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 8 February 2026.

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

6 months to
8 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 395 292 377
Rank change year-on-year -103 +85 -30
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 212 248 242
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.54% 0.80% 0.54%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.59% 0.86% 0.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 158 166 165
10th Percentile £460 £453 £525
25th Percentile £528 £519 £588
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £638 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -1.92% -3.70%
75th Percentile £713 £798 £750
90th Percentile £791 £838 £808
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £619 £650
% change year-on-year -7.03% -4.85% +6.12%
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 35,791 28,902 42,066
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.50% 92.95% 93.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,561 17,719 27,795
10th Percentile £300 £291 £275
25th Percentile £405 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £476 £490
% change year-on-year -0.21% -2.86% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,176 840 2,312
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.89 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.57 £21.25 £16.67
Median hourly rate £30.00 £33.77 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.16% -3.51% -
75th Percentile £61.31 £63.38 £61.51
90th Percentile £71.99 £75.00 £72.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.50 £32.13 £35.95
% change year-on-year -11.30% -10.63% +8.94%

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 8 February 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 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 8 February 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 -65 183 £625 +2.04% 42
London -22 124 £635 +3.93% 27
Work from Home -52 65 £625 -13.79% 24
UK excluding London -64 64 £575 -7.03% 20
North of England -63 24 £600 +14.29% 2
North West -27 16 £460 -14.10%
South East -31 16 £600 -11.11% 6
Midlands -38 13 £550 +30.02% 4
East Midlands -21 7 £545 +28.84% 2
Yorkshire -56 6 £613 +16.67% 2
West Midlands -39 5 £575 - 2
Scotland +7 4 £745 +19.20%
Wales +3 3 £500 +111.86%
East of England -21 2 £550 -8.33%
South West -28 2 £663 +3.72% 7
North East - 2 £725 -

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

For the 6 months to 8 February 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 93 (43.87%) AWS
2 86 (40.57%) Azure
3 55 (25.94%) Terraform
4 52 (24.53%) DevOps
5 48 (22.64%) CI/CD
6 44 (20.75%) Infrastructure as Code
7 43 (20.28%) GCP
7 43 (20.28%) Microsoft
7 43 (20.28%) Migration
7 43 (20.28%) Security Cleared
8 42 (19.81%) SC Cleared
9 36 (16.98%) Roadmaps
10 34 (16.04%) Kubernetes
10 34 (16.04%) Problem-Solving
11 33 (15.57%) Cloud Security
12 32 (15.09%) Agile
12 32 (15.09%) Stakeholder Management
13 30 (14.15%) Serverless
13 30 (14.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 27 (12.74%) Technical Leadership
15 24 (11.32%) AWS Certification
15 24 (11.32%) Google
15 24 (11.32%) Microservices
16 23 (10.85%) Containerisation
17 22 (10.38%) AWS CloudFormation
17 22 (10.38%) Docker
18 21 (9.91%) Amazon S3
18 21 (9.91%) Cost Optimisation
19 20 (9.43%) Identity Access Management
19 20 (9.43%) Salesforce

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 4 (1.89%) Confluence
2 2 (0.94%) Apache
2 2 (0.94%) nginx
2 2 (0.94%) Oracle HTTP Server
2 2 (0.94%) Tomcat
2 2 (0.94%) WebLogic
3 1 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.47%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.47%) GeoServer
Applications
1 1 (0.47%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.42%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.94%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.47%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 93 (43.87%) AWS
2 86 (40.57%) Azure
3 43 (20.28%) GCP
4 30 (14.15%) Serverless
4 30 (14.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 22 (10.38%) AWS CloudFormation
6 21 (9.91%) Amazon S3
7 18 (8.49%) Amazon EKS
7 18 (8.49%) AWS Lambda
7 18 (8.49%) SaaS
8 17 (8.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 16 (7.55%) Entra ID
9 16 (7.55%) GitHub
9 16 (7.55%) GitHub Actions
10 14 (6.60%) Route 53
11 13 (6.13%) OCI
12 11 (5.19%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 10 (4.72%) Amazon Kinesis
13 10 (4.72%) AWS Control Tower
14 9 (4.25%) AWS CloudTrail
Communications & Networking
1 18 (8.49%) DNS
2 16 (7.55%) Network Security
2 16 (7.55%) VPN
3 13 (6.13%) Firewall
4 8 (3.77%) WAN
5 6 (2.83%) SD-WAN
6 3 (1.42%) BGP
6 3 (1.42%) OSPF
7 2 (0.94%) DMZ
7 2 (0.94%) HTTP
7 2 (0.94%) MPLS
7 2 (0.94%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.94%) SSL
7 2 (0.94%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.94%) VSAN
8 1 (0.47%) Anycast
8 1 (0.47%) Broadband
8 1 (0.47%) DMVPN
8 1 (0.47%) LAN
8 1 (0.47%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (6.13%) DynamoDB
2 7 (3.30%) Amazon RDS
3 6 (2.83%) BigQuery
4 5 (2.36%) DocumentDB
4 5 (2.36%) NoSQL
4 5 (2.36%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.89%) Amazon Aurora
5 4 (1.89%) Data Lake
5 4 (1.89%) MySQL
5 4 (1.89%) Redis
6 2 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (0.94%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.47%) Amazon Athena
7 1 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.47%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.47%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.47%) Semantic Layer
7 1 (0.47%) SQL Server
7 1 (0.47%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 14 (6.60%) Jenkins
2 9 (4.25%) GitLab
3 5 (2.36%) JIRA
4 4 (1.89%) Terragrunt
5 2 (0.94%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.94%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.47%) AppScan
6 1 (0.47%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.47%) ERwin
6 1 (0.47%) Metasploit
6 1 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
General
1 53 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 51 (24.06%) Finance
3 26 (12.26%) Public Sector
4 25 (11.79%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (9.43%) Banking
6 15 (7.08%) Marketing
6 15 (7.08%) Presentation Skills
7 12 (5.66%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.83%) Retail
9 5 (2.36%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.42%) Financial Institution
10 3 (1.42%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.42%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.94%) Electronics
11 2 (0.94%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.94%) Law
12 1 (0.47%) Legal
12 1 (0.47%) Local Government
12 1 (0.47%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.47%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (6.60%) Kafka
2 13 (6.13%) Middleware
3 10 (4.72%) OpenID
3 10 (4.72%) REST
4 8 (3.77%) OAuth
5 6 (2.83%) ActiveMQ
5 6 (2.83%) Oracle Fusion
6 5 (2.36%) OAuth2
6 5 (2.36%) RESTful
7 4 (1.89%) Elastic Stack
7 4 (1.89%) gRPC
7 4 (1.89%) Hibernate
7 4 (1.89%) JPA
7 4 (1.89%) OpenTelemetry
7 4 (1.89%) SAML
7 4 (1.89%) Spring
7 4 (1.89%) Spring Boot
7 4 (1.89%) Spring Cloud
8 3 (1.42%) CSS
8 3 (1.42%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 42 (19.81%) Cloud Native
2 12 (5.66%) Distributed Systems
3 11 (5.19%) Hybrid Cloud
3 11 (5.19%) Public Cloud
4 7 (3.30%) Data Centre
4 7 (3.30%) Enterprise Cloud
5 5 (2.36%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.89%) Product Ownership
7 3 (1.42%) Data Structures
7 3 (1.42%) IoT
7 3 (1.42%) Operational Technology
7 3 (1.42%) Private Cloud
7 3 (1.42%) SCADA
7 3 (1.42%) Virtual Team
8 2 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.94%) Management Information System
8 2 (0.94%) Mobile Banking
8 2 (0.94%) PKI
9 1 (0.47%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 6 (2.83%) Windows
2 4 (1.89%) Linux
3 3 (1.42%) Android
3 3 (1.42%) Apple iOS
3 3 (1.42%) Mac OS
4 2 (0.94%) CentOS
4 2 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (0.94%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.94%) Unix
4 2 (0.94%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.47%) Kali Linux
5 1 (0.47%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (24.53%) DevOps
2 48 (22.64%) CI/CD
3 44 (20.75%) Infrastructure as Code
4 43 (20.28%) Migration
5 36 (16.98%) Roadmaps
6 34 (16.04%) Problem-Solving
7 33 (15.57%) Cloud Security
8 32 (15.09%) Agile
8 32 (15.09%) Stakeholder Management
9 27 (12.74%) Technical Leadership
10 24 (11.32%) Microservices
11 23 (10.85%) Containerisation
12 21 (9.91%) Cost Optimisation
13 20 (9.43%) Identity Access Management
14 18 (8.49%) Decision-Making
15 17 (8.02%) Integration Patterns
16 16 (7.55%) Computer Science
16 16 (7.55%) RBAC
16 16 (7.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 15 (7.08%) Enterprise Architecture
Programming Languages
1 13 (6.13%) Java
2 12 (5.66%) Python
2 12 (5.66%) SQL
3 11 (5.19%) Bicep
4 3 (1.42%) Bash
4 3 (1.42%) Go
4 3 (1.42%) JavaScript
4 3 (1.42%) Korn
5 2 (0.94%) PowerShell
6 1 (0.47%) Apex Code
6 1 (0.47%) C
6 1 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (0.47%) Lisp
6 1 (0.47%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 43 (20.28%) Security Cleared
2 42 (19.81%) SC Cleared
3 24 (11.32%) AWS Certification
4 19 (8.96%) Degree
5 17 (8.02%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 16 (7.55%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (4.72%) Azure Certification
8 9 (4.25%) Master's Degree
9 8 (3.77%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.42%) DV Cleared
11 2 (0.94%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 2 (0.94%) RHCE
11 2 (0.94%) SAP Certification
11 2 (0.94%) VCDX
12 1 (0.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 1 (0.47%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.66%) GDPR
2 11 (5.19%) NCSC
2 11 (5.19%) NIST
2 11 (5.19%) PCI DSS
3 10 (4.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (2.83%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (1.89%) HIPAA
5 4 (1.89%) QA
6 3 (1.42%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.94%) FedRAMP
7 2 (0.94%) GRC
7 2 (0.94%) SLA
8 1 (0.47%) COBIT
8 1 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.47%) SOC 2
System Software
1 22 (10.38%) Docker
2 7 (3.30%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.83%) Virtual Desktop
3 6 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.94%) Squid
4 2 (0.94%) VMware NSX
4 2 (0.94%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 55 (25.94%) Terraform
2 34 (16.04%) Kubernetes
3 11 (5.19%) Ansible
4 4 (1.89%) Kibana
4 4 (1.89%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.42%) Karpenter
5 3 (1.42%) Progress Chef
5 3 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.94%) Consul
6 2 (0.94%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.94%) Grafana
6 2 (0.94%) Istio
6 2 (0.94%) Nagios
6 2 (0.94%) Puppet
7 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.47%) Nessus
7 1 (0.47%) Suricata
Vendors
1 43 (20.28%) Microsoft
2 24 (11.32%) Google
3 20 (9.43%) Salesforce
4 19 (8.96%) Oracle
5 10 (4.72%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 10 (4.72%) SAP
6 9 (4.25%) Software AG
7 8 (3.77%) VMware
8 7 (3.30%) Citrix
9 6 (2.83%) CloudEndure
10 5 (2.36%) Databricks
10 5 (2.36%) Splunk
11 4 (1.89%) Cisco
12 3 (1.42%) Atlassian
12 3 (1.42%) Virgin Media
13 2 (0.94%) AVEVA
13 2 (0.94%) Brocade
13 2 (0.94%) CyberArk
13 2 (0.94%) Fortinet
13 2 (0.94%) Globalscape