Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £518, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 September 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 201 326 327
Rank change year-on-year +125 +1 -79
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 787 249 251
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.45% 0.76% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.57% 0.84% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 524 178 155
10th Percentile £413 £401 £400
25th Percentile £450 £448 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £575
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -13.04% +4.55%
75th Percentile £590 £575 £641
90th Percentile £675 £647 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £575
% change year-on-year +2.00% -13.04% +6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 7 0
10th Percentile - £29.00 -
25th Percentile £23.20 £29.50 -
Median hourly rate £77.00 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +71.11% - -
75th Percentile £81.25 £86.25 -
90th Percentile - £110.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 - -

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 50,135 29,742 35,694
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 91.07% 92.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,651 18,759 21,938
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £627 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,860 1,586 1,659
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.17 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.84 £51.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.78 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.13 £43.90
% change year-on-year +69.14% -42.76% +0.34%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 +120 688 £525 +5.00% 1,428
UK excluding London +106 433 £510 +2.00% 725
London +52 302 £525 +0.96% 763
Work from Home +26 196 £540 +8.00% 528
North of England +32 138 £513 +13.89% 210
South East +26 131 £538 +7.50% 126
North West +17 84 £519 +15.28% 138
Midlands +13 74 £500 -8.26% 91
Scotland +8 50 £437 -16.76% 102
Yorkshire -3 46 £455 -15.35% 46
East Midlands +17 42 £500 +5.26% 45
West Midlands -21 31 £525 -4.55% 46
East of England -11 18 £488 - 43
South West -30 16 £575 +4.55% 99
North East -37 8 £525 +14.13% 26
Wales -6 7 - - 18

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

For the 6 months to 21 September 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.

1 372 (47.27%) Azure
2 310 (39.39%) Terraform
3 279 (35.45%) Infrastructure as Code
4 271 (34.43%) CI/CD
5 270 (34.31%) AWS
6 208 (26.43%) Security Cleared
7 207 (26.30%) DevOps
7 207 (26.30%) Kubernetes
8 195 (24.78%) Python
9 179 (22.74%) Cloud Security
9 179 (22.74%) Microsoft
10 162 (20.58%) PowerShell
11 161 (20.46%) GCP
12 157 (19.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 149 (18.93%) Platform Engineering
14 147 (18.68%) SC Cleared
15 119 (15.12%) Windows
16 116 (14.74%) Entra ID
17 105 (13.34%) Google
18 104 (13.21%) Active Directory
19 103 (13.09%) AI
20 93 (11.82%) Containerisation
20 93 (11.82%) Migration
21 90 (11.44%) Observability
22 89 (11.31%) Agile
23 85 (10.80%) GitHub
24 84 (10.67%) Firewall
25 83 (10.55%) DNS
25 83 (10.55%) Docker
26 81 (10.29%) Bash

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 14 (1.78%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.52%) Apache
3 8 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
3 8 (1.02%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.76%) Confluence
5 3 (0.38%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.38%) IIS
5 3 (0.38%) nginx
5 3 (0.38%) OpenStack
5 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 372 (47.27%) Azure
2 270 (34.31%) AWS
3 161 (20.46%) GCP
4 116 (14.74%) Entra ID
5 85 (10.80%) GitHub
6 55 (6.99%) Azure DevOps
6 55 (6.99%) Serverless
7 54 (6.86%) GitHub Actions
8 50 (6.35%) IaaS
9 47 (5.97%) AWS CloudFormation
10 41 (5.21%) AWS Lambda
10 41 (5.21%) Azure Monitor
11 39 (4.96%) Azure AKS
11 39 (4.96%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 37 (4.70%) PaaS
13 35 (4.45%) Amazon EKS
14 34 (4.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 34 (4.32%) Microsoft 365
15 32 (4.07%) Amazon EC2
15 32 (4.07%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 84 (10.67%) Firewall
2 83 (10.55%) DNS
3 42 (5.34%) Network Security
4 36 (4.57%) VPN
5 21 (2.67%) DHCP
6 18 (2.29%) WAN
7 16 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.52%) Internet
9 7 (0.89%) SD-WAN
9 7 (0.89%) VLAN
10 6 (0.76%) NGFW
10 6 (0.76%) VSAN
11 5 (0.64%) Kerberos
11 5 (0.64%) SSL
12 4 (0.51%) BGP
12 4 (0.51%) LAN
12 4 (0.51%) Wireless
13 3 (0.38%) IPv4
13 3 (0.38%) OSPF
13 3 (0.38%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.30%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.67%) Amazon RDS
3 17 (2.16%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.65%) BigQuery
5 11 (1.40%) Data Lake
6 8 (1.02%) Oracle Exadata
7 7 (0.89%) DynamoDB
7 7 (0.89%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.76%) Amazon Athena
9 5 (0.64%) Oracle Database
10 4 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
10 4 (0.51%) Big Data
11 3 (0.38%) Flink
11 3 (0.38%) Looker
11 3 (0.38%) Metadata
11 3 (0.38%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.38%) MySQL
11 3 (0.38%) Oracle Database 12c
12 2 (0.25%) Amazon QuickSight
12 2 (0.25%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 55 (6.99%) GitLab
2 45 (5.72%) Jenkins
3 39 (4.96%) Git
4 17 (2.16%) JIRA
5 8 (1.02%) Artifactory
6 7 (0.89%) Claude Code
7 6 (0.76%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.38%) Selenium
8 3 (0.38%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.25%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.25%) Gatling
9 2 (0.25%) JMeter
9 2 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
9 2 (0.25%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.25%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.13%) eggPlant
10 1 (0.13%) IntelliJ
10 1 (0.13%) JUnit
10 1 (0.13%) LoadRunner
General
1 96 (12.20%) Finance
2 81 (10.29%) Social Skills
3 73 (9.28%) Public Sector
4 32 (4.07%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (3.30%) Banking
6 10 (1.27%) Manufacturing
7 9 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (1.02%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (0.89%) Legal
10 6 (0.76%) Investment Banking
11 5 (0.64%) Law
11 5 (0.64%) Local Government
11 5 (0.64%) Pharmaceutical
12 4 (0.51%) Front Office
12 4 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.38%) Aerospace
13 3 (0.38%) Back Office
13 3 (0.38%) Digital Health
13 3 (0.38%) Digital Healthcare
13 3 (0.38%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 310 (39.39%) Terraform
2 25 (3.18%) REST
3 19 (2.41%) ARM Templates
4 14 (1.78%) Kafka
5 13 (1.65%) OAuth
6 12 (1.52%) OAuth2
7 11 (1.40%) Spring
7 11 (1.40%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.14%) Node.js
9 8 (1.02%) .NET
9 8 (1.02%) AWS CDK
9 8 (1.02%) Keycloak
9 8 (1.02%) OpenID
10 7 (0.89%) React
10 7 (0.89%) YAML
11 6 (0.76%) FastAPI
11 6 (0.76%) Flask
12 5 (0.64%) Azure Blueprints
13 4 (0.51%) PySpark
13 4 (0.51%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 126 (16.01%) Cloud Native
2 61 (7.75%) Security Posture
3 46 (5.84%) Enterprise Cloud
4 38 (4.83%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (4.07%) Cloud Security Posture
6 31 (3.94%) Onboarding
7 26 (3.30%) Enterprise Software
8 21 (2.67%) Management Information System
9 20 (2.54%) Data Centre
9 20 (2.54%) Distributed Systems
10 16 (2.03%) Public Cloud
11 13 (1.65%) Product Ownership
12 12 (1.52%) Private Cloud
13 11 (1.40%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (1.27%) PKI
15 8 (1.02%) AI Agents
15 8 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
16 7 (0.89%) Legacy Systems
17 6 (0.76%) Distributed Architecture
18 5 (0.64%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 119 (15.12%) Windows
2 81 (10.29%) Linux
3 60 (7.62%) Windows Server
4 31 (3.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.91%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.02%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.51%) VMS
8 3 (0.38%) CentOS
9 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.13%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 279 (35.45%) Infrastructure as Code
2 271 (34.43%) CI/CD
3 207 (26.30%) DevOps
4 179 (22.74%) Cloud Security
5 157 (19.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 149 (18.93%) Platform Engineering
7 103 (13.09%) AI
8 93 (11.82%) Containerisation
8 93 (11.82%) Migration
9 90 (11.44%) Observability
10 89 (11.31%) Agile
11 67 (8.51%) Technical Leadership
12 61 (7.75%) DevSecOps
13 60 (7.62%) Continuous Improvement
14 59 (7.50%) Cybersecurity
14 59 (7.50%) Software Engineering
15 58 (7.37%) Infrastructure Automation
16 56 (7.12%) Deployment Automation
17 53 (6.73%) Problem-Solving
17 53 (6.73%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 195 (24.78%) Python
2 162 (20.58%) PowerShell
3 81 (10.29%) Bash
4 77 (9.78%) Bicep
5 64 (8.13%) SQL
6 39 (4.96%) Java
7 16 (2.03%) Shell Script
8 15 (1.91%) C#
9 11 (1.40%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.27%) Go
11 4 (0.51%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.38%) C
12 3 (0.38%) Groovy
12 3 (0.38%) Scala
13 2 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.13%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.13%) Perl
14 1 (0.13%) R
14 1 (0.13%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 208 (26.43%) Security Cleared
2 147 (18.68%) SC Cleared
3 74 (9.40%) DV Cleared
4 46 (5.84%) Azure Certification
5 43 (5.46%) AWS Certification
6 35 (4.45%) Degree
7 22 (2.80%) Microsoft Certification
8 18 (2.29%) CISSP
9 12 (1.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (1.02%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (1.02%) MCSE
11 7 (0.89%) Cisco Certification
12 6 (0.76%) CISM
12 6 (0.76%) Computer Science Degree
13 5 (0.64%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 5 (0.64%) CCNP
13 5 (0.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 3 (0.38%) CCIE
14 3 (0.38%) CEH
14 3 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (1.78%) Data Quality
3 11 (1.40%) NIST
4 10 (1.27%) QA
5 9 (1.14%) NCSC
6 6 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
6 6 (0.76%) GDPR
7 4 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 3 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.25%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.25%) SLA
10 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.13%) GRC
System Software
1 104 (13.21%) Active Directory
2 83 (10.55%) Docker
3 50 (6.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (4.32%) Virtual Machines
4 34 (4.32%) VMware ESXi
5 26 (3.30%) VMware NSX
6 22 (2.80%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (2.54%) vSphere
8 15 (1.91%) vCloud
9 11 (1.40%) Hyper-V
10 7 (0.89%) Squid
11 4 (0.51%) Firmware
11 4 (0.51%) NFS
12 3 (0.38%) Ceph
12 3 (0.38%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.38%) Postfix
13 2 (0.25%) KVM
13 2 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.13%) BitLocker
14 1 (0.13%) IAG
Systems Management
1 207 (26.30%) Kubernetes
2 52 (6.61%) Ansible
3 30 (3.81%) vCenter Server
4 27 (3.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 27 (3.43%) SCOM
5 23 (2.92%) Grafana
6 20 (2.54%) Prometheus
7 19 (2.41%) Progress Chef
8 16 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (1.78%) Puppet
10 9 (1.14%) Istio
11 8 (1.02%) Cilium
12 6 (0.76%) Argo
12 6 (0.76%) Packer
13 5 (0.64%) VxRail
14 4 (0.51%) Suricata
15 3 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 3 (0.38%) HAProxy
15 3 (0.38%) Karpenter
15 3 (0.38%) vRealize
Vendors
1 179 (22.74%) Microsoft
2 105 (13.34%) Google
3 74 (9.40%) VMware
4 36 (4.57%) Oracle
5 26 (3.30%) Databricks
6 19 (2.41%) Red Hat
7 17 (2.16%) Okta
8 16 (2.03%) Zscaler
9 15 (1.91%) Palo Alto
10 14 (1.78%) SolarWinds
11 13 (1.65%) Broadcom
12 12 (1.52%) OpenAI
12 12 (1.52%) Splunk
13 11 (1.40%) ServiceNow
14 10 (1.27%) Cisco
15 9 (1.14%) CrowdStrike
15 9 (1.14%) Salesforce
16 8 (1.02%) BeyondTrust
16 8 (1.02%) Dynatrace
16 8 (1.02%) New Relic