1.48%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 751 (9.94%) Cloud Native
2 310 (4.10%) Onboarding
3 289 (3.82%) Product Ownership
4 242 (3.20%) Data Centre
5 220 (2.91%) Hybrid Cloud
6 191 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
7 178 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
8 171 (2.26%) Security Posture
9 168 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
10 156 (2.06%) Public Cloud
11 145 (1.92%) AI Agents
12 101 (1.34%) Data Structures
13 98 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
14 95 (1.26%) Replication
15 86 (1.14%) Management Information System
16 80 (1.06%) PKI
17 79 (1.05%) Low-Code
18 67 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
19 66 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
20 64 (0.85%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 850 (11.24%) Windows
2 392 (5.19%) Linux
3 261 (3.45%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.59%) Windows 10
5 74 (0.98%) Mac OS
6 72 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 71 (0.94%) Apple iOS
7 71 (0.94%) Unix
8 69 (0.91%) VMS
9 59 (0.78%) Android
10 33 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
11 29 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 14 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 13 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.15%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
17 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.093%) CoreOS
18 7 (0.093%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,822 (37.33%) DevOps
2 2,353 (31.13%) CI/CD
3 1,766 (23.36%) Agile
4 1,097 (14.51%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,063 (14.06%) Migration
6 1,061 (14.04%) Analytics
7 1,051 (13.90%) Problem-Solving
8 1,043 (13.80%) AI
9 849 (11.23%) Data Modelling
10 784 (10.37%) Stakeholder Management
11 731 (9.67%) Continuous Improvement
12 718 (9.50%) Data Pipeline
13 693 (9.17%) Business Intelligence
14 678 (8.97%) ETL
15 677 (8.96%) Containerisation
16 674 (8.92%) Roadmaps
17 661 (8.74%) Microservices
18 639 (8.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 595 (7.87%) Test Automation
20 594 (7.86%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,763 (23.32%) Python
2 1,567 (20.73%) SQL
3 762 (10.08%) PowerShell
4 620 (8.20%) Java
5 616 (8.15%) C#
6 451 (5.97%) JavaScript
7 292 (3.86%) TypeScript
8 260 (3.44%) Bash
9 257 (3.40%) Bicep
10 89 (1.18%) T-SQL
11 88 (1.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 86 (1.14%) Scala
13 77 (1.02%) Go
14 54 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
15 50 (0.66%) Shell Script
16 41 (0.54%) PL/SQL
17 38 (0.50%) R
18 32 (0.42%) C++
19 27 (0.36%) Kotlin
20 17 (0.22%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,846 (24.42%) Security Cleared
2 1,563 (20.68%) SC Cleared
3 526 (6.96%) Degree
4 390 (5.16%) Azure Certification
5 231 (3.06%) CISSP
6 192 (2.54%) Computer Science Degree
7 186 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
8 183 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
9 167 (2.21%) DV Cleared
10 153 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
11 151 (2.00%) AWS Certification
12 128 (1.69%) CISM
13 88 (1.16%) CCNP
14 77 (1.02%) PMP
15 73 (0.97%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 72 (0.95%) PMI Certification
17 61 (0.81%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.75%) ISTQB
18 57 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
19 48 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 526 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 399 (5.28%) QA
3 345 (4.56%) GDPR
4 283 (3.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 264 (3.49%) NIST
6 150 (1.98%) Accessibility
7 106 (1.40%) NCSC
8 91 (1.20%) SLA
9 78 (1.03%) PCI DSS
10 71 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
11 64 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 53 (0.70%) GRC
12 53 (0.70%) WCAG
13 49 (0.65%) PMO
14 37 (0.49%) HIPAA
15 26 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 26 (0.34%) NIST 800
15 26 (0.34%) SOC 2
16 17 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 16 (0.21%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 914 (12.09%) Active Directory
2 787 (10.41%) Docker
3 217 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 121 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
5 120 (1.59%) Hyper-V
6 110 (1.46%) 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 22 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.11%) Varnish
15 7 (0.093%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.079%) Ceph
16 6 (0.079%) HDFS
16 6 (0.079%) KVM
16 6 (0.079%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.079%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,182 (15.64%) Terraform
2 1,074 (14.21%) Kubernetes
3 386 (5.11%) Microsoft Intune
4 357 (4.72%) Ansible
5 215 (2.84%) Grafana
6 188 (2.49%) Prometheus
7 168 (2.22%) Single Sign-On
8 107 (1.42%) SCCM
9 73 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.53%) Argo
11 38 (0.50%) Progress Chef
12 36 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 36 (0.48%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.48%) Puppet
13 32 (0.42%) Istio
14 22 (0.29%) HP ALM
15 21 (0.28%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.21%) linkerd
18 15 (0.20%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 2,401 (31.76%) Microsoft
2 755 (9.99%) Databricks
3 312 (4.13%) ServiceNow
4 299 (3.96%) VMware
5 296 (3.92%) Google
6 278 (3.68%) Oracle
7 214 (2.83%) SAP
8 209 (2.76%) Cisco
9 184 (2.43%) OpenAI
10 164 (2.17%) Splunk
11 140 (1.85%) CyberArk
11 140 (1.85%) Palo Alto
12 117 (1.55%) Salesforce
13 105 (1.39%) Foundry
13 105 (1.39%) Okta
14 77 (1.02%) Dynatrace
15 76 (1.01%) Citrix
16 73 (0.97%) Informatica
17 70 (0.93%) Red Hat
18 67 (0.89%) Zscaler