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 2 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 9 9 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -6 +1
Contract jobs citing Azure 280 258 456
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 11.74% 11.01% 16.27%
As % of the Cloud Services category 34.44% 35.78% 43.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 164 362
10th Percentile £315 £345 £313
25th Percentile £400 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £500 £495
Median % change year-on-year -7.00% +1.01% -3.46%
75th Percentile £575 £603 £575
90th Percentile £637 £675 £650
England median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -3.34%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 4 27
10th Percentile - £34.50 £17.60
25th Percentile £15.50 £42.01 £29.50
Median hourly rate £17.44 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -62.25% - -34.03%
75th Percentile £61.80 £54.01 -
90th Percentile £67.95 £68.10 -
England median hourly rate £34.24 £35.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -2.17% -24.21% -16.04%

All Cloud 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 813 721 1,044
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 34.07% 30.77% 37.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 620 448 784
10th Percentile £304 £306 £265
25th Percentile £363 £400 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £448 £490 £488
Median % change year-on-year -8.58% +0.26% -2.35%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £656 £650
England median daily rate £500 £535 £533
% change year-on-year -6.54% +0.47% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 17 57
10th Percentile £14.00 £17.44 £15.90
25th Percentile £15.75 £21.05 £18.50
Median hourly rate £32.58 £36.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.51% +9.09% -49.62%
75th Percentile £67.25 £69.75 £46.18
90th Percentile £73.90 £75.70 £56.40
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.50 £32.30
% change year-on-year -29.15% +9.91% +43.56%

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 2 November 2025.

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 2 November 2025.

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 2 November 2025. 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 -4 144 £475 -5.00% 237
Cheshire -1 80 £475 -6.40% 72
Merseyside -4 32 £406 +1.56% 33
Lancashire +1 17 £450 -1.64% 170
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 24 (8.57%) SharePoint
2 10 (3.57%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (3.21%) Confluence
4 7 (2.50%) Exchange Server 2013
4 7 (2.50%) Skype for Business
5 5 (1.79%) SAS
5 5 (1.79%) WebSphere
6 4 (1.43%) Apache Spark
6 4 (1.43%) OpenStack
7 3 (1.07%) Apache
8 2 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.71%) IIS
8 2 (0.71%) NetWeaver
8 2 (0.71%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 14 (5.00%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (3.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (2.50%) Chatbot
3 7 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (2.50%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.36%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (2.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (1.43%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.36%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.36%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 110 (39.29%) AWS
2 72 (25.71%) GCP
3 63 (22.50%) Microsoft 365
4 46 (16.43%) Azure DevOps
5 45 (16.07%) Power Platform
6 27 (9.64%) GitHub
7 22 (7.86%) Entra ID
8 20 (7.14%) SaaS
9 15 (5.36%) Serverless
10 13 (4.64%) Power Automate
10 13 (4.64%) PowerApps
11 12 (4.29%) Dynamics 365
12 11 (3.93%) Azure Logic Apps
13 10 (3.57%) Datadog
13 10 (3.57%) Figma
13 10 (3.57%) GitHub Actions
14 9 (3.21%) Azure Sentinel
14 9 (3.21%) OpenShift
15 7 (2.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 7 (2.50%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 24 (8.57%) Firewall
2 12 (4.29%) DNS
3 8 (2.86%) VPN
4 7 (2.50%) Internet
4 7 (2.50%) Network Security
4 7 (2.50%) Skype
4 7 (2.50%) TCP/IP
4 7 (2.50%) Wi-Fi
5 6 (2.14%) SAN
5 6 (2.14%) VLAN
6 5 (1.79%) BGP
6 5 (1.79%) Unified Communications
7 4 (1.43%) LAN
7 4 (1.43%) WAN
8 3 (1.07%) Cisco IOS
8 3 (1.07%) iSCSI
8 3 (1.07%) NetScaler
8 3 (1.07%) NX-OS
8 3 (1.07%) WLAN
9 2 (0.71%) Calico
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (8.93%) Power BI
2 15 (5.36%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (4.29%) SQL Server
4 10 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (3.21%) Azure SQL Database
5 9 (3.21%) BigQuery
5 9 (3.21%) Relational Database
6 7 (2.50%) Data Lake
6 7 (2.50%) MySQL
7 6 (2.14%) Amazon RDS
7 6 (2.14%) Looker
7 6 (2.14%) NoSQL
8 5 (1.79%) DynamoDB
8 5 (1.79%) RDBMS
8 5 (1.79%) Redis
9 4 (1.43%) Amazon Aurora
9 4 (1.43%) Metadata
9 4 (1.43%) Pinecone
10 3 (1.07%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.71%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 27 (9.64%) Git
2 26 (9.29%) JIRA
3 24 (8.57%) Jenkins
4 17 (6.07%) GitLab
5 10 (3.57%) Gradle
6 8 (2.86%) SonarQube
7 6 (2.14%) Maven
7 6 (2.14%) Postman
7 6 (2.14%) Storybook
7 6 (2.14%) Xcode
8 5 (1.79%) Selenium
9 4 (1.43%) Bitbucket
9 4 (1.43%) JUnit
9 4 (1.43%) Snyk
9 4 (1.43%) SonarLint
10 3 (1.07%) Cypress.io
10 3 (1.07%) Hudson
11 2 (0.71%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.71%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.71%) git-flow
General
1 93 (33.21%) Social Skills
2 57 (20.36%) Public Sector
3 40 (14.29%) Finance
4 37 (13.21%) Analytical Skills
4 37 (13.21%) Banking
5 10 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
6 8 (2.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 8 (2.86%) Military
7 6 (2.14%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.79%) Retail
9 4 (1.43%) Games
9 4 (1.43%) Marketing
10 3 (1.07%) Japanese Language
10 3 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.71%) Law
11 2 (0.71%) Legal
11 2 (0.71%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.71%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.36%) Automotive
12 1 (0.36%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 51 (18.21%) Developer
2 46 (16.43%) Architect
3 27 (9.64%) Analyst
4 25 (8.93%) Senior
5 20 (7.14%) Security Engineer
6 14 (5.00%) Azure Engineer
6 14 (5.00%) Java Developer
6 14 (5.00%) Solutions Architect
7 13 (4.64%) Cloud Engineer
7 13 (4.64%) IT Support
7 13 (4.64%) Lead
7 13 (4.64%) Technical Architect
8 11 (3.93%) Platform Engineer
8 11 (3.93%) Support Engineer
9 10 (3.57%) Senior Developer
10 9 (3.21%) Data Engineer
10 9 (3.21%) IT Engineer
11 8 (2.86%) Business Analyst
11 8 (2.86%) Change Manager
11 8 (2.86%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (8.57%) Spring Boot
2 19 (6.79%) Spring
3 15 (5.36%) .NET
4 14 (5.00%) RESTful
5 13 (4.64%) JSON
6 12 (4.29%) React
7 11 (3.93%) HTML
7 11 (3.93%) OAuth
8 10 (3.57%) REST
9 9 (3.21%) AngularJS
10 8 (2.86%) .NET Framework
11 7 (2.50%) D3.js
11 7 (2.50%) React Native
12 6 (2.14%) Elastic Stack
12 6 (2.14%) HTML5 Canvas
12 6 (2.14%) JMS
12 6 (2.14%) Middleware
12 6 (2.14%) Node.js
12 6 (2.14%) SVG
13 5 (1.79%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.86%) Cloud Native
2 20 (7.14%) Onboarding
3 12 (4.29%) Product Ownership
4 11 (3.93%) Low-Code
5 10 (3.57%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (3.21%) Data Protection Act
6 9 (3.21%) Mobile App
7 8 (2.86%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.50%) Data Centre
8 7 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (2.14%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 5 (1.79%) Clustering
10 5 (1.79%) Credit Risk
10 5 (1.79%) N-Tier
10 5 (1.79%) Replication
10 5 (1.79%) Video Conferencing
11 4 (1.43%) Autonomous Agent
11 4 (1.43%) Distributed Computing
11 4 (1.43%) Legacy Applications
11 4 (1.43%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 42 (15.00%) Windows
2 18 (6.43%) Linux
3 12 (4.29%) Windows Server
4 11 (3.93%) Android
5 9 (3.21%) Apple iOS
5 9 (3.21%) Windows 10
6 3 (1.07%) Unix
7 1 (0.36%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (35.36%) DevOps
2 81 (28.93%) CI/CD
3 63 (22.50%) Agile
4 56 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
5 39 (13.93%) Containerisation
6 35 (12.50%) Stakeholder Management
7 34 (12.14%) Analytics
8 33 (11.79%) Migration
9 32 (11.43%) Infrastructure as Code
10 30 (10.71%) Business Intelligence
10 30 (10.71%) Machine Learning
11 29 (10.36%) AI
11 29 (10.36%) Microservices
12 25 (8.93%) Mentoring
13 22 (7.86%) Continuous Improvement
13 22 (7.86%) Cybersecurity
13 22 (7.86%) Roadmaps
13 22 (7.86%) User Experience
14 21 (7.50%) ITIL
14 21 (7.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 55 (19.64%) Python
2 46 (16.43%) SQL
3 30 (10.71%) Java
4 18 (6.43%) JavaScript
5 17 (6.07%) TypeScript
6 14 (5.00%) C#
7 13 (4.64%) PowerShell
8 12 (4.29%) Bash
9 5 (1.79%) Kusto Query Language
9 5 (1.79%) R
10 4 (1.43%) Go
10 4 (1.43%) Scala
10 4 (1.43%) T-SQL
11 3 (1.07%) Perl
11 3 (1.07%) PHP
12 2 (0.71%) Bicep
12 2 (0.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.71%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.36%) C++
13 1 (0.36%) VBA
Qualifications
1 45 (16.07%) Security Cleared
2 31 (11.07%) SC Cleared
3 27 (9.64%) Degree
4 20 (7.14%) Azure Certification
5 12 (4.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (3.57%) CISSP
6 10 (3.57%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (2.86%) CISM
7 8 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (2.14%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (1.79%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.79%) CCNP
10 3 (1.07%) CCDP
10 3 (1.07%) MCP
10 3 (1.07%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.71%) CCIE
11 2 (0.71%) GCIA
11 2 (0.71%) GCIH
11 2 (0.71%) JNCIE
11 2 (0.71%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (7.86%) Accessibility
2 19 (6.79%) QA
3 14 (5.00%) NIST
4 11 (3.93%) Data Quality
4 11 (3.93%) ISO 20022
5 9 (3.21%) GDPR
5 9 (3.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 9 (3.21%) PSD2
6 7 (2.50%) PCI DSS
7 6 (2.14%) SEPA
8 2 (0.71%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.36%) GRC
9 1 (0.36%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.36%) NCSC
9 1 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.36%) SOC 1
9 1 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 44 (15.71%) Active Directory
2 43 (15.36%) Docker
3 9 (3.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.79%) vSphere
5 3 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.71%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 46 (16.43%) Kubernetes
2 34 (12.14%) Terraform
3 24 (8.57%) Microsoft Intune
4 15 (5.36%) SCCM
5 7 (2.50%) Ansible
6 6 (2.14%) Grafana
6 6 (2.14%) Prometheus
7 5 (1.79%) Fluentd
8 4 (1.43%) Jamf Pro
8 4 (1.43%) Single Sign-On
9 3 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.71%) Istio
10 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Clustering
11 1 (0.36%) AirWatch
11 1 (0.36%) QRadar
11 1 (0.36%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 106 (37.86%) Microsoft
2 22 (7.86%) ServiceNow
3 19 (6.79%) Google
4 14 (5.00%) VMware
5 12 (4.29%) F5
5 12 (4.29%) Oracle
6 11 (3.93%) Cisco
7 8 (2.86%) Citrix
7 8 (2.86%) Databricks
7 8 (2.86%) Zscaler
8 7 (2.50%) Palo Alto
8 7 (2.50%) Virgin Media
9 6 (2.14%) IBM
9 6 (2.14%) Meraki
9 6 (2.14%) SolarWinds
10 5 (1.79%) Cribl.io
10 5 (1.79%) Darktrace
10 5 (1.79%) Pega
10 5 (1.79%) Splunk
10 5 (1.79%) Veeam