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 20 September 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 195 311 320
Rank change year-on-year +116 +9 -52
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 691 218 222
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.49% 0.78% 0.67%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.62% 0.86% 0.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 467 160 137
10th Percentile £411 £402 £406
25th Percentile £460 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -13.04% +4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £645
90th Percentile £675 £641 £693
UK median daily rate £514 £500 £575
% change year-on-year +2.75% -13.04% +4.55%
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 42,725 25,379 30,637
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 91.37% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,394 16,363 19,081
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% -4.55%
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 3,515 1,370 1,471
10th Percentile £14.91 £13.75 £14.69
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.30 £21.25
Median hourly rate £43.61 £25.15 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +73.38% -45.54% +2.62%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.99 £67.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +56 303 £525 +1.69% 697
North of England +29 138 £513 +13.89% 201
South East +26 132 £538 +7.50% 125
North West +19 84 £519 +16.90% 130
Midlands +8 74 £500 -8.26% 87
Yorkshire -9 46 £455 -15.35% 47
East Midlands +15 42 £500 +5.26% 45
West Midlands -23 31 £525 -4.55% 42
East of England -11 19 £488 +0.52% 44
South West -26 16 £575 +4.55% 78
North East -39 8 £525 +14.13% 24
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 20 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.

1 346 (50.07%) Azure
2 265 (38.35%) Terraform
3 242 (35.02%) Infrastructure as Code
4 236 (34.15%) AWS
5 230 (33.29%) CI/CD
6 198 (28.65%) Security Cleared
7 179 (25.90%) DevOps
8 166 (24.02%) Cloud Security
8 166 (24.02%) Kubernetes
9 160 (23.15%) Python
10 152 (22.00%) Microsoft
11 150 (21.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 150 (21.71%) PowerShell
12 139 (20.12%) SC Cleared
13 130 (18.81%) GCP
14 122 (17.66%) Platform Engineering
15 110 (15.92%) Windows
16 93 (13.46%) Entra ID
17 86 (12.45%) AI
18 84 (12.16%) Active Directory
19 82 (11.87%) Migration
20 81 (11.72%) Agile
21 78 (11.29%) DNS
21 78 (11.29%) Firewall
21 78 (11.29%) Google
22 76 (11.00%) Linux
22 76 (11.00%) Observability
23 75 (10.85%) VMware
24 74 (10.71%) DV Cleared
25 73 (10.56%) Bash

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 (2.03%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (1.59%) Apache
3 8 (1.16%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (0.87%) Confluence
5 3 (0.43%) IIS
5 3 (0.43%) nginx
5 3 (0.43%) OpenStack
5 3 (0.43%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.29%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.29%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 346 (50.07%) Azure
2 236 (34.15%) AWS
3 130 (18.81%) GCP
4 93 (13.46%) Entra ID
5 68 (9.84%) GitHub
6 52 (7.53%) Serverless
7 50 (7.24%) Azure DevOps
7 50 (7.24%) IaaS
8 46 (6.66%) GitHub Actions
9 39 (5.64%) AWS CloudFormation
9 39 (5.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 38 (5.50%) AWS Lambda
11 37 (5.35%) Azure Monitor
11 37 (5.35%) PaaS
12 33 (4.78%) Azure AKS
13 31 (4.49%) Microsoft 365
14 30 (4.34%) Amazon EKS
15 29 (4.20%) Amazon EC2
15 29 (4.20%) SaaS
16 28 (4.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 78 (11.29%) DNS
1 78 (11.29%) Firewall
2 41 (5.93%) Network Security
3 31 (4.49%) VPN
4 20 (2.89%) DHCP
5 18 (2.60%) WAN
6 16 (2.32%) TCP/IP
7 12 (1.74%) Internet
8 7 (1.01%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.87%) NGFW
9 6 (0.87%) VLAN
10 5 (0.72%) Kerberos
10 5 (0.72%) SSL
10 5 (0.72%) VSAN
11 4 (0.58%) BGP
11 4 (0.58%) LAN
11 4 (0.58%) Wireless
12 3 (0.43%) IPv4
12 3 (0.43%) OSPF
12 3 (0.43%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (3.33%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.32%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (1.74%) BigQuery
3 12 (1.74%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.59%) Data Lake
5 8 (1.16%) Oracle Exadata
6 7 (1.01%) NoSQL
7 6 (0.87%) Amazon Athena
7 6 (0.87%) DynamoDB
8 5 (0.72%) Oracle Database
9 4 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (0.58%) 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 49 (7.09%) GitLab
2 33 (4.78%) Jenkins
3 29 (4.20%) Git
4 10 (1.45%) 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%) SonarQube
General
1 83 (12.01%) Finance
2 68 (9.84%) Public Sector
2 68 (9.84%) Social Skills
3 31 (4.49%) Analytical Skills
4 23 (3.33%) Banking
5 10 (1.45%) Manufacturing
6 8 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 7 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (1.01%) Legal
8 5 (0.72%) Law
8 5 (0.72%) Local Government
9 4 (0.58%) Front Office
9 4 (0.58%) Investment Banking
9 4 (0.58%) Pharmaceutical
9 4 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (0.43%) Aerospace
10 3 (0.43%) Back Office
10 3 (0.43%) Digital Health
10 3 (0.43%) Digital Healthcare
10 3 (0.43%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 265 (38.35%) Terraform
2 19 (2.75%) REST
3 17 (2.46%) ARM Templates
4 14 (2.03%) Kafka
5 13 (1.88%) OAuth
6 12 (1.74%) OAuth2
7 11 (1.59%) Spring
7 11 (1.59%) Spring Boot
8 8 (1.16%) OpenID
9 7 (1.01%) YAML
10 6 (0.87%) FastAPI
10 6 (0.87%) Flask
10 6 (0.87%) 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 (0.58%) Hugging Face
12 4 (0.58%) PyTorch
12 4 (0.58%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 109 (15.77%) Cloud Native
2 61 (8.83%) Security Posture
3 37 (5.35%) Enterprise Cloud
4 36 (5.21%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (4.63%) Cloud Security Posture
6 21 (3.04%) Management Information System
7 18 (2.60%) Distributed Systems
7 18 (2.60%) Onboarding
8 16 (2.32%) Data Centre
8 16 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
8 16 (2.32%) Public Cloud
9 13 (1.88%) Product Ownership
10 12 (1.74%) Private Cloud
11 8 (1.16%) AI Agents
11 8 (1.16%) PKI
12 7 (1.01%) Legacy Systems
12 7 (1.01%) Linux Command Line
13 6 (0.87%) Distributed Architecture
14 5 (0.72%) CMDB
15 4 (0.58%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 110 (15.92%) Windows
2 76 (11.00%) Linux
3 59 (8.54%) Windows Server
4 29 (4.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (2.17%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.16%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.43%) CentOS
7 3 (0.43%) VMS
8 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.14%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 242 (35.02%) Infrastructure as Code
2 230 (33.29%) CI/CD
3 179 (25.90%) DevOps
4 166 (24.02%) Cloud Security
5 150 (21.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 122 (17.66%) Platform Engineering
7 86 (12.45%) AI
8 82 (11.87%) Migration
9 81 (11.72%) Agile
10 76 (11.00%) Observability
11 69 (9.99%) Containerisation
12 63 (9.12%) Technical Leadership
13 60 (8.68%) Cybersecurity
14 57 (8.25%) DevSecOps
15 55 (7.96%) Continuous Improvement
16 52 (7.53%) Infrastructure Automation
16 52 (7.53%) Software Engineering
17 49 (7.09%) Deployment Automation
18 48 (6.95%) Change Management
19 45 (6.51%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 160 (23.15%) Python
2 150 (21.71%) PowerShell
3 73 (10.56%) Bash
4 72 (10.42%) Bicep
5 62 (8.97%) SQL
6 35 (5.07%) Java
7 13 (1.88%) C#
8 10 (1.45%) Go
9 9 (1.30%) JavaScript
10 8 (1.16%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.58%) 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%) Perl
14 1 (0.14%) R
14 1 (0.14%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 198 (28.65%) Security Cleared
2 139 (20.12%) SC Cleared
3 74 (10.71%) DV Cleared
4 44 (6.37%) Azure Certification
5 41 (5.93%) AWS Certification
6 34 (4.92%) Degree
7 21 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
8 17 (2.46%) CISSP
9 10 (1.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (1.16%) MCSE
11 6 (0.87%) CISM
11 6 (0.87%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
12 5 (0.72%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 4 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
13 4 (0.58%) CCNP
14 3 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 3 (0.43%) CCIE
14 3 (0.43%) CEH
15 2 (0.29%) CCIE Security
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (1.59%) Data Quality
3 10 (1.45%) NIST
3 10 (1.45%) QA
4 9 (1.30%) NCSC
5 6 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
5 6 (0.87%) GDPR
6 4 (0.58%) 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 (12.16%) Active Directory
2 71 (10.27%) Docker
3 50 (7.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (4.92%) VMware ESXi
5 32 (4.63%) Virtual Machines
6 26 (3.76%) VMware NSX
7 21 (3.04%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (2.89%) vSphere
9 15 (2.17%) vCloud
10 11 (1.59%) Hyper-V
11 7 (1.01%) Squid
12 4 (0.58%) Firmware
12 4 (0.58%) NFS
13 3 (0.43%) Ceph
13 3 (0.43%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.43%) Postfix
14 2 (0.29%) KVM
14 2 (0.29%) Virtual Servers
15 1 (0.14%) IAG
Systems Management
1 166 (24.02%) Kubernetes
2 48 (6.95%) Ansible
3 31 (4.49%) vCenter Server
4 27 (3.91%) Microsoft Intune
4 27 (3.91%) SCOM
5 21 (3.04%) Grafana
6 19 (2.75%) Progress Chef
6 19 (2.75%) Prometheus
7 14 (2.03%) Puppet
8 9 (1.30%) Istio
9 6 (0.87%) Packer
9 6 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
10 5 (0.72%) VxRail
11 4 (0.58%) Cilium
11 4 (0.58%) 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%) SELinux
Vendors
1 152 (22.00%) Microsoft
2 78 (11.29%) Google
3 75 (10.85%) VMware
4 34 (4.92%) Oracle
5 24 (3.47%) Databricks
6 19 (2.75%) Red Hat
7 15 (2.17%) Zscaler
8 14 (2.03%) SolarWinds
9 13 (1.88%) Broadcom
9 13 (1.88%) Palo Alto
10 11 (1.59%) Splunk
11 10 (1.45%) OpenAI
12 9 (1.30%) Cisco
12 9 (1.30%) Salesforce
12 9 (1.30%) ServiceNow
13 8 (1.16%) Dynatrace
14 7 (1.01%) CrowdStrike
14 7 (1.01%) New Relic
15 5 (0.72%) CyberArk
15 5 (0.72%) Fortinet