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 12 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 7 11
Rank change year-on-year 0 +4 -8
Contract jobs citing Azure 380 276 314
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 12.98% 13.71% 10.96%
As % of the Cloud Services category 39.83% 39.60% 33.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 303 203 244
10th Percentile £300 £234 £313
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £495
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% +1.01% -5.71%
75th Percentile £581 £580 £575
90th Percentile £635 £700 £638
England median daily rate £525 £538 £540
% change year-on-year -2.33% -0.46% -4.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 1 10
10th Percentile £15.50 - £16.25
25th Percentile £17.38 £72.50 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.38 £75.00 £34.34
Median % change year-on-year -66.16% +118.40% -50.94%
75th Percentile £60.05 £77.50 £46.18
90th Percentile £90.00 - £49.06
England median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -21.26%

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 954 697 946
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 32.58% 34.62% 33.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 671 515 694
10th Percentile £206 £230 £272
25th Percentile £363 £396 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £478
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -0.58% -4.45%
75th Percentile £560 £575 £550
90th Percentile £630 £650 £638
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 14 75
10th Percentile £17.95 £21.99 £15.50
25th Percentile £25.38 £24.85 £16.06
Median hourly rate £62.00 £28.75 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +115.65% +64.29% -66.97%
75th Percentile £76.00 £40.20 £26.50
90th Percentile £90.00 £67.27 £46.18
England median hourly rate £39.50 £26.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +49.06% +26.19% -16.00%

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 12 March 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 12 March 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 12 March 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 -3 205 £500 -1.96% 170
Cheshire +7 101 £526 +27.81% 54
Merseyside -1 53 £138 -45.00% 36
Lancashire -11 15 £500 - 78
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 31 (8.16%) SharePoint
2 24 (6.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 15 (3.95%) Confluence
4 7 (1.84%) SAS
5 5 (1.32%) OpenStack
6 4 (1.05%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.53%) IIS
8 1 (0.26%) Apache
8 1 (0.26%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.26%) CMS
8 1 (0.26%) Headless CMS
Applications
1 9 (2.37%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.53%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.53%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.32%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.53%) Elite 3E
3 2 (0.53%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
Cloud Services
1 160 (42.11%) AWS
2 97 (25.53%) GCP
3 86 (22.63%) Microsoft 365
4 58 (15.26%) Power Platform
5 54 (14.21%) Azure DevOps
5 54 (14.21%) Entra ID
6 27 (7.11%) GitHub
7 23 (6.05%) Power Automate
8 22 (5.79%) PowerApps
9 21 (5.53%) Dynamics 365
10 18 (4.74%) GitHub Actions
11 17 (4.47%) Azure Data Factory
12 15 (3.95%) Serverless
13 14 (3.68%) AWS CloudFormation
13 14 (3.68%) Azure Logic Apps
13 14 (3.68%) OpenShift
14 13 (3.42%) Azure AKS
14 13 (3.42%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 13 (3.42%) OneDrive
15 10 (2.63%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 37 (9.74%) Firewall
2 22 (5.79%) DNS
3 11 (2.89%) Wi-Fi
4 9 (2.37%) TCP/IP
5 7 (1.84%) DHCP
5 7 (1.84%) Kerberos
5 7 (1.84%) VPN
6 6 (1.58%) Internet
6 6 (1.58%) Network Security
6 6 (1.58%) VLAN
7 4 (1.05%) HTTP
7 4 (1.05%) NetScaler
8 3 (0.79%) Unified Communications
8 3 (0.79%) WAN
9 2 (0.53%) BGP
9 2 (0.53%) OSPF
9 2 (0.53%) SD-WAN
9 2 (0.53%) Wireshark
10 1 (0.26%) LAN
10 1 (0.26%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (6.05%) Data Warehouse
1 23 (6.05%) Power BI
2 16 (4.21%) SQL Server
3 9 (2.37%) Metadata
4 8 (2.11%) Data Lake
5 7 (1.84%) Looker
6 6 (1.58%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.58%) BigQuery
7 5 (1.32%) MySQL
7 5 (1.32%) NoSQL
8 4 (1.05%) MongoDB
8 4 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.79%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
9 3 (0.79%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
9 3 (0.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.53%) Data Vault
10 2 (0.53%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.53%) Hadoop
10 2 (0.53%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 33 (8.68%) JIRA
2 26 (6.84%) Git
3 18 (4.74%) GitLab
3 18 (4.74%) Jenkins
4 9 (2.37%) Postman
5 5 (1.32%) Bitbucket
5 5 (1.32%) Cucumber
5 5 (1.32%) Selenium
5 5 (1.32%) Snyk
5 5 (1.32%) SonarQube
6 3 (0.79%) CircleCI
6 3 (0.79%) JMeter
7 2 (0.53%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.53%) Fiddler
8 1 (0.26%) Browser DevTools
8 1 (0.26%) JUnit
8 1 (0.26%) Mockito
8 1 (0.26%) MSI
8 1 (0.26%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.26%) Visual Studio
General
1 107 (28.16%) Social Skills
2 75 (19.74%) Public Sector
3 72 (18.95%) Finance
4 38 (10.00%) Banking
5 37 (9.74%) Analytical Skills
6 20 (5.26%) Legal
7 10 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 9 (2.37%) Law
8 9 (2.37%) Retail
9 4 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (0.79%) Games
10 3 (0.79%) Military
10 3 (0.79%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.53%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.53%) Local Government
11 2 (0.53%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.26%) Electronics
12 1 (0.26%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 68 (17.89%) Developer
2 57 (15.00%) Architect
3 40 (10.53%) Senior
4 32 (8.42%) Security Engineer
5 31 (8.16%) Analyst
6 29 (7.63%) Lead
7 22 (5.79%) Azure Engineer
7 22 (5.79%) Java Developer
8 20 (5.26%) Data Engineer
8 20 (5.26%) DevOps Engineer
9 17 (4.47%) Solutions Architect
10 16 (4.21%) 1st Line Support
10 16 (4.21%) IT Support
11 15 (3.95%) Azure Developer
12 14 (3.68%) Platform Engineer
13 10 (2.63%) Support Engineer
14 9 (2.37%) .NET Developer
14 9 (2.37%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 9 (2.37%) Cloud Engineer
14 9 (2.37%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (8.95%) Spring Boot
2 32 (8.42%) Spring
3 29 (7.63%) REST
4 21 (5.53%) .NET
5 20 (5.26%) React
6 19 (5.00%) RESTful
7 15 (3.95%) HTML
8 13 (3.42%) JSON
9 11 (2.89%) Kafka
10 9 (2.37%) AngularJS
10 9 (2.37%) OAuth
11 8 (2.11%) .NET Core
11 8 (2.11%) ARM Templates
12 7 (1.84%) HTML5 Canvas
12 7 (1.84%) JMS
12 7 (1.84%) LangChain
12 7 (1.84%) LDAP
12 7 (1.84%) Node.js
12 7 (1.84%) PySpark
12 7 (1.84%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 37 (9.74%) Cloud Native
2 34 (8.95%) Onboarding
3 14 (3.68%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (3.68%) Security Posture
4 13 (3.42%) Product Ownership
5 10 (2.63%) Private Cloud
6 8 (2.11%) Data Centre
7 7 (1.84%) Credit Risk
7 7 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
7 7 (1.84%) Hybrid Cloud
7 7 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (1.84%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 6 (1.58%) Cloud Security Posture
8 6 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.58%) Low-Code
8 6 (1.58%) Management Information System
9 5 (1.32%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 5 (1.32%) e-Learning
9 5 (1.32%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.32%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 57 (15.00%) Windows
2 31 (8.16%) Windows 10
3 19 (5.00%) Linux
4 6 (1.58%) Windows Server
5 5 (1.32%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (1.05%) Mac OS
6 4 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.05%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.53%) VMS
8 1 (0.26%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (33.68%) DevOps
2 117 (30.79%) CI/CD
3 100 (26.32%) Agile
4 71 (18.68%) Problem-Solving
5 59 (15.53%) Analytics
6 57 (15.00%) Containerisation
7 46 (12.11%) Infrastructure as Code
8 45 (11.84%) Microservices
9 39 (10.26%) Continuous Improvement
10 37 (9.74%) Migration
11 36 (9.47%) Mentoring
11 36 (9.47%) Roadmaps
12 35 (9.21%) Data Modelling
12 35 (9.21%) Observability
13 31 (8.16%) Customer Service
14 30 (7.89%) DevSecOps
14 30 (7.89%) Test Automation
14 30 (7.89%) User Experience
15 29 (7.63%) Machine Learning
15 29 (7.63%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 92 (24.21%) Python
2 61 (16.05%) SQL
3 57 (15.00%) Java
4 49 (12.89%) PowerShell
5 27 (7.11%) C#
5 27 (7.11%) JavaScript
6 24 (6.32%) Bash
7 15 (3.95%) TypeScript
8 11 (2.89%) Bicep
9 8 (2.11%) Go
10 7 (1.84%) R
11 4 (1.05%) C++
12 3 (0.79%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 2 (0.53%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.53%) Scala
13 2 (0.53%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.26%) PHP
14 1 (0.26%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.26%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 43 (11.32%) Security Cleared
2 25 (6.58%) SC Cleared
3 24 (6.32%) Degree
4 22 (5.79%) Azure Certification
5 20 (5.26%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (4.47%) AWS Certification
7 16 (4.21%) CISSP
8 11 (2.89%) Cisco Certification
9 9 (2.37%) Microsoft Certification
10 8 (2.11%) CISM
11 5 (1.32%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 5 (1.32%) ITIL Certification
12 4 (1.05%) CCIE
12 4 (1.05%) CCNP
12 4 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
12 4 (1.05%) IBM Certification
13 3 (0.79%) CCNA
13 3 (0.79%) GIAC
13 3 (0.79%) PMI Certification
13 3 (0.79%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (6.05%) Data Quality
2 21 (5.53%) QA
3 16 (4.21%) Accessibility
4 15 (3.95%) GDPR
4 15 (3.95%) ISO 20022
5 14 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 11 (2.89%) NIST
7 8 (2.11%) PSD2
8 7 (1.84%) SEPA
9 5 (1.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 5 (1.32%) HIPAA
10 4 (1.05%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.53%) Solvency II
13 1 (0.26%) GRC
13 1 (0.26%) HL7
13 1 (0.26%) NEBOSH
13 1 (0.26%) SLA
13 1 (0.26%) SOC 2
13 1 (0.26%) WCAG
System Software
1 85 (22.37%) Active Directory
2 67 (17.63%) Docker
3 12 (3.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (2.63%) vSphere
5 5 (1.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.79%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 69 (18.16%) Kubernetes
2 53 (13.95%) Terraform
3 28 (7.37%) Microsoft Intune
4 15 (3.95%) SCCM
5 13 (3.42%) Grafana
6 12 (3.16%) Ansible
6 12 (3.16%) Prometheus
7 11 (2.89%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (2.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 6 (1.58%) Argo
10 4 (1.05%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.79%) Fluentd
11 3 (0.79%) Istio
11 3 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
12 2 (0.53%) CA Single Sign-On
12 2 (0.53%) linkerd
13 1 (0.26%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 144 (37.89%) Microsoft
2 38 (10.00%) Google
3 30 (7.89%) ServiceNow
4 18 (4.74%) Databricks
5 15 (3.95%) Bomgar
5 15 (3.95%) iManage
5 15 (3.95%) Oracle
5 15 (3.95%) VMware
6 14 (3.68%) Virgin Media
7 11 (2.89%) Splunk
8 8 (2.11%) F5
8 8 (2.11%) IBM
9 7 (1.84%) Pega
10 6 (1.58%) Foundry
10 6 (1.58%) OpenAI
11 5 (1.32%) Checkmarx
11 5 (1.32%) Citrix
11 5 (1.32%) Varonis
11 5 (1.32%) Veeam
11 5 (1.32%) Veracode