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 14 August 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 200 312 303
Rank change year-on-year +112 -9 -33
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 736 255 259
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.38% 0.77% 0.67%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.49% 0.85% 0.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 472 188 169
10th Percentile £400 £401 £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 £611 £575 £625
90th Percentile £682 £647 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £515
% change year-on-year +2.00% -2.91% -4.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 6 1
10th Percentile £23.20 £29.00 -
25th Percentile £47.10 £29.25 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £37.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +105.33% +25.00% -
75th Percentile £81.25 £58.75 £32.50
90th Percentile £82.75 £86.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.00 - £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 49,408 30,056 36,163
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.31% 92.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,654 19,017 23,287
10th Percentile £325 £281 £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 3,477 1,528 2,029
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.59 £14.23
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.29 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +2.00%
75th Percentile £67.98 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.13 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +71.50% -44.11% +23.29%

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 14 August 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 14 August 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 14 August 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 +99 632 £525 +5.00% 740
UK excluding London +96 381 £510 +2.00% 318
London +69 307 £525 - 453
Work from Home +28 190 £540 +8.00% 248
South East +5 114 £538 +7.50% 47
North of England +5 105 £525 +16.67% 111
North West -2 61 £533 +21.83% 70
Midlands 0 60 £500 +5.26% 28
Scotland +39 58 £442 -11.60% 42
Yorkshire -9 37 £467 -6.62% 27
West Midlands -25 32 £525 +8.81% 18
East Midlands -1 27 £450 -5.26% 10
East of England +1 22 £505 +4.12% 28
South West -38 16 £575 +4.55% 48
Wales -9 7 - - 3
North East -42 7 £525 +10.53% 14

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

For the 6 months to 14 August 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.

1 348 (47.28%) Azure
2 315 (42.80%) Terraform
3 270 (36.68%) AWS
4 262 (35.60%) CI/CD
5 257 (34.92%) Infrastructure as Code
6 209 (28.40%) DevOps
7 195 (26.49%) Python
8 185 (25.14%) Kubernetes
8 185 (25.14%) Security Cleared
9 169 (22.96%) Cloud Security
10 168 (22.83%) GCP
10 168 (22.83%) Microsoft
11 157 (21.33%) PowerShell
12 148 (20.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 139 (18.89%) SC Cleared
14 138 (18.75%) Platform Engineering
15 119 (16.17%) Google
16 115 (15.63%) Windows
17 95 (12.91%) Entra ID
18 93 (12.64%) AI
18 93 (12.64%) GitHub
19 87 (11.82%) Migration
20 86 (11.68%) Active Directory
20 86 (11.68%) Agile
20 86 (11.68%) Containerisation
21 84 (11.41%) Bash
22 83 (11.28%) Observability
23 79 (10.73%) Firewall
24 78 (10.60%) Docker
25 76 (10.33%) DNS

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 (1.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.22%) Apache
3 6 (0.82%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (0.82%) Confluence
4 5 (0.68%) SharePoint
5 4 (0.54%) nginx
6 3 (0.41%) IIS
6 3 (0.41%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.27%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.27%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.14%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 348 (47.28%) Azure
2 270 (36.68%) AWS
3 168 (22.83%) GCP
4 95 (12.91%) Entra ID
5 93 (12.64%) GitHub
6 60 (8.15%) GitHub Actions
7 55 (7.47%) Serverless
8 50 (6.79%) Azure DevOps
9 47 (6.39%) Azure AKS
10 46 (6.25%) AWS CloudFormation
11 43 (5.84%) IaaS
12 42 (5.71%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 40 (5.43%) Amazon S3
14 39 (5.30%) AWS Lambda
15 36 (4.89%) Amazon EC2
15 36 (4.89%) Azure Monitor
16 35 (4.76%) Amazon EKS
16 35 (4.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 33 (4.48%) Microsoft 365
18 32 (4.35%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 79 (10.73%) Firewall
2 76 (10.33%) DNS
3 39 (5.30%) VPN
4 35 (4.76%) Network Security
5 18 (2.45%) DHCP
6 17 (2.31%) WAN
7 15 (2.04%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.63%) Internet
9 6 (0.82%) SD-WAN
10 5 (0.68%) LAN
10 5 (0.68%) Reverse Proxy
10 5 (0.68%) SSL
10 5 (0.68%) VLAN
11 4 (0.54%) BGP
11 4 (0.54%) SAN
11 4 (0.54%) SMTP
11 4 (0.54%) VSAN
12 3 (0.41%) IPv4
12 3 (0.41%) NGFW
12 3 (0.41%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (3.67%) SQL Server
2 18 (2.45%) Amazon RDS
3 15 (2.04%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (1.63%) BigQuery
5 9 (1.22%) Amazon Athena
6 8 (1.09%) Oracle Exadata
7 6 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
7 6 (0.82%) DynamoDB
8 5 (0.68%) Data Lake
8 5 (0.68%) Oracle Database
9 4 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.41%) Amazon QuickSight
10 3 (0.41%) Flink
10 3 (0.41%) Looker
10 3 (0.41%) Metadata
10 3 (0.41%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.41%) MySQL
10 3 (0.41%) Oracle Database 12c
11 2 (0.27%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.27%) Redis
Development Applications
1 53 (7.20%) GitLab
2 49 (6.66%) Jenkins
3 39 (5.30%) Git
4 18 (2.45%) JIRA
5 9 (1.22%) Artifactory
6 6 (0.82%) Claude Code
7 5 (0.68%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.41%) Selenium
9 2 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.27%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.27%) Gatling
9 2 (0.27%) JMeter
9 2 (0.27%) Octopus Deploy
9 2 (0.27%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.27%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.14%) Chocolatey
10 1 (0.14%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.14%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.14%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.14%) TestRail
General
1 95 (12.91%) Finance
2 81 (11.01%) Social Skills
3 66 (8.97%) Public Sector
4 31 (4.21%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (3.67%) Banking
6 12 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (1.09%) Investment Banking
8 5 (0.68%) Law
8 5 (0.68%) Legal
8 5 (0.68%) Local Government
9 4 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
10 3 (0.41%) Front Office
10 3 (0.41%) Italian Language
10 3 (0.41%) Military
10 3 (0.41%) Police
10 3 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
10 3 (0.41%) Retail
11 2 (0.27%) Digital Health
11 2 (0.27%) Digital Healthcare
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (3.26%) REST
2 13 (1.77%) ARM Templates
3 11 (1.49%) Node.js
3 11 (1.49%) OAuth
3 11 (1.49%) OAuth2
3 11 (1.49%) Spring
3 11 (1.49%) Spring Boot
4 9 (1.22%) Kafka
5 8 (1.09%) AWS CDK
5 8 (1.09%) React
6 6 (0.82%) .NET
6 6 (0.82%) FastAPI
6 6 (0.82%) Flask
6 6 (0.82%) Keycloak
6 6 (0.82%) Model Context Protocol
6 6 (0.82%) OpenID
6 6 (0.82%) YAML
7 4 (0.54%) PySpark
7 4 (0.54%) PyTorch
7 4 (0.54%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 128 (17.39%) Cloud Native
2 53 (7.20%) Security Posture
3 41 (5.57%) Enterprise Cloud
4 34 (4.62%) Hybrid Cloud
5 30 (4.08%) Onboarding
6 25 (3.40%) Cloud Security Posture
7 23 (3.13%) Enterprise Software
8 19 (2.58%) Public Cloud
9 18 (2.45%) Data Centre
10 16 (2.17%) Distributed Systems
10 16 (2.17%) Management Information System
11 10 (1.36%) Linux Command Line
12 9 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
12 9 (1.22%) Product Ownership
13 8 (1.09%) AI Agents
13 8 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
14 7 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
14 7 (0.95%) PKI
14 7 (0.95%) Private Cloud
15 4 (0.54%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 115 (15.63%) Windows
2 75 (10.19%) Linux
3 56 (7.61%) Windows Server
4 31 (4.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 10 (1.36%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.09%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.54%) VMS
8 3 (0.41%) CentOS
9 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 262 (35.60%) CI/CD
2 257 (34.92%) Infrastructure as Code
3 209 (28.40%) DevOps
4 169 (22.96%) Cloud Security
5 148 (20.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 138 (18.75%) Platform Engineering
7 93 (12.64%) AI
8 87 (11.82%) Migration
9 86 (11.68%) Agile
9 86 (11.68%) Containerisation
10 83 (11.28%) Observability
11 60 (8.15%) Software Engineering
12 57 (7.74%) Continuous Improvement
13 54 (7.34%) Infrastructure Automation
13 54 (7.34%) Technical Leadership
14 53 (7.20%) Problem-Solving
15 50 (6.79%) DevSecOps
16 47 (6.39%) Change Management
17 46 (6.25%) Deployment Automation
18 41 (5.57%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 195 (26.49%) Python
2 157 (21.33%) PowerShell
3 84 (11.41%) Bash
4 67 (9.10%) Bicep
5 62 (8.42%) SQL
6 38 (5.16%) Java
7 20 (2.72%) C#
8 16 (2.17%) Shell Script
9 13 (1.77%) JavaScript
10 11 (1.49%) Go
11 6 (0.82%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.54%) Groovy
13 3 (0.41%) C
13 3 (0.41%) Scala
14 2 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.27%) Ruby
15 1 (0.14%) Apex Code
15 1 (0.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.14%) Perl
15 1 (0.14%) R
Qualifications
1 185 (25.14%) Security Cleared
2 139 (18.89%) SC Cleared
3 60 (8.15%) DV Cleared
4 48 (6.52%) AWS Certification
5 47 (6.39%) Azure Certification
6 29 (3.94%) Degree
7 16 (2.17%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 16 (2.17%) CISSP
8 15 (2.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 9 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.09%) Computer Science Degree
10 8 (1.09%) MCSE
11 7 (0.95%) BPSS Clearance
11 7 (0.95%) CCNP
12 5 (0.68%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 5 (0.68%) CISM
13 4 (0.54%) CCIE
13 4 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 3 (0.41%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
14 3 (0.41%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (1.90%) Data Quality
2 11 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (1.36%) QA
4 9 (1.22%) NCSC
4 9 (1.22%) NIST
5 4 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (0.54%) GDPR
6 3 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.41%) SLA
7 2 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.27%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.14%) Accessibility
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 86 (11.68%) Active Directory
2 78 (10.60%) Docker
3 39 (5.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (4.35%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (3.53%) VMware ESXi
6 23 (3.13%) VMware NSX
7 21 (2.85%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (2.45%) vSphere
9 13 (1.77%) vCloud
10 10 (1.36%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.95%) Squid
12 4 (0.54%) Firmware
13 3 (0.41%) Ceph
13 3 (0.41%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.41%) NFS
13 3 (0.41%) Postfix
14 2 (0.27%) KVM
14 2 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
15 1 (0.14%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 315 (42.80%) Terraform
2 185 (25.14%) Kubernetes
3 51 (6.93%) Ansible
4 25 (3.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (3.13%) Grafana
6 22 (2.99%) vCenter Server
7 21 (2.85%) Prometheus
8 20 (2.72%) Progress Chef
8 20 (2.72%) SCOM
9 18 (2.45%) Single Sign-On
10 15 (2.04%) Puppet
11 10 (1.36%) Istio
12 8 (1.09%) Packer
13 6 (0.82%) Argo
13 6 (0.82%) Cilium
14 5 (0.68%) VxRail
15 4 (0.54%) HAProxy
15 4 (0.54%) Suricata
16 3 (0.41%) Karpenter
16 3 (0.41%) vRealize
Vendors
1 168 (22.83%) Microsoft
2 119 (16.17%) Google
3 61 (8.29%) VMware
4 31 (4.21%) Oracle
5 18 (2.45%) Red Hat
6 17 (2.31%) Okta
6 17 (2.31%) Zscaler
7 13 (1.77%) Palo Alto
7 13 (1.77%) ServiceNow
7 13 (1.77%) Splunk
8 12 (1.63%) OpenAI
9 10 (1.36%) Cisco
9 10 (1.36%) Databricks
9 10 (1.36%) Dynatrace
10 9 (1.22%) CrowdStrike
10 9 (1.22%) Salesforce
11 8 (1.09%) BeyondTrust
11 8 (1.09%) Broadcom
11 8 (1.09%) New Relic
11 8 (1.09%) SolarWinds