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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,775 4,511 5,980
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.43% 15.16% 13.63%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.51% 40.09% 42.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,457 3,154 4,306
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
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 175 34 52
10th Percentile £19.25 £26.45 £17.80
25th Percentile £33.13 £29.50 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £58.61 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% +59.48% -39.46%
75th Percentile £74.38 £78.40 £60.36
90th Percentile £92.63 £96.63 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £70.00 £51.25
% change year-on-year -17.86% +36.59% -14.58%

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 17,870 11,252 14,202
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.46% 37.80% 32.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,937 7,591 10,000
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.99% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £620 £634
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.74% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 586 279 364
10th Percentile £16.50 £15.14 £14.00
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 £82.31 £72.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £18.87 £20.39
% change year-on-year +98.73% -7.43% -24.50%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 6,580 £525 - 2,770
London +1 3,494 £540 -1.82% 1,116
UK excluding London +3 3,316 £500 - 2,217
Work from Home -1 2,388 £525 +2.14% 1,338
North of England +7 939 £500 +5.26% 526
South East +3 836 £508 +1.50% 641
Midlands +2 542 £500 - 286
North West +6 480 £500 +0.81% 311
South West +6 422 £525 +1.69% 289
West Midlands +1 403 £500 -4.76% 167
Yorkshire +8 378 £500 +5.26% 132
Scotland +11 332 £525 +5.00% 111
East of England +8 166 £550 -5.17% 188
East Midlands +6 129 £494 +6.76% 118
Wales +1 106 £425 +6.25% 65
North East +4 93 £525 +5.00% 85
Northern Ireland +13 19 £538 +13.16% 152
Channel Islands +1 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 (4.82%) SharePoint
2 239 (3.07%) Confluence
3 187 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 185 (2.38%) Apache Spark
5 120 (1.54%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.38%) Apache
7 41 (0.53%) 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 12 (0.15%) Mendix
14 11 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 10 (0.13%) Appian
15 10 (0.13%) Camunda
15 10 (0.13%) nginx
16 9 (0.12%) HCL Notes
17 8 (0.10%) Umbraco
17 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 106 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (0.98%) 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 12 (0.15%) 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
1 107 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (0.99%) 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%) Elite 3E
12 4 (0.051%) Magento
12 4 (0.051%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,671 (34.35%) AWS
2 1,595 (20.51%) Azure DevOps
3 1,282 (16.49%) GCP
4 1,014 (13.04%) Power Platform
5 957 (12.31%) Entra ID
6 791 (10.17%) Microsoft 365
7 703 (9.04%) GitHub
8 471 (6.06%) Azure Data Factory
9 426 (5.48%) GitHub Actions
10 389 (5.00%) Serverless
11 308 (3.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 298 (3.83%) SaaS
13 285 (3.67%) Azure AKS
14 266 (3.42%) Power Automate
15 254 (3.27%) Dynamics 365
16 248 (3.19%) Azure Monitor
17 242 (3.11%) PaaS
18 235 (3.02%) PowerApps
19 209 (2.69%) Azure AI
20 207 (2.66%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 451 (5.80%) Firewall
2 337 (4.33%) DNS
3 261 (3.36%) Network Security
4 253 (3.25%) VPN
5 222 (2.86%) WAN
6 175 (2.25%) DHCP
7 131 (1.68%) LAN
8 122 (1.57%) SD-WAN
9 96 (1.23%) TCP/IP
10 90 (1.16%) BGP
11 88 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
12 71 (0.91%) VLAN
13 70 (0.90%) OSPF
14 60 (0.77%) 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
1 679 (8.73%) Power BI
2 444 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 376 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
4 374 (4.81%) Data Lake
5 270 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 227 (2.92%) Azure SQL Database
7 205 (2.64%) NoSQL
8 190 (2.44%) Metadata
9 143 (1.84%) Delta Lake
10 124 (1.59%) Relational Database
11 115 (1.48%) Big Data
12 99 (1.27%) MongoDB
13 95 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 77 (0.99%) Tableau
15 71 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
16 65 (0.84%) MySQL
17 63 (0.81%) Oracle Database
18 61 (0.78%) BigQuery
19 54 (0.69%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.64%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 572 (7.36%) JIRA
2 559 (7.19%) Git
3 388 (4.99%) Jenkins
4 319 (4.10%) GitLab
5 122 (1.57%) Selenium
6 79 (1.02%) JMeter
7 76 (0.98%) Postman
8 62 (0.80%) Cucumber
9 61 (0.78%) JUnit
10 55 (0.71%) REST Assured
11 48 (0.62%) SonarQube
12 46 (0.59%) MLflow
13 44 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 41 (0.53%) Cypress.io
14 41 (0.53%) WebDriver
15 35 (0.45%) Gatling
16 31 (0.40%) Maven
17 27 (0.35%) LoadRunner
18 26 (0.33%) Artifactory
19 25 (0.32%) NUnit
General
1 1,971 (25.35%) Social Skills
2 1,456 (18.73%) Finance
3 864 (11.11%) Public Sector
4 691 (8.89%) Analytical Skills
5 400 (5.14%) Banking
6 230 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
7 200 (2.57%) Legal
8 156 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 135 (1.74%) Retail
10 93 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
11 78 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
12 71 (0.91%) Financial Institution
13 69 (0.89%) Law
14 67 (0.86%) Investment Banking
14 67 (0.86%) Marketing
15 64 (0.82%) Front Office
16 63 (0.81%) Telecoms
17 58 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
18 52 (0.67%) Manufacturing
19 46 (0.59%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,367 (17.58%) Architect
2 988 (12.71%) Developer
3 943 (12.13%) Senior
4 699 (8.99%) Azure Engineer
5 599 (7.70%) Data Engineer
6 592 (7.61%) Lead
7 475 (6.11%) Analyst
8 417 (5.36%) DevOps Engineer
9 383 (4.93%) Solutions Architect
10 330 (4.24%) Consultant
11 285 (3.67%) Cloud Engineer
12 270 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 218 (2.80%) Azure Architect
14 217 (2.79%) Data Architect
15 198 (2.55%) Security Engineer
16 196 (2.52%) Platform Engineer
17 180 (2.32%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 180 (2.32%) Technical Architect
18 171 (2.20%) Project Manager
19 170 (2.19%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 609 (7.83%) .NET
2 543 (6.98%) REST
3 342 (4.40%) React
4 277 (3.56%) Kafka
5 264 (3.40%) RESTful
6 262 (3.37%) PySpark
7 224 (2.88%) OAuth
8 213 (2.74%) Spring
9 212 (2.73%) Node.js
10 183 (2.35%) AngularJS
11 181 (2.33%) Spring Boot
12 164 (2.11%) JSON
13 157 (2.02%) LDAP
14 146 (1.88%) SAML
15 142 (1.83%) HTML
16 141 (1.81%) OpenID
17 130 (1.67%) SOAP
18 129 (1.66%) Middleware
19 118 (1.52%) .NET Framework
20 117 (1.50%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 799 (10.28%) Cloud Native
2 326 (4.19%) Onboarding
3 302 (3.88%) Product Ownership
4 252 (3.24%) Data Centre
5 212 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
6 208 (2.68%) Distributed Systems
7 198 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 175 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
9 170 (2.19%) AI Agents
10 164 (2.11%) Security Posture
11 158 (2.03%) Public Cloud
12 113 (1.45%) Data Structures
13 108 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
14 95 (1.22%) Management Information System
15 93 (1.20%) Replication
16 83 (1.07%) PKI
17 80 (1.03%) Low-Code
18 76 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
19 71 (0.91%) Enterprise Cloud
20 69 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 890 (11.45%) Windows
2 389 (5.00%) Linux
3 283 (3.64%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.43%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.02%) Apple iOS
6 74 (0.95%) Unix
7 69 (0.89%) Android
7 69 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 66 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 65 (0.84%) VMS
10 32 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
11 30 (0.39%) Ubuntu
12 17 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
13 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.14%) CentOS
16 10 (0.13%) Debian
16 10 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.090%) CoreOS
17 7 (0.090%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,890 (37.17%) DevOps
2 2,409 (30.98%) CI/CD
3 1,863 (23.96%) Agile
4 1,144 (14.71%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,141 (14.68%) AI
6 1,116 (14.35%) Migration
7 1,089 (14.01%) Analytics
8 1,056 (13.58%) Problem-Solving
9 872 (11.22%) Data Modelling
10 861 (11.07%) Stakeholder Management
11 764 (9.83%) Continuous Improvement
12 730 (9.39%) Data Pipeline
13 729 (9.38%) Business Intelligence
14 714 (9.18%) Roadmaps
15 712 (9.16%) Containerisation
16 697 (8.96%) Microservices
17 682 (8.77%) ETL
18 676 (8.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 619 (7.96%) Test Automation
20 614 (7.90%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,820 (23.41%) Python
2 1,582 (20.35%) SQL
3 753 (9.68%) PowerShell
4 639 (8.22%) Java
5 619 (7.96%) C#
6 461 (5.93%) JavaScript
7 305 (3.92%) TypeScript
8 263 (3.38%) Bicep
9 251 (3.23%) Bash
10 91 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.16%) T-SQL
12 79 (1.02%) Scala
13 76 (0.98%) Go
14 49 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
15 43 (0.55%) R
15 43 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 37 (0.48%) PL/SQL
17 30 (0.39%) C++
17 30 (0.39%) Kotlin
18 18 (0.23%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,908 (24.54%) Security Cleared
2 1,606 (20.66%) SC Cleared
3 529 (6.80%) Degree
4 406 (5.22%) Azure Certification
5 241 (3.10%) CISSP
6 196 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
7 186 (2.39%) DV Cleared
8 185 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
9 180 (2.32%) Cisco Certification
10 176 (2.26%) Microsoft Certification
11 174 (2.24%) AWS Certification
12 130 (1.67%) CISM
13 83 (1.07%) CCNP
14 82 (1.05%) PMP
15 78 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 72 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 64 (0.82%) ISTQB
18 54 (0.69%) Master's Degree
18 54 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
19 48 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 541 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 396 (5.09%) QA
3 342 (4.40%) GDPR
4 284 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 267 (3.43%) NIST
6 165 (2.12%) Accessibility
7 114 (1.47%) NCSC
8 96 (1.23%) SLA
9 78 (1.00%) PCI DSS
10 73 (0.94%) 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 26 (0.33%) NIST 800
17 26 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 18 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 18 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 934 (12.01%) Active Directory
2 805 (10.35%) Docker
3 223 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
5 122 (1.57%) Virtual Machines
6 117 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.93%) 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 1,219 (15.68%) Terraform
2 1,088 (13.99%) Kubernetes
3 412 (5.30%) Microsoft Intune
4 357 (4.59%) Ansible
5 208 (2.68%) Grafana
6 182 (2.34%) Prometheus
7 164 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.35%) SCCM
9 72 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.57%) FortiGate
11 41 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
12 39 (0.50%) Argo
12 39 (0.50%) Progress Chef
13 37 (0.48%) Puppet
14 31 (0.40%) 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 2,465 (31.70%) Microsoft
2 748 (9.62%) Databricks
3 338 (4.35%) ServiceNow
4 301 (3.87%) VMware
5 288 (3.70%) Google
6 285 (3.67%) Oracle
7 216 (2.78%) SAP
8 210 (2.70%) Cisco
9 203 (2.61%) OpenAI
10 152 (1.95%) Splunk
11 141 (1.81%) Palo Alto
12 135 (1.74%) Salesforce
13 134 (1.72%) CyberArk
14 120 (1.54%) Foundry
15 103 (1.32%) Okta
16 87 (1.12%) Dynatrace
17 85 (1.09%) Informatica
18 77 (0.99%) Zscaler
19 71 (0.91%) Citrix
20 64 (0.82%) Fortinet