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 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 117 136 181
Rank change year-on-year +19 +45 +40
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 72 33 29
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.66% 0.88% 0.58%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.46% 2.76% 1.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 49 15 24
10th Percentile £387 £318 £478
25th Percentile £431 £400 £522
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £625
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -16.80% -
75th Percentile £575 £618 £688
90th Percentile £675 - £700
England median daily rate £531 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -11.56% - -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 £85.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -10.00% +85.27% -

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 1,319 1,195 1,565
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 30.32% 31.84% 31.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 877 699 980
10th Percentile £204 £239 £205
25th Percentile £363 £381 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.19% +5.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £613
90th Percentile £680 £700 £694
England median daily rate £515 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.37% - -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 49 94
10th Percentile £12.50 £18.33 £19.12
25th Percentile £16.50 £24.18 £24.57
Median hourly rate £25.00 £35.00 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.57% -33.96% +60.61%
75th Percentile £68.18 £57.50 £63.29
90th Percentile £80.90 £71.38 £77.85
England median hourly rate £29.00 £37.00 £43.84
% change year-on-year -21.62% -15.60% +25.16%

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025. 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 +21 59 £500 -1.96% 20
Berkshire +21 55 £500 -0.99% 15
Hampshire -17 6 £638 +4.51% 8
Surrey - 4 £400 - 6
Buckinghamshire +7 3 £475 -29.63% 5
West Sussex -9 1 £340 +4.62%
Kent - 1 £375 - 1
Oxfordshire - 1 £525 -
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 (8.33%) OpenStack
2 2 (2.78%) Jupyter
3 1 (1.39%) CMS
3 1 (1.39%) Confluence
3 1 (1.39%) nginx
3 1 (1.39%) Umbraco
Cloud Services
1 45 (62.50%) AWS
2 40 (55.56%) Azure
3 14 (19.44%) GCP
3 14 (19.44%) OpenShift
4 9 (12.50%) Amazon S3
5 7 (9.72%) Amazon EC2
5 7 (9.72%) Azure DevOps
5 7 (9.72%) Serverless
6 6 (8.33%) Amazon EKS
6 6 (8.33%) AWS Lambda
6 6 (8.33%) Entra ID
7 5 (6.94%) GitHub
8 4 (5.56%) AWS CloudFormation
8 4 (5.56%) IaaS
9 3 (4.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (4.17%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (4.17%) Azure Storage
9 3 (4.17%) Datadog
9 3 (4.17%) Power Platform
9 3 (4.17%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (12.50%) MPLS
1 9 (12.50%) WAN
2 6 (8.33%) BGP
2 6 (8.33%) LAN
3 5 (6.94%) VPN
4 4 (5.56%) Firewall
5 3 (4.17%) Broadband
5 3 (4.17%) NaaS
5 3 (4.17%) Network Security
5 3 (4.17%) SD-WAN
6 1 (1.39%) DNS
6 1 (1.39%) NetScaler
6 1 (1.39%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (8.33%) Amazon RDS
2 4 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (4.17%) Oracle Database
3 3 (4.17%) Oracle Reports
3 3 (4.17%) Power BI
4 2 (2.78%) Big Data
4 2 (2.78%) Data Mining
4 2 (2.78%) Hadoop
4 2 (2.78%) NoSQL
4 2 (2.78%) Relational Database
4 2 (2.78%) SQL Server
5 1 (1.39%) MongoDB
5 1 (1.39%) MySQL
5 1 (1.39%) Redis
Development Applications
1 11 (15.28%) Git
2 8 (11.11%) Jenkins
3 3 (4.17%) GitLab
3 3 (4.17%) JIRA
4 1 (1.39%) Cypress.io
4 1 (1.39%) MLflow
4 1 (1.39%) Mocha
General
1 27 (37.50%) Social Skills
2 12 (16.67%) Public Sector
3 9 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (9.72%) Billing
4 7 (9.72%) Finance
5 5 (6.94%) Telecoms
6 3 (4.17%) Aerospace
7 2 (2.78%) Banking
8 1 (1.39%) Digital Healthcare
8 1 (1.39%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 36 (50.00%) Architect
2 10 (13.89%) Solutions Architect
3 7 (9.72%) Developer
3 7 (9.72%) Senior
3 7 (9.72%) Site Engineer
3 7 (9.72%) Site Reliability Engineer
4 6 (8.33%) IP Architect
4 6 (8.33%) IP Specialist
4 6 (8.33%) Security Architect
4 6 (8.33%) Technical Architect
5 5 (6.94%) Analyst
5 5 (6.94%) Business Analyst
6 3 (4.17%) DBA
6 3 (4.17%) Oracle DBA
6 3 (4.17%) Technical Analyst
6 3 (4.17%) Technical Business Analyst
7 2 (2.78%) Digital Architect
7 2 (2.78%) Digital Solutions Architect
7 2 (2.78%) Network Architect
7 2 (2.78%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (16.67%) REST
2 8 (11.11%) Loki
3 6 (8.33%) NETCONF
3 6 (8.33%) RESTful
3 6 (8.33%) YANG
4 5 (6.94%) ADO
5 3 (4.17%) JSON
5 3 (4.17%) Node.js
5 3 (4.17%) OpenAPI
5 3 (4.17%) Swagger
6 2 (2.78%) .NET
6 2 (2.78%) GraphQL
6 2 (2.78%) OAuth
6 2 (2.78%) OAuth2
7 1 (1.39%) .NET Framework
7 1 (1.39%) HTML
7 1 (1.39%) SOAP
7 1 (1.39%) Spring
7 1 (1.39%) Web Services
7 1 (1.39%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (16.67%) Hybrid Cloud
2 9 (12.50%) Virtual Team
3 5 (6.94%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (5.56%) Onboarding
4 4 (5.56%) Public Cloud
4 4 (5.56%) Security Posture
5 3 (4.17%) Cloud Security Posture
5 3 (4.17%) TM Forum
6 2 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (1.39%) Algorithms
7 1 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
7 1 (1.39%) Product Ownership
7 1 (1.39%) Smart Meter
Operating Systems
1 20 (27.78%) Linux
2 11 (15.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (1.39%) Windows
3 1 (1.39%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (47.22%) CI/CD
2 28 (38.89%) DevOps
3 27 (37.50%) Agile
4 25 (34.72%) Microservices
5 19 (26.39%) Roadmaps
6 18 (25.00%) Infrastructure as Code
6 18 (25.00%) TOGAF
7 15 (20.83%) Containerisation
8 14 (19.44%) Observability
9 13 (18.06%) Stakeholder Management
10 11 (15.28%) Architectural Patterns
10 11 (15.28%) DevSecOps
10 11 (15.28%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 10 (13.89%) Problem-Solving
11 10 (13.89%) Strategic Thinking
12 8 (11.11%) CRM
12 8 (11.11%) Cybersecurity
12 8 (11.11%) High Availability
12 8 (11.11%) Infrastructure Management
12 8 (11.11%) Scaled Agile Framework
Programming Languages
1 24 (33.33%) Python
2 11 (15.28%) Bash
3 8 (11.11%) SQL
4 3 (4.17%) Java
4 3 (4.17%) Shell Script
5 2 (2.78%) C#
5 2 (2.78%) JavaScript
5 2 (2.78%) PowerShell
5 2 (2.78%) R
6 1 (1.39%) Bicep
6 1 (1.39%) Go
Qualifications
1 23 (31.94%) Security Cleared
2 16 (22.22%) SC Cleared
3 13 (18.06%) Azure Certification
4 12 (16.67%) AWS Certification
4 12 (16.67%) Cisco Certification
5 8 (11.11%) CCIE
6 6 (8.33%) JNCIE
7 5 (6.94%) Degree
7 5 (6.94%) RHCE
7 5 (6.94%) TOGAF Certification
8 4 (5.56%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 4 (5.56%) CCSP
8 4 (5.56%) CISSP
8 4 (5.56%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (4.17%) OCP
9 3 (4.17%) Oracle Certification
10 2 (2.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (2.78%) DV Cleared
11 1 (1.39%) CCSM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (15.28%) GDPR
2 7 (9.72%) NIST
3 6 (8.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (6.94%) PCI DSS
4 5 (6.94%) PSD2
5 4 (5.56%) QA
6 3 (4.17%) SLA
7 1 (1.39%) EU AI Act
7 1 (1.39%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (1.39%) JSP 440
7 1 (1.39%) NCSC
System Software
1 12 (16.67%) Docker
2 10 (13.89%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (11.11%) vSphere
4 3 (4.17%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (1.39%) Active Directory
5 1 (1.39%) Hyper-V
5 1 (1.39%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 25 (34.72%) Kubernetes
2 16 (22.22%) Ansible
3 13 (18.06%) Terraform
4 12 (16.67%) Grafana
5 11 (15.28%) Prometheus
6 8 (11.11%) Argo
6 8 (11.11%) Kustomize
7 4 (5.56%) Puppet
8 3 (4.17%) Data Guard
8 3 (4.17%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 3 (4.17%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (2.78%) systemd
10 1 (1.39%) Kubeflow
10 1 (1.39%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 17 (23.61%) Red Hat
2 16 (22.22%) VMware
3 9 (12.50%) Cisco
4 6 (8.33%) Salesforce
5 5 (6.94%) Microsoft
5 5 (6.94%) MuleSoft
6 3 (4.17%) Fortinet
6 3 (4.17%) Juniper
6 3 (4.17%) Oracle
7 2 (2.78%) PagerDuty
7 2 (2.78%) Splunk
7 2 (2.78%) Virgin Media
8 1 (1.39%) CheckPoint
8 1 (1.39%) Citrix
8 1 (1.39%) Google
8 1 (1.39%) JDA
8 1 (1.39%) Palo Alto
8 1 (1.39%) Pega
8 1 (1.39%) ServiceNow