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 15 March 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 252 281 283
Rank change year-on-year +29 +2 -13
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 381 207 296
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.03% 0.83% 0.78%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.12% 0.89% 0.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 268 154 214
10th Percentile £401 £380 £400
25th Percentile £468 £425 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £531 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.04% -3.55% -
75th Percentile £622 £625 £625
90th Percentile £725 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 4
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £51.25 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 - £30.00
75th Percentile £53.75 - £46.94
90th Percentile - - £72.93
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 33,941 23,161 35,129
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.01% 93.05% 92.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,406 15,205 23,524
10th Percentile £310 £300 £270
25th Percentile £413 £408 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,240 775 2,271
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.45 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.44 £35.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +6.97% +7.69% -23.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £76.58 £77.50 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £35.71 £33.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +8.21% +1.54% -23.53%

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 15 March 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 15 March 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 +23 206 £525 -3.31% 42
North of England -18 67 £506 +3.90% 30
Yorkshire -20 39 £506 +55.77% 17
Midlands -36 38 £575 +21.05% 9
South East -36 37 £522 -11.15% 25
West Midlands -39 33 £575 -2.13% 7
North West -13 28 £506 +12.50% 10
South West -17 20 £544 -5.43% 13
East of England -19 15 £450 +41.51% 5
East Midlands -34 5 £575 +25.27% 2
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 15 March 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.

1 186 (48.82%) Terraform
2 170 (44.62%) AWS
3 168 (44.09%) CI/CD
4 164 (43.04%) DevOps
5 160 (41.99%) Azure
5 160 (41.99%) Infrastructure as Code
6 108 (28.35%) Kubernetes
7 107 (28.08%) Security Cleared
8 101 (26.51%) Python
9 94 (24.67%) GCP
10 90 (23.62%) GitHub
11 77 (20.21%) Cloud Security
12 76 (19.95%) SC Cleared
13 74 (19.42%) Agile
13 74 (19.42%) Google
13 74 (19.42%) Microsoft
14 70 (18.37%) Docker
15 69 (18.11%) Containerisation
16 57 (14.96%) PowerShell
16 57 (14.96%) Serverless
17 53 (13.91%) GitHub Actions
17 53 (13.91%) Migration
18 52 (13.65%) Jenkins
19 44 (11.55%) Azure Certification
20 42 (11.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
20 42 (11.02%) Microservices
20 42 (11.02%) Platform Engineering
20 42 (11.02%) SQL
21 41 (10.76%) GitLab
21 41 (10.76%) Linux

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 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (1.05%) Apache
2 4 (1.05%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.79%) Confluence
3 3 (0.79%) nginx
4 1 (0.26%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.26%) Apache Superset
4 1 (0.26%) CMS
4 1 (0.26%) Headless CMS
4 1 (0.26%) SAS
4 1 (0.26%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.26%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 4 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.26%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 170 (44.62%) AWS
2 160 (41.99%) Azure
3 94 (24.67%) GCP
4 90 (23.62%) GitHub
5 57 (14.96%) Serverless
6 53 (13.91%) GitHub Actions
7 38 (9.97%) AWS CloudFormation
8 37 (9.71%) Entra ID
9 35 (9.19%) PaaS
10 34 (8.92%) Azure DevOps
11 33 (8.66%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 28 (7.35%) Amazon S3
12 28 (7.35%) IaaS
13 26 (6.82%) Azure AKS
14 25 (6.56%) Amazon EKS
15 23 (6.04%) Amazon ECS
15 23 (6.04%) AWS Lambda
16 19 (4.99%) Azure Monitor
16 19 (4.99%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 16 (4.20%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 38 (9.97%) Firewall
2 18 (4.72%) Network Security
3 15 (3.94%) VPN
4 12 (3.15%) Cisco Firepower
4 12 (3.15%) Cisco IOS
4 12 (3.15%) Cisco ISE
4 12 (3.15%) Junos
5 11 (2.89%) DNS
6 5 (1.31%) NX-OS
7 4 (1.05%) Reverse Proxy
7 4 (1.05%) Software-Defined Networking
8 2 (0.52%) LAN
9 1 (0.26%) DHCP
9 1 (0.26%) HTTP
9 1 (0.26%) SAN
9 1 (0.26%) SMTP
9 1 (0.26%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.26%) WAN
9 1 (0.26%) Wireless
9 1 (0.26%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (5.77%) NoSQL
2 19 (4.99%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (2.62%) BigQuery
4 8 (2.10%) Amazon Athena
4 8 (2.10%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (1.84%) Power BI
6 6 (1.57%) DynamoDB
7 5 (1.31%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (1.05%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.79%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.79%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.52%) Amazon QuickSight
10 2 (0.52%) Mixpanel
10 2 (0.52%) OLAP
10 2 (0.52%) OLTP
10 2 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 1 (0.26%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 52 (13.65%) Jenkins
2 41 (10.76%) GitLab
3 28 (7.35%) Git
4 7 (1.84%) JIRA
4 7 (1.84%) Liquibase
5 3 (0.79%) Postman
5 3 (0.79%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.52%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.52%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.52%) Spinnaker
7 1 (0.26%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.26%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.26%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.26%) sqlmap
General
1 62 (16.27%) Finance
1 62 (16.27%) Social Skills
2 30 (7.87%) Banking
3 29 (7.61%) Public Sector
4 21 (5.51%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (2.89%) Financial Institution
6 8 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (1.84%) Aeronautics
7 7 (1.84%) Retail
8 6 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (1.57%) Telecoms
9 5 (1.31%) Aviation
10 4 (1.05%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.05%) Legal
10 4 (1.05%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.79%) Local Government
12 2 (0.52%) Marketing
13 1 (0.26%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.26%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (10.50%) REST
2 24 (6.30%) Node.js
3 17 (4.46%) Elastic Stack
3 17 (4.46%) RESTful
4 12 (3.15%) Kafka
5 11 (2.89%) OpenID
5 11 (2.89%) React
6 10 (2.62%) OpenTelemetry
7 9 (2.36%) OpenAPI
7 9 (2.36%) Oracle Fusion
8 8 (2.10%) ARM Templates
8 8 (2.10%) SAML
8 8 (2.10%) SOAP
8 8 (2.10%) Spring
9 7 (1.84%) AngularJS
9 7 (1.84%) Lambda Expressions
9 7 (1.84%) NestJS
9 7 (1.84%) OAuth
9 7 (1.84%) Playwright
9 7 (1.84%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 76 (19.95%) Cloud Native
2 38 (9.97%) Public Cloud
3 19 (4.99%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (3.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (2.62%) Data Centre
5 10 (2.62%) Security Posture
6 8 (2.10%) PKI
6 8 (2.10%) Product Ownership
7 7 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (1.57%) Cyber Threat
9 4 (1.05%) Cloud Security Posture
9 4 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.05%) Onboarding
10 3 (0.79%) Genomics
10 3 (0.79%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (0.79%) Life Science
10 3 (0.79%) Replication
11 2 (0.52%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (0.52%) Management Information System
12 1 (0.26%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 41 (10.76%) Linux
2 25 (6.56%) Windows
3 11 (2.89%) Windows Server
4 8 (2.10%) Unix
5 4 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (1.05%) VMS
6 1 (0.26%) Alpine Linux
6 1 (0.26%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.26%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 168 (44.09%) CI/CD
2 164 (43.04%) DevOps
3 160 (41.99%) Infrastructure as Code
4 77 (20.21%) Cloud Security
5 74 (19.42%) Agile
6 69 (18.11%) Containerisation
7 53 (13.91%) Migration
8 42 (11.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 42 (11.02%) Microservices
8 42 (11.02%) Platform Engineering
9 40 (10.50%) Infrastructure Automation
10 38 (9.97%) Continuous Improvement
11 36 (9.45%) Cybersecurity
12 34 (8.92%) DevSecOps
12 34 (8.92%) Observability
13 32 (8.40%) Problem-Solving
14 31 (8.14%) AI
14 31 (8.14%) Software Engineering
15 26 (6.82%) Analytics
16 24 (6.30%) Cost Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 101 (26.51%) Python
2 57 (14.96%) PowerShell
3 42 (11.02%) SQL
4 27 (7.09%) Java
5 25 (6.56%) Bash
6 22 (5.77%) Bicep
7 18 (4.72%) Go
8 15 (3.94%) TypeScript
9 11 (2.89%) C#
10 6 (1.57%) JavaScript
10 6 (1.57%) Shell Script
11 4 (1.05%) BeanShell
11 4 (1.05%) Ruby
12 3 (0.79%) Groovy
13 2 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.52%) Perl
14 1 (0.26%) C
14 1 (0.26%) Cypher
14 1 (0.26%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 107 (28.08%) Security Cleared
2 76 (19.95%) SC Cleared
3 44 (11.55%) Azure Certification
4 29 (7.61%) Degree
5 26 (6.82%) DV Cleared
6 23 (6.04%) AWS Certification
7 20 (5.25%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (3.94%) Master's Degree
9 12 (3.15%) CISSP
9 12 (3.15%) Microsoft Certification
10 9 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
10 9 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
11 7 (1.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 7 (1.84%) CISM
12 6 (1.57%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 5 (1.31%) CCSP
13 5 (1.31%) TOGAF Certification
14 3 (0.79%) AWS Certified Developer
14 3 (0.79%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 3 (0.79%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (3.15%) GDPR
1 12 (3.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (2.62%) NIST
3 9 (2.36%) NCSC
4 6 (1.57%) PCI DSS
5 5 (1.31%) GRC
6 4 (1.05%) Data Quality
6 4 (1.05%) QA
7 2 (0.52%) SLA
7 2 (0.52%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.26%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.26%) JSP 440
System Software
1 70 (18.37%) Docker
2 23 (6.04%) Active Directory
3 12 (3.15%) VMware NSX
4 11 (2.89%) Virtual Machines
5 9 (2.36%) Virtual Desktop
6 5 (1.31%) Firmware
7 4 (1.05%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.26%) VMware Infrastructure
9 1 (0.26%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 186 (48.82%) Terraform
2 108 (28.35%) Kubernetes
3 33 (8.66%) Ansible
4 27 (7.09%) Prometheus
5 25 (6.56%) Grafana
6 18 (4.72%) Istio
7 12 (3.15%) vCenter Server
8 10 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (2.10%) Argo
9 8 (2.10%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (1.05%) Packer
10 4 (1.05%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.79%) Podman
11 3 (0.79%) Proxmox
12 2 (0.52%) Consul
12 2 (0.52%) Puppet
12 2 (0.52%) Salt
13 1 (0.26%) Docker Swarm
13 1 (0.26%) HAProxy
13 1 (0.26%) SCCM
Vendors
1 74 (19.42%) Google
1 74 (19.42%) Microsoft
2 20 (5.25%) Splunk
3 17 (4.46%) Oracle
4 16 (4.20%) Cisco
5 12 (3.15%) Juniper
5 12 (3.15%) SolarWinds
6 10 (2.62%) Databricks
6 10 (2.62%) ServiceNow
7 7 (1.84%) Ping Identity
8 6 (1.57%) Dynatrace
9 5 (1.31%) Broadcom
9 5 (1.31%) MuleSoft
9 5 (1.31%) PeopleSoft
9 5 (1.31%) Rapid7
10 4 (1.05%) Citrix
10 4 (1.05%) Red Hat
10 4 (1.05%) Salesforce
10 4 (1.05%) Zscaler
11 3 (0.79%) EMC