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 4 September 2026.

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

 6 months to
4 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 199 307 322
Rank change year-on-year +108 +15 -49
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 658 210 212
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.44% 0.77% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.56% 0.84% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 441 157 136
10th Percentile £400 £401 £400
25th Percentile £455 £447 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £558
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -10.31% +1.36%
75th Percentile £610 £550 £638
90th Percentile £683 £631 £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 42,168 24,883 30,334
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.41% 91.42% 93.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,332 16,051 19,383
10th Percentile £325 £281 £304
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £506 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% -3.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £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 3,270 1,335 1,579
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.52 £14.28
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £21.23
Median hourly rate £42.58 £25.15 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +69.28% -45.54% +5.29%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £79.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.13 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.50% -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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +50 296 £525 +2.44% 414
North of England +10 126 £513 +13.89% 101
South East +16 125 £538 +7.50% 56
North West +12 77 £525 +20.00% 55
Midlands +8 68 £500 - 45
Yorkshire -9 42 £460 -8.00% 36
East Midlands +6 35 £475 - 24
West Midlands -17 32 £525 -3.67% 21
East of England -1 19 £488 +0.52% 27
South West -35 16 £575 +4.55% 50
North East -35 7 £525 +14.13% 10
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 4 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.

1 333 (50.61%) Azure
2 263 (39.97%) Terraform
3 230 (34.95%) AWS
4 227 (34.50%) Infrastructure as Code
5 220 (33.43%) CI/CD
6 184 (27.96%) Security Cleared
7 176 (26.75%) DevOps
8 160 (24.32%) Cloud Security
9 157 (23.86%) Kubernetes
10 153 (23.25%) Python
11 145 (22.04%) Microsoft
11 145 (22.04%) PowerShell
12 142 (21.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 133 (20.21%) SC Cleared
14 132 (20.06%) GCP
15 122 (18.54%) Platform Engineering
16 103 (15.65%) Windows
17 84 (12.77%) Entra ID
18 83 (12.61%) AI
18 83 (12.61%) Google
19 81 (12.31%) Migration
20 78 (11.85%) Agile
21 76 (11.55%) Active Directory
21 76 (11.55%) DNS
21 76 (11.55%) Firewall
22 73 (11.09%) Bash
23 70 (10.64%) VMware
24 69 (10.49%) Bicep
24 69 (10.49%) Linux
25 68 (10.33%) DV Cleared

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 13 (1.98%) 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 1 (0.15%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 333 (50.61%) Azure
2 230 (34.95%) AWS
3 132 (20.06%) GCP
4 84 (12.77%) Entra ID
5 67 (10.18%) GitHub
6 51 (7.75%) Azure DevOps
7 50 (7.60%) Serverless
8 47 (7.14%) IaaS
9 43 (6.53%) GitHub Actions
10 39 (5.93%) AWS CloudFormation
11 38 (5.78%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 37 (5.62%) AWS Lambda
13 34 (5.17%) Azure Monitor
13 34 (5.17%) PaaS
14 33 (5.02%) Azure AKS
15 30 (4.56%) Microsoft 365
15 30 (4.56%) SaaS
16 29 (4.41%) Amazon EKS
17 28 (4.26%) Amazon EC2
18 27 (4.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 76 (11.55%) DNS
1 76 (11.55%) Firewall
2 39 (5.93%) 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%) 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%) SAN
11 3 (0.46%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.34%) SQL Server
2 15 (2.28%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (1.82%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.52%) BigQuery
5 9 (1.37%) Data Lake
6 8 (1.22%) Oracle Exadata
7 5 (0.76%) Amazon Athena
7 5 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.76%) DynamoDB
7 5 (0.76%) NoSQL
7 5 (0.76%) Oracle Database
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 47 (7.14%) GitLab
2 34 (5.17%) Jenkins
3 29 (4.41%) 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%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.15%) eggPlant
8 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.15%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.15%) TestRail
General
1 79 (12.01%) Finance
2 64 (9.73%) Social Skills
3 60 (9.12%) Public Sector
4 28 (4.26%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (3.50%) Banking
6 9 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (1.22%) Manufacturing
8 6 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (0.76%) Investment Banking
9 5 (0.76%) Law
9 5 (0.76%) Local Government
10 4 (0.61%) Legal
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%) Marketing
11 3 (0.46%) Military
11 3 (0.46%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.46%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (39.97%) Terraform
2 19 (2.89%) REST
3 15 (2.28%) 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
9 5 (0.76%) Azure Blueprints
10 4 (0.61%) .NET
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 58 (8.81%) Security Posture
3 35 (5.32%) Hybrid Cloud
4 33 (5.02%) Enterprise Cloud
5 30 (4.56%) Cloud Security Posture
6 21 (3.19%) Management Information System
7 18 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
7 18 (2.74%) Onboarding
8 16 (2.43%) Public Cloud
9 14 (2.13%) Data Centre
10 13 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
11 12 (1.82%) Private Cloud
11 12 (1.82%) Product Ownership
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
16 4 (0.61%) NHS
16 4 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 103 (15.65%) Windows
2 69 (10.49%) Linux
3 56 (8.51%) Windows Server
4 29 (4.41%) 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
1 227 (34.50%) Infrastructure as Code
2 220 (33.43%) CI/CD
3 176 (26.75%) DevOps
4 160 (24.32%) Cloud Security
5 142 (21.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 122 (18.54%) Platform Engineering
7 83 (12.61%) AI
8 81 (12.31%) Migration
9 78 (11.85%) Agile
10 68 (10.33%) Observability
11 63 (9.57%) Containerisation
12 59 (8.97%) Technical Leadership
13 54 (8.21%) DevSecOps
14 52 (7.90%) Cybersecurity
15 51 (7.75%) Continuous Improvement
15 51 (7.75%) Software Engineering
16 49 (7.45%) Infrastructure Automation
17 48 (7.29%) Change Management
18 44 (6.69%) Deployment Automation
18 44 (6.69%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 153 (23.25%) Python
2 145 (22.04%) PowerShell
3 73 (11.09%) Bash
4 69 (10.49%) Bicep
5 58 (8.81%) SQL
6 34 (5.17%) Java
7 13 (1.98%) 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%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.15%) Perl
14 1 (0.15%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 184 (27.96%) Security Cleared
2 133 (20.21%) SC Cleared
3 68 (10.33%) DV Cleared
4 44 (6.69%) Azure Certification
5 42 (6.38%) AWS Certification
6 31 (4.71%) Degree
7 18 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
8 17 (2.58%) CISSP
9 11 (1.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (1.06%) Cisco Certification
10 7 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (0.91%) CCNP
11 6 (0.91%) CISM
11 6 (0.91%) MCSE
12 5 (0.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 4 (0.61%) CCIE
14 3 (0.46%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 3 (0.46%) BPSS Clearance
14 3 (0.46%) CEH
15 2 (0.30%) CCIE Security
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (1.52%) Data Quality
2 10 (1.52%) NIST
2 10 (1.52%) QA
3 9 (1.37%) NCSC
4 5 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
4 5 (0.76%) GDPR
5 3 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 3 (0.46%) SLA
6 2 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
6 2 (0.30%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.15%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.15%) GRC
7 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 76 (11.55%) Active Directory
2 67 (10.18%) 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 20 (3.04%) Virtual Desktop
7 19 (2.89%) vSphere
8 15 (2.28%) vCloud
9 11 (1.67%) Hyper-V
10 7 (1.06%) Squid
11 4 (0.61%) Firmware
12 3 (0.46%) Ceph
12 3 (0.46%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.46%) NFS
12 3 (0.46%) Postfix
13 2 (0.30%) KVM
13 2 (0.30%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 157 (23.86%) 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
6 19 (2.89%) Progress Chef
7 18 (2.74%) Prometheus
8 14 (2.13%) Puppet
9 11 (1.67%) Istio
10 7 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (0.91%) Packer
12 5 (0.76%) VxRail
13 4 (0.61%) Suricata
14 3 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (0.46%) Cilium
14 3 (0.46%) HAProxy
14 3 (0.46%) vRealize
15 2 (0.30%) FortiGate
15 2 (0.30%) SELinux
Vendors
1 145 (22.04%) Microsoft
2 83 (12.61%) Google
3 70 (10.64%) VMware
4 31 (4.71%) Oracle
5 20 (3.04%) Databricks
6 19 (2.89%) 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%) Salesforce
11 8 (1.22%) Cisco
11 8 (1.22%) Dynatrace
12 7 (1.06%) CrowdStrike
12 7 (1.06%) New Relic
13 5 (0.76%) CyberArk
13 5 (0.76%) Fortinet
695 Cloud Engineer jobs in England