Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £522, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 April 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 245 315 309
Rank change year-on-year +70 -6 -48
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 488 227 298
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.06% 0.77% 0.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.15% 0.84% 0.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 329 174 203
10th Percentile £399 £400 £400
25th Percentile £450 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £613 £625 £625
90th Percentile £691 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £522 £500 £523
% change year-on-year +4.40% -4.31% -0.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 3
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £25.13 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £25.25 - £30.00
75th Percentile £39.56 - £32.50
90th Percentile £48.08 - -
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 42,439 27,180 40,683
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.23% 92.60% 92.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,345 17,830 26,590
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,678 986 2,604
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.71 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £19.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £30.79 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.20% -12.02% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.59 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.08 £75.38 £72.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £29.53 £35.00
% change year-on-year +45.64% -15.64% -17.38%

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 17 April 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 17 April 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 17 April 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 +41 403 £525 - 151
London +27 230 £525 - 55
UK excluding London +20 203 £522 +4.40% 106
Work from Home +15 121 £510 -2.86% 97
North of England -36 55 £506 +9.46% 42
South East -34 41 £516 -6.18% 24
Scotland +26 37 £513 -2.38% 6
Midlands -60 28 £673 +37.95% 11
North West -19 27 £525 +16.67% 22
Yorkshire -28 27 £481 +48.08% 14
South West -11 24 £550 -4.35% 14
West Midlands -45 22 £680 +15.74% 10
East of England -15 19 £510 +3.55% 9
East Midlands -33 6 £575 +21.05% 1
Wales -10 1 £425 +41.67%
North East -23 1 £525 -12.50% 6

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

For the 6 months to 17 April 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.

1 216 (44.26%) Terraform
2 213 (43.65%) AWS
3 207 (42.42%) Azure
4 199 (40.78%) CI/CD
5 185 (37.91%) Infrastructure as Code
6 171 (35.04%) DevOps
7 137 (28.07%) Security Cleared
8 120 (24.59%) GCP
8 120 (24.59%) Kubernetes
9 115 (23.57%) Python
10 114 (23.36%) SC Cleared
11 104 (21.31%) GitHub
12 97 (19.88%) Cloud Security
13 90 (18.44%) Google
14 86 (17.62%) Microsoft
15 77 (15.78%) Agile
16 74 (15.16%) Platform Engineering
17 70 (14.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 69 (14.14%) Containerisation
19 68 (13.93%) PowerShell
20 65 (13.32%) Migration
21 64 (13.11%) GitHub Actions
22 60 (12.30%) Docker
23 54 (11.07%) Serverless
24 48 (9.84%) Continuous Improvement
24 48 (9.84%) Observability
25 46 (9.43%) Jenkins
26 45 (9.22%) Firewall
27 43 (8.81%) AWS CloudFormation
27 43 (8.81%) DevSecOps

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 6 (1.23%) Confluence
1 6 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (1.02%) Apache Spark
3 4 (0.82%) Apache
4 3 (0.61%) nginx
5 2 (0.41%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.20%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.20%) CMS
6 1 (0.20%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.20%) SAS
6 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.41%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.20%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 213 (43.65%) AWS
2 207 (42.42%) Azure
3 120 (24.59%) GCP
4 104 (21.31%) GitHub
5 64 (13.11%) GitHub Actions
6 54 (11.07%) Serverless
7 43 (8.81%) AWS CloudFormation
8 41 (8.40%) Azure DevOps
9 38 (7.79%) Entra ID
10 36 (7.38%) PaaS
11 35 (7.17%) Amazon S3
12 34 (6.97%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 33 (6.76%) Azure AKS
14 31 (6.35%) Amazon EKS
14 31 (6.35%) AWS Lambda
15 30 (6.15%) IaaS
16 27 (5.53%) Amazon ECS
17 21 (4.30%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 20 (4.10%) SaaS
19 19 (3.89%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 45 (9.22%) Firewall
2 19 (3.89%) DNS
3 18 (3.69%) Network Security
4 17 (3.48%) VPN
5 8 (1.64%) Cisco Firepower
6 7 (1.43%) Cisco IOS
6 7 (1.43%) Cisco ISE
6 7 (1.43%) Junos
7 6 (1.23%) Reverse Proxy
8 5 (1.02%) NX-OS
9 4 (0.82%) DHCP
9 4 (0.82%) Software-Defined Networking
10 3 (0.61%) BGP
11 2 (0.41%) DKIM
11 2 (0.41%) SMTP
11 2 (0.41%) TCP/IP
11 2 (0.41%) Unified Communications
11 2 (0.41%) VLAN
12 1 (0.20%) HTTP
12 1 (0.20%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (3.07%) Amazon Athena
2 12 (2.46%) BigQuery
3 11 (2.25%) DynamoDB
4 8 (1.64%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (1.43%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (1.43%) Power BI
6 6 (1.23%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.23%) Data Lake
6 6 (1.23%) NoSQL
6 6 (1.23%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (1.02%) Big Data
8 4 (0.82%) Amazon QuickSight
8 4 (0.82%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (0.82%) Oracle Database
8 4 (0.82%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.61%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.41%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.41%) Metadata
10 2 (0.41%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 46 (9.43%) Jenkins
2 36 (7.38%) GitLab
3 34 (6.97%) Git
4 7 (1.43%) JIRA
5 4 (0.82%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.61%) Liquibase
6 3 (0.61%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.41%) CircleCI
7 2 (0.41%) Postman
7 2 (0.41%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.41%) Selenium
7 2 (0.41%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.20%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.20%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.20%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.20%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.20%) JUnit
8 1 (0.20%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.20%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.20%) sqlmap
General
1 69 (14.14%) Social Skills
2 58 (11.89%) Finance
3 42 (8.61%) Public Sector
4 19 (3.89%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (3.48%) Banking
5 17 (3.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 9 (1.84%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (1.84%) Retail
7 7 (1.43%) Aeronautics
8 6 (1.23%) Legal
8 6 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (1.23%) Telecoms
9 4 (0.82%) Financial Institution
9 4 (0.82%) Investment Banking
9 4 (0.82%) Marketing
10 3 (0.61%) Military
11 2 (0.41%) Billing
11 2 (0.41%) Law
11 2 (0.41%) Local Government
11 2 (0.41%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (4.92%) REST
2 23 (4.71%) Node.js
3 13 (2.66%) Kafka
4 12 (2.46%) React
5 11 (2.25%) OpenTelemetry
6 10 (2.05%) .NET
7 9 (1.84%) ARM Templates
7 9 (1.84%) Elastic Stack
7 9 (1.84%) Spring
7 9 (1.84%) Spring Boot
8 8 (1.64%) Oracle Fusion
8 8 (1.64%) Playwright
9 7 (1.43%) AngularJS
9 7 (1.43%) LangChain
9 7 (1.43%) OAuth
9 7 (1.43%) OpenAPI
9 7 (1.43%) SOAP
10 6 (1.23%) OAuth2
10 6 (1.23%) OpenID
10 6 (1.23%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 87 (17.83%) Cloud Native
2 32 (6.56%) Public Cloud
3 17 (3.48%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (2.87%) Data Centre
5 10 (2.05%) Product Ownership
6 9 (1.84%) Security Posture
7 7 (1.43%) Onboarding
7 7 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (1.23%) Cyber Threat
8 6 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.23%) PKI
9 5 (1.02%) Enterprise Cloud
9 5 (1.02%) Virtual Team
10 3 (0.61%) Cloud Security Posture
10 3 (0.61%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.61%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.61%) Replication
11 2 (0.41%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 34 (6.97%) Windows
2 30 (6.15%) Linux
3 16 (3.28%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.82%) Unix
4 4 (0.82%) VMS
5 1 (0.20%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (40.78%) CI/CD
2 185 (37.91%) Infrastructure as Code
3 171 (35.04%) DevOps
4 97 (19.88%) Cloud Security
5 77 (15.78%) Agile
6 74 (15.16%) Platform Engineering
7 70 (14.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 69 (14.14%) Containerisation
9 65 (13.32%) Migration
10 48 (9.84%) Continuous Improvement
10 48 (9.84%) Observability
11 43 (8.81%) DevSecOps
12 42 (8.61%) Infrastructure Automation
13 40 (8.20%) AI
14 38 (7.79%) Problem-Solving
15 36 (7.38%) Software Engineering
16 35 (7.17%) Cybersecurity
17 34 (6.97%) Microservices
18 31 (6.35%) Mentoring
19 26 (5.33%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 115 (23.57%) Python
2 68 (13.93%) PowerShell
3 41 (8.40%) SQL
4 34 (6.97%) Bash
5 28 (5.74%) Java
6 26 (5.33%) Bicep
7 15 (3.07%) TypeScript
8 13 (2.66%) C#
9 10 (2.05%) Go
10 8 (1.64%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.82%) BeanShell
11 4 (0.82%) Groovy
11 4 (0.82%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.41%) Ruby
13 1 (0.20%) C
13 1 (0.20%) Cypher
13 1 (0.20%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.20%) Perl
13 1 (0.20%) R
Qualifications
1 137 (28.07%) Security Cleared
2 114 (23.36%) SC Cleared
3 42 (8.61%) Azure Certification
4 30 (6.15%) AWS Certification
5 22 (4.51%) DV Cleared
6 17 (3.48%) Degree
7 15 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
8 13 (2.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 13 (2.66%) CISSP
9 11 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
10 10 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
11 9 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
12 7 (1.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 7 (1.43%) CISM
13 6 (1.23%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 5 (1.02%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.82%) CCSP
15 4 (0.82%) Master's Degree
16 3 (0.61%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
16 3 (0.61%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (2.66%) GDPR
2 12 (2.46%) NCSC
2 12 (2.46%) NIST
3 10 (2.05%) QA
4 9 (1.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (1.23%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.23%) PCI DSS
6 5 (1.02%) GRC
7 2 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.41%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.41%) SLA
7 2 (0.41%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.20%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.20%) FedRAMP
8 1 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 60 (12.30%) Docker
2 25 (5.12%) Active Directory
3 15 (3.07%) Virtual Desktop
4 13 (2.66%) VMware NSX
5 11 (2.25%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (1.23%) Firmware
6 6 (1.23%) Hyper-V
6 6 (1.23%) VMware Infrastructure
6 6 (1.23%) vSphere
7 1 (0.20%) Squid
Systems Management
1 216 (44.26%) Terraform
2 120 (24.59%) Kubernetes
3 28 (5.74%) Prometheus
4 24 (4.92%) Grafana
5 23 (4.71%) Ansible
6 19 (3.89%) Istio
7 13 (2.66%) Argo
8 12 (2.46%) Microsoft Intune
9 11 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (1.64%) vCenter Server
11 6 (1.23%) Packer
12 5 (1.02%) Progress Chef
12 5 (1.02%) Puppet
13 4 (0.82%) Kibana
13 4 (0.82%) logstash
13 4 (0.82%) Salt
14 2 (0.41%) Cilium
14 2 (0.41%) Consul
15 1 (0.20%) HAProxy
15 1 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 90 (18.44%) Google
2 86 (17.62%) Microsoft
3 18 (3.69%) Oracle
4 13 (2.66%) Cisco
5 12 (2.46%) Dynatrace
5 12 (2.46%) VMware
6 11 (2.25%) Databricks
7 10 (2.05%) ServiceNow
8 9 (1.84%) Splunk
9 8 (1.64%) Juniper
10 7 (1.43%) Salesforce
10 7 (1.43%) SolarWinds
11 5 (1.02%) Broadcom
11 5 (1.02%) Citrix
11 5 (1.02%) Fortinet
11 5 (1.02%) PeopleSoft
11 5 (1.02%) Ping Identity
11 5 (1.02%) Rapid7
12 4 (0.82%) Palo Alto
12 4 (0.82%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud