Cloud Architect Contract Job Trends in the North West

Cloud Architect
England > North West

The median Cloud Architect daily rate in the North West is £460, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 March 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 114 132
Rank change year-on-year -23 +18 +14
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 15 12 9
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 0.52% 0.59% 0.31%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.57% 0.63% 0.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 10 11 7
10th Percentile £411 £450 £513
25th Percentile £450 £483 £613
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £500 £725
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% -31.03% +20.83%
75th Percentile £688 £638 £744
90th Percentile £758 - £822
England median daily rate £625 £623 £675
% change year-on-year +0.40% -7.78% -

All Contract IT Job Roles
North West

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the North West. 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 the North West with a recognized job title 2,629 1,895 2,675
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.96% 92.80% 93.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,597 1,200 1,785
10th Percentile £213 £250 £275
25th Percentile £371 £375 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £575 £572 £582
90th Percentile £650 £656 £674
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 106 282
10th Percentile £18.54 £15.00 £11.07
25th Percentile £22.81 £20.39 £14.00
Median hourly rate £42.69 £31.51 £24.90
Median % change year-on-year +35.46% +26.57% -17.02%
75th Percentile £63.50 £55.76 £46.18
90th Percentile £76.75 £82.00 £63.75
England median hourly rate £36.00 £35.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +2.86% +7.69% -22.27%

Cloud Architect
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Cloud Architect' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Cloud Architect job vacancy trend in the North West

Cloud Architect
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Cloud Architect job vacancies in the North West.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Cloud Architect job vacancies in the North West

Cloud Architect
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cloud Architect in the North West over the 6 months to 9 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Cloud Architect in the North West

Cloud Architect
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Cloud Architect job vacancies in the North West.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Cloud Architect job vacancies in the North West

Cloud Architect
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Cloud Architect within the North West region over the 6 months to 9 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
Manchester -11 9 £675 +45.95% 4
Cheshire -21 6 £435 -30.40% 1
Cloud Architect
England

Cloud Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West

For the 6 months to 9 March 2026, Cloud Architect 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 North West region featuring Cloud Architect in the job title.

1 11 (73.33%) AWS
2 6 (40.00%) Kubernetes
3 5 (33.33%) Azure
3 5 (33.33%) Containerisation
3 5 (33.33%) GCP
4 4 (26.67%) Agile
4 4 (26.67%) Decision-Making
4 4 (26.67%) Google
4 4 (26.67%) Kafka
4 4 (26.67%) Problem-Solving
4 4 (26.67%) SC Cleared
4 4 (26.67%) Security Cleared
4 4 (26.67%) Stakeholder Management
4 4 (26.67%) Terraform
5 3 (20.00%) Analytics
5 3 (20.00%) BigQuery
5 3 (20.00%) Data Pipeline
5 3 (20.00%) Data Quality
5 3 (20.00%) DevSecOps
5 3 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 3 (20.00%) Java
5 3 (20.00%) Microservices
5 3 (20.00%) Migration
6 2 (13.33%) AWS Certification
6 2 (13.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 2 (13.33%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (13.33%) CI/CD
6 2 (13.33%) Collaborative Working
6 2 (13.33%) Data Encryption
6 2 (13.33%) Data Management

Cloud Architect Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 1 (6.67%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 11 (73.33%) AWS
2 5 (33.33%) Azure
2 5 (33.33%) GCP
3 2 (13.33%) Serverless
4 1 (6.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (6.67%) Amazon EKS
4 1 (6.67%) Amazon Glacier
4 1 (6.67%) Amazon Kinesis
4 1 (6.67%) Amazon S3
4 1 (6.67%) AWS Data Pipeline
4 1 (6.67%) AWS Lambda
4 1 (6.67%) Dataform
4 1 (6.67%) IaaS
4 1 (6.67%) OCI
4 1 (6.67%) OpenShift
4 1 (6.67%) PaaS
4 1 (6.67%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (20.00%) BigQuery
2 2 (13.33%) DynamoDB
3 1 (6.67%) DocumentDB
3 1 (6.67%) NoSQL
3 1 (6.67%) Oracle Database
3 1 (6.67%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 1 (6.67%) GitLab
1 1 (6.67%) Jenkins
1 1 (6.67%) JIRA
General
1 6 (40.00%) Social Skills
2 5 (33.33%) Finance
3 4 (26.67%) Public Sector
4 3 (20.00%) Banking
5 2 (13.33%) Retail
6 1 (6.67%) Electronics
6 1 (6.67%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (6.67%) Manufacturing
6 1 (6.67%) Marketing
6 1 (6.67%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (26.67%) Kafka
2 2 (13.33%) REST
3 1 (6.67%) ActiveMQ
3 1 (6.67%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 3 (20.00%) Cloud Native
2 2 (13.33%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (6.67%) AI Agents
3 1 (6.67%) Enterprise Software
3 1 (6.67%) Mobile Banking
3 1 (6.67%) Onboarding
3 1 (6.67%) Product Ownership
3 1 (6.67%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1 (6.67%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (33.33%) Containerisation
2 4 (26.67%) Agile
2 4 (26.67%) Decision-Making
2 4 (26.67%) Problem-Solving
2 4 (26.67%) Stakeholder Management
3 3 (20.00%) Analytics
3 3 (20.00%) Data Pipeline
3 3 (20.00%) DevSecOps
3 3 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
3 3 (20.00%) Microservices
3 3 (20.00%) Migration
4 2 (13.33%) CI/CD
4 2 (13.33%) Collaborative Working
4 2 (13.33%) Data Encryption
4 2 (13.33%) DataOps
4 2 (13.33%) DevOps
4 2 (13.33%) Event-Driven
4 2 (13.33%) Integration Patterns
4 2 (13.33%) Regulatory Compliance
4 2 (13.33%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 3 (20.00%) Java
2 2 (13.33%) Python
3 1 (6.67%) Bash
3 1 (6.67%) C
3 1 (6.67%) PL/SQL
3 1 (6.67%) PowerShell
3 1 (6.67%) SQL
Qualifications
1 4 (26.67%) SC Cleared
1 4 (26.67%) Security Cleared
2 2 (13.33%) AWS Certification
2 2 (13.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
2 2 (13.33%) BPSS Clearance
3 1 (6.67%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (20.00%) Data Quality
System Software
1 1 (6.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (40.00%) Kubernetes
2 4 (26.67%) Terraform
Vendors
1 4 (26.67%) Google
2 2 (13.33%) Oracle
3 1 (6.67%) Atlassian
3 1 (6.67%) CyberArk
3 1 (6.67%) SAP
3 1 (6.67%) ServiceNow