Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £523, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 February 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 254 312 263
Rank change year-on-year +58 -49 -13
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 440 229 391
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 0.74% 0.89%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.18% 0.80% 0.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 307 155 272
10th Percentile £400 £380 £410
25th Percentile £450 £458 £474
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £613 £639 £628
90th Percentile £725 £691 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £524 £500 £530
% change year-on-year +4.70% -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 4
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £25.13 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £38.88 - £50.00
75th Percentile £67.81 - £76.94
90th Percentile £93.13 - £84.93
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 37,333 28,630 41,042
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.70% 92.94% 93.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,462 17,805 26,973
10th Percentile £305 £288 £275
25th Percentile £406 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +0.63% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,275 814 2,320
10th Percentile £14.61 £16.25 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.50
Median hourly rate £31.18 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.31% -2.86% -9.09%
75th Percentile £63.32 £63.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £35.25
% change year-on-year -7.69% -7.80% -0.48%

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 19 February 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 19 February 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 19 February 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 +48 355 £525 -4.55% 116
UK excluding London +51 198 £524 +4.70% 97
London +4 182 £525 -4.55% 39
Work from Home +9 108 £500 -4.76% 59
North of England -25 66 £500 +11.11% 24
Yorkshire -19 42 £506 +22.73% 10
South East -1 41 £500 -16.67% 26
Midlands -42 40 £575 +21.05% 12
Scotland +30 35 £513 -2.38% 4
West Midlands -32 35 £670 +8.28% 8
North West -10 24 £431 -4.17% 12
South West -7 19 £544 -5.43% 20
East of England -22 10 £438 +37.58% 11
East Midlands -28 5 £575 +26.51% 4
Wales -5 1 £425 +41.67%

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

For the 6 months to 19 February 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.

1 207 (47.05%) AWS
2 192 (43.64%) CI/CD
3 187 (42.50%) Terraform
4 173 (39.32%) Infrastructure as Code
5 172 (39.09%) DevOps
6 171 (38.86%) Azure
7 126 (28.64%) Python
8 124 (28.18%) Security Cleared
9 118 (26.82%) Kubernetes
10 100 (22.73%) GCP
10 100 (22.73%) GitHub
11 87 (19.77%) SC Cleared
12 83 (18.86%) Containerisation
13 75 (17.05%) Agile
13 75 (17.05%) Microsoft
14 74 (16.82%) Cloud Security
15 70 (15.91%) Docker
16 66 (15.00%) Google
17 63 (14.32%) Serverless
18 61 (13.86%) GitHub Actions
19 59 (13.41%) Jenkins
20 54 (12.27%) Migration
21 51 (11.59%) Infrastructure Automation
21 51 (11.59%) Platform Engineering
22 48 (10.91%) GitLab
22 48 (10.91%) PowerShell
23 45 (10.23%) Microservices
23 45 (10.23%) Problem-Solving
24 44 (10.00%) AWS CloudFormation
24 44 (10.00%) Infrastructure Engineering

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 9 (2.05%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.14%) Apache
3 4 (0.91%) Confluence
3 4 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.68%) nginx
5 2 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.23%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.23%) CMS
6 1 (0.23%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.23%) SAS
6 1 (0.23%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.23%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.45%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 207 (47.05%) AWS
2 171 (38.86%) Azure
3 100 (22.73%) GCP
3 100 (22.73%) GitHub
4 63 (14.32%) Serverless
5 61 (13.86%) GitHub Actions
6 44 (10.00%) AWS CloudFormation
7 40 (9.09%) Entra ID
8 35 (7.95%) Azure DevOps
8 35 (7.95%) PaaS
9 33 (7.50%) Amazon S3
10 32 (7.27%) Amazon EKS
11 28 (6.36%) AWS Lambda
12 27 (6.14%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 27 (6.14%) IaaS
13 26 (5.91%) Amazon ECS
14 23 (5.23%) Azure AKS
15 17 (3.86%) OCI
16 16 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
17 15 (3.41%) AWS CodePipeline
Communications & Networking
1 32 (7.27%) Firewall
2 21 (4.77%) Network Security
3 18 (4.09%) VPN
4 17 (3.86%) Cisco Firepower
4 17 (3.86%) Cisco IOS
4 17 (3.86%) Cisco ISE
4 17 (3.86%) Junos
5 14 (3.18%) DNS
6 5 (1.14%) NX-OS
7 4 (0.91%) DHCP
7 4 (0.91%) Software-Defined Networking
8 3 (0.68%) Reverse Proxy
8 3 (0.68%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.68%) WAN
9 2 (0.45%) BGP
9 2 (0.45%) IPsec
9 2 (0.45%) LAN
9 2 (0.45%) Unified Communications
9 2 (0.45%) VLAN
10 1 (0.23%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (6.14%) NoSQL
2 22 (5.00%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (2.50%) Amazon Athena
4 10 (2.27%) BigQuery
5 9 (2.05%) DynamoDB
5 9 (2.05%) Power BI
6 7 (1.59%) Amazon RDS
6 7 (1.59%) Elasticsearch
7 6 (1.36%) Data Lake
8 5 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
9 4 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (0.91%) Big Data
9 4 (0.91%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.91%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
11 2 (0.45%) Metadata
11 2 (0.45%) Mixpanel
11 2 (0.45%) OLTP
11 2 (0.45%) Relational Database
11 2 (0.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 59 (13.41%) Jenkins
2 48 (10.91%) GitLab
3 31 (7.05%) Git
4 10 (2.27%) JIRA
5 9 (2.05%) Liquibase
6 3 (0.68%) MLflow
6 3 (0.68%) Postman
6 3 (0.68%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.45%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.45%) CircleCI
7 2 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.45%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.23%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.23%) Gemini Tracker
8 1 (0.23%) RStudio
8 1 (0.23%) TeamCity
8 1 (0.23%) Travis CI
8 1 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 77 (17.50%) Social Skills
2 65 (14.77%) Finance
3 40 (9.09%) Public Sector
4 32 (7.27%) Banking
5 26 (5.91%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (3.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (2.73%) Financial Institution
8 8 (1.82%) Retail
9 7 (1.59%) Aeronautics
10 6 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.36%) Telecoms
11 5 (1.14%) Aviation
11 5 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (0.91%) Legal
12 4 (0.91%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.68%) Local Government
14 2 (0.45%) Billing
14 2 (0.45%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.45%) Marketing
14 2 (0.45%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (9.77%) REST
2 25 (5.68%) Elastic Stack
3 24 (5.45%) Node.js
4 19 (4.32%) RESTful
5 13 (2.95%) Kafka
6 12 (2.73%) React
7 10 (2.27%) ARM Templates
7 10 (2.27%) OpenTelemetry
8 9 (2.05%) LangChain
8 9 (2.05%) OpenAPI
8 9 (2.05%) OpenID
8 9 (2.05%) Oracle Fusion
9 8 (1.82%) .NET
9 8 (1.82%) Lambda Expressions
9 8 (1.82%) SAML
9 8 (1.82%) SOAP
9 8 (1.82%) Spring
9 8 (1.82%) Spring Boot
10 7 (1.59%) AngularJS
10 7 (1.59%) AWS CDK
Miscellaneous
1 73 (16.59%) Cloud Native
2 39 (8.86%) Public Cloud
3 22 (5.00%) Distributed Systems
4 13 (2.95%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (2.50%) Data Centre
6 9 (2.05%) PKI
6 9 (2.05%) Product Ownership
7 6 (1.36%) Security Posture
8 5 (1.14%) Cyber Threat
8 5 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (0.91%) Algorithms
9 4 (0.91%) Cloud Security Posture
9 4 (0.91%) Onboarding
10 3 (0.68%) AI Agents
10 3 (0.68%) Distributed Computing
10 3 (0.68%) Genomics
10 3 (0.68%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (0.68%) Life Science
10 3 (0.68%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (0.68%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 42 (9.55%) Linux
2 25 (5.68%) Windows
3 17 (3.86%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.82%) Unix
5 4 (0.91%) VMS
6 1 (0.23%) Alpine Linux
6 1 (0.23%) Mac OS
6 1 (0.23%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 192 (43.64%) CI/CD
2 173 (39.32%) Infrastructure as Code
3 172 (39.09%) DevOps
4 83 (18.86%) Containerisation
5 75 (17.05%) Agile
6 74 (16.82%) Cloud Security
7 54 (12.27%) Migration
8 51 (11.59%) Infrastructure Automation
8 51 (11.59%) Platform Engineering
9 45 (10.23%) Microservices
9 45 (10.23%) Problem-Solving
10 44 (10.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 40 (9.09%) Cybersecurity
11 40 (9.09%) Observability
12 39 (8.86%) Continuous Improvement
13 36 (8.18%) DevSecOps
14 35 (7.95%) AI
15 32 (7.27%) Software Engineering
16 30 (6.82%) High Availability
17 29 (6.59%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 126 (28.64%) Python
2 48 (10.91%) PowerShell
3 37 (8.41%) SQL
4 25 (5.68%) Java
5 23 (5.23%) Bash
6 21 (4.77%) Go
7 20 (4.55%) Bicep
8 15 (3.41%) TypeScript
9 10 (2.27%) JavaScript
10 9 (2.05%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.14%) C#
12 4 (0.91%) BeanShell
12 4 (0.91%) Perl
13 3 (0.68%) Ruby
14 2 (0.45%) Groovy
14 2 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.45%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.23%) C
15 1 (0.23%) Cypher
15 1 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 124 (28.18%) Security Cleared
2 87 (19.77%) SC Cleared
3 41 (9.32%) Azure Certification
4 34 (7.73%) Degree
4 34 (7.73%) DV Cleared
5 31 (7.05%) AWS Certification
6 22 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 18 (4.09%) Master's Degree
8 14 (3.18%) Microsoft Certification
9 11 (2.50%) CISSP
10 10 (2.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 10 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
11 9 (2.05%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 8 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
13 7 (1.59%) CISM
14 6 (1.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 5 (1.14%) CCSP
15 5 (1.14%) TOGAF Certification
16 4 (0.91%) AWS Certified Developer
17 3 (0.68%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (3.41%) GDPR
2 11 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (2.50%) NIST
3 9 (2.05%) NCSC
4 8 (1.82%) QA
5 6 (1.36%) PCI DSS
6 5 (1.14%) Data Quality
6 5 (1.14%) GRC
7 3 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.45%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.45%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.23%) FedRAMP
9 1 (0.23%) JSP 440
System Software
1 70 (15.91%) Docker
2 30 (6.82%) Active Directory
3 17 (3.86%) VMware NSX
4 13 (2.95%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
6 6 (1.36%) Hyper-V
7 5 (1.14%) Firmware
7 5 (1.14%) VMware Infrastructure
8 2 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.23%) KVM
9 1 (0.23%) Squid
9 1 (0.23%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 187 (42.50%) Terraform
2 118 (26.82%) Kubernetes
3 38 (8.64%) Ansible
4 32 (7.27%) Grafana
4 32 (7.27%) Prometheus
5 17 (3.86%) Istio
5 17 (3.86%) vCenter Server
6 15 (3.41%) Argo
7 10 (2.27%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.59%) Kibana
8 7 (1.59%) logstash
9 6 (1.36%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (0.91%) Podman
11 3 (0.68%) Proxmox
12 2 (0.45%) Consul
12 2 (0.45%) Packer
12 2 (0.45%) Puppet
13 1 (0.23%) HAProxy
13 1 (0.23%) Progress Chef
13 1 (0.23%) Salt
Vendors
1 75 (17.05%) Microsoft
2 66 (15.00%) Google
3 21 (4.77%) Splunk
4 19 (4.32%) Cisco
4 19 (4.32%) Oracle
5 18 (4.09%) Juniper
6 17 (3.86%) SolarWinds
7 15 (3.41%) Databricks
8 11 (2.50%) ServiceNow
9 8 (1.82%) Dynatrace
10 7 (1.59%) Ping Identity
11 5 (1.14%) Broadcom
11 5 (1.14%) MuleSoft
11 5 (1.14%) Palo Alto
11 5 (1.14%) PeopleSoft
11 5 (1.14%) Rapid7
11 5 (1.14%) VMware
12 4 (0.91%) Citrix
12 4 (0.91%) Cloudera
12 4 (0.91%) Zscaler