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 16 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 9 8 3
Rank change year-on-year -1 -5 +1
Contract jobs citing Azure 286 259 439
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 11.83% 10.99% 15.82%
As % of the Cloud Services category 34.62% 35.58% 43.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 212 165 342
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £584 £575
90th Percentile £635 £675 £650
England median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 4 25
10th Percentile - £34.50 £18.80
25th Percentile £15.50 £42.01 -
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 £37.97 £40.59 £46.18
% change year-on-year -6.47% -12.10% -16.04%

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 826 728 1,019
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 34.16% 30.90% 36.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 636 461 765
10th Percentile £301 £300 £265
25th Percentile £363 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £449 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.53% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £543 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £650 £650
England median daily rate £500 £535 £525
% change year-on-year -6.54% +1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 16 53
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.44 £16.05
25th Percentile £16.72 £21.05 £18.50
Median hourly rate £23.31 £30.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.32% -9.09% +46.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £49.14 £46.18
90th Percentile £73.06 £73.63 £60.80
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £30.86
% change year-on-year -28.14% +13.42% +40.27%

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 16 November 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 16 November 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 16 November 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 -3 145 £475 -5.47% 356
Cheshire +6 86 £475 -4.67% 53
Merseyside -5 32 £419 +4.69% 41
Lancashire -7 17 £450 -5.26% 170
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 (9.44%) SharePoint
2 11 (3.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (2.80%) Confluence
4 7 (2.45%) Exchange Server 2013
4 7 (2.45%) SAS
4 7 (2.45%) Skype for Business
5 5 (1.75%) WebSphere
6 4 (1.40%) Apache Spark
6 4 (1.40%) OpenStack
7 3 (1.05%) Apache
8 2 (0.70%) IIS
8 2 (0.70%) NetWeaver
8 2 (0.70%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 13 (4.55%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (3.15%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (2.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (2.45%) MS Visio
4 6 (2.10%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (2.10%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.75%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.35%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 118 (41.26%) AWS
2 78 (27.27%) GCP
3 65 (22.73%) Microsoft 365
4 46 (16.08%) Azure DevOps
5 44 (15.38%) Power Platform
6 28 (9.79%) GitHub
7 25 (8.74%) Entra ID
8 20 (6.99%) SaaS
9 15 (5.24%) Serverless
10 13 (4.55%) Power Automate
10 13 (4.55%) PowerApps
11 11 (3.85%) Dynamics 365
11 11 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
12 10 (3.50%) Azure Logic Apps
12 10 (3.50%) Datadog
12 10 (3.50%) Figma
13 9 (3.15%) Azure Sentinel
13 9 (3.15%) OneDrive
13 9 (3.15%) OpenShift
14 8 (2.80%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 23 (8.04%) Firewall
2 12 (4.20%) DNS
3 7 (2.45%) Internet
3 7 (2.45%) Network Security
3 7 (2.45%) Skype
3 7 (2.45%) TCP/IP
3 7 (2.45%) VPN
3 7 (2.45%) Wi-Fi
4 6 (2.10%) SAN
4 6 (2.10%) VLAN
5 5 (1.75%) BGP
5 5 (1.75%) Unified Communications
6 4 (1.40%) LAN
6 4 (1.40%) WAN
7 3 (1.05%) Cisco IOS
7 3 (1.05%) iSCSI
7 3 (1.05%) NX-OS
7 3 (1.05%) WLAN
8 2 (0.70%) Calico
8 2 (0.70%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (8.39%) Power BI
2 17 (5.94%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (4.20%) SQL Server
4 10 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (3.15%) BigQuery
5 9 (3.15%) Relational Database
6 8 (2.80%) Azure SQL Database
7 7 (2.45%) Data Lake
7 7 (2.45%) Looker
7 7 (2.45%) MySQL
8 6 (2.10%) Amazon RDS
8 6 (2.10%) NoSQL
9 5 (1.75%) DynamoDB
9 5 (1.75%) Metadata
9 5 (1.75%) RDBMS
9 5 (1.75%) Redis
10 4 (1.40%) Amazon Aurora
10 4 (1.40%) Pinecone
11 3 (1.05%) Delta Lake
12 2 (0.70%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 27 (9.44%) Git
1 27 (9.44%) JIRA
2 24 (8.39%) Jenkins
3 17 (5.94%) GitLab
4 10 (3.50%) Gradle
5 8 (2.80%) SonarQube
6 7 (2.45%) Postman
7 6 (2.10%) Maven
7 6 (2.10%) Selenium
7 6 (2.10%) Storybook
7 6 (2.10%) Xcode
8 4 (1.40%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.40%) JUnit
8 4 (1.40%) Snyk
8 4 (1.40%) SonarLint
9 3 (1.05%) Cucumber
9 3 (1.05%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.70%) Fiddler
10 2 (0.70%) git-flow
10 2 (0.70%) Hudson
General
1 92 (32.17%) Social Skills
2 60 (20.98%) Public Sector
3 42 (14.69%) Finance
4 39 (13.64%) Analytical Skills
5 37 (12.94%) Banking
6 10 (3.50%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (2.80%) Military
7 8 (2.80%) Retail
8 6 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.40%) Games
9 4 (1.40%) Law
9 4 (1.40%) Marketing
10 3 (1.05%) Japanese Language
11 2 (0.70%) Legal
11 2 (0.70%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.70%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.35%) Automotive
12 1 (0.35%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.35%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 49 (17.13%) Architect
1 49 (17.13%) Developer
2 27 (9.44%) Analyst
3 26 (9.09%) Senior
4 19 (6.64%) Security Engineer
5 15 (5.24%) Azure Engineer
5 15 (5.24%) Lead
5 15 (5.24%) Solutions Architect
6 14 (4.90%) Java Developer
7 13 (4.55%) IT Support
8 12 (4.20%) Cloud Engineer
8 12 (4.20%) Support Engineer
8 12 (4.20%) Technical Architect
9 11 (3.85%) Platform Engineer
10 10 (3.50%) Senior Developer
11 9 (3.15%) Data Engineer
11 9 (3.15%) DevOps Engineer
12 8 (2.80%) Change Manager
12 8 (2.80%) IT Engineer
12 8 (2.80%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (9.09%) Spring Boot
2 21 (7.34%) Spring
3 14 (4.90%) RESTful
4 13 (4.55%) .NET
4 13 (4.55%) JSON
5 12 (4.20%) HTML
5 12 (4.20%) OAuth
5 12 (4.20%) REST
6 11 (3.85%) React
7 8 (2.80%) AngularJS
8 7 (2.45%) D3.js
8 7 (2.45%) React Native
9 6 (2.10%) .NET Framework
9 6 (2.10%) Elastic Stack
9 6 (2.10%) HTML5 Canvas
9 6 (2.10%) JMS
9 6 (2.10%) Middleware
9 6 (2.10%) Node.js
9 6 (2.10%) SVG
10 5 (1.75%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.69%) Cloud Native
1 22 (7.69%) Onboarding
2 13 (4.55%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (4.20%) Product Ownership
4 11 (3.85%) Low-Code
5 10 (3.50%) Data Protection Act
6 9 (3.15%) Mobile App
7 7 (2.45%) Credit Risk
7 7 (2.45%) Data Centre
7 7 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (2.10%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 5 (1.75%) Clustering
9 5 (1.75%) N-Tier
9 5 (1.75%) Replication
9 5 (1.75%) Video Conferencing
10 4 (1.40%) Autonomous Agent
10 4 (1.40%) Distributed Computing
10 4 (1.40%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.40%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 40 (13.99%) Windows
2 18 (6.29%) Linux
3 11 (3.85%) Android
3 11 (3.85%) Windows Server
4 9 (3.15%) Apple iOS
4 9 (3.15%) Windows 10
5 3 (1.05%) Unix
6 1 (0.35%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (34.97%) DevOps
2 82 (28.67%) CI/CD
3 65 (22.73%) Agile
4 57 (19.93%) Problem-Solving
5 41 (14.34%) Containerisation
6 37 (12.94%) Analytics
7 36 (12.59%) Migration
8 35 (12.24%) Infrastructure as Code
9 34 (11.89%) Stakeholder Management
10 32 (11.19%) Microservices
11 31 (10.84%) Machine Learning
12 29 (10.14%) Business Intelligence
13 27 (9.44%) AI
13 27 (9.44%) Mentoring
14 24 (8.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 24 (8.39%) User Experience
15 23 (8.04%) Continuous Improvement
15 23 (8.04%) Roadmaps
16 22 (7.69%) Cybersecurity
17 20 (6.99%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 58 (20.28%) Python
2 45 (15.73%) SQL
3 34 (11.89%) Java
4 20 (6.99%) JavaScript
5 17 (5.94%) TypeScript
6 16 (5.59%) PowerShell
7 14 (4.90%) C#
8 12 (4.20%) Bash
9 7 (2.45%) R
10 5 (1.75%) Go
10 5 (1.75%) Kusto Query Language
11 4 (1.40%) Scala
11 4 (1.40%) T-SQL
12 3 (1.05%) Perl
12 3 (1.05%) PHP
13 2 (0.70%) Bicep
13 2 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.70%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.35%) C++
14 1 (0.35%) VBA
Qualifications
1 46 (16.08%) Security Cleared
2 32 (11.19%) SC Cleared
3 26 (9.09%) Degree
4 19 (6.64%) Azure Certification
5 13 (4.55%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (3.50%) CISSP
7 9 (3.15%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (2.80%) CISM
8 8 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.75%) AWS Certification
10 5 (1.75%) CCNP
11 3 (1.05%) CCDP
11 3 (1.05%) MCP
11 3 (1.05%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.70%) CCIE
12 2 (0.70%) GCIA
12 2 (0.70%) GCIH
12 2 (0.70%) JNCIE
12 2 (0.70%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (7.69%) Accessibility
2 19 (6.64%) QA
3 14 (4.90%) NIST
4 13 (4.55%) ISO 20022
5 11 (3.85%) Data Quality
5 11 (3.85%) GDPR
5 11 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 9 (3.15%) PSD2
7 7 (2.45%) PCI DSS
8 6 (2.10%) SEPA
9 2 (0.70%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.35%) GRC
10 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.35%) NCSC
10 1 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.35%) SOC 1
10 1 (0.35%) WCAG
System Software
1 47 (16.43%) Active Directory
2 44 (15.38%) Docker
3 9 (3.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.75%) vSphere
5 2 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.70%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.35%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 46 (16.08%) Kubernetes
2 37 (12.94%) Terraform
3 26 (9.09%) Microsoft Intune
4 15 (5.24%) SCCM
5 9 (3.15%) Ansible
6 6 (2.10%) Grafana
6 6 (2.10%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
7 5 (1.75%) Fluentd
8 3 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 3 (1.05%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.70%) Istio
9 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Clustering
10 1 (0.35%) AirWatch
10 1 (0.35%) QRadar
10 1 (0.35%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 103 (36.01%) Microsoft
2 23 (8.04%) ServiceNow
3 22 (7.69%) Google
4 13 (4.55%) VMware
5 12 (4.20%) F5
5 12 (4.20%) Oracle
6 11 (3.85%) Cisco
7 8 (2.80%) Databricks
7 8 (2.80%) Virgin Media
8 7 (2.45%) Citrix
8 7 (2.45%) Palo Alto
8 7 (2.45%) Pega
8 7 (2.45%) Zscaler
9 6 (2.10%) IBM
9 6 (2.10%) Meraki
9 6 (2.10%) SolarWinds
10 5 (1.75%) Cribl.io
10 5 (1.75%) Splunk
11 4 (1.40%) Checkmarx
11 4 (1.40%) Gigya