Cloud Architect Contract Job Trends

Cloud Architect
UK

The median Cloud Architect daily rate in the UK is £603, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 July 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 339 327 344
Rank change year-on-year -12 +17 -21
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 347 243 252
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.66% 0.75% 0.59%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.71% 0.82% 0.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 231 179 178
10th Percentile £475 £461 £500
25th Percentile £550 £513 £539
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £603 £614 £650
Median % change year-on-year -1.87% -5.54% -3.70%
75th Percentile £731 £744 £763
90th Percentile £768 £815 £804
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £600 £675
% change year-on-year - -11.11% +3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £23.20 - -
Median hourly rate £25.47 - -
75th Percentile £38.30 - -
90th Percentile £57.32 - -
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 48,692 29,793 39,772
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.81% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,483 18,982 25,593
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,276 1,398 2,720
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.35 £17.44 £17.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.45 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +70.13% -33.88% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.19 £63.41
90th Percentile £80.07 £73.75 £73.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.13% -37.13% +6.67%

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 15 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 15 July 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 15 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 -12 286 £603 -3.60% 75
London -3 187 £620 -3.13% 45
Work from Home -66 106 £620 +1.22% 38
UK excluding London -68 103 £600 - 31
Midlands -38 24 £670 +11.67% 12
South East -51 22 £640 +18.52% 11
North of England -65 20 £600 +9.09%
Scotland -2 13 £650 +4.00% 1
South West -35 13 £600 -6.61% 6
West Midlands -54 13 £725 +44.57% 8
East of England -15 12 £600 -11.11%
East Midlands -5 10 £538 - 4
Yorkshire -51 10 £650 +18.18%
North West -40 9 £600 +33.33%
North East - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 15 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.

1 185 (53.31%) AWS
2 129 (37.18%) Azure
3 104 (29.97%) Migration
4 91 (26.22%) Security Cleared
5 78 (22.48%) SC Cleared
6 67 (19.31%) CI/CD
6 67 (19.31%) DevOps
7 63 (18.16%) GCP
8 57 (16.43%) Infrastructure as Code
9 52 (14.99%) Terraform
10 51 (14.70%) Microsoft
11 46 (13.26%) Technical Leadership
12 44 (12.68%) Analytics
12 44 (12.68%) Roadmaps
13 42 (12.10%) Cloud Security
13 42 (12.10%) Stakeholder Management
14 41 (11.82%) Kubernetes
14 41 (11.82%) Problem-Solving
15 37 (10.66%) Serverless
16 35 (10.09%) Firewall
16 35 (10.09%) TOGAF
17 33 (9.51%) Containerisation
17 33 (9.51%) VPN
18 32 (9.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 31 (8.93%) Technical Architecture
20 30 (8.65%) AI
20 30 (8.65%) Integration Patterns
21 29 (8.36%) SaaS
22 27 (7.78%) Agile
22 27 (7.78%) AWS Certification

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 3 (0.86%) SAS
4 2 (0.58%) nginx
4 2 (0.58%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.29%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.29%) Appian
5 1 (0.29%) Camunda
5 1 (0.29%) Cloud Foundry
5 1 (0.29%) Mendix
Applications
1 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 5 (1.44%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.86%) SAP S/4HANA
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%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 185 (53.31%) AWS
2 129 (37.18%) Azure
3 63 (18.16%) GCP
4 37 (10.66%) Serverless
5 29 (8.36%) SaaS
6 19 (5.48%) Entra ID
7 18 (5.19%) AWS CloudFormation
8 16 (4.61%) PaaS
9 14 (4.03%) Amazon EKS
9 14 (4.03%) OCI
10 12 (3.46%) IaaS
11 10 (2.88%) Microsoft 365
11 10 (2.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 8 (2.31%) Amazon S3
12 8 (2.31%) GitHub
12 8 (2.31%) Snowflake
13 7 (2.02%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 7 (2.02%) Azure AKS
13 7 (2.02%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
13 7 (2.02%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 35 (10.09%) Firewall
2 33 (9.51%) VPN
3 19 (5.48%) Network Security
4 8 (2.31%) DNS
5 4 (1.15%) WAN
6 3 (0.86%) BGP
6 3 (0.86%) OSPF
7 2 (0.58%) Intrusion Detection
7 2 (0.58%) NGFW
7 2 (0.58%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.58%) SD-WAN
7 2 (0.58%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.29%) 5G
8 1 (0.29%) Anycast
8 1 (0.29%) CTI
8 1 (0.29%) DMVPN
8 1 (0.29%) Internet
8 1 (0.29%) MPLS
8 1 (0.29%) PSTN
8 1 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (6.63%) Data Lake
2 11 (3.17%) BigQuery
3 10 (2.88%) Oracle Database
4 8 (2.31%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (1.15%) NoSQL
7 3 (0.86%) Oracle Exadata
8 2 (0.58%) Delta Lake
8 2 (0.58%) DynamoDB
8 2 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.58%) PostgreSQL
8 2 (0.58%) SAP HANA
8 2 (0.58%) SQL Server
8 2 (0.58%) Tableau
9 1 (0.29%) DocumentDB
9 1 (0.29%) Metadata
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle ODI
9 1 (0.29%) Power BI
9 1 (0.29%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 8 (2.31%) JIRA
2 5 (1.44%) Git
2 5 (1.44%) Jenkins
3 4 (1.15%) SonarQube
4 2 (0.58%) Bitbucket
4 2 (0.58%) IntelliJ
4 2 (0.58%) JUnit
4 2 (0.58%) MLflow
4 2 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
5 1 (0.29%) AppScan
5 1 (0.29%) Burp Suite
5 1 (0.29%) GitLab
5 1 (0.29%) Hudson
5 1 (0.29%) Metasploit
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
General
1 64 (18.44%) Social Skills
2 55 (15.85%) Finance
3 37 (10.66%) Public Sector
4 28 (8.07%) Banking
5 25 (7.20%) Documentation Skills
6 15 (4.32%) Retail
7 14 (4.03%) Analytical Skills
8 9 (2.59%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.73%) Marketing
11 5 (1.44%) Legal
12 3 (0.86%) Billing
12 3 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.86%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.29%) Aviation
13 1 (0.29%) Back Office
13 1 (0.29%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.29%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.29%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (6.34%) Middleware
2 14 (4.03%) REST
3 9 (2.59%) Oracle Fusion
4 8 (2.31%) OAuth
5 7 (2.02%) Kafka
5 7 (2.02%) OpenID
6 6 (1.73%) Lightning Web Components
7 5 (1.44%) ARM Templates
7 5 (1.44%) SAML
7 5 (1.44%) SOAP
8 4 (1.15%) AWS CDK
8 4 (1.15%) Node.js
8 4 (1.15%) SailPoint
9 3 (0.86%) .NET
10 2 (0.58%) .NET Framework
10 2 (0.58%) AngularJS
10 2 (0.58%) LDAP
10 2 (0.58%) React
10 2 (0.58%) Spring
10 2 (0.58%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 67 (19.31%) Cloud Native
2 24 (6.92%) Data Centre
2 24 (6.92%) Management Information System
3 21 (6.05%) Enterprise Cloud
4 20 (5.76%) Onboarding
5 17 (4.90%) Hybrid Cloud
5 17 (4.90%) Public Cloud
6 9 (2.59%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (2.31%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (2.02%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.44%) Private Cloud
10 3 (0.86%) NHS
10 3 (0.86%) SCADA
10 3 (0.86%) Wiki
11 2 (0.58%) Cyber Threat
11 2 (0.58%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (0.58%) N-Tier
11 2 (0.58%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 15 (4.32%) Windows
2 6 (1.73%) Windows Server
3 5 (1.44%) Linux
4 4 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.86%) Unix
6 2 (0.58%) Android
6 2 (0.58%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.58%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.29%) AIX
7 1 (0.29%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.29%) Solaris
7 1 (0.29%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (29.97%) Migration
2 67 (19.31%) CI/CD
2 67 (19.31%) DevOps
3 57 (16.43%) Infrastructure as Code
4 46 (13.26%) Technical Leadership
5 44 (12.68%) Analytics
5 44 (12.68%) Roadmaps
6 42 (12.10%) Cloud Security
6 42 (12.10%) Stakeholder Management
7 41 (11.82%) Problem-Solving
8 35 (10.09%) TOGAF
9 33 (9.51%) Containerisation
10 32 (9.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 31 (8.93%) Technical Architecture
12 30 (8.65%) AI
12 30 (8.65%) Integration Patterns
13 27 (7.78%) Agile
13 27 (7.78%) Security Architecture
14 26 (7.49%) Architectural Patterns
14 26 (7.49%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 14 (4.03%) Bicep
2 10 (2.88%) Java
2 10 (2.88%) Python
3 9 (2.59%) SQL
4 6 (1.73%) Apex Code
5 5 (1.44%) JavaScript
6 4 (1.15%) C#
7 3 (0.86%) Bash
7 3 (0.86%) Go
7 3 (0.86%) PowerShell
8 1 (0.29%) C
8 1 (0.29%) Lisp
8 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.29%) ProC
8 1 (0.29%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 91 (26.22%) Security Cleared
2 78 (22.48%) SC Cleared
3 27 (7.78%) AWS Certification
4 15 (4.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 10 (2.88%) Azure Certification
6 8 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
6 8 (2.31%) DV Cleared
6 8 (2.31%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (2.02%) CISSP
7 7 (2.02%) Degree
8 4 (1.15%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 4 (1.15%) BPSS Clearance
8 4 (1.15%) CCNP
8 4 (1.15%) CCSP
9 3 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.86%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
10 2 (0.58%) CISM
10 2 (0.58%) GIAC
10 2 (0.58%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (5.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 16 (4.61%) PCI DSS
3 15 (4.32%) NIST
4 9 (2.59%) GDPR
5 3 (0.86%) NCSC
6 2 (0.58%) COBIT
6 2 (0.58%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
6 2 (0.58%) GRC
6 2 (0.58%) QA
7 1 (0.29%) FedRAMP
7 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.29%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.29%) PSD2
7 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.29%) SLA
7 1 (0.29%) SOC 2
System Software
1 14 (4.03%) Active Directory
2 13 (3.75%) Docker
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 52 (14.99%) Terraform
2 41 (11.82%) Kubernetes
3 5 (1.44%) Ansible
3 5 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
4 4 (1.15%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.86%) Grafana
5 3 (0.86%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.86%) Puppet
6 2 (0.58%) CASB
6 2 (0.58%) Consul
6 2 (0.58%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.29%) CloudForms
7 1 (0.29%) Istio
7 1 (0.29%) Nessus
7 1 (0.29%) QRadar
Vendors
1 51 (14.70%) Microsoft
2 27 (7.78%) Google
3 26 (7.49%) Oracle
4 20 (5.76%) Salesforce
5 14 (4.03%) Databricks
6 13 (3.75%) SAP
7 12 (3.46%) CyberArk
8 8 (2.31%) VMware
9 7 (2.02%) Red Hat
9 7 (2.02%) Splunk
10 6 (1.73%) Cisco
10 6 (1.73%) Foundry
10 6 (1.73%) Palantir
11 5 (1.44%) IBM
12 4 (1.15%) ServiceNow
13 3 (0.86%) Atlassian
13 3 (0.86%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 3 (0.86%) Virgin Media
14 2 (0.58%) Mitel
14 2 (0.58%) Zscaler