Principal Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Principal Cloud Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Principal Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £683, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 25 August 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 456 - -
Rank change year-on-year - - -
Contract jobs requiring a Principal Cloud Engineer 6 0 0
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.022% - -
As % of the Job Titles category 0.024% - -
Number of daily rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile £617 - -
25th Percentile £642 - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £683 - -
75th Percentile £692 - -
90th Percentile £697 - -
UK median daily rate £692 £675 -
% change year-on-year +2.44% - -

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 25,349 13,790 16,770
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.69% 90.04% 92.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,259 8,454 10,091
10th Percentile £303 £213 £220
25th Percentile £410 £360 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £685
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,067 1,263 1,650
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.29 £13.86
25th Percentile £20.31 £16.38 £18.20
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +7.50%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.85 £73.65 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.92 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.68% -41.51% -1.58%

Principal Cloud Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Principal Cloud Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Principal Cloud Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Principal Cloud Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Principal Cloud Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 25 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
Yorkshire - 6 £683 - 1
North of England - 6 £683 - 1
Principal Cloud Engineer
UK

Principal Cloud Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 25 August 2026, Principal Cloud Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Principal Cloud Engineer in the job title.

1 6 (100.00%) Kubernetes
1 6 (100.00%) Technical Leadership
2 5 (83.33%) Architectural Patterns
2 5 (83.33%) CI/CD
2 5 (83.33%) Configuration Management
2 5 (83.33%) GitOps
2 5 (83.33%) Infrastructure as Code
2 5 (83.33%) Kafka
2 5 (83.33%) Microservices
2 5 (83.33%) Observability
2 5 (83.33%) Platform Engineering
2 5 (83.33%) VMware
2 5 (83.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (66.67%) Capacity Planning
3 4 (66.67%) Change Management
3 4 (66.67%) Design Patterns
3 4 (66.67%) Event-Driven
3 4 (66.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 4 (66.67%) Performance Tuning
3 4 (66.67%) Roadmaps
3 4 (66.67%) Site Reliability Engineering
4 3 (50.00%) Cybersecurity
4 3 (50.00%) Data Protection
4 3 (50.00%) Vulnerability Management
5 2 (33.33%) Secrets Management
5 2 (33.33%) Service Catalogue
6 1 (16.67%) API Design
6 1 (16.67%) Decision-Making
6 1 (16.67%) Deployment Automation
6 1 (16.67%) Event-Driven Architecture

Principal Cloud Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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:

General
1 1 (16.67%) Banking
1 1 (16.67%) Finance
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (83.33%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 6 (100.00%) Private Cloud
2 5 (83.33%) Distributed Systems
2 5 (83.33%) Onboarding
2 5 (83.33%) Product Ownership
3 1 (16.67%) Enterprise Cloud
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (100.00%) Technical Leadership
2 5 (83.33%) Architectural Patterns
2 5 (83.33%) CI/CD
2 5 (83.33%) Configuration Management
2 5 (83.33%) GitOps
2 5 (83.33%) Infrastructure as Code
2 5 (83.33%) Microservices
2 5 (83.33%) Observability
2 5 (83.33%) Platform Engineering
3 4 (66.67%) Capacity Planning
3 4 (66.67%) Change Management
3 4 (66.67%) Design Patterns
3 4 (66.67%) Event-Driven
3 4 (66.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 4 (66.67%) Performance Tuning
3 4 (66.67%) Roadmaps
3 4 (66.67%) Site Reliability Engineering
4 3 (50.00%) Cybersecurity
4 3 (50.00%) Data Protection
4 3 (50.00%) Vulnerability Management
System Software
1 5 (83.33%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 6 (100.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 5 (83.33%) VMware