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 20 September 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 338 389 339
Rank change year-on-year +51 -50 +15
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 379 175 229
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.53% 0.59%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.75% 0.58% 0.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 252 127 147
10th Percentile £453 £456 £490
25th Percentile £531 £513 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £625 £630
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -0.79% -6.67%
75th Percentile £689 £706 £750
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £603 £675
% change year-on-year -0.50% -10.67% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 0 0
10th Percentile £22.69 - -
25th Percentile £22.94 - -
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 50,359 29,970 35,820
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 91.09% 92.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,785 18,920 22,014
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 £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,867 1,585 1,673
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.29 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.16 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +2.68%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +46 310 £600 -6.25% 567
London +6 171 £650 +1.56% 324
UK excluding London -3 155 £600 -0.50% 235
Work from Home -38 107 £600 - 214
North of England -29 44 £600 -9.26% 66
South East -30 41 £575 +5.50% 64
Yorkshire -23 25 £600 -16.96% 25
Midlands -30 24 £725 +66.67% 40
Scotland -3 22 £450 - 32
North West -34 17 £600 +33.33% 36
East Midlands -5 14 £563 +29.31% 13
South West -36 11 £665 +3.50% 18
West Midlands -40 10 £725 +44.57% 27
East of England -21 9 £600 -11.11% 10
Wales -16 5 £625 +30.21% 4
North East - 2 - - 5

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

For the 6 months to 20 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.

1 170 (44.85%) AWS
2 160 (42.22%) Azure
3 101 (26.65%) Migration
4 90 (23.75%) Security Cleared
5 84 (22.16%) GCP
6 74 (19.53%) Infrastructure as Code
7 73 (19.26%) SC Cleared
8 71 (18.73%) CI/CD
9 66 (17.41%) DevOps
9 66 (17.41%) Technical Leadership
10 64 (16.89%) Microsoft
11 59 (15.57%) Stakeholder Management
12 58 (15.30%) Roadmaps
13 52 (13.72%) Kubernetes
14 51 (13.46%) Cloud Security
15 46 (12.14%) Terraform
16 44 (11.61%) Architectural Patterns
17 42 (11.08%) Google
18 41 (10.82%) SaaS
19 39 (10.29%) Oracle
19 39 (10.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 38 (10.03%) AI
20 38 (10.03%) TOGAF
21 37 (9.76%) Platform Engineering
21 37 (9.76%) Security Architecture
22 36 (9.50%) Analytics
23 33 (8.71%) Microservices
24 30 (7.92%) Enterprise Architecture
24 30 (7.92%) Problem-Solving
25 29 (7.65%) Event-Driven

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 (1.58%) Palantir Foundry
2 3 (0.79%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.53%) Apache
3 2 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.53%) SAS
3 2 (0.53%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.26%) Appian
4 1 (0.26%) Camunda
4 1 (0.26%) Cloud Foundry
Business Applications
1 5 (1.32%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.79%) Cloudability
2 3 (0.79%) Oracle Retail
3 2 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.26%) Oracle SCM
4 1 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 170 (44.85%) AWS
2 160 (42.22%) Azure
3 84 (22.16%) GCP
4 41 (10.82%) SaaS
5 23 (6.07%) PaaS
6 22 (5.80%) OCI
7 19 (5.01%) Serverless
8 18 (4.75%) Entra ID
9 15 (3.96%) GitHub
10 13 (3.43%) IaaS
11 12 (3.17%) Azure DevOps
12 11 (2.90%) Azure Sentinel
13 10 (2.64%) AWS CloudFormation
13 10 (2.64%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 10 (2.64%) Snowflake
14 9 (2.37%) Azure AKS
14 9 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
15 8 (2.11%) Amazon EKS
16 7 (1.85%) Microsoft 365
17 6 (1.58%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 26 (6.86%) Firewall
2 18 (4.75%) VPN
3 12 (3.17%) Network Security
4 5 (1.32%) DNS
5 2 (0.53%) Internet
6 1 (0.26%) 5G
6 1 (0.26%) CTI
6 1 (0.26%) DAB
6 1 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.26%) NGFW
6 1 (0.26%) PCoIP
6 1 (0.26%) PSTN
6 1 (0.26%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.26%) Remote Desktop
6 1 (0.26%) RTP
6 1 (0.26%) VSAN
6 1 (0.26%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (6.33%) Data Lake
2 15 (3.96%) Oracle Database
3 10 (2.64%) BigQuery
4 6 (1.58%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (1.06%) Oracle Exadata
6 3 (0.79%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (0.79%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.53%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.53%) MySQL
7 2 (0.53%) Power BI
7 2 (0.53%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.53%) Tableau
8 1 (0.26%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.26%) Big Data
8 1 (0.26%) HBase
8 1 (0.26%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.26%) Oracle ODI
8 1 (0.26%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.26%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.26%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 7 (1.85%) Git
1 7 (1.85%) Jenkins
2 4 (1.06%) JIRA
3 3 (0.79%) Claude Code
3 3 (0.79%) GitLab
4 2 (0.53%) IntelliJ
4 2 (0.53%) JUnit
4 2 (0.53%) MLflow
4 2 (0.53%) Oracle Forms
4 2 (0.53%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.26%) Hudson
5 1 (0.26%) Oracle APEX
General
1 61 (16.09%) Social Skills
2 58 (15.30%) Finance
3 37 (9.76%) Public Sector
4 27 (7.12%) Banking
5 21 (5.54%) Retail
6 19 (5.01%) Documentation Skills
7 13 (3.43%) Analytical Skills
8 8 (2.11%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.58%) Billing
9 6 (1.58%) Marketing
10 4 (1.06%) Legal
10 4 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.79%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.53%) Military
13 1 (0.26%) Aviation
13 1 (0.26%) Back Office
13 1 (0.26%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.26%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (12.14%) Terraform
2 19 (5.01%) Middleware
3 17 (4.49%) Kafka
3 17 (4.49%) REST
4 10 (2.64%) Oracle Fusion
5 9 (2.37%) Lightning Web Components
6 8 (2.11%) OAuth
6 8 (2.11%) SOAP
7 4 (1.06%) ARM Templates
7 4 (1.06%) JWT
7 4 (1.06%) Node.js
7 4 (1.06%) Pulumi
7 4 (1.06%) SailPoint
8 3 (0.79%) OAuth2
8 3 (0.79%) Spring
8 3 (0.79%) Spring Boot
9 2 (0.53%) .NET
9 2 (0.53%) .NET Framework
9 2 (0.53%) OpenID
9 2 (0.53%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 77 (20.32%) Cloud Native
2 30 (7.92%) Enterprise Cloud
3 24 (6.33%) Hybrid Cloud
3 24 (6.33%) Private Cloud
4 22 (5.80%) Onboarding
5 21 (5.54%) Management Information System
6 17 (4.49%) Data Centre
6 17 (4.49%) Public Cloud
7 16 (4.22%) Distributed Systems
8 12 (3.17%) Product Ownership
9 9 (2.37%) Security Posture
10 7 (1.85%) Legacy Applications
10 7 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
11 6 (1.58%) Data Fabric
12 5 (1.32%) AI Agents
12 5 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
13 3 (0.79%) CMDB
13 3 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
13 3 (0.79%) NHS
13 3 (0.79%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.90%) Windows
2 7 (1.85%) Linux
2 7 (1.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 7 (1.85%) Windows Server
3 4 (1.06%) Unix
4 1 (0.26%) AIX
4 1 (0.26%) Solaris
4 1 (0.26%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (26.65%) Migration
2 74 (19.53%) Infrastructure as Code
3 71 (18.73%) CI/CD
4 66 (17.41%) DevOps
4 66 (17.41%) Technical Leadership
5 59 (15.57%) Stakeholder Management
6 58 (15.30%) Roadmaps
7 51 (13.46%) Cloud Security
8 44 (11.61%) Architectural Patterns
9 39 (10.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 38 (10.03%) AI
10 38 (10.03%) TOGAF
11 37 (9.76%) Platform Engineering
11 37 (9.76%) Security Architecture
12 36 (9.50%) Analytics
13 33 (8.71%) Microservices
14 30 (7.92%) Enterprise Architecture
14 30 (7.92%) Problem-Solving
15 29 (7.65%) Event-Driven
16 27 (7.12%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 13 (3.43%) Bicep
1 13 (3.43%) Java
2 10 (2.64%) Python
3 9 (2.37%) Apex Code
4 6 (1.58%) JavaScript
5 5 (1.32%) Bash
5 5 (1.32%) SQL
6 4 (1.06%) C#
6 4 (1.06%) PowerShell
7 3 (0.79%) C
8 2 (0.53%) Go
8 2 (0.53%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.26%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.26%) ProC
9 1 (0.26%) Scala
9 1 (0.26%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 90 (23.75%) Security Cleared
2 73 (19.26%) SC Cleared
3 22 (5.80%) AWS Certification
4 12 (3.17%) Cisco Certification
4 12 (3.17%) CISSP
5 11 (2.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 11 (2.90%) Azure Certification
6 9 (2.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
6 9 (2.37%) CCSP
6 9 (2.37%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (1.85%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.58%) Degree
9 5 (1.32%) CISM
10 4 (1.06%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (0.79%) CCNP
11 3 (0.79%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 3 (0.79%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (0.53%) GIAC
12 2 (0.53%) IBM Certification
12 2 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (4.49%) NIST
2 16 (4.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (2.64%) GDPR
3 10 (2.64%) PCI DSS
4 4 (1.06%) Data Quality
4 4 (1.06%) GRC
4 4 (1.06%) NCSC
5 2 (0.53%) QA
6 1 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.26%) NIST 800
System Software
1 15 (3.96%) Active Directory
2 11 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.58%) Docker
3 6 (1.58%) VMware NSX
4 3 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.53%) vSphere
5 2 (0.53%) zsh
6 1 (0.26%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 52 (13.72%) Kubernetes
2 6 (1.58%) Ansible
3 5 (1.32%) Single Sign-On
4 4 (1.06%) Grafana
4 4 (1.06%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.79%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.79%) Puppet
6 2 (0.53%) CASB
7 1 (0.26%) CloudForms
7 1 (0.26%) QRadar
7 1 (0.26%) Salt
7 1 (0.26%) SCOM
7 1 (0.26%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 64 (16.89%) Microsoft
2 42 (11.08%) Google
3 39 (10.29%) Oracle
4 25 (6.60%) Salesforce
5 21 (5.54%) VMware
6 20 (5.28%) Databricks
7 10 (2.64%) CyberArk
7 10 (2.64%) SAP
8 9 (2.37%) Cisco
9 7 (1.85%) Foundry
10 6 (1.58%) Palantir
11 5 (1.32%) Red Hat
11 5 (1.32%) ServiceNow
12 4 (1.06%) Splunk
13 3 (0.79%) Dynatrace
13 3 (0.79%) IBM
13 3 (0.79%) MuleSoft
13 3 (0.79%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 3 (0.79%) SaltStack
14 2 (0.53%) Checkmarx