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 26 August 2026.

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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 375 352
Rank change year-on-year +23 -23 -3
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 358 186 229
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.57% 0.59%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.72% 0.62% 0.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 134 155
10th Percentile £475 £480 £494
25th Percentile £550 £513 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £700 £713 £763
90th Percentile £775 £775 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £641 £675
% change year-on-year -6.43% -5.00% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £23.20 - -
Median hourly rate £25.47 - -
75th Percentile £27.73 - -
90th Percentile £40.41 - -
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 49,591 29,856 36,116
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.45% 91.25% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,677 18,858 22,961
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% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £622 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,535 1,578 1,930
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.68 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.51 £17.08 £19.50
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -1.44%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% +7.50%

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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 +28 292 £600 -6.25% 25
London -2 176 £640 +2.40% 10
UK excluding London -7 125 £600 -6.43% 19
Work from Home -32 113 £600 -1.28% 20
South East -46 34 £575 +6.48% 2
North of England -48 28 £600 -20.00% 8
Midlands -34 22 £700 +16.67% 1
North West -35 16 £600 -20.00% 5
Scotland -6 14 £650 - 1
South West -44 13 £600 -6.61% 4
East Midlands -4 12 £538 -
Yorkshire -29 11 £650 -12.31% 3
East of England -17 10 £600 -11.11%
West Midlands -50 10 £725 +44.57% 1
Wales -19 5 £625 +30.21% 3
North East - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 26 August 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.

1 183 (51.12%) AWS
2 146 (40.78%) Azure
3 98 (27.37%) Migration
4 97 (27.09%) Security Cleared
5 78 (21.79%) SC Cleared
6 73 (20.39%) GCP
7 65 (18.16%) DevOps
7 65 (18.16%) Microsoft
8 63 (17.60%) Infrastructure as Code
9 60 (16.76%) CI/CD
10 54 (15.08%) Stakeholder Management
11 53 (14.80%) Cloud Security
11 53 (14.80%) Technical Leadership
12 50 (13.97%) Roadmaps
13 43 (12.01%) Terraform
14 41 (11.45%) Analytics
14 41 (11.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 40 (11.17%) SaaS
15 40 (11.17%) TOGAF
16 37 (10.34%) AI
16 37 (10.34%) Kubernetes
17 36 (10.06%) Security Architecture
18 35 (9.78%) Google
19 34 (9.50%) Architectural Patterns
19 34 (9.50%) Problem-Solving
20 33 (9.22%) Oracle
21 29 (8.10%) Enterprise Architecture
21 29 (8.10%) Technical Architecture
22 28 (7.82%) Containerisation
22 28 (7.82%) Firewall

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 (1.68%) Palantir Foundry
2 3 (0.84%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.56%) Apache
3 2 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.56%) SAS
3 2 (0.56%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.28%) Appian
4 1 (0.28%) Camunda
4 1 (0.28%) Cloud Foundry
4 1 (0.28%) Confluence
Business Applications
1 5 (1.40%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.84%) Cloudability
2 3 (0.84%) Oracle Retail
3 2 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle SCM
4 1 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 183 (51.12%) AWS
2 146 (40.78%) Azure
3 73 (20.39%) GCP
4 40 (11.17%) SaaS
5 25 (6.98%) Serverless
6 24 (6.70%) PaaS
7 18 (5.03%) Entra ID
7 18 (5.03%) OCI
8 14 (3.91%) IaaS
9 10 (2.79%) GitHub
9 10 (2.79%) Snowflake
10 9 (2.51%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (1.96%) Amazon EKS
11 7 (1.96%) Azure Sentinel
11 7 (1.96%) Microsoft 365
11 7 (1.96%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 6 (1.68%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (1.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 6 (1.68%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
12 6 (1.68%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 28 (7.82%) Firewall
2 21 (5.87%) VPN
3 14 (3.91%) Network Security
4 3 (0.84%) DNS
5 2 (0.56%) Internet
6 1 (0.28%) 5G
6 1 (0.28%) CTI
6 1 (0.28%) DAB
6 1 (0.28%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.28%) NGFW
6 1 (0.28%) PCoIP
6 1 (0.28%) PSTN
6 1 (0.28%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.28%) Remote Desktop
6 1 (0.28%) RTP
6 1 (0.28%) VSAN
6 1 (0.28%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (7.54%) Data Lake
2 14 (3.91%) Oracle Database
3 9 (2.51%) BigQuery
4 6 (1.68%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (1.12%) Oracle Exadata
6 3 (0.84%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (0.84%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.56%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.56%) MySQL
7 2 (0.56%) Power BI
7 2 (0.56%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.56%) Tableau
8 1 (0.28%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.28%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.28%) Big Data
8 1 (0.28%) Flink
8 1 (0.28%) HBase
8 1 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.28%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.28%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 7 (1.96%) Git
2 5 (1.40%) JIRA
3 3 (0.84%) Claude Code
3 3 (0.84%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.56%) IntelliJ
4 2 (0.56%) JUnit
4 2 (0.56%) MLflow
4 2 (0.56%) Oracle Forms
4 2 (0.56%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.28%) Hudson
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle APEX
General
1 59 (16.48%) Social Skills
2 54 (15.08%) Finance
3 38 (10.61%) Public Sector
4 25 (6.98%) Banking
5 21 (5.87%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (4.47%) Retail
7 14 (3.91%) Analytical Skills
8 7 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.68%) Billing
9 6 (1.68%) Marketing
10 4 (1.12%) Legal
10 4 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.84%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.28%) Aviation
12 1 (0.28%) Back Office
12 1 (0.28%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.28%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.28%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (12.01%) Terraform
2 22 (6.15%) Middleware
3 14 (3.91%) REST
4 8 (2.23%) Kafka
4 8 (2.23%) Oracle Fusion
5 6 (1.68%) Lightning Web Components
5 6 (1.68%) OAuth
6 5 (1.40%) SOAP
7 4 (1.12%) Node.js
7 4 (1.12%) SailPoint
8 3 (0.84%) ARM Templates
9 2 (0.56%) .NET Core
9 2 (0.56%) AngularJS
9 2 (0.56%) JWT
9 2 (0.56%) Keycloak
9 2 (0.56%) OpenID
9 2 (0.56%) React
9 2 (0.56%) SAML
9 2 (0.56%) Spring
9 2 (0.56%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 71 (19.83%) Cloud Native
2 27 (7.54%) Enterprise Cloud
3 25 (6.98%) Management Information System
4 23 (6.42%) Hybrid Cloud
5 19 (5.31%) Data Centre
6 15 (4.19%) Onboarding
6 15 (4.19%) Public Cloud
7 9 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (2.23%) Security Posture
9 7 (1.96%) Distributed Systems
10 6 (1.68%) Data Fabric
10 6 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.40%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.40%) Product Ownership
12 4 (1.12%) Private Cloud
13 3 (0.84%) Data Protection Act
13 3 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
13 3 (0.84%) Legacy Applications
13 3 (0.84%) NHS
13 3 (0.84%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 13 (3.63%) Windows
2 7 (1.96%) Windows Server
3 6 (1.68%) Linux
3 6 (1.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.84%) Unix
5 1 (0.28%) AIX
5 1 (0.28%) Solaris
5 1 (0.28%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 98 (27.37%) Migration
2 65 (18.16%) DevOps
3 63 (17.60%) Infrastructure as Code
4 60 (16.76%) CI/CD
5 54 (15.08%) Stakeholder Management
6 53 (14.80%) Cloud Security
6 53 (14.80%) Technical Leadership
7 50 (13.97%) Roadmaps
8 41 (11.45%) Analytics
8 41 (11.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 40 (11.17%) TOGAF
10 37 (10.34%) AI
11 36 (10.06%) Security Architecture
12 34 (9.50%) Architectural Patterns
12 34 (9.50%) Problem-Solving
13 29 (8.10%) Enterprise Architecture
13 29 (8.10%) Technical Architecture
14 28 (7.82%) Containerisation
15 27 (7.54%) Agile
15 27 (7.54%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 11 (3.07%) Bicep
2 10 (2.79%) Java
3 8 (2.23%) Python
4 6 (1.68%) Apex Code
4 6 (1.68%) JavaScript
5 5 (1.40%) Bash
5 5 (1.40%) SQL
6 4 (1.12%) PowerShell
7 2 (0.56%) C#
7 2 (0.56%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.28%) C
8 1 (0.28%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.28%) ProC
8 1 (0.28%) Scala
8 1 (0.28%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 97 (27.09%) Security Cleared
2 78 (21.79%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.26%) AWS Certification
4 14 (3.91%) Azure Certification
5 13 (3.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 12 (3.35%) Cisco Certification
6 12 (3.35%) CISSP
7 11 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (2.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 9 (2.51%) CCSP
8 9 (2.51%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.68%) Degree
10 5 (1.40%) CISM
11 3 (0.84%) CCNP
11 3 (0.84%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 3 (0.84%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
12 2 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (0.56%) GIAC
12 2 (0.56%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (5.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 18 (5.03%) NIST
3 12 (3.35%) PCI DSS
4 10 (2.79%) GDPR
5 4 (1.12%) Data Quality
5 4 (1.12%) GRC
5 4 (1.12%) NCSC
6 2 (0.56%) QA
7 1 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.28%) NIST 800
System Software
1 16 (4.47%) Active Directory
2 7 (1.96%) Docker
3 5 (1.40%) VMware NSX
4 3 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.56%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.56%) zsh
6 1 (0.28%) Varnish
6 1 (0.28%) vCloud
6 1 (0.28%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 37 (10.34%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
3 2 (0.56%) CASB
4 1 (0.28%) Ansible
4 1 (0.28%) CloudForms
4 1 (0.28%) Grafana
4 1 (0.28%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.28%) QRadar
4 1 (0.28%) SCOM
4 1 (0.28%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 65 (18.16%) Microsoft
2 35 (9.78%) Google
3 33 (9.22%) Oracle
4 22 (6.15%) Salesforce
5 19 (5.31%) Databricks
6 11 (3.07%) CyberArk
7 9 (2.51%) Cisco
7 9 (2.51%) SAP
8 8 (2.23%) VMware
9 7 (1.96%) Foundry
10 6 (1.68%) IBM
10 6 (1.68%) Palantir
11 5 (1.40%) Red Hat
11 5 (1.40%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.40%) Splunk
12 3 (0.84%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 2 (0.56%) Checkmarx
13 2 (0.56%) Zscaler
14 1 (0.28%) Denodo
14 1 (0.28%) Pure Storage