Cloud Architect Contract Job Trends

Cloud Architect
UK

The median Cloud Architect daily rate in the UK is £643, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 January 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 422 321 369
Rank change year-on-year -101 +48 -11
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 167 228 238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.45% 0.69% 0.55%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.49% 0.74% 0.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 116 146 156
10th Percentile £492 £450 £525
25th Percentile £540 £525 £588
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £643 £661 £656
Median % change year-on-year -2.84% +0.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £716 £769 £738
90th Percentile £800 £800 £794
UK excluding London median daily rate £613 £675 £650
% change year-on-year -9.26% +3.85% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 3
10th Percentile - - £79.65
25th Percentile - - £82.13
Median hourly rate £75.00 - £87.50
75th Percentile - - £88.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £87.50
% change year-on-year - - +25.00%

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 33,835 30,753 40,099
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.20% 92.71% 93.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,431 18,857 26,859
10th Percentile £300 £298 £281
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,964 949 1,554
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £14.43
25th Percentile £18.24 £21.05 £19.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £32.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% -27.78% +41.93%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.52 £46.18
% change year-on-year -20.21% -31.75% +80.14%

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 1 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 14 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 1 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 -78 140 £643 -2.84% 60
London -37 90 £650 -1.52% 27
Work from Home -40 58 £643 +1.02% 41
UK excluding London -62 51 £613 -9.26% 32
South East -20 20 £600 -11.11% 10
North of England -57 19 £630 +0.80% 9
North West -31 14 £460 -26.40% 7
South West -8 6 £646 +36.05% 5
Midlands -34 4 £545 +28.84% 5
East Midlands -17 3 £545 +28.84%
Yorkshire -52 3 £625 +38.89% 2
North East - 2 £725 -
Wales - 2 £556 -
West Midlands - 1 £700 - 5

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

For the 6 months to 1 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 67 (40.12%) AWS
2 64 (38.32%) Azure
3 45 (26.95%) DevOps
4 44 (26.35%) Terraform
5 39 (23.35%) Infrastructure as Code
6 35 (20.96%) CI/CD
6 35 (20.96%) Microsoft
7 34 (20.36%) Security Cleared
8 33 (19.76%) Migration
9 29 (17.37%) Roadmaps
10 28 (16.77%) GCP
11 27 (16.17%) SC Cleared
12 25 (14.97%) Cloud Security
12 25 (14.97%) Problem-Solving
13 24 (14.37%) Oracle
14 23 (13.77%) Agile
14 23 (13.77%) Kubernetes
15 22 (13.17%) Stakeholder Management
16 21 (12.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 19 (11.38%) AWS Certification
17 19 (11.38%) Degree
17 19 (11.38%) Technical Leadership
18 18 (10.78%) AWS CloudFormation
18 18 (10.78%) Containerisation
18 18 (10.78%) Microservices
19 17 (10.18%) Docker
19 17 (10.18%) Salesforce
19 17 (10.18%) Serverless
20 16 (9.58%) Computer Science
20 16 (9.58%) Computer Science Degree

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 (1.20%) Apache
1 2 (1.20%) Apache Airflow
1 2 (1.20%) Oracle HTTP Server
1 2 (1.20%) Tomcat
1 2 (1.20%) WebLogic
2 1 (0.60%) ArcGIS
2 1 (0.60%) Confluence
2 1 (0.60%) GeoServer
Business Applications
1 3 (1.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (1.20%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (1.20%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.60%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.60%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 67 (40.12%) AWS
2 64 (38.32%) Azure
3 28 (16.77%) GCP
4 21 (12.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 18 (10.78%) AWS CloudFormation
6 17 (10.18%) Serverless
7 15 (8.98%) Amazon S3
7 15 (8.98%) AWS Lambda
8 14 (8.38%) OCI
8 14 (8.38%) SaaS
9 13 (7.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 11 (6.59%) Amazon EKS
10 11 (6.59%) Entra ID
11 10 (5.99%) GitHub
11 10 (5.99%) GitHub Actions
12 9 (5.39%) Amazon Kinesis
12 9 (5.39%) AWS KMS
13 8 (4.79%) Amazon Glacier
14 7 (4.19%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 7 (4.19%) AWS Control Tower
Communications & Networking
1 11 (6.59%) DNS
1 11 (6.59%) VPN
2 9 (5.39%) Network Security
3 8 (4.79%) Firewall
4 4 (2.40%) SD-WAN
4 4 (2.40%) WAN
5 2 (1.20%) DMZ
5 2 (1.20%) HTTP
5 2 (1.20%) Internet
5 2 (1.20%) SSL
5 2 (1.20%) VSAN
6 1 (0.60%) Broadband
6 1 (0.60%) LAN
6 1 (0.60%) MPLS
6 1 (0.60%) MQTT
6 1 (0.60%) NaaS
6 1 (0.60%) NetScaler
6 1 (0.60%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.60%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (6.59%) DynamoDB
2 5 (2.99%) Amazon RDS
2 5 (2.99%) Data Lake
3 3 (1.80%) Amazon Aurora
3 3 (1.80%) BigQuery
3 3 (1.80%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (1.80%) DocumentDB
3 3 (1.80%) MySQL
3 3 (1.80%) NoSQL
3 3 (1.80%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (1.80%) Redis
4 2 (1.20%) Amazon Athena
4 2 (1.20%) Amazon Redshift
4 2 (1.20%) Delta Lake
4 2 (1.20%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.60%) Power BI
5 1 (0.60%) Semantic Layer
5 1 (0.60%) Spatial Data
5 1 (0.60%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 12 (7.19%) Jenkins
2 7 (4.19%) GitLab
3 4 (2.40%) Terragrunt
4 1 (0.60%) ERwin
4 1 (0.60%) JIRA
4 1 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
General
1 42 (25.15%) Finance
2 40 (23.95%) Social Skills
3 21 (12.57%) Public Sector
4 18 (10.78%) Analytical Skills
5 13 (7.78%) Marketing
6 11 (6.59%) Banking
6 11 (6.59%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (3.59%) Retail
8 5 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (2.40%) Legal
10 3 (1.80%) Financial Institution
10 3 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.80%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.80%) Telecoms
11 2 (1.20%) Electronics
11 2 (1.20%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.60%) Law
12 1 (0.60%) Local Government
12 1 (0.60%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.78%) Kafka
2 10 (5.99%) Middleware
3 9 (5.39%) REST
4 7 (4.19%) Oracle Fusion
5 6 (3.59%) ActiveMQ
6 4 (2.40%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (2.40%) RESTful
7 3 (1.80%) ARM Templates
7 3 (1.80%) gRPC
7 3 (1.80%) Hibernate
7 3 (1.80%) JPA
7 3 (1.80%) OAuth
7 3 (1.80%) OAuth2
7 3 (1.80%) OpenID
7 3 (1.80%) OpenTelemetry
7 3 (1.80%) Spring
7 3 (1.80%) Spring Boot
7 3 (1.80%) Spring Cloud
7 3 (1.80%) Web Services
8 2 (1.20%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 28 (16.77%) Cloud Native
2 8 (4.79%) Hybrid Cloud
3 7 (4.19%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (4.19%) Public Cloud
4 6 (3.59%) Data Centre
5 5 (2.99%) Enterprise Cloud
6 3 (1.80%) IoT
6 3 (1.80%) Management Information System
6 3 (1.80%) Reinsurance
6 3 (1.80%) Security Posture
7 2 (1.20%) Cloud Security Posture
7 2 (1.20%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.20%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.20%) Operational Technology
7 2 (1.20%) PKI
7 2 (1.20%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.60%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.60%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.80%) Linux
2 2 (1.20%) CentOS
2 2 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 2 (1.20%) Ubuntu
2 2 (1.20%) Unix
2 2 (1.20%) VMS
2 2 (1.20%) Windows
2 2 (1.20%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (26.95%) DevOps
2 39 (23.35%) Infrastructure as Code
3 35 (20.96%) CI/CD
4 33 (19.76%) Migration
5 29 (17.37%) Roadmaps
6 25 (14.97%) Cloud Security
6 25 (14.97%) Problem-Solving
7 23 (13.77%) Agile
8 22 (13.17%) Stakeholder Management
9 19 (11.38%) Technical Leadership
10 18 (10.78%) Containerisation
10 18 (10.78%) Microservices
11 16 (9.58%) Computer Science
12 15 (8.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 13 (7.78%) Architectural Design
13 13 (7.78%) Decision-Making
13 13 (7.78%) RBAC
14 12 (7.19%) Analytics
14 12 (7.19%) Cost Optimisation
14 12 (7.19%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 10 (5.99%) Java
1 10 (5.99%) SQL
2 7 (4.19%) Python
3 6 (3.59%) Bicep
3 6 (3.59%) PowerShell
4 4 (2.40%) Bash
5 2 (1.20%) Go
5 2 (1.20%) JavaScript
5 2 (1.20%) Korn
6 1 (0.60%) Apex Code
6 1 (0.60%) C
6 1 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (0.60%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 34 (20.36%) Security Cleared
2 27 (16.17%) SC Cleared
3 19 (11.38%) AWS Certification
3 19 (11.38%) Degree
4 16 (9.58%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (8.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 13 (7.78%) Azure Certification
7 7 (4.19%) Master's Degree
8 6 (3.59%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
10 2 (1.20%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 2 (1.20%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (1.20%) MCP
10 2 (1.20%) RHCE
10 2 (1.20%) SAP Certification
10 2 (1.20%) VCDX
11 1 (0.60%) CCSP
11 1 (0.60%) CISM
11 1 (0.60%) CISSP
11 1 (0.60%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (7.78%) GDPR
2 12 (7.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 11 (6.59%) NIST
4 10 (5.99%) NCSC
5 8 (4.79%) Cyber Essentials
6 6 (3.59%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.80%) Data Quality
7 3 (1.80%) HIPAA
7 3 (1.80%) QA
7 3 (1.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.60%) GRC
9 1 (0.60%) SLA
System Software
1 17 (10.18%) Docker
2 6 (3.59%) Active Directory
2 6 (3.59%) Virtual Desktop
2 6 (3.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (1.20%) VMware NSX
3 2 (1.20%) vSphere
4 1 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 44 (26.35%) Terraform
2 23 (13.77%) Kubernetes
3 10 (5.99%) Ansible
4 4 (2.40%) Kibana
5 3 (1.80%) Karpenter
5 3 (1.80%) Prometheus
6 2 (1.20%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (1.20%) Nagios
7 1 (0.60%) Grafana
7 1 (0.60%) Suricata
Vendors
1 35 (20.96%) Microsoft
2 24 (14.37%) Oracle
3 17 (10.18%) Salesforce
4 12 (7.19%) Google
5 8 (4.79%) Citrix
5 8 (4.79%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 8 (4.79%) VMware
6 7 (4.19%) Software AG
7 6 (3.59%) Cisco
7 6 (3.59%) CloudEndure
7 6 (3.59%) SAP
8 4 (2.40%) Databricks
9 3 (1.80%) Splunk
10 2 (1.20%) Brocade
10 2 (1.20%) Extreme Networks
10 2 (1.20%) Fortinet
10 2 (1.20%) OpenAI
10 2 (1.20%) Sophos
11 1 (0.60%) Arista
11 1 (0.60%) Poppulo