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

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 8 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 -8
Contract jobs citing Azure 332 234 337
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 12.83% 11.36% 11.93%
As % of the Cloud Services category 37.18% 35.45% 35.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 255 160 249
10th Percentile £300 £230 £299
25th Percentile £375 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £488
Median % change year-on-year - -7.69% -7.14%
75th Percentile £545 £575 £575
90th Percentile £625 £700 £638
England median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -3.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 2 20
10th Percentile - £48.81 £16.25
25th Percentile £15.50 £52.76 £20.75
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% -14.08%

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 893 660 955
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 34.51% 32.04% 33.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 657 453 709
10th Percentile £217 £250 £265
25th Percentile £358 £390 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £448 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year -5.79% -1.04% -4.00%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £553
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 43 10 53
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.44 £15.50
25th Percentile £18.69 £21.05 £16.54
Median hourly rate £42.69 £24.18 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +76.53% -7.00% -48.00%
75th Percentile £69.25 £41.89 £46.18
90th Percentile £74.26 £78.50 £67.24
England median hourly rate £31.93 £27.50 £23.22
% change year-on-year +16.11% +18.46% -3.27%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 0 176 £450 -10.00% 203
Cheshire +14 92 £465 +30.62% 67
Merseyside -7 45 £138 -45.00% 42
Lancashire -5 15 £450 -14.29% 121
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 (8.13%) SharePoint
2 21 (6.33%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.01%) Confluence
4 7 (2.11%) Exchange Server 2013
4 7 (2.11%) SAS
4 7 (2.11%) Skype for Business
5 4 (1.20%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.90%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.90%) IIS
7 2 (0.60%) Apache
8 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.30%) CMS
8 1 (0.30%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 17 (5.12%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (2.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (2.71%) MS Visio
3 8 (2.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.30%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (1.51%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.60%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.30%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.30%) Elite 3E
Cloud Services
1 138 (41.57%) AWS
2 98 (29.52%) GCP
3 72 (21.69%) Microsoft 365
4 52 (15.66%) Power Platform
5 50 (15.06%) Azure DevOps
6 33 (9.94%) Entra ID
7 32 (9.64%) GitHub
8 17 (5.12%) Power Automate
9 16 (4.82%) PowerApps
10 15 (4.52%) SaaS
11 13 (3.92%) AWS CloudFormation
11 13 (3.92%) Dynamics 365
11 13 (3.92%) Serverless
12 12 (3.61%) GitHub Actions
12 12 (3.61%) Google Tag Manager
13 11 (3.31%) Datadog
13 11 (3.31%) Google Analytics
14 10 (3.01%) Azure Logic Apps
14 10 (3.01%) OneDrive
14 10 (3.01%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 22 (6.63%) Firewall
2 16 (4.82%) DNS
3 14 (4.22%) Wi-Fi
4 10 (3.01%) Internet
4 10 (3.01%) TCP/IP
5 9 (2.71%) VLAN
6 7 (2.11%) Skype
7 6 (1.81%) VPN
7 6 (1.81%) WAN
8 5 (1.51%) DHCP
8 5 (1.51%) Network Security
8 5 (1.51%) Unified Communications
9 4 (1.20%) LAN
10 3 (0.90%) BGP
10 3 (0.90%) Cisco IOS
10 3 (0.90%) Kerberos
10 3 (0.90%) NetScaler
10 3 (0.90%) NX-OS
10 3 (0.90%) WLAN
11 2 (0.60%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (8.13%) Power BI
2 15 (4.52%) Data Warehouse
3 13 (3.92%) BigQuery
4 12 (3.61%) SQL Server
5 11 (3.31%) Looker
6 9 (2.71%) Azure SQL Database
6 9 (2.71%) Relational Database
7 8 (2.41%) NoSQL
8 7 (2.11%) MySQL
8 7 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
9 6 (1.81%) Data Lake
9 6 (1.81%) Metadata
10 5 (1.51%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (1.51%) DynamoDB
10 5 (1.51%) RDBMS
11 4 (1.20%) Amazon Aurora
11 4 (1.20%) Redis
12 3 (0.90%) MongoDB
13 2 (0.60%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
13 2 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 35 (10.54%) Git
2 33 (9.94%) JIRA
3 20 (6.02%) Jenkins
4 15 (4.52%) GitLab
5 12 (3.61%) Postman
6 10 (3.01%) Gradle
7 9 (2.71%) SonarQube
8 7 (2.11%) Selenium
9 6 (1.81%) Cucumber
9 6 (1.81%) Storybook
9 6 (1.81%) Xcode
10 5 (1.51%) Bitbucket
10 5 (1.51%) Snyk
11 4 (1.20%) JMeter
11 4 (1.20%) JUnit
11 4 (1.20%) Maven
11 4 (1.20%) SonarLint
12 3 (0.90%) CircleCI
12 3 (0.90%) Cypress.io
13 2 (0.60%) Fiddler
General
1 108 (32.53%) Social Skills
2 79 (23.80%) Public Sector
3 52 (15.66%) Finance
4 39 (11.75%) Banking
5 38 (11.45%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (4.52%) Legal
7 10 (3.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.11%) Law
10 6 (1.81%) Military
11 5 (1.51%) Games
12 4 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
12 4 (1.20%) Retail
12 4 (1.20%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.90%) Marketing
14 2 (0.60%) Manufacturing
14 2 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
15 1 (0.30%) Advertising
15 1 (0.30%) Electronics
15 1 (0.30%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 72 (21.69%) Developer
2 52 (15.66%) Architect
3 36 (10.84%) Analyst
4 32 (9.64%) Senior
5 24 (7.23%) Java Developer
6 19 (5.72%) IT Support
7 16 (4.82%) Azure Engineer
7 16 (4.82%) Lead
8 15 (4.52%) Support Analyst
9 14 (4.22%) Azure Developer
9 14 (4.22%) Solutions Architect
10 13 (3.92%) Data Engineer
10 13 (3.92%) Platform Engineer
10 13 (3.92%) Security Engineer
11 12 (3.61%) Support Engineer
12 11 (3.31%) DevOps Engineer
12 11 (3.31%) Technical Architect
13 10 (3.01%) 1st Line Support
13 10 (3.01%) Senior Developer
14 9 (2.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (12.35%) Spring Boot
2 35 (10.54%) Spring
3 27 (8.13%) REST
4 20 (6.02%) RESTful
5 18 (5.42%) React
6 17 (5.12%) .NET
7 14 (4.22%) HTML
7 14 (4.22%) JSON
8 12 (3.61%) OAuth
9 11 (3.31%) JMS
10 9 (2.71%) AngularJS
10 9 (2.71%) Kafka
11 7 (2.11%) Node.js
11 7 (2.11%) React Native
12 6 (1.81%) D3.js
12 6 (1.81%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (1.81%) HTML5 Canvas
12 6 (1.81%) PySpark
12 6 (1.81%) SVG
12 6 (1.81%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 31 (9.34%) Cloud Native
2 30 (9.04%) Onboarding
3 16 (4.82%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (4.82%) Product Ownership
4 11 (3.31%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 9 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
5 9 (2.71%) Low-Code
6 8 (2.41%) Mobile App
6 8 (2.41%) Private Cloud
7 7 (2.11%) Credit Risk
7 7 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.51%) e-Learning
9 5 (1.51%) NHS
9 5 (1.51%) N-Tier
9 5 (1.51%) Video Conferencing
9 5 (1.51%) Virtual Team
10 4 (1.20%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.20%) Distributed Computing
10 4 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 47 (14.16%) Windows
2 23 (6.93%) Windows 10
3 13 (3.92%) Linux
4 8 (2.41%) Android
4 8 (2.41%) Apple iOS
5 6 (1.81%) Windows Server
6 4 (1.20%) Mac OS
6 4 (1.20%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (0.90%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.60%) VMS
9 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 116 (34.94%) DevOps
2 100 (30.12%) CI/CD
3 85 (25.60%) Agile
4 75 (22.59%) Problem-Solving
5 54 (16.27%) Containerisation
6 43 (12.95%) Microservices
7 42 (12.65%) Analytics
8 37 (11.14%) User Experience
9 36 (10.84%) Migration
10 34 (10.24%) Continuous Improvement
11 33 (9.94%) Business Intelligence
11 33 (9.94%) Infrastructure as Code
12 28 (8.43%) Stakeholder Management
13 27 (8.13%) Mentoring
13 27 (8.13%) SDLC
14 26 (7.83%) Machine Learning
14 26 (7.83%) Test Automation
14 26 (7.83%) Validation
15 25 (7.53%) ITIL
15 25 (7.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 70 (21.08%) Python
2 59 (17.77%) Java
3 51 (15.36%) SQL
4 28 (8.43%) JavaScript
5 25 (7.53%) PowerShell
6 23 (6.93%) C#
7 22 (6.63%) TypeScript
8 16 (4.82%) Bash
9 9 (2.71%) Go
10 7 (2.11%) R
11 6 (1.81%) Bicep
12 4 (1.20%) T-SQL
13 3 (0.90%) C++
13 3 (0.90%) Perl
13 3 (0.90%) Scala
14 2 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 2 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.60%) PHP
15 1 (0.30%) C
15 1 (0.30%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 47 (14.16%) Security Cleared
2 27 (8.13%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.83%) Degree
4 17 (5.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (4.52%) Azure Certification
6 12 (3.61%) CISSP
7 9 (2.71%) AWS Certification
7 9 (2.71%) CISM
8 7 (2.11%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
10 4 (1.20%) IBM Certification
10 4 (1.20%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.90%) CCDP
11 3 (0.90%) CCNP
11 3 (0.90%) DV Cleared
12 2 (0.60%) CCIE
12 2 (0.60%) GIAC
12 2 (0.60%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.60%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (8.13%) Accessibility
2 25 (7.53%) QA
3 21 (6.33%) Data Quality
4 19 (5.72%) ISO 20022
5 15 (4.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (4.52%) PSD2
6 13 (3.92%) GDPR
7 12 (3.61%) NIST
8 11 (3.31%) SEPA
9 6 (1.81%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.60%) WCAG
11 1 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.30%) GRC
11 1 (0.30%) HL7
11 1 (0.30%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.30%) SLA
11 1 (0.30%) SOC 1
11 1 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 70 (21.08%) Active Directory
2 60 (18.07%) Docker
3 14 (4.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (2.71%) vSphere
5 4 (1.20%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.30%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.30%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 63 (18.98%) Kubernetes
2 38 (11.45%) Terraform
3 34 (10.24%) Microsoft Intune
4 24 (7.23%) SCCM
5 11 (3.31%) Ansible
6 9 (2.71%) Grafana
6 9 (2.71%) Prometheus
6 9 (2.71%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (1.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 5 (1.51%) Fluentd
9 3 (0.90%) 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
1 120 (36.14%) Microsoft
2 31 (9.34%) Google
3 30 (9.04%) ServiceNow
4 17 (5.12%) Oracle
5 16 (4.82%) VMware
6 13 (3.92%) Virgin Media
7 10 (3.01%) F5
8 9 (2.71%) Bomgar
8 9 (2.71%) Databricks
8 9 (2.71%) iManage
9 8 (2.41%) Cisco
10 7 (2.11%) Palo Alto
10 7 (2.11%) Pega
10 7 (2.11%) Splunk
11 6 (1.81%) Citrix
11 6 (1.81%) Meraki
11 6 (1.81%) SolarWinds
11 6 (1.81%) Veeam
12 5 (1.51%) IBM
12 5 (1.51%) Veracode