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 9 June 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 307 332
Rank change year-on-year +83 +25 -58
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 580 230 278
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 0.79% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.26% 0.85% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 385 176 189
10th Percentile £400 £401 £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 £617 £578 £625
90th Percentile £688 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +4.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 1 3
10th Percentile £30.35 - -
25th Percentile £71.00 £42.50 £27.50
Median hourly rate £76.00 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.89% +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 45,859 27,036 40,213
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.35% 92.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,926 17,399 25,887
10th Percentile £325 £287 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £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 3,063 1,119 2,897
10th Percentile £15.15 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.84 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.61 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.73% -25.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.47 £61.75
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% -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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +60 485 £525 +5.00% 131
London +59 289 £531 +6.25% 49
UK excluding London +18 225 £520 +4.00% 98
Work from Home -5 144 £538 +7.50% 87
North of England -31 65 £500 - 21
South East -30 54 £538 +7.50% 39
Scotland +20 43 £451 -14.19% 1
North West -14 34 £505 +22.13% 16
Midlands -47 26 £525 +5.00% 7
Yorkshire -38 24 £481 -3.75% 5
East of England -15 22 £505 +2.54% 6
West Midlands -42 22 £525 - 5
South West -17 16 £550 -2.22% 22
North East -26 7 £525 -4.55%
East Midlands -31 4 £425 -10.53% 2

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

For the 6 months to 9 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.

1 265 (45.69%) Terraform
2 263 (45.34%) Azure
3 255 (43.97%) AWS
4 241 (41.55%) CI/CD
5 218 (37.59%) Infrastructure as Code
6 198 (34.14%) DevOps
7 145 (25.00%) Security Cleared
8 140 (24.14%) Python
9 138 (23.79%) Kubernetes
10 130 (22.41%) GCP
11 121 (20.86%) Cloud Security
12 115 (19.83%) SC Cleared
13 107 (18.45%) GitHub
14 104 (17.93%) Platform Engineering
15 103 (17.76%) Microsoft
16 97 (16.72%) Google
17 92 (15.86%) PowerShell
18 90 (15.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
19 83 (14.31%) Migration
20 72 (12.41%) Containerisation
21 70 (12.07%) GitHub Actions
22 68 (11.72%) Agile
23 66 (11.38%) AI
23 66 (11.38%) Windows
24 62 (10.69%) Docker
24 62 (10.69%) Firewall
25 58 (10.00%) Observability
25 58 (10.00%) Serverless
26 55 (9.48%) Bash
26 55 (9.48%) 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 (1.21%) Apache
1 7 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (1.03%) Confluence
3 5 (0.86%) nginx
4 4 (0.69%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.52%) IIS
5 3 (0.52%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.52%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.34%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.17%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.17%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.17%) SAS
7 1 (0.17%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.17%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 263 (45.34%) Azure
2 255 (43.97%) AWS
3 130 (22.41%) GCP
4 107 (18.45%) GitHub
5 70 (12.07%) GitHub Actions
6 58 (10.00%) Serverless
7 47 (8.10%) Entra ID
8 45 (7.76%) Azure DevOps
9 44 (7.59%) AWS CloudFormation
10 39 (6.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 38 (6.55%) Azure AKS
11 38 (6.55%) IaaS
11 38 (6.55%) PaaS
12 37 (6.38%) Amazon S3
13 35 (6.03%) AWS Lambda
14 33 (5.69%) Amazon EKS
15 31 (5.34%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 30 (5.17%) Amazon ECS
17 28 (4.83%) Amazon EC2
18 23 (3.97%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 62 (10.69%) Firewall
2 46 (7.93%) DNS
3 27 (4.66%) VPN
4 26 (4.48%) Network Security
5 9 (1.55%) DHCP
6 8 (1.38%) TCP/IP
6 8 (1.38%) WAN
7 6 (1.03%) Reverse Proxy
8 5 (0.86%) SSL
9 4 (0.69%) SD-WAN
9 4 (0.69%) Software-Defined Networking
9 4 (0.69%) VLAN
10 3 (0.52%) BGP
10 3 (0.52%) Internet
10 3 (0.52%) SMTP
11 2 (0.34%) BIG-IP
11 2 (0.34%) Kerberos
11 2 (0.34%) NGFW
11 2 (0.34%) SAN
11 2 (0.34%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (2.41%) Amazon Athena
1 14 (2.41%) SQL Server
2 13 (2.24%) DynamoDB
3 12 (2.07%) BigQuery
4 10 (1.72%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (1.38%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (1.03%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.86%) Oracle Database
8 4 (0.69%) Amazon QuickSight
8 4 (0.69%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.52%) Big Data
9 3 (0.52%) Metadata
9 3 (0.52%) MySQL
9 3 (0.52%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.52%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.34%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.34%) Redis
10 2 (0.34%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 50 (8.62%) GitLab
2 49 (8.45%) Jenkins
3 42 (7.24%) Git
4 12 (2.07%) JIRA
5 10 (1.72%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.52%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.52%) Selenium
6 3 (0.52%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.34%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.34%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.34%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.34%) Postman
7 2 (0.34%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.17%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.17%) Gatling
8 1 (0.17%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.17%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.17%) TestRail
8 1 (0.17%) Travis CI
General
1 74 (12.76%) Social Skills
2 60 (10.34%) Finance
3 46 (7.93%) Public Sector
4 21 (3.62%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (3.45%) Banking
6 13 (2.24%) Documentation Skills
7 12 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 9 (1.55%) Retail
9 6 (1.03%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.03%) Legal
9 6 (1.03%) Telecoms
10 5 (0.86%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.69%) Local Government
11 4 (0.69%) Marketing
11 4 (0.69%) Military
12 3 (0.52%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.52%) Police
13 2 (0.34%) Billing
13 2 (0.34%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (3.10%) REST
2 14 (2.41%) Node.js
2 14 (2.41%) React
2 14 (2.41%) Spring
2 14 (2.41%) Spring Boot
3 12 (2.07%) OAuth
3 12 (2.07%) OAuth2
4 11 (1.90%) Kafka
5 9 (1.55%) .NET
5 9 (1.55%) OpenTelemetry
6 7 (1.21%) OpenID
7 6 (1.03%) AngularJS
7 6 (1.03%) ARM Templates
7 6 (1.03%) LangChain
7 6 (1.03%) Oracle Fusion
8 5 (0.86%) Model Context Protocol
8 5 (0.86%) Playwright
8 5 (0.86%) YAML
9 4 (0.69%) PySpark
9 4 (0.69%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 107 (18.45%) Cloud Native
2 29 (5.00%) Hybrid Cloud
3 28 (4.83%) Public Cloud
4 24 (4.14%) Data Centre
5 20 (3.45%) Security Posture
6 16 (2.76%) Enterprise Cloud
7 15 (2.59%) Onboarding
8 13 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
9 10 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
9 10 (1.72%) Management Information System
10 9 (1.55%) Product Ownership
11 8 (1.38%) Cloud Security Posture
11 8 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
11 8 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
12 6 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
13 5 (0.86%) Private Cloud
14 4 (0.69%) Legacy Systems
14 4 (0.69%) PKI
14 4 (0.69%) Virtual Team
15 3 (0.52%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 66 (11.38%) Windows
2 39 (6.72%) Windows Server
3 38 (6.55%) Linux
4 11 (1.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.86%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.52%) CentOS
6 3 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
7 2 (0.34%) VMS
7 2 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.17%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 241 (41.55%) CI/CD
2 218 (37.59%) Infrastructure as Code
3 198 (34.14%) DevOps
4 121 (20.86%) Cloud Security
5 104 (17.93%) Platform Engineering
6 90 (15.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 83 (14.31%) Migration
8 72 (12.41%) Containerisation
9 68 (11.72%) Agile
10 66 (11.38%) AI
11 58 (10.00%) Observability
12 55 (9.48%) Problem-Solving
13 50 (8.62%) Infrastructure Automation
14 48 (8.28%) Software Engineering
15 47 (8.10%) Continuous Improvement
16 45 (7.76%) Technical Leadership
17 43 (7.41%) Cybersecurity
18 42 (7.24%) DevSecOps
19 33 (5.69%) Mentoring
20 31 (5.34%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 140 (24.14%) Python
2 92 (15.86%) PowerShell
3 55 (9.48%) Bash
4 47 (8.10%) SQL
5 38 (6.55%) Bicep
6 32 (5.52%) Java
7 15 (2.59%) C#
8 11 (1.90%) Go
8 11 (1.90%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.55%) TypeScript
10 5 (0.86%) Groovy
11 3 (0.52%) Ruby
12 1 (0.17%) Cypher
12 1 (0.17%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.17%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.17%) Perl
12 1 (0.17%) R
12 1 (0.17%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 145 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 115 (19.83%) SC Cleared
3 44 (7.59%) Azure Certification
4 30 (5.17%) AWS Certification
5 29 (5.00%) DV Cleared
6 19 (3.28%) Degree
7 14 (2.41%) Microsoft Certification
8 13 (2.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 13 (2.24%) CISSP
9 12 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
10 9 (1.55%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
12 6 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 5 (0.86%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 5 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.69%) CCSP
14 4 (0.69%) MCSE
15 3 (0.52%) CCNP
15 3 (0.52%) CISM
15 3 (0.52%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (2.24%) NIST
2 11 (1.90%) GDPR
2 11 (1.90%) NCSC
3 10 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (1.72%) QA
4 5 (0.86%) Data Quality
4 5 (0.86%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
6 2 (0.34%) SLA
6 2 (0.34%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.17%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.17%) GRC
7 1 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 62 (10.69%) Docker
2 43 (7.41%) Active Directory
3 20 (3.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (2.93%) Virtual Desktop
4 17 (2.93%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (2.93%) VMware NSX
5 16 (2.76%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (2.41%) vSphere
7 10 (1.72%) Hyper-V
8 9 (1.55%) vCloud
9 7 (1.21%) Squid
10 3 (0.52%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.52%) Firmware
10 3 (0.52%) Postfix
11 2 (0.34%) Ceph
11 2 (0.34%) KVM
11 2 (0.34%) NFS
Systems Management
1 265 (45.69%) Terraform
2 138 (23.79%) Kubernetes
3 34 (5.86%) Ansible
4 24 (4.14%) Grafana
5 21 (3.62%) Prometheus
6 17 (2.93%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (2.59%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (2.41%) Argo
8 14 (2.41%) Istio
9 13 (2.24%) vCenter Server
10 11 (1.90%) SCOM
11 10 (1.72%) Progress Chef
12 7 (1.21%) Packer
12 7 (1.21%) Puppet
13 6 (1.03%) Cilium
14 4 (0.69%) HAProxy
14 4 (0.69%) Salt
14 4 (0.69%) Suricata
15 3 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 2 (0.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 103 (17.76%) Microsoft
2 97 (16.72%) Google
3 36 (6.21%) VMware
4 24 (4.14%) Oracle
5 15 (2.59%) Palo Alto
5 15 (2.59%) Zscaler
6 12 (2.07%) Red Hat
7 8 (1.38%) Cisco
7 8 (1.38%) Databricks
7 8 (1.38%) Dynatrace
7 8 (1.38%) ServiceNow
7 8 (1.38%) Splunk
8 7 (1.21%) Salesforce
9 6 (1.03%) Okta
9 6 (1.03%) OpenAI
10 5 (0.86%) Citrix
10 5 (0.86%) Fortinet
10 5 (0.86%) PeopleSoft
11 4 (0.69%) Juniper
11 4 (0.69%) Rapid7