Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £514, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 4 October 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 201 291 327
Rank change year-on-year +90 +36 -76
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 800 272 241
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.46% 0.82% 0.63%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.59% 0.90% 0.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 526 201 146
10th Percentile £413 £400 £386
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.75% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £642
90th Percentile £675 £668 £706
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 7 0
10th Percentile £22.74 £29.00 -
25th Percentile £23.20 £29.50 -
Median hourly rate £76.50 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +70.00% - -
75th Percentile £81.25 £86.25 -
90th Percentile - £110.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.73 - -

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 50,330 30,144 35,336
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.12% 90.83% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,591 19,030 21,429
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £636 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £741
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,999 1,630 1,541
10th Percentile £14.42 £13.75 £14.99
25th Percentile £19.77 £17.30 £20.75
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £42.91
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.39% -3.57%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.19 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.28 £74.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.74 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.44% -41.69% -2.82%

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 4 October 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 4 October 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 4 October 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 +108 702 £525 +5.00% 1,554
UK excluding London +104 443 £510 +2.00% 873
London +39 301 £525 +0.96% 756
Work from Home +27 213 £540 +8.00% 642
North of England +33 146 £511 +13.61% 246
South East +23 135 £538 +7.50% 143
North West +24 87 £513 +17.14% 150
Midlands +18 79 £500 -9.09% 119
Yorkshire -2 49 £460 -20.00% 59
Scotland +3 46 £425 -15.00% 115
East Midlands +28 45 £500 +5.26% 52
West Midlands -19 33 £525 -4.55% 67
East of England -10 16 £475 +5.56% 67
South West -22 16 £575 - 120
North East -34 10 £525 +14.13% 37
Wales -7 7 - - 23

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

For the 6 months to 4 October 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.

1 382 (47.75%) Azure
2 310 (38.75%) Terraform
3 283 (35.38%) Infrastructure as Code
4 268 (33.50%) CI/CD
5 266 (33.25%) AWS
6 212 (26.50%) Kubernetes
7 207 (25.88%) DevOps
8 204 (25.50%) Security Cleared
9 193 (24.13%) Python
10 187 (23.38%) Microsoft
11 177 (22.13%) Cloud Security
12 172 (21.50%) PowerShell
13 161 (20.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 160 (20.00%) GCP
15 145 (18.13%) SC Cleared
16 144 (18.00%) Platform Engineering
17 129 (16.13%) Entra ID
18 125 (15.63%) Windows
19 109 (13.63%) Active Directory
20 106 (13.25%) Google
21 102 (12.75%) AI
21 102 (12.75%) Migration
22 93 (11.63%) Containerisation
23 90 (11.25%) Observability
24 87 (10.88%) GitHub
25 86 (10.75%) Agile
25 86 (10.75%) Firewall
26 85 (10.63%) DNS
27 83 (10.38%) Docker
28 82 (10.25%) Bash

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 15 (1.88%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.50%) Apache
3 9 (1.13%) SharePoint
4 8 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.88%) Confluence
6 4 (0.50%) nginx
7 3 (0.38%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.38%) IIS
7 3 (0.38%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
9 1 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
9 1 (0.13%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.13%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 382 (47.75%) Azure
2 266 (33.25%) AWS
3 160 (20.00%) GCP
4 129 (16.13%) Entra ID
5 87 (10.88%) GitHub
6 58 (7.25%) IaaS
7 56 (7.00%) Azure DevOps
7 56 (7.00%) GitHub Actions
8 52 (6.50%) Serverless
9 46 (5.75%) Microsoft 365
10 45 (5.63%) AWS CloudFormation
11 43 (5.38%) Azure Monitor
11 43 (5.38%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 39 (4.88%) AWS Lambda
12 39 (4.88%) PaaS
13 38 (4.75%) Azure AKS
14 36 (4.50%) Amazon EKS
15 33 (4.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 31 (3.88%) Amazon S3
17 30 (3.75%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 86 (10.75%) Firewall
2 85 (10.63%) DNS
3 44 (5.50%) Network Security
4 41 (5.13%) VPN
5 21 (2.63%) DHCP
6 19 (2.38%) WAN
7 17 (2.13%) TCP/IP
8 13 (1.63%) Internet
9 9 (1.13%) VSAN
10 8 (1.00%) SD-WAN
11 7 (0.88%) NGFW
11 7 (0.88%) VLAN
12 5 (0.63%) BGP
12 5 (0.63%) Kerberos
12 5 (0.63%) Reverse Proxy
13 4 (0.50%) LAN
13 4 (0.50%) SAN
13 4 (0.50%) SSL
13 4 (0.50%) Wireless
14 3 (0.38%) IPv4
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (3.63%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.63%) Amazon RDS
3 16 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.63%) BigQuery
4 13 (1.63%) Data Lake
5 9 (1.13%) NoSQL
6 8 (1.00%) DynamoDB
6 8 (1.00%) Oracle Exadata
7 6 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
8 5 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.63%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.38%) Flink
9 3 (0.38%) Looker
9 3 (0.38%) Metadata
9 3 (0.38%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.38%) MySQL
9 3 (0.38%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.38%) Redis
10 2 (0.25%) Amazon QuickSight
10 2 (0.25%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 53 (6.63%) GitLab
2 49 (6.13%) Jenkins
3 38 (4.75%) Git
4 17 (2.13%) JIRA
5 8 (1.00%) Artifactory
6 7 (0.88%) Claude Code
7 6 (0.75%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.38%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.25%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.25%) Gatling
9 2 (0.25%) JMeter
9 2 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.13%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.13%) eggPlant
10 1 (0.13%) Postman
10 1 (0.13%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.13%) Selenium
10 1 (0.13%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 97 (12.13%) Finance
2 82 (10.25%) Social Skills
3 75 (9.38%) Public Sector
4 33 (4.13%) Analytical Skills
5 30 (3.75%) Banking
6 11 (1.38%) Manufacturing
7 8 (1.00%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (1.00%) Legal
8 6 (0.75%) Investment Banking
9 5 (0.63%) Front Office
9 5 (0.63%) Law
9 5 (0.63%) Local Government
9 5 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
9 5 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.50%) Police
11 3 (0.38%) Digital Health
11 3 (0.38%) Digital Healthcare
11 3 (0.38%) Italian Language
11 3 (0.38%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 310 (38.75%) Terraform
2 26 (3.25%) REST
3 19 (2.38%) ARM Templates
4 15 (1.88%) Kafka
5 14 (1.75%) OAuth
6 13 (1.63%) OAuth2
7 10 (1.25%) Spring
7 10 (1.25%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.13%) OpenID
8 9 (1.13%) YAML
9 8 (1.00%) .NET
9 8 (1.00%) AWS CDK
9 8 (1.00%) Keycloak
9 8 (1.00%) Node.js
9 8 (1.00%) React
10 6 (0.75%) FastAPI
10 6 (0.75%) Flask
11 5 (0.63%) Azure Blueprints
12 4 (0.50%) Hugging Face
12 4 (0.50%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 128 (16.00%) Cloud Native
2 60 (7.50%) Security Posture
3 44 (5.50%) Enterprise Cloud
4 40 (5.00%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (4.00%) Cloud Security Posture
6 30 (3.75%) Onboarding
7 27 (3.38%) Enterprise Software
8 25 (3.13%) Data Centre
9 21 (2.63%) Management Information System
10 20 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
11 14 (1.75%) Private Cloud
12 13 (1.63%) Product Ownership
12 13 (1.63%) Public Cloud
13 11 (1.38%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (1.25%) PKI
15 8 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
16 7 (0.88%) AI Agents
17 6 (0.75%) Distributed Architecture
18 5 (0.63%) CMDB
19 4 (0.50%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 125 (15.63%) Windows
2 82 (10.25%) Linux
3 63 (7.88%) Windows Server
4 32 (4.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.88%) Windows Server 2019
6 9 (1.13%) Ubuntu
7 8 (1.00%) VMS
8 3 (0.38%) CentOS
9 2 (0.25%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.13%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 283 (35.38%) Infrastructure as Code
2 268 (33.50%) CI/CD
3 207 (25.88%) DevOps
4 177 (22.13%) Cloud Security
5 161 (20.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 144 (18.00%) Platform Engineering
7 102 (12.75%) AI
7 102 (12.75%) Migration
8 93 (11.63%) Containerisation
9 90 (11.25%) Observability
10 86 (10.75%) Agile
11 65 (8.13%) Technical Leadership
12 64 (8.00%) Cybersecurity
13 62 (7.75%) Infrastructure Automation
14 58 (7.25%) Deployment Automation
14 58 (7.25%) Software Engineering
15 55 (6.88%) DevSecOps
16 54 (6.75%) Continuous Improvement
16 54 (6.75%) Problem-Solving
16 54 (6.75%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 193 (24.13%) Python
2 172 (21.50%) PowerShell
3 82 (10.25%) Bash
4 74 (9.25%) Bicep
5 68 (8.50%) SQL
6 36 (4.50%) Java
7 16 (2.00%) Shell Script
8 15 (1.88%) C#
9 11 (1.38%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.25%) Go
11 4 (0.50%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.38%) C
12 3 (0.38%) Kotlin
12 3 (0.38%) Scala
13 2 (0.25%) Groovy
13 2 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.13%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.13%) R
14 1 (0.13%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 204 (25.50%) Security Cleared
2 145 (18.13%) SC Cleared
3 70 (8.75%) DV Cleared
4 47 (5.88%) Azure Certification
5 44 (5.50%) AWS Certification
6 37 (4.63%) Degree
7 22 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
8 18 (2.25%) CISSP
9 13 (1.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.00%) MCSE
11 7 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 6 (0.75%) CCNP
12 6 (0.75%) CISM
12 6 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
13 5 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 3 (0.38%) CCIE
14 3 (0.38%) CEH
14 3 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (2.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 13 (1.63%) Data Quality
2 13 (1.63%) NIST
3 6 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
3 6 (0.75%) GDPR
3 6 (0.75%) QA
4 5 (0.63%) NCSC
5 4 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (0.50%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.25%) SLA
8 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.13%) GRC
System Software
1 109 (13.63%) Active Directory
2 83 (10.38%) Docker
3 52 (6.50%) VMware Infrastructure
4 43 (5.38%) Virtual Machines
5 35 (4.38%) VMware ESXi
6 27 (3.38%) VMware NSX
7 21 (2.63%) Virtual Desktop
7 21 (2.63%) vSphere
8 15 (1.88%) vCloud
9 11 (1.38%) Hyper-V
10 6 (0.75%) Squid
11 5 (0.63%) Firmware
12 4 (0.50%) NFS
13 3 (0.38%) Ceph
13 3 (0.38%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.38%) Postfix
14 2 (0.25%) IAG
14 2 (0.25%) KVM
14 2 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
15 1 (0.13%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 212 (26.50%) Kubernetes
2 54 (6.75%) Ansible
3 31 (3.88%) vCenter Server
4 28 (3.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 27 (3.38%) SCOM
6 26 (3.25%) Grafana
7 23 (2.88%) Prometheus
8 19 (2.38%) Progress Chef
9 15 (1.88%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (1.75%) Puppet
11 11 (1.38%) Istio
12 8 (1.00%) Cilium
13 6 (0.75%) Argo
14 5 (0.63%) Packer
14 5 (0.63%) VxRail
15 4 (0.50%) HAProxy
15 4 (0.50%) Suricata
16 3 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 3 (0.38%) Karpenter
16 3 (0.38%) vRealize
Vendors
1 187 (23.38%) Microsoft
2 106 (13.25%) Google
3 76 (9.50%) VMware
4 36 (4.50%) Oracle
5 29 (3.63%) Databricks
6 20 (2.50%) Red Hat
7 18 (2.25%) Okta
8 17 (2.13%) Palo Alto
9 16 (2.00%) SolarWinds
9 16 (2.00%) Zscaler
10 14 (1.75%) Splunk
11 13 (1.63%) Broadcom
12 12 (1.50%) Cisco
12 12 (1.50%) OpenAI
12 12 (1.50%) ServiceNow
13 10 (1.25%) Dynatrace
14 9 (1.13%) CrowdStrike
14 9 (1.13%) New Relic
15 8 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
15 8 (1.00%) Salesforce