Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £513, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 11 October 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 197 292 335
Rank change year-on-year +95 +43 -89
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 810 286 243
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.48% 0.86% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.61% 0.95% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 524 212 144
10th Percentile £405 £400 £386
25th Percentile £450 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £644
90th Percentile £681 £649 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +1.00% - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 7 0
10th Percentile £22.69 £29.00 -
25th Percentile £23.20 £29.50 -
Median hourly rate £76.00 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +68.89% - -
75th Percentile £81.25 £86.25 -
90th Percentile - £110.00 -
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 50,214 30,082 35,242
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.03% 90.84% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,439 18,998 21,292
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 £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,075 1,645 1,472
10th Percentile £14.31 £13.75 £14.87
25th Percentile £19.34 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -39.40% -7.78%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.60 £68.00 £74.37
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +66.84% -41.18% -4.49%

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 11 October 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 11 October 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 11 October 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 +98 710 £525 +5.00% 1,335
UK excluding London +106 448 £505 +1.00% 729
London +52 305 £525 +2.44% 655
Work from Home +38 219 £528 +5.60% 534
North of England +21 150 £510 +7.37% 199
South East +19 134 £538 +7.50% 128
North West +20 89 £513 +18.84% 116
Midlands +13 83 £500 -4.76% 91
Yorkshire 0 50 £450 -13.88% 49
East Midlands +29 48 £500 +5.26% 40
Scotland +2 47 £428 -18.57% 89
West Midlands -31 34 £525 -1.41% 51
South West -18 15 £556 +1.14% 84
East of England -19 14 £475 +10.14% 69
North East -33 11 £525 +14.13% 34
Wales -6 7 - - 25

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

For the 6 months to 11 October 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 (47.65%) Azure
2 312 (38.52%) Terraform
3 285 (35.19%) Infrastructure as Code
4 268 (33.09%) CI/CD
5 262 (32.35%) AWS
6 208 (25.68%) DevOps
6 208 (25.68%) Kubernetes
7 198 (24.44%) Security Cleared
8 195 (24.07%) Python
9 193 (23.83%) Microsoft
10 176 (21.73%) PowerShell
11 175 (21.60%) Cloud Security
12 165 (20.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 160 (19.75%) GCP
14 150 (18.52%) Platform Engineering
15 139 (17.16%) SC Cleared
16 135 (16.67%) Entra ID
17 123 (15.19%) Windows
18 112 (13.83%) Active Directory
19 109 (13.46%) Google
20 103 (12.72%) Migration
21 102 (12.59%) AI
22 93 (11.48%) Observability
23 89 (10.99%) GitHub
24 88 (10.86%) Containerisation
24 88 (10.86%) Firewall
25 87 (10.74%) DNS
26 85 (10.49%) Agile
27 81 (10.00%) Bash
27 81 (10.00%) 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 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.48%) Apache
3 10 (1.23%) SharePoint
4 8 (0.99%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.86%) Confluence
6 5 (0.62%) nginx
7 3 (0.37%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.37%) IIS
7 3 (0.37%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.37%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
8 2 (0.25%) Traefik
9 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 (47.65%) Azure
2 262 (32.35%) AWS
3 160 (19.75%) GCP
4 135 (16.67%) Entra ID
5 89 (10.99%) GitHub
6 62 (7.65%) IaaS
7 59 (7.28%) GitHub Actions
8 57 (7.04%) Azure DevOps
9 50 (6.17%) Serverless
10 49 (6.05%) Microsoft 365
11 46 (5.68%) AWS CloudFormation
12 45 (5.56%) Azure Monitor
13 43 (5.31%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 42 (5.19%) PaaS
15 40 (4.94%) Azure AKS
16 37 (4.57%) Amazon EKS
16 37 (4.57%) AWS Lambda
17 33 (4.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 31 (3.83%) OCI
19 29 (3.58%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 88 (10.86%) Firewall
2 87 (10.74%) DNS
3 45 (5.56%) Network Security
4 41 (5.06%) VPN
5 21 (2.59%) DHCP
6 19 (2.35%) WAN
7 17 (2.10%) TCP/IP
8 14 (1.73%) Internet
9 9 (1.11%) VSAN
10 8 (0.99%) SD-WAN
11 7 (0.86%) NGFW
11 7 (0.86%) VLAN
12 5 (0.62%) BGP
12 5 (0.62%) Kerberos
13 4 (0.49%) LAN
13 4 (0.49%) Reverse Proxy
13 4 (0.49%) SAN
13 4 (0.49%) SSL
13 4 (0.49%) Wireless
14 3 (0.37%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (3.83%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.59%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (1.73%) Data Lake
5 12 (1.48%) BigQuery
6 10 (1.23%) NoSQL
7 9 (1.11%) DynamoDB
8 8 (0.99%) Oracle Exadata
9 6 (0.74%) Oracle Database
10 5 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (0.62%) MongoDB
11 4 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
11 4 (0.49%) Metadata
11 4 (0.49%) MySQL
11 4 (0.49%) Redis
12 3 (0.37%) Delta Lake
12 3 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
12 3 (0.37%) Flink
12 3 (0.37%) Looker
12 3 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 50 (6.17%) GitLab
2 49 (6.05%) Jenkins
3 37 (4.57%) Git
4 17 (2.10%) JIRA
5 7 (0.86%) Claude Code
6 6 (0.74%) Artifactory
6 6 (0.74%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.49%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.25%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.25%) Gatling
8 2 (0.25%) JMeter
8 2 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.12%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.12%) eggPlant
9 1 (0.12%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.12%) Selenium
9 1 (0.12%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.12%) Spinnaker
9 1 (0.12%) TestRail
General
1 101 (12.47%) Finance
2 85 (10.49%) Social Skills
3 76 (9.38%) Public Sector
4 35 (4.32%) Banking
5 34 (4.20%) Analytical Skills
6 11 (1.36%) Manufacturing
7 9 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (0.99%) Legal
9 6 (0.74%) Front Office
9 6 (0.74%) Investment Banking
10 5 (0.62%) Local Government
10 5 (0.62%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.37%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.37%) Automotive
11 3 (0.37%) Back Office
11 3 (0.37%) Italian Language
11 3 (0.37%) Law
11 3 (0.37%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (38.52%) Terraform
2 27 (3.33%) REST
3 20 (2.47%) ARM Templates
4 16 (1.98%) Kafka
4 16 (1.98%) OAuth
5 14 (1.73%) OAuth2
6 12 (1.48%) OpenID
7 11 (1.36%) Spring
7 11 (1.36%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.11%) Node.js
8 9 (1.11%) YAML
9 8 (0.99%) .NET
9 8 (0.99%) AWS CDK
9 8 (0.99%) React
10 6 (0.74%) FastAPI
10 6 (0.74%) Flask
10 6 (0.74%) Keycloak
10 6 (0.74%) OpenTelemetry
11 5 (0.62%) Azure Blueprints
12 4 (0.49%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 127 (15.68%) Cloud Native
2 61 (7.53%) Security Posture
3 45 (5.56%) Enterprise Cloud
4 41 (5.06%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (3.95%) Cloud Security Posture
6 31 (3.83%) Onboarding
7 27 (3.33%) Data Centre
8 26 (3.21%) Enterprise Software
9 20 (2.47%) Distributed Systems
9 20 (2.47%) Management Information System
10 16 (1.98%) Public Cloud
11 14 (1.73%) Private Cloud
12 13 (1.60%) Product Ownership
13 12 (1.48%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (1.23%) PKI
15 8 (0.99%) AI Agents
15 8 (0.99%) Data Protection Act
16 6 (0.74%) Distributed Architecture
16 6 (0.74%) Replication
17 5 (0.62%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 123 (15.19%) Windows
2 81 (10.00%) Linux
3 61 (7.53%) Windows Server
4 32 (3.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.85%) Windows Server 2019
6 9 (1.11%) Ubuntu
7 8 (0.99%) 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
1 285 (35.19%) Infrastructure as Code
2 268 (33.09%) CI/CD
3 208 (25.68%) DevOps
4 175 (21.60%) Cloud Security
5 165 (20.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 150 (18.52%) Platform Engineering
7 103 (12.72%) Migration
8 102 (12.59%) AI
9 93 (11.48%) Observability
10 88 (10.86%) Containerisation
11 85 (10.49%) Agile
12 66 (8.15%) Cybersecurity
12 66 (8.15%) Infrastructure Automation
13 65 (8.02%) Technical Leadership
14 62 (7.65%) Deployment Automation
15 60 (7.41%) Software Engineering
16 59 (7.28%) RBAC
17 57 (7.04%) Continuous Improvement
18 56 (6.91%) Problem-Solving
19 54 (6.67%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 195 (24.07%) Python
2 176 (21.73%) PowerShell
3 81 (10.00%) Bash
4 78 (9.63%) Bicep
5 70 (8.64%) SQL
6 37 (4.57%) Java
7 16 (1.98%) Shell Script
8 14 (1.73%) C#
9 11 (1.36%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.23%) Go
11 5 (0.62%) Kotlin
12 4 (0.49%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.37%) C
13 3 (0.37%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (0.37%) Scala
14 2 (0.25%) Groovy
15 1 (0.12%) Apex Code
15 1 (0.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.12%) R
15 1 (0.12%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 198 (24.44%) Security Cleared
2 139 (17.16%) SC Cleared
3 69 (8.52%) DV Cleared
4 48 (5.93%) Azure Certification
5 45 (5.56%) AWS Certification
6 39 (4.81%) Degree
7 23 (2.84%) Microsoft Certification
8 18 (2.22%) CISSP
9 13 (1.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (0.99%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (0.99%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (0.99%) MCSE
11 7 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 6 (0.74%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 6 (0.74%) CCNP
12 6 (0.74%) CISM
12 6 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (0.37%) CCIE
13 3 (0.37%) CEH
13 3 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (2.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (1.73%) Data Quality
3 12 (1.48%) NIST
4 8 (0.99%) GDPR
5 6 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials
5 6 (0.74%) NCSC
5 6 (0.74%) QA
6 4 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 4 (0.49%) 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
1 112 (13.83%) Active Directory
2 80 (9.88%) Docker
3 53 (6.54%) VMware Infrastructure
4 46 (5.68%) Virtual Machines
5 35 (4.32%) VMware ESXi
6 25 (3.09%) VMware NSX
7 21 (2.59%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (2.47%) vSphere
9 15 (1.85%) vCloud
10 11 (1.36%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.74%) Squid
12 5 (0.62%) Firmware
13 4 (0.49%) 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
1 208 (25.68%) Kubernetes
2 52 (6.42%) Ansible
3 31 (3.83%) vCenter Server
4 28 (3.46%) Microsoft Intune
5 27 (3.33%) SCOM
6 25 (3.09%) Grafana
7 19 (2.35%) Progress Chef
7 19 (2.35%) Prometheus
8 15 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (1.48%) Puppet
10 11 (1.36%) Istio
11 7 (0.86%) Argo
11 7 (0.86%) Cilium
12 5 (0.62%) HAProxy
12 5 (0.62%) VxRail
13 4 (0.49%) Packer
13 4 (0.49%) Suricata
14 3 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (0.37%) Karpenter
14 3 (0.37%) vRealize
Vendors
1 193 (23.83%) Microsoft
2 109 (13.46%) Google
3 75 (9.26%) VMware
4 38 (4.69%) Oracle
5 30 (3.70%) Databricks
6 20 (2.47%) Red Hat
7 19 (2.35%) Okta
8 17 (2.10%) Palo Alto
9 16 (1.98%) SolarWinds
10 15 (1.85%) Zscaler
11 14 (1.73%) Splunk
12 13 (1.60%) Broadcom
12 13 (1.60%) Cisco
13 12 (1.48%) OpenAI
13 12 (1.48%) ServiceNow
14 9 (1.11%) CrowdStrike
14 9 (1.11%) Dynatrace
14 9 (1.11%) New Relic
14 9 (1.11%) Salesforce
15 8 (0.99%) BeyondTrust