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 1 May 2026.

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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 241 304 312
Rank change year-on-year +63 +8 -48
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 423 185 240
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.05% 0.76% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.13% 0.82% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 292 150 168
10th Percentile £401 £400 £400
25th Percentile £463 £425 £473
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £620
90th Percentile £705 £675 £691
UK median daily rate £522 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 3
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £51.25 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 - £30.00
75th Percentile £53.75 - £32.50
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £25.25 - £30.00
% change year-on-year - - -58.90%

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 37,282 22,549 34,489
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 92.63% 92.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,335 15,006 22,895
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £643
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,521 899 2,432
10th Percentile £15.79 £14.20 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £47.00 £30.78 £36.31
Median % change year-on-year +52.70% -15.22% -19.32%
75th Percentile £67.50 £63.75 £61.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.42
% change year-on-year +51.72% -20.37% -19.07%

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 1 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
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 1 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 +58 247 £525 - 66
North of England -36 51 £500 +11.11% 32
South East -33 44 £510 -9.33% 35
Midlands -64 28 £675 +42.11% 18
North West -28 25 £544 +20.83% 19
East of England -9 24 £505 +2.54% 9
Yorkshire -30 23 £481 +13.24% 10
West Midlands -47 23 £675 +14.89% 14
South West -14 21 £550 -4.35% 22
East Midlands -33 5 £496 +4.47% 4
North East -23 3 £525 -12.50% 3
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 1 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.

1 202 (47.75%) Azure
2 196 (46.34%) Terraform
3 175 (41.37%) AWS
4 168 (39.72%) CI/CD
5 167 (39.48%) Infrastructure as Code
6 156 (36.88%) DevOps
7 124 (29.31%) Security Cleared
8 106 (25.06%) SC Cleared
9 103 (24.35%) Kubernetes
10 92 (21.75%) GCP
11 89 (21.04%) Cloud Security
11 89 (21.04%) Python
12 87 (20.57%) GitHub
13 85 (20.09%) Microsoft
14 71 (16.78%) Google
14 71 (16.78%) PowerShell
15 70 (16.55%) Agile
16 59 (13.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 58 (13.71%) Migration
18 56 (13.24%) Docker
18 56 (13.24%) Platform Engineering
19 54 (12.77%) Containerisation
20 53 (12.53%) GitHub Actions
21 47 (11.11%) Firewall
22 44 (10.40%) Serverless
23 41 (9.69%) Azure Certification
23 41 (9.69%) SQL
24 40 (9.46%) Continuous Improvement
24 40 (9.46%) DevSecOps
24 40 (9.46%) Entra ID

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 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (0.95%) Apache Spark
2 4 (0.95%) Confluence
3 3 (0.71%) Apache
4 2 (0.47%) nginx
5 1 (0.24%) SAS
5 1 (0.24%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.24%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 2 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.24%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 202 (47.75%) Azure
2 175 (41.37%) AWS
3 92 (21.75%) GCP
4 87 (20.57%) GitHub
5 53 (12.53%) GitHub Actions
6 44 (10.40%) Serverless
7 40 (9.46%) Entra ID
8 39 (9.22%) Azure DevOps
9 35 (8.27%) AWS CloudFormation
10 33 (7.80%) Azure AKS
10 33 (7.80%) PaaS
11 32 (7.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 30 (7.09%) Amazon S3
13 29 (6.86%) IaaS
14 24 (5.67%) AWS Lambda
15 22 (5.20%) Amazon EKS
16 21 (4.96%) Amazon ECS
17 20 (4.73%) Azure Monitor
18 18 (4.26%) OCI
18 18 (4.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 47 (11.11%) Firewall
2 17 (4.02%) Network Security
3 15 (3.55%) VPN
4 13 (3.07%) DNS
5 6 (1.42%) Cisco Firepower
5 6 (1.42%) Reverse Proxy
6 5 (1.18%) Cisco IOS
6 5 (1.18%) Cisco ISE
6 5 (1.18%) Junos
6 5 (1.18%) NX-OS
7 4 (0.95%) Software-Defined Networking
8 3 (0.71%) SMTP
9 2 (0.47%) BGP
9 2 (0.47%) DKIM
9 2 (0.47%) Kerberos
9 2 (0.47%) NGFW
9 2 (0.47%) VLAN
10 1 (0.24%) SD-WAN
10 1 (0.24%) tcpdump
10 1 (0.24%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.84%) BigQuery
2 11 (2.60%) Amazon Athena
3 7 (1.65%) DynamoDB
3 7 (1.65%) SQL Server
4 6 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
4 6 (1.42%) Azure SQL Database
5 5 (1.18%) Amazon Redshift
5 5 (1.18%) NoSQL
5 5 (1.18%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.95%) Amazon QuickSight
6 4 (0.95%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (0.95%) Oracle Database
6 4 (0.95%) Power BI
7 3 (0.71%) Big Data
7 3 (0.71%) Snowflake Schema
8 2 (0.47%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.47%) Mixpanel
8 2 (0.47%) OLAP
8 2 (0.47%) OLTP
8 2 (0.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 37 (8.75%) Jenkins
2 30 (7.09%) GitLab
3 29 (6.86%) Git
4 6 (1.42%) JIRA
5 4 (0.95%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.71%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.47%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.47%) Postman
7 2 (0.47%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.47%) Selenium
7 2 (0.47%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.24%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.24%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.24%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.24%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.24%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.24%) JUnit
8 1 (0.24%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.24%) sqlmap
General
1 54 (12.77%) Social Skills
2 49 (11.58%) Finance
3 37 (8.75%) Public Sector
4 16 (3.78%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (3.78%) Banking
5 9 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
6 8 (1.89%) Retail
7 7 (1.65%) Aeronautics
7 7 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (1.18%) Legal
9 5 (1.18%) Telecoms
10 4 (0.95%) Investment Banking
10 4 (0.95%) Marketing
11 3 (0.71%) Military
12 2 (0.47%) Financial Institution
12 2 (0.47%) Law
12 2 (0.47%) Local Government
12 2 (0.47%) Police
13 1 (0.24%) Billing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (5.20%) REST
2 21 (4.96%) Node.js
3 12 (2.84%) Kafka
4 11 (2.60%) OpenTelemetry
4 11 (2.60%) React
5 9 (2.13%) OAuth
5 9 (2.13%) OpenID
5 9 (2.13%) Spring
6 8 (1.89%) .NET
6 8 (1.89%) ARM Templates
6 8 (1.89%) OAuth2
6 8 (1.89%) Oracle Fusion
6 8 (1.89%) Spring Boot
7 7 (1.65%) AngularJS
7 7 (1.65%) OpenAPI
7 7 (1.65%) Playwright
7 7 (1.65%) SOAP
8 6 (1.42%) LangChain
9 5 (1.18%) NestJS
9 5 (1.18%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 75 (17.73%) Cloud Native
2 28 (6.62%) Public Cloud
3 17 (4.02%) Hybrid Cloud
4 12 (2.84%) Data Centre
5 9 (2.13%) Security Posture
6 8 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (1.89%) Product Ownership
7 7 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (1.42%) Cyber Threat
9 5 (1.18%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.18%) PKI
9 5 (1.18%) Virtual Team
10 4 (0.95%) Enterprise Cloud
10 4 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (0.71%) Cloud Security Posture
11 3 (0.71%) Distributed Systems
11 3 (0.71%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.71%) Replication
12 2 (0.47%) CMDB
12 2 (0.47%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 31 (7.33%) Windows
2 25 (5.91%) Linux
3 14 (3.31%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.95%) Unix
5 3 (0.71%) VMS
6 1 (0.24%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 168 (39.72%) CI/CD
2 167 (39.48%) Infrastructure as Code
3 156 (36.88%) DevOps
4 89 (21.04%) Cloud Security
5 70 (16.55%) Agile
6 59 (13.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 58 (13.71%) Migration
8 56 (13.24%) Platform Engineering
9 54 (12.77%) Containerisation
10 40 (9.46%) Continuous Improvement
10 40 (9.46%) DevSecOps
11 39 (9.22%) AI
12 38 (8.98%) Observability
13 37 (8.75%) Cybersecurity
14 33 (7.80%) Problem-Solving
14 33 (7.80%) Software Engineering
15 31 (7.33%) Infrastructure Automation
16 28 (6.62%) Mentoring
17 27 (6.38%) Microservices
18 25 (5.91%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 89 (21.04%) Python
2 71 (16.78%) PowerShell
3 41 (9.69%) SQL
4 31 (7.33%) Bash
5 30 (7.09%) Bicep
6 24 (5.67%) Java
7 17 (4.02%) C#
8 13 (3.07%) TypeScript
9 7 (1.65%) Go
9 7 (1.65%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.95%) BeanShell
10 4 (0.95%) Groovy
10 4 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.47%) Ruby
13 1 (0.24%) Cypher
13 1 (0.24%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 124 (29.31%) Security Cleared
2 106 (25.06%) SC Cleared
3 41 (9.69%) Azure Certification
4 18 (4.26%) DV Cleared
5 16 (3.78%) AWS Certification
6 15 (3.55%) Degree
7 13 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
8 12 (2.84%) CISSP
9 10 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
10 9 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (1.89%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 8 (1.89%) Computer Science Degree
12 7 (1.65%) CISM
13 6 (1.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 5 (1.18%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.95%) CCSP
16 3 (0.71%) CCNP
16 3 (0.71%) OSCP
16 3 (0.71%) SANS
17 2 (0.47%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (2.36%) GDPR
1 10 (2.36%) NCSC
1 10 (2.36%) NIST
2 9 (2.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (2.13%) QA
3 7 (1.65%) PCI DSS
4 5 (1.18%) Data Quality
4 5 (1.18%) GRC
5 2 (0.47%) SLA
5 2 (0.47%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.24%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.24%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 56 (13.24%) Docker
2 22 (5.20%) Active Directory
3 16 (3.78%) Virtual Desktop
4 13 (3.07%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (2.60%) VMware NSX
6 7 (1.65%) vSphere
7 6 (1.42%) Firmware
8 4 (0.95%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.95%) VMware Infrastructure
9 1 (0.24%) Squid
Systems Management
1 196 (46.34%) Terraform
2 103 (24.35%) Kubernetes
3 21 (4.96%) Prometheus
4 20 (4.73%) Ansible
5 17 (4.02%) Istio
6 16 (3.78%) Grafana
7 15 (3.55%) Microsoft Intune
8 8 (1.89%) Argo
8 8 (1.89%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (1.42%) Packer
9 6 (1.42%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.95%) Progress Chef
10 4 (0.95%) Puppet
10 4 (0.95%) Salt
11 2 (0.47%) Cilium
12 1 (0.24%) Consul
12 1 (0.24%) HAProxy
12 1 (0.24%) PaperCut
12 1 (0.24%) SCCM
Vendors
1 85 (20.09%) Microsoft
2 71 (16.78%) Google
3 18 (4.26%) Oracle
4 13 (3.07%) VMware
5 10 (2.36%) Cisco
6 9 (2.13%) Dynatrace
6 9 (2.13%) ServiceNow
7 7 (1.65%) Databricks
7 7 (1.65%) Salesforce
7 7 (1.65%) Splunk
8 6 (1.42%) Juniper
9 5 (1.18%) Broadcom
9 5 (1.18%) Citrix
9 5 (1.18%) Fortinet
9 5 (1.18%) PeopleSoft
9 5 (1.18%) Ping Identity
9 5 (1.18%) Rapid7
9 5 (1.18%) SolarWinds
10 4 (0.95%) Palo Alto
10 4 (0.95%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud