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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,207 4,791 6,250
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.03% 15.52% 13.86%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.29% 41.85% 41.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,394 3,232 4,577
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 40 83
10th Percentile £18.48 £21.15 £17.75
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.75 £22.55
Median hourly rate £57.50 £30.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +86.99% -33.41% -9.45%
75th Percentile £67.25 £56.25 £62.25
90th Percentile £93.75 £75.67 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +91.67% -35.04% -23.03%

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 14,677 11,449 15,013
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.90% 37.09% 33.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,102 7,587 10,774
10th Percentile £306 £313 £288
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 £635
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.26% -0.77% -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 350 172 323
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.78 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.28
Median hourly rate £33.73 £27.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.65% +22.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £59.69 £43.75 £49.54
90th Percentile £80.10 £68.75 £72.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.96 £24.66 £20.99
% change year-on-year +45.80% +17.51% +4.93%

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 3 February 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 3 February 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 3 February 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 5,255 £522 -0.57% 2,804
London 0 2,824 £541 -1.66% 1,059
UK excluding London 0 2,545 £500 - 2,345
Work from Home -1 1,913 £520 -0.48% 1,569
North of England -1 693 £475 +4.63% 563
South East -2 656 £492 -8.47% 805
Midlands -2 443 £513 -1.68% 301
North West -1 346 £450 - 333
West Midlands +2 334 £540 -1.82% 178
South West +4 330 £509 -3.10% 256
Yorkshire -2 302 £485 +2.11% 160
Scotland +7 283 £550 +18.41% 172
East of England -3 143 £550 +22.22% 198
East Midlands -3 108 £433 -3.78% 122
Wales -4 63 £410 -16.33% 67
North East -4 48 £500 +7.64% 73
Northern Ireland +7 10 £475 - 18
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
1 285 (4.59%) SharePoint
2 198 (3.19%) Microsoft Exchange
3 157 (2.53%) Apache Spark
4 153 (2.46%) Confluence
5 85 (1.37%) Apache
6 83 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.42%) CMS
7 26 (0.42%) SAS
8 25 (0.40%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 14 (0.23%) Appian
10 14 (0.23%) IIS
11 13 (0.21%) Camunda
12 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.18%) nginx
13 11 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 11 (0.18%) WebLogic
14 10 (0.16%) GeoServer
14 10 (0.16%) SugarCRM
15 9 (0.14%) Mendix
Applications
1 134 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 103 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 48 (0.77%) MS Visio
5 39 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.14%) Trello
8 7 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.081%) Weka
10 4 (0.064%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.016%) FrameMaker
13 1 (0.016%) Revit
Business Applications
1 108 (1.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.16%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Endur
6 8 (0.13%) NetSuite
6 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.097%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.097%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.097%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.081%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.081%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,179 (35.11%) AWS
2 1,234 (19.88%) Azure DevOps
3 1,217 (19.61%) GCP
4 845 (13.61%) Power Platform
5 717 (11.55%) Entra ID
6 712 (11.47%) Microsoft 365
7 635 (10.23%) GitHub
8 439 (7.07%) Azure Data Factory
9 385 (6.20%) Serverless
10 366 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
11 292 (4.70%) Dynamics 365
12 287 (4.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 264 (4.25%) SaaS
14 259 (4.17%) Power Automate
15 238 (3.83%) Azure AKS
16 231 (3.72%) Azure Functions
17 220 (3.54%) Snowflake
18 218 (3.51%) Azure Logic Apps
18 218 (3.51%) Azure Monitor
19 206 (3.32%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 421 (6.78%) Firewall
2 269 (4.33%) DNS
3 202 (3.25%) VPN
4 176 (2.84%) Network Security
5 162 (2.61%) DHCP
6 149 (2.40%) WAN
7 96 (1.55%) TCP/IP
8 95 (1.53%) LAN
9 77 (1.24%) Wi-Fi
10 76 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 70 (1.13%) Kerberos
12 65 (1.05%) VLAN
13 61 (0.98%) HTTP
14 38 (0.61%) BGP
15 35 (0.56%) Internet
15 35 (0.56%) Wireless
16 30 (0.48%) MPLS
16 30 (0.48%) SSL
17 26 (0.42%) OSPF
18 25 (0.40%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 579 (9.33%) Power BI
2 362 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 312 (5.03%) Data Warehouse
4 308 (4.96%) Data Lake
5 226 (3.64%) PostgreSQL
6 221 (3.56%) Azure SQL Database
7 183 (2.95%) NoSQL
8 145 (2.34%) Metadata
9 129 (2.08%) Relational Database
10 101 (1.63%) Delta Lake
11 89 (1.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 82 (1.32%) MongoDB
13 81 (1.30%) Big Data
14 77 (1.24%) MySQL
15 69 (1.11%) Oracle Database
16 68 (1.10%) Tableau
17 67 (1.08%) BigQuery
18 53 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
19 48 (0.77%) Redis
20 43 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 480 (7.73%) Git
2 443 (7.14%) JIRA
3 341 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 254 (4.09%) GitLab
5 107 (1.72%) Selenium
6 97 (1.56%) Postman
7 63 (1.01%) Cucumber
8 56 (0.90%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.89%) JMeter
10 54 (0.87%) JUnit
11 47 (0.76%) Cypress.io
12 46 (0.74%) REST Assured
13 41 (0.66%) MLflow
13 41 (0.66%) Visual Studio
14 37 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
15 29 (0.47%) Artifactory
16 28 (0.45%) ERwin
16 28 (0.45%) Maven
16 28 (0.45%) TestRail
17 27 (0.43%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,960 (31.58%) Social Skills
2 1,106 (17.82%) Finance
3 732 (11.79%) Public Sector
4 621 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
5 359 (5.78%) Banking
6 207 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
7 131 (2.11%) Legal
8 111 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 105 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
10 98 (1.58%) Marketing
11 89 (1.43%) Retail
12 87 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
13 72 (1.16%) Investment Banking
14 62 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 62 (1.00%) Telecoms
15 53 (0.85%) Financial Institution
15 53 (0.85%) Law
16 52 (0.84%) Manufacturing
17 42 (0.68%) Military
18 40 (0.64%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,011 (16.29%) Architect
2 900 (14.50%) Developer
3 639 (10.29%) Senior
4 503 (8.10%) Azure Engineer
5 483 (7.78%) Data Engineer
6 428 (6.90%) Lead
7 417 (6.72%) Analyst
8 323 (5.20%) DevOps Engineer
9 317 (5.11%) Solutions Architect
10 271 (4.37%) Consultant
11 183 (2.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 173 (2.79%) Security Engineer
13 159 (2.56%) Senior Developer
14 157 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
15 154 (2.48%) Azure Architect
16 152 (2.45%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 133 (2.14%) Platform Engineer
18 130 (2.09%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 128 (2.06%) Data Architect
20 120 (1.93%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 518 (8.35%) .NET
2 451 (7.27%) REST
3 283 (4.56%) React
4 251 (4.04%) RESTful
5 231 (3.72%) PySpark
6 227 (3.66%) Kafka
7 209 (3.37%) Node.js
8 198 (3.19%) OAuth
9 189 (3.04%) Spring
10 175 (2.82%) Spring Boot
11 166 (2.67%) AngularJS
11 166 (2.67%) HTML
12 154 (2.48%) LDAP
13 149 (2.40%) SOAP
14 147 (2.37%) JSON
15 144 (2.32%) CSS
16 135 (2.17%) PyTorch
17 126 (2.03%) TensorFlow
18 119 (1.92%) SAML
19 110 (1.77%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 543 (8.75%) Cloud Native
2 236 (3.80%) Onboarding
3 215 (3.46%) Product Ownership
4 167 (2.69%) Hybrid Cloud
5 162 (2.61%) Enterprise Software
6 160 (2.58%) Security Posture
7 155 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
8 139 (2.24%) Data Centre
9 117 (1.88%) Public Cloud
10 100 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
11 88 (1.42%) AI Agents
12 85 (1.37%) Replication
13 75 (1.21%) Management Information System
14 72 (1.16%) Data Structures
15 69 (1.11%) Algorithms
16 68 (1.10%) Low-Code
17 62 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
17 62 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
18 58 (0.93%) NHS
19 57 (0.92%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 714 (11.50%) Windows
2 365 (5.88%) Linux
3 202 (3.25%) Windows Server
4 125 (2.01%) Windows 10
5 88 (1.42%) Unix
6 53 (0.85%) VMS
7 46 (0.74%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.72%) Mac OS
9 40 (0.64%) Android
10 36 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.31%) Ubuntu
13 11 (0.18%) CentOS
14 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 7 (0.11%) Solaris
17 5 (0.081%) AIX
18 3 (0.048%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,278 (36.70%) DevOps
2 1,871 (30.14%) CI/CD
3 1,538 (24.78%) Agile
4 1,187 (19.12%) Problem-Solving
5 932 (15.02%) Analytics
6 836 (13.47%) AI
7 812 (13.08%) Infrastructure as Code
8 735 (11.84%) Migration
9 653 (10.52%) Business Intelligence
10 646 (10.41%) Stakeholder Management
11 623 (10.04%) Containerisation
12 608 (9.80%) Data Modelling
13 543 (8.75%) Continuous Improvement
14 541 (8.72%) Machine Learning
15 535 (8.62%) ETL
16 531 (8.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 525 (8.46%) Microservices
18 510 (8.22%) Data Pipeline
19 507 (8.17%) Test Automation
20 460 (7.41%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 1,586 (25.55%) Python
2 1,350 (21.75%) SQL
3 682 (10.99%) PowerShell
4 548 (8.83%) C#
5 538 (8.67%) Java
6 468 (7.54%) JavaScript
7 265 (4.27%) TypeScript
8 255 (4.11%) Bash
9 180 (2.90%) Bicep
10 95 (1.53%) Scala
11 83 (1.34%) Go
12 81 (1.30%) PL/SQL
13 69 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
14 64 (1.03%) T-SQL
15 63 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 49 (0.79%) R
17 47 (0.76%) Shell Script
18 41 (0.66%) C++
19 34 (0.55%) PHP
20 23 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,447 (23.31%) Security Cleared
2 1,201 (19.35%) SC Cleared
3 518 (8.35%) Degree
4 347 (5.59%) Azure Certification
5 196 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
6 171 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
7 163 (2.63%) CISSP
8 126 (2.03%) AWS Certification
9 125 (2.01%) DV Cleared
10 108 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
11 106 (1.71%) CISM
12 91 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
12 91 (1.47%) Master's Degree
13 50 (0.81%) PMI Certification
14 48 (0.77%) TOGAF Certification
15 47 (0.76%) ISTQB
16 46 (0.74%) PMP
17 44 (0.71%) CCNP
18 33 (0.53%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 28 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 386 (6.22%) Data Quality
2 376 (6.06%) GDPR
3 332 (5.35%) QA
4 305 (4.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 231 (3.72%) NIST
6 129 (2.08%) Accessibility
7 93 (1.50%) NCSC
8 70 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 54 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 49 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
10 49 (0.79%) SLA
11 42 (0.68%) HIPAA
12 38 (0.61%) SOC 2
13 37 (0.60%) PMO
13 37 (0.60%) WCAG
14 28 (0.45%) EU AI Act
14 28 (0.45%) GRC
14 28 (0.45%) PSD2
15 24 (0.39%) ISO 20022
16 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 812 (13.08%) Active Directory
2 759 (12.23%) Docker
3 193 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 96 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 76 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
6 73 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (1.00%) vSphere
8 20 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.19%) Squid
9 12 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.16%) DFS Replication
12 9 (0.14%) Firmware
13 8 (0.13%) KVM
13 8 (0.13%) Postfix
13 8 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.11%) Dovecot
15 6 (0.097%) Snort
15 6 (0.097%) zsh
Systems Management
1 942 (15.18%) Terraform
2 885 (14.26%) Kubernetes
3 330 (5.32%) Microsoft Intune
4 304 (4.90%) Ansible
5 168 (2.71%) Single Sign-On
6 148 (2.38%) Grafana
7 146 (2.35%) SCCM
8 135 (2.17%) Prometheus
9 70 (1.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.69%) Argo
11 30 (0.48%) Puppet
12 26 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 25 (0.40%) vRealize
14 23 (0.37%) Kibana
14 23 (0.37%) Nessus
15 22 (0.35%) Istio
16 19 (0.31%) Progress Chef
17 18 (0.29%) Nmap
17 18 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
17 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 2,012 (32.42%) Microsoft
2 620 (9.99%) Databricks
3 353 (5.69%) Oracle
4 324 (5.22%) Google
5 269 (4.33%) ServiceNow
6 256 (4.12%) VMware
7 174 (2.80%) SAP
8 164 (2.64%) OpenAI
9 158 (2.55%) Cisco
10 155 (2.50%) Splunk
11 123 (1.98%) Salesforce
12 114 (1.84%) CyberArk
13 101 (1.63%) Palo Alto
14 82 (1.32%) Foundry
15 73 (1.18%) Okta
16 66 (1.06%) Red Hat
17 65 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (1.03%) Citrix
19 60 (0.97%) IBM
20 56 (0.90%) Informatica