Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £515, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 October 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 199 305 331
Rank change year-on-year +106 +26 -85
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 800 270 244
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.46% 0.82% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.58% 0.90% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 527 199 147
10th Percentile £413 £400 £395
25th Percentile £450 £425 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £551
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -9.26% +0.18%
75th Percentile £591 £575 £641
90th Percentile £675 £669 £705
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £515
% change year-on-year +2.00% -2.91% -6.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 7 0
10th Percentile £22.74 £29.00 -
25th Percentile £23.20 £29.50 -
Median hourly rate £76.50 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +70.00% - -
75th Percentile £81.25 £86.25 -
90th Percentile - £110.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.73 - -

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 50,598 30,120 35,393
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.17% 90.94% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,800 19,028 21,472
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 £631 £623 £638
90th Percentile £734 £725 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,975 1,619 1,553
10th Percentile £14.45 £13.75 £14.88
25th Percentile £19.78 £17.30 £20.75
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £68.31 £74.97
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.87 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.97% -41.69% -1.88%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 +103 702 £525 +5.00% 1,485
UK excluding London +109 442 £510 +2.00% 810
London +50 302 £525 +1.69% 741
Work from Home +29 212 £538 +7.60% 577
North of England +28 146 £511 +13.61% 225
South East +17 133 £538 +7.50% 132
North West +17 87 £513 +17.14% 141
Midlands +11 80 £500 -9.09% 115
Yorkshire +5 49 £460 -20.00% 54
East Midlands +24 46 £500 +5.26% 51
Scotland -1 46 £425 -15.00% 104
West Midlands -14 33 £525 -4.55% 64
East of England -15 16 £475 +5.56% 63
South West -25 16 £575 - 114
North East -37 10 £525 +14.13% 30
Wales -6 7 - - 19

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

For the 6 months to 2 October 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.

1 384 (48.00%) Azure
2 312 (39.00%) Terraform
3 285 (35.63%) Infrastructure as Code
4 270 (33.75%) CI/CD
5 266 (33.25%) AWS
6 213 (26.63%) Kubernetes
7 206 (25.75%) DevOps
8 205 (25.63%) Security Cleared
9 194 (24.25%) Python
10 187 (23.38%) Microsoft
11 180 (22.50%) Cloud Security
12 172 (21.50%) PowerShell
13 161 (20.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 159 (19.88%) GCP
15 146 (18.25%) SC Cleared
16 145 (18.13%) Platform Engineering
17 127 (15.88%) Entra ID
18 126 (15.75%) Windows
19 109 (13.63%) Active Directory
20 104 (13.00%) AI
20 104 (13.00%) Google
21 102 (12.75%) Migration
22 93 (11.63%) Containerisation
23 91 (11.38%) Observability
24 88 (11.00%) GitHub
25 86 (10.75%) Firewall
26 84 (10.50%) Agile
26 84 (10.50%) DNS
27 83 (10.38%) Docker
28 82 (10.25%) Linux

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 15 (1.88%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.50%) Apache
3 9 (1.13%) SharePoint
4 8 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.88%) Confluence
6 4 (0.50%) nginx
7 3 (0.38%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.38%) IIS
7 3 (0.38%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
9 1 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
9 1 (0.13%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.13%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 384 (48.00%) Azure
2 266 (33.25%) AWS
3 159 (19.88%) GCP
4 127 (15.88%) Entra ID
5 88 (11.00%) GitHub
6 56 (7.00%) Azure DevOps
6 56 (7.00%) GitHub Actions
6 56 (7.00%) IaaS
7 52 (6.50%) Serverless
8 45 (5.63%) AWS CloudFormation
9 44 (5.50%) Microsoft 365
10 43 (5.38%) Azure Monitor
10 43 (5.38%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 40 (5.00%) Azure AKS
12 39 (4.88%) AWS Lambda
13 38 (4.75%) PaaS
14 36 (4.50%) Amazon EKS
15 33 (4.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 31 (3.88%) Amazon S3
17 30 (3.75%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 86 (10.75%) Firewall
2 84 (10.50%) DNS
3 44 (5.50%) Network Security
4 40 (5.00%) VPN
5 21 (2.63%) DHCP
6 18 (2.25%) WAN
7 16 (2.00%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.50%) Internet
9 9 (1.13%) VSAN
10 7 (0.88%) NGFW
10 7 (0.88%) SD-WAN
10 7 (0.88%) VLAN
11 5 (0.63%) Kerberos
11 5 (0.63%) Reverse Proxy
12 4 (0.50%) BGP
12 4 (0.50%) LAN
12 4 (0.50%) SAN
12 4 (0.50%) SSL
12 4 (0.50%) Wireless
13 3 (0.38%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (3.50%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.63%) Amazon RDS
3 17 (2.13%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.63%) BigQuery
4 13 (1.63%) Data Lake
5 9 (1.13%) NoSQL
6 8 (1.00%) DynamoDB
6 8 (1.00%) Oracle Exadata
7 6 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
7 6 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.63%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.38%) Flink
9 3 (0.38%) Looker
9 3 (0.38%) Metadata
9 3 (0.38%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.38%) MySQL
9 3 (0.38%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.38%) Redis
10 2 (0.25%) Amazon QuickSight
10 2 (0.25%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 54 (6.75%) GitLab
2 48 (6.00%) Jenkins
3 39 (4.88%) Git
4 17 (2.13%) JIRA
5 8 (1.00%) Artifactory
6 7 (0.88%) Claude Code
7 6 (0.75%) Bitbucket
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
10 1 (0.13%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.13%) eggPlant
10 1 (0.13%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.13%) Selenium
10 1 (0.13%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.13%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 96 (12.00%) Finance
2 82 (10.25%) Social Skills
3 75 (9.38%) Public Sector
4 33 (4.13%) Analytical Skills
5 29 (3.63%) Banking
6 11 (1.38%) Manufacturing
7 9 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (1.00%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.00%) Legal
9 6 (0.75%) Investment Banking
10 5 (0.63%) Front Office
10 5 (0.63%) Law
10 5 (0.63%) Local Government
10 5 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.50%) Police
12 3 (0.38%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.38%) Back Office
12 3 (0.38%) Digital Health
12 3 (0.38%) Digital Healthcare
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (39.00%) Terraform
2 26 (3.25%) REST
3 19 (2.38%) ARM Templates
4 15 (1.88%) Kafka
5 14 (1.75%) OAuth
6 13 (1.63%) OAuth2
7 10 (1.25%) Spring
7 10 (1.25%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.13%) OpenID
8 9 (1.13%) YAML
9 8 (1.00%) AWS CDK
9 8 (1.00%) Keycloak
9 8 (1.00%) Node.js
9 8 (1.00%) React
10 7 (0.88%) .NET
11 6 (0.75%) FastAPI
11 6 (0.75%) Flask
12 5 (0.63%) Azure Blueprints
13 4 (0.50%) Hugging Face
13 4 (0.50%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 127 (15.88%) Cloud Native
2 61 (7.63%) Security Posture
3 45 (5.63%) Enterprise Cloud
4 40 (5.00%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (4.00%) Cloud Security Posture
6 30 (3.75%) Onboarding
7 27 (3.38%) Enterprise Software
8 24 (3.00%) Data Centre
9 21 (2.63%) Management Information System
10 20 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
11 14 (1.75%) Private Cloud
12 13 (1.63%) Product Ownership
12 13 (1.63%) Public Cloud
13 11 (1.38%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (1.25%) PKI
15 8 (1.00%) AI Agents
15 8 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
16 6 (0.75%) Distributed Architecture
17 5 (0.63%) CMDB
18 4 (0.50%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 126 (15.75%) Windows
2 82 (10.25%) Linux
3 63 (7.88%) Windows Server
4 32 (4.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.88%) Windows Server 2019
6 9 (1.13%) Ubuntu
7 8 (1.00%) VMS
8 3 (0.38%) CentOS
9 2 (0.25%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.13%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 285 (35.63%) Infrastructure as Code
2 270 (33.75%) CI/CD
3 206 (25.75%) DevOps
4 180 (22.50%) Cloud Security
5 161 (20.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 145 (18.13%) Platform Engineering
7 104 (13.00%) AI
8 102 (12.75%) Migration
9 93 (11.63%) Containerisation
10 91 (11.38%) Observability
11 84 (10.50%) Agile
12 65 (8.13%) Technical Leadership
13 64 (8.00%) Cybersecurity
14 61 (7.63%) Infrastructure Automation
15 58 (7.25%) Deployment Automation
15 58 (7.25%) Software Engineering
16 56 (7.00%) DevSecOps
17 55 (6.88%) Problem-Solving
18 54 (6.75%) Continuous Improvement
18 54 (6.75%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 194 (24.25%) Python
2 172 (21.50%) PowerShell
3 81 (10.13%) Bash
4 74 (9.25%) Bicep
5 69 (8.63%) SQL
6 37 (4.63%) Java
7 16 (2.00%) Shell Script
8 15 (1.88%) C#
9 11 (1.38%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.13%) Go
11 4 (0.50%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.38%) C
12 3 (0.38%) Scala
13 2 (0.25%) Groovy
13 2 (0.25%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.13%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.13%) R
14 1 (0.13%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 205 (25.63%) Security Cleared
2 146 (18.25%) SC Cleared
3 70 (8.75%) DV Cleared
4 46 (5.75%) Azure Certification
5 44 (5.50%) AWS Certification
6 36 (4.50%) Degree
7 22 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
8 18 (2.25%) CISSP
9 13 (1.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.00%) MCSE
11 7 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 6 (0.75%) CCNP
12 6 (0.75%) CISM
12 6 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
13 5 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 3 (0.38%) CCIE
14 3 (0.38%) CEH
14 3 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (2.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 13 (1.63%) Data Quality
2 13 (1.63%) NIST
3 6 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
3 6 (0.75%) GDPR
3 6 (0.75%) QA
4 5 (0.63%) NCSC
5 4 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (0.50%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.25%) SLA
8 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.13%) GRC
System Software
1 109 (13.63%) Active Directory
2 83 (10.38%) Docker
3 52 (6.50%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (5.13%) Virtual Machines
5 35 (4.38%) VMware ESXi
6 27 (3.38%) VMware NSX
7 22 (2.75%) Virtual Desktop
8 21 (2.63%) vSphere
9 15 (1.88%) vCloud
10 11 (1.38%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.75%) Squid
12 5 (0.63%) Firmware
13 4 (0.50%) NFS
14 3 (0.38%) Ceph
14 3 (0.38%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.38%) Postfix
15 2 (0.25%) IAG
15 2 (0.25%) KVM
15 2 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
16 1 (0.13%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 213 (26.63%) Kubernetes
2 54 (6.75%) Ansible
3 31 (3.88%) vCenter Server
4 28 (3.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 27 (3.38%) SCOM
6 26 (3.25%) Grafana
7 23 (2.88%) Prometheus
8 19 (2.38%) Progress Chef
9 16 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (1.75%) Puppet
11 11 (1.38%) Istio
12 8 (1.00%) Cilium
13 6 (0.75%) Argo
13 6 (0.75%) Packer
14 5 (0.63%) VxRail
15 4 (0.50%) HAProxy
15 4 (0.50%) Suricata
16 3 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 3 (0.38%) FortiGate
16 3 (0.38%) vRealize
Vendors
1 187 (23.38%) Microsoft
2 104 (13.00%) Google
3 76 (9.50%) VMware
4 36 (4.50%) Oracle
5 29 (3.63%) Databricks
6 20 (2.50%) Red Hat
7 18 (2.25%) Okta
7 18 (2.25%) Palo Alto
8 16 (2.00%) SolarWinds
8 16 (2.00%) Zscaler
9 14 (1.75%) Splunk
10 13 (1.63%) Broadcom
10 13 (1.63%) Cisco
10 13 (1.63%) ServiceNow
11 12 (1.50%) OpenAI
12 10 (1.25%) Dynatrace
13 9 (1.13%) CrowdStrike
13 9 (1.13%) New Relic
14 8 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
14 8 (1.00%) Salesforce