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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 7 13
Rank change year-on-year +1 +6 -10
Contract jobs citing Azure 436 279 292
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 14.01% 14.22% 10.35%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.21% 41.89% 32.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 351 208 228
10th Percentile £313 £250 £314
25th Percentile £400 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £581 £580 £582
90th Percentile £639 £700 £650
England median daily rate £525 £525 £540
% change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 3 3
10th Percentile £19.25 £67.75 £16.55
25th Percentile - £68.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.38 £72.50 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -64.99% +291.89% -57.95%
75th Percentile £60.05 £76.88 £32.72
90th Percentile £90.00 £77.25 £40.79
England median hourly rate £57.50 £44.25 £38.50
% change year-on-year +29.94% +14.94% -27.84%

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 1,009 666 912
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 32.41% 33.94% 32.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 709 510 666
10th Percentile £220 £230 £300
25th Percentile £371 £395 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £489
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -2.86% -2.20%
75th Percentile £570 £575 £550
90th Percentile £643 £650 £638
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 14 69
10th Percentile £21.46 £24.99 £13.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.88 -
Median hourly rate £62.50 £28.88 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year +116.45% +79.79% -48.61%
75th Percentile £77.50 £65.22 £23.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £77.13 £43.75
England median hourly rate £40.78 £26.81 £21.00
% change year-on-year +52.09% +27.68% -18.32%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 -2 228 £465 -11.43% 177
Cheshire +5 129 £528 +26.09% 55
Merseyside +5 55 £139 -44.50% 29
Lancashire -11 17 £500 +2.56% 81
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 35 (8.03%) SharePoint
2 28 (6.42%) Microsoft Exchange
3 18 (4.13%) Confluence
4 6 (1.38%) SAS
5 5 (1.15%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.92%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.46%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
7 2 (0.46%) IIS
8 1 (0.23%) Apache
8 1 (0.23%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.23%) CMS
8 1 (0.23%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 8 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.46%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.46%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.46%) Trello
4 1 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.15%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (0.92%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.46%) Elite 3E
3 2 (0.46%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 178 (40.83%) AWS
2 100 (22.94%) GCP
3 91 (20.87%) Microsoft 365
4 74 (16.97%) Entra ID
5 65 (14.91%) Azure DevOps
6 59 (13.53%) Power Platform
7 28 (6.42%) GitHub
8 24 (5.50%) Power Automate
9 23 (5.28%) Dynamics 365
9 23 (5.28%) PowerApps
10 20 (4.59%) GitHub Actions
11 19 (4.36%) Serverless
12 17 (3.90%) Azure Data Factory
13 16 (3.67%) OneDrive
14 14 (3.21%) Azure Logic Apps
15 13 (2.98%) Azure Monitor
15 13 (2.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 12 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
16 12 (2.75%) Azure AKS
16 12 (2.75%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 48 (11.01%) Firewall
2 27 (6.19%) DNS
3 14 (3.21%) Network Security
4 13 (2.98%) VPN
5 10 (2.29%) Kerberos
6 9 (2.06%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.06%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (1.83%) DHCP
8 7 (1.61%) VLAN
9 4 (0.92%) HTTP
9 4 (0.92%) Internet
9 4 (0.92%) NetScaler
9 4 (0.92%) WAN
9 4 (0.92%) Wireshark
10 3 (0.69%) BGP
10 3 (0.69%) OSPF
10 3 (0.69%) SD-WAN
11 2 (0.46%) NAS
11 2 (0.46%) SAN
11 2 (0.46%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (5.73%) Power BI
2 22 (5.05%) Data Warehouse
3 17 (3.90%) SQL Server
4 11 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
5 10 (2.29%) Metadata
6 8 (1.83%) Data Lake
7 7 (1.61%) MySQL
7 7 (1.61%) NoSQL
8 6 (1.38%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (1.38%) Looker
8 6 (1.38%) MongoDB
9 5 (1.15%) BigQuery
10 3 (0.69%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
10 3 (0.69%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.69%) Snowflake Schema
10 3 (0.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 2 (0.46%) Data Vault
11 2 (0.46%) Power Query
11 2 (0.46%) RDBMS
11 2 (0.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 39 (8.94%) JIRA
2 24 (5.50%) Git
3 16 (3.67%) GitLab
4 13 (2.98%) Jenkins
5 11 (2.52%) Postman
6 7 (1.61%) Cucumber
7 5 (1.15%) Selenium
8 3 (0.69%) JMeter
8 3 (0.69%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.46%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.46%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.46%) Fiddler
9 2 (0.46%) Snyk
10 1 (0.23%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.23%) JUnit
10 1 (0.23%) Mockito
10 1 (0.23%) MSI
10 1 (0.23%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.23%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 1 (0.23%) Visual Studio
General
1 113 (25.92%) Social Skills
2 82 (18.81%) Finance
3 81 (18.58%) Public Sector
4 50 (11.47%) Banking
5 43 (9.86%) Analytical Skills
6 25 (5.73%) Legal
7 11 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 9 (2.06%) Law
8 9 (2.06%) Retail
9 5 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
10 4 (0.92%) Local Government
10 4 (0.92%) Military
11 3 (0.69%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.69%) Games
12 2 (0.46%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.46%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.23%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.23%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 74 (16.97%) Architect
2 67 (15.37%) Developer
3 42 (9.63%) Senior
4 41 (9.40%) Analyst
5 33 (7.57%) Lead
6 30 (6.88%) Security Engineer
7 27 (6.19%) Azure Engineer
8 22 (5.05%) Java Developer
9 21 (4.82%) Data Engineer
10 20 (4.59%) Platform Engineer
11 19 (4.36%) Solutions Architect
12 17 (3.90%) 1st Line Support
13 16 (3.67%) DevOps Engineer
14 15 (3.44%) Azure Developer
15 14 (3.21%) IT Support
16 11 (2.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 11 (2.52%) Security Architect
16 11 (2.52%) Support Engineer
17 10 (2.29%) .NET Developer
17 10 (2.29%) Systems Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (8.03%) Spring
2 34 (7.80%) Spring Boot
3 30 (6.88%) REST
4 21 (4.82%) .NET
5 20 (4.59%) React
5 20 (4.59%) RESTful
6 17 (3.90%) OAuth
7 13 (2.98%) HTML
8 12 (2.75%) JSON
8 12 (2.75%) Kafka
9 10 (2.29%) AngularJS
9 10 (2.29%) Node.js
10 9 (2.06%) ARM Templates
10 9 (2.06%) LDAP
10 9 (2.06%) OpenID
11 8 (1.83%) RabbitMQ
11 8 (1.83%) SAML
12 7 (1.61%) .NET Core
12 7 (1.61%) LangChain
12 7 (1.61%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 42 (9.63%) Cloud Native
2 32 (7.34%) Onboarding
3 15 (3.44%) Product Ownership
3 15 (3.44%) Security Posture
4 14 (3.21%) Distributed Systems
5 10 (2.29%) Data Centre
5 10 (2.29%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (2.29%) Private Cloud
6 8 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
6 8 (1.83%) Enterprise Cloud
6 8 (1.83%) Management Information System
7 7 (1.61%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 6 (1.38%) Cloud Security Posture
8 6 (1.38%) Credit Risk
8 6 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.38%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.15%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 5 (1.15%) Linux Command Line
9 5 (1.15%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.15%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 61 (13.99%) Windows
2 32 (7.34%) Windows 10
3 22 (5.05%) Linux
4 9 (2.06%) Windows Server
5 7 (1.61%) VMS
6 6 (1.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (1.15%) Mac OS
7 5 (1.15%) Windows Server 2019
8 4 (0.92%) Windows Server 2012
9 2 (0.46%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.46%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.23%) Unix
10 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 140 (32.11%) DevOps
2 116 (26.61%) CI/CD
3 113 (25.92%) Agile
4 78 (17.89%) Problem-Solving
5 62 (14.22%) Analytics
6 59 (13.53%) Containerisation
7 50 (11.47%) Continuous Improvement
7 50 (11.47%) Microservices
8 46 (10.55%) Infrastructure as Code
8 46 (10.55%) Migration
9 38 (8.72%) Data Modelling
9 38 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 37 (8.49%) Observability
11 36 (8.26%) Mentoring
12 35 (8.03%) Roadmaps
12 35 (8.03%) Stakeholder Management
13 34 (7.80%) Cloud Security
14 33 (7.57%) Test Automation
15 32 (7.34%) ETL
16 30 (6.88%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 97 (22.25%) Python
2 61 (13.99%) Java
2 61 (13.99%) SQL
3 53 (12.16%) PowerShell
4 28 (6.42%) JavaScript
5 27 (6.19%) C#
6 24 (5.50%) Bash
7 18 (4.13%) Bicep
8 13 (2.98%) TypeScript
9 8 (1.83%) Go
10 6 (1.38%) R
11 4 (0.92%) C++
12 3 (0.69%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.69%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.46%) Scala
14 1 (0.23%) PHP
14 1 (0.23%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.23%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 43 (9.86%) Security Cleared
2 26 (5.96%) Azure Certification
3 25 (5.73%) Degree
4 23 (5.28%) SC Cleared
5 20 (4.59%) BPSS Clearance
6 19 (4.36%) Cisco Certification
6 19 (4.36%) CISSP
7 17 (3.90%) AWS Certification
8 11 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
9 10 (2.29%) CCNA
9 10 (2.29%) CISM
10 9 (2.06%) CCNP
11 5 (1.15%) ITIL Certification
11 5 (1.15%) PMI Certification
11 5 (1.15%) PMP
12 4 (0.92%) CCIE
12 4 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
12 4 (0.92%) GIAC
12 4 (0.92%) IBM Certification
13 3 (0.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (5.96%) NIST
2 23 (5.28%) Data Quality
3 21 (4.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 20 (4.59%) QA
5 16 (3.67%) GDPR
6 15 (3.44%) Accessibility
6 15 (3.44%) ISO 20022
7 8 (1.83%) PSD2
8 7 (1.61%) SEPA
9 5 (1.15%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 5 (1.15%) HIPAA
10 4 (0.92%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.69%) GRC
11 3 (0.69%) NCSC
12 2 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27005
12 2 (0.46%) SLA
12 2 (0.46%) Solvency II
12 2 (0.46%) WCAG
13 1 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 96 (22.02%) Active Directory
2 71 (16.28%) Docker
3 15 (3.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (2.75%) vSphere
5 9 (2.06%) Virtual Desktop
6 8 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (0.69%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.46%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.23%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 72 (16.51%) Kubernetes
2 58 (13.30%) Terraform
3 29 (6.65%) Microsoft Intune
4 15 (3.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 14 (3.21%) Ansible
6 13 (2.98%) Grafana
6 13 (2.98%) SCCM
6 13 (2.98%) Single Sign-On
7 12 (2.75%) Prometheus
8 6 (1.38%) Argo
9 5 (1.15%) Jamf Pro
10 4 (0.92%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.69%) Fluentd
11 3 (0.69%) Istio
11 3 (0.69%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.46%) CA Single Sign-On
12 2 (0.46%) linkerd
12 2 (0.46%) PowerCLI
12 2 (0.46%) vMotion
12 2 (0.46%) vRealize
Vendors
1 157 (36.01%) Microsoft
2 37 (8.49%) Google
3 31 (7.11%) ServiceNow
4 18 (4.13%) Databricks
4 18 (4.13%) VMware
5 17 (3.90%) Bomgar
5 17 (3.90%) iManage
6 14 (3.21%) Oracle
7 13 (2.98%) Splunk
8 12 (2.75%) Virgin Media
9 10 (2.29%) Infoblox
10 9 (2.06%) Cisco
11 8 (1.83%) F5
11 8 (1.83%) IBM
12 6 (1.38%) CyberArk
12 6 (1.38%) Foundry
12 6 (1.38%) Meraki
12 6 (1.38%) OpenAI
12 6 (1.38%) Pega
12 6 (1.38%) SAP