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 21 May 2026.

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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 226 305 320
Rank change year-on-year +79 +15 -58
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 530 233 273
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 0.80% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.19% 0.87% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 349 183 184
10th Percentile £400 £400 £400
25th Percentile £462 £449 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £588 £616
90th Percentile £688 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 3
10th Percentile £25.13 - -
25th Percentile £31.66 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £62.25 - £30.00
75th Percentile £75.25 - £32.50
90th Percentile £76.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £76.00 - £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 44,544 26,886 39,472
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 92.37% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,258 17,494 25,719
10th Percentile £325 £293 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -3.23%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,901 1,057 2,674
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.69 £27.99 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +52.50% -23.32% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.50 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £26.34 £40.00
% change year-on-year +70.88% -34.16% -5.88%

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 21 May 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 21 May 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 21 May 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 +66 440 £525 +5.00% 230
London +60 262 £525 +5.00% 98
UK excluding London +3 209 £525 +5.00% 163
Work from Home -4 130 £531 +6.25% 109
North of England -35 56 £518 +3.50% 27
South East -29 50 £538 -2.27% 52
Scotland +21 40 £451 -14.19% 13
North West -20 29 £538 +33.71% 19
East of England -6 24 £505 +2.54% 12
Yorkshire -33 21 £481 +4.05% 4
South West -19 20 £550 -4.35% 37
Midlands -52 20 £673 +34.50% 20
West Midlands -47 17 £673 +14.47% 12
North East -26 6 £525 -4.55% 4
East Midlands -32 3 - - 8

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

For the 6 months to 21 May 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.

1 237 (44.72%) Azure
2 235 (44.34%) Terraform
3 224 (42.26%) AWS
4 221 (41.70%) CI/CD
5 198 (37.36%) Infrastructure as Code
6 184 (34.72%) DevOps
7 144 (27.17%) Security Cleared
8 125 (23.58%) Python
9 120 (22.64%) GCP
9 120 (22.64%) Kubernetes
10 117 (22.08%) SC Cleared
11 106 (20.00%) Cloud Security
12 98 (18.49%) GitHub
13 94 (17.74%) Microsoft
14 91 (17.17%) Google
15 86 (16.23%) Platform Engineering
16 81 (15.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 80 (15.09%) Migration
18 78 (14.72%) PowerShell
19 67 (12.64%) Agile
20 66 (12.45%) Containerisation
21 61 (11.51%) GitHub Actions
22 57 (10.75%) AI
23 54 (10.19%) Firewall
24 53 (10.00%) Serverless
24 53 (10.00%) Windows
25 52 (9.81%) Docker
26 49 (9.25%) Problem-Solving
27 45 (8.49%) GitLab
27 45 (8.49%) Observability

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 7 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (1.13%) Apache
3 5 (0.94%) Apache Spark
3 5 (0.94%) Confluence
4 3 (0.57%) nginx
5 2 (0.38%) CloudStack
5 2 (0.38%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.19%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.19%) IIS
6 1 (0.19%) SAS
6 1 (0.19%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.19%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.38%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.19%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 237 (44.72%) Azure
2 224 (42.26%) AWS
3 120 (22.64%) GCP
4 98 (18.49%) GitHub
5 61 (11.51%) GitHub Actions
6 53 (10.00%) Serverless
7 42 (7.92%) Azure DevOps
7 42 (7.92%) Entra ID
8 39 (7.36%) AWS CloudFormation
9 37 (6.98%) Azure AKS
9 37 (6.98%) PaaS
10 35 (6.60%) Amazon S3
10 35 (6.60%) IaaS
11 31 (5.85%) AWS Lambda
11 31 (5.85%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 30 (5.66%) Amazon EKS
13 26 (4.91%) Amazon EC2
13 26 (4.91%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 25 (4.72%) Amazon ECS
15 21 (3.96%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 54 (10.19%) Firewall
2 34 (6.42%) DNS
3 25 (4.72%) Network Security
4 23 (4.34%) VPN
5 7 (1.32%) TCP/IP
6 6 (1.13%) DHCP
6 6 (1.13%) Reverse Proxy
6 6 (1.13%) WAN
7 4 (0.75%) Software-Defined Networking
7 4 (0.75%) VLAN
8 3 (0.57%) BGP
8 3 (0.57%) SD-WAN
8 3 (0.57%) SMTP
8 3 (0.57%) SSL
9 2 (0.38%) DKIM
9 2 (0.38%) Internet
9 2 (0.38%) Kerberos
9 2 (0.38%) NGFW
9 2 (0.38%) SAN
9 2 (0.38%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.83%) Amazon Athena
2 13 (2.45%) BigQuery
3 11 (2.08%) DynamoDB
4 9 (1.70%) SQL Server
5 7 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (1.13%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (1.13%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.94%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.94%) Oracle Database
7 5 (0.94%) PostgreSQL
8 4 (0.75%) Amazon QuickSight
9 3 (0.57%) Big Data
9 3 (0.57%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (0.57%) Metadata
9 3 (0.57%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.57%) Power BI
9 3 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.38%) OLAP
10 2 (0.38%) OLTP
10 2 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 45 (8.49%) GitLab
2 44 (8.30%) Jenkins
3 41 (7.74%) Git
4 10 (1.89%) Artifactory
4 10 (1.89%) JIRA
5 3 (0.57%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.38%) Claude Code
6 2 (0.38%) Liquibase
6 2 (0.38%) Postman
6 2 (0.38%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.38%) Selenium
7 1 (0.19%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.19%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.19%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.19%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.19%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.19%) RStudio
7 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.19%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.19%) Travis CI
General
1 68 (12.83%) Social Skills
2 52 (9.81%) Finance
3 44 (8.30%) Public Sector
4 21 (3.96%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (3.02%) Banking
6 13 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.70%) Retail
9 5 (0.94%) Legal
9 5 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (0.94%) Telecoms
10 4 (0.75%) Investment Banking
10 4 (0.75%) Marketing
10 4 (0.75%) Military
10 4 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.57%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.57%) Police
12 2 (0.38%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.38%) Local Government
12 2 (0.38%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (3.02%) REST
2 13 (2.45%) Node.js
2 13 (2.45%) React
2 13 (2.45%) Spring
2 13 (2.45%) Spring Boot
3 11 (2.08%) Kafka
4 10 (1.89%) OAuth
5 9 (1.70%) .NET
5 9 (1.70%) OAuth2
5 9 (1.70%) OpenTelemetry
6 8 (1.51%) OpenID
6 8 (1.51%) Oracle Fusion
7 6 (1.13%) AngularJS
7 6 (1.13%) ARM Templates
7 6 (1.13%) LangChain
8 5 (0.94%) Model Context Protocol
8 5 (0.94%) Playwright
8 5 (0.94%) Web Services
9 4 (0.75%) Jest
9 4 (0.75%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 90 (16.98%) Cloud Native
2 29 (5.47%) Public Cloud
3 25 (4.72%) Hybrid Cloud
4 21 (3.96%) Data Centre
5 14 (2.64%) Onboarding
6 13 (2.45%) Enterprise Cloud
6 13 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
6 13 (2.45%) Security Posture
7 10 (1.89%) Product Ownership
8 7 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.13%) Cyber Threat
9 6 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
10 5 (0.94%) Cloud Security Posture
10 5 (0.94%) Management Information System
10 5 (0.94%) PKI
11 4 (0.75%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (0.75%) Private Cloud
11 4 (0.75%) Virtual Team
12 3 (0.57%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 53 (10.00%) Windows
2 31 (5.85%) Linux
3 30 (5.66%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.57%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.38%) VMS
7 1 (0.19%) CentOS
7 1 (0.19%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.19%) Unix
7 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (41.70%) CI/CD
2 198 (37.36%) Infrastructure as Code
3 184 (34.72%) DevOps
4 106 (20.00%) Cloud Security
5 86 (16.23%) Platform Engineering
6 81 (15.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 80 (15.09%) Migration
8 67 (12.64%) Agile
9 66 (12.45%) Containerisation
10 57 (10.75%) AI
11 49 (9.25%) Problem-Solving
12 45 (8.49%) Observability
13 44 (8.30%) Continuous Improvement
14 42 (7.92%) Infrastructure Automation
14 42 (7.92%) Software Engineering
15 41 (7.74%) DevSecOps
16 38 (7.17%) Cybersecurity
17 35 (6.60%) Technical Leadership
18 31 (5.85%) Mentoring
19 27 (5.09%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 125 (23.58%) Python
2 78 (14.72%) PowerShell
3 44 (8.30%) Bash
4 43 (8.11%) SQL
5 33 (6.23%) Bicep
6 25 (4.72%) Java
7 15 (2.83%) C#
8 9 (1.70%) Go
8 9 (1.70%) JavaScript
9 8 (1.51%) TypeScript
10 5 (0.94%) Groovy
11 2 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.38%) Ruby
12 1 (0.19%) BeanShell
12 1 (0.19%) Cypher
12 1 (0.19%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.19%) R
12 1 (0.19%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 144 (27.17%) Security Cleared
2 117 (22.08%) SC Cleared
3 35 (6.60%) Azure Certification
4 24 (4.53%) DV Cleared
5 21 (3.96%) AWS Certification
6 14 (2.64%) Degree
7 13 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
8 12 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
9 11 (2.08%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 10 (1.89%) CISSP
11 9 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
11 9 (1.70%) Computer Science Degree
12 6 (1.13%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 5 (0.94%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 5 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.75%) CCSP
14 4 (0.75%) CISM
14 4 (0.75%) MCSE
15 3 (0.57%) CCNP
15 3 (0.57%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.26%) NIST
2 11 (2.08%) GDPR
2 11 (2.08%) QA
3 10 (1.89%) NCSC
4 9 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (1.13%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.13%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.75%) GRC
7 2 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.38%) SLA
7 2 (0.38%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.19%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.19%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.19%) WCAG
System Software
1 52 (9.81%) Docker
2 36 (6.79%) Active Directory
3 17 (3.21%) Virtual Desktop
4 14 (2.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (2.64%) VMware NSX
5 13 (2.45%) Virtual Machines
6 10 (1.89%) vSphere
7 9 (1.70%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (1.51%) Hyper-V
9 7 (1.32%) Squid
10 6 (1.13%) vCloud
11 3 (0.57%) Firmware
12 2 (0.38%) Ceph
12 2 (0.38%) KVM
12 2 (0.38%) NFS
13 1 (0.19%) Dovecot
13 1 (0.19%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 235 (44.34%) Terraform
2 120 (22.64%) Kubernetes
3 24 (4.53%) Ansible
4 22 (4.15%) Grafana
5 19 (3.58%) Prometheus
6 15 (2.83%) Microsoft Intune
7 14 (2.64%) Istio
7 14 (2.64%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (2.45%) Argo
9 10 (1.89%) vCenter Server
10 8 (1.51%) SCOM
11 7 (1.32%) Packer
12 6 (1.13%) Puppet
13 5 (0.94%) Cilium
13 5 (0.94%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.75%) Salt
14 4 (0.75%) Suricata
15 2 (0.38%) HAProxy
15 2 (0.38%) SELinux
16 1 (0.19%) PaperCut
Vendors
1 94 (17.74%) Microsoft
2 91 (17.17%) Google
3 28 (5.28%) VMware
4 23 (4.34%) Oracle
5 11 (2.08%) Palo Alto
5 11 (2.08%) Zscaler
6 10 (1.89%) Databricks
7 8 (1.51%) Dynatrace
7 8 (1.51%) ServiceNow
8 7 (1.32%) Cisco
8 7 (1.32%) Salesforce
9 6 (1.13%) Red Hat
10 5 (0.94%) Citrix
10 5 (0.94%) Fortinet
10 5 (0.94%) Okta
10 5 (0.94%) PeopleSoft
10 5 (0.94%) Splunk
11 4 (0.75%) Rapid7
11 4 (0.75%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
12 3 (0.57%) OpenAI