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 21 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 261 284
Rank change year-on-year +178 +23 -31
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 987 238 296
As % of all contract jobs in England 3.06% 0.89% 0.80%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 8.76% 2.74% 2.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 684 152 184
10th Percentile £400 £425 £407
25th Percentile £447 £499 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% - -7.69%
75th Percentile £638 £682 £680
90th Percentile £725 £775 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -12.50% - -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 2 7
10th Percentile £35.00 £57.98 £34.42
25th Percentile £39.06 £62.06 £41.71
Median hourly rate £65.00 £70.25 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -7.47% +53.12% -
75th Percentile £92.50 £79.56 £68.00
90th Percentile £98.35 £84.33 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £70.25 £45.88
% change year-on-year -7.47% +53.12% -

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 11,268 8,698 11,529
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.90% 32.64% 31.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,195 5,221 7,700
10th Percentile £281 £270 £258
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £675
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £533 £538
% change year-on-year -6.19% -0.93% -3.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 549 249 615
10th Percentile £15.20 £18.43 £14.38
25th Percentile £18.50 £24.18 £18.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £39.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.08% +9.86% +57.88%
75th Percentile £61.50 £68.75 £61.38
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.56 £72.65
UK median hourly rate £27.63 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -21.07% - +55.66%

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 21 January 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 21 January 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 21 January 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 +151 568 £550 -8.33% 164
North of England +58 161 £500 -9.09% 145
South East +34 88 £475 -8.65% 193
Yorkshire +20 88 £500 - 63
Midlands +21 78 £505 -18.32% 76
North West +17 67 £478 -20.31% 66
West Midlands +13 57 £530 -19.88% 22
South West +17 40 £575 +2.22% 84
East of England -2 32 £541 -11.73% 89
East Midlands -9 21 £419 -27.17% 51
North East -8 6 £573 +4.09% 17
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 42 (4.26%) Apache Spark
2 33 (3.34%) Confluence
3 29 (2.94%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (2.03%) Apache
5 12 (1.22%) nginx
6 11 (1.11%) OpenStack
7 9 (0.91%) SAS
8 5 (0.51%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.51%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.41%) CMS
9 4 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.30%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 2 (0.20%) Appian
11 2 (0.20%) Headless CMS
11 2 (0.20%) Oracle Coherence
11 2 (0.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.20%) WebLogic
12 1 (0.10%) Anypoint
12 1 (0.10%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 6 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.30%) LaTeX
2 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.20%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.10%) Notion
Business Applications
1 5 (0.51%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.41%) Maximo
3 3 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.10%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.10%) Finacle
5 1 (0.10%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.10%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 558 (56.53%) AWS
2 461 (46.71%) Azure
3 277 (28.06%) GCP
4 219 (22.19%) Serverless
5 194 (19.66%) GitHub
6 119 (12.06%) Amazon S3
7 116 (11.75%) GitHub Actions
8 109 (11.04%) Azure DevOps
9 107 (10.84%) AWS Lambda
10 80 (8.11%) AWS CloudFormation
11 68 (6.89%) Azure AKS
12 66 (6.69%) Amazon ECS
13 57 (5.78%) OpenShift
14 51 (5.17%) Amazon EKS
14 51 (5.17%) SaaS
15 46 (4.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 45 (4.56%) Amazon EC2
16 45 (4.56%) Azure Functions
17 43 (4.36%) PaaS
18 42 (4.26%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 40 (4.05%) Firewall
2 27 (2.74%) Network Security
3 24 (2.43%) VPN
4 20 (2.03%) DNS
5 18 (1.82%) WAN
6 11 (1.11%) BGP
6 11 (1.11%) MPLS
7 9 (0.91%) LAN
7 9 (0.91%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.51%) HTTP
8 5 (0.51%) NX-OS
9 4 (0.41%) Broadband
10 3 (0.30%) NaaS
10 3 (0.30%) Reverse Proxy
10 3 (0.30%) SSL
10 3 (0.30%) TCP/IP
10 3 (0.30%) VSAN
11 2 (0.20%) 5G
11 2 (0.20%) NetScaler
11 2 (0.20%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 95 (9.63%) PostgreSQL
2 74 (7.50%) NoSQL
3 39 (3.95%) Amazon RDS
4 38 (3.85%) DynamoDB
5 36 (3.65%) Data Lake
6 34 (3.44%) BigQuery
7 33 (3.34%) MongoDB
8 32 (3.24%) Relational Database
9 31 (3.14%) Power BI
10 30 (3.04%) SQL Server
11 28 (2.84%) Redis
12 27 (2.74%) Amazon Athena
12 27 (2.74%) Metadata
13 25 (2.53%) MySQL
14 21 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
15 19 (1.93%) Amazon Redshift
16 17 (1.72%) Amazon Aurora
16 17 (1.72%) Big Data
17 16 (1.62%) Azure SQL Database
18 13 (1.32%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 177 (17.93%) Jenkins
2 117 (11.85%) Git
3 116 (11.75%) GitLab
4 66 (6.69%) JIRA
5 32 (3.24%) Liquibase
6 18 (1.82%) SonarQube
7 15 (1.52%) JUnit
8 13 (1.32%) MLflow
9 11 (1.11%) Cypress.io
9 11 (1.11%) JMeter
9 11 (1.11%) Selenium
10 10 (1.01%) Gradle
11 9 (0.91%) CircleCI
11 9 (0.91%) Gatling
11 9 (0.91%) Maven
11 9 (0.91%) Mockito
12 8 (0.81%) Postman
12 8 (0.81%) Sonatype Nexus
13 7 (0.71%) Mocha
14 6 (0.61%) Cucumber
General
1 279 (28.27%) Social Skills
2 195 (19.76%) Finance
3 122 (12.36%) Public Sector
4 95 (9.63%) Banking
5 57 (5.78%) Analytical Skills
6 25 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
6 25 (2.53%) Financial Institution
7 17 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 17 (1.72%) Pharmaceutical
8 16 (1.62%) Telecoms
9 14 (1.42%) Front Office
9 14 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
10 13 (1.32%) Retail
11 12 (1.22%) Investment Banking
12 10 (1.01%) Marketing
13 9 (0.91%) Publishing
14 8 (0.81%) Billing
14 8 (0.81%) Legal
15 7 (0.71%) Aviation
16 6 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 232 (23.51%) Architect
2 178 (18.03%) Developer
3 145 (14.69%) Senior
4 83 (8.41%) Lead
5 78 (7.90%) Software Engineer
6 66 (6.69%) DevOps Engineer
7 64 (6.48%) Data Engineer
8 59 (5.98%) AWS Engineer
8 59 (5.98%) Solutions Architect
9 55 (5.57%) Cloud Engineer
10 39 (3.95%) Azure Engineer
11 37 (3.75%) Senior Developer
12 36 (3.65%) Cloud Architect
12 36 (3.65%) Java Developer
13 34 (3.44%) Full-Stack Developer
14 30 (3.04%) Backend Developer
15 29 (2.94%) Consultant
16 26 (2.63%) GCP Engineer
17 25 (2.53%) Senior Software Engineer
17 25 (2.53%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (13.27%) REST
2 123 (12.46%) Node.js
3 115 (11.65%) RESTful
4 90 (9.12%) Kafka
5 89 (9.02%) .NET
6 87 (8.81%) Spring
7 80 (8.11%) Spring Boot
8 77 (7.80%) React
9 57 (5.78%) GraphQL
10 51 (5.17%) AngularJS
11 45 (4.56%) Playwright
12 38 (3.85%) Elastic Stack
13 33 (3.34%) OAuth
14 32 (3.24%) YAML
15 31 (3.14%) FastAPI
15 31 (3.14%) Vitest
16 28 (2.84%) Middleware
17 26 (2.63%) OpenTelemetry
17 26 (2.63%) PyTorch
18 25 (2.53%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 91 (9.22%) Distributed Systems
2 46 (4.66%) Public Cloud
3 44 (4.46%) Hybrid Cloud
4 41 (4.15%) Product Ownership
5 31 (3.14%) Legacy Systems
6 29 (2.94%) Onboarding
7 27 (2.74%) Enterprise Software
8 24 (2.43%) Security Posture
9 22 (2.23%) Algorithms
10 17 (1.72%) AI Agents
10 17 (1.72%) Data Centre
10 17 (1.72%) Virtual Team
11 15 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
12 14 (1.42%) Genomics
13 13 (1.32%) Fixed Income
13 13 (1.32%) Life Science
13 13 (1.32%) NHS
14 12 (1.22%) Equities
14 12 (1.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 12 (1.22%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 94 (9.52%) Linux
2 15 (1.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 14 (1.42%) Unix
4 9 (0.91%) VMS
4 9 (0.91%) Windows
5 8 (0.81%) Windows Server
6 2 (0.20%) Android
6 2 (0.20%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.20%) CentOS
6 2 (0.20%) Solaris
6 2 (0.20%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 606 (61.40%) CI/CD
2 531 (53.80%) DevOps
3 377 (38.20%) Agile
4 328 (33.23%) Infrastructure as Code
5 302 (30.60%) Containerisation
6 277 (28.06%) Microservices
7 198 (20.06%) Software Engineering
8 197 (19.96%) Problem-Solving
9 183 (18.54%) AI
10 168 (17.02%) Test Automation
11 136 (13.78%) Machine Learning
12 134 (13.58%) Observability
13 129 (13.07%) Migration
14 120 (12.16%) Roadmaps
15 119 (12.06%) Data Pipeline
16 109 (11.04%) Mentoring
17 107 (10.84%) Analytics
18 102 (10.33%) Stakeholder Management
19 99 (10.03%) Event-Driven
20 98 (9.93%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 371 (37.59%) Python
2 204 (20.67%) SQL
3 192 (19.45%) Java
4 100 (10.13%) TypeScript
5 64 (6.48%) JavaScript
6 63 (6.38%) C#
6 63 (6.38%) Go
7 52 (5.27%) Bash
8 38 (3.85%) Bicep
8 38 (3.85%) PowerShell
9 14 (1.42%) Shell Script
10 13 (1.32%) Scala
11 8 (0.81%) Ruby
12 7 (0.71%) Kotlin
13 6 (0.61%) R
13 6 (0.61%) VBA
14 5 (0.51%) Korn
14 5 (0.51%) PL/SQL
15 3 (0.30%) C
15 3 (0.30%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 202 (20.47%) Security Cleared
2 172 (17.43%) SC Cleared
3 99 (10.03%) Degree
4 56 (5.67%) Computer Science Degree
5 51 (5.17%) AWS Certification
6 49 (4.96%) Azure Certification
7 42 (4.26%) Master's Degree
8 29 (2.94%) TOGAF Certification
9 24 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
10 23 (2.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 22 (2.23%) CISSP
12 20 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
12 20 (2.03%) DV Cleared
13 15 (1.52%) MCP
14 14 (1.42%) PhD
15 13 (1.32%) CISM
16 12 (1.22%) CCIE
17 10 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 10 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
18 9 (0.91%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (6.18%) QA
2 54 (5.47%) NIST
3 52 (5.27%) GDPR
4 45 (4.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 33 (3.34%) Data Quality
6 19 (1.93%) PCI DSS
7 18 (1.82%) EU AI Act
7 18 (1.82%) PSD2
8 13 (1.32%) ISO 20022
9 12 (1.22%) SEPA
10 11 (1.11%) NCSC
11 8 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
12 6 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 6 (0.61%) HIPAA
13 5 (0.51%) Accessibility
13 5 (0.51%) SLA
13 5 (0.51%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 3 (0.30%) Solvency II
15 2 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 340 (34.45%) Docker
2 32 (3.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (2.43%) Active Directory
4 12 (1.22%) vSphere
5 11 (1.11%) VMware NSX
6 10 (1.01%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (0.81%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.20%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 1 (0.10%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 389 (39.41%) Kubernetes
2 312 (31.61%) Terraform
3 93 (9.42%) Grafana
4 87 (8.81%) Prometheus
5 83 (8.41%) Ansible
6 38 (3.85%) Argo
7 17 (1.72%) Puppet
8 16 (1.62%) Kibana
9 14 (1.42%) Istio
10 9 (0.91%) Kustomize
11 8 (0.81%) logstash
12 7 (0.71%) FortiGate
12 7 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
13 6 (0.61%) ITRS Geneos
14 5 (0.51%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.51%) Packer
14 5 (0.51%) Progress Chef
14 5 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
15 4 (0.41%) AirWatch
15 4 (0.41%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 171 (17.33%) Microsoft
2 100 (10.13%) Google
3 83 (8.41%) Databricks
4 55 (5.57%) Splunk
5 39 (3.95%) Red Hat
5 39 (3.95%) VMware
6 36 (3.65%) Oracle
7 23 (2.33%) Cisco
8 20 (2.03%) CyberArk
9 18 (1.82%) Salesforce
10 16 (1.62%) MuleSoft
11 15 (1.52%) Foundry
12 14 (1.42%) Dynatrace
12 14 (1.42%) ServiceNow
13 11 (1.11%) SAP
14 10 (1.01%) OpenAI
15 9 (0.91%) AppDynamics
15 9 (0.91%) Centrify
15 9 (0.91%) Solace
16 8 (0.81%) F5