Cloud Architect Contract Job Trends

Cloud Architect
UK

The median Cloud Architect daily rate in the UK is £625, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 22 January 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 407 315 369
Rank change year-on-year -92 +54 -25
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 185 232 226
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.73% 0.52%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.54% 0.79% 0.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 148 157
10th Percentile £457 £487 £525
25th Percentile £525 £527 £588
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £675 £650
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% +3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £709 £800 £738
90th Percentile £800 £838 £780
UK excluding London median daily rate £561 £625 £650
% change year-on-year -10.20% -3.85% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
Median hourly rate £75.00 - £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £78.00
% change year-on-year - - +11.43%

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 34,562 29,431 40,133
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.43% 92.83% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,880 18,000 26,627
10th Percentile £300 £289 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £500
% change year-on-year -0.58% -4.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,053 885 1,927
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.92 £13.50
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -18.75% +14.29%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £62.96
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £74.37
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.41
% change year-on-year -22.62% -19.58% +34.71%

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 22 January 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
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 22 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
England -58 160 £625 -1.96% 35
London -28 105 £650 -0.95% 21
UK excluding London -75 56 £561 -10.20% 20
Work from Home -45 55 £625 -13.79% 24
North of England -57 24 £600 -4.00% 1
North West -29 16 £460 -26.40% 1
South East -37 15 £600 -11.11% 7
Midlands -41 10 £550 +30.02% 3
East Midlands -18 7 £545 +28.84% 1
Yorkshire -49 6 £613 +36.11%
Wales - 3 £500 -
South West -19 2 £663 -1.12% 5
East of England -21 2 £550 -8.33% 2
West Midlands - 2 £638 - 2
North East - 2 £725 -

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

For the 6 months to 22 January 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 82 (44.32%) AWS
2 69 (37.30%) Azure
3 49 (26.49%) DevOps
4 46 (24.86%) Terraform
5 42 (22.70%) CI/CD
6 41 (22.16%) Infrastructure as Code
7 38 (20.54%) Microsoft
8 36 (19.46%) GCP
9 35 (18.92%) Migration
10 34 (18.38%) Security Cleared
11 33 (17.84%) SC Cleared
12 32 (17.30%) Roadmaps
13 29 (15.68%) Problem-Solving
14 28 (15.14%) Agile
14 28 (15.14%) Kubernetes
15 26 (14.05%) Cloud Security
15 26 (14.05%) Stakeholder Management
16 24 (12.97%) Serverless
16 24 (12.97%) Technical Leadership
17 23 (12.43%) AWS Certification
17 23 (12.43%) Microservices
17 23 (12.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 20 (10.81%) AWS CloudFormation
18 20 (10.81%) Salesforce
19 19 (10.27%) Degree
19 19 (10.27%) Google
19 19 (10.27%) Oracle
20 18 (9.73%) Containerisation
20 18 (9.73%) Docker
20 18 (9.73%) SaaS

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 2 (1.08%) Apache
1 2 (1.08%) Confluence
1 2 (1.08%) Oracle HTTP Server
1 2 (1.08%) Tomcat
1 2 (1.08%) WebLogic
2 1 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.54%) ArcGIS
2 1 (0.54%) GeoServer
Business Applications
1 4 (2.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.62%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (1.08%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.54%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 82 (44.32%) AWS
2 69 (37.30%) Azure
3 36 (19.46%) GCP
4 24 (12.97%) Serverless
5 23 (12.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 20 (10.81%) AWS CloudFormation
7 18 (9.73%) SaaS
8 17 (9.19%) Amazon S3
9 16 (8.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 15 (8.11%) AWS Lambda
10 15 (8.11%) GitHub
10 15 (8.11%) GitHub Actions
11 14 (7.57%) Amazon EKS
12 13 (7.03%) OCI
13 12 (6.49%) Entra ID
14 10 (5.41%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 10 (5.41%) Amazon Kinesis
14 10 (5.41%) Route 53
15 9 (4.86%) AWS Control Tower
15 9 (4.86%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 15 (8.11%) DNS
2 14 (7.57%) Network Security
3 12 (6.49%) VPN
4 11 (5.95%) Firewall
5 8 (4.32%) WAN
6 6 (3.24%) SD-WAN
7 3 (1.62%) DMZ
8 2 (1.08%) BGP
8 2 (1.08%) HTTP
8 2 (1.08%) Internet
8 2 (1.08%) OSPF
8 2 (1.08%) SSL
8 2 (1.08%) VSAN
9 1 (0.54%) Broadband
9 1 (0.54%) MQTT
9 1 (0.54%) NaaS
9 1 (0.54%) NetScaler
9 1 (0.54%) Reverse Proxy
9 1 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
9 1 (0.54%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (6.49%) DynamoDB
2 5 (2.70%) Amazon RDS
2 5 (2.70%) DocumentDB
2 5 (2.70%) NoSQL
2 5 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (2.16%) Amazon Aurora
3 4 (2.16%) Data Lake
3 4 (2.16%) MySQL
3 4 (2.16%) Redis
4 3 (1.62%) BigQuery
5 2 (1.08%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (1.08%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.54%) Power BI
6 1 (0.54%) Semantic Layer
6 1 (0.54%) Spatial Data
6 1 (0.54%) SQL Server
6 1 (0.54%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 14 (7.57%) Jenkins
2 9 (4.86%) GitLab
3 4 (2.16%) Terragrunt
4 2 (1.08%) JIRA
5 1 (0.54%) ERwin
5 1 (0.54%) Oracle Forms
General
1 47 (25.41%) Finance
2 45 (24.32%) Social Skills
3 24 (12.97%) Analytical Skills
3 24 (12.97%) Public Sector
4 16 (8.65%) Banking
5 15 (8.11%) Marketing
6 12 (6.49%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (2.70%) Retail
8 4 (2.16%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.62%) Financial Institution
9 3 (1.62%) Manufacturing
9 3 (1.62%) Telecoms
10 2 (1.08%) Electronics
10 2 (1.08%) General Ledger
10 2 (1.08%) Law
11 1 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.54%) Local Government
11 1 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.54%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (7.57%) Kafka
2 13 (7.03%) Middleware
3 9 (4.86%) REST
4 6 (3.24%) ActiveMQ
4 6 (3.24%) Oracle Fusion
5 5 (2.70%) OAuth
5 5 (2.70%) OAuth2
5 5 (2.70%) OpenID
5 5 (2.70%) RESTful
6 4 (2.16%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (2.16%) gRPC
6 4 (2.16%) Hibernate
6 4 (2.16%) JPA
6 4 (2.16%) OpenTelemetry
6 4 (2.16%) Spring
6 4 (2.16%) Spring Boot
6 4 (2.16%) Spring Cloud
7 3 (1.62%) CSS
7 3 (1.62%) HTML
8 2 (1.08%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 39 (21.08%) Cloud Native
2 11 (5.95%) Hybrid Cloud
2 11 (5.95%) Public Cloud
3 10 (5.41%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (2.70%) Data Centre
4 5 (2.70%) Enterprise Cloud
5 4 (2.16%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.62%) Data Structures
6 3 (1.62%) IoT
6 3 (1.62%) Product Ownership
6 3 (1.62%) Virtual Team
7 2 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.08%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.08%) Operational Technology
7 2 (1.08%) PKI
7 2 (1.08%) Private Cloud
7 2 (1.08%) SCADA
8 1 (0.54%) Life Science
8 1 (0.54%) Mobile Banking
Operating Systems
1 4 (2.16%) Windows
2 3 (1.62%) Linux
3 2 (1.08%) Android
3 2 (1.08%) Apple iOS
3 2 (1.08%) CentOS
3 2 (1.08%) Mac OS
3 2 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (1.08%) Ubuntu
3 2 (1.08%) Unix
3 2 (1.08%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.54%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (26.49%) DevOps
2 42 (22.70%) CI/CD
3 41 (22.16%) Infrastructure as Code
4 35 (18.92%) Migration
5 32 (17.30%) Roadmaps
6 29 (15.68%) Problem-Solving
7 28 (15.14%) Agile
8 26 (14.05%) Cloud Security
8 26 (14.05%) Stakeholder Management
9 24 (12.97%) Technical Leadership
10 23 (12.43%) Microservices
11 18 (9.73%) Containerisation
12 17 (9.19%) Cost Optimisation
13 16 (8.65%) Computer Science
13 16 (8.65%) Decision-Making
13 16 (8.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 15 (8.11%) Integration Patterns
15 14 (7.57%) Project Delivery
16 13 (7.03%) Architectural Design
16 13 (7.03%) Design Patterns
Programming Languages
1 12 (6.49%) Java
2 9 (4.86%) SQL
3 8 (4.32%) Python
4 7 (3.78%) Bicep
5 3 (1.62%) Bash
5 3 (1.62%) JavaScript
5 3 (1.62%) Korn
6 2 (1.08%) PowerShell
7 1 (0.54%) Apex Code
7 1 (0.54%) C
7 1 (0.54%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (0.54%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 34 (18.38%) Security Cleared
2 33 (17.84%) SC Cleared
3 23 (12.43%) AWS Certification
4 19 (10.27%) Degree
5 16 (8.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 16 (8.65%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (5.41%) Azure Certification
7 9 (4.86%) Master's Degree
8 6 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.62%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.62%) MCP
10 2 (1.08%) RHCE
10 2 (1.08%) SAP Certification
10 2 (1.08%) VCDX
11 1 (0.54%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 1 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.54%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.95%) GDPR
1 11 (5.95%) NCSC
2 10 (5.41%) NIST
2 10 (5.41%) PCI DSS
3 9 (4.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (3.24%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (2.16%) HIPAA
5 4 (2.16%) QA
6 3 (1.62%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (1.08%) FedRAMP
7 2 (1.08%) GRC
8 1 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.54%) SLA
8 1 (0.54%) SOC 2
System Software
1 18 (9.73%) Docker
2 6 (3.24%) Active Directory
2 6 (3.24%) Virtual Desktop
2 6 (3.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (1.08%) VMware NSX
3 2 (1.08%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 46 (24.86%) Terraform
2 28 (15.14%) Kubernetes
3 10 (5.41%) Ansible
4 4 (2.16%) Kibana
5 3 (1.62%) Karpenter
6 2 (1.08%) Istio
6 2 (1.08%) Nagios
6 2 (1.08%) Progress Chef
6 2 (1.08%) Prometheus
6 2 (1.08%) Puppet
7 1 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.54%) Suricata
Vendors
1 38 (20.54%) Microsoft
2 20 (10.81%) Salesforce
3 19 (10.27%) Google
3 19 (10.27%) Oracle
4 10 (5.41%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 9 (4.86%) SAP
5 9 (4.86%) Software AG
6 8 (4.32%) Citrix
6 8 (4.32%) VMware
7 6 (3.24%) CloudEndure
8 5 (2.70%) Databricks
9 4 (2.16%) Cisco
9 4 (2.16%) Splunk
10 2 (1.08%) AVEVA
10 2 (1.08%) Brocade
10 2 (1.08%) Extreme Networks
10 2 (1.08%) Fortinet
10 2 (1.08%) MuleSoft
10 2 (1.08%) Solace
10 2 (1.08%) Virgin Media