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 23 June 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 215 311 325
Rank change year-on-year +96 +14 -57
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 607 239 278
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.20% 0.80% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.29% 0.87% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 402 180 193
10th Percentile £400 £402 £389
25th Percentile £462 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £621 £578 £625
90th Percentile £688 £639 £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 19 1 3
10th Percentile £71.00 - -
25th Percentile £73.75 £42.50 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.50 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.22% +50.00% -
75th Percentile £81.25 £47.50 £32.50
90th Percentile £85.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £76.50 - £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 46,904 27,610 40,551
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.14% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,521 17,729 25,983
10th Percentile £325 £288 £281
25th Percentile £414 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.60% -1.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,134 1,203 2,979
10th Percentile £15.38 £13.85 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.44 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.25 £27.38 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.99% -27.00% -14.77%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -1.23%

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 23 June 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 23 June 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 23 June 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 +72 517 £525 +5.00% 151
London +67 297 £540 +2.86% 54
UK excluding London +25 251 £510 +2.00% 115
Work from Home +10 154 £540 +8.00% 86
North of England -32 71 £500 +11.11% 28
South East -24 68 £538 +7.50% 30
Scotland +14 44 £451 -14.19% 4
North West -24 33 £500 +24.38% 17
Midlands -33 32 £525 +7.69% 23
Yorkshire -24 31 £481 -3.75% 10
West Midlands -38 25 £525 - 12
East of England -9 22 £505 +60.32% 8
South West -24 15 £550 -2.22% 16
East Midlands -18 7 £438 -7.89% 11
North East -38 7 £525 +5.00% 1

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

For the 6 months to 23 June 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.

1 280 (46.13%) Azure
2 277 (45.63%) Terraform
3 271 (44.65%) AWS
4 242 (39.87%) CI/CD
5 227 (37.40%) Infrastructure as Code
6 199 (32.78%) DevOps
7 156 (25.70%) Python
8 149 (24.55%) Security Cleared
9 136 (22.41%) Kubernetes
10 133 (21.91%) GCP
11 125 (20.59%) Cloud Security
12 119 (19.60%) Platform Engineering
13 116 (19.11%) SC Cleared
14 114 (18.78%) Microsoft
15 104 (17.13%) PowerShell
16 101 (16.64%) GitHub
17 99 (16.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 96 (15.82%) Google
19 87 (14.33%) Migration
20 78 (12.85%) Windows
21 73 (12.03%) Agile
22 71 (11.70%) Containerisation
23 70 (11.53%) AI
24 69 (11.37%) Firewall
25 65 (10.71%) GitHub Actions
26 64 (10.54%) Serverless
27 60 (9.88%) Docker
28 59 (9.72%) Bash
28 59 (9.72%) Problem-Solving
29 57 (9.39%) Entra ID

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 10 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (1.15%) Confluence
3 6 (0.99%) Apache
4 5 (0.82%) nginx
5 3 (0.49%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.49%) IIS
5 3 (0.49%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.49%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.33%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.16%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.16%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.16%) SAS
7 1 (0.16%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.16%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 280 (46.13%) Azure
2 271 (44.65%) AWS
3 133 (21.91%) GCP
4 101 (16.64%) GitHub
5 65 (10.71%) GitHub Actions
6 64 (10.54%) Serverless
7 57 (9.39%) Entra ID
8 47 (7.74%) Azure DevOps
9 45 (7.41%) AWS CloudFormation
10 42 (6.92%) Azure AKS
11 40 (6.59%) Amazon S3
11 40 (6.59%) IaaS
11 40 (6.59%) PaaS
12 39 (6.43%) AWS Lambda
13 36 (5.93%) Amazon EKS
14 34 (5.60%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 33 (5.44%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 32 (5.27%) Amazon ECS
17 31 (5.11%) Amazon EC2
18 27 (4.45%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 69 (11.37%) Firewall
2 51 (8.40%) DNS
3 31 (5.11%) VPN
4 29 (4.78%) Network Security
5 12 (1.98%) WAN
6 10 (1.65%) DHCP
6 10 (1.65%) TCP/IP
7 5 (0.82%) Reverse Proxy
7 5 (0.82%) SD-WAN
7 5 (0.82%) SSL
8 4 (0.66%) BGP
8 4 (0.66%) Internet
8 4 (0.66%) Software-Defined Networking
8 4 (0.66%) VLAN
9 3 (0.49%) IPv4
9 3 (0.49%) SAN
9 3 (0.49%) SMTP
10 2 (0.33%) Kerberos
10 2 (0.33%) LAN
10 2 (0.33%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (2.80%) SQL Server
2 13 (2.14%) Amazon Athena
2 13 (2.14%) DynamoDB
3 10 (1.65%) Amazon RDS
4 9 (1.48%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (0.99%) Amazon Redshift
5 6 (0.99%) Azure SQL Database
5 6 (0.99%) BigQuery
6 5 (0.82%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.66%) Amazon QuickSight
8 3 (0.49%) Big Data
8 3 (0.49%) Metadata
8 3 (0.49%) MySQL
8 3 (0.49%) Oracle Database 12c
8 3 (0.49%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.33%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.33%) Redis
9 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.16%) Delta Lake
10 1 (0.16%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 51 (8.40%) Jenkins
2 47 (7.74%) GitLab
3 41 (6.75%) Git
4 15 (2.47%) JIRA
5 10 (1.65%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.49%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.49%) Selenium
6 3 (0.49%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.33%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.33%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.33%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.33%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.16%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.16%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.16%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.16%) Gatling
8 1 (0.16%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.16%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.16%) TestRail
General
1 78 (12.85%) Social Skills
2 66 (10.87%) Finance
3 51 (8.40%) Public Sector
4 27 (4.45%) Banking
5 24 (3.95%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (1.32%) Investment Banking
9 6 (0.99%) Legal
9 6 (0.99%) Telecoms
10 5 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (0.82%) Retail
11 4 (0.66%) Law
11 4 (0.66%) Marketing
11 4 (0.66%) Military
12 3 (0.49%) Corporate Banking
12 3 (0.49%) Local Government
12 3 (0.49%) Police
12 3 (0.49%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (3.62%) REST
2 12 (1.98%) OAuth
2 12 (1.98%) OAuth2
3 11 (1.81%) Kafka
4 10 (1.65%) Node.js
5 9 (1.48%) .NET
5 9 (1.48%) React
5 9 (1.48%) Spring
5 9 (1.48%) Spring Boot
6 7 (1.15%) ARM Templates
6 7 (1.15%) Model Context Protocol
6 7 (1.15%) OpenID
7 5 (0.82%) AWS CDK
7 5 (0.82%) Playwright
7 5 (0.82%) YAML
8 4 (0.66%) Express.js
8 4 (0.66%) FastAPI
8 4 (0.66%) Flask
8 4 (0.66%) Jest
8 4 (0.66%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 115 (18.95%) Cloud Native
2 32 (5.27%) Hybrid Cloud
3 27 (4.45%) Public Cloud
4 24 (3.95%) Security Posture
5 22 (3.62%) Data Centre
6 18 (2.97%) Enterprise Cloud
6 18 (2.97%) Onboarding
7 15 (2.47%) Distributed Systems
8 14 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
9 12 (1.98%) Management Information System
10 11 (1.81%) Product Ownership
11 10 (1.65%) Cloud Security Posture
12 8 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
12 8 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
13 6 (0.99%) Cyber Threat
13 6 (0.99%) Legacy Systems
14 5 (0.82%) Linux Command Line
15 4 (0.66%) AI Agents
15 4 (0.66%) PKI
15 4 (0.66%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 78 (12.85%) Windows
2 44 (7.25%) Windows Server
3 43 (7.08%) Linux
4 13 (2.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.82%) Ubuntu
5 5 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
6 3 (0.49%) CentOS
7 2 (0.33%) VMS
7 2 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 242 (39.87%) CI/CD
2 227 (37.40%) Infrastructure as Code
3 199 (32.78%) DevOps
4 125 (20.59%) Cloud Security
5 119 (19.60%) Platform Engineering
6 99 (16.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 87 (14.33%) Migration
8 73 (12.03%) Agile
9 71 (11.70%) Containerisation
10 70 (11.53%) AI
11 59 (9.72%) Problem-Solving
12 55 (9.06%) Observability
13 54 (8.90%) Infrastructure Automation
14 51 (8.40%) Continuous Improvement
15 49 (8.07%) Technical Leadership
16 48 (7.91%) Software Engineering
17 42 (6.92%) Cybersecurity
18 37 (6.10%) DevSecOps
19 36 (5.93%) Mentoring
20 34 (5.60%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 156 (25.70%) Python
2 104 (17.13%) PowerShell
3 59 (9.72%) Bash
4 51 (8.40%) SQL
5 42 (6.92%) Bicep
6 33 (5.44%) Java
7 15 (2.47%) C#
8 12 (1.98%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.65%) Go
9 10 (1.65%) TypeScript
10 5 (0.82%) Groovy
11 2 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.33%) R
11 2 (0.33%) Ruby
12 1 (0.16%) Apex Code
12 1 (0.16%) Cypher
12 1 (0.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.16%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.16%) Perl
12 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 149 (24.55%) Security Cleared
2 116 (19.11%) SC Cleared
3 47 (7.74%) Azure Certification
4 36 (5.93%) DV Cleared
5 35 (5.77%) AWS Certification
6 17 (2.80%) Degree
7 15 (2.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 15 (2.47%) Microsoft Certification
8 13 (2.14%) CISSP
9 11 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
10 9 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
11 8 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
12 6 (0.99%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 6 (0.99%) CCNP
13 5 (0.82%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 5 (0.82%) MCSE
13 5 (0.82%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.66%) CCSP
15 3 (0.49%) CCIE
15 3 (0.49%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (2.31%) NIST
2 11 (1.81%) NCSC
3 10 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (1.65%) QA
4 9 (1.48%) GDPR
5 6 (0.99%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.66%) Data Quality
7 3 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.33%) SLA
9 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.16%) GRC
9 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 60 (9.88%) Docker
2 51 (8.40%) Active Directory
3 22 (3.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (3.13%) VMware NSX
5 18 (2.97%) Virtual Desktop
5 18 (2.97%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (2.97%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (2.47%) vSphere
7 11 (1.81%) vCloud
8 10 (1.65%) Hyper-V
9 7 (1.15%) Squid
10 4 (0.66%) Firmware
11 3 (0.49%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.49%) Postfix
12 2 (0.33%) Ceph
12 2 (0.33%) KVM
12 2 (0.33%) NFS
Systems Management
1 277 (45.63%) Terraform
2 136 (22.41%) Kubernetes
3 41 (6.75%) Ansible
4 24 (3.95%) Grafana
5 22 (3.62%) Prometheus
6 21 (3.46%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (2.47%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (2.47%) vCenter Server
8 14 (2.31%) Progress Chef
9 13 (2.14%) Puppet
9 13 (2.14%) SCOM
10 9 (1.48%) Istio
10 9 (1.48%) Packer
11 7 (1.15%) Argo
12 6 (0.99%) Cilium
13 4 (0.66%) HAProxy
13 4 (0.66%) Salt
13 4 (0.66%) Suricata
14 3 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (0.49%) vRealize
Vendors
1 114 (18.78%) Microsoft
2 96 (15.82%) Google
3 40 (6.59%) VMware
4 22 (3.62%) Oracle
5 16 (2.64%) Zscaler
6 15 (2.47%) Palo Alto
7 14 (2.31%) Red Hat
8 10 (1.65%) Cisco
8 10 (1.65%) Salesforce
9 9 (1.48%) Okta
10 8 (1.32%) CrowdStrike
10 8 (1.32%) Dynatrace
10 8 (1.32%) ServiceNow
11 7 (1.15%) Splunk
12 6 (0.99%) Fortinet
12 6 (0.99%) OpenAI
13 5 (0.82%) Citrix
13 5 (0.82%) Rapid7
14 4 (0.66%) Juniper
14 4 (0.66%) PeopleSoft