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 1 January 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 282 317 248
Rank change year-on-year +35 -69 -3
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 358 235 421
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.96% 0.71% 0.98%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.06% 0.76% 1.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 265 143 299
10th Percentile £401 £380 £423
25th Percentile £453 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.09% - -
75th Percentile £599 £650 £638
90th Percentile £705 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £522 £500 £538
% change year-on-year +4.50% -7.07% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 2
10th Percentile £25.13 - £69.43
25th Percentile £28.03 - £72.31
Median hourly rate £30.00 - £79.25
75th Percentile £67.81 - £85.81
90th Percentile £110.00 - £88.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £88.50

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 33,835 30,753 40,099
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.20% 92.71% 93.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,431 18,857 26,859
10th Percentile £300 £298 £281
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,964 949 1,554
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £14.43
25th Percentile £18.24 £21.05 £19.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £32.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% -27.78% +41.93%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.52 £46.18
% change year-on-year -20.21% -31.75% +80.14%

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 1 January 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 1 January 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 1 January 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 +26 295 £524 -4.77% 143
UK excluding London +36 174 £522 +4.50% 116
London +5 142 £525 -4.55% 52
Work from Home +6 84 £500 -3.85% 73
North of England -27 53 £500 +21.21% 23
South East +14 42 £500 -6.98% 40
Midlands -16 38 £575 +21.05% 15
West Midlands -9 32 £575 -11.54% 10
Yorkshire -30 32 £513 +24.24% 9
Scotland +33 27 £525 +5.00% 4
North West -19 21 £450 - 13
South West 0 16 £538 -6.52% 20
East of England -12 10 £438 -12.50% 6
East Midlands -19 6 £575 +27.78% 5
Wales -2 1 £425 +41.67% 4

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

For the 6 months to 1 January 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.

1 161 (44.97%) AWS
2 153 (42.74%) DevOps
3 148 (41.34%) CI/CD
4 146 (40.78%) Azure
5 144 (40.22%) Terraform
6 137 (38.27%) Infrastructure as Code
7 113 (31.56%) Security Cleared
8 109 (30.45%) Python
9 101 (28.21%) Kubernetes
10 85 (23.74%) GCP
11 78 (21.79%) GitHub
12 73 (20.39%) SC Cleared
13 70 (19.55%) Agile
14 69 (19.27%) Containerisation
15 64 (17.88%) Microsoft
16 62 (17.32%) Docker
17 56 (15.64%) Jenkins
18 55 (15.36%) Cloud Security
19 54 (15.08%) Google
20 53 (14.80%) GitHub Actions
21 46 (12.85%) Serverless
22 45 (12.57%) GitLab
23 44 (12.29%) Linux
24 43 (12.01%) REST
25 41 (11.45%) Problem-Solving
26 39 (10.89%) Infrastructure Engineering
27 38 (10.61%) Ansible
27 38 (10.61%) Infrastructure Automation
27 38 (10.61%) PowerShell
28 36 (10.06%) Active Directory

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 (1.68%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.40%) Apache
3 4 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.84%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.56%) Confluence
5 2 (0.56%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.28%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.28%) CMS
6 1 (0.28%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.28%) nginx
6 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (0.56%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 161 (44.97%) AWS
2 146 (40.78%) Azure
3 85 (23.74%) GCP
4 78 (21.79%) GitHub
5 53 (14.80%) GitHub Actions
6 46 (12.85%) Serverless
7 33 (9.22%) AWS CloudFormation
8 32 (8.94%) Entra ID
9 30 (8.38%) Azure DevOps
10 22 (6.15%) Amazon EKS
10 22 (6.15%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 21 (5.87%) Amazon S3
11 21 (5.87%) PaaS
12 18 (5.03%) AWS Lambda
12 18 (5.03%) IaaS
13 17 (4.75%) Microsoft 365
14 15 (4.19%) Azure Monitor
15 14 (3.91%) Azure AKS
16 13 (3.63%) Cloud Run
17 11 (3.07%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 28 (7.82%) Firewall
2 21 (5.87%) Cisco Firepower
2 21 (5.87%) Cisco IOS
2 21 (5.87%) Cisco ISE
2 21 (5.87%) Junos
3 16 (4.47%) Network Security
4 15 (4.19%) VPN
5 9 (2.51%) DNS
6 5 (1.40%) NX-OS
6 5 (1.40%) WAN
7 3 (0.84%) DHCP
7 3 (0.84%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.56%) LAN
8 2 (0.56%) SAN
8 2 (0.56%) Unified Communications
8 2 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
9 1 (0.28%) BGP
9 1 (0.28%) MPLS
9 1 (0.28%) VRRP
9 1 (0.28%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (8.66%) NoSQL
2 26 (7.26%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (2.79%) BigQuery
4 9 (2.51%) Power BI
5 7 (1.96%) Elasticsearch
6 6 (1.68%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (1.68%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (1.40%) Amazon Athena
7 5 (1.40%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (1.40%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.12%) Delta Lake
8 4 (1.12%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.12%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.84%) Amazon Aurora
9 3 (0.84%) Big Data
9 3 (0.84%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.56%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.56%) OLAP
10 2 (0.56%) OLTP
10 2 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 56 (15.64%) Jenkins
2 45 (12.57%) GitLab
3 26 (7.26%) Git
4 13 (3.63%) JIRA
4 13 (3.63%) Liquibase
5 3 (0.84%) MLflow
5 3 (0.84%) Postman
6 2 (0.56%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.56%) CircleCI
6 2 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.56%) Spinnaker
7 1 (0.28%) Gemini Tracker
7 1 (0.28%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.28%) Travis CI
7 1 (0.28%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 74 (20.67%) Social Skills
2 60 (16.76%) Finance
3 32 (8.94%) Banking
4 28 (7.82%) Public Sector
5 26 (7.26%) Analytical Skills
6 19 (5.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (3.07%) Financial Institution
8 7 (1.96%) Aeronautics
8 7 (1.96%) Local Government
8 7 (1.96%) Retail
9 6 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.40%) Aviation
10 5 (1.40%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (1.40%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.56%) Billing
11 2 (0.56%) Marketing
12 1 (0.28%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.28%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.28%) Legal
12 1 (0.28%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (12.01%) REST
2 26 (7.26%) Elastic Stack
3 21 (5.87%) RESTful
4 20 (5.59%) Node.js
5 11 (3.07%) ARM Templates
5 11 (3.07%) Kafka
6 10 (2.79%) React
7 9 (2.51%) SOAP
8 8 (2.23%) LangChain
8 8 (2.23%) OpenAPI
8 8 (2.23%) OpenTelemetry
8 8 (2.23%) Oracle Fusion
8 8 (2.23%) SAML
9 7 (1.96%) AWS CDK
9 7 (1.96%) GraphQL
9 7 (1.96%) Lambda Expressions
9 7 (1.96%) OpenID
9 7 (1.96%) Spring
9 7 (1.96%) Spring Boot
10 6 (1.68%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 56 (15.64%) Cloud Native
2 35 (9.78%) Public Cloud
3 21 (5.87%) Distributed Systems
4 9 (2.51%) PKI
5 7 (1.96%) Data Centre
6 5 (1.40%) Genomics
6 5 (1.40%) Hybrid Cloud
6 5 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
6 5 (1.40%) Product Ownership
6 5 (1.40%) Security Posture
7 4 (1.12%) Algorithms
7 4 (1.12%) Cloud Security Posture
7 4 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
7 4 (1.12%) Life Science
8 3 (0.84%) AI Agents
8 3 (0.84%) Distributed Computing
8 3 (0.84%) Replication
9 2 (0.56%) Cyber Threat
9 2 (0.56%) Linux Command Line
9 2 (0.56%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 44 (12.29%) Linux
2 35 (9.78%) Windows
3 22 (6.15%) Windows Server
4 9 (2.51%) Unix
5 3 (0.84%) VMS
6 1 (0.28%) Alpine Linux
6 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.28%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 153 (42.74%) DevOps
2 148 (41.34%) CI/CD
3 137 (38.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 70 (19.55%) Agile
5 69 (19.27%) Containerisation
6 55 (15.36%) Cloud Security
7 41 (11.45%) Problem-Solving
8 39 (10.89%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 38 (10.61%) Infrastructure Automation
10 35 (9.78%) Microservices
11 34 (9.50%) Migration
12 33 (9.22%) Observability
12 33 (9.22%) Software Engineering
13 30 (8.38%) AI
14 29 (8.10%) Continuous Improvement
14 29 (8.10%) Cost Optimisation
14 29 (8.10%) Cybersecurity
15 28 (7.82%) DevSecOps
16 27 (7.54%) High Availability
16 27 (7.54%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 109 (30.45%) Python
2 38 (10.61%) PowerShell
3 35 (9.78%) SQL
4 29 (8.10%) Go
5 28 (7.82%) Java
6 23 (6.42%) Bash
7 16 (4.47%) Bicep
8 11 (3.07%) Shell Script
8 11 (3.07%) TypeScript
9 9 (2.51%) JavaScript
10 7 (1.96%) C#
10 7 (1.96%) Perl
11 4 (1.12%) BeanShell
12 3 (0.84%) Ruby
13 2 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.56%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.56%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.56%) VB
14 1 (0.28%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.28%) C
Qualifications
1 113 (31.56%) Security Cleared
2 73 (20.39%) SC Cleared
3 36 (10.06%) DV Cleared
4 34 (9.50%) Degree
5 32 (8.94%) AWS Certification
6 31 (8.66%) Azure Certification
7 19 (5.31%) Computer Science Degree
8 17 (4.75%) Master's Degree
9 10 (2.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 10 (2.79%) Microsoft Certification
10 8 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
11 7 (1.96%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 6 (1.68%) CISSP
13 5 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
13 5 (1.40%) CISM
14 4 (1.12%) AWS Certified Developer
15 3 (0.84%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 3 (0.84%) CCSP
15 3 (0.84%) DBS Check
16 2 (0.56%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (2.51%) QA
3 8 (2.23%) NIST
4 7 (1.96%) GDPR
4 7 (1.96%) NCSC
5 5 (1.40%) GRC
6 4 (1.12%) Data Quality
7 3 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.56%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.56%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.56%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.28%) FedRAMP
9 1 (0.28%) JSP 440
System Software
1 62 (17.32%) Docker
2 36 (10.06%) Active Directory
3 21 (5.87%) VMware NSX
4 8 (2.23%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.68%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (1.12%) Firmware
6 4 (1.12%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.84%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.28%) KVM
9 1 (0.28%) Squid
Systems Management
1 144 (40.22%) Terraform
2 101 (28.21%) Kubernetes
3 38 (10.61%) Ansible
4 31 (8.66%) Grafana
5 30 (8.38%) Prometheus
6 21 (5.87%) vCenter Server
7 13 (3.63%) Argo
8 12 (3.35%) Istio
9 7 (1.96%) Kibana
9 7 (1.96%) logstash
10 6 (1.68%) Microsoft Intune
11 5 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.84%) Podman
12 3 (0.84%) Proxmox
13 2 (0.56%) FortiGate
13 2 (0.56%) Puppet
14 1 (0.28%) Consul
14 1 (0.28%) Packer
14 1 (0.28%) SCCM
14 1 (0.28%) vRealize
Vendors
1 64 (17.88%) Microsoft
2 54 (15.08%) Google
3 24 (6.70%) Cisco
4 23 (6.42%) Splunk
5 22 (6.15%) Juniper
6 21 (5.87%) SolarWinds
7 16 (4.47%) Oracle
8 14 (3.91%) Databricks
9 10 (2.79%) ServiceNow
10 8 (2.23%) VMware
11 7 (1.96%) Dynatrace
11 7 (1.96%) Palo Alto
12 6 (1.68%) MuleSoft
13 5 (1.40%) Broadcom
13 5 (1.40%) Ping Identity
14 4 (1.12%) Salesforce
15 3 (0.84%) Cloudera
15 3 (0.84%) SAP
15 3 (0.84%) Zscaler
16 2 (0.56%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud