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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 12 9
Rank change year-on-year +8 -3 -6
Contract jobs citing Azure 539 234 291
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 14.27% 10.65% 12.25%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.92% 34.01% 39.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 386 171 218
10th Percentile £314 £358 £363
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £595
90th Percentile £649 £650 £675
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 3 3
10th Percentile £22.32 £28.60 £32.84
25th Percentile £25.38 £43.19 £37.84
Median hourly rate £29.00 £70.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -58.57% +51.58% -
75th Percentile £51.77 £74.38 -
90th Percentile £78.33 £75.50 -
England median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -37.78%

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 1,200 688 745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 31.76% 31.32% 31.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 772 513 505
10th Percentile £241 £311 £302
25th Percentile £400 £390 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £613 £538 £575
90th Percentile £691 £638 £650
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 23 37
10th Percentile £18.85 £12.82 £14.84
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.87 -
Median hourly rate £46.80 £40.59 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year +15.30% +152.74% -40.96%
75th Percentile £76.00 £56.25 £32.50
90th Percentile £91.00 £75.50 £70.45
England median hourly rate £35.71 £26.00 £23.80
% change year-on-year +37.35% +9.24% -27.88%

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 7 August 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 7 August 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 7 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
Manchester +4 282 £492 -6.29% 310
Cheshire +21 143 £550 +15.79% 59
Lancashire +11 48 £550 +22.22% 86
Merseyside -3 42 £149 -65.00% 46
Cumbria -11 6 £383 +61.05% 2
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 41 (7.61%) SharePoint
2 29 (5.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 16 (2.97%) Confluence
4 8 (1.48%) Apache Spark
5 7 (1.30%) SharePoint Server
6 5 (0.93%) Apache
7 4 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.56%) TIBCO ActiveMatrix
9 2 (0.37%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
9 2 (0.37%) SAS
10 1 (0.19%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.19%) CMS
10 1 (0.19%) Drupal
10 1 (0.19%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.19%) SharePoint 2013
10 1 (0.19%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.19%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.19%) WordPress
Applications
1 10 (1.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.56%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.37%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.37%) Trello
4 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.11%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.74%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.56%) Adobe Campaign
4 3 (0.56%) BusinessWorks
4 3 (0.56%) Elite 3E
5 1 (0.19%) Dynamics AX
5 1 (0.19%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.19%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 224 (41.56%) AWS
2 111 (20.59%) GCP
3 87 (16.14%) Azure DevOps
4 75 (13.91%) Entra ID
4 75 (13.91%) Microsoft 365
5 74 (13.73%) Power Platform
6 34 (6.31%) GitHub
7 32 (5.94%) Power Automate
8 31 (5.75%) PowerApps
9 26 (4.82%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 26 (4.82%) Serverless
10 25 (4.64%) Azure Data Factory
11 24 (4.45%) Dynamics 365
11 24 (4.45%) Microsoft Copilot
12 23 (4.27%) Azure AKS
12 23 (4.27%) GitHub Actions
13 22 (4.08%) SaaS
14 21 (3.90%) Azure Monitor
14 21 (3.90%) OneDrive
15 18 (3.34%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 65 (12.06%) Firewall
2 31 (5.75%) DNS
3 26 (4.82%) VPN
4 24 (4.45%) Network Security
5 19 (3.53%) BGP
5 19 (3.53%) OSPF
5 19 (3.53%) WAN
6 17 (3.15%) SD-WAN
7 12 (2.23%) Ethernet VPN
7 12 (2.23%) VXLAN
7 12 (2.23%) Wi-Fi
8 11 (2.04%) BIG-IP
8 11 (2.04%) SSL
8 11 (2.04%) WLAN
9 10 (1.86%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 7 (1.30%) SAN
10 7 (1.30%) TCP/IP
11 5 (0.93%) NAS
11 5 (0.93%) VLAN
12 4 (0.74%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (8.16%) Power BI
2 38 (7.05%) SQL Server
3 23 (4.27%) Data Warehouse
4 19 (3.53%) Data Lake
5 18 (3.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 15 (2.78%) Metadata
7 14 (2.60%) MySQL
7 14 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
8 9 (1.67%) NoSQL
9 6 (1.11%) Azure SQL Database
9 6 (1.11%) BigQuery
10 5 (0.93%) MongoDB
10 5 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
10 5 (0.93%) Sybase ASE
11 4 (0.74%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
11 4 (0.74%) Relational Database
11 4 (0.74%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 3 (0.56%) Big Data
12 3 (0.56%) Data Vault
12 3 (0.56%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 33 (6.12%) JIRA
2 28 (5.19%) GitLab
3 24 (4.45%) Git
4 18 (3.34%) Jenkins
5 11 (2.04%) Postman
6 6 (1.11%) Cucumber
6 6 (1.11%) REST Assured
7 5 (0.93%) Selenium
8 3 (0.56%) Claude Code
8 3 (0.56%) ClearCase
8 3 (0.56%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
8 3 (0.56%) TestRail
8 3 (0.56%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.37%) Burp Suite
9 2 (0.37%) Gatling
9 2 (0.37%) Gradle
9 2 (0.37%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.19%) Rational Robot
10 1 (0.19%) Visual Studio
General
1 113 (20.96%) Social Skills
2 112 (20.78%) Finance
3 66 (12.24%) Public Sector
4 46 (8.53%) Analytical Skills
5 33 (6.12%) Banking
6 22 (4.08%) Legal
7 17 (3.15%) Manufacturing
8 16 (2.97%) Retail
9 14 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
10 10 (1.86%) Military
11 7 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
12 5 (0.93%) Games
13 4 (0.74%) Health Technology
13 4 (0.74%) Law
13 4 (0.74%) Marketing
14 3 (0.56%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.56%) Investment Banking
14 3 (0.56%) Local Government
15 2 (0.37%) Advertising
15 2 (0.37%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 81 (15.03%) Architect
2 62 (11.50%) Senior
3 54 (10.02%) Security Engineer
4 45 (8.35%) Analyst
5 42 (7.79%) Lead
6 41 (7.61%) Developer
7 31 (5.75%) Azure Engineer
7 31 (5.75%) Cloud Engineer
8 29 (5.38%) Data Engineer
9 24 (4.45%) Solutions Architect
10 21 (3.90%) DevOps Engineer
10 21 (3.90%) Security Architect
11 20 (3.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 18 (3.34%) DBA
13 17 (3.15%) Network Engineer
14 16 (2.97%) Systems Analyst
15 15 (2.78%) Platform Engineer
16 14 (2.60%) Cloud Security Engineer
16 14 (2.60%) Consultant
17 13 (2.41%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (4.27%) REST
2 18 (3.34%) Spring
3 17 (3.15%) OAuth
4 16 (2.97%) .NET
4 16 (2.97%) PySpark
5 14 (2.60%) Node.js
5 14 (2.60%) Spring Boot
6 12 (2.23%) React
6 12 (2.23%) SAML
7 10 (1.86%) LangChain
7 10 (1.86%) SailPoint
8 9 (1.67%) ARM Templates
8 9 (1.67%) Kafka
8 9 (1.67%) OpenID
8 9 (1.67%) Playwright
9 8 (1.48%) Nunjucks
9 8 (1.48%) PyTorch
9 8 (1.48%) RESTful
9 8 (1.48%) scikit-learn
10 7 (1.30%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 73 (13.54%) Cloud Native
2 35 (6.49%) Security Posture
3 27 (5.01%) Data Centre
4 26 (4.82%) Onboarding
5 25 (4.64%) Hybrid Cloud
6 24 (4.45%) Enterprise Cloud
7 22 (4.08%) Management Information System
8 16 (2.97%) Data Protection Act
8 16 (2.97%) Legacy Systems
9 15 (2.78%) Replication
10 14 (2.60%) AI Agents
11 12 (2.23%) Product Ownership
12 9 (1.67%) Cloud Security Posture
12 9 (1.67%) Linux Command Line
13 8 (1.48%) Clustering
14 6 (1.11%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 6 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
14 6 (1.11%) PKI
15 5 (0.93%) Public Cloud
15 5 (0.93%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 86 (15.96%) Windows
2 45 (8.35%) Linux
3 26 (4.82%) Windows Server
4 22 (4.08%) Windows 10
5 18 (3.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (1.48%) Apple iOS
6 8 (1.48%) Unix
6 8 (1.48%) VMS
7 6 (1.11%) Android
7 6 (1.11%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.37%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (32.84%) DevOps
2 167 (30.98%) CI/CD
3 117 (21.71%) Agile
4 92 (17.07%) Migration
5 91 (16.88%) Infrastructure as Code
6 69 (12.80%) Cloud Security
7 68 (12.62%) Analytics
8 66 (12.24%) Stakeholder Management
9 61 (11.32%) Problem-Solving
10 56 (10.39%) Roadmaps
11 54 (10.02%) AI
11 54 (10.02%) Continuous Improvement
12 52 (9.65%) Business Intelligence
12 52 (9.65%) Data Modelling
13 48 (8.91%) Data Pipeline
14 47 (8.72%) SIEM
14 47 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 44 (8.16%) Containerisation
15 44 (8.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 42 (7.79%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 145 (26.90%) Python
2 100 (18.55%) SQL
3 81 (15.03%) PowerShell
4 51 (9.46%) Java
5 40 (7.42%) Bash
6 39 (7.24%) Bicep
7 19 (3.53%) T-SQL
8 18 (3.34%) C#
9 16 (2.97%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.74%) Search Processing Language
10 4 (0.74%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.74%) TypeScript
11 3 (0.56%) VB
11 3 (0.56%) VB6
12 2 (0.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.37%) Go
12 2 (0.37%) PROC SQL
12 2 (0.37%) VBScript
13 1 (0.19%) Google Apps Script
Qualifications
1 92 (17.07%) Security Cleared
2 72 (13.36%) SC Cleared
3 54 (10.02%) Degree
4 46 (8.53%) Azure Certification
5 35 (6.49%) CISSP
6 31 (5.75%) AWS Certification
7 27 (5.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 24 (4.45%) Cisco Certification
9 22 (4.08%) Microsoft Certification
10 13 (2.41%) CCNP
11 12 (2.23%) CCNA
12 6 (1.11%) Computer Science Degree
13 5 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 5 (0.93%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 4 (0.74%) CISM
14 4 (0.74%) DBS Check
14 4 (0.74%) GCFA
14 4 (0.74%) GCIH
14 4 (0.74%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 3 (0.56%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (6.31%) Data Quality
2 26 (4.82%) NIST
3 22 (4.08%) GDPR
4 20 (3.71%) QA
5 10 (1.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (1.48%) Accessibility
7 6 (1.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (1.11%) HIPAA
7 6 (1.11%) PCI DSS
7 6 (1.11%) SLA
8 5 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.74%) NCSC
10 3 (0.56%) GRC
10 3 (0.56%) GxP
10 3 (0.56%) Solvency II
11 2 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 2 (0.37%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.37%) WCAG
12 1 (0.19%) ISO 20022
12 1 (0.19%) SEPA
System Software
1 80 (14.84%) Active Directory
2 58 (10.76%) Docker
3 15 (2.78%) Virtual Machines
4 14 (2.60%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (2.41%) Virtual Desktop
6 5 (0.93%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.74%) Firmware
8 3 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.56%) VMware NSX
8 3 (0.56%) vSphere
9 2 (0.37%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 2 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 111 (20.59%) Terraform
2 85 (15.77%) Kubernetes
3 43 (7.98%) Ansible
4 24 (4.45%) Microsoft Intune
5 19 (3.53%) Progress Chef
6 16 (2.97%) Grafana
7 15 (2.78%) Single Sign-On
8 12 (2.23%) Prometheus
8 12 (2.23%) SCCM
9 9 (1.67%) Argo
10 8 (1.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 8 (1.48%) CASB
11 7 (1.30%) SCOM
12 4 (0.74%) Istio
13 3 (0.56%) FortiGate
13 3 (0.56%) vCenter Server
14 2 (0.37%) Failover Clustering
14 2 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
14 2 (0.37%) vMotion
14 2 (0.37%) vRealize
Vendors
1 203 (37.66%) Microsoft
2 51 (9.46%) ServiceNow
3 40 (7.42%) Google
4 31 (5.75%) Databricks
5 28 (5.19%) Splunk
6 22 (4.08%) Palo Alto
7 18 (3.34%) Red Hat
8 17 (3.15%) BeyondTrust
8 17 (3.15%) Infoblox
8 17 (3.15%) VMware
9 16 (2.97%) Aruba
10 14 (2.60%) Salesforce
11 12 (2.23%) Arista
11 12 (2.23%) Bomgar
11 12 (2.23%) Cisco
11 12 (2.23%) F5
11 12 (2.23%) Fortinet
11 12 (2.23%) iManage
11 12 (2.23%) OpenAI
12 11 (2.04%) CyberArk