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 23 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,489 4,869 6,149
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.96% 15.95% 13.82%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.33% 42.35% 41.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,609 3,341 4,463
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -3.57%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £649
90th Percentile £712 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 40 75
10th Percentile £20.87 £22.38 £17.76
25th Percentile £45.73 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%
75th Percentile £61.66 £61.81 £60.80
90th Percentile £82.40 £77.75 £71.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £27.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +109.09% -45.00% -23.08%

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 15,331 11,497 14,790
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.71% 37.67% 33.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,520 7,753 10,544
10th Percentile £311 £313 £288
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £631 £634
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -3.94% -1.10% -1.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 392 179 332
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.65 £14.14
25th Percentile £20.29 £21.46 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.54 £27.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +36.51% +27.91% -14.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £44.13 £46.18
90th Percentile £80.18 £75.84 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £24.18 £19.31
% change year-on-year +76.53% +25.22% -8.05%

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 23 February 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 23 February 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 23 February 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 5,475 £525 -2.33% 2,616
London 0 2,958 £540 -1.82% 954
UK excluding London 0 2,665 £500 - 2,178
Work from Home -2 2,005 £525 - 1,294
North of England 0 712 £488 +2.63% 547
South East -1 693 £500 -8.26% 738
Midlands -2 455 £500 - 312
North West 0 355 £465 -1.38% 300
West Midlands -2 340 £525 -2.10% 195
South West +3 333 £512 -3.49% 237
Yorkshire -3 307 £500 +5.26% 163
Scotland +7 297 £550 +17.65% 122
East of England -1 161 £550 +4.76% 191
East Midlands -2 113 £433 -3.78% 116
Wales -4 78 £388 -20.92% 56
North East -5 54 £515 +8.42% 92
Northern Ireland +7 10 £475 - 10

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
1 282 (4.35%) SharePoint
2 209 (3.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 174 (2.68%) Apache Spark
4 173 (2.67%) Confluence
5 92 (1.42%) Apache
6 82 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.35%) OpenStack
8 19 (0.29%) SAS
9 17 (0.26%) ArcGIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 15 (0.23%) Appian
11 12 (0.18%) Camunda
11 12 (0.18%) IIS
12 10 (0.15%) GeoServer
12 10 (0.15%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.15%) Mendix
12 10 (0.15%) SugarCRM
13 9 (0.14%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.12%) Skype for Business
14 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
Applications
1 123 (1.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 99 (1.53%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 47 (0.72%) MS Visio
4 42 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
5 15 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.11%) Trello
7 5 (0.077%) Acrobat
7 5 (0.077%) PTC Creo
7 5 (0.077%) Weka
8 4 (0.062%) Adobe XD
9 3 (0.046%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.015%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.015%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.015%) Revit
11 1 (0.015%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.015%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 103 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.17%) Maximo
4 10 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) Endur
7 7 (0.11%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.092%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.092%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.092%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.092%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.092%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.077%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.077%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.077%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.077%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,283 (35.18%) AWS
2 1,278 (19.69%) GCP
3 1,275 (19.65%) Azure DevOps
4 871 (13.42%) Power Platform
5 761 (11.73%) Entra ID
6 741 (11.42%) Microsoft 365
7 667 (10.28%) GitHub
8 468 (7.21%) Azure Data Factory
9 388 (5.98%) GitHub Actions
9 388 (5.98%) Serverless
10 304 (4.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 292 (4.50%) Dynamics 365
12 269 (4.15%) SaaS
13 253 (3.90%) Power Automate
14 251 (3.87%) Azure AKS
15 234 (3.61%) Azure Functions
16 226 (3.48%) Snowflake
17 222 (3.42%) Azure Monitor
18 211 (3.25%) Azure Logic Apps
19 210 (3.24%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 436 (6.72%) Firewall
2 278 (4.28%) DNS
3 214 (3.30%) VPN
4 193 (2.97%) Network Security
5 166 (2.56%) DHCP
6 158 (2.43%) WAN
7 105 (1.62%) LAN
8 97 (1.49%) TCP/IP
9 87 (1.34%) Wi-Fi
10 80 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 71 (1.09%) Kerberos
11 71 (1.09%) VLAN
12 55 (0.85%) HTTP
13 39 (0.60%) BGP
14 38 (0.59%) Wireless
15 36 (0.55%) SSL
16 34 (0.52%) Internet
17 32 (0.49%) OSPF
18 31 (0.48%) MPLS
19 28 (0.43%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 587 (9.05%) Power BI
2 374 (5.76%) SQL Server
3 345 (5.32%) Data Warehouse
4 336 (5.18%) Data Lake
5 252 (3.88%) PostgreSQL
6 230 (3.54%) Azure SQL Database
7 185 (2.85%) NoSQL
8 163 (2.51%) Metadata
9 123 (1.90%) Relational Database
10 119 (1.83%) Delta Lake
11 94 (1.45%) Big Data
12 92 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 87 (1.34%) MongoDB
14 79 (1.22%) MySQL
15 71 (1.09%) Tableau
16 69 (1.06%) Oracle Database
17 66 (1.02%) BigQuery
18 56 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
19 47 (0.72%) Hadoop
19 47 (0.72%) Redis
Development Applications
1 506 (7.80%) Git
2 460 (7.09%) JIRA
3 346 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 268 (4.13%) GitLab
5 118 (1.82%) Selenium
6 96 (1.48%) Postman
7 70 (1.08%) Cucumber
8 69 (1.06%) JMeter
9 65 (1.00%) JUnit
10 49 (0.76%) MLflow
10 49 (0.76%) SonarQube
11 48 (0.74%) REST Assured
12 47 (0.72%) Cypress.io
13 38 (0.59%) Visual Studio
14 36 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.51%) TestRail
16 31 (0.48%) Artifactory
17 29 (0.45%) ERwin
18 28 (0.43%) Bitbucket
18 28 (0.43%) Gatling
General
1 1,981 (30.53%) Social Skills
2 1,155 (17.80%) Finance
3 753 (11.60%) Public Sector
4 654 (10.08%) Analytical Skills
5 354 (5.46%) Banking
6 209 (3.22%) Documentation Skills
7 137 (2.11%) Legal
8 108 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 107 (1.65%) Influencing Skills
10 90 (1.39%) Marketing
10 90 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
10 90 (1.39%) Retail
11 78 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
12 64 (0.99%) Investment Banking
13 63 (0.97%) Telecoms
14 58 (0.89%) Financial Institution
15 55 (0.85%) Law
16 51 (0.79%) Manufacturing
17 40 (0.62%) Billing
18 39 (0.60%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,073 (16.54%) Architect
2 903 (13.92%) Developer
3 707 (10.90%) Senior
4 541 (8.34%) Azure Engineer
5 534 (8.23%) Data Engineer
6 467 (7.20%) Lead
7 440 (6.78%) Analyst
8 328 (5.05%) DevOps Engineer
8 328 (5.05%) Solutions Architect
9 296 (4.56%) Consultant
10 182 (2.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 181 (2.79%) Security Engineer
12 174 (2.68%) Cloud Engineer
13 162 (2.50%) Azure Architect
14 158 (2.43%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 157 (2.42%) Senior Developer
16 139 (2.14%) Data Architect
17 137 (2.11%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 136 (2.10%) Platform Engineer
19 127 (1.96%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 515 (7.94%) .NET
2 457 (7.04%) REST
3 308 (4.75%) React
4 258 (3.98%) PySpark
5 252 (3.88%) RESTful
6 239 (3.68%) Kafka
7 220 (3.39%) Node.js
8 203 (3.13%) OAuth
9 201 (3.10%) Spring
10 176 (2.71%) Spring Boot
11 171 (2.64%) HTML
12 169 (2.60%) AngularJS
13 153 (2.36%) CSS
14 151 (2.33%) LDAP
15 146 (2.25%) SOAP
16 143 (2.20%) PyTorch
17 140 (2.16%) JSON
18 130 (2.00%) TensorFlow
19 127 (1.96%) SAML
20 123 (1.90%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 568 (8.75%) Cloud Native
2 240 (3.70%) Onboarding
3 230 (3.54%) Product Ownership
4 175 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
5 168 (2.59%) Security Posture
6 155 (2.39%) Data Centre
6 155 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
7 153 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
8 117 (1.80%) Public Cloud
9 113 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
10 97 (1.49%) AI Agents
11 86 (1.33%) Data Structures
12 84 (1.29%) Replication
13 78 (1.20%) Algorithms
14 71 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
15 69 (1.06%) Low-Code
15 69 (1.06%) Management Information System
16 64 (0.99%) NHS
17 62 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
18 54 (0.83%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 726 (11.19%) Windows
2 368 (5.67%) Linux
3 196 (3.02%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.90%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.25%) Unix
6 57 (0.88%) VMS
7 50 (0.77%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.60%) Apple iOS
10 33 (0.51%) Android
11 23 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.29%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.18%) CentOS
15 11 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.12%) Solaris
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.077%) AIX
19 4 (0.062%) Data ONTAP
20 3 (0.046%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,360 (36.37%) DevOps
2 1,982 (30.54%) CI/CD
3 1,593 (24.55%) Agile
4 1,194 (18.40%) Problem-Solving
5 988 (15.23%) Analytics
6 901 (13.89%) AI
7 872 (13.44%) Infrastructure as Code
8 798 (12.30%) Migration
9 686 (10.57%) Stakeholder Management
10 667 (10.28%) Business Intelligence
10 667 (10.28%) Data Modelling
11 655 (10.09%) Containerisation
12 599 (9.23%) Continuous Improvement
13 583 (8.98%) Machine Learning
14 581 (8.95%) ETL
15 577 (8.89%) Data Pipeline
16 566 (8.72%) Microservices
17 541 (8.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 532 (8.20%) Test Automation
19 524 (8.08%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,709 (26.34%) Python
2 1,428 (22.01%) SQL
3 709 (10.93%) PowerShell
4 557 (8.58%) C#
5 545 (8.40%) Java
6 497 (7.66%) JavaScript
7 281 (4.33%) TypeScript
8 258 (3.98%) Bash
9 200 (3.08%) Bicep
10 96 (1.48%) Scala
11 84 (1.29%) PL/SQL
12 79 (1.22%) Go
13 71 (1.09%) T-SQL
14 70 (1.08%) Kusto Query Language
15 65 (1.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 45 (0.69%) R
17 43 (0.66%) Shell Script
18 39 (0.60%) C++
19 36 (0.55%) PHP
20 22 (0.34%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,522 (23.46%) Security Cleared
2 1,257 (19.37%) SC Cleared
3 535 (8.24%) Degree
4 360 (5.55%) Azure Certification
5 208 (3.21%) Computer Science Degree
6 176 (2.71%) CISSP
7 175 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
8 136 (2.10%) AWS Certification
9 129 (1.99%) DV Cleared
10 122 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
11 113 (1.74%) CISM
12 103 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
13 92 (1.42%) Master's Degree
14 65 (1.00%) TOGAF Certification
15 53 (0.82%) CCNP
16 51 (0.79%) ISTQB
17 50 (0.77%) PMI Certification
18 49 (0.76%) PMP
19 35 (0.54%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (6.73%) Data Quality
2 387 (5.96%) GDPR
3 346 (5.33%) QA
4 299 (4.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 232 (3.58%) NIST
6 134 (2.07%) Accessibility
7 95 (1.46%) NCSC
8 78 (1.20%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
10 58 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 53 (0.82%) SLA
12 42 (0.65%) PMO
13 40 (0.62%) HIPAA
14 36 (0.55%) SOC 2
15 35 (0.54%) WCAG
16 33 (0.51%) GRC
17 25 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 25 (0.39%) EU AI Act
18 23 (0.35%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.35%) NIST 800
System Software
1 842 (12.98%) Active Directory
2 780 (12.02%) Docker
3 193 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (1.54%) Hyper-V
5 87 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
6 78 (1.20%) Virtual Desktop
7 71 (1.09%) vSphere
8 22 (0.34%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.15%) Firmware
12 9 (0.14%) NFS
12 9 (0.14%) Postfix
13 8 (0.12%) Snort
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 6 (0.092%) DFS Replication
15 6 (0.092%) GPFS
15 6 (0.092%) KVM
15 6 (0.092%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 1,008 (15.53%) Terraform
2 937 (14.44%) Kubernetes
3 350 (5.39%) Microsoft Intune
4 299 (4.61%) Ansible
5 171 (2.64%) Single Sign-On
6 153 (2.36%) Grafana
7 138 (2.13%) SCCM
8 136 (2.10%) Prometheus
9 73 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 47 (0.72%) Argo
11 27 (0.42%) FortiGate
12 26 (0.40%) Puppet
13 25 (0.39%) vRealize
14 22 (0.34%) Istio
14 22 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
15 21 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 20 (0.31%) Nessus
17 19 (0.29%) Kibana
17 19 (0.29%) Nmap
18 18 (0.28%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,094 (32.27%) Microsoft
2 674 (10.39%) Databricks
3 340 (5.24%) Oracle
4 327 (5.04%) Google
5 276 (4.25%) ServiceNow
6 263 (4.05%) VMware
7 188 (2.90%) SAP
8 166 (2.56%) Cisco
9 160 (2.47%) OpenAI
10 156 (2.40%) Splunk
11 115 (1.77%) Salesforce
12 114 (1.76%) CyberArk
13 108 (1.66%) Palo Alto
14 94 (1.45%) Foundry
15 75 (1.16%) Okta
16 71 (1.09%) Red Hat
17 70 (1.08%) Citrix
18 65 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
19 64 (0.99%) IBM
20 62 (0.96%) Informatica