Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 May 2026.

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

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 226 303 329
Rank change year-on-year +77 +26 -67
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 518 235 273
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 0.80% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.17% 0.87% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 339 184 184
10th Percentile £400 £400 £400
25th Percentile £462 £449 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -0.72%
75th Percentile £616 £594 £613
90th Percentile £688 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £522 £510 £510
% change year-on-year +2.38% -0.03% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 3
10th Percentile £25.13 - -
25th Percentile £31.66 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £62.25 - £30.00
75th Percentile £75.25 - £32.50
90th Percentile £76.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £76.00 - £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 44,407 27,141 39,490
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.29% 92.39% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,193 17,684 25,687
10th Percentile £321 £293 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -3.23%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,901 1,046 2,662
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.82
25th Percentile £20.27 £18.15 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.69 £28.17 £36.58
Median % change year-on-year +51.55% -22.99% -18.72%
75th Percentile £66.25 £61.44 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.13 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.90% -32.19% -5.88%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +48 430 £525 +5.00% 174
London +53 257 £525 +5.00% 58
UK excluding London -1 202 £522 +2.38% 137
Work from Home +15 130 £525 +5.00% 72
North of England -33 55 £500 - 27
South East -35 49 £522 -5.09% 42
Scotland +22 38 £451 -14.19% 12
North West -19 29 £524 +30.29% 15
East of England -10 23 £510 +3.55% 7
Yorkshire -37 22 £481 +13.24% 9
South West -19 19 £550 -4.35% 32
Midlands -62 19 £675 +35.00% 16
West Midlands -51 16 £675 +14.89% 9
North East -25 4 £525 -4.55% 3
East Midlands -29 3 - - 7

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

For the 6 months to 17 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.

1 233 (44.98%) Azure
2 232 (44.79%) Terraform
3 223 (43.05%) AWS
4 218 (42.08%) CI/CD
5 197 (38.03%) Infrastructure as Code
6 185 (35.71%) DevOps
7 140 (27.03%) Security Cleared
8 124 (23.94%) Python
9 123 (23.75%) GCP
10 120 (23.17%) Kubernetes
11 114 (22.01%) SC Cleared
12 102 (19.69%) Cloud Security
13 100 (19.31%) GitHub
14 92 (17.76%) Google
15 88 (16.99%) Microsoft
16 81 (15.64%) Platform Engineering
17 80 (15.44%) PowerShell
18 77 (14.86%) Migration
19 75 (14.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
20 66 (12.74%) Agile
21 64 (12.36%) Containerisation
22 61 (11.78%) GitHub Actions
23 54 (10.42%) AI
23 54 (10.42%) Docker
24 52 (10.04%) Firewall
24 52 (10.04%) Serverless
25 46 (8.88%) Problem-Solving
25 46 (8.88%) Windows
26 45 (8.69%) Jenkins
27 44 (8.49%) Bash

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 (1.35%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (0.97%) Apache Spark
2 5 (0.97%) Confluence
3 3 (0.58%) Apache
4 2 (0.39%) nginx
5 1 (0.19%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.19%) SAS
5 1 (0.19%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.19%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.39%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.19%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 233 (44.98%) Azure
2 223 (43.05%) AWS
3 123 (23.75%) GCP
4 100 (19.31%) GitHub
5 61 (11.78%) GitHub Actions
6 52 (10.04%) Serverless
7 42 (8.11%) Azure DevOps
8 40 (7.72%) AWS CloudFormation
8 40 (7.72%) Entra ID
9 38 (7.34%) Azure AKS
9 38 (7.34%) PaaS
10 35 (6.76%) IaaS
11 34 (6.56%) Amazon S3
12 32 (6.18%) Amazon EKS
12 32 (6.18%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 29 (5.60%) AWS Lambda
14 26 (5.02%) Amazon ECS
15 25 (4.83%) Amazon EC2
15 25 (4.83%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 22 (4.25%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 52 (10.04%) Firewall
2 29 (5.60%) DNS
3 23 (4.44%) Network Security
4 22 (4.25%) VPN
5 6 (1.16%) Reverse Proxy
5 6 (1.16%) TCP/IP
6 5 (0.97%) DHCP
6 5 (0.97%) WAN
7 4 (0.77%) Software-Defined Networking
8 3 (0.58%) BGP
8 3 (0.58%) SD-WAN
8 3 (0.58%) SMTP
9 2 (0.39%) Cisco Firepower
9 2 (0.39%) DKIM
9 2 (0.39%) Kerberos
9 2 (0.39%) NGFW
9 2 (0.39%) SSL
9 2 (0.39%) Unified Communications
9 2 (0.39%) VLAN
10 1 (0.19%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.90%) Amazon Athena
2 12 (2.32%) BigQuery
3 11 (2.12%) DynamoDB
4 8 (1.54%) SQL Server
5 7 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
6 6 (1.16%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (1.16%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.16%) Oracle Database
6 6 (1.16%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (0.97%) Data Lake
8 4 (0.77%) Amazon QuickSight
9 3 (0.58%) Big Data
9 3 (0.58%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (0.58%) Metadata
9 3 (0.58%) NoSQL
9 3 (0.58%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.58%) Power BI
9 3 (0.58%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.39%) OLTP
10 2 (0.39%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 45 (8.69%) Jenkins
2 43 (8.30%) GitLab
3 42 (8.11%) Git
4 10 (1.93%) Artifactory
5 9 (1.74%) JIRA
6 3 (0.58%) 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 (0.19%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.19%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.19%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.19%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.19%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.19%) RStudio
8 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.19%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.19%) Travis CI
General
1 67 (12.93%) Social Skills
2 53 (10.23%) Finance
3 44 (8.49%) Public Sector
4 20 (3.86%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (3.09%) Banking
6 13 (2.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.74%) Retail
9 6 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (0.97%) Legal
10 5 (0.97%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.77%) Investment Banking
11 4 (0.77%) Marketing
11 4 (0.77%) Military
11 4 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.58%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.58%) Police
13 2 (0.39%) Billing
13 2 (0.39%) Law
13 2 (0.39%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (3.47%) REST
2 16 (3.09%) Node.js
3 13 (2.51%) React
3 13 (2.51%) Spring
4 12 (2.32%) Spring Boot
5 11 (2.12%) Kafka
6 10 (1.93%) .NET
6 10 (1.93%) OAuth
6 10 (1.93%) OpenTelemetry
7 9 (1.74%) OAuth2
8 8 (1.54%) OpenID
8 8 (1.54%) Oracle Fusion
9 6 (1.16%) AngularJS
9 6 (1.16%) ARM Templates
9 6 (1.16%) LangChain
9 6 (1.16%) Playwright
10 5 (0.97%) OpenAPI
10 5 (0.97%) PySpark
10 5 (0.97%) Web Services
11 4 (0.77%) Express.js
Miscellaneous
1 89 (17.18%) Cloud Native
2 30 (5.79%) Public Cloud
3 24 (4.63%) Hybrid Cloud
4 19 (3.67%) Data Centre
5 12 (2.32%) Enterprise Cloud
5 12 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (2.12%) Onboarding
7 10 (1.93%) Product Ownership
7 10 (1.93%) Security Posture
8 7 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.16%) Cyber Threat
9 6 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
10 4 (0.77%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (0.77%) Management Information System
10 4 (0.77%) Virtual Team
11 3 (0.58%) Cloud Security Posture
11 3 (0.58%) CMDB
11 3 (0.58%) PKI
11 3 (0.58%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 46 (8.88%) Windows
2 28 (5.41%) Linux
3 25 (4.83%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.39%) Unix
5 2 (0.39%) VMS
6 1 (0.19%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 218 (42.08%) CI/CD
2 197 (38.03%) Infrastructure as Code
3 185 (35.71%) DevOps
4 102 (19.69%) Cloud Security
5 81 (15.64%) Platform Engineering
6 77 (14.86%) Migration
7 75 (14.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 66 (12.74%) Agile
9 64 (12.36%) Containerisation
10 54 (10.42%) AI
11 46 (8.88%) Problem-Solving
12 44 (8.49%) Observability
13 43 (8.30%) Continuous Improvement
14 42 (8.11%) DevSecOps
15 40 (7.72%) Infrastructure Automation
16 39 (7.53%) Software Engineering
17 37 (7.14%) Cybersecurity
18 33 (6.37%) Mentoring
19 29 (5.60%) Technical Leadership
20 28 (5.41%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 124 (23.94%) Python
2 80 (15.44%) PowerShell
3 44 (8.49%) Bash
4 43 (8.30%) SQL
5 33 (6.37%) Bicep
6 26 (5.02%) Java
7 16 (3.09%) C#
8 10 (1.93%) TypeScript
9 9 (1.74%) Go
9 9 (1.74%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.77%) Groovy
11 2 (0.39%) BeanShell
11 2 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
11 2 (0.39%) Ruby
11 2 (0.39%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.19%) Cypher
12 1 (0.19%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.19%) R
Qualifications
1 140 (27.03%) Security Cleared
2 114 (22.01%) SC Cleared
3 38 (7.34%) Azure Certification
4 21 (4.05%) AWS Certification
5 19 (3.67%) DV Cleared
6 14 (2.70%) Degree
6 14 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
7 12 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
7 12 (2.32%) CISSP
8 11 (2.12%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 10 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.54%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (1.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 5 (0.97%) CCSP
12 5 (0.97%) CISM
12 5 (0.97%) TOGAF Certification
13 4 (0.77%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 4 (0.77%) MCSE
14 3 (0.58%) Master's Degree
14 3 (0.58%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.32%) GDPR
1 12 (2.32%) NIST
2 11 (2.12%) NCSC
2 11 (2.12%) QA
3 9 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (1.35%) PCI DSS
5 6 (1.16%) Data Quality
6 5 (0.97%) GRC
7 2 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.39%) SLA
7 2 (0.39%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.19%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.19%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.19%) WCAG
System Software
1 54 (10.42%) Docker
2 31 (5.98%) Active Directory
3 17 (3.28%) Virtual Desktop
4 13 (2.51%) Virtual Machines
4 13 (2.51%) VMware NSX
5 12 (2.32%) VMware Infrastructure
6 9 (1.74%) vSphere
7 7 (1.35%) Hyper-V
8 6 (1.16%) Squid
8 6 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.97%) vCloud
10 3 (0.58%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 232 (44.79%) Terraform
2 120 (23.17%) Kubernetes
3 23 (4.44%) Grafana
4 20 (3.86%) Ansible
4 20 (3.86%) Prometheus
5 16 (3.09%) Istio
6 15 (2.90%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (2.51%) Argo
7 13 (2.51%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.35%) vCenter Server
9 6 (1.16%) Packer
10 5 (0.97%) Cilium
10 5 (0.97%) Progress Chef
10 5 (0.97%) Puppet
10 5 (0.97%) SCOM
11 4 (0.77%) Salt
11 4 (0.77%) Suricata
12 1 (0.19%) Consul
12 1 (0.19%) PaperCut
12 1 (0.19%) Podman
Vendors
1 92 (17.76%) Google
2 88 (16.99%) Microsoft
3 24 (4.63%) Oracle
4 23 (4.44%) VMware
5 11 (2.12%) Databricks
6 10 (1.93%) Dynatrace
6 10 (1.93%) Palo Alto
6 10 (1.93%) Zscaler
7 8 (1.54%) ServiceNow
8 7 (1.35%) Salesforce
9 6 (1.16%) Cisco
10 5 (0.97%) Citrix
10 5 (0.97%) Fortinet
10 5 (0.97%) PeopleSoft
10 5 (0.97%) Rapid7
10 5 (0.97%) Splunk
11 4 (0.77%) Okta
11 4 (0.77%) Red Hat
11 4 (0.77%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
12 3 (0.58%) Tenable