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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,302 4,933 5,542
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.13% 14.91% 14.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.64% 39.37% 42.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,795 3,368 3,784
10th Percentile £363 £350 £345
25th Percentile £447 £415 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £519 £534
Median % change year-on-year +1.20% -2.86% -2.91%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 185 44 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £23.00 £24.22 £23.80
Median hourly rate £45.20 £34.24 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +32.01% -6.83% -23.58%
75th Percentile £80.00 £67.25 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.38 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.35 £25.89 £42.34
% change year-on-year +63.61% -38.86% -8.32%

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 19,022 12,530 13,119
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.67% 37.88% 34.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,616 8,370 8,741
10th Percentile £325 £312 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
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 622 298 189
10th Percentile £15.26 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £30.00 £26.48 £33.54
Median % change year-on-year +13.31% -21.06% -4.17%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.42 £64.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.08 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +55.68% -41.61% +26.92%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -1 7,069 £526 +0.10% 7,778
London 0 3,696 £550 +0.92% 3,734
UK excluding London +1 3,526 £513 +2.50% 4,806
Work from Home -2 2,513 £525 +5.00% 3,689
North of England +8 1,000 £500 +5.26% 1,278
South East +1 911 £525 +5.53% 1,183
Midlands +2 646 £493 -4.37% 731
West Midlands +2 494 £488 -11.36% 445
North West +6 490 £500 +5.26% 684
Yorkshire +5 428 £500 +2.04% 443
South West +2 415 £550 +10.00% 540
Scotland +2 287 £525 +5.00% 395
East of England +1 200 £510 +2.00% 401
East Midlands +1 146 £500 +8.11% 286
North East +2 95 £513 +2.50% 159
Wales -1 85 £450 - 139
Northern Ireland +12 14 £650 - 180
Channel Islands -1 10 £450 -29.69%

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
1 467 (5.63%) SharePoint
2 262 (3.16%) Confluence
3 193 (2.32%) Microsoft Exchange
4 188 (2.26%) Apache Spark
5 163 (1.96%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.37%) Apache
7 45 (0.54%) SAS
8 29 (0.35%) IIS
9 28 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
10 25 (0.30%) CMS
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.18%) nginx
11 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.096%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.084%) Mendix
16 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
16 6 (0.072%) ThingWorx
16 6 (0.072%) Traefik
Applications
1 118 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.55%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 39 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.096%) Revit
8 8 (0.096%) Trello
9 7 (0.084%) CPLEX
10 5 (0.060%) Notion
11 4 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.036%) 1Password
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
13 2 (0.024%) Windchill
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 134 (1.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 10 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.096%) Magento
10 7 (0.084%) Shopify
11 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
11 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
12 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
13 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
13 4 (0.048%) NetSuite
13 4 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
13 4 (0.048%) SAP BPC
13 4 (0.048%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,980 (35.89%) AWS
2 1,742 (20.98%) Azure DevOps
3 1,455 (17.53%) GCP
4 1,124 (13.54%) Entra ID
5 1,080 (13.01%) Power Platform
6 876 (10.55%) Microsoft 365
7 847 (10.20%) GitHub
8 490 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
9 462 (5.56%) Azure Data Factory
10 378 (4.55%) Serverless
11 356 (4.29%) SaaS
12 313 (3.77%) Azure Monitor
13 307 (3.70%) Power Automate
14 306 (3.69%) Dynamics 365
15 298 (3.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 292 (3.52%) Snowflake
17 290 (3.49%) Azure AKS
18 289 (3.48%) PowerApps
19 253 (3.05%) Microsoft Copilot
20 249 (3.00%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 513 (6.18%) Firewall
2 414 (4.99%) DNS
3 313 (3.77%) VPN
4 290 (3.49%) Network Security
5 233 (2.81%) DHCP
6 183 (2.20%) WAN
7 166 (2.00%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.31%) LAN
9 105 (1.26%) BGP
10 100 (1.20%) SD-WAN
11 85 (1.02%) VLAN
12 84 (1.01%) OSPF
13 83 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.90%) SSL
15 66 (0.79%) Wireless
16 61 (0.73%) SAN
17 46 (0.55%) HTTP
17 46 (0.55%) IPsec
18 43 (0.52%) VXLAN
19 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 696 (8.38%) Power BI
2 471 (5.67%) SQL Server
3 398 (4.79%) Data Warehouse
4 389 (4.69%) Data Lake
5 287 (3.46%) PostgreSQL
6 256 (3.08%) Metadata
7 212 (2.55%) NoSQL
8 192 (2.31%) Azure SQL Database
9 143 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 128 (1.54%) Delta Lake
11 113 (1.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 103 (1.24%) MongoDB
13 101 (1.22%) MySQL
14 93 (1.12%) Big Data
15 70 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
16 68 (0.82%) Redis
17 63 (0.76%) BigQuery
18 61 (0.73%) Oracle Database
19 58 (0.70%) Tableau
20 56 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 739 (8.90%) Git
2 596 (7.18%) JIRA
3 462 (5.56%) Jenkins
4 370 (4.46%) GitLab
5 136 (1.64%) Selenium
6 86 (1.04%) Postman
7 64 (0.77%) Cypress.io
8 61 (0.73%) JUnit
9 59 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 55 (0.66%) Claude Code
10 55 (0.66%) JMeter
11 54 (0.65%) Maven
11 54 (0.65%) SonarQube
12 51 (0.61%) Visual Studio
13 49 (0.59%) Gradle
14 47 (0.57%) REST Assured
15 38 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 34 (0.41%) LoadRunner
17 33 (0.40%) MLflow
18 31 (0.37%) Gatling
General
1 2,290 (27.58%) Social Skills
2 1,570 (18.91%) Finance
3 956 (11.52%) Public Sector
4 806 (9.71%) Analytical Skills
5 483 (5.82%) Banking
6 226 (2.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 217 (2.61%) Retail
8 211 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
9 171 (2.06%) Legal
10 111 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 110 (1.32%) Manufacturing
12 92 (1.11%) Telecoms
13 89 (1.07%) Marketing
14 88 (1.06%) Investment Banking
15 87 (1.05%) Aerospace
16 83 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
17 77 (0.93%) Military
18 70 (0.84%) Law
19 60 (0.72%) Local Government
20 59 (0.71%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,589 (19.14%) Architect
2 1,052 (12.67%) Senior
3 1,006 (12.12%) Developer
4 726 (8.74%) Azure Engineer
5 688 (8.29%) Lead
6 593 (7.14%) Data Engineer
7 494 (5.95%) Solutions Architect
8 466 (5.61%) Analyst
9 464 (5.59%) DevOps Engineer
10 380 (4.58%) Cloud Engineer
11 316 (3.81%) Consultant
11 316 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 269 (3.24%) Data Architect
13 239 (2.88%) Platform Engineer
14 220 (2.65%) Azure Architect
15 207 (2.49%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 204 (2.46%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 200 (2.41%) Technical Architect
18 196 (2.36%) Security Engineer
19 184 (2.22%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,410 (16.98%) Terraform
2 737 (8.88%) REST
3 620 (7.47%) .NET
4 394 (4.75%) Kafka
5 304 (3.66%) React
6 295 (3.55%) RESTful
7 277 (3.34%) OAuth
8 266 (3.20%) PySpark
9 239 (2.88%) JSON
10 192 (2.31%) Spring
11 182 (2.19%) Spring Boot
12 166 (2.00%) OAuth2
13 164 (1.98%) OpenID
14 156 (1.88%) HTML
15 154 (1.85%) SAML
16 153 (1.84%) Node.js
17 150 (1.81%) Middleware
18 144 (1.73%) SOAP
19 141 (1.70%) AngularJS
20 132 (1.59%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 936 (11.27%) Cloud Native
2 424 (5.11%) Onboarding
3 389 (4.69%) Product Ownership
4 315 (3.79%) AI Agents
5 313 (3.77%) Enterprise Software
6 288 (3.47%) Hybrid Cloud
7 276 (3.32%) Distributed Systems
8 254 (3.06%) Data Centre
9 228 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
10 184 (2.22%) Security Posture
11 176 (2.12%) Management Information System
12 149 (1.79%) Data Structures
13 148 (1.78%) Public Cloud
14 124 (1.49%) PKI
15 113 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
16 109 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
17 101 (1.22%) Replication
18 100 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
19 89 (1.07%) CMDB
20 88 (1.06%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 992 (11.95%) Windows
2 519 (6.25%) Linux
3 376 (4.53%) Windows Server
4 149 (1.79%) Windows 10
5 91 (1.10%) Android
6 88 (1.06%) Unix
7 86 (1.04%) Apple iOS
8 81 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 75 (0.90%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 50 (0.60%) VMS
12 27 (0.33%) CentOS
13 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.084%) Debian
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
19 4 (0.048%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,048 (36.71%) DevOps
2 2,680 (32.28%) CI/CD
3 2,066 (24.89%) Agile
4 1,489 (17.94%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,432 (17.25%) AI
6 1,414 (17.03%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,236 (14.89%) Migration
8 1,134 (13.66%) Problem-Solving
9 1,129 (13.60%) Analytics
10 954 (11.49%) Continuous Improvement
11 911 (10.97%) Data Modelling
12 858 (10.33%) Roadmaps
13 795 (9.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 789 (9.50%) Containerisation
15 757 (9.12%) Business Intelligence
16 753 (9.07%) Technical Leadership
17 739 (8.90%) Test Automation
18 738 (8.89%) Data Pipeline
19 732 (8.82%) Microservices
20 661 (7.96%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,895 (22.83%) Python
2 1,584 (19.08%) SQL
3 895 (10.78%) PowerShell
4 690 (8.31%) Java
5 602 (7.25%) C#
6 513 (6.18%) JavaScript
7 408 (4.91%) Bash
8 362 (4.36%) Bicep
9 306 (3.69%) TypeScript
10 98 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 94 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 81 (0.98%) Go
13 65 (0.78%) Scala
14 61 (0.73%) Shell Script
15 58 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.51%) PL/SQL
17 36 (0.43%) R
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.39%) Groovy
20 30 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,166 (26.09%) Security Cleared
2 1,746 (21.03%) SC Cleared
3 560 (6.75%) Degree
4 474 (5.71%) Azure Certification
5 311 (3.75%) DV Cleared
6 273 (3.29%) CISSP
7 270 (3.25%) BPSS Clearance
8 251 (3.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 210 (2.53%) AWS Certification
10 197 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
11 181 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
12 140 (1.69%) CISM
13 92 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 90 (1.08%) PMI Certification
15 86 (1.04%) CCNP
16 85 (1.02%) PMP
17 70 (0.84%) ISTQB
18 64 (0.77%) CCSP
19 62 (0.75%) Master's Degree
20 52 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 613 (7.38%) Data Quality
2 464 (5.59%) QA
3 307 (3.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 295 (3.55%) NIST
5 292 (3.52%) GDPR
6 204 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 121 (1.46%) NCSC
8 110 (1.32%) SLA
9 85 (1.02%) GRC
10 81 (0.98%) WCAG
11 79 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
12 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 52 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 50 (0.60%) PMO
15 44 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 33 (0.40%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.31%) HIPAA
17 26 (0.31%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.25%) COBIT
System Software
1 1,031 (12.42%) Active Directory
2 922 (11.11%) Docker
3 243 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
5 143 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
6 127 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 71 (0.86%) vSphere
8 49 (0.59%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.39%) VMware NSX
10 21 (0.25%) Firmware
11 17 (0.20%) IAG
12 15 (0.18%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.084%) Ceph
18 6 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
19 5 (0.060%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,305 (15.72%) Kubernetes
2 452 (5.44%) Ansible
3 449 (5.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 261 (3.14%) Grafana
5 205 (2.47%) Prometheus
6 153 (1.84%) Single Sign-On
7 136 (1.64%) SCCM
8 58 (0.70%) Argo
8 58 (0.70%) Progress Chef
9 45 (0.54%) Puppet
10 38 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
11 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.41%) SCOM
13 30 (0.36%) Istio
14 28 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 19 (0.23%) CASB
16 18 (0.22%) Packer
16 18 (0.22%) QRadar
16 18 (0.22%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,005 (36.20%) Microsoft
2 866 (10.43%) Databricks
3 416 (5.01%) ServiceNow
4 390 (4.70%) Google
5 356 (4.29%) VMware
6 346 (4.17%) Oracle
7 243 (2.93%) Cisco
8 234 (2.82%) Splunk
9 220 (2.65%) SAP
10 217 (2.61%) OpenAI
11 187 (2.25%) Salesforce
12 148 (1.78%) CyberArk
12 148 (1.78%) Palo Alto
13 138 (1.66%) Foundry
14 131 (1.58%) Dynatrace
15 93 (1.12%) Zscaler
16 88 (1.06%) IBM
17 83 (1.00%) Informatica
18 82 (0.99%) Okta
19 80 (0.96%) Fortinet