Cloud Architect Contract Job Trends

Cloud Architect
UK

The median Cloud Architect daily rate in the UK is £620, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 May 2026.

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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 331 314 360
Rank change year-on-year -17 +46 -51
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 344 218 233
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.70% 0.76% 0.54%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.76% 0.82% 0.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 158 162
10th Percentile £500 £450 £501
25th Percentile £550 £513 £566
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £625 £675
Median % change year-on-year -0.80% -7.41% -
75th Percentile £750 £775 £775
90th Percentile £775 £838 £824
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £602 £650
% change year-on-year -0.25% -7.46% -
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 45,367 26,659 39,830
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.33% 92.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,689 17,296 25,850
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -4.00% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £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 3,009 1,048 2,796
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.87 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.79% -25.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £59.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £25.31 £40.00
% change year-on-year +72.28% -36.73% -6.98%

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 30 May 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 30 May 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 -5 288 £620 -0.80% 141
London +23 197 £625 - 65
Work from Home -51 101 £600 -3.61% 68
UK excluding London -52 96 £600 -0.25% 82
Midlands -40 27 £588 -2.08% 9
South East -50 17 £650 +34.85% 23
North of England -74 16 £525 - 23
West Midlands -56 15 £713 +42.07% 8
Scotland +7 13 £650 +4.00% 8
South West -36 13 £600 -9.77% 12
North West -39 12 £563 +25.00% 14
East Midlands -15 11 £545 - 1
East of England -27 10 £600 -11.11% 2
Yorkshire -69 3 £500 -9.09% 9
Wales -21 1 £500 +4.17% 3
North East - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 30 May 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.

1 201 (58.43%) AWS
2 123 (35.76%) Azure
3 99 (28.78%) Migration
4 89 (25.87%) Security Cleared
5 77 (22.38%) SC Cleared
6 72 (20.93%) CI/CD
7 71 (20.64%) DevOps
8 65 (18.90%) GCP
9 62 (18.02%) Terraform
10 61 (17.73%) Infrastructure as Code
11 52 (15.12%) Roadmaps
12 48 (13.95%) Microsoft
13 44 (12.79%) Cloud Security
13 44 (12.79%) Stakeholder Management
14 43 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
14 43 (12.50%) Serverless
14 43 (12.50%) Technical Leadership
15 39 (11.34%) Kubernetes
16 37 (10.76%) Analytics
17 36 (10.47%) Integration Patterns
18 35 (10.17%) Microservices
19 33 (9.59%) Agile
20 31 (9.01%) AWS CloudFormation
20 31 (9.01%) Containerisation
20 31 (9.01%) Firewall
21 30 (8.72%) AWS Certification
21 30 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
21 30 (8.72%) VPN
22 29 (8.43%) Google
23 28 (8.14%) Virtual Private Cloud

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 (1.74%) Palantir Foundry
2 4 (1.16%) Confluence
3 2 (0.58%) nginx
3 2 (0.58%) SAS
3 2 (0.58%) 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 (1.16%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.87%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 201 (58.43%) AWS
2 123 (35.76%) Azure
3 65 (18.90%) GCP
4 43 (12.50%) Serverless
5 31 (9.01%) AWS CloudFormation
6 28 (8.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 24 (6.98%) Amazon EKS
7 24 (6.98%) Entra ID
7 24 (6.98%) SaaS
8 18 (5.23%) GitHub
9 16 (4.65%) Amazon S3
10 15 (4.36%) GitHub Actions
11 14 (4.07%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 14 (4.07%) AWS Lambda
11 14 (4.07%) Route 53
12 12 (3.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 12 (3.49%) AWS KMS
13 11 (3.20%) AWS CloudTrail
13 11 (3.20%) AWS Control Tower
14 9 (2.62%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 31 (9.01%) Firewall
2 30 (8.72%) VPN
3 22 (6.40%) Network Security
4 17 (4.94%) DNS
5 6 (1.74%) WAN
6 3 (0.87%) BGP
6 3 (0.87%) OSPF
6 3 (0.87%) SD-WAN
7 2 (0.58%) DMZ
7 2 (0.58%) Intrusion Detection
7 2 (0.58%) NGFW
7 2 (0.58%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.58%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.29%) Anycast
8 1 (0.29%) CTI
8 1 (0.29%) DMVPN
8 1 (0.29%) Internet
8 1 (0.29%) LAN
8 1 (0.29%) MPLS
8 1 (0.29%) PSTN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (6.98%) Data Lake
2 11 (3.20%) BigQuery
3 8 (2.33%) NoSQL
4 7 (2.03%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (1.74%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (1.74%) DynamoDB
5 6 (1.74%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (1.45%) DocumentDB
7 4 (1.16%) Amazon Aurora
7 4 (1.16%) MySQL
7 4 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 4 (1.16%) Redis
8 2 (0.58%) Delta Lake
8 2 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.58%) Power BI
8 2 (0.58%) Tableau
9 1 (0.29%) Metadata
9 1 (0.29%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.29%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.29%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 12 (3.49%) Jenkins
2 9 (2.62%) GitLab
3 6 (1.74%) JIRA
4 5 (1.45%) Git
5 4 (1.16%) SonarQube
5 4 (1.16%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.58%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.58%) IntelliJ
6 2 (0.58%) JUnit
6 2 (0.58%) 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
General
1 69 (20.06%) Social Skills
2 62 (18.02%) Finance
3 36 (10.47%) Public Sector
4 28 (8.14%) Banking
5 21 (6.10%) Documentation Skills
6 19 (5.52%) Analytical Skills
7 16 (4.65%) Presentation Skills
8 12 (3.49%) Retail
9 10 (2.91%) Marketing
10 5 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.87%) Billing
11 3 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.58%) Law
12 2 (0.58%) Telecoms
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 (6.69%) Middleware
2 17 (4.94%) REST
3 11 (3.20%) Kafka
3 11 (3.20%) OAuth
3 11 (3.20%) OpenID
4 6 (1.74%) Spring
4 6 (1.74%) Spring Boot
5 5 (1.45%) ARM Templates
5 5 (1.45%) OAuth2
5 5 (1.45%) Oracle Fusion
5 5 (1.45%) RESTful
5 5 (1.45%) SAML
6 4 (1.16%) AWS CDK
6 4 (1.16%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (1.16%) gRPC
6 4 (1.16%) JPA
6 4 (1.16%) Lightning Web Components
6 4 (1.16%) Node.js
6 4 (1.16%) OpenTelemetry
6 4 (1.16%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 73 (21.22%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.10%) Management Information System
3 20 (5.81%) Data Centre
4 18 (5.23%) Onboarding
5 17 (4.94%) Distributed Systems
6 16 (4.65%) Public Cloud
7 15 (4.36%) Enterprise Cloud
8 14 (4.07%) Hybrid Cloud
9 8 (2.33%) Legacy Systems
9 8 (2.33%) Product Ownership
10 7 (2.03%) Private Cloud
11 4 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
11 4 (1.16%) PKI
12 3 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (0.87%) NHS
12 3 (0.87%) SCADA
12 3 (0.87%) Security Posture
12 3 (0.87%) Wiki
13 2 (0.58%) AI Agents
13 2 (0.58%) N-Tier
Operating Systems
1 10 (2.91%) Windows
2 3 (0.87%) Android
2 3 (0.87%) Apple iOS
2 3 (0.87%) Mac OS
3 2 (0.58%) Linux
3 2 (0.58%) Unix
4 1 (0.29%) AIX
4 1 (0.29%) Kali Linux
4 1 (0.29%) Solaris
4 1 (0.29%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (28.78%) Migration
2 72 (20.93%) CI/CD
3 71 (20.64%) DevOps
4 61 (17.73%) Infrastructure as Code
5 52 (15.12%) Roadmaps
6 44 (12.79%) Cloud Security
6 44 (12.79%) Stakeholder Management
7 43 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
7 43 (12.50%) Technical Leadership
8 37 (10.76%) Analytics
9 36 (10.47%) Integration Patterns
10 35 (10.17%) Microservices
11 33 (9.59%) Agile
12 31 (9.01%) Containerisation
13 30 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 25 (7.27%) Security Architecture
14 25 (7.27%) Technical Architecture
15 24 (6.98%) Architectural Design
15 24 (6.98%) Data Engineering
15 24 (6.98%) Event-Driven
Programming Languages
1 15 (4.36%) Bicep
1 15 (4.36%) Java
2 13 (3.78%) SQL
3 11 (3.20%) Python
4 8 (2.33%) JavaScript
5 4 (1.16%) Apex Code
5 4 (1.16%) C#
6 3 (0.87%) Go
7 2 (0.58%) Bash
7 2 (0.58%) Korn
7 2 (0.58%) PowerShell
8 1 (0.29%) C
8 1 (0.29%) Lisp
8 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.29%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 89 (25.87%) Security Cleared
2 77 (22.38%) SC Cleared
3 30 (8.72%) AWS Certification
4 20 (5.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 11 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (3.20%) Degree
6 9 (2.62%) DV Cleared
7 8 (2.33%) Master's Degree
8 7 (2.03%) Azure Certification
9 6 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.45%) Microsoft Certification
11 4 (1.16%) CCNP
12 3 (0.87%) CISSP
13 2 (0.58%) MCSE
13 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 1 (0.29%) CCSP
14 1 (0.29%) CISM
14 1 (0.29%) MBA
14 1 (0.29%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (6.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 20 (5.81%) NIST
3 19 (5.52%) PCI DSS
4 12 (3.49%) NCSC
5 9 (2.62%) GDPR
6 6 (1.74%) Cyber Essentials
6 6 (1.74%) QA
7 2 (0.58%) COBIT
7 2 (0.58%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.58%) FedRAMP
7 2 (0.58%) GRC
7 2 (0.58%) 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 20 (5.81%) Docker
2 14 (4.07%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (1.16%) VMware NSX
5 2 (0.58%) Squid
5 2 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.29%) Varnish
6 1 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 62 (18.02%) Terraform
2 39 (11.34%) Kubernetes
3 10 (2.91%) Ansible
4 4 (1.16%) Kibana
4 4 (1.16%) Progress Chef
4 4 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.87%) Karpenter
5 3 (0.87%) Puppet
6 2 (0.58%) Consul
6 2 (0.58%) FortiGate
6 2 (0.58%) Grafana
6 2 (0.58%) Istio
6 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.58%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.29%) CloudForms
7 1 (0.29%) Nessus
7 1 (0.29%) QRadar
7 1 (0.29%) Suricata
Vendors
1 48 (13.95%) Microsoft
2 29 (8.43%) Google
3 24 (6.98%) Salesforce
4 16 (4.65%) Databricks
5 12 (3.49%) Oracle
6 11 (3.20%) SAP
7 10 (2.91%) CyberArk
8 8 (2.33%) Citrix
9 7 (2.03%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
9 7 (2.03%) Software AG
9 7 (2.03%) Splunk
9 7 (2.03%) VMware
10 6 (1.74%) Cisco
10 6 (1.74%) CloudEndure
10 6 (1.74%) Foundry
10 6 (1.74%) Palantir
11 5 (1.45%) IBM
12 4 (1.16%) ServiceNow
12 4 (1.16%) Virgin Media
13 3 (0.87%) MuleSoft