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 28 July 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 208 307 332
Rank change year-on-year +99 +25 -57
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 707 255 251
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.34% 0.78% 0.63%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.44% 0.85% 0.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 459 192 170
10th Percentile £400 £402 £386
25th Percentile £450 £434 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £618 £575 £625
90th Percentile £688 £649 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +2.00% -3.85% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 4 1
10th Percentile £23.20 £33.75 -
25th Percentile £71.00 £39.38 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £53.75 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.26% +79.17% -
75th Percentile £81.25 £74.38 £32.50
90th Percentile £83.50 £95.75 -
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 48,972 29,978 37,340
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.64% 91.54% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,547 19,070 24,184
10th Percentile £331 £285 £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 3,337 1,464 2,247
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.71 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.32
Median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £42.03
Median % change year-on-year +72.96% -40.16% -2.97%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.02 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +8.59%

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 28 July 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 28 July 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 28 July 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 +92 597 £525 +5.00% 392
UK excluding London +77 357 £510 +2.00% 197
London +58 300 £525 - 221
Work from Home +11 182 £538 +7.55% 152
South East -3 101 £538 +2.38% 42
North of England -11 95 £525 +16.67% 67
Scotland +37 64 £437 -12.60% 14
Midlands -10 55 £525 +10.53% 27
North West -11 55 £535 +25.94% 40
Yorkshire -14 33 £475 -5.00% 20
West Midlands -28 29 £525 +5.00% 18
East Midlands +4 25 £450 -5.26% 9
East of England -1 22 £505 +26.25% 17
South West -27 16 £550 -2.22% 21
North East -41 7 £525 +7.69% 7
Wales -9 6 - - 8

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

For the 6 months to 28 July 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.

1 335 (47.38%) Azure
2 300 (42.43%) Terraform
3 279 (39.46%) AWS
4 252 (35.64%) CI/CD
5 249 (35.22%) Infrastructure as Code
6 209 (29.56%) DevOps
7 187 (26.45%) Python
8 171 (24.19%) Security Cleared
9 167 (23.62%) Kubernetes
10 159 (22.49%) Cloud Security
11 158 (22.35%) GCP
12 153 (21.64%) Microsoft
13 145 (20.51%) PowerShell
14 144 (20.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 135 (19.09%) Platform Engineering
16 130 (18.39%) SC Cleared
17 110 (15.56%) Google
18 108 (15.28%) Windows
19 88 (12.45%) GitHub
19 88 (12.45%) Migration
20 87 (12.31%) Agile
20 87 (12.31%) AI
21 83 (11.74%) Containerisation
22 81 (11.46%) Entra ID
23 78 (11.03%) Active Directory
24 76 (10.75%) Bash
25 74 (10.47%) Firewall
25 74 (10.47%) Observability
26 73 (10.33%) DNS
27 71 (10.04%) Docker

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 (1.84%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.27%) Apache
3 7 (0.99%) Confluence
4 5 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (0.71%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.57%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.57%) nginx
6 3 (0.42%) IIS
6 3 (0.42%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.28%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.28%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.14%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.28%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 335 (47.38%) Azure
2 279 (39.46%) AWS
3 158 (22.35%) GCP
4 88 (12.45%) GitHub
5 81 (11.46%) Entra ID
6 63 (8.91%) Serverless
7 55 (7.78%) GitHub Actions
8 48 (6.79%) Azure AKS
9 46 (6.51%) Azure DevOps
10 43 (6.08%) AWS CloudFormation
11 42 (5.94%) Amazon S3
11 42 (5.94%) IaaS
12 41 (5.80%) AWS Lambda
13 36 (5.09%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 35 (4.95%) Amazon EC2
14 35 (4.95%) Amazon EKS
14 35 (4.95%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 33 (4.67%) PaaS
16 31 (4.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 30 (4.24%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 74 (10.47%) Firewall
2 73 (10.33%) DNS
3 40 (5.66%) VPN
4 31 (4.38%) Network Security
5 16 (2.26%) DHCP
5 16 (2.26%) WAN
6 14 (1.98%) TCP/IP
7 8 (1.13%) Internet
8 6 (0.85%) SD-WAN
8 6 (0.85%) VLAN
9 5 (0.71%) BGP
9 5 (0.71%) Reverse Proxy
9 5 (0.71%) SSL
10 4 (0.57%) LAN
10 4 (0.57%) SAN
11 3 (0.42%) OSPF
11 3 (0.42%) SMTP
11 3 (0.42%) Software-Defined Networking
11 3 (0.42%) VSAN
11 3 (0.42%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (3.54%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.40%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (1.98%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.56%) Amazon Athena
5 10 (1.41%) BigQuery
5 10 (1.41%) DynamoDB
6 6 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (0.85%) Oracle Database
7 5 (0.71%) Data Lake
8 4 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
8 4 (0.57%) Oracle Exadata
9 3 (0.42%) Amazon QuickSight
9 3 (0.42%) Big Data
9 3 (0.42%) MySQL
9 3 (0.42%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.42%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.28%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.28%) Flink
10 2 (0.28%) Looker
10 2 (0.28%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 50 (7.07%) Jenkins
2 49 (6.93%) GitLab
3 37 (5.23%) Git
4 19 (2.69%) JIRA
5 9 (1.27%) Artifactory
6 5 (0.71%) Bitbucket
6 5 (0.71%) Claude Code
7 3 (0.42%) Selenium
7 3 (0.42%) Team Foundation Server
8 2 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.28%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.28%) Liquibase
8 2 (0.28%) Robot Framework
8 2 (0.28%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.14%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.14%) Chocolatey
9 1 (0.14%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.14%) Gatling
9 1 (0.14%) sqlmap
9 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 96 (13.58%) Finance
2 80 (11.32%) Social Skills
3 65 (9.19%) Public Sector
4 26 (3.68%) Banking
5 25 (3.54%) Analytical Skills
6 11 (1.56%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (1.13%) Investment Banking
8 5 (0.71%) Law
8 5 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
9 4 (0.57%) Legal
9 4 (0.57%) Local Government
10 3 (0.42%) Financial Institution
10 3 (0.42%) Front Office
10 3 (0.42%) Military
10 3 (0.42%) Police
10 3 (0.42%) Retail
10 3 (0.42%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.28%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.28%) Back Office
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (3.96%) REST
2 13 (1.84%) Node.js
2 13 (1.84%) OAuth
2 13 (1.84%) OAuth2
3 11 (1.56%) ARM Templates
4 10 (1.41%) Spring
4 10 (1.41%) Spring Boot
5 9 (1.27%) React
6 8 (1.13%) Model Context Protocol
7 7 (0.99%) AWS CDK
7 7 (0.99%) Kafka
7 7 (0.99%) OpenID
8 6 (0.85%) FastAPI
8 6 (0.85%) Flask
8 6 (0.85%) YAML
9 5 (0.71%) .NET
9 5 (0.71%) Playwright
9 5 (0.71%) PyTorch
9 5 (0.71%) TensorFlow
10 4 (0.57%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 129 (18.25%) Cloud Native
2 41 (5.80%) Security Posture
3 36 (5.09%) Enterprise Cloud
4 34 (4.81%) Hybrid Cloud
5 27 (3.82%) Onboarding
6 23 (3.25%) Public Cloud
7 20 (2.83%) Data Centre
7 20 (2.83%) Enterprise Software
8 17 (2.40%) Cloud Security Posture
8 17 (2.40%) Distributed Systems
9 15 (2.12%) Management Information System
10 9 (1.27%) Linux Command Line
10 9 (1.27%) Product Ownership
10 9 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
11 8 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
12 7 (0.99%) Legacy Systems
13 6 (0.85%) AI Agents
14 5 (0.71%) PKI
14 5 (0.71%) Private Cloud
15 4 (0.57%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 108 (15.28%) Windows
2 70 (9.90%) Linux
3 52 (7.36%) Windows Server
4 29 (4.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.27%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.13%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.42%) CentOS
7 3 (0.42%) VMS
8 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.14%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 252 (35.64%) CI/CD
2 249 (35.22%) Infrastructure as Code
3 209 (29.56%) DevOps
4 159 (22.49%) Cloud Security
5 144 (20.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 135 (19.09%) Platform Engineering
7 88 (12.45%) Migration
8 87 (12.31%) Agile
8 87 (12.31%) AI
9 83 (11.74%) Containerisation
10 74 (10.47%) Observability
11 58 (8.20%) Software Engineering
12 57 (8.06%) Infrastructure Automation
13 56 (7.92%) Problem-Solving
14 53 (7.50%) Technical Leadership
15 51 (7.21%) Continuous Improvement
16 42 (5.94%) Change Management
16 42 (5.94%) Deployment Automation
16 42 (5.94%) DevSecOps
16 42 (5.94%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 187 (26.45%) Python
2 145 (20.51%) PowerShell
3 76 (10.75%) Bash
4 61 (8.63%) Bicep
5 60 (8.49%) SQL
6 36 (5.09%) Java
7 18 (2.55%) C#
8 13 (1.84%) JavaScript
9 11 (1.56%) Shell Script
10 10 (1.41%) Go
11 9 (1.27%) TypeScript
12 5 (0.71%) Groovy
13 2 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.28%) Ruby
13 2 (0.28%) Scala
14 1 (0.14%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.14%) Cypher
14 1 (0.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.14%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.14%) R
Qualifications
1 171 (24.19%) Security Cleared
2 130 (18.39%) SC Cleared
3 53 (7.50%) DV Cleared
4 46 (6.51%) AWS Certification
5 45 (6.36%) Azure Certification
6 27 (3.82%) Degree
7 16 (2.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 15 (2.12%) CISSP
8 15 (2.12%) Microsoft Certification
9 11 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.13%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (0.99%) BPSS Clearance
11 7 (0.99%) CCNP
12 6 (0.85%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 6 (0.85%) MCSE
13 4 (0.57%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 4 (0.57%) CCIE
13 4 (0.57%) CISM
14 3 (0.42%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
14 3 (0.42%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (1.84%) Data Quality
2 11 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (1.41%) NIST
3 10 (1.41%) QA
4 8 (1.13%) NCSC
5 4 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (0.57%) GDPR
6 3 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.28%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.28%) SLA
8 1 (0.14%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
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 78 (11.03%) Active Directory
2 71 (10.04%) Docker
3 34 (4.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 29 (4.10%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (3.39%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (2.97%) VMware NSX
7 17 (2.40%) vSphere
8 16 (2.26%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (1.70%) Hyper-V
9 12 (1.70%) vCloud
10 7 (0.99%) Squid
11 5 (0.71%) Firmware
12 3 (0.42%) Ceph
12 3 (0.42%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.42%) NFS
12 3 (0.42%) Postfix
13 2 (0.28%) KVM
13 2 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 300 (42.43%) Terraform
2 167 (23.62%) Kubernetes
3 51 (7.21%) Ansible
4 23 (3.25%) Grafana
5 22 (3.11%) Prometheus
6 20 (2.83%) Progress Chef
6 20 (2.83%) Single Sign-On
6 20 (2.83%) vCenter Server
7 19 (2.69%) Microsoft Intune
8 18 (2.55%) SCOM
9 16 (2.26%) Puppet
10 8 (1.13%) Istio
10 8 (1.13%) Packer
11 6 (0.85%) Argo
11 6 (0.85%) Cilium
12 4 (0.57%) HAProxy
12 4 (0.57%) Suricata
12 4 (0.57%) VxRail
13 3 (0.42%) Salt
13 3 (0.42%) vRealize
Vendors
1 153 (21.64%) Microsoft
2 110 (15.56%) Google
3 54 (7.64%) VMware
4 29 (4.10%) Oracle
5 17 (2.40%) Red Hat
5 17 (2.40%) Zscaler
6 16 (2.26%) Okta
7 14 (1.98%) ServiceNow
8 13 (1.84%) Palo Alto
9 11 (1.56%) Splunk
10 10 (1.41%) Cisco
11 9 (1.27%) CrowdStrike
11 9 (1.27%) Dynatrace
11 9 (1.27%) OpenAI
11 9 (1.27%) Salesforce
12 8 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
12 8 (1.13%) Databricks
13 7 (0.99%) Broadcom
13 7 (0.99%) SolarWinds
14 6 (0.85%) Fortinet