Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £520, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 September 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 196 312 337
Rank change year-on-year +116 +25 -79
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 801 263 245
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.46% 0.80% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.58% 0.88% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 531 193 148
10th Percentile £413 £400 £386
25th Percentile £452 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £551
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -9.17% +0.09%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £639
90th Percentile £675 £648 £704
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £515
% change year-on-year +2.00% -2.91% -6.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 7 0
10th Percentile £22.74 £29.00 -
25th Percentile £23.20 £29.50 -
Median hourly rate £76.50 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +70.00% - -
75th Percentile £81.25 £86.25 -
90th Percentile - £110.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.73 - -

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 50,615 29,871 34,958
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.21% 90.97% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,878 18,887 21,169
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £733 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,942 1,601 1,551
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.88
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.55 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.74 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.44% -41.69% -2.16%

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 30 September 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 30 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cloud Engineer in the UK

Cloud Engineer
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 Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 30 September 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 +116 704 £525 +5.00% 1,399
UK excluding London +99 443 £510 +2.00% 733
London +50 302 £525 +0.48% 714
Work from Home +29 212 £540 +8.00% 522
North of England +22 145 £511 +13.61% 212
South East +29 137 £538 +7.50% 121
North West +17 87 £513 +17.14% 136
Midlands +23 78 £500 -9.09% 93
Yorkshire -5 48 £460 -14.42% 48
Scotland +7 45 £425 -15.00% 98
East Midlands +18 44 £500 +5.26% 41
West Midlands -19 33 £525 -4.55% 52
East of England -15 17 £475 +5.56% 61
South West -29 16 £575 - 94
North East -34 10 £525 +14.13% 28
Wales -6 7 - - 18

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

For the 6 months to 30 September 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.

1 386 (48.19%) Azure
2 314 (39.20%) Terraform
3 287 (35.83%) Infrastructure as Code
4 272 (33.96%) AWS
4 272 (33.96%) CI/CD
5 211 (26.34%) Kubernetes
6 209 (26.09%) Security Cleared
7 206 (25.72%) DevOps
8 194 (24.22%) Python
9 193 (24.09%) Microsoft
10 183 (22.85%) Cloud Security
11 171 (21.35%) PowerShell
12 165 (20.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 157 (19.60%) GCP
14 148 (18.48%) SC Cleared
15 145 (18.10%) Platform Engineering
16 126 (15.73%) Entra ID
16 126 (15.73%) Windows
17 109 (13.61%) Active Directory
18 104 (12.98%) AI
19 103 (12.86%) Migration
20 102 (12.73%) Google
21 94 (11.74%) Containerisation
22 90 (11.24%) Observability
23 87 (10.86%) GitHub
24 86 (10.74%) Agile
24 86 (10.74%) Firewall
25 85 (10.61%) DNS
26 84 (10.49%) Docker
27 82 (10.24%) Linux

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 15 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.50%) Apache
3 9 (1.12%) SharePoint
4 8 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.87%) Confluence
6 3 (0.37%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.37%) IIS
6 3 (0.37%) nginx
6 3 (0.37%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.37%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.12%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 386 (48.19%) Azure
2 272 (33.96%) AWS
3 157 (19.60%) GCP
4 126 (15.73%) Entra ID
5 87 (10.86%) GitHub
6 56 (6.99%) IaaS
7 55 (6.87%) Azure DevOps
7 55 (6.87%) GitHub Actions
8 54 (6.74%) Serverless
9 45 (5.62%) AWS CloudFormation
10 43 (5.37%) Azure Monitor
10 43 (5.37%) Microsoft 365
11 41 (5.12%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 40 (4.99%) AWS Lambda
13 39 (4.87%) Azure AKS
13 39 (4.87%) PaaS
14 35 (4.37%) Amazon EKS
15 33 (4.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 31 (3.87%) Amazon EC2
16 31 (3.87%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 86 (10.74%) Firewall
2 85 (10.61%) DNS
3 44 (5.49%) Network Security
4 39 (4.87%) VPN
5 21 (2.62%) DHCP
6 18 (2.25%) WAN
7 16 (2.00%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.50%) Internet
9 9 (1.12%) VSAN
10 7 (0.87%) SD-WAN
10 7 (0.87%) VLAN
11 6 (0.75%) NGFW
12 5 (0.62%) Kerberos
13 4 (0.50%) BGP
13 4 (0.50%) LAN
13 4 (0.50%) SAN
13 4 (0.50%) SSL
13 4 (0.50%) Wireless
14 3 (0.37%) OSPF
14 3 (0.37%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (3.50%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
3 17 (2.12%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.62%) BigQuery
5 11 (1.37%) Data Lake
6 8 (1.00%) Oracle Exadata
7 7 (0.87%) DynamoDB
7 7 (0.87%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
8 6 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
9 5 (0.62%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.37%) Flink
10 3 (0.37%) Looker
10 3 (0.37%) Metadata
10 3 (0.37%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.37%) MySQL
10 3 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
11 2 (0.25%) Big Data
11 2 (0.25%) Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.25%) Redis
Development Applications
1 54 (6.74%) GitLab
2 47 (5.87%) Jenkins
3 38 (4.74%) Git
4 17 (2.12%) JIRA
5 8 (1.00%) Artifactory
6 7 (0.87%) Claude Code
7 6 (0.75%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.37%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.25%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.25%) Gatling
9 2 (0.25%) JMeter
9 2 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.12%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.12%) eggPlant
10 1 (0.12%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.12%) Selenium
10 1 (0.12%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.12%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.12%) TestRail
General
1 96 (11.99%) Finance
2 83 (10.36%) Social Skills
3 76 (9.49%) Public Sector
4 32 (4.00%) Analytical Skills
5 28 (3.50%) Banking
6 10 (1.25%) Manufacturing
7 9 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (1.00%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.00%) Legal
9 6 (0.75%) Investment Banking
10 5 (0.62%) Law
10 5 (0.62%) Local Government
10 5 (0.62%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.50%) Front Office
11 4 (0.50%) Police
12 3 (0.37%) Digital Health
12 3 (0.37%) Italian Language
12 3 (0.37%) Military
12 3 (0.37%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 314 (39.20%) Terraform
2 26 (3.25%) REST
3 20 (2.50%) ARM Templates
4 14 (1.75%) Kafka
5 13 (1.62%) OAuth
6 12 (1.50%) OAuth2
7 10 (1.25%) Spring
7 10 (1.25%) Spring Boot
8 8 (1.00%) .NET
8 8 (1.00%) AWS CDK
8 8 (1.00%) Keycloak
8 8 (1.00%) Node.js
8 8 (1.00%) OpenID
8 8 (1.00%) React
9 7 (0.87%) YAML
10 6 (0.75%) FastAPI
10 6 (0.75%) Flask
11 5 (0.62%) Azure Blueprints
12 4 (0.50%) PySpark
12 4 (0.50%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 126 (15.73%) Cloud Native
2 61 (7.62%) Security Posture
3 45 (5.62%) Enterprise Cloud
4 40 (4.99%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (4.00%) Cloud Security Posture
6 30 (3.75%) Onboarding
7 27 (3.37%) Enterprise Software
8 24 (3.00%) Data Centre
9 21 (2.62%) Management Information System
10 20 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
11 15 (1.87%) Public Cloud
12 14 (1.75%) Private Cloud
13 13 (1.62%) Product Ownership
14 11 (1.37%) Linux Command Line
15 10 (1.25%) PKI
16 8 (1.00%) AI Agents
16 8 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
17 6 (0.75%) Distributed Architecture
18 5 (0.62%) CMDB
18 5 (0.62%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 126 (15.73%) Windows
2 82 (10.24%) Linux
3 64 (7.99%) Windows Server
4 31 (3.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.87%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.00%) Ubuntu
7 7 (0.87%) VMS
8 3 (0.37%) CentOS
9 2 (0.25%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.12%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 287 (35.83%) Infrastructure as Code
2 272 (33.96%) CI/CD
3 206 (25.72%) DevOps
4 183 (22.85%) Cloud Security
5 165 (20.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 145 (18.10%) Platform Engineering
7 104 (12.98%) AI
8 103 (12.86%) Migration
9 94 (11.74%) Containerisation
10 90 (11.24%) Observability
11 86 (10.74%) Agile
12 65 (8.11%) Technical Leadership
13 62 (7.74%) Cybersecurity
14 61 (7.62%) DevSecOps
15 60 (7.49%) Infrastructure Automation
16 59 (7.37%) Software Engineering
17 58 (7.24%) Deployment Automation
18 55 (6.87%) Continuous Improvement
18 55 (6.87%) Problem-Solving
19 54 (6.74%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 194 (24.22%) Python
2 171 (21.35%) PowerShell
3 81 (10.11%) Bash
4 79 (9.86%) Bicep
5 66 (8.24%) SQL
6 38 (4.74%) Java
7 16 (2.00%) Shell Script
8 15 (1.87%) C#
9 11 (1.37%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.12%) Go
11 4 (0.50%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.37%) C
12 3 (0.37%) Scala
13 2 (0.25%) Groovy
13 2 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.12%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.12%) Perl
14 1 (0.12%) R
14 1 (0.12%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 209 (26.09%) Security Cleared
2 148 (18.48%) SC Cleared
3 74 (9.24%) DV Cleared
4 47 (5.87%) Azure Certification
5 44 (5.49%) AWS Certification
6 35 (4.37%) Degree
7 22 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
8 18 (2.25%) CISSP
9 13 (1.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (1.00%) MCSE
11 7 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
11 7 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 6 (0.75%) CISM
12 6 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
13 5 (0.62%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 5 (0.62%) CCNP
14 3 (0.37%) CCIE
14 3 (0.37%) CEH
14 3 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 13 (1.62%) Data Quality
2 13 (1.62%) NIST
3 9 (1.12%) NCSC
4 8 (1.00%) QA
5 6 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
5 6 (0.75%) GDPR
6 4 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 4 (0.50%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.25%) SLA
9 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.12%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.12%) GRC
System Software
1 109 (13.61%) Active Directory
2 84 (10.49%) Docker
3 52 (6.49%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (4.99%) Virtual Machines
5 35 (4.37%) VMware ESXi
6 28 (3.50%) VMware NSX
7 24 (3.00%) Virtual Desktop
8 22 (2.75%) vSphere
9 15 (1.87%) vCloud
10 11 (1.37%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.75%) Squid
12 5 (0.62%) Firmware
13 4 (0.50%) NFS
14 3 (0.37%) Ceph
14 3 (0.37%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.37%) Postfix
15 2 (0.25%) IAG
15 2 (0.25%) KVM
15 2 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
16 1 (0.12%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 211 (26.34%) Kubernetes
2 54 (6.74%) Ansible
3 31 (3.87%) vCenter Server
4 29 (3.62%) Microsoft Intune
5 27 (3.37%) SCOM
6 24 (3.00%) Grafana
7 21 (2.62%) Prometheus
8 19 (2.37%) Progress Chef
9 16 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (1.75%) Puppet
11 11 (1.37%) Istio
12 8 (1.00%) Cilium
13 6 (0.75%) Argo
13 6 (0.75%) Packer
14 5 (0.62%) VxRail
15 4 (0.50%) Suricata
16 3 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 3 (0.37%) HAProxy
16 3 (0.37%) Karpenter
16 3 (0.37%) vRealize
Vendors
1 193 (24.09%) Microsoft
2 102 (12.73%) Google
3 77 (9.61%) VMware
4 36 (4.49%) Oracle
5 27 (3.37%) Databricks
6 20 (2.50%) Red Hat
7 17 (2.12%) Okta
7 17 (2.12%) Palo Alto
8 16 (2.00%) SolarWinds
8 16 (2.00%) Zscaler
9 14 (1.75%) Splunk
10 13 (1.62%) Broadcom
10 13 (1.62%) Cisco
10 13 (1.62%) ServiceNow
11 12 (1.50%) OpenAI
12 10 (1.25%) Dynatrace
13 9 (1.12%) CrowdStrike
13 9 (1.12%) New Relic
14 8 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
14 8 (1.00%) Salesforce