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 7 March 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 254 302 277
Rank change year-on-year +48 -25 -27
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 467 244 386
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.09% 0.80% 0.86%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.19% 0.86% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 325 173 272
10th Percentile £400 £380 £400
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £619 £625 £625
90th Percentile £725 £693 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 5
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £25.13 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £25.25 - £30.00
75th Percentile £39.56 - £72.50
90th Percentile £48.08 - £83.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £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 39,253 28,458 41,733
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.91% 92.86% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,589 18,093 27,411
10th Percentile £310 £293 £273
25th Percentile £409 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £723 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £485
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,404 876 2,465
10th Percentile £14.84 £16.17 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.89 £21.39 £16.25
Median hourly rate £34.50 £35.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% +6.06% -18.67%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.25 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.17 £32.50 £33.07
% change year-on-year +2.06% -1.71% -14.67%

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 7 March 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 7 March 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 7 March 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 +29 381 £525 -4.55% 124
UK excluding London +27 203 £525 +5.00% 101
London +22 203 £525 -4.55% 43
Work from Home +2 114 £511 -2.62% 54
North of England -13 70 £513 +2.60% 30
Yorkshire -21 41 £513 +127.78% 12
Midlands -43 40 £575 +21.05% 12
South East -15 39 £522 -13.00% 26
West Midlands -29 35 £670 +14.04% 7
Scotland +32 34 £513 - 6
North West -15 29 £513 +13.89% 15
South West -13 20 £550 -4.35% 20
East of England -17 13 £450 +41.51% 8
East Midlands -34 5 £575 +25.27% 5
Wales -2 1 £425 +41.67%

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

For the 6 months to 7 March 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.

1 222 (47.54%) AWS
2 208 (44.54%) CI/CD
2 208 (44.54%) Terraform
3 188 (40.26%) Infrastructure as Code
4 184 (39.40%) Azure
4 184 (39.40%) DevOps
5 136 (29.12%) Python
6 133 (28.48%) Kubernetes
7 130 (27.84%) Security Cleared
8 109 (23.34%) GitHub
9 108 (23.13%) GCP
10 96 (20.56%) SC Cleared
11 91 (19.49%) Containerisation
12 88 (18.84%) Cloud Security
13 83 (17.77%) Microsoft
14 82 (17.56%) Agile
15 81 (17.34%) Docker
16 77 (16.49%) Google
17 71 (15.20%) Serverless
18 68 (14.56%) GitHub Actions
19 64 (13.70%) PowerShell
20 62 (13.28%) Migration
21 60 (12.85%) Jenkins
22 57 (12.21%) Platform Engineering
23 53 (11.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
24 52 (11.13%) Infrastructure Automation
25 50 (10.71%) GitLab
26 47 (10.06%) AWS CloudFormation
26 47 (10.06%) Linux
26 47 (10.06%) Microservices

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 8 (1.71%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.07%) Apache
2 5 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.86%) Confluence
4 3 (0.64%) nginx
5 1 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.21%) Apache Superset
5 1 (0.21%) CMS
5 1 (0.21%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.21%) SAS
5 1 (0.21%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.21%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.43%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.21%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 222 (47.54%) AWS
2 184 (39.40%) Azure
3 109 (23.34%) GitHub
4 108 (23.13%) GCP
5 71 (15.20%) Serverless
6 68 (14.56%) GitHub Actions
7 47 (10.06%) AWS CloudFormation
8 39 (8.35%) Entra ID
9 38 (8.14%) PaaS
10 37 (7.92%) Amazon S3
11 36 (7.71%) Azure DevOps
12 34 (7.28%) Amazon EKS
13 33 (7.07%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 32 (6.85%) AWS Lambda
15 30 (6.42%) Azure AKS
16 29 (6.21%) IaaS
17 28 (6.00%) Amazon ECS
18 20 (4.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 18 (3.85%) Azure Monitor
19 18 (3.85%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 40 (8.57%) Firewall
2 19 (4.07%) Network Security
3 18 (3.85%) VPN
4 14 (3.00%) DNS
5 13 (2.78%) Cisco Firepower
5 13 (2.78%) Cisco IOS
5 13 (2.78%) Cisco ISE
5 13 (2.78%) Junos
6 5 (1.07%) NX-OS
7 4 (0.86%) DHCP
7 4 (0.86%) Reverse Proxy
7 4 (0.86%) Software-Defined Networking
8 2 (0.43%) BGP
8 2 (0.43%) LAN
8 2 (0.43%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.43%) Unified Communications
8 2 (0.43%) WAN
9 1 (0.21%) DKIM
9 1 (0.21%) ICMP
9 1 (0.21%) WireGuard
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (5.35%) NoSQL
2 21 (4.50%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (2.57%) Amazon Athena
3 12 (2.57%) DynamoDB
4 11 (2.36%) BigQuery
5 9 (1.93%) Amazon RDS
6 8 (1.71%) Power BI
7 7 (1.50%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (1.28%) Data Lake
9 5 (1.07%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
10 4 (0.86%) Big Data
10 4 (0.86%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (0.86%) SQL Server
11 3 (0.64%) Oracle Database
11 3 (0.64%) Snowflake Schema
12 2 (0.43%) Mixpanel
12 2 (0.43%) OLAP
12 2 (0.43%) OLTP
12 2 (0.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 60 (12.85%) Jenkins
2 50 (10.71%) GitLab
3 31 (6.64%) Git
4 9 (1.93%) JIRA
4 9 (1.93%) Liquibase
5 3 (0.64%) MLflow
5 3 (0.64%) Postman
5 3 (0.64%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.43%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.43%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.43%) CircleCI
6 2 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.43%) Spinnaker
7 1 (0.21%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.21%) Gemini Tracker
7 1 (0.21%) RStudio
7 1 (0.21%) Travis CI
7 1 (0.21%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 84 (17.99%) Social Skills
2 73 (15.63%) Finance
3 38 (8.14%) Public Sector
4 35 (7.49%) Banking
5 26 (5.57%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (3.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (3.00%) Financial Institution
8 9 (1.93%) Documentation Skills
9 8 (1.71%) Retail
10 7 (1.50%) Aeronautics
11 6 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (1.28%) Telecoms
12 5 (1.07%) Aviation
12 5 (1.07%) Legal
13 4 (0.86%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.64%) Investment Banking
14 3 (0.64%) Local Government
15 2 (0.43%) Billing
15 2 (0.43%) Marketing
16 1 (0.21%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (9.21%) REST
2 26 (5.57%) Elastic Stack
2 26 (5.57%) Node.js
3 19 (4.07%) RESTful
4 13 (2.78%) Kafka
5 12 (2.57%) React
6 11 (2.36%) OpenID
7 10 (2.14%) OpenTelemetry
8 9 (1.93%) ARM Templates
8 9 (1.93%) OpenAPI
8 9 (1.93%) Oracle Fusion
9 8 (1.71%) LangChain
9 8 (1.71%) OAuth
9 8 (1.71%) Playwright
9 8 (1.71%) SAML
9 8 (1.71%) SOAP
9 8 (1.71%) Spring
9 8 (1.71%) Spring Boot
10 7 (1.50%) AWS CDK
10 7 (1.50%) NestJS
Miscellaneous
1 86 (18.42%) Cloud Native
2 41 (8.78%) Public Cloud
3 23 (4.93%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (3.21%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (2.57%) Data Centre
6 10 (2.14%) Product Ownership
7 9 (1.93%) PKI
7 9 (1.93%) Security Posture
8 6 (1.28%) Cyber Threat
8 6 (1.28%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (0.86%) Algorithms
9 4 (0.86%) Cloud Security Posture
9 4 (0.86%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.64%) Distributed Computing
10 3 (0.64%) Enterprise Software
10 3 (0.64%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (0.64%) Life Science
10 3 (0.64%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (0.64%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 47 (10.06%) Linux
2 33 (7.07%) Windows
3 15 (3.21%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.71%) Unix
5 4 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.86%) VMS
6 1 (0.21%) Alpine Linux
6 1 (0.21%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.21%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 208 (44.54%) CI/CD
2 188 (40.26%) Infrastructure as Code
3 184 (39.40%) DevOps
4 91 (19.49%) Containerisation
5 88 (18.84%) Cloud Security
6 82 (17.56%) Agile
7 62 (13.28%) Migration
8 57 (12.21%) Platform Engineering
9 53 (11.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 52 (11.13%) Infrastructure Automation
11 47 (10.06%) Microservices
11 47 (10.06%) Observability
12 43 (9.21%) Continuous Improvement
12 43 (9.21%) Problem-Solving
13 40 (8.57%) Cybersecurity
14 38 (8.14%) AI
15 36 (7.71%) DevSecOps
16 33 (7.07%) Software Engineering
17 31 (6.64%) Cost Optimisation
18 29 (6.21%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 136 (29.12%) Python
2 64 (13.70%) PowerShell
3 43 (9.21%) SQL
4 32 (6.85%) Bash
5 28 (6.00%) Java
6 21 (4.50%) Bicep
6 21 (4.50%) Go
7 17 (3.64%) TypeScript
8 11 (2.36%) C#
9 9 (1.93%) JavaScript
10 6 (1.28%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.86%) BeanShell
11 4 (0.86%) Perl
11 4 (0.86%) Ruby
12 2 (0.43%) Groovy
12 2 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.21%) C
13 1 (0.21%) Cypher
13 1 (0.21%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.21%) R
Qualifications
1 130 (27.84%) Security Cleared
2 96 (20.56%) SC Cleared
3 46 (9.85%) Azure Certification
4 38 (8.14%) AWS Certification
5 35 (7.49%) Degree
6 28 (6.00%) DV Cleared
7 23 (4.93%) Computer Science Degree
8 18 (3.85%) Master's Degree
9 14 (3.00%) Microsoft Certification
10 13 (2.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 13 (2.78%) CISSP
11 11 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
12 9 (1.93%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 9 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
13 7 (1.50%) CISM
14 6 (1.28%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 5 (1.07%) CCSP
15 5 (1.07%) TOGAF Certification
16 4 (0.86%) AWS Certified Developer
17 3 (0.64%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (3.21%) GDPR
2 11 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (2.36%) NIST
3 9 (1.93%) NCSC
4 6 (1.28%) PCI DSS
4 6 (1.28%) QA
5 5 (1.07%) Data Quality
5 5 (1.07%) GRC
6 3 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.43%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.43%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.21%) FedRAMP
8 1 (0.21%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.21%) SLA
System Software
1 81 (17.34%) Docker
2 27 (5.78%) Active Directory
3 13 (2.78%) VMware NSX
4 12 (2.57%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (1.71%) Virtual Desktop
6 6 (1.28%) Hyper-V
7 5 (1.07%) Firmware
8 4 (0.86%) VMware Infrastructure
9 2 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.21%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 208 (44.54%) Terraform
2 133 (28.48%) Kubernetes
3 38 (8.14%) Ansible
4 35 (7.49%) Grafana
4 35 (7.49%) Prometheus
5 17 (3.64%) Istio
6 15 (3.21%) Argo
7 13 (2.78%) vCenter Server
8 12 (2.57%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (1.71%) Microsoft Intune
10 7 (1.50%) Kibana
10 7 (1.50%) logstash
11 5 (1.07%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.86%) Packer
12 4 (0.86%) Podman
13 3 (0.64%) Proxmox
13 3 (0.64%) Puppet
14 2 (0.43%) Consul
14 2 (0.43%) Salt
14 2 (0.43%) SCCM
Vendors
1 83 (17.77%) Microsoft
2 77 (16.49%) Google
3 22 (4.71%) Splunk
4 19 (4.07%) Oracle
5 17 (3.64%) Cisco
6 13 (2.78%) Databricks
6 13 (2.78%) Juniper
6 13 (2.78%) SolarWinds
7 11 (2.36%) ServiceNow
8 9 (1.93%) Dynatrace
9 7 (1.50%) Ping Identity
10 5 (1.07%) Broadcom
10 5 (1.07%) MuleSoft
10 5 (1.07%) PeopleSoft
10 5 (1.07%) Rapid7
10 5 (1.07%) VMware
10 5 (1.07%) Zscaler
11 4 (0.86%) Citrix
11 4 (0.86%) Red Hat
11 4 (0.86%) Salesforce