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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,351 4,855 5,593
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.31% 14.71% 14.50%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.98% 39.32% 42.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,853 3,296 3,885
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £415 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +3.03% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 173 45 33
10th Percentile £18.25 £16.91 £20.21
25th Percentile £21.33 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% +7.14% -35.19%
75th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £100.68 £88.25 £85.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £53.23 £38.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% +38.25% -16.63%

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 18,989 12,346 13,213
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.81% 37.40% 34.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,599 8,215 8,949
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
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 609 308 205
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £14.20
25th Percentile £17.97 £18.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £29.63 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.70% -1.25% -14.29%
75th Percentile £67.70 £54.06 £61.06
90th Percentile £81.25 £71.62 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £20.50 £28.50
% change year-on-year +46.34% -28.07% +5.56%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 0 7,147 £525 - 5,081
London +1 3,734 £550 +0.92% 2,509
UK excluding London +2 3,577 £510 +3.03% 3,285
Work from Home 0 2,530 £525 +5.00% 4,039
North of England +9 1,043 £500 +5.26% 806
South East 0 910 £525 +5.00% 892
Midlands +2 647 £493 -3.90% 453
North West +5 532 £500 +5.26% 403
West Midlands +2 476 £488 -9.72% 259
South West +3 433 £550 +10.00% 395
Yorkshire +7 427 £500 +5.26% 277
Scotland +4 288 £520 +7.44% 282
East of England +3 183 £525 +5.00% 291
East Midlands +6 160 £500 +11.11% 193
North East +5 97 £500 - 131
Wales +1 87 £450 - 106
Northern Ireland +15 14 £650 - 96
Channel Islands -1 11 £450 -29.69% 2

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
1 472 (5.65%) SharePoint
2 258 (3.09%) Confluence
3 201 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 179 (2.14%) Apache Spark
5 166 (1.99%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.38%) Apache
7 44 (0.53%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) IIS
9 29 (0.35%) SharePoint Server
10 24 (0.29%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) nginx
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.084%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.084%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.084%) Mendix
15 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
15 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
Applications
1 124 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 91 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
3 72 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.50%) Chatbot
5 41 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 36 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
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
13 2 (0.024%) Mingle
14 1 (0.012%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 132 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (0.85%) 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 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 8 (0.096%) Oracle EBS
9 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 7 (0.084%) Workday HCM
10 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
10 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 6 (0.072%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 5 (0.060%) NetSuite
11 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
12 4 (0.048%) Endur
12 4 (0.048%) Maximo
12 4 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,994 (35.85%) AWS
2 1,771 (21.21%) Azure DevOps
3 1,435 (17.18%) GCP
4 1,102 (13.20%) Entra ID
5 1,086 (13.00%) Power Platform
6 871 (10.43%) Microsoft 365
7 848 (10.15%) GitHub
8 496 (5.94%) GitHub Actions
9 474 (5.68%) Azure Data Factory
10 381 (4.56%) Serverless
11 359 (4.30%) SaaS
12 313 (3.75%) Azure Monitor
13 312 (3.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 303 (3.63%) Power Automate
15 291 (3.48%) Azure AKS
15 291 (3.48%) Dynamics 365
16 289 (3.46%) PowerApps
17 285 (3.41%) Snowflake
18 245 (2.93%) Azure AI
19 241 (2.89%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 527 (6.31%) Firewall
2 418 (5.01%) DNS
3 314 (3.76%) VPN
4 306 (3.66%) Network Security
5 224 (2.68%) DHCP
6 189 (2.26%) WAN
7 162 (1.94%) TCP/IP
8 110 (1.32%) LAN
9 106 (1.27%) BGP
10 102 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.13%) VLAN
12 85 (1.02%) OSPF
12 85 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
13 76 (0.91%) SSL
14 63 (0.75%) SAN
15 60 (0.72%) Wireless
16 47 (0.56%) HTTP
17 45 (0.54%) IPsec
18 44 (0.53%) VXLAN
19 39 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 720 (8.62%) Power BI
2 476 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 413 (4.95%) Data Warehouse
4 386 (4.62%) Data Lake
5 298 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
6 248 (2.97%) Metadata
7 217 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 210 (2.51%) Azure SQL Database
9 144 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 135 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 111 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 109 (1.31%) MongoDB
13 94 (1.13%) Big Data
14 91 (1.09%) MySQL
15 72 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
16 64 (0.77%) Redis
17 62 (0.74%) Tableau
18 61 (0.73%) BigQuery
19 60 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
20 57 (0.68%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 714 (8.55%) Git
2 607 (7.27%) JIRA
3 470 (5.63%) Jenkins
4 365 (4.37%) GitLab
5 128 (1.53%) Selenium
6 80 (0.96%) Postman
7 62 (0.74%) Cypress.io
8 61 (0.73%) JUnit
9 57 (0.68%) SonarQube
10 56 (0.67%) Maven
11 53 (0.63%) JMeter
12 51 (0.61%) Cucumber
13 50 (0.60%) Claude Code
14 47 (0.56%) Gradle
14 47 (0.56%) REST Assured
15 44 (0.53%) Visual Studio
16 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 37 (0.44%) MLflow
18 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
19 31 (0.37%) Gatling
General
1 2,290 (27.42%) Social Skills
2 1,578 (18.90%) Finance
3 962 (11.52%) Public Sector
4 820 (9.82%) Analytical Skills
5 470 (5.63%) Banking
6 221 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 208 (2.49%) Retail
9 179 (2.14%) Legal
10 106 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
11 102 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 88 (1.05%) Marketing
12 88 (1.05%) Telecoms
13 85 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
14 81 (0.97%) Aerospace
15 78 (0.93%) Investment Banking
16 74 (0.89%) Law
17 73 (0.87%) Military
18 59 (0.71%) Financial Institution
18 59 (0.71%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,580 (18.92%) Architect
2 1,050 (12.57%) Senior
3 999 (11.96%) Developer
4 734 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 683 (8.18%) Lead
6 600 (7.18%) Data Engineer
7 485 (5.81%) Analyst
8 475 (5.69%) Solutions Architect
9 470 (5.63%) DevOps Engineer
10 371 (4.44%) Cloud Engineer
11 322 (3.86%) Consultant
12 318 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 270 (3.23%) Data Architect
14 243 (2.91%) Platform Engineer
15 220 (2.63%) Azure Architect
16 212 (2.54%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 200 (2.39%) Technical Architect
18 194 (2.32%) Security Architect
19 192 (2.30%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 190 (2.28%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,417 (16.97%) Terraform
2 701 (8.39%) REST
3 627 (7.51%) .NET
4 380 (4.55%) Kafka
5 306 (3.66%) React
6 292 (3.50%) RESTful
7 278 (3.33%) PySpark
8 259 (3.10%) OAuth
9 233 (2.79%) JSON
10 195 (2.34%) Spring
11 181 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 158 (1.89%) OpenID
13 157 (1.88%) Node.js
14 154 (1.84%) HTML
15 152 (1.82%) OAuth2
16 151 (1.81%) AngularJS
16 151 (1.81%) SAML
17 140 (1.68%) Playwright
18 134 (1.60%) Middleware
19 132 (1.58%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 928 (11.11%) Cloud Native
2 409 (4.90%) Onboarding
3 384 (4.60%) Product Ownership
4 297 (3.56%) AI Agents
5 293 (3.51%) Enterprise Software
6 281 (3.36%) Hybrid Cloud
7 266 (3.19%) Distributed Systems
8 249 (2.98%) Data Centre
9 226 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
10 177 (2.12%) Security Posture
11 170 (2.04%) Management Information System
12 147 (1.76%) Data Structures
13 143 (1.71%) Public Cloud
14 117 (1.40%) Enterprise Cloud
15 114 (1.37%) PKI
16 113 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
17 108 (1.29%) Replication
18 96 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
19 82 (0.98%) CMDB
20 80 (0.96%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 988 (11.83%) Windows
2 523 (6.26%) Linux
3 374 (4.48%) Windows Server
4 136 (1.63%) Windows 10
5 90 (1.08%) Unix
6 88 (1.05%) Android
7 84 (1.01%) Apple iOS
8 83 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 74 (0.89%) Mac OS
10 55 (0.66%) VMS
11 54 (0.65%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.25%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.14%) 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 3,092 (37.03%) DevOps
2 2,658 (31.83%) CI/CD
3 2,099 (25.13%) Agile
4 1,438 (17.22%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,412 (16.91%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,411 (16.90%) AI
7 1,225 (14.67%) Migration
8 1,158 (13.87%) Analytics
9 1,142 (13.68%) Problem-Solving
10 961 (11.51%) Continuous Improvement
11 913 (10.93%) Data Modelling
12 841 (10.07%) Roadmaps
13 802 (9.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 785 (9.40%) Containerisation
15 776 (9.29%) Business Intelligence
16 764 (9.15%) Data Pipeline
17 742 (8.89%) Technical Leadership
18 733 (8.78%) Microservices
19 713 (8.54%) Test Automation
20 669 (8.01%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,911 (22.88%) Python
2 1,609 (19.27%) SQL
3 882 (10.56%) PowerShell
4 689 (8.25%) Java
5 598 (7.16%) C#
6 496 (5.94%) JavaScript
7 409 (4.90%) Bash
8 360 (4.31%) Bicep
9 297 (3.56%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.83%) Go
13 64 (0.77%) Scala
14 62 (0.74%) Shell Script
15 57 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.49%) PL/SQL
17 40 (0.48%) R
18 34 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 31 (0.37%) Groovy
20 26 (0.31%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 2,169 (25.97%) Security Cleared
2 1,745 (20.90%) SC Cleared
3 570 (6.83%) Degree
4 476 (5.70%) Azure Certification
5 302 (3.62%) DV Cleared
6 276 (3.30%) CISSP
7 265 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
8 254 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 207 (2.48%) Cisco Certification
10 201 (2.41%) AWS Certification
11 184 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
12 141 (1.69%) CISM
13 95 (1.14%) CCNP
14 90 (1.08%) PMI Certification
15 89 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 87 (1.04%) PMP
17 66 (0.79%) ISTQB
18 62 (0.74%) Master's Degree
19 61 (0.73%) CCSP
20 52 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 610 (7.30%) Data Quality
2 462 (5.53%) QA
3 314 (3.76%) NIST
4 309 (3.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 303 (3.63%) GDPR
6 204 (2.44%) Accessibility
7 124 (1.48%) NCSC
8 108 (1.29%) SLA
9 84 (1.01%) WCAG
10 82 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
11 78 (0.93%) GRC
12 72 (0.86%) PCI DSS
13 58 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 56 (0.67%) PMO
15 45 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 29 (0.35%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.31%) HIPAA
18 25 (0.30%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
20 19 (0.23%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,035 (12.39%) Active Directory
2 928 (11.11%) Docker
3 247 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
5 146 (1.75%) Virtual Machines
6 133 (1.59%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.81%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.29%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) IAG
11 18 (0.22%) NFS
12 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
12 11 (0.13%) Postfix
13 10 (0.12%) Ceph
14 9 (0.11%) zsh
15 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.084%) Squid
17 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,301 (15.58%) Kubernetes
2 460 (5.51%) Ansible
3 440 (5.27%) Microsoft Intune
4 260 (3.11%) Grafana
5 206 (2.47%) Prometheus
6 152 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
7 129 (1.54%) SCCM
8 63 (0.75%) Progress Chef
9 59 (0.71%) Argo
10 49 (0.59%) Puppet
11 37 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 33 (0.40%) SCOM
14 23 (0.28%) Istio
14 23 (0.28%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.24%) QRadar
16 18 (0.22%) CASB
16 18 (0.22%) Packer
17 17 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,969 (35.55%) Microsoft
2 863 (10.33%) Databricks
3 416 (4.98%) ServiceNow
4 368 (4.41%) Google
5 362 (4.33%) VMware
6 341 (4.08%) Oracle
7 250 (2.99%) Cisco
8 226 (2.71%) SAP
9 215 (2.57%) Splunk
10 210 (2.51%) OpenAI
11 182 (2.18%) Salesforce
12 154 (1.84%) CyberArk
13 153 (1.83%) Palo Alto
14 139 (1.66%) Foundry
15 122 (1.46%) Dynatrace
16 96 (1.15%) Informatica
17 89 (1.07%) Zscaler
18 81 (0.97%) Fortinet
19 80 (0.96%) MuleSoft
20 79 (0.95%) Okta