Cloud Native Contract Job Trends in the South East

Cloud Native
England > South East

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Cloud Native in contract job vacancies in the South East. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Cloud Native over the 6 months leading up to 18 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 100 135 175
Rank change year-on-year +35 +40 +34
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 85 27 26
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.93% 0.81% 0.51%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.50% 2.48% 1.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 59 13 23
10th Percentile £306 £315 £418
25th Percentile £413 £325 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £520 £580
Median % change year-on-year -8.65% -10.34% -7.20%
75th Percentile £545 £618 £681
90th Percentile £655 - £700
England median daily rate £525 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -12.50% - -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile £86.50 - -
25th Percentile £88.75 - -
Median hourly rate £95.00 - -
75th Percentile £101.75 - -
90th Percentile £104.30 - -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £70.25 £45.88
% change year-on-year -7.47% +53.12% -

All Generic Skills
South East

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 the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 1,307 1,088 1,576
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 29.70% 32.59% 30.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 875 629 965
10th Percentile £204 £235 £205
25th Percentile £363 £380 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £520 £495
Median % change year-on-year -6.73% +5.05% -5.71%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £683 £675 £688
England median daily rate £510 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -7.27% - -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 43 112
10th Percentile £12.50 £20.04 £16.25
25th Percentile £16.13 £25.87 £23.91
Median hourly rate £23.00 £35.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.29% -30.00% +33.33%
75th Percentile £62.00 £60.50 £61.99
90th Percentile £81.00 £71.77 £76.53
England median hourly rate £29.50 £38.07 £35.00
% change year-on-year -22.51% +8.77% +46.38%

Cloud Native
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Cloud Native job vacancy trend in the South East

Cloud Native
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Cloud Native.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Cloud Native

Cloud Native
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cloud Native in the South East over the 6 months to 18 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Cloud Native in the South East

Cloud Native
Contract Job Locations in the South East

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 South East region over the 6 months to 18 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
Thames Valley +24 63 £475 -5.94% 82
Berkshire +23 59 £475 -5.00% 56
Surrey - 15 £413 - 21
Hampshire -21 6 £638 +4.51% 19
Buckinghamshire -3 3 £475 -29.63% 15
Oxfordshire - 1 £525 - 11
Cloud Native
England

Cloud Native
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 6 (7.06%) OpenStack
2 1 (1.18%) Appian
2 1 (1.18%) Confluence
2 1 (1.18%) Jupyter
2 1 (1.18%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 55 (64.71%) AWS
1 55 (64.71%) Azure
2 25 (29.41%) GCP
3 14 (16.47%) OpenShift
4 12 (14.12%) Azure DevOps
5 10 (11.76%) Serverless
6 8 (9.41%) Amazon S3
6 8 (9.41%) Azure Storage
6 8 (9.41%) GitHub
7 7 (8.24%) Datadog
8 6 (7.06%) Amazon EC2
8 6 (7.06%) Azure Functions
9 5 (5.88%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (5.88%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (5.88%) Azure API Management
9 5 (5.88%) Azure Data Factory
9 5 (5.88%) Entra ID
10 4 (4.71%) IaaS
11 3 (3.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 3 (3.53%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 11 (12.94%) VPN
2 9 (10.59%) MPLS
2 9 (10.59%) WAN
3 8 (9.41%) DNS
4 6 (7.06%) BGP
4 6 (7.06%) LAN
5 4 (4.71%) Firewall
6 3 (3.53%) Broadband
6 3 (3.53%) NaaS
6 3 (3.53%) Network Security
6 3 (3.53%) SD-WAN
7 1 (1.18%) NetScaler
7 1 (1.18%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (5.88%) Amazon RDS
1 5 (5.88%) Azure SQL Database
2 3 (3.53%) Oracle Database
2 3 (3.53%) Oracle Reports
2 3 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (3.53%) Power BI
3 2 (2.35%) Big Data
3 2 (2.35%) Data Lake
3 2 (2.35%) Data Mining
3 2 (2.35%) Hadoop
3 2 (2.35%) Relational Database
3 2 (2.35%) SQL Server
4 1 (1.18%) MongoDB
4 1 (1.18%) MySQL
4 1 (1.18%) NoSQL
4 1 (1.18%) Redis
Development Applications
1 10 (11.76%) Git
2 6 (7.06%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.53%) JIRA
4 2 (2.35%) GitLab
5 1 (1.18%) Cypress.io
5 1 (1.18%) Mocha
General
1 30 (35.29%) Social Skills
2 14 (16.47%) Analytical Skills
3 12 (14.12%) Public Sector
4 7 (8.24%) Billing
4 7 (8.24%) Finance
5 5 (5.88%) Telecoms
6 2 (2.35%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.35%) Banking
7 1 (1.18%) Digital Healthcare
7 1 (1.18%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.18%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 40 (47.06%) Architect
2 9 (10.59%) Solutions Architect
3 8 (9.41%) Infrastructure Architect
3 8 (9.41%) Senior
4 7 (8.24%) Site Engineer
4 7 (8.24%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 6 (7.06%) Azure Engineer
5 6 (7.06%) Business Analyst
5 6 (7.06%) IP Architect
5 6 (7.06%) IP Specialist
6 5 (5.88%) Analyst
6 5 (5.88%) Azure Software Engineer
6 5 (5.88%) Developer
6 5 (5.88%) Security Architect
6 5 (5.88%) Software Engineer
6 5 (5.88%) Technical Architect
7 3 (3.53%) DBA
7 3 (3.53%) Oracle DBA
7 3 (3.53%) Technical Analyst
7 3 (3.53%) Technical Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (17.65%) REST
2 8 (9.41%) Loki
3 6 (7.06%) ARM Templates
3 6 (7.06%) NETCONF
3 6 (7.06%) YANG
4 5 (5.88%) .NET
4 5 (5.88%) ADO
5 4 (4.71%) Middleware
5 4 (4.71%) RESTful
6 3 (3.53%) JSON
6 3 (3.53%) Node.js
6 3 (3.53%) OpenAPI
6 3 (3.53%) Swagger
7 2 (2.35%) OAuth
7 2 (2.35%) OAuth2
8 1 (1.18%) AngularJS
8 1 (1.18%) Express.js
8 1 (1.18%) Pandas
8 1 (1.18%) Spring Boot
8 1 (1.18%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 11 (12.94%) Hybrid Cloud
1 11 (12.94%) Public Cloud
2 9 (10.59%) Enterprise Software
2 9 (10.59%) Virtual Team
3 4 (4.71%) Security Posture
4 3 (3.53%) Cloud Security Posture
4 3 (3.53%) Onboarding
4 3 (3.53%) TM Forum
5 2 (2.35%) Product Ownership
6 1 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.18%) Enterprise Cloud
6 1 (1.18%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.18%) Low-Code
6 1 (1.18%) Smart Meter
Operating Systems
1 20 (23.53%) Linux
2 11 (12.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (1.18%) Windows
3 1 (1.18%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (47.06%) CI/CD
2 35 (41.18%) DevOps
3 28 (32.94%) Microservices
4 27 (31.76%) Agile
5 20 (23.53%) Roadmaps
6 18 (21.18%) Observability
7 17 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
7 17 (20.00%) Stakeholder Management
7 17 (20.00%) TOGAF
8 15 (17.65%) Containerisation
9 11 (12.94%) Problem-Solving
9 11 (12.94%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 10 (11.76%) Architectural Patterns
10 10 (11.76%) DevSecOps
10 10 (11.76%) Strategic Thinking
11 9 (10.59%) Mentoring
11 9 (10.59%) Software Engineering
12 8 (9.41%) CRM
12 8 (9.41%) High Availability
12 8 (9.41%) Infrastructure Management
Programming Languages
1 32 (37.65%) Python
2 15 (17.65%) Bash
3 14 (16.47%) SQL
4 7 (8.24%) JavaScript
5 6 (7.06%) PowerShell
6 5 (5.88%) C#
7 3 (3.53%) Java
7 3 (3.53%) Shell Script
8 2 (2.35%) R
9 1 (1.18%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 25 (29.41%) Security Cleared
2 19 (22.35%) SC Cleared
3 12 (14.12%) AWS Certification
3 12 (14.12%) Azure Certification
3 12 (14.12%) Cisco Certification
4 8 (9.41%) CCIE
5 6 (7.06%) JNCIE
6 5 (5.88%) RHCE
6 5 (5.88%) TOGAF Certification
7 4 (4.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 4 (4.71%) CCSP
7 4 (4.71%) CISSP
7 4 (4.71%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (4.71%) Degree
8 3 (3.53%) OCP
8 3 (3.53%) Oracle Certification
9 2 (2.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (2.35%) DV Cleared
10 1 (1.18%) CCSM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (12.94%) GDPR
2 6 (7.06%) NIST
3 5 (5.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (5.88%) PCI DSS
3 5 (5.88%) PSD2
4 3 (3.53%) SLA
5 2 (2.35%) QA
System Software
1 17 (20.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 15 (17.65%) Docker
3 8 (9.41%) Hyper-V
3 8 (9.41%) vSphere
4 3 (3.53%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (1.18%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 28 (32.94%) Kubernetes
2 16 (18.82%) Ansible
2 16 (18.82%) Grafana
3 15 (17.65%) Prometheus
4 11 (12.94%) Terraform
5 8 (9.41%) Argo
5 8 (9.41%) Kustomize
6 4 (4.71%) Puppet
7 3 (3.53%) Data Guard
7 3 (3.53%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 3 (3.53%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (2.35%) systemd
9 1 (1.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 23 (27.06%) VMware
2 17 (20.00%) Red Hat
3 9 (10.59%) Cisco
3 9 (10.59%) Microsoft
4 6 (7.06%) Databricks
4 6 (7.06%) Salesforce
4 6 (7.06%) Splunk
5 5 (5.88%) MuleSoft
6 4 (4.71%) AppDynamics
6 4 (4.71%) Dynatrace
7 3 (3.53%) Fortinet
7 3 (3.53%) Juniper
7 3 (3.53%) Oracle
8 2 (2.35%) PagerDuty
8 2 (2.35%) Virgin Media
9 1 (1.18%) CheckPoint
9 1 (1.18%) Google
9 1 (1.18%) Palo Alto
9 1 (1.18%) Pega
9 1 (1.18%) ServiceNow