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

6 months to
9 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 8 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -3 -3
Contract jobs citing Azure 309 232 379
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 12.44% 11.16% 14.35%
As % of the Cloud Services category 35.89% 35.31% 40.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 235 154 283
10th Percentile £303 £250 £270
25th Percentile £381 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -10.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £585
90th Percentile £620 £700 £650
England median daily rate £522 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 3 24
10th Percentile - - £17.98
25th Percentile £15.50 - £20.75
Median hourly rate £18.87 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -59.14% - -34.03%
75th Percentile £56.54 £61.84 -
90th Percentile £67.25 £71.24 -
England median hourly rate £52.50 £35.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +50.00% -24.21% -8.55%

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 861 657 941
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 34.66% 31.62% 35.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 638 433 699
10th Percentile £214 £250 £265
25th Percentile £358 £375 £392
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £445 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.32% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £538 £565 £582
90th Percentile £629 £650 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 13 46
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.16 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.05 £17.73
Median hourly rate £40.53 £29.00 £38.75
Median % change year-on-year +39.76% -25.16% -22.50%
75th Percentile £68.75 £58.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £72.14 £75.95 £62.88
England median hourly rate £27.50 £28.46 £22.50
% change year-on-year -3.36% +26.47% -0.07%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -1 170 £450 -10.00% 166
Cheshire +9 83 £465 +20.00% 68
Merseyside -6 38 £138 -45.00% 48
Lancashire -10 15 £450 -10.00% 110
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 25 (8.09%) SharePoint
2 18 (5.83%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (2.91%) Confluence
4 7 (2.27%) Exchange Server 2013
4 7 (2.27%) SAS
4 7 (2.27%) Skype for Business
5 4 (1.29%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.97%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.97%) IIS
7 2 (0.65%) Apache
8 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.32%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 17 (5.50%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (2.91%) MS Visio
3 8 (2.59%) Microsoft Excel
4 7 (2.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.97%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (1.62%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (1.62%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.32%) Dynamics NAV
2 1 (0.32%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 128 (41.42%) AWS
2 90 (29.13%) GCP
3 68 (22.01%) Microsoft 365
4 48 (15.53%) Azure DevOps
4 48 (15.53%) Power Platform
5 31 (10.03%) GitHub
6 28 (9.06%) Entra ID
7 15 (4.85%) SaaS
8 14 (4.53%) Power Automate
9 13 (4.21%) GitHub Actions
9 13 (4.21%) PowerApps
9 13 (4.21%) Serverless
10 12 (3.88%) Dynamics 365
10 12 (3.88%) Google Tag Manager
11 11 (3.56%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (3.56%) Datadog
11 11 (3.56%) Google Analytics
12 10 (3.24%) OneDrive
12 10 (3.24%) OpenShift
13 9 (2.91%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 17 (5.50%) Firewall
2 14 (4.53%) DNS
3 13 (4.21%) Wi-Fi
4 10 (3.24%) TCP/IP
5 9 (2.91%) Internet
5 9 (2.91%) VLAN
6 7 (2.27%) Skype
7 6 (1.94%) VPN
8 5 (1.62%) Unified Communications
8 5 (1.62%) WAN
9 4 (1.29%) LAN
9 4 (1.29%) Network Security
10 3 (0.97%) BGP
10 3 (0.97%) Cisco IOS
10 3 (0.97%) DHCP
10 3 (0.97%) iSCSI
10 3 (0.97%) NX-OS
10 3 (0.97%) SAN
10 3 (0.97%) WLAN
11 2 (0.65%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (8.41%) Power BI
2 15 (4.85%) Data Warehouse
3 13 (4.21%) BigQuery
4 11 (3.56%) Looker
4 11 (3.56%) SQL Server
5 9 (2.91%) Azure SQL Database
5 9 (2.91%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (2.91%) Relational Database
6 6 (1.94%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (1.94%) Data Lake
6 6 (1.94%) Metadata
6 6 (1.94%) MySQL
6 6 (1.94%) NoSQL
7 5 (1.62%) DynamoDB
7 5 (1.62%) RDBMS
7 5 (1.62%) Redis
8 4 (1.29%) Amazon Aurora
9 2 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (0.65%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.65%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 33 (10.68%) JIRA
2 30 (9.71%) Git
3 21 (6.80%) Jenkins
4 13 (4.21%) GitLab
5 10 (3.24%) Gradle
6 9 (2.91%) SonarQube
7 8 (2.59%) Postman
8 6 (1.94%) Storybook
8 6 (1.94%) Xcode
9 5 (1.62%) Bitbucket
9 5 (1.62%) Cucumber
9 5 (1.62%) Selenium
9 5 (1.62%) Snyk
10 4 (1.29%) JUnit
10 4 (1.29%) Maven
10 4 (1.29%) SonarLint
11 3 (0.97%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.97%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.65%) Fiddler
12 2 (0.65%) git-flow
General
1 104 (33.66%) Social Skills
2 72 (23.30%) Public Sector
3 45 (14.56%) Finance
4 40 (12.94%) Analytical Skills
5 35 (11.33%) Banking
6 10 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (2.91%) Legal
8 8 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (1.94%) Law
9 6 (1.94%) Military
10 5 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.62%) Marketing
10 5 (1.62%) Retail
11 4 (1.29%) Games
12 3 (0.97%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.97%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
14 1 (0.32%) Electronics
14 1 (0.32%) Local Government
14 1 (0.32%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 62 (20.06%) Developer
2 48 (15.53%) Architect
3 36 (11.65%) Analyst
4 28 (9.06%) Senior
5 20 (6.47%) Java Developer
6 18 (5.83%) IT Support
7 15 (4.85%) Azure Engineer
7 15 (4.85%) Solutions Architect
8 14 (4.53%) Lead
8 14 (4.53%) Support Analyst
9 13 (4.21%) Security Engineer
10 12 (3.88%) Azure Developer
10 12 (3.88%) Data Engineer
10 12 (3.88%) Platform Engineer
10 12 (3.88%) Support Engineer
11 11 (3.56%) DevOps Engineer
11 11 (3.56%) Technical Architect
12 10 (3.24%) Senior Developer
13 9 (2.91%) Data Scientist
14 8 (2.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (10.36%) Spring Boot
2 26 (8.41%) Spring
3 20 (6.47%) REST
4 16 (5.18%) .NET
5 15 (4.85%) RESTful
6 13 (4.21%) HTML
6 13 (4.21%) JSON
6 13 (4.21%) React
7 11 (3.56%) OAuth
8 9 (2.91%) AngularJS
8 9 (2.91%) JMS
9 8 (2.59%) Node.js
10 6 (1.94%) D3.js
10 6 (1.94%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (1.94%) Kafka
10 6 (1.94%) PySpark
10 6 (1.94%) React Native
10 6 (1.94%) SVG
11 5 (1.62%) Dropwizard
11 5 (1.62%) Micronaut
Miscellaneous
1 27 (8.74%) Onboarding
2 23 (7.44%) Cloud Native
3 14 (4.53%) Distributed Systems
4 13 (4.21%) Product Ownership
5 9 (2.91%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (2.91%) Low-Code
5 9 (2.91%) SWIFT Messaging Network
6 8 (2.59%) Data Protection Act
6 8 (2.59%) Mobile App
7 7 (2.27%) Credit Risk
7 7 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.94%) Data Centre
9 5 (1.62%) Clustering
9 5 (1.62%) NHS
9 5 (1.62%) N-Tier
9 5 (1.62%) Private Cloud
9 5 (1.62%) Replication
9 5 (1.62%) Video Conferencing
10 4 (1.29%) Public Cloud
10 4 (1.29%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 46 (14.89%) Windows
2 21 (6.80%) Windows 10
3 12 (3.88%) Linux
4 9 (2.91%) Android
5 8 (2.59%) Apple iOS
6 6 (1.94%) Windows Server
7 4 (1.29%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.97%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.32%) VMS
10 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 108 (34.95%) DevOps
2 88 (28.48%) CI/CD
3 72 (23.30%) Agile
4 66 (21.36%) Problem-Solving
5 51 (16.50%) Containerisation
6 46 (14.89%) Analytics
7 35 (11.33%) User Experience
8 34 (11.00%) Microservices
9 33 (10.68%) Infrastructure as Code
9 33 (10.68%) Migration
10 32 (10.36%) Business Intelligence
11 30 (9.71%) Continuous Improvement
11 30 (9.71%) Machine Learning
12 28 (9.06%) Mentoring
12 28 (9.06%) Stakeholder Management
13 26 (8.41%) Roadmaps
13 26 (8.41%) Validation
14 25 (8.09%) AI
14 25 (8.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 23 (7.44%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 69 (22.33%) Python
2 53 (17.15%) SQL
3 46 (14.89%) Java
4 22 (7.12%) JavaScript
5 21 (6.80%) C#
5 21 (6.80%) PowerShell
6 17 (5.50%) TypeScript
7 16 (5.18%) Bash
8 7 (2.27%) R
9 6 (1.94%) Bicep
9 6 (1.94%) Go
10 4 (1.29%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.97%) Perl
11 3 (0.97%) PHP
11 3 (0.97%) Scala
12 2 (0.65%) C++
12 2 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.32%) C
13 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 46 (14.89%) Security Cleared
2 30 (9.71%) SC Cleared
3 23 (7.44%) Degree
4 16 (5.18%) Azure Certification
5 13 (4.21%) BPSS Clearance
6 11 (3.56%) CISSP
7 8 (2.59%) AWS Certification
7 8 (2.59%) CISM
8 5 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (1.62%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (1.29%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (0.97%) CCDP
10 3 (0.97%) CCNP
10 3 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.97%) IBM Certification
11 2 (0.65%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.65%) MCP
11 2 (0.65%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.65%) PMP
11 2 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (8.09%) Accessibility
1 25 (8.09%) QA
2 21 (6.80%) Data Quality
3 17 (5.50%) ISO 20022
4 14 (4.53%) GDPR
5 13 (4.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 13 (4.21%) PSD2
6 11 (3.56%) NIST
7 9 (2.91%) SEPA
8 6 (1.94%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.65%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.65%) WCAG
10 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.32%) GRC
10 1 (0.32%) HL7
10 1 (0.32%) SOC 1
System Software
1 61 (19.74%) Active Directory
2 58 (18.77%) Docker
3 14 (4.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (2.59%) vSphere
5 3 (0.97%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.32%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 56 (18.12%) Kubernetes
2 37 (11.97%) Terraform
3 33 (10.68%) Microsoft Intune
4 22 (7.12%) SCCM
5 9 (2.91%) Ansible
6 8 (2.59%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (2.27%) Grafana
7 7 (2.27%) Prometheus
8 5 (1.62%) Fluentd
9 4 (1.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 3 (0.97%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Clustering
12 1 (0.32%) AirWatch
12 1 (0.32%) Istio
12 1 (0.32%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 108 (34.95%) Microsoft
2 31 (10.03%) Google
3 29 (9.39%) ServiceNow
4 16 (5.18%) VMware
5 14 (4.53%) Oracle
6 13 (4.21%) Virgin Media
7 9 (2.91%) Cisco
7 9 (2.91%) Databricks
7 9 (2.91%) F5
8 7 (2.27%) Palo Alto
8 7 (2.27%) Pega
8 7 (2.27%) SolarWinds
8 7 (2.27%) Splunk
9 6 (1.94%) Bomgar
9 6 (1.94%) Citrix
9 6 (1.94%) iManage
9 6 (1.94%) Meraki
9 6 (1.94%) Veeam
10 5 (1.62%) Checkmarx
10 5 (1.62%) Veracode