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 21 July 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 212 315 325
Rank change year-on-year +103 +10 -52
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 689 252 261
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.31% 0.77% 0.63%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.41% 0.84% 0.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 445 189 180
10th Percentile £400 £400 £386
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £618 £575 £625
90th Percentile £688 £640 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £505
% change year-on-year +2.00% -0.99% -8.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 3 1
10th Percentile £23.20 £32.50 -
25th Percentile £73.06 £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 £83.88 £59.50 -
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 48,798 29,864 38,453
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.56% 91.64% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,431 18,992 24,873
10th Percentile £325 £285 £293
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £735 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,294 1,429 2,439
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £13.49
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.00
Median hourly rate £44.10 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +75.33% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £80.17 £73.75 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.81
% change year-on-year +78.93% -39.85% +5.65%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +92 576 £525 +5.00% 374
UK excluding London +68 335 £510 +2.00% 216
London +57 299 £525 - 187
Work from Home +2 177 £539 +7.80% 163
North of England -13 91 £525 +16.67% 77
South East -15 90 £538 +4.88% 49
Scotland +35 64 £437 -12.60% 16
North West -15 50 £538 +26.47% 43
Midlands -13 49 £513 +7.89% 34
Yorkshire -24 34 £475 -2.56% 29
West Midlands -32 27 £525 - 21
East of England -3 22 £505 +26.25% 11
East Midlands 0 21 £450 -5.26% 13
South West -29 16 £550 -2.22% 22
North East -42 7 £525 +7.69% 5
Wales -11 5 - - 8

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

For the 6 months to 21 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.

1 323 (46.88%) Azure
2 299 (43.40%) Terraform
3 281 (40.78%) AWS
4 254 (36.87%) CI/CD
5 248 (35.99%) Infrastructure as Code
6 210 (30.48%) DevOps
7 180 (26.12%) Python
8 170 (24.67%) Security Cleared
9 163 (23.66%) Kubernetes
10 157 (22.79%) GCP
11 154 (22.35%) Cloud Security
12 149 (21.63%) Microsoft
13 138 (20.03%) PowerShell
14 136 (19.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 133 (19.30%) Platform Engineering
16 131 (19.01%) SC Cleared
17 111 (16.11%) Google
18 107 (15.53%) Windows
19 93 (13.50%) GitHub
20 91 (13.21%) Migration
21 86 (12.48%) Containerisation
22 85 (12.34%) Agile
22 85 (12.34%) AI
23 78 (11.32%) Active Directory
24 75 (10.89%) Entra ID
25 73 (10.60%) Bash
25 73 (10.60%) DNS
25 73 (10.60%) Firewall
25 73 (10.60%) Observability
26 69 (10.01%) Docker

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 13 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
2 8 (1.16%) Apache
2 8 (1.16%) Confluence
3 5 (0.73%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (0.58%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.58%) nginx
5 3 (0.44%) IIS
5 3 (0.44%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.29%) CloudStack
6 2 (0.29%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.15%) SAS
7 1 (0.15%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.15%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.29%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 323 (46.88%) Azure
2 281 (40.78%) AWS
3 157 (22.79%) GCP
4 93 (13.50%) GitHub
5 75 (10.89%) Entra ID
6 61 (8.85%) Serverless
7 57 (8.27%) GitHub Actions
8 48 (6.97%) Azure AKS
9 43 (6.24%) AWS CloudFormation
9 43 (6.24%) Azure DevOps
10 41 (5.95%) Amazon S3
11 40 (5.81%) IaaS
12 39 (5.66%) AWS Lambda
13 37 (5.37%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 36 (5.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 35 (5.08%) Amazon EC2
15 35 (5.08%) PaaS
16 34 (4.93%) Amazon EKS
17 31 (4.50%) Amazon ECS
18 30 (4.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 73 (10.60%) DNS
1 73 (10.60%) Firewall
2 40 (5.81%) VPN
3 30 (4.35%) Network Security
4 16 (2.32%) DHCP
5 15 (2.18%) WAN
6 14 (2.03%) TCP/IP
7 8 (1.16%) Internet
8 6 (0.87%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.87%) VLAN
9 5 (0.73%) BGP
9 5 (0.73%) Reverse Proxy
9 5 (0.73%) SSL
10 4 (0.58%) LAN
10 4 (0.58%) SAN
10 4 (0.58%) Software-Defined Networking
11 3 (0.44%) OSPF
11 3 (0.44%) SMTP
11 3 (0.44%) VSAN
11 3 (0.44%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (3.63%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.32%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (2.03%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.60%) Amazon Athena
4 11 (1.60%) DynamoDB
5 9 (1.31%) BigQuery
6 6 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
7 5 (0.73%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.73%) Oracle Database
8 3 (0.44%) Amazon QuickSight
8 3 (0.44%) Big Data
8 3 (0.44%) MySQL
8 3 (0.44%) Oracle Database 12c
8 3 (0.44%) Oracle Exadata
8 3 (0.44%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.29%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.29%) Metadata
9 2 (0.29%) Redis
10 1 (0.15%) Apache Iceberg
Development Applications
1 50 (7.26%) Jenkins
2 47 (6.82%) GitLab
3 38 (5.52%) Git
4 19 (2.76%) JIRA
5 9 (1.31%) Artifactory
6 5 (0.73%) Bitbucket
6 5 (0.73%) Claude Code
7 3 (0.44%) Selenium
7 3 (0.44%) Team Foundation Server
8 2 (0.29%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.29%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.29%) Liquibase
8 2 (0.29%) Robot Framework
8 2 (0.29%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.15%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.15%) Chocolatey
9 1 (0.15%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.15%) Gatling
9 1 (0.15%) sqlmap
9 1 (0.15%) TestRail
General
1 87 (12.63%) Finance
2 83 (12.05%) Social Skills
3 62 (9.00%) Public Sector
4 25 (3.63%) Banking
5 23 (3.34%) Analytical Skills
6 11 (1.60%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (1.31%) Investment Banking
8 5 (0.73%) Law
8 5 (0.73%) Legal
8 5 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
8 5 (0.73%) Retail
9 3 (0.44%) Corporate Banking
9 3 (0.44%) Financial Institution
9 3 (0.44%) Local Government
9 3 (0.44%) Military
9 3 (0.44%) Police
9 3 (0.44%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (0.44%) Retail Banking
9 3 (0.44%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (3.77%) REST
2 14 (2.03%) Node.js
3 13 (1.89%) OAuth
3 13 (1.89%) OAuth2
4 10 (1.45%) ARM Templates
4 10 (1.45%) React
5 9 (1.31%) Spring
5 9 (1.31%) Spring Boot
6 8 (1.16%) Model Context Protocol
7 7 (1.02%) AWS CDK
7 7 (1.02%) OpenID
8 6 (0.87%) .NET
8 6 (0.87%) Kafka
8 6 (0.87%) YAML
9 5 (0.73%) FastAPI
9 5 (0.73%) Flask
9 5 (0.73%) Playwright
9 5 (0.73%) PyTorch
9 5 (0.73%) TensorFlow
10 4 (0.58%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 126 (18.29%) Cloud Native
2 38 (5.52%) Security Posture
3 36 (5.22%) Hybrid Cloud
4 32 (4.64%) Enterprise Cloud
5 26 (3.77%) Onboarding
6 24 (3.48%) Public Cloud
7 22 (3.19%) Data Centre
8 17 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
9 16 (2.32%) Cloud Security Posture
9 16 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
10 14 (2.03%) Management Information System
11 9 (1.31%) Linux Command Line
11 9 (1.31%) Product Ownership
11 9 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
13 7 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
14 5 (0.73%) AI Agents
14 5 (0.73%) PKI
14 5 (0.73%) Private Cloud
15 4 (0.58%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 107 (15.53%) Windows
2 67 (9.72%) Linux
3 52 (7.55%) Windows Server
4 28 (4.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.31%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.16%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.44%) CentOS
7 3 (0.44%) VMS
8 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.15%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 254 (36.87%) CI/CD
2 248 (35.99%) Infrastructure as Code
3 210 (30.48%) DevOps
4 154 (22.35%) Cloud Security
5 136 (19.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 133 (19.30%) Platform Engineering
7 91 (13.21%) Migration
8 86 (12.48%) Containerisation
9 85 (12.34%) Agile
9 85 (12.34%) AI
10 73 (10.60%) Observability
11 56 (8.13%) Infrastructure Automation
12 54 (7.84%) Technical Leadership
13 53 (7.69%) Problem-Solving
13 53 (7.69%) Software Engineering
14 50 (7.26%) Continuous Improvement
15 43 (6.24%) DevSecOps
16 42 (6.10%) Deployment Automation
17 41 (5.95%) Mentoring
18 39 (5.66%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 180 (26.12%) Python
2 138 (20.03%) PowerShell
3 73 (10.60%) Bash
4 59 (8.56%) SQL
5 56 (8.13%) Bicep
6 33 (4.79%) Java
7 18 (2.61%) C#
8 13 (1.89%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.45%) Go
9 10 (1.45%) Shell Script
10 9 (1.31%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.73%) Groovy
12 2 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.29%) R
12 2 (0.29%) Ruby
13 1 (0.15%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.15%) C
13 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.15%) Perl
13 1 (0.15%) Scala
Qualifications
1 170 (24.67%) Security Cleared
2 131 (19.01%) SC Cleared
3 50 (7.26%) DV Cleared
4 47 (6.82%) AWS Certification
5 46 (6.68%) Azure Certification
6 24 (3.48%) Degree
7 17 (2.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 15 (2.18%) CISSP
8 15 (2.18%) Microsoft Certification
9 11 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
11 7 (1.02%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 7 (1.02%) CCNP
11 7 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
12 6 (0.87%) MCSE
13 4 (0.58%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 4 (0.58%) CCIE
13 4 (0.58%) CISM
14 3 (0.44%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
14 3 (0.44%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (1.60%) NIST
2 10 (1.45%) Data Quality
2 10 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (1.45%) QA
3 8 (1.16%) NCSC
4 4 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (0.58%) GDPR
5 3 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (0.44%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.29%) SLA
7 1 (0.15%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.15%) GRC
7 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 78 (11.32%) Active Directory
2 69 (10.01%) Docker
3 33 (4.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (3.77%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (3.48%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (3.05%) VMware NSX
7 17 (2.47%) vSphere
8 14 (2.03%) Virtual Desktop
9 13 (1.89%) Hyper-V
10 12 (1.74%) vCloud
11 7 (1.02%) Squid
12 4 (0.58%) Firmware
13 3 (0.44%) Ceph
13 3 (0.44%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.44%) NFS
13 3 (0.44%) Postfix
14 2 (0.29%) KVM
15 1 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 299 (43.40%) Terraform
2 163 (23.66%) Kubernetes
3 50 (7.26%) Ansible
4 24 (3.48%) Grafana
5 23 (3.34%) Prometheus
6 21 (3.05%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (2.90%) vCenter Server
8 19 (2.76%) Progress Chef
9 18 (2.61%) SCOM
10 17 (2.47%) Microsoft Intune
11 15 (2.18%) Puppet
12 9 (1.31%) Istio
13 8 (1.16%) Packer
14 7 (1.02%) Argo
15 6 (0.87%) Cilium
16 4 (0.58%) HAProxy
16 4 (0.58%) Suricata
16 4 (0.58%) VxRail
17 3 (0.44%) Salt
17 3 (0.44%) vRealize
Vendors
1 149 (21.63%) Microsoft
2 111 (16.11%) Google
3 53 (7.69%) VMware
4 28 (4.06%) Oracle
5 17 (2.47%) Red Hat
5 17 (2.47%) Zscaler
6 16 (2.32%) Okta
7 15 (2.18%) ServiceNow
8 13 (1.89%) Palo Alto
9 10 (1.45%) Cisco
9 10 (1.45%) Dynatrace
10 9 (1.31%) CrowdStrike
10 9 (1.31%) Salesforce
11 8 (1.16%) BeyondTrust
11 8 (1.16%) Databricks
11 8 (1.16%) Splunk
12 7 (1.02%) Broadcom
12 7 (1.02%) OpenAI
12 7 (1.02%) SolarWinds
13 6 (0.87%) Fortinet