Cloud Architect Contract Job Trends

Cloud Architect
UK

The median Cloud Architect daily rate in the UK is £600, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 September 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 355 381 346
Rank change year-on-year +26 -35 +17
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 372 174 234
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.53% 0.62%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.74% 0.59% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 246 129 151
10th Percentile £453 £458 £490
25th Percentile £531 £513 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £688 £700 £763
90th Percentile £813 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £633 £675
% change year-on-year -5.14% -6.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £22.69 - -
Median hourly rate £25.47 - -
75th Percentile £27.73 - -
90th Percentile - - -
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 50,372 29,667 35,213
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.22% 91.00% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,736 18,751 21,351
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,923 1,598 1,565
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £41.92 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.68% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.61 £74.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.50% -41.69% -2.82%

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 29 September 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 29 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cloud Architect in the UK

Cloud Architect
Top 16 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 29 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
England +22 303 £600 -6.25% 554
London -11 161 £650 +1.56% 320
UK excluding London +6 160 £600 -5.14% 229
Work from Home -32 104 £600 - 193
North of England -38 46 £600 -9.43% 69
South East -38 40 £575 +5.50% 59
Yorkshire -17 27 £600 -10.95% 25
Midlands -19 25 £725 +73.65% 39
Scotland -6 23 £450 - 27
North West -38 17 £600 +33.33% 39
East Midlands -3 15 £563 +29.31% 15
South West -39 12 £665 +3.50% 18
East of England -20 10 £600 -11.11% 11
West Midlands -35 10 £725 +81.25% 24
Wales -18 5 £625 +30.21% 5
North East -39 2 - - 5

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

For the 6 months to 29 September 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.

1 163 (43.82%) AWS
2 161 (43.28%) Azure
3 96 (25.81%) Migration
4 84 (22.58%) GCP
4 84 (22.58%) Security Cleared
5 75 (20.16%) Infrastructure as Code
6 72 (19.35%) CI/CD
7 69 (18.55%) SC Cleared
8 68 (18.28%) Technical Leadership
9 65 (17.47%) DevOps
9 65 (17.47%) Microsoft
10 60 (16.13%) Stakeholder Management
11 59 (15.86%) Roadmaps
12 56 (15.05%) Kubernetes
13 52 (13.98%) Cloud Security
14 49 (13.17%) Terraform
15 43 (11.56%) Google
16 42 (11.29%) Architectural Patterns
17 40 (10.75%) SaaS
17 40 (10.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 39 (10.48%) Oracle
18 39 (10.48%) Security Architecture
19 37 (9.95%) Platform Engineering
20 36 (9.68%) AI
21 35 (9.41%) TOGAF
22 32 (8.60%) Microservices
23 30 (8.06%) Enterprise Architecture
23 30 (8.06%) Event-Driven
24 28 (7.53%) Analytics
24 28 (7.53%) Mentoring

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 (1.61%) Palantir Foundry
2 3 (0.81%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.54%) Apache
3 2 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.54%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.27%) Appian
4 1 (0.27%) Camunda
4 1 (0.27%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.27%) SAS
Business Applications
1 5 (1.34%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.81%) Cloudability
2 3 (0.81%) Oracle Retail
3 2 (0.54%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.54%) Oracle Receivables
3 2 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle SCM
4 1 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 163 (43.82%) AWS
2 161 (43.28%) Azure
3 84 (22.58%) GCP
4 40 (10.75%) SaaS
5 23 (6.18%) OCI
5 23 (6.18%) PaaS
6 19 (5.11%) Serverless
7 18 (4.84%) Entra ID
8 15 (4.03%) GitHub
9 13 (3.49%) IaaS
10 12 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
11 11 (2.96%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.96%) Azure Sentinel
12 10 (2.69%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 9 (2.42%) Azure AKS
13 9 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (2.15%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (2.15%) Snowflake
15 7 (1.88%) Microsoft 365
16 6 (1.61%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 25 (6.72%) Firewall
2 18 (4.84%) VPN
3 12 (3.23%) Network Security
4 5 (1.34%) DNS
5 2 (0.54%) Internet
5 2 (0.54%) WAN
6 1 (0.27%) 5G
6 1 (0.27%) BGP
6 1 (0.27%) CTI
6 1 (0.27%) DAB
6 1 (0.27%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.27%) NGFW
6 1 (0.27%) PCoIP
6 1 (0.27%) PSTN
6 1 (0.27%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.27%) Remote Desktop
6 1 (0.27%) RTP
6 1 (0.27%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.27%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (5.11%) Data Lake
2 14 (3.76%) Oracle Database
3 8 (2.15%) BigQuery
4 6 (1.61%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (1.08%) Oracle Exadata
6 3 (0.81%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.54%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.54%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.54%) MongoDB
7 2 (0.54%) MySQL
7 2 (0.54%) Power BI
7 2 (0.54%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.54%) Tableau
8 1 (0.27%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.27%) Flink
8 1 (0.27%) HBase
8 1 (0.27%) Oracle ODI
8 1 (0.27%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.27%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 7 (1.88%) Git
1 7 (1.88%) Jenkins
2 4 (1.08%) JIRA
3 3 (0.81%) Claude Code
3 3 (0.81%) GitLab
4 2 (0.54%) IntelliJ
4 2 (0.54%) JUnit
4 2 (0.54%) MLflow
4 2 (0.54%) Oracle Forms
4 2 (0.54%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.27%) Hudson
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle APEX
General
1 61 (16.40%) Social Skills
2 57 (15.32%) Finance
3 37 (9.95%) Public Sector
4 27 (7.26%) Banking
5 19 (5.11%) Documentation Skills
5 19 (5.11%) Retail
6 14 (3.76%) Analytical Skills
7 10 (2.69%) Influencing Skills
8 6 (1.61%) Billing
8 6 (1.61%) Marketing
9 5 (1.34%) Legal
10 4 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.81%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.54%) Military
13 1 (0.27%) Aviation
13 1 (0.27%) Back Office
13 1 (0.27%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.27%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (13.17%) Terraform
2 19 (5.11%) Kafka
3 18 (4.84%) Middleware
4 16 (4.30%) REST
5 11 (2.96%) Oracle Fusion
6 9 (2.42%) Lightning Web Components
7 8 (2.15%) OAuth
7 8 (2.15%) SOAP
8 5 (1.34%) ARM Templates
9 4 (1.08%) JWT
9 4 (1.08%) Node.js
9 4 (1.08%) Pulumi
9 4 (1.08%) SailPoint
9 4 (1.08%) Spring
9 4 (1.08%) Spring Boot
10 3 (0.81%) OAuth2
11 2 (0.54%) .NET Core
11 2 (0.54%) AngularJS
11 2 (0.54%) Keycloak
11 2 (0.54%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 78 (20.97%) Cloud Native
2 30 (8.06%) Enterprise Cloud
3 27 (7.26%) Hybrid Cloud
4 26 (6.99%) Private Cloud
5 22 (5.91%) Onboarding
6 19 (5.11%) Management Information System
7 18 (4.84%) Public Cloud
8 17 (4.57%) Distributed Systems
9 16 (4.30%) Data Centre
10 11 (2.96%) Product Ownership
11 9 (2.42%) Security Posture
12 7 (1.88%) Legacy Applications
12 7 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
13 6 (1.61%) Data Fabric
14 5 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
15 4 (1.08%) AI Agents
16 3 (0.81%) Cloud Security Posture
16 3 (0.81%) CMDB
16 3 (0.81%) Data Protection Act
16 3 (0.81%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.96%) Windows
2 7 (1.88%) Linux
2 7 (1.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 7 (1.88%) Windows Server
3 4 (1.08%) Unix
4 1 (0.27%) AIX
4 1 (0.27%) Solaris
4 1 (0.27%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (25.81%) Migration
2 75 (20.16%) Infrastructure as Code
3 72 (19.35%) CI/CD
4 68 (18.28%) Technical Leadership
5 65 (17.47%) DevOps
6 60 (16.13%) Stakeholder Management
7 59 (15.86%) Roadmaps
8 52 (13.98%) Cloud Security
9 42 (11.29%) Architectural Patterns
10 40 (10.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 39 (10.48%) Security Architecture
12 37 (9.95%) Platform Engineering
13 36 (9.68%) AI
14 35 (9.41%) TOGAF
15 32 (8.60%) Microservices
16 30 (8.06%) Enterprise Architecture
16 30 (8.06%) Event-Driven
17 28 (7.53%) Analytics
17 28 (7.53%) Mentoring
18 26 (6.99%) Architectural Design
Programming Languages
1 14 (3.76%) Bicep
1 14 (3.76%) Java
2 11 (2.96%) Python
3 9 (2.42%) Apex Code
4 6 (1.61%) JavaScript
5 5 (1.34%) Bash
5 5 (1.34%) SQL
6 4 (1.08%) C#
6 4 (1.08%) PowerShell
7 3 (0.81%) C
8 2 (0.54%) Go
8 2 (0.54%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.27%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.27%) ProC
9 1 (0.27%) Scala
9 1 (0.27%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 84 (22.58%) Security Cleared
2 69 (18.55%) SC Cleared
3 22 (5.91%) AWS Certification
4 12 (3.23%) Azure Certification
4 12 (3.23%) CISSP
5 11 (2.96%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 11 (2.96%) Cisco Certification
6 9 (2.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
6 9 (2.42%) CCSP
7 8 (2.15%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.61%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.34%) CISM
9 5 (1.34%) Degree
10 4 (1.08%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (0.81%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 3 (0.81%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (0.54%) CCNP
12 2 (0.54%) GIAC
12 2 (0.54%) IBM Certification
12 2 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (4.57%) NIST
2 16 (4.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (2.69%) GDPR
3 10 (2.69%) PCI DSS
4 4 (1.08%) Data Quality
4 4 (1.08%) GRC
5 3 (0.81%) NCSC
6 2 (0.54%) QA
7 1 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.27%) NIST 800
System Software
1 15 (4.03%) Active Directory
2 11 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (1.88%) Docker
4 5 (1.34%) VMware NSX
5 2 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.54%) vSphere
5 2 (0.54%) zsh
6 1 (0.27%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 56 (15.05%) Kubernetes
2 8 (2.15%) Ansible
3 5 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
4 4 (1.08%) Grafana
4 4 (1.08%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.81%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.81%) Puppet
6 2 (0.54%) CASB
7 1 (0.27%) CloudForms
7 1 (0.27%) QRadar
7 1 (0.27%) Salt
7 1 (0.27%) SCOM
7 1 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 65 (17.47%) Microsoft
2 43 (11.56%) Google
3 39 (10.48%) Oracle
4 24 (6.45%) Salesforce
5 20 (5.38%) VMware
6 18 (4.84%) Databricks
7 10 (2.69%) CyberArk
8 9 (2.42%) Cisco
9 8 (2.15%) SAP
10 7 (1.88%) Foundry
11 6 (1.61%) Palantir
12 5 (1.34%) ServiceNow
13 4 (1.08%) Red Hat
13 4 (1.08%) Splunk
14 3 (0.81%) Dynatrace
14 3 (0.81%) MuleSoft
14 3 (0.81%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
14 3 (0.81%) SaltStack
15 2 (0.54%) Checkmarx
15 2 (0.54%) IBM