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 25 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 108 119 160
Rank change year-on-year +11 +41 +41
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 97 34 37
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.79% 1.16% 0.66%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.95% 3.39% 2.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 68 16 25
10th Percentile £341 £435 £375
25th Percentile £400 £504 £482
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £593 £500
Median % change year-on-year -19.83% +18.50% -28.57%
75th Percentile £539 £618 £538
90th Percentile £616 £664 £690
England median daily rate £538 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -6.52% -4.17% -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £66.25 - -
Median hourly rate £67.50 - -
75th Percentile £95.63 - -
90th Percentile £100.05 - -
England median hourly rate £74.50 £55.50 £43.86
% change year-on-year +34.23% +26.54% -43.77%

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 1,631 1,003 1,677
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 30.17% 34.22% 29.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,076 620 951
10th Percentile £250 £213 £205
25th Percentile £400 £369 £329
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £508 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% +1.50% -2.91%
75th Percentile £600 £618 £608
90th Percentile £688 £663 £688
England median daily rate £513 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -5.09% -1.82% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 57 144
10th Percentile £15.13 £16.95 £11.79
25th Percentile £20.72 £23.50 £18.35
Median hourly rate £67.50 £32.50 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +107.69% -8.45% -25.26%
75th Percentile £88.00 £62.24 £61.30
90th Percentile - £81.22 £65.00
England median hourly rate £41.94 £33.50 £27.75
% change year-on-year +25.19% +20.72% +18.24%

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 25 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Cloud Native in the South East

Cloud Native
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

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

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

Cloud Native
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Cloud Native in the South East over the 6 months to 25 March 2026.

Hourly 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 25 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
Thames Valley -13 59 £475 -7.77% 26
Berkshire -15 51 £450 -11.76% 12
Surrey - 23 £425 - 4
Hampshire -31 9 £530 -13.11% 4
Buckinghamshire -18 6 £494 -26.85% 9
East Sussex - 2 £323 - 1
Oxfordshire - 2 £528 - 5
Home Counties - 2 - -
West Sussex - 1 - - 4
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 3 (3.09%) Confluence
2 2 (2.06%) Apache Pulsar
2 2 (2.06%) OpenStack
3 1 (1.03%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.03%) Appian
3 1 (1.03%) ArcGIS
3 1 (1.03%) Jupyter
3 1 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (2.06%) CPLEX
2 1 (1.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.03%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (1.03%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 60 (61.86%) Azure
2 55 (56.70%) AWS
3 26 (26.80%) GCP
4 15 (15.46%) OpenShift
5 14 (14.43%) Azure DevOps
6 10 (10.31%) Serverless
7 9 (9.28%) Amazon S3
7 9 (9.28%) Azure Storage
7 9 (9.28%) GitHub
8 8 (8.25%) Amazon EKS
8 8 (8.25%) AWS CloudFormation
9 7 (7.22%) Azure API Management
9 7 (7.22%) Datadog
10 6 (6.19%) Azure AKS
10 6 (6.19%) Azure Functions
11 5 (5.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 5 (5.15%) Amazon EC2
11 5 (5.15%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (5.15%) Azure Data Factory
11 5 (5.15%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (13.40%) VPN
2 10 (10.31%) DNS
3 6 (6.19%) Firewall
4 5 (5.15%) MPLS
4 5 (5.15%) WAN
5 3 (3.09%) Broadband
5 3 (3.09%) NaaS
5 3 (3.09%) SD-WAN
6 2 (2.06%) BGP
6 2 (2.06%) LAN
6 2 (2.06%) Network Security
7 1 (1.03%) iSCSI
7 1 (1.03%) NetScaler
7 1 (1.03%) Remote Desktop
7 1 (1.03%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (7.22%) PostgreSQL
2 6 (6.19%) Azure SQL Database
3 5 (5.15%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (4.12%) NoSQL
4 4 (4.12%) Relational Database
5 3 (3.09%) Big Data
5 3 (3.09%) Oracle Database
5 3 (3.09%) Oracle Reports
5 3 (3.09%) Power BI
5 3 (3.09%) SQL Server
6 2 (2.06%) Data Lake
6 2 (2.06%) Data Mining
6 2 (2.06%) DynamoDB
6 2 (2.06%) Hadoop
6 2 (2.06%) MongoDB
7 1 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (1.03%) GIS
7 1 (1.03%) MySQL
7 1 (1.03%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 14 (14.43%) Git
2 8 (8.25%) Jenkins
3 4 (4.12%) JIRA
4 1 (1.03%) Cucumber
4 1 (1.03%) GitLab
4 1 (1.03%) MLflow
4 1 (1.03%) SonarQube
4 1 (1.03%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 36 (37.11%) Social Skills
2 15 (15.46%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (14.43%) Public Sector
4 9 (9.28%) Finance
5 4 (4.12%) Telecoms
6 3 (3.09%) Banking
6 3 (3.09%) Billing
7 2 (2.06%) Aerospace
7 2 (2.06%) Financial Institution
7 2 (2.06%) Marketing
8 1 (1.03%) Aviation
8 1 (1.03%) Manufacturing
8 1 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 37 (38.14%) Architect
2 13 (13.40%) Senior
3 11 (11.34%) Solutions Architect
4 10 (10.31%) Infrastructure Architect
5 8 (8.25%) Azure Engineer
5 8 (8.25%) Java Engineer
5 8 (8.25%) Site Engineer
5 8 (8.25%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 7 (7.22%) DevOps Engineer
7 6 (6.19%) Developer
7 6 (6.19%) Technical Architect
8 5 (5.15%) Azure Software Engineer
8 5 (5.15%) Software Engineer
9 4 (4.12%) Project Manager
10 3 (3.09%) DBA
10 3 (3.09%) Delivery Manager
10 3 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 3 (3.09%) Network Architect
10 3 (3.09%) Oracle DBA
10 3 (3.09%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (12.37%) REST
2 10 (10.31%) ARM Templates
3 8 (8.25%) .NET
3 8 (8.25%) Loki
4 6 (6.19%) Kafka
5 5 (5.15%) OAuth
5 5 (5.15%) RESTful
6 4 (4.12%) Middleware
6 4 (4.12%) OpenAPI
6 4 (4.12%) Swagger
7 3 (3.09%) GraphQL
7 3 (3.09%) JSON
7 3 (3.09%) NumPy
7 3 (3.09%) OAuth2
7 3 (3.09%) Pandas
7 3 (3.09%) RabbitMQ
8 2 (2.06%) Django
8 2 (2.06%) Flask
8 2 (2.06%) SAML
8 2 (2.06%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 11 (11.34%) Public Cloud
2 9 (9.28%) Virtual Team
3 8 (8.25%) Distributed Systems
4 7 (7.22%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (4.12%) Hybrid Cloud
5 4 (4.12%) Onboarding
6 3 (3.09%) TM Forum
7 2 (2.06%) Algorithms
7 2 (2.06%) Data Structures
7 2 (2.06%) Product Ownership
7 2 (2.06%) Security Posture
8 1 (1.03%) Chip and PIN
8 1 (1.03%) EMV
8 1 (1.03%) Enterprise Cloud
8 1 (1.03%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (1.03%) Low-Code
8 1 (1.03%) Management Information System
8 1 (1.03%) Mobile App
8 1 (1.03%) Private Cloud
8 1 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 21 (21.65%) Linux
2 12 (12.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (3.09%) Windows
4 1 (1.03%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (47.42%) CI/CD
2 44 (45.36%) DevOps
3 33 (34.02%) Agile
4 29 (29.90%) Microservices
5 23 (23.71%) Containerisation
6 22 (22.68%) Infrastructure as Code
6 22 (22.68%) Observability
7 18 (18.56%) Software Engineering
8 17 (17.53%) Roadmaps
9 16 (16.49%) Stakeholder Management
10 14 (14.43%) Problem-Solving
10 14 (14.43%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 13 (13.40%) Architectural Patterns
11 13 (13.40%) High Availability
12 12 (12.37%) Analytics
13 11 (11.34%) Scaled Agile Framework
13 11 (11.34%) TOGAF
14 10 (10.31%) Continuous Improvement
14 10 (10.31%) Cybersecurity
15 9 (9.28%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 33 (34.02%) Python
2 18 (18.56%) Bash
3 16 (16.49%) SQL
4 10 (10.31%) Java
5 9 (9.28%) PowerShell
6 7 (7.22%) JavaScript
7 6 (6.19%) Bicep
7 6 (6.19%) C#
8 3 (3.09%) Shell Script
9 2 (2.06%) R
10 1 (1.03%) Go
10 1 (1.03%) Google Apps Script
10 1 (1.03%) Korn
10 1 (1.03%) Objective-C
10 1 (1.03%) Swift
10 1 (1.03%) VBA
Qualifications
1 27 (27.84%) Security Cleared
2 19 (19.59%) SC Cleared
3 11 (11.34%) Azure Certification
4 10 (10.31%) AWS Certification
5 6 (6.19%) Degree
6 5 (5.15%) Cisco Certification
6 5 (5.15%) RHCE
6 5 (5.15%) TOGAF Certification
7 4 (4.12%) CCIE
7 4 (4.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (3.09%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (3.09%) OCP
8 3 (3.09%) Oracle Certification
9 2 (2.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (2.06%) CCNP
9 2 (2.06%) CISM
9 2 (2.06%) CISSP
9 2 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (2.06%) PMI Certification
9 2 (2.06%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (7.22%) GDPR
2 3 (3.09%) SLA
3 2 (2.06%) NIST
3 2 (2.06%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.03%) ISO 20022
4 1 (1.03%) ISO 8583
4 1 (1.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.03%) NCSC
4 1 (1.03%) QA
System Software
1 21 (21.65%) Docker
2 18 (18.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 10 (10.31%) Hyper-V
4 8 (8.25%) vSphere
5 3 (3.09%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (2.06%) Active Directory
7 1 (1.03%) Citrix Hypervisor
7 1 (1.03%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 34 (35.05%) Kubernetes
2 19 (19.59%) Terraform
3 17 (17.53%) Grafana
3 17 (17.53%) Prometheus
4 14 (14.43%) Ansible
5 8 (8.25%) Argo
5 8 (8.25%) Kustomize
6 3 (3.09%) Data Guard
6 3 (3.09%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 3 (3.09%) Oracle RMAN
6 3 (3.09%) Puppet
7 2 (2.06%) Istio
7 2 (2.06%) linkerd
7 2 (2.06%) systemd
8 1 (1.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 1 (1.03%) Kubeflow
8 1 (1.03%) Progress Chef
8 1 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 25 (25.77%) VMware
2 18 (18.56%) Red Hat
3 15 (15.46%) Microsoft
4 9 (9.28%) Cisco
5 7 (7.22%) Splunk
6 6 (6.19%) Databricks
7 5 (5.15%) Dynatrace
8 4 (4.12%) AppDynamics
9 3 (3.09%) Fortinet
9 3 (3.09%) Juniper
9 3 (3.09%) Oracle
10 2 (2.06%) PagerDuty
10 2 (2.06%) Salesforce
10 2 (2.06%) Virgin Media
11 1 (1.03%) CA Agile Central
11 1 (1.03%) Checkmarx
11 1 (1.03%) MuleSoft
11 1 (1.03%) OpenAI
11 1 (1.03%) Palo Alto
11 1 (1.03%) ServiceNow