Cloud Architect Contract Job Trends

Cloud Architect
UK

The median Cloud Architect daily rate in the UK is £605, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 July 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 335 314 350
Rank change year-on-year -21 +36 -34
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 356 246 245
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.77% 0.57%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.74% 0.84% 0.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 182 170
10th Percentile £475 £464 £500
25th Percentile £550 £513 £539
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £605 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -3.20% -3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £715 £772 £763
90th Percentile £768 £838 £814
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £608 £675
% change year-on-year -1.28% -9.96% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £23.20 - -
Median hourly rate £25.47 - -
75th Percentile £48.87 - -
90th Percentile £61.55 - -
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 47,894 29,248 40,280
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.44% 91.99% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,968 18,668 25,910
10th Percentile £325 £287 £285
25th Percentile £417 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,250 1,325 2,804
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.75 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.44 £16.65
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.57% -29.47% -14.05%
75th Percentile £67.50 £55.25 £62.96
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.25 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -

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 6 July 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 6 July 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 6 July 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 -17 292 £603 -3.60% 74
London -6 193 £620 -3.13% 31
Work from Home -51 111 £600 -4.00% 42
UK excluding London -71 104 £600 -1.28% 51
Midlands -41 26 £594 -1.04% 14
North of England -65 22 £600 +9.09% 15
South East -40 17 £650 +21.04% 8
West Midlands -46 14 £725 +44.57% 10
Scotland -8 13 £650 +4.00% 3
East of England -22 13 £600 -11.11% 1
South West -31 13 £600 -6.43% 4
East Midlands -10 11 £550 - 4
Yorkshire -47 11 £650 +18.18% 3
North West -38 10 £600 +33.33% 10
Wales -26 1 £500 +4.17% 4
North East - 1 - - 2

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

For the 6 months to 6 July 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.

1 191 (53.65%) AWS
2 129 (36.24%) Azure
3 101 (28.37%) Migration
4 92 (25.84%) Security Cleared
5 79 (22.19%) SC Cleared
6 73 (20.51%) CI/CD
7 70 (19.66%) DevOps
8 65 (18.26%) GCP
9 61 (17.13%) Infrastructure as Code
10 55 (15.45%) Terraform
11 50 (14.04%) Microsoft
12 45 (12.64%) Technical Leadership
13 44 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
13 44 (12.36%) Roadmaps
13 44 (12.36%) Stakeholder Management
14 43 (12.08%) Analytics
14 43 (12.08%) Cloud Security
15 41 (11.52%) Kubernetes
16 40 (11.24%) Serverless
17 36 (10.11%) Firewall
18 34 (9.55%) Containerisation
19 33 (9.27%) Integration Patterns
19 33 (9.27%) VPN
20 31 (8.71%) Google
20 31 (8.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 31 (8.71%) Technical Architecture
21 30 (8.43%) TOGAF
22 29 (8.15%) Agile
22 29 (8.15%) AI
22 29 (8.15%) Microservices

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 (1.69%) Palantir Foundry
2 4 (1.12%) Confluence
3 3 (0.84%) SAS
4 2 (0.56%) nginx
4 2 (0.56%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.28%) Appian
5 1 (0.28%) Camunda
5 1 (0.28%) Cloud Foundry
5 1 (0.28%) Mendix
Applications
1 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.12%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.84%) Salesforce CRM
2 3 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.56%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle SCM
Cloud Services
1 191 (53.65%) AWS
2 129 (36.24%) Azure
3 65 (18.26%) GCP
4 40 (11.24%) Serverless
5 28 (7.87%) SaaS
6 20 (5.62%) Entra ID
7 19 (5.34%) AWS CloudFormation
8 15 (4.21%) Amazon EKS
9 13 (3.65%) GitHub
9 13 (3.65%) PaaS
10 12 (3.37%) OCI
11 11 (3.09%) Microsoft 365
11 11 (3.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 10 (2.81%) GitHub Actions
12 10 (2.81%) IaaS
13 9 (2.53%) Amazon S3
13 9 (2.53%) Route 53
14 8 (2.25%) Azure AKS
14 8 (2.25%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 8 (2.25%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 36 (10.11%) Firewall
2 33 (9.27%) VPN
3 21 (5.90%) Network Security
4 10 (2.81%) DNS
5 5 (1.40%) WAN
6 3 (0.84%) BGP
6 3 (0.84%) OSPF
7 2 (0.56%) Intrusion Detection
7 2 (0.56%) NGFW
7 2 (0.56%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.56%) SD-WAN
7 2 (0.56%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.28%) 5G
8 1 (0.28%) Anycast
8 1 (0.28%) Cisco ASA
8 1 (0.28%) DMVPN
8 1 (0.28%) IPsec
8 1 (0.28%) Radio Access Network
8 1 (0.28%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (0.28%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (6.46%) Data Lake
2 11 (3.09%) BigQuery
3 9 (2.53%) Amazon RDS
4 6 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
4 6 (1.69%) Oracle Database
5 5 (1.40%) NoSQL
6 3 (0.84%) DynamoDB
6 3 (0.84%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.56%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.56%) DocumentDB
7 2 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.56%) Oracle Exadata
7 2 (0.56%) SAP HANA
7 2 (0.56%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.56%) Tableau
8 1 (0.28%) Amazon Aurora
8 1 (0.28%) Metadata
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle ODI
8 1 (0.28%) Redis
8 1 (0.28%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 8 (2.25%) JIRA
2 7 (1.97%) Jenkins
3 5 (1.40%) Git
4 4 (1.12%) SonarQube
5 2 (0.56%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.56%) GitLab
5 2 (0.56%) IntelliJ
5 2 (0.56%) JUnit
5 2 (0.56%) MLflow
5 2 (0.56%) Oracle Forms
6 1 (0.28%) AppScan
6 1 (0.28%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.28%) Hudson
6 1 (0.28%) Metasploit
6 1 (0.28%) Oracle APEX
General
1 70 (19.66%) Social Skills
2 57 (16.01%) Finance
3 36 (10.11%) Public Sector
4 29 (8.15%) Banking
5 25 (7.02%) Documentation Skills
6 18 (5.06%) Analytical Skills
7 15 (4.21%) Retail
8 10 (2.81%) Presentation Skills
9 8 (2.25%) Marketing
10 7 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (1.40%) Legal
12 3 (0.84%) Billing
12 3 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.84%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.28%) Aviation
13 1 (0.28%) Back Office
13 1 (0.28%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.28%) Law
13 1 (0.28%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (6.46%) Middleware
2 16 (4.49%) REST
3 9 (2.53%) OAuth
3 9 (2.53%) Oracle Fusion
4 8 (2.25%) Kafka
4 8 (2.25%) OpenID
5 6 (1.69%) Lightning Web Components
6 5 (1.40%) ARM Templates
6 5 (1.40%) SAML
6 5 (1.40%) SOAP
7 4 (1.12%) AWS CDK
7 4 (1.12%) Node.js
7 4 (1.12%) SailPoint
8 3 (0.84%) .NET
8 3 (0.84%) Spring
8 3 (0.84%) Spring Boot
9 2 (0.56%) .NET Framework
9 2 (0.56%) LDAP
9 2 (0.56%) RESTful
9 2 (0.56%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 70 (19.66%) Cloud Native
2 24 (6.74%) Data Centre
2 24 (6.74%) Management Information System
3 20 (5.62%) Onboarding
4 19 (5.34%) Hybrid Cloud
5 18 (5.06%) Enterprise Cloud
6 17 (4.78%) Public Cloud
7 11 (3.09%) Distributed Systems
8 9 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
9 8 (2.25%) Product Ownership
10 7 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
10 7 (1.97%) Security Posture
11 6 (1.69%) Private Cloud
12 3 (0.84%) NHS
12 3 (0.84%) SCADA
12 3 (0.84%) Wiki
13 2 (0.56%) Data Protection Act
13 2 (0.56%) Mobile Banking
13 2 (0.56%) N-Tier
13 2 (0.56%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 16 (4.49%) Windows
2 6 (1.69%) Windows Server
3 3 (0.84%) Android
3 3 (0.84%) Apple iOS
3 3 (0.84%) Mac OS
3 3 (0.84%) Unix
4 2 (0.56%) Linux
5 1 (0.28%) AIX
5 1 (0.28%) Kali Linux
5 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.28%) Solaris
5 1 (0.28%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (28.37%) Migration
2 73 (20.51%) CI/CD
3 70 (19.66%) DevOps
4 61 (17.13%) Infrastructure as Code
5 45 (12.64%) Technical Leadership
6 44 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
6 44 (12.36%) Roadmaps
6 44 (12.36%) Stakeholder Management
7 43 (12.08%) Analytics
7 43 (12.08%) Cloud Security
8 34 (9.55%) Containerisation
9 33 (9.27%) Integration Patterns
10 31 (8.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 31 (8.71%) Technical Architecture
11 30 (8.43%) TOGAF
12 29 (8.15%) Agile
12 29 (8.15%) AI
12 29 (8.15%) Microservices
13 27 (7.58%) Security Architecture
14 26 (7.30%) Cost Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 16 (4.49%) Bicep
2 12 (3.37%) Java
2 12 (3.37%) Python
3 11 (3.09%) SQL
4 6 (1.69%) Apex Code
4 6 (1.69%) JavaScript
5 4 (1.12%) C#
6 3 (0.84%) Bash
6 3 (0.84%) Go
6 3 (0.84%) PowerShell
7 1 (0.28%) C
7 1 (0.28%) Lisp
7 1 (0.28%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.28%) ProC
7 1 (0.28%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 92 (25.84%) Security Cleared
2 79 (22.19%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.30%) AWS Certification
4 14 (3.93%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 9 (2.53%) Azure Certification
5 9 (2.53%) Degree
6 8 (2.25%) DV Cleared
6 8 (2.25%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (1.69%) CISSP
9 5 (1.40%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
10 4 (1.12%) CCNP
10 4 (1.12%) Master's Degree
11 3 (0.84%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 3 (0.84%) CCSP
12 2 (0.56%) CISM
12 2 (0.56%) GIAC
12 2 (0.56%) MCSE
12 2 (0.56%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (5.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 18 (5.06%) PCI DSS
3 16 (4.49%) NIST
4 9 (2.53%) GDPR
5 4 (1.12%) NCSC
6 3 (0.84%) QA
7 2 (0.56%) COBIT
7 2 (0.56%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.56%) FedRAMP
7 2 (0.56%) GRC
7 2 (0.56%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.28%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.28%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.28%) PSD2
8 1 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.28%) SLA
8 1 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 15 (4.21%) Active Directory
1 15 (4.21%) Docker
2 4 (1.12%) VMware NSX
3 2 (0.56%) Squid
3 2 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
3 2 (0.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.28%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 55 (15.45%) Terraform
2 41 (11.52%) Kubernetes
3 5 (1.40%) Ansible
3 5 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
4 4 (1.12%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.84%) Grafana
5 3 (0.84%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.84%) Puppet
6 2 (0.56%) CASB
6 2 (0.56%) Consul
6 2 (0.56%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.56%) Istio
6 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.28%) CloudForms
7 1 (0.28%) Nessus
7 1 (0.28%) QRadar
Vendors
1 50 (14.04%) Microsoft
2 31 (8.71%) Google
3 22 (6.18%) Salesforce
4 21 (5.90%) Oracle
5 14 (3.93%) Databricks
6 13 (3.65%) SAP
7 12 (3.37%) CyberArk
8 8 (2.25%) VMware
9 7 (1.97%) Red Hat
9 7 (1.97%) Splunk
10 6 (1.69%) Cisco
10 6 (1.69%) Foundry
10 6 (1.69%) Palantir
11 5 (1.40%) IBM
11 5 (1.40%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
12 4 (1.12%) ServiceNow
12 4 (1.12%) Virgin Media
13 3 (0.84%) Atlassian
13 3 (0.84%) MuleSoft
14 2 (0.56%) Mitel