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 10 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 8 9
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 -8
Contract jobs citing Azure 343 252 328
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 12.87% 12.02% 11.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 37.90% 36.57% 33.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 267 177 248
10th Percentile £300 £230 £313
25th Percentile £378 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £495
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -6.57% -5.71%
75th Percentile £551 £575 £563
90th Percentile £630 £693 £638
England median daily rate £521 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.71% -4.55% -3.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 1 15
10th Percentile - - £16.85
25th Percentile £15.50 £72.50 £20.25
Median hourly rate £29.34 £75.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -60.88% +62.41% -34.03%
75th Percentile £61.90 £77.50 -
90th Percentile £67.95 - -
England median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%

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 905 689 966
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 33.95% 32.86% 33.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 650 480 717
10th Percentile £213 £250 £268
25th Percentile £358 £389 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £485
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -2.06% -3.00%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £550
90th Percentile £625 £656 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 9 60
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.44 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.90 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £45.23 £24.18 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +87.06% +15.14% -58.00%
75th Percentile £74.13 £29.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £77.85 £79.50 £71.93
England median hourly rate £35.91 £27.50 £22.15
% change year-on-year +30.58% +24.15% -11.40%

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 10 February 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 10 February 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 10 February 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 -1 186 £460 -8.00% 198
Cheshire +13 99 £481 +35.18% 44
Merseyside -6 43 £138 -45.00% 26
Lancashire -12 11 £425 -19.05% 99
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 (8.16%) SharePoint
2 23 (6.71%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (3.21%) Confluence
4 7 (2.04%) Exchange Server 2013
4 7 (2.04%) SAS
4 7 (2.04%) Skype for Business
5 5 (1.46%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.87%) IIS
7 1 (0.29%) Apache
7 1 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.29%) ArcGIS
7 1 (0.29%) CMS
7 1 (0.29%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 19 (5.54%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (2.62%) MS Visio
3 8 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (2.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (1.46%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.58%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.29%) Elite 3E
Cloud Services
1 139 (40.52%) AWS
2 94 (27.41%) GCP
3 78 (22.74%) Microsoft 365
4 56 (16.33%) Power Platform
5 46 (13.41%) Azure DevOps
6 40 (11.66%) Entra ID
7 28 (8.16%) GitHub
8 16 (4.66%) Power Automate
9 15 (4.37%) PowerApps
10 13 (3.79%) AWS CloudFormation
10 13 (3.79%) Dynamics 365
10 13 (3.79%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (3.50%) Google Tag Manager
12 11 (3.21%) Azure Data Factory
12 11 (3.21%) Azure Logic Apps
12 11 (3.21%) Google Analytics
12 11 (3.21%) OneDrive
12 11 (3.21%) SaaS
13 10 (2.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 10 (2.92%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 30 (8.75%) Firewall
2 18 (5.25%) DNS
3 14 (4.08%) Wi-Fi
4 9 (2.62%) Internet
4 9 (2.62%) TCP/IP
5 8 (2.33%) VLAN
6 7 (2.04%) Kerberos
6 7 (2.04%) Skype
6 7 (2.04%) VPN
7 6 (1.75%) DHCP
7 6 (1.75%) Network Security
8 5 (1.46%) Unified Communications
8 5 (1.46%) WAN
9 4 (1.17%) NetScaler
10 3 (0.87%) LAN
11 2 (0.58%) Cisco IOS
11 2 (0.58%) NX-OS
11 2 (0.58%) SD-WAN
11 2 (0.58%) Wireshark
11 2 (0.58%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (7.87%) Power BI
2 18 (5.25%) Data Warehouse
3 11 (3.21%) Looker
4 9 (2.62%) BigQuery
4 9 (2.62%) SQL Server
5 7 (2.04%) Metadata
6 6 (1.75%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.75%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.46%) NoSQL
7 5 (1.46%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.17%) MongoDB
8 4 (1.17%) MySQL
9 3 (0.87%) PostgreSQL
10 2 (0.58%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.58%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 2 (0.58%) Tableau
11 1 (0.29%) Spark SQL
11 1 (0.29%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 34 (9.91%) JIRA
2 29 (8.45%) Git
3 16 (4.66%) GitLab
3 16 (4.66%) Jenkins
4 8 (2.33%) Postman
5 6 (1.75%) Selenium
6 5 (1.46%) Bitbucket
6 5 (1.46%) Cucumber
6 5 (1.46%) Gradle
6 5 (1.46%) Snyk
6 5 (1.46%) SonarQube
6 5 (1.46%) Storybook
6 5 (1.46%) Xcode
7 3 (0.87%) CircleCI
7 3 (0.87%) Cypress.io
7 3 (0.87%) JMeter
8 2 (0.58%) Fiddler
8 2 (0.58%) git-flow
9 1 (0.29%) Browser DevTools
9 1 (0.29%) Mockito
General
1 113 (32.94%) Social Skills
2 78 (22.74%) Public Sector
3 58 (16.91%) Finance
4 42 (12.24%) Analytical Skills
5 40 (11.66%) Banking
6 16 (4.66%) Legal
7 10 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (2.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (2.33%) Law
9 6 (1.75%) Military
9 6 (1.75%) Retail
10 5 (1.46%) Games
11 4 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 3 (0.87%) Marketing
12 3 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.58%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.29%) Advertising
14 1 (0.29%) Automotive
14 1 (0.29%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 73 (21.28%) Developer
2 55 (16.03%) Architect
3 37 (10.79%) Analyst
4 31 (9.04%) Senior
5 23 (6.71%) Java Developer
5 23 (6.71%) Lead
6 19 (5.54%) IT Support
7 17 (4.96%) Azure Engineer
8 16 (4.66%) Solutions Architect
8 16 (4.66%) Support Analyst
9 15 (4.37%) Security Engineer
10 14 (4.08%) Azure Developer
10 14 (4.08%) Data Engineer
10 14 (4.08%) Platform Engineer
11 12 (3.50%) 1st Line Support
11 12 (3.50%) DevOps Engineer
12 11 (3.21%) Support Engineer
13 10 (2.92%) Data Scientist
13 10 (2.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 10 (2.92%) React Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (10.20%) Spring Boot
2 34 (9.91%) Spring
3 29 (8.45%) REST
4 17 (4.96%) .NET
4 17 (4.96%) RESTful
5 16 (4.66%) HTML
5 16 (4.66%) React
6 15 (4.37%) JSON
7 11 (3.21%) Kafka
7 11 (3.21%) OAuth
8 10 (2.92%) JMS
9 9 (2.62%) Node.js
10 7 (2.04%) CSS
10 7 (2.04%) LDAP
10 7 (2.04%) PySpark
11 6 (1.75%) ARM Templates
11 6 (1.75%) Elastic Stack
11 6 (1.75%) HTML5 Canvas
11 6 (1.75%) React Native
11 6 (1.75%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 32 (9.33%) Onboarding
2 25 (7.29%) Cloud Native
3 14 (4.08%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (4.08%) Product Ownership
4 10 (2.92%) Private Cloud
4 10 (2.92%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 9 (2.62%) Low-Code
6 8 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (2.04%) Credit Risk
7 7 (2.04%) Mobile App
8 6 (1.75%) Data Centre
8 6 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.46%) e-Learning
9 5 (1.46%) Hybrid Cloud
9 5 (1.46%) NHS
9 5 (1.46%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.46%) Video Conferencing
9 5 (1.46%) Virtual Team
10 4 (1.17%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 49 (14.29%) Windows
2 25 (7.29%) Windows 10
3 13 (3.79%) Linux
4 7 (2.04%) Apple iOS
5 6 (1.75%) Android
5 6 (1.75%) Windows Server
6 5 (1.46%) Windows Server 2019
7 4 (1.17%) Mac OS
7 4 (1.17%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.29%) VMS
8 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (33.53%) DevOps
2 97 (28.28%) CI/CD
3 88 (25.66%) Agile
4 77 (22.45%) Problem-Solving
5 51 (14.87%) Analytics
5 51 (14.87%) Containerisation
6 42 (12.24%) Microservices
7 39 (11.37%) User Experience
8 35 (10.20%) Continuous Improvement
9 34 (9.91%) Infrastructure as Code
9 34 (9.91%) Migration
10 33 (9.62%) Business Intelligence
11 32 (9.33%) Machine Learning
12 31 (9.04%) Observability
13 29 (8.45%) Mentoring
14 28 (8.16%) ITIL
15 27 (7.87%) Validation
16 25 (7.29%) Customer Service
17 24 (7.00%) Test Automation
18 23 (6.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 67 (19.53%) Python
2 54 (15.74%) Java
3 50 (14.58%) SQL
4 30 (8.75%) PowerShell
5 29 (8.45%) JavaScript
6 25 (7.29%) C#
7 23 (6.71%) TypeScript
8 16 (4.66%) Bash
9 10 (2.92%) Go
10 7 (2.04%) R
11 6 (1.75%) Bicep
12 3 (0.87%) C++
12 3 (0.87%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.58%) Perl
13 2 (0.58%) PHP
13 2 (0.58%) Scala
13 2 (0.58%) T-SQL
14 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.29%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 48 (13.99%) Security Cleared
2 30 (8.75%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.58%) Degree
4 21 (6.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 15 (4.37%) Azure Certification
6 11 (3.21%) CISSP
7 10 (2.92%) AWS Certification
8 9 (2.62%) CISM
9 6 (1.75%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (1.17%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.17%) Computer Science Degree
10 4 (1.17%) IBM Certification
10 4 (1.17%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (0.87%) DV Cleared
12 2 (0.58%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.58%) CCIE
12 2 (0.58%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.58%) PMP
12 2 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.00%) Accessibility
1 24 (7.00%) QA
2 22 (6.41%) Data Quality
3 18 (5.25%) ISO 20022
4 16 (4.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 14 (4.08%) PSD2
6 13 (3.79%) GDPR
7 12 (3.50%) NIST
8 10 (2.92%) SEPA
9 5 (1.46%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.58%) WCAG
12 1 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 1 (0.29%) GRC
12 1 (0.29%) HL7
12 1 (0.29%) NEBOSH
12 1 (0.29%) SLA
12 1 (0.29%) SOC 2
System Software
1 78 (22.74%) Active Directory
2 56 (16.33%) Docker
3 14 (4.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (2.92%) vSphere
5 5 (1.46%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.29%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 58 (16.91%) Kubernetes
2 37 (10.79%) Terraform
3 34 (9.91%) Microsoft Intune
4 25 (7.29%) SCCM
5 11 (3.21%) Ansible
5 11 (3.21%) Grafana
6 10 (2.92%) Prometheus
7 8 (2.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 8 (2.33%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (1.46%) Fluentd
9 3 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
10 1 (0.29%) AirWatch
10 1 (0.29%) CA Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.29%) Istio
10 1 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 130 (37.90%) Microsoft
2 33 (9.62%) Google
3 31 (9.04%) ServiceNow
4 16 (4.66%) Oracle
4 16 (4.66%) VMware
5 13 (3.79%) Databricks
5 13 (3.79%) Virgin Media
6 11 (3.21%) Bomgar
6 11 (3.21%) iManage
7 10 (2.92%) F5
8 8 (2.33%) Cisco
9 7 (2.04%) OpenAI
9 7 (2.04%) Pega
9 7 (2.04%) Splunk
10 6 (1.75%) Citrix
10 6 (1.75%) Foundry
10 6 (1.75%) Palo Alto
10 6 (1.75%) Veeam
11 5 (1.46%) IBM
11 5 (1.46%) Meraki