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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,266 4,994 5,447
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.13% 15.22% 14.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.70% 40.01% 42.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,772 3,413 3,682
10th Percentile £363 £350 £340
25th Percentile £445 £415 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.12% -1.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £719 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.03% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 44 34
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.50 £20.34
25th Percentile £21.29 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £39.50 £33.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.32% -4.61% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.00 £65.99 £59.38
90th Percentile £100.00 £88.38 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £19.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +107.89% -58.86% -

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 18,915 12,482 12,956
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.61% 38.04% 34.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,538 8,334 8,575
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £409 £420
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 637 293 188
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £30.00 £26.00 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% -24.56% +4.44%
75th Percentile £67.50 £47.50 £64.73
90th Percentile £79.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £19.27 £33.00
% change year-on-year +55.68% -41.61% +42.00%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -1 7,034 £530 +0.95% 8,479
London 0 3,703 £550 - 3,883
UK excluding London 0 3,471 £510 +2.03% 5,489
Work from Home -2 2,507 £529 +5.80% 4,400
North of England +3 1,006 £500 +5.26% 1,407
South East +1 893 £525 +5.00% 1,362
Midlands +1 631 £500 -3.24% 772
North West +5 491 £500 +5.26% 701
West Midlands +2 481 £488 -11.36% 467
Yorkshire +4 427 £500 +2.04% 488
South West +3 410 £550 +7.53% 614
Scotland +1 281 £500 - 510
East of England -1 194 £510 +1.49% 476
East Midlands +3 146 £500 +8.11% 305
North East +5 102 £513 +2.50% 230
Wales -2 82 £438 -2.78% 239
Northern Ireland +15 13 £650 - 147
Channel Islands -9 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
1 466 (5.64%) SharePoint
2 269 (3.25%) Confluence
3 195 (2.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 187 (2.26%) Apache Spark
5 157 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
6 118 (1.43%) Apache
7 36 (0.44%) SAS
8 31 (0.38%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) CMS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 15 (0.18%) nginx
11 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.17%) OpenStack
11 14 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 9 (0.11%) Umbraco
13 8 (0.097%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.085%) Mendix
15 6 (0.073%) Ethereum
15 6 (0.073%) Hyperledger
15 6 (0.073%) Traefik
Applications
1 124 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 42 (0.51%) Chatbot
5 42 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.15%) AutoCAD
7 8 (0.097%) Trello
8 7 (0.085%) CPLEX
8 7 (0.085%) Revit
9 5 (0.060%) Notion
9 5 (0.060%) Spreadsheet
10 3 (0.036%) 1Password
10 3 (0.036%) Houdini
10 3 (0.036%) Mingle
10 3 (0.036%) NUKE
11 2 (0.024%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.024%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.024%) Windchill
12 1 (0.012%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 131 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.17%) SAP MDG
5 13 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 13 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 11 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 10 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.097%) Cloudability
9 8 (0.097%) Magento
10 7 (0.085%) Shopify
11 6 (0.073%) R3 Corda
11 6 (0.073%) Teamcenter
11 6 (0.073%) Temenos T24
12 5 (0.060%) Dynamics NAV
12 5 (0.060%) FLEXCUBE
12 5 (0.060%) Maximo
13 4 (0.048%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,971 (35.94%) AWS
2 1,747 (21.13%) Azure DevOps
3 1,478 (17.88%) GCP
4 1,137 (13.76%) Entra ID
5 1,066 (12.90%) Power Platform
6 887 (10.73%) Microsoft 365
7 874 (10.57%) GitHub
8 494 (5.98%) GitHub Actions
9 463 (5.60%) Azure Data Factory
10 374 (4.52%) Serverless
11 365 (4.42%) SaaS
12 325 (3.93%) Azure Monitor
13 299 (3.62%) Dynamics 365
14 297 (3.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 297 (3.59%) Power Automate
15 294 (3.56%) Snowflake
16 291 (3.52%) Azure AKS
17 280 (3.39%) PowerApps
18 251 (3.04%) Azure AI
19 247 (2.99%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 516 (6.24%) Firewall
2 416 (5.03%) DNS
3 316 (3.82%) VPN
4 295 (3.57%) Network Security
5 230 (2.78%) DHCP
6 179 (2.17%) WAN
7 166 (2.01%) TCP/IP
8 105 (1.27%) BGP
9 104 (1.26%) LAN
10 98 (1.19%) SD-WAN
11 84 (1.02%) OSPF
12 82 (0.99%) VLAN
13 80 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
14 70 (0.85%) SSL
15 67 (0.81%) Wireless
16 63 (0.76%) SAN
17 46 (0.56%) HTTP
18 44 (0.53%) IPsec
19 41 (0.50%) VXLAN
20 39 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 692 (8.37%) Power BI
2 476 (5.76%) SQL Server
3 401 (4.85%) Data Warehouse
4 388 (4.69%) Data Lake
5 291 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 251 (3.04%) Metadata
7 210 (2.54%) NoSQL
8 206 (2.49%) Azure SQL Database
9 150 (1.81%) Relational Database
10 130 (1.57%) Delta Lake
11 115 (1.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 110 (1.33%) MySQL
13 105 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 88 (1.06%) Big Data
15 71 (0.86%) Redis
16 70 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
17 65 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
18 63 (0.76%) BigQuery
19 61 (0.74%) Oracle Database
20 55 (0.67%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 756 (9.15%) Git
2 606 (7.33%) JIRA
3 476 (5.76%) Jenkins
4 373 (4.51%) GitLab
5 138 (1.67%) Selenium
6 88 (1.06%) Postman
7 67 (0.81%) Cucumber
8 63 (0.76%) Cypress.io
8 63 (0.76%) JUnit
9 60 (0.73%) Claude Code
10 58 (0.70%) JMeter
11 53 (0.64%) Maven
11 53 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 51 (0.62%) Gradle
12 51 (0.62%) Visual Studio
13 47 (0.57%) REST Assured
14 36 (0.44%) WebDriver
15 35 (0.42%) Bitbucket
16 33 (0.40%) LoadRunner
17 31 (0.38%) MLflow
General
1 2,296 (27.78%) Social Skills
2 1,594 (19.28%) Finance
3 958 (11.59%) Public Sector
4 809 (9.79%) Analytical Skills
5 499 (6.04%) Banking
6 220 (2.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 217 (2.63%) Retail
8 202 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
9 172 (2.08%) Legal
10 115 (1.39%) Manufacturing
11 114 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
12 98 (1.19%) Investment Banking
13 95 (1.15%) Marketing
14 91 (1.10%) Telecoms
15 87 (1.05%) Aerospace
16 83 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
17 76 (0.92%) Military
18 66 (0.80%) Law
19 61 (0.74%) Local Government
20 60 (0.73%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,578 (19.09%) Architect
2 1,054 (12.75%) Senior
3 1,016 (12.29%) Developer
4 723 (8.75%) Azure Engineer
5 687 (8.31%) Lead
6 581 (7.03%) Data Engineer
7 490 (5.93%) Solutions Architect
8 462 (5.59%) DevOps Engineer
9 457 (5.53%) Analyst
10 382 (4.62%) Cloud Engineer
11 322 (3.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 318 (3.85%) Consultant
13 268 (3.24%) Data Architect
14 226 (2.73%) Platform Engineer
15 218 (2.64%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 210 (2.54%) Azure Architect
17 202 (2.44%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 196 (2.37%) Technical Architect
19 195 (2.36%) Security Engineer
20 181 (2.19%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,413 (17.09%) Terraform
2 769 (9.30%) REST
3 630 (7.62%) .NET
4 402 (4.86%) Kafka
5 314 (3.80%) React
6 300 (3.63%) RESTful
7 272 (3.29%) OAuth
8 263 (3.18%) PySpark
9 242 (2.93%) JSON
10 189 (2.29%) Spring
11 181 (2.19%) Spring Boot
12 167 (2.02%) HTML
13 165 (2.00%) OAuth2
14 164 (1.98%) OpenID
15 154 (1.86%) Middleware
16 151 (1.83%) Node.js
17 150 (1.81%) AngularJS
18 147 (1.78%) SAML
19 146 (1.77%) SOAP
20 134 (1.62%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 936 (11.32%) Cloud Native
2 420 (5.08%) Onboarding
3 388 (4.69%) Product Ownership
4 332 (4.02%) Enterprise Software
5 330 (3.99%) AI Agents
6 283 (3.42%) Distributed Systems
7 282 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
8 255 (3.08%) Data Centre
9 228 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
10 186 (2.25%) Management Information System
11 181 (2.19%) Security Posture
12 151 (1.83%) Data Structures
13 147 (1.78%) Public Cloud
14 132 (1.60%) PKI
15 110 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
16 109 (1.32%) Enterprise Cloud
17 101 (1.22%) Replication
18 95 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
19 91 (1.10%) CMDB
20 89 (1.08%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 1,000 (12.10%) Windows
2 533 (6.45%) Linux
3 388 (4.69%) Windows Server
4 156 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 92 (1.11%) Android
6 88 (1.06%) Apple iOS
7 86 (1.04%) Unix
8 85 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 68 (0.82%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.68%) Ubuntu
11 52 (0.63%) VMS
12 27 (0.33%) CentOS
13 20 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 17 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.085%) Debian
18 6 (0.073%) AIX
18 6 (0.073%) Data ONTAP
18 6 (0.073%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,052 (36.92%) DevOps
2 2,697 (32.63%) CI/CD
3 2,085 (25.22%) Agile
4 1,525 (18.45%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,448 (17.52%) AI
6 1,424 (17.23%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,247 (15.09%) Migration
8 1,145 (13.85%) Problem-Solving
9 1,118 (13.53%) Analytics
10 969 (11.72%) Continuous Improvement
11 898 (10.86%) Data Modelling
12 874 (10.57%) Roadmaps
13 789 (9.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 783 (9.47%) Containerisation
15 757 (9.16%) Business Intelligence
16 756 (9.15%) Test Automation
17 755 (9.13%) Technical Leadership
18 733 (8.87%) Microservices
19 732 (8.86%) Data Pipeline
20 670 (8.11%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 1,929 (23.34%) Python
2 1,590 (19.24%) SQL
3 917 (11.09%) PowerShell
4 687 (8.31%) Java
5 608 (7.36%) C#
6 520 (6.29%) JavaScript
7 427 (5.17%) Bash
8 370 (4.48%) Bicep
9 311 (3.76%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 93 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 81 (0.98%) Go
13 65 (0.79%) Scala
14 63 (0.76%) Shell Script
15 61 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
16 44 (0.53%) PL/SQL
17 37 (0.45%) R
18 33 (0.40%) C++
18 33 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 32 (0.39%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 2,158 (26.11%) Security Cleared
2 1,738 (21.03%) SC Cleared
3 561 (6.79%) Degree
4 473 (5.72%) Azure Certification
5 311 (3.76%) DV Cleared
6 274 (3.31%) BPSS Clearance
7 268 (3.24%) CISSP
8 252 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 217 (2.63%) AWS Certification
10 193 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
11 187 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
12 138 (1.67%) CISM
13 93 (1.13%) PMI Certification
14 91 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 89 (1.08%) PMP
16 83 (1.00%) CCNP
17 65 (0.79%) CCSP
18 64 (0.77%) ISTQB
18 64 (0.77%) Master's Degree
19 51 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 615 (7.44%) Data Quality
2 469 (5.67%) QA
3 300 (3.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 288 (3.48%) NIST
5 286 (3.46%) GDPR
6 212 (2.56%) Accessibility
7 118 (1.43%) NCSC
8 109 (1.32%) SLA
9 82 (0.99%) GRC
9 82 (0.99%) WCAG
10 79 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
11 74 (0.90%) PCI DSS
12 51 (0.62%) PMO
13 49 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 46 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 35 (0.42%) SOC 2
16 26 (0.31%) ISO 20022
17 25 (0.30%) HIPAA
18 22 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,026 (12.41%) Active Directory
2 932 (11.28%) Docker
3 250 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 150 (1.81%) Virtual Machines
5 144 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
6 131 (1.58%) Hyper-V
7 74 (0.90%) vSphere
8 51 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.24%) Firmware
11 17 (0.21%) IAG
12 14 (0.17%) 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 (0.085%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.085%) Ceph
17 6 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.060%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,313 (15.88%) Kubernetes
2 460 (5.56%) Ansible
3 449 (5.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 275 (3.33%) Grafana
5 211 (2.55%) Prometheus
6 145 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
7 142 (1.72%) SCCM
8 63 (0.76%) Argo
9 60 (0.73%) Progress Chef
10 48 (0.58%) Puppet
11 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.41%) SCOM
13 33 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
14 30 (0.36%) Istio
15 24 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 21 (0.25%) CASB
17 19 (0.23%) QRadar
17 19 (0.23%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.21%) Packer
19 14 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 3,026 (36.61%) Microsoft
2 865 (10.46%) Databricks
3 406 (4.91%) ServiceNow
4 405 (4.90%) Google
5 362 (4.38%) VMware
6 346 (4.19%) Oracle
7 238 (2.88%) Cisco
8 233 (2.82%) Splunk
9 228 (2.76%) OpenAI
10 220 (2.66%) SAP
11 188 (2.27%) Salesforce
12 155 (1.88%) Palo Alto
13 145 (1.75%) CyberArk
14 139 (1.68%) Foundry
15 136 (1.65%) Dynatrace
16 90 (1.09%) Zscaler
17 89 (1.08%) IBM
18 82 (0.99%) Informatica
19 80 (0.97%) Fortinet
20 79 (0.96%) MuleSoft