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 24 May 2026.

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

 6 months to
24 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 236 283 312
Rank change year-on-year +47 +29 -45
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 448 199 237
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.08% 0.83% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.17% 0.90% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 307 165 166
10th Percentile £413 £400 £400
25th Percentile £475 £438 £473
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £623 £594 £625
90th Percentile £690 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 3
10th Percentile £57.18 - -
25th Percentile £66.06 £42.50 £27.50
Median hourly rate £74.00 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.44% +50.00% -68.83%
75th Percentile £76.00 £47.50 £32.50
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £62.25 £45.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +38.33% +50.00% -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 38,362 22,147 33,789
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.30% 92.31% 92.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,778 14,732 22,409
10th Percentile £320 £290 £282
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -3.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,659 891 2,479
10th Percentile £15.48 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.00 £29.07 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +54.80% -21.81% -17.38%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.38 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +51.81% -23.30% -18.89%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +56 269 £525 +5.00% 79
North of England -42 57 £525 +5.00% 25
South East -33 51 £538 -0.19% 43
North West -22 29 £538 +33.71% 19
East of England -16 24 £505 +2.54% 9
Yorkshire -40 21 £481 -3.75% 4
Midlands -65 19 £670 +34.00% 16
South West -18 18 £550 -4.35% 33
West Midlands -53 16 £670 +27.62% 10
North East -28 7 £525 -4.55% 2
East Midlands -32 3 - - 6
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 24 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.

1 214 (47.77%) Azure
2 206 (45.98%) Terraform
3 185 (41.29%) CI/CD
4 181 (40.40%) AWS
5 168 (37.50%) Infrastructure as Code
6 163 (36.38%) DevOps
7 127 (28.35%) Security Cleared
8 101 (22.54%) SC Cleared
9 97 (21.65%) Kubernetes
10 95 (21.21%) Cloud Security
10 95 (21.21%) Python
11 92 (20.54%) GCP
12 87 (19.42%) Microsoft
13 76 (16.96%) GitHub
14 75 (16.74%) PowerShell
15 72 (16.07%) Google
16 71 (15.85%) Migration
17 65 (14.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 64 (14.29%) Platform Engineering
19 61 (13.62%) Agile
20 53 (11.83%) Containerisation
21 51 (11.38%) Firewall
22 49 (10.94%) GitHub Actions
23 48 (10.71%) AI
23 48 (10.71%) Docker
24 47 (10.49%) Windows
25 46 (10.27%) Serverless
26 44 (9.82%) SQL
27 40 (8.93%) Bash
27 40 (8.93%) Problem-Solving

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 (1.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (1.12%) Apache
2 5 (1.12%) Confluence
3 4 (0.89%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.67%) nginx
5 2 (0.45%) CloudStack
5 2 (0.45%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.22%) IIS
6 1 (0.22%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.22%) SAS
6 1 (0.22%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.22%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.22%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 214 (47.77%) Azure
2 181 (40.40%) AWS
3 92 (20.54%) GCP
4 76 (16.96%) GitHub
5 49 (10.94%) GitHub Actions
6 46 (10.27%) Serverless
7 38 (8.48%) Entra ID
8 37 (8.26%) Azure DevOps
9 36 (8.04%) PaaS
10 35 (7.81%) IaaS
11 34 (7.59%) AWS CloudFormation
12 32 (7.14%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 31 (6.92%) Amazon S3
13 31 (6.92%) Azure AKS
14 25 (5.58%) AWS Lambda
15 24 (5.36%) Amazon EC2
15 24 (5.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 21 (4.69%) Amazon EKS
16 21 (4.69%) OCI
17 19 (4.24%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 51 (11.38%) Firewall
2 33 (7.37%) DNS
3 24 (5.36%) Network Security
4 18 (4.02%) VPN
5 7 (1.56%) TCP/IP
6 6 (1.34%) Reverse Proxy
6 6 (1.34%) WAN
7 4 (0.89%) DHCP
7 4 (0.89%) Software-Defined Networking
7 4 (0.89%) SSL
7 4 (0.89%) VLAN
8 3 (0.67%) Internet
8 3 (0.67%) SD-WAN
8 3 (0.67%) SMTP
9 2 (0.45%) BGP
9 2 (0.45%) Cisco Firepower
9 2 (0.45%) DKIM
9 2 (0.45%) Kerberos
9 2 (0.45%) NGFW
9 2 (0.45%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (2.90%) BigQuery
2 11 (2.46%) Amazon Athena
3 9 (2.01%) SQL Server
4 7 (1.56%) DynamoDB
5 6 (1.34%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.89%) Amazon QuickSight
7 4 (0.89%) Amazon Redshift
7 4 (0.89%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.67%) Big Data
8 3 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (0.67%) Oracle Database 12c
8 3 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (0.45%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.45%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.45%) OLAP
9 2 (0.45%) OLTP
9 2 (0.45%) Power BI
9 2 (0.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 38 (8.48%) GitLab
2 36 (8.04%) Git
3 33 (7.37%) Jenkins
4 9 (2.01%) Artifactory
5 8 (1.79%) JIRA
6 3 (0.67%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.45%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.45%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.45%) Postman
7 2 (0.45%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.45%) Selenium
8 1 (0.22%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.22%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.22%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.22%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.22%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.22%) JUnit
8 1 (0.22%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.22%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.22%) sqlmap
General
1 52 (11.61%) Social Skills
2 44 (9.82%) Finance
3 36 (8.04%) Public Sector
4 17 (3.79%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (3.57%) Banking
6 9 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (1.79%) Retail
8 6 (1.34%) Telecoms
9 5 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (1.12%) Legal
9 5 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.89%) Investment Banking
10 4 (0.89%) Marketing
10 4 (0.89%) Military
11 3 (0.67%) Local Government
11 3 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
12 2 (0.45%) Financial Institution
12 2 (0.45%) Law
12 2 (0.45%) Police
13 1 (0.22%) Front Office
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (3.35%) REST
2 13 (2.90%) Spring
2 13 (2.90%) Spring Boot
3 12 (2.68%) Node.js
4 11 (2.46%) OAuth
4 11 (2.46%) React
5 10 (2.23%) Kafka
5 10 (2.23%) OAuth2
6 8 (1.79%) OpenID
6 8 (1.79%) OpenTelemetry
6 8 (1.79%) Oracle Fusion
7 7 (1.56%) .NET
8 6 (1.34%) AngularJS
8 6 (1.34%) ARM Templates
8 6 (1.34%) LangChain
9 4 (0.89%) Express.js
9 4 (0.89%) Jest
9 4 (0.89%) Model Context Protocol
9 4 (0.89%) Playwright
9 4 (0.89%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 78 (17.41%) Cloud Native
2 27 (6.03%) Public Cloud
3 24 (5.36%) Hybrid Cloud
4 17 (3.79%) Data Centre
5 13 (2.90%) Security Posture
6 9 (2.01%) Enterprise Cloud
7 8 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (1.79%) Onboarding
7 8 (1.79%) Product Ownership
8 7 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.34%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.12%) Cloud Security Posture
10 5 (1.12%) Management Information System
10 5 (1.12%) Private Cloud
11 4 (0.89%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (0.89%) PKI
11 4 (0.89%) Virtual Team
12 3 (0.67%) Replication
13 2 (0.45%) CMDB
13 2 (0.45%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 47 (10.49%) Windows
2 29 (6.47%) Linux
3 28 (6.25%) Windows Server
4 5 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.67%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.45%) VMS
7 1 (0.22%) CentOS
7 1 (0.22%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.22%) Unix
7 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (41.29%) CI/CD
2 168 (37.50%) Infrastructure as Code
3 163 (36.38%) DevOps
4 95 (21.21%) Cloud Security
5 71 (15.85%) Migration
6 65 (14.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 64 (14.29%) Platform Engineering
8 61 (13.62%) Agile
9 53 (11.83%) Containerisation
10 48 (10.71%) AI
11 40 (8.93%) Problem-Solving
12 38 (8.48%) DevSecOps
12 38 (8.48%) Software Engineering
13 36 (8.04%) Continuous Improvement
13 36 (8.04%) Cybersecurity
14 35 (7.81%) Observability
15 31 (6.92%) Infrastructure Automation
16 29 (6.47%) Technical Leadership
17 25 (5.58%) Mentoring
18 24 (5.36%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 95 (21.21%) Python
2 75 (16.74%) PowerShell
3 44 (9.82%) SQL
4 40 (8.93%) Bash
5 33 (7.37%) Bicep
6 21 (4.69%) Java
7 15 (3.35%) C#
8 7 (1.56%) Go
8 7 (1.56%) TypeScript
9 6 (1.34%) JavaScript
10 5 (1.12%) Groovy
11 3 (0.67%) Ruby
12 2 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.22%) BeanShell
13 1 (0.22%) Cypher
13 1 (0.22%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.22%) Perl
13 1 (0.22%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 127 (28.35%) Security Cleared
2 101 (22.54%) SC Cleared
3 38 (8.48%) Azure Certification
4 27 (6.03%) DV Cleared
5 15 (3.35%) Degree
6 12 (2.68%) AWS Certification
7 11 (2.46%) Microsoft Certification
8 10 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (1.79%) Cisco Certification
9 8 (1.79%) CISSP
9 8 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
10 7 (1.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 5 (1.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (1.12%) TOGAF Certification
12 4 (0.89%) CISM
13 3 (0.67%) CCNP
13 3 (0.67%) CCSP
14 2 (0.45%) Citrix Certification
14 2 (0.45%) MCSE
14 2 (0.45%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (2.23%) GDPR
1 10 (2.23%) NIST
1 10 (2.23%) QA
2 9 (2.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (2.01%) NCSC
3 6 (1.34%) PCI DSS
4 5 (1.12%) Data Quality
5 4 (0.89%) GRC
6 2 (0.45%) SLA
6 2 (0.45%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.22%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.22%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 48 (10.71%) Docker
2 29 (6.47%) Active Directory
3 16 (3.57%) Virtual Desktop
4 15 (3.35%) VMware NSX
5 13 (2.90%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
6 11 (2.46%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (2.23%) vSphere
8 7 (1.56%) Squid
8 7 (1.56%) vCloud
9 6 (1.34%) Hyper-V
10 4 (0.89%) Firmware
11 2 (0.45%) Ceph
11 2 (0.45%) KVM
11 2 (0.45%) NFS
12 1 (0.22%) Dovecot
12 1 (0.22%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 206 (45.98%) Terraform
2 97 (21.65%) Kubernetes
3 23 (5.13%) Ansible
4 16 (3.57%) Grafana
5 14 (3.13%) Istio
5 14 (3.13%) Microsoft Intune
5 14 (3.13%) Prometheus
6 12 (2.68%) vCenter Server
7 9 (2.01%) SCOM
8 8 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (1.56%) Argo
9 7 (1.56%) Packer
10 6 (1.34%) Puppet
11 4 (0.89%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.89%) Salt
11 4 (0.89%) Suricata
12 2 (0.45%) Cilium
12 2 (0.45%) HAProxy
12 2 (0.45%) SELinux
13 1 (0.22%) PaperCut
Vendors
1 87 (19.42%) Microsoft
2 72 (16.07%) Google
3 27 (6.03%) VMware
4 23 (5.13%) Oracle
5 11 (2.46%) Palo Alto
6 10 (2.23%) Zscaler
7 7 (1.56%) Cisco
7 7 (1.56%) Databricks
7 7 (1.56%) Salesforce
7 7 (1.56%) ServiceNow
8 6 (1.34%) Dynatrace
8 6 (1.34%) Red Hat
9 5 (1.12%) Citrix
9 5 (1.12%) Fortinet
9 5 (1.12%) PeopleSoft
9 5 (1.12%) Splunk
10 4 (0.89%) OpenAI
10 4 (0.89%) Rapid7
10 4 (0.89%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
11 3 (0.67%) Tenable
190 Cloud Engineer jobs in England