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 10 July 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 217 314 322
Rank change year-on-year +97 +8 -52
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 662 261 279
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.26% 0.81% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.36% 0.88% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 430 193 193
10th Percentile £399 £400 £386
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £614 £575 £625
90th Percentile £688 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +2.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 3 3
10th Percentile £32.76 £32.50 -
25th Percentile £73.75 £36.25 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.00 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.11% +50.00% -
75th Percentile £81.25 £55.00 £32.50
90th Percentile £84.25 £59.50 -
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 48,674 29,733 40,149
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.88% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,515 18,978 25,840
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £418 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.40% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,263 1,368 2,770
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £12.88
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £16.79
Median hourly rate £43.50 £26.39 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.87% -29.64% -14.05%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.06 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.40 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +0.50%

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 10 July 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 10 July 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 10 July 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 +90 553 £525 +5.00% 212
London +58 300 £539 +2.62% 74
UK excluding London +27 299 £510 +2.00% 174
Work from Home +6 172 £539 +7.80% 99
North of England -30 82 £500 +11.11% 47
South East -17 75 £538 +7.50% 45
Scotland +25 57 £447 -14.86% 14
Midlands -24 46 £513 +7.89% 22
North West -19 40 £475 +14.87% 31
Yorkshire -17 35 £475 -2.56% 11
West Midlands -46 26 £525 - 11
East of England -14 22 £505 +60.32% 9
East Midlands -4 19 £450 -5.26% 11
South West -23 16 £550 -2.22% 31
North East -40 7 £525 +5.00% 5
Wales -11 3 - - 5

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

For the 6 months to 10 July 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.

1 305 (46.07%) Azure
2 297 (44.86%) Terraform
3 283 (42.75%) AWS
4 258 (38.97%) CI/CD
5 242 (36.56%) Infrastructure as Code
6 213 (32.18%) DevOps
7 174 (26.28%) Python
8 165 (24.92%) Security Cleared
9 151 (22.81%) Kubernetes
10 149 (22.51%) GCP
11 144 (21.75%) Cloud Security
12 135 (20.39%) Microsoft
13 129 (19.49%) SC Cleared
14 128 (19.34%) Platform Engineering
15 124 (18.73%) PowerShell
16 116 (17.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 106 (16.01%) Google
18 102 (15.41%) GitHub
19 95 (14.35%) Windows
20 92 (13.90%) Migration
21 87 (13.14%) Containerisation
22 83 (12.54%) AI
23 78 (11.78%) Agile
24 72 (10.88%) Docker
25 70 (10.57%) Firewall
26 68 (10.27%) Active Directory
26 68 (10.27%) Observability
27 67 (10.12%) Entra ID
28 66 (9.97%) Bash
28 66 (9.97%) DNS

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 (1.81%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (1.06%) Confluence
3 6 (0.91%) Apache
4 5 (0.76%) nginx
5 4 (0.60%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.45%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.45%) IIS
6 3 (0.45%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.30%) CloudStack
8 1 (0.15%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.15%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.15%) SAS
8 1 (0.15%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (0.15%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.30%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 305 (46.07%) Azure
2 283 (42.75%) AWS
3 149 (22.51%) GCP
4 102 (15.41%) GitHub
5 67 (10.12%) Entra ID
6 62 (9.37%) Serverless
7 61 (9.21%) GitHub Actions
8 48 (7.25%) Azure AKS
9 45 (6.80%) Amazon S3
9 45 (6.80%) AWS CloudFormation
10 43 (6.50%) Azure DevOps
11 41 (6.19%) IaaS
11 41 (6.19%) PaaS
12 39 (5.89%) AWS Lambda
13 36 (5.44%) Amazon EC2
13 36 (5.44%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 35 (5.29%) Amazon ECS
15 34 (5.14%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 33 (4.98%) Amazon EKS
17 29 (4.38%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 70 (10.57%) Firewall
2 66 (9.97%) DNS
3 36 (5.44%) VPN
4 27 (4.08%) Network Security
5 15 (2.27%) DHCP
5 15 (2.27%) WAN
6 14 (2.11%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.91%) Reverse Proxy
7 6 (0.91%) SD-WAN
8 5 (0.76%) BGP
8 5 (0.76%) Internet
8 5 (0.76%) SSL
8 5 (0.76%) VLAN
9 4 (0.60%) LAN
9 4 (0.60%) Software-Defined Networking
10 3 (0.45%) IPv4
10 3 (0.45%) OSPF
10 3 (0.45%) SAN
10 3 (0.45%) SMTP
10 3 (0.45%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.32%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.57%) Amazon RDS
3 14 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.96%) Amazon Athena
4 13 (1.96%) DynamoDB
5 7 (1.06%) BigQuery
6 6 (0.91%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (0.91%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.76%) Oracle Database
8 4 (0.60%) Amazon QuickSight
9 3 (0.45%) Big Data
9 3 (0.45%) Metadata
9 3 (0.45%) MySQL
9 3 (0.45%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.45%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.30%) Redis
11 1 (0.15%) InfluxDB
11 1 (0.15%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 52 (7.85%) Jenkins
2 45 (6.80%) GitLab
3 44 (6.65%) Git
4 17 (2.57%) JIRA
5 10 (1.51%) Artifactory
6 5 (0.76%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.60%) Claude Code
8 3 (0.45%) Selenium
8 3 (0.45%) Team Foundation Server
9 2 (0.30%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.30%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.30%) Liquibase
9 2 (0.30%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.15%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.15%) Chocolatey
10 1 (0.15%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.15%) Gatling
10 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.15%) sqlmap
10 1 (0.15%) TestRail
General
1 79 (11.93%) Finance
2 78 (11.78%) Social Skills
3 59 (8.91%) Public Sector
4 25 (3.78%) Banking
5 22 (3.32%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (1.81%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (1.36%) Investment Banking
8 6 (0.91%) Legal
9 5 (0.76%) Law
9 5 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
9 5 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (0.76%) Retail
10 4 (0.60%) Military
11 3 (0.45%) Corporate Banking
11 3 (0.45%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.45%) Local Government
11 3 (0.45%) Police
11 3 (0.45%) Retail Banking
12 2 (0.30%) International Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (3.78%) REST
2 14 (2.11%) Node.js
3 13 (1.96%) OAuth
3 13 (1.96%) OAuth2
4 10 (1.51%) ARM Templates
5 9 (1.36%) .NET
5 9 (1.36%) Kafka
5 9 (1.36%) React
5 9 (1.36%) Spring
5 9 (1.36%) Spring Boot
6 7 (1.06%) AWS CDK
6 7 (1.06%) Model Context Protocol
6 7 (1.06%) OpenID
7 6 (0.91%) YAML
8 5 (0.76%) Playwright
9 4 (0.60%) FastAPI
9 4 (0.60%) Jest
9 4 (0.60%) OpenTelemetry
9 4 (0.60%) PySpark
9 4 (0.60%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 122 (18.43%) Cloud Native
2 35 (5.29%) Hybrid Cloud
3 30 (4.53%) Security Posture
4 26 (3.93%) Public Cloud
5 24 (3.63%) Data Centre
5 24 (3.63%) Enterprise Cloud
6 23 (3.47%) Onboarding
7 15 (2.27%) Cloud Security Posture
7 15 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
7 15 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
8 13 (1.96%) Management Information System
9 9 (1.36%) Linux Command Line
9 9 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (1.21%) Product Ownership
11 7 (1.06%) Legacy Systems
12 5 (0.76%) PKI
12 5 (0.76%) Private Cloud
13 4 (0.60%) AI Agents
13 4 (0.60%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 95 (14.35%) Windows
2 58 (8.76%) Linux
3 51 (7.70%) Windows Server
4 21 (3.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (1.21%) Ubuntu
6 7 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (0.45%) CentOS
7 3 (0.45%) VMS
8 2 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.15%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 258 (38.97%) CI/CD
2 242 (36.56%) Infrastructure as Code
3 213 (32.18%) DevOps
4 144 (21.75%) Cloud Security
5 128 (19.34%) Platform Engineering
6 116 (17.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 92 (13.90%) Migration
8 87 (13.14%) Containerisation
9 83 (12.54%) AI
10 78 (11.78%) Agile
11 68 (10.27%) Observability
12 54 (8.16%) Problem-Solving
13 53 (8.01%) Technical Leadership
14 52 (7.85%) Infrastructure Automation
15 50 (7.55%) Software Engineering
16 48 (7.25%) Continuous Improvement
17 41 (6.19%) Cybersecurity
17 41 (6.19%) DevSecOps
18 39 (5.89%) Mentoring
19 38 (5.74%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 174 (26.28%) Python
2 124 (18.73%) PowerShell
3 66 (9.97%) Bash
4 55 (8.31%) SQL
5 48 (7.25%) Bicep
6 33 (4.98%) Java
7 16 (2.42%) C#
8 12 (1.81%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.51%) Go
9 10 (1.51%) TypeScript
10 7 (1.06%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.91%) Groovy
12 2 (0.30%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.30%) R
12 2 (0.30%) Ruby
13 1 (0.15%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.15%) Cypher
13 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.15%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.15%) Perl
Qualifications
1 165 (24.92%) Security Cleared
2 129 (19.49%) SC Cleared
3 44 (6.65%) DV Cleared
4 43 (6.50%) Azure Certification
5 38 (5.74%) AWS Certification
6 21 (3.17%) Degree
7 17 (2.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 15 (2.27%) CISSP
9 14 (2.11%) Microsoft Certification
10 13 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
11 9 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
12 8 (1.21%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 7 (1.06%) BPSS Clearance
13 7 (1.06%) CCNP
14 6 (0.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 6 (0.91%) MCSE
15 4 (0.60%) CCIE
15 4 (0.60%) CCSP
16 3 (0.45%) CISM
16 3 (0.45%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (2.11%) NIST
2 10 (1.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (1.51%) QA
3 9 (1.36%) GDPR
4 8 (1.21%) NCSC
5 7 (1.06%) Data Quality
6 6 (0.91%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.30%) SLA
9 1 (0.15%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.15%) GRC
9 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 72 (10.88%) Docker
2 68 (10.27%) Active Directory
3 28 (4.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 26 (3.93%) Virtual Machines
5 21 (3.17%) VMware ESXi
5 21 (3.17%) VMware NSX
6 16 (2.42%) vSphere
7 15 (2.27%) Virtual Desktop
8 12 (1.81%) Hyper-V
8 12 (1.81%) vCloud
9 7 (1.06%) Squid
10 4 (0.60%) Firmware
11 3 (0.45%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.45%) NFS
11 3 (0.45%) Postfix
12 2 (0.30%) Ceph
12 2 (0.30%) KVM
Systems Management
1 297 (44.86%) Terraform
2 151 (22.81%) Kubernetes
3 48 (7.25%) Ansible
4 26 (3.93%) Grafana
5 25 (3.78%) Prometheus
6 22 (3.32%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (2.72%) vCenter Server
8 16 (2.42%) Microsoft Intune
8 16 (2.42%) SCOM
9 14 (2.11%) Progress Chef
10 13 (1.96%) Puppet
11 9 (1.36%) Istio
11 9 (1.36%) Packer
12 7 (1.06%) Argo
13 6 (0.91%) Cilium
14 4 (0.60%) HAProxy
14 4 (0.60%) Salt
14 4 (0.60%) Suricata
14 4 (0.60%) VxRail
15 3 (0.45%) vRealize
Vendors
1 135 (20.39%) Microsoft
2 106 (16.01%) Google
3 48 (7.25%) VMware
4 26 (3.93%) Oracle
5 17 (2.57%) Zscaler
6 15 (2.27%) Red Hat
7 13 (1.96%) Palo Alto
7 13 (1.96%) ServiceNow
8 12 (1.81%) Okta
9 10 (1.51%) Cisco
10 9 (1.36%) Dynatrace
10 9 (1.36%) Salesforce
11 8 (1.21%) CrowdStrike
11 8 (1.21%) Databricks
12 7 (1.06%) Fortinet
12 7 (1.06%) OpenAI
12 7 (1.06%) Splunk
13 5 (0.76%) Citrix
13 5 (0.76%) Rapid7
13 5 (0.76%) SolarWinds