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 5 October 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 196 295 324
Rank change year-on-year +99 +29 -60
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 703 233 213
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.52% 0.83% 0.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.66% 0.92% 0.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 466 175 129
10th Percentile £413 £402 £384
25th Percentile £460 £449 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -13.04% +4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £644
90th Percentile £685 £661 £703
UK median daily rate £514 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +2.75% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 7 0
10th Percentile £22.69 £29.00 -
25th Percentile £23.20 £29.50 -
Median hourly rate £76.00 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +68.89% - -
75th Percentile £79.13 £86.25 -
90th Percentile £81.25 £110.00 -
UK median hourly rate £76.00 £45.00 -
% change year-on-year +68.89% - -

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 42,458 25,439 30,190
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.08% 91.08% 93.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,019 16,376 18,496
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.64% -2.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,652 1,417 1,343
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.79 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.48 £17.30 £21.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.90
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -42.71% -4.32%
75th Percentile £67.89 £52.16 £67.50
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +65.94% -40.82% -4.49%

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 5 October 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 5 October 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 5 October 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 +50 303 £525 +1.69% 760
North of England +32 146 £511 +13.61% 242
South East +19 133 £538 +7.50% 156
North West +22 87 £513 +17.14% 150
Midlands +22 80 £500 -9.09% 110
Yorkshire +4 49 £460 -20.00% 55
East Midlands +28 46 £500 +5.26% 49
West Midlands -22 33 £525 -4.55% 61
East of England -13 16 £475 +5.56% 69
South West -27 16 £575 - 115
North East -33 10 £525 +14.13% 37
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 5 October 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.

1 350 (49.79%) Azure
2 265 (37.70%) Terraform
3 243 (34.57%) Infrastructure as Code
4 227 (32.29%) AWS
4 227 (32.29%) CI/CD
5 190 (27.03%) Security Cleared
6 175 (24.89%) DevOps
7 170 (24.18%) Kubernetes
8 164 (23.33%) Cloud Security
9 160 (22.76%) Python
10 157 (22.33%) Microsoft
10 157 (22.33%) PowerShell
11 151 (21.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 133 (18.92%) SC Cleared
13 129 (18.35%) GCP
14 121 (17.21%) Platform Engineering
15 112 (15.93%) Windows
16 106 (15.08%) Entra ID
17 88 (12.52%) Active Directory
18 87 (12.38%) Migration
19 84 (11.95%) AI
20 81 (11.52%) Google
21 78 (11.10%) DNS
21 78 (11.10%) Firewall
22 77 (10.95%) Agile
23 75 (10.67%) Linux
23 75 (10.67%) Observability
24 74 (10.53%) VMware
25 73 (10.38%) Bash
26 71 (10.10%) Docker

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 (1.99%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (1.56%) Apache
3 9 (1.28%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.00%) Confluence
5 6 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.43%) IIS
6 3 (0.43%) nginx
6 3 (0.43%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.43%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.28%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.28%) CloudStack
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.14%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 350 (49.79%) Azure
2 227 (32.29%) AWS
3 129 (18.35%) GCP
4 106 (15.08%) Entra ID
5 69 (9.82%) GitHub
6 58 (8.25%) IaaS
7 51 (7.25%) Azure DevOps
8 50 (7.11%) Serverless
9 47 (6.69%) GitHub Actions
10 43 (6.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 42 (5.97%) Microsoft 365
12 39 (5.55%) Azure Monitor
12 39 (5.55%) PaaS
13 37 (5.26%) AWS CloudFormation
13 37 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
14 33 (4.69%) Azure AKS
15 32 (4.55%) Amazon EKS
16 30 (4.27%) OCI
17 28 (3.98%) SaaS
18 27 (3.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 78 (11.10%) DNS
1 78 (11.10%) Firewall
2 42 (5.97%) Network Security
3 33 (4.69%) VPN
4 20 (2.84%) DHCP
5 19 (2.70%) WAN
6 17 (2.42%) TCP/IP
7 13 (1.85%) Internet
8 8 (1.14%) SD-WAN
9 7 (1.00%) VSAN
10 6 (0.85%) NGFW
10 6 (0.85%) VLAN
11 5 (0.71%) BGP
11 5 (0.71%) Kerberos
12 4 (0.57%) LAN
12 4 (0.57%) Reverse Proxy
12 4 (0.57%) SSL
12 4 (0.57%) Wireless
13 3 (0.43%) IPv4
13 3 (0.43%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.70%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.28%) Amazon RDS
3 13 (1.85%) Data Lake
4 12 (1.71%) BigQuery
5 11 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
6 9 (1.28%) NoSQL
7 8 (1.14%) Oracle Exadata
8 6 (0.85%) Amazon Athena
8 6 (0.85%) DynamoDB
9 5 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
9 5 (0.71%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.43%) Flink
10 3 (0.43%) Looker
10 3 (0.43%) MySQL
10 3 (0.43%) Oracle Database 12c
11 2 (0.28%) Amazon QuickSight
11 2 (0.28%) Amazon Redshift
11 2 (0.28%) Big Data
11 2 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.28%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 46 (6.54%) GitLab
2 36 (5.12%) Jenkins
3 27 (3.84%) Git
4 10 (1.42%) JIRA
5 7 (1.00%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.43%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.43%) Claude Code
6 3 (0.43%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.28%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.28%) Gatling
7 2 (0.28%) JMeter
7 2 (0.28%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.14%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.14%) eggPlant
8 1 (0.14%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.14%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.14%) Selenium
8 1 (0.14%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 84 (11.95%) Finance
2 69 (9.82%) Public Sector
2 69 (9.82%) Social Skills
3 32 (4.55%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (3.84%) Banking
5 11 (1.56%) Manufacturing
6 8 (1.14%) Legal
7 7 (1.00%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (0.71%) Front Office
8 5 (0.71%) Law
8 5 (0.71%) Local Government
8 5 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (0.57%) Investment Banking
9 4 (0.57%) Pharmaceutical
10 3 (0.43%) Aerospace
10 3 (0.43%) Back Office
10 3 (0.43%) Italian Language
10 3 (0.43%) Military
10 3 (0.43%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 265 (37.70%) Terraform
2 20 (2.84%) REST
3 17 (2.42%) ARM Templates
4 14 (1.99%) Kafka
5 13 (1.85%) OAuth
6 12 (1.71%) OAuth2
7 10 (1.42%) Spring
7 10 (1.42%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.28%) YAML
9 8 (1.14%) OpenID
10 7 (1.00%) React
11 6 (0.85%) FastAPI
11 6 (0.85%) Flask
12 5 (0.71%) .NET
12 5 (0.71%) AWS CDK
12 5 (0.71%) Azure Blueprints
12 5 (0.71%) Keycloak
13 4 (0.57%) Hugging Face
13 4 (0.57%) PyTorch
13 4 (0.57%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 112 (15.93%) Cloud Native
2 60 (8.53%) Security Posture
3 37 (5.26%) Hybrid Cloud
4 35 (4.98%) Enterprise Cloud
5 32 (4.55%) Cloud Security Posture
6 21 (2.99%) Data Centre
6 21 (2.99%) Management Information System
7 18 (2.56%) Distributed Systems
8 17 (2.42%) Enterprise Software
8 17 (2.42%) Onboarding
9 14 (1.99%) Private Cloud
10 13 (1.85%) Product Ownership
10 13 (1.85%) Public Cloud
11 8 (1.14%) PKI
12 7 (1.00%) AI Agents
12 7 (1.00%) Linux Command Line
13 6 (0.85%) Distributed Architecture
14 5 (0.71%) CMDB
15 4 (0.57%) Legacy Applications
15 4 (0.57%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 112 (15.93%) Windows
2 75 (10.67%) Linux
3 59 (8.39%) Windows Server
4 30 (4.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (2.13%) Windows Server 2019
6 9 (1.28%) Ubuntu
7 7 (1.00%) VMS
8 3 (0.43%) CentOS
9 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.14%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 243 (34.57%) Infrastructure as Code
2 227 (32.29%) CI/CD
3 175 (24.89%) DevOps
4 164 (23.33%) Cloud Security
5 151 (21.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 121 (17.21%) Platform Engineering
7 87 (12.38%) Migration
8 84 (11.95%) AI
9 77 (10.95%) Agile
10 75 (10.67%) Observability
11 70 (9.96%) Containerisation
12 63 (8.96%) Cybersecurity
13 62 (8.82%) Technical Leadership
14 55 (7.82%) Infrastructure Automation
15 53 (7.54%) Software Engineering
16 52 (7.40%) Continuous Improvement
17 51 (7.25%) Deployment Automation
17 51 (7.25%) DevSecOps
18 47 (6.69%) Change Management
19 45 (6.40%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 160 (22.76%) Python
2 157 (22.33%) PowerShell
3 73 (10.38%) Bash
4 68 (9.67%) Bicep
5 66 (9.39%) SQL
6 33 (4.69%) Java
7 13 (1.85%) C#
8 10 (1.42%) Go
9 9 (1.28%) JavaScript
10 8 (1.14%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.57%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.43%) C
12 3 (0.43%) Kotlin
12 3 (0.43%) Scala
13 2 (0.28%) Groovy
13 2 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.14%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.14%) R
14 1 (0.14%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 190 (27.03%) Security Cleared
2 133 (18.92%) SC Cleared
3 70 (9.96%) DV Cleared
4 45 (6.40%) Azure Certification
5 41 (5.83%) AWS Certification
6 36 (5.12%) Degree
7 21 (2.99%) Microsoft Certification
8 17 (2.42%) CISSP
9 10 (1.42%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (1.14%) MCSE
11 6 (0.85%) CISM
11 6 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (0.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 5 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
13 4 (0.57%) BPSS Clearance
13 4 (0.57%) CCNP
14 3 (0.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 3 (0.43%) CCIE
14 3 (0.43%) CEH
15 2 (0.28%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 12 (1.71%) NIST
3 10 (1.42%) Data Quality
4 6 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
4 6 (0.85%) GDPR
4 6 (0.85%) QA
5 5 (0.71%) NCSC
6 4 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 4 (0.57%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.28%) SLA
8 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.14%) GRC
System Software
1 88 (12.52%) Active Directory
2 71 (10.10%) Docker
3 50 (7.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (5.69%) Virtual Machines
5 34 (4.84%) VMware ESXi
6 25 (3.56%) VMware NSX
7 20 (2.84%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (2.70%) vSphere
9 15 (2.13%) vCloud
10 11 (1.56%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.85%) Squid
12 4 (0.57%) Firmware
12 4 (0.57%) NFS
13 3 (0.43%) Ceph
13 3 (0.43%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.43%) Postfix
14 2 (0.28%) IAG
14 2 (0.28%) KVM
14 2 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 170 (24.18%) Kubernetes
2 48 (6.83%) Ansible
3 30 (4.27%) vCenter Server
4 27 (3.84%) SCOM
5 26 (3.70%) Microsoft Intune
6 23 (3.27%) Grafana
7 21 (2.99%) Prometheus
8 19 (2.70%) Progress Chef
9 14 (1.99%) Puppet
10 11 (1.56%) Istio
11 5 (0.71%) Packer
11 5 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.71%) VxRail
12 4 (0.57%) Cilium
12 4 (0.57%) Suricata
13 3 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 3 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 3 (0.43%) HAProxy
13 3 (0.43%) vRealize
14 2 (0.28%) SELinux
Vendors
1 157 (22.33%) Microsoft
2 81 (11.52%) Google
3 74 (10.53%) VMware
4 34 (4.84%) Oracle
5 27 (3.84%) Databricks
6 20 (2.84%) Red Hat
7 16 (2.28%) SolarWinds
8 14 (1.99%) Palo Alto
8 14 (1.99%) Zscaler
9 13 (1.85%) Broadcom
9 13 (1.85%) Splunk
10 11 (1.56%) Cisco
11 10 (1.42%) Dynatrace
11 10 (1.42%) OpenAI
11 10 (1.42%) ServiceNow
12 8 (1.14%) New Relic
12 8 (1.14%) Salesforce
13 7 (1.00%) CrowdStrike
14 5 (0.71%) CyberArk
15 4 (0.57%) Fortinet