Azure Contract Job Trends in the South West

Microsoft Azure
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South West requiring Azure skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 11 9
Rank change year-on-year +6 -2 -2
Contract jobs citing Azure 386 203 353
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 11.50% 11.98% 11.17%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.94% 40.28% 44.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 243 165 291
10th Percentile £314 £318 £215
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year - +5.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £589
90th Percentile £688 £709 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £545
% change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 3 0
10th Percentile - £16.60 -
25th Percentile £56.25 £19.75 -
Median hourly rate £57.50 £25.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +130.00% - -
75th Percentile £58.75 £51.85 -
90th Percentile - £67.96 -
England median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
% change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -43.41%

All Cloud Computing Skills
South 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 South West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for cloud computing skills 859 504 791
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 25.60% 29.75% 25.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 553 370 601
10th Percentile £285 £235 £213
25th Percentile £405 £382 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £613 £618 £599
90th Percentile £688 £688 £675
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 29 34
10th Percentile £14.00 £18.13 £12.58
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.13 £14.25
Median hourly rate £57.50 £18.87 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year +204.72% -3.23% -64.01%
75th Percentile £58.75 £34.50 £70.00
90th Percentile - £43.75 -
England median hourly rate £39.50 £25.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +54.90% +19.33% -35.73%

Azure
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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

Azure job vacancy trend in the South West

Azure
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Azure.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Azure

Azure
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Azure in the South West over the 6 months to 19 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Azure in the South West

Azure
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Azure.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Azure

Azure
Contract Job Locations in the South 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 South West region over the 6 months to 19 May 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
Somerset +5 106 £525 +2.44% 42
Bristol -3 83 £550 +22.63% 76
Gloucestershire 0 65 £450 -18.18% 47
Wiltshire +4 49 £500 -16.67% 34
Devon +7 37 £513 +2.68% 53
Dorset +4 32 £675 +3.85% 14
Azure
England

Azure
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South 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 18 (4.66%) SharePoint
2 11 (2.85%) IIS
3 7 (1.81%) Apache
3 7 (1.81%) Apache Spark
4 5 (1.30%) Confluence
5 4 (1.04%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.52%) nginx
7 1 (0.26%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 4 (1.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.26%) InDesign
2 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.26%) PTC Creo
2 1 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (0.26%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (1.81%) Maximo
2 6 (1.55%) NEC Housing
3 2 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.52%) Unit4 Business World
4 1 (0.26%) SAP EHS
4 1 (0.26%) SAP Hybris
4 1 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.26%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 137 (35.49%) AWS
2 68 (17.62%) Azure DevOps
3 58 (15.03%) GCP
4 34 (8.81%) Entra ID
5 31 (8.03%) GitHub
6 24 (6.22%) Power Platform
7 23 (5.96%) Azure Data Factory
8 19 (4.92%) Microsoft 365
9 17 (4.40%) Azure Monitor
10 12 (3.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 11 (2.85%) GitHub Actions
11 11 (2.85%) PaaS
12 10 (2.59%) Azure Key Vault
12 10 (2.59%) Azure Sentinel
12 10 (2.59%) OpenShift
12 10 (2.59%) Serverless
13 9 (2.33%) Azure AKS
13 9 (2.33%) Dynamics 365
14 7 (1.81%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (1.81%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 16 (4.15%) Firewall
1 16 (4.15%) VPN
2 10 (2.59%) DHCP
2 10 (2.59%) DNS
3 5 (1.30%) Network Security
4 4 (1.04%) LAN
5 3 (0.78%) TCP/IP
5 3 (0.78%) WAN
6 2 (0.52%) HTTP
6 2 (0.52%) NAS
6 2 (0.52%) Reverse Proxy
6 2 (0.52%) SAN
6 2 (0.52%) VLAN
7 1 (0.26%) AMQP
7 1 (0.26%) Cisco ASA
7 1 (0.26%) Cisco ISE
7 1 (0.26%) Cisco Nexus
7 1 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (0.26%) tcpdump
7 1 (0.26%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (5.70%) Power BI
2 21 (5.44%) SQL Server
3 17 (4.40%) Data Warehouse
4 9 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
5 8 (2.07%) MongoDB
6 6 (1.55%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.55%) NoSQL
7 5 (1.30%) Delta Lake
7 5 (1.30%) Metadata
8 4 (1.04%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (1.04%) Redis
8 4 (1.04%) Star Schema
9 3 (0.78%) Big Data
9 3 (0.78%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.78%) GIS
9 3 (0.78%) Power Query
9 3 (0.78%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.78%) Tableau
10 2 (0.52%) Data Vault
10 2 (0.52%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 22 (5.70%) Git
2 20 (5.18%) GitLab
3 17 (4.40%) JIRA
4 12 (3.11%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.78%) AdminStudio
5 3 (0.78%) InstallShield
5 3 (0.78%) Visual Studio Code
6 2 (0.52%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.52%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.52%) JUnit
6 2 (0.52%) MLflow
6 2 (0.52%) REST Assured
6 2 (0.52%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.52%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.26%) Gradle
7 1 (0.26%) Oracle APEX
7 1 (0.26%) Selenium
7 1 (0.26%) TestNG
7 1 (0.26%) webpack
General
1 66 (17.10%) Social Skills
2 28 (7.25%) Finance
3 25 (6.48%) Public Sector
4 24 (6.22%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (3.37%) Legal
6 7 (1.81%) Banking
6 7 (1.81%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (1.55%) Marketing
8 5 (1.30%) Military
8 5 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.04%) Back Office
9 4 (1.04%) Local Government
10 3 (0.78%) Investment Banking
10 3 (0.78%) Retail
11 1 (0.26%) Electronics
11 1 (0.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.26%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.26%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.26%) Publishing
11 1 (0.26%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 53 (13.73%) Consultant
2 44 (11.40%) Architect
3 40 (10.36%) Implementation Consultant
4 34 (8.81%) Data Engineer
5 30 (7.77%) DevOps Engineer
6 28 (7.25%) Azure Engineer
7 25 (6.48%) Developer
8 23 (5.96%) Product Manager
9 22 (5.70%) Senior
10 20 (5.18%) Digital Product Manager
10 20 (5.18%) Lead
11 16 (4.15%) Support Engineer
12 15 (3.89%) Azure Specialist
12 15 (3.89%) Desktop Engineer
12 15 (3.89%) Desktop Support
12 15 (3.89%) Desktop Support Engineer
13 13 (3.37%) Analyst
13 13 (3.37%) Site Engineer
13 13 (3.37%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 12 (3.11%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (6.99%) .NET
2 18 (4.66%) .NET Framework
3 16 (4.15%) Kafka
4 15 (3.89%) REST
5 10 (2.59%) React
6 9 (2.33%) Node.js
7 8 (2.07%) GraphQL
7 8 (2.07%) Playwright
8 7 (1.81%) ARM Templates
8 7 (1.81%) RabbitMQ
8 7 (1.81%) RESTful
9 6 (1.55%) Keycloak
9 6 (1.55%) PySpark
9 6 (1.55%) SailPoint
9 6 (1.55%) Spring
9 6 (1.55%) Spring Boot
9 6 (1.55%) WebSockets
10 5 (1.30%) Flask
10 5 (1.30%) LDAP
11 4 (1.04%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 31 (8.03%) Cloud Native
2 30 (7.77%) Legacy Systems
3 21 (5.44%) Product Ownership
4 20 (5.18%) Hybrid Cloud
5 18 (4.66%) Public Cloud
6 14 (3.63%) Enterprise Software
7 11 (2.85%) Data Structures
8 10 (2.59%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.55%) Legacy Code
10 4 (1.04%) Augmented Reality
10 4 (1.04%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.04%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.04%) Virtual Reality
10 4 (1.04%) Wiki
11 3 (0.78%) Distributed Systems
11 3 (0.78%) Enterprise Cloud
11 3 (0.78%) EPoS
11 3 (0.78%) Linux Command Line
11 3 (0.78%) Low-Code
11 3 (0.78%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 51 (13.21%) Windows
2 29 (7.51%) Linux
3 19 (4.92%) Windows Server
4 14 (3.63%) Windows 10
5 8 (2.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (1.30%) Rocky
6 5 (1.30%) Ubuntu
7 4 (1.04%) Android
7 4 (1.04%) Debian
8 3 (0.78%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.52%) Unix
9 2 (0.52%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.26%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.26%) CentOS
10 1 (0.26%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 123 (31.87%) DevOps
2 93 (24.09%) Agile
3 83 (21.50%) CI/CD
4 50 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
5 46 (11.92%) ERP
6 44 (11.40%) Analytics
6 44 (11.40%) Continuous Improvement
7 42 (10.88%) Roadmaps
8 41 (10.62%) Data Modelling
8 41 (10.62%) Infrastructure as Code
8 41 (10.62%) PLM
9 34 (8.81%) Migration
10 33 (8.55%) Containerisation
11 31 (8.03%) Business Intelligence
11 31 (8.03%) Data Engineering
11 31 (8.03%) Data Pipeline
12 30 (7.77%) Decision-Making
12 30 (7.77%) ITIL
13 29 (7.51%) ETL
13 29 (7.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 63 (16.32%) Python
2 54 (13.99%) SQL
3 37 (9.59%) PowerShell
4 18 (4.66%) Bash
4 18 (4.66%) Java
5 16 (4.15%) C#
5 16 (4.15%) Go
5 16 (4.15%) JavaScript
6 13 (3.37%) Bicep
7 11 (2.85%) TypeScript
8 8 (2.07%) PL/SQL
9 4 (1.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 4 (1.04%) T-SQL
10 3 (0.78%) C++
11 2 (0.52%) R
12 1 (0.26%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.26%) Scala
12 1 (0.26%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 156 (40.41%) Security Cleared
2 129 (33.42%) SC Cleared
3 27 (6.99%) DV Cleared
4 26 (6.74%) Azure Certification
5 19 (4.92%) Degree
6 16 (4.15%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (2.07%) CISM
7 8 (2.07%) CISSP
8 7 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (1.30%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 4 (1.04%) TOGAF Certification
12 3 (0.78%) ACSP
12 3 (0.78%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.78%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 3 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (0.52%) AWS Certification
13 2 (0.52%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 2 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.52%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (6.22%) QA
2 18 (4.66%) Data Quality
3 14 (3.63%) GDPR
4 11 (2.85%) NIST
5 10 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.81%) NIST 800
7 4 (1.04%) NCSC
8 3 (0.78%) SNOMED CT
9 2 (0.52%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.52%) HL7
9 2 (0.52%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.52%) SLA
10 1 (0.26%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.26%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.26%) ISO 22301
10 1 (0.26%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.26%) PMO
System Software
1 49 (12.69%) Active Directory
2 34 (8.81%) Docker
3 10 (2.59%) Hyper-V
3 10 (2.59%) Virtual Desktop
4 8 (2.07%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.26%) KVM
6 1 (0.26%) NFS
6 1 (0.26%) VirtualBox
6 1 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.26%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 53 (13.73%) Kubernetes
2 47 (12.18%) Terraform
3 25 (6.48%) Microsoft Intune
4 18 (4.66%) Ansible
5 13 (3.37%) Grafana
6 11 (2.85%) Prometheus
7 8 (2.07%) SCCM
8 7 (1.81%) Argo
9 5 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (1.04%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 2 (0.52%) CASB
11 2 (0.52%) Cilium
11 2 (0.52%) Istio
11 2 (0.52%) Podman
11 2 (0.52%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.52%) Puppet
12 1 (0.26%) Icinga
12 1 (0.26%) Kibana
12 1 (0.26%) logstash
12 1 (0.26%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 119 (30.83%) Microsoft
2 40 (10.36%) Siemens
3 21 (5.44%) Databricks
4 15 (3.89%) Google
5 12 (3.11%) Oracle
6 9 (2.33%) SAP
6 9 (2.33%) VMware
7 8 (2.07%) NEC
7 8 (2.07%) Red Hat
8 7 (1.81%) IBM
8 7 (1.81%) NetApp
8 7 (1.81%) Starlink
9 6 (1.55%) InterSystems
9 6 (1.55%) McAfee
10 4 (1.04%) Apple
10 4 (1.04%) MuleSoft
10 4 (1.04%) Splunk
11 3 (0.78%) Cisco
11 3 (0.78%) Dynatrace
11 3 (0.78%) ServiceNow