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 3 July 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 208 298 328
Rank change year-on-year +90 +30 -62
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 641 260 279
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.24% 0.83% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.35% 0.90% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 416 194 193
10th Percentile £400 £401 £386
25th Percentile £450 £428 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £575 £625
90th Percentile £688 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 3 3
10th Percentile £71.00 £32.50 -
25th Percentile £73.75 £36.25 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.11% +50.00% -
75th Percentile £81.25 £55.00 £32.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £59.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £77.00 - £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 47,626 28,777 40,436
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.44% 92.02% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,832 18,386 25,995
10th Percentile £325 £288 £285
25th Percentile £416 £401 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,230 1,296 2,846
10th Percentile £15.70 £13.93 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.49 £16.65
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.26% -29.33% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £55.31 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.50 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -

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 3 July 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 3 July 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 3 July 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 +71 539 £525 +5.00% 212
London +56 297 £525 - 68
UK excluding London +33 280 £510 +2.00% 177
Work from Home +5 167 £539 +7.80% 122
North of England -23 79 £500 +8.11% 36
South East -21 71 £538 +7.50% 39
Scotland +26 50 £451 -14.19% 19
Midlands -33 43 £513 +7.89% 41
North West -18 40 £488 +21.27% 21
Yorkshire -24 32 £475 -2.56% 14
West Midlands -43 25 £525 - 25
East of England -4 22 £505 +60.32% 8
East Midlands -6 17 £450 -5.26% 16
South West -18 15 £550 -2.22% 24
North East -40 7 £525 +5.00% 1
Wales -17 2 - - 8

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

For the 6 months to 3 July 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.

1 293 (45.71%) Azure
2 291 (45.40%) Terraform
3 276 (43.06%) AWS
4 249 (38.85%) CI/CD
5 235 (36.66%) Infrastructure as Code
6 205 (31.98%) DevOps
7 165 (25.74%) Python
8 161 (25.12%) Security Cleared
9 146 (22.78%) GCP
10 143 (22.31%) Kubernetes
11 139 (21.68%) Cloud Security
12 126 (19.66%) SC Cleared
13 125 (19.50%) Microsoft
14 122 (19.03%) Platform Engineering
15 117 (18.25%) PowerShell
16 109 (17.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 101 (15.76%) Google
18 100 (15.60%) GitHub
19 93 (14.51%) Migration
20 90 (14.04%) Windows
21 81 (12.64%) Containerisation
22 80 (12.48%) AI
23 77 (12.01%) Agile
24 69 (10.76%) Docker
24 69 (10.76%) Firewall
25 64 (9.98%) Active Directory
26 63 (9.83%) Entra ID
26 63 (9.83%) GitHub Actions
26 63 (9.83%) Serverless
27 62 (9.67%) DNS

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 10 (1.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (1.09%) Confluence
3 6 (0.94%) Apache
4 5 (0.78%) nginx
5 3 (0.47%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.47%) IIS
5 3 (0.47%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.47%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.31%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.16%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.16%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.16%) SAS
7 1 (0.16%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.16%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.16%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 293 (45.71%) Azure
2 276 (43.06%) AWS
3 146 (22.78%) GCP
4 100 (15.60%) GitHub
5 63 (9.83%) Entra ID
5 63 (9.83%) GitHub Actions
5 63 (9.83%) Serverless
6 47 (7.33%) Azure AKS
7 45 (7.02%) Amazon S3
7 45 (7.02%) AWS CloudFormation
8 41 (6.40%) Azure DevOps
8 41 (6.40%) IaaS
8 41 (6.40%) PaaS
9 39 (6.08%) AWS Lambda
10 36 (5.62%) Amazon EC2
10 36 (5.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 34 (5.30%) Amazon ECS
11 34 (5.30%) Amazon EKS
11 34 (5.30%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 31 (4.84%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 69 (10.76%) Firewall
2 62 (9.67%) DNS
3 35 (5.46%) VPN
4 28 (4.37%) Network Security
5 15 (2.34%) WAN
6 13 (2.03%) TCP/IP
7 12 (1.87%) DHCP
8 6 (0.94%) Reverse Proxy
8 6 (0.94%) SD-WAN
9 5 (0.78%) BGP
9 5 (0.78%) Internet
9 5 (0.78%) SSL
10 4 (0.62%) LAN
10 4 (0.62%) Software-Defined Networking
10 4 (0.62%) VLAN
11 3 (0.47%) IPv4
11 3 (0.47%) OSPF
11 3 (0.47%) SAN
11 3 (0.47%) SMTP
12 2 (0.31%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (3.28%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.50%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (2.03%) Amazon Athena
4 13 (2.03%) DynamoDB
5 7 (1.09%) BigQuery
6 6 (0.94%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (0.94%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.78%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.78%) Oracle Database
8 4 (0.62%) Amazon QuickSight
9 3 (0.47%) Big Data
9 3 (0.47%) Metadata
9 3 (0.47%) MySQL
9 3 (0.47%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.47%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.31%) Redis
11 1 (0.16%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.16%) Neo4j
11 1 (0.16%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 52 (8.11%) Jenkins
2 45 (7.02%) GitLab
3 42 (6.55%) Git
4 17 (2.65%) JIRA
5 10 (1.56%) Artifactory
6 5 (0.78%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.47%) Selenium
7 3 (0.47%) Team Foundation Server
8 2 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.31%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.31%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.31%) Liquibase
8 2 (0.31%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.16%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.16%) Chocolatey
9 1 (0.16%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.16%) Gatling
9 1 (0.16%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.16%) sqlmap
9 1 (0.16%) TestRail
General
1 76 (11.86%) Social Skills
2 73 (11.39%) Finance
3 58 (9.05%) Public Sector
4 25 (3.90%) Banking
5 21 (3.28%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (1.40%) Investment Banking
8 6 (0.94%) Legal
9 5 (0.78%) Pharmaceutical
9 5 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (0.78%) Retail
10 4 (0.62%) Law
10 4 (0.62%) Military
11 3 (0.47%) Corporate Banking
11 3 (0.47%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.47%) Local Government
11 3 (0.47%) Police
11 3 (0.47%) Retail Banking
12 2 (0.31%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (3.90%) REST
2 14 (2.18%) Node.js
3 13 (2.03%) OAuth
3 13 (2.03%) OAuth2
4 10 (1.56%) ARM Templates
5 9 (1.40%) .NET
5 9 (1.40%) Kafka
5 9 (1.40%) React
5 9 (1.40%) Spring
5 9 (1.40%) Spring Boot
6 7 (1.09%) AWS CDK
6 7 (1.09%) Model Context Protocol
6 7 (1.09%) OpenID
7 6 (0.94%) YAML
8 5 (0.78%) Playwright
9 4 (0.62%) FastAPI
9 4 (0.62%) Jest
9 4 (0.62%) OpenTelemetry
9 4 (0.62%) PySpark
9 4 (0.62%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 120 (18.72%) Cloud Native
2 34 (5.30%) Hybrid Cloud
3 28 (4.37%) Security Posture
4 27 (4.21%) Public Cloud
5 22 (3.43%) Data Centre
6 21 (3.28%) Enterprise Cloud
6 21 (3.28%) Onboarding
7 15 (2.34%) Distributed Systems
7 15 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
8 13 (2.03%) Cloud Security Posture
8 13 (2.03%) Management Information System
9 9 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
11 7 (1.09%) Product Ownership
12 6 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
12 6 (0.94%) Linux Command Line
13 5 (0.78%) Private Cloud
14 4 (0.62%) AI Agents
14 4 (0.62%) Cyber Threat
14 4 (0.62%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 90 (14.04%) Windows
2 54 (8.42%) Linux
3 49 (7.64%) Windows Server
4 20 (3.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (1.25%) Ubuntu
6 7 (1.09%) Windows Server 2019
7 4 (0.62%) VMS
8 3 (0.47%) CentOS
9 2 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 249 (38.85%) CI/CD
2 235 (36.66%) Infrastructure as Code
3 205 (31.98%) DevOps
4 139 (21.68%) Cloud Security
5 122 (19.03%) Platform Engineering
6 109 (17.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 93 (14.51%) Migration
8 81 (12.64%) Containerisation
9 80 (12.48%) AI
10 77 (12.01%) Agile
11 62 (9.67%) Observability
12 52 (8.11%) Problem-Solving
12 52 (8.11%) Technical Leadership
13 50 (7.80%) Software Engineering
14 49 (7.64%) Infrastructure Automation
15 47 (7.33%) Continuous Improvement
16 40 (6.24%) Cybersecurity
17 38 (5.93%) DevSecOps
17 38 (5.93%) Mentoring
18 35 (5.46%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 165 (25.74%) Python
2 117 (18.25%) PowerShell
3 60 (9.36%) Bash
4 54 (8.42%) SQL
5 47 (7.33%) Bicep
6 33 (5.15%) Java
7 16 (2.50%) C#
8 12 (1.87%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.56%) Go
9 10 (1.56%) TypeScript
10 5 (0.78%) Groovy
11 2 (0.31%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.31%) R
11 2 (0.31%) Ruby
11 2 (0.31%) Shell Script
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
Qualifications
1 161 (25.12%) Security Cleared
2 126 (19.66%) SC Cleared
3 44 (6.86%) Azure Certification
4 42 (6.55%) DV Cleared
5 37 (5.77%) AWS Certification
6 21 (3.28%) Degree
7 17 (2.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 14 (2.18%) CISSP
8 14 (2.18%) Microsoft Certification
9 12 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
10 9 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
11 8 (1.25%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 7 (1.09%) CCNP
13 6 (0.94%) BPSS Clearance
13 6 (0.94%) MCSE
14 5 (0.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 4 (0.62%) CCIE
15 4 (0.62%) CCSP
15 4 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
16 3 (0.47%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (2.18%) NIST
2 10 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 9 (1.40%) GDPR
4 8 (1.25%) QA
5 7 (1.09%) NCSC
6 6 (0.94%) Data Quality
6 6 (0.94%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.31%) SLA
9 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.16%) GRC
9 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 69 (10.76%) Docker
2 64 (9.98%) Active Directory
3 26 (4.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (3.90%) Virtual Machines
5 21 (3.28%) VMware ESXi
6 20 (3.12%) VMware NSX
7 15 (2.34%) vSphere
8 14 (2.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (1.87%) vCloud
10 10 (1.56%) Hyper-V
11 7 (1.09%) Squid
12 4 (0.62%) Firmware
13 3 (0.47%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.47%) NFS
13 3 (0.47%) Postfix
14 2 (0.31%) Ceph
14 2 (0.31%) KVM
Systems Management
1 291 (45.40%) Terraform
2 143 (22.31%) Kubernetes
3 47 (7.33%) Ansible
4 24 (3.74%) Grafana
5 23 (3.59%) Prometheus
6 22 (3.43%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (2.81%) vCenter Server
8 16 (2.50%) SCOM
9 15 (2.34%) Microsoft Intune
10 14 (2.18%) Progress Chef
11 13 (2.03%) Puppet
12 9 (1.40%) Istio
12 9 (1.40%) Packer
13 7 (1.09%) Argo
14 6 (0.94%) Cilium
15 4 (0.62%) HAProxy
15 4 (0.62%) Salt
15 4 (0.62%) Suricata
16 3 (0.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 3 (0.47%) vRealize
Vendors
1 125 (19.50%) Microsoft
2 101 (15.76%) Google
3 45 (7.02%) VMware
4 25 (3.90%) Oracle
5 17 (2.65%) Zscaler
6 15 (2.34%) Red Hat
7 13 (2.03%) Palo Alto
8 12 (1.87%) ServiceNow
9 11 (1.72%) Okta
10 10 (1.56%) Cisco
11 9 (1.40%) Dynatrace
11 9 (1.40%) Salesforce
12 8 (1.25%) CrowdStrike
13 7 (1.09%) Databricks
13 7 (1.09%) Fortinet
13 7 (1.09%) OpenAI
13 7 (1.09%) Splunk
14 5 (0.78%) Citrix
14 5 (0.78%) Rapid7
14 5 (0.78%) SolarWinds