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 7 May 2026.

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

 6 months to
7 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 226 294 308
Rank change year-on-year +68 +14 -40
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 524 225 289
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 0.77% 0.67%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.19% 0.83% 0.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 349 176 198
10th Percentile £400 £400 £400
25th Percentile £462 £445 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £522 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% -5.02% -0.72%
75th Percentile £613 £603 £623
90th Percentile £691 £650 £683
UK excluding London median daily rate £522 £500 £511
% change year-on-year +4.40% -2.20% -7.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 3
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £25.13 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 - £30.00
75th Percentile £73.00 - £32.50
90th Percentile £74.80 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 - £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 43,991 27,101 40,252
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.23% 92.53% 92.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,021 17,685 26,221
10th Percentile £316 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,853 1,051 2,676
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.69 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.66% -20.55% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.50 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £28.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +60.71% -30.00% -5.11%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +58 434 £525 +5.00% 197
London +53 249 £525 +5.00% 71
UK excluding London +12 216 £522 +4.40% 138
Work from Home +16 129 £510 +2.00% 84
North of England -23 54 £500 +11.11% 36
South East -18 49 £510 -7.27% 40
Scotland +26 40 £451 -14.19% 5
North West -22 28 £544 +20.83% 19
Midlands -62 27 £675 +42.11% 25
East of England -14 25 £500 +1.52% 6
West Midlands -44 23 £675 +14.89% 14
South West -15 22 £550 -4.35% 26
Yorkshire -30 22 £481 +13.24% 15
North East -19 4 £525 -12.50% 2
East Midlands -35 4 £418 -12.11% 11

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

For the 6 months to 7 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.

1 236 (45.04%) Azure
2 234 (44.66%) Terraform
3 219 (41.79%) AWS
4 214 (40.84%) CI/CD
5 204 (38.93%) Infrastructure as Code
6 182 (34.73%) DevOps
7 150 (28.63%) Security Cleared
8 125 (23.85%) Kubernetes
8 125 (23.85%) SC Cleared
9 121 (23.09%) GCP
10 120 (22.90%) Python
11 107 (20.42%) GitHub
12 105 (20.04%) Cloud Security
13 92 (17.56%) Microsoft
14 90 (17.18%) Google
15 84 (16.03%) PowerShell
16 81 (15.46%) Platform Engineering
17 76 (14.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 72 (13.74%) Migration
19 71 (13.55%) Agile
20 70 (13.36%) Containerisation
21 68 (12.98%) GitHub Actions
22 58 (11.07%) Docker
23 53 (10.11%) Firewall
24 51 (9.73%) Serverless
25 50 (9.54%) AI
26 48 (9.16%) Continuous Improvement
26 48 (9.16%) Observability
27 45 (8.59%) Azure DevOps
27 45 (8.59%) Jenkins

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 (1.34%) 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%) SAS
5 1 (0.19%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.19%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.38%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.19%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 236 (45.04%) Azure
2 219 (41.79%) AWS
3 121 (23.09%) GCP
4 107 (20.42%) GitHub
5 68 (12.98%) GitHub Actions
6 51 (9.73%) Serverless
7 45 (8.59%) Azure DevOps
8 44 (8.40%) Entra ID
9 40 (7.63%) PaaS
10 39 (7.44%) AWS CloudFormation
11 37 (7.06%) Azure AKS
12 34 (6.49%) IaaS
13 33 (6.30%) Amazon S3
13 33 (6.30%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 30 (5.73%) Amazon EKS
15 29 (5.53%) AWS Lambda
16 27 (5.15%) Amazon ECS
17 22 (4.20%) OCI
18 20 (3.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 19 (3.63%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 53 (10.11%) Firewall
2 24 (4.58%) DNS
3 21 (4.01%) VPN
4 19 (3.63%) Network Security
5 6 (1.15%) Cisco Firepower
5 6 (1.15%) Reverse Proxy
6 5 (0.95%) Cisco IOS
6 5 (0.95%) Cisco ISE
6 5 (0.95%) Junos
6 5 (0.95%) NX-OS
7 4 (0.76%) DHCP
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%) WAN
9 2 (0.38%) Kerberos
9 2 (0.38%) NGFW
9 2 (0.38%) Unified Communications
9 2 (0.38%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.86%) Amazon Athena
2 12 (2.29%) BigQuery
3 11 (2.10%) DynamoDB
4 8 (1.53%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (1.34%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (1.34%) SQL Server
6 6 (1.15%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.15%) Oracle Database
6 6 (1.15%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (0.95%) Data Lake
8 4 (0.76%) Amazon QuickSight
8 4 (0.76%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (0.76%) Power BI
9 3 (0.57%) Big Data
9 3 (0.57%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.57%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.38%) OLAP
10 2 (0.38%) OLTP
10 2 (0.38%) Oracle Database 12c
10 2 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 45 (8.59%) Jenkins
2 37 (7.06%) Git
2 37 (7.06%) GitLab
3 7 (1.34%) JIRA
4 4 (0.76%) Artifactory
5 3 (0.57%) Team Foundation Server
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%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.19%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.19%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.19%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.19%) RStudio
7 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.19%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.19%) Travis CI
General
1 72 (13.74%) Social Skills
2 60 (11.45%) Finance
3 44 (8.40%) Public Sector
4 20 (3.82%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (3.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 17 (3.24%) Banking
7 11 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.72%) Retail
9 7 (1.34%) Aeronautics
10 6 (1.15%) Legal
10 6 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
11 5 (0.95%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.76%) Investment Banking
12 4 (0.76%) Marketing
13 3 (0.57%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.57%) Military
13 3 (0.57%) Police
14 2 (0.38%) Billing
14 2 (0.38%) Law
14 2 (0.38%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (4.20%) REST
2 20 (3.82%) Node.js
3 13 (2.48%) Kafka
3 13 (2.48%) React
4 11 (2.10%) OAuth
4 11 (2.10%) OpenTelemetry
4 11 (2.10%) Spring
5 10 (1.91%) .NET
5 10 (1.91%) OAuth2
5 10 (1.91%) Spring Boot
6 9 (1.72%) ARM Templates
6 9 (1.72%) OpenID
7 8 (1.53%) Oracle Fusion
8 7 (1.34%) LangChain
8 7 (1.34%) Playwright
9 6 (1.15%) AngularJS
9 6 (1.15%) Web Services
10 5 (0.95%) OpenAPI
10 5 (0.95%) PySpark
10 5 (0.95%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 87 (16.60%) Cloud Native
2 30 (5.73%) Public Cloud
3 19 (3.63%) Hybrid Cloud
4 18 (3.44%) Data Centre
5 12 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (2.10%) Onboarding
7 10 (1.91%) Product Ownership
7 10 (1.91%) Security Posture
8 9 (1.72%) Enterprise Cloud
9 7 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (1.15%) Cyber Threat
10 6 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
10 6 (1.15%) PKI
11 5 (0.95%) Virtual Team
12 4 (0.76%) Legacy Systems
12 4 (0.76%) Management Information System
13 3 (0.57%) Cloud Security Posture
13 3 (0.57%) CMDB
13 3 (0.57%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 42 (8.02%) Windows
2 27 (5.15%) Linux
3 21 (4.01%) 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
Processes & Methodologies
1 214 (40.84%) CI/CD
2 204 (38.93%) Infrastructure as Code
3 182 (34.73%) DevOps
4 105 (20.04%) Cloud Security
5 81 (15.46%) Platform Engineering
6 76 (14.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 72 (13.74%) Migration
8 71 (13.55%) Agile
9 70 (13.36%) Containerisation
10 50 (9.54%) AI
11 48 (9.16%) Continuous Improvement
11 48 (9.16%) Observability
12 45 (8.59%) Problem-Solving
13 42 (8.02%) DevSecOps
14 41 (7.82%) Cybersecurity
15 40 (7.63%) Infrastructure Automation
16 38 (7.25%) Software Engineering
17 34 (6.49%) Mentoring
18 29 (5.53%) Microservices
19 26 (4.96%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 120 (22.90%) Python
2 84 (16.03%) PowerShell
3 44 (8.40%) SQL
4 39 (7.44%) Bash
5 32 (6.11%) Bicep
6 26 (4.96%) Java
7 17 (3.24%) C#
8 12 (2.29%) TypeScript
9 9 (1.72%) Go
9 9 (1.72%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.76%) Groovy
11 3 (0.57%) BeanShell
12 2 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.38%) Ruby
12 2 (0.38%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.19%) Cypher
13 1 (0.19%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.19%) R
Qualifications
1 150 (28.63%) Security Cleared
2 125 (23.85%) SC Cleared
3 42 (8.02%) Azure Certification
4 26 (4.96%) AWS Certification
5 21 (4.01%) DV Cleared
6 15 (2.86%) Degree
6 15 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 13 (2.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 13 (2.48%) CISSP
8 12 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
9 10 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.53%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (1.34%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 6 (1.15%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 6 (1.15%) CISM
13 5 (0.95%) CCSP
13 5 (0.95%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.76%) MCSE
15 3 (0.57%) CCNP
15 3 (0.57%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.29%) GDPR
1 12 (2.29%) NIST
2 11 (2.10%) NCSC
3 10 (1.91%) QA
4 9 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (1.34%) PCI DSS
6 6 (1.15%) Data Quality
7 5 (0.95%) GRC
8 2 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.38%) SLA
8 2 (0.38%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.19%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.19%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.19%) WCAG
System Software
1 58 (11.07%) Docker
2 31 (5.92%) Active Directory
3 17 (3.24%) Virtual Desktop
4 15 (2.86%) VMware NSX
5 14 (2.67%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (1.72%) VMware Infrastructure
7 8 (1.53%) vSphere
8 6 (1.15%) Firmware
8 6 (1.15%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.57%) vCloud
9 3 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.19%) Squid
Systems Management
1 234 (44.66%) Terraform
2 125 (23.85%) Kubernetes
3 25 (4.77%) Prometheus
4 21 (4.01%) Ansible
5 20 (3.82%) Grafana
6 17 (3.24%) Istio
7 16 (3.05%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (2.67%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (2.48%) Argo
10 9 (1.72%) vCenter Server
11 6 (1.15%) Packer
12 5 (0.95%) Progress Chef
12 5 (0.95%) Puppet
13 4 (0.76%) Salt
14 3 (0.57%) Cilium
14 3 (0.57%) SCOM
15 1 (0.19%) Consul
15 1 (0.19%) HAProxy
15 1 (0.19%) Podman
15 1 (0.19%) SCCM
Vendors
1 92 (17.56%) Microsoft
2 90 (17.18%) Google
3 24 (4.58%) Oracle
4 20 (3.82%) VMware
5 12 (2.29%) Dynatrace
6 11 (2.10%) Cisco
7 10 (1.91%) Databricks
8 9 (1.72%) ServiceNow
9 7 (1.34%) Salesforce
10 6 (1.15%) Juniper
10 6 (1.15%) Palo Alto
10 6 (1.15%) Splunk
10 6 (1.15%) Zscaler
11 5 (0.95%) Broadcom
11 5 (0.95%) Citrix
11 5 (0.95%) Fortinet
11 5 (0.95%) PeopleSoft
11 5 (0.95%) Ping Identity
11 5 (0.95%) Rapid7
11 5 (0.95%) SolarWinds
208 Cloud Engineer jobs Nationwide