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 11 January 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 271 297 257
Rank change year-on-year +26 -40 +4
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 298 203 327
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.96% 0.75% 0.90%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.05% 0.81% 0.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 222 126 245
10th Percentile £409 £380 £425
25th Percentile £468 £431 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £644 £638
90th Percentile £723 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £523 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.48% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £29.00 - £86.75
Median hourly rate £52.50 - £88.50
75th Percentile £110.00 - £90.25
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £30.00 - £79.25
% change year-on-year - - +53.14%

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 28,488 25,027 33,935
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.52% 92.90% 93.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,175 15,498 23,097
10th Percentile £300 £300 £275
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,738 757 1,541
10th Percentile £14.41 £15.91 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.45 £21.25 £19.06
Median hourly rate £27.50 £35.00 £43.33
Median % change year-on-year -21.43% -19.22% +23.80%
75th Percentile £61.25 £64.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £75.00 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £26.50 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -18.46% -23.53% +28.79%

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 11 January 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 11 January 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 11 January 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 +11 143 £525 -4.55% 39
North of England -12 54 £506 +22.73% 19
South East +22 44 £500 -11.11% 36
Midlands -19 38 £575 +21.05% 9
West Midlands -8 32 £575 -11.54% 7
Yorkshire -23 32 £513 +24.24% 6
North West -17 22 £450 - 13
South West -7 15 £538 -6.52% 12
East of England -13 10 £438 -12.50% 5
East Midlands -23 6 £575 +27.78% 2
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 11 January 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.

1 138 (46.31%) DevOps
2 128 (42.95%) AWS
3 124 (41.61%) Azure
4 122 (40.94%) CI/CD
4 122 (40.94%) Terraform
5 116 (38.93%) Infrastructure as Code
6 100 (33.56%) Security Cleared
7 92 (30.87%) Python
8 88 (29.53%) Kubernetes
9 71 (23.83%) GCP
10 70 (23.49%) GitHub
11 64 (21.48%) Agile
12 62 (20.81%) SC Cleared
13 55 (18.46%) Docker
14 54 (18.12%) Containerisation
14 54 (18.12%) Microsoft
15 50 (16.78%) Jenkins
16 48 (16.11%) Cloud Security
17 47 (15.77%) Google
18 46 (15.44%) GitHub Actions
19 41 (13.76%) Serverless
20 40 (13.42%) GitLab
20 40 (13.42%) Linux
21 39 (13.09%) REST
22 37 (12.42%) PowerShell
23 36 (12.08%) Ansible
24 35 (11.74%) SQL
25 34 (11.41%) DV Cleared
25 34 (11.41%) Problem-Solving
26 32 (10.74%) 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 5 (1.68%) Apache
1 5 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.67%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.67%) Confluence
3 2 (0.67%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.34%) Apache Superset
4 1 (0.34%) CMS
4 1 (0.34%) Headless CMS
4 1 (0.34%) NetWeaver
4 1 (0.34%) nginx
4 1 (0.34%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 4 (1.34%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 128 (42.95%) AWS
2 124 (41.61%) Azure
3 71 (23.83%) GCP
4 70 (23.49%) GitHub
5 46 (15.44%) GitHub Actions
6 41 (13.76%) Serverless
7 32 (10.74%) Entra ID
8 28 (9.40%) AWS CloudFormation
9 27 (9.06%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (7.05%) Amazon EKS
10 21 (7.05%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 19 (6.38%) PaaS
12 17 (5.70%) Amazon S3
12 17 (5.70%) IaaS
13 16 (5.37%) Azure Monitor
14 15 (5.03%) AWS Lambda
15 14 (4.70%) Azure AKS
16 12 (4.03%) Azure Sentinel
16 12 (4.03%) Cloud Run
17 11 (3.69%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 25 (8.39%) Firewall
2 21 (7.05%) Cisco Firepower
2 21 (7.05%) Cisco IOS
2 21 (7.05%) Cisco ISE
2 21 (7.05%) Junos
3 15 (5.03%) Network Security
4 10 (3.36%) VPN
5 5 (1.68%) DNS
5 5 (1.68%) NX-OS
6 3 (1.01%) TCP/IP
6 3 (1.01%) WAN
7 2 (0.67%) LAN
7 2 (0.67%) SAN
7 2 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
8 1 (0.34%) IPsec
8 1 (0.34%) MPLS
8 1 (0.34%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (0.34%) VLAN
8 1 (0.34%) WireGuard
8 1 (0.34%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (9.73%) NoSQL
2 25 (8.39%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (3.02%) BigQuery
4 8 (2.68%) Power BI
5 6 (2.01%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (2.01%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (1.68%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (1.34%) DynamoDB
8 3 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (1.01%) Amazon Aurora
8 3 (1.01%) Data Lake
8 3 (1.01%) Delta Lake
8 3 (1.01%) Oracle Database
9 2 (0.67%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.67%) Mixpanel
9 2 (0.67%) OLAP
9 2 (0.67%) OLTP
9 2 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (0.67%) SQL Server
9 2 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 50 (16.78%) Jenkins
2 40 (13.42%) GitLab
3 22 (7.38%) Git
4 12 (4.03%) Liquibase
5 10 (3.36%) JIRA
6 3 (1.01%) Postman
7 2 (0.67%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.67%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.34%) TeamCity
General
1 55 (18.46%) Social Skills
2 52 (17.45%) Finance
3 26 (8.72%) Banking
4 23 (7.72%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (6.38%) Public Sector
6 11 (3.69%) Financial Institution
7 10 (3.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (2.35%) Aeronautics
9 6 (2.01%) Local Government
9 6 (2.01%) Retail
10 5 (1.68%) Aviation
10 5 (1.68%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (1.68%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.34%) Documentation Skills
12 2 (0.67%) Billing
12 2 (0.67%) Marketing
13 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.34%) Military
13 1 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (13.09%) REST
2 20 (6.71%) RESTful
3 18 (6.04%) Elastic Stack
3 18 (6.04%) Node.js
4 13 (4.36%) Kafka
5 11 (3.69%) ARM Templates
6 9 (3.02%) React
7 8 (2.68%) OpenAPI
7 8 (2.68%) OpenTelemetry
7 8 (2.68%) Oracle Fusion
7 8 (2.68%) SAML
7 8 (2.68%) SOAP
8 7 (2.35%) OpenID
9 6 (2.01%) AngularJS
9 6 (2.01%) AWS CDK
9 6 (2.01%) GraphQL
9 6 (2.01%) JSON
9 6 (2.01%) LangChain
9 6 (2.01%) Spring
9 6 (2.01%) XSD
Miscellaneous
1 52 (17.45%) Cloud Native
2 33 (11.07%) Public Cloud
3 20 (6.71%) Distributed Systems
4 8 (2.68%) PKI
5 5 (1.68%) Data Centre
5 5 (1.68%) Genomics
5 5 (1.68%) Hybrid Cloud
5 5 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (1.68%) Security Posture
6 4 (1.34%) Cloud Security Posture
6 4 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.34%) Life Science
6 4 (1.34%) Product Ownership
7 3 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (1.01%) Replication
8 2 (0.67%) AI Agents
8 2 (0.67%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.34%) CSOC
9 1 (0.34%) Distributed Applications
9 1 (0.34%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 40 (13.42%) Linux
2 26 (8.72%) Windows
3 19 (6.38%) Windows Server
4 9 (3.02%) Unix
5 4 (1.34%) VMS
6 1 (0.34%) Alpine Linux
6 1 (0.34%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (46.31%) DevOps
2 122 (40.94%) CI/CD
3 116 (38.93%) Infrastructure as Code
4 64 (21.48%) Agile
5 54 (18.12%) Containerisation
6 48 (16.11%) Cloud Security
7 34 (11.41%) Problem-Solving
8 32 (10.74%) Microservices
9 31 (10.40%) Infrastructure Automation
10 29 (9.73%) Cybersecurity
10 29 (9.73%) Migration
11 28 (9.40%) Continuous Improvement
11 28 (9.40%) High Availability
11 28 (9.40%) Software Engineering
12 27 (9.06%) DevSecOps
12 27 (9.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 24 (8.05%) AI
14 23 (7.72%) Cost Optimisation
14 23 (7.72%) ITSM
14 23 (7.72%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 92 (30.87%) Python
2 37 (12.42%) PowerShell
3 35 (11.74%) SQL
4 26 (8.72%) Go
5 24 (8.05%) Java
6 18 (6.04%) Bash
7 16 (5.37%) Bicep
8 11 (3.69%) Shell Script
9 9 (3.02%) TypeScript
10 6 (2.01%) JavaScript
11 5 (1.68%) C#
11 5 (1.68%) Perl
12 4 (1.34%) BeanShell
13 3 (1.01%) Ruby
14 2 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.67%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.34%) C
15 1 (0.34%) Korn
15 1 (0.34%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 100 (33.56%) Security Cleared
2 62 (20.81%) SC Cleared
3 34 (11.41%) DV Cleared
4 32 (10.74%) Azure Certification
5 29 (9.73%) Degree
6 23 (7.72%) AWS Certification
7 18 (6.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (5.37%) Master's Degree
9 10 (3.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
11 6 (2.01%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 6 (2.01%) CISSP
12 5 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
12 5 (1.68%) CISM
13 4 (1.34%) AWS Certified Developer
13 4 (1.34%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 3 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 3 (1.01%) CCSP
15 2 (0.67%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
15 2 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (3.02%) NCSC
3 7 (2.35%) NIST
3 7 (2.35%) QA
4 6 (2.01%) GDPR
5 5 (1.68%) GRC
6 3 (1.01%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.67%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.34%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
System Software
1 55 (18.46%) Docker
2 31 (10.40%) Active Directory
3 21 (7.05%) VMware NSX
4 7 (2.35%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.68%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (1.34%) Firmware
7 3 (1.01%) VMware Infrastructure
8 2 (0.67%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.34%) KVM
9 1 (0.34%) Squid
Systems Management
1 122 (40.94%) Terraform
2 88 (29.53%) Kubernetes
3 36 (12.08%) Ansible
4 25 (8.39%) Prometheus
5 24 (8.05%) Grafana
6 21 (7.05%) vCenter Server
7 12 (4.03%) Istio
8 7 (2.35%) Argo
9 5 (1.68%) Microsoft Intune
9 5 (1.68%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (1.01%) Podman
10 3 (1.01%) Proxmox
11 2 (0.67%) FortiGate
11 2 (0.67%) Puppet
12 1 (0.34%) Consul
12 1 (0.34%) Docker Swarm
12 1 (0.34%) Packer
12 1 (0.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 54 (18.12%) Microsoft
2 47 (15.77%) Google
3 23 (7.72%) Cisco
4 22 (7.38%) Juniper
4 22 (7.38%) Splunk
5 21 (7.05%) SolarWinds
6 16 (5.37%) Oracle
7 11 (3.69%) Databricks
8 9 (3.02%) ServiceNow
9 8 (2.68%) Palo Alto
10 5 (1.68%) Broadcom
10 5 (1.68%) MuleSoft
10 5 (1.68%) Ping Identity
10 5 (1.68%) VMware
11 4 (1.34%) Dynatrace
12 3 (1.01%) Salesforce
12 3 (1.01%) Zscaler
13 2 (0.67%) Cloudera
13 2 (0.67%) HP
13 2 (0.67%) Proofpoint