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 12 May 2026.

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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 238 285 312
Rank change year-on-year +47 +27 -39
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 428 188 239
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.05% 0.77% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.14% 0.84% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 294 156 169
10th Percentile £404 £400 £400
25th Percentile £463 £434 £473
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £625 £613 £615
90th Percentile £705 £675 £680
UK median daily rate £525 £522 £550
% change year-on-year +0.50% -5.02% -2.22%
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 37,472 22,498 34,093
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 92.54% 92.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,288 14,975 22,610
10th Percentile £313 £300 £281
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £507 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -1.07% -2.38% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,585 913 2,443
10th Percentile £15.77 £14.00 £12.87
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £47.00 £30.32 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.01% -19.15% -16.23%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £44.00 £28.60 £37.50
% change year-on-year +53.85% -23.73% -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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +64 252 £525 +5.00% 60
North of England -33 55 £500 +2.56% 35
South East -33 47 £522 -5.09% 37
North West -19 29 £524 +30.29% 21
East of England -9 25 £500 +1.52% 6
Midlands -47 23 £675 +35.00% 22
Yorkshire -33 22 £481 +13.24% 10
West Midlands -51 20 £675 +14.89% 15
South West -20 18 £550 -4.35% 23
North East -22 4 £525 -8.70% 4
East Midlands -38 3 - - 7
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 12 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.

1 204 (47.66%) Azure
2 201 (46.96%) Terraform
3 177 (41.36%) AWS
3 177 (41.36%) CI/CD
4 169 (39.49%) Infrastructure as Code
5 159 (37.15%) DevOps
6 123 (28.74%) Security Cleared
7 102 (23.83%) SC Cleared
8 97 (22.66%) Kubernetes
9 96 (22.43%) GCP
10 91 (21.26%) Cloud Security
11 89 (20.79%) Python
12 82 (19.16%) GitHub
12 82 (19.16%) Microsoft
13 75 (17.52%) PowerShell
14 73 (17.06%) Google
15 67 (15.65%) Migration
16 64 (14.95%) Agile
17 57 (13.32%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 57 (13.32%) Platform Engineering
18 52 (12.15%) Containerisation
18 52 (12.15%) GitHub Actions
19 50 (11.68%) Docker
20 47 (10.98%) Firewall
21 44 (10.28%) AI
21 44 (10.28%) Serverless
22 42 (9.81%) SQL
23 40 (9.35%) DevSecOps
24 39 (9.11%) Azure Certification
25 38 (8.88%) Azure DevOps

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 (0.93%) Apache Spark
2 4 (0.93%) 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 2 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.23%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 204 (47.66%) Azure
2 177 (41.36%) AWS
3 96 (22.43%) GCP
4 82 (19.16%) GitHub
5 52 (12.15%) GitHub Actions
6 44 (10.28%) Serverless
7 38 (8.88%) Azure DevOps
8 36 (8.41%) Entra ID
8 36 (8.41%) PaaS
9 33 (7.71%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 32 (7.48%) AWS CloudFormation
10 32 (7.48%) IaaS
11 31 (7.24%) Amazon S3
11 31 (7.24%) Azure AKS
12 23 (5.37%) AWS Lambda
13 21 (4.91%) Amazon EKS
14 20 (4.67%) Amazon EC2
14 20 (4.67%) Amazon ECS
14 20 (4.67%) OCI
14 20 (4.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 47 (10.98%) Firewall
2 20 (4.67%) DNS
2 20 (4.67%) Network Security
3 16 (3.74%) VPN
4 6 (1.40%) Reverse Proxy
5 4 (0.93%) Software-Defined Networking
6 3 (0.70%) Cisco Firepower
6 3 (0.70%) SD-WAN
6 3 (0.70%) SMTP
6 3 (0.70%) TCP/IP
6 3 (0.70%) WAN
7 2 (0.47%) BGP
7 2 (0.47%) Cisco IOS
7 2 (0.47%) Cisco ISE
7 2 (0.47%) DHCP
7 2 (0.47%) Junos
7 2 (0.47%) Kerberos
7 2 (0.47%) NGFW
7 2 (0.47%) SSL
7 2 (0.47%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.80%) BigQuery
2 11 (2.57%) Amazon Athena
3 7 (1.64%) DynamoDB
3 7 (1.64%) SQL Server
4 6 (1.40%) Azure SQL Database
5 5 (1.17%) Amazon RDS
5 5 (1.17%) Oracle Database
5 5 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.93%) Amazon QuickSight
6 4 (0.93%) 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%) Data Lake
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 35 (8.18%) Jenkins
2 34 (7.94%) Git
3 32 (7.48%) GitLab
4 6 (1.40%) Artifactory
4 6 (1.40%) 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 51 (11.92%) Social Skills
2 46 (10.75%) Finance
3 36 (8.41%) Public Sector
4 16 (3.74%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (3.74%) Banking
5 9 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
6 8 (1.87%) Retail
7 7 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (1.17%) Legal
9 5 (1.17%) Telecoms
10 4 (0.93%) Aeronautics
10 4 (0.93%) Investment Banking
10 4 (0.93%) Marketing
10 4 (0.93%) Military
11 2 (0.47%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.47%) Law
11 2 (0.47%) Local Government
11 2 (0.47%) Police
12 1 (0.23%) Front Office
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (4.44%) REST
2 17 (3.97%) Node.js
3 13 (3.04%) Spring
4 12 (2.80%) Spring Boot
5 11 (2.57%) Kafka
5 11 (2.57%) React
6 9 (2.10%) OAuth
6 9 (2.10%) OpenID
6 9 (2.10%) OpenTelemetry
7 8 (1.87%) .NET
7 8 (1.87%) OAuth2
7 8 (1.87%) Oracle Fusion
8 6 (1.40%) AngularJS
8 6 (1.40%) ARM Templates
8 6 (1.40%) LangChain
9 5 (1.17%) OpenAPI
9 5 (1.17%) Playwright
9 5 (1.17%) SOAP
10 4 (0.93%) Express.js
10 4 (0.93%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 77 (17.99%) Cloud Native
2 29 (6.78%) Public Cloud
3 21 (4.91%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (3.04%) Data Centre
5 10 (2.34%) Security Posture
6 8 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (1.87%) Product Ownership
7 7 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (1.40%) Cyber Threat
9 5 (1.17%) Enterprise Cloud
9 5 (1.17%) Onboarding
10 4 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (0.93%) Management Information System
10 4 (0.93%) 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 34 (7.94%) Windows
2 24 (5.61%) Linux
3 17 (3.97%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.47%) Unix
5 2 (0.47%) VMS
6 1 (0.23%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (41.36%) CI/CD
2 169 (39.49%) Infrastructure as Code
3 159 (37.15%) DevOps
4 91 (21.26%) Cloud Security
5 67 (15.65%) Migration
6 64 (14.95%) Agile
7 57 (13.32%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 57 (13.32%) Platform Engineering
8 52 (12.15%) Containerisation
9 44 (10.28%) AI
10 40 (9.35%) DevSecOps
11 37 (8.64%) Continuous Improvement
11 37 (8.64%) Cybersecurity
12 35 (8.18%) Observability
12 35 (8.18%) Software Engineering
13 33 (7.71%) Problem-Solving
14 30 (7.01%) Infrastructure Automation
15 26 (6.07%) Mentoring
16 25 (5.84%) Microservices
17 23 (5.37%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 89 (20.79%) Python
2 75 (17.52%) PowerShell
3 42 (9.81%) SQL
4 36 (8.41%) Bash
5 31 (7.24%) Bicep
6 25 (5.84%) Java
7 17 (3.97%) C#
8 9 (2.10%) TypeScript
9 7 (1.64%) Go
10 6 (1.40%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.93%) Groovy
12 3 (0.70%) BeanShell
13 2 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.47%) Ruby
13 2 (0.47%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.23%) Cypher
14 1 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 123 (28.74%) Security Cleared
2 102 (23.83%) SC Cleared
3 39 (9.11%) Azure Certification
4 18 (4.21%) DV Cleared
5 14 (3.27%) Degree
6 13 (3.04%) AWS Certification
7 12 (2.80%) Microsoft Certification
8 11 (2.57%) CISSP
9 10 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
10 9 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
11 7 (1.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 7 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
12 6 (1.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 6 (1.40%) CISM
13 5 (1.17%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.93%) CCSP
15 3 (0.70%) CCNP
15 3 (0.70%) OSCP
15 3 (0.70%) SANS
16 2 (0.47%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (2.34%) GDPR
1 10 (2.34%) NCSC
1 10 (2.34%) NIST
2 9 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (2.10%) 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 (11.68%) Docker
2 21 (4.91%) Active Directory
3 16 (3.74%) Virtual Desktop
4 14 (3.27%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (2.57%) VMware NSX
6 8 (1.87%) vSphere
7 7 (1.64%) VMware Infrastructure
8 5 (1.17%) Hyper-V
9 4 (0.93%) Firmware
9 4 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
10 3 (0.70%) Squid
10 3 (0.70%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 201 (46.96%) Terraform
2 97 (22.66%) Kubernetes
3 18 (4.21%) Ansible
4 17 (3.97%) Istio
4 17 (3.97%) Prometheus
5 16 (3.74%) Grafana
6 14 (3.27%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (1.87%) Argo
8 7 (1.64%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (1.40%) Packer
9 6 (1.40%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.93%) Progress Chef
10 4 (0.93%) Puppet
10 4 (0.93%) Salt
11 3 (0.70%) SCOM
12 2 (0.47%) Cilium
12 2 (0.47%) Suricata
13 1 (0.23%) HAProxy
13 1 (0.23%) PaperCut
13 1 (0.23%) SCCM
Vendors
1 82 (19.16%) Microsoft
2 73 (17.06%) Google
3 21 (4.91%) Oracle
4 18 (4.21%) VMware
5 9 (2.10%) Dynatrace
6 8 (1.87%) ServiceNow
7 7 (1.64%) Cisco
7 7 (1.64%) Palo Alto
7 7 (1.64%) Salesforce
8 6 (1.40%) Databricks
8 6 (1.40%) Zscaler
9 5 (1.17%) Citrix
9 5 (1.17%) Fortinet
9 5 (1.17%) PeopleSoft
9 5 (1.17%) Rapid7
9 5 (1.17%) Splunk
10 4 (0.93%) Red Hat
10 4 (0.93%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
11 3 (0.70%) EMC
11 3 (0.70%) Juniper