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 14 September 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 340 383 339
Rank change year-on-year +43 -44 +26
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 373 177 235
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.54% 0.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.75% 0.59% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 248 129 154
10th Percentile £455 £462 £500
25th Percentile £550 £513 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £696 £713 £750
90th Percentile £775 £775 £796
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £640 £675
% change year-on-year -6.25% -5.19% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 0 0
10th Percentile £22.69 - -
25th Percentile £23.20 - -
Median hourly rate £25.47 - -
75th Percentile £27.73 - -
90th Percentile £31.96 - -
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 49,990 29,768 35,726
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 91.07% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,655 18,799 22,146
10th Percentile £325 £278 £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 £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,750 1,555 1,711
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.69 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.27 £17.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -1.71%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.72 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +8.43%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +40 304 £600 -6.25% 527
London -1 173 £650 +1.56% 306
UK excluding London -1 147 £600 -6.25% 219
Work from Home -36 107 £608 +0.75% 335
South East -24 40 £575 +5.50% 53
North of England -44 37 £600 -16.96% 75
Midlands -26 23 £725 +44.57% 27
Scotland -3 21 £450 - 34
Yorkshire -19 18 £638 -11.76% 24
North West -37 18 £600 - 44
South West -45 13 £600 -6.61% 18
East Midlands - 13 £563 - 9
West Midlands -38 10 £725 +44.57% 18
East of England -24 9 £600 -11.11% 4
Wales -17 5 £625 +30.21% 3
North East - 1 - - 7

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

For the 6 months to 14 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.

1 172 (46.11%) AWS
2 156 (41.82%) Azure
3 99 (26.54%) Migration
4 90 (24.13%) Security Cleared
5 85 (22.79%) GCP
6 73 (19.57%) SC Cleared
7 68 (18.23%) Infrastructure as Code
8 66 (17.69%) CI/CD
9 65 (17.43%) Microsoft
10 64 (17.16%) DevOps
11 63 (16.89%) Technical Leadership
12 60 (16.09%) Stakeholder Management
13 56 (15.01%) Roadmaps
14 53 (14.21%) Cloud Security
15 47 (12.60%) Kubernetes
16 45 (12.06%) Terraform
17 43 (11.53%) Google
18 41 (10.99%) Architectural Patterns
19 39 (10.46%) SaaS
20 38 (10.19%) AI
20 38 (10.19%) Analytics
20 38 (10.19%) Oracle
20 38 (10.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 38 (10.19%) TOGAF
21 36 (9.65%) Security Architecture
22 32 (8.58%) Problem-Solving
23 31 (8.31%) Enterprise Architecture
23 31 (8.31%) Platform Engineering
24 28 (7.51%) Mentoring
25 27 (7.24%) Integration Patterns

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 (0.80%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.54%) Apache
3 2 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.54%) SAS
3 2 (0.54%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.27%) Appian
4 1 (0.27%) Camunda
4 1 (0.27%) Cloud Foundry
Business Applications
1 5 (1.34%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.80%) Cloudability
2 3 (0.80%) Oracle Retail
3 2 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle SCM
4 1 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 172 (46.11%) AWS
2 156 (41.82%) Azure
3 85 (22.79%) GCP
4 39 (10.46%) SaaS
5 23 (6.17%) PaaS
6 21 (5.63%) OCI
7 20 (5.36%) Serverless
8 17 (4.56%) Entra ID
9 14 (3.75%) GitHub
10 13 (3.49%) IaaS
11 11 (2.95%) Azure DevOps
12 10 (2.68%) Azure Sentinel
12 10 (2.68%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 10 (2.68%) Snowflake
13 9 (2.41%) AWS CloudFormation
14 8 (2.14%) Azure AKS
14 8 (2.14%) GitHub Actions
15 7 (1.88%) Amazon EKS
15 7 (1.88%) Microsoft 365
16 6 (1.61%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 25 (6.70%) Firewall
2 18 (4.83%) VPN
3 13 (3.49%) Network Security
4 4 (1.07%) DNS
5 2 (0.54%) Internet
6 1 (0.27%) 5G
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%) VSAN
6 1 (0.27%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (6.43%) Data Lake
2 15 (4.02%) Oracle Database
3 10 (2.68%) BigQuery
4 6 (1.61%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (1.07%) Oracle Exadata
6 3 (0.80%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (0.80%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.54%) Delta Lake
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%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.27%) Big Data
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%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.27%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 7 (1.88%) Git
2 6 (1.61%) Jenkins
3 4 (1.07%) JIRA
4 3 (0.80%) Claude Code
5 2 (0.54%) GitLab
5 2 (0.54%) IntelliJ
5 2 (0.54%) JUnit
5 2 (0.54%) MLflow
5 2 (0.54%) Oracle Forms
5 2 (0.54%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.27%) Hudson
6 1 (0.27%) Oracle APEX
General
1 63 (16.89%) Social Skills
2 57 (15.28%) Finance
3 37 (9.92%) Public Sector
4 27 (7.24%) Banking
5 21 (5.63%) Retail
6 19 (5.09%) Documentation Skills
7 13 (3.49%) Analytical Skills
8 7 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.61%) Billing
9 6 (1.61%) Marketing
10 4 (1.07%) Legal
10 4 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.80%) 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 45 (12.06%) Terraform
2 19 (5.09%) Middleware
3 17 (4.56%) REST
4 11 (2.95%) Kafka
5 9 (2.41%) Lightning Web Components
5 9 (2.41%) Oracle Fusion
6 8 (2.14%) SOAP
7 6 (1.61%) OAuth
8 4 (1.07%) ARM Templates
8 4 (1.07%) Node.js
8 4 (1.07%) SailPoint
9 3 (0.80%) Pulumi
10 2 (0.54%) .NET
10 2 (0.54%) .NET Core
10 2 (0.54%) AngularJS
10 2 (0.54%) Keycloak
10 2 (0.54%) OpenID
10 2 (0.54%) React
10 2 (0.54%) Spring
10 2 (0.54%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 77 (20.64%) Cloud Native
2 30 (8.04%) Enterprise Cloud
3 23 (6.17%) Hybrid Cloud
4 21 (5.63%) Management Information System
5 19 (5.09%) Onboarding
6 16 (4.29%) Data Centre
7 15 (4.02%) Private Cloud
7 15 (4.02%) Public Cloud
8 11 (2.95%) Distributed Systems
9 9 (2.41%) Product Ownership
9 9 (2.41%) Security Posture
10 8 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
11 6 (1.61%) Data Fabric
11 6 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
11 6 (1.61%) Legacy Applications
12 5 (1.34%) AI Agents
13 3 (0.80%) Cloud Security Posture
13 3 (0.80%) Data Protection Act
13 3 (0.80%) Greenfield Project
13 3 (0.80%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.22%) Windows
2 7 (1.88%) Linux
2 7 (1.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 7 (1.88%) Windows Server
3 4 (1.07%) Unix
4 1 (0.27%) AIX
4 1 (0.27%) Solaris
4 1 (0.27%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (26.54%) Migration
2 68 (18.23%) Infrastructure as Code
3 66 (17.69%) CI/CD
4 64 (17.16%) DevOps
5 63 (16.89%) Technical Leadership
6 60 (16.09%) Stakeholder Management
7 56 (15.01%) Roadmaps
8 53 (14.21%) Cloud Security
9 41 (10.99%) Architectural Patterns
10 38 (10.19%) AI
10 38 (10.19%) Analytics
10 38 (10.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 38 (10.19%) TOGAF
11 36 (9.65%) Security Architecture
12 32 (8.58%) Problem-Solving
13 31 (8.31%) Enterprise Architecture
13 31 (8.31%) Platform Engineering
14 28 (7.51%) Mentoring
15 27 (7.24%) Integration Patterns
15 27 (7.24%) Technical Architecture
Programming Languages
1 12 (3.22%) Bicep
2 10 (2.68%) Java
3 9 (2.41%) Apex Code
3 9 (2.41%) Python
4 6 (1.61%) JavaScript
5 5 (1.34%) Bash
5 5 (1.34%) SQL
6 4 (1.07%) PowerShell
7 2 (0.54%) C
7 2 (0.54%) C#
7 2 (0.54%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.27%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.27%) ProC
8 1 (0.27%) Scala
8 1 (0.27%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 90 (24.13%) Security Cleared
2 73 (19.57%) SC Cleared
3 22 (5.90%) AWS Certification
4 12 (3.22%) Cisco Certification
4 12 (3.22%) CISSP
5 11 (2.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 11 (2.95%) Azure Certification
6 9 (2.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
6 9 (2.41%) CCSP
6 9 (2.41%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (1.88%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.61%) Degree
9 5 (1.34%) CISM
10 3 (0.80%) CCNP
10 3 (0.80%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
10 3 (0.80%) TOGAF Certification
11 2 (0.54%) BPSS Clearance
11 2 (0.54%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.54%) GIAC
11 2 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (4.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 17 (4.56%) NIST
2 11 (2.95%) PCI DSS
3 10 (2.68%) GDPR
4 4 (1.07%) Data Quality
4 4 (1.07%) GRC
4 4 (1.07%) NCSC
5 2 (0.54%) QA
6 1 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.27%) NIST 800
System Software
1 15 (4.02%) Active Directory
2 7 (1.88%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.61%) Docker
3 6 (1.61%) VMware NSX
4 3 (0.80%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.54%) vSphere
5 2 (0.54%) zsh
6 1 (0.27%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 47 (12.60%) Kubernetes
2 5 (1.34%) Ansible
3 4 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (0.80%) Grafana
4 3 (0.80%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.54%) CASB
5 2 (0.54%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.54%) Puppet
6 1 (0.27%) CloudForms
6 1 (0.27%) QRadar
6 1 (0.27%) Salt
6 1 (0.27%) SCOM
6 1 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 65 (17.43%) Microsoft
2 43 (11.53%) Google
3 38 (10.19%) Oracle
4 25 (6.70%) Salesforce
5 18 (4.83%) Databricks
6 16 (4.29%) VMware
7 10 (2.68%) CyberArk
7 10 (2.68%) SAP
8 9 (2.41%) Cisco
9 7 (1.88%) Foundry
10 6 (1.61%) Palantir
11 5 (1.34%) Red Hat
11 5 (1.34%) ServiceNow
12 4 (1.07%) IBM
12 4 (1.07%) Splunk
13 3 (0.80%) MuleSoft
13 3 (0.80%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
14 2 (0.54%) Checkmarx
14 2 (0.54%) Dynatrace
14 2 (0.54%) SaltStack