Public Cloud Contract Job Trends in the South East

Public Cloud
England > South East

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Public Cloud in contract job vacancies in the South East. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Public Cloud over the 6 months leading up to 21 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 152 125 166
Rank change year-on-year -27 +41 -3
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 53 25 26
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.89% 0.84% 0.48%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 3.08% 2.54% 1.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 40 20 24
10th Percentile £400 £508 £333
25th Percentile £503 £561 £483
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £563 £600 £605
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% -0.83% +10.00%
75th Percentile £641 £680 £669
90th Percentile £725 £694 £743
England median daily rate £600 £610 £610
% change year-on-year -1.64% - -4.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £36.75
Median hourly rate - £70.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year - +81.82% -
75th Percentile - - £40.25
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £72.50 £70.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year +3.57% +81.82% -50.64%

All Generic Skills
South East

Public Cloud 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 1,719 985 1,530
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 28.89% 33.11% 28.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,142 622 931
10th Percentile £268 £200 £205
25th Percentile £400 £350 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.91%
75th Percentile £600 £598 £608
90th Percentile £688 £656 £688
England median daily rate £515 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.19% -2.27% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 125 66 148
10th Percentile £18.10 £15.75 £11.71
25th Percentile £27.88 £21.29 £17.64
Median hourly rate £67.50 £46.40 £47.19
Median % change year-on-year +45.47% -1.66% -5.63%
75th Percentile £85.40 £62.24 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.50 £65.00
England median hourly rate £45.00 £33.91 £34.11
% change year-on-year +32.70% -0.57% +51.68%

Public Cloud
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Public Cloud relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Public Cloud job vacancy trend in the South East

Public Cloud
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Public Cloud.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Public Cloud

Public Cloud
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Cloud in the South East over the 6 months to 21 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Public Cloud in the South East

Public Cloud
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Public Cloud.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Public Cloud

Public Cloud
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 Public Cloud within the South East region over the 6 months to 21 May 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 -26 25 £610 -0.81% 11
Buckinghamshire -18 24 £610 -0.81% 5
Surrey -2 21 £438 +25.00% 1
Hampshire -34 4 £538 -10.42% 1
Berkshire -24 1 £600 - 3
Public Cloud
England

Public Cloud
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 3 (5.66%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (1.89%) Apache
2 1 (1.89%) IIS
2 1 (1.89%) nginx
2 1 (1.89%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.89%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (7.55%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (7.55%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (3.77%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (9.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (7.55%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 46 (86.79%) Azure
2 32 (60.38%) AWS
3 14 (26.42%) GCP
4 4 (7.55%) SaaS
5 3 (5.66%) dbt
5 3 (5.66%) IaaS
5 3 (5.66%) Microsoft 365
5 3 (5.66%) PaaS
6 2 (3.77%) AWS CloudFormation
6 2 (3.77%) OpenShift
7 1 (1.89%) AWS Direct Connect
7 1 (1.89%) Azure AKS
7 1 (1.89%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (1.89%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 1 (1.89%) Cloudflare
7 1 (1.89%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 13 (24.53%) DNS
1 13 (24.53%) VPN
2 10 (18.87%) LAN
2 10 (18.87%) WAN
3 8 (15.09%) Firewall
4 3 (5.66%) VSAN
4 3 (5.66%) Wireless
5 1 (1.89%) BIG-IP
5 1 (1.89%) MPLS
5 1 (1.89%) NAS
5 1 (1.89%) Network Security
5 1 (1.89%) SAN
5 1 (1.89%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (5.66%) BigQuery
2 1 (1.89%) MySQL
2 1 (1.89%) SQL Server
General
1 13 (24.53%) Finance
2 6 (11.32%) Financial Institution
3 5 (9.43%) General Ledger
4 3 (5.66%) Public Sector
5 1 (1.89%) Social Skills
5 1 (1.89%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 29 (54.72%) Architect
2 18 (33.96%) Technical Architect
3 10 (18.87%) Infrastructure Architect
4 7 (13.21%) Cloud Engineer
4 7 (13.21%) Senior
5 6 (11.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 5 (9.43%) Linux Engineer
7 4 (7.55%) Accountant
7 4 (7.55%) Financial Accountant
7 4 (7.55%) Network Architect
7 4 (7.55%) Senior Architect
7 4 (7.55%) Senior Technical Architect
8 3 (5.66%) Azure Engineer
8 3 (5.66%) Citrix Engineer
8 3 (5.66%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
8 3 (5.66%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
8 3 (5.66%) Machine Learning Engineer
8 3 (5.66%) Python Engineer
8 3 (5.66%) VMware Engineer
8 3 (5.66%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (13.21%) Middleware
2 3 (5.66%) NumPy
2 3 (5.66%) Pandas
3 1 (1.89%) LAMP
3 1 (1.89%) LEMP Stack
3 1 (1.89%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 12 (22.64%) Cloud Native
2 7 (13.21%) PKI
3 5 (9.43%) Hybrid Cloud
4 4 (7.55%) Onboarding
5 3 (5.66%) Private Cloud
6 2 (3.77%) Data Centre
6 2 (3.77%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 2 (3.77%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (3.77%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 17 (32.08%) Linux
2 12 (22.64%) Windows
3 4 (7.55%) Debian
4 3 (5.66%) Ubuntu
5 2 (3.77%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (26.42%) Migration
2 13 (24.53%) Infrastructure as Code
3 12 (22.64%) IT Strategy
4 11 (20.75%) Agile
4 11 (20.75%) CI/CD
5 9 (16.98%) DevOps
5 9 (16.98%) DevSecOps
6 8 (15.09%) Identity Access Management
6 8 (15.09%) Matrix Organization
6 8 (15.09%) Technology Strategy
6 8 (15.09%) TOGAF
7 7 (13.21%) API Management
7 7 (13.21%) Containerisation
7 7 (13.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 7 (13.21%) Microservices
8 6 (11.32%) Architectural Patterns
9 5 (9.43%) Requirements Management
9 5 (9.43%) Roadmaps
9 5 (9.43%) Stakeholder Management
9 5 (9.43%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 4 (7.55%) Bicep
1 4 (7.55%) Python
2 3 (5.66%) PowerShell
3 1 (1.89%) Bash
Qualifications
1 24 (45.28%) Security Cleared
2 22 (41.51%) SC Cleared
3 13 (24.53%) DV Cleared
4 6 (11.32%) CCNP
4 6 (11.32%) Cisco Certification
5 5 (9.43%) ACCA
5 5 (9.43%) CIMA
6 4 (7.55%) MCSE
6 4 (7.55%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (5.66%) Degree
8 2 (3.77%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 1 (1.89%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (22.64%) NCSC
2 9 (16.98%) NIST
3 5 (9.43%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 13 (24.53%) VMware Infrastructure
2 10 (18.87%) Hyper-V
3 9 (16.98%) VMware NSX
4 2 (3.77%) Docker
4 2 (3.77%) VMware ESXi
5 1 (1.89%) Active Directory
5 1 (1.89%) Dovecot
5 1 (1.89%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 7 (13.21%) Terraform
2 5 (9.43%) Ansible
3 3 (5.66%) Kubeflow
3 3 (5.66%) Kubernetes
4 1 (1.89%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 1 (1.89%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 25 (47.17%) VMware
2 15 (28.30%) Microsoft
3 7 (13.21%) MuleSoft
4 5 (9.43%) SAP
5 4 (7.55%) Cisco
5 4 (7.55%) Citrix
6 3 (5.66%) Google
6 3 (5.66%) Palo Alto
6 3 (5.66%) Red Hat
7 1 (1.89%) F5
7 1 (1.89%) Foundry
7 1 (1.89%) Juniper