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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 8,297 4,801 5,585
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 15.53% 14.58% 14.34%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.23% 39.26% 42.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,794 3,291 3,986
10th Percentile £374 £350 £345
25th Percentile £438 £423 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 187 40 41
10th Percentile £18.40 £18.76 £17.80
25th Percentile £23.00 £27.24 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £43.23 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.46% +23.50% -35.19%
75th Percentile £78.00 £77.80 £61.60
90th Percentile £93.27 £100.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £53.23 £31.00
% change year-on-year -1.36% +71.69% -32.87%

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 18,758 12,229 13,113
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.12% 37.14% 33.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,385 8,188 9,134
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £423 £410 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £623 £615 £638
90th Percentile £713 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 620 313 265
10th Percentile £15.81 £15.17 £14.20
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £27.76 £24.84
Median % change year-on-year +26.08% +11.76% -29.03%
75th Percentile £69.77 £47.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.43 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.13 £18.87 £21.37
% change year-on-year +80.84% -11.70% -15.37%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 7,131 £525 - 4,231
London +1 3,732 £550 - 2,039
UK excluding London +3 3,580 £500 - 2,739
Work from Home -1 2,563 £525 +5.00% 1,967
North of England +8 1,027 £500 +5.26% 744
South East +2 916 £525 +5.00% 809
Midlands +4 654 £494 -1.25% 347
North West +8 534 £500 +2.56% 430
West Midlands +3 494 £493 -6.19% 220
South West +7 441 £540 +8.00% 337
Yorkshire +5 411 £500 +5.26% 220
Scotland +9 288 £500 +3.09% 168
East of England +3 178 £525 -4.55% 208
East Midlands +10 148 £488 +5.41% 127
North East +5 95 £513 +2.50% 106
Wales 0 95 £461 +3.42% 93
Northern Ireland +13 15 £644 +35.53% 75
Channel Islands +1 8 £450 -29.69% 1

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
1 439 (5.29%) SharePoint
2 280 (3.37%) Confluence
3 202 (2.43%) Microsoft Exchange
4 168 (2.02%) Apache Spark
5 144 (1.74%) Apache Airflow
6 116 (1.40%) Apache
7 41 (0.49%) SAS
8 35 (0.42%) IIS
9 26 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
10 19 (0.23%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) ArcGIS
14 10 (0.12%) nginx
15 9 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 9 (0.11%) Mendix
16 8 (0.096%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.096%) WebSphere
17 7 (0.084%) Camunda
18 6 (0.072%) Ethereum
Applications
1 120 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 36 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.13%) Trello
9 9 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.096%) Revit
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%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.012%) Sketch
14 1 (0.012%) Weka
Business Applications
1 120 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.14%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.12%) SAP MDG
5 10 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.096%) Magento
8 7 (0.084%) Maximo
8 7 (0.084%) Shopify
9 6 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.060%) Dynamics GP
10 5 (0.060%) NetSuite
10 5 (0.060%) Payment Gateway
10 5 (0.060%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.060%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.048%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.048%) SAP ERP
11 4 (0.048%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,920 (35.19%) AWS
2 1,759 (21.20%) Azure DevOps
3 1,405 (16.93%) GCP
4 1,064 (12.82%) Entra ID
5 1,043 (12.57%) Power Platform
6 841 (10.14%) Microsoft 365
7 835 (10.06%) GitHub
8 502 (6.05%) GitHub Actions
9 477 (5.75%) Azure Data Factory
10 351 (4.23%) Serverless
11 334 (4.03%) SaaS
12 313 (3.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 303 (3.65%) Azure AKS
14 299 (3.60%) Azure Monitor
15 284 (3.42%) Power Automate
16 272 (3.28%) PowerApps
17 265 (3.19%) Dynamics 365
18 256 (3.09%) PaaS
19 249 (3.00%) Snowflake
20 232 (2.80%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 529 (6.38%) Firewall
2 412 (4.97%) DNS
3 331 (3.99%) VPN
4 305 (3.68%) Network Security
5 208 (2.51%) DHCP
6 201 (2.42%) WAN
7 171 (2.06%) TCP/IP
8 123 (1.48%) LAN
9 114 (1.37%) BGP
10 105 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 95 (1.14%) VLAN
12 90 (1.08%) OSPF
13 83 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 74 (0.89%) SSL
15 60 (0.72%) SAN
16 57 (0.69%) Wireless
17 52 (0.63%) IPsec
18 49 (0.59%) HTTP
19 47 (0.57%) VXLAN
20 43 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 720 (8.68%) Power BI
2 462 (5.57%) SQL Server
3 407 (4.91%) Data Warehouse
4 365 (4.40%) Data Lake
5 292 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 218 (2.63%) Azure SQL Database
7 214 (2.58%) Metadata
8 210 (2.53%) NoSQL
9 140 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 139 (1.68%) Delta Lake
11 102 (1.23%) Big Data
12 101 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 97 (1.17%) MongoDB
14 81 (0.98%) MySQL
15 64 (0.77%) Snowflake Schema
16 62 (0.75%) Tableau
17 60 (0.72%) BigQuery
18 58 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
18 58 (0.70%) Star Schema
19 57 (0.69%) Redis
Development Applications
1 672 (8.10%) Git
2 637 (7.68%) JIRA
3 448 (5.40%) Jenkins
4 353 (4.25%) GitLab
5 133 (1.60%) Selenium
6 73 (0.88%) Postman
7 68 (0.82%) JUnit
8 65 (0.78%) JMeter
9 59 (0.71%) Cypress.io
10 58 (0.70%) Cucumber
11 57 (0.69%) SonarQube
12 51 (0.61%) Maven
13 47 (0.57%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.54%) WebDriver
15 42 (0.51%) REST Assured
16 40 (0.48%) Claude Code
16 40 (0.48%) Gradle
17 33 (0.40%) MLflow
18 29 (0.35%) Gatling
18 29 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 2,150 (25.91%) Social Skills
2 1,546 (18.63%) Finance
3 975 (11.75%) Public Sector
4 798 (9.62%) Analytical Skills
5 434 (5.23%) Banking
6 232 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 199 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 189 (2.28%) Legal
9 185 (2.23%) Retail
10 95 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
10 95 (1.14%) Telecoms
11 90 (1.08%) Manufacturing
12 89 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
13 74 (0.89%) Law
14 71 (0.86%) Aerospace
14 71 (0.86%) Financial Institution
14 71 (0.86%) Investment Banking
15 68 (0.82%) Marketing
16 62 (0.75%) Front Office
17 59 (0.71%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,492 (17.98%) Architect
2 1,043 (12.57%) Senior
3 1,040 (12.53%) Developer
4 735 (8.86%) Azure Engineer
5 687 (8.28%) Lead
6 613 (7.39%) Data Engineer
7 493 (5.94%) Analyst
8 441 (5.32%) Solutions Architect
9 428 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
10 354 (4.27%) Cloud Engineer
11 315 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 303 (3.65%) Consultant
13 250 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 228 (2.75%) Platform Engineer
15 222 (2.68%) Azure Architect
16 197 (2.37%) Technical Architect
17 195 (2.35%) Project Manager
18 192 (2.31%) Security Engineer
19 188 (2.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 182 (2.19%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 644 (7.76%) .NET
2 630 (7.59%) REST
3 334 (4.03%) Kafka
4 324 (3.91%) React
5 288 (3.47%) RESTful
6 256 (3.09%) PySpark
7 236 (2.84%) OAuth
8 213 (2.57%) JSON
9 210 (2.53%) Spring
10 196 (2.36%) Node.js
11 174 (2.10%) Spring Boot
12 173 (2.09%) AngularJS
13 156 (1.88%) HTML
14 148 (1.78%) SAML
15 146 (1.76%) OpenID
16 141 (1.70%) OAuth2
17 139 (1.68%) .NET Framework
18 136 (1.64%) Middleware
19 133 (1.60%) Playwright
20 121 (1.46%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 888 (10.70%) Cloud Native
2 395 (4.76%) Onboarding
3 352 (4.24%) Product Ownership
4 265 (3.19%) Hybrid Cloud
5 264 (3.18%) Distributed Systems
6 258 (3.11%) AI Agents
7 254 (3.06%) Data Centre
8 234 (2.82%) Enterprise Software
9 233 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
10 180 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 140 (1.69%) Public Cloud
12 139 (1.68%) Data Structures
13 138 (1.66%) Management Information System
14 112 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
15 110 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
16 107 (1.29%) PKI
17 94 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
18 93 (1.12%) Replication
19 78 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
20 75 (0.90%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 971 (11.70%) Windows
2 492 (5.93%) Linux
3 344 (4.15%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.48%) Windows 10
5 84 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 83 (1.00%) Unix
7 80 (0.96%) Android
8 73 (0.88%) Apple iOS
9 69 (0.83%) Mac OS
10 58 (0.70%) VMS
11 48 (0.58%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 12 (0.14%) CentOS
15 12 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 10 (0.12%) Debian
17 6 (0.072%) AIX
17 6 (0.072%) Amazon Linux
17 6 (0.072%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 3,082 (37.15%) DevOps
2 2,600 (31.34%) CI/CD
3 2,082 (25.09%) Agile
4 1,322 (15.93%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,298 (15.64%) AI
6 1,218 (14.68%) Migration
7 1,198 (14.44%) Stakeholder Management
8 1,133 (13.66%) Analytics
9 1,077 (12.98%) Problem-Solving
10 924 (11.14%) Data Modelling
11 916 (11.04%) Continuous Improvement
12 815 (9.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 785 (9.46%) Data Pipeline
14 775 (9.34%) Containerisation
14 775 (9.34%) Roadmaps
15 763 (9.20%) Business Intelligence
16 740 (8.92%) Microservices
17 700 (8.44%) Test Automation
18 675 (8.14%) ETL
19 652 (7.86%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,910 (23.02%) Python
2 1,612 (19.43%) SQL
3 839 (10.11%) PowerShell
4 684 (8.24%) Java
5 626 (7.54%) C#
6 505 (6.09%) JavaScript
7 385 (4.64%) Bash
8 329 (3.97%) Bicep
9 305 (3.68%) TypeScript
10 102 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 96 (1.16%) T-SQL
12 71 (0.86%) Go
13 59 (0.71%) Scala
14 57 (0.69%) Shell Script
15 55 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
16 40 (0.48%) PL/SQL
17 39 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.47%) R
18 31 (0.37%) Groovy
19 28 (0.34%) C++
Qualifications
1 2,121 (25.56%) Security Cleared
2 1,726 (20.80%) SC Cleared
3 554 (6.68%) Degree
4 447 (5.39%) Azure Certification
5 272 (3.28%) DV Cleared
6 256 (3.09%) CISSP
7 246 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
8 223 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
9 213 (2.57%) Cisco Certification
10 198 (2.39%) AWS Certification
11 183 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 125 (1.51%) CISM
13 102 (1.23%) CCNP
14 86 (1.04%) PMI Certification
15 85 (1.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 85 (1.02%) PMP
16 69 (0.83%) ISTQB
17 57 (0.69%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.67%) CCSP
19 53 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 576 (6.94%) Data Quality
2 435 (5.24%) QA
3 329 (3.97%) GDPR
4 306 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 300 (3.62%) NIST
6 202 (2.43%) Accessibility
7 124 (1.49%) NCSC
8 104 (1.25%) SLA
9 77 (0.93%) GRC
9 77 (0.93%) WCAG
10 73 (0.88%) PCI DSS
11 72 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
12 60 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 55 (0.66%) PMO
14 31 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 30 (0.36%) HIPAA
16 26 (0.31%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 19 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
19 18 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 995 (11.99%) Active Directory
2 915 (11.03%) Docker
3 240 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 147 (1.77%) Virtual Machines
6 128 (1.54%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.83%) vSphere
8 54 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.36%) Firmware
11 24 (0.29%) NFS
12 14 (0.17%) IAG
12 14 (0.17%) Postfix
13 12 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.11%) zsh
15 8 (0.096%) Ceph
16 7 (0.084%) Varnish
17 6 (0.072%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
18 5 (0.060%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 1,378 (16.61%) Terraform
2 1,274 (15.35%) Kubernetes
3 438 (5.28%) Ansible
4 432 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
5 259 (3.12%) Grafana
6 217 (2.62%) Prometheus
7 147 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
8 118 (1.42%) SCCM
9 60 (0.72%) Progress Chef
10 58 (0.70%) Argo
11 48 (0.58%) Puppet
12 42 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
13 37 (0.45%) FortiGate
14 34 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 32 (0.39%) Istio
16 21 (0.25%) SCOM
16 21 (0.25%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.24%) Packer
18 19 (0.23%) HAProxy
19 16 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,777 (33.47%) Microsoft
2 784 (9.45%) Databricks
3 402 (4.85%) ServiceNow
4 343 (4.13%) Google
5 340 (4.10%) VMware
6 310 (3.74%) Oracle
7 239 (2.88%) Cisco
8 226 (2.72%) SAP
9 200 (2.41%) OpenAI
10 192 (2.31%) Splunk
11 158 (1.90%) Salesforce
12 154 (1.86%) Palo Alto
13 143 (1.72%) CyberArk
14 140 (1.69%) Foundry
15 115 (1.39%) Dynatrace
16 106 (1.28%) Zscaler
17 89 (1.07%) Okta
18 86 (1.04%) Informatica
19 79 (0.95%) Citrix
20 77 (0.93%) Fortinet