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 28 April 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 237 302 309
Rank change year-on-year +65 +7 -35
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 424 189 240
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.06% 0.77% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.14% 0.83% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 294 152 169
10th Percentile £400 £400 £400
25th Percentile £463 £425 £473
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £624 £625 £619
90th Percentile £705 £675 £690
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 37,090 22,661 34,277
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.65% 92.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,200 15,114 22,756
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £409 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £640
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -3.00% -1.82% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,526 899 2,410
10th Percentile £15.77 £14.20 £12.92
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £45.59 £31.76 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +43.53% -10.91% -20.78%
75th Percentile £67.25 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.54
UK median hourly rate £43.39 £29.25 £35.83
% change year-on-year +48.35% -18.36% -20.38%

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 28 April 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 28 April 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 +49 242 £525 - 59
North of England -38 57 £513 +10.81% 48
South East -40 43 £510 -9.33% 41
North West -17 27 £525 +16.67% 28
Yorkshire -35 27 £481 +13.24% 14
Midlands -55 27 £671 +37.69% 16
East of England -13 24 £505 +2.54% 9
South West -18 23 £550 -4.35% 25
West Midlands -48 21 £680 +15.74% 13
East Midlands -37 6 £575 +21.05% 3
North East -23 3 £525 -12.50% 6
Cloud Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 28 April 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.

1 196 (46.23%) Azure
2 194 (45.75%) Terraform
3 177 (41.75%) AWS
4 168 (39.62%) CI/CD
5 164 (38.68%) Infrastructure as Code
6 157 (37.03%) DevOps
7 125 (29.48%) Security Cleared
8 107 (25.24%) SC Cleared
9 104 (24.53%) Kubernetes
10 97 (22.88%) GCP
11 89 (20.99%) Python
12 88 (20.75%) GitHub
13 87 (20.52%) Cloud Security
14 82 (19.34%) Microsoft
15 76 (17.92%) Google
16 72 (16.98%) Agile
17 69 (16.27%) PowerShell
18 58 (13.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 58 (13.68%) Migration
19 57 (13.44%) Docker
20 56 (13.21%) Platform Engineering
21 54 (12.74%) Containerisation
22 53 (12.50%) GitHub Actions
23 45 (10.61%) Serverless
24 43 (10.14%) Firewall
25 42 (9.91%) Azure Certification
25 42 (9.91%) SQL
26 40 (9.43%) DevSecOps
27 39 (9.20%) Continuous Improvement
28 38 (8.96%) AI

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 5 (1.18%) Confluence
3 4 (0.94%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.71%) Apache
4 3 (0.71%) nginx
5 2 (0.47%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.24%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.24%) SAS
6 1 (0.24%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 2 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.24%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 196 (46.23%) Azure
2 177 (41.75%) AWS
3 97 (22.88%) GCP
4 88 (20.75%) GitHub
5 53 (12.50%) GitHub Actions
6 45 (10.61%) Serverless
7 38 (8.96%) Azure DevOps
8 37 (8.73%) AWS CloudFormation
8 37 (8.73%) Entra ID
9 33 (7.78%) Azure AKS
9 33 (7.78%) PaaS
10 32 (7.55%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 31 (7.31%) Amazon S3
12 29 (6.84%) IaaS
13 25 (5.90%) AWS Lambda
14 23 (5.42%) Amazon EKS
15 22 (5.19%) Amazon ECS
16 19 (4.48%) Azure Monitor
17 18 (4.25%) OCI
17 18 (4.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 43 (10.14%) Firewall
2 17 (4.01%) Network Security
3 15 (3.54%) 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 (0.94%) Software-Defined Networking
8 3 (0.71%) SMTP
9 2 (0.47%) BGP
9 2 (0.47%) DKIM
9 2 (0.47%) VLAN
10 1 (0.24%) ICMP
10 1 (0.24%) OSPF
10 1 (0.24%) tcpdump
10 1 (0.24%) Wireless
10 1 (0.24%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.83%) BigQuery
2 11 (2.59%) 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
5 5 (1.18%) Power BI
6 4 (0.94%) Amazon QuickSight
6 4 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (0.94%) Oracle Database
7 3 (0.71%) Big Data
7 3 (0.71%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.71%) Snowflake Schema
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 (8.73%) Jenkins
2 31 (7.31%) Git
2 31 (7.31%) GitLab
3 7 (1.65%) JIRA
4 4 (0.94%) Artifactory
5 3 (0.71%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.47%) Liquibase
6 2 (0.47%) Postman
6 2 (0.47%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.47%) Selenium
6 2 (0.47%) Spinnaker
7 1 (0.24%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.24%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.24%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.24%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.24%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.24%) JUnit
7 1 (0.24%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.24%) sqlmap
General
1 54 (12.74%) Social Skills
2 49 (11.56%) Finance
3 35 (8.25%) Public Sector
4 16 (3.77%) Banking
5 15 (3.54%) Analytical Skills
6 9 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (1.89%) Retail
8 7 (1.65%) Aeronautics
8 7 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (1.18%) Legal
10 5 (1.18%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.94%) Investment Banking
11 4 (0.94%) Marketing
12 3 (0.71%) Military
13 2 (0.47%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.47%) Law
13 2 (0.47%) Local Government
13 2 (0.47%) Police
14 1 (0.24%) Billing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (5.19%) REST
2 21 (4.95%) Node.js
3 12 (2.83%) Kafka
4 11 (2.59%) OpenTelemetry
4 11 (2.59%) React
5 9 (2.12%) Spring
6 8 (1.89%) .NET
6 8 (1.89%) ARM Templates
6 8 (1.89%) Oracle Fusion
6 8 (1.89%) Spring Boot
7 7 (1.65%) AngularJS
7 7 (1.65%) OAuth
7 7 (1.65%) OpenAPI
7 7 (1.65%) OpenID
7 7 (1.65%) Playwright
7 7 (1.65%) SOAP
8 6 (1.42%) LangChain
8 6 (1.42%) OAuth2
9 5 (1.18%) GraphQL
9 5 (1.18%) NestJS
Miscellaneous
1 74 (17.45%) Cloud Native
2 28 (6.60%) Public Cloud
3 17 (4.01%) Hybrid Cloud
4 12 (2.83%) Data Centre
5 9 (2.12%) Security Posture
6 8 (1.89%) Product Ownership
7 7 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
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 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (0.71%) Cloud Security Posture
11 3 (0.71%) Distributed Systems
11 3 (0.71%) Enterprise Cloud
11 3 (0.71%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.71%) Replication
12 1 (0.24%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 1 (0.24%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 31 (7.31%) Windows
2 26 (6.13%) Linux
3 14 (3.30%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.94%) Unix
4 4 (0.94%) VMS
5 1 (0.24%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 168 (39.62%) CI/CD
2 164 (38.68%) Infrastructure as Code
3 157 (37.03%) DevOps
4 87 (20.52%) Cloud Security
5 72 (16.98%) Agile
6 58 (13.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 58 (13.68%) Migration
7 56 (13.21%) Platform Engineering
8 54 (12.74%) Containerisation
9 40 (9.43%) DevSecOps
10 39 (9.20%) Continuous Improvement
11 38 (8.96%) AI
11 38 (8.96%) Observability
12 35 (8.25%) Cybersecurity
13 33 (7.78%) Infrastructure Automation
13 33 (7.78%) Software Engineering
14 32 (7.55%) Problem-Solving
15 28 (6.60%) Mentoring
16 27 (6.37%) Microservices
17 24 (5.66%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 89 (20.99%) Python
2 69 (16.27%) PowerShell
3 42 (9.91%) SQL
4 30 (7.08%) Bash
5 28 (6.60%) Bicep
6 24 (5.66%) Java
7 17 (4.01%) C#
8 13 (3.07%) TypeScript
9 7 (1.65%) Go
9 7 (1.65%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.94%) BeanShell
10 4 (0.94%) Groovy
10 4 (0.94%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.47%) Ruby
12 1 (0.24%) C
12 1 (0.24%) Cypher
12 1 (0.24%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 125 (29.48%) Security Cleared
2 107 (25.24%) SC Cleared
3 42 (9.91%) Azure Certification
4 19 (4.48%) DV Cleared
5 17 (4.01%) AWS Certification
6 15 (3.54%) Degree
7 13 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
8 12 (2.83%) CISSP
9 10 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
10 9 (2.12%) 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 (0.94%) 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 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (2.12%) QA
3 6 (1.42%) 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 57 (13.44%) Docker
2 20 (4.72%) Active Directory
3 14 (3.30%) Virtual Desktop
4 13 (3.07%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (2.59%) VMware NSX
6 7 (1.65%) vSphere
7 6 (1.42%) Firmware
8 4 (0.94%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.94%) VMware Infrastructure
9 1 (0.24%) Squid
Systems Management
1 194 (45.75%) Terraform
2 104 (24.53%) Kubernetes
3 22 (5.19%) Prometheus
4 20 (4.72%) Ansible
5 17 (4.01%) Grafana
5 17 (4.01%) Istio
6 13 (3.07%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (1.89%) Argo
9 7 (1.65%) Packer
10 6 (1.42%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.94%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.94%) Puppet
11 4 (0.94%) Salt
12 2 (0.47%) Cilium
12 2 (0.47%) Consul
13 1 (0.24%) HAProxy
13 1 (0.24%) PaperCut
13 1 (0.24%) SCCM
Vendors
1 82 (19.34%) Microsoft
2 76 (17.92%) Google
3 18 (4.25%) Oracle
4 13 (3.07%) VMware
5 10 (2.36%) Cisco
6 9 (2.12%) Dynatrace
6 9 (2.12%) ServiceNow
7 8 (1.89%) Databricks
7 8 (1.89%) Splunk
8 7 (1.65%) Salesforce
9 6 (1.42%) Juniper
10 5 (1.18%) Broadcom
10 5 (1.18%) Citrix
10 5 (1.18%) Fortinet
10 5 (1.18%) PeopleSoft
10 5 (1.18%) Ping Identity
10 5 (1.18%) Rapid7
10 5 (1.18%) SolarWinds
11 4 (0.94%) Palo Alto
11 4 (0.94%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud