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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,348 4,804 5,578
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.59% 14.61% 14.40%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.44% 39.33% 42.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,839 3,273 3,972
10th Percentile £375 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £423 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £721 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 183 42 38
10th Percentile £18.30 £18.87 £18.05
25th Percentile £23.00 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £40.73 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.91% +16.36% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.63 £75.31 £60.58
90th Percentile £94.01 £94.38 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £49.65 £65.00 £30.50
% change year-on-year -23.62% +113.11% -33.95%

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 18,783 12,214 13,073
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.07% 37.16% 33.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,416 8,148 9,109
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £411 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 610 316 251
10th Percentile £15.73 £15.27 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £16.40
Median hourly rate £35.00 £27.88 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.54% +11.52% -28.15%
75th Percentile £69.80 £47.50 £53.38
90th Percentile £82.26 £67.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +80.13% -11.70% -16.03%

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 18 August 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 18 August 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 18 August 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 7,182 £525 - 4,354
London +1 3,738 £550 - 1,994
UK excluding London +2 3,606 £500 - 3,087
Work from Home -1 2,566 £525 +5.00% 2,138
North of England +8 1,057 £500 +5.26% 808
South East +1 941 £525 +5.00% 863
Midlands +4 650 £494 -1.25% 397
North West +6 552 £500 +2.30% 448
West Midlands +3 483 £493 -6.19% 260
South West +6 428 £540 +7.90% 370
Yorkshire +6 423 £500 +5.26% 247
Scotland +9 279 £500 +0.81% 237
East of England +3 177 £525 +1.45% 248
East Midlands +8 155 £500 +8.11% 137
North East +6 95 £506 -2.08% 123
Wales -1 90 £490 +9.87% 103
Northern Ireland +13 15 £644 +35.53% 97
Channel Islands +1 10 £450 -29.69% 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
1 448 (5.37%) SharePoint
2 270 (3.23%) Confluence
3 203 (2.43%) Microsoft Exchange
4 173 (2.07%) Apache Spark
5 150 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.41%) Apache
7 41 (0.49%) SAS
8 37 (0.44%) IIS
9 27 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
10 21 (0.25%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
14 11 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Mendix
16 8 (0.096%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
17 7 (0.084%) Camunda
18 6 (0.072%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 122 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 86 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.46%) Chatbot
5 36 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.096%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.060%) Notion
12 3 (0.036%) Houdini
12 3 (0.036%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.012%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 117 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 7 (0.084%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Maximo
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.060%) Workday HCM
11 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,984 (35.75%) AWS
2 1,777 (21.29%) Azure DevOps
3 1,425 (17.07%) GCP
4 1,086 (13.01%) Entra ID
5 1,048 (12.55%) Power Platform
6 845 (10.12%) Microsoft 365
7 839 (10.05%) GitHub
8 509 (6.10%) GitHub Actions
9 478 (5.73%) Azure Data Factory
10 352 (4.22%) Serverless
11 348 (4.17%) SaaS
12 314 (3.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 305 (3.65%) Azure Monitor
14 300 (3.59%) Azure AKS
15 287 (3.44%) Power Automate
16 273 (3.27%) PowerApps
17 263 (3.15%) Dynamics 365
18 253 (3.03%) PaaS
19 250 (2.99%) Snowflake
20 229 (2.74%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 529 (6.34%) Firewall
2 420 (5.03%) DNS
3 328 (3.93%) VPN
4 302 (3.62%) Network Security
5 214 (2.56%) DHCP
6 193 (2.31%) WAN
7 169 (2.02%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.41%) LAN
9 109 (1.31%) BGP
10 102 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.13%) VLAN
12 87 (1.04%) OSPF
13 83 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.90%) SSL
15 64 (0.77%) SAN
16 54 (0.65%) Wireless
17 50 (0.60%) HTTP
18 48 (0.57%) IPsec
19 46 (0.55%) VXLAN
20 41 (0.49%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 717 (8.59%) Power BI
2 470 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 406 (4.86%) Data Warehouse
4 363 (4.35%) Data Lake
5 294 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 224 (2.68%) Metadata
7 222 (2.66%) Azure SQL Database
7 222 (2.66%) NoSQL
8 144 (1.72%) Relational Database
9 128 (1.53%) Delta Lake
10 102 (1.22%) MongoDB
11 101 (1.21%) Big Data
12 100 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 82 (0.98%) MySQL
14 65 (0.78%) Tableau
15 64 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
15 64 (0.77%) BigQuery
16 63 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
17 59 (0.71%) Redis
18 58 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 685 (8.21%) Git
2 629 (7.53%) JIRA
3 465 (5.57%) Jenkins
4 362 (4.34%) GitLab
5 137 (1.64%) Selenium
6 75 (0.90%) Postman
7 69 (0.83%) JUnit
8 63 (0.75%) JMeter
9 60 (0.72%) Cypress.io
10 57 (0.68%) Cucumber
11 56 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 51 (0.61%) Maven
13 48 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 44 (0.53%) WebDriver
15 43 (0.52%) Claude Code
15 43 (0.52%) REST Assured
16 41 (0.49%) Gradle
17 34 (0.41%) MLflow
18 32 (0.38%) LoadRunner
19 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,200 (26.35%) Social Skills
2 1,551 (18.58%) Finance
3 979 (11.73%) Public Sector
4 808 (9.68%) Analytical Skills
5 449 (5.38%) Banking
6 237 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 214 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 189 (2.26%) Retail
9 185 (2.22%) Legal
10 96 (1.15%) Manufacturing
11 95 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 90 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
13 89 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
14 75 (0.90%) Aerospace
15 74 (0.89%) Investment Banking
15 74 (0.89%) Law
16 73 (0.87%) Marketing
17 71 (0.85%) Financial Institution
18 60 (0.72%) Military
19 57 (0.68%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,517 (18.17%) Architect
2 1,043 (12.49%) Senior
3 1,041 (12.47%) Developer
4 734 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 697 (8.35%) Lead
6 598 (7.16%) Data Engineer
7 489 (5.86%) Analyst
8 438 (5.25%) Solutions Architect
9 430 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
10 354 (4.24%) Cloud Engineer
11 319 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 302 (3.62%) Consultant
13 258 (3.09%) Data Architect
14 230 (2.76%) Azure Architect
15 226 (2.71%) Platform Engineer
16 200 (2.40%) Technical Architect
17 196 (2.35%) Security Engineer
18 189 (2.26%) Project Manager
19 187 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 186 (2.23%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 661 (7.92%) REST
2 635 (7.61%) .NET
3 350 (4.19%) Kafka
4 319 (3.82%) React
5 288 (3.45%) RESTful
6 262 (3.14%) PySpark
7 240 (2.87%) OAuth
8 220 (2.64%) JSON
9 212 (2.54%) Spring
10 184 (2.20%) Node.js
11 180 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 170 (2.04%) AngularJS
13 154 (1.84%) HTML
14 151 (1.81%) SAML
15 148 (1.77%) OpenID
16 142 (1.70%) OAuth2
17 138 (1.65%) Middleware
18 134 (1.61%) .NET Framework
18 134 (1.61%) Playwright
19 123 (1.47%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 917 (10.98%) Cloud Native
2 412 (4.94%) Onboarding
3 350 (4.19%) Product Ownership
4 271 (3.25%) Hybrid Cloud
5 269 (3.22%) Distributed Systems
6 258 (3.09%) AI Agents
7 257 (3.08%) Enterprise Software
8 252 (3.02%) Data Centre
9 232 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
10 181 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 151 (1.81%) Management Information System
12 144 (1.72%) Data Structures
13 143 (1.71%) Public Cloud
14 119 (1.43%) Enterprise Cloud
15 115 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
16 112 (1.34%) PKI
17 96 (1.15%) Replication
17 96 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
18 80 (0.96%) CMDB
19 77 (0.92%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 988 (11.84%) Windows
2 513 (6.15%) Linux
3 356 (4.26%) Windows Server
4 128 (1.53%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 86 (1.03%) Unix
7 84 (1.01%) Android
8 80 (0.96%) Apple iOS
9 71 (0.85%) Mac OS
10 58 (0.69%) VMS
11 53 (0.63%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.22%) CentOS
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 11 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
17 10 (0.12%) Debian
18 6 (0.072%) AIX
18 6 (0.072%) Amazon Linux
18 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,093 (37.05%) DevOps
2 2,627 (31.47%) CI/CD
3 2,082 (24.94%) Agile
4 1,339 (16.04%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,306 (15.64%) AI
6 1,261 (15.11%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,227 (14.70%) Migration
8 1,143 (13.69%) Analytics
9 1,109 (13.28%) Problem-Solving
10 926 (11.09%) Continuous Improvement
11 925 (11.08%) Data Modelling
12 831 (9.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 790 (9.46%) Roadmaps
14 776 (9.30%) Data Pipeline
15 775 (9.28%) Containerisation
16 764 (9.15%) Business Intelligence
17 749 (8.97%) Microservices
18 704 (8.43%) Test Automation
19 674 (8.07%) ETL
20 672 (8.05%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,898 (22.74%) Python
2 1,625 (19.47%) SQL
3 859 (10.29%) PowerShell
4 700 (8.39%) Java
5 618 (7.40%) C#
6 501 (6.00%) JavaScript
7 389 (4.66%) Bash
8 333 (3.99%) Bicep
9 296 (3.55%) TypeScript
10 101 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 93 (1.11%) T-SQL
12 72 (0.86%) Go
13 61 (0.73%) Shell Script
14 57 (0.68%) Scala
15 55 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
16 45 (0.54%) PL/SQL
17 40 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 40 (0.48%) R
18 31 (0.37%) Groovy
19 27 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,149 (25.74%) Security Cleared
2 1,746 (20.92%) SC Cleared
3 563 (6.74%) Degree
4 453 (5.43%) Azure Certification
5 284 (3.40%) DV Cleared
6 272 (3.26%) CISSP
7 246 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
8 229 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
9 213 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
10 198 (2.37%) AWS Certification
11 182 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
12 136 (1.63%) CISM
13 101 (1.21%) CCNP
14 91 (1.09%) PMI Certification
15 89 (1.07%) PMP
16 87 (1.04%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 74 (0.89%) ISTQB
18 63 (0.75%) Master's Degree
19 57 (0.68%) CCSP
20 45 (0.54%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 583 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 441 (5.28%) QA
3 325 (3.89%) GDPR
4 309 (3.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 308 (3.69%) NIST
6 199 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 129 (1.55%) NCSC
8 104 (1.25%) SLA
9 77 (0.92%) GRC
10 76 (0.91%) WCAG
11 73 (0.87%) PCI DSS
12 71 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
13 62 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 56 (0.67%) PMO
15 33 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 30 (0.36%) HIPAA
17 27 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 19 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
19 19 (0.23%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,017 (12.18%) Active Directory
2 912 (10.92%) Docker
3 245 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 154 (1.84%) Virtual Desktop
5 143 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
6 131 (1.57%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.81%) vSphere
8 55 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 23 (0.28%) NFS
12 15 (0.18%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Postfix
14 12 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.096%) Ceph
16 8 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Varnish
18 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,381 (16.54%) Terraform
2 1,287 (15.42%) Kubernetes
3 449 (5.38%) Ansible
4 437 (5.23%) Microsoft Intune
5 266 (3.19%) Grafana
6 218 (2.61%) Prometheus
7 148 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
8 124 (1.49%) SCCM
9 63 (0.75%) Progress Chef
10 59 (0.71%) Argo
11 49 (0.59%) Puppet
12 40 (0.48%) Jamf Pro
13 36 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 33 (0.40%) Istio
15 31 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 23 (0.28%) SCOM
17 22 (0.26%) vCenter Server
18 20 (0.24%) Packer
19 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
20 18 (0.22%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,836 (33.97%) Microsoft
2 796 (9.54%) Databricks
3 409 (4.90%) ServiceNow
4 361 (4.32%) Google
5 351 (4.20%) VMware
6 323 (3.87%) Oracle
7 241 (2.89%) Cisco
8 228 (2.73%) SAP
9 202 (2.42%) Splunk
10 197 (2.36%) OpenAI
11 166 (1.99%) Salesforce
12 153 (1.83%) CyberArk
13 150 (1.80%) Palo Alto
14 140 (1.68%) Foundry
15 119 (1.43%) Dynatrace
16 103 (1.23%) Zscaler
17 94 (1.13%) Okta
18 92 (1.10%) Informatica
19 78 (0.93%) IBM
20 74 (0.89%) Fortinet