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 30 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 8 9
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Azure 346 236 337
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 13.08% 11.28% 11.86%
As % of the Cloud Services category 37.86% 35.12% 35.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 268 165 250
10th Percentile £304 £238 £299
25th Percentile £381 £393 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £488
Median % change year-on-year - -7.69% -7.14%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £630 £700 £638
England median daily rate £520 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -1.89% -3.64% -3.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 2 19
10th Percentile - £48.81 £16.25
25th Percentile £15.50 £52.76 £20.25
Median hourly rate £29.34 £60.59 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -51.57% +31.20% -34.03%
75th Percentile £61.90 £69.67 -
90th Percentile £67.95 £74.37 -
England median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%

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 914 672 962
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 34.54% 32.12% 33.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 674 467 716
10th Percentile £223 £250 £265
25th Percentile £358 £381 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -1.04% -4.00%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £550
90th Percentile £625 £650 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 10 53
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.44 £15.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £42.69 £24.18 £23.61
Median % change year-on-year +76.53% +2.41% -63.68%
75th Percentile £69.45 £41.89 £46.18
90th Percentile £76.90 £78.50 £67.24
England median hourly rate £33.09 £27.50 £23.00
% change year-on-year +20.31% +19.57% -6.12%

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 30 January 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 30 January 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 30 January 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 0 183 £455 -9.00% 199
Cheshire +14 98 £481 +35.18% 54
Merseyside -6 45 £138 -45.00% 39
Lancashire -6 16 £438 -16.67% 122
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 27 (7.80%) SharePoint
2 21 (6.07%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.89%) Confluence
4 7 (2.02%) Exchange Server 2013
4 7 (2.02%) SAS
4 7 (2.02%) Skype for Business
5 5 (1.45%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.87%) IIS
7 2 (0.58%) Apache
8 1 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.29%) CMS
8 1 (0.29%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 17 (4.91%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (2.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.60%) MS Visio
3 8 (2.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (1.45%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.58%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.29%) Elite 3E
Cloud Services
1 143 (41.33%) AWS
2 100 (28.90%) GCP
3 72 (20.81%) Microsoft 365
4 58 (16.76%) Power Platform
5 50 (14.45%) Azure DevOps
6 37 (10.69%) Entra ID
7 32 (9.25%) GitHub
8 17 (4.91%) Power Automate
9 16 (4.62%) PowerApps
9 16 (4.62%) Serverless
10 15 (4.34%) SaaS
11 14 (4.05%) Dynamics 365
12 13 (3.76%) AWS CloudFormation
13 12 (3.47%) Azure Logic Apps
13 12 (3.47%) GitHub Actions
13 12 (3.47%) Google Tag Manager
14 11 (3.18%) Datadog
14 11 (3.18%) Google Analytics
15 10 (2.89%) Azure Data Factory
15 10 (2.89%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 25 (7.23%) Firewall
2 16 (4.62%) DNS
3 14 (4.05%) Wi-Fi
4 10 (2.89%) Internet
5 9 (2.60%) TCP/IP
5 9 (2.60%) VLAN
6 7 (2.02%) Kerberos
6 7 (2.02%) Skype
7 6 (1.73%) Network Security
7 6 (1.73%) VPN
8 5 (1.45%) DHCP
8 5 (1.45%) Unified Communications
8 5 (1.45%) WAN
9 3 (0.87%) LAN
9 3 (0.87%) NetScaler
10 2 (0.58%) iSCSI
10 2 (0.58%) NX-OS
10 2 (0.58%) SD-WAN
10 2 (0.58%) Wireshark
10 2 (0.58%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.09%) Power BI
2 17 (4.91%) Data Warehouse
3 13 (3.76%) BigQuery
3 13 (3.76%) SQL Server
4 11 (3.18%) Looker
5 9 (2.60%) Azure SQL Database
5 9 (2.60%) Relational Database
6 8 (2.31%) NoSQL
7 7 (2.02%) Data Lake
7 7 (2.02%) MySQL
7 7 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (1.73%) Metadata
9 5 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
9 5 (1.45%) DynamoDB
9 5 (1.45%) RDBMS
10 4 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (1.16%) Redis
11 3 (0.87%) MongoDB
12 2 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (0.58%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 36 (10.40%) Git
2 35 (10.12%) JIRA
3 20 (5.78%) Jenkins
4 15 (4.34%) GitLab
5 12 (3.47%) Postman
6 10 (2.89%) Gradle
7 9 (2.60%) SonarQube
8 7 (2.02%) Selenium
9 6 (1.73%) Cucumber
9 6 (1.73%) Storybook
9 6 (1.73%) Xcode
10 5 (1.45%) Bitbucket
10 5 (1.45%) Snyk
11 4 (1.16%) JMeter
11 4 (1.16%) JUnit
11 4 (1.16%) Maven
11 4 (1.16%) SonarLint
12 3 (0.87%) CircleCI
12 3 (0.87%) Cypress.io
13 2 (0.58%) git-flow
General
1 114 (32.95%) Social Skills
2 80 (23.12%) Public Sector
3 56 (16.18%) Finance
4 41 (11.85%) Banking
5 39 (11.27%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (4.34%) Legal
7 10 (2.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 9 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.02%) Law
10 6 (1.73%) Military
11 5 (1.45%) Games
11 5 (1.45%) Retail
12 4 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 4 (1.16%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.87%) Marketing
14 2 (0.58%) Manufacturing
14 2 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
15 1 (0.29%) Advertising
15 1 (0.29%) Automotive
15 1 (0.29%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 74 (21.39%) Developer
2 59 (17.05%) Architect
3 36 (10.40%) Analyst
4 34 (9.83%) Senior
5 25 (7.23%) Java Developer
6 19 (5.49%) IT Support
7 18 (5.20%) Azure Engineer
8 17 (4.91%) Lead
9 16 (4.62%) Solutions Architect
10 15 (4.34%) Support Analyst
11 14 (4.05%) Azure Developer
11 14 (4.05%) Data Engineer
12 13 (3.76%) Platform Engineer
12 13 (3.76%) Security Engineer
13 12 (3.47%) Support Engineer
14 11 (3.18%) DevOps Engineer
14 11 (3.18%) Technical Architect
15 10 (2.89%) 1st Line Support
15 10 (2.89%) Senior Developer
16 9 (2.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (12.43%) Spring Boot
2 37 (10.69%) Spring
3 31 (8.96%) REST
4 21 (6.07%) RESTful
5 18 (5.20%) React
6 17 (4.91%) .NET
6 17 (4.91%) JSON
7 14 (4.05%) HTML
8 12 (3.47%) JMS
8 12 (3.47%) OAuth
9 10 (2.89%) Kafka
10 9 (2.60%) AngularJS
10 9 (2.60%) Node.js
11 7 (2.02%) LDAP
11 7 (2.02%) React Native
12 6 (1.73%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (1.73%) HTML5 Canvas
12 6 (1.73%) PySpark
12 6 (1.73%) SVG
12 6 (1.73%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 33 (9.54%) Cloud Native
2 31 (8.96%) Onboarding
3 16 (4.62%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (4.62%) Product Ownership
4 12 (3.47%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 9 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (2.60%) Low-Code
5 9 (2.60%) Private Cloud
6 8 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (2.31%) Mobile App
7 7 (2.02%) Credit Risk
8 6 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.45%) Data Centre
9 5 (1.45%) e-Learning
9 5 (1.45%) NHS
9 5 (1.45%) N-Tier
9 5 (1.45%) Video Conferencing
9 5 (1.45%) Virtual Team
10 4 (1.16%) Distributed Computing
10 4 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 47 (13.58%) Windows
2 23 (6.65%) Windows 10
3 13 (3.76%) Linux
4 8 (2.31%) Android
4 8 (2.31%) Apple iOS
5 6 (1.73%) Windows Server
6 4 (1.16%) Mac OS
6 4 (1.16%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (0.87%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.58%) VMS
9 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (34.39%) DevOps
2 103 (29.77%) CI/CD
3 88 (25.43%) Agile
4 79 (22.83%) Problem-Solving
5 57 (16.47%) Containerisation
6 46 (13.29%) Analytics
6 46 (13.29%) Microservices
7 37 (10.69%) User Experience
8 36 (10.40%) Migration
9 35 (10.12%) Continuous Improvement
10 34 (9.83%) Business Intelligence
11 33 (9.54%) Infrastructure as Code
12 30 (8.67%) Machine Learning
12 30 (8.67%) Stakeholder Management
13 29 (8.38%) ITIL
13 29 (8.38%) Mentoring
14 28 (8.09%) Observability
14 28 (8.09%) Roadmaps
14 28 (8.09%) SDLC
15 27 (7.80%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 71 (20.52%) Python
2 61 (17.63%) Java
3 54 (15.61%) SQL
4 29 (8.38%) PowerShell
5 28 (8.09%) JavaScript
6 25 (7.23%) C#
7 22 (6.36%) TypeScript
8 16 (4.62%) Bash
9 10 (2.89%) Go
10 7 (2.02%) R
11 6 (1.73%) Bicep
12 4 (1.16%) T-SQL
13 3 (0.87%) C++
13 3 (0.87%) Scala
14 2 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 2 (0.58%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.58%) Perl
14 2 (0.58%) PHP
15 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.29%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 48 (13.87%) Security Cleared
2 27 (7.80%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.51%) Degree
4 18 (5.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (4.34%) Azure Certification
6 12 (3.47%) CISSP
7 9 (2.60%) AWS Certification
7 9 (2.60%) CISM
8 7 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.16%) Computer Science Degree
10 4 (1.16%) IBM Certification
10 4 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.87%) DV Cleared
12 2 (0.58%) CCDP
12 2 (0.58%) CCIE
12 2 (0.58%) CCNP
12 2 (0.58%) GIAC
12 2 (0.58%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.58%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (7.80%) Accessibility
2 26 (7.51%) QA
3 22 (6.36%) Data Quality
4 20 (5.78%) ISO 20022
5 16 (4.62%) PSD2
6 15 (4.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 13 (3.76%) GDPR
8 12 (3.47%) NIST
8 12 (3.47%) SEPA
9 6 (1.73%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.58%) WCAG
11 1 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.29%) GRC
11 1 (0.29%) HL7
11 1 (0.29%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.29%) SLA
11 1 (0.29%) SOC 1
11 1 (0.29%) SOC 2
System Software
1 74 (21.39%) Active Directory
2 62 (17.92%) Docker
3 14 (4.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (2.60%) vSphere
5 4 (1.16%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.29%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.29%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 65 (18.79%) Kubernetes
2 39 (11.27%) Terraform
3 34 (9.83%) Microsoft Intune
4 24 (6.94%) SCCM
5 11 (3.18%) Ansible
6 10 (2.89%) Grafana
6 10 (2.89%) Prometheus
7 9 (2.60%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 5 (1.45%) Fluentd
10 3 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
11 1 (0.29%) AirWatch
11 1 (0.29%) CA Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.29%) Istio
11 1 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 122 (35.26%) Microsoft
2 32 (9.25%) Google
3 30 (8.67%) ServiceNow
4 18 (5.20%) Oracle
5 16 (4.62%) VMware
6 13 (3.76%) Virgin Media
7 11 (3.18%) Databricks
8 9 (2.60%) Bomgar
8 9 (2.60%) F5
8 9 (2.60%) iManage
9 7 (2.02%) Cisco
9 7 (2.02%) Pega
9 7 (2.02%) Splunk
10 6 (1.73%) Citrix
10 6 (1.73%) OpenAI
10 6 (1.73%) Palo Alto
10 6 (1.73%) Veeam
11 5 (1.45%) Checkmarx
11 5 (1.45%) Cribl.io
11 5 (1.45%) Veracode