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 14 April 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 245 297 314
Rank change year-on-year +52 +17 -47
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 479 230 297
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 0.79% 0.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.14% 0.85% 0.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 320 176 203
10th Percentile £391 £400 £400
25th Percentile £450 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.52% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £613 £625 £619
90th Percentile £694 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £523
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.31% -0.48%
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 42,188 27,123 40,371
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.27% 92.63% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,193 17,821 26,390
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.80% -1.00% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £628 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,670 980 2,573
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.83 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.09 £19.91 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.53 £31.42 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.16% -10.22% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.25 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.03 £75.58 £72.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +41.67% -14.29% -17.38%

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 14 April 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 14 April 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 14 April 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 +35 395 £525 - 142
London +25 227 £525 - 51
UK excluding London +9 197 £525 +5.00% 105
Work from Home -6 116 £510 -2.86% 89
North of England -43 54 £506 +3.90% 38
South East -31 39 £522 -7.20% 28
Scotland +23 36 £513 -2.38% 7
Yorkshire -34 28 £481 +48.08% 13
Midlands -55 27 £676 +42.37% 8
North West -21 26 £538 +19.44% 20
South West -11 24 £550 -4.35% 14
West Midlands -49 21 £680 +15.74% 7
East of England -18 18 £510 +3.55% 11
East Midlands -34 6 £575 +21.05% 1
Wales -13 1 £425 +41.67%

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

For the 6 months to 14 April 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.

1 215 (44.89%) Terraform
2 209 (43.63%) AWS
3 201 (41.96%) Azure
4 198 (41.34%) CI/CD
5 184 (38.41%) Infrastructure as Code
6 171 (35.70%) DevOps
7 134 (27.97%) Security Cleared
8 121 (25.26%) GCP
8 121 (25.26%) Kubernetes
9 115 (24.01%) Python
10 111 (23.17%) SC Cleared
11 104 (21.71%) GitHub
12 97 (20.25%) Cloud Security
13 92 (19.21%) Google
14 86 (17.95%) Microsoft
15 76 (15.87%) Agile
16 74 (15.45%) Platform Engineering
17 70 (14.61%) Containerisation
18 69 (14.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
19 68 (14.20%) PowerShell
20 64 (13.36%) Migration
21 63 (13.15%) GitHub Actions
22 61 (12.73%) Docker
23 54 (11.27%) Serverless
24 48 (10.02%) Continuous Improvement
24 48 (10.02%) Observability
25 47 (9.81%) Jenkins
26 45 (9.39%) Firewall
27 43 (8.98%) AWS CloudFormation
27 43 (8.98%) DevSecOps

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 6 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (1.04%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.04%) Confluence
3 4 (0.84%) Apache
4 3 (0.63%) nginx
5 2 (0.42%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.21%) CMS
6 1 (0.21%) Headless CMS
6 1 (0.21%) SAS
6 1 (0.21%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.42%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.21%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 209 (43.63%) AWS
2 201 (41.96%) Azure
3 121 (25.26%) GCP
4 104 (21.71%) GitHub
5 63 (13.15%) GitHub Actions
6 54 (11.27%) Serverless
7 43 (8.98%) AWS CloudFormation
8 40 (8.35%) Azure DevOps
9 38 (7.93%) Entra ID
10 36 (7.52%) PaaS
11 35 (7.31%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 34 (7.10%) Amazon S3
13 33 (6.89%) Azure AKS
14 31 (6.47%) Amazon EKS
14 31 (6.47%) IaaS
15 30 (6.26%) AWS Lambda
16 26 (5.43%) Amazon ECS
17 21 (4.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 20 (4.18%) SaaS
19 19 (3.97%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 45 (9.39%) Firewall
2 18 (3.76%) DNS
2 18 (3.76%) Network Security
3 16 (3.34%) VPN
4 8 (1.67%) Cisco Firepower
5 7 (1.46%) Cisco IOS
5 7 (1.46%) Cisco ISE
5 7 (1.46%) Junos
6 6 (1.25%) Reverse Proxy
7 5 (1.04%) NX-OS
8 4 (0.84%) DHCP
8 4 (0.84%) Software-Defined Networking
9 3 (0.63%) BGP
10 2 (0.42%) DKIM
10 2 (0.42%) SMTP
10 2 (0.42%) TCP/IP
10 2 (0.42%) Unified Communications
10 2 (0.42%) VLAN
11 1 (0.21%) LAN
11 1 (0.21%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (2.92%) Amazon Athena
2 12 (2.51%) BigQuery
3 10 (2.09%) DynamoDB
4 8 (1.67%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (1.46%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (1.46%) NoSQL
5 7 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (1.46%) Power BI
6 6 (1.25%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.25%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.04%) Big Data
8 4 (0.84%) Amazon QuickSight
8 4 (0.84%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (0.84%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (0.84%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.63%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.63%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.42%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.42%) Metadata
10 2 (0.42%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 47 (9.81%) Jenkins
2 37 (7.72%) GitLab
3 34 (7.10%) Git
4 6 (1.25%) JIRA
5 4 (0.84%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.63%) Liquibase
6 3 (0.63%) Postman
6 3 (0.63%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.42%) CircleCI
7 2 (0.42%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.42%) Selenium
7 2 (0.42%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.21%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.21%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.21%) JUnit
8 1 (0.21%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.21%) RStudio
8 1 (0.21%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.21%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.21%) Travis CI
General
1 69 (14.41%) Social Skills
2 59 (12.32%) Finance
3 42 (8.77%) Public Sector
4 19 (3.97%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (3.76%) Banking
6 17 (3.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (1.67%) Retail
8 7 (1.46%) Aeronautics
9 6 (1.25%) Legal
9 6 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
9 6 (1.25%) Telecoms
10 4 (0.84%) Financial Institution
10 4 (0.84%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.63%) Marketing
11 3 (0.63%) Military
12 2 (0.42%) Billing
12 2 (0.42%) Local Government
12 2 (0.42%) Pharmaceutical
12 2 (0.42%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (5.43%) REST
2 23 (4.80%) Node.js
3 13 (2.71%) Kafka
4 11 (2.30%) OpenTelemetry
5 10 (2.09%) Elastic Stack
5 10 (2.09%) React
6 9 (1.88%) .NET
6 9 (1.88%) ARM Templates
6 9 (1.88%) Oracle Fusion
6 9 (1.88%) Spring
6 9 (1.88%) Spring Boot
7 8 (1.67%) OAuth
7 8 (1.67%) Playwright
7 8 (1.67%) SOAP
8 7 (1.46%) AngularJS
8 7 (1.46%) LangChain
8 7 (1.46%) OpenAPI
8 7 (1.46%) Web Services
9 6 (1.25%) OpenID
9 6 (1.25%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 87 (18.16%) Cloud Native
2 34 (7.10%) Public Cloud
3 16 (3.34%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (2.71%) Data Centre
5 10 (2.09%) Product Ownership
6 9 (1.88%) Security Posture
7 7 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (1.25%) Cyber Threat
8 6 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.25%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.25%) PKI
9 5 (1.04%) Enterprise Cloud
9 5 (1.04%) Virtual Team
10 3 (0.63%) Cloud Security Posture
10 3 (0.63%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.63%) Replication
11 2 (0.42%) Clustering
11 2 (0.42%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 32 (6.68%) Windows
2 30 (6.26%) Linux
3 14 (2.92%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.84%) Unix
4 4 (0.84%) VMS
5 1 (0.21%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 198 (41.34%) CI/CD
2 184 (38.41%) Infrastructure as Code
3 171 (35.70%) DevOps
4 97 (20.25%) Cloud Security
5 76 (15.87%) Agile
6 74 (15.45%) Platform Engineering
7 70 (14.61%) Containerisation
8 69 (14.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 64 (13.36%) Migration
10 48 (10.02%) Continuous Improvement
10 48 (10.02%) Observability
11 43 (8.98%) DevSecOps
12 42 (8.77%) Infrastructure Automation
13 39 (8.14%) AI
14 38 (7.93%) Problem-Solving
15 36 (7.52%) Software Engineering
16 35 (7.31%) Microservices
17 34 (7.10%) Cybersecurity
18 31 (6.47%) Mentoring
19 26 (5.43%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 115 (24.01%) Python
2 68 (14.20%) PowerShell
3 40 (8.35%) SQL
4 34 (7.10%) Bash
5 28 (5.85%) Java
6 25 (5.22%) Bicep
7 14 (2.92%) TypeScript
8 13 (2.71%) C#
9 11 (2.30%) Go
10 6 (1.25%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.84%) BeanShell
11 4 (0.84%) Groovy
11 4 (0.84%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.42%) Ruby
13 1 (0.21%) C
13 1 (0.21%) Cypher
13 1 (0.21%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.21%) Perl
13 1 (0.21%) R
Qualifications
1 134 (27.97%) Security Cleared
2 111 (23.17%) SC Cleared
3 41 (8.56%) Azure Certification
4 29 (6.05%) AWS Certification
5 22 (4.59%) DV Cleared
6 19 (3.97%) Degree
7 15 (3.13%) Microsoft Certification
8 13 (2.71%) CISSP
9 12 (2.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 11 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
11 10 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
12 9 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
13 7 (1.46%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 7 (1.46%) CISM
14 6 (1.25%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 5 (1.04%) Master's Degree
15 5 (1.04%) TOGAF Certification
16 4 (0.84%) CCSP
17 3 (0.63%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
17 3 (0.63%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (2.71%) GDPR
2 12 (2.51%) NCSC
2 12 (2.51%) NIST
3 9 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 9 (1.88%) QA
4 6 (1.25%) Data Quality
4 6 (1.25%) PCI DSS
5 5 (1.04%) GRC
6 2 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
6 2 (0.42%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.42%) SLA
6 2 (0.42%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.21%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.21%) FedRAMP
7 1 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 61 (12.73%) Docker
2 25 (5.22%) Active Directory
3 14 (2.92%) Virtual Desktop
4 12 (2.51%) VMware NSX
5 11 (2.30%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (1.25%) Firmware
6 6 (1.25%) Hyper-V
7 5 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
7 5 (1.04%) vSphere
8 1 (0.21%) Squid
Systems Management
1 215 (44.89%) Terraform
2 121 (25.26%) Kubernetes
3 29 (6.05%) Prometheus
4 25 (5.22%) Grafana
5 24 (5.01%) Ansible
6 19 (3.97%) Istio
7 13 (2.71%) Argo
8 12 (2.51%) Microsoft Intune
9 11 (2.30%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (1.67%) vCenter Server
11 6 (1.25%) Packer
12 5 (1.04%) Progress Chef
12 5 (1.04%) Puppet
13 4 (0.84%) Kibana
13 4 (0.84%) logstash
13 4 (0.84%) Salt
14 2 (0.42%) Cilium
14 2 (0.42%) Consul
15 1 (0.21%) HAProxy
15 1 (0.21%) Podman
Vendors
1 92 (19.21%) Google
2 86 (17.95%) Microsoft
3 18 (3.76%) Oracle
4 13 (2.71%) Cisco
5 12 (2.51%) Dynatrace
6 11 (2.30%) Databricks
7 10 (2.09%) ServiceNow
7 10 (2.09%) VMware
8 9 (1.88%) Splunk
9 8 (1.67%) Juniper
10 7 (1.46%) SolarWinds
11 6 (1.25%) Salesforce
12 5 (1.04%) Broadcom
12 5 (1.04%) Citrix
12 5 (1.04%) Fortinet
12 5 (1.04%) PeopleSoft
12 5 (1.04%) Ping Identity
12 5 (1.04%) Rapid7
13 4 (0.84%) Palo Alto
13 4 (0.84%) Red Hat