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 26 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 126 163
Rank change year-on-year +7 +37 +32
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 95 25 38
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.59% 0.86% 0.69%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.51% 2.59% 2.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 69 15 24
10th Percentile £349 £378 £375
25th Percentile £400 £402 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £440 £498
Median % change year-on-year +7.95% -11.56% -20.40%
75th Percentile £560 £544 £500
90th Percentile £650 £610 £632
England median daily rate £550 £500 £588
% change year-on-year +10.00% -14.89% -9.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £66.25 - -
Median hourly rate £67.50 - -
75th Percentile £68.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £75.25 £40.00 -
% change year-on-year +88.13% - -

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 1,725 967 1,554
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 28.89% 33.23% 28.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,143 616 943
10th Percentile £264 £200 £205
25th Percentile £400 £350 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.91%
75th Percentile £600 £595 £608
90th Percentile £699 £650 £688
England median daily rate £520 £535 £550
% change year-on-year -2.80% -2.73% -3.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 131 67 152
10th Percentile £18.25 £15.13 £11.72
25th Percentile £27.69 £20.61 £18.17
Median hourly rate £67.50 £47.81 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +41.20% +0.64% -5.00%
75th Percentile £85.40 £63.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.50 £69.91
England median hourly rate £42.71 £33.91 £35.50
% change year-on-year +25.94% -4.48% +60.20%

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 26 May 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 26 May 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 -17 49 £500 +12.36% 20
Berkshire -11 35 £425 -4.49% 11
Surrey +4 21 £425 - 2
Hampshire -21 13 £483 +13.38% 12
Buckinghamshire - 10 £550 - 5
East Sussex - 4 £459 - 1
Oxfordshire - 4 £665 - 4
West Sussex - 4 £500 - 1
Home Counties - 2 - -
Sussex - 1 £600 - 1
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 (5.26%) OpenStack
2 3 (3.16%) Confluence
3 2 (2.11%) Apache Pulsar
4 1 (1.05%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.05%) Appian
4 1 (1.05%) ArcGIS
4 1 (1.05%) CMS
4 1 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (1.05%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (4.21%) CPLEX
2 1 (1.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.05%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.05%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (1.05%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 65 (68.42%) Azure
2 54 (56.84%) AWS
3 29 (30.53%) GCP
4 20 (21.05%) Azure DevOps
5 12 (12.63%) GitHub
6 10 (10.53%) Serverless
7 9 (9.47%) Amazon S3
7 9 (9.47%) Azure Storage
8 7 (7.37%) Azure AKS
8 7 (7.37%) Azure API Management
8 7 (7.37%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (7.37%) OpenShift
9 6 (6.32%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (6.32%) Azure Functions
10 5 (5.26%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (5.26%) Azure Data Factory
10 5 (5.26%) Azure Monitor
10 5 (5.26%) Datadog
10 5 (5.26%) IaaS
11 4 (4.21%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 11 (11.58%) VPN
2 10 (10.53%) DNS
3 5 (5.26%) BGP
3 5 (5.26%) Firewall
3 5 (5.26%) LAN
3 5 (5.26%) MPLS
3 5 (5.26%) WAN
4 2 (2.11%) Network Security
5 1 (1.05%) iSCSI
5 1 (1.05%) Remote Desktop
5 1 (1.05%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (9.47%) NoSQL
2 8 (8.42%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (6.32%) Azure SQL Database
4 5 (5.26%) Amazon RDS
4 5 (5.26%) DynamoDB
5 4 (4.21%) MongoDB
5 4 (4.21%) Relational Database
6 3 (3.16%) Data Lake
6 3 (3.16%) Oracle Database
6 3 (3.16%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (2.11%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (2.11%) Metadata
7 2 (2.11%) SQL Server
8 1 (1.05%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (1.05%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (1.05%) BusinessObjects
8 1 (1.05%) GIS
8 1 (1.05%) MySQL
8 1 (1.05%) Parquet
8 1 (1.05%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 13 (13.68%) Git
2 10 (10.53%) Jenkins
3 4 (4.21%) JIRA
4 2 (2.11%) GitLab
5 1 (1.05%) Cucumber
5 1 (1.05%) MLflow
5 1 (1.05%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.05%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 25 (26.32%) Social Skills
2 14 (14.74%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (10.53%) Public Sector
4 9 (9.47%) Finance
5 2 (2.11%) Billing
5 2 (2.11%) Financial Institution
5 2 (2.11%) Marketing
5 2 (2.11%) Telecoms
6 1 (1.05%) Automotive
6 1 (1.05%) Aviation
6 1 (1.05%) Banking
6 1 (1.05%) Legal
6 1 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 31 (32.63%) Architect
2 14 (14.74%) Developer
3 11 (11.58%) Azure Engineer
3 11 (11.58%) Java Engineer
3 11 (11.58%) Senior
4 10 (10.53%) DevOps Engineer
4 10 (10.53%) Infrastructure Architect
5 9 (9.47%) Solutions Architect
6 6 (6.32%) Software Engineer
7 5 (5.26%) Azure Software Engineer
7 5 (5.26%) Cloud Engineer
7 5 (5.26%) Python Developer
8 4 (4.21%) IP Architect
8 4 (4.21%) Network Architect
9 3 (3.16%) Delivery Manager
9 3 (3.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 3 (3.16%) Java Developer
9 3 (3.16%) Oracle DBA
9 3 (3.16%) Project Manager
9 3 (3.16%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (17.89%) REST
2 11 (11.58%) RESTful
3 10 (10.53%) .NET
3 10 (10.53%) ARM Templates
4 9 (9.47%) GraphQL
4 9 (9.47%) Kafka
5 7 (7.37%) OAuth
6 6 (6.32%) OpenAPI
6 6 (6.32%) Swagger
7 5 (5.26%) NETCONF
7 5 (5.26%) OAuth2
7 5 (5.26%) RabbitMQ
7 5 (5.26%) YANG
8 4 (4.21%) Django
8 4 (4.21%) Flask
8 4 (4.21%) JSON
8 4 (4.21%) Middleware
8 4 (4.21%) NumPy
8 4 (4.21%) Pandas
8 4 (4.21%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 12 (12.63%) Distributed Systems
1 12 (12.63%) Public Cloud
2 9 (9.47%) Enterprise Software
3 7 (7.37%) Hybrid Cloud
4 6 (6.32%) Virtual Team
5 5 (5.26%) Data Structures
6 4 (4.21%) Algorithms
6 4 (4.21%) Onboarding
6 4 (4.21%) Product Ownership
7 3 (3.16%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (2.11%) Mobile App
8 2 (2.11%) Security Posture
8 2 (2.11%) TM Forum
9 1 (1.05%) Distributed Architecture
9 1 (1.05%) EMV
9 1 (1.05%) Legacy Applications
9 1 (1.05%) Low-Code
9 1 (1.05%) Management Information System
9 1 (1.05%) Private Cloud
9 1 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 11 (11.58%) Linux
2 4 (4.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (3.16%) Windows
4 1 (1.05%) Android
4 1 (1.05%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (62.11%) DevOps
2 47 (49.47%) CI/CD
3 35 (36.84%) Microservices
4 24 (25.26%) Agile
4 24 (25.26%) Containerisation
5 23 (24.21%) Software Engineering
6 19 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
7 18 (18.95%) Problem-Solving
8 16 (16.84%) Roadmaps
9 15 (15.79%) Stakeholder Management
10 14 (14.74%) Architectural Patterns
11 13 (13.68%) Analytics
12 12 (12.63%) Enterprise Architecture
12 12 (12.63%) Observability
13 11 (11.58%) Continuous Improvement
13 11 (11.58%) Test Automation
14 10 (10.53%) High Availability
14 10 (10.53%) Root Cause Analysis
14 10 (10.53%) Scrum
15 9 (9.47%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 27 (28.42%) Python
2 19 (20.00%) Java
3 17 (17.89%) SQL
4 10 (10.53%) PowerShell
5 8 (8.42%) Bash
5 8 (8.42%) Bicep
6 7 (7.37%) C#
6 7 (7.37%) JavaScript
7 3 (3.16%) Shell Script
8 1 (1.05%) Go
8 1 (1.05%) Google Apps Script
8 1 (1.05%) Korn
8 1 (1.05%) Kotlin
8 1 (1.05%) Objective-C
8 1 (1.05%) Swift
8 1 (1.05%) TypeScript
8 1 (1.05%) VBA
Qualifications
1 18 (18.95%) Security Cleared
2 13 (13.68%) SC Cleared
3 7 (7.37%) Azure Certification
4 6 (6.32%) Cisco Certification
4 6 (6.32%) Degree
5 5 (5.26%) CCIE
5 5 (5.26%) JNCIE
5 5 (5.26%) RHCE
6 4 (4.21%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (3.16%) OCP
7 3 (3.16%) Oracle Certification
8 2 (2.11%) AWS Certification
8 2 (2.11%) CISM
8 2 (2.11%) CISSP
8 2 (2.11%) DV Cleared
8 2 (2.11%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (1.05%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (1.05%) CCNP
9 1 (1.05%) PMI Certification
9 1 (1.05%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.26%) GDPR
2 4 (4.21%) QA
3 2 (2.11%) NIST
3 2 (2.11%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.05%) ISO 20022
4 1 (1.05%) ISO 8583
4 1 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.05%) NCSC
4 1 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 24 (25.26%) Docker
2 10 (10.53%) Hyper-V
2 10 (10.53%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (3.16%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (2.11%) Active Directory
5 1 (1.05%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 31 (32.63%) Kubernetes
2 25 (26.32%) Terraform
3 15 (15.79%) Ansible
4 9 (9.47%) Grafana
5 7 (7.37%) Prometheus
6 3 (3.16%) Data Guard
6 3 (3.16%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 3 (3.16%) Oracle RMAN
7 2 (2.11%) Istio
7 2 (2.11%) linkerd
7 2 (2.11%) systemd
8 1 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 1 (1.05%) Kubeflow
8 1 (1.05%) Puppet
8 1 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 21 (22.11%) Microsoft
2 11 (11.58%) VMware
3 10 (10.53%) Red Hat
4 6 (6.32%) Databricks
4 6 (6.32%) Dynatrace
4 6 (6.32%) Splunk
5 4 (4.21%) AppDynamics
5 4 (4.21%) Oracle
6 2 (2.11%) Google
6 2 (2.11%) SAP
7 1 (1.05%) Ab Initio
7 1 (1.05%) Ariba
7 1 (1.05%) Dell
7 1 (1.05%) ESRI
7 1 (1.05%) Foundry
7 1 (1.05%) Informatica
7 1 (1.05%) PagerDuty
7 1 (1.05%) Salesforce
7 1 (1.05%) Teradata
7 1 (1.05%) webMethods