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 30 July 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 347 335 348
Rank change year-on-year -12 +13 -32
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 346 222 233
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.68% 0.58%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.71% 0.74% 0.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 161 163
10th Percentile £475 £450 £500
25th Percentile £550 £513 £531
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £625 £613 £650
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -5.77% -3.70%
75th Percentile £733 £738 £763
90th Percentile £789 £800 £798
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £600 £675
% change year-on-year - -11.11% +0.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £23.20 - -
Median hourly rate £25.47 - -
75th Percentile £27.73 - -
90th Percentile £48.87 - -
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 49,068 30,025 37,043
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.63% 91.50% 92.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,609 19,114 23,981
10th Percentile £331 £282 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £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 3,359 1,460 2,193
10th Percentile £15.50 £13.69 £14.05
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £19.09
Median hourly rate £43.61 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +73.38% -40.82% -1.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +7.50%

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 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 30 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 30 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 -10 281 £625 -1.19% 192
London -4 182 £650 +1.56% 129
Work from Home -49 107 £625 +2.84% 61
UK excluding London -46 102 £600 - 68
South East -52 25 £575 +6.48% 26
Midlands -40 23 £673 +12.08% 8
North of England -62 19 £625 +13.64% 16
South West -37 13 £600 -6.61% 9
West Midlands -53 13 £725 +44.57% 7
Scotland -5 12 £650 - 4
East of England -8 11 £600 -11.11% 2
East Midlands -3 10 £538 - 1
Yorkshire -44 9 £650 +18.18% 7
North West -47 9 £600 +33.33% 9
North East - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 30 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.

1 182 (52.60%) AWS
2 134 (38.73%) Azure
3 105 (30.35%) Migration
4 94 (27.17%) Security Cleared
5 78 (22.54%) SC Cleared
6 65 (18.79%) CI/CD
7 64 (18.50%) GCP
8 61 (17.63%) DevOps
9 57 (16.47%) Infrastructure as Code
10 50 (14.45%) Microsoft
11 48 (13.87%) Stakeholder Management
11 48 (13.87%) Technical Leadership
12 46 (13.29%) Cloud Security
13 45 (13.01%) Analytics
13 45 (13.01%) Terraform
14 42 (12.14%) Roadmaps
15 39 (11.27%) Kubernetes
15 39 (11.27%) TOGAF
16 36 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
16 36 (10.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 34 (9.83%) SaaS
18 31 (8.96%) Firewall
18 31 (8.96%) Security Architecture
18 31 (8.96%) Technical Architecture
19 30 (8.67%) Integration Patterns
19 30 (8.67%) Oracle
20 29 (8.38%) AI
20 29 (8.38%) Containerisation
21 28 (8.09%) Data Lake
22 27 (7.80%) 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 3 (0.87%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.87%) SAS
3 2 (0.58%) Apache
3 2 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.58%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.29%) Appian
4 1 (0.29%) Camunda
4 1 (0.29%) Cloud Foundry
4 1 (0.29%) Confluence
4 1 (0.29%) Mendix
Business Applications
1 5 (1.45%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.58%) Oracle Retail
2 2 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle SCM
3 1 (0.29%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 182 (52.60%) AWS
2 134 (38.73%) Azure
3 64 (18.50%) GCP
4 34 (9.83%) SaaS
5 27 (7.80%) Serverless
6 24 (6.94%) PaaS
7 19 (5.49%) Entra ID
8 16 (4.62%) IaaS
9 15 (4.34%) OCI
10 14 (4.05%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (2.60%) Snowflake
12 8 (2.31%) Amazon EKS
12 8 (2.31%) Azure Sentinel
13 7 (2.02%) Azure AKS
13 7 (2.02%) Microsoft 365
13 7 (2.02%) Salesforce Service Cloud
14 6 (1.73%) Azure Key Vault
14 6 (1.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 6 (1.73%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
15 5 (1.45%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 31 (8.96%) Firewall
2 27 (7.80%) VPN
3 15 (4.34%) Network Security
4 3 (0.87%) DNS
5 2 (0.58%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.29%) 5G
6 1 (0.29%) Cisco ASA
6 1 (0.29%) CTI
6 1 (0.29%) DAB
6 1 (0.29%) Internet
6 1 (0.29%) NGFW
6 1 (0.29%) PSTN
6 1 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.29%) RTP
6 1 (0.29%) VSAN
6 1 (0.29%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.09%) Data Lake
2 12 (3.47%) Oracle Database
3 9 (2.60%) BigQuery
4 7 (2.02%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (1.16%) NoSQL
6 4 (1.16%) Oracle Exadata
7 2 (0.58%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.58%) MySQL
7 2 (0.58%) SAP HANA
7 2 (0.58%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.58%) Tableau
8 1 (0.29%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.29%) Big Data
8 1 (0.29%) Cloudera CDH
8 1 (0.29%) Flink
8 1 (0.29%) HBase
8 1 (0.29%) Metadata
8 1 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.29%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 5 (1.45%) Git
2 4 (1.16%) JIRA
3 3 (0.87%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.58%) IntelliJ
4 2 (0.58%) JUnit
4 2 (0.58%) MLflow
4 2 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
4 2 (0.58%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.29%) Hudson
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle APEX
General
1 58 (16.76%) Social Skills
2 52 (15.03%) Finance
3 39 (11.27%) Public Sector
4 26 (7.51%) Documentation Skills
5 23 (6.65%) Banking
6 15 (4.34%) Retail
7 11 (3.18%) Analytical Skills
8 8 (2.31%) Influencing Skills
9 7 (2.02%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.73%) Marketing
11 5 (1.45%) Legal
12 3 (0.87%) Billing
12 3 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.87%) 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 (6.36%) Middleware
2 14 (4.05%) REST
3 9 (2.60%) Oracle Fusion
4 8 (2.31%) Kafka
5 7 (2.02%) Lightning Web Components
6 5 (1.45%) ARM Templates
6 5 (1.45%) OAuth
6 5 (1.45%) SOAP
7 4 (1.16%) Node.js
7 4 (1.16%) SailPoint
8 3 (0.87%) .NET
9 2 (0.58%) .NET Core
9 2 (0.58%) .NET Framework
9 2 (0.58%) AngularJS
9 2 (0.58%) JWT
9 2 (0.58%) OpenID
9 2 (0.58%) React
9 2 (0.58%) SAML
9 2 (0.58%) Spring
9 2 (0.58%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 65 (18.79%) Cloud Native
2 27 (7.80%) Management Information System
3 23 (6.65%) Enterprise Cloud
4 22 (6.36%) Data Centre
5 16 (4.62%) Hybrid Cloud
5 16 (4.62%) Onboarding
6 15 (4.34%) Public Cloud
7 9 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
9 7 (2.02%) Product Ownership
9 7 (2.02%) Security Posture
10 6 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.73%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.45%) Data Fabric
12 3 (0.87%) AI Agents
12 3 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
12 3 (0.87%) NHS
12 3 (0.87%) PKI
12 3 (0.87%) Wiki
13 2 (0.58%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 12 (3.47%) Windows
2 6 (1.73%) Windows Server
3 5 (1.45%) Linux
3 5 (1.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.87%) Unix
5 1 (0.29%) AIX
5 1 (0.29%) Solaris
5 1 (0.29%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (30.35%) Migration
2 65 (18.79%) CI/CD
3 61 (17.63%) DevOps
4 57 (16.47%) Infrastructure as Code
5 48 (13.87%) Stakeholder Management
5 48 (13.87%) Technical Leadership
6 46 (13.29%) Cloud Security
7 45 (13.01%) Analytics
8 42 (12.14%) Roadmaps
9 39 (11.27%) TOGAF
10 36 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
10 36 (10.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 31 (8.96%) Security Architecture
11 31 (8.96%) Technical Architecture
12 30 (8.67%) Integration Patterns
13 29 (8.38%) AI
13 29 (8.38%) Containerisation
14 25 (7.23%) Enterprise Architecture
15 24 (6.94%) Agile
15 24 (6.94%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 15 (4.34%) Bicep
2 13 (3.76%) Java
3 8 (2.31%) Python
4 7 (2.02%) Apex Code
4 7 (2.02%) JavaScript
4 7 (2.02%) SQL
5 4 (1.16%) C#
6 3 (0.87%) Bash
6 3 (0.87%) PowerShell
7 1 (0.29%) C
7 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.29%) ProC
7 1 (0.29%) Scala
7 1 (0.29%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 94 (27.17%) Security Cleared
2 78 (22.54%) SC Cleared
3 27 (7.80%) AWS Certification
4 16 (4.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 13 (3.76%) Azure Certification
6 11 (3.18%) Cisco Certification
6 11 (3.18%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (2.89%) CISSP
7 10 (2.89%) DV Cleared
8 7 (2.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 7 (2.02%) CCSP
9 6 (1.73%) Degree
10 5 (1.45%) CISM
11 4 (1.16%) CCNP
12 3 (0.87%) BPSS Clearance
12 3 (0.87%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 3 (0.87%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
13 2 (0.58%) GIAC
13 2 (0.58%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (5.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 17 (4.91%) NIST
3 13 (3.76%) PCI DSS
4 11 (3.18%) GDPR
5 5 (1.45%) Data Quality
6 4 (1.16%) GRC
7 3 (0.87%) NCSC
8 2 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.58%) QA
9 1 (0.29%) COBIT
9 1 (0.29%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.29%) PSD2
9 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.29%) SLA
System Software
1 16 (4.62%) Active Directory
2 9 (2.60%) Docker
3 5 (1.45%) VMware NSX
4 2 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
4 2 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.29%) Varnish
5 1 (0.29%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 45 (13.01%) Terraform
2 39 (11.27%) Kubernetes
3 2 (0.58%) Ansible
3 2 (0.58%) CASB
3 2 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (0.29%) CloudForms
4 1 (0.29%) Grafana
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (0.29%) Progress Chef
4 1 (0.29%) Prometheus
4 1 (0.29%) Puppet
4 1 (0.29%) QRadar
Vendors
1 50 (14.45%) Microsoft
2 30 (8.67%) Oracle
3 24 (6.94%) Google
4 20 (5.78%) Salesforce
5 17 (4.91%) Databricks
6 11 (3.18%) CyberArk
7 10 (2.89%) SAP
8 9 (2.60%) VMware
9 7 (2.02%) Foundry
9 7 (2.02%) IBM
10 6 (1.73%) Cisco
10 6 (1.73%) Palantir
11 5 (1.45%) Red Hat
11 5 (1.45%) Splunk
12 4 (1.16%) ServiceNow
13 3 (0.87%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
14 2 (0.58%) Checkmarx
14 2 (0.58%) Denodo
14 2 (0.58%) MuleSoft
14 2 (0.58%) Zscaler