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

6 months to
9 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 9 9 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 -6 +1
Contract jobs citing Azure 284 261 445
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 11.82% 11.08% 15.94%
As % of the Cloud Services category 34.68% 35.51% 43.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 168 349
10th Percentile £324 £332 £308
25th Percentile £400 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £575
90th Percentile £638 £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 27
10th Percentile - £34.50 £17.60
25th Percentile £15.50 £42.01 £29.50
Median hourly rate £17.44 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -62.25% - -32.09%
75th Percentile £61.80 £54.01 -
90th Percentile £67.95 £68.10 -
England median hourly rate £34.24 £40.59 £46.18
% change year-on-year -15.64% -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 819 735 1,026
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 34.10% 31.20% 36.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 626 463 771
10th Percentile £303 £308 £265
25th Percentile £367 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £485 £495
Median % change year-on-year -7.22% -2.02% -1.00%
75th Percentile £542 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £655 £650
England median daily rate £500 £535 £525
% change year-on-year -6.54% +1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 16 56
10th Percentile £15.00 £17.44 £15.88
25th Percentile £16.25 £21.05 £18.31
Median hourly rate £23.31 £30.00 £28.31
Median % change year-on-year -22.32% +5.99% -56.45%
75th Percentile £67.75 £49.14 £46.18
90th Percentile £74.01 £73.63 £57.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £28.61
% change year-on-year -28.14% +22.33% +27.16%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -2 147 £475 -5.00% 533
Cheshire +4 82 £475 -6.40% 154
Merseyside -5 32 £419 +4.69% 76
Lancashire -4 17 £450 -5.26% 294
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 26 (9.15%) SharePoint
2 10 (3.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (3.17%) Confluence
4 7 (2.46%) Exchange Server 2013
4 7 (2.46%) Skype for Business
5 5 (1.76%) SAS
5 5 (1.76%) WebSphere
6 4 (1.41%) Apache Spark
6 4 (1.41%) OpenStack
7 3 (1.06%) Apache
8 2 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.70%) IIS
8 2 (0.70%) NetWeaver
8 2 (0.70%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 13 (4.58%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (3.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (2.46%) MS Visio
4 6 (2.11%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.35%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (2.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (1.41%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.35%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 115 (40.49%) AWS
2 74 (26.06%) GCP
3 63 (22.18%) Microsoft 365
4 48 (16.90%) Azure DevOps
5 44 (15.49%) Power Platform
6 30 (10.56%) GitHub
7 23 (8.10%) Entra ID
8 20 (7.04%) SaaS
9 16 (5.63%) Serverless
10 13 (4.58%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (4.58%) Power Automate
10 13 (4.58%) PowerApps
11 12 (4.23%) Dynamics 365
12 11 (3.87%) Azure Logic Apps
13 10 (3.52%) Datadog
13 10 (3.52%) Figma
14 9 (3.17%) Azure Sentinel
14 9 (3.17%) OpenShift
15 8 (2.82%) AWS CloudFormation
15 8 (2.82%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 23 (8.10%) Firewall
2 12 (4.23%) DNS
3 7 (2.46%) Internet
3 7 (2.46%) Network Security
3 7 (2.46%) Skype
3 7 (2.46%) TCP/IP
3 7 (2.46%) VPN
3 7 (2.46%) Wi-Fi
4 6 (2.11%) SAN
4 6 (2.11%) VLAN
5 5 (1.76%) BGP
5 5 (1.76%) Unified Communications
6 4 (1.41%) LAN
6 4 (1.41%) WAN
7 3 (1.06%) Cisco IOS
7 3 (1.06%) iSCSI
7 3 (1.06%) NX-OS
7 3 (1.06%) WLAN
8 2 (0.70%) Calico
8 2 (0.70%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (8.45%) Power BI
2 15 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (4.23%) SQL Server
4 10 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (3.17%) Azure SQL Database
5 9 (3.17%) BigQuery
5 9 (3.17%) Relational Database
6 7 (2.46%) Data Lake
6 7 (2.46%) MySQL
7 6 (2.11%) Amazon RDS
7 6 (2.11%) Looker
7 6 (2.11%) NoSQL
8 5 (1.76%) DynamoDB
8 5 (1.76%) Metadata
8 5 (1.76%) RDBMS
8 5 (1.76%) Redis
9 4 (1.41%) Amazon Aurora
9 4 (1.41%) Pinecone
10 3 (1.06%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.70%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 28 (9.86%) JIRA
2 27 (9.51%) Git
3 25 (8.80%) Jenkins
4 17 (5.99%) GitLab
5 10 (3.52%) Gradle
6 8 (2.82%) SonarQube
7 7 (2.46%) Postman
8 6 (2.11%) Maven
8 6 (2.11%) Selenium
8 6 (2.11%) Storybook
8 6 (2.11%) Xcode
9 4 (1.41%) Bitbucket
9 4 (1.41%) JUnit
9 4 (1.41%) Snyk
9 4 (1.41%) SonarLint
10 3 (1.06%) Cucumber
10 3 (1.06%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.70%) Fiddler
11 2 (0.70%) git-flow
11 2 (0.70%) Hudson
General
1 92 (32.39%) Social Skills
2 59 (20.77%) Public Sector
3 40 (14.08%) Finance
4 37 (13.03%) Analytical Skills
5 35 (12.32%) Banking
6 10 (3.52%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (2.82%) Military
8 7 (2.46%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (2.46%) Retail
9 4 (1.41%) Games
9 4 (1.41%) Law
9 4 (1.41%) Marketing
10 3 (1.06%) 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 50 (17.61%) Developer
2 47 (16.55%) Architect
3 26 (9.15%) Analyst
3 26 (9.15%) Senior
4 19 (6.69%) Security Engineer
5 15 (5.28%) Azure Engineer
5 15 (5.28%) Lead
6 14 (4.93%) Java Developer
6 14 (4.93%) Solutions Architect
7 13 (4.58%) IT Support
8 12 (4.23%) Cloud Engineer
8 12 (4.23%) Support Engineer
8 12 (4.23%) Technical Architect
9 11 (3.87%) Platform Engineer
10 10 (3.52%) Senior Developer
11 9 (3.17%) Data Engineer
11 9 (3.17%) DevOps Engineer
12 8 (2.82%) Change Manager
12 8 (2.82%) IT Engineer
12 8 (2.82%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (8.45%) Spring Boot
2 19 (6.69%) Spring
3 15 (5.28%) .NET
4 14 (4.93%) RESTful
5 13 (4.58%) JSON
6 12 (4.23%) HTML
6 12 (4.23%) OAuth
6 12 (4.23%) React
6 12 (4.23%) REST
7 9 (3.17%) AngularJS
8 8 (2.82%) .NET Framework
9 7 (2.46%) D3.js
9 7 (2.46%) React Native
10 6 (2.11%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (2.11%) HTML5 Canvas
10 6 (2.11%) JMS
10 6 (2.11%) Middleware
10 6 (2.11%) Node.js
10 6 (2.11%) SVG
11 5 (1.76%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.75%) Cloud Native
2 21 (7.39%) Onboarding
3 13 (4.58%) Product Ownership
4 11 (3.87%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (3.87%) Low-Code
5 10 (3.52%) Data Protection Act
6 9 (3.17%) Mobile App
7 8 (2.82%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.46%) Data Centre
8 7 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (2.11%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 5 (1.76%) Clustering
10 5 (1.76%) Credit Risk
10 5 (1.76%) N-Tier
10 5 (1.76%) Replication
10 5 (1.76%) Video Conferencing
11 4 (1.41%) Autonomous Agent
11 4 (1.41%) Distributed Computing
11 4 (1.41%) Legacy Applications
11 4 (1.41%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 40 (14.08%) Windows
2 18 (6.34%) Linux
3 11 (3.87%) Android
3 11 (3.87%) Windows Server
4 9 (3.17%) Apple iOS
4 9 (3.17%) Windows 10
5 3 (1.06%) Unix
6 1 (0.35%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (35.92%) DevOps
2 84 (29.58%) CI/CD
3 66 (23.24%) Agile
4 57 (20.07%) Problem-Solving
5 40 (14.08%) Containerisation
6 35 (12.32%) Infrastructure as Code
6 35 (12.32%) Migration
6 35 (12.32%) Stakeholder Management
7 34 (11.97%) Analytics
8 30 (10.56%) Machine Learning
8 30 (10.56%) Microservices
9 29 (10.21%) Business Intelligence
10 28 (9.86%) AI
11 27 (9.51%) Mentoring
12 23 (8.10%) Continuous Improvement
12 23 (8.10%) Roadmaps
12 23 (8.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 22 (7.75%) Cybersecurity
13 22 (7.75%) User Experience
14 20 (7.04%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 57 (20.07%) Python
2 46 (16.20%) SQL
3 32 (11.27%) Java
4 20 (7.04%) JavaScript
5 17 (5.99%) TypeScript
6 15 (5.28%) C#
6 15 (5.28%) PowerShell
7 12 (4.23%) Bash
8 5 (1.76%) Go
8 5 (1.76%) Kusto Query Language
8 5 (1.76%) R
9 4 (1.41%) Scala
9 4 (1.41%) T-SQL
10 3 (1.06%) Perl
10 3 (1.06%) PHP
11 2 (0.70%) Bicep
11 2 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 2 (0.70%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.35%) C++
12 1 (0.35%) VBA
Qualifications
1 46 (16.20%) Security Cleared
2 32 (11.27%) SC Cleared
3 26 (9.15%) Degree
4 19 (6.69%) Azure Certification
5 12 (4.23%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (3.52%) CISSP
7 8 (2.82%) CISM
7 8 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (2.11%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (1.76%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.76%) CCNP
10 3 (1.06%) CCDP
10 3 (1.06%) MCP
10 3 (1.06%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.70%) CCIE
11 2 (0.70%) GCIA
11 2 (0.70%) GCIH
11 2 (0.70%) JNCIE
11 2 (0.70%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (7.75%) Accessibility
2 19 (6.69%) QA
3 14 (4.93%) NIST
4 11 (3.87%) Data Quality
4 11 (3.87%) ISO 20022
5 10 (3.52%) GDPR
5 10 (3.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 9 (3.17%) PSD2
7 7 (2.46%) PCI DSS
8 6 (2.11%) 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 45 (15.85%) Active Directory
2 44 (15.49%) Docker
3 9 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.76%) 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 47 (16.55%) Kubernetes
2 37 (13.03%) Terraform
3 25 (8.80%) Microsoft Intune
4 15 (5.28%) SCCM
5 9 (3.17%) Ansible
6 6 (2.11%) Grafana
6 6 (2.11%) Prometheus
7 5 (1.76%) Fluentd
7 5 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (1.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 3 (1.06%) 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 (36.27%) Microsoft
2 23 (8.10%) ServiceNow
3 20 (7.04%) Google
4 13 (4.58%) VMware
5 12 (4.23%) F5
5 12 (4.23%) Oracle
6 11 (3.87%) Cisco
7 8 (2.82%) Databricks
7 8 (2.82%) Virgin Media
8 7 (2.46%) Citrix
8 7 (2.46%) Palo Alto
8 7 (2.46%) Zscaler
9 6 (2.11%) IBM
9 6 (2.11%) Meraki
9 6 (2.11%) SolarWinds
10 5 (1.76%) Cribl.io
10 5 (1.76%) Pega
10 5 (1.76%) Splunk
11 4 (1.41%) Checkmarx
11 4 (1.41%) Veracode