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 20 July 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 209 309 337
Rank change year-on-year +100 +28 -59
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 685 254 266
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.30% 0.77% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.40% 0.84% 0.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 442 191 185
10th Percentile £400 £400 £386
25th Percentile £450 £425 £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 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 3 1
10th Percentile £23.20 £32.50 -
25th Percentile £73.06 £36.25 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.11% +50.00% -
75th Percentile £81.25 £55.00 £32.50
90th Percentile £83.88 £59.50 -
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 48,848 30,065 38,836
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.55% 91.66% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,490 19,139 25,111
10th Percentile £325 £285 £291
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £737 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,297 1,430 2,509
10th Percentile £15.79 £13.75 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £17.80
Median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.72% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +78.93% -38.57% +3.51%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +78 573 £525 +5.00% 347
UK excluding London +51 328 £510 +2.00% 193
London +55 301 £525 - 176
Work from Home +17 176 £539 +7.80% 144
North of England -18 88 £518 +15.00% 66
South East -16 86 £538 +4.88% 49
Scotland +35 64 £437 -14.73% 11
Midlands -9 49 £513 +7.89% 32
North West -19 48 £510 +20.00% 40
Yorkshire -24 33 £475 -2.56% 21
West Midlands -40 27 £525 - 20
East of England +4 22 £505 +26.25% 12
East Midlands -1 21 £450 -5.26% 12
South West -28 16 £550 -2.22% 19
North East -36 7 £525 +7.69% 5
Wales -11 5 - - 5

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

For the 6 months to 20 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.

1 316 (46.13%) Azure
2 299 (43.65%) Terraform
3 282 (41.17%) AWS
4 254 (37.08%) CI/CD
5 243 (35.47%) Infrastructure as Code
6 208 (30.36%) DevOps
7 179 (26.13%) Python
8 168 (24.53%) Security Cleared
9 160 (23.36%) Kubernetes
10 155 (22.63%) GCP
11 150 (21.90%) Cloud Security
12 147 (21.46%) Microsoft
13 134 (19.56%) PowerShell
14 132 (19.27%) Platform Engineering
15 131 (19.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 130 (18.98%) SC Cleared
17 110 (16.06%) Google
18 103 (15.04%) Windows
19 94 (13.72%) GitHub
20 92 (13.43%) Migration
21 84 (12.26%) Containerisation
22 83 (12.12%) AI
23 82 (11.97%) Agile
24 75 (10.95%) Active Directory
25 74 (10.80%) Entra ID
26 72 (10.51%) Observability
27 71 (10.36%) Bash
27 71 (10.36%) Firewall
28 70 (10.22%) DNS
29 68 (9.93%) 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 12 (1.75%) Microsoft Exchange
2 8 (1.17%) Apache
2 8 (1.17%) Confluence
3 4 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (0.58%) Apache Spark
3 4 (0.58%) nginx
3 4 (0.58%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.44%) IIS
4 3 (0.44%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.29%) CloudStack
5 2 (0.29%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.15%) SAS
6 1 (0.15%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.15%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.29%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 316 (46.13%) Azure
2 282 (41.17%) AWS
3 155 (22.63%) GCP
4 94 (13.72%) GitHub
5 74 (10.80%) Entra ID
6 61 (8.91%) Serverless
7 58 (8.47%) GitHub Actions
8 48 (7.01%) Azure AKS
9 44 (6.42%) AWS CloudFormation
10 42 (6.13%) Amazon S3
11 41 (5.99%) Azure DevOps
12 39 (5.69%) AWS Lambda
12 39 (5.69%) IaaS
13 36 (5.26%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 36 (5.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 35 (5.11%) Amazon EC2
14 35 (5.11%) PaaS
15 34 (4.96%) Amazon EKS
16 30 (4.38%) Amazon ECS
17 29 (4.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 71 (10.36%) Firewall
2 70 (10.22%) DNS
3 39 (5.69%) VPN
4 29 (4.23%) Network Security
5 15 (2.19%) DHCP
5 15 (2.19%) WAN
6 14 (2.04%) TCP/IP
7 7 (1.02%) Internet
8 6 (0.88%) SD-WAN
9 5 (0.73%) BGP
9 5 (0.73%) Reverse Proxy
9 5 (0.73%) SSL
9 5 (0.73%) VLAN
10 4 (0.58%) LAN
10 4 (0.58%) SAN
10 4 (0.58%) Software-Defined Networking
11 3 (0.44%) IPv4
11 3 (0.44%) OSPF
11 3 (0.44%) SMTP
11 3 (0.44%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (3.50%) SQL Server
2 16 (2.34%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.61%) Amazon Athena
4 11 (1.61%) DynamoDB
5 9 (1.31%) BigQuery
6 6 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
7 5 (0.73%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.73%) Oracle Database
8 3 (0.44%) Amazon QuickSight
8 3 (0.44%) Big Data
8 3 (0.44%) MySQL
8 3 (0.44%) Oracle Database 12c
8 3 (0.44%) Oracle Exadata
8 3 (0.44%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.29%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.29%) Metadata
9 2 (0.29%) Redis
10 1 (0.15%) Apache Iceberg
Development Applications
1 50 (7.30%) Jenkins
2 47 (6.86%) GitLab
3 38 (5.55%) Git
4 18 (2.63%) JIRA
5 9 (1.31%) Artifactory
6 5 (0.73%) Bitbucket
6 5 (0.73%) Claude Code
7 3 (0.44%) Selenium
7 3 (0.44%) Team Foundation Server
8 2 (0.29%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.29%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.29%) Liquibase
8 2 (0.29%) Robot Framework
8 2 (0.29%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.15%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.15%) Chocolatey
9 1 (0.15%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.15%) Gatling
9 1 (0.15%) sqlmap
9 1 (0.15%) TestRail
General
1 85 (12.41%) Finance
2 82 (11.97%) Social Skills
3 63 (9.20%) Public Sector
4 25 (3.65%) Banking
5 23 (3.36%) Analytical Skills
6 11 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (1.31%) Investment Banking
8 5 (0.73%) Law
8 5 (0.73%) Legal
8 5 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
8 5 (0.73%) Retail
9 3 (0.44%) Corporate Banking
9 3 (0.44%) Financial Institution
9 3 (0.44%) Local Government
9 3 (0.44%) Military
9 3 (0.44%) Police
9 3 (0.44%) Retail Banking
9 3 (0.44%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.29%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (3.80%) REST
2 14 (2.04%) Node.js
3 13 (1.90%) OAuth
3 13 (1.90%) OAuth2
4 10 (1.46%) React
5 9 (1.31%) ARM Templates
5 9 (1.31%) Spring
5 9 (1.31%) Spring Boot
6 7 (1.02%) AWS CDK
6 7 (1.02%) Kafka
6 7 (1.02%) Model Context Protocol
6 7 (1.02%) OpenID
7 6 (0.88%) .NET
7 6 (0.88%) YAML
8 5 (0.73%) FastAPI
8 5 (0.73%) Flask
8 5 (0.73%) Playwright
8 5 (0.73%) PyTorch
8 5 (0.73%) TensorFlow
9 4 (0.58%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 125 (18.25%) Cloud Native
2 37 (5.40%) Security Posture
3 36 (5.26%) Hybrid Cloud
4 31 (4.53%) Enterprise Cloud
5 25 (3.65%) Onboarding
6 24 (3.50%) Public Cloud
7 23 (3.36%) Data Centre
8 17 (2.48%) Enterprise Software
9 16 (2.34%) Cloud Security Posture
9 16 (2.34%) Distributed Systems
10 13 (1.90%) Management Information System
11 9 (1.31%) Linux Command Line
11 9 (1.31%) Product Ownership
11 9 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
13 7 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
14 5 (0.73%) PKI
14 5 (0.73%) Private Cloud
15 4 (0.58%) AI Agents
15 4 (0.58%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 103 (15.04%) Windows
2 64 (9.34%) Linux
3 51 (7.45%) Windows Server
4 27 (3.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (1.17%) Ubuntu
5 8 (1.17%) Windows Server 2019
6 3 (0.44%) CentOS
6 3 (0.44%) VMS
7 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.15%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 254 (37.08%) CI/CD
2 243 (35.47%) Infrastructure as Code
3 208 (30.36%) DevOps
4 150 (21.90%) Cloud Security
5 132 (19.27%) Platform Engineering
6 131 (19.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 92 (13.43%) Migration
8 84 (12.26%) Containerisation
9 83 (12.12%) AI
10 82 (11.97%) Agile
11 72 (10.51%) Observability
12 55 (8.03%) Infrastructure Automation
13 53 (7.74%) Problem-Solving
13 53 (7.74%) Software Engineering
13 53 (7.74%) Technical Leadership
14 51 (7.45%) Continuous Improvement
15 41 (5.99%) Deployment Automation
15 41 (5.99%) DevSecOps
16 40 (5.84%) Mentoring
17 37 (5.40%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 179 (26.13%) Python
2 134 (19.56%) PowerShell
3 71 (10.36%) Bash
4 58 (8.47%) SQL
5 54 (7.88%) Bicep
6 32 (4.67%) Java
7 18 (2.63%) C#
8 13 (1.90%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.46%) Go
9 10 (1.46%) Shell Script
10 9 (1.31%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.73%) Groovy
12 2 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.29%) R
12 2 (0.29%) Ruby
13 1 (0.15%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.15%) Cypher
13 1 (0.15%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.15%) Perl
13 1 (0.15%) Scala
Qualifications
1 168 (24.53%) Security Cleared
2 130 (18.98%) SC Cleared
3 49 (7.15%) DV Cleared
4 45 (6.57%) AWS Certification
5 44 (6.42%) Azure Certification
6 23 (3.36%) Degree
7 17 (2.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 14 (2.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 13 (1.90%) CISSP
10 11 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (1.17%) BPSS Clearance
12 7 (1.02%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 7 (1.02%) CCNP
12 7 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
13 6 (0.88%) MCSE
14 4 (0.58%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 4 (0.58%) CCIE
15 3 (0.44%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
15 3 (0.44%) CISM
15 3 (0.44%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (1.61%) NIST
2 10 (1.46%) Data Quality
2 10 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (1.46%) QA
3 8 (1.17%) NCSC
4 4 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (0.58%) GDPR
5 3 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (0.44%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.29%) SLA
7 1 (0.15%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.15%) GRC
7 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 75 (10.95%) Active Directory
2 68 (9.93%) Docker
3 31 (4.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 27 (3.94%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (3.36%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (3.07%) VMware NSX
7 17 (2.48%) vSphere
8 14 (2.04%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (1.75%) Hyper-V
9 12 (1.75%) vCloud
10 7 (1.02%) Squid
11 4 (0.58%) Firmware
12 3 (0.44%) Ceph
12 3 (0.44%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.44%) NFS
12 3 (0.44%) Postfix
13 2 (0.29%) KVM
14 1 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 299 (43.65%) Terraform
2 160 (23.36%) Kubernetes
3 50 (7.30%) Ansible
4 24 (3.50%) Grafana
5 23 (3.36%) Prometheus
6 21 (3.07%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (2.77%) vCenter Server
8 18 (2.63%) Progress Chef
9 17 (2.48%) SCOM
10 16 (2.34%) Microsoft Intune
11 15 (2.19%) Puppet
12 9 (1.31%) Istio
13 8 (1.17%) Packer
14 7 (1.02%) Argo
15 6 (0.88%) Cilium
16 4 (0.58%) HAProxy
16 4 (0.58%) Suricata
16 4 (0.58%) VxRail
17 3 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 3 (0.44%) Salt
Vendors
1 147 (21.46%) Microsoft
2 110 (16.06%) Google
3 51 (7.45%) VMware
4 28 (4.09%) Oracle
5 17 (2.48%) Zscaler
6 16 (2.34%) Okta
6 16 (2.34%) Red Hat
7 14 (2.04%) ServiceNow
8 13 (1.90%) Palo Alto
9 10 (1.46%) Cisco
9 10 (1.46%) Dynatrace
10 9 (1.31%) CrowdStrike
10 9 (1.31%) Salesforce
11 8 (1.17%) BeyondTrust
11 8 (1.17%) Databricks
11 8 (1.17%) Splunk
12 6 (0.88%) Broadcom
12 6 (0.88%) Fortinet
12 6 (0.88%) OpenAI
12 6 (0.88%) SolarWinds