Cloud Architect Contract Job Trends

Cloud Architect
UK

The median Cloud Architect daily rate in the UK is £635, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 14 December 2025.

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

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 414 337 377
Rank change year-on-year -77 +40 -28
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 169 234 243
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.46% 0.68% 0.55%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.51% 0.73% 0.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 115 153 160
10th Percentile £473 £455 £524
25th Percentile £525 £525 £588
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £635 £663 £675
Median % change year-on-year -4.15% -1.85% -
75th Percentile £713 £750 £746
90th Percentile £800 £800 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £613 £675 £650
% change year-on-year -9.26% +3.85% +1.96%
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 Vacancies
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 33,137 32,079 41,606
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.94% 92.76% 93.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,987 19,722 27,981
10th Percentile £290 £300 £292
25th Percentile £404 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £644
90th Percentile £723 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,959 1,044 1,467
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.48 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.98 £21.05 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.47 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.23% -21.35% +48.33%
75th Percentile £57.50 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.46 £73.28 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -27.78% +80.00%

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 December 2025.

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 14 December 2025. 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 -84 137 £640 -4.30% 98
London -28 85 £643 -1.15% 19
Work from Home -14 67 £643 +5.16% 99
UK excluding London -63 55 £613 -9.26% 89
South East -11 22 £575 -14.81% 28
North of England -41 19 £630 +0.80% 17
North West -26 14 £460 -26.40% 9
South West -5 9 £643 +35.26% 12
Yorkshire -44 3 £625 +11.11% 7
Scotland +3 2 - - 3
Wales 0 2 £556 - 2
North East - 2 £725 - 1
East Midlands -20 1 £435 +2.84% 6
Midlands -39 1 £435 +2.84% 16

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

For the 6 months to 14 December 2025, 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 68 (40.24%) AWS
1 68 (40.24%) Azure
2 45 (26.63%) DevOps
3 43 (25.44%) Terraform
4 40 (23.67%) Infrastructure as Code
4 40 (23.67%) Microsoft
5 38 (22.49%) Security Cleared
6 34 (20.12%) CI/CD
7 33 (19.53%) Migration
8 32 (18.93%) GCP
9 29 (17.16%) Cloud Security
10 28 (16.57%) SC Cleared
11 25 (14.79%) Roadmaps
12 24 (14.20%) Oracle
13 23 (13.61%) Problem-Solving
14 20 (11.83%) Agile
14 20 (11.83%) AWS Certification
15 19 (11.24%) Degree
15 19 (11.24%) Kubernetes
15 19 (11.24%) Stakeholder Management
15 19 (11.24%) Technical Leadership
16 18 (10.65%) Containerisation
16 18 (10.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 17 (10.06%) GDPR
18 16 (9.47%) Azure Certification
18 16 (9.47%) Computer Science
18 16 (9.47%) Computer Science Degree
18 16 (9.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
19 15 (8.88%) Analytics
19 15 (8.88%) AWS CloudFormation

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 (1.18%) Apache
1 2 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
1 2 (1.18%) Oracle HTTP Server
1 2 (1.18%) Tomcat
1 2 (1.18%) WebLogic
2 1 (0.59%) ArcGIS
2 1 (0.59%) Confluence
2 1 (0.59%) GeoServer
2 1 (0.59%) Jupyter
Business Applications
1 2 (1.18%) Oracle ERP
1 2 (1.18%) Oracle General Ledger
1 2 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.59%) Dynamics AX
Cloud Services
1 68 (40.24%) AWS
1 68 (40.24%) Azure
2 32 (18.93%) GCP
3 18 (10.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 15 (8.88%) AWS CloudFormation
5 14 (8.28%) Entra ID
5 14 (8.28%) OCI
6 13 (7.69%) Serverless
7 12 (7.10%) SaaS
8 11 (6.51%) Amazon S3
8 11 (6.51%) AWS Lambda
9 9 (5.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 9 (5.33%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 9 (5.33%) AWS CloudTrail
9 9 (5.33%) AWS KMS
9 9 (5.33%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (4.73%) Amazon Glacier
10 8 (4.73%) GitHub
10 8 (4.73%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (4.14%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (7.10%) VPN
2 9 (5.33%) DNS
2 9 (5.33%) Firewall
3 8 (4.73%) Network Security
4 4 (2.37%) WAN
5 3 (1.78%) SD-WAN
5 3 (1.78%) VSAN
6 2 (1.18%) HTTP
6 2 (1.18%) Internet
6 2 (1.18%) SSL
6 2 (1.18%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.59%) BGP
7 1 (0.59%) DMZ
7 1 (0.59%) MPLS
7 1 (0.59%) MQTT
7 1 (0.59%) NaaS
7 1 (0.59%) NAS
7 1 (0.59%) NetScaler
7 1 (0.59%) SAN
7 1 (0.59%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.73%) DynamoDB
2 5 (2.96%) Data Lake
3 4 (2.37%) BigQuery
3 4 (2.37%) Delta Lake
4 2 (1.18%) Amazon Athena
4 2 (1.18%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (1.18%) Amazon Redshift
4 2 (1.18%) Data Warehouse
4 2 (1.18%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.59%) Big Data
5 1 (0.59%) GIS
5 1 (0.59%) Metadata
5 1 (0.59%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (0.59%) Power BI
5 1 (0.59%) Spatial Data
5 1 (0.59%) SQL Server
5 1 (0.59%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 8 (4.73%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.78%) GitLab
2 3 (1.78%) Terragrunt
3 1 (0.59%) ERwin
3 1 (0.59%) JIRA
3 1 (0.59%) Oracle Forms
General
1 41 (24.26%) Social Skills
2 38 (22.49%) Finance
3 21 (12.43%) Public Sector
4 15 (8.88%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (6.51%) Marketing
6 9 (5.33%) Presentation Skills
7 8 (4.73%) Banking
7 8 (4.73%) Retail
8 5 (2.96%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (2.37%) Legal
9 4 (2.37%) Telecoms
10 3 (1.78%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (1.78%) Financial Institution
10 3 (1.78%) Manufacturing
11 2 (1.18%) Electronics
11 2 (1.18%) General Ledger
12 1 (0.59%) French Language
12 1 (0.59%) Local Government
12 1 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.59%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (5.92%) Kafka
2 7 (4.14%) Middleware
2 7 (4.14%) Oracle Fusion
3 6 (3.55%) ActiveMQ
4 5 (2.96%) REST
5 3 (1.78%) ARM Templates
5 3 (1.78%) Elastic Stack
5 3 (1.78%) Web Services
6 2 (1.18%) Hugging Face
6 2 (1.18%) PyTorch
6 2 (1.18%) SOAP
6 2 (1.18%) TensorFlow
7 1 (0.59%) .NET
7 1 (0.59%) Google JAX
7 1 (0.59%) JAX
7 1 (0.59%) JSON
7 1 (0.59%) LangChain
7 1 (0.59%) PostGIS
7 1 (0.59%) RESTful
7 1 (0.59%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 27 (15.98%) Cloud Native
2 10 (5.92%) Hybrid Cloud
3 8 (4.73%) Data Centre
4 7 (4.14%) Public Cloud
5 5 (2.96%) Enterprise Cloud
5 5 (2.96%) IoT
5 5 (2.96%) Onboarding
5 5 (2.96%) Reinsurance
6 3 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
6 3 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (1.78%) Management Information System
6 3 (1.78%) Security Posture
7 2 (1.18%) AI Agents
7 2 (1.18%) Cloud Security Posture
7 2 (1.18%) Operational Technology
7 2 (1.18%) PKI
7 2 (1.18%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.59%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.59%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.59%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 5 (2.96%) Windows
2 4 (2.37%) Linux
3 3 (1.78%) VMS
4 2 (1.18%) CentOS
4 2 (1.18%) Mac OS
4 2 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (1.18%) Ubuntu
4 2 (1.18%) Unix
4 2 (1.18%) Windows 10
4 2 (1.18%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 45 (26.63%) DevOps
2 40 (23.67%) Infrastructure as Code
3 34 (20.12%) CI/CD
4 33 (19.53%) Migration
5 29 (17.16%) Cloud Security
6 25 (14.79%) Roadmaps
7 23 (13.61%) Problem-Solving
8 20 (11.83%) Agile
9 19 (11.24%) Stakeholder Management
9 19 (11.24%) Technical Leadership
10 18 (10.65%) Containerisation
11 16 (9.47%) Computer Science
12 15 (8.88%) Analytics
12 15 (8.88%) RBAC
12 15 (8.88%) TOGAF
13 14 (8.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 13 (7.69%) Decision-Making
14 13 (7.69%) Microservices
15 12 (7.10%) Machine Learning
15 12 (7.10%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 10 (5.92%) PowerShell
1 10 (5.92%) Python
2 8 (4.73%) Bicep
3 7 (4.14%) Bash
3 7 (4.14%) Java
4 6 (3.55%) SQL
5 3 (1.78%) Go
6 1 (0.59%) Apex Code
6 1 (0.59%) C
6 1 (0.59%) Korn
6 1 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (0.59%) PL/SQL
6 1 (0.59%) R
Qualifications
1 38 (22.49%) Security Cleared
2 28 (16.57%) SC Cleared
3 20 (11.83%) AWS Certification
4 19 (11.24%) Degree
5 16 (9.47%) Azure Certification
5 16 (9.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (8.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 8 (4.73%) DV Cleared
8 7 (4.14%) Master's Degree
9 4 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (2.37%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (1.18%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 2 (1.18%) Citrix Certification
11 2 (1.18%) RHCE
11 2 (1.18%) VCDX
12 1 (0.59%) CISM
12 1 (0.59%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.59%) SAP Certification
12 1 (0.59%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (10.06%) GDPR
2 16 (9.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 11 (6.51%) NIST
4 10 (5.92%) NCSC
5 8 (4.73%) Cyber Essentials
6 6 (3.55%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.78%) Data Quality
7 3 (1.78%) HIPAA
7 3 (1.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.59%) GRC
9 1 (0.59%) SLA
9 1 (0.59%) SOC 2
System Software
1 13 (7.69%) Docker
2 10 (5.92%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (5.33%) Active Directory
4 6 (3.55%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (1.78%) VMware NSX
5 3 (1.78%) vSphere
6 1 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 43 (25.44%) Terraform
2 19 (11.24%) Kubernetes
3 8 (4.73%) Ansible
4 4 (2.37%) Microsoft Intune
4 4 (2.37%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.78%) Kibana
6 2 (1.18%) Grafana
6 2 (1.18%) Karpenter
6 2 (1.18%) Nagios
6 2 (1.18%) SCCM
7 1 (0.59%) Suricata
7 1 (0.59%) Trend Micro Deep Security
Vendors
1 40 (23.67%) Microsoft
2 24 (14.20%) Oracle
3 15 (8.88%) Google
3 15 (8.88%) Salesforce
4 13 (7.69%) VMware
5 10 (5.92%) Citrix
6 7 (4.14%) Databricks
7 6 (3.55%) Cisco
7 6 (3.55%) CloudEndure
7 6 (3.55%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
8 5 (2.96%) OpenAI
8 5 (2.96%) SAP
9 4 (2.37%) Software AG
10 2 (1.18%) Brocade
10 2 (1.18%) ESRI
10 2 (1.18%) Extreme Networks
10 2 (1.18%) NetApp
10 2 (1.18%) Sophos
10 2 (1.18%) Splunk
11 1 (0.59%) BiZZdesign