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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,310 4,758 5,566
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.49% 14.53% 14.42%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.32% 39.00% 42.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,819 3,238 3,907
10th Percentile £365 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £635
90th Percentile £715 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 46 37
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.31 £18.36
25th Percentile £21.27 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.29% +10.71% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.94 £72.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £98.31 £91.88 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -41.15% +85.71% -24.21%

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 18,749 12,200 13,110
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.94% 37.26% 33.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,413 8,127 9,000
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £417
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 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 608 313 224
10th Percentile £15.44 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.25 £18.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £28.75 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -14.29%
75th Percentile £68.75 £52.50 £57.63
90th Percentile £81.55 £70.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.13 £19.14 £24.18
% change year-on-year +62.66% -20.86% -10.44%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 7,124 £525 - 5,698
London +1 3,730 £550 +0.92% 2,983
UK excluding London +2 3,566 £500 - 3,543
Work from Home 0 2,520 £525 +5.00% 2,779
North of England +11 1,040 £500 +5.26% 925
South East +2 923 £525 +5.00% 876
Midlands +4 647 £493 -3.90% 482
North West +7 530 £494 +3.89% 525
West Midlands +3 476 £490 -9.01% 296
Yorkshire +6 430 £500 +5.26% 287
South West +5 421 £540 +8.00% 458
Scotland +11 288 £500 +5.26% 314
East of England +3 175 £525 +5.00% 271
East Midlands +8 159 £500 +8.11% 185
North East +4 93 £500 - 119
Wales -1 88 £483 +7.22% 94
Northern Ireland +14 13 £650 +36.84% 159
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
1 455 (5.48%) SharePoint
2 268 (3.23%) Confluence
3 192 (2.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.09%) Apache Spark
5 154 (1.85%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.40%) Apache
7 42 (0.51%) SAS
8 36 (0.43%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 23 (0.28%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) nginx
13 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
14 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.096%) Mendix
14 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.084%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
Applications
1 125 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.47%) Chatbot
5 38 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.096%) 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%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 132 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
7 8 (0.096%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.072%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Endur
11 4 (0.048%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,981 (35.87%) AWS
2 1,780 (21.42%) Azure DevOps
3 1,400 (16.85%) GCP
4 1,085 (13.06%) Entra ID
5 1,062 (12.78%) Power Platform
6 861 (10.36%) Microsoft 365
7 839 (10.10%) GitHub
8 493 (5.93%) GitHub Actions
9 467 (5.62%) Azure Data Factory
10 376 (4.52%) Serverless
11 357 (4.30%) SaaS
12 317 (3.81%) Azure Monitor
13 307 (3.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 294 (3.54%) Power Automate
15 290 (3.49%) Azure AKS
15 290 (3.49%) Dynamics 365
16 279 (3.36%) PowerApps
17 266 (3.20%) Snowflake
18 234 (2.82%) Azure AI
19 223 (2.68%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 536 (6.45%) Firewall
2 419 (5.04%) DNS
3 319 (3.84%) VPN
4 308 (3.71%) Network Security
5 224 (2.70%) DHCP
6 196 (2.36%) WAN
7 170 (2.05%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.42%) LAN
9 112 (1.35%) BGP
10 103 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.13%) VLAN
12 90 (1.08%) OSPF
13 85 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.89%) SSL
15 62 (0.75%) SAN
16 56 (0.67%) Wireless
17 49 (0.59%) HTTP
18 47 (0.57%) IPsec
19 45 (0.54%) VXLAN
20 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 718 (8.64%) Power BI
2 465 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 403 (4.85%) Data Warehouse
4 369 (4.44%) Data Lake
5 286 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 243 (2.92%) Metadata
7 219 (2.64%) NoSQL
8 210 (2.53%) Azure SQL Database
9 142 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 135 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 108 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 100 (1.20%) MongoDB
13 96 (1.16%) Big Data
14 87 (1.05%) MySQL
15 67 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
16 66 (0.79%) Redis
16 66 (0.79%) Tableau
17 62 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
18 57 (0.69%) Oracle Database
18 57 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 687 (8.27%) Git
2 613 (7.38%) JIRA
3 467 (5.62%) Jenkins
4 359 (4.32%) GitLab
5 136 (1.64%) Selenium
6 78 (0.94%) Postman
7 64 (0.77%) Cypress.io
8 60 (0.72%) JUnit
9 59 (0.71%) JMeter
10 53 (0.64%) Maven
10 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 50 (0.60%) Cucumber
12 47 (0.57%) Visual Studio
13 46 (0.55%) Claude Code
14 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
15 44 (0.53%) Gradle
16 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 35 (0.42%) MLflow
18 32 (0.39%) LoadRunner
19 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,255 (27.14%) Social Skills
2 1,553 (18.69%) Finance
3 975 (11.73%) Public Sector
4 821 (9.88%) Analytical Skills
5 446 (5.37%) Banking
6 232 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 211 (2.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 196 (2.36%) Retail
9 180 (2.17%) Legal
10 103 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
11 102 (1.23%) Manufacturing
12 96 (1.16%) Telecoms
13 83 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 77 (0.93%) Aerospace
14 77 (0.93%) Investment Banking
15 76 (0.91%) Marketing
16 74 (0.89%) Law
17 72 (0.87%) Military
18 65 (0.78%) Financial Institution
19 57 (0.69%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,545 (18.59%) Architect
2 1,041 (12.53%) Senior
3 993 (11.95%) Developer
4 733 (8.82%) Azure Engineer
5 678 (8.16%) Lead
6 593 (7.14%) Data Engineer
7 492 (5.92%) Analyst
8 460 (5.54%) DevOps Engineer
9 450 (5.42%) Solutions Architect
10 360 (4.33%) Cloud Engineer
11 317 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 314 (3.78%) Consultant
13 274 (3.30%) Data Architect
14 243 (2.92%) Platform Engineer
15 228 (2.74%) Azure Architect
16 202 (2.43%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 200 (2.41%) Technical Architect
18 187 (2.25%) Security Architect
19 185 (2.23%) Project Manager
20 180 (2.17%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,393 (16.76%) Terraform
2 671 (8.07%) REST
3 630 (7.58%) .NET
4 369 (4.44%) Kafka
5 304 (3.66%) React
6 291 (3.50%) RESTful
7 274 (3.30%) PySpark
8 249 (3.00%) OAuth
9 229 (2.76%) JSON
10 205 (2.47%) Spring
11 179 (2.15%) Spring Boot
12 163 (1.96%) Node.js
13 154 (1.85%) AngularJS
14 151 (1.82%) HTML
15 150 (1.81%) SAML
16 148 (1.78%) OpenID
17 144 (1.73%) OAuth2
18 142 (1.71%) Playwright
19 140 (1.68%) Middleware
20 133 (1.60%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 911 (10.96%) Cloud Native
2 412 (4.96%) Onboarding
3 364 (4.38%) Product Ownership
4 286 (3.44%) AI Agents
5 282 (3.39%) Enterprise Software
6 273 (3.29%) Hybrid Cloud
7 270 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
8 250 (3.01%) Data Centre
9 231 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
10 175 (2.11%) Security Posture
11 156 (1.88%) Management Information System
12 140 (1.68%) Public Cloud
13 139 (1.67%) Data Structures
14 116 (1.40%) PKI
15 115 (1.38%) Enterprise Cloud
16 114 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
17 102 (1.23%) Replication
18 93 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
19 82 (0.99%) CMDB
20 79 (0.95%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 991 (11.93%) Windows
2 513 (6.17%) Linux
3 369 (4.44%) Windows Server
4 133 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.05%) Unix
6 86 (1.03%) Android
7 83 (1.00%) Apple iOS
8 82 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 61 (0.73%) VMS
11 53 (0.64%) Ubuntu
12 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.22%) CentOS
14 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,085 (37.12%) DevOps
2 2,619 (31.52%) CI/CD
3 2,082 (25.05%) Agile
4 1,373 (16.52%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,370 (16.49%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,354 (16.29%) AI
7 1,232 (14.83%) Migration
8 1,142 (13.74%) Analytics
9 1,119 (13.47%) Problem-Solving
10 945 (11.37%) Continuous Improvement
11 908 (10.93%) Data Modelling
12 817 (9.83%) Roadmaps
13 811 (9.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 776 (9.34%) Containerisation
15 774 (9.31%) Business Intelligence
16 759 (9.13%) Data Pipeline
17 736 (8.86%) Microservices
18 710 (8.54%) Technical Leadership
19 700 (8.42%) Test Automation
20 663 (7.98%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,907 (22.95%) Python
2 1,622 (19.52%) SQL
3 861 (10.36%) PowerShell
4 686 (8.26%) Java
5 596 (7.17%) C#
6 485 (5.84%) JavaScript
7 405 (4.87%) Bash
8 351 (4.22%) Bicep
9 286 (3.44%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 92 (1.11%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.83%) Go
13 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
14 61 (0.73%) Scala
15 52 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.51%) PL/SQL
17 41 (0.49%) R
18 36 (0.43%) Kotlin
19 34 (0.41%) Groovy
20 25 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,161 (26.00%) Security Cleared
2 1,750 (21.06%) SC Cleared
3 556 (6.69%) Degree
4 459 (5.52%) Azure Certification
5 288 (3.47%) DV Cleared
6 268 (3.23%) CISSP
7 262 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
8 240 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
9 208 (2.50%) AWS Certification
10 205 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
11 182 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
12 138 (1.66%) CISM
13 94 (1.13%) CCNP
14 88 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 87 (1.05%) PMI Certification
16 84 (1.01%) PMP
17 70 (0.84%) ISTQB
18 63 (0.76%) Master's Degree
19 58 (0.70%) CCSP
20 46 (0.55%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 602 (7.24%) Data Quality
2 452 (5.44%) QA
3 318 (3.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 316 (3.80%) NIST
5 308 (3.71%) GDPR
6 200 (2.41%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.43%) NCSC
8 106 (1.28%) SLA
9 80 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
10 79 (0.95%) WCAG
11 75 (0.90%) GRC
12 74 (0.89%) PCI DSS
13 58 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 54 (0.65%) PMO
15 43 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.31%) SOC 2
17 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
18 21 (0.25%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
20 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,016 (12.23%) Active Directory
2 915 (11.01%) Docker
3 249 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
5 143 (1.72%) Virtual Machines
6 136 (1.64%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.79%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.32%) Firmware
11 19 (0.23%) NFS
12 17 (0.20%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 12 (0.14%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Squid
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 6 (0.072%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,286 (15.48%) Kubernetes
2 452 (5.44%) Ansible
3 435 (5.23%) Microsoft Intune
4 262 (3.15%) Grafana
5 208 (2.50%) Prometheus
6 147 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
7 127 (1.53%) SCCM
8 62 (0.75%) Progress Chef
9 60 (0.72%) Argo
10 48 (0.58%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 30 (0.36%) SCOM
15 26 (0.31%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) Packer
17 19 (0.23%) QRadar
18 18 (0.22%) HAProxy
19 15 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,902 (34.92%) Microsoft
2 830 (9.99%) Databricks
3 413 (4.97%) ServiceNow
4 360 (4.33%) VMware
5 354 (4.26%) Google
6 328 (3.95%) Oracle
7 244 (2.94%) Cisco
8 222 (2.67%) SAP
9 214 (2.58%) Splunk
10 209 (2.52%) OpenAI
11 171 (2.06%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.84%) CyberArk
13 152 (1.83%) Palo Alto
14 138 (1.66%) Foundry
15 118 (1.42%) Dynatrace
16 97 (1.17%) Zscaler
17 96 (1.16%) Informatica
18 83 (1.00%) Okta
19 80 (0.96%) Fortinet
20 75 (0.90%) IBM