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 19 January 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 410 304 371
Rank change year-on-year -106 +67 -22
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 179 229 226
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 0.73% 0.52%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.53% 0.78% 0.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 133 145 156
10th Percentile £460 £489 £525
25th Percentile £525 £527 £588
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £675 £650
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% +3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £713 £800 £738
90th Percentile £800 £838 £781
UK excluding London median daily rate £573 £625 £650
% change year-on-year -8.40% -3.85% +4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
Median hourly rate £75.00 - £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £78.00
% change year-on-year - - +11.43%

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 33,788 29,232 40,213
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.39% 92.85% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,356 17,863 26,715
10th Percentile £300 £295 £275
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £616 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £481 £500
% change year-on-year -1.14% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,002 885 1,834
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.92 £13.99
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.76
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £40.32
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -19.39% +18.58%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -23.53% +46.55%

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 19 January 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 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 19 January 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 -70 154 £628 -4.38% 33
London -30 100 £650 -2.80% 22
Work from Home -40 55 £625 -13.79% 19
UK excluding London -55 55 £573 -8.40% 15
North of England -42 24 £600 -4.00% 2
North West -26 16 £460 -26.40% 1
South East -22 15 £600 -11.11% 7
Midlands -32 10 £550 +30.02% 3
East Midlands -20 7 £545 +28.84% 1
Yorkshire -42 6 £613 +36.11% 1
Wales - 3 £500 -
South West -15 2 £663 -1.12% 2
North East - 2 £725 -
West Midlands - 2 £638 - 2
East of England -18 1 £550 -8.33% 1

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

For the 6 months to 19 January 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 79 (44.13%) AWS
2 67 (37.43%) Azure
3 48 (26.82%) DevOps
4 44 (24.58%) Terraform
5 40 (22.35%) CI/CD
6 39 (21.79%) Infrastructure as Code
7 36 (20.11%) GCP
7 36 (20.11%) Microsoft
8 35 (19.55%) Migration
9 32 (17.88%) Security Cleared
10 31 (17.32%) Roadmaps
10 31 (17.32%) SC Cleared
11 28 (15.64%) Kubernetes
11 28 (15.64%) Problem-Solving
12 27 (15.08%) Agile
13 26 (14.53%) Cloud Security
13 26 (14.53%) Stakeholder Management
14 24 (13.41%) Serverless
15 23 (12.85%) Technical Leadership
16 22 (12.29%) Microservices
17 21 (11.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 20 (11.17%) AWS Certification
18 20 (11.17%) Salesforce
19 19 (10.61%) Oracle
20 18 (10.06%) AWS CloudFormation
20 18 (10.06%) Containerisation
20 18 (10.06%) Degree
20 18 (10.06%) Docker
20 18 (10.06%) Google
21 17 (9.50%) Cost Optimisation

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 2 (1.12%) Apache
1 2 (1.12%) Confluence
1 2 (1.12%) Oracle HTTP Server
1 2 (1.12%) Tomcat
1 2 (1.12%) WebLogic
2 1 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.56%) ArcGIS
2 1 (0.56%) GeoServer
Business Applications
1 4 (2.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.68%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (1.12%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.56%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 79 (44.13%) AWS
2 67 (37.43%) Azure
3 36 (20.11%) GCP
4 24 (13.41%) Serverless
5 21 (11.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 18 (10.06%) AWS CloudFormation
7 15 (8.38%) Amazon S3
7 15 (8.38%) AWS Lambda
7 15 (8.38%) GitHub
7 15 (8.38%) GitHub Actions
7 15 (8.38%) SaaS
8 14 (7.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 13 (7.26%) OCI
10 12 (6.70%) Amazon EKS
11 11 (6.15%) Entra ID
12 10 (5.59%) Amazon Kinesis
13 9 (5.03%) AWS KMS
14 8 (4.47%) Amazon GuardDuty
15 7 (3.91%) AWS CloudTrail
15 7 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 12 (6.70%) DNS
1 12 (6.70%) Network Security
2 10 (5.59%) VPN
3 8 (4.47%) Firewall
4 5 (2.79%) WAN
5 4 (2.23%) SD-WAN
6 3 (1.68%) DMZ
7 2 (1.12%) HTTP
7 2 (1.12%) Internet
7 2 (1.12%) SSL
7 2 (1.12%) VSAN
8 1 (0.56%) Broadband
8 1 (0.56%) LAN
8 1 (0.56%) MPLS
8 1 (0.56%) MQTT
8 1 (0.56%) NaaS
8 1 (0.56%) NetScaler
8 1 (0.56%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
8 1 (0.56%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (6.70%) DynamoDB
2 5 (2.79%) Amazon RDS
2 5 (2.79%) DocumentDB
2 5 (2.79%) NoSQL
2 5 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (2.23%) Amazon Aurora
3 4 (2.23%) Data Lake
3 4 (2.23%) MySQL
3 4 (2.23%) Redis
4 3 (1.68%) BigQuery
5 2 (1.12%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (1.12%) Oracle Database
6 1 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.56%) Power BI
6 1 (0.56%) Semantic Layer
6 1 (0.56%) Spatial Data
6 1 (0.56%) SQL Server
6 1 (0.56%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 14 (7.82%) Jenkins
2 9 (5.03%) GitLab
3 4 (2.23%) Terragrunt
4 2 (1.12%) JIRA
5 1 (0.56%) ERwin
5 1 (0.56%) Oracle Forms
General
1 46 (25.70%) Finance
2 43 (24.02%) Social Skills
3 24 (13.41%) Public Sector
4 21 (11.73%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (8.38%) Banking
5 15 (8.38%) Marketing
6 11 (6.15%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (2.79%) Retail
8 4 (2.23%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.68%) Financial Institution
9 3 (1.68%) Manufacturing
9 3 (1.68%) Telecoms
10 2 (1.12%) Electronics
10 2 (1.12%) General Ledger
10 2 (1.12%) Law
11 1 (0.56%) Legal
11 1 (0.56%) Local Government
11 1 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.56%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (7.82%) Kafka
2 12 (6.70%) Middleware
3 9 (5.03%) REST
4 6 (3.35%) ActiveMQ
4 6 (3.35%) Oracle Fusion
5 5 (2.79%) OAuth
5 5 (2.79%) OAuth2
5 5 (2.79%) OpenID
5 5 (2.79%) RESTful
6 4 (2.23%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (2.23%) gRPC
6 4 (2.23%) Hibernate
6 4 (2.23%) JPA
6 4 (2.23%) OpenTelemetry
6 4 (2.23%) Spring
6 4 (2.23%) Spring Boot
6 4 (2.23%) Spring Cloud
7 3 (1.68%) CSS
7 3 (1.68%) HTML
8 2 (1.12%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 37 (20.67%) Cloud Native
2 11 (6.15%) Hybrid Cloud
2 11 (6.15%) Public Cloud
3 10 (5.59%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (2.79%) Enterprise Cloud
5 3 (1.68%) Data Centre
5 3 (1.68%) Data Structures
5 3 (1.68%) IoT
5 3 (1.68%) Onboarding
5 3 (1.68%) Product Ownership
5 3 (1.68%) Virtual Team
6 2 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (1.12%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.12%) Management Information System
6 2 (1.12%) Operational Technology
6 2 (1.12%) PKI
6 2 (1.12%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.56%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.56%) Hedge funds
7 1 (0.56%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.68%) Linux
1 3 (1.68%) Windows
2 2 (1.12%) CentOS
2 2 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 2 (1.12%) Ubuntu
2 2 (1.12%) Unix
2 2 (1.12%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.56%) Android
3 1 (0.56%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.56%) Mac OS
3 1 (0.56%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (26.82%) DevOps
2 40 (22.35%) CI/CD
3 39 (21.79%) Infrastructure as Code
4 35 (19.55%) Migration
5 31 (17.32%) Roadmaps
6 28 (15.64%) Problem-Solving
7 27 (15.08%) Agile
8 26 (14.53%) Cloud Security
8 26 (14.53%) Stakeholder Management
9 23 (12.85%) Technical Leadership
10 22 (12.29%) Microservices
11 18 (10.06%) Containerisation
12 17 (9.50%) Cost Optimisation
13 16 (8.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 15 (8.38%) Computer Science
14 15 (8.38%) Decision-Making
14 15 (8.38%) Integration Patterns
15 13 (7.26%) Design Patterns
15 13 (7.26%) Mentoring
15 13 (7.26%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 12 (6.70%) Java
2 9 (5.03%) SQL
3 8 (4.47%) Python
4 7 (3.91%) Bicep
5 3 (1.68%) Bash
5 3 (1.68%) JavaScript
5 3 (1.68%) Korn
6 2 (1.12%) PowerShell
7 1 (0.56%) Apex Code
7 1 (0.56%) C
7 1 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (0.56%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 32 (17.88%) Security Cleared
2 31 (17.32%) SC Cleared
3 20 (11.17%) AWS Certification
4 18 (10.06%) Degree
5 15 (8.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 15 (8.38%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (5.59%) Azure Certification
7 8 (4.47%) Master's Degree
8 6 (3.35%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.68%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.68%) MCP
10 2 (1.12%) RHCE
10 2 (1.12%) SAP Certification
10 2 (1.12%) VCDX
11 1 (0.56%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 1 (0.56%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.56%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.15%) GDPR
1 11 (6.15%) NCSC
2 10 (5.59%) NIST
2 10 (5.59%) PCI DSS
3 9 (5.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (3.35%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (2.23%) HIPAA
5 4 (2.23%) QA
6 3 (1.68%) Data Quality
6 3 (1.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (1.12%) FedRAMP
7 2 (1.12%) GRC
8 1 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.56%) SLA
8 1 (0.56%) SOC 2
System Software
1 18 (10.06%) Docker
2 6 (3.35%) Virtual Desktop
2 6 (3.35%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (2.79%) Active Directory
4 2 (1.12%) VMware NSX
4 2 (1.12%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 44 (24.58%) Terraform
2 28 (15.64%) Kubernetes
3 10 (5.59%) Ansible
4 4 (2.23%) Kibana
5 3 (1.68%) Karpenter
6 2 (1.12%) Istio
6 2 (1.12%) Nagios
6 2 (1.12%) Progress Chef
6 2 (1.12%) Prometheus
6 2 (1.12%) Puppet
7 1 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.56%) Suricata
Vendors
1 36 (20.11%) Microsoft
2 20 (11.17%) Salesforce
3 19 (10.61%) Oracle
4 18 (10.06%) Google
5 10 (5.59%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
6 8 (4.47%) Citrix
6 8 (4.47%) Software AG
6 8 (4.47%) VMware
7 7 (3.91%) SAP
8 6 (3.35%) CloudEndure
9 4 (2.23%) Cisco
9 4 (2.23%) Splunk
10 3 (1.68%) Databricks
11 2 (1.12%) Brocade
11 2 (1.12%) Extreme Networks
11 2 (1.12%) Fortinet
11 2 (1.12%) MuleSoft
12 1 (0.56%) Aruba
12 1 (0.56%) Atlassian
12 1 (0.56%) ServiceNow