Public Cloud Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Public Cloud
UK > UK excluding London

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Public Cloud in contract job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Public Cloud over the 6 months leading up to 9 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 259 212 247
Rank change year-on-year -47 +35 -51
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 147 140 159
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.81% 1.00% 0.83%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.50% 3.17% 2.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 102 97 107
10th Percentile £345 £449 £400
25th Percentile £425 £525 £498
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £581 £582
Median % change year-on-year -9.64% -0.17% +1.22%
75th Percentile £638 £688 £688
90th Percentile £736 £755 £746
UK median daily rate £543 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -9.58% +4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 2
Median hourly rate - £66.50 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year - -14.74% -
UK median hourly rate - £58.00 £78.00
% change year-on-year - -25.64% +48.57%

All Generic Skills
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 5,890 4,420 5,885
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 32.45% 31.63% 30.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,653 2,470 3,712
10th Percentile £204 £200 £210
25th Percentile £358 £356 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £530 £545
% change year-on-year -5.66% -2.75% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 465 240 400
10th Percentile £13.13 £18.14 £15.31
25th Percentile £17.09 £22.50 £18.19
Median hourly rate £27.21 £32.50 £44.13
Median % change year-on-year -16.28% -26.35% +114.15%
75th Percentile £64.34 £65.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £82.25 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £27.36 £33.54 £38.10
% change year-on-year -18.44% -11.96% +52.39%

Public Cloud
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

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

Public Cloud job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Public Cloud
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Public Cloud.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Public Cloud

Public Cloud
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Cloud in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 9 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Public Cloud in the UK excluding London

Public Cloud
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Public Cloud.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Public Cloud

Public Cloud
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 Public Cloud within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 9 January 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
North of England -9 67 £476 -7.93% 25
Yorkshire -11 47 £515 -0.39% 13
Midlands -25 23 £530 +7.07% 11
South East -57 23 £522 -18.44% 47
Scotland -1 19 £450 -22.41% 4
North West -26 19 £450 -10.00% 6
West Midlands -24 15 £530 -18.46% 3
South West -1 14 £650 +1.96% 22
East of England -29 9 £413 -31.25% 18
East Midlands -17 8 £631 +42.12% 7
Wales -1 3 £214 -64.40% 6
North East -10 2 - - 6
Public Cloud
UK

Public Cloud
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:

Application Platforms
1 6 (4.08%) OpenStack
2 1 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.68%) Confluence
Applications
1 5 (3.40%) Microsoft Excel
1 5 (3.40%) Weka
Business Applications
1 15 (10.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (3.40%) SAP ERP
3 2 (1.36%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.68%) SAP CO
4 1 (0.68%) SAP FI/CO
4 1 (0.68%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 74 (50.34%) AWS
2 68 (46.26%) GCP
3 59 (40.14%) Azure
4 36 (24.49%) Serverless
5 9 (6.12%) AWS KMS
5 9 (6.12%) SuccessFactors
6 6 (4.08%) Entra ID
7 5 (3.40%) Cloud Computing
7 5 (3.40%) Power Platform
8 4 (2.72%) GitHub
8 4 (2.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 4 (2.72%) Microsoft 365
8 4 (2.72%) PowerApps
8 4 (2.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 3 (2.04%) Amazon EC2
9 3 (2.04%) SaaS
10 2 (1.36%) Amazon S3
10 2 (1.36%) Datadog
10 2 (1.36%) IaaS
10 2 (1.36%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 10 (6.80%) DNS
2 9 (6.12%) VPN
3 8 (5.44%) Firewall
4 7 (4.76%) Network Security
4 7 (4.76%) TCP/IP
5 6 (4.08%) WAN
6 4 (2.72%) LAN
7 2 (1.36%) DHCP
7 2 (1.36%) Internet
7 2 (1.36%) NetScaler
8 1 (0.68%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 1 (0.68%) InfiniBand
8 1 (0.68%) SAN
8 1 (0.68%) SD-WAN
8 1 (0.68%) VLAN
8 1 (0.68%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (27.89%) NoSQL
2 16 (10.88%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (6.80%) MongoDB
4 5 (3.40%) Power BI
4 5 (3.40%) Relational Database
5 4 (2.72%) Data Mining
6 3 (2.04%) SQL Server
7 2 (1.36%) Redis
8 1 (0.68%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.68%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.68%) BigQuery
8 1 (0.68%) MySQL
8 1 (0.68%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.68%) Oracle Database 12c
8 1 (0.68%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.68%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (0.68%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 36 (24.49%) Jenkins
2 31 (21.09%) GitLab
3 29 (19.73%) Liquibase
4 7 (4.76%) JIRA
5 3 (2.04%) Git
5 3 (2.04%) Vite
6 2 (1.36%) Mocha
7 1 (0.68%) JUnit
General
1 69 (46.94%) Finance
2 53 (36.05%) Social Skills
3 37 (25.17%) Banking
4 24 (16.33%) Financial Institution
5 17 (11.56%) Public Sector
6 12 (8.16%) Analytical Skills
7 5 (3.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (3.40%) Presentation Skills
8 4 (2.72%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (2.04%) Local Government
10 2 (1.36%) Digital Health
10 2 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.36%) Welsh Language
11 1 (0.68%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.68%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 34 (23.13%) Architect
2 32 (21.77%) Senior
3 24 (16.33%) Cloud Engineer
4 22 (14.97%) Software Engineer
5 19 (12.93%) GCP Engineer
6 17 (11.56%) Senior Software Engineer
7 13 (8.84%) DevOps Engineer
8 12 (8.16%) Analyst
9 11 (7.48%) AWS Engineer
9 11 (7.48%) Developer
10 10 (6.80%) AWS Software Engineer
11 8 (5.44%) Cloud Software Engineer
12 7 (4.76%) Infrastructure Architect
12 7 (4.76%) Java Developer
12 7 (4.76%) Senior Cloud Engineer
13 6 (4.08%) Full-Stack Developer
13 6 (4.08%) Full-Stack Java Developer
13 6 (4.08%) GCP Software Engineer
13 6 (4.08%) Security Architect
14 5 (3.40%) SAP Programme Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (24.49%) REST
2 35 (23.81%) RESTful
3 34 (23.13%) Elastic Stack
4 8 (5.44%) Spring
4 8 (5.44%) Spring Boot
5 6 (4.08%) React
6 5 (3.40%) Middleware
7 4 (2.72%) AngularJS
7 4 (2.72%) Kafka
8 3 (2.04%) Next.js
9 2 (1.36%) AWS CDK
9 2 (1.36%) CSS
9 2 (1.36%) Express.js
9 2 (1.36%) HTML
9 2 (1.36%) Jest
9 2 (1.36%) Node.js
10 1 (0.68%) Hibernate
10 1 (0.68%) NumPy
10 1 (0.68%) RabbitMQ
10 1 (0.68%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 47 (31.97%) Cloud Native
2 31 (21.09%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (10.20%) Data Centre
4 11 (7.48%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (6.80%) Private Cloud
6 7 (4.76%) Cloud Security Posture
6 7 (4.76%) Security Posture
7 5 (3.40%) Enterprise Software
7 5 (3.40%) Grid Computing
7 5 (3.40%) Mainframe
7 5 (3.40%) PKI
8 4 (2.72%) Distributed Applications
9 3 (2.04%) Product Ownership
10 2 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
10 2 (1.36%) NHS
10 2 (1.36%) PMI
10 2 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
11 1 (0.68%) Distributed Computing
11 1 (0.68%) Operational Technology
11 1 (0.68%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 47 (31.97%) Linux
2 12 (8.16%) Windows
3 5 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 2 (1.36%) Unix
4 2 (1.36%) Windows Server 2012
4 2 (1.36%) Windows Server 2019
5 1 (0.68%) CentOS
5 1 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.68%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (42.86%) DevOps
2 61 (41.50%) Agile
3 58 (39.46%) CI/CD
4 49 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
5 41 (27.89%) Microservices
6 38 (25.85%) Containerisation
7 35 (23.81%) Computer Science
7 35 (23.81%) Software Engineering
8 33 (22.45%) Cost Optimisation
8 33 (22.45%) Root Cause Analysis
9 31 (21.09%) Cryptography
10 30 (20.41%) Non-Functional Testing
11 29 (19.73%) Continuous Delivery
11 29 (19.73%) Continuous Integration
11 29 (19.73%) Cybersecurity
11 29 (19.73%) High Availability
12 28 (19.05%) Data Security
13 27 (18.37%) Change Management
14 23 (15.65%) Infrastructure Automation
15 20 (13.61%) Data Encryption
Programming Languages
1 53 (36.05%) Python
2 37 (25.17%) Go
3 21 (14.29%) Java
4 10 (6.80%) SQL
5 6 (4.08%) Bash
6 4 (2.72%) PowerShell
7 3 (2.04%) JavaScript
8 2 (1.36%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.68%) Bicep
9 1 (0.68%) C++
9 1 (0.68%) Perl
9 1 (0.68%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.68%) Ruby
9 1 (0.68%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 41 (27.89%) Degree
2 34 (23.13%) Computer Science Degree
3 31 (21.09%) Master's Degree
4 28 (19.05%) Security Cleared
5 16 (10.88%) AWS Certification
6 13 (8.84%) SC Cleared
7 10 (6.80%) Azure Certification
8 7 (4.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 5 (3.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 5 (3.40%) CCSP
9 5 (3.40%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (3.40%) CISSP
9 5 (3.40%) DV Cleared
9 5 (3.40%) ISTQB
10 4 (2.72%) AWS Certified Developer
10 4 (2.72%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 4 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
11 2 (1.36%) BC Cleared
11 2 (1.36%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (4.08%) GDPR
1 6 (4.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 6 (4.08%) NIST
1 6 (4.08%) PCI DSS
2 5 (3.40%) PSD2
3 4 (2.72%) QA
3 4 (2.72%) SLA
4 2 (1.36%) Accessibility
4 2 (1.36%) WCAG
5 1 (0.68%) GAMP
5 1 (0.68%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 1 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 46 (31.29%) Docker
2 11 (7.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (4.76%) Hyper-V
4 5 (3.40%) GPFS
4 5 (3.40%) Lustre
4 5 (3.40%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 4 (2.72%) Active Directory
6 2 (1.36%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (1.36%) vSphere
7 1 (0.68%) Ceph
7 1 (0.68%) IAG
7 1 (0.68%) KVM
7 1 (0.68%) QEMU
7 1 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 58 (39.46%) Kubernetes
2 48 (32.65%) Terraform
3 39 (26.53%) Ansible
4 34 (23.13%) Grafana
4 34 (23.13%) Prometheus
5 4 (2.72%) Istio
6 2 (1.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 2 (1.36%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (1.36%) SCCM
7 1 (0.68%) Consul
7 1 (0.68%) Data Guard
7 1 (0.68%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.68%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 1 (0.68%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.68%) Puppet
7 1 (0.68%) Salt
7 1 (0.68%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 35 (23.81%) Splunk
2 22 (14.97%) Google
3 16 (10.88%) SAP
4 11 (7.48%) VMware
5 9 (6.12%) Microsoft
6 7 (4.76%) ServiceNow
7 4 (2.72%) MuleSoft
8 3 (2.04%) F5
8 3 (2.04%) Oracle
8 3 (2.04%) Veeam
9 1 (0.68%) Brocade
9 1 (0.68%) Cisco
9 1 (0.68%) Dell
9 1 (0.68%) Extreme Networks
9 1 (0.68%) NetApp