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

6 months to
26 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,062 4,802 6,227
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.07% 15.35% 14.06%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.34% 41.63% 41.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,305 3,229 4,547
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £523
% change year-on-year - -4.31% -0.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 43 86
10th Percentile £17.45 £20.49 £17.77
25th Percentile £28.00 £23.70 £24.57
Median hourly rate £56.50 £29.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +94.83% -37.20% -9.45%
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.59 £62.88
90th Percentile £93.75 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +91.67% -35.04% -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 14,317 11,535 14,889
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.95% 36.87% 33.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,879 7,657 10,677
10th Percentile £306 £313 £281
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 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -1.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 327 167 306
10th Percentile £14.25 £17.26 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.69 £21.46 £17.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.50 £24.02
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% +14.49% +3.76%
75th Percentile £58.70 £43.75 £52.83
90th Percentile £77.85 £68.75 £73.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.11 £25.00 £21.00
% change year-on-year +12.44% +19.05% +7.69%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 5,138 £520 -0.95% 3,754
London 0 2,768 £540 -1.82% 979
UK excluding London 0 2,476 £500 - 3,461
Work from Home -2 1,852 £514 -1.39% 1,973
North of England -1 669 £465 -2.11% 731
South East -2 636 £500 -5.66% 1,165
Midlands -2 438 £517 -1.10% 430
West Midlands +2 332 £550 - 199
North West -2 329 £450 - 381
South West +4 318 £512 -2.57% 396
Yorkshire 0 296 £479 +0.74% 239
Scotland +7 277 £550 +18.03% 199
East of England -1 139 £513 +17.14% 413
East Midlands -2 105 £436 -3.11% 224
Wales -5 59 £410 -18.00% 157
North East -6 47 £475 -6.17% 116
Northern Ireland +2 8 £385 - 53
Channel Islands +3 2 £600 +101.68% 1

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
1 280 (4.62%) SharePoint
2 191 (3.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 146 (2.41%) Confluence
4 144 (2.38%) Apache Spark
5 78 (1.29%) Apache
6 77 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.45%) SAS
8 25 (0.41%) CMS
8 25 (0.41%) OpenStack
9 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
9 14 (0.23%) IIS
10 13 (0.21%) Camunda
10 13 (0.21%) nginx
11 12 (0.20%) Appian
11 12 (0.20%) HCL Notes
11 12 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 10 (0.16%) SugarCRM
14 9 (0.15%) Mendix
Applications
1 129 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 101 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 47 (0.78%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.61%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.15%) Trello
8 8 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.082%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.082%) Weka
10 3 (0.049%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.049%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.033%) Windchill
12 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.016%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.016%) Revit
12 1 (0.016%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 107 (1.77%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Maximo
5 9 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.13%) Endur
6 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
6 8 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 8 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.099%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.099%) Dynamics NAV
7 6 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
7 6 (0.099%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.099%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.099%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.082%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.082%) Oracle Payables
8 5 (0.082%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,136 (35.24%) AWS
2 1,207 (19.91%) Azure DevOps
3 1,195 (19.71%) GCP
4 822 (13.56%) Power Platform
5 704 (11.61%) Microsoft 365
6 691 (11.40%) Entra ID
7 627 (10.34%) GitHub
8 425 (7.01%) Azure Data Factory
9 373 (6.15%) Serverless
10 367 (6.05%) GitHub Actions
11 289 (4.77%) Dynamics 365
12 276 (4.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 256 (4.22%) Power Automate
14 251 (4.14%) SaaS
15 234 (3.86%) Azure AKS
16 223 (3.68%) Azure Functions
17 217 (3.58%) Snowflake
18 214 (3.53%) Azure Monitor
19 208 (3.43%) Azure Logic Apps
20 199 (3.28%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 414 (6.83%) Firewall
2 258 (4.26%) DNS
3 196 (3.23%) VPN
4 173 (2.85%) Network Security
5 152 (2.51%) DHCP
6 149 (2.46%) WAN
7 97 (1.60%) TCP/IP
8 93 (1.53%) LAN
9 77 (1.27%) SD-WAN
10 72 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
11 64 (1.06%) VLAN
12 62 (1.02%) HTTP
13 57 (0.94%) Kerberos
14 38 (0.63%) BGP
15 36 (0.59%) Internet
16 35 (0.58%) Wireless
17 28 (0.46%) MPLS
18 27 (0.45%) SSL
19 25 (0.41%) SAN
20 24 (0.40%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 568 (9.37%) Power BI
2 351 (5.79%) SQL Server
3 298 (4.92%) Data Lake
4 295 (4.87%) Data Warehouse
5 228 (3.76%) PostgreSQL
6 216 (3.56%) Azure SQL Database
7 180 (2.97%) NoSQL
8 133 (2.19%) Metadata
9 128 (2.11%) Relational Database
10 97 (1.60%) Delta Lake
11 88 (1.45%) MongoDB
12 86 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 76 (1.25%) MySQL
14 71 (1.17%) Big Data
15 67 (1.11%) Oracle Database
16 62 (1.02%) Tableau
17 61 (1.01%) BigQuery
18 53 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
19 48 (0.79%) Redis
20 44 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 468 (7.72%) Git
2 426 (7.03%) JIRA
3 350 (5.77%) Jenkins
4 259 (4.27%) GitLab
5 108 (1.78%) Selenium
6 97 (1.60%) Postman
7 60 (0.99%) Cucumber
8 59 (0.97%) SonarQube
9 56 (0.92%) JUnit
10 55 (0.91%) JMeter
11 49 (0.81%) Cypress.io
12 41 (0.68%) REST Assured
13 39 (0.64%) Visual Studio
14 38 (0.63%) MLflow
15 37 (0.61%) Oracle APEX
16 31 (0.51%) Artifactory
16 31 (0.51%) Bitbucket
16 31 (0.51%) Maven
17 29 (0.48%) ERwin
18 27 (0.45%) TestRail
General
1 1,916 (31.61%) Social Skills
2 1,073 (17.70%) Finance
3 708 (11.68%) Public Sector
4 595 (9.82%) Analytical Skills
5 354 (5.84%) Banking
6 194 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
7 122 (2.01%) Legal
8 115 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 104 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
10 88 (1.45%) Marketing
10 88 (1.45%) Retail
11 84 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
12 74 (1.22%) Investment Banking
13 60 (0.99%) Telecoms
14 56 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
15 53 (0.87%) Financial Institution
15 53 (0.87%) Manufacturing
16 51 (0.84%) Law
17 39 (0.64%) Local Government
18 38 (0.63%) Billing
Job Titles
1 973 (16.05%) Architect
2 884 (14.58%) Developer
3 620 (10.23%) Senior
4 478 (7.89%) Azure Engineer
5 467 (7.70%) Data Engineer
6 419 (6.91%) Lead
7 397 (6.55%) Analyst
8 325 (5.36%) DevOps Engineer
9 306 (5.05%) Solutions Architect
10 261 (4.31%) Consultant
11 178 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 178 (2.94%) Security Engineer
12 156 (2.57%) Senior Developer
13 155 (2.56%) Cloud Engineer
14 147 (2.42%) Azure Architect
15 139 (2.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 129 (2.13%) Platform Engineer
17 124 (2.05%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 122 (2.01%) Azure Data Engineer
18 122 (2.01%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 498 (8.22%) .NET
2 432 (7.13%) REST
3 276 (4.55%) React
4 240 (3.96%) RESTful
5 227 (3.74%) PySpark
6 222 (3.66%) Kafka
7 204 (3.37%) Node.js
8 193 (3.18%) OAuth
9 191 (3.15%) Spring
10 176 (2.90%) Spring Boot
11 169 (2.79%) AngularJS
12 165 (2.72%) HTML
13 145 (2.39%) SOAP
14 144 (2.38%) JSON
15 140 (2.31%) CSS
15 140 (2.31%) LDAP
16 133 (2.19%) PyTorch
17 125 (2.06%) TensorFlow
18 114 (1.88%) SAML
19 109 (1.80%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 528 (8.71%) Cloud Native
2 224 (3.70%) Onboarding
3 200 (3.30%) Product Ownership
4 166 (2.74%) Hybrid Cloud
5 162 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
6 156 (2.57%) Security Posture
7 155 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (2.16%) Data Centre
9 113 (1.86%) Public Cloud
10 104 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
11 85 (1.40%) Replication
12 84 (1.39%) AI Agents
13 75 (1.24%) Management Information System
14 68 (1.12%) Algorithms
14 68 (1.12%) Data Structures
15 66 (1.09%) Low-Code
16 60 (0.99%) Data Protection Act
17 56 (0.92%) NHS
18 55 (0.91%) CMDB
18 55 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 702 (11.58%) Windows
2 374 (6.17%) Linux
3 200 (3.30%) Windows Server
4 123 (2.03%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.58%) Unix
6 56 (0.92%) VMS
7 48 (0.79%) Apple iOS
8 44 (0.73%) Mac OS
9 42 (0.69%) Android
10 37 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
14 11 (0.18%) CentOS
15 9 (0.15%) Solaris
15 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.082%) AIX
18 3 (0.049%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,222 (36.65%) DevOps
2 1,818 (29.99%) CI/CD
3 1,512 (24.94%) Agile
4 1,157 (19.09%) Problem-Solving
5 884 (14.58%) Analytics
6 794 (13.10%) Infrastructure as Code
7 790 (13.03%) AI
8 713 (11.76%) Migration
9 639 (10.54%) Business Intelligence
10 619 (10.21%) Stakeholder Management
11 608 (10.03%) Containerisation
12 580 (9.57%) Data Modelling
13 533 (8.79%) Continuous Improvement
14 527 (8.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 514 (8.48%) Machine Learning
16 503 (8.30%) Microservices
17 500 (8.25%) ETL
18 496 (8.18%) Test Automation
19 493 (8.13%) Data Pipeline
20 431 (7.11%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 1,562 (25.77%) Python
2 1,312 (21.64%) SQL
3 658 (10.85%) PowerShell
4 547 (9.02%) Java
5 526 (8.68%) C#
6 470 (7.75%) JavaScript
7 262 (4.32%) Bash
8 257 (4.24%) TypeScript
9 177 (2.92%) Bicep
10 95 (1.57%) Scala
11 91 (1.50%) Go
12 81 (1.34%) PL/SQL
13 68 (1.12%) Kusto Query Language
14 65 (1.07%) T-SQL
15 58 (0.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 51 (0.84%) Shell Script
17 50 (0.82%) R
18 41 (0.68%) C++
19 34 (0.56%) PHP
20 23 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,410 (23.26%) Security Cleared
2 1,173 (19.35%) SC Cleared
3 501 (8.26%) Degree
4 341 (5.63%) Azure Certification
5 195 (3.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 169 (2.79%) Microsoft Certification
7 159 (2.62%) CISSP
8 126 (2.08%) AWS Certification
9 123 (2.03%) DV Cleared
10 104 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
11 103 (1.70%) CISM
12 91 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
13 86 (1.42%) Master's Degree
14 51 (0.84%) PMI Certification
15 47 (0.78%) PMP
16 46 (0.76%) ISTQB
16 46 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
17 43 (0.71%) CCNP
18 40 (0.66%) MCP
19 28 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 362 (5.97%) Data Quality
2 358 (5.91%) GDPR
3 327 (5.39%) QA
4 307 (5.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 228 (3.76%) NIST
6 128 (2.11%) Accessibility
7 90 (1.48%) NCSC
8 72 (1.19%) PCI DSS
9 55 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 51 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
11 46 (0.76%) SLA
12 40 (0.66%) HIPAA
13 38 (0.63%) SOC 2
13 38 (0.63%) WCAG
14 36 (0.59%) PMO
15 28 (0.46%) EU AI Act
16 26 (0.43%) GRC
16 26 (0.43%) PSD2
17 22 (0.36%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 789 (13.02%) Active Directory
2 761 (12.55%) Docker
3 187 (3.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.52%) Hyper-V
5 75 (1.24%) Virtual Machines
6 71 (1.17%) Virtual Desktop
7 57 (0.94%) vSphere
8 20 (0.33%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.21%) Squid
10 11 (0.18%) DFS Replication
10 11 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
10 11 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.16%) KVM
12 9 (0.15%) Firmware
12 9 (0.15%) Postfix
12 9 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 8 (0.13%) Dovecot
14 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.12%) NFS
15 6 (0.099%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 914 (15.08%) Terraform
2 877 (14.47%) Kubernetes
3 313 (5.16%) Microsoft Intune
4 312 (5.15%) Ansible
5 156 (2.57%) Grafana
5 156 (2.57%) Single Sign-On
6 140 (2.31%) Prometheus
6 140 (2.31%) SCCM
7 61 (1.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (0.73%) Argo
9 34 (0.56%) Puppet
10 26 (0.43%) FortiGate
11 24 (0.40%) Kibana
11 24 (0.40%) vRealize
12 23 (0.38%) Istio
13 22 (0.36%) Nessus
14 19 (0.31%) Progress Chef
15 18 (0.30%) Nmap
15 18 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
15 18 (0.30%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 1,961 (32.35%) Microsoft
2 604 (9.96%) Databricks
3 354 (5.84%) Oracle
4 315 (5.20%) Google
5 257 (4.24%) ServiceNow
6 245 (4.04%) VMware
7 170 (2.80%) SAP
8 162 (2.67%) Cisco
9 152 (2.51%) Splunk
10 148 (2.44%) OpenAI
11 125 (2.06%) Salesforce
12 110 (1.81%) CyberArk
13 102 (1.68%) Palo Alto
14 72 (1.19%) Okta
15 71 (1.17%) Foundry
16 66 (1.09%) Red Hat
17 62 (1.02%) Citrix
18 61 (1.01%) BeyondTrust
19 60 (0.99%) IBM
20 58 (0.96%) Fortinet