Azure Contract Job Trends in Birmingham

Microsoft Azure
West Midlands > Birmingham

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Birmingham requiring Azure skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 8 7
Rank change year-on-year +4 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Azure 111 66 90
As % of all contract jobs in Birmingham 11.96% 12.69% 12.21%
As % of the Cloud Services category 38.68% 40.99% 43.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 86 60 66
10th Percentile £272 £155 £275
25th Percentile £400 £400 £351
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -3.95% -2.56% -8.24%
75th Percentile £542 £538 £638
90th Percentile £644 £614 £653
West Midlands median daily rate £496 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -5.48% -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
Median hourly rate - - £19.95
West Midlands median hourly rate £52.50 - £19.95

All Cloud Computing Skills
Birmingham

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 in Birmingham.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for cloud computing skills 287 161 208
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham 30.93% 30.96% 28.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 199 123 161
10th Percentile £281 £166 £250
25th Percentile £400 £348 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £475 £451
Median % change year-on-year +1.47% +5.44% -9.90%
75th Percentile £575 £566 £600
90th Percentile £688 £635 £675
West Midlands median daily rate £475 £500 £450
% change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 9
10th Percentile £37.00 - £14.08
25th Percentile £55.00 £56.88 £16.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £58.75 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.15% +161.11% +11.17%
75th Percentile £75.00 £60.63 £26.50
90th Percentile - - £32.20
West Midlands median hourly rate £33.99 £18.07 £22.50
% change year-on-year +88.15% -19.71% +11.17%

Azure
Job Vacancy Trend in Birmingham

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Azure relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham.

Azure job vacancy trend in Birmingham

Azure
Daily Rate Trend in Birmingham

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing Azure.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing Azure

Azure
Daily Rate Histogram in Birmingham

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Azure in Birmingham over the 6 months to 17 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Azure in Birmingham

Azure
Hourly Rate Trend in Birmingham

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing Azure.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing Azure

Azure
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Birmingham 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 20 (18.02%) Confluence
2 9 (8.11%) SharePoint
3 4 (3.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (2.70%) Apache
5 2 (1.80%) CloudStack
6 1 (0.90%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.90%) CMS
6 1 (0.90%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.90%) Umbraco
6 1 (0.90%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (2.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (1.80%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.80%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.90%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (6.31%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (1.80%) NEC Housing
2 2 (1.80%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 41 (36.94%) AWS
2 20 (18.02%) Azure DevOps
3 17 (15.32%) Microsoft 365
4 15 (13.51%) Entra ID
4 15 (13.51%) Power Platform
5 14 (12.61%) GCP
6 12 (10.81%) GitHub
7 11 (9.91%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (7.21%) Azure Sentinel
8 8 (7.21%) Dynamics 365
9 7 (6.31%) Amazon S3
10 6 (5.41%) Amazon SQS
10 6 (5.41%) OneDrive
11 5 (4.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 5 (4.50%) Amazon EC2
11 5 (4.50%) Azure API Management
11 5 (4.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 5 (4.50%) Power Automate
11 5 (4.50%) Serverless
12 4 (3.60%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (10.81%) VPN
2 9 (8.11%) Firewall
3 8 (7.21%) DHCP
3 8 (7.21%) DNS
4 3 (2.70%) SAN
5 2 (1.80%) NAS
5 2 (1.80%) Network Security
5 2 (1.80%) Remote Desktop
5 2 (1.80%) Structured Cabling
5 2 (1.80%) TCP/IP
5 2 (1.80%) WAN
6 1 (0.90%) BGP
6 1 (0.90%) BIG-IP
6 1 (0.90%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 1 (0.90%) LAN
6 1 (0.90%) NaaS
6 1 (0.90%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.90%) VLAN
6 1 (0.90%) VXLAN
6 1 (0.90%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (18.92%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (9.01%) Power BI
3 6 (5.41%) Amazon RDS
3 6 (5.41%) DynamoDB
4 5 (4.50%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (3.60%) Amazon Aurora
6 3 (2.70%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (2.70%) Data Lake
6 3 (2.70%) Power Query
6 3 (2.70%) Relational Database
6 3 (2.70%) SQL Server
7 2 (1.80%) NoSQL
7 2 (1.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.90%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.90%) Data Hub
8 1 (0.90%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.90%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.90%) Spark SQL
8 1 (0.90%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 1 (0.90%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 30 (27.03%) Git
2 24 (21.62%) JIRA
3 18 (16.22%) JMeter
3 18 (16.22%) JUnit
4 17 (15.32%) Jenkins
5 14 (12.61%) Cucumber
5 14 (12.61%) Selenium
6 13 (11.71%) WebDriver
7 9 (8.11%) GitLab
8 4 (3.60%) DbUnit
8 4 (3.60%) jMock
8 4 (3.60%) Maven
8 4 (3.60%) Mockito
8 4 (3.60%) SonarQube
9 2 (1.80%) Bitbucket Server
10 1 (0.90%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.90%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.90%) Postman
10 1 (0.90%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.90%) sqlmap
General
1 45 (40.54%) Social Skills
2 19 (17.12%) Public Sector
3 13 (11.71%) Analytical Skills
4 9 (8.11%) Organisational Skills
5 7 (6.31%) Finance
6 4 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (2.70%) Banking
8 2 (1.80%) Investment Banking
8 2 (1.80%) Law
9 1 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.90%) Military
9 1 (0.90%) Publishing
9 1 (0.90%) Retail
9 1 (0.90%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 16 (14.41%) Senior
2 15 (13.51%) Analyst
3 12 (10.81%) Developer
3 12 (10.81%) Tester
4 11 (9.91%) Architect
5 10 (9.01%) Azure Engineer
6 9 (8.11%) Automation Tester
7 8 (7.21%) Data Engineer
7 8 (7.21%) IT Engineer
7 8 (7.21%) IT Support
7 8 (7.21%) Security Engineer
7 8 (7.21%) Support Engineer
8 7 (6.31%) Senior Automation Tester
8 7 (6.31%) Senior Tester
9 6 (5.41%) Business Analyst
9 6 (5.41%) Cloud Engineer
9 6 (5.41%) IT Support Engineer
10 5 (4.50%) Java Developer
10 5 (4.50%) Lead
10 5 (4.50%) Test Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (15.32%) Spring
2 13 (11.71%) WireMock
3 6 (5.41%) Node.js
4 5 (4.50%) REST
4 5 (4.50%) RESTful
5 4 (3.60%) ActiveMQ
5 4 (3.60%) AngularJS
5 4 (3.60%) Hibernate
5 4 (3.60%) JPA
5 4 (3.60%) PowerMock
5 4 (3.60%) SOAP
5 4 (3.60%) Spring Batch
5 4 (3.60%) Spring Boot
5 4 (3.60%) Spring Cloud
5 4 (3.60%) Spring Integration
5 4 (3.60%) Web Services
6 3 (2.70%) .NET
6 3 (2.70%) ADO
6 3 (2.70%) Elastic Stack
6 3 (2.70%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 15 (13.51%) Distributed Systems
2 10 (9.01%) Distributed Architecture
2 10 (9.01%) Onboarding
3 7 (6.31%) Cloud Native
4 5 (4.50%) Hybrid Cloud
5 4 (3.60%) Data Centre
6 3 (2.70%) Distributed Applications
6 3 (2.70%) Management Information System
6 3 (2.70%) Security Posture
7 2 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.80%) Product Ownership
7 2 (1.80%) Public Cloud
7 2 (1.80%) Replication
8 1 (0.90%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.90%) CMDB
8 1 (0.90%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.90%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.90%) Digital Signage
8 1 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.90%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 23 (20.72%) Windows
2 10 (9.01%) Linux
3 8 (7.21%) Windows 10
4 7 (6.31%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.80%) Apple iOS
5 2 (1.80%) Mac OS
5 2 (1.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (1.80%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.90%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (37.84%) CI/CD
2 38 (34.23%) DevOps
3 36 (32.43%) Agile
4 25 (22.52%) Continuous Improvement
5 24 (21.62%) Test Automation
6 21 (18.92%) Microservices
7 20 (18.02%) Test Strategy
8 19 (17.12%) TDD
9 18 (16.22%) Observability
9 18 (16.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 17 (15.32%) BDD
11 16 (14.41%) Validation
12 15 (13.51%) Load Testing
12 15 (13.51%) Migration
13 14 (12.61%) Analytics
14 13 (11.71%) Data Modelling
14 13 (11.71%) Digital Transformation Programme
14 13 (11.71%) End-to-End Testing
15 12 (10.81%) Containerisation
15 12 (10.81%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 19 (17.12%) Python
2 18 (16.22%) SQL
3 9 (8.11%) Java
4 8 (7.21%) PowerShell
5 5 (4.50%) Bicep
6 3 (2.70%) C#
6 3 (2.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 3 (2.70%) R
7 2 (1.80%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.80%) PL/SQL
7 2 (1.80%) VB
8 1 (0.90%) Bash
8 1 (0.90%) Go
8 1 (0.90%) Groovy
8 1 (0.90%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.90%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 24 (21.62%) Security Cleared
2 19 (17.12%) SC Cleared
3 6 (5.41%) AWS Certification
4 5 (4.50%) ISTQB
5 4 (3.60%) Azure Certification
6 3 (2.70%) Degree
7 2 (1.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.80%) CCNP
7 2 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (1.80%) CISSP
7 2 (1.80%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 2 (1.80%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (1.80%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
7 2 (1.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (5.41%) SLA
2 5 (4.50%) Data Quality
3 4 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (2.70%) NIST
5 2 (1.80%) Accessibility
5 2 (1.80%) GDPR
6 1 (0.90%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.90%) QA
6 1 (0.90%) WCAG
System Software
1 21 (18.92%) Docker
2 18 (16.22%) Active Directory
3 4 (3.60%) Postfix
4 3 (2.70%) Hyper-V
4 3 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (1.80%) vSphere
6 1 (0.90%) Firmware
6 1 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 22 (19.82%) Grafana
2 21 (18.92%) Kubernetes
3 19 (17.12%) Terraform
4 17 (15.32%) Prometheus
5 15 (13.51%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (4.50%) Ansible
7 2 (1.80%) Argo
7 2 (1.80%) Check_MK
7 2 (1.80%) HP ALM
7 2 (1.80%) HP Quality Center
8 1 (0.90%) EMC NetWorker
8 1 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 47 (42.34%) Microsoft
2 13 (11.71%) ServiceNow
3 4 (3.60%) Atlassian
3 4 (3.60%) Jaspersoft
3 4 (3.60%) Oracle
3 4 (3.60%) Splunk
3 4 (3.60%) Veeam
4 3 (2.70%) CrowdStrike
4 3 (2.70%) Dynatrace
4 3 (2.70%) Fortinet
4 3 (2.70%) Remedy
4 3 (2.70%) VMware
5 2 (1.80%) Adobe
5 2 (1.80%) BeyondTrust
5 2 (1.80%) Cisco
5 2 (1.80%) Commvault
5 2 (1.80%) Databricks
5 2 (1.80%) HP
5 2 (1.80%) Northgate
5 2 (1.80%) SAP