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 13 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 115 116 138
Rank change year-on-year +1 +22 +44
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 122 48 39
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.86% 1.35% 0.91%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.08% 4.33% 3.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 81 29 25
10th Percentile £349 £363 £325
25th Percentile £434 £402 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +17.78% -10.00% -20.00%
75th Percentile £650 £575 £600
90th Percentile £788 £687 £659
England median daily rate £550 £525 £575
% change year-on-year +4.76% -8.70% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £63.80 - -
25th Percentile £64.25 - -
Median hourly rate £67.50 - -
75th Percentile £70.25 - -
90th Percentile £70.40 - -
England median hourly rate £75.00 £51.25 £85.00
% change year-on-year +46.34% -39.71% +8.97%

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 2,008 1,109 1,277
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 30.61% 31.22% 29.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,176 698 729
10th Percentile £275 £204 £250
25th Percentile £412 £358 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -2.00% -
75th Percentile £617 £600 £608
90th Percentile £700 £675 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £543
% change year-on-year - -3.23% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 237 94 74
10th Percentile £12.84 £13.81 £13.84
25th Percentile £16.25 £16.50 £26.44
Median hourly rate £32.50 £31.61 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +2.83% -43.81% +2.86%
75th Percentile £71.00 £57.25 £75.00
90th Percentile £90.25 £70.01 £75.16
England median hourly rate £33.99 £29.50 £52.75
% change year-on-year +15.22% -44.08% +14.23%

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 13 October 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
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 13 October 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 -18 54 £530 +6.00% 66
Berkshire -21 36 £425 -13.71% 36
Hampshire -5 34 £625 +55.47% 36
Surrey -9 18 £460 - 22
Buckinghamshire -15 12 £763 +17.31% 9
Middlesex - 12 £600 -
West Sussex -21 7 £400 +17.65% 12
Oxfordshire - 6 £530 - 21
Sussex - 2 £613 -
East Sussex - 1 £459 - 3
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 5 (4.10%) OpenStack
2 3 (2.46%) Apache Spark
3 2 (1.64%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.82%) CMS
4 1 (0.82%) Confluence
4 1 (0.82%) IIS
4 1 (0.82%) SAS
4 1 (0.82%) WebSphere
Applications
1 5 (4.10%) CPLEX
2 1 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.82%) Cloudability
1 1 (0.82%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 80 (65.57%) Azure
2 73 (59.84%) AWS
3 30 (24.59%) GCP
4 21 (17.21%) GitHub
5 14 (11.48%) Azure DevOps
6 13 (10.66%) Azure Monitor
6 13 (10.66%) SaaS
7 11 (9.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 10 (8.20%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (8.20%) Serverless
9 9 (7.38%) Azure Service Bus
9 9 (7.38%) Boomi
9 9 (7.38%) iPaaS
9 9 (7.38%) OpenShift
10 8 (6.56%) Datadog
11 7 (5.74%) AWS Lambda
12 6 (4.92%) Amazon ECS
12 6 (4.92%) Amazon S3
12 6 (4.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 4 (3.28%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 9 (7.38%) BGP
1 9 (7.38%) DNS
1 9 (7.38%) HTTP
1 9 (7.38%) LAN
1 9 (7.38%) MPLS
1 9 (7.38%) WAN
2 8 (6.56%) Firewall
3 7 (5.74%) TCP/IP
3 7 (5.74%) VPN
4 6 (4.92%) Network Security
4 6 (4.92%) Software-Defined Networking
5 4 (3.28%) BIG-IP
5 4 (3.28%) Cisco ASA
5 4 (3.28%) Cisco Firepower
5 4 (3.28%) Cisco Nexus
5 4 (3.28%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 4 (3.28%) IPsec
5 4 (3.28%) OSPF
5 4 (3.28%) SD-WAN
5 4 (3.28%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (10.66%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (9.02%) Relational Database
3 10 (8.20%) NoSQL
4 5 (4.10%) Data Lake
4 5 (4.10%) Data Warehouse
4 5 (4.10%) DynamoDB
4 5 (4.10%) MongoDB
5 3 (2.46%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (2.46%) Big Data
5 3 (2.46%) Metadata
6 2 (1.64%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (1.64%) Power BI
6 2 (1.64%) Spark SQL
7 1 (0.82%) Amazon Athena
7 1 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.82%) BusinessObjects
7 1 (0.82%) Delta Lake
7 1 (0.82%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.82%) Parquet
7 1 (0.82%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 12 (9.84%) Git
2 10 (8.20%) Jenkins
3 7 (5.74%) GitLab
4 2 (1.64%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (0.82%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.82%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.82%) JIRA
5 1 (0.82%) JUnit
5 1 (0.82%) Mockito
5 1 (0.82%) SonarQube
General
1 59 (48.36%) Social Skills
2 27 (22.13%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (9.02%) Finance
4 8 (6.56%) Public Sector
5 6 (4.92%) Aerospace
6 5 (4.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (3.28%) Telecoms
8 3 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (1.64%) Legal
9 2 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.64%) Retail
10 1 (0.82%) German Language
10 1 (0.82%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.82%) Military
10 1 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 32 (26.23%) Architect
2 17 (13.93%) Senior
3 15 (12.30%) Solutions Architect
4 14 (11.48%) Developer
5 11 (9.02%) Lead
6 9 (7.38%) Cloud Engineer
6 9 (7.38%) Software Engineer
7 8 (6.56%) Network Architect
7 8 (6.56%) Service Owner
7 8 (6.56%) Technical Leader
8 6 (4.92%) Azure Engineer
8 6 (4.92%) Python Developer
8 6 (4.92%) Technical Architect
9 5 (4.10%) IP Architect
9 5 (4.10%) Java Developer
10 4 (3.28%) Data Engineer
10 4 (3.28%) Project Manager
10 4 (3.28%) Senior Developer
10 4 (3.28%) Senior Java Developer
10 4 (3.28%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (26.23%) Terraform
2 21 (17.21%) REST
3 18 (14.75%) OAuth
4 15 (12.30%) GraphQL
4 15 (12.30%) Kafka
4 15 (12.30%) RESTful
5 14 (11.48%) OpenAPI
5 14 (11.48%) RabbitMQ
5 14 (11.48%) Swagger
6 13 (10.66%) JWT
7 12 (9.84%) JSON
7 12 (9.84%) SOAP
8 10 (8.20%) Django
8 10 (8.20%) Middleware
8 10 (8.20%) SAML
9 9 (7.38%) ActiveMQ
9 9 (7.38%) EDI
9 9 (7.38%) XML
10 8 (6.56%) OAuth2
11 7 (5.74%) React
Miscellaneous
1 19 (15.57%) Distributed Systems
2 13 (10.66%) Product Ownership
3 12 (9.84%) Enterprise Software
3 12 (9.84%) Hybrid Cloud
4 9 (7.38%) Data Structures
5 8 (6.56%) CMDB
6 6 (4.92%) Algorithms
6 6 (4.92%) Data Protection Act
7 5 (4.10%) Data Centre
7 5 (4.10%) Onboarding
8 4 (3.28%) Management Information System
8 4 (3.28%) Private Cloud
9 3 (2.46%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (2.46%) Security Posture
10 2 (1.64%) AI Agents
10 2 (1.64%) Cyber Defence
10 2 (1.64%) Cyber Threat
10 2 (1.64%) Cyberattack
10 2 (1.64%) Distributed Architecture
10 2 (1.64%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 14 (11.48%) Linux
1 14 (11.48%) Windows
2 4 (3.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 4 (3.28%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.82%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (46.72%) DevOps
2 52 (42.62%) Agile
3 47 (38.52%) CI/CD
4 41 (33.61%) Containerisation
4 41 (33.61%) Problem-Solving
5 39 (31.97%) Continuous Improvement
6 32 (26.23%) Infrastructure as Code
7 30 (24.59%) Roadmaps
7 30 (24.59%) Software Engineering
8 27 (22.13%) Microservices
9 26 (21.31%) Observability
10 24 (19.67%) AI
10 24 (19.67%) Test Automation
11 21 (17.21%) Enterprise Architecture
11 21 (17.21%) Stakeholder Management
11 21 (17.21%) Technical Leadership
12 20 (16.39%) Decision-Making
13 19 (15.57%) Analytics
13 19 (15.57%) Event-Driven
14 18 (14.75%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 52 (42.62%) Python
2 22 (18.03%) PowerShell
3 17 (13.93%) Bash
4 16 (13.11%) SQL
5 15 (12.30%) Java
6 8 (6.56%) JavaScript
7 5 (4.10%) Bicep
8 3 (2.46%) Kusto Query Language
9 2 (1.64%) C#
9 2 (1.64%) Go
10 1 (0.82%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 38 (31.15%) Security Cleared
2 29 (23.77%) SC Cleared
3 15 (12.30%) Degree
4 12 (9.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (9.02%) AWS Certification
6 10 (8.20%) Azure Certification
7 8 (6.56%) Cisco Certification
7 8 (6.56%) DV Cleared
7 8 (6.56%) ITIL Certification
7 8 (6.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 7 (5.74%) CCIE
8 7 (5.74%) Master's Degree
9 5 (4.10%) JNCIE
10 4 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (3.28%) OSCP
11 3 (2.46%) CCNP
12 2 (1.64%) CISM
12 2 (1.64%) CISSP
12 2 (1.64%) GCIA
12 2 (1.64%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (18.03%) QA
2 5 (4.10%) Accessibility
2 5 (4.10%) NCSC
3 4 (3.28%) Data Quality
4 2 (1.64%) Disclosure Scotland
4 2 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.64%) NIST
4 2 (1.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 1 (0.82%) GDPR
5 1 (0.82%) GRC
5 1 (0.82%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 24 (19.67%) Docker
2 10 (8.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (6.56%) IAG
4 6 (4.92%) VMware NSX
5 3 (2.46%) Hyper-V
6 2 (1.64%) Active Directory
6 2 (1.64%) vSphere
7 1 (0.82%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 47 (38.52%) Kubernetes
2 31 (25.41%) Ansible
3 8 (6.56%) Progress Chef
3 8 (6.56%) Puppet
4 5 (4.10%) Istio
5 3 (2.46%) Grafana
6 2 (1.64%) Argo
6 2 (1.64%) linkerd
6 2 (1.64%) Prometheus
6 2 (1.64%) vRealize
6 2 (1.64%) vRealize Orchestrator
7 1 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 1 (0.82%) Packer
7 1 (0.82%) Podman
7 1 (0.82%) QRadar
7 1 (0.82%) Rancher
7 1 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 32 (26.23%) Microsoft
2 14 (11.48%) Google
2 14 (11.48%) VMware
3 11 (9.02%) Dynatrace
4 10 (8.20%) Databricks
4 10 (8.20%) IBM
4 10 (8.20%) Informatica
4 10 (8.20%) Oracle
5 9 (7.38%) MuleSoft
5 9 (7.38%) ServiceNow
5 9 (7.38%) TIBCO
5 9 (7.38%) WSO2
6 8 (6.56%) Nexthink
7 5 (4.10%) Cisco
8 4 (3.28%) F5
8 4 (3.28%) Palo Alto
8 4 (3.28%) SolarWinds
9 3 (2.46%) Red Hat
9 3 (2.46%) SAP
10 1 (0.82%) CheckPoint