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 19 May 2026.

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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 229 296 309
Rank change year-on-year +67 +13 -48
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 525 234 273
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.09% 0.80% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.18% 0.87% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 345 183 184
10th Percentile £400 £400 £400
25th Percentile £462 £449 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £615 £594 £616
90th Percentile £688 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £510 £510
% change year-on-year +2.97% -0.03% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 3
10th Percentile £25.13 - -
25th Percentile £31.66 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £62.25 - £30.00
75th Percentile £75.25 - £32.50
90th Percentile £76.00 - -
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 44,361 26,969 39,513
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.34% 92.35% 92.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,167 17,560 25,723
10th Percentile £325 £294 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -2.38% -3.40%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,886 1,047 2,672
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.82
25th Percentile £20.31 £18.13 £16.29
Median hourly rate £42.69 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +52.45% -23.29% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.00 £61.38 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.13 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.90% -32.19% -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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +54 436 £525 +5.00% 186
London +54 260 £525 +5.00% 76
UK excluding London +2 205 £525 +2.97% 143
Work from Home +4 131 £525 +5.00% 91
North of England -31 57 £505 +1.00% 26
South East -36 49 £525 -4.55% 40
Scotland +17 38 £451 -14.19% 17
North West -20 30 £538 +33.71% 14
East of England -11 23 £510 +3.55% 6
Yorkshire -31 22 £481 +13.24% 8
Midlands -57 20 £675 +35.00% 18
South West -12 19 £550 -4.35% 34
West Midlands -46 17 £675 +14.89% 10
North East -25 5 £525 -4.55% 4
East Midlands -35 3 - - 8

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

For the 6 months to 19 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.

1 239 (45.52%) Azure
2 234 (44.57%) Terraform
3 225 (42.86%) AWS
4 222 (42.29%) CI/CD
5 201 (38.29%) Infrastructure as Code
6 187 (35.62%) DevOps
7 142 (27.05%) Security Cleared
8 125 (23.81%) Python
9 123 (23.43%) GCP
10 120 (22.86%) Kubernetes
11 116 (22.10%) SC Cleared
12 103 (19.62%) Cloud Security
13 101 (19.24%) GitHub
14 92 (17.52%) Microsoft
15 91 (17.33%) Google
16 84 (16.00%) Platform Engineering
17 80 (15.24%) Migration
18 79 (15.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 79 (15.05%) PowerShell
19 66 (12.57%) Agile
20 65 (12.38%) Containerisation
21 62 (11.81%) GitHub Actions
22 57 (10.86%) AI
23 54 (10.29%) Docker
24 52 (9.90%) Firewall
25 51 (9.71%) Serverless
26 50 (9.52%) Windows
27 48 (9.14%) Problem-Solving
28 45 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
28 45 (8.57%) Observability

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 7 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (0.95%) Apache Spark
2 5 (0.95%) Confluence
3 4 (0.76%) Apache
4 2 (0.38%) nginx
5 1 (0.19%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.19%) CloudStack
5 1 (0.19%) SAS
5 1 (0.19%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.19%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.38%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.19%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 239 (45.52%) Azure
2 225 (42.86%) AWS
3 123 (23.43%) GCP
4 101 (19.24%) GitHub
5 62 (11.81%) GitHub Actions
6 51 (9.71%) Serverless
7 44 (8.38%) Azure DevOps
8 42 (8.00%) Entra ID
9 39 (7.43%) AWS CloudFormation
9 39 (7.43%) Azure AKS
10 37 (7.05%) PaaS
11 35 (6.67%) IaaS
12 34 (6.48%) Amazon S3
13 32 (6.10%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 31 (5.90%) Amazon EKS
15 29 (5.52%) AWS Lambda
16 25 (4.76%) Amazon EC2
16 25 (4.76%) Amazon ECS
16 25 (4.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 21 (4.00%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 52 (9.90%) Firewall
2 31 (5.90%) DNS
3 24 (4.57%) Network Security
4 22 (4.19%) VPN
5 6 (1.14%) DHCP
5 6 (1.14%) Reverse Proxy
5 6 (1.14%) TCP/IP
6 5 (0.95%) WAN
7 4 (0.76%) Software-Defined Networking
8 3 (0.57%) BGP
8 3 (0.57%) SD-WAN
8 3 (0.57%) SMTP
8 3 (0.57%) VLAN
9 2 (0.38%) Cisco Firepower
9 2 (0.38%) DKIM
9 2 (0.38%) Internet
9 2 (0.38%) Kerberos
9 2 (0.38%) NGFW
9 2 (0.38%) SSL
9 2 (0.38%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.86%) Amazon Athena
2 12 (2.29%) BigQuery
3 11 (2.10%) DynamoDB
4 8 (1.52%) SQL Server
5 7 (1.33%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (1.14%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (1.14%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 5 (0.95%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
8 4 (0.76%) Amazon QuickSight
9 3 (0.57%) Big Data
9 3 (0.57%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (0.57%) Metadata
9 3 (0.57%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.57%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.57%) Power BI
9 3 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.38%) OLTP
10 2 (0.38%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 44 (8.38%) GitLab
1 44 (8.38%) Jenkins
2 41 (7.81%) Git
3 10 (1.90%) Artifactory
4 9 (1.71%) JIRA
5 3 (0.57%) Team Foundation Server
6 2 (0.38%) Claude Code
6 2 (0.38%) Liquibase
6 2 (0.38%) Postman
6 2 (0.38%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.38%) Selenium
6 2 (0.38%) Spinnaker
7 1 (0.19%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.19%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.19%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.19%) JUnit
7 1 (0.19%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.19%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.19%) Travis CI
General
1 69 (13.14%) Social Skills
2 53 (10.10%) Finance
3 44 (8.38%) Public Sector
4 20 (3.81%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (2.86%) Banking
6 13 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.71%) Retail
9 5 (0.95%) Legal
9 5 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (0.95%) Telecoms
10 4 (0.76%) Marketing
10 4 (0.76%) Military
10 4 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.57%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.57%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.57%) Police
12 2 (0.38%) Billing
12 2 (0.38%) Law
12 2 (0.38%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (3.43%) REST
2 14 (2.67%) Node.js
3 13 (2.48%) React
3 13 (2.48%) Spring
3 13 (2.48%) Spring Boot
4 11 (2.10%) Kafka
5 10 (1.90%) OAuth
6 9 (1.71%) .NET
6 9 (1.71%) OAuth2
6 9 (1.71%) OpenTelemetry
7 8 (1.52%) OpenID
7 8 (1.52%) Oracle Fusion
8 6 (1.14%) AngularJS
8 6 (1.14%) ARM Templates
8 6 (1.14%) LangChain
9 5 (0.95%) OpenAPI
9 5 (0.95%) Playwright
9 5 (0.95%) PySpark
9 5 (0.95%) Web Services
10 4 (0.76%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 89 (16.95%) Cloud Native
2 30 (5.71%) Public Cloud
3 25 (4.76%) Hybrid Cloud
4 20 (3.81%) Data Centre
5 13 (2.48%) Onboarding
6 12 (2.29%) Enterprise Cloud
6 12 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
7 10 (1.90%) Product Ownership
7 10 (1.90%) Security Posture
8 7 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.14%) Cyber Threat
9 6 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
10 4 (0.76%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (0.76%) Management Information System
10 4 (0.76%) PKI
10 4 (0.76%) Virtual Team
11 3 (0.57%) Cloud Security Posture
11 3 (0.57%) CMDB
11 3 (0.57%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 50 (9.52%) Windows
2 29 (5.52%) Linux
3 28 (5.33%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.38%) Unix
5 2 (0.38%) VMS
6 1 (0.19%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.19%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 222 (42.29%) CI/CD
2 201 (38.29%) Infrastructure as Code
3 187 (35.62%) DevOps
4 103 (19.62%) Cloud Security
5 84 (16.00%) Platform Engineering
6 80 (15.24%) Migration
7 79 (15.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 66 (12.57%) Agile
9 65 (12.38%) Containerisation
10 57 (10.86%) AI
11 48 (9.14%) Problem-Solving
12 45 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
12 45 (8.57%) Observability
13 42 (8.00%) Infrastructure Automation
14 41 (7.81%) DevSecOps
15 40 (7.62%) Software Engineering
16 38 (7.24%) Cybersecurity
17 32 (6.10%) Mentoring
18 31 (5.90%) Technical Leadership
19 27 (5.14%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 125 (23.81%) Python
2 79 (15.05%) PowerShell
3 43 (8.19%) Bash
3 43 (8.19%) SQL
4 35 (6.67%) Bicep
5 26 (4.95%) Java
6 17 (3.24%) C#
7 9 (1.71%) Go
7 9 (1.71%) JavaScript
8 8 (1.52%) TypeScript
9 4 (0.76%) Groovy
10 2 (0.38%) BeanShell
10 2 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.38%) Ruby
10 2 (0.38%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.19%) Cypher
11 1 (0.19%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.19%) R
Qualifications
1 142 (27.05%) Security Cleared
2 116 (22.10%) SC Cleared
3 39 (7.43%) Azure Certification
4 21 (4.00%) AWS Certification
5 20 (3.81%) DV Cleared
6 14 (2.67%) Degree
6 14 (2.67%) Microsoft Certification
7 12 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
8 11 (2.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 11 (2.10%) CISSP
9 9 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (1.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 5 (0.95%) CISM
12 5 (0.95%) TOGAF Certification
13 4 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 4 (0.76%) CCSP
13 4 (0.76%) MCSE
14 3 (0.57%) CCNP
14 3 (0.57%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.29%) NIST
2 11 (2.10%) GDPR
2 11 (2.10%) QA
3 10 (1.90%) NCSC
4 9 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (1.14%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.14%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.76%) GRC
7 2 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.38%) SLA
7 2 (0.38%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.19%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.19%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.19%) WCAG
System Software
1 54 (10.29%) Docker
2 34 (6.48%) Active Directory
3 17 (3.24%) Virtual Desktop
4 14 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (2.48%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (2.48%) VMware NSX
6 10 (1.90%) vSphere
7 8 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 8 (1.52%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (1.14%) Squid
9 5 (0.95%) vCloud
10 3 (0.57%) Firmware
11 1 (0.19%) Ceph
11 1 (0.19%) KVM
11 1 (0.19%) NFS
Systems Management
1 234 (44.57%) Terraform
2 120 (22.86%) Kubernetes
3 22 (4.19%) Grafana
4 21 (4.00%) Ansible
5 19 (3.62%) Prometheus
6 16 (3.05%) Istio
7 15 (2.86%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (2.48%) Argo
8 13 (2.48%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (1.52%) vCenter Server
10 6 (1.14%) Packer
10 6 (1.14%) SCOM
11 5 (0.95%) Cilium
11 5 (0.95%) Progress Chef
11 5 (0.95%) Puppet
12 4 (0.76%) Salt
12 4 (0.76%) Suricata
13 1 (0.19%) Consul
13 1 (0.19%) PaperCut
13 1 (0.19%) Podman
Vendors
1 92 (17.52%) Microsoft
2 91 (17.33%) Google
3 26 (4.95%) VMware
4 24 (4.57%) Oracle
5 11 (2.10%) Databricks
6 10 (1.90%) Dynatrace
6 10 (1.90%) Palo Alto
6 10 (1.90%) Zscaler
7 9 (1.71%) ServiceNow
8 7 (1.33%) Salesforce
9 6 (1.14%) Cisco
10 5 (0.95%) Citrix
10 5 (0.95%) Fortinet
10 5 (0.95%) PeopleSoft
10 5 (0.95%) Splunk
11 4 (0.76%) Okta
11 4 (0.76%) Rapid7
11 4 (0.76%) Red Hat
11 4 (0.76%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
12 3 (0.57%) OpenAI