Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 7 April 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 242 313 307
Rank change year-on-year +71 -6 -46
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 489 229 320
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 0.78% 0.73%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.16% 0.84% 0.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 330 172 220
10th Percentile £400 £382 £400
25th Percentile £450 £425 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £613 £620 £621
90th Percentile £694 £675 £689
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 4
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £25.13 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £25.25 - £30.00
75th Percentile £39.56 - £42.50
90th Percentile £48.08 - £60.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £30.00

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 42,056 27,143 40,722
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.24% 92.76% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,180 17,855 26,652
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.05%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,649 962 2,545
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.00 £20.24 £16.25
Median hourly rate £40.00 £31.76 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.94% -6.59% -23.65%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.62 £30.93 £35.00
% change year-on-year +34.55% -11.63% -17.38%

Cloud Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Cloud Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Cloud Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Cloud Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Cloud Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Cloud Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Cloud Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cloud Engineer over the 6 months to 7 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Cloud Engineer in the UK

Cloud Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Cloud Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Cloud Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Cloud Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Cloud Engineer over the 6 months to 7 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cloud Engineer in the UK

Cloud Engineer
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 Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 7 April 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 +35 399 £525 - 126
London +31 222 £525 - 47
UK excluding London +5 207 £525 +5.00% 95
Work from Home +5 118 £510 -2.86% 70
North of England -30 64 £513 +7.89% 33
South East -35 39 £522 -7.20% 29
Scotland +30 38 £513 -2.38% 5
Yorkshire -20 36 £506 +55.77% 13
Midlands -50 35 £575 +21.05% 8
West Midlands -40 29 £670 +14.04% 5
North West -19 28 £513 +13.89% 17
South West -11 22 £550 -4.35% 15
East of England -24 18 £510 +3.55% 5
East Midlands -33 6 £575 +21.05% 3
Wales -9 1 £425 +41.67% 1

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

For the 6 months to 7 April 2026, Cloud Engineer 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 Engineer in the job title.

1 222 (45.40%) Terraform
2 218 (44.58%) AWS
3 206 (42.13%) CI/CD
4 202 (41.31%) Azure
5 194 (39.67%) Infrastructure as Code
6 181 (37.01%) DevOps
7 131 (26.79%) Security Cleared
8 128 (26.18%) GCP
9 127 (25.97%) Kubernetes
10 124 (25.36%) Python
11 105 (21.47%) GitHub
12 103 (21.06%) SC Cleared
13 100 (20.45%) Cloud Security
14 95 (19.43%) Google
15 86 (17.59%) Agile
15 86 (17.59%) Microsoft
16 78 (15.95%) Containerisation
17 74 (15.13%) Platform Engineering
18 69 (14.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
19 68 (13.91%) PowerShell
20 66 (13.50%) Docker
21 64 (13.09%) Migration
22 63 (12.88%) GitHub Actions
22 63 (12.88%) Serverless
23 57 (11.66%) Jenkins
24 49 (10.02%) Continuous Improvement
24 49 (10.02%) Infrastructure Automation
24 49 (10.02%) Observability
25 44 (9.00%) AWS CloudFormation
25 44 (9.00%) Firewall

Cloud Engineer 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 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (1.02%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.02%) Confluence
3 4 (0.82%) Apache
4 3 (0.61%) nginx
5 2 (0.41%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.20%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.20%) CMS
6 1 (0.20%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.20%) SAS
6 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.41%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.20%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 218 (44.58%) AWS
2 202 (41.31%) Azure
3 128 (26.18%) GCP
4 105 (21.47%) GitHub
5 63 (12.88%) GitHub Actions
5 63 (12.88%) Serverless
6 44 (9.00%) AWS CloudFormation
7 39 (7.98%) Azure DevOps
8 37 (7.57%) PaaS
9 36 (7.36%) Entra ID
10 34 (6.95%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 32 (6.54%) Amazon S3
11 32 (6.54%) Azure AKS
12 31 (6.34%) Amazon EKS
12 31 (6.34%) IaaS
13 28 (5.73%) AWS Lambda
14 26 (5.32%) Amazon ECS
15 20 (4.09%) SaaS
15 20 (4.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 19 (3.89%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 44 (9.00%) Firewall
2 20 (4.09%) DNS
3 19 (3.89%) Network Security
4 16 (3.27%) VPN
5 9 (1.84%) Cisco Firepower
6 8 (1.64%) Cisco IOS
6 8 (1.64%) Cisco ISE
6 8 (1.64%) Junos
7 5 (1.02%) NX-OS
8 4 (0.82%) DHCP
8 4 (0.82%) Reverse Proxy
8 4 (0.82%) Software-Defined Networking
9 3 (0.61%) BGP
10 2 (0.41%) DKIM
10 2 (0.41%) SMTP
10 2 (0.41%) TCP/IP
10 2 (0.41%) Unified Communications
10 2 (0.41%) VLAN
11 1 (0.20%) SD-WAN
11 1 (0.20%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (3.27%) NoSQL
3 12 (2.45%) Amazon Athena
4 11 (2.25%) BigQuery
5 10 (2.04%) DynamoDB
6 8 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (1.43%) Power BI
8 6 (1.23%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (1.23%) Data Lake
9 5 (1.02%) Amazon Redshift
9 5 (1.02%) Big Data
10 4 (0.82%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (0.82%) SQL Server
11 3 (0.61%) Oracle Database
11 3 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (0.41%) Amazon QuickSight
12 2 (0.41%) Delta Lake
12 2 (0.41%) Metadata
12 2 (0.41%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 57 (11.66%) Jenkins
2 44 (9.00%) GitLab
3 33 (6.75%) Git
4 7 (1.43%) JIRA
5 6 (1.23%) Liquibase
6 3 (0.61%) CircleCI
6 3 (0.61%) Postman
6 3 (0.61%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.41%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.41%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.41%) Selenium
7 2 (0.41%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.20%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.20%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.20%) JUnit
8 1 (0.20%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.20%) RStudio
8 1 (0.20%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.20%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 77 (15.75%) Social Skills
2 70 (14.31%) Finance
3 42 (8.59%) Public Sector
4 25 (5.11%) Banking
5 21 (4.29%) Analytical Skills
6 17 (3.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (2.04%) Financial Institution
8 8 (1.64%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.64%) Retail
9 7 (1.43%) Aeronautics
10 6 (1.23%) Legal
10 6 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.23%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.82%) Investment Banking
12 3 (0.61%) Marketing
13 2 (0.41%) Billing
13 2 (0.41%) Local Government
13 2 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.20%) Front Office
14 1 (0.20%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (7.57%) REST
2 24 (4.91%) Node.js
3 19 (3.89%) Elastic Stack
4 15 (3.07%) RESTful
5 13 (2.66%) Kafka
6 11 (2.25%) OpenTelemetry
6 11 (2.25%) React
7 9 (1.84%) .NET
7 9 (1.84%) ARM Templates
7 9 (1.84%) Oracle Fusion
7 9 (1.84%) Spring
7 9 (1.84%) Spring Boot
8 8 (1.64%) LangChain
8 8 (1.64%) OAuth
8 8 (1.64%) Playwright
8 8 (1.64%) SOAP
9 7 (1.43%) AngularJS
9 7 (1.43%) NestJS
9 7 (1.43%) OpenAPI
9 7 (1.43%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 87 (17.79%) Cloud Native
2 43 (8.79%) Public Cloud
3 17 (3.48%) Distributed Systems
4 16 (3.27%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (2.66%) Data Centre
6 10 (2.04%) Product Ownership
7 9 (1.84%) PKI
7 9 (1.84%) Security Posture
8 7 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.23%) Cyber Threat
9 6 (1.23%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.02%) Enterprise Cloud
11 4 (0.82%) Enterprise Software
11 4 (0.82%) Virtual Team
12 3 (0.61%) Cloud Security Posture
12 3 (0.61%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (0.61%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.61%) Replication
13 2 (0.41%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 40 (8.18%) Linux
2 33 (6.75%) Windows
3 15 (3.07%) Windows Server
4 5 (1.02%) Unix
5 4 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.82%) VMS
6 1 (0.20%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 206 (42.13%) CI/CD
2 194 (39.67%) Infrastructure as Code
3 181 (37.01%) DevOps
4 100 (20.45%) Cloud Security
5 86 (17.59%) Agile
6 78 (15.95%) Containerisation
7 74 (15.13%) Platform Engineering
8 69 (14.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 64 (13.09%) Migration
10 49 (10.02%) Continuous Improvement
10 49 (10.02%) Infrastructure Automation
10 49 (10.02%) Observability
11 42 (8.59%) DevSecOps
11 42 (8.59%) Microservices
12 41 (8.38%) AI
13 39 (7.98%) Cybersecurity
13 39 (7.98%) Problem-Solving
14 37 (7.57%) Software Engineering
15 30 (6.13%) Mentoring
16 27 (5.52%) Cost Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 124 (25.36%) Python
2 68 (13.91%) PowerShell
3 39 (7.98%) SQL
4 33 (6.75%) Bash
5 28 (5.73%) Java
6 25 (5.11%) Bicep
7 19 (3.89%) Go
8 16 (3.27%) TypeScript
9 12 (2.45%) C#
10 7 (1.43%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.82%) BeanShell
11 4 (0.82%) Groovy
11 4 (0.82%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.41%) Perl
12 2 (0.41%) Ruby
13 1 (0.20%) C
13 1 (0.20%) Cypher
13 1 (0.20%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.20%) R
Qualifications
1 131 (26.79%) Security Cleared
2 103 (21.06%) SC Cleared
3 42 (8.59%) Azure Certification
4 30 (6.13%) AWS Certification
5 29 (5.93%) Degree
6 25 (5.11%) DV Cleared
7 19 (3.89%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (3.27%) Microsoft Certification
9 13 (2.66%) CISSP
9 13 (2.66%) Master's Degree
10 12 (2.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 10 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
11 10 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
12 7 (1.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 7 (1.43%) CISM
13 6 (1.23%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 5 (1.02%) CCSP
14 5 (1.02%) TOGAF Certification
15 3 (0.61%) AWS Certified Developer
15 3 (0.61%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (2.86%) GDPR
2 13 (2.66%) NCSC
3 12 (2.45%) NIST
4 11 (2.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 8 (1.64%) QA
6 6 (1.23%) Data Quality
6 6 (1.23%) PCI DSS
7 5 (1.02%) GRC
8 4 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.61%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.41%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.41%) SLA
11 1 (0.20%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.20%) FedRAMP
11 1 (0.20%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 66 (13.50%) Docker
2 25 (5.11%) Active Directory
3 14 (2.86%) Virtual Desktop
4 12 (2.45%) VMware NSX
5 11 (2.25%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.23%) Firmware
7 6 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
8 4 (0.82%) vSphere
9 1 (0.20%) Squid
Systems Management
1 222 (45.40%) Terraform
2 127 (25.97%) Kubernetes
3 33 (6.75%) Ansible
3 33 (6.75%) Prometheus
4 32 (6.54%) Grafana
5 19 (3.89%) Istio
6 15 (3.07%) Argo
7 12 (2.45%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
9 9 (1.84%) vCenter Server
10 5 (1.02%) Packer
10 5 (1.02%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.82%) Kibana
11 4 (0.82%) logstash
12 3 (0.61%) Podman
12 3 (0.61%) Puppet
13 2 (0.41%) Consul
13 2 (0.41%) Proxmox
13 2 (0.41%) Salt
13 2 (0.41%) SCCM
Vendors
1 95 (19.43%) Google
2 86 (17.59%) Microsoft
3 18 (3.68%) Oracle
3 18 (3.68%) Splunk
4 14 (2.86%) Cisco
5 11 (2.25%) Databricks
5 11 (2.25%) ServiceNow
6 10 (2.04%) Dynatrace
6 10 (2.04%) VMware
7 9 (1.84%) Juniper
8 8 (1.64%) SolarWinds
9 7 (1.43%) Ping Identity
10 6 (1.23%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.02%) Broadcom
11 5 (1.02%) Citrix
11 5 (1.02%) PeopleSoft
11 5 (1.02%) Rapid7
11 5 (1.02%) Zscaler
12 4 (0.82%) Palo Alto
12 4 (0.82%) Red Hat