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 1 September 2026.

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

 6 months to
1 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 197 303 327
Rank change year-on-year +106 +24 -54
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 658 217 212
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.44% 0.79% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.56% 0.86% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 439 161 137
10th Percentile £407 £402 £395
25th Percentile £461 £447 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £565
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -11.50% +2.73%
75th Percentile £613 £575 £638
90th Percentile £684 £633 £675
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +4.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 7 0
10th Percentile £23.20 £29.00 -
25th Percentile £34.02 £29.50 -
Median hourly rate £77.00 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +71.11% - -
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 42,208 25,248 30,773
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.43% 91.56% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,337 16,299 19,707
10th Percentile £325 £281 £303
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £635 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,268 1,358 1,625
10th Percentile £15.18 £13.69 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.34 £21.00
Median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.96% -44.11% +2.86%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £66.74
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +51 301 £525 - 468
South East +21 126 £538 +7.50% 53
North of England +17 122 £513 +13.89% 105
North West -1 74 £525 +16.67% 53
Midlands +1 67 £500 +5.26% 47
Yorkshire -4 41 £467 -6.62% 41
East Midlands +12 34 £488 +2.63% 21
West Midlands -20 32 £525 -2.78% 26
East of England -5 19 £488 +0.52% 36
South West -29 15 £600 +9.09% 52
North East -44 7 £525 +10.53% 11
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 1 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.

1 332 (50.46%) Azure
2 266 (40.43%) Terraform
3 227 (34.50%) AWS
4 225 (34.19%) Infrastructure as Code
5 219 (33.28%) CI/CD
6 187 (28.42%) Security Cleared
7 175 (26.60%) DevOps
8 158 (24.01%) Cloud Security
9 155 (23.56%) Kubernetes
10 153 (23.25%) Python
11 147 (22.34%) PowerShell
12 145 (22.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 144 (21.88%) Microsoft
14 136 (20.67%) SC Cleared
15 129 (19.60%) GCP
16 123 (18.69%) Platform Engineering
17 104 (15.81%) Windows
18 83 (12.61%) Migration
19 82 (12.46%) AI
19 82 (12.46%) Google
20 81 (12.31%) Entra ID
21 79 (12.01%) Agile
22 76 (11.55%) DNS
22 76 (11.55%) Firewall
23 73 (11.09%) Active Directory
23 73 (11.09%) Bash
24 72 (10.94%) GitHub
25 71 (10.79%) VMware
26 68 (10.33%) DV Cleared
26 68 (10.33%) Observability

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 12 (1.82%) Microsoft Exchange
2 10 (1.52%) Apache
3 6 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (0.91%) Confluence
3 6 (0.91%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.46%) IIS
4 3 (0.46%) nginx
4 3 (0.46%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.30%) CloudStack
5 2 (0.30%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 1 (0.15%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.30%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 332 (50.46%) Azure
2 227 (34.50%) AWS
3 129 (19.60%) GCP
4 81 (12.31%) Entra ID
5 72 (10.94%) GitHub
6 51 (7.75%) Azure DevOps
7 50 (7.60%) Serverless
8 48 (7.29%) GitHub Actions
9 46 (6.99%) IaaS
10 38 (5.78%) AWS CloudFormation
11 37 (5.62%) AWS Lambda
12 36 (5.47%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 35 (5.32%) Azure AKS
13 35 (5.32%) Azure Monitor
14 33 (5.02%) PaaS
15 30 (4.56%) Amazon EC2
15 30 (4.56%) Microsoft 365
16 29 (4.41%) Amazon EKS
16 29 (4.41%) SaaS
17 25 (3.80%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 76 (11.55%) DNS
1 76 (11.55%) Firewall
2 38 (5.78%) Network Security
3 31 (4.71%) VPN
4 18 (2.74%) DHCP
5 17 (2.58%) WAN
6 15 (2.28%) TCP/IP
7 12 (1.82%) Internet
8 6 (0.91%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.91%) VLAN
9 5 (0.76%) LAN
9 5 (0.76%) SSL
9 5 (0.76%) VSAN
10 4 (0.61%) SAN
10 4 (0.61%) Wireless
11 3 (0.46%) BGP
11 3 (0.46%) IPv4
11 3 (0.46%) Kerberos
11 3 (0.46%) OSPF
11 3 (0.46%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (3.65%) SQL Server
2 15 (2.28%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.52%) BigQuery
5 8 (1.22%) Data Lake
5 8 (1.22%) Oracle Exadata
6 5 (0.76%) Amazon Athena
6 5 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (0.76%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.61%) DynamoDB
7 4 (0.61%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.46%) Flink
8 3 (0.46%) Looker
8 3 (0.46%) MySQL
8 3 (0.46%) Oracle Database 12c
9 2 (0.30%) Amazon QuickSight
9 2 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.30%) Big Data
9 2 (0.30%) Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.30%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 46 (6.99%) GitLab
2 33 (5.02%) Jenkins
3 28 (4.26%) Git
4 11 (1.67%) JIRA
5 7 (1.06%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.46%) Claude Code
6 3 (0.46%) Selenium
6 3 (0.46%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.30%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.30%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.30%) Gatling
7 2 (0.30%) JMeter
7 2 (0.30%) Octopus Deploy
7 2 (0.30%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.15%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.15%) eggPlant
8 1 (0.15%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.15%) JUnit
8 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.15%) sqlmap
General
1 79 (12.01%) Finance
2 69 (10.49%) Social Skills
3 59 (8.97%) Public Sector
4 29 (4.41%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (3.80%) Banking
6 9 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (1.22%) Manufacturing
8 7 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (0.91%) Investment Banking
10 5 (0.76%) Law
10 5 (0.76%) Local Government
11 3 (0.46%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.46%) Digital Health
11 3 (0.46%) Front Office
11 3 (0.46%) Italian Language
11 3 (0.46%) Legal
11 3 (0.46%) Marketing
11 3 (0.46%) Military
11 3 (0.46%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.46%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (40.43%) Terraform
2 19 (2.89%) REST
3 14 (2.13%) ARM Templates
4 13 (1.98%) Kafka
5 11 (1.67%) Spring
5 11 (1.67%) Spring Boot
6 9 (1.37%) OAuth
6 9 (1.37%) OAuth2
7 8 (1.22%) YAML
8 6 (0.91%) FastAPI
8 6 (0.91%) Flask
8 6 (0.91%) React
9 5 (0.76%) AWS CDK
10 4 (0.61%) .NET
10 4 (0.61%) Azure Blueprints
10 4 (0.61%) Hugging Face
10 4 (0.61%) Keycloak
10 4 (0.61%) OpenID
10 4 (0.61%) PyTorch
10 4 (0.61%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 105 (15.96%) Cloud Native
2 57 (8.66%) Security Posture
3 37 (5.62%) Hybrid Cloud
4 32 (4.86%) Enterprise Cloud
5 29 (4.41%) Cloud Security Posture
6 20 (3.04%) Management Information System
7 19 (2.89%) Onboarding
8 18 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
9 16 (2.43%) Public Cloud
10 13 (1.98%) Data Centre
10 13 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
10 13 (1.98%) Product Ownership
11 12 (1.82%) Private Cloud
12 8 (1.22%) AI Agents
13 7 (1.06%) Legacy Systems
13 7 (1.06%) Linux Command Line
14 6 (0.91%) PKI
15 5 (0.76%) Distributed Architecture
15 5 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
16 4 (0.61%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 104 (15.81%) Windows
2 67 (10.18%) Linux
3 55 (8.36%) Windows Server
4 27 (4.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 12 (1.82%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.22%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.46%) CentOS
7 3 (0.46%) VMS
8 2 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 225 (34.19%) Infrastructure as Code
2 219 (33.28%) CI/CD
3 175 (26.60%) DevOps
4 158 (24.01%) Cloud Security
5 145 (22.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 123 (18.69%) Platform Engineering
7 83 (12.61%) Migration
8 82 (12.46%) AI
9 79 (12.01%) Agile
10 68 (10.33%) Observability
11 62 (9.42%) Containerisation
12 59 (8.97%) Technical Leadership
13 54 (8.21%) Continuous Improvement
14 53 (8.05%) DevSecOps
15 52 (7.90%) Software Engineering
16 51 (7.75%) Cybersecurity
17 48 (7.29%) Infrastructure Automation
18 46 (6.99%) Change Management
19 45 (6.84%) Problem-Solving
20 44 (6.69%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 153 (23.25%) Python
2 147 (22.34%) PowerShell
3 73 (11.09%) Bash
4 67 (10.18%) Bicep
5 60 (9.12%) SQL
6 32 (4.86%) Java
7 15 (2.28%) C#
8 10 (1.52%) Go
9 9 (1.37%) JavaScript
10 8 (1.22%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.61%) Groovy
11 4 (0.61%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.46%) C
12 3 (0.46%) Scala
13 2 (0.30%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.15%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.15%) Perl
14 1 (0.15%) R
14 1 (0.15%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 187 (28.42%) Security Cleared
2 136 (20.67%) SC Cleared
3 68 (10.33%) DV Cleared
4 43 (6.53%) Azure Certification
5 41 (6.23%) AWS Certification
6 31 (4.71%) Degree
7 17 (2.58%) Microsoft Certification
8 15 (2.28%) CISSP
9 11 (1.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (1.06%) Cisco Certification
12 6 (0.91%) CCNP
12 6 (0.91%) CISM
12 6 (0.91%) MCSE
13 5 (0.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 4 (0.61%) CCIE
15 3 (0.46%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 3 (0.46%) BPSS Clearance
15 3 (0.46%) CEH
16 2 (0.30%) CCIE Security
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (2.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (1.67%) Data Quality
3 10 (1.52%) NIST
3 10 (1.52%) QA
4 9 (1.37%) NCSC
5 5 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (0.76%) GDPR
6 3 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 3 (0.46%) SLA
7 2 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.30%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.15%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.15%) GRC
8 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 73 (11.09%) Active Directory
2 64 (9.73%) Docker
3 45 (6.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 31 (4.71%) Virtual Machines
4 31 (4.71%) VMware ESXi
5 26 (3.95%) VMware NSX
6 19 (2.89%) Virtual Desktop
6 19 (2.89%) vSphere
7 15 (2.28%) vCloud
8 11 (1.67%) Hyper-V
9 7 (1.06%) Squid
10 4 (0.61%) Firmware
11 3 (0.46%) Ceph
11 3 (0.46%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.46%) NFS
11 3 (0.46%) Postfix
12 2 (0.30%) KVM
12 2 (0.30%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 155 (23.56%) Kubernetes
2 46 (6.99%) Ansible
3 28 (4.26%) vCenter Server
4 24 (3.65%) SCOM
5 22 (3.34%) Microsoft Intune
6 19 (2.89%) Grafana
7 18 (2.74%) Progress Chef
7 18 (2.74%) Prometheus
8 14 (2.13%) Puppet
9 11 (1.67%) Istio
10 7 (1.06%) Packer
10 7 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.76%) VxRail
12 4 (0.61%) Suricata
13 3 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 3 (0.46%) Cilium
13 3 (0.46%) HAProxy
13 3 (0.46%) vRealize
14 2 (0.30%) FortiGate
14 2 (0.30%) SELinux
Vendors
1 144 (21.88%) Microsoft
2 82 (12.46%) Google
3 71 (10.79%) VMware
4 31 (4.71%) Oracle
5 18 (2.74%) Databricks
6 17 (2.58%) Red Hat
7 15 (2.28%) Zscaler
8 11 (1.67%) Palo Alto
8 11 (1.67%) Splunk
9 10 (1.52%) Broadcom
9 10 (1.52%) OpenAI
9 10 (1.52%) ServiceNow
9 10 (1.52%) SolarWinds
10 9 (1.37%) Dynatrace
10 9 (1.37%) Salesforce
11 8 (1.22%) Cisco
12 7 (1.06%) CrowdStrike
12 7 (1.06%) New Relic
13 5 (0.76%) CyberArk
13 5 (0.76%) Fortinet
764 Cloud Engineer jobs in England