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 16 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 7 11
Rank change year-on-year +1 +4 -8
Contract jobs citing Azure 409 277 315
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 13.69% 13.73% 11.10%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.61% 40.09% 33.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 330 205 251
10th Percentile £306 £238 £313
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £500 £489
Median % change year-on-year -3.15% +2.25% -6.86%
75th Percentile £581 £580 £575
90th Percentile £639 £700 £650
England median daily rate £525 £530 £540
% change year-on-year -0.94% -1.85% -4.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 3 7
10th Percentile £15.50 £67.75 £17.15
25th Percentile £18.31 £68.13 £18.50
Median hourly rate £25.38 £72.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -64.99% +222.22% -67.86%
75th Percentile £52.94 £76.88 £46.18
90th Percentile £88.43 £77.25 -
England median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.12
% change year-on-year +7.48% +16.01% -22.88%

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 983 691 947
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 32.90% 34.26% 33.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 697 516 698
10th Percentile £217 £230 £281
25th Percentile £369 £389 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £570 £575 £550
90th Percentile £638 £650 £638
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 16 73
10th Percentile £18.23 £22.61 £15.50
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.20 £16.06
Median hourly rate £57.50 £28.75 £17.29
Median % change year-on-year +100.00% +66.33% -67.38%
75th Percentile £76.00 £50.66 £26.50
90th Percentile £90.00 £76.88 £46.18
England median hourly rate £37.58 £26.00 £21.19
% change year-on-year +44.54% +22.73% -15.26%

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 16 March 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 16 March 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 16 March 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 -2 215 £492 -3.53% 151
Cheshire +9 121 £526 +28.35% 53
Merseyside +1 53 £138 -45.00% 34
Lancashire -14 14 £500 - 85
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 32 (7.82%) SharePoint
2 25 (6.11%) Microsoft Exchange
3 18 (4.40%) Confluence
4 7 (1.71%) SAS
5 5 (1.22%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.98%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.49%) IIS
8 1 (0.24%) Apache
8 1 (0.24%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.24%) CMS
8 1 (0.24%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 9 (2.20%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.22%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.49%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.49%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.22%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.49%) Elite 3E
3 2 (0.49%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
Cloud Services
1 167 (40.83%) AWS
2 98 (23.96%) GCP
3 87 (21.27%) Microsoft 365
4 65 (15.89%) Entra ID
5 61 (14.91%) Azure DevOps
6 60 (14.67%) Power Platform
7 30 (7.33%) GitHub
8 23 (5.62%) Power Automate
9 22 (5.38%) Dynamics 365
9 22 (5.38%) PowerApps
10 21 (5.13%) GitHub Actions
11 18 (4.40%) Serverless
12 17 (4.16%) Azure Data Factory
13 14 (3.42%) AWS CloudFormation
13 14 (3.42%) Azure Logic Apps
13 14 (3.42%) OneDrive
13 14 (3.42%) OpenShift
14 13 (3.18%) Azure AKS
14 13 (3.18%) Azure Monitor
14 13 (3.18%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 44 (10.76%) Firewall
2 24 (5.87%) DNS
3 12 (2.93%) Network Security
4 11 (2.69%) Wi-Fi
5 10 (2.44%) VPN
6 9 (2.20%) Kerberos
6 9 (2.20%) TCP/IP
7 7 (1.71%) DHCP
8 6 (1.47%) Internet
8 6 (1.47%) VLAN
9 4 (0.98%) HTTP
9 4 (0.98%) NetScaler
10 3 (0.73%) Unified Communications
10 3 (0.73%) WAN
11 2 (0.49%) BGP
11 2 (0.49%) OSPF
11 2 (0.49%) SD-WAN
11 2 (0.49%) Wireshark
12 1 (0.24%) LAN
12 1 (0.24%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (6.11%) Power BI
2 23 (5.62%) Data Warehouse
3 15 (3.67%) SQL Server
4 9 (2.20%) Metadata
5 8 (1.96%) Data Lake
6 7 (1.71%) Looker
7 6 (1.47%) Azure SQL Database
7 6 (1.47%) BigQuery
7 6 (1.47%) MySQL
7 6 (1.47%) NoSQL
7 6 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
8 5 (1.22%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.73%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
9 3 (0.73%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.73%) Snowflake Schema
9 3 (0.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.49%) Data Vault
10 2 (0.49%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.49%) Power Query
10 2 (0.49%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 37 (9.05%) JIRA
2 26 (6.36%) Git
3 18 (4.40%) GitLab
3 18 (4.40%) Jenkins
4 10 (2.44%) Postman
5 6 (1.47%) Cucumber
5 6 (1.47%) SonarQube
6 5 (1.22%) Bitbucket
6 5 (1.22%) Selenium
6 5 (1.22%) Snyk
7 3 (0.73%) CircleCI
7 3 (0.73%) JMeter
8 2 (0.49%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.49%) Fiddler
9 1 (0.24%) JUnit
9 1 (0.24%) Mockito
9 1 (0.24%) MSI
9 1 (0.24%) Spinnaker
9 1 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.24%) Visual Studio
General
1 109 (26.65%) Social Skills
2 78 (19.07%) Public Sector
3 77 (18.83%) Finance
4 42 (10.27%) Banking
5 38 (9.29%) Analytical Skills
6 20 (4.89%) Legal
7 11 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 9 (2.20%) Law
8 9 (2.20%) Retail
9 5 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.73%) Games
11 3 (0.73%) Local Government
11 3 (0.73%) Military
11 3 (0.73%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.49%) Financial Institution
12 2 (0.49%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.24%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.24%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 70 (17.11%) Architect
2 69 (16.87%) Developer
3 39 (9.54%) Senior
4 34 (8.31%) Analyst
4 34 (8.31%) Lead
5 32 (7.82%) Security Engineer
6 25 (6.11%) Azure Engineer
7 22 (5.38%) Java Developer
8 20 (4.89%) Data Engineer
8 20 (4.89%) DevOps Engineer
9 18 (4.40%) Solutions Architect
10 17 (4.16%) Platform Engineer
11 16 (3.91%) 1st Line Support
11 16 (3.91%) IT Support
12 15 (3.67%) Azure Developer
13 10 (2.44%) Support Engineer
14 9 (2.20%) .NET Developer
14 9 (2.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 9 (2.20%) Security Architect
14 9 (2.20%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (8.56%) Spring Boot
2 33 (8.07%) Spring
3 31 (7.58%) REST
4 20 (4.89%) .NET
5 19 (4.65%) React
5 19 (4.65%) RESTful
6 14 (3.42%) HTML
7 13 (3.18%) JSON
8 12 (2.93%) Kafka
8 12 (2.93%) OAuth
9 9 (2.20%) AngularJS
9 9 (2.20%) LDAP
10 8 (1.96%) ARM Templates
10 8 (1.96%) Node.js
11 7 (1.71%) .NET Core
11 7 (1.71%) HTML5 Canvas
11 7 (1.71%) JMS
11 7 (1.71%) LangChain
11 7 (1.71%) PySpark
11 7 (1.71%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 44 (10.76%) Cloud Native
2 35 (8.56%) Onboarding
3 14 (3.42%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (3.42%) Product Ownership
3 14 (3.42%) Security Posture
4 10 (2.44%) Private Cloud
5 9 (2.20%) Data Centre
6 7 (1.71%) Credit Risk
6 7 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
6 7 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
6 7 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
6 7 (1.71%) SWIFT Messaging Network
7 6 (1.47%) Cloud Security Posture
7 6 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (1.47%) Low-Code
7 6 (1.47%) Management Information System
8 5 (1.22%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 5 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (1.22%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.22%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 58 (14.18%) Windows
2 31 (7.58%) Windows 10
3 20 (4.89%) Linux
4 7 (1.71%) Windows Server
5 5 (1.22%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (0.98%) Mac OS
6 4 (0.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (0.98%) VMS
6 4 (0.98%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (0.24%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (33.50%) DevOps
2 121 (29.58%) CI/CD
3 107 (26.16%) Agile
4 70 (17.11%) Problem-Solving
5 60 (14.67%) Analytics
5 60 (14.67%) Containerisation
6 49 (11.98%) Infrastructure as Code
7 47 (11.49%) Microservices
8 43 (10.51%) Continuous Improvement
9 41 (10.02%) Migration
10 37 (9.05%) Observability
11 36 (8.80%) Roadmaps
12 35 (8.56%) Data Modelling
12 35 (8.56%) Mentoring
13 33 (8.07%) Test Automation
14 32 (7.82%) User Experience
15 31 (7.58%) Cloud Security
15 31 (7.58%) Customer Service
15 31 (7.58%) DevSecOps
16 30 (7.33%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 94 (22.98%) Python
2 62 (15.16%) SQL
3 58 (14.18%) Java
4 50 (12.22%) PowerShell
5 28 (6.85%) JavaScript
6 26 (6.36%) C#
7 25 (6.11%) Bash
8 17 (4.16%) Bicep
9 15 (3.67%) TypeScript
10 8 (1.96%) Go
11 7 (1.71%) R
12 4 (0.98%) C++
13 3 (0.73%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.49%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 2 (0.49%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.49%) Scala
14 2 (0.49%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.24%) C
15 1 (0.24%) PHP
15 1 (0.24%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 45 (11.00%) Security Cleared
2 25 (6.11%) SC Cleared
3 24 (5.87%) Azure Certification
4 23 (5.62%) Degree
5 20 (4.89%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (3.91%) AWS Certification
6 16 (3.91%) CISSP
7 14 (3.42%) Cisco Certification
8 9 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
9 8 (1.96%) CISM
10 7 (1.71%) CCNP
11 6 (1.47%) CCNA
12 5 (1.22%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 5 (1.22%) ITIL Certification
13 4 (0.98%) CCIE
13 4 (0.98%) IBM Certification
14 3 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
14 3 (0.73%) GIAC
14 3 (0.73%) PMI Certification
14 3 (0.73%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (5.62%) Data Quality
1 23 (5.62%) QA
2 19 (4.65%) NIST
3 17 (4.16%) Accessibility
4 16 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (3.67%) GDPR
5 15 (3.67%) ISO 20022
6 8 (1.96%) PSD2
7 7 (1.71%) SEPA
8 5 (1.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 5 (1.22%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.98%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.73%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.73%) NCSC
11 2 (0.49%) Solvency II
11 2 (0.49%) WCAG
12 1 (0.24%) GRC
12 1 (0.24%) HL7
12 1 (0.24%) NEBOSH
12 1 (0.24%) SLA
System Software
1 89 (21.76%) Active Directory
2 70 (17.11%) Docker
3 13 (3.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (2.44%) vSphere
5 8 (1.96%) Virtual Desktop
6 5 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.73%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 72 (17.60%) Kubernetes
2 59 (14.43%) Terraform
3 29 (7.09%) Microsoft Intune
4 15 (3.67%) SCCM
5 14 (3.42%) Grafana
6 13 (3.18%) Prometheus
7 12 (2.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 12 (2.93%) Ansible
7 12 (2.93%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.47%) Argo
9 4 (0.98%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.73%) Fluentd
10 3 (0.73%) Istio
10 3 (0.73%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.49%) CA Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.49%) linkerd
12 1 (0.24%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 151 (36.92%) Microsoft
2 38 (9.29%) Google
3 31 (7.58%) ServiceNow
4 18 (4.40%) Databricks
5 16 (3.91%) Oracle
5 16 (3.91%) VMware
6 15 (3.67%) Bomgar
6 15 (3.67%) iManage
7 14 (3.42%) Virgin Media
8 12 (2.93%) Splunk
9 8 (1.96%) F5
9 8 (1.96%) IBM
10 7 (1.71%) Pega
11 6 (1.47%) Foundry
11 6 (1.47%) OpenAI
12 5 (1.22%) Checkmarx
12 5 (1.22%) Infoblox
12 5 (1.22%) Varonis
12 5 (1.22%) Veeam
12 5 (1.22%) Veracode