Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £520, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 September 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 197 319 349
Rank change year-on-year +122 +30 -81
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 763 251 246
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.42% 0.77% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.54% 0.84% 0.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 500 180 155
10th Percentile £406 £400 £386
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £625
90th Percentile £675 £630 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +2.00% -9.09% +3.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 7 0
10th Percentile £23.20 £29.00 -
25th Percentile £55.67 £29.50 -
Median hourly rate £77.00 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +71.11% - -
75th Percentile £81.25 £86.25 -
90th Percentile £82.38 £110.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.00 - -

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 49,606 29,880 35,937
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.25% 93.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,580 18,873 22,662
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,581 1,559 1,838
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.69 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.04 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.33 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.95
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.78% +11.13%

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 September 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 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cloud Engineer in the UK

Cloud Engineer
Top 16 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 September 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 +106 658 £525 +5.00% 763
UK excluding London +111 412 £510 +2.00% 370
London +51 301 £525 - 470
Work from Home +31 187 £540 +8.00% 258
South East +21 126 £538 +7.50% 54
North of England +17 122 £513 +13.89% 107
North West -1 74 £525 +16.67% 53
Midlands +1 67 £500 +5.26% 44
Scotland +25 57 £447 -8.31% 56
Yorkshire -4 41 £467 -6.62% 42
East Midlands +12 34 £488 +2.63% 18
West Midlands -20 32 £525 -2.78% 26
East of England -5 19 £488 +0.52% 35
South West -29 15 £600 +9.09% 50
Wales -8 7 - - 5
North East -44 7 £525 +10.53% 12

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

For the 6 months to 1 September 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.

1 360 (47.18%) Azure
2 312 (40.89%) Terraform
3 265 (34.73%) AWS
3 265 (34.73%) Infrastructure as Code
4 259 (33.94%) CI/CD
5 206 (27.00%) DevOps
6 198 (25.95%) Security Cleared
7 197 (25.82%) Kubernetes
8 191 (25.03%) Python
9 174 (22.80%) Cloud Security
10 173 (22.67%) Microsoft
11 165 (21.63%) GCP
12 160 (20.97%) PowerShell
13 159 (20.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 152 (19.92%) Platform Engineering
15 144 (18.87%) SC Cleared
16 115 (15.07%) Windows
17 113 (14.81%) Google
18 103 (13.50%) Entra ID
19 100 (13.11%) AI
20 93 (12.19%) Active Directory
20 93 (12.19%) Migration
21 90 (11.80%) GitHub
22 87 (11.40%) Agile
23 86 (11.27%) Containerisation
24 84 (11.01%) Bash
25 83 (10.88%) Observability
26 81 (10.62%) DNS
26 81 (10.62%) Firewall
27 76 (9.96%) Docker

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 12 (1.57%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (1.44%) Apache
3 8 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (0.79%) Confluence
4 6 (0.79%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.39%) IIS
5 3 (0.39%) nginx
5 3 (0.39%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.26%) CloudStack
6 2 (0.26%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
7 1 (0.13%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.26%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 360 (47.18%) Azure
2 265 (34.73%) AWS
3 165 (21.63%) GCP
4 103 (13.50%) Entra ID
5 90 (11.80%) GitHub
6 57 (7.47%) GitHub Actions
7 56 (7.34%) Azure DevOps
8 54 (7.08%) Serverless
9 47 (6.16%) AWS CloudFormation
10 46 (6.03%) IaaS
11 41 (5.37%) AWS Lambda
11 41 (5.37%) Azure AKS
12 39 (5.11%) Azure Monitor
13 36 (4.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 35 (4.59%) Amazon EC2
14 35 (4.59%) Amazon EKS
15 34 (4.46%) Amazon S3
15 34 (4.46%) Microsoft 365
16 33 (4.33%) PaaS
17 32 (4.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 81 (10.62%) DNS
1 81 (10.62%) Firewall
2 39 (5.11%) Network Security
3 37 (4.85%) VPN
4 19 (2.49%) DHCP
5 17 (2.23%) WAN
6 15 (1.97%) TCP/IP
7 12 (1.57%) Internet
8 7 (0.92%) VLAN
9 6 (0.79%) SD-WAN
9 6 (0.79%) VSAN
10 5 (0.66%) LAN
10 5 (0.66%) SSL
11 4 (0.52%) SAN
11 4 (0.52%) Wireless
12 3 (0.39%) BGP
12 3 (0.39%) NGFW
12 3 (0.39%) OSPF
12 3 (0.39%) Reverse Proxy
12 3 (0.39%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (3.54%) SQL Server
2 20 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
3 16 (2.10%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.44%) BigQuery
5 9 (1.18%) Data Lake
6 8 (1.05%) Oracle Exadata
7 6 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
7 6 (0.79%) DynamoDB
8 5 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.66%) Oracle Database
9 4 (0.52%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.39%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.39%) Flink
10 3 (0.39%) Looker
10 3 (0.39%) Metadata
10 3 (0.39%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.39%) MySQL
10 3 (0.39%) Oracle Database 12c
11 2 (0.26%) Amazon QuickSight
11 2 (0.26%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 54 (7.08%) GitLab
2 47 (6.16%) Jenkins
3 38 (4.98%) Git
4 18 (2.36%) JIRA
5 8 (1.05%) Artifactory
6 7 (0.92%) Claude Code
7 5 (0.66%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.39%) Selenium
8 3 (0.39%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.26%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.26%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.26%) Gatling
9 2 (0.26%) JMeter
9 2 (0.26%) Octopus Deploy
9 2 (0.26%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.26%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.13%) eggPlant
10 1 (0.13%) IntelliJ
10 1 (0.13%) JUnit
10 1 (0.13%) Metasploit
General
1 95 (12.45%) Finance
2 84 (11.01%) Social Skills
3 69 (9.04%) Public Sector
4 33 (4.33%) Analytical Skills
5 28 (3.67%) Banking
6 10 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.05%) Investment Banking
8 8 (1.05%) Manufacturing
9 5 (0.66%) Law
9 5 (0.66%) Local Government
10 4 (0.52%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.39%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.39%) Digital Health
11 3 (0.39%) Digital Healthcare
11 3 (0.39%) Front Office
11 3 (0.39%) Legal
11 3 (0.39%) Marketing
11 3 (0.39%) Military
11 3 (0.39%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (40.89%) Terraform
2 24 (3.15%) REST
3 15 (1.97%) ARM Templates
4 14 (1.83%) Kafka
5 11 (1.44%) Spring
5 11 (1.44%) Spring Boot
6 9 (1.18%) Node.js
6 9 (1.18%) OAuth
6 9 (1.18%) OAuth2
7 8 (1.05%) AWS CDK
7 8 (1.05%) React
7 8 (1.05%) YAML
8 7 (0.92%) .NET
8 7 (0.92%) Keycloak
9 6 (0.79%) FastAPI
9 6 (0.79%) Flask
10 4 (0.52%) Azure Blueprints
10 4 (0.52%) Hugging Face
10 4 (0.52%) PySpark
10 4 (0.52%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 123 (16.12%) Cloud Native
2 57 (7.47%) Security Posture
3 43 (5.64%) Enterprise Cloud
4 38 (4.98%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (4.19%) Onboarding
6 29 (3.80%) Cloud Security Posture
7 23 (3.01%) Enterprise Software
8 21 (2.75%) Distributed Systems
9 20 (2.62%) Management Information System
10 17 (2.23%) Data Centre
11 16 (2.10%) Public Cloud
12 13 (1.70%) Product Ownership
13 12 (1.57%) Private Cloud
14 11 (1.44%) Linux Command Line
15 9 (1.18%) PKI
16 8 (1.05%) AI Agents
16 8 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
17 7 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
18 5 (0.66%) Distributed Architecture
18 5 (0.66%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 115 (15.07%) Windows
2 75 (9.83%) Linux
3 58 (7.60%) Windows Server
4 29 (3.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 12 (1.57%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.05%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.52%) VMS
8 3 (0.39%) CentOS
9 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 265 (34.73%) Infrastructure as Code
2 259 (33.94%) CI/CD
3 206 (27.00%) DevOps
4 174 (22.80%) Cloud Security
5 159 (20.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 152 (19.92%) Platform Engineering
7 100 (13.11%) AI
8 93 (12.19%) Migration
9 87 (11.40%) Agile
10 86 (11.27%) Containerisation
11 83 (10.88%) Observability
12 63 (8.26%) Technical Leadership
13 60 (7.86%) Continuous Improvement
14 59 (7.73%) Software Engineering
15 57 (7.47%) DevSecOps
15 57 (7.47%) Infrastructure Automation
16 55 (7.21%) Problem-Solving
17 53 (6.95%) Cybersecurity
18 51 (6.68%) Deployment Automation
19 47 (6.16%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 191 (25.03%) Python
2 160 (20.97%) PowerShell
3 84 (11.01%) Bash
4 72 (9.44%) Bicep
5 62 (8.13%) SQL
6 36 (4.72%) Java
7 17 (2.23%) C#
8 16 (2.10%) Shell Script
9 12 (1.57%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.31%) Go
11 4 (0.52%) Groovy
11 4 (0.52%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.39%) C
12 3 (0.39%) Scala
13 2 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.13%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.13%) Perl
14 1 (0.13%) R
14 1 (0.13%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 198 (25.95%) Security Cleared
2 144 (18.87%) SC Cleared
3 68 (8.91%) DV Cleared
4 45 (5.90%) AWS Certification
5 44 (5.77%) Azure Certification
6 32 (4.19%) Degree
7 19 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
8 16 (2.10%) CISSP
9 14 (1.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 9 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
11 8 (1.05%) MCSE
12 7 (0.92%) BPSS Clearance
12 7 (0.92%) CCNP
13 6 (0.79%) CISM
14 5 (0.66%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 5 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 4 (0.52%) CCIE
16 3 (0.39%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
16 3 (0.39%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (1.83%) Data Quality
3 12 (1.57%) NIST
4 10 (1.31%) NCSC
4 10 (1.31%) QA
5 7 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (0.66%) GDPR
7 3 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 3 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.39%) SLA
8 2 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.26%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.13%) GRC
9 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 93 (12.19%) Active Directory
2 76 (9.96%) Docker
3 47 (6.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (4.19%) Virtual Machines
5 31 (4.06%) VMware ESXi
6 27 (3.54%) VMware NSX
7 20 (2.62%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (2.62%) vSphere
8 15 (1.97%) vCloud
9 12 (1.57%) Hyper-V
10 7 (0.92%) Squid
11 4 (0.52%) Firmware
12 3 (0.39%) Ceph
12 3 (0.39%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.39%) NFS
12 3 (0.39%) Postfix
13 2 (0.26%) KVM
13 2 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.13%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 197 (25.82%) Kubernetes
2 51 (6.68%) Ansible
3 28 (3.67%) vCenter Server
4 24 (3.15%) SCOM
5 23 (3.01%) Microsoft Intune
6 22 (2.88%) Grafana
7 20 (2.62%) Prometheus
8 18 (2.36%) Progress Chef
9 16 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (1.83%) Puppet
11 11 (1.44%) Istio
12 7 (0.92%) Cilium
12 7 (0.92%) Packer
13 6 (0.79%) Argo
14 5 (0.66%) VxRail
15 4 (0.52%) Suricata
16 3 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 3 (0.39%) HAProxy
16 3 (0.39%) Karpenter
16 3 (0.39%) vRealize
Vendors
1 173 (22.67%) Microsoft
2 113 (14.81%) Google
3 73 (9.57%) VMware
4 33 (4.33%) Oracle
5 20 (2.62%) Databricks
6 17 (2.23%) Okta
6 17 (2.23%) Red Hat
7 16 (2.10%) Zscaler
8 13 (1.70%) Palo Alto
9 12 (1.57%) OpenAI
9 12 (1.57%) ServiceNow
9 12 (1.57%) Splunk
10 10 (1.31%) Broadcom
10 10 (1.31%) SolarWinds
11 9 (1.18%) Cisco
11 9 (1.18%) CrowdStrike
11 9 (1.18%) Dynatrace
11 9 (1.18%) Salesforce
12 8 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
12 8 (1.05%) New Relic