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 16 June 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 217 299 321
Rank change year-on-year +82 +22 -58
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 607 236 283
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.21% 0.80% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.31% 0.86% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 401 179 196
10th Percentile £400 £400 £393
25th Percentile £462 £449 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £621 £575 £625
90th Percentile £688 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +3.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 1 3
10th Percentile £52.65 - -
25th Percentile £73.75 £42.50 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.11% +50.00% -41.18%
75th Percentile £81.25 £47.50 £32.50
90th Percentile £85.00 - -
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 46,390 27,334 40,477
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.40% 92.27% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,221 17,578 25,945
10th Percentile £325 £288 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,091 1,160 2,956
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.85 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.79 £17.75 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.61 £27.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.85% -26.80% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.01
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -2.55%

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 16 June 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 16 June 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 16 June 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 +79 510 £525 +5.00% 238
London +65 300 £550 +7.84% 99
UK excluding London +14 244 £515 +3.00% 168
Work from Home +15 150 £540 +8.00% 107
North of England -29 70 £500 +5.26% 39
South East -26 62 £538 +3.66% 49
Scotland +22 47 £451 -14.19% 11
North West -22 32 £500 +24.38% 29
Yorkshire -26 31 £481 -3.75% 8
Midlands -41 29 £525 +5.00% 21
West Midlands -40 24 £525 - 17
East of England -15 22 £505 +2.54% 7
South West -18 15 £550 -2.22% 31
North East -36 7 £525 +5.00% 2
East Midlands -25 5 £413 -13.16% 4

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

For the 6 months to 16 June 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.

1 280 (46.13%) Azure
2 278 (45.80%) Terraform
3 267 (43.99%) AWS
4 248 (40.86%) CI/CD
5 231 (38.06%) Infrastructure as Code
6 203 (33.44%) DevOps
7 151 (24.88%) Python
8 146 (24.05%) Security Cleared
9 140 (23.06%) Kubernetes
10 135 (22.24%) GCP
11 128 (21.09%) Cloud Security
12 117 (19.28%) SC Cleared
13 115 (18.95%) Platform Engineering
14 112 (18.45%) Microsoft
15 107 (17.63%) GitHub
16 100 (16.47%) Google
17 99 (16.31%) PowerShell
18 97 (15.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
19 88 (14.50%) Migration
20 76 (12.52%) Containerisation
21 74 (12.19%) Windows
22 72 (11.86%) Agile
22 72 (11.86%) AI
23 71 (11.70%) GitHub Actions
24 66 (10.87%) Firewall
25 63 (10.38%) Docker
26 61 (10.05%) Observability
26 61 (10.05%) Serverless
27 59 (9.72%) Bash
28 57 (9.39%) Problem-Solving

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 (1.15%) Confluence
1 7 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (0.99%) Apache
3 5 (0.82%) nginx
4 3 (0.49%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.49%) IIS
4 3 (0.49%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.49%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.33%) CloudStack
6 1 (0.16%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.16%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.16%) SAS
6 1 (0.16%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.16%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 280 (46.13%) Azure
2 267 (43.99%) AWS
3 135 (22.24%) GCP
4 107 (17.63%) GitHub
5 71 (11.70%) GitHub Actions
6 61 (10.05%) Serverless
7 54 (8.90%) Entra ID
8 47 (7.74%) Azure DevOps
9 43 (7.08%) AWS CloudFormation
10 41 (6.75%) Azure AKS
11 39 (6.43%) Amazon S3
11 39 (6.43%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 39 (6.43%) IaaS
11 39 (6.43%) PaaS
12 37 (6.10%) AWS Lambda
13 35 (5.77%) Amazon EKS
14 32 (5.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 30 (4.94%) Amazon ECS
16 29 (4.78%) Amazon EC2
17 24 (3.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 66 (10.87%) Firewall
2 48 (7.91%) DNS
3 29 (4.78%) Network Security
4 28 (4.61%) VPN
5 10 (1.65%) DHCP
5 10 (1.65%) WAN
6 9 (1.48%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.82%) Reverse Proxy
7 5 (0.82%) SD-WAN
7 5 (0.82%) SSL
8 4 (0.66%) BGP
8 4 (0.66%) Internet
8 4 (0.66%) Software-Defined Networking
8 4 (0.66%) VLAN
9 3 (0.49%) SMTP
10 2 (0.33%) BIG-IP
10 2 (0.33%) IPv4
10 2 (0.33%) Kerberos
10 2 (0.33%) OSPF
10 2 (0.33%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.47%) SQL Server
2 13 (2.14%) Amazon Athena
2 13 (2.14%) DynamoDB
3 11 (1.81%) BigQuery
4 10 (1.65%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (0.99%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.82%) Oracle Database
8 4 (0.66%) Amazon QuickSight
9 3 (0.49%) Big Data
9 3 (0.49%) Metadata
9 3 (0.49%) MySQL
9 3 (0.49%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.49%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.33%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.33%) Redis
10 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 1 (0.16%) Delta Lake
11 1 (0.16%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 53 (8.73%) Jenkins
2 51 (8.40%) GitLab
3 42 (6.92%) Git
4 14 (2.31%) JIRA
5 10 (1.65%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.49%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.49%) Selenium
6 3 (0.49%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.33%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.33%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.33%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.33%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.16%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.16%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.16%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.16%) Gatling
8 1 (0.16%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.16%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.16%) TestRail
General
1 81 (13.34%) Social Skills
2 67 (11.04%) Finance
3 46 (7.58%) Public Sector
4 27 (4.45%) Banking
5 23 (3.79%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (1.65%) Retail
8 8 (1.32%) Investment Banking
9 6 (0.99%) Legal
9 6 (0.99%) Telecoms
10 5 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.66%) Law
11 4 (0.66%) Local Government
11 4 (0.66%) Marketing
11 4 (0.66%) Military
12 3 (0.49%) Corporate Banking
12 3 (0.49%) Police
12 3 (0.49%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (3.29%) REST
2 15 (2.47%) Node.js
3 14 (2.31%) React
3 14 (2.31%) Spring
3 14 (2.31%) Spring Boot
4 12 (1.98%) OAuth
4 12 (1.98%) OAuth2
5 11 (1.81%) Kafka
6 9 (1.48%) .NET
6 9 (1.48%) OpenTelemetry
7 7 (1.15%) ARM Templates
7 7 (1.15%) Model Context Protocol
7 7 (1.15%) OpenID
8 6 (0.99%) AngularJS
8 6 (0.99%) LangChain
9 5 (0.82%) AWS CDK
9 5 (0.82%) Playwright
9 5 (0.82%) YAML
10 4 (0.66%) Oracle Fusion
10 4 (0.66%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 117 (19.28%) Cloud Native
2 29 (4.78%) Hybrid Cloud
3 28 (4.61%) Public Cloud
4 24 (3.95%) Data Centre
5 23 (3.79%) Security Posture
6 17 (2.80%) Enterprise Cloud
7 16 (2.64%) Onboarding
8 14 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
9 13 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
10 11 (1.81%) Management Information System
10 11 (1.81%) Product Ownership
11 9 (1.48%) Cloud Security Posture
12 8 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
12 8 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
13 6 (0.99%) Cyber Threat
13 6 (0.99%) Legacy Systems
14 4 (0.66%) AI Agents
14 4 (0.66%) PKI
14 4 (0.66%) Private Cloud
14 4 (0.66%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 74 (12.19%) Windows
2 41 (6.75%) Linux
3 40 (6.59%) Windows Server
4 12 (1.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.82%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.66%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (0.49%) CentOS
8 2 (0.33%) VMS
8 2 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 248 (40.86%) CI/CD
2 231 (38.06%) Infrastructure as Code
3 203 (33.44%) DevOps
4 128 (21.09%) Cloud Security
5 115 (18.95%) Platform Engineering
6 97 (15.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 88 (14.50%) Migration
8 76 (12.52%) Containerisation
9 72 (11.86%) Agile
9 72 (11.86%) AI
10 61 (10.05%) Observability
11 57 (9.39%) Problem-Solving
12 52 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
13 51 (8.40%) Infrastructure Automation
13 51 (8.40%) Software Engineering
14 47 (7.74%) Technical Leadership
15 44 (7.25%) Cybersecurity
16 41 (6.75%) DevSecOps
17 35 (5.77%) Mentoring
18 34 (5.60%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 151 (24.88%) Python
2 99 (16.31%) PowerShell
3 59 (9.72%) Bash
4 50 (8.24%) SQL
5 41 (6.75%) Bicep
6 34 (5.60%) Java
7 15 (2.47%) C#
8 11 (1.81%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.65%) Go
9 10 (1.65%) TypeScript
10 5 (0.82%) Groovy
11 2 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.33%) R
11 2 (0.33%) Ruby
12 1 (0.16%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.16%) Cypher
12 1 (0.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.16%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.16%) Perl
12 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 146 (24.05%) Security Cleared
2 117 (19.28%) SC Cleared
3 47 (7.74%) Azure Certification
4 38 (6.26%) AWS Certification
5 31 (5.11%) DV Cleared
6 19 (3.13%) Degree
7 16 (2.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 15 (2.47%) Microsoft Certification
9 14 (2.31%) CISSP
10 11 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
10 11 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
12 7 (1.15%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 6 (0.99%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 5 (0.82%) CCNP
14 5 (0.82%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.66%) CCSP
15 4 (0.66%) MCSE
16 3 (0.49%) CCIE
16 3 (0.49%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (2.31%) NIST
2 11 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (1.81%) NCSC
3 10 (1.65%) GDPR
3 10 (1.65%) QA
4 6 (0.99%) PCI DSS
5 4 (0.66%) Data Quality
6 3 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.33%) SLA
7 2 (0.33%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.16%) GRC
8 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 63 (10.38%) Docker
2 49 (8.07%) Active Directory
3 19 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (2.97%) VMware NSX
5 17 (2.80%) Virtual Desktop
5 17 (2.80%) Virtual Machines
5 17 (2.80%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (2.31%) vSphere
7 10 (1.65%) Hyper-V
7 10 (1.65%) vCloud
8 7 (1.15%) Squid
9 3 (0.49%) Dovecot
9 3 (0.49%) Firmware
9 3 (0.49%) Postfix
10 2 (0.33%) Ceph
10 2 (0.33%) KVM
10 2 (0.33%) NFS
Systems Management
1 278 (45.80%) Terraform
2 140 (23.06%) Kubernetes
3 39 (6.43%) Ansible
4 25 (4.12%) Grafana
5 23 (3.79%) Prometheus
6 20 (3.29%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (2.47%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (2.31%) Istio
8 14 (2.31%) Progress Chef
8 14 (2.31%) vCenter Server
9 13 (2.14%) Argo
10 12 (1.98%) Puppet
10 12 (1.98%) SCOM
11 8 (1.32%) Packer
12 6 (0.99%) Cilium
13 4 (0.66%) HAProxy
13 4 (0.66%) Salt
13 4 (0.66%) Suricata
14 3 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 2 (0.33%) SELinux
Vendors
1 112 (18.45%) Microsoft
2 100 (16.47%) Google
3 36 (5.93%) VMware
4 22 (3.62%) Oracle
5 16 (2.64%) Zscaler
6 15 (2.47%) Palo Alto
7 13 (2.14%) Red Hat
8 10 (1.65%) Salesforce
9 9 (1.48%) Cisco
9 9 (1.48%) Dynatrace
10 8 (1.32%) Okta
11 7 (1.15%) ServiceNow
11 7 (1.15%) Splunk
12 6 (0.99%) CrowdStrike
12 6 (0.99%) Fortinet
12 6 (0.99%) OpenAI
13 5 (0.82%) Citrix
13 5 (0.82%) Databricks
13 5 (0.82%) Rapid7
14 4 (0.66%) Juniper