Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £522, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 25 March 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 247 297 288
Rank change year-on-year +50 -9 -29
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 481 233 344
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 0.80% 0.78%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.19% 0.86% 0.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 330 173 243
10th Percentile £400 £376 £400
25th Percentile £450 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £613 £619 £625
90th Percentile £705 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £522 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.40% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 5
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £25.13 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £25.25 - £30.00
75th Percentile £39.56 - £72.50
90th Percentile £48.08 - £83.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £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 40,363 27,024 41,118
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.96% 92.92% 92.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,200 17,764 26,931
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £412 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.37%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.47% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,503 906 2,513
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.20 £12.87
25th Percentile £19.34 £21.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £36.71 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.95% - -24.42%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.52 £60.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £76.25 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.86 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +13.40% - -20.36%

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 25 March 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 25 March 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 25 March 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 +26 391 £525 - 127
London +22 217 £525 - 46
UK excluding London +4 204 £522 +4.40% 97
Work from Home +3 114 £500 -4.76% 71
North of England -21 69 £500 +5.26% 33
Scotland +34 39 £513 -2.38% 5
Yorkshire -22 39 £506 +55.77% 13
South East -29 37 £516 -8.27% 30
Midlands -49 37 £575 +21.05% 8
West Midlands -29 32 £623 +5.96% 5
North West -19 30 £500 +11.11% 17
South West -4 20 £544 -5.43% 16
East of England -29 13 £505 +25.78% 5
East Midlands -37 5 £575 +25.27% 3
Wales -10 1 £425 +41.67% 1

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

For the 6 months to 25 March 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.

1 217 (45.11%) Terraform
2 216 (44.91%) AWS
3 203 (42.20%) CI/CD
4 191 (39.71%) Infrastructure as Code
5 187 (38.88%) Azure
6 182 (37.84%) DevOps
7 132 (27.44%) Python
8 129 (26.82%) Kubernetes
9 127 (26.40%) GCP
10 123 (25.57%) Security Cleared
11 109 (22.66%) GitHub
12 94 (19.54%) Google
13 92 (19.13%) SC Cleared
14 91 (18.92%) Cloud Security
15 83 (17.26%) Containerisation
16 82 (17.05%) Agile
17 81 (16.84%) Microsoft
18 72 (14.97%) Docker
19 70 (14.55%) Platform Engineering
20 66 (13.72%) Serverless
21 65 (13.51%) GitHub Actions
21 65 (13.51%) PowerShell
22 62 (12.89%) Jenkins
23 60 (12.47%) Migration
24 59 (12.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
25 52 (10.81%) Infrastructure Automation
26 49 (10.19%) Continuous Improvement
27 48 (9.98%) GitLab
28 47 (9.77%) Linux
29 45 (9.36%) AWS CloudFormation

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 6 (1.25%) Apache Spark
1 6 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (1.04%) Apache
3 4 (0.83%) Confluence
4 3 (0.62%) nginx
5 1 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.21%) Apache Superset
5 1 (0.21%) CMS
5 1 (0.21%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.21%) SAS
5 1 (0.21%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.21%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.42%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.21%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 216 (44.91%) AWS
2 187 (38.88%) Azure
3 127 (26.40%) GCP
4 109 (22.66%) GitHub
5 66 (13.72%) Serverless
6 65 (13.51%) GitHub Actions
7 45 (9.36%) AWS CloudFormation
8 39 (8.11%) Azure DevOps
8 39 (8.11%) Entra ID
9 34 (7.07%) Amazon EKS
9 34 (7.07%) PaaS
10 33 (6.86%) Amazon S3
10 33 (6.86%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 30 (6.24%) Azure AKS
12 29 (6.03%) AWS Lambda
13 28 (5.82%) Amazon ECS
13 28 (5.82%) IaaS
14 22 (4.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 20 (4.16%) Microsoft 365
16 18 (3.74%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 43 (8.94%) Firewall
2 19 (3.95%) Network Security
2 19 (3.95%) VPN
3 18 (3.74%) DNS
4 12 (2.49%) Cisco Firepower
4 12 (2.49%) Cisco IOS
4 12 (2.49%) Cisco ISE
4 12 (2.49%) Junos
5 5 (1.04%) NX-OS
6 4 (0.83%) DHCP
6 4 (0.83%) Reverse Proxy
6 4 (0.83%) Software-Defined Networking
7 3 (0.62%) BGP
7 3 (0.62%) LAN
8 2 (0.42%) DKIM
8 2 (0.42%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.42%) Unified Communications
8 2 (0.42%) VLAN
8 2 (0.42%) WAN
8 2 (0.42%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (4.37%) NoSQL
2 20 (4.16%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (2.49%) Amazon Athena
4 11 (2.29%) BigQuery
5 10 (2.08%) Amazon RDS
5 10 (2.08%) DynamoDB
6 7 (1.46%) Power BI
7 6 (1.25%) Data Lake
8 5 (1.04%) Amazon Redshift
8 5 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (1.04%) Big Data
9 4 (0.83%) Data Warehouse
9 4 (0.83%) Elasticsearch
9 4 (0.83%) SQL Server
10 3 (0.62%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.62%) Snowflake Schema
11 2 (0.42%) Mixpanel
11 2 (0.42%) OLAP
11 2 (0.42%) OLTP
11 2 (0.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 62 (12.89%) Jenkins
2 48 (9.98%) GitLab
3 33 (6.86%) Git
4 8 (1.66%) JIRA
5 7 (1.46%) Liquibase
6 3 (0.62%) Postman
6 3 (0.62%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.42%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.42%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.42%) CircleCI
7 2 (0.42%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.42%) Selenium
7 2 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.42%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.21%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.21%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.21%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.21%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.21%) Travis CI
8 1 (0.21%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 76 (15.80%) Social Skills
2 75 (15.59%) Finance
3 39 (8.11%) Public Sector
4 32 (6.65%) Banking
5 22 (4.57%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (3.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (2.49%) Financial Institution
8 9 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
9 8 (1.66%) Retail
10 7 (1.46%) Aeronautics
11 6 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (1.25%) Telecoms
12 5 (1.04%) Legal
13 4 (0.83%) Investment Banking
14 3 (0.62%) Local Government
14 3 (0.62%) Marketing
15 2 (0.42%) Billing
15 2 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
16 1 (0.21%) Front Office
16 1 (0.21%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (8.32%) REST
2 27 (5.61%) Node.js
3 21 (4.37%) Elastic Stack
4 17 (3.53%) RESTful
5 13 (2.70%) Kafka
6 12 (2.49%) React
7 11 (2.29%) OpenTelemetry
8 9 (1.87%) ARM Templates
8 9 (1.87%) OpenAPI
8 9 (1.87%) Oracle Fusion
8 9 (1.87%) Spring
8 9 (1.87%) Spring Boot
9 8 (1.66%) .NET
9 8 (1.66%) LangChain
9 8 (1.66%) OAuth
9 8 (1.66%) Playwright
9 8 (1.66%) SOAP
10 7 (1.46%) AngularJS
10 7 (1.46%) NestJS
10 7 (1.46%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 87 (18.09%) Cloud Native
2 40 (8.32%) Public Cloud
3 21 (4.37%) Distributed Systems
4 16 (3.33%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (2.70%) Data Centre
6 10 (2.08%) PKI
6 10 (2.08%) Product Ownership
7 9 (1.87%) Security Posture
8 7 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.25%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.04%) Onboarding
11 4 (0.83%) Enterprise Cloud
11 4 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
12 3 (0.62%) Cloud Security Posture
12 3 (0.62%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (0.62%) Legacy Systems
12 3 (0.62%) Replication
13 2 (0.42%) Analytical Mindset
13 2 (0.42%) Greenfield Project
13 2 (0.42%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 47 (9.77%) Linux
2 34 (7.07%) Windows
3 16 (3.33%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.66%) Unix
5 4 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.83%) VMS
6 1 (0.21%) Alpine Linux
6 1 (0.21%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.21%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 203 (42.20%) CI/CD
2 191 (39.71%) Infrastructure as Code
3 182 (37.84%) DevOps
4 91 (18.92%) Cloud Security
5 83 (17.26%) Containerisation
6 82 (17.05%) Agile
7 70 (14.55%) Platform Engineering
8 60 (12.47%) Migration
9 59 (12.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 52 (10.81%) Infrastructure Automation
11 49 (10.19%) Continuous Improvement
12 45 (9.36%) Observability
13 44 (9.15%) Microservices
14 41 (8.52%) Cybersecurity
15 38 (7.90%) AI
15 38 (7.90%) Problem-Solving
16 35 (7.28%) DevSecOps
17 34 (7.07%) Software Engineering
18 30 (6.24%) Analytics
18 30 (6.24%) Cost Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 132 (27.44%) Python
2 65 (13.51%) PowerShell
3 42 (8.73%) SQL
4 33 (6.86%) Bash
5 29 (6.03%) Java
6 22 (4.57%) Go
7 21 (4.37%) Bicep
8 17 (3.53%) TypeScript
9 11 (2.29%) C#
10 8 (1.66%) JavaScript
11 6 (1.25%) Shell Script
12 4 (0.83%) BeanShell
12 4 (0.83%) Perl
12 4 (0.83%) Ruby
13 3 (0.62%) Groovy
14 2 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
15 1 (0.21%) C
15 1 (0.21%) Cypher
15 1 (0.21%) Kotlin
15 1 (0.21%) R
Qualifications
1 123 (25.57%) Security Cleared
2 92 (19.13%) SC Cleared
3 44 (9.15%) Azure Certification
4 34 (7.07%) AWS Certification
5 32 (6.65%) Degree
6 26 (5.41%) DV Cleared
7 22 (4.57%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (3.33%) Master's Degree
8 16 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
9 13 (2.70%) CISSP
10 12 (2.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 10 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
11 10 (2.08%) Cisco Certification
12 7 (1.46%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 7 (1.46%) CISM
13 6 (1.25%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 5 (1.04%) CCSP
14 5 (1.04%) TOGAF Certification
15 3 (0.62%) AWS Certified Developer
15 3 (0.62%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (3.12%) GDPR
2 12 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 11 (2.29%) NIST
4 10 (2.08%) NCSC
5 7 (1.46%) QA
6 6 (1.25%) Data Quality
6 6 (1.25%) PCI DSS
7 5 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.04%) GRC
8 3 (0.62%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.42%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.42%) SLA
10 1 (0.21%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.21%) FedRAMP
10 1 (0.21%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 72 (14.97%) Docker
2 29 (6.03%) Active Directory
3 14 (2.91%) VMware NSX
4 12 (2.49%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (2.29%) Virtual Desktop
6 7 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.25%) Firmware
7 6 (1.25%) VMware Infrastructure
8 2 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.42%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 217 (45.11%) Terraform
2 129 (26.82%) Kubernetes
3 36 (7.48%) Ansible
4 34 (7.07%) Prometheus
5 33 (6.86%) Grafana
6 19 (3.95%) Istio
7 15 (3.12%) Argo
8 13 (2.70%) vCenter Server
9 12 (2.49%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (2.29%) Microsoft Intune
11 5 (1.04%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.83%) Kibana
12 4 (0.83%) logstash
12 4 (0.83%) Packer
12 4 (0.83%) Podman
13 3 (0.62%) Proxmox
13 3 (0.62%) Puppet
14 2 (0.42%) Consul
14 2 (0.42%) Salt
14 2 (0.42%) SCCM
Vendors
1 94 (19.54%) Google
2 81 (16.84%) Microsoft
3 20 (4.16%) Splunk
4 19 (3.95%) Oracle
5 18 (3.74%) Cisco
6 13 (2.70%) Databricks
6 13 (2.70%) Juniper
7 12 (2.49%) SolarWinds
8 11 (2.29%) ServiceNow
9 10 (2.08%) Dynatrace
10 8 (1.66%) VMware
11 7 (1.46%) Ping Identity
12 6 (1.25%) Salesforce
13 5 (1.04%) Broadcom
13 5 (1.04%) Citrix
13 5 (1.04%) MuleSoft
13 5 (1.04%) PeopleSoft
13 5 (1.04%) Rapid7
13 5 (1.04%) Zscaler
14 4 (0.83%) Red Hat