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 24 June 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 210 303 318
Rank change year-on-year +93 +15 -53
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 613 245 278
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.20% 0.82% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.30% 0.89% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 405 183 193
10th Percentile £400 £403 £389
25th Percentile £462 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £625 £575 £625
90th Percentile £688 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 1 3
10th Percentile £72.93 - -
25th Percentile £73.75 £42.50 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.50 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.22% +50.00% -
75th Percentile £81.25 £47.50 £32.50
90th Percentile £85.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £76.50 - £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 47,021 27,678 40,406
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.16% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,598 17,771 25,926
10th Percentile £325 £288 £281
25th Percentile £414 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,150 1,209 2,937
10th Percentile £15.38 £13.84 £12.84
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.44 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.00 £27.38 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.08% -27.00% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £74.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +76.94% -37.13% -

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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 +79 521 £525 +5.00% 115
London +65 299 £545 +3.81% 31
UK excluding London +28 256 £510 +2.00% 110
Work from Home +3 157 £540 +8.00% 71
North of England -37 72 £500 +8.11% 29
South East -25 68 £538 +7.50% 31
Scotland +16 47 £451 -14.19% 9
North West -30 34 £500 +24.38% 16
Midlands -34 33 £525 +7.69% 15
Yorkshire -25 31 £481 -1.28% 12
West Midlands -37 25 £525 - 6
East of England -9 22 £505 +60.32% 8
South West -22 15 £550 -2.22% 12
East Midlands -17 8 £450 -5.26% 9
North East -38 7 £525 +5.00% 1

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

For the 6 months to 24 June 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.

1 284 (46.33%) Azure
2 282 (46.00%) Terraform
3 275 (44.86%) AWS
4 247 (40.29%) CI/CD
5 232 (37.85%) Infrastructure as Code
6 204 (33.28%) DevOps
7 158 (25.77%) Python
8 150 (24.47%) Security Cleared
9 139 (22.68%) Kubernetes
10 135 (22.02%) GCP
11 129 (21.04%) Cloud Security
12 121 (19.74%) Platform Engineering
13 118 (19.25%) SC Cleared
14 116 (18.92%) Microsoft
15 107 (17.46%) PowerShell
16 104 (16.97%) GitHub
17 100 (16.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 97 (15.82%) Google
19 89 (14.52%) Migration
20 80 (13.05%) Windows
21 74 (12.07%) Containerisation
22 73 (11.91%) Agile
22 73 (11.91%) AI
23 71 (11.58%) Firewall
24 68 (11.09%) GitHub Actions
25 64 (10.44%) Serverless
26 63 (10.28%) Docker
27 60 (9.79%) Entra ID
28 59 (9.62%) Bash
28 59 (9.62%) Problem-Solving

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 10 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (1.14%) Confluence
3 6 (0.98%) Apache
4 5 (0.82%) nginx
5 3 (0.49%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.49%) IIS
5 3 (0.49%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.49%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.33%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.16%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.16%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.16%) SAS
7 1 (0.16%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.16%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 284 (46.33%) Azure
2 275 (44.86%) AWS
3 135 (22.02%) GCP
4 104 (16.97%) GitHub
5 68 (11.09%) GitHub Actions
6 64 (10.44%) Serverless
7 60 (9.79%) Entra ID
8 48 (7.83%) Azure DevOps
9 45 (7.34%) AWS CloudFormation
10 44 (7.18%) Azure AKS
11 42 (6.85%) Amazon S3
12 41 (6.69%) IaaS
12 41 (6.69%) PaaS
13 39 (6.36%) AWS Lambda
14 36 (5.87%) Amazon EKS
15 35 (5.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 34 (5.55%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 33 (5.38%) Amazon EC2
18 32 (5.22%) Amazon ECS
19 28 (4.57%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 71 (11.58%) Firewall
2 53 (8.65%) DNS
3 33 (5.38%) VPN
4 30 (4.89%) Network Security
5 13 (2.12%) WAN
6 11 (1.79%) DHCP
6 11 (1.79%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.98%) Reverse Proxy
7 6 (0.98%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.82%) BGP
8 5 (0.82%) Internet
8 5 (0.82%) SSL
9 4 (0.65%) Software-Defined Networking
9 4 (0.65%) VLAN
10 3 (0.49%) IPv4
10 3 (0.49%) OSPF
10 3 (0.49%) SAN
10 3 (0.49%) SMTP
11 2 (0.33%) Kerberos
11 2 (0.33%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.77%) SQL Server
2 13 (2.12%) Amazon Athena
2 13 (2.12%) DynamoDB
3 12 (1.96%) Amazon RDS
4 10 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (1.14%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (0.98%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (0.98%) BigQuery
7 5 (0.82%) Oracle Database
8 4 (0.65%) Amazon QuickSight
9 3 (0.49%) Big Data
9 3 (0.49%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.49%) Metadata
9 3 (0.49%) MySQL
9 3 (0.49%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.49%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.33%) Redis
10 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 1 (0.16%) Pentaho
11 1 (0.16%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 53 (8.65%) Jenkins
2 47 (7.67%) GitLab
3 42 (6.85%) Git
4 15 (2.45%) JIRA
5 10 (1.63%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.49%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.49%) Selenium
6 3 (0.49%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.33%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.33%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.33%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.33%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.16%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.16%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.16%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.16%) Gatling
8 1 (0.16%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.16%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.16%) TestRail
General
1 78 (12.72%) Social Skills
2 68 (11.09%) Finance
3 52 (8.48%) Public Sector
4 28 (4.57%) Banking
5 23 (3.75%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (1.96%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (1.47%) Investment Banking
8 6 (0.98%) Legal
9 5 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
9 5 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (0.82%) Retail
9 5 (0.82%) Telecoms
10 4 (0.65%) Law
10 4 (0.65%) Military
11 3 (0.49%) Corporate Banking
11 3 (0.49%) Local Government
11 3 (0.49%) Marketing
11 3 (0.49%) Police
11 3 (0.49%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (3.92%) REST
2 13 (2.12%) OAuth
2 13 (2.12%) OAuth2
3 11 (1.79%) Kafka
4 10 (1.63%) Node.js
5 9 (1.47%) .NET
5 9 (1.47%) React
5 9 (1.47%) Spring
5 9 (1.47%) Spring Boot
6 8 (1.31%) ARM Templates
7 7 (1.14%) Model Context Protocol
7 7 (1.14%) OpenID
8 6 (0.98%) YAML
9 5 (0.82%) AWS CDK
9 5 (0.82%) Playwright
10 4 (0.65%) FastAPI
10 4 (0.65%) Flask
10 4 (0.65%) Jest
10 4 (0.65%) OpenTelemetry
10 4 (0.65%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 117 (19.09%) Cloud Native
2 32 (5.22%) Hybrid Cloud
3 27 (4.40%) Public Cloud
4 25 (4.08%) Security Posture
5 22 (3.59%) Data Centre
6 19 (3.10%) Enterprise Cloud
6 19 (3.10%) Onboarding
7 15 (2.45%) Distributed Systems
7 15 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
8 12 (1.96%) Management Information System
9 10 (1.63%) Cloud Security Posture
9 10 (1.63%) Product Ownership
10 8 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
11 6 (0.98%) Cyber Threat
11 6 (0.98%) Legacy Systems
12 5 (0.82%) Linux Command Line
13 4 (0.65%) AI Agents
13 4 (0.65%) Private Cloud
13 4 (0.65%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 80 (13.05%) Windows
2 47 (7.67%) Linux
3 45 (7.34%) Windows Server
4 16 (2.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.98%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (0.49%) CentOS
8 2 (0.33%) VMS
8 2 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 247 (40.29%) CI/CD
2 232 (37.85%) Infrastructure as Code
3 204 (33.28%) DevOps
4 129 (21.04%) Cloud Security
5 121 (19.74%) Platform Engineering
6 100 (16.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 89 (14.52%) Migration
8 74 (12.07%) Containerisation
9 73 (11.91%) Agile
9 73 (11.91%) AI
10 59 (9.62%) Problem-Solving
11 56 (9.14%) Infrastructure Automation
11 56 (9.14%) Observability
12 50 (8.16%) Continuous Improvement
13 49 (7.99%) Technical Leadership
14 48 (7.83%) Software Engineering
15 42 (6.85%) Cybersecurity
16 38 (6.20%) DevSecOps
17 36 (5.87%) Mentoring
18 34 (5.55%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 158 (25.77%) Python
2 107 (17.46%) PowerShell
3 59 (9.62%) Bash
4 52 (8.48%) SQL
5 43 (7.01%) Bicep
6 33 (5.38%) Java
7 15 (2.45%) C#
8 12 (1.96%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.63%) Go
9 10 (1.63%) TypeScript
10 5 (0.82%) Groovy
11 2 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.33%) R
11 2 (0.33%) Ruby
12 1 (0.16%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.16%) Cypher
12 1 (0.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.16%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.16%) Perl
12 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 150 (24.47%) Security Cleared
2 118 (19.25%) SC Cleared
3 48 (7.83%) Azure Certification
4 37 (6.04%) AWS Certification
5 36 (5.87%) DV Cleared
6 18 (2.94%) Degree
7 17 (2.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 15 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
9 14 (2.28%) CISSP
10 12 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
11 9 (1.47%) BPSS Clearance
12 8 (1.31%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 8 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
13 7 (1.14%) CCNP
14 5 (0.82%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 5 (0.82%) MCSE
14 5 (0.82%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.65%) CCIE
15 4 (0.65%) CCSP
16 3 (0.49%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (2.28%) NIST
2 11 (1.79%) NCSC
3 10 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (1.47%) GDPR
4 9 (1.47%) QA
5 6 (0.98%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.65%) Data Quality
7 3 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.33%) SLA
9 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.16%) GRC
9 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 63 (10.28%) Docker
2 53 (8.65%) Active Directory
3 22 (3.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (3.26%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (3.10%) VMware NSX
6 18 (2.94%) Virtual Desktop
6 18 (2.94%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (2.45%) vSphere
8 11 (1.79%) vCloud
9 10 (1.63%) Hyper-V
10 7 (1.14%) Squid
11 4 (0.65%) Firmware
12 3 (0.49%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.49%) Postfix
13 2 (0.33%) Ceph
13 2 (0.33%) KVM
13 2 (0.33%) NFS
Systems Management
1 282 (46.00%) Terraform
2 139 (22.68%) Kubernetes
3 42 (6.85%) Ansible
4 24 (3.92%) Grafana
5 22 (3.59%) Prometheus
6 21 (3.43%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (2.45%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (2.45%) vCenter Server
8 14 (2.28%) Progress Chef
9 13 (2.12%) Puppet
9 13 (2.12%) SCOM
10 9 (1.47%) Istio
10 9 (1.47%) Packer
11 7 (1.14%) Argo
12 6 (0.98%) Cilium
13 4 (0.65%) HAProxy
13 4 (0.65%) Salt
13 4 (0.65%) Suricata
14 3 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (0.49%) vRealize
Vendors
1 116 (18.92%) Microsoft
2 97 (15.82%) Google
3 40 (6.53%) VMware
4 24 (3.92%) Oracle
5 17 (2.77%) Zscaler
6 15 (2.45%) Palo Alto
6 15 (2.45%) Red Hat
7 10 (1.63%) Cisco
7 10 (1.63%) Okta
7 10 (1.63%) Salesforce
8 8 (1.31%) CrowdStrike
8 8 (1.31%) Dynatrace
8 8 (1.31%) ServiceNow
9 7 (1.14%) Fortinet
9 7 (1.14%) OpenAI
9 7 (1.14%) Splunk
10 5 (0.82%) Citrix
10 5 (0.82%) Databricks
10 5 (0.82%) Rapid7
11 4 (0.65%) PagerDuty