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 29 August 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 355 380 334
Rank change year-on-year +25 -46 +3
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 363 183 231
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.56% 0.60%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.73% 0.61% 0.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 133 154
10th Percentile £475 £466 £493
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 £796
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 49,838 30,062 35,859
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.47% 91.24% 93.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,768 18,992 22,689
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £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 3,565 1,567 1,847
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.51 £17.04 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £44.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.84% +10.00%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +31 296 £600 -6.25% 374
London -1 175 £630 +0.80% 247
UK excluding London -7 133 £600 -6.43% 145
Work from Home -33 111 £600 -0.50% 130
South East -38 37 £575 +6.48% 37
North of England -44 29 £600 -18.51% 44
Midlands -28 22 £700 +39.58% 19
North West -44 17 £600 - 25
Scotland -8 16 £600 - 10
South West -38 14 £600 -6.61% 18
East Midlands -3 12 £538 - 9
East of England -15 11 £600 -11.11% 8
Yorkshire -34 11 £650 -12.31% 16
West Midlands -30 10 £725 +44.57% 10
Wales -20 5 £625 +30.21% 3
North East - 1 - - 3

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

For the 6 months to 29 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.

1 185 (50.96%) AWS
2 150 (41.32%) Azure
3 99 (27.27%) Migration
4 97 (26.72%) Security Cleared
5 78 (21.49%) SC Cleared
6 75 (20.66%) GCP
7 67 (18.46%) DevOps
8 65 (17.91%) Microsoft
9 64 (17.63%) Infrastructure as Code
10 60 (16.53%) CI/CD
11 55 (15.15%) Stakeholder Management
12 53 (14.60%) Cloud Security
12 53 (14.60%) Roadmaps
12 53 (14.60%) Technical Leadership
13 43 (11.85%) Terraform
14 42 (11.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 40 (11.02%) Analytics
16 39 (10.74%) SaaS
16 39 (10.74%) TOGAF
17 37 (10.19%) AI
17 37 (10.19%) Google
17 37 (10.19%) Kubernetes
18 35 (9.64%) Oracle
18 35 (9.64%) Security Architecture
19 34 (9.37%) Architectural Patterns
20 33 (9.09%) Problem-Solving
21 29 (7.99%) Containerisation
21 29 (7.99%) Enterprise Architecture
21 29 (7.99%) Technical Architecture
22 28 (7.71%) Mentoring

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 (1.65%) Palantir Foundry
2 3 (0.83%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.55%) Apache
3 2 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.55%) SAS
3 2 (0.55%) 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 (1.38%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.83%) Cloudability
2 3 (0.83%) Oracle Retail
3 2 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle SCM
4 1 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 185 (50.96%) AWS
2 150 (41.32%) Azure
3 75 (20.66%) GCP
4 39 (10.74%) SaaS
5 27 (7.44%) Serverless
6 24 (6.61%) PaaS
7 19 (5.23%) Entra ID
7 19 (5.23%) OCI
8 14 (3.86%) IaaS
9 11 (3.03%) GitHub
10 10 (2.75%) Snowflake
11 8 (2.20%) AWS CloudFormation
12 7 (1.93%) Amazon EKS
12 7 (1.93%) Azure Sentinel
12 7 (1.93%) Microsoft 365
12 7 (1.93%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 6 (1.65%) Azure DevOps
13 6 (1.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 6 (1.65%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
13 6 (1.65%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 27 (7.44%) Firewall
2 20 (5.51%) VPN
3 13 (3.58%) Network Security
4 3 (0.83%) DNS
5 2 (0.55%) 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 26 (7.16%) Data Lake
2 14 (3.86%) Oracle Database
3 9 (2.48%) BigQuery
4 6 (1.65%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (1.10%) Oracle Exadata
6 3 (0.83%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (0.83%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.55%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.55%) MySQL
7 2 (0.55%) Power BI
7 2 (0.55%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.55%) 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 (1.93%) Git
2 5 (1.38%) JIRA
3 4 (1.10%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.83%) Claude Code
5 2 (0.55%) IntelliJ
5 2 (0.55%) JUnit
5 2 (0.55%) MLflow
5 2 (0.55%) Oracle Forms
5 2 (0.55%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.28%) Hudson
6 1 (0.28%) Oracle APEX
General
1 62 (17.08%) Social Skills
2 55 (15.15%) Finance
3 39 (10.74%) Public Sector
4 25 (6.89%) Banking
5 21 (5.79%) Documentation Skills
6 17 (4.68%) Retail
7 14 (3.86%) Analytical Skills
8 7 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.65%) Billing
9 6 (1.65%) Marketing
10 4 (1.10%) Legal
10 4 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.83%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.55%) Military
13 1 (0.28%) Aviation
13 1 (0.28%) Back Office
13 1 (0.28%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.28%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.28%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (11.85%) Terraform
2 21 (5.79%) Middleware
3 14 (3.86%) REST
4 9 (2.48%) Oracle Fusion
5 8 (2.20%) Kafka
6 6 (1.65%) Lightning Web Components
6 6 (1.65%) OAuth
7 5 (1.38%) SOAP
8 4 (1.10%) ARM Templates
8 4 (1.10%) Node.js
8 4 (1.10%) SailPoint
9 2 (0.55%) .NET Core
9 2 (0.55%) .NET Framework
9 2 (0.55%) AngularJS
9 2 (0.55%) JWT
9 2 (0.55%) OpenID
9 2 (0.55%) React
9 2 (0.55%) SAML
9 2 (0.55%) Spring
9 2 (0.55%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 74 (20.39%) Cloud Native
2 27 (7.44%) Enterprise Cloud
3 24 (6.61%) Management Information System
4 23 (6.34%) Hybrid Cloud
5 18 (4.96%) Data Centre
6 15 (4.13%) Onboarding
6 15 (4.13%) Public Cloud
7 10 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (2.48%) Security Posture
9 7 (1.93%) Distributed Systems
10 6 (1.65%) Data Fabric
10 6 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.38%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.38%) Product Ownership
12 4 (1.10%) Private Cloud
13 3 (0.83%) CMDB
13 3 (0.83%) Data Protection Act
13 3 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
13 3 (0.83%) Legacy Applications
13 3 (0.83%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 14 (3.86%) Windows
2 7 (1.93%) Windows Server
3 6 (1.65%) Linux
3 6 (1.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.10%) Unix
5 1 (0.28%) AIX
5 1 (0.28%) Solaris
5 1 (0.28%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (27.27%) Migration
2 67 (18.46%) DevOps
3 64 (17.63%) Infrastructure as Code
4 60 (16.53%) CI/CD
5 55 (15.15%) Stakeholder Management
6 53 (14.60%) Cloud Security
6 53 (14.60%) Roadmaps
6 53 (14.60%) Technical Leadership
7 42 (11.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 40 (11.02%) Analytics
9 39 (10.74%) TOGAF
10 37 (10.19%) AI
11 35 (9.64%) Security Architecture
12 34 (9.37%) Architectural Patterns
13 33 (9.09%) Problem-Solving
14 29 (7.99%) Containerisation
14 29 (7.99%) Enterprise Architecture
14 29 (7.99%) Technical Architecture
15 28 (7.71%) Mentoring
16 27 (7.44%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 10 (2.75%) Bicep
1 10 (2.75%) Java
2 9 (2.48%) Python
3 6 (1.65%) Apex Code
3 6 (1.65%) Bash
3 6 (1.65%) JavaScript
4 5 (1.38%) PowerShell
4 5 (1.38%) SQL
5 2 (0.55%) C#
5 2 (0.55%) Shell Script
6 1 (0.28%) C
6 1 (0.28%) PL/SQL
6 1 (0.28%) ProC
6 1 (0.28%) Scala
6 1 (0.28%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 97 (26.72%) Security Cleared
2 78 (21.49%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.16%) AWS Certification
4 14 (3.86%) Azure Certification
5 13 (3.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 12 (3.31%) Cisco Certification
6 12 (3.31%) CISSP
7 11 (3.03%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (2.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 9 (2.48%) CCSP
9 8 (2.20%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.65%) Degree
11 5 (1.38%) CISM
12 3 (0.83%) CCNP
12 3 (0.83%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 3 (0.83%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
13 2 (0.55%) IBM Certification
13 2 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
13 2 (0.55%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 18 (4.96%) NIST
3 13 (3.58%) PCI DSS
4 10 (2.75%) GDPR
5 4 (1.10%) Data Quality
5 4 (1.10%) GRC
5 4 (1.10%) NCSC
6 2 (0.55%) QA
7 1 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.28%) NIST 800
System Software
1 17 (4.68%) Active Directory
2 7 (1.93%) Docker
3 5 (1.38%) VMware NSX
4 3 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.55%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.55%) zsh
6 1 (0.28%) Varnish
6 1 (0.28%) vCloud
6 1 (0.28%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 37 (10.19%) Kubernetes
2 4 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
3 2 (0.55%) Ansible
3 2 (0.55%) CASB
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 (17.91%) Microsoft
2 37 (10.19%) Google
3 35 (9.64%) Oracle
4 22 (6.06%) Salesforce
5 19 (5.23%) Databricks
6 11 (3.03%) CyberArk
7 9 (2.48%) Cisco
7 9 (2.48%) SAP
8 8 (2.20%) VMware
9 7 (1.93%) Foundry
10 6 (1.65%) IBM
10 6 (1.65%) Palantir
11 5 (1.38%) Red Hat
11 5 (1.38%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.38%) Splunk
12 3 (0.83%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 2 (0.55%) Checkmarx
13 2 (0.55%) Zscaler
14 1 (0.28%) Denodo
14 1 (0.28%) Pure Storage