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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 115 125 145
Rank change year-on-year +10 +20 +35
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 117 33 35
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.79% 0.96% 0.75%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.11% 3.02% 2.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 75 21 22
10th Percentile £349 £363 £325
25th Percentile £431 £400 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £425 £488
Median % change year-on-year +18.82% -12.82% -22.00%
75th Percentile £625 £575 £531
90th Percentile £721 £675 £669
England median daily rate £550 £525 £575
% change year-on-year +4.76% -8.70% -9.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 0
10th Percentile £64.33 - -
25th Percentile £65.56 - -
Median hourly rate £67.50 - -
75th Percentile £69.75 - -
90th Percentile £70.20 - -
England median hourly rate £73.00 £51.25 £85.00
% change year-on-year +42.44% -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 1,915 1,093 1,343
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 29.28% 31.64% 28.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,189 689 775
10th Percentile £275 £204 £221
25th Percentile £413 £350 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% - -
75th Percentile £618 £600 £617
90th Percentile £700 £665 £700
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 204 96 126
10th Percentile £13.04 £15.31 £12.08
25th Percentile £16.72 £16.95 £27.13
Median hourly rate £41.25 £33.89 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% -40.92% +4.87%
75th Percentile £73.75 £62.62 £69.14
90th Percentile £88.00 £72.25 £75.16
England median hourly rate £38.25 £32.77 £53.25
% change year-on-year +16.72% -38.46% +16.14%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 -16 54 £530 +6.00% 65
Berkshire -12 31 £408 -18.50% 31
Hampshire -11 27 £600 +49.25% 28
Surrey -6 16 £460 +8.24% 10
Buckinghamshire -21 15 £555 -14.62% 15
Middlesex - 12 £600 - 2
West Sussex -17 8 £400 +17.65% 2
Oxfordshire - 8 £530 - 21
East Sussex - 2 £530 - 2
Sussex - 1 £600 -
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 (4.27%) OpenStack
2 3 (2.56%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.85%) CMS
3 1 (0.85%) Confluence
3 1 (0.85%) SAS
Applications
1 6 (5.13%) CPLEX
2 1 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.85%) Cloudability
1 1 (0.85%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 81 (69.23%) Azure
2 71 (60.68%) AWS
3 30 (25.64%) GCP
4 18 (15.38%) Azure DevOps
4 18 (15.38%) GitHub
5 13 (11.11%) Azure Monitor
6 11 (9.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 11 (9.40%) SaaS
7 10 (8.55%) GitHub Actions
8 8 (6.84%) Datadog
8 8 (6.84%) OpenShift
9 7 (5.98%) Azure Service Bus
9 7 (5.98%) Boomi
9 7 (5.98%) iPaaS
10 6 (5.13%) Azure AKS
10 6 (5.13%) Serverless
10 6 (5.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 5 (4.27%) Amazon ECS
11 5 (4.27%) AWS CloudFormation
11 5 (4.27%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 10 (8.55%) DNS
2 9 (7.69%) BGP
2 9 (7.69%) Firewall
2 9 (7.69%) LAN
2 9 (7.69%) MPLS
2 9 (7.69%) VPN
2 9 (7.69%) WAN
3 8 (6.84%) Network Security
4 7 (5.98%) HTTP
4 7 (5.98%) TCP/IP
5 5 (4.27%) Software-Defined Networking
6 4 (3.42%) BIG-IP
6 4 (3.42%) Cisco ASA
6 4 (3.42%) Cisco Firepower
6 4 (3.42%) Cisco Nexus
6 4 (3.42%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 4 (3.42%) IPsec
6 4 (3.42%) OSPF
6 4 (3.42%) SD-WAN
6 4 (3.42%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (11.97%) PostgreSQL
1 14 (11.97%) Relational Database
2 9 (7.69%) NoSQL
3 6 (5.13%) MongoDB
4 5 (4.27%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (2.56%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (2.56%) Big Data
5 3 (2.56%) DynamoDB
5 3 (2.56%) Metadata
6 2 (1.71%) Data Lake
6 2 (1.71%) Spark SQL
7 1 (0.85%) Amazon Athena
7 1 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.85%) Apache Iceberg
7 1 (0.85%) BusinessObjects
7 1 (0.85%) Delta Lake
7 1 (0.85%) Parquet
7 1 (0.85%) Pentaho
7 1 (0.85%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 13 (11.11%) Git
2 8 (6.84%) Jenkins
3 5 (4.27%) GitLab
4 2 (1.71%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (0.85%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.85%) JIRA
5 1 (0.85%) JUnit
5 1 (0.85%) Mockito
General
1 58 (49.57%) Social Skills
2 25 (21.37%) Analytical Skills
3 11 (9.40%) Public Sector
4 8 (6.84%) Finance
5 6 (5.13%) Aerospace
6 5 (4.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 5 (4.27%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (1.71%) Legal
7 2 (1.71%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.85%) Automotive
8 1 (0.85%) Aviation
8 1 (0.85%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.85%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.85%) Military
Job Titles
1 31 (26.50%) Architect
2 18 (15.38%) Senior
3 15 (12.82%) Developer
4 12 (10.26%) Cloud Engineer
4 12 (10.26%) Lead
4 12 (10.26%) Solutions Architect
5 9 (7.69%) Technical Leader
6 8 (6.84%) Network Architect
6 8 (6.84%) Service Owner
7 7 (5.98%) Azure Engineer
7 7 (5.98%) Python Developer
7 7 (5.98%) Software Engineer
8 6 (5.13%) DevOps Engineer
8 6 (5.13%) Java Engineer
8 6 (5.13%) Technical Architect
9 5 (4.27%) IP Architect
9 5 (4.27%) Platform Engineer
10 4 (3.42%) Java Developer
10 4 (3.42%) Python Engineer
10 4 (3.42%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (32.48%) Terraform
2 19 (16.24%) REST
3 15 (12.82%) OAuth
3 15 (12.82%) RESTful
4 14 (11.97%) GraphQL
4 14 (11.97%) Kafka
5 13 (11.11%) OpenAPI
5 13 (11.11%) RabbitMQ
5 13 (11.11%) Swagger
6 11 (9.40%) Django
7 10 (8.55%) JSON
7 10 (8.55%) JWT
8 9 (7.69%) SOAP
9 8 (6.84%) React
9 8 (6.84%) SAML
10 7 (5.98%) ActiveMQ
10 7 (5.98%) EDI
10 7 (5.98%) Middleware
10 7 (5.98%) OAuth2
10 7 (5.98%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (17.09%) Distributed Systems
2 12 (10.26%) Hybrid Cloud
3 11 (9.40%) Product Ownership
4 9 (7.69%) Data Structures
5 8 (6.84%) CMDB
6 7 (5.98%) Algorithms
6 7 (5.98%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (5.13%) Virtual Team
8 4 (3.42%) Data Centre
8 4 (3.42%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (3.42%) Onboarding
8 4 (3.42%) Private Cloud
8 4 (3.42%) Security Posture
9 3 (2.56%) Distributed Architecture
9 3 (2.56%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 3 (2.56%) Management Information System
10 2 (1.71%) Cyber Threat
10 2 (1.71%) Cyberattack
10 2 (1.71%) Mobile App
10 2 (1.71%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 13 (11.11%) Linux
2 12 (10.26%) Windows
3 4 (3.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (2.56%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.85%) Android
5 1 (0.85%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (49.57%) DevOps
2 49 (41.88%) CI/CD
3 48 (41.03%) Agile
4 44 (37.61%) Problem-Solving
5 38 (32.48%) Continuous Improvement
6 36 (30.77%) Infrastructure as Code
7 34 (29.06%) Containerisation
8 28 (23.93%) Roadmaps
8 28 (23.93%) Software Engineering
9 27 (23.08%) Microservices
10 24 (20.51%) Observability
11 23 (19.66%) Test Automation
12 20 (17.09%) Enterprise Architecture
12 20 (17.09%) Stakeholder Management
13 19 (16.24%) AI
14 18 (15.38%) Analytics
15 17 (14.53%) Decision-Making
15 17 (14.53%) Platform Engineering
15 17 (14.53%) Technical Leadership
16 16 (13.68%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 48 (41.03%) Python
2 21 (17.95%) PowerShell
3 18 (15.38%) Java
4 17 (14.53%) Bash
5 13 (11.11%) SQL
6 8 (6.84%) Bicep
7 7 (5.98%) JavaScript
8 3 (2.56%) Kusto Query Language
9 2 (1.71%) Go
9 2 (1.71%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.85%) C#
10 1 (0.85%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.85%) Objective-C
10 1 (0.85%) Swift
Qualifications
1 36 (30.77%) Security Cleared
2 27 (23.08%) SC Cleared
3 13 (11.11%) Degree
4 10 (8.55%) Azure Certification
4 10 (8.55%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (7.69%) AWS Certification
6 8 (6.84%) Cisco Certification
6 8 (6.84%) DV Cleared
6 8 (6.84%) ITIL Certification
7 7 (5.98%) CCIE
7 7 (5.98%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 5 (4.27%) JNCIE
8 5 (4.27%) Master's Degree
9 4 (3.42%) CISM
9 4 (3.42%) CISSP
9 4 (3.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (3.42%) OSCP
10 3 (2.56%) CCNP
11 2 (1.71%) GCIA
11 2 (1.71%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (18.80%) QA
2 5 (4.27%) Accessibility
2 5 (4.27%) NCSC
3 3 (2.56%) Data Quality
3 3 (2.56%) GDPR
3 3 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (1.71%) Disclosure Scotland
4 2 (1.71%) NIST
4 2 (1.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 1 (0.85%) GRC
5 1 (0.85%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 25 (21.37%) Docker
2 8 (6.84%) IAG
3 7 (5.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (4.27%) VMware NSX
5 4 (3.42%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.85%) Active Directory
6 1 (0.85%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (0.85%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 44 (37.61%) Kubernetes
2 33 (28.21%) Ansible
3 8 (6.84%) Progress Chef
3 8 (6.84%) Puppet
4 5 (4.27%) Istio
5 2 (1.71%) Grafana
5 2 (1.71%) linkerd
6 1 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 1 (0.85%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.85%) QRadar
6 1 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.85%) vRealize
6 1 (0.85%) vRealize Orchestrator
Vendors
1 32 (27.35%) Microsoft
2 12 (10.26%) Google
3 11 (9.40%) Dynatrace
4 10 (8.55%) VMware
5 8 (6.84%) Informatica
5 8 (6.84%) Nexthink
5 8 (6.84%) Oracle
5 8 (6.84%) ServiceNow
6 7 (5.98%) IBM
6 7 (5.98%) MuleSoft
6 7 (5.98%) TIBCO
6 7 (5.98%) WSO2
7 6 (5.13%) Databricks
8 5 (4.27%) Cisco
9 4 (3.42%) F5
9 4 (3.42%) Palo Alto
9 4 (3.42%) SolarWinds
10 3 (2.56%) Red Hat
10 3 (2.56%) SAP
11 1 (0.85%) CheckPoint