Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £515, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 October 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 199 303 336
Rank change year-on-year +104 +33 -75
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 802 269 244
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.46% 0.81% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.59% 0.89% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 527 199 147
10th Percentile £413 £400 £386
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £591 £575 £641
90th Percentile £675 £669 £705
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 50,556 30,128 35,360
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.16% 90.91% 92.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,767 19,028 21,436
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 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,987 1,619 1,546
10th Percentile £14.45 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.78 £17.27 £20.75
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £42.96
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.45% -3.47%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.31 £74.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.50% -41.69% -2.27%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +104 704 £525 +5.00% 1,492
UK excluding London +99 443 £510 +2.00% 827
London +50 303 £525 +0.48% 741
Work from Home +33 213 £540 +8.00% 600
North of England +27 146 £511 +13.61% 227
South East +25 135 £538 +7.50% 134
North West +17 87 £513 +17.14% 141
Midlands +14 79 £500 -9.09% 115
Yorkshire +1 49 £460 -20.00% 55
Scotland +2 46 £425 -15.00% 108
East Midlands +20 45 £500 +5.26% 50
West Midlands -14 33 £525 -4.55% 65
East of England -14 16 £475 +5.56% 63
South West -27 16 £575 - 118
North East -40 10 £525 +14.13% 31
Wales -6 7 - - 23

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

For the 6 months to 3 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.

1 384 (47.88%) Azure
2 311 (38.78%) Terraform
3 284 (35.41%) Infrastructure as Code
4 269 (33.54%) CI/CD
5 268 (33.42%) AWS
6 212 (26.43%) Kubernetes
7 207 (25.81%) DevOps
8 205 (25.56%) Security Cleared
9 193 (24.06%) Python
10 187 (23.32%) Microsoft
11 178 (22.19%) Cloud Security
12 172 (21.45%) PowerShell
13 162 (20.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 160 (19.95%) GCP
15 146 (18.20%) SC Cleared
16 145 (18.08%) Platform Engineering
17 129 (16.08%) Entra ID
18 125 (15.59%) Windows
19 109 (13.59%) Active Directory
20 106 (13.22%) Google
21 103 (12.84%) AI
22 102 (12.72%) Migration
23 93 (11.60%) Containerisation
24 91 (11.35%) Observability
25 87 (10.85%) Firewall
25 87 (10.85%) GitHub
26 86 (10.72%) Agile
27 85 (10.60%) DNS
28 83 (10.35%) Docker
29 82 (10.22%) 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 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.50%) Apache
3 9 (1.12%) SharePoint
4 8 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (0.87%) Confluence
6 4 (0.50%) nginx
7 3 (0.37%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.37%) IIS
7 3 (0.37%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.37%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
9 1 (0.12%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.12%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 384 (47.88%) Azure
2 268 (33.42%) AWS
3 160 (19.95%) GCP
4 129 (16.08%) Entra ID
5 87 (10.85%) GitHub
6 58 (7.23%) IaaS
7 56 (6.98%) Azure DevOps
7 56 (6.98%) GitHub Actions
8 52 (6.48%) Serverless
9 46 (5.74%) AWS CloudFormation
9 46 (5.74%) Microsoft 365
10 43 (5.36%) Azure Monitor
10 43 (5.36%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 39 (4.86%) AWS Lambda
11 39 (4.86%) PaaS
12 38 (4.74%) Azure AKS
13 36 (4.49%) Amazon EKS
14 33 (4.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 31 (3.87%) Amazon S3
16 30 (3.74%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 87 (10.85%) Firewall
2 85 (10.60%) DNS
3 45 (5.61%) Network Security
4 41 (5.11%) VPN
5 21 (2.62%) DHCP
6 19 (2.37%) WAN
7 17 (2.12%) TCP/IP
8 13 (1.62%) Internet
9 9 (1.12%) VSAN
10 8 (1.00%) SD-WAN
11 7 (0.87%) NGFW
11 7 (0.87%) VLAN
12 5 (0.62%) BGP
12 5 (0.62%) Kerberos
12 5 (0.62%) Reverse Proxy
13 4 (0.50%) LAN
13 4 (0.50%) SAN
13 4 (0.50%) SSL
13 4 (0.50%) Wireless
14 3 (0.37%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (3.62%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
3 16 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.62%) BigQuery
4 13 (1.62%) Data Lake
5 9 (1.12%) NoSQL
6 8 (1.00%) DynamoDB
6 8 (1.00%) Oracle Exadata
7 6 (0.75%) Amazon Athena
8 5 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.62%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.37%) Flink
9 3 (0.37%) Looker
9 3 (0.37%) Metadata
9 3 (0.37%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.37%) MySQL
9 3 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.37%) Redis
10 2 (0.25%) Amazon QuickSight
10 2 (0.25%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 54 (6.73%) GitLab
2 49 (6.11%) Jenkins
3 39 (4.86%) Git
4 17 (2.12%) JIRA
5 8 (1.00%) Artifactory
6 7 (0.87%) Claude Code
7 6 (0.75%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.37%) 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 (0.12%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.12%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.12%) eggPlant
10 1 (0.12%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.12%) Selenium
10 1 (0.12%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.12%) TestRail
General
1 97 (12.09%) Finance
2 82 (10.22%) Social Skills
3 75 (9.35%) Public Sector
4 33 (4.11%) Analytical Skills
5 30 (3.74%) Banking
6 11 (1.37%) 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 (0.62%) Front Office
9 5 (0.62%) Law
9 5 (0.62%) Local Government
9 5 (0.62%) Pharmaceutical
9 5 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.50%) Police
11 3 (0.37%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.37%) Back Office
11 3 (0.37%) Digital Health
11 3 (0.37%) Digital Healthcare
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 311 (38.78%) Terraform
2 26 (3.24%) REST
3 19 (2.37%) ARM Templates
4 15 (1.87%) Kafka
5 14 (1.75%) OAuth
6 13 (1.62%) OAuth2
7 10 (1.25%) Spring
7 10 (1.25%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.12%) OpenID
8 9 (1.12%) 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 (0.62%) Azure Blueprints
12 4 (0.50%) Hugging Face
12 4 (0.50%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 128 (15.96%) Cloud Native
2 60 (7.48%) Security Posture
3 45 (5.61%) Enterprise Cloud
4 41 (5.11%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (3.99%) Cloud Security Posture
6 30 (3.74%) Onboarding
7 27 (3.37%) Enterprise Software
8 25 (3.12%) Data Centre
9 21 (2.62%) Management Information System
10 20 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
11 14 (1.75%) Private Cloud
12 13 (1.62%) Product Ownership
12 13 (1.62%) Public Cloud
13 11 (1.37%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (1.25%) PKI
15 8 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
16 7 (0.87%) AI Agents
17 6 (0.75%) Distributed Architecture
18 5 (0.62%) CMDB
19 4 (0.50%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 125 (15.59%) Windows
2 82 (10.22%) Linux
3 63 (7.86%) Windows Server
4 32 (3.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.87%) Windows Server 2019
6 9 (1.12%) Ubuntu
7 8 (1.00%) VMS
8 3 (0.37%) CentOS
9 2 (0.25%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.12%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 284 (35.41%) Infrastructure as Code
2 269 (33.54%) CI/CD
3 207 (25.81%) DevOps
4 178 (22.19%) Cloud Security
5 162 (20.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 145 (18.08%) Platform Engineering
7 103 (12.84%) AI
8 102 (12.72%) Migration
9 93 (11.60%) Containerisation
10 91 (11.35%) Observability
11 86 (10.72%) Agile
12 65 (8.10%) Technical Leadership
13 64 (7.98%) Cybersecurity
14 62 (7.73%) Infrastructure Automation
15 58 (7.23%) Deployment Automation
15 58 (7.23%) Software Engineering
16 56 (6.98%) DevSecOps
17 54 (6.73%) Continuous Improvement
17 54 (6.73%) Problem-Solving
17 54 (6.73%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 193 (24.06%) Python
2 172 (21.45%) PowerShell
3 82 (10.22%) Bash
4 74 (9.23%) Bicep
5 68 (8.48%) SQL
6 36 (4.49%) Java
7 16 (2.00%) Shell Script
8 15 (1.87%) C#
9 11 (1.37%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.25%) Go
11 4 (0.50%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.37%) C
12 3 (0.37%) Kotlin
12 3 (0.37%) Scala
13 2 (0.25%) Groovy
13 2 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.12%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.12%) Perl
14 1 (0.12%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 205 (25.56%) Security Cleared
2 146 (18.20%) SC Cleared
3 70 (8.73%) DV Cleared
4 47 (5.86%) Azure Certification
5 44 (5.49%) AWS Certification
6 37 (4.61%) Degree
7 22 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
8 18 (2.24%) CISSP
9 13 (1.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (1.00%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.00%) MCSE
11 7 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 6 (0.75%) CCNP
12 6 (0.75%) CISM
12 6 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
13 5 (0.62%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 3 (0.37%) CCIE
14 3 (0.37%) CEH
14 3 (0.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 13 (1.62%) Data Quality
2 13 (1.62%) NIST
3 6 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
3 6 (0.75%) GDPR
3 6 (0.75%) QA
4 5 (0.62%) NCSC
5 4 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (0.50%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.25%) SLA
8 1 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.12%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.12%) GRC
System Software
1 109 (13.59%) Active Directory
2 83 (10.35%) Docker
3 52 (6.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 43 (5.36%) Virtual Machines
5 35 (4.36%) VMware ESXi
6 27 (3.37%) VMware NSX
7 22 (2.74%) Virtual Desktop
8 21 (2.62%) vSphere
9 15 (1.87%) vCloud
10 11 (1.37%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.75%) Squid
12 5 (0.62%) Firmware
13 4 (0.50%) NFS
14 3 (0.37%) Ceph
14 3 (0.37%) Dovecot
14 3 (0.37%) Postfix
15 2 (0.25%) IAG
15 2 (0.25%) KVM
15 2 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
16 1 (0.12%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 212 (26.43%) Kubernetes
2 54 (6.73%) Ansible
3 31 (3.87%) vCenter Server
4 28 (3.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 27 (3.37%) SCOM
6 26 (3.24%) Grafana
7 23 (2.87%) Prometheus
8 19 (2.37%) Progress Chef
9 16 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (1.75%) Puppet
11 11 (1.37%) Istio
12 8 (1.00%) Cilium
13 6 (0.75%) Argo
14 5 (0.62%) Packer
14 5 (0.62%) VxRail
15 4 (0.50%) HAProxy
15 4 (0.50%) Suricata
16 3 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 3 (0.37%) Karpenter
16 3 (0.37%) vRealize
Vendors
1 187 (23.32%) Microsoft
2 106 (13.22%) Google
3 76 (9.48%) VMware
4 36 (4.49%) Oracle
5 29 (3.62%) Databricks
6 20 (2.49%) Red Hat
7 18 (2.24%) Okta
7 18 (2.24%) Palo Alto
8 16 (2.00%) SolarWinds
8 16 (2.00%) Zscaler
9 14 (1.75%) Splunk
10 13 (1.62%) Broadcom
10 13 (1.62%) Cisco
11 12 (1.50%) OpenAI
11 12 (1.50%) ServiceNow
12 10 (1.25%) Dynatrace
13 9 (1.12%) CrowdStrike
13 9 (1.12%) New Relic
14 8 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
14 8 (1.00%) Salesforce