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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 124 151
Rank change year-on-year -7 +27 +38
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 99 30 48
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.53% 0.89% 0.86%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.10% 2.78% 2.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 62 19 28
10th Percentile £349 £357 £439
25th Percentile £413 £402 £474
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £498
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -9.55% -20.40%
75th Percentile £622 £544 £528
90th Percentile £769 £635 £673
England median daily rate £550 £500 £594
% change year-on-year +10.00% -15.79% -8.65%
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 £77.00 £51.25 £85.00
% change year-on-year +50.24% -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 1,940 1,078 1,612
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 29.91% 31.83% 28.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,253 660 947
10th Percentile £280 £205 £213
25th Percentile £406 £350 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% - -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £661 £698
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -0.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 173 100 163
10th Percentile £17.50 £15.13 £11.82
25th Percentile £27.88 £16.95 £18.00
Median hourly rate £60.00 £33.89 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +77.07% -40.92% +14.70%
75th Percentile £85.40 £62.24 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.66 £75.16
England median hourly rate £43.96 £33.05 £39.25
% change year-on-year +33.01% -15.80% +22.66%

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 July 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 July 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 50 £530 +6.00% 28
Berkshire -18 32 £425 -10.53% 17
Hampshire -12 22 £492 +15.38% 13
Buckinghamshire -20 14 £560 -13.85% 7
Surrey -12 12 £490 +15.29% 12
Middlesex - 5 - - 1
West Sussex -16 4 £500 +47.06% 7
Oxfordshire - 4 £665 - 4
East Sussex - 4 £459 - 1
Home Counties - 2 - -
Sussex - 1 £600 - 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 7 (7.07%) OpenStack
2 3 (3.03%) Apache Spark
2 3 (3.03%) Confluence
3 2 (2.02%) Apache Pulsar
4 1 (1.01%) ArcGIS
4 1 (1.01%) CMS
4 1 (1.01%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (1.01%) SAS
Applications
1 7 (7.07%) CPLEX
2 1 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.01%) MS Visio
2 1 (1.01%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (1.01%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (1.01%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 66 (66.67%) Azure
2 58 (58.59%) AWS
3 22 (22.22%) GCP
4 18 (18.18%) Azure DevOps
5 12 (12.12%) GitHub
6 10 (10.10%) Azure Monitor
7 9 (9.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 8 (8.08%) AWS CloudFormation
8 8 (8.08%) Azure AKS
8 8 (8.08%) Serverless
8 8 (8.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 7 (7.07%) Amazon S3
9 7 (7.07%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (7.07%) SaaS
10 6 (6.06%) Amazon EKS
10 6 (6.06%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (5.05%) Amazon ECS
11 5 (5.05%) Azure Key Vault
11 5 (5.05%) Datadog
12 4 (4.04%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 11 (11.11%) BGP
1 11 (11.11%) LAN
1 11 (11.11%) MPLS
1 11 (11.11%) WAN
2 10 (10.10%) Firewall
3 8 (8.08%) DNS
4 7 (7.07%) VPN
5 6 (6.06%) Network Security
6 4 (4.04%) BIG-IP
6 4 (4.04%) Cisco ASA
6 4 (4.04%) Cisco Firepower
6 4 (4.04%) Cisco Nexus
6 4 (4.04%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 4 (4.04%) IPsec
6 4 (4.04%) OSPF
6 4 (4.04%) SD-WAN
6 4 (4.04%) TCP/IP
6 4 (4.04%) VLAN
7 2 (2.02%) ICMP
7 2 (2.02%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (15.15%) PostgreSQL
2 12 (12.12%) NoSQL
3 8 (8.08%) Relational Database
4 7 (7.07%) MongoDB
5 5 (5.05%) DynamoDB
6 4 (4.04%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (3.03%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (3.03%) Big Data
8 2 (2.02%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (2.02%) Metadata
8 2 (2.02%) Spark SQL
9 1 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
9 1 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
9 1 (1.01%) Apache Iceberg
9 1 (1.01%) BusinessObjects
9 1 (1.01%) Data Lake
9 1 (1.01%) GIS
9 1 (1.01%) Parquet
9 1 (1.01%) Pentaho
9 1 (1.01%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 12 (12.12%) Git
2 6 (6.06%) Jenkins
3 4 (4.04%) JIRA
4 2 (2.02%) Cucumber
4 2 (2.02%) GitLab
4 2 (2.02%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (1.01%) JUnit
5 1 (1.01%) MLflow
5 1 (1.01%) Mockito
5 1 (1.01%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.01%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 45 (45.45%) Social Skills
2 20 (20.20%) Analytical Skills
3 12 (12.12%) Finance
4 9 (9.09%) Public Sector
5 4 (4.04%) Telecoms
6 3 (3.03%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (2.02%) Aerospace
7 2 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (2.02%) Financial Institution
7 2 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (2.02%) Legal
8 1 (1.01%) Automotive
8 1 (1.01%) Aviation
8 1 (1.01%) Banking
8 1 (1.01%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 23 (23.23%) Architect
2 18 (18.18%) Developer
3 14 (14.14%) Senior
4 11 (11.11%) Java Engineer
5 10 (10.10%) DevOps Engineer
6 9 (9.09%) Cloud Engineer
6 9 (9.09%) Lead
6 9 (9.09%) Network Architect
7 8 (8.08%) Python Developer
8 7 (7.07%) Azure Engineer
8 7 (7.07%) Technical Architect
9 6 (6.06%) IP Architect
9 6 (6.06%) Technical Leader
10 4 (4.04%) Java Developer
10 4 (4.04%) Senior Developer
10 4 (4.04%) Service Owner
10 4 (4.04%) Solutions Architect
11 3 (3.03%) Lead Architect
11 3 (3.03%) Senior Java Developer
11 3 (3.03%) Senior Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (19.19%) REST
2 14 (14.14%) RESTful
3 13 (13.13%) Kafka
4 11 (11.11%) OAuth
5 10 (10.10%) GraphQL
6 9 (9.09%) Django
6 9 (9.09%) RabbitMQ
7 8 (8.08%) OpenAPI
7 8 (8.08%) Swagger
8 7 (7.07%) FastAPI
8 7 (7.07%) Flask
8 7 (7.07%) NETCONF
8 7 (7.07%) NumPy
8 7 (7.07%) OAuth2
8 7 (7.07%) Pandas
8 7 (7.07%) pytest
8 7 (7.07%) YANG
9 6 (6.06%) .NET
9 6 (6.06%) React
10 5 (5.05%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 17 (17.17%) Distributed Systems
2 11 (11.11%) Hybrid Cloud
3 10 (10.10%) Data Structures
4 8 (8.08%) Product Ownership
5 7 (7.07%) Algorithms
6 6 (6.06%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (6.06%) Virtual Team
7 5 (5.05%) Private Cloud
8 4 (4.04%) CMDB
8 4 (4.04%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (4.04%) Public Cloud
9 3 (3.03%) Data Centre
9 3 (3.03%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (3.03%) Onboarding
9 3 (3.03%) Security Posture
10 2 (2.02%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (2.02%) Mobile App
11 1 (1.01%) Chip and PIN
11 1 (1.01%) EMV
11 1 (1.01%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 8 (8.08%) Windows
2 6 (6.06%) Linux
3 1 (1.01%) Android
3 1 (1.01%) Apple iOS
3 1 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 60 (60.61%) DevOps
2 47 (47.47%) CI/CD
3 36 (36.36%) Agile
4 34 (34.34%) Problem-Solving
5 31 (31.31%) Microservices
6 29 (29.29%) Containerisation
7 28 (28.28%) Infrastructure as Code
8 27 (27.27%) Roadmaps
9 25 (25.25%) Continuous Improvement
10 23 (23.23%) Software Engineering
11 18 (18.18%) Analytics
11 18 (18.18%) Enterprise Architecture
11 18 (18.18%) Test Automation
12 17 (17.17%) AI
12 17 (17.17%) Observability
13 15 (15.15%) Cloud Security
14 14 (14.14%) Architectural Patterns
14 14 (14.14%) TOGAF
15 13 (13.13%) Migration
15 13 (13.13%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 37 (37.37%) Python
2 19 (19.19%) Java
3 14 (14.14%) SQL
4 13 (13.13%) PowerShell
5 10 (10.10%) Bash
6 7 (7.07%) Bicep
7 6 (6.06%) JavaScript
8 3 (3.03%) C#
9 1 (1.01%) Go
9 1 (1.01%) Google Apps Script
9 1 (1.01%) Korn
9 1 (1.01%) Kotlin
9 1 (1.01%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (1.01%) Objective-C
9 1 (1.01%) Swift
9 1 (1.01%) TypeScript
9 1 (1.01%) VBA
Qualifications
1 25 (25.25%) Security Cleared
2 18 (18.18%) SC Cleared
3 11 (11.11%) Cisco Certification
4 10 (10.10%) Degree
5 9 (9.09%) CCIE
6 7 (7.07%) AWS Certification
6 7 (7.07%) Azure Certification
6 7 (7.07%) JNCIE
7 6 (6.06%) DV Cleared
8 5 (5.05%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (4.04%) CCNP
9 4 (4.04%) ITIL Certification
9 4 (4.04%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (3.03%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 2 (2.02%) CISM
11 2 (2.02%) CISSP
11 2 (2.02%) Master's Degree
12 1 (1.01%) MCSE
12 1 (1.01%) PMI Certification
12 1 (1.01%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (15.15%) QA
2 6 (6.06%) NCSC
3 2 (2.02%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.02%) Data Quality
3 2 (2.02%) GDPR
3 2 (2.02%) PCI DSS
3 2 (2.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (1.01%) Disclosure Scotland
4 1 (1.01%) ISO 20022
4 1 (1.01%) ISO 8583
4 1 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.01%) NIST
System Software
1 25 (25.25%) Docker
2 4 (4.04%) IAG
2 4 (4.04%) VMware Infrastructure
2 4 (4.04%) VMware NSX
3 3 (3.03%) Active Directory
4 2 (2.02%) Hyper-V
5 1 (1.01%) Citrix Hypervisor
5 1 (1.01%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 33 (33.33%) Kubernetes
2 31 (31.31%) Terraform
3 23 (23.23%) Ansible
4 4 (4.04%) Grafana
4 4 (4.04%) Progress Chef
4 4 (4.04%) Puppet
5 3 (3.03%) Prometheus
6 2 (2.02%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (2.02%) Istio
6 2 (2.02%) linkerd
7 1 (1.01%) Kubeflow
7 1 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 28 (28.28%) Microsoft
2 8 (8.08%) Dynatrace
2 8 (8.08%) VMware
3 6 (6.06%) Google
4 5 (5.05%) Cisco
4 5 (5.05%) Databricks
4 5 (5.05%) ServiceNow
5 4 (4.04%) F5
5 4 (4.04%) Nexthink
5 4 (4.04%) Palo Alto
5 4 (4.04%) SolarWinds
6 3 (3.03%) SAP
7 2 (2.02%) Informatica
7 2 (2.02%) Oracle
7 2 (2.02%) Splunk
8 1 (1.01%) Ariba
8 1 (1.01%) CheckPoint
8 1 (1.01%) Citrix
8 1 (1.01%) Dell
8 1 (1.01%) Red Hat