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 23 September 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 185 304 330
Rank change year-on-year +119 +26 -61
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 696 217 214
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.50% 0.79% 0.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.62% 0.86% 0.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 471 159 132
10th Percentile £413 £402 £401
25th Percentile £461 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -13.04% +4.55%
75th Percentile £604 £575 £646
90th Percentile £688 £644 £700
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £570
% change year-on-year +4.00% -12.28% +3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 7 0
10th Percentile £23.10 £29.00 -
25th Percentile £23.20 £29.50 -
Median hourly rate £76.00 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +68.89% - -
75th Percentile £81.25 £86.25 -
90th Percentile - £110.00 -
UK median hourly rate £77.00 £45.00 -
% change year-on-year +71.11% - -

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 42,935 25,205 29,932
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 91.31% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,501 16,241 18,594
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -3.98%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,554 1,371 1,420
10th Percentile £14.85 £13.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.33 £21.25
Median hourly rate £42.58 £25.15 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +69.28% -45.54% +2.62%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £67.50
90th Percentile £79.70 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% -3.37%

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 23 September 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 23 September 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 23 September 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 +56 305 £525 +0.96% 724
North of England +19 139 £513 +13.89% 227
South East +27 134 £538 +7.50% 139
North West +18 85 £519 +15.28% 145
Midlands +9 75 £500 -8.26% 96
Yorkshire -9 46 £455 -15.35% 52
East Midlands +12 42 £500 +5.26% 49
West Midlands -14 32 £525 -4.55% 47
East of England -15 18 £488 +13.04% 51
South West -27 17 £575 +4.55% 91
North East -35 8 £525 +14.13% 30
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 23 September 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.

1 350 (50.29%) Azure
2 266 (38.22%) Terraform
3 243 (34.91%) Infrastructure as Code
4 233 (33.48%) AWS
5 231 (33.19%) CI/CD
6 198 (28.45%) Security Cleared
7 178 (25.57%) DevOps
8 166 (23.85%) Cloud Security
8 166 (23.85%) Kubernetes
9 160 (22.99%) Python
10 156 (22.41%) Microsoft
11 153 (21.98%) PowerShell
12 151 (21.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 139 (19.97%) SC Cleared
14 128 (18.39%) GCP
15 122 (17.53%) Platform Engineering
16 109 (15.66%) Windows
17 97 (13.94%) Entra ID
18 85 (12.21%) AI
18 85 (12.21%) Migration
19 84 (12.07%) Active Directory
20 80 (11.49%) Agile
21 79 (11.35%) DNS
22 78 (11.21%) Firewall
23 77 (11.06%) Google
23 77 (11.06%) Observability
24 75 (10.78%) VMware
25 74 (10.63%) DV Cleared
25 74 (10.63%) Linux
26 73 (10.49%) Bicep

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 14 (2.01%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (1.58%) Apache
3 8 (1.15%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.01%) Confluence
5 6 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.43%) IIS
6 3 (0.43%) nginx
6 3 (0.43%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.43%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.29%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.29%) CloudStack
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 350 (50.29%) Azure
2 233 (33.48%) AWS
3 128 (18.39%) GCP
4 97 (13.94%) Entra ID
5 67 (9.63%) GitHub
6 52 (7.47%) IaaS
6 52 (7.47%) Serverless
7 51 (7.33%) Azure DevOps
8 45 (6.47%) GitHub Actions
9 39 (5.60%) AWS CloudFormation
9 39 (5.60%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 38 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
11 37 (5.32%) Azure Monitor
11 37 (5.32%) PaaS
12 35 (5.03%) Microsoft 365
13 34 (4.89%) Azure AKS
14 30 (4.31%) Amazon EKS
15 29 (4.17%) SaaS
16 28 (4.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 28 (4.02%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 79 (11.35%) DNS
2 78 (11.21%) Firewall
3 40 (5.75%) Network Security
4 31 (4.45%) VPN
5 20 (2.87%) DHCP
6 18 (2.59%) WAN
7 16 (2.30%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.72%) Internet
9 7 (1.01%) SD-WAN
9 7 (1.01%) VSAN
10 6 (0.86%) NGFW
10 6 (0.86%) VLAN
11 5 (0.72%) Kerberos
11 5 (0.72%) SSL
12 4 (0.57%) BGP
12 4 (0.57%) LAN
12 4 (0.57%) Wireless
13 3 (0.43%) IPv4
13 3 (0.43%) OSPF
13 3 (0.43%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (3.30%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.30%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (1.72%) BigQuery
3 12 (1.72%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.58%) Data Lake
5 8 (1.15%) Oracle Exadata
6 7 (1.01%) NoSQL
7 6 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
7 6 (0.86%) DynamoDB
8 5 (0.72%) Oracle Database
9 4 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (0.57%) Big Data
10 3 (0.43%) Flink
10 3 (0.43%) Looker
10 3 (0.43%) MySQL
10 3 (0.43%) Oracle Database 12c
11 2 (0.29%) Amazon QuickSight
11 2 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
11 2 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.29%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 48 (6.90%) GitLab
2 32 (4.60%) Jenkins
3 28 (4.02%) Git
4 11 (1.58%) JIRA
5 7 (1.01%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.43%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.43%) Claude Code
6 3 (0.43%) Selenium
6 3 (0.43%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.29%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.29%) Gatling
7 2 (0.29%) JMeter
7 2 (0.29%) Octopus Deploy
7 2 (0.29%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.14%) eggPlant
8 1 (0.14%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.14%) JUnit
8 1 (0.14%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 84 (12.07%) Finance
2 69 (9.91%) Social Skills
3 68 (9.77%) Public Sector
4 31 (4.45%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (3.30%) Banking
6 10 (1.44%) Manufacturing
7 8 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (1.01%) Legal
9 5 (0.72%) Law
9 5 (0.72%) Local Government
10 4 (0.57%) Front Office
10 4 (0.57%) Investment Banking
10 4 (0.57%) Pharmaceutical
10 4 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.43%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.43%) Back Office
11 3 (0.43%) Italian Language
11 3 (0.43%) Marketing
11 3 (0.43%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (38.22%) Terraform
2 19 (2.73%) REST
3 17 (2.44%) ARM Templates
4 14 (2.01%) Kafka
5 13 (1.87%) OAuth
6 12 (1.72%) OAuth2
7 11 (1.58%) Spring
7 11 (1.58%) Spring Boot
8 8 (1.15%) OpenID
9 7 (1.01%) YAML
10 6 (0.86%) FastAPI
10 6 (0.86%) Flask
10 6 (0.86%) React
11 5 (0.72%) .NET
11 5 (0.72%) AWS CDK
11 5 (0.72%) Azure Blueprints
11 5 (0.72%) Keycloak
12 4 (0.57%) Hugging Face
12 4 (0.57%) PyTorch
12 4 (0.57%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 109 (15.66%) Cloud Native
2 61 (8.76%) Security Posture
3 36 (5.17%) Enterprise Cloud
3 36 (5.17%) Hybrid Cloud
4 32 (4.60%) Cloud Security Posture
5 21 (3.02%) Management Information System
6 18 (2.59%) Distributed Systems
6 18 (2.59%) Onboarding
7 17 (2.44%) Data Centre
8 16 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
8 16 (2.30%) Public Cloud
9 14 (2.01%) Private Cloud
10 13 (1.87%) Product Ownership
11 8 (1.15%) AI Agents
11 8 (1.15%) PKI
12 7 (1.01%) Legacy Systems
12 7 (1.01%) Linux Command Line
13 6 (0.86%) Distributed Architecture
14 5 (0.72%) CMDB
15 4 (0.57%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 109 (15.66%) Windows
2 74 (10.63%) Linux
3 58 (8.33%) Windows Server
4 29 (4.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (2.16%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.15%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.57%) VMS
8 3 (0.43%) CentOS
9 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.14%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 243 (34.91%) Infrastructure as Code
2 231 (33.19%) CI/CD
3 178 (25.57%) DevOps
4 166 (23.85%) Cloud Security
5 151 (21.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 122 (17.53%) Platform Engineering
7 85 (12.21%) AI
7 85 (12.21%) Migration
8 80 (11.49%) Agile
9 77 (11.06%) Observability
10 69 (9.91%) Containerisation
11 63 (9.05%) Technical Leadership
12 60 (8.62%) Cybersecurity
13 57 (8.19%) DevSecOps
14 55 (7.90%) Continuous Improvement
15 53 (7.61%) Software Engineering
16 51 (7.33%) Infrastructure Automation
17 49 (7.04%) Deployment Automation
18 48 (6.90%) Change Management
19 45 (6.47%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 160 (22.99%) Python
2 153 (21.98%) PowerShell
3 73 (10.49%) Bicep
4 72 (10.34%) Bash
5 62 (8.91%) SQL
6 35 (5.03%) Java
7 13 (1.87%) C#
8 10 (1.44%) Go
9 9 (1.29%) JavaScript
10 8 (1.15%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.57%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.43%) C
12 3 (0.43%) Groovy
12 3 (0.43%) Scala
13 2 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.14%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.14%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.14%) R
14 1 (0.14%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 198 (28.45%) Security Cleared
2 139 (19.97%) SC Cleared
3 74 (10.63%) DV Cleared
4 45 (6.47%) Azure Certification
5 41 (5.89%) AWS Certification
6 34 (4.89%) Degree
7 21 (3.02%) Microsoft Certification
8 17 (2.44%) CISSP
9 10 (1.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (1.15%) MCSE
11 6 (0.86%) CISM
11 6 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 5 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
13 4 (0.57%) BPSS Clearance
13 4 (0.57%) CCNP
14 3 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 3 (0.43%) CCIE
14 3 (0.43%) CEH
15 2 (0.29%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (2.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (1.58%) Data Quality
3 10 (1.44%) NIST
3 10 (1.44%) QA
4 9 (1.29%) NCSC
5 6 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
5 6 (0.86%) GDPR
6 4 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 2 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.29%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.29%) SLA
8 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.14%) GRC
System Software
1 84 (12.07%) Active Directory
2 71 (10.20%) Docker
3 50 (7.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (4.89%) Virtual Machines
4 34 (4.89%) VMware ESXi
5 27 (3.88%) VMware NSX
6 22 (3.16%) Virtual Desktop
7 19 (2.73%) vSphere
8 15 (2.16%) vCloud
9 11 (1.58%) Hyper-V
10 7 (1.01%) Squid
11 4 (0.57%) Firmware
11 4 (0.57%) NFS
12 3 (0.43%) Ceph
12 3 (0.43%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.43%) Postfix
13 2 (0.29%) KVM
13 2 (0.29%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.14%) IAG
Systems Management
1 166 (23.85%) Kubernetes
2 48 (6.90%) Ansible
3 30 (4.31%) vCenter Server
4 27 (3.88%) Microsoft Intune
4 27 (3.88%) SCOM
5 21 (3.02%) Grafana
6 19 (2.73%) Progress Chef
6 19 (2.73%) Prometheus
7 14 (2.01%) Puppet
8 9 (1.29%) Istio
9 6 (0.86%) Packer
9 6 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
10 5 (0.72%) VxRail
11 4 (0.57%) Cilium
11 4 (0.57%) Suricata
12 3 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 3 (0.43%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.43%) HAProxy
12 3 (0.43%) vRealize
13 2 (0.29%) Argo
Vendors
1 156 (22.41%) Microsoft
2 77 (11.06%) Google
3 75 (10.78%) VMware
4 34 (4.89%) Oracle
5 24 (3.45%) Databricks
6 20 (2.87%) Red Hat
7 15 (2.16%) Zscaler
8 14 (2.01%) SolarWinds
9 13 (1.87%) Broadcom
9 13 (1.87%) Palo Alto
10 11 (1.58%) Splunk
11 10 (1.44%) OpenAI
12 9 (1.29%) Cisco
12 9 (1.29%) Salesforce
12 9 (1.29%) ServiceNow
13 8 (1.15%) Dynatrace
14 7 (1.01%) CrowdStrike
14 7 (1.01%) New Relic
15 5 (0.72%) CyberArk
15 5 (0.72%) Fortinet