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

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,408 5,117 5,527
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.20% 15.38% 14.69%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.80% 40.04% 42.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,866 3,499 3,745
10th Percentile £363 £350 £339
25th Percentile £441 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.11% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £724
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 192 45 35
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £19.76
25th Percentile £22.58 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £45.20 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.94% -2.86% -24.21%
75th Percentile £78.81 £67.25 £58.75
90th Percentile £100.00 £93.75 £82.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £25.89 £38.59
% change year-on-year +52.60% -32.92% -16.44%

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 19,195 12,780 13,078
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.70% 38.41% 34.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,755 8,545 8,658
10th Percentile £325 £309 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £715 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 652 294 182
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.14 £16.30
25th Percentile £17.90 £18.87 £22.83
Median hourly rate £31.25 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.25% -28.14% +7.99%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.18 £65.68
90th Percentile £78.75 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.27 £33.93
% change year-on-year +55.68% -43.21% +50.73%

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 16 October 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 16 October 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 16 October 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 -2 7,140 £530 +0.95% 1,672
London 0 3,784 £550 +0.92% 547
UK excluding London 0 3,496 £510 +2.00% 1,376
Work from Home -2 2,580 £525 +5.00% 914
North of England +4 1,023 £500 +5.26% 368
South East +1 911 £538 +7.50% 354
Midlands +1 632 £493 -5.15% 213
North West +4 496 £500 +5.26% 182
West Midlands +1 492 £480 -12.73% 136
Yorkshire +4 439 £500 - 140
South West +2 400 £550 +5.77% 207
Scotland -2 286 £500 - 92
East of England -2 182 £505 +1.00% 95
East Midlands +2 136 £500 +9.59% 77
North East -3 97 £506 +1.25% 53
Wales -2 82 £438 -2.78% 56
Northern Ireland +13 13 £650 - 15
Channel Islands -8 3 £500 -21.88% 2

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
1 474 (5.64%) SharePoint
2 279 (3.32%) Confluence
3 199 (2.37%) Microsoft Exchange
4 190 (2.26%) Apache Spark
5 158 (1.88%) Apache Airflow
6 121 (1.44%) Apache
7 38 (0.45%) SAS
8 31 (0.37%) IIS
9 28 (0.33%) CMS
10 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
13 13 (0.15%) nginx
13 13 (0.15%) OpenStack
14 9 (0.11%) Traefik
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.095%) Apache Superset
16 7 (0.083%) Mendix
17 6 (0.071%) Ethereum
17 6 (0.071%) Hyperledger
Applications
1 130 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 65 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 52 (0.62%) MS Visio
5 51 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 40 (0.48%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.13%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.095%) Trello
9 6 (0.071%) CPLEX
9 6 (0.071%) Revit
9 6 (0.071%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.059%) Notion
11 3 (0.036%) 1Password
11 3 (0.036%) Houdini
11 3 (0.036%) Mingle
11 3 (0.036%) NUKE
11 3 (0.036%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.024%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 133 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.15%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 10 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 9 (0.11%) Cloudability
8 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.095%) Magento
10 7 (0.083%) Shopify
11 6 (0.071%) FLEXCUBE
11 6 (0.071%) Maximo
11 6 (0.071%) R3 Corda
11 6 (0.071%) Temenos T24
12 5 (0.059%) Dynamics NAV
13 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,981 (35.45%) AWS
2 1,807 (21.49%) Azure DevOps
3 1,498 (17.82%) GCP
4 1,177 (14.00%) Entra ID
5 1,093 (13.00%) Power Platform
6 919 (10.93%) Microsoft 365
7 902 (10.73%) GitHub
8 510 (6.07%) GitHub Actions
9 469 (5.58%) Azure Data Factory
10 383 (4.56%) Serverless
11 366 (4.35%) SaaS
12 348 (4.14%) Azure Monitor
13 316 (3.76%) Dynamics 365
14 309 (3.68%) Power Automate
15 305 (3.63%) Snowflake
16 304 (3.62%) Azure AKS
17 297 (3.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 292 (3.47%) PowerApps
19 273 (3.25%) Azure AI
20 260 (3.09%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 527 (6.27%) Firewall
2 435 (5.17%) DNS
3 321 (3.82%) VPN
4 299 (3.56%) Network Security
5 234 (2.78%) DHCP
6 175 (2.08%) WAN
7 170 (2.02%) TCP/IP
8 110 (1.31%) BGP
9 104 (1.24%) LAN
10 96 (1.14%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.06%) OSPF
12 83 (0.99%) VLAN
13 75 (0.89%) Wi-Fi
14 69 (0.82%) SSL
15 68 (0.81%) Wireless
16 63 (0.75%) SAN
17 49 (0.58%) HTTP
18 46 (0.55%) IPsec
19 41 (0.49%) Internet
20 39 (0.46%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 702 (8.35%) Power BI
2 485 (5.77%) SQL Server
3 413 (4.91%) Data Warehouse
4 403 (4.79%) Data Lake
5 296 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 264 (3.14%) Metadata
7 210 (2.50%) NoSQL
8 208 (2.47%) Azure SQL Database
9 154 (1.83%) Relational Database
10 131 (1.56%) Delta Lake
11 119 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 114 (1.36%) MySQL
13 112 (1.33%) MongoDB
14 85 (1.01%) Big Data
15 72 (0.86%) Redis
16 69 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
17 68 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
18 67 (0.80%) BigQuery
19 64 (0.76%) Oracle Database
20 57 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 781 (9.29%) Git
2 618 (7.35%) JIRA
3 488 (5.80%) Jenkins
4 374 (4.45%) GitLab
5 145 (1.72%) Selenium
6 93 (1.11%) Postman
7 71 (0.84%) Cypress.io
8 70 (0.83%) Cucumber
9 66 (0.78%) JUnit
10 62 (0.74%) Claude Code
11 60 (0.71%) JMeter
12 54 (0.64%) Maven
12 54 (0.64%) Visual Studio
13 53 (0.63%) Gradle
14 50 (0.59%) REST Assured
14 50 (0.59%) SonarQube
15 37 (0.44%) MLflow
16 36 (0.43%) WebDriver
17 35 (0.42%) Bitbucket
18 34 (0.40%) LoadRunner
General
1 2,370 (28.19%) Social Skills
2 1,656 (19.70%) Finance
3 1,000 (11.89%) Public Sector
4 844 (10.04%) Analytical Skills
5 532 (6.33%) Banking
6 222 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 221 (2.63%) Retail
8 205 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
9 180 (2.14%) Legal
10 118 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
11 116 (1.38%) Manufacturing
12 101 (1.20%) Marketing
13 98 (1.17%) Investment Banking
14 90 (1.07%) Aerospace
14 90 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 84 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
16 76 (0.90%) Military
17 68 (0.81%) Law
18 66 (0.78%) Financial Institution
19 65 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,618 (19.24%) Architect
2 1,068 (12.70%) Senior
3 1,023 (12.17%) Developer
4 739 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 714 (8.49%) Lead
6 593 (7.05%) Data Engineer
7 512 (6.09%) Solutions Architect
8 464 (5.52%) Analyst
9 462 (5.49%) DevOps Engineer
10 387 (4.60%) Cloud Engineer
11 345 (4.10%) Consultant
12 318 (3.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 271 (3.22%) Data Architect
14 241 (2.87%) Platform Engineer
15 223 (2.65%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 207 (2.46%) Azure Architect
17 202 (2.40%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 200 (2.38%) Technical Architect
19 198 (2.35%) Security Engineer
20 183 (2.18%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,445 (17.19%) Terraform
2 805 (9.57%) REST
3 646 (7.68%) .NET
4 412 (4.90%) Kafka
5 323 (3.84%) React
6 310 (3.69%) RESTful
7 290 (3.45%) OAuth
8 267 (3.18%) PySpark
9 243 (2.89%) JSON
10 191 (2.27%) Spring
11 185 (2.20%) OpenID
11 185 (2.20%) Spring Boot
12 172 (2.05%) OAuth2
13 165 (1.96%) HTML
14 163 (1.94%) Middleware
15 161 (1.91%) SAML
16 160 (1.90%) SOAP
17 152 (1.81%) AngularJS
18 149 (1.77%) Node.js
19 144 (1.71%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 947 (11.26%) Cloud Native
2 441 (5.25%) Onboarding
3 414 (4.92%) Product Ownership
4 352 (4.19%) AI Agents
5 349 (4.15%) Enterprise Software
6 288 (3.43%) Distributed Systems
7 287 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
8 260 (3.09%) Data Centre
9 230 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
10 192 (2.28%) Management Information System
11 188 (2.24%) Security Posture
12 158 (1.88%) Data Structures
13 145 (1.72%) Public Cloud
14 131 (1.56%) PKI
15 117 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
15 117 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
16 103 (1.23%) Replication
17 94 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
18 91 (1.08%) CMDB
19 90 (1.07%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 1,001 (11.91%) Windows
2 541 (6.43%) Linux
3 390 (4.64%) Windows Server
4 159 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 89 (1.06%) Unix
6 87 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 84 (1.00%) Android
8 79 (0.94%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.74%) macOS
10 58 (0.69%) Ubuntu
11 51 (0.61%) VMS
12 27 (0.32%) CentOS
13 19 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.083%) AIX
18 6 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
18 6 (0.071%) Debian
19 5 (0.059%) Alpine Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,140 (37.35%) DevOps
2 2,766 (32.90%) CI/CD
3 2,132 (25.36%) Agile
4 1,603 (19.07%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,498 (17.82%) AI
6 1,463 (17.40%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,273 (15.14%) Migration
8 1,168 (13.89%) Problem-Solving
9 1,156 (13.75%) Analytics
10 1,024 (12.18%) Continuous Improvement
11 914 (10.87%) Data Modelling
12 907 (10.79%) Roadmaps
13 800 (9.51%) Test Automation
14 799 (9.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 784 (9.32%) Technical Leadership
16 780 (9.28%) Containerisation
17 765 (9.10%) Business Intelligence
18 754 (8.97%) Microservices
19 743 (8.84%) Data Pipeline
20 699 (8.31%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 1,966 (23.38%) Python
2 1,616 (19.22%) SQL
3 962 (11.44%) PowerShell
4 679 (8.08%) Java
5 640 (7.61%) C#
6 538 (6.40%) JavaScript
7 437 (5.20%) Bash
8 396 (4.71%) Bicep
9 333 (3.96%) TypeScript
10 108 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 89 (1.06%) T-SQL
12 76 (0.90%) Go
13 72 (0.86%) Kusto Query Language
14 67 (0.80%) Scala
15 63 (0.75%) Shell Script
16 43 (0.51%) PL/SQL
17 35 (0.42%) R
18 33 (0.39%) C++
18 33 (0.39%) Groovy
18 33 (0.39%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 2,198 (26.14%) Security Cleared
2 1,762 (20.96%) SC Cleared
3 580 (6.90%) Degree
4 487 (5.79%) Azure Certification
5 327 (3.89%) DV Cleared
6 284 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 272 (3.24%) CISSP
8 254 (3.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 229 (2.72%) AWS Certification
10 191 (2.27%) Cisco Certification
10 191 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
11 140 (1.67%) CISM
12 100 (1.19%) PMI Certification
13 95 (1.13%) PMP
14 92 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 80 (0.95%) CCNP
16 70 (0.83%) ISTQB
17 65 (0.77%) Master's Degree
18 63 (0.75%) CCSP
19 56 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 639 (7.60%) Data Quality
2 491 (5.84%) QA
3 303 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 285 (3.39%) GDPR
5 283 (3.37%) NIST
6 208 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 118 (1.40%) NCSC
8 111 (1.32%) SLA
9 81 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
10 80 (0.95%) WCAG
11 79 (0.94%) GRC
12 74 (0.88%) PCI DSS
13 51 (0.61%) PMO
14 48 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 47 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 38 (0.45%) SOC 2
17 27 (0.32%) ISO 20022
18 24 (0.29%) HIPAA
19 23 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
20 21 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,043 (12.40%) Active Directory
2 950 (11.30%) Docker
3 247 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 152 (1.81%) Virtual Machines
5 139 (1.65%) Virtual Desktop
6 127 (1.51%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.90%) vSphere
8 48 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.23%) Firmware
11 16 (0.19%) IAG
12 15 (0.18%) NFS
13 11 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.11%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 7 (0.083%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.083%) Ceph
17 6 (0.071%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.059%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,332 (15.84%) Kubernetes
2 469 (5.58%) Ansible
3 457 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 279 (3.32%) Grafana
5 208 (2.47%) Prometheus
6 152 (1.81%) SCCM
6 152 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
7 65 (0.77%) Argo
8 62 (0.74%) Progress Chef
9 48 (0.57%) Puppet
10 38 (0.45%) FortiGate
11 35 (0.42%) Istio
12 34 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
12 34 (0.40%) SCOM
13 25 (0.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.25%) CASB
15 20 (0.24%) QRadar
16 18 (0.21%) Packer
16 18 (0.21%) vCenter Server
17 13 (0.15%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 3,152 (37.49%) Microsoft
2 891 (10.60%) Databricks
3 427 (5.08%) Google
4 409 (4.86%) ServiceNow
5 374 (4.45%) Oracle
6 358 (4.26%) VMware
7 247 (2.94%) OpenAI
8 238 (2.83%) Splunk
9 234 (2.78%) Cisco
10 224 (2.66%) SAP
11 198 (2.35%) Salesforce
12 155 (1.84%) Foundry
12 155 (1.84%) Palo Alto
13 148 (1.76%) CyberArk
14 147 (1.75%) Dynatrace
15 91 (1.08%) IBM
16 87 (1.03%) Informatica
16 87 (1.03%) Zscaler
17 83 (0.99%) Fortinet
18 81 (0.96%) Okta