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

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,898 4,727 6,076
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.98% 16.02% 13.65%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.79% 42.23% 41.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,879 3,334 4,400
10th Percentile £354 £350 £340
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.25%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 123 42 73
10th Percentile £25.18 £22.50 £17.78
25th Percentile £45.73 £23.80 £22.08
Median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -19.69%
75th Percentile £66.63 £71.56 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £79.87 £70.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -28.95%

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 16,120 11,193 14,535
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 37.35% 37.93% 32.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,001 7,744 10,327
10th Percentile £313 £313 £287
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £633
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £488
% change year-on-year -2.56% - -3.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 438 196 360
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £20.18 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +47.06% +19.33% -14.52%
75th Percentile £61.81 £43.10 £43.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £76.72 £62.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.15 £24.00 £17.80
% change year-on-year +79.78% +34.83% -19.24%

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 14 March 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 14 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the UK

Azure
Top 17 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 14 March 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 5,817 £525 -1.06% 2,725
London +1 3,154 £540 -1.82% 1,050
UK excluding London 0 2,813 £500 - 2,145
Work from Home -2 2,110 £525 +0.96% 1,320
North of England +3 785 £492 +3.58% 570
South East -1 745 £500 -9.09% 679
Midlands -3 469 £500 - 302
North West 0 411 £487 -2.70% 291
West Midlands -3 363 £508 -3.24% 179
South West +5 336 £510 -2.95% 245
Yorkshire -3 324 £488 +8.33% 193
Scotland +7 293 £543 +14.21% 123
East of England 0 153 £550 -5.17% 182
East Midlands -4 102 £430 -9.47% 120
Wales -3 85 £400 -7.25% 62
North East -3 52 £525 +10.53% 94
Northern Ireland +2 13 £475 - 12

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
1 307 (4.45%) SharePoint
2 217 (3.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 188 (2.73%) Apache Spark
4 184 (2.67%) Confluence
5 100 (1.45%) Apache
6 94 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.33%) IIS
7 23 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 20 (0.29%) SAS
9 17 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 17 (0.25%) CMS
10 15 (0.22%) Appian
11 14 (0.20%) Camunda
12 13 (0.19%) Mendix
13 11 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 10 (0.14%) GeoServer
15 9 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 8 (0.12%) Smallworld
17 7 (0.10%) Jupyter
18 6 (0.087%) Anypoint
Applications
1 124 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.62%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 15 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.087%) Trello
8 5 (0.072%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.072%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.072%) Weka
9 4 (0.058%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
10 2 (0.029%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.014%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.014%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.014%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 108 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 80 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.17%) Maximo
4 10 (0.14%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.12%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.087%) Dynamics NAV
8 6 (0.087%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.087%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.087%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.072%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.072%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.072%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.058%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.058%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.058%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,413 (34.98%) AWS
2 1,401 (20.31%) Azure DevOps
3 1,349 (19.56%) GCP
4 928 (13.45%) Power Platform
5 841 (12.19%) Entra ID
6 764 (11.08%) Microsoft 365
7 727 (10.54%) GitHub
8 498 (7.22%) Azure Data Factory
9 428 (6.20%) GitHub Actions
10 419 (6.07%) Serverless
11 319 (4.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 290 (4.20%) Dynamics 365
13 281 (4.07%) SaaS
14 264 (3.83%) Power Automate
15 260 (3.77%) Azure AKS
16 249 (3.61%) Azure Functions
17 246 (3.57%) Azure Monitor
18 234 (3.39%) PaaS
19 226 (3.28%) Snowflake
20 211 (3.06%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 461 (6.68%) Firewall
2 289 (4.19%) DNS
3 240 (3.48%) VPN
4 223 (3.23%) Network Security
5 177 (2.57%) WAN
6 166 (2.41%) DHCP
7 122 (1.77%) LAN
8 101 (1.46%) TCP/IP
9 92 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
10 89 (1.29%) SD-WAN
11 69 (1.00%) Kerberos
12 65 (0.94%) VLAN
13 56 (0.81%) HTTP
14 46 (0.67%) BGP
15 43 (0.62%) Wireless
16 39 (0.57%) OSPF
17 36 (0.52%) Internet
18 35 (0.51%) SSL
19 33 (0.48%) SAN
20 32 (0.46%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 633 (9.18%) Power BI
2 403 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 368 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
4 337 (4.89%) Data Lake
5 267 (3.87%) PostgreSQL
6 258 (3.74%) Azure SQL Database
7 205 (2.97%) NoSQL
8 168 (2.44%) Metadata
9 136 (1.97%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.70%) Relational Database
11 109 (1.58%) Big Data
12 99 (1.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 87 (1.26%) MongoDB
14 81 (1.17%) MySQL
15 77 (1.12%) Tableau
16 68 (0.99%) Oracle Database
17 67 (0.97%) BigQuery
18 57 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
19 50 (0.72%) Hadoop
20 49 (0.71%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 532 (7.71%) Git
2 479 (6.94%) JIRA
3 366 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 275 (3.99%) GitLab
5 134 (1.94%) Selenium
6 93 (1.35%) Postman
7 83 (1.20%) JMeter
8 79 (1.15%) Cucumber
9 72 (1.04%) JUnit
10 50 (0.72%) MLflow
11 49 (0.71%) Cypress.io
11 49 (0.71%) REST Assured
12 47 (0.68%) Visual Studio
13 46 (0.67%) SonarQube
14 34 (0.49%) Oracle APEX
15 32 (0.46%) TestRail
16 31 (0.45%) Artifactory
17 30 (0.43%) SpecFlow
17 30 (0.43%) WebDriver
18 27 (0.39%) Zephyr
General
1 2,010 (29.14%) Social Skills
2 1,239 (17.96%) Finance
3 817 (11.84%) Public Sector
4 688 (9.97%) Analytical Skills
5 377 (5.47%) Banking
6 218 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
7 156 (2.26%) Legal
8 113 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 107 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
10 89 (1.29%) Retail
11 86 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
12 82 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
13 78 (1.13%) Marketing
14 74 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 65 (0.94%) Financial Institution
16 59 (0.86%) Investment Banking
17 56 (0.81%) Law
18 53 (0.77%) Front Office
19 51 (0.74%) Manufacturing
20 41 (0.59%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,177 (17.06%) Architect
2 975 (14.13%) Developer
3 775 (11.24%) Senior
4 594 (8.61%) Azure Engineer
5 569 (8.25%) Data Engineer
6 519 (7.52%) Lead
7 436 (6.32%) Analyst
8 334 (4.84%) DevOps Engineer
9 324 (4.70%) Solutions Architect
10 309 (4.48%) Consultant
11 192 (2.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 186 (2.70%) Cloud Engineer
13 181 (2.62%) Azure Architect
14 180 (2.61%) Security Engineer
15 163 (2.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 156 (2.26%) Senior Developer
17 152 (2.20%) Data Architect
18 148 (2.15%) Platform Engineer
19 140 (2.03%) Tester
20 139 (2.02%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 558 (8.09%) .NET
2 493 (7.15%) REST
3 336 (4.87%) React
4 266 (3.86%) PySpark
5 262 (3.80%) RESTful
6 253 (3.67%) Kafka
7 252 (3.65%) Node.js
8 219 (3.17%) Spring
9 208 (3.02%) OAuth
10 199 (2.88%) AngularJS
11 180 (2.61%) Spring Boot
12 176 (2.55%) HTML
13 152 (2.20%) LDAP
14 151 (2.19%) CSS
15 147 (2.13%) PyTorch
16 142 (2.06%) SOAP
17 141 (2.04%) JSON
18 133 (1.93%) TensorFlow
19 130 (1.88%) Middleware
20 128 (1.86%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 634 (9.19%) Cloud Native
2 271 (3.93%) Onboarding
3 245 (3.55%) Product Ownership
4 183 (2.65%) Data Centre
5 180 (2.61%) Hybrid Cloud
6 172 (2.49%) Security Posture
7 163 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
8 158 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
9 132 (1.91%) Public Cloud
10 129 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
11 113 (1.64%) AI Agents
12 88 (1.28%) Data Structures
13 85 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
14 82 (1.19%) Algorithms
15 79 (1.15%) Replication
16 74 (1.07%) Management Information System
17 67 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
18 66 (0.96%) Low-Code
19 65 (0.94%) NHS
20 61 (0.88%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 744 (10.79%) Windows
2 370 (5.36%) Linux
3 219 (3.17%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.71%) Windows 10
5 76 (1.10%) Unix
6 66 (0.96%) VMS
7 48 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 42 (0.61%) Mac OS
9 35 (0.51%) Apple iOS
10 27 (0.39%) Android
11 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 17 (0.25%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.12%) CentOS
15 8 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.087%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.087%) Solaris
16 6 (0.087%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.072%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,554 (37.03%) DevOps
2 2,132 (30.91%) CI/CD
3 1,667 (24.17%) Agile
4 1,189 (17.24%) Problem-Solving
5 1,048 (15.19%) Analytics
6 950 (13.77%) AI
7 914 (13.25%) Infrastructure as Code
8 898 (13.02%) Migration
9 731 (10.60%) Data Modelling
10 718 (10.41%) Stakeholder Management
11 703 (10.19%) Business Intelligence
12 675 (9.79%) Containerisation
13 660 (9.57%) Continuous Improvement
14 630 (9.13%) Microservices
15 628 (9.10%) Data Pipeline
16 620 (8.99%) ETL
17 616 (8.93%) Machine Learning
18 596 (8.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 574 (8.32%) Test Automation
20 564 (8.18%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,813 (26.28%) Python
2 1,560 (22.62%) SQL
3 740 (10.73%) PowerShell
4 604 (8.76%) C#
5 587 (8.51%) Java
6 514 (7.45%) JavaScript
7 305 (4.42%) TypeScript
8 258 (3.74%) Bash
9 213 (3.09%) Bicep
10 99 (1.44%) Scala
11 81 (1.17%) Kusto Query Language
12 80 (1.16%) Go
13 79 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 78 (1.13%) PL/SQL
15 75 (1.09%) T-SQL
16 49 (0.71%) Shell Script
17 46 (0.67%) R
18 39 (0.57%) C++
19 28 (0.41%) PHP
20 25 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,646 (23.86%) Security Cleared
2 1,366 (19.80%) SC Cleared
3 558 (8.09%) Degree
4 374 (5.42%) Azure Certification
5 222 (3.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 193 (2.80%) CISSP
7 163 (2.36%) Microsoft Certification
8 148 (2.15%) AWS Certification
9 136 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
10 132 (1.91%) DV Cleared
11 124 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
12 123 (1.78%) CISM
13 94 (1.36%) Master's Degree
14 68 (0.99%) TOGAF Certification
15 64 (0.93%) CCNP
16 63 (0.91%) ISTQB
17 60 (0.87%) PMI Certification
18 57 (0.83%) PMP
19 44 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 37 (0.54%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 480 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 405 (5.87%) GDPR
3 366 (5.31%) QA
4 302 (4.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 243 (3.52%) NIST
6 136 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 101 (1.46%) NCSC
8 85 (1.23%) PCI DSS
9 61 (0.88%) SLA
10 60 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 58 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
12 52 (0.75%) PMO
13 38 (0.55%) HIPAA
14 36 (0.52%) GRC
15 35 (0.51%) WCAG
16 30 (0.43%) SOC 2
17 24 (0.35%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 24 (0.35%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 878 (12.73%) Active Directory
2 826 (11.97%) Docker
3 199 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 99 (1.44%) Hyper-V
5 95 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
6 73 (1.06%) vSphere
7 72 (1.04%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.35%) VMware NSX
9 21 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
10 18 (0.26%) Firmware
11 15 (0.22%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Postfix
13 7 (0.10%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.10%) KVM
13 7 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.087%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.087%) GPFS
14 6 (0.087%) Lustre
14 6 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.087%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,071 (15.53%) Terraform
2 1,016 (14.73%) Kubernetes
3 360 (5.22%) Microsoft Intune
4 316 (4.58%) Ansible
5 181 (2.62%) Grafana
6 163 (2.36%) Single Sign-On
7 157 (2.28%) Prometheus
8 128 (1.86%) SCCM
9 75 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.74%) Argo
11 32 (0.46%) Istio
12 29 (0.42%) FortiGate
13 27 (0.39%) Puppet
14 25 (0.36%) vRealize
15 24 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 23 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
17 21 (0.30%) HP ALM
17 21 (0.30%) vCenter Server
18 16 (0.23%) Nmap
19 15 (0.22%) Kibana
Vendors
1 2,199 (31.88%) Microsoft
2 695 (10.08%) Databricks
3 346 (5.02%) Google
4 341 (4.94%) Oracle
5 283 (4.10%) ServiceNow
6 270 (3.91%) VMware
7 203 (2.94%) SAP
8 177 (2.57%) OpenAI
9 168 (2.44%) Cisco
10 154 (2.23%) Splunk
11 126 (1.83%) CyberArk
12 113 (1.64%) Foundry
13 109 (1.58%) Palo Alto
14 93 (1.35%) Salesforce
15 89 (1.29%) Okta
16 77 (1.12%) Red Hat
17 71 (1.03%) IBM
18 67 (0.97%) BeyondTrust
18 67 (0.97%) Citrix
18 67 (0.97%) Informatica