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

6 months to
7 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,168 4,659 5,928
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.72% 15.92% 13.51%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.80% 41.77% 41.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,108 3,331 4,285
10th Percentile £356 £351 £346
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -0.57% -4.00%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £742
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 124 46 56
10th Percentile £25.41 £22.50 £17.79
25th Percentile £50.94 £24.05 £22.45
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +70.37% -8.16% -31.94%
75th Percentile £68.75 £74.75 £59.95
90th Percentile £84.20 £87.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £50.53
% change year-on-year +79.69% -36.67% -12.13%

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 16,746 11,154 14,268
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 36.73% 38.12% 32.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,422 7,820 10,103
10th Percentile £313 £313 £296
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £635
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £490
% change year-on-year -0.31% -2.76% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 471 227 346
10th Percentile £15.62 £15.44 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £27.13 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +47.47% +29.17% -26.32%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.97 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £76.63 £60.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £23.00 £17.72
% change year-on-year +97.65% +29.83% -21.27%

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 April 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 7 April 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 7 April 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 6,078 £525 -0.10% 2,909
London +1 3,294 £538 -2.27% 1,004
UK excluding London +2 2,951 £500 - 2,332
Work from Home -1 2,182 £525 +0.96% 1,365
North of England +3 820 £489 +0.82% 604
South East +1 759 £500 -6.98% 685
Midlands 0 506 £488 -6.25% 369
North West +2 439 £481 -3.75% 303
West Midlands 0 376 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 362 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire 0 337 £494 +11.27% 208
Scotland +5 299 £550 +15.79% 115
East of England +8 154 £535 -7.76% 207
East Midlands -1 121 £436 -8.21% 163
Wales -2 87 £411 +1.23% 73
North East -7 47 £525 +7.69% 97
Northern Ireland 0 13 £475 - 24
Channel Islands +4 8 £450 +51.26% 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
1 332 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 208 (2.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 204 (2.85%) Confluence
4 191 (2.66%) Apache Spark
5 108 (1.51%) Apache
6 102 (1.42%) Apache Airflow
7 28 (0.39%) SAS
8 23 (0.32%) IIS
9 20 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 18 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 17 (0.24%) CMS
12 16 (0.22%) Appian
13 15 (0.21%) Camunda
14 13 (0.18%) Mendix
15 11 (0.15%) HCL Notes
16 10 (0.14%) Jupyter
16 10 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
17 9 (0.13%) SharePoint Server
18 7 (0.098%) Anypoint
19 5 (0.070%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 127 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 89 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
3 58 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 49 (0.68%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.11%) Trello
8 6 (0.084%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.070%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.070%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.056%) Weka
11 3 (0.042%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.028%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
13 1 (0.014%) Revit
Business Applications
1 111 (1.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Maximo
4 11 (0.15%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.098%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.098%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.084%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.056%) Cloudability
9 4 (0.056%) Dynamics AX
9 4 (0.056%) Dynamics NAV
9 4 (0.056%) Endur
9 4 (0.056%) Oracle 11i
9 4 (0.056%) Primavera
9 4 (0.056%) ResourceLink
9 4 (0.056%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.056%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,452 (34.21%) AWS
2 1,495 (20.86%) Azure DevOps
3 1,322 (18.44%) GCP
4 967 (13.49%) Power Platform
5 868 (12.11%) Entra ID
6 786 (10.97%) Microsoft 365
7 725 (10.11%) GitHub
8 508 (7.09%) Azure Data Factory
9 428 (5.97%) GitHub Actions
10 415 (5.79%) Serverless
11 332 (4.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 291 (4.06%) Dynamics 365
13 279 (3.89%) SaaS
14 268 (3.74%) Power Automate
15 264 (3.68%) Azure AKS
16 250 (3.49%) Azure Monitor
17 236 (3.29%) PaaS
18 235 (3.28%) Azure Functions
19 216 (3.01%) Snowflake
20 212 (2.96%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 460 (6.42%) Firewall
2 312 (4.35%) DNS
3 265 (3.70%) VPN
4 239 (3.33%) Network Security
5 190 (2.65%) WAN
6 171 (2.39%) DHCP
7 137 (1.91%) LAN
8 99 (1.38%) TCP/IP
9 97 (1.35%) SD-WAN
10 92 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
11 78 (1.09%) VLAN
12 70 (0.98%) Kerberos
13 54 (0.75%) BGP
14 47 (0.66%) OSPF
15 44 (0.61%) HTTP
15 44 (0.61%) SSL
16 43 (0.60%) Wireless
17 39 (0.54%) SAN
18 32 (0.45%) Internet
18 32 (0.45%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 652 (9.10%) Power BI
2 420 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 382 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
4 348 (4.85%) Data Lake
5 262 (3.66%) Azure SQL Database
6 257 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
7 209 (2.92%) NoSQL
8 183 (2.55%) Metadata
9 147 (2.05%) Delta Lake
10 115 (1.60%) Relational Database
11 111 (1.55%) Big Data
12 97 (1.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 93 (1.30%) MongoDB
14 87 (1.21%) Tableau
15 70 (0.98%) MySQL
15 70 (0.98%) Oracle Database
16 65 (0.91%) BigQuery
17 64 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
18 56 (0.78%) Star Schema
19 47 (0.66%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 534 (7.45%) Git
2 498 (6.95%) JIRA
3 384 (5.36%) Jenkins
4 279 (3.89%) GitLab
5 140 (1.95%) Selenium
6 89 (1.24%) Postman
7 77 (1.07%) JMeter
8 76 (1.06%) Cucumber
9 75 (1.05%) JUnit
10 52 (0.73%) REST Assured
11 51 (0.71%) MLflow
12 47 (0.66%) Cypress.io
13 43 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 43 (0.60%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.49%) Artifactory
15 33 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
15 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 32 (0.45%) TestRail
17 26 (0.36%) Gatling
17 26 (0.36%) Zephyr
General
1 1,972 (27.51%) Social Skills
2 1,288 (17.97%) Finance
3 825 (11.51%) Public Sector
4 697 (9.72%) Analytical Skills
5 384 (5.36%) Banking
6 226 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
7 179 (2.50%) Legal
8 115 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 98 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 91 (1.27%) Retail
11 86 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
12 85 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
13 77 (1.07%) Marketing
14 76 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 68 (0.95%) Law
16 67 (0.93%) Financial Institution
17 59 (0.82%) Investment Banking
18 58 (0.81%) Front Office
19 46 (0.64%) Manufacturing
20 44 (0.61%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,203 (16.78%) Architect
2 969 (13.52%) Developer
3 836 (11.66%) Senior
4 641 (8.94%) Azure Engineer
5 587 (8.19%) Data Engineer
6 549 (7.66%) Lead
7 454 (6.33%) Analyst
8 366 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
9 321 (4.48%) Solutions Architect
10 312 (4.35%) Consultant
11 202 (2.82%) Cloud Engineer
12 194 (2.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 189 (2.64%) Azure Architect
14 178 (2.48%) Security Engineer
15 173 (2.41%) Platform Engineer
16 165 (2.30%) Senior Developer
17 159 (2.22%) Data Architect
18 157 (2.19%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 155 (2.16%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 149 (2.08%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 562 (7.84%) .NET
2 475 (6.63%) REST
3 341 (4.76%) React
4 277 (3.86%) Kafka
5 267 (3.72%) PySpark
6 257 (3.59%) RESTful
7 251 (3.50%) Node.js
8 224 (3.13%) Spring
9 206 (2.87%) OAuth
10 189 (2.64%) AngularJS
11 187 (2.61%) Spring Boot
12 158 (2.20%) HTML
12 158 (2.20%) LDAP
13 147 (2.05%) JSON
14 139 (1.94%) CSS
15 132 (1.84%) Middleware
16 127 (1.77%) SAML
17 126 (1.76%) SOAP
18 122 (1.70%) PyTorch
19 117 (1.63%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 649 (9.05%) Cloud Native
2 276 (3.85%) Onboarding
3 272 (3.79%) Product Ownership
4 196 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 187 (2.61%) Data Centre
6 166 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
7 164 (2.29%) Security Posture
8 161 (2.25%) Legacy Systems
9 154 (2.15%) Public Cloud
10 146 (2.04%) Distributed Systems
11 122 (1.70%) AI Agents
12 92 (1.28%) Data Structures
13 87 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
13 87 (1.21%) Replication
14 74 (1.03%) Management Information System
15 70 (0.98%) PKI
16 67 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
17 65 (0.91%) Algorithms
18 64 (0.89%) Low-Code
18 64 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 775 (10.81%) Windows
2 381 (5.32%) Linux
3 234 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 127 (1.77%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.10%) VMS
6 75 (1.05%) Unix
7 57 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 50 (0.70%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.56%) Apple iOS
10 31 (0.43%) Android
11 23 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.25%) Ubuntu
12 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.084%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.070%) AIX
17 5 (0.070%) CentOS
17 5 (0.070%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,677 (37.35%) DevOps
2 2,195 (30.62%) CI/CD
3 1,695 (23.65%) Agile
4 1,142 (15.93%) Problem-Solving
5 1,071 (14.94%) Analytics
6 1,000 (13.95%) AI
7 980 (13.67%) Infrastructure as Code
8 950 (13.25%) Migration
9 792 (11.05%) Data Modelling
10 736 (10.27%) Stakeholder Management
11 714 (9.96%) Business Intelligence
12 685 (9.56%) Continuous Improvement
13 683 (9.53%) Containerisation
14 656 (9.15%) ETL
15 654 (9.12%) Data Pipeline
15 654 (9.12%) Microservices
16 601 (8.38%) Machine Learning
17 599 (8.36%) Data Engineering
18 589 (8.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 575 (8.02%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,819 (25.38%) Python
2 1,581 (22.06%) SQL
3 755 (10.53%) PowerShell
4 621 (8.66%) C#
5 604 (8.43%) Java
6 492 (6.86%) JavaScript
7 298 (4.16%) TypeScript
8 258 (3.60%) Bash
9 228 (3.18%) Bicep
10 99 (1.38%) Scala
11 82 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 79 (1.10%) Go
13 76 (1.06%) PL/SQL
13 76 (1.06%) T-SQL
14 75 (1.05%) Kusto Query Language
15 54 (0.75%) Shell Script
16 46 (0.64%) R
17 30 (0.42%) C++
18 25 (0.35%) PHP
19 21 (0.29%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,753 (24.46%) Security Cleared
2 1,461 (20.38%) SC Cleared
3 539 (7.52%) Degree
4 378 (5.27%) Azure Certification
5 209 (2.92%) Computer Science Degree
6 197 (2.75%) CISSP
7 163 (2.27%) Microsoft Certification
8 152 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
9 144 (2.01%) DV Cleared
10 142 (1.98%) Cisco Certification
11 137 (1.91%) AWS Certification
12 120 (1.67%) CISM
13 83 (1.16%) Master's Degree
14 78 (1.09%) CCNP
15 70 (0.98%) PMI Certification
15 70 (0.98%) PMP
16 67 (0.93%) ISTQB
17 66 (0.92%) TOGAF Certification
18 46 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.50%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 508 (7.09%) Data Quality
2 398 (5.55%) GDPR
3 386 (5.39%) QA
4 309 (4.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 260 (3.63%) NIST
6 137 (1.91%) Accessibility
7 107 (1.49%) NCSC
8 84 (1.17%) PCI DSS
9 63 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
9 63 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 61 (0.85%) SLA
11 59 (0.82%) PMO
12 41 (0.57%) WCAG
13 39 (0.54%) GRC
14 37 (0.52%) HIPAA
15 26 (0.36%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.35%) NIST 800
17 24 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 23 (0.32%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 911 (12.71%) Active Directory
2 831 (11.59%) Docker
3 212 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 104 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
6 91 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
7 81 (1.13%) vSphere
8 35 (0.49%) VMware NSX
9 33 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
10 25 (0.35%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) NFS
12 10 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.098%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.098%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.098%) Varnish
14 6 (0.084%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.084%) RACF
14 6 (0.084%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.070%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,119 (15.61%) Terraform
2 1,047 (14.61%) Kubernetes
3 377 (5.26%) Microsoft Intune
4 323 (4.51%) Ansible
5 191 (2.66%) Grafana
6 161 (2.25%) Prometheus
6 161 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
7 121 (1.69%) SCCM
8 74 (1.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 44 (0.61%) Argo
10 34 (0.47%) Istio
11 31 (0.43%) FortiGate
12 29 (0.40%) Puppet
13 27 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
13 27 (0.38%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.38%) vCenter Server
14 26 (0.36%) vRealize
15 22 (0.31%) HP ALM
16 17 (0.24%) Kubeflow
17 16 (0.22%) VxRail
Vendors
1 2,289 (31.93%) Microsoft
2 736 (10.27%) Databricks
3 332 (4.63%) Oracle
4 328 (4.58%) Google
5 296 (4.13%) VMware
6 281 (3.92%) ServiceNow
7 205 (2.86%) SAP
8 194 (2.71%) Cisco
9 184 (2.57%) OpenAI
10 165 (2.30%) Splunk
11 136 (1.90%) CyberArk
12 118 (1.65%) Foundry
13 111 (1.55%) Palo Alto
14 96 (1.34%) Salesforce
15 86 (1.20%) Okta
16 78 (1.09%) IBM
16 78 (1.09%) Informatica
17 74 (1.03%) BeyondTrust
17 74 (1.03%) Red Hat
18 72 (1.00%) Citrix