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 11 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,763 4,736 6,103
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.89% 16.07% 13.64%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.56% 42.20% 41.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,792 3,334 4,413
10th Percentile £350 £350 £340
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -0.94% -5.78%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 40 76
10th Percentile £25.13 £22.28 £17.77
25th Percentile £46.00 £23.80 £22.08
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +79.69% -30.71% -16.04%
75th Percentile £64.50 £65.00 £60.40
90th Percentile £80.00 £80.75 £71.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £31.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +82.54% -31.79% -28.95%

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 15,892 11,223 14,590
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.34% 38.07% 32.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,854 7,757 10,362
10th Percentile £313 £313 £285
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £633
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £490
% change year-on-year -4.04% +1.02% -3.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 428 188 360
10th Percentile £15.42 £15.39 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £20.28 £16.06
Median hourly rate £38.51 £26.00 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +48.10% +21.67% -14.52%
75th Percentile £61.44 £42.23 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £74.28 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.31 £24.18 £17.80
% change year-on-year +83.23% +35.84% -19.24%

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 11 March 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 11 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 11 March 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 5,701 £525 -2.10% 2,753
London +1 3,110 £540 -1.82% 831
UK excluding London 0 2,736 £500 - 2,193
Work from Home -2 2,079 £525 +0.77% 1,325
North of England +1 741 £492 +0.46% 579
South East -1 731 £500 -9.09% 689
Midlands -4 468 £500 -4.08% 309
North West 0 376 £488 -2.50% 305
West Midlands -3 357 £510 -4.67% 191
South West +5 328 £512 -2.57% 240
Yorkshire -3 319 £488 +5.41% 193
Scotland +9 291 £546 +15.00% 128
East of England 0 150 £550 -5.17% 204
East Midlands -4 108 £442 -5.90% 116
Wales -3 81 £400 -9.86% 69
North East -5 48 £525 +10.53% 90
Northern Ireland +1 12 £475 - 7

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
1 308 (4.55%) SharePoint
2 216 (3.19%) Microsoft Exchange
3 182 (2.69%) Apache Spark
3 182 (2.69%) Confluence
4 95 (1.40%) Apache
5 89 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (0.33%) OpenStack
7 21 (0.31%) SAS
8 18 (0.27%) CMS
8 18 (0.27%) IIS
9 16 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 15 (0.22%) Appian
11 14 (0.21%) Camunda
12 13 (0.19%) Mendix
13 11 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
15 9 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
17 6 (0.089%) Anypoint
17 6 (0.089%) Jupyter
Applications
1 119 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 45 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.089%) Trello
8 5 (0.074%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.074%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.074%) Weka
9 4 (0.059%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.015%) InDesign
11 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 109 (1.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.18%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.12%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.089%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.089%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.089%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.074%) NetSuite
9 5 (0.074%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.074%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.074%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.059%) Oracle General Ledger
10 4 (0.059%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.059%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,359 (34.88%) AWS
2 1,363 (20.15%) Azure DevOps
3 1,329 (19.65%) GCP
4 915 (13.53%) Power Platform
5 818 (12.10%) Entra ID
6 766 (11.33%) Microsoft 365
7 707 (10.45%) GitHub
8 486 (7.19%) Azure Data Factory
9 416 (6.15%) GitHub Actions
10 408 (6.03%) Serverless
11 318 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 294 (4.35%) Dynamics 365
13 276 (4.08%) SaaS
14 264 (3.90%) Power Automate
15 260 (3.84%) Azure AKS
16 244 (3.61%) Azure Functions
17 235 (3.47%) Azure Monitor
18 229 (3.39%) PaaS
19 224 (3.31%) Snowflake
20 210 (3.11%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 443 (6.55%) Firewall
2 280 (4.14%) DNS
3 235 (3.47%) VPN
4 204 (3.02%) Network Security
5 173 (2.56%) WAN
6 163 (2.41%) DHCP
7 117 (1.73%) LAN
8 100 (1.48%) TCP/IP
9 91 (1.35%) Wi-Fi
10 88 (1.30%) SD-WAN
11 68 (1.01%) Kerberos
12 66 (0.98%) VLAN
13 55 (0.81%) HTTP
14 44 (0.65%) BGP
15 39 (0.58%) Wireless
16 37 (0.55%) OSPF
17 35 (0.52%) Internet
17 35 (0.52%) SSL
18 33 (0.49%) MPLS
19 31 (0.46%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 619 (9.15%) Power BI
2 397 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 362 (5.35%) Data Warehouse
4 332 (4.91%) Data Lake
5 264 (3.90%) PostgreSQL
6 251 (3.71%) Azure SQL Database
7 202 (2.99%) NoSQL
8 162 (2.40%) Metadata
9 129 (1.91%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.73%) Relational Database
11 105 (1.55%) Big Data
12 100 (1.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 86 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 75 (1.11%) MySQL
15 74 (1.09%) Tableau
16 68 (1.01%) BigQuery
17 66 (0.98%) Oracle Database
18 57 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
19 50 (0.74%) Redis
20 49 (0.72%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 527 (7.79%) Git
2 468 (6.92%) JIRA
3 362 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 269 (3.98%) GitLab
5 127 (1.88%) Selenium
6 91 (1.35%) Postman
7 78 (1.15%) Cucumber
8 76 (1.12%) JMeter
9 70 (1.04%) JUnit
10 50 (0.74%) MLflow
11 48 (0.71%) Cypress.io
11 48 (0.71%) REST Assured
12 45 (0.67%) SonarQube
13 43 (0.64%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.52%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.49%) TestRail
16 31 (0.46%) Artifactory
16 31 (0.46%) SpecFlow
17 29 (0.43%) WebDriver
18 27 (0.40%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,983 (29.32%) Social Skills
2 1,211 (17.91%) Finance
3 806 (11.92%) Public Sector
4 665 (9.83%) Analytical Skills
5 371 (5.49%) Banking
6 215 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
7 153 (2.26%) Legal
8 110 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 107 (1.58%) Influencing Skills
10 89 (1.32%) Retail
11 86 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
12 81 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
13 77 (1.14%) Marketing
14 72 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 63 (0.93%) Financial Institution
16 60 (0.89%) Investment Banking
17 56 (0.83%) Law
18 53 (0.78%) Front Office
19 50 (0.74%) Manufacturing
20 39 (0.58%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,141 (16.87%) Architect
2 971 (14.36%) Developer
3 758 (11.21%) Senior
4 579 (8.56%) Azure Engineer
5 551 (8.15%) Data Engineer
6 506 (7.48%) Lead
7 431 (6.37%) Analyst
8 325 (4.81%) DevOps Engineer
9 323 (4.78%) Solutions Architect
10 303 (4.48%) Consultant
11 185 (2.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 183 (2.71%) Cloud Engineer
13 182 (2.69%) Security Engineer
14 174 (2.57%) Azure Architect
15 166 (2.45%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 157 (2.32%) Senior Developer
17 149 (2.20%) Data Architect
18 145 (2.14%) Platform Engineer
19 135 (2.00%) Tester
20 134 (1.98%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 555 (8.21%) .NET
2 484 (7.16%) REST
3 333 (4.92%) React
4 258 (3.81%) RESTful
5 257 (3.80%) PySpark
6 248 (3.67%) Kafka
7 247 (3.65%) Node.js
8 212 (3.13%) Spring
9 205 (3.03%) OAuth
10 196 (2.90%) AngularJS
11 177 (2.62%) HTML
12 175 (2.59%) Spring Boot
13 151 (2.23%) CSS
14 149 (2.20%) LDAP
15 145 (2.14%) PyTorch
16 141 (2.08%) JSON
16 141 (2.08%) SOAP
17 131 (1.94%) TensorFlow
18 128 (1.89%) Middleware
19 126 (1.86%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 601 (8.89%) Cloud Native
2 269 (3.98%) Onboarding
3 242 (3.58%) Product Ownership
4 178 (2.63%) Data Centre
4 178 (2.63%) Hybrid Cloud
5 167 (2.47%) Security Posture
6 159 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
7 156 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
8 130 (1.92%) Public Cloud
9 127 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
10 109 (1.61%) AI Agents
11 83 (1.23%) Data Structures
12 82 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
13 80 (1.18%) Algorithms
14 77 (1.14%) Replication
15 71 (1.05%) Management Information System
16 68 (1.01%) Low-Code
17 66 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
18 64 (0.95%) NHS
19 59 (0.87%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 733 (10.84%) Windows
2 359 (5.31%) Linux
3 209 (3.09%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.77%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.08%) Unix
6 62 (0.92%) VMS
7 47 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 45 (0.67%) Mac OS
9 36 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 28 (0.41%) Android
11 22 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 17 (0.25%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.12%) CentOS
15 8 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.089%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.089%) Solaris
16 6 (0.089%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.074%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,485 (36.74%) DevOps
2 2,083 (30.80%) CI/CD
3 1,627 (24.06%) Agile
4 1,176 (17.39%) Problem-Solving
5 1,022 (15.11%) Analytics
6 939 (13.88%) AI
7 883 (13.06%) Infrastructure as Code
8 864 (12.78%) Migration
9 711 (10.51%) Data Modelling
10 706 (10.44%) Stakeholder Management
11 688 (10.17%) Business Intelligence
12 664 (9.82%) Containerisation
13 638 (9.43%) Continuous Improvement
14 614 (9.08%) Microservices
15 609 (9.00%) ETL
15 609 (9.00%) Machine Learning
16 607 (8.98%) Data Pipeline
17 584 (8.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 556 (8.22%) Test Automation
19 545 (8.06%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,778 (26.29%) Python
2 1,523 (22.52%) SQL
3 735 (10.87%) PowerShell
4 599 (8.86%) C#
5 576 (8.52%) Java
6 509 (7.53%) JavaScript
7 308 (4.55%) TypeScript
8 258 (3.81%) Bash
9 200 (2.96%) Bicep
10 96 (1.42%) Scala
11 80 (1.18%) Go
11 80 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
12 79 (1.17%) PL/SQL
13 78 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 76 (1.12%) T-SQL
15 45 (0.67%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.64%) R
17 39 (0.58%) C++
18 28 (0.41%) PHP
19 25 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,618 (23.92%) Security Cleared
2 1,339 (19.80%) SC Cleared
3 547 (8.09%) Degree
4 370 (5.47%) Azure Certification
5 219 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 185 (2.74%) CISSP
7 164 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
8 143 (2.11%) AWS Certification
9 134 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
10 133 (1.97%) DV Cleared
11 119 (1.76%) Cisco Certification
12 116 (1.72%) CISM
13 91 (1.35%) Master's Degree
14 66 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
15 60 (0.89%) CCNP
16 58 (0.86%) ISTQB
16 58 (0.86%) PMI Certification
17 55 (0.81%) PMP
18 43 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 37 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 459 (6.79%) Data Quality
2 399 (5.90%) GDPR
3 357 (5.28%) QA
4 297 (4.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 234 (3.46%) NIST
6 135 (2.00%) Accessibility
7 97 (1.43%) NCSC
8 83 (1.23%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 60 (0.89%) SLA
10 57 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
11 50 (0.74%) PMO
12 39 (0.58%) HIPAA
13 35 (0.52%) WCAG
14 34 (0.50%) GRC
14 34 (0.50%) SOC 2
15 25 (0.37%) EU AI Act
16 24 (0.35%) ISO 20022
17 23 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.34%) PSD2
System Software
1 870 (12.86%) Active Directory
2 807 (11.93%) Docker
3 193 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 93 (1.38%) Hyper-V
4 93 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
5 72 (1.06%) vSphere
6 69 (1.02%) Virtual Desktop
7 24 (0.35%) VMware NSX
8 19 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
9 17 (0.25%) Firmware
10 15 (0.22%) NFS
11 8 (0.12%) Postfix
12 7 (0.10%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 7 (0.10%) KVM
12 7 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.089%) GPFS
13 6 (0.089%) Lustre
13 6 (0.089%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.089%) Snort
14 5 (0.074%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 1,038 (15.35%) Terraform
2 996 (14.73%) Kubernetes
3 357 (5.28%) Microsoft Intune
4 312 (4.61%) Ansible
5 177 (2.62%) Grafana
6 161 (2.38%) Single Sign-On
7 153 (2.26%) Prometheus
8 130 (1.92%) SCCM
9 73 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 49 (0.72%) Argo
11 32 (0.47%) Istio
12 29 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 27 (0.40%) Puppet
14 25 (0.37%) vRealize
15 24 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 23 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
17 20 (0.30%) HP ALM
18 19 (0.28%) vCenter Server
19 15 (0.22%) Kibana
19 15 (0.22%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,169 (32.07%) Microsoft
2 678 (10.03%) Databricks
3 344 (5.09%) Google
4 337 (4.98%) Oracle
5 278 (4.11%) ServiceNow
6 263 (3.89%) VMware
7 198 (2.93%) SAP
8 176 (2.60%) OpenAI
9 166 (2.45%) Cisco
10 151 (2.23%) Splunk
11 124 (1.83%) CyberArk
12 110 (1.63%) Foundry
13 106 (1.57%) Palo Alto
14 94 (1.39%) Salesforce
15 87 (1.29%) Okta
16 73 (1.08%) Red Hat
17 72 (1.06%) IBM
18 70 (1.04%) Citrix
19 66 (0.98%) Fortinet
19 66 (0.98%) Informatica