Cloud Architect Contract Job Trends

Cloud Architect
UK

The median Cloud Architect daily rate in the UK is £620, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 July 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 353 335 359
Rank change year-on-year -18 +24 -42
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 344 227 240
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.69% 0.59%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.70% 0.76% 0.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 166 168
10th Percentile £475 £453 £500
25th Percentile £550 £513 £538
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £603 £655
Median % change year-on-year +2.82% -7.94% -2.96%
75th Percentile £733 £737 £763
90th Percentile £770 £800 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £600 £675
% change year-on-year - -11.11% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £23.20 - -
Median hourly rate £25.47 - -
75th Percentile £27.73 - -
90th Percentile £53.09 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.47 - -

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 48,872 29,931 38,007
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.61% 91.58% 93.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,492 19,056 24,610
10th Percentile £328 £283 £298
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.02%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £727 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,302 1,437 2,371
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £13.60
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.17
Median hourly rate £43.55 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +73.17% -38.57% -6.42%
75th Percentile £67.89 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.92 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.91
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.39% +7.28%

Cloud Architect
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Cloud Architect' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Cloud Architect job vacancy trend in the UK

Cloud Architect
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Cloud Architect job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Cloud Architect job vacancies in the UK

Cloud Architect
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cloud Architect over the 6 months to 24 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Cloud Architect in the UK

Cloud Architect
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Cloud Architect job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Cloud Architect job vacancies in the UK

Cloud Architect
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Cloud Architect over the 6 months to 24 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cloud Architect in the UK

Cloud Architect
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Cloud Architect within the UK over the 6 months to 24 July 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
England -18 278 £620 -1.98% 200
London -16 183 £650 +1.56% 126
Work from Home -50 104 £618 +2.40% 67
UK excluding London -66 99 £600 - 79
South East -49 24 £575 +6.48% 24
Midlands -36 21 £635 +5.83% 15
North of England -58 18 £625 +13.64% 19
Scotland -1 13 £650 - 3
South West -43 13 £600 -6.43% 14
West Midlands -51 12 £725 +44.57% 11
East of England -12 11 £600 -11.11% 1
East Midlands -4 9 £538 - 4
North West -40 9 £600 +33.33% 10
Yorkshire -43 8 £650 +18.18% 9
North East - 1 - - 1

Cloud Architect Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 24 July 2026, Cloud Architect 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 featuring Cloud Architect in the job title.

1 179 (52.03%) AWS
2 131 (38.08%) Azure
3 106 (30.81%) Migration
4 95 (27.62%) Security Cleared
5 79 (22.97%) SC Cleared
6 65 (18.90%) CI/CD
7 63 (18.31%) GCP
8 61 (17.73%) DevOps
9 58 (16.86%) Infrastructure as Code
10 51 (14.83%) Microsoft
11 48 (13.95%) Technical Leadership
12 47 (13.66%) Stakeholder Management
13 46 (13.37%) Terraform
14 45 (13.08%) Analytics
14 45 (13.08%) Cloud Security
15 42 (12.21%) Roadmaps
16 38 (11.05%) Problem-Solving
17 37 (10.76%) Kubernetes
18 36 (10.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 36 (10.47%) TOGAF
19 32 (9.30%) SaaS
20 30 (8.72%) AI
20 30 (8.72%) Firewall
20 30 (8.72%) Security Architecture
20 30 (8.72%) Technical Architecture
21 29 (8.43%) Containerisation
21 29 (8.43%) Integration Patterns
22 28 (8.14%) Data Lake
22 28 (8.14%) Oracle
23 27 (7.85%) Serverless

Cloud Architect Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 (1.74%) Palantir Foundry
2 3 (0.87%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.87%) SAS
3 2 (0.58%) Apache
3 2 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.58%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.29%) Appian
4 1 (0.29%) Camunda
4 1 (0.29%) Cloud Foundry
4 1 (0.29%) Confluence
4 1 (0.29%) Mendix
Business Applications
1 5 (1.45%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.58%) Oracle Retail
2 2 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle SCM
3 1 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 179 (52.03%) AWS
2 131 (38.08%) Azure
3 63 (18.31%) GCP
4 32 (9.30%) SaaS
5 27 (7.85%) Serverless
6 21 (6.10%) Entra ID
6 21 (6.10%) PaaS
7 15 (4.36%) AWS CloudFormation
7 15 (4.36%) IaaS
7 15 (4.36%) OCI
8 9 (2.62%) Amazon EKS
8 9 (2.62%) Azure Sentinel
8 9 (2.62%) Microsoft 365
8 9 (2.62%) Snowflake
9 7 (2.03%) Azure AKS
9 7 (2.03%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 6 (1.74%) Azure Key Vault
10 6 (1.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 6 (1.74%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
10 6 (1.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 30 (8.72%) Firewall
2 27 (7.85%) VPN
3 15 (4.36%) Network Security
4 3 (0.87%) DNS
5 2 (0.58%) Intrusion Detection
5 2 (0.58%) NGFW
6 1 (0.29%) 5G
6 1 (0.29%) Anycast
6 1 (0.29%) BGP
6 1 (0.29%) Cisco ASA
6 1 (0.29%) CTI
6 1 (0.29%) DAB
6 1 (0.29%) DMVPN
6 1 (0.29%) Internet
6 1 (0.29%) IPsec
6 1 (0.29%) MPLS
6 1 (0.29%) OSPF
6 1 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.29%) RTP
6 1 (0.29%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.14%) Data Lake
2 12 (3.49%) Oracle Database
3 9 (2.62%) BigQuery
4 8 (2.33%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (1.74%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (1.16%) NoSQL
6 4 (1.16%) Oracle Exadata
7 2 (0.58%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.58%) SAP HANA
7 2 (0.58%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.58%) Tableau
8 1 (0.29%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.29%) Big Data
8 1 (0.29%) Cloudera CDH
8 1 (0.29%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.29%) Flink
8 1 (0.29%) HBase
8 1 (0.29%) Metadata
8 1 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.29%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 5 (1.45%) Git
2 4 (1.16%) JIRA
3 3 (0.87%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.58%) IntelliJ
4 2 (0.58%) JUnit
4 2 (0.58%) MLflow
4 2 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
4 2 (0.58%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.29%) AppScan
5 1 (0.29%) Burp Suite
5 1 (0.29%) Hudson
5 1 (0.29%) Metasploit
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
General
1 59 (17.15%) Social Skills
2 52 (15.12%) Finance
3 39 (11.34%) Public Sector
4 26 (7.56%) Documentation Skills
5 23 (6.69%) Banking
6 15 (4.36%) Retail
7 12 (3.49%) Analytical Skills
8 7 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (2.03%) Presentation Skills
9 6 (1.74%) Marketing
10 5 (1.45%) Legal
11 3 (0.87%) Billing
11 3 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.87%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.29%) Aviation
12 1 (0.29%) Back Office
12 1 (0.29%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.29%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.29%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (6.10%) Middleware
2 14 (4.07%) REST
3 9 (2.62%) Oracle Fusion
4 8 (2.33%) Kafka
5 7 (2.03%) Lightning Web Components
6 5 (1.45%) ARM Templates
6 5 (1.45%) SOAP
7 4 (1.16%) Node.js
7 4 (1.16%) OAuth
7 4 (1.16%) SailPoint
8 3 (0.87%) .NET
9 2 (0.58%) .NET Core
9 2 (0.58%) .NET Framework
9 2 (0.58%) AngularJS
9 2 (0.58%) AWS CDK
9 2 (0.58%) JWT
9 2 (0.58%) React
9 2 (0.58%) Spring
9 2 (0.58%) Spring Boot
9 2 (0.58%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 63 (18.31%) Cloud Native
2 26 (7.56%) Management Information System
3 24 (6.98%) Enterprise Cloud
4 22 (6.40%) Data Centre
5 17 (4.94%) Onboarding
6 16 (4.65%) Hybrid Cloud
7 13 (3.78%) Public Cloud
8 9 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
9 8 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
10 7 (2.03%) Product Ownership
10 7 (2.03%) Security Posture
11 6 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (1.45%) Data Fabric
12 5 (1.45%) Private Cloud
13 3 (0.87%) AI Agents
13 3 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
13 3 (0.87%) NHS
13 3 (0.87%) Wiki
14 2 (0.58%) N-Tier
14 2 (0.58%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 14 (4.07%) Windows
2 6 (1.74%) Linux
2 6 (1.74%) Windows Server
3 5 (1.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.87%) Unix
5 1 (0.29%) AIX
5 1 (0.29%) Android
5 1 (0.29%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.29%) Kali Linux
5 1 (0.29%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.29%) Solaris
5 1 (0.29%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 106 (30.81%) Migration
2 65 (18.90%) CI/CD
3 61 (17.73%) DevOps
4 58 (16.86%) Infrastructure as Code
5 48 (13.95%) Technical Leadership
6 47 (13.66%) Stakeholder Management
7 45 (13.08%) Analytics
7 45 (13.08%) Cloud Security
8 42 (12.21%) Roadmaps
9 38 (11.05%) Problem-Solving
10 36 (10.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 36 (10.47%) TOGAF
11 30 (8.72%) AI
11 30 (8.72%) Security Architecture
11 30 (8.72%) Technical Architecture
12 29 (8.43%) Containerisation
12 29 (8.43%) Integration Patterns
13 24 (6.98%) Architectural Patterns
14 23 (6.69%) Enterprise Architecture
14 23 (6.69%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 15 (4.36%) Bicep
2 11 (3.20%) Java
3 8 (2.33%) Python
4 7 (2.03%) Apex Code
4 7 (2.03%) SQL
5 5 (1.45%) JavaScript
6 4 (1.16%) C#
7 3 (0.87%) Bash
7 3 (0.87%) PowerShell
8 1 (0.29%) C
8 1 (0.29%) Lisp
8 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.29%) ProC
8 1 (0.29%) Scala
8 1 (0.29%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 95 (27.62%) Security Cleared
2 79 (22.97%) SC Cleared
3 25 (7.27%) AWS Certification
4 14 (4.07%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 13 (3.78%) Azure Certification
6 11 (3.20%) Cisco Certification
6 11 (3.20%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (2.91%) CISSP
7 10 (2.91%) DV Cleared
8 7 (2.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 7 (2.03%) CCSP
9 6 (1.74%) Degree
10 5 (1.45%) CISM
11 4 (1.16%) CCNP
12 3 (0.87%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 3 (0.87%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
13 2 (0.58%) IBM Certification
13 2 (0.58%) Master's Degree
13 2 (0.58%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (6.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 18 (5.23%) NIST
3 14 (4.07%) PCI DSS
4 12 (3.49%) GDPR
5 5 (1.45%) Data Quality
6 4 (1.16%) GRC
7 3 (0.87%) NCSC
8 2 (0.58%) COBIT
8 2 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.58%) QA
9 1 (0.29%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.29%) PSD2
9 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.29%) SLA
System Software
1 17 (4.94%) Active Directory
2 10 (2.91%) Docker
3 5 (1.45%) VMware NSX
4 2 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.29%) Varnish
5 1 (0.29%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 46 (13.37%) Terraform
2 37 (10.76%) Kubernetes
3 3 (0.87%) Ansible
4 2 (0.58%) CASB
4 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
4 2 (0.58%) Progress Chef
4 2 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (0.29%) CloudForms
5 1 (0.29%) Grafana
5 1 (0.29%) Nessus
5 1 (0.29%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.29%) Puppet
5 1 (0.29%) QRadar
Vendors
1 51 (14.83%) Microsoft
2 28 (8.14%) Oracle
3 25 (7.27%) Google
4 20 (5.81%) Salesforce
5 17 (4.94%) Databricks
6 12 (3.49%) CyberArk
7 10 (2.91%) SAP
8 9 (2.62%) VMware
9 7 (2.03%) Foundry
9 7 (2.03%) IBM
10 6 (1.74%) Cisco
10 6 (1.74%) Palantir
10 6 (1.74%) Splunk
11 5 (1.45%) Red Hat
12 4 (1.16%) ServiceNow
13 3 (0.87%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
14 2 (0.58%) Checkmarx
14 2 (0.58%) Denodo
14 2 (0.58%) MuleSoft
14 2 (0.58%) Zscaler