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 2 August 2026.

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

 6 months to
2 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 205 291 320
Rank change year-on-year +86 +29 -45
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 610 228 220
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.34% 0.82% 0.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.45% 0.90% 0.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 403 178 153
10th Percentile £400 £401 £389
25th Percentile £462 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £625 £575 £625
90th Percentile £688 £641 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 4 1
10th Percentile £23.20 £33.75 -
25th Percentile £59.05 £39.38 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £53.75 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.26% +79.17% -
75th Percentile £81.25 £74.38 £32.50
90th Percentile - £95.75 -
UK median hourly rate £77.00 £53.75 £30.00
% change year-on-year +43.26% +79.17% -

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 42,152 25,459 31,165
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.57% 91.68% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,638 16,519 20,588
10th Percentile £329 £285 £300
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,102 1,306 1,856
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.67 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.00 £17.79 £21.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.08% -42.22% +4.65%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £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 2 August 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 2 August 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 2 August 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 +71 304 £525 +0.96% 279
South East -2 105 £538 +2.38% 46
North of England -9 98 £525 +16.67% 85
Midlands -7 58 £525 +10.53% 26
North West -19 56 £535 +22.34% 57
Yorkshire -15 35 £463 -7.50% 20
West Midlands -32 31 £525 +8.81% 17
East Midlands +3 26 £450 -5.26% 9
East of England +5 22 £505 +26.25% 18
South West -29 16 £563 +2.27% 36
North East -39 7 £525 +7.69% 8
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 2 August 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.

1 312 (51.15%) Azure
2 265 (43.44%) Terraform
3 234 (38.36%) AWS
4 219 (35.90%) CI/CD
5 216 (35.41%) Infrastructure as Code
6 181 (29.67%) DevOps
7 167 (27.38%) Security Cleared
8 151 (24.75%) Python
9 143 (23.44%) Cloud Security
10 140 (22.95%) PowerShell
11 133 (21.80%) Kubernetes
12 131 (21.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 129 (21.15%) Microsoft
14 128 (20.98%) GCP
15 127 (20.82%) SC Cleared
16 102 (16.72%) Platform Engineering
17 100 (16.39%) Windows
18 84 (13.77%) Google
19 81 (13.28%) Agile
20 79 (12.95%) Migration
21 73 (11.97%) Firewall
22 72 (11.80%) AI
23 71 (11.64%) DNS
23 71 (11.64%) GitHub
24 70 (11.48%) Bash
25 67 (10.98%) Entra ID
26 66 (10.82%) Docker
27 65 (10.66%) Linux
28 62 (10.16%) Active Directory
28 62 (10.16%) Containerisation

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 (1.97%) Microsoft Exchange
2 8 (1.31%) Apache
3 7 (1.15%) Confluence
4 5 (0.82%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.66%) nginx
6 3 (0.49%) IIS
6 3 (0.49%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.33%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.16%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.16%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.16%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.16%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.33%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 312 (51.15%) Azure
2 234 (38.36%) AWS
3 128 (20.98%) GCP
4 71 (11.64%) GitHub
5 67 (10.98%) Entra ID
6 57 (9.34%) Serverless
7 48 (7.87%) GitHub Actions
8 44 (7.21%) Azure DevOps
9 43 (7.05%) IaaS
10 41 (6.72%) Azure AKS
11 37 (6.07%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 35 (5.74%) AWS Lambda
13 34 (5.57%) AWS CloudFormation
14 33 (5.41%) Amazon S3
14 33 (5.41%) PaaS
15 31 (5.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 30 (4.92%) Amazon EC2
17 28 (4.59%) Azure Monitor
18 26 (4.26%) Amazon ECS
18 26 (4.26%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 73 (11.97%) Firewall
2 71 (11.64%) DNS
3 34 (5.57%) VPN
4 28 (4.59%) Network Security
5 16 (2.62%) DHCP
5 16 (2.62%) WAN
6 14 (2.30%) TCP/IP
7 10 (1.64%) Internet
8 6 (0.98%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.98%) VLAN
9 5 (0.82%) Reverse Proxy
9 5 (0.82%) SSL
10 4 (0.66%) BGP
10 4 (0.66%) LAN
10 4 (0.66%) SAN
11 3 (0.49%) IPv4
11 3 (0.49%) OSPF
11 3 (0.49%) SMTP
11 3 (0.49%) VSAN
11 3 (0.49%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.61%) SQL Server
2 12 (1.97%) Amazon RDS
3 10 (1.64%) BigQuery
3 10 (1.64%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (1.48%) Amazon Athena
5 6 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
5 6 (0.98%) DynamoDB
5 6 (0.98%) Oracle Exadata
6 5 (0.82%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.66%) Data Lake
8 3 (0.49%) Amazon QuickSight
8 3 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (0.49%) Flink
8 3 (0.49%) Looker
8 3 (0.49%) MySQL
8 3 (0.49%) Oracle Database 12c
9 2 (0.33%) Big Data
10 1 (0.16%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.16%) Redis
10 1 (0.16%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 42 (6.89%) GitLab
2 35 (5.74%) Jenkins
3 28 (4.59%) Git
4 12 (1.97%) JIRA
5 8 (1.31%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.49%) Selenium
6 3 (0.49%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.33%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.33%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.33%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.33%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.33%) Octopus Deploy
7 2 (0.33%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.16%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.16%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.16%) Gatling
8 1 (0.16%) Postman
8 1 (0.16%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.16%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.16%) TestRail
General
1 76 (12.46%) Finance
2 64 (10.49%) Social Skills
3 52 (8.52%) Public Sector
4 23 (3.77%) Analytical Skills
4 23 (3.77%) Banking
5 9 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 6 (0.98%) Investment Banking
7 5 (0.82%) Law
7 5 (0.82%) Local Government
8 4 (0.66%) Legal
8 4 (0.66%) Pharmaceutical
9 3 (0.49%) Front Office
9 3 (0.49%) Military
9 3 (0.49%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.33%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.33%) Back Office
10 2 (0.33%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.33%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.33%) Marketing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.77%) REST
2 12 (1.97%) OAuth
2 12 (1.97%) OAuth2
3 11 (1.80%) ARM Templates
4 10 (1.64%) Spring
4 10 (1.64%) Spring Boot
5 8 (1.31%) Node.js
6 7 (1.15%) OpenID
7 6 (0.98%) FastAPI
7 6 (0.98%) Flask
7 6 (0.98%) React
7 6 (0.98%) YAML
8 5 (0.82%) Kafka
8 5 (0.82%) Model Context Protocol
8 5 (0.82%) Playwright
9 4 (0.66%) AWS CDK
9 4 (0.66%) Express.js
9 4 (0.66%) Hugging Face
9 4 (0.66%) PyTorch
9 4 (0.66%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 110 (18.03%) Cloud Native
2 43 (7.05%) Security Posture
3 33 (5.41%) Hybrid Cloud
4 25 (4.10%) Enterprise Cloud
5 23 (3.77%) Public Cloud
6 18 (2.95%) Cloud Security Posture
7 16 (2.62%) Data Centre
8 15 (2.46%) Management Information System
9 14 (2.30%) Onboarding
10 12 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
11 11 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
12 9 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
13 8 (1.31%) Product Ownership
14 7 (1.15%) AI Agents
14 7 (1.15%) Legacy Systems
15 6 (0.98%) Linux Command Line
16 5 (0.82%) PKI
16 5 (0.82%) Private Cloud
17 4 (0.66%) Virtual Team
18 3 (0.49%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 100 (16.39%) Windows
2 65 (10.66%) Linux
3 50 (8.20%) Windows Server
4 27 (4.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 10 (1.64%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.31%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.49%) CentOS
8 2 (0.33%) VMS
8 2 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 219 (35.90%) CI/CD
2 216 (35.41%) Infrastructure as Code
3 181 (29.67%) DevOps
4 143 (23.44%) Cloud Security
5 131 (21.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 102 (16.72%) Platform Engineering
7 81 (13.28%) Agile
8 79 (12.95%) Migration
9 72 (11.80%) AI
10 62 (10.16%) Containerisation
11 58 (9.51%) Observability
12 54 (8.85%) Software Engineering
13 48 (7.87%) Technical Leadership
14 47 (7.70%) Infrastructure Automation
15 45 (7.38%) Continuous Improvement
16 43 (7.05%) Problem-Solving
17 42 (6.89%) DevSecOps
18 41 (6.72%) Change Management
19 37 (6.07%) Cybersecurity
20 34 (5.57%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 151 (24.75%) Python
2 140 (22.95%) PowerShell
3 70 (11.48%) Bash
4 59 (9.67%) SQL
5 58 (9.51%) Bicep
6 33 (5.41%) Java
7 17 (2.79%) C#
8 10 (1.64%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.48%) Go
9 9 (1.48%) TypeScript
10 5 (0.82%) Groovy
10 5 (0.82%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.49%) C
11 3 (0.49%) Scala
12 2 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.33%) Ruby
13 1 (0.16%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.16%) Cypher
13 1 (0.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.16%) Perl
Qualifications
1 167 (27.38%) Security Cleared
2 127 (20.82%) SC Cleared
3 56 (9.18%) DV Cleared
4 48 (7.87%) Azure Certification
5 42 (6.89%) AWS Certification
6 27 (4.43%) Degree
7 14 (2.30%) CISSP
8 13 (2.13%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 13 (2.13%) Microsoft Certification
9 9 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
9 9 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
10 6 (0.98%) CCNP
11 5 (0.82%) CISM
12 4 (0.66%) CCIE
12 4 (0.66%) MCSE
12 4 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 3 (0.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 3 (0.49%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 3 (0.49%) BPSS Clearance
14 2 (0.33%) CCIE Security
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (1.80%) Data Quality
3 10 (1.64%) QA
4 8 (1.31%) NCSC
4 8 (1.31%) NIST
5 4 (0.66%) GDPR
6 2 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
6 2 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
6 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.33%) SLA
7 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.16%) GRC
7 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 66 (10.82%) Docker
2 62 (10.16%) Active Directory
3 34 (5.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (4.75%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (4.10%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (3.44%) VMware NSX
7 17 (2.79%) vSphere
8 16 (2.62%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (1.97%) vCloud
10 10 (1.64%) Hyper-V
11 7 (1.15%) Squid
12 5 (0.82%) Firmware
13 3 (0.49%) Ceph
13 3 (0.49%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.49%) NFS
13 3 (0.49%) Postfix
14 2 (0.33%) KVM
14 2 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 265 (43.44%) Terraform
2 133 (21.80%) Kubernetes
3 47 (7.70%) Ansible
4 21 (3.44%) vCenter Server
5 19 (3.11%) Grafana
5 19 (3.11%) Progress Chef
5 19 (3.11%) Prometheus
5 19 (3.11%) SCOM
6 17 (2.79%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (2.46%) Puppet
8 11 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
9 9 (1.48%) Istio
10 8 (1.31%) Packer
11 5 (0.82%) VxRail
12 4 (0.66%) HAProxy
12 4 (0.66%) Suricata
13 3 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 3 (0.49%) Salt
13 3 (0.49%) vRealize
14 2 (0.33%) Cilium
Vendors
1 129 (21.15%) Microsoft
2 84 (13.77%) Google
3 55 (9.02%) VMware
4 25 (4.10%) Oracle
5 17 (2.79%) Red Hat
6 15 (2.46%) Zscaler
7 12 (1.97%) ServiceNow
8 11 (1.80%) Palo Alto
8 11 (1.80%) Splunk
9 9 (1.48%) Cisco
9 9 (1.48%) Dynatrace
9 9 (1.48%) Salesforce
10 8 (1.31%) Broadcom
10 8 (1.31%) SolarWinds
11 7 (1.15%) CrowdStrike
11 7 (1.15%) OpenAI
12 6 (0.98%) Databricks
12 6 (0.98%) Fortinet
12 6 (0.98%) New Relic
13 4 (0.66%) EMC
498 Cloud Engineer jobs in England