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 7 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 5 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,438 5,426 7,093
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.56% 14.77% 15.18%
As % of the Cloud Services category 40.29% 41.99% 42.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,764 3,647 5,198
10th Percentile £350 £342 £357
25th Percentile £419 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £716 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 39 91
10th Percentile £15.50 £19.88 £17.72
25th Percentile £25.47 £23.80 £25.38
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -24.21% -9.45%
75th Percentile £67.25 £66.63 £68.00
90th Percentile £93.75 £81.50 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.46 £46.18 £46.18
% change year-on-year -5.90% - -8.55%

All Cloud 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 13,497 12,923 16,599
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 38.61% 35.18% 35.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,103 8,517 11,887
10th Percentile £305 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £425 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 323 167 321
10th Percentile £15.12 £18.98 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.80 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% +16.67% +35.87%
75th Percentile £43.92 £64.61 £60.00
90th Percentile £71.89 £70.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £33.93 £22.50
% change year-on-year -38.11% +50.80% +15.38%

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 7 November 2025.

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 7 November 2025.

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 7 November 2025. 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 4,627 £525 -2.33% 8,895
London +1 2,521 £545 -0.91% 3,822
UK excluding London 0 2,231 £500 - 7,131
Work from Home 0 1,784 £500 -4.76% 4,587
North of England -1 585 £475 -5.00% 1,282
South East -3 511 £500 -4.76% 3,516
Midlands -1 413 £517 -1.34% 699
South West +4 297 £500 -2.44% 546
West Midlands +1 297 £550 - 434
North West 0 284 £465 -7.00% 824
Yorkshire -2 269 £488 -2.50% 318
Scotland +1 251 £500 +11.11% 349
East of England +4 154 £500 +42.86% 473
East Midlands -1 110 £450 -5.26% 251
Wales +3 69 £438 -16.67% 192
North East -3 36 £500 +42.86% 145
Channel Islands - 7 £640 - 109
Northern Ireland -13 5 - - 61

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
1 240 (4.41%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 142 (2.61%) Confluence
4 125 (2.30%) Apache Spark
5 85 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
6 84 (1.54%) Apache
7 29 (0.53%) CMS
8 26 (0.48%) SAS
9 20 (0.37%) OpenStack
10 19 (0.35%) nginx
11 18 (0.33%) WebLogic
12 12 (0.22%) Anypoint
13 10 (0.18%) IIS
13 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.18%) Mule
13 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.17%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.15%) GeoServer
16 7 (0.13%) Camunda
Applications
1 119 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 81 (1.49%) Microsoft Office
3 36 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
4 35 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.26%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 9 (0.17%) Trello
9 4 (0.074%) Weka
10 3 (0.055%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.037%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.037%) Windchill
12 1 (0.018%) Acrobat
12 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.018%) Revit
12 1 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 98 (1.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 50 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 18 (0.33%) Aladdin
4 15 (0.28%) Endur
4 15 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
5 11 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
6 10 (0.18%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
7 8 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.15%) Workday HCM
8 7 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.13%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.11%) Maximo
9 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.092%) Remedy ITSM
10 5 (0.092%) SAP MDG
10 5 (0.092%) SAP PM
11 4 (0.074%) Fidessa
11 4 (0.074%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 1,969 (36.21%) AWS
2 1,101 (20.25%) Azure DevOps
3 1,042 (19.16%) GCP
4 686 (12.61%) Power Platform
5 621 (11.42%) Entra ID
6 619 (11.38%) Microsoft 365
7 505 (9.29%) GitHub
8 338 (6.22%) Azure Data Factory
9 285 (5.24%) GitHub Actions
10 277 (5.09%) Serverless
11 242 (4.45%) SaaS
12 240 (4.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 234 (4.30%) Dynamics 365
14 206 (3.79%) Power Automate
15 199 (3.66%) Azure AKS
16 195 (3.59%) PaaS
17 189 (3.48%) PowerApps
18 188 (3.46%) Snowflake
19 186 (3.42%) Azure Sentinel
20 183 (3.37%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 400 (7.36%) Firewall
2 199 (3.66%) DNS
3 179 (3.29%) VPN
4 149 (2.74%) Network Security
5 121 (2.23%) WAN
6 99 (1.82%) DHCP
7 86 (1.58%) TCP/IP
8 79 (1.45%) LAN
9 67 (1.23%) VLAN
10 65 (1.20%) HTTP
11 56 (1.03%) SD-WAN
12 55 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
13 48 (0.88%) BGP
14 40 (0.74%) SAN
15 36 (0.66%) OSPF
16 35 (0.64%) SSL
17 33 (0.61%) Internet
17 33 (0.61%) MPLS
18 32 (0.59%) Wireless
19 20 (0.37%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 467 (8.59%) Power BI
2 311 (5.72%) SQL Server
3 252 (4.63%) Data Warehouse
3 252 (4.63%) PostgreSQL
4 232 (4.27%) Data Lake
5 181 (3.33%) NoSQL
6 175 (3.22%) Azure SQL Database
7 128 (2.35%) Relational Database
8 107 (1.97%) MongoDB
9 99 (1.82%) Metadata
10 89 (1.64%) MySQL
11 80 (1.47%) Big Data
12 72 (1.32%) Delta Lake
13 66 (1.21%) Tableau
14 64 (1.18%) BigQuery
15 60 (1.10%) Redis
16 57 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 45 (0.83%) Oracle Database
18 40 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
19 38 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 465 (8.55%) Git
2 427 (7.85%) JIRA
3 329 (6.05%) Jenkins
4 220 (4.05%) GitLab
5 100 (1.84%) Selenium
6 87 (1.60%) Postman
7 86 (1.58%) SonarQube
8 66 (1.21%) JUnit
9 51 (0.94%) Cypress.io
10 48 (0.88%) JMeter
10 48 (0.88%) Maven
11 46 (0.85%) Bitbucket
12 41 (0.75%) Cucumber
13 40 (0.74%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.64%) Gradle
15 33 (0.61%) CircleCI
16 30 (0.55%) ERwin
16 30 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
17 28 (0.51%) Mockito
18 27 (0.50%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,720 (31.63%) Social Skills
2 1,042 (19.16%) Finance
3 612 (11.25%) Public Sector
4 509 (9.36%) Analytical Skills
5 363 (6.68%) Banking
6 178 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
7 126 (2.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 97 (1.78%) Retail
9 96 (1.77%) Marketing
10 95 (1.75%) Investment Banking
11 88 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
12 81 (1.49%) Legal
13 73 (1.34%) Manufacturing
13 73 (1.34%) Telecoms
14 68 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
15 52 (0.96%) Law
16 48 (0.88%) Local Government
16 48 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
17 45 (0.83%) Front Office
18 41 (0.75%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 903 (16.61%) Developer
2 890 (16.37%) Architect
3 528 (9.71%) Senior
4 408 (7.50%) Analyst
5 396 (7.28%) Azure Engineer
6 368 (6.77%) Lead
7 348 (6.40%) Data Engineer
8 307 (5.65%) Solutions Architect
9 269 (4.95%) DevOps Engineer
10 213 (3.92%) Consultant
11 176 (3.24%) Security Engineer
12 174 (3.20%) Senior Developer
13 163 (3.00%) Azure Architect
14 158 (2.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 132 (2.43%) Cloud Engineer
16 129 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
17 116 (2.13%) Data Architect
18 113 (2.08%) Support Engineer
19 111 (2.04%) Software Engineer
20 109 (2.00%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 475 (8.73%) .NET
2 340 (6.25%) REST
3 266 (4.89%) React
4 260 (4.78%) RESTful
5 193 (3.55%) HTML
5 193 (3.55%) Kafka
6 188 (3.46%) Node.js
7 169 (3.11%) OAuth
8 167 (3.07%) Spring
9 160 (2.94%) AngularJS
10 157 (2.89%) CSS
11 153 (2.81%) JSON
12 147 (2.70%) Spring Boot
13 146 (2.68%) PySpark
14 132 (2.43%) SOAP
15 103 (1.89%) PyTorch
16 102 (1.88%) ARM Templates
16 102 (1.88%) Web Services
17 101 (1.86%) XML
18 96 (1.77%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 391 (7.19%) Cloud Native
2 186 (3.42%) Onboarding
3 185 (3.40%) Product Ownership
4 152 (2.80%) Hybrid Cloud
5 140 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
6 134 (2.46%) Data Centre
7 115 (2.11%) Security Posture
8 105 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
9 103 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
10 98 (1.80%) Public Cloud
11 81 (1.49%) Algorithms
12 75 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
13 69 (1.27%) Management Information System
14 68 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
15 52 (0.96%) Data Structures
15 52 (0.96%) Replication
16 51 (0.94%) AI Agents
16 51 (0.94%) Virtual Team
17 50 (0.92%) Low-Code
18 49 (0.90%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 638 (11.73%) Windows
2 379 (6.97%) Linux
3 182 (3.35%) Windows Server
4 109 (2.00%) Unix
5 99 (1.82%) Windows 10
6 69 (1.27%) Android
7 58 (1.07%) Apple iOS
8 46 (0.85%) VMS
9 37 (0.68%) Mac OS
10 25 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 22 (0.40%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) Solaris
13 10 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.17%) CentOS
15 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
17 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,982 (36.45%) DevOps
2 1,566 (28.80%) CI/CD
3 1,457 (26.79%) Agile
4 988 (18.17%) Problem-Solving
5 726 (13.35%) Infrastructure as Code
6 694 (12.76%) Analytics
7 655 (12.04%) Migration
8 597 (10.98%) AI
9 540 (9.93%) Business Intelligence
10 510 (9.38%) Stakeholder Management
11 503 (9.25%) Containerisation
12 468 (8.61%) Data Modelling
13 467 (8.59%) Test Automation
14 459 (8.44%) Microservices
15 447 (8.22%) Machine Learning
16 427 (7.85%) Scrum
17 404 (7.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 400 (7.36%) Continuous Improvement
18 400 (7.36%) Cybersecurity
19 397 (7.30%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,374 (25.27%) Python
2 1,191 (21.90%) SQL
3 571 (10.50%) PowerShell
4 538 (9.89%) Java
5 504 (9.27%) C#
6 448 (8.24%) JavaScript
7 279 (5.13%) Bash
8 235 (4.32%) TypeScript
9 158 (2.91%) Bicep
10 87 (1.60%) Go
11 76 (1.40%) Kusto Query Language
12 68 (1.25%) Scala
13 52 (0.96%) R
14 51 (0.94%) T-SQL
15 50 (0.92%) PL/SQL
16 48 (0.88%) C++
17 38 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 35 (0.64%) Groovy
18 35 (0.64%) Shell Script
19 30 (0.55%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,046 (19.24%) Security Cleared
2 841 (15.47%) SC Cleared
3 469 (8.62%) Degree
4 317 (5.83%) Azure Certification
5 175 (3.22%) CISSP
6 173 (3.18%) Microsoft Certification
7 166 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 128 (2.35%) DV Cleared
9 126 (2.32%) AWS Certification
10 101 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
11 94 (1.73%) CISM
12 82 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
13 80 (1.47%) Master's Degree
14 49 (0.90%) CCNP
15 45 (0.83%) ISTQB
16 38 (0.70%) OSCP
17 35 (0.64%) PMI Certification
18 34 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 31 (0.57%) MCP
20 28 (0.51%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 327 (6.01%) GDPR
2 307 (5.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 294 (5.41%) QA
4 253 (4.65%) NIST
5 244 (4.49%) Data Quality
6 144 (2.65%) Accessibility
7 79 (1.45%) NCSC
8 72 (1.32%) PCI DSS
9 62 (1.14%) HIPAA
10 49 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
11 42 (0.77%) SOC 2
12 40 (0.74%) SLA
13 31 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 30 (0.55%) WCAG
15 28 (0.51%) EU AI Act
16 25 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 22 (0.40%) GRC
17 22 (0.40%) PSD2
18 20 (0.37%) COBIT
19 19 (0.35%) NIST 800
System Software
1 669 (12.30%) Active Directory
2 657 (12.08%) Docker
3 164 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
5 69 (1.27%) Hyper-V
6 68 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
7 48 (0.88%) vSphere
8 25 (0.46%) VMware NSX
9 19 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.28%) Squid
11 13 (0.24%) DFS Replication
11 13 (0.24%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 12 (0.22%) Firmware
13 10 (0.18%) Dovecot
13 10 (0.18%) Postfix
13 10 (0.18%) zsh
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.13%) KVM
15 7 (0.13%) NFS
15 7 (0.13%) Snort
Systems Management
1 793 (14.58%) Terraform
2 744 (13.68%) Kubernetes
3 296 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 294 (5.41%) Ansible
5 148 (2.72%) Single Sign-On
6 119 (2.19%) Grafana
7 118 (2.17%) SCCM
8 117 (2.15%) Prometheus
9 35 (0.64%) Argo
10 34 (0.63%) Puppet
11 31 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 28 (0.51%) Nessus
13 21 (0.39%) Nmap
14 20 (0.37%) Kibana
14 20 (0.37%) NetBackup
15 19 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
16 18 (0.33%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
17 17 (0.31%) Progress Chef
18 16 (0.29%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,733 (31.87%) Microsoft
2 487 (8.96%) Databricks
3 308 (5.66%) Oracle
4 249 (4.58%) Google
5 216 (3.97%) VMware
6 203 (3.73%) ServiceNow
7 173 (3.18%) Cisco
8 154 (2.83%) SAP
9 132 (2.43%) Splunk
10 122 (2.24%) Salesforce
11 99 (1.82%) OpenAI
12 90 (1.66%) Citrix
13 89 (1.64%) Palo Alto
14 75 (1.38%) CyberArk
15 62 (1.14%) Okta
16 61 (1.12%) F5
17 59 (1.08%) Red Hat
18 53 (0.97%) IBM
19 51 (0.94%) HP
20 49 (0.90%) Foundry