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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,167 4,876 5,963
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.47% 14.87% 14.29%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.92% 39.73% 42.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,706 3,378 4,297
10th Percentile £369 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 38 49
10th Percentile £18.50 £22.83 £17.80
25th Percentile £26.50 £27.86 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +27.92% -35.73%
75th Percentile £77.50 £78.40 £61.60
90th Percentile £95.94 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £53.23 £48.09
% change year-on-year +8.03% +10.68% -14.51%

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 18,597 12,273 13,978
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.23% 37.42% 33.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,300 8,220 9,785
10th Percentile £328 £313 £310
25th Percentile £419 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.64% -4.62% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 611 315 329
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.12 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.31 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.12 £27.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +34.98% +25.00% -37.14%
75th Percentile £70.00 £47.50 £50.00
90th Percentile £83.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £20.89
% change year-on-year +98.73% -9.65% -21.19%

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 20 July 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 20 July 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 20 July 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 0 6,957 £525 - 2,710
London +1 3,624 £550 - 1,191
UK excluding London +3 3,544 £505 +1.00% 1,967
Work from Home -1 2,536 £525 +2.44% 1,216
North of England +7 1,011 £500 +1.52% 521
South East +2 885 £525 +5.00% 639
Midlands +3 624 £498 +0.51% 274
North West +8 528 £503 +0.50% 272
West Midlands +2 469 £498 -5.24% 174
South West +7 449 £540 +7.90% 215
Yorkshire +3 405 £500 +5.26% 170
Scotland +8 311 £500 +5.26% 100
East of England +5 185 £550 -2.22% 155
East Midlands +4 144 £481 +4.05% 99
Wales -1 103 £425 -4.71% 77
North East +4 91 £525 +5.00% 88
Northern Ireland +14 18 £588 +23.68% 34
Channel Islands +3 8 £450 -37.93%

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
1 412 (5.04%) SharePoint
2 276 (3.38%) Confluence
3 196 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 184 (2.25%) Apache Spark
5 128 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
6 115 (1.41%) Apache
7 41 (0.50%) SAS
8 34 (0.42%) IIS
9 21 (0.26%) CMS
10 19 (0.23%) OpenStack
11 18 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
12 13 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 12 (0.15%) ArcGIS
14 10 (0.12%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.098%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.098%) WebSphere
17 7 (0.086%) Camunda
17 7 (0.086%) Mendix
18 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
Applications
1 121 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 30 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.11%) Trello
10 8 (0.098%) Revit
11 4 (0.049%) Notion
12 3 (0.037%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.024%) Houdini
13 2 (0.024%) NUKE
13 2 (0.024%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.024%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.012%) InDesign
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 111 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) SAP MDG
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.098%) Magento
7 8 (0.098%) Maximo
7 8 (0.098%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
9 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.073%) Shopify
9 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.061%) Adobe Campaign
10 5 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.061%) Endur
10 5 (0.061%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.061%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.061%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,895 (35.45%) AWS
2 1,676 (20.52%) Azure DevOps
3 1,390 (17.02%) GCP
4 1,027 (12.57%) Entra ID
5 1,024 (12.54%) Power Platform
6 801 (9.81%) Microsoft 365
7 787 (9.64%) GitHub
8 469 (5.74%) GitHub Actions
9 458 (5.61%) Azure Data Factory
10 357 (4.37%) Serverless
11 332 (4.07%) SaaS
12 313 (3.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 294 (3.60%) Azure AKS
14 283 (3.47%) Azure Monitor
15 268 (3.28%) Power Automate
16 261 (3.20%) PowerApps
17 260 (3.18%) PaaS
18 248 (3.04%) Dynamics 365
19 229 (2.80%) Azure AI
20 223 (2.73%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 507 (6.21%) Firewall
2 379 (4.64%) DNS
3 305 (3.73%) VPN
4 282 (3.45%) Network Security
5 202 (2.47%) WAN
6 189 (2.31%) DHCP
7 147 (1.80%) TCP/IP
8 132 (1.62%) LAN
9 116 (1.42%) BGP
10 105 (1.29%) SD-WAN
11 91 (1.11%) OSPF
12 87 (1.07%) VLAN
13 85 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
14 70 (0.86%) SSL
15 58 (0.71%) IPsec
16 57 (0.70%) SAN
17 55 (0.67%) Wireless
18 46 (0.56%) Kerberos
18 46 (0.56%) VXLAN
19 45 (0.55%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 700 (8.57%) Power BI
2 460 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 396 (4.85%) Data Warehouse
4 358 (4.38%) Data Lake
5 309 (3.78%) PostgreSQL
6 216 (2.64%) Azure SQL Database
7 214 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 205 (2.51%) Metadata
9 140 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 130 (1.59%) Delta Lake
11 121 (1.48%) Big Data
12 107 (1.31%) MongoDB
13 97 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 85 (1.04%) MySQL
15 73 (0.89%) Tableau
16 67 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
17 65 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.71%) Oracle Database
18 58 (0.71%) Redis
19 53 (0.65%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 639 (7.82%) JIRA
2 629 (7.70%) Git
3 427 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 312 (3.82%) GitLab
5 129 (1.58%) Selenium
6 76 (0.93%) Postman
7 73 (0.89%) JMeter
8 70 (0.86%) JUnit
9 58 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 54 (0.66%) Cypress.io
11 51 (0.62%) REST Assured
12 49 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 47 (0.58%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.55%) WebDriver
15 43 (0.53%) Maven
16 40 (0.49%) MLflow
17 34 (0.42%) Gradle
18 31 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
19 29 (0.36%) Claude Code
19 29 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,068 (25.32%) Social Skills
2 1,519 (18.60%) Finance
3 949 (11.62%) Public Sector
4 776 (9.50%) Analytical Skills
5 424 (5.19%) Banking
6 242 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
7 196 (2.40%) Legal
8 179 (2.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 173 (2.12%) Retail
10 101 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
11 90 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
12 88 (1.08%) Telecoms
13 72 (0.88%) Law
13 72 (0.88%) Manufacturing
14 70 (0.86%) Marketing
15 66 (0.81%) Front Office
15 66 (0.81%) Investment Banking
16 65 (0.80%) Financial Institution
17 57 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
18 55 (0.67%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,458 (17.85%) Architect
2 1,060 (12.98%) Developer
3 996 (12.20%) Senior
4 722 (8.84%) Azure Engineer
5 658 (8.06%) Lead
6 597 (7.31%) Data Engineer
7 500 (6.12%) Analyst
8 424 (5.19%) DevOps Engineer
9 418 (5.12%) Solutions Architect
10 319 (3.91%) Consultant
11 316 (3.87%) Cloud Engineer
12 290 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 241 (2.95%) Data Architect
14 220 (2.69%) Azure Architect
15 209 (2.56%) Platform Engineer
16 200 (2.45%) Technical Architect
17 190 (2.33%) Project Manager
18 187 (2.29%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 184 (2.25%) Business Analyst
19 184 (2.25%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 642 (7.86%) .NET
2 592 (7.25%) REST
3 344 (4.21%) React
4 312 (3.82%) Kafka
5 291 (3.56%) RESTful
6 250 (3.06%) PySpark
7 230 (2.82%) OAuth
8 226 (2.77%) Spring
9 212 (2.60%) Node.js
10 196 (2.40%) JSON
11 192 (2.35%) Spring Boot
12 180 (2.20%) AngularJS
13 157 (1.92%) HTML
14 143 (1.75%) OpenID
14 143 (1.75%) SAML
15 132 (1.62%) Middleware
15 132 (1.62%) OAuth2
16 131 (1.60%) .NET Framework
17 129 (1.58%) LDAP
18 126 (1.54%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 860 (10.53%) Cloud Native
2 363 (4.44%) Onboarding
3 347 (4.25%) Product Ownership
4 270 (3.31%) Data Centre
5 260 (3.18%) Distributed Systems
6 240 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
7 234 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
8 218 (2.67%) AI Agents
9 183 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
10 162 (1.98%) Security Posture
11 142 (1.74%) Public Cloud
12 126 (1.54%) Data Structures
13 121 (1.48%) Management Information System
14 114 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
15 104 (1.27%) Replication
16 99 (1.21%) PKI
17 97 (1.19%) Enterprise Cloud
18 90 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
19 78 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
20 72 (0.88%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 925 (11.33%) Windows
2 444 (5.44%) Linux
3 296 (3.62%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 78 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 77 (0.94%) Android
6 77 (0.94%) Unix
7 75 (0.92%) Apple iOS
8 72 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 59 (0.72%) VMS
10 41 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 26 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.13%) CentOS
16 9 (0.11%) Debian
17 8 (0.098%) Windows 7
18 7 (0.086%) CoreOS
19 6 (0.073%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,024 (37.03%) DevOps
2 2,550 (31.22%) CI/CD
3 2,060 (25.22%) Agile
4 1,253 (15.34%) AI
5 1,232 (15.09%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,191 (14.58%) Migration
7 1,123 (13.75%) Analytics
8 1,075 (13.16%) Problem-Solving
9 1,051 (12.87%) Stakeholder Management
10 918 (11.24%) Data Modelling
11 858 (10.51%) Continuous Improvement
12 769 (9.42%) Data Pipeline
13 765 (9.37%) Microservices
14 761 (9.32%) Roadmaps
15 757 (9.27%) Containerisation
16 748 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
17 740 (9.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 675 (8.26%) ETL
19 668 (8.18%) Test Automation
20 650 (7.96%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,890 (23.14%) Python
2 1,593 (19.51%) SQL
3 786 (9.62%) PowerShell
4 687 (8.41%) Java
5 622 (7.62%) C#
6 473 (5.79%) JavaScript
7 330 (4.04%) Bash
8 317 (3.88%) TypeScript
9 290 (3.55%) Bicep
10 96 (1.18%) T-SQL
11 94 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 82 (1.00%) Go
13 68 (0.83%) Scala
14 55 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 52 (0.64%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.53%) R
17 40 (0.49%) PL/SQL
18 39 (0.48%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.33%) Groovy
20 25 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,038 (24.95%) Security Cleared
2 1,677 (20.53%) SC Cleared
3 578 (7.08%) Degree
4 430 (5.27%) Azure Certification
5 253 (3.10%) DV Cleared
6 247 (3.02%) CISSP
7 238 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
8 208 (2.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 205 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
10 195 (2.39%) AWS Certification
11 191 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
12 122 (1.49%) CISM
13 98 (1.20%) CCNP
14 83 (1.02%) PMI Certification
14 83 (1.02%) PMP
15 80 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 66 (0.81%) ISTQB
16 66 (0.81%) Master's Degree
17 54 (0.66%) CCSP
18 53 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 559 (6.84%) Data Quality
2 430 (5.27%) QA
3 334 (4.09%) GDPR
4 281 (3.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 276 (3.38%) NIST
6 199 (2.44%) Accessibility
7 119 (1.46%) NCSC
8 97 (1.19%) SLA
9 72 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
10 71 (0.87%) GRC
10 71 (0.87%) PCI DSS
10 71 (0.87%) WCAG
11 57 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 51 (0.62%) PMO
13 36 (0.44%) HIPAA
14 31 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 25 (0.31%) SOC 2
16 23 (0.28%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
18 19 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 972 (11.90%) Active Directory
2 872 (10.68%) Docker
3 222 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 114 (1.40%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.84%) vSphere
8 52 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.36%) Firmware
11 26 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.20%) Postfix
13 12 (0.15%) IAG
14 11 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.098%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.086%) Ceph
16 7 (0.086%) Varnish
17 6 (0.073%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 6 (0.073%) HDFS
18 5 (0.061%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 1,306 (15.99%) Terraform
2 1,199 (14.68%) Kubernetes
3 423 (5.18%) Microsoft Intune
4 400 (4.90%) Ansible
5 245 (3.00%) Grafana
6 209 (2.56%) Prometheus
7 161 (1.97%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.35%) SCCM
9 56 (0.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 52 (0.64%) Argo
11 48 (0.59%) Progress Chef
12 47 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
13 43 (0.53%) Puppet
14 34 (0.42%) FortiGate
15 29 (0.36%) Istio
16 21 (0.26%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.24%) vCenter Server
18 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
19 18 (0.22%) Packer
20 15 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,625 (32.14%) Microsoft
2 740 (9.06%) Databricks
3 386 (4.73%) ServiceNow
4 328 (4.02%) Google
5 316 (3.87%) Oracle
6 312 (3.82%) VMware
7 230 (2.82%) SAP
8 223 (2.73%) Cisco
9 205 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 181 (2.22%) Splunk
11 157 (1.92%) Salesforce
12 144 (1.76%) Palo Alto
13 138 (1.69%) Foundry
14 134 (1.64%) CyberArk
15 98 (1.20%) Dynatrace
16 96 (1.18%) Okta
17 95 (1.16%) Zscaler
18 86 (1.05%) Informatica
19 77 (0.94%) Citrix
20 73 (0.89%) Fortinet