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 8 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 133 169
Rank change year-on-year +30 +36 +57
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 85 28 39
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.83% 0.89% 0.71%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.16% 2.64% 2.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 58 13 31
10th Percentile £336 £355 £405
25th Percentile £400 £505 £492
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £575 £525
Median % change year-on-year -21.74% +9.52% -17.65%
75th Percentile £534 £618 £638
90th Percentile £612 - £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 £76.50 £70.25 £68.00
% change year-on-year +8.90% +3.31% -

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 1,379 1,059 1,648
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 29.61% 33.53% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 936 607 1,002
10th Percentile £204 £250 £205
25th Percentile £363 £384 £314
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £486
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +7.97% -5.58%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
England median daily rate £508 £547 £548
% change year-on-year -7.13% -0.09% -4.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 39 122
10th Percentile £12.50 £19.68 £14.13
25th Percentile £15.72 £24.42 £22.77
Median hourly rate £25.00 £35.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.57% -26.32% +24.22%
75th Percentile £65.23 £62.24 £61.78
90th Percentile £87.80 £74.89 £76.53
England median hourly rate £31.18 £39.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year -20.05% +20.00% +44.54%

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 8 February 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 8 February 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 +16 59 £475 -7.77% 25
Berkshire +21 54 £450 -11.76% 15
Surrey - 16 £413 - 4
Hampshire -19 8 £578 -5.33% 3
Buckinghamshire -1 4 £494 -26.85% 4
Home Counties - 2 - -
Oxfordshire - 1 £525 - 6
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 2 (2.35%) Apache Pulsar
3 1 (1.18%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.18%) Appian
3 1 (1.18%) Confluence
3 1 (1.18%) Jupyter
Applications
1 1 (1.18%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (1.18%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 57 (67.06%) Azure
2 54 (63.53%) AWS
3 22 (25.88%) GCP
4 15 (17.65%) OpenShift
5 14 (16.47%) Azure DevOps
6 9 (10.59%) Serverless
7 8 (9.41%) Amazon S3
7 8 (9.41%) Azure Storage
8 7 (8.24%) Amazon EKS
8 7 (8.24%) Azure API Management
9 6 (7.06%) Azure Functions
9 6 (7.06%) Datadog
9 6 (7.06%) GitHub
10 5 (5.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 5 (5.88%) Amazon EC2
10 5 (5.88%) AWS CloudFormation
10 5 (5.88%) Azure Data Factory
11 4 (4.71%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (4.71%) IaaS
11 4 (4.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
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 3 (3.53%) Broadband
5 3 (3.53%) Firewall
5 3 (3.53%) NaaS
5 3 (3.53%) SD-WAN
6 1 (1.18%) NetScaler
6 1 (1.18%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (5.88%) Amazon RDS
1 5 (5.88%) Azure SQL Database
2 4 (4.71%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (3.53%) Big Data
3 3 (3.53%) Oracle Database
3 3 (3.53%) Oracle Reports
3 3 (3.53%) Power BI
4 2 (2.35%) Data Lake
4 2 (2.35%) Data Mining
4 2 (2.35%) Hadoop
4 2 (2.35%) NoSQL
4 2 (2.35%) Relational Database
4 2 (2.35%) SQL Server
5 1 (1.18%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.18%) DynamoDB
5 1 (1.18%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 11 (12.94%) Git
2 6 (7.06%) Jenkins
3 2 (2.35%) JIRA
4 1 (1.18%) GitLab
4 1 (1.18%) MLflow
4 1 (1.18%) SonarQube
4 1 (1.18%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 32 (37.65%) Social Skills
2 13 (15.29%) Analytical Skills
2 13 (15.29%) Public Sector
3 7 (8.24%) Billing
4 5 (5.88%) Finance
5 4 (4.71%) Telecoms
6 3 (3.53%) Banking
7 2 (2.35%) Aerospace
7 2 (2.35%) Marketing
8 1 (1.18%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 35 (41.18%) Architect
2 10 (11.76%) Senior
3 9 (10.59%) Solutions Architect
4 8 (9.41%) Infrastructure Architect
5 7 (8.24%) Azure Engineer
5 7 (8.24%) Site Engineer
5 7 (8.24%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 6 (7.06%) Business Analyst
6 6 (7.06%) Technical Architect
7 5 (5.88%) Analyst
7 5 (5.88%) Azure Software Engineer
7 5 (5.88%) IP Architect
7 5 (5.88%) IP Specialist
7 5 (5.88%) Software Engineer
8 4 (4.71%) Developer
8 4 (4.71%) Project Manager
9 3 (3.53%) Data Engineer
9 3 (3.53%) Delivery Manager
9 3 (3.53%) Oracle DBA
9 3 (3.53%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (15.29%) REST
2 8 (9.41%) ARM Templates
2 8 (9.41%) Loki
3 7 (8.24%) .NET
4 6 (7.06%) NETCONF
4 6 (7.06%) YANG
5 5 (5.88%) ADO
6 4 (4.71%) Kafka
6 4 (4.71%) Middleware
7 3 (3.53%) OpenAPI
7 3 (3.53%) RESTful
7 3 (3.53%) Swagger
8 2 (2.35%) JSON
8 2 (2.35%) NumPy
8 2 (2.35%) OAuth
8 2 (2.35%) OAuth2
8 2 (2.35%) OpenTelemetry
8 2 (2.35%) Pandas
9 1 (1.18%) pytest
9 1 (1.18%) React
Miscellaneous
1 9 (10.59%) Public Cloud
1 9 (10.59%) Virtual Team
2 8 (9.41%) Hybrid Cloud
3 5 (5.88%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (4.71%) Onboarding
5 3 (3.53%) Distributed Systems
5 3 (3.53%) TM Forum
6 2 (2.35%) Product Ownership
7 1 (1.18%) Algorithms
7 1 (1.18%) Chip and PIN
7 1 (1.18%) Data Structures
7 1 (1.18%) EMV
7 1 (1.18%) Enterprise Cloud
7 1 (1.18%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (1.18%) Low-Code
7 1 (1.18%) Private Cloud
7 1 (1.18%) Smart Meter
Operating Systems
1 20 (23.53%) Linux
2 11 (12.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (3.53%) Windows
4 1 (1.18%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 38 (44.71%) CI/CD
2 37 (43.53%) DevOps
3 28 (32.94%) Agile
3 28 (32.94%) Microservices
4 21 (24.71%) Observability
5 18 (21.18%) Containerisation
5 18 (21.18%) Infrastructure as Code
6 17 (20.00%) Roadmaps
6 17 (20.00%) Stakeholder Management
7 14 (16.47%) TOGAF
8 13 (15.29%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 11 (12.94%) Software Engineering
10 9 (10.59%) High Availability
10 9 (10.59%) Problem-Solving
10 9 (10.59%) Scaled Agile Framework
11 8 (9.41%) Cybersecurity
11 8 (9.41%) Enterprise Architecture
11 8 (9.41%) Infrastructure Management
11 8 (9.41%) Network Virtualisation
11 8 (9.41%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 32 (37.65%) Python
2 16 (18.82%) Bash
3 13 (15.29%) SQL
4 7 (8.24%) PowerShell
5 6 (7.06%) JavaScript
6 5 (5.88%) C#
7 3 (3.53%) Bicep
7 3 (3.53%) Java
7 3 (3.53%) Shell Script
8 2 (2.35%) R
Qualifications
1 26 (30.59%) Security Cleared
2 19 (22.35%) SC Cleared
3 10 (11.76%) Azure Certification
4 9 (10.59%) AWS Certification
4 9 (10.59%) Cisco Certification
5 8 (9.41%) CCIE
6 6 (7.06%) JNCIE
7 5 (5.88%) Degree
7 5 (5.88%) RHCE
7 5 (5.88%) TOGAF Certification
8 4 (4.71%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (3.53%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (3.53%) OCP
9 3 (3.53%) Oracle Certification
10 2 (2.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (2.35%) CCNP
10 2 (2.35%) DV Cleared
10 2 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (2.35%) PMI Certification
10 2 (2.35%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (7.06%) GDPR
2 3 (3.53%) SLA
3 2 (2.35%) NIST
3 2 (2.35%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.18%) ISO 20022
4 1 (1.18%) ISO 8583
4 1 (1.18%) NCSC
System Software
1 17 (20.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 12 (14.12%) 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 17 (20.00%) Grafana
2 17 (20.00%) Prometheus
3 15 (17.65%) Ansible
4 14 (16.47%) Terraform
5 8 (9.41%) Argo
5 8 (9.41%) Kustomize
6 3 (3.53%) Data Guard
6 3 (3.53%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 3 (3.53%) Oracle RMAN
6 3 (3.53%) Puppet
7 2 (2.35%) Istio
7 2 (2.35%) linkerd
7 2 (2.35%) systemd
8 1 (1.18%) Kubeflow
8 1 (1.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 24 (28.24%) VMware
2 17 (20.00%) Red Hat
3 11 (12.94%) Microsoft
4 9 (10.59%) Cisco
5 7 (8.24%) Splunk
6 6 (7.06%) Databricks
6 6 (7.06%) Salesforce
7 5 (5.88%) MuleSoft
8 4 (4.71%) AppDynamics
8 4 (4.71%) Dynatrace
9 3 (3.53%) Fortinet
9 3 (3.53%) Juniper
9 3 (3.53%) Oracle
10 2 (2.35%) PagerDuty
10 2 (2.35%) Virgin Media
11 1 (1.18%) Ab Initio
11 1 (1.18%) CheckPoint
11 1 (1.18%) Citrix
11 1 (1.18%) ServiceNow
11 1 (1.18%) Teradata