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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 127 140
Rank change year-on-year 0 +13 +54
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 109 40 46
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.63% 1.15% 0.91%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.44% 3.63% 3.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 71 26 27
10th Percentile £349 £349 £390
25th Percentile £425 £401 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £450 £493
Median % change year-on-year +12.22% -8.72% -21.12%
75th Percentile £625 £594 £529
90th Percentile £769 £724 £673
England median daily rate £550 £515 £600
% change year-on-year +6.80% -14.17% -7.69%
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 £76.00 £51.25 £85.00
% change year-on-year +48.29% -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 2,004 1,103 1,461
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 30.03% 31.67% 28.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,257 672 870
10th Percentile £277 £213 £213
25th Percentile £412 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -2.44% +2.50%
75th Percentile £606 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £665 £715
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 191 100 146
10th Percentile £16.33 £15.13 £12.00
25th Percentile £26.73 £16.95 £18.91
Median hourly rate £55.00 £33.47 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +64.34% -41.64% +14.70%
75th Percentile £85.00 £62.24 £64.08
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.50 £75.16
England median hourly rate £43.96 £32.05 £45.00
% change year-on-year +37.16% -28.78% +10.86%

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 1 August 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 1 August 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 -23 55 £530 +6.00% 41
Berkshire -21 32 £400 -20.00% 21
Hampshire -14 26 £575 +34.98% 17
Buckinghamshire -22 15 £550 -15.38% 6
Surrey -10 12 £475 +11.76% 14
Oxfordshire - 8 £530 - 14
West Sussex -14 6 £400 +17.65% 4
Middlesex - 6 - - 1
East Sussex - 4 £459 - 2
Sussex - 1 £600 - 1
Home Counties - 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 (4.59%) OpenStack
2 3 (2.75%) Confluence
3 2 (1.83%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.92%) Apache Pulsar
4 1 (0.92%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.92%) CMS
4 1 (0.92%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.92%) SAS
Applications
1 7 (6.42%) CPLEX
2 1 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.92%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.92%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.92%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.92%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 71 (65.14%) Azure
2 65 (59.63%) AWS
3 24 (22.02%) GCP
4 16 (14.68%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (11.93%) GitHub
6 9 (8.26%) Azure Monitor
6 9 (8.26%) GitHub Actions
7 8 (7.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 7 (6.42%) AWS CloudFormation
8 7 (6.42%) Azure AKS
8 7 (6.42%) SaaS
8 7 (6.42%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 6 (5.50%) Amazon S3
9 6 (5.50%) Serverless
10 5 (4.59%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (4.59%) Amazon EKS
10 5 (4.59%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (4.59%) Datadog
10 5 (4.59%) Entra ID
11 4 (3.67%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 10 (9.17%) Firewall
2 9 (8.26%) BGP
2 9 (8.26%) DNS
2 9 (8.26%) LAN
2 9 (8.26%) MPLS
2 9 (8.26%) WAN
3 8 (7.34%) Network Security
3 8 (7.34%) VPN
4 5 (4.59%) TCP/IP
5 4 (3.67%) BIG-IP
5 4 (3.67%) Cisco ASA
5 4 (3.67%) Cisco Firepower
5 4 (3.67%) Cisco Nexus
5 4 (3.67%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 4 (3.67%) IPsec
5 4 (3.67%) OSPF
5 4 (3.67%) SD-WAN
5 4 (3.67%) VLAN
6 3 (2.75%) HTTP
7 2 (1.83%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (12.84%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (10.09%) NoSQL
2 11 (10.09%) Relational Database
3 7 (6.42%) MongoDB
4 5 (4.59%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (3.67%) DynamoDB
6 3 (2.75%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (2.75%) Metadata
7 2 (1.83%) Big Data
7 2 (1.83%) Data Lake
7 2 (1.83%) Spark SQL
8 1 (0.92%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (0.92%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.92%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.92%) BusinessObjects
8 1 (0.92%) GIS
8 1 (0.92%) MySQL
8 1 (0.92%) Parquet
8 1 (0.92%) Power BI
8 1 (0.92%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 11 (10.09%) Git
2 6 (5.50%) Jenkins
3 4 (3.67%) JIRA
4 2 (1.83%) Cucumber
4 2 (1.83%) GitLab
4 2 (1.83%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (0.92%) JUnit
5 1 (0.92%) Mockito
General
1 53 (48.62%) Social Skills
2 23 (21.10%) Analytical Skills
3 10 (9.17%) Finance
4 6 (5.50%) Public Sector
5 5 (4.59%) Telecoms
6 4 (3.67%) Aerospace
7 3 (2.75%) Organisational Skills
8 2 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.83%) Financial Institution
8 2 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.83%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.83%) Legal
9 1 (0.92%) Automotive
9 1 (0.92%) Aviation
9 1 (0.92%) Banking
9 1 (0.92%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 28 (25.69%) Architect
2 19 (17.43%) Developer
3 18 (16.51%) Senior
4 12 (11.01%) Cloud Engineer
5 10 (9.17%) Java Engineer
5 10 (9.17%) Solutions Architect
6 9 (8.26%) DevOps Engineer
6 9 (8.26%) Lead
7 8 (7.34%) Azure Engineer
7 8 (7.34%) Network Architect
7 8 (7.34%) Python Developer
8 7 (6.42%) Software Engineer
9 6 (5.50%) Technical Architect
9 6 (5.50%) Technical Leader
10 5 (4.59%) IP Architect
11 4 (3.67%) Java Developer
11 4 (3.67%) Senior Developer
11 4 (3.67%) Senior Software Engineer
11 4 (3.67%) Service Owner
12 3 (2.75%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (16.51%) REST
2 14 (12.84%) RESTful
3 13 (11.93%) Kafka
4 12 (11.01%) GraphQL
4 12 (11.01%) OAuth
5 11 (10.09%) RabbitMQ
6 10 (9.17%) OpenAPI
6 10 (9.17%) Swagger
7 9 (8.26%) Django
8 7 (6.42%) .NET
8 7 (6.42%) FastAPI
8 7 (6.42%) Flask
8 7 (6.42%) JSON
8 7 (6.42%) JWT
8 7 (6.42%) NumPy
8 7 (6.42%) Pandas
8 7 (6.42%) pytest
9 6 (5.50%) AngularJS
9 6 (5.50%) OAuth2
9 6 (5.50%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 20 (18.35%) Distributed Systems
2 11 (10.09%) Product Ownership
3 10 (9.17%) Data Structures
3 10 (9.17%) Hybrid Cloud
4 8 (7.34%) Enterprise Software
5 7 (6.42%) Algorithms
6 6 (5.50%) Virtual Team
7 5 (4.59%) Onboarding
8 4 (3.67%) CMDB
8 4 (3.67%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (3.67%) Private Cloud
8 4 (3.67%) Security Posture
9 3 (2.75%) Data Centre
9 3 (2.75%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (2.75%) Public Cloud
10 2 (1.83%) Cyber Defence
10 2 (1.83%) Cyber Threat
10 2 (1.83%) Cyberattack
10 2 (1.83%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (1.83%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 12 (11.01%) Windows
2 11 (10.09%) Linux
3 5 (4.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.92%) Android
4 1 (0.92%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.92%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (51.38%) DevOps
2 46 (42.20%) CI/CD
3 41 (37.61%) Agile
4 38 (34.86%) Problem-Solving
5 31 (28.44%) Infrastructure as Code
6 30 (27.52%) Continuous Improvement
7 29 (26.61%) Microservices
8 28 (25.69%) Software Engineering
9 27 (24.77%) Containerisation
10 25 (22.94%) Roadmaps
11 21 (19.27%) Test Automation
12 18 (16.51%) Analytics
13 17 (15.60%) AI
13 17 (15.60%) Enterprise Architecture
14 16 (14.68%) Observability
14 16 (14.68%) Stakeholder Management
15 15 (13.76%) Cloud Security
16 14 (12.84%) Architectural Patterns
17 13 (11.93%) DevSecOps
17 13 (11.93%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 40 (36.70%) Python
2 21 (19.27%) Java
3 17 (15.60%) PowerShell
4 14 (12.84%) Bash
5 13 (11.93%) SQL
6 7 (6.42%) Bicep
7 5 (4.59%) JavaScript
8 3 (2.75%) Go
9 2 (1.83%) C#
9 2 (1.83%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.92%) Google Apps Script
10 1 (0.92%) Korn
10 1 (0.92%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.92%) Objective-C
10 1 (0.92%) Swift
10 1 (0.92%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.92%) VBA
Qualifications
1 26 (23.85%) Security Cleared
2 21 (19.27%) SC Cleared
3 10 (9.17%) AWS Certification
3 10 (9.17%) Degree
4 8 (7.34%) Azure Certification
4 8 (7.34%) Cisco Certification
5 7 (6.42%) CCIE
6 6 (5.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (5.50%) DV Cleared
7 5 (4.59%) JNCIE
8 4 (3.67%) ITIL Certification
8 4 (3.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 3 (2.75%) CCNP
10 2 (1.83%) CISM
10 2 (1.83%) CISSP
10 2 (1.83%) GCFA
10 2 (1.83%) GCIA
10 2 (1.83%) GCIH
10 2 (1.83%) Master's Degree
10 2 (1.83%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (13.76%) QA
2 5 (4.59%) NCSC
3 3 (2.75%) Data Quality
3 3 (2.75%) GDPR
4 2 (1.83%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.83%) Disclosure Scotland
4 2 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.83%) PCI DSS
4 2 (1.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 1 (0.92%) GRC
5 1 (0.92%) ISO 20022
5 1 (0.92%) NIST
System Software
1 24 (22.02%) Docker
2 5 (4.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (3.67%) IAG
3 4 (3.67%) VMware NSX
4 3 (2.75%) Active Directory
4 3 (2.75%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.92%) Citrix Hypervisor
5 1 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 33 (30.28%) Kubernetes
1 33 (30.28%) Terraform
2 26 (23.85%) Ansible
3 8 (7.34%) Progress Chef
3 8 (7.34%) Puppet
4 3 (2.75%) Grafana
5 2 (1.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (1.83%) Istio
5 2 (1.83%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.92%) linkerd
6 1 (0.92%) QRadar
6 1 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 31 (28.44%) Microsoft
2 9 (8.26%) Google
3 8 (7.34%) Dynatrace
3 8 (7.34%) VMware
4 5 (4.59%) Cisco
4 5 (4.59%) Databricks
4 5 (4.59%) ServiceNow
5 4 (3.67%) F5
5 4 (3.67%) Informatica
5 4 (3.67%) Nexthink
5 4 (3.67%) Oracle
5 4 (3.67%) Palo Alto
5 4 (3.67%) SolarWinds
6 3 (2.75%) IBM
6 3 (2.75%) MuleSoft
6 3 (2.75%) SAP
6 3 (2.75%) TIBCO
6 3 (2.75%) WSO2
7 2 (1.83%) Red Hat
7 2 (1.83%) Splunk