Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends in England

Cloud Engineer
UK > England

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in England is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 June 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

 6 months to
30 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 213 292 322
Rank change year-on-year +79 +30 -38
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 532 213 240
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.22% 0.84% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.32% 0.91% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 357 164 170
10th Percentile £400 £402 £399
25th Percentile £463 £434 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £553
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.50% +0.45%
75th Percentile £625 £588 £625
90th Percentile £688 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 2 3
10th Percentile £72.93 £44.50 -
25th Percentile £73.75 £47.50 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £53.75 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.26% +79.17% -
75th Percentile £81.25 £58.75 £32.50
90th Percentile - £61.00 -
UK median hourly rate £77.25 £53.75 £30.00
% change year-on-year +43.72% +79.17% -

All Contract IT Job Roles
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in England. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in England with a recognized job title 40,429 23,502 34,503
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.38% 92.15% 92.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,779 15,373 22,543
10th Percentile £325 £293 £298
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £638
90th Percentile £735 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,896 1,093 2,589
10th Percentile £15.99 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.93 £17.87 £16.74
Median hourly rate £45.00 £28.50 £39.55
Median % change year-on-year +57.89% -27.94% -9.83%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.51
UK median hourly rate £43.00 £27.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +59.26% -28.00% -12.79%

Cloud Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Cloud Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Cloud Engineer job vacancy trend in England

Cloud Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Cloud Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Cloud Engineer job vacancies in England

Cloud Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cloud Engineer in England over the 6 months to 30 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Cloud Engineer in England

Cloud Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Cloud Engineer job vacancies in England.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Cloud Engineer job vacancies in England

Cloud Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Cloud Engineer in England over the 6 months to 30 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cloud Engineer in England

Cloud Engineer
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Cloud Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 30 June 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
London +53 299 £525 - 63
North of England -31 75 £500 +8.11% 32
South East -29 69 £538 +7.50% 31
Midlands -34 40 £500 +2.56% 26
North West -26 36 £500 +24.38% 19
Yorkshire -24 32 £475 -2.56% 12
West Midlands -36 25 £525 - 16
East of England -8 22 £505 +60.32% 7
East Midlands -9 15 £450 -5.26% 10
South West -21 15 £550 -2.22% 13
North East -37 7 £525 +5.00% 1
Cloud Engineer
UK

Cloud Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 30 June 2026, Cloud Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring Cloud Engineer in the job title.

1 269 (50.56%) Azure
2 248 (46.62%) Terraform
3 229 (43.05%) AWS
4 208 (39.10%) CI/CD
5 196 (36.84%) Infrastructure as Code
6 177 (33.27%) DevOps
7 144 (27.07%) Security Cleared
8 130 (24.44%) Python
9 119 (22.37%) Cloud Security
10 113 (21.24%) SC Cleared
11 112 (21.05%) GCP
11 112 (21.05%) Kubernetes
12 109 (20.49%) Microsoft
13 107 (20.11%) PowerShell
14 93 (17.48%) Platform Engineering
15 91 (17.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 81 (15.23%) Migration
17 80 (15.04%) GitHub
17 80 (15.04%) Google
18 76 (14.29%) Windows
19 67 (12.59%) Agile
19 67 (12.59%) Firewall
20 65 (12.22%) AI
21 60 (11.28%) Containerisation
22 58 (10.90%) Docker
23 57 (10.71%) Serverless
24 55 (10.34%) Bash
25 53 (9.96%) GitHub Actions
25 53 (9.96%) SQL
26 52 (9.77%) DNS

Cloud Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 11 (2.07%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (1.13%) Confluence
3 5 (0.94%) Apache
3 5 (0.94%) nginx
4 3 (0.56%) IIS
4 3 (0.56%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.56%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.38%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.38%) CloudStack
6 1 (0.19%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.19%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.19%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.19%) SAS
6 1 (0.19%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.19%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 269 (50.56%) Azure
2 229 (43.05%) AWS
3 112 (21.05%) GCP
4 80 (15.04%) GitHub
5 57 (10.71%) Serverless
6 53 (9.96%) GitHub Actions
7 52 (9.77%) Entra ID
8 42 (7.89%) IaaS
9 41 (7.71%) Azure AKS
9 41 (7.71%) PaaS
10 39 (7.33%) Azure DevOps
11 37 (6.95%) Amazon S3
12 36 (6.77%) AWS CloudFormation
13 34 (6.39%) AWS Lambda
13 34 (6.39%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 32 (6.02%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 30 (5.64%) Amazon EC2
15 30 (5.64%) SaaS
16 27 (5.08%) Amazon ECS
17 26 (4.89%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 67 (12.59%) Firewall
2 52 (9.77%) DNS
3 29 (5.45%) VPN
4 27 (5.08%) Network Security
5 15 (2.82%) WAN
6 12 (2.26%) DHCP
6 12 (2.26%) TCP/IP
7 6 (1.13%) Reverse Proxy
7 6 (1.13%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.94%) Internet
8 5 (0.94%) SSL
9 4 (0.75%) BGP
9 4 (0.75%) LAN
9 4 (0.75%) Software-Defined Networking
9 4 (0.75%) VLAN
10 3 (0.56%) IPv4
10 3 (0.56%) OSPF
10 3 (0.56%) SAN
10 3 (0.56%) SMTP
11 2 (0.38%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (3.76%) SQL Server
2 11 (2.07%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (1.88%) Amazon RDS
4 9 (1.69%) Amazon Athena
5 8 (1.50%) DynamoDB
6 7 (1.32%) Azure SQL Database
6 7 (1.32%) BigQuery
7 5 (0.94%) Oracle Database
8 4 (0.75%) Amazon QuickSight
8 4 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.56%) Big Data
9 3 (0.56%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.56%) MySQL
9 3 (0.56%) Oracle Database 12c
10 2 (0.38%) Metadata
10 2 (0.38%) Relational Database
11 1 (0.19%) InfluxDB
11 1 (0.19%) Neo4j
11 1 (0.19%) NoSQL
11 1 (0.19%) Redis
Development Applications
1 37 (6.95%) GitLab
1 37 (6.95%) Jenkins
2 36 (6.77%) Git
3 11 (2.07%) JIRA
4 9 (1.69%) Artifactory
5 3 (0.56%) Selenium
5 3 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.38%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.38%) Claude Code
6 2 (0.38%) Cypress.io
6 2 (0.38%) Liquibase
6 2 (0.38%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.19%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.19%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.19%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.19%) Octopus Deploy
7 1 (0.19%) Postman
7 1 (0.19%) REST Assured
7 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.19%) TestRail
General
1 61 (11.47%) Social Skills
2 59 (11.09%) Finance
3 46 (8.65%) Public Sector
4 24 (4.51%) Banking
5 18 (3.38%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (1.88%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (1.32%) Investment Banking
8 6 (1.13%) Legal
9 5 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.75%) Law
10 4 (0.75%) Military
10 4 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
10 4 (0.75%) Telecoms
11 3 (0.56%) Local Government
11 3 (0.56%) Marketing
11 3 (0.56%) Retail
12 2 (0.38%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.38%) Financial Institution
12 2 (0.38%) International Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (3.76%) REST
2 12 (2.26%) OAuth
2 12 (2.26%) OAuth2
3 10 (1.88%) ARM Templates
4 9 (1.69%) Kafka
4 9 (1.69%) Spring
4 9 (1.69%) Spring Boot
5 8 (1.50%) Node.js
6 7 (1.32%) .NET
6 7 (1.32%) OpenID
6 7 (1.32%) React
7 6 (1.13%) YAML
8 5 (0.94%) Model Context Protocol
8 5 (0.94%) Playwright
9 4 (0.75%) AWS CDK
9 4 (0.75%) Express.js
9 4 (0.75%) FastAPI
9 4 (0.75%) Flask
9 4 (0.75%) Jest
10 3 (0.56%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 100 (18.80%) Cloud Native
2 32 (6.02%) Hybrid Cloud
3 27 (5.08%) Public Cloud
3 27 (5.08%) Security Posture
4 19 (3.57%) Data Centre
5 15 (2.82%) Enterprise Cloud
6 12 (2.26%) Cloud Security Posture
6 12 (2.26%) Management Information System
6 12 (2.26%) Onboarding
7 11 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
8 9 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
9 8 (1.50%) Product Ownership
10 6 (1.13%) Legacy Systems
11 5 (0.94%) Cyber Threat
11 5 (0.94%) Linux Command Line
12 4 (0.75%) AI Agents
12 4 (0.75%) Private Cloud
12 4 (0.75%) Virtual Team
13 3 (0.56%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 76 (14.29%) Windows
2 48 (9.02%) Linux
3 42 (7.89%) Windows Server
4 18 (3.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (1.50%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (0.56%) CentOS
7 3 (0.56%) VMS
8 2 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.19%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 208 (39.10%) CI/CD
2 196 (36.84%) Infrastructure as Code
3 177 (33.27%) DevOps
4 119 (22.37%) Cloud Security
5 93 (17.48%) Platform Engineering
6 91 (17.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 81 (15.23%) Migration
8 67 (12.59%) Agile
9 65 (12.22%) AI
10 60 (11.28%) Containerisation
11 48 (9.02%) Observability
12 44 (8.27%) Infrastructure Automation
13 42 (7.89%) Continuous Improvement
13 42 (7.89%) Problem-Solving
13 42 (7.89%) Software Engineering
14 40 (7.52%) Technical Leadership
15 38 (7.14%) Cybersecurity
16 36 (6.77%) DevSecOps
17 30 (5.64%) Change Management
17 30 (5.64%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 130 (24.44%) Python
2 107 (20.11%) PowerShell
3 55 (10.34%) Bash
4 53 (9.96%) SQL
5 40 (7.52%) Bicep
6 29 (5.45%) Java
7 16 (3.01%) C#
8 10 (1.88%) TypeScript
9 9 (1.69%) Go
9 9 (1.69%) JavaScript
10 5 (0.94%) Groovy
11 2 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.38%) Ruby
12 1 (0.19%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.19%) C
12 1 (0.19%) Cypher
12 1 (0.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.19%) Perl
12 1 (0.19%) R
12 1 (0.19%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 144 (27.07%) Security Cleared
2 113 (21.24%) SC Cleared
3 46 (8.65%) Azure Certification
4 37 (6.95%) DV Cleared
5 29 (5.45%) AWS Certification
6 19 (3.57%) Degree
7 13 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
8 12 (2.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 12 (2.26%) CISSP
9 10 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (1.13%) CCNP
12 5 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
13 4 (0.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 4 (0.75%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 4 (0.75%) CCIE
13 4 (0.75%) MCSE
13 4 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
14 3 (0.56%) CCSP
15 2 (0.38%) Citrix Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.26%) NIST
2 10 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 9 (1.69%) QA
4 8 (1.50%) NCSC
5 7 (1.32%) GDPR
6 6 (1.13%) PCI DSS
7 5 (0.94%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.38%) SLA
9 1 (0.19%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.19%) GRC
9 1 (0.19%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.19%) WCAG
System Software
1 58 (10.90%) Docker
2 45 (8.46%) Active Directory
3 24 (4.51%) Virtual Machines
4 22 (4.14%) VMware Infrastructure
5 18 (3.38%) VMware ESXi
5 18 (3.38%) VMware NSX
6 15 (2.82%) Virtual Desktop
7 14 (2.63%) vSphere
8 11 (2.07%) vCloud
9 9 (1.69%) Hyper-V
10 7 (1.32%) Squid
11 4 (0.75%) Firmware
12 3 (0.56%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.56%) NFS
12 3 (0.56%) Postfix
13 2 (0.38%) Ceph
13 2 (0.38%) KVM
Systems Management
1 248 (46.62%) Terraform
2 112 (21.05%) Kubernetes
3 41 (7.71%) Ansible
4 19 (3.57%) Grafana
4 19 (3.57%) Prometheus
5 15 (2.82%) vCenter Server
6 14 (2.63%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (2.44%) Progress Chef
7 13 (2.44%) SCOM
8 12 (2.26%) Puppet
8 12 (2.26%) Single Sign-On
9 9 (1.69%) Istio
9 9 (1.69%) Packer
10 4 (0.75%) HAProxy
10 4 (0.75%) Salt
10 4 (0.75%) Suricata
11 3 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 3 (0.56%) vRealize
11 3 (0.56%) VxRail
12 2 (0.38%) SELinux
Vendors
1 109 (20.49%) Microsoft
2 80 (15.04%) Google
3 40 (7.52%) VMware
4 22 (4.14%) Oracle
5 15 (2.82%) Red Hat
5 15 (2.82%) Zscaler
6 12 (2.26%) Palo Alto
7 10 (1.88%) Salesforce
7 10 (1.88%) ServiceNow
8 9 (1.69%) Cisco
9 8 (1.50%) Dynatrace
10 7 (1.32%) CrowdStrike
10 7 (1.32%) Fortinet
11 6 (1.13%) OpenAI
11 6 (1.13%) Splunk
12 5 (0.94%) Citrix
12 5 (0.94%) Databricks
12 5 (0.94%) Rapid7
13 4 (0.75%) Juniper
13 4 (0.75%) PeopleSoft
162 Cloud Engineer jobs in England