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 2 August 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 361 358 352
Rank change year-on-year -3 -6 -24
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 348 215 228
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.65% 0.58%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.70% 0.71% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 154 160
10th Percentile £475 £477 £500
25th Percentile £550 £513 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £613 £650
Median % change year-on-year +1.92% -5.65% -3.70%
75th Percentile £715 £733 £763
90th Percentile £789 £790 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £602 £700
% change year-on-year -0.25% -14.07% +4.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £23.20 - -
Median hourly rate £25.47 - -
75th Percentile £27.73 - -
90th Percentile £44.64 - -
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 49,411 30,266 36,487
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.62% 91.43% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,780 19,222 23,643
10th Percentile £331 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £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 3,407 1,492 2,092
10th Percentile £15.36 £13.65 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.89 £54.19 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +76.94% -41.51% +10.19%

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 2 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 2 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cloud Architect in the UK

Cloud Architect
Top 15 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 2 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 -5 285 £625 -2.34% 243
London +7 182 £650 +1.56% 166
Work from Home -52 108 £630 +4.48% 78
UK excluding London -45 105 £600 -0.25% 83
South East -52 26 £575 +6.48% 29
Midlands -32 24 £673 +12.08% 12
North of England -59 19 £625 -1.77% 19
South West -35 15 £600 -6.61% 16
West Midlands -48 13 £725 +44.57% 10
Scotland 0 11 £650 - 4
East Midlands -4 11 £538 - 2
East of England -6 11 £600 -11.11% 1
Yorkshire -40 9 £650 +18.18% 10
North West -48 9 £600 -20.00% 10
North East - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 2 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.

1 180 (51.72%) AWS
2 135 (38.79%) Azure
3 107 (30.75%) Migration
4 96 (27.59%) Security Cleared
5 79 (22.70%) SC Cleared
6 65 (18.68%) GCP
7 64 (18.39%) CI/CD
8 61 (17.53%) DevOps
9 57 (16.38%) Infrastructure as Code
10 50 (14.37%) Microsoft
11 48 (13.79%) Technical Leadership
12 47 (13.51%) Stakeholder Management
13 46 (13.22%) Cloud Security
14 45 (12.93%) Analytics
15 44 (12.64%) Terraform
16 42 (12.07%) Roadmaps
17 39 (11.21%) Kubernetes
17 39 (11.21%) TOGAF
18 38 (10.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 36 (10.34%) Problem-Solving
20 34 (9.77%) SaaS
21 32 (9.20%) Oracle
22 31 (8.91%) Firewall
22 31 (8.91%) Security Architecture
22 31 (8.91%) Technical Architecture
23 30 (8.62%) Integration Patterns
24 29 (8.33%) AI
24 29 (8.33%) Containerisation
25 28 (8.05%) Data Lake
26 27 (7.76%) VPN

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 (1.72%) Palantir Foundry
2 3 (0.86%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.86%) SAS
3 2 (0.57%) Apache
3 2 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.57%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.29%) Appian
4 1 (0.29%) Camunda
4 1 (0.29%) Cloud Foundry
4 1 (0.29%) Confluence
4 1 (0.29%) Mendix
Business Applications
1 5 (1.44%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.57%) Oracle Retail
2 2 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle SCM
3 1 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 180 (51.72%) AWS
2 135 (38.79%) Azure
3 65 (18.68%) GCP
4 34 (9.77%) SaaS
5 26 (7.47%) Serverless
6 24 (6.90%) PaaS
7 19 (5.46%) Entra ID
8 17 (4.89%) OCI
9 16 (4.60%) IaaS
10 13 (3.74%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (2.59%) Snowflake
12 8 (2.30%) Azure Sentinel
13 7 (2.01%) Amazon EKS
13 7 (2.01%) Azure AKS
13 7 (2.01%) Microsoft 365
13 7 (2.01%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 6 (1.72%) Azure Key Vault
14 6 (1.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 6 (1.72%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
15 5 (1.44%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 31 (8.91%) Firewall
2 27 (7.76%) VPN
3 15 (4.31%) Network Security
4 3 (0.86%) DNS
5 2 (0.57%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.29%) 5G
6 1 (0.29%) Cisco ASA
6 1 (0.29%) CTI
6 1 (0.29%) DAB
6 1 (0.29%) Internet
6 1 (0.29%) NGFW
6 1 (0.29%) PSTN
6 1 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.29%) RTP
6 1 (0.29%) VSAN
6 1 (0.29%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.05%) Data Lake
2 14 (4.02%) Oracle Database
3 9 (2.59%) BigQuery
4 6 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
4 6 (1.72%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (1.15%) NoSQL
5 4 (1.15%) Oracle Exadata
6 2 (0.57%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.57%) MySQL
6 2 (0.57%) SAP HANA
6 2 (0.57%) SQL Server
6 2 (0.57%) Tableau
7 1 (0.29%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.29%) Big Data
7 1 (0.29%) Cloudera CDH
7 1 (0.29%) Flink
7 1 (0.29%) HBase
7 1 (0.29%) Metadata
7 1 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.29%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 5 (1.44%) Git
2 4 (1.15%) JIRA
3 3 (0.86%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.57%) IntelliJ
4 2 (0.57%) JUnit
4 2 (0.57%) MLflow
4 2 (0.57%) Oracle Forms
4 2 (0.57%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.29%) Hudson
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
General
1 57 (16.38%) Social Skills
2 52 (14.94%) Finance
3 41 (11.78%) Public Sector
4 27 (7.76%) Documentation Skills
5 23 (6.61%) Banking
6 15 (4.31%) Retail
7 11 (3.16%) Analytical Skills
8 8 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.72%) Marketing
9 6 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (1.15%) Legal
11 3 (0.86%) Billing
11 3 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.86%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.29%) Aviation
12 1 (0.29%) Back Office
12 1 (0.29%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.29%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.29%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (6.32%) Middleware
2 14 (4.02%) REST
3 9 (2.59%) Oracle Fusion
4 8 (2.30%) Kafka
5 7 (2.01%) Lightning Web Components
6 5 (1.44%) ARM Templates
6 5 (1.44%) OAuth
6 5 (1.44%) SOAP
7 4 (1.15%) Node.js
7 4 (1.15%) SailPoint
8 3 (0.86%) .NET
9 2 (0.57%) .NET Core
9 2 (0.57%) .NET Framework
9 2 (0.57%) AngularJS
9 2 (0.57%) JWT
9 2 (0.57%) OpenID
9 2 (0.57%) React
9 2 (0.57%) SAML
9 2 (0.57%) Spring
9 2 (0.57%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 65 (18.68%) Cloud Native
2 27 (7.76%) Management Information System
3 23 (6.61%) Enterprise Cloud
4 22 (6.32%) Data Centre
5 16 (4.60%) Hybrid Cloud
5 16 (4.60%) Onboarding
6 15 (4.31%) Public Cloud
7 9 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
9 7 (2.01%) Product Ownership
9 7 (2.01%) Security Posture
10 6 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.72%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.44%) Data Fabric
12 3 (0.86%) AI Agents
12 3 (0.86%) Greenfield Project
12 3 (0.86%) NHS
12 3 (0.86%) PKI
12 3 (0.86%) Wiki
13 2 (0.57%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.45%) Windows
2 6 (1.72%) Windows Server
3 5 (1.44%) Linux
3 5 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.86%) Unix
5 1 (0.29%) AIX
5 1 (0.29%) Solaris
5 1 (0.29%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (30.75%) Migration
2 64 (18.39%) CI/CD
3 61 (17.53%) DevOps
4 57 (16.38%) Infrastructure as Code
5 48 (13.79%) Technical Leadership
6 47 (13.51%) Stakeholder Management
7 46 (13.22%) Cloud Security
8 45 (12.93%) Analytics
9 42 (12.07%) Roadmaps
10 39 (11.21%) TOGAF
11 38 (10.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 36 (10.34%) Problem-Solving
13 31 (8.91%) Security Architecture
13 31 (8.91%) Technical Architecture
14 30 (8.62%) Integration Patterns
15 29 (8.33%) AI
15 29 (8.33%) Containerisation
16 25 (7.18%) Enterprise Architecture
17 24 (6.90%) Agile
17 24 (6.90%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 15 (4.31%) Bicep
2 13 (3.74%) Java
3 8 (2.30%) Python
4 7 (2.01%) Apex Code
4 7 (2.01%) JavaScript
4 7 (2.01%) SQL
5 4 (1.15%) C#
6 3 (0.86%) Bash
6 3 (0.86%) PowerShell
7 1 (0.29%) C
7 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.29%) ProC
7 1 (0.29%) Scala
7 1 (0.29%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 96 (27.59%) Security Cleared
2 79 (22.70%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.47%) AWS Certification
4 15 (4.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 13 (3.74%) Azure Certification
6 11 (3.16%) Cisco Certification
6 11 (3.16%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (2.87%) CISSP
7 10 (2.87%) DV Cleared
8 7 (2.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 7 (2.01%) CCSP
9 6 (1.72%) Degree
10 5 (1.44%) CISM
11 4 (1.15%) CCNP
12 3 (0.86%) BPSS Clearance
12 3 (0.86%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 3 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
13 2 (0.57%) GIAC
13 2 (0.57%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (5.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 17 (4.89%) NIST
3 13 (3.74%) PCI DSS
4 11 (3.16%) GDPR
5 5 (1.44%) Data Quality
6 4 (1.15%) GRC
7 3 (0.86%) NCSC
8 2 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.57%) QA
9 1 (0.29%) COBIT
9 1 (0.29%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.29%) PSD2
9 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.29%) SLA
System Software
1 16 (4.60%) Active Directory
2 9 (2.59%) Docker
3 5 (1.44%) VMware NSX
4 2 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.29%) Varnish
5 1 (0.29%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 44 (12.64%) Terraform
2 39 (11.21%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.57%) Ansible
3 2 (0.57%) CASB
3 2 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.29%) CloudForms
4 1 (0.29%) Grafana
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.29%) Progress Chef
4 1 (0.29%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.29%) Puppet
4 1 (0.29%) QRadar
Vendors
1 50 (14.37%) Microsoft
2 32 (9.20%) Oracle
3 25 (7.18%) Google
4 20 (5.75%) Salesforce
5 17 (4.89%) Databricks
6 11 (3.16%) CyberArk
7 10 (2.87%) SAP
8 9 (2.59%) VMware
9 7 (2.01%) Foundry
9 7 (2.01%) IBM
10 6 (1.72%) Cisco
10 6 (1.72%) Palantir
11 5 (1.44%) Red Hat
11 5 (1.44%) Splunk
12 4 (1.15%) ServiceNow
13 3 (0.86%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
14 2 (0.57%) Checkmarx
14 2 (0.57%) Denodo
14 2 (0.57%) MuleSoft
14 2 (0.57%) Zscaler