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 26 May 2026.

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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 228 303 318
Rank change year-on-year +75 +15 -49
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 546 234 271
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 0.82% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.22% 0.89% 0.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 360 184 185
10th Percentile £400 £400 £400
25th Percentile £462 £445 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £588 £625
90th Percentile £688 £646 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £511
% change year-on-year +5.00% -2.20% -7.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 3
10th Percentile £25.13 - -
25th Percentile £38.19 £42.50 £27.50
Median hourly rate £72.00 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +60.00% +50.00% -68.42%
75th Percentile £76.00 £47.50 £32.50
90th Percentile £79.60 - -
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 44,822 26,395 39,583
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.28% 92.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,378 17,183 25,758
10th Percentile £325 £289 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,956 1,008 2,746
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.49 £18.12 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.52 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.46% -24.62% -18.89%
75th Percentile £67.06 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +73.72% -37.13% -5.88%

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 26 May 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 26 May 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 26 May 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 +58 456 £525 +5.00% 215
London +51 274 £525 +5.00% 92
UK excluding London -6 209 £525 +5.00% 148
Work from Home +6 136 £538 +7.50% 88
North of England -38 57 £525 +5.00% 28
South East -37 53 £538 -0.19% 40
Scotland +21 40 £451 -14.19% 10
North West -18 29 £538 +33.71% 24
East of England -19 23 £510 +3.55% 10
Yorkshire -38 21 £481 -3.75% 2
Midlands -56 19 £670 +34.00% 20
South West -18 18 £550 -4.35% 38
West Midlands -51 16 £670 +27.62% 12
North East -23 7 £525 -4.55% 2
East Midlands -33 3 - - 8

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

For the 6 months to 26 May 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.

1 248 (45.42%) Azure
2 242 (44.32%) Terraform
3 233 (42.67%) AWS
4 228 (41.76%) CI/CD
5 203 (37.18%) Infrastructure as Code
6 190 (34.80%) DevOps
7 145 (26.56%) Security Cleared
8 131 (23.99%) Python
9 127 (23.26%) Kubernetes
10 124 (22.71%) GCP
11 117 (21.43%) SC Cleared
12 110 (20.15%) Cloud Security
13 100 (18.32%) GitHub
14 95 (17.40%) Microsoft
15 94 (17.22%) Google
16 92 (16.85%) Platform Engineering
17 83 (15.20%) PowerShell
18 80 (14.65%) Migration
19 79 (14.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
20 68 (12.45%) Agile
20 68 (12.45%) Containerisation
21 64 (11.72%) GitHub Actions
22 61 (11.17%) AI
23 56 (10.26%) Firewall
23 56 (10.26%) Windows
24 55 (10.07%) Docker
25 54 (9.89%) Serverless
26 51 (9.34%) Problem-Solving
27 47 (8.61%) Bash
27 47 (8.61%) GitLab

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 (1.47%) Apache
2 7 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.10%) Confluence
4 5 (0.92%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.92%) nginx
5 3 (0.55%) IIS
5 3 (0.55%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.55%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.37%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.18%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.18%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.18%) SAS
7 1 (0.18%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.37%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.18%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 248 (45.42%) Azure
2 233 (42.67%) AWS
3 124 (22.71%) GCP
4 100 (18.32%) GitHub
5 64 (11.72%) GitHub Actions
6 54 (9.89%) Serverless
7 46 (8.42%) Azure DevOps
8 45 (8.24%) Entra ID
9 41 (7.51%) AWS CloudFormation
10 37 (6.78%) Azure AKS
10 37 (6.78%) PaaS
11 35 (6.41%) Amazon S3
11 35 (6.41%) IaaS
12 33 (6.04%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 31 (5.68%) AWS Lambda
14 30 (5.49%) Amazon EKS
15 26 (4.76%) Amazon EC2
15 26 (4.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 25 (4.58%) Amazon ECS
16 25 (4.58%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 56 (10.26%) Firewall
2 39 (7.14%) DNS
3 26 (4.76%) Network Security
4 22 (4.03%) VPN
5 8 (1.47%) TCP/IP
6 6 (1.10%) DHCP
6 6 (1.10%) Reverse Proxy
6 6 (1.10%) WAN
7 4 (0.73%) Software-Defined Networking
7 4 (0.73%) SSL
7 4 (0.73%) VLAN
8 3 (0.55%) BGP
8 3 (0.55%) Internet
8 3 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 3 (0.55%) SMTP
9 2 (0.37%) DKIM
9 2 (0.37%) NGFW
9 2 (0.37%) Unified Communications
9 2 (0.37%) VSAN
9 2 (0.37%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.75%) Amazon Athena
2 13 (2.38%) BigQuery
3 11 (2.01%) DynamoDB
3 11 (2.01%) SQL Server
4 7 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (1.10%) Amazon Redshift
5 6 (1.10%) Azure SQL Database
5 6 (1.10%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (0.92%) Data Lake
6 5 (0.92%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.73%) Amazon QuickSight
8 3 (0.55%) Big Data
8 3 (0.55%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (0.55%) Metadata
8 3 (0.55%) MySQL
8 3 (0.55%) Oracle Database 12c
8 3 (0.55%) Power BI
8 3 (0.55%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (0.37%) OLAP
9 2 (0.37%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 47 (8.61%) GitLab
2 43 (7.88%) Jenkins
3 41 (7.51%) Git
4 12 (2.20%) JIRA
5 10 (1.83%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.55%) Postman
6 3 (0.55%) Selenium
6 3 (0.55%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.37%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.37%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.37%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.37%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.18%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.18%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.18%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.18%) Gatling
8 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.18%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.18%) TestRail
8 1 (0.18%) Travis CI
General
1 70 (12.82%) Social Skills
2 57 (10.44%) Finance
3 45 (8.24%) Public Sector
4 21 (3.85%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (3.48%) Banking
6 13 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.65%) Retail
9 6 (1.10%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.10%) Legal
9 6 (1.10%) Telecoms
10 5 (0.92%) Local Government
10 5 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.73%) Marketing
11 4 (0.73%) Military
11 4 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.55%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.55%) Police
13 2 (0.37%) Corporate Banking
13 2 (0.37%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (3.66%) REST
2 13 (2.38%) Node.js
2 13 (2.38%) OAuth
2 13 (2.38%) React
2 13 (2.38%) Spring
2 13 (2.38%) Spring Boot
3 12 (2.20%) Kafka
3 12 (2.20%) OAuth2
4 9 (1.65%) .NET
4 9 (1.65%) OpenTelemetry
5 8 (1.47%) Oracle Fusion
6 7 (1.28%) OpenID
7 6 (1.10%) AngularJS
7 6 (1.10%) ARM Templates
7 6 (1.10%) LangChain
7 6 (1.10%) Playwright
8 5 (0.92%) Model Context Protocol
8 5 (0.92%) Web Services
8 5 (0.92%) YAML
9 4 (0.73%) Express.js
Miscellaneous
1 95 (17.40%) Cloud Native
2 29 (5.31%) Public Cloud
3 25 (4.58%) Hybrid Cloud
4 22 (4.03%) Data Centre
5 14 (2.56%) Enterprise Cloud
5 14 (2.56%) Onboarding
6 13 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
6 13 (2.38%) Security Posture
7 10 (1.83%) Product Ownership
8 8 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
9 7 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (1.10%) Cyber Threat
10 6 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (0.92%) Cloud Security Posture
11 5 (0.92%) Management Information System
11 5 (0.92%) PKI
11 5 (0.92%) Private Cloud
12 4 (0.73%) Legacy Systems
12 4 (0.73%) Virtual Team
13 3 (0.55%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 56 (10.26%) Windows
2 33 (6.04%) Linux
2 33 (6.04%) Windows Server
3 5 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (0.92%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.55%) CentOS
4 3 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (0.37%) VMS
5 2 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (0.18%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.18%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 228 (41.76%) CI/CD
2 203 (37.18%) Infrastructure as Code
3 190 (34.80%) DevOps
4 110 (20.15%) Cloud Security
5 92 (16.85%) Platform Engineering
6 80 (14.65%) Migration
7 79 (14.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 68 (12.45%) Agile
8 68 (12.45%) Containerisation
9 61 (11.17%) AI
10 51 (9.34%) Problem-Solving
11 47 (8.61%) Observability
12 46 (8.42%) Software Engineering
13 44 (8.06%) Continuous Improvement
14 43 (7.88%) Infrastructure Automation
15 41 (7.51%) Cybersecurity
15 41 (7.51%) DevSecOps
16 38 (6.96%) Technical Leadership
17 33 (6.04%) Mentoring
18 28 (5.13%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 131 (23.99%) Python
2 83 (15.20%) PowerShell
3 47 (8.61%) Bash
4 45 (8.24%) SQL
5 36 (6.59%) Bicep
6 27 (4.95%) Java
7 15 (2.75%) C#
8 10 (1.83%) Go
8 10 (1.83%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.65%) TypeScript
10 5 (0.92%) Groovy
11 3 (0.55%) Ruby
12 2 (0.37%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.18%) BeanShell
13 1 (0.18%) Cypher
13 1 (0.18%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.18%) Perl
13 1 (0.18%) R
13 1 (0.18%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 145 (26.56%) Security Cleared
2 117 (21.43%) SC Cleared
3 39 (7.14%) Azure Certification
4 27 (4.95%) DV Cleared
5 23 (4.21%) AWS Certification
6 17 (3.11%) Degree
7 13 (2.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 13 (2.38%) Microsoft Certification
8 12 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
9 10 (1.83%) CISSP
10 9 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
10 9 (1.65%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 5 (0.92%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 5 (0.92%) TOGAF Certification
13 4 (0.73%) CCSP
13 4 (0.73%) CISM
13 4 (0.73%) MCSE
14 3 (0.55%) CCNP
14 3 (0.55%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.20%) GDPR
1 12 (2.20%) NIST
2 11 (2.01%) QA
3 10 (1.83%) NCSC
4 9 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (1.10%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.10%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
6 3 (0.55%) GRC
7 2 (0.37%) SLA
7 2 (0.37%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.18%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 55 (10.07%) Docker
2 39 (7.14%) Active Directory
3 17 (3.11%) Virtual Desktop
4 16 (2.93%) VMware NSX
5 15 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
6 13 (2.38%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (2.01%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (2.01%) vSphere
8 7 (1.28%) Hyper-V
8 7 (1.28%) Squid
8 7 (1.28%) vCloud
9 4 (0.73%) Firmware
10 3 (0.55%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.55%) Postfix
11 2 (0.37%) Ceph
11 2 (0.37%) KVM
11 2 (0.37%) NFS
Systems Management
1 242 (44.32%) Terraform
2 127 (23.26%) Kubernetes
3 27 (4.95%) Ansible
4 22 (4.03%) Grafana
5 19 (3.48%) Prometheus
6 15 (2.75%) Microsoft Intune
6 15 (2.75%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (2.56%) Argo
7 14 (2.56%) Istio
8 12 (2.20%) vCenter Server
9 9 (1.65%) SCOM
10 7 (1.28%) Packer
10 7 (1.28%) Puppet
11 6 (1.10%) Cilium
12 5 (0.92%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.73%) HAProxy
13 4 (0.73%) Salt
13 4 (0.73%) Suricata
14 3 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 2 (0.37%) SELinux
Vendors
1 95 (17.40%) Microsoft
2 94 (17.22%) Google
3 29 (5.31%) VMware
4 26 (4.76%) Oracle
5 12 (2.20%) Palo Alto
5 12 (2.20%) Zscaler
6 10 (1.83%) Databricks
7 9 (1.65%) Cisco
8 8 (1.47%) Dynatrace
8 8 (1.47%) Red Hat
8 8 (1.47%) ServiceNow
9 7 (1.28%) Salesforce
10 6 (1.10%) OpenAI
10 6 (1.10%) Splunk
11 5 (0.92%) Citrix
11 5 (0.92%) Fortinet
11 5 (0.92%) Juniper
11 5 (0.92%) Okta
11 5 (0.92%) PeopleSoft
12 4 (0.73%) Rapid7