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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,791 4,519 6,008
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.42% 15.15% 13.69%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.49% 40.07% 42.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,468 3,155 4,322
10th Percentile £363 £350 £355
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 35 53
10th Percentile £19.25 £25.58 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.00 £29.13 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +38.96% -36.57%
75th Percentile £75.00 £78.10 £61.60
90th Percentile £95.63 £95.50 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £67.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -14.81% +28.57% -12.50%

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 17,914 11,278 14,248
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.45% 37.82% 32.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,970 7,607 10,025
10th Percentile £326 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £620 £635
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 586 278 365
10th Percentile £16.50 £15.14 £14.05
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.06 £28.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.36% +27.27% -37.14%
75th Percentile £68.75 £47.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.13 £72.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £20.77
% change year-on-year +98.73% -9.15% -23.07%

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 19 June 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 6,597 £525 - 2,191
London +1 3,496 £540 -1.82% 834
UK excluding London +3 3,331 £500 - 1,824
Work from Home -1 2,397 £525 +2.44% 1,024
North of England +7 941 £500 +5.26% 429
South East +2 838 £510 +2.00% 590
Midlands +2 547 £500 - 248
North West +6 480 £500 +1.83% 250
South West +6 426 £525 +1.69% 235
West Midlands +1 408 £500 -4.76% 144
Yorkshire +8 381 £500 +5.26% 111
Scotland +10 332 £525 +5.00% 78
East of England +7 167 £550 -4.76% 171
East Midlands +6 129 £494 +6.76% 103
Wales 0 107 £425 +6.25% 60
North East +4 92 £525 +5.00% 70
Northern Ireland +13 19 £538 +13.16% 53
Channel Islands +2 8 £450 -34.07%

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
1 375 (4.81%) SharePoint
2 239 (3.07%) Confluence
3 187 (2.40%) Microsoft Exchange
4 185 (2.37%) Apache Spark
5 119 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.37%) Apache
7 42 (0.54%) SAS
8 28 (0.36%) IIS
9 19 (0.24%) CMS
10 17 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 16 (0.21%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.14%) Mendix
14 10 (0.13%) Camunda
14 10 (0.13%) nginx
15 9 (0.12%) Appian
16 8 (0.10%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.10%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 107 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
3 66 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 39 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 28 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.10%) Revit
10 7 (0.090%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.064%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.064%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.051%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.051%) Notion
12 4 (0.051%) Trello
13 2 (0.026%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.013%) InDesign
14 1 (0.013%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.013%) Sketch
14 1 (0.013%) Weka
Business Applications
1 106 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.14%) Maximo
6 10 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 9 (0.12%) SAP MDG
8 8 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
8 8 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 7 (0.090%) Shopify
10 6 (0.077%) Oracle EBS
10 6 (0.077%) SimCorp Dimension
10 6 (0.077%) Unit4 Business World
11 5 (0.064%) Endur
11 5 (0.064%) SAP MM
12 4 (0.051%) Dynamics GP
12 4 (0.051%) Magento
12 4 (0.051%) NetSuite
12 4 (0.051%) Oracle FAH
Cloud Services
1 2,687 (34.49%) AWS
2 1,596 (20.49%) Azure DevOps
3 1,294 (16.61%) GCP
4 1,011 (12.98%) Power Platform
5 962 (12.35%) Entra ID
6 786 (10.09%) Microsoft 365
7 702 (9.01%) GitHub
8 467 (5.99%) Azure Data Factory
9 428 (5.49%) GitHub Actions
10 386 (4.95%) Serverless
11 305 (3.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 304 (3.90%) SaaS
13 284 (3.65%) Azure AKS
14 263 (3.38%) Power Automate
15 250 (3.21%) Azure Monitor
15 250 (3.21%) Dynamics 365
16 242 (3.11%) PaaS
17 234 (3.00%) PowerApps
18 210 (2.70%) Azure AI
19 208 (2.67%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 451 (5.79%) Firewall
2 336 (4.31%) DNS
3 262 (3.36%) Network Security
4 255 (3.27%) VPN
5 224 (2.88%) WAN
6 174 (2.23%) DHCP
7 132 (1.69%) LAN
8 123 (1.58%) SD-WAN
9 96 (1.23%) TCP/IP
10 91 (1.17%) BGP
11 88 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
12 71 (0.91%) VLAN
13 70 (0.90%) OSPF
14 61 (0.78%) Kerberos
15 59 (0.76%) SSL
16 54 (0.69%) SAN
17 49 (0.63%) Wireless
18 48 (0.62%) VXLAN
19 43 (0.55%) IPsec
20 40 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 677 (8.69%) Power BI
2 440 (5.65%) SQL Server
3 373 (4.79%) Data Warehouse
4 372 (4.77%) Data Lake
5 269 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
6 230 (2.95%) Azure SQL Database
7 205 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 191 (2.45%) Metadata
9 140 (1.80%) Delta Lake
10 126 (1.62%) Relational Database
11 116 (1.49%) Big Data
12 100 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 92 (1.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 77 (0.99%) Tableau
15 71 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
16 65 (0.83%) MySQL
17 62 (0.80%) Oracle Database
18 61 (0.78%) BigQuery
19 54 (0.69%) Star Schema
20 49 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 577 (7.41%) JIRA
2 564 (7.24%) Git
3 393 (5.04%) Jenkins
4 323 (4.15%) GitLab
5 121 (1.55%) Selenium
6 78 (1.00%) JMeter
7 75 (0.96%) Postman
8 61 (0.78%) Cucumber
8 61 (0.78%) JUnit
9 54 (0.69%) REST Assured
10 48 (0.62%) SonarQube
11 47 (0.60%) Visual Studio
12 45 (0.58%) MLflow
13 41 (0.53%) Cypress.io
14 40 (0.51%) WebDriver
15 34 (0.44%) Gatling
16 31 (0.40%) Maven
17 27 (0.35%) LoadRunner
18 25 (0.32%) Artifactory
18 25 (0.32%) NUnit
General
1 1,969 (25.27%) Social Skills
2 1,462 (18.77%) Finance
3 864 (11.09%) Public Sector
4 692 (8.88%) Analytical Skills
5 403 (5.17%) Banking
6 226 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
7 200 (2.57%) Legal
8 158 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 138 (1.77%) Retail
10 93 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 77 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
12 69 (0.89%) Financial Institution
12 69 (0.89%) Law
13 67 (0.86%) Investment Banking
14 64 (0.82%) Front Office
14 64 (0.82%) Marketing
15 63 (0.81%) Telecoms
16 59 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
17 52 (0.67%) Manufacturing
18 47 (0.60%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,373 (17.62%) Architect
2 994 (12.76%) Developer
3 943 (12.10%) Senior
4 699 (8.97%) Azure Engineer
5 595 (7.64%) Lead
6 594 (7.62%) Data Engineer
7 472 (6.06%) Analyst
8 415 (5.33%) DevOps Engineer
9 384 (4.93%) Solutions Architect
10 329 (4.22%) Consultant
11 284 (3.65%) Cloud Engineer
12 269 (3.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 217 (2.79%) Azure Architect
14 216 (2.77%) Data Architect
15 198 (2.54%) Security Engineer
16 195 (2.50%) Platform Engineer
17 183 (2.35%) Technical Architect
18 180 (2.31%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 171 (2.19%) Project Manager
20 168 (2.16%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 616 (7.91%) .NET
2 545 (7.00%) REST
3 346 (4.44%) React
4 277 (3.56%) Kafka
5 266 (3.41%) RESTful
6 261 (3.35%) PySpark
7 225 (2.89%) OAuth
8 213 (2.73%) Node.js
9 212 (2.72%) Spring
10 183 (2.35%) AngularJS
11 180 (2.31%) Spring Boot
12 165 (2.12%) JSON
13 158 (2.03%) LDAP
14 147 (1.89%) SAML
15 142 (1.82%) HTML
15 142 (1.82%) OpenID
16 131 (1.68%) Middleware
16 131 (1.68%) SOAP
17 122 (1.57%) .NET Framework
18 118 (1.51%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 807 (10.36%) Cloud Native
2 327 (4.20%) Onboarding
3 305 (3.91%) Product Ownership
4 253 (3.25%) Data Centre
5 215 (2.76%) Hybrid Cloud
6 210 (2.70%) Distributed Systems
7 199 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 176 (2.26%) Enterprise Software
9 171 (2.19%) AI Agents
10 166 (2.13%) Security Posture
11 157 (2.02%) Public Cloud
12 114 (1.46%) Data Structures
13 108 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
14 98 (1.26%) Management Information System
15 93 (1.19%) Replication
16 85 (1.09%) PKI
17 77 (0.99%) Low-Code
18 76 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
19 73 (0.94%) Enterprise Cloud
20 71 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 891 (11.44%) Windows
2 389 (4.99%) Linux
3 282 (3.62%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.41%) Windows 10
5 78 (1.00%) Apple iOS
6 73 (0.94%) Unix
7 69 (0.89%) Android
7 69 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 66 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 65 (0.83%) VMS
10 31 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
11 30 (0.39%) Ubuntu
12 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
12 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
13 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.14%) CentOS
15 10 (0.13%) Debian
15 10 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.090%) CoreOS
16 7 (0.090%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,891 (37.11%) DevOps
2 2,415 (31.00%) CI/CD
3 1,871 (24.01%) Agile
4 1,147 (14.72%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,146 (14.71%) AI
6 1,120 (14.38%) Migration
7 1,089 (13.98%) Analytics
8 1,059 (13.59%) Problem-Solving
9 871 (11.18%) Data Modelling
10 864 (11.09%) Stakeholder Management
11 769 (9.87%) Continuous Improvement
12 728 (9.34%) Data Pipeline
13 727 (9.33%) Business Intelligence
14 718 (9.22%) Roadmaps
15 712 (9.14%) Containerisation
16 704 (9.04%) Microservices
17 679 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 677 (8.69%) ETL
19 615 (7.89%) Test Automation
20 612 (7.86%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,822 (23.39%) Python
2 1,578 (20.25%) SQL
3 752 (9.65%) PowerShell
4 642 (8.24%) Java
5 625 (8.02%) C#
6 465 (5.97%) JavaScript
7 312 (4.00%) TypeScript
8 261 (3.35%) Bicep
9 250 (3.21%) Bash
10 91 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 87 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 79 (1.01%) Scala
13 78 (1.00%) Go
14 49 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.56%) R
16 43 (0.55%) Shell Script
17 36 (0.46%) PL/SQL
18 31 (0.40%) C++
19 30 (0.39%) Kotlin
20 18 (0.23%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,918 (24.62%) Security Cleared
2 1,612 (20.69%) SC Cleared
3 538 (6.91%) Degree
4 404 (5.19%) Azure Certification
5 243 (3.12%) CISSP
6 194 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
7 191 (2.45%) DV Cleared
8 187 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
9 182 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
10 176 (2.26%) AWS Certification
10 176 (2.26%) Microsoft Certification
11 128 (1.64%) CISM
12 84 (1.08%) CCNP
13 82 (1.05%) PMP
14 78 (1.00%) PMI Certification
15 73 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 64 (0.82%) ISTQB
17 56 (0.72%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
19 49 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 539 (6.92%) Data Quality
2 401 (5.15%) QA
3 341 (4.38%) GDPR
4 285 (3.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 268 (3.44%) NIST
6 164 (2.10%) Accessibility
7 115 (1.48%) NCSC
8 97 (1.25%) SLA
9 78 (1.00%) PCI DSS
10 72 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
11 69 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 60 (0.77%) WCAG
13 57 (0.73%) GRC
14 43 (0.55%) PMO
15 38 (0.49%) HIPAA
16 29 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 27 (0.35%) SOC 2
18 26 (0.33%) NIST 800
19 19 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
20 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 936 (12.01%) Active Directory
2 803 (10.31%) Docker
3 222 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
5 122 (1.57%) Virtual Machines
6 116 (1.49%) Hyper-V
7 71 (0.91%) vSphere
8 53 (0.68%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (0.40%) Firmware
10 28 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 22 (0.28%) NFS
12 17 (0.22%) Postfix
13 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.10%) BitLocker
14 8 (0.10%) Varnish
15 6 (0.077%) Ceph
15 6 (0.077%) KVM
15 6 (0.077%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.077%) RACF
16 5 (0.064%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,224 (15.71%) Terraform
2 1,090 (13.99%) Kubernetes
3 410 (5.26%) Microsoft Intune
4 362 (4.65%) Ansible
5 208 (2.67%) Grafana
6 182 (2.34%) Prometheus
7 166 (2.13%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.35%) SCCM
9 72 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.58%) FortiGate
11 41 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
12 39 (0.50%) Argo
12 39 (0.50%) Progress Chef
13 37 (0.47%) Puppet
14 30 (0.39%) Istio
15 23 (0.30%) vCenter Server
16 21 (0.27%) HP ALM
17 20 (0.26%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.21%) Packer
19 14 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 2,467 (31.66%) Microsoft
2 741 (9.51%) Databricks
3 339 (4.35%) ServiceNow
4 299 (3.84%) VMware
5 291 (3.74%) Google
6 282 (3.62%) Oracle
7 219 (2.81%) SAP
8 211 (2.71%) Cisco
9 203 (2.61%) OpenAI
10 152 (1.95%) Splunk
11 142 (1.82%) Palo Alto
12 136 (1.75%) Salesforce
13 134 (1.72%) CyberArk
14 120 (1.54%) Foundry
15 105 (1.35%) Okta
16 86 (1.10%) Dynatrace
17 85 (1.09%) Informatica
18 78 (1.00%) Zscaler
19 70 (0.90%) Citrix
20 65 (0.83%) Fortinet