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

6 months to
10 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 121 136 182
Rank change year-on-year +15 +46 +35
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 69 39 29
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.63% 0.98% 0.55%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.33% 3.11% 1.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 45 20 23
10th Percentile £375 £324 £418
25th Percentile £431 £470 £519
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £625
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -18.00% +6.38%
75th Percentile £575 £618 £688
90th Percentile £675 £620 £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 £85.00 £85.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year - +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 1,294 1,254 1,647
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 30.50% 31.66% 31.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 847 722 1,031
10th Percentile £204 £250 £205
25th Percentile £368 £380 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £512 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.88% +2.37% -2.91%
75th Percentile £600 £624 £613
90th Percentile £688 £699 £700
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.68% - -3.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 66 96
10th Percentile £12.50 £13.25 £19.23
25th Percentile £16.50 £22.85 £24.00
Median hourly rate £25.00 £35.00 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.57% -33.96% +53.62%
75th Percentile £63.75 £62.24 £63.29
90th Percentile £84.50 £74.93 £77.75
England median hourly rate £27.21 £38.54 £43.92
% change year-on-year -29.39% -12.26% +25.49%

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 10 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 10 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 +20 57 £493 -1.50% 39
Berkshire +20 53 £493 -0.81% 29
Hampshire -4 5 £650 +6.56% 6
Buckinghamshire +5 3 £475 -29.63% 8
Surrey - 3 - - 8
West Sussex -13 1 £340 +4.62%
Kent - 1 £375 -
Oxfordshire - 1 £525 - 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 6 (8.70%) OpenStack
2 2 (2.90%) Jupyter
3 1 (1.45%) CMS
3 1 (1.45%) Confluence
3 1 (1.45%) nginx
3 1 (1.45%) Umbraco
Cloud Services
1 41 (59.42%) AWS
2 36 (52.17%) Azure
3 13 (18.84%) GCP
3 13 (18.84%) OpenShift
4 8 (11.59%) Serverless
5 7 (10.14%) Azure DevOps
6 6 (8.70%) Amazon EKS
6 6 (8.70%) Amazon S3
6 6 (8.70%) AWS Lambda
6 6 (8.70%) Entra ID
7 5 (7.25%) GitHub
7 5 (7.25%) SaaS
8 4 (5.80%) Amazon EC2
8 4 (5.80%) AWS CloudFormation
9 3 (4.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (4.35%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (4.35%) Datadog
9 3 (4.35%) GitHub Actions
9 3 (4.35%) Power Platform
10 2 (2.90%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 9 (13.04%) MPLS
1 9 (13.04%) WAN
2 6 (8.70%) BGP
2 6 (8.70%) LAN
3 4 (5.80%) Firewall
3 4 (5.80%) VPN
4 3 (4.35%) Broadband
4 3 (4.35%) NaaS
4 3 (4.35%) Network Security
4 3 (4.35%) SD-WAN
5 1 (1.45%) NetScaler
5 1 (1.45%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (5.80%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (4.35%) Amazon RDS
2 3 (4.35%) Power BI
3 2 (2.90%) Big Data
3 2 (2.90%) Data Mining
3 2 (2.90%) Hadoop
3 2 (2.90%) NoSQL
3 2 (2.90%) Relational Database
3 2 (2.90%) SQL Server
4 1 (1.45%) MongoDB
4 1 (1.45%) MySQL
4 1 (1.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 10 (14.49%) Git
2 7 (10.14%) Jenkins
3 3 (4.35%) GitLab
3 3 (4.35%) JIRA
4 1 (1.45%) Cypress.io
4 1 (1.45%) MLflow
4 1 (1.45%) Mocha
General
1 27 (39.13%) Social Skills
2 12 (17.39%) Public Sector
3 10 (14.49%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (10.14%) Billing
4 7 (10.14%) Finance
5 6 (8.70%) Telecoms
6 3 (4.35%) Aerospace
7 2 (2.90%) Banking
8 1 (1.45%) Digital Healthcare
8 1 (1.45%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 36 (52.17%) Architect
2 10 (14.49%) Solutions Architect
3 7 (10.14%) Developer
3 7 (10.14%) Security Architect
3 7 (10.14%) Senior
3 7 (10.14%) Site Engineer
3 7 (10.14%) Site Reliability Engineer
4 6 (8.70%) IP Architect
4 6 (8.70%) IP Specialist
4 6 (8.70%) Technical Architect
5 5 (7.25%) Analyst
5 5 (7.25%) Business Analyst
6 3 (4.35%) Technical Analyst
6 3 (4.35%) Technical Business Analyst
7 2 (2.90%) Cloud Architect
7 2 (2.90%) Data Engineer
7 2 (2.90%) Digital Architect
7 2 (2.90%) Digital Solutions Architect
7 2 (2.90%) Network Architect
7 2 (2.90%) Senior Data Warehouse Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (17.39%) REST
2 8 (11.59%) Loki
3 6 (8.70%) NETCONF
3 6 (8.70%) RESTful
3 6 (8.70%) YANG
4 5 (7.25%) ADO
5 3 (4.35%) JSON
5 3 (4.35%) Node.js
5 3 (4.35%) OpenAPI
5 3 (4.35%) Swagger
6 2 (2.90%) .NET
6 2 (2.90%) GraphQL
6 2 (2.90%) OAuth
6 2 (2.90%) OAuth2
6 2 (2.90%) Web Services
7 1 (1.45%) .NET Framework
7 1 (1.45%) HTML
7 1 (1.45%) Middleware
7 1 (1.45%) SOAP
7 1 (1.45%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (17.39%) Hybrid Cloud
2 9 (13.04%) Virtual Team
3 5 (7.25%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (5.80%) Onboarding
4 4 (5.80%) Security Posture
5 3 (4.35%) Cloud Security Posture
5 3 (4.35%) Public Cloud
5 3 (4.35%) TM Forum
6 2 (2.90%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (1.45%) Algorithms
7 1 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.45%) Cyber Defence
7 1 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (1.45%) Enterprise Cloud
7 1 (1.45%) Product Ownership
7 1 (1.45%) Smart Meter
Operating Systems
1 16 (23.19%) Linux
2 8 (11.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (1.45%) Windows
3 1 (1.45%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (44.93%) CI/CD
2 28 (40.58%) Agile
3 25 (36.23%) DevOps
3 25 (36.23%) Microservices
4 20 (28.99%) Roadmaps
5 19 (27.54%) TOGAF
6 18 (26.09%) Infrastructure as Code
7 14 (20.29%) Containerisation
7 14 (20.29%) Observability
8 12 (17.39%) Stakeholder Management
9 11 (15.94%) Architectural Patterns
9 11 (15.94%) DevSecOps
9 11 (15.94%) Problem-Solving
9 11 (15.94%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 10 (14.49%) Strategic Thinking
11 9 (13.04%) Cybersecurity
12 8 (11.59%) Enterprise Architecture
12 8 (11.59%) Infrastructure Management
12 8 (11.59%) Network Architecture
12 8 (11.59%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 24 (34.78%) Python
2 11 (15.94%) Bash
3 5 (7.25%) SQL
4 3 (4.35%) Java
5 2 (2.90%) C#
5 2 (2.90%) JavaScript
5 2 (2.90%) PowerShell
5 2 (2.90%) R
6 1 (1.45%) Bicep
6 1 (1.45%) Go
Qualifications
1 23 (33.33%) Security Cleared
2 16 (23.19%) SC Cleared
3 13 (18.84%) AWS Certification
4 12 (17.39%) Cisco Certification
5 10 (14.49%) Azure Certification
6 8 (11.59%) CCIE
7 6 (8.70%) Degree
7 6 (8.70%) JNCIE
7 6 (8.70%) TOGAF Certification
8 5 (7.25%) CISSP
8 5 (7.25%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (5.80%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 4 (5.80%) CCSP
9 4 (5.80%) RHCE
10 2 (2.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (2.90%) DV Cleared
11 1 (1.45%) CCNP
11 1 (1.45%) PhD
11 1 (1.45%) VCDX
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (11.59%) GDPR
2 7 (10.14%) NIST
3 6 (8.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (7.25%) PCI DSS
4 5 (7.25%) PSD2
5 4 (5.80%) QA
6 3 (4.35%) SLA
7 1 (1.45%) EU AI Act
7 1 (1.45%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (1.45%) JSP 440
7 1 (1.45%) NCSC
System Software
1 12 (17.39%) Docker
2 9 (13.04%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (11.59%) vSphere
4 1 (1.45%) Active Directory
4 1 (1.45%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 24 (34.78%) Kubernetes
2 15 (21.74%) Ansible
3 12 (17.39%) Grafana
3 12 (17.39%) Terraform
4 11 (15.94%) Prometheus
5 8 (11.59%) Argo
5 8 (11.59%) Kustomize
6 4 (5.80%) Puppet
7 1 (1.45%) Kubeflow
7 1 (1.45%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 15 (21.74%) VMware
2 13 (18.84%) Red Hat
3 9 (13.04%) Cisco
4 6 (8.70%) Salesforce
5 5 (7.25%) Microsoft
5 5 (7.25%) MuleSoft
6 3 (4.35%) Fortinet
6 3 (4.35%) Juniper
7 2 (2.90%) PagerDuty
7 2 (2.90%) ServiceNow
7 2 (2.90%) Splunk
7 2 (2.90%) Virgin Media
8 1 (1.45%) CheckPoint
8 1 (1.45%) Citrix
8 1 (1.45%) Google
8 1 (1.45%) JDA
8 1 (1.45%) Palo Alto
8 1 (1.45%) Pega