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 21 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 11 9
Rank change year-on-year +6 -2 -3
Contract jobs citing Azure 386 203 358
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 11.44% 12.04% 11.31%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.78% 40.20% 45.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 242 164 295
10th Percentile £339 £316 £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 £623 £589
90th Percentile £688 £700 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £543
% change year-on-year - -3.23% -3.56%
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% -44.44%

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 862 505 794
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 25.54% 29.95% 25.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 554 370 605
10th Percentile £300 £225 £213
25th Percentile £406 £375 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £613 £614 £600
90th Percentile £688 £685 £679
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 29 33
10th Percentile £14.00 £18.13 £12.55
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.13 £14.25
Median hourly rate £57.50 £18.87 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +204.72% -10.14% -60.64%
75th Percentile £58.75 £34.50 £70.00
90th Percentile - £43.75 -
England median hourly rate £41.06 £25.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +61.02% +19.33% -33.84%

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 21 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 21 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% 41
Bristol -3 86 £550 +22.63% 80
Gloucestershire -1 64 £450 -18.18% 43
Wiltshire +4 49 £500 -16.67% 31
Devon +6 38 £513 +2.68% 37
Dorset +3 29 £675 +3.85% 12
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 6 (1.55%) 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 2 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.52%) NEC Housing
2 2 (0.52%) Unit4 Business World
3 1 (0.26%) SAP EHS
3 1 (0.26%) SAP Hybris
3 1 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.26%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 141 (36.53%) AWS
2 63 (16.32%) Azure DevOps
3 59 (15.28%) GCP
4 33 (8.55%) Entra ID
5 32 (8.29%) GitHub
6 25 (6.48%) 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
10 12 (3.11%) 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
14 7 (1.81%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (1.81%) IaaS
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
4 4 (1.04%) WAN
5 3 (0.78%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.52%) BGP
6 2 (0.52%) HTTP
6 2 (0.52%) NAS
6 2 (0.52%) OSPF
6 2 (0.52%) Reverse Proxy
6 2 (0.52%) SAN
6 2 (0.52%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.52%) VLAN
7 1 (0.26%) AMQP
7 1 (0.26%) Cisco ASA
7 1 (0.26%) NGFW
7 1 (0.26%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (5.96%) 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%) GIS
9 3 (0.78%) Power Query
9 3 (0.78%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.78%) Tableau
10 2 (0.52%) Data Lake
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 18 (4.66%) JIRA
4 12 (3.11%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.78%) AdminStudio
5 3 (0.78%) Bitbucket
5 3 (0.78%) InstallShield
5 3 (0.78%) Visual Studio Code
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%) SoapUI
7 1 (0.26%) TestNG
General
1 68 (17.62%) Social Skills
2 25 (6.48%) Analytical Skills
3 24 (6.22%) Finance
3 24 (6.22%) Public Sector
4 13 (3.37%) Legal
5 7 (1.81%) Banking
6 6 (1.55%) Marketing
6 6 (1.55%) Military
7 5 (1.30%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
8 3 (0.78%) Investment Banking
8 3 (0.78%) Retail
9 2 (0.52%) Local Government
10 1 (0.26%) Back Office
10 1 (0.26%) Electronics
10 1 (0.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.26%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.26%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.26%) Publishing
10 1 (0.26%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 52 (13.47%) Consultant
2 47 (12.18%) 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 24 (6.22%) Product Manager
9 22 (5.70%) Senior
10 21 (5.44%) Digital Product Manager
10 21 (5.44%) 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%) Site Engineer
13 13 (3.37%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 12 (3.11%) Data Architect
14 12 (3.11%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (7.51%) .NET
2 18 (4.66%) .NET Framework
3 16 (4.15%) Kafka
4 15 (3.89%) REST
5 11 (2.85%) React
6 10 (2.59%) Node.js
7 8 (2.07%) GraphQL
7 8 (2.07%) Playwright
8 7 (1.81%) RabbitMQ
8 7 (1.81%) RESTful
8 7 (1.81%) Spring Boot
9 6 (1.55%) ARM Templates
9 6 (1.55%) Keycloak
9 6 (1.55%) PySpark
9 6 (1.55%) SailPoint
9 6 (1.55%) Spring
9 6 (1.55%) WebSockets
10 5 (1.30%) Flask
10 5 (1.30%) LDAP
10 5 (1.30%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 32 (8.29%) Cloud Native
2 31 (8.03%) Legacy Systems
3 20 (5.18%) Hybrid Cloud
3 20 (5.18%) Product Ownership
4 18 (4.66%) Public Cloud
5 14 (3.63%) Enterprise Software
6 12 (3.11%) Data Structures
7 10 (2.59%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (1.55%) Legacy Code
9 5 (1.30%) Onboarding
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
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
1 121 (31.35%) DevOps
2 93 (24.09%) Agile
3 86 (22.28%) CI/CD
4 48 (12.44%) Problem-Solving
5 46 (11.92%) Analytics
5 46 (11.92%) ERP
6 44 (11.40%) Continuous Improvement
6 44 (11.40%) Roadmaps
7 43 (11.14%) Data Modelling
7 43 (11.14%) Infrastructure as Code
8 41 (10.62%) PLM
9 35 (9.07%) Containerisation
10 34 (8.81%) Migration
11 32 (8.29%) Business Intelligence
11 32 (8.29%) Data Pipeline
12 30 (7.77%) Data Engineering
12 30 (7.77%) ITIL
12 30 (7.77%) Stakeholder Management
13 29 (7.51%) ETL
14 28 (7.25%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 63 (16.32%) Python
2 50 (12.95%) SQL
3 36 (9.33%) PowerShell
4 21 (5.44%) Java
5 18 (4.66%) Bash
6 16 (4.15%) C#
6 16 (4.15%) Go
6 16 (4.15%) JavaScript
7 13 (3.37%) Bicep
8 11 (2.85%) TypeScript
9 4 (1.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 4 (1.04%) PL/SQL
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
1 158 (40.93%) Security Cleared
2 129 (33.42%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.51%) DV Cleared
4 26 (6.74%) Azure Certification
5 18 (4.66%) Degree
6 16 (4.15%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (2.33%) CISSP
8 8 (2.07%) CISM
9 7 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
10 6 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
11 5 (1.30%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 4 (1.04%) TOGAF Certification
13 3 (0.78%) ACSP
13 3 (0.78%) Cisco Certification
13 3 (0.78%) ISTQB
13 3 (0.78%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 3 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
14 2 (0.52%) AWS Certification
14 2 (0.52%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 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 9 (2.33%) 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%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.26%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 54 (13.99%) Kubernetes
2 48 (12.44%) 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%) Argo
7 8 (2.07%) SCCM
8 6 (1.55%) Single Sign-On
9 4 (1.04%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.52%) CASB
10 2 (0.52%) Cilium
10 2 (0.52%) Istio
10 2 (0.52%) Podman
10 2 (0.52%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.52%) Puppet
11 1 (0.26%) Icinga
11 1 (0.26%) Kibana
11 1 (0.26%) logstash
11 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 10 (2.59%) VMware
6 9 (2.33%) SAP
7 8 (2.07%) Oracle
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%) Cisco
10 4 (1.04%) MuleSoft
10 4 (1.04%) NEC
10 4 (1.04%) Splunk
11 3 (0.78%) Dynatrace
11 3 (0.78%) ServiceNow