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 6 September 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 197 326 336
Rank change year-on-year +129 +10 -77
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 766 247 247
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.42% 0.76% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.53% 0.83% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 504 179 154
10th Percentile £402 £400 £390
25th Percentile £450 £425 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £590 £568 £625
90th Percentile £675 £634 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
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 49,947 29,816 35,657
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.42% 91.16% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,790 18,788 22,381
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 3,636 1,547 1,786
10th Percentile £14.85 £13.63 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.48 £17.00 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.91 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £70.16 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +12.50%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +111 663 £525 +5.00% 646
UK excluding London +102 421 £510 +2.00% 333
London +61 297 £525 +2.44% 388
Work from Home +31 187 £540 +9.37% 218
South East +14 128 £538 +7.50% 51
North of England +13 127 £513 +13.89% 96
North West +4 78 £525 +20.00% 53
Midlands +2 68 £500 - 38
Scotland +16 57 £447 -10.60% 53
Yorkshire -4 42 £460 -8.00% 32
East Midlands +10 35 £475 - 21
West Midlands -15 32 £525 -3.67% 17
East of England -6 19 £488 +0.52% 25
South West -30 16 £575 +4.55% 48
Wales -11 7 - - 3
North East -37 7 £525 +14.13% 11

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

For the 6 months to 6 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.

1 361 (47.13%) Azure
2 309 (40.34%) Terraform
3 267 (34.86%) AWS
3 267 (34.86%) Infrastructure as Code
4 260 (33.94%) CI/CD
5 208 (27.15%) DevOps
6 199 (25.98%) Kubernetes
7 197 (25.72%) Security Cleared
8 190 (24.80%) Python
9 175 (22.85%) Cloud Security
10 173 (22.58%) Microsoft
11 168 (21.93%) GCP
12 156 (20.37%) PowerShell
13 155 (20.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 151 (19.71%) Platform Engineering
15 142 (18.54%) SC Cleared
16 114 (14.88%) Google
16 114 (14.88%) Windows
17 106 (13.84%) Entra ID
18 101 (13.19%) AI
19 97 (12.66%) Active Directory
20 90 (11.75%) Migration
21 87 (11.36%) Agile
21 87 (11.36%) Containerisation
22 84 (10.97%) GitHub
23 82 (10.70%) Bash
23 82 (10.70%) DNS
23 82 (10.70%) Observability
24 81 (10.57%) Firewall
25 79 (10.31%) 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 13 (1.70%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (1.44%) Apache
3 8 (1.04%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (0.78%) Confluence
4 6 (0.78%) 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 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 361 (47.13%) Azure
2 267 (34.86%) AWS
3 168 (21.93%) GCP
4 106 (13.84%) Entra ID
5 84 (10.97%) GitHub
6 56 (7.31%) Azure DevOps
7 54 (7.05%) Serverless
8 51 (6.66%) GitHub Actions
9 47 (6.14%) AWS CloudFormation
9 47 (6.14%) IaaS
10 41 (5.35%) AWS Lambda
11 39 (5.09%) Azure AKS
12 38 (4.96%) Azure Monitor
12 38 (4.96%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 34 (4.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 34 (4.44%) Amazon EKS
13 34 (4.44%) Microsoft 365
13 34 (4.44%) PaaS
14 32 (4.18%) Amazon EC2
14 32 (4.18%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 82 (10.70%) DNS
2 81 (10.57%) Firewall
3 40 (5.22%) Network Security
4 37 (4.83%) VPN
5 19 (2.48%) DHCP
6 17 (2.22%) WAN
7 15 (1.96%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.57%) Internet
9 7 (0.91%) VLAN
10 6 (0.78%) SD-WAN
10 6 (0.78%) VSAN
11 5 (0.65%) LAN
11 5 (0.65%) SSL
12 4 (0.52%) Wireless
13 3 (0.39%) BGP
13 3 (0.39%) IPv4
13 3 (0.39%) Kerberos
13 3 (0.39%) OSPF
13 3 (0.39%) SAN
13 3 (0.39%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (3.26%) SQL Server
2 20 (2.61%) Amazon RDS
3 18 (2.35%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (1.44%) BigQuery
5 9 (1.17%) Data Lake
6 8 (1.04%) Oracle Exadata
7 7 (0.91%) DynamoDB
8 5 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
8 5 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (0.65%) NoSQL
8 5 (0.65%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.39%) Flink
9 3 (0.39%) Looker
9 3 (0.39%) Metadata
9 3 (0.39%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.39%) MySQL
9 3 (0.39%) Oracle Database 12c
10 2 (0.26%) Amazon QuickSight
10 2 (0.26%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.26%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 55 (7.18%) GitLab
2 48 (6.27%) Jenkins
3 40 (5.22%) Git
4 18 (2.35%) JIRA
5 8 (1.04%) Artifactory
6 7 (0.91%) Claude Code
7 5 (0.65%) 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%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.13%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.13%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 94 (12.27%) Finance
2 77 (10.05%) Social Skills
3 70 (9.14%) Public Sector
4 30 (3.92%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (3.39%) Banking
6 10 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (1.04%) Manufacturing
8 7 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (0.91%) Investment Banking
9 5 (0.65%) Law
9 5 (0.65%) Legal
9 5 (0.65%) Local Government
10 4 (0.52%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.39%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.39%) Front Office
11 3 (0.39%) Italian Language
11 3 (0.39%) Marketing
11 3 (0.39%) Military
11 3 (0.39%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.39%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (40.34%) Terraform
2 24 (3.13%) REST
3 16 (2.09%) ARM Templates
4 13 (1.70%) Kafka
5 11 (1.44%) Spring
5 11 (1.44%) Spring Boot
6 9 (1.17%) Node.js
6 9 (1.17%) OAuth
6 9 (1.17%) OAuth2
7 8 (1.04%) AWS CDK
7 8 (1.04%) React
7 8 (1.04%) YAML
8 7 (0.91%) .NET
8 7 (0.91%) Keycloak
9 6 (0.78%) FastAPI
9 6 (0.78%) Flask
10 5 (0.65%) Azure Blueprints
11 4 (0.52%) Hugging Face
11 4 (0.52%) Model Context Protocol
11 4 (0.52%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 122 (15.93%) Cloud Native
2 58 (7.57%) Security Posture
3 44 (5.74%) Enterprise Cloud
4 36 (4.70%) Hybrid Cloud
5 31 (4.05%) Onboarding
6 30 (3.92%) Cloud Security Posture
7 23 (3.00%) Enterprise Software
8 21 (2.74%) Management Information System
9 20 (2.61%) Distributed Systems
10 18 (2.35%) Data Centre
11 16 (2.09%) Public Cloud
12 12 (1.57%) Private Cloud
12 12 (1.57%) Product Ownership
13 11 (1.44%) Linux Command Line
14 9 (1.17%) PKI
15 8 (1.04%) AI Agents
15 8 (1.04%) Data Protection Act
16 7 (0.91%) Legacy Systems
17 5 (0.65%) Distributed Architecture
18 4 (0.52%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 114 (14.88%) Windows
2 76 (9.92%) Linux
3 59 (7.70%) Windows Server
4 31 (4.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (1.70%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.04%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.52%) VMS
8 3 (0.39%) CentOS
9 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 267 (34.86%) Infrastructure as Code
2 260 (33.94%) CI/CD
3 208 (27.15%) DevOps
4 175 (22.85%) Cloud Security
5 155 (20.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 151 (19.71%) Platform Engineering
7 101 (13.19%) AI
8 90 (11.75%) Migration
9 87 (11.36%) Agile
9 87 (11.36%) Containerisation
10 82 (10.70%) Observability
11 64 (8.36%) Technical Leadership
12 59 (7.70%) Software Engineering
13 58 (7.57%) Continuous Improvement
13 58 (7.57%) DevSecOps
14 57 (7.44%) Infrastructure Automation
15 54 (7.05%) Cybersecurity
15 54 (7.05%) Problem-Solving
16 51 (6.66%) Deployment Automation
17 49 (6.40%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 190 (24.80%) Python
2 156 (20.37%) PowerShell
3 82 (10.70%) Bash
4 74 (9.66%) Bicep
5 60 (7.83%) SQL
6 38 (4.96%) Java
7 16 (2.09%) Shell Script
8 15 (1.96%) C#
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%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.13%) R
14 1 (0.13%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 197 (25.72%) Security Cleared
2 142 (18.54%) SC Cleared
3 70 (9.14%) DV Cleared
4 45 (5.87%) Azure Certification
5 44 (5.74%) AWS Certification
6 32 (4.18%) Degree
7 20 (2.61%) Microsoft Certification
8 18 (2.35%) CISSP
9 13 (1.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 9 (1.17%) Cisco Certification
11 8 (1.04%) MCSE
12 7 (0.91%) BPSS Clearance
12 7 (0.91%) CCNP
12 7 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
13 6 (0.78%) CISM
14 5 (0.65%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 5 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 4 (0.52%) CCIE
16 3 (0.39%) CEH
17 2 (0.26%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 13 (1.70%) Data Quality
3 12 (1.57%) NIST
4 10 (1.31%) NCSC
4 10 (1.31%) QA
5 7 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (0.65%) GDPR
7 3 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 3 (0.39%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.39%) SLA
8 2 (0.26%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
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 97 (12.66%) Active Directory
2 79 (10.31%) Docker
3 48 (6.27%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (4.18%) Virtual Machines
4 32 (4.18%) VMware ESXi
5 27 (3.52%) VMware NSX
6 21 (2.74%) Virtual Desktop
7 20 (2.61%) vSphere
8 15 (1.96%) vCloud
9 12 (1.57%) Hyper-V
10 7 (0.91%) 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
1 199 (25.98%) Kubernetes
2 51 (6.66%) Ansible
3 29 (3.79%) vCenter Server
4 25 (3.26%) SCOM
5 23 (3.00%) Microsoft Intune
6 21 (2.74%) Grafana
7 19 (2.48%) Progress Chef
7 19 (2.48%) Prometheus
8 16 (2.09%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (1.83%) Puppet
10 11 (1.44%) Istio
11 7 (0.91%) Cilium
12 6 (0.78%) Argo
12 6 (0.78%) Packer
13 5 (0.65%) VxRail
14 4 (0.52%) Suricata
15 3 (0.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 3 (0.39%) HAProxy
15 3 (0.39%) Karpenter
15 3 (0.39%) vRealize
Vendors
1 173 (22.58%) Microsoft
2 114 (14.88%) Google
3 73 (9.53%) VMware
4 34 (4.44%) Oracle
5 22 (2.87%) Databricks
6 19 (2.48%) Red Hat
7 17 (2.22%) Okta
8 16 (2.09%) Zscaler
9 13 (1.70%) Palo Alto
10 12 (1.57%) OpenAI
10 12 (1.57%) ServiceNow
10 12 (1.57%) Splunk
11 11 (1.44%) Broadcom
11 11 (1.44%) SolarWinds
12 9 (1.17%) Cisco
12 9 (1.17%) CrowdStrike
12 9 (1.17%) Salesforce
13 8 (1.04%) BeyondTrust
13 8 (1.04%) Dynatrace
13 8 (1.04%) New Relic