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 15 August 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 206 308 325
Rank change year-on-year +102 +17 -60
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 738 257 258
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.38% 0.78% 0.66%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.49% 0.85% 0.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 474 189 169
10th Percentile £400 £402 £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 £608 £575 £625
90th Percentile £681 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 6 1
10th Percentile £23.20 £29.00 -
25th Percentile £47.10 £29.25 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £37.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +105.33% +25.00% -
75th Percentile £81.25 £58.75 £32.50
90th Percentile £82.75 £86.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.00 - £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 49,650 30,089 36,083
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.30% 92.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,817 19,016 23,243
10th Percentile £326 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,489 1,535 2,025
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.25
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.28 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +2.00%
75th Percentile £67.89 £53.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +20.00%

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 15 August 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 15 August 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 15 August 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 +94 634 £525 +5.00% 829
UK excluding London +95 385 £510 +2.00% 350
London +63 305 £525 - 520
Work from Home +24 189 £540 +8.00% 289
South East +12 115 £538 +7.50% 51
North of England +3 107 £525 +16.67% 115
North West -9 62 £533 +21.83% 70
Midlands +2 61 £500 +5.26% 30
Scotland +30 58 £442 -11.60% 51
Yorkshire -12 38 £474 -5.24% 30
West Midlands -17 32 £525 +8.81% 21
East Midlands +5 28 £450 -5.26% 9
East of England +1 22 £505 +4.12% 34
South West -41 16 £575 +4.55% 54
Wales -7 7 - - 2
North East -42 7 £525 +10.53% 15

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

For the 6 months to 15 August 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.

1 349 (47.29%) Azure
2 317 (42.95%) Terraform
3 270 (36.59%) AWS
4 264 (35.77%) CI/CD
5 259 (35.09%) Infrastructure as Code
6 212 (28.73%) DevOps
7 196 (26.56%) Python
8 187 (25.34%) Kubernetes
9 186 (25.20%) Security Cleared
10 169 (22.90%) Cloud Security
10 169 (22.90%) Microsoft
11 168 (22.76%) GCP
12 159 (21.54%) PowerShell
13 150 (20.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 140 (18.97%) SC Cleared
15 139 (18.83%) Platform Engineering
16 119 (16.12%) Google
17 115 (15.58%) Windows
18 95 (12.87%) Entra ID
19 93 (12.60%) AI
19 93 (12.60%) GitHub
20 87 (11.79%) Containerisation
20 87 (11.79%) Migration
21 86 (11.65%) Active Directory
21 86 (11.65%) Agile
22 84 (11.38%) Bash
22 84 (11.38%) Observability
23 80 (10.84%) Firewall
24 78 (10.57%) Docker
25 77 (10.43%) DNS

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 (1.76%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.22%) Apache
3 6 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (0.81%) Confluence
4 5 (0.68%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.54%) nginx
6 3 (0.41%) IIS
6 3 (0.41%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.27%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.27%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.14%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 349 (47.29%) Azure
2 270 (36.59%) AWS
3 168 (22.76%) GCP
4 95 (12.87%) Entra ID
5 93 (12.60%) GitHub
6 60 (8.13%) GitHub Actions
7 56 (7.59%) Serverless
8 52 (7.05%) Azure DevOps
9 47 (6.37%) Azure AKS
10 46 (6.23%) AWS CloudFormation
11 44 (5.96%) IaaS
12 42 (5.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 40 (5.42%) Amazon S3
13 40 (5.42%) AWS Lambda
14 36 (4.88%) Amazon EC2
14 36 (4.88%) Azure Monitor
15 35 (4.74%) Amazon EKS
15 35 (4.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 33 (4.47%) Microsoft 365
16 33 (4.47%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 80 (10.84%) Firewall
2 77 (10.43%) DNS
3 39 (5.28%) VPN
4 35 (4.74%) Network Security
5 18 (2.44%) DHCP
6 17 (2.30%) WAN
7 15 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.63%) Internet
9 6 (0.81%) SD-WAN
10 5 (0.68%) LAN
10 5 (0.68%) Reverse Proxy
10 5 (0.68%) SSL
10 5 (0.68%) VLAN
11 4 (0.54%) BGP
11 4 (0.54%) SAN
11 4 (0.54%) SMTP
11 4 (0.54%) VSAN
12 3 (0.41%) IPv4
12 3 (0.41%) NGFW
12 3 (0.41%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (3.66%) SQL Server
2 19 (2.57%) Amazon RDS
3 16 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.63%) BigQuery
5 9 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
6 8 (1.08%) Oracle Exadata
7 7 (0.95%) DynamoDB
8 6 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (0.81%) Data Lake
9 5 (0.68%) Oracle Database
10 4 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.41%) Amazon QuickSight
11 3 (0.41%) Flink
11 3 (0.41%) Looker
11 3 (0.41%) Metadata
11 3 (0.41%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.41%) MySQL
11 3 (0.41%) Oracle Database 12c
12 2 (0.27%) Elasticsearch
12 2 (0.27%) Redis
Development Applications
1 54 (7.32%) GitLab
2 50 (6.78%) Jenkins
3 40 (5.42%) Git
4 18 (2.44%) JIRA
5 9 (1.22%) Artifactory
6 6 (0.81%) Claude Code
7 5 (0.68%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.41%) Selenium
9 2 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.27%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.27%) Gatling
9 2 (0.27%) JMeter
9 2 (0.27%) Octopus Deploy
9 2 (0.27%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.27%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.14%) Chocolatey
10 1 (0.14%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.14%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.14%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 95 (12.87%) Finance
2 81 (10.98%) Social Skills
3 66 (8.94%) Public Sector
4 31 (4.20%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (3.66%) Banking
6 12 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (1.08%) Investment Banking
8 5 (0.68%) Law
8 5 (0.68%) Legal
8 5 (0.68%) Local Government
9 4 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
10 3 (0.41%) Front Office
10 3 (0.41%) Italian Language
10 3 (0.41%) Military
10 3 (0.41%) Police
10 3 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (0.41%) Retail
11 2 (0.27%) Digital Health
11 2 (0.27%) Digital Healthcare
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (3.25%) REST
2 13 (1.76%) ARM Templates
3 11 (1.49%) Node.js
3 11 (1.49%) OAuth
3 11 (1.49%) OAuth2
3 11 (1.49%) Spring
3 11 (1.49%) Spring Boot
4 9 (1.22%) Kafka
5 8 (1.08%) AWS CDK
5 8 (1.08%) React
6 7 (0.95%) YAML
7 6 (0.81%) .NET
7 6 (0.81%) FastAPI
7 6 (0.81%) Flask
7 6 (0.81%) Keycloak
7 6 (0.81%) Model Context Protocol
7 6 (0.81%) OpenID
8 4 (0.54%) PySpark
8 4 (0.54%) PyTorch
8 4 (0.54%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 128 (17.34%) Cloud Native
2 53 (7.18%) Security Posture
3 41 (5.56%) Enterprise Cloud
4 34 (4.61%) Hybrid Cloud
5 30 (4.07%) Onboarding
6 25 (3.39%) Cloud Security Posture
7 23 (3.12%) Enterprise Software
8 19 (2.57%) Public Cloud
9 18 (2.44%) Data Centre
10 16 (2.17%) Distributed Systems
10 16 (2.17%) Management Information System
11 10 (1.36%) Linux Command Line
12 9 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
12 9 (1.22%) Product Ownership
13 8 (1.08%) AI Agents
13 8 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
14 7 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
14 7 (0.95%) PKI
14 7 (0.95%) Private Cloud
15 4 (0.54%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 115 (15.58%) Windows
2 75 (10.16%) Linux
3 56 (7.59%) Windows Server
4 31 (4.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 10 (1.36%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.08%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.54%) VMS
8 3 (0.41%) CentOS
9 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 264 (35.77%) CI/CD
2 259 (35.09%) Infrastructure as Code
3 212 (28.73%) DevOps
4 169 (22.90%) Cloud Security
5 150 (20.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 139 (18.83%) Platform Engineering
7 93 (12.60%) AI
8 87 (11.79%) Containerisation
8 87 (11.79%) Migration
9 86 (11.65%) Agile
10 84 (11.38%) Observability
11 61 (8.27%) Software Engineering
12 59 (7.99%) Continuous Improvement
13 54 (7.32%) Technical Leadership
14 53 (7.18%) Infrastructure Automation
14 53 (7.18%) Problem-Solving
15 50 (6.78%) DevSecOps
16 47 (6.37%) Change Management
16 47 (6.37%) Deployment Automation
17 43 (5.83%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 196 (26.56%) Python
2 159 (21.54%) PowerShell
3 84 (11.38%) Bash
4 67 (9.08%) Bicep
5 63 (8.54%) SQL
6 38 (5.15%) Java
7 20 (2.71%) C#
8 16 (2.17%) Shell Script
9 13 (1.76%) JavaScript
10 11 (1.49%) Go
11 6 (0.81%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.54%) Groovy
13 3 (0.41%) C
13 3 (0.41%) Scala
14 2 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.27%) Ruby
15 1 (0.14%) Apex Code
15 1 (0.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.14%) Perl
15 1 (0.14%) R
Qualifications
1 186 (25.20%) Security Cleared
2 140 (18.97%) SC Cleared
3 60 (8.13%) DV Cleared
4 48 (6.50%) AWS Certification
5 47 (6.37%) Azure Certification
6 29 (3.93%) Degree
7 16 (2.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 16 (2.17%) CISSP
8 15 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
9 9 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
10 8 (1.08%) MCSE
11 7 (0.95%) BPSS Clearance
11 7 (0.95%) CCNP
12 5 (0.68%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 5 (0.68%) CISM
13 4 (0.54%) CCIE
13 4 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
14 3 (0.41%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (1.90%) Data Quality
2 11 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (1.36%) QA
4 9 (1.22%) NCSC
4 9 (1.22%) NIST
5 4 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (0.54%) GDPR
6 3 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.41%) SLA
7 2 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.27%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.14%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.14%) GRC
8 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 86 (11.65%) Active Directory
2 78 (10.57%) Docker
3 39 (5.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (4.34%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (3.52%) VMware ESXi
6 23 (3.12%) VMware NSX
7 21 (2.85%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (2.44%) vSphere
9 13 (1.76%) vCloud
10 10 (1.36%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.95%) Squid
12 4 (0.54%) Firmware
13 3 (0.41%) Ceph
13 3 (0.41%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.41%) NFS
13 3 (0.41%) Postfix
14 2 (0.27%) KVM
14 2 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
15 1 (0.14%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 317 (42.95%) Terraform
2 187 (25.34%) Kubernetes
3 51 (6.91%) Ansible
4 25 (3.39%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (3.12%) Grafana
6 22 (2.98%) vCenter Server
7 21 (2.85%) Prometheus
8 20 (2.71%) Progress Chef
8 20 (2.71%) SCOM
9 18 (2.44%) Single Sign-On
10 15 (2.03%) Puppet
11 10 (1.36%) Istio
12 8 (1.08%) Packer
13 6 (0.81%) Argo
13 6 (0.81%) Cilium
14 5 (0.68%) VxRail
15 4 (0.54%) HAProxy
15 4 (0.54%) Suricata
16 3 (0.41%) Salt
16 3 (0.41%) vRealize
Vendors
1 169 (22.90%) Microsoft
2 119 (16.12%) Google
3 61 (8.27%) VMware
4 31 (4.20%) Oracle
5 18 (2.44%) Red Hat
6 17 (2.30%) Okta
6 17 (2.30%) Zscaler
7 13 (1.76%) Palo Alto
7 13 (1.76%) ServiceNow
7 13 (1.76%) Splunk
8 12 (1.63%) OpenAI
9 11 (1.49%) Databricks
10 10 (1.36%) Cisco
10 10 (1.36%) Dynatrace
11 9 (1.22%) CrowdStrike
11 9 (1.22%) Salesforce
12 8 (1.08%) BeyondTrust
12 8 (1.08%) Broadcom
12 8 (1.08%) New Relic
12 8 (1.08%) SolarWinds