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 11 August 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 203 325 325
Rank change year-on-year +122 0 -54
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 733 257 252
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.37% 0.78% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.48% 0.85% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 474 192 165
10th Percentile £400 £400 £386
25th Percentile £451 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £575 £625
90th Percentile £684 £665 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +2.00% -3.85% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 5 1
10th Percentile £23.20 £29.40 -
25th Percentile £47.10 £30.00 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.11% +50.00% -
75th Percentile £81.25 £62.50 £32.50
90th Percentile £82.75 £91.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.00 - £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 49,431 30,083 36,174
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.55% 91.36% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,700 19,069 23,306
10th Percentile £328 £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 £625 £638
90th Percentile £729 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,475 1,511 2,026
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.08 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.99% -41.51% +2.87%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.08 £45.00
% change year-on-year +69.49% -44.28% +28.57%

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 August 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 August 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 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 +90 627 £525 +5.00% 761
UK excluding London +98 373 £510 +2.00% 330
London +47 309 £525 - 462
Work from Home +23 188 £540 +8.00% 260
South East +2 111 £538 +7.50% 55
North of England -12 100 £525 +16.67% 111
Midlands -8 60 £500 +5.26% 32
North West 0 59 £535 +22.34% 70
Scotland +33 58 £442 -11.60% 45
Yorkshire -18 34 £462 -7.62% 28
West Midlands -27 32 £525 +8.81% 18
East Midlands +7 27 £450 -5.26% 14
East of England 0 22 £505 +4.12% 26
South West -27 16 £563 +2.27% 47
Wales -5 7 - - 3
North East -41 7 £525 +10.53% 13

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

For the 6 months to 11 August 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.

1 354 (48.29%) Azure
2 315 (42.97%) Terraform
3 271 (36.97%) AWS
4 260 (35.47%) CI/CD
5 259 (35.33%) Infrastructure as Code
6 216 (29.47%) DevOps
7 193 (26.33%) Python
8 181 (24.69%) Security Cleared
9 179 (24.42%) Kubernetes
10 170 (23.19%) Cloud Security
11 169 (23.06%) Microsoft
12 166 (22.65%) GCP
13 159 (21.69%) PowerShell
14 149 (20.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 137 (18.69%) SC Cleared
16 135 (18.42%) Platform Engineering
17 116 (15.83%) Windows
18 115 (15.69%) Google
19 95 (12.96%) Entra ID
20 93 (12.69%) GitHub
21 92 (12.55%) AI
21 92 (12.55%) Migration
22 89 (12.14%) Agile
23 88 (12.01%) Containerisation
24 85 (11.60%) Active Directory
25 82 (11.19%) Bash
26 79 (10.78%) Firewall
27 78 (10.64%) Docker
27 78 (10.64%) Observability
28 76 (10.37%) DNS

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 13 (1.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.23%) Apache
3 7 (0.95%) Confluence
4 6 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.68%) SharePoint
6 4 (0.55%) nginx
7 3 (0.41%) IIS
7 3 (0.41%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.27%) CloudStack
8 2 (0.27%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
9 1 (0.14%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.14%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 354 (48.29%) Azure
2 271 (36.97%) AWS
3 166 (22.65%) GCP
4 95 (12.96%) Entra ID
5 93 (12.69%) GitHub
6 59 (8.05%) GitHub Actions
7 58 (7.91%) Serverless
8 52 (7.09%) Azure DevOps
9 48 (6.55%) Azure AKS
10 45 (6.14%) AWS CloudFormation
10 45 (6.14%) IaaS
11 41 (5.59%) Amazon S3
12 39 (5.32%) AWS Lambda
12 39 (5.32%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 38 (5.18%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 36 (4.91%) Amazon EC2
15 35 (4.77%) Azure Monitor
16 34 (4.64%) Amazon EKS
16 34 (4.64%) PaaS
17 32 (4.37%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 79 (10.78%) Firewall
2 76 (10.37%) DNS
3 39 (5.32%) VPN
4 33 (4.50%) Network Security
5 18 (2.46%) DHCP
6 17 (2.32%) WAN
7 15 (2.05%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.64%) Internet
9 6 (0.82%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.82%) VLAN
10 5 (0.68%) BGP
10 5 (0.68%) LAN
10 5 (0.68%) Reverse Proxy
10 5 (0.68%) SSL
11 4 (0.55%) SAN
11 4 (0.55%) SMTP
11 4 (0.55%) VSAN
12 3 (0.41%) Kerberos
12 3 (0.41%) NGFW
12 3 (0.41%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.55%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.46%) Amazon RDS
3 15 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.64%) BigQuery
5 9 (1.23%) Amazon Athena
6 8 (1.09%) Oracle Exadata
7 7 (0.95%) DynamoDB
8 6 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
9 5 (0.68%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.68%) Oracle Database
10 4 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.41%) Amazon QuickSight
11 3 (0.41%) Flink
11 3 (0.41%) Looker
11 3 (0.41%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.41%) MySQL
11 3 (0.41%) Oracle Database 12c
12 2 (0.27%) Big Data
12 2 (0.27%) Redis
12 2 (0.27%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 52 (7.09%) GitLab
2 49 (6.68%) Jenkins
3 39 (5.32%) Git
4 19 (2.59%) JIRA
5 9 (1.23%) Artifactory
6 6 (0.82%) Claude Code
7 5 (0.68%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.41%) Selenium
8 3 (0.41%) Team Foundation Server
9 2 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.27%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.27%) Gatling
9 2 (0.27%) JMeter
9 2 (0.27%) Octopus Deploy
9 2 (0.27%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.27%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.14%) Chocolatey
10 1 (0.14%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.14%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 92 (12.55%) Finance
2 84 (11.46%) Social Skills
3 64 (8.73%) Public Sector
4 30 (4.09%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (3.55%) Banking
6 12 (1.64%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (1.09%) Investment Banking
9 5 (0.68%) Law
9 5 (0.68%) Legal
9 5 (0.68%) Local Government
10 4 (0.55%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.41%) Front Office
11 3 (0.41%) Italian Language
11 3 (0.41%) Military
11 3 (0.41%) Police
11 3 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.41%) Retail
12 2 (0.27%) Digital Health
12 2 (0.27%) Digital Healthcare
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (3.27%) REST
2 13 (1.77%) ARM Templates
3 12 (1.64%) Node.js
3 12 (1.64%) OAuth
3 12 (1.64%) OAuth2
4 10 (1.36%) Spring
4 10 (1.36%) Spring Boot
5 8 (1.09%) AWS CDK
5 8 (1.09%) React
6 7 (0.95%) Model Context Protocol
6 7 (0.95%) OpenID
7 6 (0.82%) .NET
7 6 (0.82%) FastAPI
7 6 (0.82%) Flask
7 6 (0.82%) Kafka
7 6 (0.82%) YAML
8 5 (0.68%) Keycloak
9 4 (0.55%) Hugging Face
9 4 (0.55%) Playwright
9 4 (0.55%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 128 (17.46%) Cloud Native
2 52 (7.09%) Security Posture
3 41 (5.59%) Enterprise Cloud
4 35 (4.77%) Hybrid Cloud
5 27 (3.68%) Onboarding
6 23 (3.14%) Cloud Security Posture
7 22 (3.00%) Enterprise Software
8 21 (2.86%) Public Cloud
9 18 (2.46%) Data Centre
10 16 (2.18%) Management Information System
11 14 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
12 10 (1.36%) Linux Command Line
13 9 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
13 9 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
14 8 (1.09%) AI Agents
14 8 (1.09%) Product Ownership
15 7 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
15 7 (0.95%) PKI
16 5 (0.68%) Private Cloud
17 4 (0.55%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 116 (15.83%) Windows
2 73 (9.96%) Linux
3 55 (7.50%) Windows Server
4 31 (4.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 10 (1.36%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.09%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.55%) VMS
8 3 (0.41%) CentOS
9 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.14%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 260 (35.47%) CI/CD
2 259 (35.33%) Infrastructure as Code
3 216 (29.47%) DevOps
4 170 (23.19%) Cloud Security
5 149 (20.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 135 (18.42%) Platform Engineering
7 92 (12.55%) AI
7 92 (12.55%) Migration
8 89 (12.14%) Agile
9 88 (12.01%) Containerisation
10 78 (10.64%) Observability
11 59 (8.05%) Software Engineering
12 56 (7.64%) Continuous Improvement
13 54 (7.37%) Infrastructure Automation
14 53 (7.23%) Technical Leadership
15 52 (7.09%) Problem-Solving
16 49 (6.68%) DevSecOps
17 45 (6.14%) Change Management
17 45 (6.14%) Deployment Automation
18 41 (5.59%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 193 (26.33%) Python
2 159 (21.69%) PowerShell
3 82 (11.19%) Bash
4 66 (9.00%) Bicep
5 60 (8.19%) SQL
6 37 (5.05%) Java
7 20 (2.73%) C#
8 14 (1.91%) Shell Script
9 13 (1.77%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.36%) Go
11 7 (0.95%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.55%) Groovy
13 3 (0.41%) C
13 3 (0.41%) Scala
14 2 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.27%) Ruby
15 1 (0.14%) Apex Code
15 1 (0.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.14%) Perl
15 1 (0.14%) R
Qualifications
1 181 (24.69%) Security Cleared
2 137 (18.69%) SC Cleared
3 57 (7.78%) DV Cleared
4 50 (6.82%) Azure Certification
5 48 (6.55%) AWS Certification
6 29 (3.96%) Degree
7 18 (2.46%) CISSP
8 17 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
9 16 (2.18%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 11 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
11 9 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
12 8 (1.09%) MCSE
13 7 (0.95%) BPSS Clearance
13 7 (0.95%) CCNP
14 6 (0.82%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 6 (0.82%) CISM
15 4 (0.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 4 (0.55%) CCIE
15 4 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 3 (0.41%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (1.77%) Data Quality
1 13 (1.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (1.36%) NIST
2 10 (1.36%) QA
3 9 (1.23%) NCSC
4 6 (0.82%) GDPR
5 4 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
6 3 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.27%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.27%) SLA
8 1 (0.14%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.14%) GRC
8 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 85 (11.60%) Active Directory
2 78 (10.64%) Docker
3 37 (5.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (4.50%) Virtual Machines
5 25 (3.41%) VMware ESXi
6 22 (3.00%) VMware NSX
7 21 (2.86%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (2.46%) vSphere
9 12 (1.64%) vCloud
10 11 (1.50%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.95%) Squid
12 5 (0.68%) Firmware
13 3 (0.41%) Ceph
13 3 (0.41%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.41%) NFS
13 3 (0.41%) Postfix
14 2 (0.27%) KVM
14 2 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
15 1 (0.14%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 315 (42.97%) Terraform
2 179 (24.42%) Kubernetes
3 52 (7.09%) Ansible
4 24 (3.27%) Microsoft Intune
5 22 (3.00%) Grafana
6 21 (2.86%) Progress Chef
6 21 (2.86%) vCenter Server
7 20 (2.73%) Prometheus
8 19 (2.59%) SCOM
8 19 (2.59%) Single Sign-On
9 16 (2.18%) Puppet
10 8 (1.09%) Istio
10 8 (1.09%) Packer
11 7 (0.95%) Argo
12 6 (0.82%) Cilium
13 5 (0.68%) VxRail
14 4 (0.55%) HAProxy
14 4 (0.55%) Suricata
15 3 (0.41%) Salt
15 3 (0.41%) vRealize
Vendors
1 169 (23.06%) Microsoft
2 115 (15.69%) Google
3 58 (7.91%) VMware
4 29 (3.96%) Oracle
5 18 (2.46%) Red Hat
5 18 (2.46%) Zscaler
6 17 (2.32%) Okta
7 14 (1.91%) ServiceNow
8 13 (1.77%) Palo Alto
8 13 (1.77%) Splunk
9 11 (1.50%) OpenAI
10 10 (1.36%) Cisco
11 9 (1.23%) CrowdStrike
11 9 (1.23%) Dynatrace
11 9 (1.23%) Salesforce
12 8 (1.09%) BeyondTrust
12 8 (1.09%) Broadcom
12 8 (1.09%) Databricks
12 8 (1.09%) New Relic
12 8 (1.09%) SolarWinds