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 14 May 2026.

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

 6 months to
14 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 237 289 318
Rank change year-on-year +52 +29 -50
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 426 193 236
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.05% 0.80% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.14% 0.87% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 288 160 166
10th Percentile £413 £400 £400
25th Percentile £468 £445 £473
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £625 £600 £618
90th Percentile £691 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £510 £550
% change year-on-year +2.97% -7.30% -3.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 3
10th Percentile £57.18 - -
25th Percentile £66.06 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £74.00 - £30.00
75th Percentile £76.00 - £32.50
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £62.25 - £30.00
% change year-on-year - - -68.42%

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 37,507 22,311 33,904
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.34% 92.50% 92.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,310 14,840 22,465
10th Percentile £315 £300 £281
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £510 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,581 900 2,436
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.00 £12.87
25th Percentile £20.89 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £46.50 £30.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.00% -20.00% -14.88%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.43 £28.18 £37.50
% change year-on-year +54.13% -24.85% -16.67%

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 14 May 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 14 May 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 14 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
London +48 255 £525 +5.00% 61
North of England -31 55 £500 +2.56% 28
South East -32 48 £522 -5.09% 41
North West -18 29 £524 +30.29% 15
East of England -17 23 £510 +3.55% 6
Yorkshire -33 22 £481 +13.24% 9
Midlands -55 19 £675 +35.00% 16
South West -20 18 £550 -4.35% 29
West Midlands -46 16 £675 +14.89% 9
North East -21 4 £525 -8.70% 4
East Midlands -35 3 - - 7
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 14 May 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.

1 202 (47.42%) Azure
2 199 (46.71%) Terraform
3 177 (41.55%) CI/CD
4 176 (41.31%) AWS
5 164 (38.50%) Infrastructure as Code
6 159 (37.32%) DevOps
7 122 (28.64%) Security Cleared
8 99 (23.24%) SC Cleared
9 97 (22.77%) Kubernetes
10 96 (22.54%) GCP
11 92 (21.60%) Python
12 89 (20.89%) Cloud Security
13 80 (18.78%) GitHub
14 78 (18.31%) Microsoft
15 73 (17.14%) Google
15 73 (17.14%) PowerShell
16 66 (15.49%) Migration
17 61 (14.32%) Agile
18 56 (13.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 56 (13.15%) Platform Engineering
19 50 (11.74%) Containerisation
19 50 (11.74%) Docker
19 50 (11.74%) GitHub Actions
20 48 (11.27%) Firewall
21 44 (10.33%) AI
21 44 (10.33%) Serverless
22 42 (9.86%) SQL
23 39 (9.15%) Bash
23 39 (9.15%) DevSecOps
24 38 (8.92%) Azure Certification

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 7 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (0.94%) Apache Spark
2 4 (0.94%) Confluence
3 2 (0.47%) Apache
3 2 (0.47%) nginx
4 1 (0.23%) SAS
4 1 (0.23%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.23%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.23%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 202 (47.42%) Azure
2 176 (41.31%) AWS
3 96 (22.54%) GCP
4 80 (18.78%) GitHub
5 50 (11.74%) GitHub Actions
6 44 (10.33%) Serverless
7 36 (8.45%) Azure DevOps
8 35 (8.22%) PaaS
9 33 (7.75%) Entra ID
9 33 (7.75%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 32 (7.51%) AWS CloudFormation
10 32 (7.51%) Azure AKS
10 32 (7.51%) IaaS
11 31 (7.28%) Amazon S3
12 23 (5.40%) Amazon EC2
12 23 (5.40%) Amazon EKS
12 23 (5.40%) AWS Lambda
12 23 (5.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 20 (4.69%) Amazon ECS
13 20 (4.69%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 48 (11.27%) Firewall
2 22 (5.16%) DNS
2 22 (5.16%) Network Security
3 17 (3.99%) VPN
4 6 (1.41%) Reverse Proxy
5 5 (1.17%) TCP/IP
6 4 (0.94%) Software-Defined Networking
6 4 (0.94%) WAN
7 3 (0.70%) Cisco Firepower
7 3 (0.70%) SD-WAN
7 3 (0.70%) SMTP
8 2 (0.47%) BGP
8 2 (0.47%) Cisco IOS
8 2 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
8 2 (0.47%) DHCP
8 2 (0.47%) Junos
8 2 (0.47%) Kerberos
8 2 (0.47%) NGFW
8 2 (0.47%) SSL
8 2 (0.47%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.82%) BigQuery
2 11 (2.58%) Amazon Athena
3 7 (1.64%) DynamoDB
3 7 (1.64%) SQL Server
4 6 (1.41%) Azure SQL Database
5 5 (1.17%) Amazon RDS
5 5 (1.17%) Oracle Database
5 5 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.94%) Amazon QuickSight
6 4 (0.94%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (0.70%) Big Data
7 3 (0.70%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (0.70%) NoSQL
7 3 (0.70%) Power BI
7 3 (0.70%) Snowflake Schema
8 2 (0.47%) Mixpanel
8 2 (0.47%) OLAP
8 2 (0.47%) OLTP
8 2 (0.47%) Oracle Database 12c
8 2 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 37 (8.69%) Git
2 35 (8.22%) GitLab
2 35 (8.22%) Jenkins
3 9 (2.11%) Artifactory
4 6 (1.41%) JIRA
5 3 (0.70%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.47%) Liquibase
6 2 (0.47%) Postman
6 2 (0.47%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.47%) Selenium
6 2 (0.47%) Spinnaker
7 1 (0.23%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.23%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.23%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.23%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.23%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.23%) JUnit
7 1 (0.23%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.23%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.23%) sqlmap
General
1 49 (11.50%) Social Skills
2 43 (10.09%) Finance
3 36 (8.45%) Public Sector
4 16 (3.76%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (3.76%) Banking
5 9 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
6 8 (1.88%) Retail
7 6 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (1.17%) Legal
8 5 (1.17%) Telecoms
9 4 (0.94%) Investment Banking
9 4 (0.94%) Marketing
9 4 (0.94%) Military
10 2 (0.47%) Aeronautics
10 2 (0.47%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.47%) Law
10 2 (0.47%) Local Government
10 2 (0.47%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.47%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.99%) REST
2 16 (3.76%) Node.js
3 13 (3.05%) Spring
4 12 (2.82%) Spring Boot
5 11 (2.58%) Kafka
5 11 (2.58%) React
6 9 (2.11%) OAuth
6 9 (2.11%) OpenTelemetry
7 8 (1.88%) .NET
7 8 (1.88%) OAuth2
7 8 (1.88%) OpenID
7 8 (1.88%) Oracle Fusion
8 6 (1.41%) AngularJS
8 6 (1.41%) ARM Templates
8 6 (1.41%) LangChain
9 5 (1.17%) OpenAPI
9 5 (1.17%) Playwright
10 4 (0.94%) Jest
10 4 (0.94%) Lambda Expressions
10 4 (0.94%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 76 (17.84%) Cloud Native
2 29 (6.81%) Public Cloud
3 22 (5.16%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (3.05%) Data Centre
5 10 (2.35%) Security Posture
6 8 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (1.88%) Product Ownership
7 7 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (1.41%) Cyber Threat
8 6 (1.41%) Enterprise Cloud
9 5 (1.17%) Onboarding
10 4 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (0.94%) Management Information System
10 4 (0.94%) Virtual Team
11 3 (0.70%) Cloud Security Posture
11 3 (0.70%) Distributed Systems
11 3 (0.70%) PKI
11 3 (0.70%) Replication
12 2 (0.47%) CMDB
12 2 (0.47%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 35 (8.22%) Windows
2 24 (5.63%) Linux
3 18 (4.23%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.47%) Unix
5 2 (0.47%) VMS
6 1 (0.23%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (41.55%) CI/CD
2 164 (38.50%) Infrastructure as Code
3 159 (37.32%) DevOps
4 89 (20.89%) Cloud Security
5 66 (15.49%) Migration
6 61 (14.32%) Agile
7 56 (13.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 56 (13.15%) Platform Engineering
8 50 (11.74%) Containerisation
9 44 (10.33%) AI
10 39 (9.15%) DevSecOps
11 35 (8.22%) Continuous Improvement
11 35 (8.22%) Software Engineering
12 34 (7.98%) Observability
12 34 (7.98%) Problem-Solving
13 33 (7.75%) Cybersecurity
14 29 (6.81%) Infrastructure Automation
15 25 (5.87%) Mentoring
16 24 (5.63%) Microservices
17 23 (5.40%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 92 (21.60%) Python
2 73 (17.14%) PowerShell
3 42 (9.86%) SQL
4 39 (9.15%) Bash
5 31 (7.28%) Bicep
6 24 (5.63%) Java
7 17 (3.99%) C#
8 9 (2.11%) TypeScript
9 7 (1.64%) Go
10 6 (1.41%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.94%) Groovy
12 2 (0.47%) BeanShell
12 2 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.47%) Ruby
12 2 (0.47%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.23%) Cypher
13 1 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 122 (28.64%) Security Cleared
2 99 (23.24%) SC Cleared
3 38 (8.92%) Azure Certification
4 19 (4.46%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.05%) Degree
6 12 (2.82%) AWS Certification
6 12 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (2.35%) CISSP
8 9 (2.11%) Cisco Certification
9 7 (1.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
10 6 (1.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (1.17%) CISM
11 5 (1.17%) TOGAF Certification
12 4 (0.94%) CCSP
13 3 (0.70%) CCNP
13 3 (0.70%) OSCP
13 3 (0.70%) SANS
14 2 (0.47%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (2.35%) GDPR
1 10 (2.35%) NCSC
1 10 (2.35%) NIST
2 9 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (2.11%) QA
3 7 (1.64%) PCI DSS
4 5 (1.17%) Data Quality
4 5 (1.17%) GRC
5 2 (0.47%) SLA
5 2 (0.47%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.23%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.23%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 50 (11.74%) Docker
2 21 (4.93%) Active Directory
3 16 (3.76%) Virtual Desktop
4 13 (3.05%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (2.82%) VMware NSX
6 8 (1.88%) VMware Infrastructure
6 8 (1.88%) vSphere
7 6 (1.41%) Squid
8 5 (1.17%) Hyper-V
8 5 (1.17%) VMware ESXi
9 4 (0.94%) Firmware
9 4 (0.94%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 199 (46.71%) Terraform
2 97 (22.77%) Kubernetes
3 18 (4.23%) Ansible
3 18 (4.23%) Grafana
4 17 (3.99%) Istio
5 16 (3.76%) Prometheus
6 14 (3.29%) Microsoft Intune
7 7 (1.64%) Argo
7 7 (1.64%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (1.64%) vCenter Server
8 6 (1.41%) Packer
9 4 (0.94%) Progress Chef
9 4 (0.94%) Puppet
9 4 (0.94%) Salt
9 4 (0.94%) SCOM
9 4 (0.94%) Suricata
10 2 (0.47%) Cilium
11 1 (0.23%) Consul
11 1 (0.23%) HAProxy
11 1 (0.23%) PaperCut
Vendors
1 78 (18.31%) Microsoft
2 73 (17.14%) Google
3 21 (4.93%) Oracle
4 19 (4.46%) VMware
5 8 (1.88%) Dynatrace
5 8 (1.88%) Palo Alto
6 7 (1.64%) Cisco
6 7 (1.64%) Salesforce
6 7 (1.64%) ServiceNow
6 7 (1.64%) Zscaler
7 6 (1.41%) Databricks
8 5 (1.17%) Citrix
8 5 (1.17%) Fortinet
8 5 (1.17%) PeopleSoft
8 5 (1.17%) Rapid7
8 5 (1.17%) Splunk
9 4 (0.94%) Red Hat
9 4 (0.94%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
10 3 (0.70%) EMC
10 3 (0.70%) Juniper
177 Cloud Engineer jobs in England