Cloud Native Contract Job Trends in England

Cloud Native
UK > England

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Cloud Native in contract job vacancies in England. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Cloud Native over the 6 months leading up to 4 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 254 290
Rank change year-on-year +169 +36 -26
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 1,007 246 288
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.02% 0.94% 0.76%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 8.76% 2.85% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 695 158 180
10th Percentile £400 £425 £441
25th Percentile £450 £496 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% - -7.69%
75th Percentile £641 £680 £675
90th Percentile £750 £775 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -12.50% - -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 2 4
10th Percentile £35.00 £57.98 £38.20
25th Percentile £53.13 £62.06 £50.93
Median hourly rate £76.50 £70.25 £68.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.90% +3.31% -
75th Percentile £95.00 £79.56 £78.00
90th Percentile £96.75 £84.33 -
UK median hourly rate £76.50 £70.25 £68.00
% change year-on-year +8.90% +3.31% -

All Generic Skills
England

Cloud Native falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 11,493 8,626 11,834
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.47% 33.03% 31.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,348 5,198 7,836
10th Percentile £275 £266 £252
25th Percentile £406 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £545
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% +0.92% -5.22%
75th Percentile £630 £675 £662
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 565 248 739
10th Percentile £15.40 £18.51 £13.40
25th Percentile £18.82 £24.23 £17.00
Median hourly rate £31.65 £37.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.60% +15.38% +44.49%
75th Percentile £63.75 £66.13 £58.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.20 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £32.22
% change year-on-year -14.29% +8.64% +43.28%

Cloud Native
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Cloud Native relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Cloud Native job vacancy trend in England

Cloud Native
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Cloud Native.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Cloud Native

Cloud Native
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cloud Native in England over the 6 months to 4 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Cloud Native in England

Cloud Native
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Cloud Native.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Cloud Native

Cloud Native
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Cloud Native in England over the 6 months to 4 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cloud Native in England

Cloud Native
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 Native within the England region over the 6 months to 4 February 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 +135 586 £558 -7.08% 202
North of England +57 166 £500 -9.09% 94
Midlands +25 86 £519 -4.46% 26
Yorkshire +21 86 £500 - 30
South East +27 84 £450 -21.74% 94
North West +24 74 £500 -16.67% 57
West Midlands +14 62 £537 +6.13% 17
South West +14 40 £625 +11.11% 59
East of England -6 32 £550 -15.38% 8
East Midlands -5 24 £425 -26.09% 9
North East -8 6 £573 +4.09% 8
Cloud Native
UK

Cloud Native
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 46 (4.57%) Apache Spark
2 33 (3.28%) Confluence
3 30 (2.98%) Apache Airflow
4 22 (2.18%) Apache
5 10 (0.99%) OpenStack
6 8 (0.79%) nginx
6 8 (0.79%) SAS
7 6 (0.60%) SharePoint
8 4 (0.40%) CMS
8 4 (0.40%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
9 3 (0.30%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.20%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.20%) Appian
10 2 (0.20%) Headless CMS
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle Coherence
10 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
10 2 (0.20%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.099%) Camunda
Applications
1 6 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.50%) Chatbot
3 3 (0.30%) LaTeX
3 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.099%) Notion
Business Applications
1 6 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.099%) Cloudability
4 1 (0.099%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.099%) Finacle
4 1 (0.099%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.099%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.099%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 571 (56.70%) AWS
2 469 (46.57%) Azure
3 274 (27.21%) GCP
4 215 (21.35%) Serverless
5 194 (19.27%) GitHub
6 123 (12.21%) Amazon S3
7 117 (11.62%) GitHub Actions
8 109 (10.82%) Azure DevOps
9 106 (10.53%) AWS Lambda
10 88 (8.74%) AWS CloudFormation
11 73 (7.25%) Azure AKS
12 64 (6.36%) OpenShift
13 61 (6.06%) Amazon ECS
14 59 (5.86%) Amazon EKS
15 53 (5.26%) SaaS
16 51 (5.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 46 (4.57%) PaaS
18 45 (4.47%) Amazon EC2
19 41 (4.07%) Azure Functions
19 41 (4.07%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 39 (3.87%) Firewall
2 27 (2.68%) Network Security
3 26 (2.58%) DNS
4 24 (2.38%) VPN
5 17 (1.69%) WAN
6 10 (0.99%) BGP
6 10 (0.99%) MPLS
7 9 (0.89%) SD-WAN
8 8 (0.79%) LAN
9 5 (0.50%) NX-OS
9 5 (0.50%) Reverse Proxy
10 4 (0.40%) HTTP
11 3 (0.30%) 5G
11 3 (0.30%) Broadband
11 3 (0.30%) NaaS
11 3 (0.30%) SSL
11 3 (0.30%) TCP/IP
11 3 (0.30%) VSAN
12 2 (0.20%) NetScaler
12 2 (0.20%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 97 (9.63%) PostgreSQL
2 71 (7.05%) NoSQL
3 42 (4.17%) Amazon RDS
4 41 (4.07%) Data Lake
5 39 (3.87%) DynamoDB
6 34 (3.38%) Power BI
7 33 (3.28%) BigQuery
8 32 (3.18%) MongoDB
9 31 (3.08%) SQL Server
10 29 (2.88%) Metadata
10 29 (2.88%) Redis
10 29 (2.88%) Relational Database
11 28 (2.78%) Amazon Athena
12 24 (2.38%) MySQL
13 23 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
14 21 (2.09%) Amazon Redshift
15 18 (1.79%) Big Data
16 17 (1.69%) Amazon Aurora
17 16 (1.59%) Mixpanel
18 15 (1.49%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 193 (19.17%) Jenkins
2 123 (12.21%) GitLab
3 120 (11.92%) Git
4 66 (6.55%) JIRA
5 29 (2.88%) Liquibase
6 15 (1.49%) SonarQube
7 14 (1.39%) JUnit
8 12 (1.19%) Gradle
8 12 (1.19%) MLflow
9 11 (1.09%) JMeter
9 11 (1.09%) Maven
10 10 (0.99%) Selenium
11 9 (0.89%) Gatling
12 8 (0.79%) CircleCI
12 8 (0.79%) Cypress.io
12 8 (0.79%) Postman
13 7 (0.70%) Cucumber
13 7 (0.70%) Mocha
13 7 (0.70%) Mockito
14 5 (0.50%) Bitbucket
General
1 285 (28.30%) Social Skills
2 204 (20.26%) Finance
3 122 (12.12%) Public Sector
4 96 (9.53%) Banking
5 56 (5.56%) Analytical Skills
6 33 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
7 23 (2.28%) Financial Institution
8 21 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
9 15 (1.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 15 (1.49%) Pharmaceutical
9 15 (1.49%) Retail
10 14 (1.39%) Front Office
11 13 (1.29%) Telecoms
12 12 (1.19%) Investment Banking
13 9 (0.89%) Billing
14 7 (0.70%) Aviation
14 7 (0.70%) Legal
14 7 (0.70%) Marketing
15 6 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
15 6 (0.60%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 242 (24.03%) Architect
2 174 (17.28%) Developer
3 152 (15.09%) Senior
4 86 (8.54%) Lead
5 77 (7.65%) Software Engineer
6 75 (7.45%) Data Engineer
7 63 (6.26%) DevOps Engineer
7 63 (6.26%) Solutions Architect
8 60 (5.96%) AWS Engineer
9 55 (5.46%) Cloud Engineer
10 40 (3.97%) Senior Developer
11 38 (3.77%) Azure Engineer
11 38 (3.77%) Cloud Architect
12 36 (3.57%) Full-Stack Developer
13 34 (3.38%) Java Developer
14 30 (2.98%) Backend Developer
15 28 (2.78%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 27 (2.68%) Consultant
17 26 (2.58%) Full-Stack Engineer
18 25 (2.48%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 124 (12.31%) Node.js
2 123 (12.21%) REST
3 102 (10.13%) RESTful
4 99 (9.83%) Kafka
5 90 (8.94%) Spring
6 89 (8.84%) .NET
7 87 (8.64%) React
8 84 (8.34%) Spring Boot
9 59 (5.86%) GraphQL
10 55 (5.46%) AngularJS
11 45 (4.47%) Playwright
12 39 (3.87%) Elastic Stack
13 34 (3.38%) OpenTelemetry
14 33 (3.28%) OpenID
15 32 (3.18%) OAuth
16 31 (3.08%) Vitest
17 29 (2.88%) YAML
18 28 (2.78%) FastAPI
19 27 (2.68%) Middleware
20 26 (2.58%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 100 (9.93%) Distributed Systems
2 44 (4.37%) Product Ownership
3 43 (4.27%) Public Cloud
4 41 (4.07%) Hybrid Cloud
4 41 (4.07%) Onboarding
5 27 (2.68%) Enterprise Software
5 27 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
6 23 (2.28%) Security Posture
7 22 (2.18%) Algorithms
8 21 (2.09%) Virtual Team
9 17 (1.69%) AI Agents
10 14 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.29%) Data Centre
11 13 (1.29%) Fixed Income
11 13 (1.29%) Genomics
11 13 (1.29%) NHS
11 13 (1.29%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 12 (1.19%) Equities
12 12 (1.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 12 (1.19%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 96 (9.53%) Linux
2 15 (1.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 15 (1.49%) Unix
3 12 (1.19%) Windows
4 8 (0.79%) VMS
5 7 (0.70%) Windows Server
6 3 (0.30%) Android
7 2 (0.20%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.20%) CentOS
7 2 (0.20%) Solaris
7 2 (0.20%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 621 (61.67%) CI/CD
2 543 (53.92%) DevOps
3 374 (37.14%) Agile
4 332 (32.97%) Infrastructure as Code
5 306 (30.39%) Containerisation
6 276 (27.41%) Microservices
7 200 (19.86%) Software Engineering
8 195 (19.36%) Problem-Solving
9 191 (18.97%) AI
10 171 (16.98%) Test Automation
11 144 (14.30%) Machine Learning
11 144 (14.30%) Observability
12 140 (13.90%) Migration
13 122 (12.12%) Data Pipeline
14 120 (11.92%) Analytics
15 117 (11.62%) Roadmaps
16 114 (11.32%) Mentoring
17 110 (10.92%) Stakeholder Management
18 108 (10.72%) Event-Driven
19 105 (10.43%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 380 (37.74%) Python
2 217 (21.55%) SQL
3 191 (18.97%) Java
4 106 (10.53%) TypeScript
5 65 (6.45%) C#
6 63 (6.26%) JavaScript
7 61 (6.06%) Go
8 56 (5.56%) Bash
9 39 (3.87%) PowerShell
10 38 (3.77%) Bicep
11 15 (1.49%) Shell Script
12 13 (1.29%) Scala
13 11 (1.09%) Ruby
14 8 (0.79%) Kotlin
15 6 (0.60%) R
15 6 (0.60%) VBA
16 5 (0.50%) Korn
17 3 (0.30%) C
17 3 (0.30%) MATLAB
17 3 (0.30%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 213 (21.15%) Security Cleared
2 183 (18.17%) SC Cleared
3 97 (9.63%) Degree
4 55 (5.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 51 (5.06%) AWS Certification
6 48 (4.77%) Azure Certification
7 44 (4.37%) Master's Degree
8 30 (2.98%) TOGAF Certification
9 25 (2.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 25 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
10 20 (1.99%) DV Cleared
11 19 (1.89%) CISSP
12 18 (1.79%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (1.39%) CISM
13 14 (1.39%) PhD
14 13 (1.29%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 12 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
16 11 (1.09%) CCIE
17 7 (0.70%) JNCIE
17 7 (0.70%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (5.76%) NIST
2 57 (5.66%) QA
3 53 (5.26%) GDPR
4 46 (4.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 42 (4.17%) Data Quality
6 19 (1.89%) NCSC
7 18 (1.79%) EU AI Act
7 18 (1.79%) PCI DSS
8 15 (1.49%) ISO 20022
9 14 (1.39%) PSD2
10 13 (1.29%) SEPA
11 8 (0.79%) SOC 2
12 7 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
13 6 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 6 (0.60%) HIPAA
14 5 (0.50%) Accessibility
14 5 (0.50%) GRC
14 5 (0.50%) SLA
15 3 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 3 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 334 (33.17%) Docker
2 34 (3.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (1.99%) Active Directory
4 16 (1.59%) vSphere
5 15 (1.49%) VMware NSX
6 12 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (0.79%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.20%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 1 (0.099%) Snort
9 1 (0.099%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 406 (40.32%) Kubernetes
2 311 (30.88%) Terraform
3 97 (9.63%) Grafana
4 91 (9.04%) Prometheus
5 81 (8.04%) Ansible
6 44 (4.37%) Argo
7 18 (1.79%) Istio
8 16 (1.59%) Kibana
9 14 (1.39%) Puppet
10 9 (0.89%) Kustomize
11 8 (0.79%) logstash
12 7 (0.70%) FortiGate
12 7 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
12 7 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
13 6 (0.60%) ITRS Geneos
13 6 (0.60%) vCenter Server
14 5 (0.50%) Packer
14 5 (0.50%) Progress Chef
15 4 (0.40%) AirWatch
15 4 (0.40%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 171 (16.98%) Microsoft
2 96 (9.53%) Google
3 90 (8.94%) Databricks
4 65 (6.45%) Splunk
5 44 (4.37%) VMware
6 41 (4.07%) Red Hat
7 37 (3.67%) Oracle
8 27 (2.68%) CyberArk
9 23 (2.28%) Cisco
10 17 (1.69%) Salesforce
11 16 (1.59%) Dynatrace
11 16 (1.59%) MuleSoft
12 15 (1.49%) Foundry
12 15 (1.49%) ServiceNow
13 11 (1.09%) SAP
14 10 (0.99%) OpenAI
15 9 (0.89%) AppDynamics
15 9 (0.89%) Centrify
15 9 (0.89%) Solace
16 8 (0.79%) F5