Azure Contract Job Trends in Northern Ireland

Microsoft Azure
UK > Northern Ireland

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Northern Ireland requiring Azure skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 27 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
27 Jan 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 27 10
Rank change year-on-year +2 -17 +13
Contract jobs citing Azure 8 2 19
As % of all contract jobs in Northern Ireland 3.43% 1.27% 11.38%
As % of the Cloud Services category 15.38% 6.25% 42.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1 0 12
10th Percentile - - £500
25th Percentile £378 - £519
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £385 - £588
Median % change year-on-year - - +46.88%
75th Percentile £393 - £630
90th Percentile - - £683
UK median daily rate £517 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.52% -4.55% -2.65%

All Cloud Computing Skills
Northern Ireland

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 Northern Ireland.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for cloud computing skills 52 32 45
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Northern Ireland 22.32% 20.25% 26.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 13 11 28
10th Percentile £380 £148 £206
25th Percentile £390 £225 £359
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £325 £563
Median % change year-on-year +23.08% -42.22% +12.50%
75th Percentile - £583 £646
90th Percentile £596 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 5 2
10th Percentile £24.04 - £16.03
25th Percentile £25.61 £22.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £28.22 £24.18 £16.75
Median % change year-on-year +16.71% +44.36% +21.00%
75th Percentile £33.83 - £18.06
90th Percentile £37.19 - £18.48
UK median hourly rate £31.65 £27.43 £23.43
% change year-on-year +15.41% +17.08% +1.19%

Azure
Job Vacancy Trend in Northern Ireland

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Azure relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Northern Ireland.

Azure job vacancy trend in Northern Ireland

Azure
Daily Rate Trend in Northern Ireland

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Northern Ireland citing Azure.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Northern Ireland citing Azure

Azure
Contract Job Locations in Northern Ireland

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Azure within the Northern Ireland region over the 6 months to 27 January 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
County Antrim +4 7 - - 43
County Armagh - 1 £385 -
Azure
UK

Azure
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Northern Ireland 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:

Applications
1 1 (12.50%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (12.50%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 7 (87.50%) AWS
2 4 (50.00%) GCP
3 3 (37.50%) Amazon EKS
4 2 (25.00%) Azure AKS
5 1 (12.50%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (12.50%) Cisco Wireless
1 1 (12.50%) Firewall
1 1 (12.50%) Internet
1 1 (12.50%) LAN
1 1 (12.50%) MPLS
1 1 (12.50%) SD-WAN
1 1 (12.50%) SNA
1 1 (12.50%) WAN
1 1 (12.50%) Wireless
1 1 (12.50%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (12.50%) MySQL
1 1 (12.50%) Relational Database
1 1 (12.50%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 3 (37.50%) GitLab
2 2 (25.00%) Selenium
3 1 (12.50%) Cucumber
3 1 (12.50%) SpecFlow
General
1 3 (37.50%) Finance
2 1 (12.50%) Influencing Skills
2 1 (12.50%) Public Sector
2 1 (12.50%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 3 (37.50%) AWS DevOps
1 3 (37.50%) AWS DevOps Engineer
1 3 (37.50%) AWS Engineer
1 3 (37.50%) DevOps Engineer
2 1 (12.50%) Architect
2 1 (12.50%) C# Developer
2 1 (12.50%) Developer
2 1 (12.50%) Infrastructure Architect
2 1 (12.50%) IT Architect
2 1 (12.50%) IT Infrastructure Architect
2 1 (12.50%) Network Engineer
2 1 (12.50%) Senior
2 1 (12.50%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (37.50%) .NET
2 2 (25.00%) GraphQL
2 2 (25.00%) Playwright
2 2 (25.00%) REST
3 1 (12.50%) React
3 1 (12.50%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 1 (12.50%) Data Protection Act
1 1 (12.50%) Distributed Applications
1 1 (12.50%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1 (12.50%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (62.50%) CI/CD
2 3 (37.50%) B2B
2 3 (37.50%) Containerisation
2 3 (37.50%) DevOps
2 3 (37.50%) DevSecOps
2 3 (37.50%) GitOps
2 3 (37.50%) Infrastructure as Code
3 2 (25.00%) Fintech
3 2 (25.00%) Test Automation
4 1 (12.50%) API Testing
4 1 (12.50%) BDD
4 1 (12.50%) Change Control
4 1 (12.50%) Continuous Improvement
4 1 (12.50%) Customer Engagement
4 1 (12.50%) Cybersecurity
4 1 (12.50%) Data Protection
4 1 (12.50%) Load Testing
4 1 (12.50%) Non-Functional Testing
4 1 (12.50%) SDLC
4 1 (12.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 3 (37.50%) C#
2 1 (12.50%) Java
2 1 (12.50%) JavaScript
2 1 (12.50%) Python
Qualifications
1 1 (12.50%) CCNP
1 1 (12.50%) CCSP
1 1 (12.50%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (37.50%) QA
System Software
1 3 (37.50%) Docker
2 1 (12.50%) Active Directory
2 1 (12.50%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 3 (37.50%) Argo
1 3 (37.50%) Kubernetes
1 3 (37.50%) Terraform
2 1 (12.50%) Ansible
2 1 (12.50%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1 (12.50%) Cisco
1 1 (12.50%) Fortinet
1 1 (12.50%) Microsoft
1 1 (12.50%) VMware
46 Azure jobs in Northern Ireland