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

6 months to
15 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 131 167
Rank change year-on-year +27 +36 +48
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 87 27 40
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.85% 0.86% 0.73%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.26% 2.57% 2.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 59 12 31
10th Percentile £340 £343 £405
25th Percentile £400 £516 £492
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £593 £525
Median % change year-on-year -24.05% +12.86% -17.65%
75th Percentile £531 £618 £656
90th Percentile £610 - £700
England median daily rate £525 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -12.50% - -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 0
10th Percentile £71.88 - -
25th Percentile £80.31 - -
Median hourly rate £92.50 - -
75th Percentile £99.63 - -
90th Percentile £103.45 - -
England median hourly rate £76.00 £70.25 £68.00
% change year-on-year +8.19% +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 1,390 1,051 1,659
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 29.63% 33.47% 30.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 933 608 997
10th Percentile £205 £250 £205
25th Percentile £363 £386 £329
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £525 £485
Median % change year-on-year -6.29% +8.25% -7.62%
75th Percentile £598 £625 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
England median daily rate £510 £545 £550
% change year-on-year -6.42% -0.91% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 38 120
10th Percentile £12.50 £19.53 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.23 £24.30 £22.61
Median hourly rate £25.00 £33.75 £48.75
Median % change year-on-year -25.93% -30.77% +21.88%
75th Percentile £69.20 £62.24 £61.90
90th Percentile £88.00 £72.38 £76.53
England median hourly rate £32.50 £37.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year -12.16% +13.85% +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 15 February 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Cloud Native in the South East over the 6 months to 15 February 2026.

Hourly 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 15 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 +12 60 £475 -8.65% 25
Berkshire +21 55 £450 -12.62% 14
Surrey - 17 £413 - 3
Hampshire -22 8 £578 -5.33% 2
Buckinghamshire -6 4 £494 -26.85% 7
Home Counties - 2 - -
Oxfordshire - 1 £525 - 4
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 (5.75%) OpenStack
2 2 (2.30%) Apache Pulsar
3 1 (1.15%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.15%) Appian
3 1 (1.15%) ArcGIS
3 1 (1.15%) Confluence
3 1 (1.15%) Jupyter
Applications
1 1 (1.15%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 1 (1.15%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 58 (66.67%) Azure
2 54 (62.07%) AWS
3 22 (25.29%) GCP
4 15 (17.24%) Azure DevOps
4 15 (17.24%) OpenShift
5 9 (10.34%) Serverless
6 8 (9.20%) Amazon S3
6 8 (9.20%) Azure Storage
7 7 (8.05%) Amazon EKS
7 7 (8.05%) Azure API Management
8 6 (6.90%) Azure Functions
8 6 (6.90%) Datadog
8 6 (6.90%) GitHub
9 5 (5.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 5 (5.75%) Amazon EC2
9 5 (5.75%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (5.75%) Azure AKS
9 5 (5.75%) Azure Data Factory
10 4 (4.60%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (4.60%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 11 (12.64%) VPN
2 8 (9.20%) DNS
2 8 (9.20%) MPLS
2 8 (9.20%) WAN
3 5 (5.75%) BGP
3 5 (5.75%) LAN
4 3 (3.45%) Broadband
4 3 (3.45%) Firewall
4 3 (3.45%) NaaS
4 3 (3.45%) SD-WAN
5 1 (1.15%) NetScaler
5 1 (1.15%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (5.75%) Amazon RDS
1 5 (5.75%) Azure SQL Database
2 4 (4.60%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (3.45%) Big Data
3 3 (3.45%) Oracle Database
3 3 (3.45%) Oracle Reports
3 3 (3.45%) Power BI
4 2 (2.30%) Data Lake
4 2 (2.30%) Data Mining
4 2 (2.30%) Hadoop
4 2 (2.30%) NoSQL
4 2 (2.30%) Relational Database
4 2 (2.30%) SQL Server
5 1 (1.15%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (1.15%) DynamoDB
5 1 (1.15%) GIS
5 1 (1.15%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 11 (12.64%) Git
2 6 (6.90%) Jenkins
3 2 (2.30%) JIRA
4 1 (1.15%) GitLab
4 1 (1.15%) MLflow
4 1 (1.15%) SonarQube
4 1 (1.15%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 32 (36.78%) Social Skills
2 13 (14.94%) Analytical Skills
2 13 (14.94%) Public Sector
3 7 (8.05%) Billing
4 5 (5.75%) Finance
5 4 (4.60%) Telecoms
6 3 (3.45%) Banking
7 2 (2.30%) Aerospace
7 2 (2.30%) Marketing
8 1 (1.15%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 35 (40.23%) Architect
2 10 (11.49%) Senior
2 10 (11.49%) Solutions Architect
3 8 (9.20%) Azure Engineer
3 8 (9.20%) Infrastructure Architect
4 7 (8.05%) Site Engineer
4 7 (8.05%) Site Reliability Engineer
5 6 (6.90%) Business Analyst
5 6 (6.90%) Technical Architect
6 5 (5.75%) Analyst
6 5 (5.75%) Azure Software Engineer
6 5 (5.75%) Software Engineer
7 4 (4.60%) Developer
7 4 (4.60%) IP Architect
7 4 (4.60%) IP Specialist
7 4 (4.60%) Project Manager
8 3 (3.45%) DBA
8 3 (3.45%) Network Architect
8 3 (3.45%) Oracle DBA
8 3 (3.45%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (14.94%) REST
2 9 (10.34%) ARM Templates
3 8 (9.20%) Loki
4 7 (8.05%) .NET
5 5 (5.75%) ADO
5 5 (5.75%) NETCONF
5 5 (5.75%) YANG
6 4 (4.60%) Kafka
6 4 (4.60%) Middleware
7 3 (3.45%) OAuth
7 3 (3.45%) OpenAPI
7 3 (3.45%) RESTful
7 3 (3.45%) Swagger
8 2 (2.30%) JSON
8 2 (2.30%) NumPy
8 2 (2.30%) OAuth2
8 2 (2.30%) OpenTelemetry
8 2 (2.30%) Pandas
9 1 (1.15%) Flask
9 1 (1.15%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 9 (10.34%) Public Cloud
1 9 (10.34%) Virtual Team
2 7 (8.05%) Hybrid Cloud
3 5 (5.75%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (4.60%) Onboarding
5 3 (3.45%) Distributed Systems
5 3 (3.45%) TM Forum
6 2 (2.30%) Product Ownership
7 1 (1.15%) Algorithms
7 1 (1.15%) Chip and PIN
7 1 (1.15%) Data Structures
7 1 (1.15%) EMV
7 1 (1.15%) Enterprise Cloud
7 1 (1.15%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (1.15%) Low-Code
7 1 (1.15%) Private Cloud
7 1 (1.15%) Smart Meter
Operating Systems
1 20 (22.99%) Linux
2 11 (12.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (3.45%) Windows
4 1 (1.15%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 39 (44.83%) CI/CD
1 39 (44.83%) DevOps
2 30 (34.48%) Agile
3 27 (31.03%) Microservices
4 21 (24.14%) Observability
5 20 (22.99%) Containerisation
6 19 (21.84%) Infrastructure as Code
7 17 (19.54%) Roadmaps
7 17 (19.54%) Stakeholder Management
8 14 (16.09%) TOGAF
9 13 (14.94%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 12 (13.79%) Software Engineering
11 10 (11.49%) High Availability
11 10 (11.49%) Problem-Solving
12 9 (10.34%) Scaled Agile Framework
13 8 (9.20%) Analytics
13 8 (9.20%) Cybersecurity
13 8 (9.20%) Enterprise Architecture
13 8 (9.20%) Infrastructure Management
13 8 (9.20%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 32 (36.78%) Python
2 16 (18.39%) Bash
3 14 (16.09%) SQL
4 7 (8.05%) JavaScript
4 7 (8.05%) PowerShell
5 5 (5.75%) C#
6 4 (4.60%) Bicep
6 4 (4.60%) Java
7 3 (3.45%) Shell Script
8 2 (2.30%) R
Qualifications
1 26 (29.89%) Security Cleared
2 19 (21.84%) SC Cleared
3 10 (11.49%) Azure Certification
4 9 (10.34%) AWS Certification
5 8 (9.20%) Cisco Certification
6 7 (8.05%) CCIE
7 5 (5.75%) Degree
7 5 (5.75%) JNCIE
7 5 (5.75%) RHCE
7 5 (5.75%) TOGAF Certification
8 4 (4.60%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (3.45%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (3.45%) OCP
9 3 (3.45%) Oracle Certification
10 2 (2.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (2.30%) CCNP
10 2 (2.30%) DV Cleared
10 2 (2.30%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (2.30%) PMI Certification
10 2 (2.30%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (6.90%) GDPR
2 3 (3.45%) SLA
3 2 (2.30%) NIST
3 2 (2.30%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.15%) ISO 20022
4 1 (1.15%) ISO 8583
4 1 (1.15%) NCSC
System Software
1 17 (19.54%) VMware Infrastructure
2 13 (14.94%) Docker
3 8 (9.20%) Hyper-V
3 8 (9.20%) vSphere
4 3 (3.45%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (1.15%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 29 (33.33%) Kubernetes
2 17 (19.54%) Grafana
2 17 (19.54%) Prometheus
3 15 (17.24%) Terraform
4 14 (16.09%) Ansible
5 8 (9.20%) Argo
5 8 (9.20%) Kustomize
6 3 (3.45%) Data Guard
6 3 (3.45%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 3 (3.45%) Oracle RMAN
6 3 (3.45%) Puppet
7 2 (2.30%) Istio
7 2 (2.30%) linkerd
7 2 (2.30%) systemd
8 1 (1.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 1 (1.15%) Kubeflow
8 1 (1.15%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 24 (27.59%) VMware
2 17 (19.54%) Red Hat
3 11 (12.64%) Microsoft
4 9 (10.34%) Cisco
5 7 (8.05%) Splunk
6 6 (6.90%) Databricks
6 6 (6.90%) Salesforce
7 5 (5.75%) MuleSoft
8 4 (4.60%) AppDynamics
8 4 (4.60%) Dynatrace
9 3 (3.45%) Fortinet
9 3 (3.45%) Juniper
9 3 (3.45%) Oracle
10 2 (2.30%) PagerDuty
10 2 (2.30%) Virgin Media
11 1 (1.15%) Checkmarx
11 1 (1.15%) CheckPoint
11 1 (1.15%) OpenAI
11 1 (1.15%) Palo Alto
11 1 (1.15%) ServiceNow