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 8 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 10 9
Rank change year-on-year +6 -1 -3
Contract jobs citing Azure 438 217 362
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 12.28% 11.78% 11.16%
As % of the Cloud Services category 45.86% 38.82% 43.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 275 170 280
10th Percentile £363 £308 £311
25th Percentile £431 £363 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £595
90th Percentile £735 £700 £725
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 5 0
10th Percentile - £18.70 -
25th Percentile £56.25 £25.00 -
Median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -11.54% - -
75th Percentile £58.75 £77.50 -
90th Percentile - £78.22 -
England median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £42.34
% change year-on-year +27.78% +6.28% -29.84%

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 955 559 832
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 26.78% 30.35% 25.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 594 400 593
10th Percentile £305 £225 £221
25th Percentile £413 £355 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +10.53% -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £675 £685
England median daily rate £520 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.00% -1.94% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 39 50
10th Percentile £14.21 £18.13 £13.74
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.51 £14.25
Median hourly rate £57.50 £18.87 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +204.72% -73.04% +40.00%
75th Percentile £58.75 £30.88 -
90th Percentile - £37.50 -
England median hourly rate £39.50 £25.15 £22.00
% change year-on-year +57.06% +14.32% -33.33%

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 8 July 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 8 July 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 +4 120 £480 -4.00% 40
Bristol +3 114 £550 +25.71% 52
Gloucestershire 0 59 £450 -26.68% 61
Devon +4 47 £525 +0.96% 40
Wiltshire 0 43 £500 -12.09% 28
Dorset +3 32 £675 +61.19% 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 22 (5.02%) SharePoint
2 16 (3.65%) Confluence
3 11 (2.51%) IIS
4 8 (1.83%) Apache Spark
5 6 (1.37%) Apache
6 3 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.46%) nginx
8 1 (0.23%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.23%) ColdFusion
8 1 (0.23%) Oracle Coherence
8 1 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 4 (0.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.23%) InDesign
3 1 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.23%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.23%) PTC Creo
3 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.23%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.46%) Maximo
1 2 (0.46%) Unit4 Business World
2 1 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.23%) SAP EHS
2 1 (0.23%) SAP Hybris
2 1 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.23%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 173 (39.50%) AWS
2 66 (15.07%) Azure DevOps
3 64 (14.61%) GCP
4 56 (12.79%) Entra ID
5 31 (7.08%) GitHub
6 30 (6.85%) Microsoft 365
7 26 (5.94%) Power Platform
8 17 (3.88%) Azure Data Factory
8 17 (3.88%) Azure Key Vault
8 17 (3.88%) Azure Monitor
9 16 (3.65%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (3.42%) Serverless
11 11 (2.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 11 (2.51%) Cloud Computing
12 10 (2.28%) SaaS
13 9 (2.05%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 9 (2.05%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 9 (2.05%) PaaS
14 8 (1.83%) Azure Sentinel
15 7 (1.60%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (4.79%) Firewall
2 16 (3.65%) DNS
3 13 (2.97%) WAN
4 12 (2.74%) VPN
5 7 (1.60%) BGP
5 7 (1.60%) DHCP
5 7 (1.60%) TCP/IP
6 5 (1.14%) SAN
6 5 (1.14%) VLAN
7 4 (0.91%) NAS
7 4 (0.91%) Network Security
8 3 (0.68%) LAN
9 2 (0.46%) OSPF
9 2 (0.46%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.46%) SSL
10 1 (0.23%) AMQP
10 1 (0.23%) DMVPN
10 1 (0.23%) HTTP
10 1 (0.23%) MPLS
10 1 (0.23%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (6.85%) SQL Server
2 23 (5.25%) Power BI
3 16 (3.65%) PostgreSQL
4 15 (3.42%) Data Warehouse
5 9 (2.05%) Geospatial Data
6 8 (1.83%) Azure SQL Database
6 8 (1.83%) Data Lake
6 8 (1.83%) MongoDB
6 8 (1.83%) Oracle Database
7 6 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
7 6 (1.37%) NoSQL
8 5 (1.14%) Delta Lake
8 5 (1.14%) Metadata
9 4 (0.91%) Big Data
9 4 (0.91%) Redis
9 4 (0.91%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.91%) Star Schema
10 3 (0.68%) GIS
10 3 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.68%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 28 (6.39%) Git
2 27 (6.16%) JIRA
3 21 (4.79%) GitLab
4 14 (3.20%) Jenkins
5 8 (1.83%) MSI
6 3 (0.68%) AdminStudio
6 3 (0.68%) InstallShield
6 3 (0.68%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 3 (0.68%) Visual Studio Code
7 2 (0.46%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.46%) JUnit
7 2 (0.46%) MLflow
7 2 (0.46%) Spinnaker
7 2 (0.46%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.23%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.23%) Gradle
8 1 (0.23%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.23%) NUnit
8 1 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.23%) Selenium
General
1 67 (15.30%) Social Skills
2 35 (7.99%) Public Sector
3 28 (6.39%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (4.11%) Finance
5 16 (3.65%) Legal
6 9 (2.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (1.83%) Military
8 6 (1.37%) Local Government
8 6 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
9 5 (1.14%) Marketing
10 4 (0.91%) Banking
10 4 (0.91%) Police
11 3 (0.68%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.68%) Retail
12 2 (0.46%) Advertising
12 2 (0.46%) Aviation
12 2 (0.46%) Publishing
13 1 (0.23%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.23%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 66 (15.07%) Consultant
2 62 (14.16%) Architect
3 40 (9.13%) Implementation Consultant
4 37 (8.45%) Developer
5 35 (7.99%) Lead
6 27 (6.16%) Product Manager
6 27 (6.16%) Senior
7 25 (5.71%) DevOps Engineer
8 24 (5.48%) Data Engineer
8 24 (5.48%) Digital Product Manager
9 22 (5.02%) Azure Engineer
10 21 (4.79%) Technical Architect
11 15 (3.42%) Solutions Architect
12 14 (3.20%) Analyst
12 14 (3.20%) Azure Architect
12 14 (3.20%) Azure Specialist
12 14 (3.20%) Data Architect
12 14 (3.20%) Support Engineer
13 13 (2.97%) Azure Consultant
13 13 (2.97%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (9.13%) .NET
2 25 (5.71%) .NET Framework
3 21 (4.79%) REST
4 17 (3.88%) RESTful
5 14 (3.20%) React
6 12 (2.74%) Kafka
7 11 (2.51%) .NET Core
7 11 (2.51%) SailPoint
7 11 (2.51%) Spring Boot
8 10 (2.28%) GeoJSON
8 10 (2.28%) LDAP
9 9 (2.05%) Node.js
9 9 (2.05%) Spring
10 8 (1.83%) ATL
10 8 (1.83%) COM
10 8 (1.83%) GraphQL
10 8 (1.83%) MFC
10 8 (1.83%) Playwright
10 8 (1.83%) RabbitMQ
11 7 (1.60%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 47 (10.73%) Cloud Native
2 38 (8.68%) Legacy Systems
3 21 (4.79%) Onboarding
4 18 (4.11%) Enterprise Software
4 18 (4.11%) Product Ownership
4 18 (4.11%) Public Cloud
5 14 (3.20%) Hybrid Cloud
6 11 (2.51%) Data Structures
6 11 (2.51%) Self-Motivation
7 8 (1.83%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (1.37%) Data Centre
8 6 (1.37%) Legacy Code
9 4 (0.91%) Augmented Reality
9 4 (0.91%) Enterprise Cloud
9 4 (0.91%) Legacy Applications
9 4 (0.91%) Management Information System
9 4 (0.91%) Virtual Reality
9 4 (0.91%) Wiki
10 3 (0.68%) EPoS
10 3 (0.68%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 68 (15.53%) Windows
2 34 (7.76%) Linux
3 21 (4.79%) Windows Server
4 17 (3.88%) Windows 10
5 8 (1.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (1.37%) Android
7 5 (1.14%) Rocky
7 5 (1.14%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.91%) Debian
9 3 (0.68%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.68%) Unix
10 2 (0.46%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.23%) CentOS
11 1 (0.23%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 121 (27.63%) DevOps
2 117 (26.71%) Agile
3 100 (22.83%) CI/CD
4 63 (14.38%) Infrastructure as Code
5 54 (12.33%) Roadmaps
6 51 (11.64%) Containerisation
7 48 (10.96%) Continuous Improvement
8 47 (10.73%) ERP
9 46 (10.50%) Problem-Solving
10 44 (10.05%) Analytics
10 44 (10.05%) Migration
11 41 (9.36%) Microservices
11 41 (9.36%) PLM
12 40 (9.13%) Stakeholder Management
13 39 (8.90%) Data Modelling
14 34 (7.76%) Decision-Making
14 34 (7.76%) Technical Leadership
15 32 (7.31%) Data Pipeline
16 29 (6.62%) Business Intelligence
16 29 (6.62%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 68 (15.53%) SQL
2 67 (15.30%) Python
3 35 (7.99%) PowerShell
4 29 (6.62%) Java
5 25 (5.71%) C#
6 21 (4.79%) Bash
6 21 (4.79%) JavaScript
7 16 (3.65%) Go
7 16 (3.65%) TypeScript
8 13 (2.97%) Bicep
9 5 (1.14%) BeanShell
9 5 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 4 (0.91%) R
10 4 (0.91%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.68%) C++
12 2 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 2 (0.46%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.46%) Scala
12 2 (0.46%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.23%) Rust
Qualifications
1 184 (42.01%) Security Cleared
2 139 (31.74%) SC Cleared
3 45 (10.27%) DV Cleared
4 22 (5.02%) Degree
5 14 (3.20%) Azure Certification
6 13 (2.97%) Microsoft Certification
7 11 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
8 9 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
8 9 (2.05%) CISSP
9 7 (1.60%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (1.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 5 (1.14%) CCNA
11 4 (0.91%) CISM
11 4 (0.91%) TOGAF Certification
12 3 (0.68%) ACSP
12 3 (0.68%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.68%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 3 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (0.46%) A+ Certification
13 2 (0.46%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (6.39%) QA
2 20 (4.57%) Data Quality
3 14 (3.20%) NCSC
4 13 (2.97%) GDPR
5 8 (1.83%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.83%) SLA
6 7 (1.60%) WCAG
7 6 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (1.14%) ISO 9000
9 4 (0.91%) NIST
10 3 (0.68%) SNOMED CT
11 2 (0.46%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.46%) HL7
11 2 (0.46%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
12 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.23%) ISO 22301
12 1 (0.23%) PMO
System Software
1 60 (13.70%) Active Directory
2 51 (11.64%) Docker
3 18 (4.11%) Virtual Desktop
4 15 (3.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (2.28%) Hyper-V
6 9 (2.05%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (1.14%) vSphere
8 2 (0.46%) KVM
8 2 (0.46%) VirtualBox
8 2 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.46%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.23%) NFS
Systems Management
1 73 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 65 (14.84%) Terraform
3 26 (5.94%) Ansible
4 25 (5.71%) Microsoft Intune
5 18 (4.11%) Grafana
6 15 (3.42%) Prometheus
7 12 (2.74%) Argo
8 11 (2.51%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (1.60%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 6 (1.37%) FortiGate
11 5 (1.14%) OPNET
12 4 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.91%) Istio
12 4 (0.91%) Proxmox
12 4 (0.91%) SCCM
13 3 (0.68%) Progress Chef
14 2 (0.46%) CASB
14 2 (0.46%) Cilium
14 2 (0.46%) Docker Swarm
14 2 (0.46%) Podman
Vendors
1 155 (35.39%) Microsoft
2 40 (9.13%) Siemens
3 24 (5.48%) Oracle
4 19 (4.34%) Databricks
5 16 (3.65%) VMware
6 13 (2.97%) Google
7 8 (1.83%) SAP
8 7 (1.60%) CyberArk
8 7 (1.60%) InterSystems
8 7 (1.60%) Starlink
9 6 (1.37%) Cisco
9 6 (1.37%) McAfee
10 5 (1.14%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.14%) NetApp
10 5 (1.14%) Red Hat
10 5 (1.14%) Splunk
10 5 (1.14%) Zscaler
11 4 (0.91%) Apple
11 4 (0.91%) MuleSoft
12 3 (0.68%) IBM