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 29 May 2026.

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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 229 303 323
Rank change year-on-year +74 +20 -63
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 560 230 275
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.14% 0.80% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.24% 0.87% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 370 180 188
10th Percentile £400 £400 £400
25th Percentile £462 £449 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £613 £588 £625
90th Percentile £688 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +5.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 1 3
10th Percentile £25.13 - -
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.50 £27.50
Median hourly rate £72.00 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +60.00% +50.00% -68.42%
75th Percentile £76.00 £47.50 £32.50
90th Percentile £85.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 - £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 45,155 26,550 39,743
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.33% 92.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,543 17,231 25,865
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,003 1,045 2,776
10th Percentile £15.01 £14.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.87 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.99 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +51.84% -24.72% -17.38%
75th Percentile £66.38 £59.90 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +73.38% -37.13% -5.88%

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 29 May 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 29 May 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 29 May 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 +53 469 £525 +5.00% 218
London +56 280 £525 +5.00% 91
UK excluding London +9 216 £525 +5.00% 153
Work from Home +18 137 £539 +7.75% 88
North of England -36 59 £518 +3.50% 35
South East -24 54 £531 -1.07% 41
Scotland +21 41 £451 -14.19% 12
North West -13 31 £524 +30.29% 24
East of England -12 22 £505 +2.54% 10
Midlands -49 22 £531 +6.25% 19
Yorkshire -36 21 £481 -3.75% 9
South West -17 19 £550 -4.35% 37
West Midlands -48 18 £538 +2.38% 13
North East -28 7 £525 -4.55% 2
East Midlands -29 4 £425 -10.53% 6

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

For the 6 months to 29 May 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.

1 255 (45.54%) Azure
2 250 (44.64%) Terraform
3 242 (43.21%) AWS
4 235 (41.96%) CI/CD
5 208 (37.14%) Infrastructure as Code
6 194 (34.64%) DevOps
7 148 (26.43%) Security Cleared
8 136 (24.29%) Python
9 133 (23.75%) Kubernetes
10 127 (22.68%) GCP
11 118 (21.07%) SC Cleared
12 113 (20.18%) Cloud Security
13 101 (18.04%) GitHub
14 98 (17.50%) Microsoft
15 97 (17.32%) Google
16 93 (16.61%) Platform Engineering
17 87 (15.54%) PowerShell
18 84 (15.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 84 (15.00%) Migration
19 70 (12.50%) Containerisation
20 68 (12.14%) Agile
21 66 (11.79%) GitHub Actions
22 63 (11.25%) AI
23 60 (10.71%) Windows
24 59 (10.54%) Docker
24 59 (10.54%) Firewall
25 56 (10.00%) Serverless
26 54 (9.64%) Observability
27 52 (9.29%) Bash
28 51 (9.11%) Problem-Solving

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 8 (1.43%) Apache
2 7 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.07%) Confluence
4 5 (0.89%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.89%) nginx
5 3 (0.54%) IIS
5 3 (0.54%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.54%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.36%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.18%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.18%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.18%) SAS
7 1 (0.18%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.18%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 255 (45.54%) Azure
2 242 (43.21%) AWS
3 127 (22.68%) GCP
4 101 (18.04%) GitHub
5 66 (11.79%) GitHub Actions
6 56 (10.00%) Serverless
7 47 (8.39%) Entra ID
8 45 (8.04%) Azure DevOps
9 42 (7.50%) AWS CloudFormation
10 38 (6.79%) Amazon S3
11 37 (6.61%) Azure AKS
11 37 (6.61%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 37 (6.61%) PaaS
12 35 (6.25%) IaaS
13 34 (6.07%) AWS Lambda
14 32 (5.71%) Amazon EKS
15 29 (5.18%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 28 (5.00%) Amazon EC2
16 28 (5.00%) Amazon ECS
17 25 (4.46%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 59 (10.54%) Firewall
2 42 (7.50%) DNS
3 26 (4.64%) Network Security
4 24 (4.29%) VPN
5 8 (1.43%) DHCP
5 8 (1.43%) TCP/IP
6 7 (1.25%) WAN
7 6 (1.07%) Reverse Proxy
8 5 (0.89%) SSL
9 4 (0.71%) SD-WAN
9 4 (0.71%) Software-Defined Networking
9 4 (0.71%) VLAN
10 3 (0.54%) BGP
10 3 (0.54%) Internet
10 3 (0.54%) SMTP
11 2 (0.36%) BIG-IP
11 2 (0.36%) Kerberos
11 2 (0.36%) NGFW
11 2 (0.36%) SAN
11 2 (0.36%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.68%) Amazon Athena
2 13 (2.32%) BigQuery
3 12 (2.14%) DynamoDB
4 11 (1.96%) SQL Server
5 10 (1.79%) Amazon RDS
6 7 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
7 6 (1.07%) Amazon Redshift
7 6 (1.07%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.89%) Data Lake
8 5 (0.89%) Oracle Database
9 4 (0.71%) Amazon QuickSight
10 3 (0.54%) Big Data
10 3 (0.54%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (0.54%) Metadata
10 3 (0.54%) MySQL
10 3 (0.54%) Oracle Database 12c
10 3 (0.54%) Power BI
10 3 (0.54%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
11 2 (0.36%) OLAP
Development Applications
1 48 (8.57%) GitLab
2 46 (8.21%) Jenkins
3 41 (7.32%) Git
4 12 (2.14%) JIRA
5 10 (1.79%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.54%) Postman
6 3 (0.54%) Selenium
6 3 (0.54%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.36%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.36%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.36%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.36%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.36%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.18%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.18%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.18%) RStudio
8 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.18%) sqlmap
General
1 70 (12.50%) Social Skills
2 59 (10.54%) Finance
3 46 (8.21%) Public Sector
4 21 (3.75%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (3.39%) Banking
6 13 (2.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (1.96%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.61%) Retail
9 6 (1.07%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.07%) Legal
9 6 (1.07%) Telecoms
10 5 (0.89%) Local Government
10 5 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.71%) Marketing
11 4 (0.71%) Military
11 4 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.54%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.54%) Police
13 2 (0.36%) Corporate Banking
13 2 (0.36%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (3.39%) REST
2 14 (2.50%) Node.js
2 14 (2.50%) React
2 14 (2.50%) Spring
2 14 (2.50%) Spring Boot
3 13 (2.32%) OAuth
4 12 (2.14%) Kafka
4 12 (2.14%) OAuth2
5 9 (1.61%) .NET
5 9 (1.61%) OpenTelemetry
6 8 (1.43%) Oracle Fusion
7 7 (1.25%) OpenID
8 6 (1.07%) AngularJS
8 6 (1.07%) ARM Templates
8 6 (1.07%) LangChain
9 5 (0.89%) Model Context Protocol
9 5 (0.89%) Playwright
9 5 (0.89%) Web Services
9 5 (0.89%) YAML
10 4 (0.71%) Express.js
Miscellaneous
1 100 (17.86%) Cloud Native
2 29 (5.18%) Public Cloud
3 27 (4.82%) Hybrid Cloud
4 22 (3.93%) Data Centre
5 16 (2.86%) Security Posture
6 14 (2.50%) Enterprise Cloud
6 14 (2.50%) Onboarding
7 13 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
8 9 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
8 9 (1.61%) Product Ownership
9 7 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (1.25%) Management Information System
9 7 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (1.07%) Cloud Security Posture
10 6 (1.07%) Cyber Threat
11 5 (0.89%) PKI
11 5 (0.89%) Private Cloud
12 4 (0.71%) Legacy Systems
12 4 (0.71%) Virtual Team
13 3 (0.54%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 60 (10.71%) Windows
2 37 (6.61%) Linux
3 35 (6.25%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.89%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.54%) CentOS
6 3 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
7 2 (0.36%) VMS
7 2 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.18%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 235 (41.96%) CI/CD
2 208 (37.14%) Infrastructure as Code
3 194 (34.64%) DevOps
4 113 (20.18%) Cloud Security
5 93 (16.61%) Platform Engineering
6 84 (15.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 84 (15.00%) Migration
7 70 (12.50%) Containerisation
8 68 (12.14%) Agile
9 63 (11.25%) AI
10 54 (9.64%) Observability
11 51 (9.11%) Problem-Solving
12 47 (8.39%) Software Engineering
13 45 (8.04%) Continuous Improvement
13 45 (8.04%) Infrastructure Automation
14 43 (7.68%) Cybersecurity
15 41 (7.32%) Technical Leadership
16 39 (6.96%) DevSecOps
17 33 (5.89%) Mentoring
18 29 (5.18%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 136 (24.29%) Python
2 87 (15.54%) PowerShell
3 52 (9.29%) Bash
4 46 (8.21%) SQL
5 36 (6.43%) Bicep
6 31 (5.54%) Java
7 15 (2.68%) C#
8 11 (1.96%) Go
9 10 (1.79%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.61%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.89%) Groovy
12 3 (0.54%) Ruby
13 2 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.18%) BeanShell
14 1 (0.18%) Cypher
14 1 (0.18%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.18%) Perl
14 1 (0.18%) R
14 1 (0.18%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 148 (26.43%) Security Cleared
2 118 (21.07%) SC Cleared
3 41 (7.32%) Azure Certification
4 28 (5.00%) DV Cleared
5 26 (4.64%) AWS Certification
6 19 (3.39%) Degree
7 13 (2.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 13 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 12 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
8 12 (2.14%) CISSP
9 9 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
9 9 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
10 6 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (0.89%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 5 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
12 4 (0.71%) CCSP
12 4 (0.71%) CISM
12 4 (0.71%) MCSE
13 3 (0.54%) CCNP
13 3 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (2.32%) NIST
2 12 (2.14%) GDPR
3 10 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (1.79%) NCSC
3 10 (1.79%) QA
4 6 (1.07%) Data Quality
5 5 (0.89%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.36%) GRC
7 2 (0.36%) SLA
7 2 (0.36%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.18%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.18%) WCAG
System Software
1 59 (10.54%) Docker
2 41 (7.32%) Active Directory
3 17 (3.04%) Virtual Desktop
3 17 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (2.86%) VMware NSX
5 15 (2.68%) Virtual Machines
6 13 (2.32%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (2.32%) vSphere
7 9 (1.61%) Hyper-V
8 7 (1.25%) Squid
8 7 (1.25%) vCloud
9 4 (0.71%) Firmware
10 3 (0.54%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.54%) Postfix
11 2 (0.36%) Ceph
11 2 (0.36%) KVM
11 2 (0.36%) NFS
Systems Management
1 250 (44.64%) Terraform
2 133 (23.75%) Kubernetes
3 31 (5.54%) Ansible
4 24 (4.29%) Grafana
5 21 (3.75%) Prometheus
6 15 (2.68%) Microsoft Intune
6 15 (2.68%) Single Sign-On
7 14 (2.50%) Argo
7 14 (2.50%) Istio
8 12 (2.14%) vCenter Server
9 9 (1.61%) SCOM
10 8 (1.43%) Progress Chef
11 7 (1.25%) Packer
11 7 (1.25%) Puppet
12 6 (1.07%) Cilium
13 4 (0.71%) HAProxy
13 4 (0.71%) Salt
13 4 (0.71%) Suricata
14 3 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 2 (0.36%) SELinux
Vendors
1 98 (17.50%) Microsoft
2 97 (17.32%) Google
3 31 (5.54%) VMware
4 26 (4.64%) Oracle
5 13 (2.32%) Palo Alto
5 13 (2.32%) Zscaler
6 10 (1.79%) Databricks
6 10 (1.79%) Red Hat
7 9 (1.61%) Cisco
8 8 (1.43%) Dynatrace
8 8 (1.43%) ServiceNow
9 7 (1.25%) Salesforce
10 6 (1.07%) OpenAI
10 6 (1.07%) Splunk
11 5 (0.89%) Citrix
11 5 (0.89%) Fortinet
11 5 (0.89%) Juniper
11 5 (0.89%) Okta
11 5 (0.89%) PeopleSoft
12 4 (0.71%) Rapid7