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 1 May 2026.

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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 238 316 312
Rank change year-on-year +78 -4 -52
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 511 222 291
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 0.76% 0.67%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.17% 0.82% 0.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 341 170 197
10th Percentile £400 £400 £401
25th Percentile £454 £428 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £690 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £521 £500 £523
% change year-on-year +4.20% -4.31% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 3
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £25.13 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £25.25 - £30.00
75th Percentile £39.56 - £32.50
90th Percentile £48.08 - -
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 43,629 27,082 40,416
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.55% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,928 17,690 26,310
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £492
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.46% -1.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,807 1,034 2,664
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.15 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.42
Median % change year-on-year +51.72% -20.37% -19.07%
75th Percentile £66.00 £62.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £28.00 £39.55
% change year-on-year +62.36% -29.20% -6.94%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +63 423 £525 - 175
London +58 247 £525 - 64
UK excluding London +18 207 £521 +4.20% 124
Work from Home +9 125 £510 +2.00% 90
North of England -36 51 £500 +11.11% 32
South East -33 44 £510 -9.33% 36
Scotland +22 40 £451 -14.19% 7
Midlands -64 28 £675 +42.11% 18
North West -28 25 £544 +20.83% 19
East of England -9 24 £505 +2.54% 9
Yorkshire -30 23 £481 +13.24% 10
West Midlands -47 23 £675 +14.89% 14
South West -14 21 £550 -4.35% 22
East Midlands -33 5 £496 +4.47% 4
North East -23 3 £525 -12.50% 3

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

For the 6 months to 1 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.

1 226 (44.23%) Terraform
2 225 (44.03%) Azure
3 220 (43.05%) AWS
4 204 (39.92%) CI/CD
5 199 (38.94%) Infrastructure as Code
6 177 (34.64%) DevOps
7 144 (28.18%) Security Cleared
8 126 (24.66%) Kubernetes
9 124 (24.27%) SC Cleared
10 119 (23.29%) Python
11 118 (23.09%) GCP
12 108 (21.14%) GitHub
13 102 (19.96%) Cloud Security
14 92 (18.00%) Microsoft
15 88 (17.22%) Google
16 80 (15.66%) Platform Engineering
17 76 (14.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 76 (14.87%) PowerShell
18 75 (14.68%) Agile
19 70 (13.70%) Containerisation
20 67 (13.11%) GitHub Actions
21 66 (12.92%) Migration
22 59 (11.55%) Docker
23 51 (9.98%) Serverless
24 50 (9.78%) Firewall
25 49 (9.59%) AI
25 49 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
25 49 (9.59%) Observability
26 44 (8.61%) Azure DevOps
26 44 (8.61%) 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 7 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (0.98%) Apache Spark
2 5 (0.98%) Confluence
3 4 (0.78%) Apache
4 2 (0.39%) nginx
5 1 (0.20%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.20%) SAS
5 1 (0.20%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.39%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.20%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 225 (44.03%) Azure
2 220 (43.05%) AWS
3 118 (23.09%) GCP
4 108 (21.14%) GitHub
5 67 (13.11%) GitHub Actions
6 51 (9.98%) Serverless
7 44 (8.61%) Azure DevOps
7 44 (8.61%) Entra ID
8 41 (8.02%) AWS CloudFormation
9 38 (7.44%) Azure AKS
10 36 (7.05%) PaaS
11 33 (6.46%) Amazon S3
12 32 (6.26%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 31 (6.07%) Amazon EKS
14 30 (5.87%) IaaS
15 29 (5.68%) AWS Lambda
16 26 (5.09%) Amazon ECS
17 20 (3.91%) Azure Monitor
17 20 (3.91%) OCI
17 20 (3.91%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 50 (9.78%) Firewall
2 18 (3.52%) DNS
2 18 (3.52%) Network Security
2 18 (3.52%) VPN
3 6 (1.17%) Cisco Firepower
3 6 (1.17%) Reverse Proxy
4 5 (0.98%) Cisco IOS
4 5 (0.98%) Cisco ISE
4 5 (0.98%) Junos
4 5 (0.98%) NX-OS
5 4 (0.78%) DHCP
5 4 (0.78%) Software-Defined Networking
6 3 (0.59%) BGP
6 3 (0.59%) SMTP
7 2 (0.39%) DKIM
7 2 (0.39%) Kerberos
7 2 (0.39%) NGFW
7 2 (0.39%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.39%) Unified Communications
7 2 (0.39%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.94%) Amazon Athena
2 12 (2.35%) BigQuery
3 11 (2.15%) DynamoDB
4 8 (1.57%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (1.37%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (1.37%) SQL Server
6 6 (1.17%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (0.98%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.98%) NoSQL
7 5 (0.98%) Power BI
8 4 (0.78%) Amazon QuickSight
8 4 (0.78%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (0.78%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.59%) Big Data
9 3 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.39%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.39%) Metadata
10 2 (0.39%) Mixpanel
10 2 (0.39%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 44 (8.61%) Jenkins
2 35 (6.85%) GitLab
3 34 (6.65%) Git
4 7 (1.37%) JIRA
5 4 (0.78%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.59%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.39%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.39%) Postman
7 2 (0.39%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.39%) Selenium
7 2 (0.39%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.20%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.20%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.20%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.20%) JUnit
8 1 (0.20%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.20%) RStudio
8 1 (0.20%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.20%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.20%) Travis CI
General
1 71 (13.89%) Social Skills
2 61 (11.94%) Finance
3 45 (8.81%) Public Sector
4 20 (3.91%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (3.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 17 (3.33%) Banking
7 11 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.76%) Retail
9 7 (1.37%) Aeronautics
10 6 (1.17%) Legal
10 6 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
11 5 (0.98%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.78%) Investment Banking
12 4 (0.78%) Marketing
13 3 (0.59%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.59%) Military
13 3 (0.59%) Police
14 2 (0.39%) Billing
14 2 (0.39%) Law
14 2 (0.39%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (4.50%) REST
2 21 (4.11%) Node.js
3 13 (2.54%) Kafka
3 13 (2.54%) React
4 11 (2.15%) OpenTelemetry
5 10 (1.96%) .NET
5 10 (1.96%) OAuth
6 9 (1.76%) ARM Templates
6 9 (1.76%) OAuth2
6 9 (1.76%) OpenID
6 9 (1.76%) Spring
7 8 (1.57%) Oracle Fusion
7 8 (1.57%) Playwright
7 8 (1.57%) Spring Boot
8 7 (1.37%) AngularJS
8 7 (1.37%) LangChain
8 7 (1.37%) OpenAPI
8 7 (1.37%) SOAP
9 6 (1.17%) Web Services
10 5 (0.98%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 87 (17.03%) Cloud Native
2 29 (5.68%) Public Cloud
3 17 (3.33%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (2.94%) Data Centre
5 10 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
5 10 (1.96%) Product Ownership
6 9 (1.76%) Onboarding
6 9 (1.76%) Security Posture
7 8 (1.57%) Enterprise Cloud
8 7 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.17%) Cyber Threat
9 6 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
9 6 (1.17%) PKI
10 5 (0.98%) Virtual Team
11 4 (0.78%) Legacy Systems
12 3 (0.59%) Cloud Security Posture
12 3 (0.59%) CMDB
12 3 (0.59%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.59%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 39 (7.63%) Windows
2 28 (5.48%) Linux
3 18 (3.52%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.78%) Unix
5 3 (0.59%) VMS
6 1 (0.20%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 204 (39.92%) CI/CD
2 199 (38.94%) Infrastructure as Code
3 177 (34.64%) DevOps
4 102 (19.96%) Cloud Security
5 80 (15.66%) Platform Engineering
6 76 (14.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 75 (14.68%) Agile
8 70 (13.70%) Containerisation
9 66 (12.92%) Migration
10 49 (9.59%) AI
10 49 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
10 49 (9.59%) Observability
11 41 (8.02%) DevSecOps
11 41 (8.02%) Infrastructure Automation
11 41 (8.02%) Problem-Solving
12 40 (7.83%) Cybersecurity
13 37 (7.24%) Software Engineering
14 35 (6.85%) Mentoring
15 30 (5.87%) Microservices
16 28 (5.48%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 119 (23.29%) Python
2 76 (14.87%) PowerShell
3 42 (8.22%) SQL
4 36 (7.05%) Bash
5 30 (5.87%) Bicep
6 27 (5.28%) Java
7 17 (3.33%) C#
8 14 (2.74%) TypeScript
9 10 (1.96%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.76%) Go
11 4 (0.78%) BeanShell
11 4 (0.78%) Groovy
11 4 (0.78%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.39%) Ruby
14 1 (0.20%) Cypher
14 1 (0.20%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.20%) R
Qualifications
1 144 (28.18%) Security Cleared
2 124 (24.27%) SC Cleared
3 41 (8.02%) Azure Certification
4 28 (5.48%) AWS Certification
5 18 (3.52%) DV Cleared
6 16 (3.13%) Degree
7 15 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
8 13 (2.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 13 (2.54%) CISSP
9 11 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
10 9 (1.76%) Cisco Certification
10 9 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (1.37%) CISM
12 6 (1.17%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 6 (1.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 5 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.78%) CCSP
14 4 (0.78%) MCSE
15 3 (0.59%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
15 3 (0.59%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.35%) GDPR
2 11 (2.15%) NCSC
2 11 (2.15%) NIST
3 10 (1.96%) QA
4 9 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (1.37%) PCI DSS
6 6 (1.17%) Data Quality
7 5 (0.98%) GRC
8 2 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.39%) SLA
8 2 (0.39%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.20%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.20%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 59 (11.55%) Docker
2 28 (5.48%) Active Directory
3 17 (3.33%) Virtual Desktop
4 13 (2.54%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (2.35%) VMware NSX
6 8 (1.57%) vSphere
7 7 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
8 6 (1.17%) Firmware
8 6 (1.17%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.20%) Squid
Systems Management
1 226 (44.23%) Terraform
2 126 (24.66%) Kubernetes
3 26 (5.09%) Prometheus
4 21 (4.11%) Ansible
4 21 (4.11%) Grafana
5 17 (3.33%) Istio
6 16 (3.13%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (2.54%) Argo
8 12 (2.35%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (1.17%) Packer
9 6 (1.17%) vCenter Server
10 5 (0.98%) Progress Chef
10 5 (0.98%) Puppet
11 4 (0.78%) Salt
12 3 (0.59%) Cilium
13 1 (0.20%) Consul
13 1 (0.20%) Kibana
13 1 (0.20%) logstash
13 1 (0.20%) PaperCut
13 1 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 92 (18.00%) Microsoft
2 88 (17.22%) Google
3 20 (3.91%) Oracle
4 16 (3.13%) VMware
5 12 (2.35%) Dynatrace
6 11 (2.15%) Cisco
6 11 (2.15%) Databricks
7 10 (1.96%) ServiceNow
8 7 (1.37%) Salesforce
8 7 (1.37%) Splunk
9 6 (1.17%) Juniper
10 5 (0.98%) Broadcom
10 5 (0.98%) Citrix
10 5 (0.98%) Fortinet
10 5 (0.98%) PeopleSoft
10 5 (0.98%) Ping Identity
10 5 (0.98%) Rapid7
10 5 (0.98%) SolarWinds
11 4 (0.78%) Palo Alto
11 4 (0.78%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud