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 28 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 7 12
Rank change year-on-year +2 +5 -8
Contract jobs citing Azure 453 261 289
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 14.11% 13.46% 10.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.15% 41.10% 32.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 355 203 221
10th Percentile £313 £265 £325
25th Percentile £406 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.76%
75th Percentile £584 £575 £588
90th Percentile £638 £700 £650
England median daily rate £523 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -0.48% -3.67% -3.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 2 2
10th Percentile £19.25 £67.63 £16.40
25th Percentile - £67.81 £16.63
Median hourly rate £25.38 £71.25 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -64.38% +295.83% -72.52%
75th Percentile £46.32 £75.31 £19.13
90th Percentile £90.00 £75.88 £19.20
England median hourly rate £57.50 £57.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +0.88% +62.86% -36.36%

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 1,026 635 886
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 31.96% 32.75% 32.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 699 493 641
10th Percentile £229 £234 £284
25th Percentile £375 £400 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £475 £489
Median % change year-on-year -1.05% -2.86% -2.20%
75th Percentile £576 £563 £575
90th Percentile £650 £638 £638
England median daily rate £504 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.95% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 11 65
10th Percentile £23.71 - £13.00
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.88 -
Median hourly rate £62.25 £29.00 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year +114.66% +80.57% -56.94%
75th Percentile £78.38 £57.94 £20.00
90th Percentile £95.00 £76.25 £43.75
England median hourly rate £43.15 £26.45 £20.77
% change year-on-year +63.13% +27.35% -35.70%

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 28 April 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 28 April 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 28 April 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 -3 239 £500 -3.61% 223
Cheshire +8 131 £538 +26.47% 65
Merseyside +8 53 £140 -44.00% 25
Lancashire -4 20 £500 +2.56% 92
Cumbria -10 3 £525 - 1
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 28 (6.18%) SharePoint
2 27 (5.96%) Microsoft Exchange
3 18 (3.97%) Confluence
4 5 (1.10%) SAS
5 4 (0.88%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.44%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.22%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.22%) CMS
8 1 (0.22%) Headless CMS
8 1 (0.22%) IIS
8 1 (0.22%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.22%) OpenStack
Applications
1 7 (1.55%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.10%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.66%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.44%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.44%) Trello
5 1 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.66%) Elite 3E
1 3 (0.66%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.44%) NEC Housing
2 2 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
Cloud Services
1 195 (43.05%) AWS
2 105 (23.18%) GCP
3 78 (17.22%) Microsoft 365
4 69 (15.23%) Entra ID
5 62 (13.69%) Azure DevOps
6 51 (11.26%) Power Platform
7 27 (5.96%) GitHub
8 23 (5.08%) Azure Data Factory
9 21 (4.64%) Dynamics 365
10 19 (4.19%) Serverless
11 18 (3.97%) GitHub Actions
11 18 (3.97%) Power Automate
12 17 (3.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 16 (3.53%) OneDrive
13 16 (3.53%) PowerApps
14 13 (2.87%) Azure AKS
14 13 (2.87%) Azure Logic Apps
14 13 (2.87%) Azure Monitor
15 12 (2.65%) OpenShift
16 11 (2.43%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 47 (10.38%) Firewall
2 32 (7.06%) DNS
3 16 (3.53%) VPN
4 15 (3.31%) Network Security
5 10 (2.21%) Kerberos
6 9 (1.99%) TCP/IP
6 9 (1.99%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (1.77%) DHCP
8 7 (1.55%) VLAN
9 6 (1.32%) BGP
9 6 (1.32%) OSPF
10 5 (1.10%) SD-WAN
10 5 (1.10%) WAN
11 4 (0.88%) HTTP
11 4 (0.88%) NetScaler
11 4 (0.88%) SAN
11 4 (0.88%) Wireshark
12 3 (0.66%) BIG-IP
12 3 (0.66%) Ethernet VPN
12 3 (0.66%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (5.52%) Power BI
2 22 (4.86%) Data Warehouse
3 21 (4.64%) SQL Server
4 14 (3.09%) PostgreSQL
5 12 (2.65%) Metadata
6 10 (2.21%) Data Lake
7 8 (1.77%) NoSQL
8 7 (1.55%) MongoDB
8 7 (1.55%) MySQL
9 6 (1.32%) Azure SQL Database
9 6 (1.32%) Snowflake Schema
10 5 (1.10%) Looker
10 5 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 4 (0.88%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
11 4 (0.88%) BigQuery
12 3 (0.66%) Data Vault
12 3 (0.66%) Oracle Database
12 3 (0.66%) RDBMS
12 3 (0.66%) Relational Database
12 3 (0.66%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 41 (9.05%) JIRA
2 24 (5.30%) Git
3 17 (3.75%) GitLab
4 11 (2.43%) Postman
5 10 (2.21%) Jenkins
6 7 (1.55%) Cucumber
7 6 (1.32%) Selenium
8 3 (0.66%) Cypress.io
8 3 (0.66%) JMeter
8 3 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.44%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.44%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.44%) ClearCase
9 2 (0.44%) Fiddler
9 2 (0.44%) Snyk
9 2 (0.44%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.22%) JUnit
10 1 (0.22%) Mockito
10 1 (0.22%) Rational Robot
10 1 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 105 (23.18%) Social Skills
2 85 (18.76%) Finance
3 81 (17.88%) Public Sector
4 45 (9.93%) Banking
5 34 (7.51%) Analytical Skills
6 25 (5.52%) Legal
7 11 (2.43%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (2.21%) Retail
9 9 (1.99%) Law
10 8 (1.77%) Military
11 7 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
13 4 (0.88%) Local Government
14 3 (0.66%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.66%) Health Technology
14 3 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
15 2 (0.44%) Manufacturing
15 2 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
15 2 (0.44%) Telecoms
16 1 (0.22%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 83 (18.32%) Architect
2 63 (13.91%) Developer
3 47 (10.38%) Senior
4 43 (9.49%) Analyst
5 40 (8.83%) Lead
6 33 (7.28%) Security Engineer
7 30 (6.62%) Azure Engineer
8 24 (5.30%) Data Engineer
9 22 (4.86%) Java Developer
10 21 (4.64%) Solutions Architect
11 18 (3.97%) DevOps Engineer
12 17 (3.75%) 1st Line Support
12 17 (3.75%) Platform Engineer
13 13 (2.87%) Azure Developer
13 13 (2.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 13 (2.87%) Lead Developer
13 13 (2.87%) Security Architect
14 12 (2.65%) Systems Analyst
14 12 (2.65%) Technical Architect
15 11 (2.43%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (7.95%) Spring
2 33 (7.28%) Spring Boot
3 32 (7.06%) REST
4 21 (4.64%) .NET
5 19 (4.19%) React
5 19 (4.19%) RESTful
6 17 (3.75%) OAuth
7 14 (3.09%) Node.js
8 12 (2.65%) Kafka
9 11 (2.43%) OpenID
10 10 (2.21%) AngularJS
10 10 (2.21%) HTML
10 10 (2.21%) PySpark
10 10 (2.21%) SAML
11 9 (1.99%) ARM Templates
11 9 (1.99%) JSON
11 9 (1.99%) LDAP
12 8 (1.77%) RabbitMQ
13 7 (1.55%) LangChain
13 7 (1.55%) Nunjucks
Miscellaneous
1 50 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 30 (6.62%) Onboarding
3 16 (3.53%) Security Posture
4 15 (3.31%) Data Centre
5 14 (3.09%) Product Ownership
6 13 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
6 13 (2.87%) Hybrid Cloud
7 11 (2.43%) Enterprise Cloud
7 11 (2.43%) Private Cloud
8 10 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
9 9 (1.99%) Management Information System
10 7 (1.55%) Cloud Security Posture
10 7 (1.55%) Public Cloud
10 7 (1.55%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 6 (1.32%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 6 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
11 6 (1.32%) Virtual Team
12 5 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (1.10%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 58 (12.80%) Windows
2 28 (6.18%) Windows 10
3 18 (3.97%) Linux
4 12 (2.65%) Windows Server
5 7 (1.55%) VMS
6 6 (1.32%) Mac OS
6 6 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (1.10%) Windows Server 2019
8 4 (0.88%) Windows Server 2012
9 3 (0.66%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.44%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.22%) Unix
11 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (31.13%) DevOps
2 122 (26.93%) CI/CD
3 112 (24.72%) Agile
4 70 (15.45%) Problem-Solving
5 65 (14.35%) Analytics
6 56 (12.36%) Migration
7 54 (11.92%) Microservices
8 53 (11.70%) Containerisation
9 48 (10.60%) Continuous Improvement
9 48 (10.60%) Infrastructure as Code
10 40 (8.83%) Data Modelling
10 40 (8.83%) Roadmaps
10 40 (8.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 38 (8.39%) Cloud Security
12 37 (8.17%) Stakeholder Management
13 36 (7.95%) Observability
13 36 (7.95%) Test Automation
14 34 (7.51%) Data Pipeline
14 34 (7.51%) Mentoring
15 32 (7.06%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 100 (22.08%) Python
2 71 (15.67%) SQL
3 66 (14.57%) Java
4 55 (12.14%) PowerShell
5 27 (5.96%) JavaScript
6 25 (5.52%) C#
7 19 (4.19%) Bash
7 19 (4.19%) Bicep
8 12 (2.65%) TypeScript
9 8 (1.77%) Go
10 6 (1.32%) T-SQL
11 5 (1.10%) R
12 4 (0.88%) C++
12 4 (0.88%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.44%) Scala
13 2 (0.44%) VB
13 2 (0.44%) VB6
14 1 (0.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.22%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 55 (12.14%) Security Cleared
2 32 (7.06%) Azure Certification
2 32 (7.06%) SC Cleared
3 25 (5.52%) Degree
4 22 (4.86%) CISSP
5 21 (4.64%) Cisco Certification
6 20 (4.42%) BPSS Clearance
7 19 (4.19%) AWS Certification
8 12 (2.65%) Microsoft Certification
9 10 (2.21%) CCNA
9 10 (2.21%) CISM
10 9 (1.99%) CCNP
11 5 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (1.10%) ITIL Certification
12 4 (0.88%) CCIE
12 4 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
12 4 (0.88%) GIAC
12 4 (0.88%) IBM Certification
13 3 (0.66%) CEH
13 3 (0.66%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (6.84%) Data Quality
2 29 (6.40%) NIST
3 22 (4.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 21 (4.64%) QA
5 18 (3.97%) GDPR
6 14 (3.09%) Accessibility
7 13 (2.87%) ISO 20022
8 8 (1.77%) PSD2
9 7 (1.55%) SEPA
10 6 (1.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 6 (1.32%) HIPAA
11 4 (0.88%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
12 3 (0.66%) GRC
12 3 (0.66%) NCSC
13 2 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 2 (0.44%) SLA
13 2 (0.44%) Solvency II
13 2 (0.44%) WCAG
14 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 90 (19.87%) Active Directory
2 68 (15.01%) Docker
3 12 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (2.21%) Virtual Desktop
5 8 (1.77%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (1.77%) vSphere
6 3 (0.66%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.44%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.22%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 76 (16.78%) Kubernetes
2 61 (13.47%) Terraform
3 23 (5.08%) Microsoft Intune
4 18 (3.97%) Ansible
5 15 (3.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 13 (2.87%) Grafana
7 12 (2.65%) Prometheus
8 11 (2.43%) SCCM
8 11 (2.43%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (1.32%) Argo
10 4 (0.88%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.66%) Fluentd
11 3 (0.66%) Istio
11 3 (0.66%) Jamf Pro
11 3 (0.66%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.44%) linkerd
12 2 (0.44%) PowerCLI
12 2 (0.44%) vMotion
12 2 (0.44%) vRealize
12 2 (0.44%) WSUS
Vendors
1 147 (32.45%) Microsoft
2 36 (7.95%) Google
3 25 (5.52%) ServiceNow
4 19 (4.19%) Databricks
5 18 (3.97%) Oracle
6 17 (3.75%) Bomgar
6 17 (3.75%) iManage
6 17 (3.75%) VMware
7 14 (3.09%) Splunk
8 13 (2.87%) Infoblox
9 10 (2.21%) Virgin Media
10 8 (1.77%) Cisco
10 8 (1.77%) IBM
11 7 (1.55%) Citrix
11 7 (1.55%) CyberArk
11 7 (1.55%) F5
11 7 (1.55%) SAP
12 6 (1.32%) Foundry
12 6 (1.32%) OpenAI
12 6 (1.32%) Varonis