Cloud Architect Contract Job Trends

Cloud Architect
UK

The median Cloud Architect daily rate in the UK is £620, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 June 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 339 317 360
Rank change year-on-year -22 +43 -35
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 347 229 242
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.77% 0.55%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.74% 0.83% 0.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 170 167
10th Percentile £500 £462 £500
25th Percentile £550 £513 £547
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £633 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.98% -2.69% -3.70%
75th Percentile £750 £775 £763
90th Percentile £775 £838 £818
UK excluding London median daily rate £630 £625 £650
% change year-on-year +0.80% -3.85% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 - -

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 46,817 27,571 40,801
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.38% 92.17% 92.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,459 17,717 26,128
10th Percentile £325 £289 £281
25th Percentile £414 £402 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £492
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.36% -1.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,118 1,192 3,003
10th Percentile £15.33 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.58 £16.45
Median hourly rate £43.69 £27.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.16% -26.80% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -1.45%

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 21 June 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 21 June 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 -1 287 £620 -3.13% 43
London +8 196 £625 -2.34% 19
Work from Home -46 105 £620 -1.98% 22
UK excluding London -54 96 £630 +0.80% 29
Midlands -40 25 £600 - 8
North of England -63 21 £600 +9.09% 9
West Midlands -45 15 £713 +42.07% 7
Scotland +2 13 £650 +4.00%
South West -31 13 £600 -8.05% 4
South East -53 13 £675 +18.27% 3
East of England -21 11 £600 -11.11%
North West -35 10 £600 +33.33% 7
Yorkshire -53 10 £650 +18.18% 2
East Midlands -11 9 £550 - 1
Wales -23 1 £500 +4.17% 5
North East - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 21 June 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.

1 190 (54.76%) AWS
2 123 (35.45%) Azure
3 96 (27.67%) Migration
4 86 (24.78%) Security Cleared
5 74 (21.33%) CI/CD
5 74 (21.33%) SC Cleared
6 71 (20.46%) DevOps
7 64 (18.44%) GCP
8 60 (17.29%) Infrastructure as Code
9 54 (15.56%) Terraform
10 51 (14.70%) Microsoft
11 47 (13.54%) Roadmaps
12 44 (12.68%) Stakeholder Management
12 44 (12.68%) Technical Leadership
13 43 (12.39%) Problem-Solving
14 41 (11.82%) Serverless
15 39 (11.24%) Analytics
16 38 (10.95%) Cloud Security
16 38 (10.95%) Kubernetes
17 35 (10.09%) Firewall
17 35 (10.09%) Integration Patterns
18 34 (9.80%) Containerisation
18 34 (9.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 32 (9.22%) Microservices
19 32 (9.22%) VPN
20 30 (8.65%) Agile
20 30 (8.65%) Google
21 28 (8.07%) Cost Optimisation
21 28 (8.07%) Technical Architecture
22 26 (7.49%) SaaS

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 (1.73%) Palantir Foundry
2 4 (1.15%) Confluence
3 2 (0.58%) nginx
3 2 (0.58%) SAS
3 2 (0.58%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.29%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.29%) Appian
4 1 (0.29%) Camunda
4 1 (0.29%) Cloud Foundry
4 1 (0.29%) Mendix
Applications
1 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.15%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.86%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.58%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle SCM
4 1 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 190 (54.76%) AWS
2 123 (35.45%) Azure
3 64 (18.44%) GCP
4 41 (11.82%) Serverless
5 26 (7.49%) SaaS
6 22 (6.34%) AWS CloudFormation
7 19 (5.48%) Entra ID
8 18 (5.19%) Amazon EKS
9 15 (4.32%) GitHub
9 15 (4.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 12 (3.46%) Amazon S3
10 12 (3.46%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (3.46%) Route 53
11 11 (3.17%) Microsoft 365
12 10 (2.88%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (2.59%) PaaS
14 8 (2.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 8 (2.31%) Azure AKS
14 8 (2.31%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 8 (2.31%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 35 (10.09%) Firewall
2 32 (9.22%) VPN
3 21 (6.05%) Network Security
4 13 (3.75%) DNS
5 6 (1.73%) WAN
6 3 (0.86%) BGP
6 3 (0.86%) OSPF
6 3 (0.86%) SD-WAN
7 2 (0.58%) DMZ
7 2 (0.58%) Intrusion Detection
7 2 (0.58%) NGFW
7 2 (0.58%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.58%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.29%) CTI
8 1 (0.29%) Internet
8 1 (0.29%) LAN
8 1 (0.29%) MPLS
8 1 (0.29%) PSTN
8 1 (0.29%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (0.29%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (6.63%) Data Lake
2 11 (3.17%) Amazon RDS
2 11 (3.17%) BigQuery
3 8 (2.31%) NoSQL
4 6 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
4 6 (1.73%) DynamoDB
4 6 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (1.44%) DocumentDB
6 4 (1.15%) Amazon Aurora
6 4 (1.15%) MySQL
6 4 (1.15%) Redis
7 3 (0.86%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.58%) Delta Lake
8 2 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.58%) SAP HANA
8 2 (0.58%) SQL Server
8 2 (0.58%) Tableau
9 1 (0.29%) Metadata
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle ODI
9 1 (0.29%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 10 (2.88%) Jenkins
2 8 (2.31%) JIRA
3 5 (1.44%) Git
3 5 (1.44%) GitLab
4 4 (1.15%) SonarQube
5 2 (0.58%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.58%) IntelliJ
5 2 (0.58%) JUnit
5 2 (0.58%) MLflow
5 2 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (0.29%) AppScan
6 1 (0.29%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.29%) Hudson
6 1 (0.29%) Metasploit
6 1 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
General
1 72 (20.75%) Social Skills
2 55 (15.85%) Finance
3 34 (9.80%) Public Sector
4 27 (7.78%) Banking
5 22 (6.34%) Documentation Skills
6 17 (4.90%) Analytical Skills
7 14 (4.03%) Retail
8 12 (3.46%) Presentation Skills
9 8 (2.31%) Marketing
10 7 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.15%) Legal
12 3 (0.86%) Billing
12 3 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.86%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.58%) Law
14 1 (0.29%) Aviation
14 1 (0.29%) Back Office
14 1 (0.29%) Investment Banking
14 1 (0.29%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (6.34%) Middleware
2 18 (5.19%) REST
3 11 (3.17%) Kafka
3 11 (3.17%) OAuth
3 11 (3.17%) OpenID
4 7 (2.02%) Oracle Fusion
5 6 (1.73%) Spring
5 6 (1.73%) Spring Boot
6 5 (1.44%) ARM Templates
6 5 (1.44%) Lightning Web Components
6 5 (1.44%) OAuth2
6 5 (1.44%) RESTful
6 5 (1.44%) SAML
7 4 (1.15%) AWS CDK
7 4 (1.15%) gRPC
7 4 (1.15%) Hibernate
7 4 (1.15%) JPA
7 4 (1.15%) Node.js
7 4 (1.15%) OpenTelemetry
7 4 (1.15%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 75 (21.61%) Cloud Native
2 22 (6.34%) Data Centre
2 22 (6.34%) Management Information System
3 20 (5.76%) Onboarding
4 17 (4.90%) Hybrid Cloud
5 16 (4.61%) Distributed Systems
5 16 (4.61%) Enterprise Cloud
5 16 (4.61%) Public Cloud
6 9 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (2.31%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.02%) Private Cloud
9 6 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (1.15%) Security Posture
11 3 (0.86%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (0.86%) NHS
11 3 (0.86%) SCADA
11 3 (0.86%) Wiki
12 2 (0.58%) Mobile Banking
12 2 (0.58%) N-Tier
12 2 (0.58%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 15 (4.32%) Windows
2 5 (1.44%) Windows Server
3 3 (0.86%) Android
3 3 (0.86%) Apple iOS
3 3 (0.86%) Mac OS
3 3 (0.86%) Unix
4 1 (0.29%) AIX
4 1 (0.29%) Kali Linux
4 1 (0.29%) Linux
4 1 (0.29%) Solaris
4 1 (0.29%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (27.67%) Migration
2 74 (21.33%) CI/CD
3 71 (20.46%) DevOps
4 60 (17.29%) Infrastructure as Code
5 47 (13.54%) Roadmaps
6 44 (12.68%) Stakeholder Management
6 44 (12.68%) Technical Leadership
7 43 (12.39%) Problem-Solving
8 39 (11.24%) Analytics
9 38 (10.95%) Cloud Security
10 35 (10.09%) Integration Patterns
11 34 (9.80%) Containerisation
11 34 (9.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 32 (9.22%) Microservices
13 30 (8.65%) Agile
14 28 (8.07%) Cost Optimisation
14 28 (8.07%) Technical Architecture
15 26 (7.49%) Security Architecture
16 25 (7.20%) TOGAF
17 24 (6.92%) AI
Programming Languages
1 15 (4.32%) Bicep
1 15 (4.32%) Java
2 14 (4.03%) SQL
3 10 (2.88%) Python
4 6 (1.73%) JavaScript
5 5 (1.44%) Apex Code
6 4 (1.15%) C#
7 3 (0.86%) Go
8 2 (0.58%) Korn
9 1 (0.29%) Bash
9 1 (0.29%) C
9 1 (0.29%) Lisp
9 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.29%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.29%) ProC
9 1 (0.29%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 86 (24.78%) Security Cleared
2 74 (21.33%) SC Cleared
3 22 (6.34%) AWS Certification
4 14 (4.03%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 10 (2.88%) Degree
6 9 (2.59%) DV Cleared
7 8 (2.31%) Azure Certification
7 8 (2.31%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.73%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (1.44%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.44%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (1.44%) Master's Degree
10 4 (1.15%) CCNP
10 4 (1.15%) CISSP
11 2 (0.58%) CISM
11 2 (0.58%) GIAC
11 2 (0.58%) MCSE
11 2 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.29%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 1 (0.29%) CRISC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 21 (6.05%) PCI DSS
3 18 (5.19%) NIST
4 8 (2.31%) GDPR
5 6 (1.73%) QA
6 5 (1.44%) NCSC
7 2 (0.58%) COBIT
7 2 (0.58%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.58%) FedRAMP
7 2 (0.58%) GRC
7 2 (0.58%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.29%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.29%) PSD2
8 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.29%) SLA
8 1 (0.29%) SOC 2
System Software
1 17 (4.90%) Docker
2 15 (4.32%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.15%) VMware NSX
4 2 (0.58%) Squid
4 2 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.29%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 54 (15.56%) Terraform
2 38 (10.95%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.73%) Ansible
4 4 (1.15%) Progress Chef
4 4 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.86%) Grafana
5 3 (0.86%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.86%) Puppet
6 2 (0.58%) Consul
6 2 (0.58%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.58%) Istio
6 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.29%) CloudForms
7 1 (0.29%) Nessus
7 1 (0.29%) QRadar
Vendors
1 51 (14.70%) Microsoft
2 30 (8.65%) Google
3 20 (5.76%) Salesforce
4 16 (4.61%) Databricks
5 15 (4.32%) Oracle
6 12 (3.46%) CyberArk
7 11 (3.17%) SAP
8 8 (2.31%) VMware
9 7 (2.02%) Cisco
9 7 (2.02%) Red Hat
9 7 (2.02%) Splunk
10 6 (1.73%) Foundry
10 6 (1.73%) Palantir
11 5 (1.44%) IBM
11 5 (1.44%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
12 4 (1.15%) ServiceNow
12 4 (1.15%) Software AG
12 4 (1.15%) Virgin Media
13 3 (0.86%) Atlassian
14 2 (0.58%) Mitel