Cloud Architect Contract Job Trends

Cloud Architect
UK

The median Cloud Architect daily rate in the UK is £601, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 August 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 345 358 347
Rank change year-on-year +13 -11 -12
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Architect 346 196 225
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.59% 0.58%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.70% 0.65% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 222 140 157
10th Percentile £500 £498 £496
25th Percentile £550 £522 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £601 £633 £650
Median % change year-on-year -4.94% -2.69% -3.70%
75th Percentile £711 £731 £763
90th Percentile £775 £775 £793
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £641 £688
% change year-on-year -6.43% -6.73% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £23.20 - -
Median hourly rate £25.47 - -
75th Percentile £27.73 - -
90th Percentile £40.41 - -
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 49,505 30,216 36,013
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 91.29% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,709 19,089 23,205
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £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 3,494 1,545 1,999
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +2.87%
75th Percentile £67.96 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +21.62%

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 17 August 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 17 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cloud Architect 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 17 August 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 +11 282 £600 -6.43% 52
London -6 173 £650 +1.56% 30
UK excluding London -36 113 £600 -6.43% 35
Work from Home -42 109 £608 +0.75% 33
South East -41 30 £575 +6.48% 12
North of England -51 23 £600 -20.00% 8
Midlands -28 22 £700 +16.67% 1
South West -40 15 £600 -6.61% 7
North West -28 13 £600 -20.00% 6
East Midlands -5 12 £538 -
Scotland -4 10 £650 - 4
East of England -13 10 £600 -11.11%
West Midlands -44 10 £725 +44.57% 1
Yorkshire -28 9 £650 -12.31% 2
Wales -20 4 £663 +38.02% 3
North East - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 17 August 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.

1 180 (52.02%) AWS
2 139 (40.17%) Azure
3 101 (29.19%) Migration
4 93 (26.88%) Security Cleared
5 74 (21.39%) SC Cleared
6 69 (19.94%) GCP
7 66 (19.08%) DevOps
8 62 (17.92%) Infrastructure as Code
9 58 (16.76%) CI/CD
9 58 (16.76%) Microsoft
10 51 (14.74%) Technical Leadership
11 49 (14.16%) Cloud Security
12 45 (13.01%) Roadmaps
13 44 (12.72%) Stakeholder Management
14 43 (12.43%) Terraform
15 42 (12.14%) Analytics
16 40 (11.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 39 (11.27%) TOGAF
18 38 (10.98%) Kubernetes
18 38 (10.98%) SaaS
19 35 (10.12%) Problem-Solving
20 34 (9.83%) Security Architecture
21 32 (9.25%) AI
21 32 (9.25%) Google
22 31 (8.96%) Technical Architecture
23 30 (8.67%) Oracle
24 29 (8.38%) Architectural Patterns
24 29 (8.38%) Containerisation
24 29 (8.38%) Firewall
25 27 (7.80%) Data Lake

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
3 2 (0.58%) Apache
3 2 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.58%) SAS
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
Business Applications
1 5 (1.45%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.58%) Cloudability
2 2 (0.58%) Oracle Retail
2 2 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
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
1 180 (52.02%) AWS
2 139 (40.17%) Azure
3 69 (19.94%) GCP
4 38 (10.98%) SaaS
5 27 (7.80%) Serverless
6 24 (6.94%) PaaS
7 16 (4.62%) Entra ID
7 16 (4.62%) OCI
8 14 (4.05%) IaaS
9 12 (3.47%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (2.60%) Snowflake
11 8 (2.31%) GitHub
12 7 (2.02%) Amazon EKS
12 7 (2.02%) Azure Sentinel
12 7 (2.02%) Microsoft 365
12 7 (2.02%) Salesforce Service Cloud
13 6 (1.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 6 (1.73%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
14 5 (1.45%) Azure DevOps
14 5 (1.45%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 29 (8.38%) Firewall
2 24 (6.94%) VPN
3 14 (4.05%) Network Security
4 2 (0.58%) DNS
4 2 (0.58%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (0.29%) 5G
5 1 (0.29%) CTI
5 1 (0.29%) DAB
5 1 (0.29%) Internet
5 1 (0.29%) NGFW
5 1 (0.29%) PSTN
5 1 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
5 1 (0.29%) RTP
5 1 (0.29%) VSAN
5 1 (0.29%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (7.80%) Data Lake
2 13 (3.76%) Oracle Database
3 9 (2.60%) BigQuery
4 6 (1.73%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (1.16%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (1.16%) Oracle Exadata
6 3 (0.87%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.58%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.58%) MySQL
7 2 (0.58%) Power BI
7 2 (0.58%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.58%) Tableau
8 1 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.29%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.29%) Big Data
8 1 (0.29%) Flink
8 1 (0.29%) HBase
8 1 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.29%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.29%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 7 (2.02%) Git
2 5 (1.45%) JIRA
3 3 (0.87%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.58%) Claude Code
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 53 (15.32%) Social Skills
2 51 (14.74%) Finance
3 38 (10.98%) Public Sector
4 23 (6.65%) Banking
5 21 (6.07%) Documentation Skills
6 14 (4.05%) Retail
7 13 (3.76%) Analytical Skills
8 7 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.73%) Marketing
10 5 (1.45%) Billing
11 4 (1.16%) Legal
11 4 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
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 8 (2.31%) Kafka
3 8 (2.31%) Oracle Fusion
4 6 (1.73%) Lightning Web Components
4 6 (1.73%) OAuth
5 5 (1.45%) SOAP
6 4 (1.16%) Node.js
6 4 (1.16%) SailPoint
7 3 (0.87%) ARM Templates
8 2 (0.58%) .NET
8 2 (0.58%) .NET Core
8 2 (0.58%) .NET Framework
8 2 (0.58%) AngularJS
8 2 (0.58%) JWT
8 2 (0.58%) OpenID
8 2 (0.58%) React
8 2 (0.58%) SAML
8 2 (0.58%) Spring
8 2 (0.58%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 68 (19.65%) Cloud Native
2 26 (7.51%) Management Information System
3 23 (6.65%) Enterprise Cloud
4 20 (5.78%) Data Centre
5 19 (5.49%) Hybrid Cloud
6 16 (4.62%) Onboarding
7 15 (4.34%) Public Cloud
8 10 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
9 8 (2.31%) Security Posture
10 6 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
11 5 (1.45%) Data Fabric
11 5 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.45%) Product Ownership
12 4 (1.16%) Private Cloud
13 3 (0.87%) AI Agents
13 3 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
13 3 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
13 3 (0.87%) NHS
13 3 (0.87%) PKI
13 3 (0.87%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 14 (4.05%) Windows
2 7 (2.02%) Windows Server
3 5 (1.45%) Linux
3 5 (1.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.16%) Unix
5 1 (0.29%) AIX
5 1 (0.29%) Solaris
5 1 (0.29%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (29.19%) Migration
2 66 (19.08%) DevOps
3 62 (17.92%) Infrastructure as Code
4 58 (16.76%) CI/CD
5 51 (14.74%) Technical Leadership
6 49 (14.16%) Cloud Security
7 45 (13.01%) Roadmaps
8 44 (12.72%) Stakeholder Management
9 42 (12.14%) Analytics
10 40 (11.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 39 (11.27%) TOGAF
12 35 (10.12%) Problem-Solving
13 34 (9.83%) Security Architecture
14 32 (9.25%) AI
15 31 (8.96%) Technical Architecture
16 29 (8.38%) Architectural Patterns
16 29 (8.38%) Containerisation
17 25 (7.23%) Enterprise Architecture
17 25 (7.23%) Integration Patterns
17 25 (7.23%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 11 (3.18%) Bicep
2 10 (2.89%) Java
3 7 (2.02%) Python
4 6 (1.73%) Apex Code
4 6 (1.73%) JavaScript
5 5 (1.45%) Bash
5 5 (1.45%) SQL
6 4 (1.16%) PowerShell
7 2 (0.58%) C#
7 2 (0.58%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.29%) C
8 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.29%) ProC
8 1 (0.29%) Scala
8 1 (0.29%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 93 (26.88%) Security Cleared
2 74 (21.39%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.51%) AWS Certification
4 14 (4.05%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 13 (3.76%) Azure Certification
6 11 (3.18%) Cisco Certification
6 11 (3.18%) CISSP
6 11 (3.18%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (2.60%) DV Cleared
8 8 (2.31%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 8 (2.31%) CCSP
9 6 (1.73%) Degree
10 5 (1.45%) CISM
11 3 (0.87%) CCNP
11 3 (0.87%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 3 (0.87%) TOGAF Certification
12 2 (0.58%) BPSS Clearance
12 2 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (0.58%) IBM Certification
12 2 (0.58%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (6.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 18 (5.20%) NIST
3 14 (4.05%) PCI DSS
4 10 (2.89%) GDPR
5 4 (1.16%) Data Quality
5 4 (1.16%) GRC
5 4 (1.16%) NCSC
6 2 (0.58%) QA
7 1 (0.29%) COBIT
7 1 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 16 (4.62%) Active Directory
2 7 (2.02%) Docker
3 5 (1.45%) VMware NSX
4 3 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.58%) zsh
6 1 (0.29%) Varnish
6 1 (0.29%) vCloud
6 1 (0.29%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 43 (12.43%) Terraform
2 38 (10.98%) Kubernetes
3 3 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (0.58%) Ansible
4 2 (0.58%) CASB
5 1 (0.29%) CloudForms
5 1 (0.29%) Grafana
5 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.29%) Progress Chef
5 1 (0.29%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.29%) Puppet
5 1 (0.29%) QRadar
5 1 (0.29%) SCOM
5 1 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 58 (16.76%) Microsoft
2 32 (9.25%) Google
3 30 (8.67%) Oracle
4 21 (6.07%) Salesforce
5 18 (5.20%) Databricks
6 11 (3.18%) CyberArk
7 9 (2.60%) SAP
8 8 (2.31%) Cisco
8 8 (2.31%) VMware
9 7 (2.02%) Foundry
10 6 (1.73%) IBM
10 6 (1.73%) Palantir
11 5 (1.45%) Red Hat
11 5 (1.45%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.45%) Splunk
12 3 (0.87%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 2 (0.58%) Checkmarx
13 2 (0.58%) Zscaler
14 1 (0.29%) Denodo
14 1 (0.29%) Pure Storage