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 11 June 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 331 314 366
Rank change year-on-year -17 +52 -45
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 339 226 234
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.77% 0.54%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.74% 0.83% 0.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 238 165 161
10th Percentile £493 £452 £500
25th Percentile £546 £513 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £605 £625 £650
Median % change year-on-year -3.20% -3.85% -3.70%
75th Percentile £750 £775 £763
90th Percentile £775 £838 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £608 £650
% change year-on-year -1.28% -6.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
Median hourly rate £70.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 - -

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 46,065 27,116 40,535
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.32% 92.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,032 17,461 26,079
10th Percentile £325 £288 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.55% -4.76% -2.60%
75th Percentile £621 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,078 1,132 2,932
10th Percentile £15.13 £13.87 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.79 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.00 £27.70 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.23% -26.13% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -5.88%

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 11 June 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 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 11 June 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 -4 281 £611 -2.20% 33
London +1 189 £625 -2.34% 15
Work from Home -44 104 £600 -4.00% 30
UK excluding London -56 97 £600 -1.28% 26
Midlands -45 27 £588 -2.08% 2
North of England -68 22 £600 +9.09% 7
West Midlands -47 15 £713 +42.07% 2
Scotland -4 13 £650 +4.00% 1
South West -23 13 £600 -10.45% 2
North West -35 13 £600 +33.33% 5
South East -50 12 £663 +37.45% 6
East Midlands -19 11 £545 -
East of England -20 10 £600 -11.11%
Yorkshire -52 8 £582 +5.82% 2
Wales -21 1 £500 +4.17% 8
North East - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 11 June 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 (56.34%) AWS
2 122 (35.99%) Azure
3 96 (28.32%) Migration
4 84 (24.78%) Security Cleared
5 73 (21.53%) CI/CD
6 72 (21.24%) SC Cleared
7 71 (20.94%) DevOps
8 62 (18.29%) GCP
9 60 (17.70%) Infrastructure as Code
10 54 (15.93%) Terraform
11 49 (14.45%) Microsoft
12 46 (13.57%) Roadmaps
13 44 (12.98%) Stakeholder Management
14 43 (12.68%) Problem-Solving
15 42 (12.39%) Technical Leadership
16 41 (12.09%) Cloud Security
16 41 (12.09%) Serverless
17 39 (11.50%) Analytics
18 38 (11.21%) Kubernetes
19 35 (10.32%) Integration Patterns
20 33 (9.73%) Containerisation
20 33 (9.73%) Firewall
20 33 (9.73%) Microservices
21 32 (9.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
22 31 (9.14%) VPN
23 30 (8.85%) Agile
23 30 (8.85%) Google
24 27 (7.96%) Security Architecture
24 27 (7.96%) Technical Architecture
25 26 (7.67%) 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 6 (1.77%) Palantir Foundry
2 4 (1.18%) Confluence
3 2 (0.59%) nginx
3 2 (0.59%) SAS
3 2 (0.59%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.29%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.29%) Appian
4 1 (0.29%) Camunda
4 1 (0.29%) Cloud Foundry
4 1 (0.29%) Mendix
Applications
1 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.18%) Payment Gateway
1 4 (1.18%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 191 (56.34%) AWS
2 122 (35.99%) Azure
3 62 (18.29%) GCP
4 41 (12.09%) Serverless
5 24 (7.08%) SaaS
6 22 (6.49%) AWS CloudFormation
7 19 (5.60%) Amazon EKS
7 19 (5.60%) Entra ID
8 16 (4.72%) GitHub
8 16 (4.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 13 (3.83%) Amazon S3
9 13 (3.83%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (3.54%) Route 53
11 11 (3.24%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (2.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 9 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
13 8 (2.36%) Azure AKS
13 8 (2.36%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 8 (2.36%) PaaS
13 8 (2.36%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 33 (9.73%) Firewall
2 31 (9.14%) VPN
3 22 (6.49%) Network Security
4 14 (4.13%) DNS
5 6 (1.77%) WAN
6 3 (0.88%) BGP
6 3 (0.88%) OSPF
6 3 (0.88%) SD-WAN
7 2 (0.59%) DMZ
7 2 (0.59%) Intrusion Detection
7 2 (0.59%) NGFW
7 2 (0.59%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.59%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.29%) Cisco ASA
8 1 (0.29%) CTI
8 1 (0.29%) Internet
8 1 (0.29%) IPsec
8 1 (0.29%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (0.29%) Wi-Fi
8 1 (0.29%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (7.08%) Data Lake
2 11 (3.24%) BigQuery
3 9 (2.65%) Amazon RDS
4 8 (2.36%) NoSQL
5 7 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (1.77%) DynamoDB
6 6 (1.77%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (1.47%) DocumentDB
8 4 (1.18%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (1.18%) MySQL
8 4 (1.18%) Oracle Database
8 4 (1.18%) Redis
9 2 (0.59%) Delta Lake
9 2 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.59%) Power BI
9 2 (0.59%) SAP HANA
9 2 (0.59%) SQL Server
9 2 (0.59%) Tableau
10 1 (0.29%) Metadata
10 1 (0.29%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 10 (2.95%) Jenkins
2 7 (2.06%) JIRA
3 6 (1.77%) GitLab
4 5 (1.47%) Git
5 4 (1.18%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.59%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.59%) IntelliJ
6 2 (0.59%) JUnit
6 2 (0.59%) MLflow
7 1 (0.29%) AppScan
7 1 (0.29%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.29%) Hudson
7 1 (0.29%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
7 1 (0.29%) Terragrunt
General
1 68 (20.06%) Social Skills
2 54 (15.93%) Finance
3 32 (9.44%) Public Sector
4 26 (7.67%) Banking
5 22 (6.49%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (4.72%) Analytical Skills
7 13 (3.83%) Presentation Skills
8 12 (3.54%) Retail
9 10 (2.95%) Marketing
10 5 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.88%) Billing
11 3 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.88%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.59%) Law
13 1 (0.29%) Aviation
13 1 (0.29%) Back Office
13 1 (0.29%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.29%) Legal
13 1 (0.29%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (6.78%) Middleware
2 17 (5.01%) REST
3 11 (3.24%) Kafka
3 11 (3.24%) OAuth
3 11 (3.24%) OpenID
4 6 (1.77%) Spring
4 6 (1.77%) Spring Boot
5 5 (1.47%) ARM Templates
5 5 (1.47%) OAuth2
5 5 (1.47%) Oracle Fusion
5 5 (1.47%) RESTful
5 5 (1.47%) SAML
6 4 (1.18%) AWS CDK
6 4 (1.18%) gRPC
6 4 (1.18%) JPA
6 4 (1.18%) Lightning Web Components
6 4 (1.18%) Node.js
6 4 (1.18%) OpenTelemetry
6 4 (1.18%) SailPoint
6 4 (1.18%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 75 (22.12%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.19%) Data Centre
2 21 (6.19%) Management Information System
3 19 (5.60%) Onboarding
4 16 (4.72%) Enterprise Cloud
4 16 (4.72%) Public Cloud
5 15 (4.42%) Distributed Systems
5 15 (4.42%) Hybrid Cloud
6 8 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
6 8 (2.36%) Product Ownership
7 7 (2.06%) Private Cloud
8 5 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (0.88%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (0.88%) NHS
9 3 (0.88%) SCADA
9 3 (0.88%) Security Posture
9 3 (0.88%) Wiki
10 2 (0.59%) AI Agents
10 2 (0.59%) Mobile Banking
10 2 (0.59%) N-Tier
Operating Systems
1 13 (3.83%) Windows
2 3 (0.88%) Android
2 3 (0.88%) Apple iOS
2 3 (0.88%) Mac OS
2 3 (0.88%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.59%) Unix
4 1 (0.29%) AIX
4 1 (0.29%) Kali Linux
4 1 (0.29%) Linux
4 1 (0.29%) Solaris
4 1 (0.29%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (28.32%) Migration
2 73 (21.53%) CI/CD
3 71 (20.94%) DevOps
4 60 (17.70%) Infrastructure as Code
5 46 (13.57%) Roadmaps
6 44 (12.98%) Stakeholder Management
7 43 (12.68%) Problem-Solving
8 42 (12.39%) Technical Leadership
9 41 (12.09%) Cloud Security
10 39 (11.50%) Analytics
11 35 (10.32%) Integration Patterns
12 33 (9.73%) Containerisation
12 33 (9.73%) Microservices
13 32 (9.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 30 (8.85%) Agile
15 27 (7.96%) Security Architecture
15 27 (7.96%) Technical Architecture
16 26 (7.67%) Cost Optimisation
17 24 (7.08%) AI
17 24 (7.08%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 16 (4.72%) Java
2 15 (4.42%) Bicep
2 15 (4.42%) SQL
3 10 (2.95%) Python
4 8 (2.36%) JavaScript
5 4 (1.18%) Apex Code
5 4 (1.18%) C#
6 3 (0.88%) Go
7 2 (0.59%) Korn
8 1 (0.29%) Bash
8 1 (0.29%) C
8 1 (0.29%) Lisp
8 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.29%) PowerShell
8 1 (0.29%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 84 (24.78%) Security Cleared
2 72 (21.24%) SC Cleared
3 21 (6.19%) AWS Certification
4 13 (3.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 12 (3.54%) Degree
6 9 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (2.65%) DV Cleared
7 7 (2.06%) Azure Certification
7 7 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.77%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (1.77%) Master's Degree
9 5 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.18%) CCNP
11 3 (0.88%) CISSP
12 2 (0.59%) MCSE
12 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 1 (0.29%) CCSP
13 1 (0.29%) CISM
13 1 (0.29%) MBA
13 1 (0.29%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 20 (5.90%) PCI DSS
3 19 (5.60%) NIST
4 9 (2.65%) GDPR
5 6 (1.77%) QA
6 5 (1.47%) NCSC
7 2 (0.59%) COBIT
7 2 (0.59%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.59%) FedRAMP
7 2 (0.59%) GRC
7 2 (0.59%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.29%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.29%) PSD2
8 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.29%) SLA
8 1 (0.29%) SOC 2
System Software
1 18 (5.31%) Docker
2 14 (4.13%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.18%) VMware NSX
4 2 (0.59%) Squid
4 2 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.59%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.29%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 54 (15.93%) Terraform
2 38 (11.21%) Kubernetes
3 7 (2.06%) Ansible
4 4 (1.18%) Progress Chef
4 4 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.88%) Grafana
5 3 (0.88%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.88%) Puppet
6 2 (0.59%) Consul
6 2 (0.59%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.59%) Istio
6 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.29%) CloudForms
7 1 (0.29%) Karpenter
7 1 (0.29%) Kibana
7 1 (0.29%) Nessus
7 1 (0.29%) QRadar
Vendors
1 49 (14.45%) Microsoft
2 30 (8.85%) Google
3 21 (6.19%) Salesforce
4 16 (4.72%) Databricks
5 12 (3.54%) Oracle
5 12 (3.54%) SAP
6 11 (3.24%) CyberArk
7 8 (2.36%) Splunk
7 8 (2.36%) VMware
8 7 (2.06%) Cisco
8 7 (2.06%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
9 6 (1.77%) Foundry
9 6 (1.77%) Palantir
9 6 (1.77%) Red Hat
10 5 (1.47%) IBM
10 5 (1.47%) Software AG
11 4 (1.18%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.18%) Virgin Media
12 3 (0.88%) Atlassian
12 3 (0.88%) MuleSoft