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

6 months to
7 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 8 8 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -5 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 300 262 413
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 12.23% 11.66% 15.36%
As % of the Cloud Services category 34.80% 37.70% 41.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 170 317
10th Percentile £308 £250 £281
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £495
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +1.01% -5.71%
75th Percentile £569 £582 £575
90th Percentile £630 £675 £647
England median daily rate £520 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -3.26% -2.27% -3.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 4 25
10th Percentile - £34.50 £18.05
25th Percentile £15.50 £42.01 £21.25
Median hourly rate £17.44 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -62.25% - -30.03%
75th Percentile £61.80 £54.01 -
90th Percentile £67.95 £68.10 -
England median hourly rate £45.46 £35.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +29.89% -24.21% -6.71%

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 862 695 988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 35.15% 30.93% 36.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 657 444 744
10th Percentile £251 £252 £265
25th Percentile £363 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £541 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £649 £650
England median daily rate £500 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 16 51
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.44 £15.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.05 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £30.00 £23.61
Median % change year-on-year -16.17% +27.06% +4.93%
75th Percentile £67.25 £49.14 £46.18
90th Percentile £73.29 £73.63 £52.00
England median hourly rate £25.47 £31.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.84% +24.00% +11.11%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -3 158 £475 -5.00% 335
Cheshire +6 87 £481 -1.28% 161
Merseyside -6 33 £338 -11.76% 88
Lancashire -7 15 £450 -4.26% 165
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 (9.00%) SharePoint
2 14 (4.67%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (2.33%) Confluence
3 7 (2.33%) Exchange Server 2013
3 7 (2.33%) SAS
3 7 (2.33%) Skype for Business
4 4 (1.33%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.33%) OpenStack
5 3 (1.00%) Apache
5 3 (1.00%) IIS
5 3 (1.00%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.67%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 17 (5.67%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (2.67%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (2.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (2.33%) MS Visio
4 6 (2.00%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (2.00%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.67%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.33%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.33%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.33%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 119 (39.67%) AWS
2 84 (28.00%) GCP
3 65 (21.67%) Microsoft 365
4 47 (15.67%) Azure DevOps
4 47 (15.67%) Power Platform
5 28 (9.33%) GitHub
6 27 (9.00%) Entra ID
7 20 (6.67%) SaaS
8 14 (4.67%) Power Automate
8 14 (4.67%) PowerApps
8 14 (4.67%) Serverless
9 11 (3.67%) Dynamics 365
9 11 (3.67%) GitHub Actions
9 11 (3.67%) Google Tag Manager
10 10 (3.33%) Azure Logic Apps
10 10 (3.33%) Datadog
10 10 (3.33%) Figma
10 10 (3.33%) Google Analytics
10 10 (3.33%) OneDrive
11 9 (3.00%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 20 (6.67%) Firewall
2 13 (4.33%) DNS
3 8 (2.67%) Internet
3 8 (2.67%) TCP/IP
3 8 (2.67%) Wi-Fi
4 7 (2.33%) Skype
5 6 (2.00%) SAN
5 6 (2.00%) VPN
6 5 (1.67%) Network Security
6 5 (1.67%) Unified Communications
7 4 (1.33%) LAN
7 4 (1.33%) VLAN
7 4 (1.33%) WAN
8 3 (1.00%) BGP
8 3 (1.00%) Cisco IOS
8 3 (1.00%) iSCSI
8 3 (1.00%) NX-OS
8 3 (1.00%) WLAN
9 2 (0.67%) NetScaler
9 2 (0.67%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (9.00%) Power BI
2 16 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (4.00%) BigQuery
4 10 (3.33%) Looker
4 10 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (3.33%) SQL Server
5 9 (3.00%) Azure SQL Database
6 8 (2.67%) Relational Database
7 7 (2.33%) MySQL
8 6 (2.00%) Amazon RDS
8 6 (2.00%) Data Lake
8 6 (2.00%) Metadata
8 6 (2.00%) NoSQL
9 5 (1.67%) DynamoDB
9 5 (1.67%) Redis
10 4 (1.33%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (1.33%) Pinecone
10 4 (1.33%) RDBMS
11 3 (1.00%) Delta Lake
12 2 (0.67%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 30 (10.00%) JIRA
2 28 (9.33%) Git
3 22 (7.33%) Jenkins
4 14 (4.67%) GitLab
5 10 (3.33%) Gradle
6 8 (2.67%) SonarQube
7 7 (2.33%) Postman
8 6 (2.00%) Storybook
8 6 (2.00%) Xcode
9 5 (1.67%) Selenium
10 4 (1.33%) Bitbucket
10 4 (1.33%) Cucumber
10 4 (1.33%) JUnit
10 4 (1.33%) Maven
10 4 (1.33%) Snyk
10 4 (1.33%) SonarLint
11 2 (0.67%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.67%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.67%) git-flow
11 2 (0.67%) Hudson
General
1 91 (30.33%) Social Skills
2 71 (23.67%) Public Sector
3 45 (15.00%) Finance
4 40 (13.33%) Banking
5 38 (12.67%) Analytical Skills
6 11 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (3.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (2.67%) Military
9 5 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.67%) Law
9 5 (1.67%) Marketing
9 5 (1.67%) Retail
10 4 (1.33%) Games
10 4 (1.33%) Legal
11 3 (1.00%) Japanese Language
11 3 (1.00%) Manufacturing
11 3 (1.00%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.33%) Automotive
12 1 (0.33%) Electronics
12 1 (0.33%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 57 (19.00%) Developer
2 49 (16.33%) Architect
3 31 (10.33%) Analyst
4 24 (8.00%) Senior
5 19 (6.33%) Java Developer
6 17 (5.67%) Azure Engineer
6 17 (5.67%) Security Engineer
7 15 (5.00%) Solutions Architect
8 13 (4.33%) IT Support
8 13 (4.33%) Lead
8 13 (4.33%) Technical Architect
9 12 (4.00%) Cloud Engineer
9 12 (4.00%) Data Engineer
9 12 (4.00%) Support Engineer
10 10 (3.33%) Platform Engineer
10 10 (3.33%) Senior Developer
11 9 (3.00%) Azure Developer
11 9 (3.00%) DevOps Engineer
12 8 (2.67%) IT Engineer
12 8 (2.67%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (10.33%) Spring Boot
2 25 (8.33%) Spring
3 17 (5.67%) REST
4 14 (4.67%) .NET
4 14 (4.67%) RESTful
5 13 (4.33%) JSON
6 12 (4.00%) OAuth
7 11 (3.67%) HTML
8 10 (3.33%) React
9 9 (3.00%) AngularJS
9 9 (3.00%) JMS
9 9 (3.00%) Node.js
10 7 (2.33%) D3.js
10 7 (2.33%) React Native
11 6 (2.00%) Elastic Stack
11 6 (2.00%) HTML5 Canvas
11 6 (2.00%) Kafka
11 6 (2.00%) LangChain
11 6 (2.00%) Middleware
11 6 (2.00%) SVG
Miscellaneous
1 27 (9.00%) Onboarding
2 24 (8.00%) Cloud Native
3 14 (4.67%) Distributed Systems
4 13 (4.33%) Product Ownership
5 11 (3.67%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (3.67%) Low-Code
6 9 (3.00%) Mobile App
6 9 (3.00%) SWIFT Messaging Network
7 7 (2.33%) Credit Risk
7 7 (2.33%) Data Centre
7 7 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.67%) Clustering
8 5 (1.67%) NHS
8 5 (1.67%) N-Tier
8 5 (1.67%) Replication
8 5 (1.67%) Video Conferencing
9 4 (1.33%) Autonomous Agent
9 4 (1.33%) Distributed Computing
9 4 (1.33%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 43 (14.33%) Windows
2 15 (5.00%) Linux
3 14 (4.67%) Windows 10
4 10 (3.33%) Windows Server
5 9 (3.00%) Android
6 8 (2.67%) Apple iOS
7 3 (1.00%) Unix
8 1 (0.33%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.33%) VMS
8 1 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (34.67%) DevOps
2 82 (27.33%) CI/CD
3 74 (24.67%) Agile
4 57 (19.00%) Problem-Solving
5 50 (16.67%) Containerisation
6 42 (14.00%) Analytics
7 35 (11.67%) Migration
8 34 (11.33%) Microservices
9 33 (11.00%) Business Intelligence
9 33 (11.00%) Infrastructure as Code
9 33 (11.00%) Stakeholder Management
10 31 (10.33%) Machine Learning
11 29 (9.67%) AI
11 29 (9.67%) User Experience
12 24 (8.00%) Continuous Improvement
12 24 (8.00%) Mentoring
12 24 (8.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 24 (8.00%) Validation
13 22 (7.33%) Roadmaps
14 21 (7.00%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 66 (22.00%) Python
2 52 (17.33%) SQL
3 45 (15.00%) Java
4 19 (6.33%) PowerShell
5 17 (5.67%) C#
5 17 (5.67%) JavaScript
6 14 (4.67%) TypeScript
7 13 (4.33%) Bash
8 7 (2.33%) R
9 5 (1.67%) Bicep
9 5 (1.67%) Go
9 5 (1.67%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (1.33%) Scala
10 4 (1.33%) T-SQL
11 3 (1.00%) Perl
11 3 (1.00%) PHP
12 2 (0.67%) C++
12 2 (0.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.33%) C
Qualifications
1 49 (16.33%) Security Cleared
2 34 (11.33%) SC Cleared
3 25 (8.33%) Degree
4 19 (6.33%) Azure Certification
5 13 (4.33%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (3.00%) CISSP
7 7 (2.33%) CISM
7 7 (2.33%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (2.00%) AWS Certification
8 6 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (1.00%) CCDP
10 3 (1.00%) CCNP
10 3 (1.00%) MCP
10 3 (1.00%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.67%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.67%) CBAP
11 2 (0.67%) GCIA
11 2 (0.67%) GCIH
11 2 (0.67%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (8.67%) QA
2 23 (7.67%) Accessibility
3 19 (6.33%) Data Quality
4 16 (5.33%) ISO 20022
5 13 (4.33%) NIST
6 12 (4.00%) PSD2
7 11 (3.67%) GDPR
8 10 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (3.00%) SEPA
10 7 (2.33%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.67%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 1 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.33%) GRC
12 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
12 1 (0.33%) HL7
12 1 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.33%) SOC 1
12 1 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 52 (17.33%) Active Directory
2 51 (17.00%) Docker
3 9 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (2.00%) vSphere
5 3 (1.00%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 51 (17.00%) Kubernetes
2 35 (11.67%) Terraform
3 29 (9.67%) Microsoft Intune
4 17 (5.67%) SCCM
5 9 (3.00%) Ansible
6 7 (2.33%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (2.00%) Grafana
7 6 (2.00%) Prometheus
8 5 (1.67%) Fluentd
9 3 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 3 (1.00%) Jamf Pro
10 2 (0.67%) Microsoft Clustering
11 1 (0.33%) AirWatch
11 1 (0.33%) Istio
11 1 (0.33%) QRadar
11 1 (0.33%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 110 (36.67%) Microsoft
2 26 (8.67%) Google
2 26 (8.67%) ServiceNow
3 16 (5.33%) Oracle
4 13 (4.33%) VMware
5 12 (4.00%) Virgin Media
6 10 (3.33%) F5
7 9 (3.00%) Cisco
7 9 (3.00%) Databricks
8 8 (2.67%) Citrix
9 7 (2.33%) Palo Alto
9 7 (2.33%) Pega
9 7 (2.33%) SolarWinds
10 6 (2.00%) Meraki
10 6 (2.00%) Splunk
10 6 (2.00%) Zscaler
11 5 (1.67%) Cribl.io
11 5 (1.67%) SAP
12 4 (1.33%) Checkmarx
12 4 (1.33%) Confluent