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 6 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 8 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 -9
Contract jobs citing Azure 337 247 329
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 12.76% 11.73% 11.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 37.57% 35.85% 33.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 260 172 247
10th Percentile £300 £232 £298
25th Percentile £381 £388 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £456 £488
Median % change year-on-year -1.37% -6.41% -7.14%
75th Percentile £551 £575 £563
90th Percentile £630 £699 £638
England median daily rate £522 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -1.51% -3.64% -3.34%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 1 17
10th Percentile - - £16.25
25th Percentile £15.50 £72.50 £19.25
Median hourly rate £29.34 £75.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -60.88% +62.41% -34.03%
75th Percentile £61.90 £77.50 -
90th Percentile £67.95 - -
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 897 689 968
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 33.95% 32.72% 33.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 645 478 718
10th Percentile £220 £250 £265
25th Percentile £358 £390 £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 £623 £656 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 9 60
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.44 £15.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £45.00 £24.18 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +86.10% +12.47% -57.00%
75th Percentile £73.75 £29.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £78.20 £79.50 £71.93
England median hourly rate £35.00 £27.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +27.27% +22.22% -10.00%

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 6 February 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 6 February 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 6 February 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 +2 179 £460 -8.00% 207
Cheshire +18 97 £481 +35.18% 45
Merseyside -7 43 £138 -45.00% 32
Lancashire -8 13 £425 -19.05% 96
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 (8.01%) SharePoint
2 22 (6.53%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.97%) Confluence
4 7 (2.08%) Exchange Server 2013
4 7 (2.08%) SAS
4 7 (2.08%) Skype for Business
5 5 (1.48%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.89%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.89%) IIS
7 2 (0.59%) Apache
8 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.30%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.30%) CMS
8 1 (0.30%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 18 (5.34%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (2.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.67%) MS Visio
3 8 (2.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.30%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (1.48%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.59%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.30%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.30%) Elite 3E
Cloud Services
1 139 (41.25%) AWS
2 96 (28.49%) GCP
3 75 (22.26%) Microsoft 365
4 58 (17.21%) Power Platform
5 46 (13.65%) Azure DevOps
6 37 (10.98%) Entra ID
7 29 (8.61%) GitHub
8 17 (5.04%) Power Automate
9 16 (4.75%) PowerApps
10 14 (4.15%) Dynamics 365
11 13 (3.86%) AWS CloudFormation
11 13 (3.86%) GitHub Actions
12 12 (3.56%) Google Tag Manager
13 11 (3.26%) Azure Logic Apps
13 11 (3.26%) Google Analytics
13 11 (3.26%) SaaS
14 10 (2.97%) Azure Data Factory
14 10 (2.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 10 (2.97%) OneDrive
14 10 (2.97%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 28 (8.31%) Firewall
2 17 (5.04%) DNS
3 14 (4.15%) Wi-Fi
4 10 (2.97%) Internet
5 9 (2.67%) TCP/IP
6 8 (2.37%) VLAN
7 7 (2.08%) Kerberos
7 7 (2.08%) Skype
8 6 (1.78%) DHCP
8 6 (1.78%) Network Security
8 6 (1.78%) VPN
9 5 (1.48%) Unified Communications
9 5 (1.48%) WAN
10 4 (1.19%) NetScaler
11 3 (0.89%) LAN
12 2 (0.59%) BGP
12 2 (0.59%) Cisco IOS
12 2 (0.59%) IPsec
12 2 (0.59%) Wireshark
12 2 (0.59%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.31%) Power BI
2 17 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
3 11 (3.26%) Looker
4 10 (2.97%) BigQuery
4 10 (2.97%) SQL Server
5 7 (2.08%) Data Lake
6 6 (1.78%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.78%) Metadata
6 6 (1.78%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.48%) NoSQL
8 4 (1.19%) MySQL
9 3 (0.89%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.89%) PostgreSQL
10 2 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.59%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.59%) RDBMS
10 2 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.59%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 2 (0.59%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 33 (9.79%) JIRA
2 30 (8.90%) Git
3 17 (5.04%) Jenkins
4 16 (4.75%) GitLab
5 9 (2.67%) Postman
6 7 (2.08%) Selenium
7 6 (1.78%) Cucumber
7 6 (1.78%) Gradle
7 6 (1.78%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.48%) Bitbucket
8 5 (1.48%) Snyk
8 5 (1.48%) Storybook
8 5 (1.48%) Xcode
9 4 (1.19%) JMeter
10 3 (0.89%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.89%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.59%) Fiddler
11 2 (0.59%) git-flow
11 2 (0.59%) JUnit
12 1 (0.30%) Visual Studio
General
1 110 (32.64%) Social Skills
2 78 (23.15%) Public Sector
3 54 (16.02%) Finance
4 40 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
5 39 (11.57%) Banking
6 16 (4.75%) Legal
7 10 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (2.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (2.08%) Law
8 7 (2.08%) Military
9 5 (1.48%) Games
9 5 (1.48%) Retail
10 4 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
10 4 (1.19%) Telecoms
11 3 (0.89%) Marketing
12 2 (0.59%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.30%) Advertising
13 1 (0.30%) Automotive
13 1 (0.30%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 71 (21.07%) Developer
2 54 (16.02%) Architect
3 36 (10.68%) Analyst
4 30 (8.90%) Senior
5 23 (6.82%) Java Developer
6 20 (5.93%) Lead
7 19 (5.64%) IT Support
8 17 (5.04%) Azure Engineer
9 16 (4.75%) Solutions Architect
10 15 (4.45%) Support Analyst
11 14 (4.15%) Azure Developer
11 14 (4.15%) Data Engineer
11 14 (4.15%) Platform Engineer
11 14 (4.15%) Security Engineer
12 11 (3.26%) 1st Line Support
12 11 (3.26%) DevOps Engineer
12 11 (3.26%) Support Engineer
13 10 (2.97%) Data Scientist
13 10 (2.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 8 (2.37%) Performance Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (10.98%) Spring Boot
2 35 (10.39%) Spring
3 30 (8.90%) REST
4 17 (5.04%) .NET
5 16 (4.75%) RESTful
6 15 (4.45%) JSON
6 15 (4.45%) React
7 14 (4.15%) HTML
8 11 (3.26%) Kafka
8 11 (3.26%) OAuth
9 10 (2.97%) JMS
10 9 (2.67%) Node.js
11 7 (2.08%) LDAP
12 6 (1.78%) AngularJS
12 6 (1.78%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (1.78%) HTML5 Canvas
12 6 (1.78%) PySpark
12 6 (1.78%) React Native
12 6 (1.78%) XGBoost
13 5 (1.48%) D3.js
Miscellaneous
1 31 (9.20%) Onboarding
2 26 (7.72%) Cloud Native
3 14 (4.15%) Product Ownership
4 13 (3.86%) Distributed Systems
5 10 (2.97%) Private Cloud
5 10 (2.97%) SWIFT Messaging Network
6 9 (2.67%) Low-Code
7 8 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.08%) Credit Risk
8 7 (2.08%) Mobile App
9 6 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
10 5 (1.48%) Data Centre
10 5 (1.48%) e-Learning
10 5 (1.48%) NHS
10 5 (1.48%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.48%) Video Conferencing
10 5 (1.48%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.19%) Distributed Computing
11 4 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 47 (13.95%) Windows
2 23 (6.82%) Windows 10
3 13 (3.86%) Linux
4 7 (2.08%) Apple iOS
5 6 (1.78%) Android
5 6 (1.78%) Windows Server
6 5 (1.48%) Windows Server 2019
7 4 (1.19%) Mac OS
7 4 (1.19%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.30%) VMS
8 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 113 (33.53%) DevOps
2 94 (27.89%) CI/CD
3 85 (25.22%) Agile
4 74 (21.96%) Problem-Solving
5 50 (14.84%) Containerisation
6 48 (14.24%) Analytics
7 42 (12.46%) Microservices
8 37 (10.98%) User Experience
9 34 (10.09%) Business Intelligence
9 34 (10.09%) Continuous Improvement
9 34 (10.09%) Migration
10 31 (9.20%) Infrastructure as Code
10 31 (9.20%) Machine Learning
11 29 (8.61%) ITIL
12 28 (8.31%) Observability
13 27 (8.01%) Validation
14 26 (7.72%) Mentoring
15 25 (7.42%) Stakeholder Management
15 25 (7.42%) Test Automation
16 24 (7.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 68 (20.18%) Python
2 55 (16.32%) Java
3 49 (14.54%) SQL
4 30 (8.90%) PowerShell
5 28 (8.31%) JavaScript
6 25 (7.42%) C#
7 21 (6.23%) TypeScript
8 16 (4.75%) Bash
9 10 (2.97%) Go
10 7 (2.08%) R
11 4 (1.19%) Bicep
12 3 (0.89%) C++
12 3 (0.89%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.89%) Scala
13 2 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.59%) Perl
13 2 (0.59%) PHP
13 2 (0.59%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.30%) C
14 1 (0.30%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 47 (13.95%) Security Cleared
2 28 (8.31%) SC Cleared
3 27 (8.01%) Degree
4 18 (5.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (4.45%) Azure Certification
6 11 (3.26%) CISSP
7 9 (2.67%) AWS Certification
7 9 (2.67%) CISM
8 7 (2.08%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (1.19%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (1.19%) IBM Certification
9 4 (1.19%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (0.89%) DV Cleared
11 2 (0.59%) CCDP
11 2 (0.59%) CCIE
11 2 (0.59%) CCNP
11 2 (0.59%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.59%) PMP
11 2 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (7.42%) Accessibility
2 24 (7.12%) QA
3 22 (6.53%) Data Quality
4 18 (5.34%) ISO 20022
5 15 (4.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (4.15%) PSD2
7 13 (3.86%) GDPR
8 12 (3.56%) NIST
9 10 (2.97%) SEPA
10 5 (1.48%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.59%) WCAG
12 1 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 1 (0.30%) GRC
12 1 (0.30%) HL7
12 1 (0.30%) NEBOSH
12 1 (0.30%) SLA
12 1 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 75 (22.26%) Active Directory
2 56 (16.62%) Docker
3 14 (4.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (2.97%) vSphere
5 5 (1.48%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.30%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 59 (17.51%) Kubernetes
2 34 (10.09%) Terraform
3 33 (9.79%) Microsoft Intune
4 25 (7.42%) SCCM
5 11 (3.26%) Ansible
6 10 (2.97%) Grafana
6 10 (2.97%) Prometheus
7 8 (2.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 8 (2.37%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (1.48%) Fluentd
9 3 (0.89%) Jamf Pro
10 1 (0.30%) AirWatch
10 1 (0.30%) CA Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.30%) Istio
10 1 (0.30%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 125 (37.09%) Microsoft
2 32 (9.50%) Google
3 31 (9.20%) ServiceNow
4 16 (4.75%) Oracle
4 16 (4.75%) VMware
5 13 (3.86%) Virgin Media
6 11 (3.26%) Databricks
7 10 (2.97%) Bomgar
7 10 (2.97%) F5
7 10 (2.97%) iManage
8 7 (2.08%) Cisco
8 7 (2.08%) Pega
8 7 (2.08%) Splunk
9 6 (1.78%) Citrix
9 6 (1.78%) OpenAI
9 6 (1.78%) Palo Alto
9 6 (1.78%) Veeam
10 5 (1.48%) Checkmarx
10 5 (1.48%) Cribl.io
10 5 (1.48%) Veracode