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 15 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 9 8 4
Rank change year-on-year -1 -4 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 310 243 399
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 12.61% 11.35% 15.13%
As % of the Cloud Services category 35.96% 36.54% 40.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 234 159 303
10th Percentile £311 £250 £277
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £488 £495
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% -1.52% -5.71%
75th Percentile £551 £579 £582
90th Percentile £629 £675 £650
England median daily rate £521 £528 £550
% change year-on-year -1.42% -4.00% -3.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 4 25
10th Percentile - £34.50 £18.05
25th Percentile £15.50 £42.01 £21.25
Median hourly rate £18.87 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -59.14% - -34.03%
75th Percentile £56.54 £54.01 -
90th Percentile £67.25 £68.10 -
England median hourly rate £45.73 £35.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +30.66% -24.21% -10.76%

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 862 665 975
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 35.07% 31.06% 36.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 652 433 728
10th Percentile £241 £250 £265
25th Percentile £360 £375 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £448 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.79% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £540 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £645 £650
England median daily rate £500 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 15 51
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.88 £15.75
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.61 £17.72
Median hourly rate £40.00 £31.00 £23.61
Median % change year-on-year +29.03% +31.30% -22.35%
75th Percentile £69.25 £52.09 £46.18
90th Percentile £72.37 £74.40 £52.00
England median hourly rate £26.30 £30.94 £23.43
% change year-on-year -14.99% +32.07% +4.11%

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 15 December 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 15 December 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 15 December 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 -1 166 £450 -10.00% 274
Cheshire +9 88 £475 +18.75% 132
Merseyside -3 34 £325 -10.96% 83
Lancashire -4 17 £450 -4.26% 139
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 26 (8.39%) SharePoint
2 15 (4.84%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (2.26%) Confluence
3 7 (2.26%) Exchange Server 2013
3 7 (2.26%) SAS
3 7 (2.26%) Skype for Business
4 4 (1.29%) OpenStack
5 3 (0.97%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.97%) IIS
5 3 (0.97%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.65%) Apache
6 2 (0.65%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 18 (5.81%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (2.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (2.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (2.26%) MS Visio
4 6 (1.94%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (1.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.61%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.32%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.32%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 127 (40.97%) AWS
2 91 (29.35%) GCP
3 69 (22.26%) Microsoft 365
4 48 (15.48%) Power Platform
5 47 (15.16%) Azure DevOps
6 30 (9.68%) Entra ID
6 30 (9.68%) GitHub
7 19 (6.13%) SaaS
8 14 (4.52%) Power Automate
9 13 (4.19%) PowerApps
9 13 (4.19%) Serverless
10 12 (3.87%) Azure Logic Apps
10 12 (3.87%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (3.87%) Google Tag Manager
11 11 (3.55%) Datadog
11 11 (3.55%) Dynamics 365
11 11 (3.55%) Google Analytics
12 10 (3.23%) Figma
12 10 (3.23%) OneDrive
12 10 (3.23%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 20 (6.45%) Firewall
2 14 (4.52%) DNS
3 9 (2.90%) TCP/IP
3 9 (2.90%) Wi-Fi
4 8 (2.58%) Internet
5 7 (2.26%) Skype
6 6 (1.94%) SAN
6 6 (1.94%) VPN
7 5 (1.61%) Network Security
7 5 (1.61%) Unified Communications
7 5 (1.61%) VLAN
8 4 (1.29%) LAN
8 4 (1.29%) WAN
9 3 (0.97%) BGP
9 3 (0.97%) Cisco IOS
9 3 (0.97%) iSCSI
9 3 (0.97%) NetScaler
9 3 (0.97%) NX-OS
9 3 (0.97%) WLAN
10 2 (0.65%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (9.03%) Power BI
2 15 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
3 13 (4.19%) BigQuery
4 11 (3.55%) Looker
4 11 (3.55%) SQL Server
5 10 (3.23%) PostgreSQL
6 9 (2.90%) Azure SQL Database
6 9 (2.90%) Relational Database
7 7 (2.26%) MySQL
8 6 (1.94%) Amazon RDS
8 6 (1.94%) Data Lake
8 6 (1.94%) Metadata
8 6 (1.94%) NoSQL
9 5 (1.61%) DynamoDB
9 5 (1.61%) RDBMS
9 5 (1.61%) Redis
10 4 (1.29%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (1.29%) Pinecone
11 2 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (0.65%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 30 (9.68%) JIRA
2 29 (9.35%) Git
3 23 (7.42%) Jenkins
4 16 (5.16%) GitLab
5 10 (3.23%) Gradle
6 9 (2.90%) SonarQube
7 8 (2.58%) Postman
8 6 (1.94%) Storybook
8 6 (1.94%) Xcode
9 5 (1.61%) Bitbucket
9 5 (1.61%) Cucumber
9 5 (1.61%) Selenium
9 5 (1.61%) 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%) git-flow
12 2 (0.65%) Hudson
General
1 99 (31.94%) Social Skills
2 74 (23.87%) Public Sector
3 45 (14.52%) Finance
4 40 (12.90%) Analytical Skills
5 38 (12.26%) Banking
6 11 (3.55%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (2.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (2.58%) Military
9 6 (1.94%) Law
9 6 (1.94%) Legal
10 5 (1.61%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.61%) Marketing
10 5 (1.61%) Retail
11 4 (1.29%) Games
12 3 (0.97%) Japanese Language
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%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 59 (19.03%) Developer
2 51 (16.45%) Architect
3 34 (10.97%) Analyst
4 26 (8.39%) Senior
5 20 (6.45%) Java Developer
6 16 (5.16%) Azure Engineer
7 15 (4.84%) Lead
7 15 (4.84%) Solutions Architect
8 14 (4.52%) IT Support
8 14 (4.52%) Security Engineer
9 13 (4.19%) Technical Architect
10 12 (3.87%) Azure Developer
10 12 (3.87%) Data Engineer
10 12 (3.87%) Support Engineer
11 11 (3.55%) Platform Engineer
12 10 (3.23%) DevOps Engineer
12 10 (3.23%) Senior Developer
13 9 (2.90%) Cloud Engineer
13 9 (2.90%) Support Analyst
14 8 (2.58%) Change Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (10.32%) Spring Boot
2 26 (8.39%) Spring
3 18 (5.81%) REST
4 14 (4.52%) RESTful
5 13 (4.19%) .NET
5 13 (4.19%) JSON
6 12 (3.87%) OAuth
7 11 (3.55%) HTML
7 11 (3.55%) React
8 10 (3.23%) Node.js
9 9 (2.90%) AngularJS
9 9 (2.90%) JMS
10 7 (2.26%) D3.js
10 7 (2.26%) React Native
11 6 (1.94%) Elastic Stack
11 6 (1.94%) Kafka
11 6 (1.94%) LangChain
11 6 (1.94%) SVG
12 5 (1.61%) J2EE
12 5 (1.61%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 28 (9.03%) Onboarding
2 25 (8.06%) Cloud Native
3 14 (4.52%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (4.52%) Product Ownership
4 11 (3.55%) Data Protection Act
4 11 (3.55%) Low-Code
5 9 (2.90%) Mobile App
5 9 (2.90%) SWIFT Messaging Network
6 7 (2.26%) Credit Risk
6 7 (2.26%) Data Centre
6 7 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.61%) Clustering
8 5 (1.61%) NHS
8 5 (1.61%) N-Tier
8 5 (1.61%) Replication
8 5 (1.61%) Video Conferencing
9 4 (1.29%) Distributed Computing
9 4 (1.29%) Legacy Applications
9 4 (1.29%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 47 (15.16%) Windows
2 18 (5.81%) Windows 10
3 14 (4.52%) Linux
4 11 (3.55%) Windows Server
5 9 (2.90%) Android
6 8 (2.58%) Apple iOS
7 4 (1.29%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.97%) Unix
9 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.32%) VMS
10 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (33.87%) DevOps
2 84 (27.10%) CI/CD
3 77 (24.84%) Agile
4 61 (19.68%) Problem-Solving
5 52 (16.77%) Containerisation
6 48 (15.48%) Analytics
7 36 (11.61%) Microservices
7 36 (11.61%) Migration
8 35 (11.29%) Infrastructure as Code
8 35 (11.29%) Stakeholder Management
9 34 (10.97%) Business Intelligence
9 34 (10.97%) User Experience
10 32 (10.32%) Machine Learning
11 30 (9.68%) Continuous Improvement
12 29 (9.35%) AI
13 26 (8.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 26 (8.39%) Validation
14 25 (8.06%) Mentoring
14 25 (8.06%) Roadmaps
15 21 (6.77%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 68 (21.94%) Python
2 55 (17.74%) SQL
3 45 (14.52%) Java
4 23 (7.42%) PowerShell
5 18 (5.81%) C#
5 18 (5.81%) JavaScript
6 16 (5.16%) Bash
7 15 (4.84%) TypeScript
8 7 (2.26%) R
9 6 (1.94%) Bicep
10 5 (1.61%) Go
10 5 (1.61%) Kusto Query Language
11 4 (1.29%) T-SQL
12 3 (0.97%) Perl
12 3 (0.97%) PHP
12 3 (0.97%) Scala
13 2 (0.65%) C++
13 2 (0.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.32%) C
14 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 50 (16.13%) Security Cleared
2 34 (10.97%) SC Cleared
3 27 (8.71%) Degree
4 17 (5.48%) Azure Certification
5 13 (4.19%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (2.90%) CISSP
7 7 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (1.94%) CISM
8 6 (1.94%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (1.61%) AWS Certification
10 4 (1.29%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (0.97%) CCDP
11 3 (0.97%) CCNP
11 3 (0.97%) MCP
11 3 (0.97%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.65%) CBAP
12 2 (0.65%) GCIA
12 2 (0.65%) GCIH
12 2 (0.65%) GIAC
12 2 (0.65%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (9.03%) QA
2 25 (8.06%) Accessibility
3 20 (6.45%) Data Quality
4 16 (5.16%) ISO 20022
5 15 (4.84%) GDPR
6 12 (3.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 12 (3.87%) NIST
6 12 (3.87%) PSD2
7 9 (2.90%) SEPA
8 7 (2.26%) 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%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.32%) HL7
10 1 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.32%) SOC 1
System Software
1 58 (18.71%) Active Directory
2 55 (17.74%) Docker
3 13 (4.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (2.26%) vSphere
5 4 (1.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 53 (17.10%) Kubernetes
2 37 (11.94%) Terraform
3 32 (10.32%) Microsoft Intune
4 21 (6.77%) SCCM
5 9 (2.90%) Ansible
6 7 (2.26%) Grafana
6 7 (2.26%) Prometheus
6 7 (2.26%) Single Sign-On
7 5 (1.61%) Fluentd
8 4 (1.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 3 (0.97%) Jamf Pro
10 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Clustering
11 1 (0.32%) AirWatch
11 1 (0.32%) Istio
11 1 (0.32%) QRadar
11 1 (0.32%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 112 (36.13%) Microsoft
2 30 (9.68%) Google
3 27 (8.71%) ServiceNow
4 17 (5.48%) Oracle
4 17 (5.48%) VMware
5 13 (4.19%) Virgin Media
6 11 (3.55%) Citrix
6 11 (3.55%) F5
7 9 (2.90%) Cisco
7 9 (2.90%) Databricks
8 7 (2.26%) Palo Alto
8 7 (2.26%) Pega
8 7 (2.26%) SolarWinds
8 7 (2.26%) Splunk
9 6 (1.94%) Meraki
10 5 (1.61%) Checkmarx
10 5 (1.61%) Cribl.io
10 5 (1.61%) Veracode
11 4 (1.29%) Confluent
11 4 (1.29%) Gigya