Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £513, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 December 2025.

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

6 months to
2 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 280 326 233
Rank change year-on-year +46 -93 +16
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 337 250 474
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.94% 0.70% 1.04%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.03% 0.75% 1.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 256 151 338
10th Percentile £400 £386 £413
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -3.51%
75th Percentile £588 £650 £638
90th Percentile £698 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £538
% change year-on-year +2.50% -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 2
10th Percentile £29.00 - £69.43
25th Percentile £29.25 - £72.31
Median hourly rate £46.25 - £79.25
75th Percentile £98.13 - £85.81
90th Percentile £110.00 - £88.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £88.50

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 32,727 33,118 42,499
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.97% 92.81% 93.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,756 20,117 28,647
10th Percentile £284 £300 £294
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £645
90th Percentile £724 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.14% -0.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,905 1,179 1,517
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.32 £15.21
25th Percentile £17.96 £20.63 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -20.45% +44.26%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.61 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -26.97% +78.00%

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025. 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 +13 282 £513 -6.82% 182
UK excluding London +43 175 £513 +2.50% 165
London +9 129 £513 -10.87% 50
Work from Home +19 92 £460 -16.45% 98
North of England -23 53 £500 +21.21% 39
South East +21 43 £500 -4.76% 57
Midlands -6 40 £575 +21.05% 23
West Midlands -7 32 £575 -11.54% 16
Yorkshire -15 29 £520 +26.06% 10
Scotland +24 26 £513 +2.50% 7
North West -16 22 £444 -1.39% 23
South West +1 14 £531 -7.61% 29
East of England -5 11 £438 +38.23% 9
East Midlands -14 8 £450 - 6
North East -5 2 £400 -27.27% 6
Wales - 1 £425 - 5

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

For the 6 months to 2 December 2025, 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.

1 166 (49.26%) AWS
2 149 (44.21%) DevOps
3 147 (43.62%) CI/CD
4 145 (43.03%) Terraform
5 137 (40.65%) Azure
6 134 (39.76%) Infrastructure as Code
7 118 (35.01%) Python
8 99 (29.38%) Security Cleared
9 94 (27.89%) Kubernetes
10 83 (24.63%) GCP
11 68 (20.18%) Microsoft
12 65 (19.29%) GitHub
13 64 (18.99%) Agile
14 63 (18.69%) Docker
14 63 (18.69%) SC Cleared
15 61 (18.10%) Containerisation
16 59 (17.51%) Cloud Security
17 54 (16.02%) Jenkins
18 46 (13.65%) Google
18 46 (13.65%) Linux
19 44 (13.06%) Serverless
20 42 (12.46%) Problem-Solving
21 41 (12.17%) PowerShell
21 41 (12.17%) REST
22 40 (11.87%) Ansible
22 40 (11.87%) GitLab
23 39 (11.57%) GitHub Actions
24 38 (11.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
24 38 (11.28%) Windows
25 37 (10.98%) Infrastructure Automation

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 (3.56%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.19%) Apache Spark
2 4 (1.19%) Confluence
2 4 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.89%) Apache
3 3 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.59%) NetWeaver
4 2 (0.59%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.30%) Apache Superset
5 1 (0.30%) CMS
5 1 (0.30%) Headless CMS
5 1 (0.30%) nginx
5 1 (0.30%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (0.59%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 4 (1.19%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 166 (49.26%) AWS
2 137 (40.65%) Azure
3 83 (24.63%) GCP
4 65 (19.29%) GitHub
5 44 (13.06%) Serverless
6 39 (11.57%) GitHub Actions
7 33 (9.79%) AWS CloudFormation
8 31 (9.20%) Entra ID
9 24 (7.12%) Amazon EKS
10 22 (6.53%) Amazon S3
10 22 (6.53%) Azure DevOps
10 22 (6.53%) Microsoft 365
11 20 (5.93%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 20 (5.93%) PaaS
12 18 (5.34%) AWS Lambda
12 18 (5.34%) IaaS
13 14 (4.15%) Amazon EC2
14 13 (3.86%) Azure Monitor
14 13 (3.86%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 12 (3.56%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 35 (10.39%) Firewall
2 24 (7.12%) VPN
3 21 (6.23%) Cisco Firepower
3 21 (6.23%) Cisco IOS
3 21 (6.23%) Cisco ISE
3 21 (6.23%) Junos
4 12 (3.56%) DNS
5 11 (3.26%) Network Security
6 6 (1.78%) WAN
7 5 (1.48%) NX-OS
8 4 (1.19%) TCP/IP
9 2 (0.59%) BGP
9 2 (0.59%) DHCP
9 2 (0.59%) LAN
9 2 (0.59%) MPLS
9 2 (0.59%) SAN
9 2 (0.59%) SD-WAN
9 2 (0.59%) Wi-Fi
10 1 (0.30%) SMTP
10 1 (0.30%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (9.50%) NoSQL
2 29 (8.61%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (2.08%) Elasticsearch
4 6 (1.78%) Amazon RDS
4 6 (1.78%) Azure SQL Database
4 6 (1.78%) Power BI
5 4 (1.19%) Big Data
5 4 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (1.19%) DynamoDB
5 4 (1.19%) SQL Server
6 3 (0.89%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.89%) Amazon Aurora
6 3 (0.89%) BigQuery
6 3 (0.89%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.89%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.59%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.59%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.30%) CockroachDB
8 1 (0.30%) KNIME
8 1 (0.30%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 54 (16.02%) Jenkins
2 40 (11.87%) GitLab
3 23 (6.82%) Git
4 16 (4.75%) JIRA
4 16 (4.75%) Liquibase
5 3 (0.89%) MLflow
6 2 (0.59%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.59%) CircleCI
6 2 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.59%) Spinnaker
7 1 (0.30%) Gemini Tracker
7 1 (0.30%) Postman
7 1 (0.30%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.30%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.30%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 74 (21.96%) Social Skills
2 68 (20.18%) Finance
3 35 (10.39%) Banking
4 23 (6.82%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (6.23%) Public Sector
6 13 (3.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (3.26%) Financial Institution
8 7 (2.08%) Aeronautics
9 6 (1.78%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.48%) Aviation
10 5 (1.48%) Local Government
10 5 (1.48%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.89%) Retail
11 3 (0.89%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.59%) Billing
12 2 (0.59%) Law
12 2 (0.59%) Military
12 2 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.30%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.30%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (12.17%) REST
2 25 (7.42%) Elastic Stack
3 21 (6.23%) RESTful
4 15 (4.45%) Node.js
5 12 (3.56%) ARM Templates
6 11 (3.26%) Kafka
7 8 (2.37%) OpenAPI
7 8 (2.37%) SAML
8 7 (2.08%) AWS CDK
8 7 (2.08%) Lambda Expressions
8 7 (2.08%) OpenID
8 7 (2.08%) SOAP
9 6 (1.78%) FastAPI
9 6 (1.78%) GraphQL
9 6 (1.78%) JSON
9 6 (1.78%) pytest
9 6 (1.78%) XSD
9 6 (1.78%) YAML
10 5 (1.48%) NestJS
10 5 (1.48%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 50 (14.84%) Cloud Native
2 31 (9.20%) Public Cloud
3 21 (6.23%) Distributed Systems
4 8 (2.37%) PKI
5 7 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (1.78%) Data Centre
6 6 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (1.78%) Security Posture
7 5 (1.48%) Cloud Security Posture
7 5 (1.48%) Genomics
8 4 (1.19%) Algorithms
8 4 (1.19%) Life Science
8 4 (1.19%) Product Ownership
9 3 (0.89%) AI Agents
9 3 (0.89%) Distributed Computing
9 3 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
10 2 (0.59%) Linux Command Line
10 2 (0.59%) Management Information System
11 1 (0.30%) Clustering
11 1 (0.30%) IVR
Operating Systems
1 46 (13.65%) Linux
2 38 (11.28%) Windows
3 23 (6.82%) Windows Server
4 11 (3.26%) Unix
5 4 (1.19%) VMS
6 1 (0.30%) Alpine Linux
6 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.30%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 149 (44.21%) DevOps
2 147 (43.62%) CI/CD
3 134 (39.76%) Infrastructure as Code
4 64 (18.99%) Agile
5 61 (18.10%) Containerisation
6 59 (17.51%) Cloud Security
7 42 (12.46%) Problem-Solving
8 38 (11.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 37 (10.98%) Infrastructure Automation
10 35 (10.39%) Migration
11 31 (9.20%) High Availability
12 30 (8.90%) Microservices
13 26 (7.72%) Cost Optimisation
13 26 (7.72%) Cybersecurity
14 25 (7.42%) AI
14 25 (7.42%) Software Engineering
15 24 (7.12%) Observability
15 24 (7.12%) Service Management
16 23 (6.82%) ITSM
17 22 (6.53%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 118 (35.01%) Python
2 41 (12.17%) PowerShell
3 34 (10.09%) SQL
4 32 (9.50%) Go
5 30 (8.90%) Bash
6 29 (8.61%) Java
7 15 (4.45%) Bicep
8 11 (3.26%) Shell Script
8 11 (3.26%) TypeScript
9 10 (2.97%) Perl
10 9 (2.67%) JavaScript
11 5 (1.48%) C#
12 4 (1.19%) BeanShell
13 2 (0.59%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.59%) Ruby
13 2 (0.59%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.59%) VB
14 1 (0.30%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.30%) C
14 1 (0.30%) Korn
Qualifications
1 99 (29.38%) Security Cleared
2 63 (18.69%) SC Cleared
3 35 (10.39%) DV Cleared
4 33 (9.79%) AWS Certification
4 33 (9.79%) Azure Certification
5 31 (9.20%) Degree
6 18 (5.34%) Computer Science Degree
7 17 (5.04%) Master's Degree
8 12 (3.56%) Microsoft Certification
9 10 (2.97%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 6 (1.78%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 5 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.48%) CISSP
12 4 (1.19%) AWS Certified Developer
12 4 (1.19%) CISM
13 3 (0.89%) CCSP
14 2 (0.59%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 2 (0.59%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
15 1 (0.30%) DBS Check
15 1 (0.30%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (3.56%) NIST
2 11 (3.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 9 (2.67%) QA
4 6 (1.78%) PCI DSS
5 5 (1.48%) GDPR
5 5 (1.48%) NCSC
6 3 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
6 3 (0.89%) GRC
6 3 (0.89%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.30%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.30%) FedRAMP
7 1 (0.30%) JSP 440
7 1 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 63 (18.69%) Docker
2 34 (10.09%) Active Directory
3 21 (6.23%) VMware NSX
4 6 (1.78%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.48%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (1.19%) Firmware
6 4 (1.19%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.59%) vSphere
8 1 (0.30%) iptables
8 1 (0.30%) KVM
8 1 (0.30%) Squid
Systems Management
1 145 (43.03%) Terraform
2 94 (27.89%) Kubernetes
3 40 (11.87%) Ansible
4 32 (9.50%) Grafana
5 30 (8.90%) Prometheus
6 21 (6.23%) vCenter Server
7 7 (2.08%) Argo
7 7 (2.08%) Istio
7 7 (2.08%) Kibana
7 7 (2.08%) logstash
7 7 (2.08%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (1.78%) Puppet
8 6 (1.78%) Single Sign-On
9 3 (0.89%) Podman
9 3 (0.89%) Proxmox
9 3 (0.89%) QRadar
10 2 (0.59%) FortiGate
10 2 (0.59%) Packer
11 1 (0.30%) Nessus
11 1 (0.30%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 68 (20.18%) Microsoft
2 46 (13.65%) Google
3 25 (7.42%) Cisco
4 22 (6.53%) Juniper
4 22 (6.53%) Splunk
5 21 (6.23%) SolarWinds
6 11 (3.26%) Zscaler
7 10 (2.97%) Oracle
8 9 (2.67%) ServiceNow
9 7 (2.08%) Databricks
9 7 (2.08%) Palo Alto
9 7 (2.08%) VMware
10 6 (1.78%) Dynatrace
10 6 (1.78%) MuleSoft
11 5 (1.48%) Broadcom
11 5 (1.48%) Darktrace
11 5 (1.48%) Ping Identity
12 3 (0.89%) Atlassian
12 3 (0.89%) Axway
12 3 (0.89%) Cloudera