Azure Contract Job Trends in the North West

Microsoft Azure
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Azure skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 8 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 8 12
Rank change year-on-year +3 +4 -8
Contract jobs citing Azure 448 255 282
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 14.02% 13.06% 10.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.71% 40.22% 32.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 348 197 219
10th Percentile £313 £258 £318
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £490
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% +0.41% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £582
90th Percentile £649 £671 £650
England median daily rate £525 £525 £545
% change year-on-year - -3.67% -2.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 2 2
10th Percentile £19.86 £67.63 £16.40
25th Percentile £25.38 £67.81 £16.63
Median hourly rate £32.44 £71.25 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -54.47% +295.83% -73.43%
75th Percentile £46.08 £75.31 £19.13
90th Percentile £85.68 £75.88 £19.20
England median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
% change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -39.13%

All Cloud Computing Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for cloud computing skills 1,025 634 859
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 32.07% 32.48% 31.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 685 490 622
10th Percentile £246 £248 £281
25th Percentile £376 £395 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year - -1.04% -4.00%
75th Percentile £586 £550 £575
90th Percentile £650 £638 £638
England median daily rate £508 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.33% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 14 64
10th Percentile £25.38 £17.04 £13.00
25th Percentile £27.13 £26.88 -
Median hourly rate £62.50 £34.67 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year +80.27% +115.88% -59.44%
75th Percentile £77.50 £58.13 £23.69
90th Percentile £95.00 £75.13 £43.75
England median hourly rate £46.80 £25.98 £21.00
% change year-on-year +80.17% +23.69% -34.98%

Azure
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Azure job vacancy trend in the North West

Azure
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Azure.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Azure

Azure
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Azure in the North West over the 6 months to 8 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Azure in the North West

Azure
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Azure.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Azure

Azure
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Azure in the North West over the 6 months to 8 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in the North West

Azure
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Azure within the North West region over the 6 months to 8 May 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
Manchester -2 235 £500 -0.79% 201
Cheshire +9 122 £543 +27.87% 35
Merseyside +5 52 £140 -65.00% 26
Lancashire +6 27 £525 +7.69% 83
Cumbria -11 3 £525 - 3
Azure
England

Azure
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 26 (5.80%) Microsoft Exchange
2 22 (4.91%) SharePoint
3 19 (4.24%) Confluence
4 3 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.67%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.45%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
5 2 (0.45%) SAS
6 1 (0.22%) ArcGIS
6 1 (0.22%) CMS
6 1 (0.22%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.22%) IIS
6 1 (0.22%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.22%) OpenStack
Applications
1 7 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.12%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.45%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.45%) Trello
5 1 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.12%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.67%) Elite 3E
3 2 (0.45%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.22%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 190 (42.41%) AWS
2 95 (21.21%) GCP
3 70 (15.63%) Microsoft 365
4 65 (14.51%) Azure DevOps
4 65 (14.51%) Entra ID
5 55 (12.28%) Power Platform
6 24 (5.36%) Dynamics 365
6 24 (5.36%) GitHub
7 23 (5.13%) Azure Data Factory
8 19 (4.24%) Serverless
9 18 (4.02%) Power Automate
10 17 (3.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 16 (3.57%) GitHub Actions
11 16 (3.57%) PowerApps
12 15 (3.35%) Azure AKS
12 15 (3.35%) OneDrive
13 12 (2.68%) Azure Logic Apps
13 12 (2.68%) Azure Monitor
13 12 (2.68%) PaaS
13 12 (2.68%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 47 (10.49%) Firewall
2 33 (7.37%) DNS
3 17 (3.79%) Network Security
4 15 (3.35%) VPN
5 12 (2.68%) Wi-Fi
6 11 (2.46%) SD-WAN
6 11 (2.46%) WAN
7 10 (2.23%) Kerberos
8 9 (2.01%) BGP
8 9 (2.01%) OSPF
8 9 (2.01%) TCP/IP
9 8 (1.79%) DHCP
10 7 (1.56%) VLAN
11 6 (1.34%) BIG-IP
11 6 (1.34%) Ethernet VPN
11 6 (1.34%) VXLAN
12 5 (1.12%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 5 (1.12%) WLAN
13 4 (0.89%) HTTP
13 4 (0.89%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (6.47%) Power BI
2 21 (4.69%) SQL Server
3 19 (4.24%) Data Warehouse
4 14 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (2.46%) Metadata
6 10 (2.23%) Data Lake
7 8 (1.79%) NoSQL
8 7 (1.56%) MongoDB
8 7 (1.56%) MySQL
9 6 (1.34%) Azure SQL Database
9 6 (1.34%) Snowflake Schema
10 5 (1.12%) BigQuery
10 5 (1.12%) Looker
10 5 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 4 (0.89%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
11 4 (0.89%) Oracle Database
12 3 (0.67%) Data Vault
12 3 (0.67%) RDBMS
12 3 (0.67%) Relational Database
12 3 (0.67%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 40 (8.93%) JIRA
2 26 (5.80%) Git
3 18 (4.02%) GitLab
4 10 (2.23%) Postman
5 8 (1.79%) Jenkins
6 6 (1.34%) Cucumber
7 5 (1.12%) Selenium
8 3 (0.67%) ClearCase
8 3 (0.67%) Cypress.io
8 3 (0.67%) JMeter
9 2 (0.45%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.45%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.45%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.22%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.22%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.22%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.22%) Snyk
10 1 (0.22%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.22%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 98 (21.88%) Social Skills
2 82 (18.30%) Finance
3 78 (17.41%) Public Sector
4 43 (9.60%) Banking
5 32 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
6 25 (5.58%) Legal
7 10 (2.23%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (2.01%) Retail
9 8 (1.79%) Military
10 7 (1.56%) Law
11 5 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.89%) Health Technology
13 3 (0.67%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.67%) Local Government
14 2 (0.45%) Automotive
14 2 (0.45%) Influencing Skills
14 2 (0.45%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.45%) Manufacturing
14 2 (0.45%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 74 (16.52%) Architect
2 64 (14.29%) Developer
3 52 (11.61%) Senior
4 44 (9.82%) Analyst
5 39 (8.71%) Lead
6 33 (7.37%) Security Engineer
7 29 (6.47%) Azure Engineer
8 23 (5.13%) Data Engineer
8 23 (5.13%) Java Developer
9 19 (4.24%) DevOps Engineer
10 18 (4.02%) Platform Engineer
10 18 (4.02%) Solutions Architect
11 17 (3.79%) 1st Line Support
12 16 (3.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 13 (2.90%) Azure Developer
13 13 (2.90%) Lead Developer
13 13 (2.90%) Security Architect
13 13 (2.90%) Systems Analyst
14 12 (2.68%) Software Developer
15 11 (2.46%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (7.59%) Spring
2 31 (6.92%) Spring Boot
3 30 (6.70%) REST
4 22 (4.91%) .NET
5 19 (4.24%) React
5 19 (4.24%) RESTful
6 15 (3.35%) Node.js
6 15 (3.35%) OAuth
7 12 (2.68%) Kafka
8 11 (2.46%) PySpark
9 10 (2.23%) AngularJS
9 10 (2.23%) OpenID
10 9 (2.01%) LDAP
10 9 (2.01%) SAML
11 8 (1.79%) HTML
11 8 (1.79%) JSON
11 8 (1.79%) Nunjucks
11 8 (1.79%) RabbitMQ
12 7 (1.56%) ARM Templates
12 7 (1.56%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 52 (11.61%) Cloud Native
2 27 (6.03%) Onboarding
3 22 (4.91%) Data Centre
4 17 (3.79%) Hybrid Cloud
5 16 (3.57%) Security Posture
6 14 (3.13%) Product Ownership
7 12 (2.68%) Enterprise Cloud
8 11 (2.46%) Private Cloud
9 10 (2.23%) Management Information System
10 9 (2.01%) Distributed Systems
10 9 (2.01%) Legacy Systems
11 8 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
12 7 (1.56%) Cloud Security Posture
12 7 (1.56%) Public Cloud
12 7 (1.56%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 6 (1.34%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 6 (1.34%) Linux Command Line
14 5 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
14 5 (1.12%) Operational Technology
14 5 (1.12%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 59 (13.17%) Windows
2 26 (5.80%) Windows 10
3 18 (4.02%) Linux
4 12 (2.68%) Windows Server
5 8 (1.79%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.56%) VMS
7 6 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (1.12%) Apple iOS
8 5 (1.12%) Windows Server 2019
9 4 (0.89%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.22%) Unix
11 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (32.14%) DevOps
2 123 (27.46%) CI/CD
3 114 (25.45%) Agile
4 72 (16.07%) Problem-Solving
5 66 (14.73%) Migration
6 63 (14.06%) Analytics
7 52 (11.61%) Microservices
8 50 (11.16%) Continuous Improvement
9 48 (10.71%) Containerisation
9 48 (10.71%) Infrastructure as Code
10 43 (9.60%) Roadmaps
11 37 (8.26%) Test Automation
12 36 (8.04%) Data Modelling
12 36 (8.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 36 (8.04%) Stakeholder Management
13 35 (7.81%) Cloud Security
13 35 (7.81%) Observability
13 35 (7.81%) Zero Trust
14 34 (7.59%) Business Intelligence
14 34 (7.59%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 102 (22.77%) Python
2 73 (16.29%) SQL
3 63 (14.06%) Java
4 57 (12.72%) PowerShell
5 26 (5.80%) JavaScript
6 25 (5.58%) C#
7 20 (4.46%) Bicep
8 19 (4.24%) Bash
9 12 (2.68%) TypeScript
10 7 (1.56%) Go
11 6 (1.34%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.89%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.67%) C++
13 3 (0.67%) VB
13 3 (0.67%) VB6
14 2 (0.45%) R
15 1 (0.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.22%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.22%) Ruby
15 1 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 54 (12.05%) Security Cleared
2 32 (7.14%) Azure Certification
3 31 (6.92%) SC Cleared
4 25 (5.58%) Degree
5 22 (4.91%) AWS Certification
6 21 (4.69%) BPSS Clearance
6 21 (4.69%) Cisco Certification
6 21 (4.69%) CISSP
7 11 (2.46%) Microsoft Certification
8 10 (2.23%) CCNA
9 9 (2.01%) CCNP
10 7 (1.56%) CISM
11 5 (1.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (1.12%) ITIL Certification
12 4 (0.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.89%) CCIE
12 4 (0.89%) Computer Science Degree
12 4 (0.89%) GIAC
12 4 (0.89%) IBM Certification
13 3 (0.67%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 25 (5.58%) NIST
3 21 (4.69%) QA
4 18 (4.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 17 (3.79%) GDPR
6 14 (3.13%) Accessibility
7 10 (2.23%) ISO 20022
8 8 (1.79%) PSD2
9 7 (1.56%) SEPA
10 6 (1.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 6 (1.34%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.67%) GRC
11 3 (0.67%) NCSC
12 2 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27005
12 2 (0.45%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.45%) SLA
12 2 (0.45%) Solvency II
12 2 (0.45%) WCAG
13 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 83 (18.53%) Active Directory
2 64 (14.29%) Docker
3 12 (2.68%) Virtual Desktop
3 12 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.79%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (1.79%) vSphere
5 3 (0.67%) Firmware
5 3 (0.67%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
6 2 (0.45%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 70 (15.63%) Kubernetes
2 63 (14.06%) Terraform
3 22 (4.91%) Microsoft Intune
4 20 (4.46%) Ansible
5 14 (3.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 13 (2.90%) Grafana
6 13 (2.90%) SCCM
7 12 (2.68%) Prometheus
8 10 (2.23%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (1.34%) Argo
10 4 (0.89%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.67%) Istio
11 3 (0.67%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.45%) FortiGate
12 2 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 2 (0.45%) linkerd
12 2 (0.45%) PowerCLI
12 2 (0.45%) vMotion
12 2 (0.45%) vRealize
12 2 (0.45%) WSUS
Vendors
1 148 (33.04%) Microsoft
2 34 (7.59%) Google
3 26 (5.80%) ServiceNow
4 19 (4.24%) Oracle
5 18 (4.02%) Databricks
6 17 (3.79%) Bomgar
6 17 (3.79%) iManage
6 17 (3.79%) VMware
7 16 (3.57%) Infoblox
8 15 (3.35%) Splunk
9 10 (2.23%) F5
9 10 (2.23%) Palo Alto
10 9 (2.01%) BeyondTrust
10 9 (2.01%) Cisco
11 8 (1.79%) CyberArk
11 8 (1.79%) IBM
11 8 (1.79%) Virgin Media
12 7 (1.56%) Aruba
12 7 (1.56%) Citrix
12 7 (1.56%) SAP