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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,288 4,713 5,525
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.46% 14.50% 14.43%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.20% 38.91% 42.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,817 3,209 3,884
10th Percentile £365 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £635
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £499 £500
% change year-on-year +0.25% -0.25% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 172 46 35
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.31 £18.30
25th Percentile £21.25 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £38.25 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.29% +10.71% -35.19%
75th Percentile £79.25 £72.50 £56.25
90th Percentile £99.44 £91.88 £82.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £65.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year -41.15% +96.97% -28.54%

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 18,752 12,112 13,023
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.97% 37.26% 34.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,464 8,065 8,932
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £425 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £613 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 601 312 222
10th Percentile £15.31 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.25 £18.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £33.99 £28.88 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.71% -3.75% -14.29%
75th Percentile £68.75 £52.81 £56.88
90th Percentile £82.25 £71.43 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £19.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +71.05% -21.42% -10.44%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 7,096 £525 - 5,900
London +1 3,708 £550 +0.92% 3,119
UK excluding London +2 3,565 £500 +0.25% 3,608
Work from Home 0 2,512 £525 +5.00% 2,951
North of England +9 1,035 £500 +5.26% 921
South East +3 914 £525 +5.00% 873
Midlands +4 652 £493 -4.14% 498
North West +7 529 £500 +5.26% 529
West Midlands +3 480 £488 -9.47% 296
Yorkshire +7 426 £500 +5.26% 280
South West +5 423 £540 +8.00% 474
Scotland +11 288 £500 +5.26% 333
East of England +4 179 £525 +5.00% 297
East Midlands +7 160 £500 +8.11% 201
North East +9 93 £500 - 117
Wales -1 88 £483 +7.22% 86
Northern Ireland +15 15 £650 +36.84% 161
Channel Islands 0 11 £450 -29.69% 3

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
1 454 (5.48%) SharePoint
2 266 (3.21%) Confluence
3 194 (2.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 180 (2.17%) Apache Spark
5 157 (1.89%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.42%) Apache
7 42 (0.51%) SAS
8 33 (0.40%) IIS
9 24 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
10 23 (0.28%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) nginx
13 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
14 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.097%) Apache Superset
16 7 (0.084%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.084%) Mendix
17 6 (0.072%) Cloud Foundry
17 6 (0.072%) WebSphere
Applications
1 124 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 90 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.46%) Chatbot
6 36 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.097%) Revit
10 8 (0.097%) 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%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.012%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 129 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
6 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.097%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.097%) Magento
7 8 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.072%) NetSuite
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
9 6 (0.072%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Dynamics GP
11 4 (0.048%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.048%) Endur
11 4 (0.048%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,978 (35.93%) AWS
2 1,769 (21.34%) Azure DevOps
3 1,411 (17.02%) GCP
4 1,086 (13.10%) Entra ID
5 1,065 (12.85%) Power Platform
6 858 (10.35%) Microsoft 365
7 834 (10.06%) GitHub
8 487 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
9 471 (5.68%) Azure Data Factory
10 376 (4.54%) Serverless
11 359 (4.33%) SaaS
12 313 (3.78%) Azure Monitor
13 309 (3.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 290 (3.50%) Power Automate
15 286 (3.45%) Azure AKS
16 282 (3.40%) Dynamics 365
17 278 (3.35%) PowerApps
18 275 (3.32%) Snowflake
19 229 (2.76%) Azure AI
20 223 (2.69%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 531 (6.41%) Firewall
2 416 (5.02%) DNS
3 315 (3.80%) VPN
4 310 (3.74%) Network Security
5 225 (2.71%) DHCP
6 196 (2.36%) WAN
7 167 (2.01%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.42%) LAN
9 111 (1.34%) BGP
10 103 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 94 (1.13%) VLAN
12 89 (1.07%) OSPF
13 85 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 75 (0.90%) SSL
15 61 (0.74%) SAN
16 58 (0.70%) Wireless
17 47 (0.57%) HTTP
17 47 (0.57%) IPsec
18 45 (0.54%) VXLAN
19 40 (0.48%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 720 (8.69%) Power BI
2 469 (5.66%) SQL Server
3 407 (4.91%) Data Warehouse
4 375 (4.52%) Data Lake
5 291 (3.51%) PostgreSQL
6 247 (2.98%) Metadata
7 220 (2.65%) NoSQL
8 211 (2.55%) Azure SQL Database
9 141 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 135 (1.63%) Delta Lake
11 107 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 103 (1.24%) MongoDB
13 99 (1.19%) Big Data
14 88 (1.06%) MySQL
15 69 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
16 66 (0.80%) Tableau
17 64 (0.77%) Redis
18 61 (0.74%) Snowflake Schema
19 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
20 57 (0.69%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 693 (8.36%) Git
2 612 (7.38%) JIRA
3 465 (5.61%) Jenkins
4 359 (4.33%) GitLab
5 133 (1.60%) Selenium
6 77 (0.93%) Postman
7 62 (0.75%) JUnit
8 61 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 59 (0.71%) JMeter
10 54 (0.65%) Maven
11 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 50 (0.60%) Cucumber
13 46 (0.56%) Claude Code
13 46 (0.56%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.54%) Gradle
14 45 (0.54%) REST Assured
15 39 (0.47%) WebDriver
16 37 (0.45%) MLflow
17 32 (0.39%) LoadRunner
18 30 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 2,255 (27.21%) Social Skills
2 1,549 (18.69%) Finance
3 965 (11.64%) Public Sector
4 818 (9.87%) Analytical Skills
5 449 (5.42%) Banking
6 232 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 216 (2.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 195 (2.35%) Retail
9 179 (2.16%) Legal
10 106 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
11 101 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 95 (1.15%) Telecoms
13 83 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 77 (0.93%) Aerospace
14 77 (0.93%) Investment Banking
14 77 (0.93%) Marketing
15 75 (0.90%) Law
16 72 (0.87%) Military
17 64 (0.77%) Financial Institution
18 58 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,550 (18.70%) Architect
2 1,040 (12.55%) Senior
3 990 (11.94%) Developer
4 725 (8.75%) Azure Engineer
5 678 (8.18%) Lead
6 599 (7.23%) Data Engineer
7 492 (5.94%) Analyst
8 455 (5.49%) DevOps Engineer
8 455 (5.49%) Solutions Architect
9 360 (4.34%) Cloud Engineer
10 316 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 311 (3.75%) Consultant
12 273 (3.29%) Data Architect
13 242 (2.92%) Platform Engineer
14 227 (2.74%) Azure Architect
15 201 (2.43%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 199 (2.40%) Technical Architect
17 189 (2.28%) Security Architect
18 188 (2.27%) Project Manager
19 180 (2.17%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,388 (16.75%) Terraform
2 674 (8.13%) REST
3 627 (7.57%) .NET
4 374 (4.51%) Kafka
5 303 (3.66%) React
6 287 (3.46%) RESTful
7 278 (3.35%) PySpark
8 249 (3.00%) OAuth
9 229 (2.76%) JSON
10 204 (2.46%) Spring
11 180 (2.17%) Spring Boot
12 159 (1.92%) Node.js
13 151 (1.82%) AngularJS
13 151 (1.82%) OpenID
14 149 (1.80%) HTML
14 149 (1.80%) SAML
15 144 (1.74%) OAuth2
16 140 (1.69%) Middleware
17 139 (1.68%) Playwright
18 132 (1.59%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 911 (10.99%) Cloud Native
2 412 (4.97%) Onboarding
3 367 (4.43%) Product Ownership
4 286 (3.45%) Enterprise Software
5 282 (3.40%) AI Agents
6 273 (3.29%) Distributed Systems
7 271 (3.27%) Hybrid Cloud
8 247 (2.98%) Data Centre
9 233 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
10 175 (2.11%) Security Posture
11 164 (1.98%) Management Information System
12 143 (1.73%) Data Structures
13 140 (1.69%) Public Cloud
14 117 (1.41%) PKI
15 115 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
16 112 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
17 104 (1.25%) Replication
18 92 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
19 82 (0.99%) CMDB
20 78 (0.94%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 988 (11.92%) Windows
2 514 (6.20%) Linux
3 372 (4.49%) Windows Server
4 133 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.05%) Android
5 87 (1.05%) Unix
6 84 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 83 (1.00%) Apple iOS
8 73 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 61 (0.74%) VMS
10 54 (0.65%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.23%) CentOS
13 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.11%) Debian
16 6 (0.072%) AIX
16 6 (0.072%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,070 (37.04%) DevOps
2 2,622 (31.64%) CI/CD
3 2,078 (25.07%) Agile
4 1,386 (16.72%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,376 (16.60%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,364 (16.46%) AI
7 1,229 (14.83%) Migration
8 1,142 (13.78%) Analytics
9 1,115 (13.45%) Problem-Solving
10 940 (11.34%) Continuous Improvement
11 919 (11.09%) Data Modelling
12 820 (9.89%) Roadmaps
13 802 (9.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 777 (9.38%) Business Intelligence
15 769 (9.28%) Containerisation
16 767 (9.25%) Data Pipeline
17 732 (8.83%) Microservices
18 715 (8.63%) Technical Leadership
19 696 (8.40%) Test Automation
20 666 (8.04%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,908 (23.02%) Python
2 1,623 (19.58%) SQL
3 865 (10.44%) PowerShell
4 688 (8.30%) Java
5 597 (7.20%) C#
6 484 (5.84%) JavaScript
7 400 (4.83%) Bash
8 350 (4.22%) Bicep
9 287 (3.46%) TypeScript
10 104 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 92 (1.11%) T-SQL
12 68 (0.82%) Go
13 64 (0.77%) Scala
14 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
15 51 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.49%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.49%) R
17 36 (0.43%) Kotlin
18 32 (0.39%) Groovy
19 25 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,155 (26.00%) Security Cleared
2 1,739 (20.98%) SC Cleared
3 565 (6.82%) Degree
4 458 (5.53%) Azure Certification
5 292 (3.52%) DV Cleared
6 270 (3.26%) CISSP
7 261 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
8 243 (2.93%) Microsoft Certification
9 204 (2.46%) AWS Certification
9 204 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
10 186 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
11 139 (1.68%) CISM
12 93 (1.12%) CCNP
13 88 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 88 (1.06%) PMI Certification
14 84 (1.01%) PMP
15 69 (0.83%) ISTQB
16 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
17 59 (0.71%) CCSP
18 46 (0.56%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 612 (7.38%) Data Quality
2 451 (5.44%) QA
3 317 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 315 (3.80%) NIST
5 312 (3.76%) GDPR
6 198 (2.39%) Accessibility
7 120 (1.45%) NCSC
8 109 (1.32%) SLA
9 80 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
9 80 (0.97%) WCAG
10 78 (0.94%) GRC
11 75 (0.90%) PCI DSS
12 58 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 54 (0.65%) PMO
14 43 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 27 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
17 22 (0.27%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,012 (12.21%) Active Directory
2 916 (11.05%) Docker
3 251 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 152 (1.83%) Virtual Desktop
5 142 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
6 137 (1.65%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.80%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.33%) Firmware
11 19 (0.23%) NFS
12 17 (0.21%) IAG
13 13 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 12 (0.14%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) Ceph
15 9 (0.11%) zsh
16 8 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.084%) Squid
18 6 (0.072%) BitLocker
18 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 1,282 (15.47%) Kubernetes
2 452 (5.45%) Ansible
3 434 (5.24%) Microsoft Intune
4 263 (3.17%) Grafana
5 208 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 146 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
7 125 (1.51%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 60 (0.72%) Argo
10 48 (0.58%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 32 (0.39%) SCOM
15 25 (0.30%) Istio
16 23 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.23%) QRadar
18 18 (0.22%) HAProxy
18 18 (0.22%) Packer
19 16 (0.19%) CASB
Vendors
1 2,905 (35.05%) Microsoft
2 842 (10.16%) Databricks
3 412 (4.97%) ServiceNow
4 362 (4.37%) Google
4 362 (4.37%) VMware
5 332 (4.01%) Oracle
6 247 (2.98%) Cisco
7 223 (2.69%) SAP
8 213 (2.57%) Splunk
9 204 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 175 (2.11%) Salesforce
11 153 (1.85%) CyberArk
11 153 (1.85%) Palo Alto
12 136 (1.64%) Foundry
13 116 (1.40%) Dynatrace
14 96 (1.16%) Informatica
15 92 (1.11%) Zscaler
16 83 (1.00%) Okta
17 80 (0.97%) Fortinet
18 74 (0.89%) IBM