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 12 June 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 221 304 330
Rank change year-on-year +83 +26 -57
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 594 235 282
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.19% 0.80% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.29% 0.86% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 397 179 193
10th Percentile £400 £400 £400
25th Percentile £462 £442 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £625 £575 £625
90th Percentile £688 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £500 £510
% change year-on-year +4.00% -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 1 3
10th Percentile £38.89 - -
25th Percentile £71.69 £42.50 £27.50
Median hourly rate £77.25 £45.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.67% +50.00% -41.18%
75th Percentile £81.25 £47.50 £32.50
90th Percentile £85.00 - -
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 46,156 27,173 40,538
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 92.32% 92.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,087 17,480 26,089
10th Percentile £325 £289 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.68% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,077 1,137 2,938
10th Percentile £15.19 £13.94 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.79 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.00 £27.64 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.57% -26.29% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £61.71
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -4.76%

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 12 June 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 12 June 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 12 June 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 +78 497 £525 +5.00% 135
London +75 295 £544 +8.75% 47
UK excluding London +32 234 £520 +4.00% 103
Work from Home -3 150 £540 +8.00% 75
North of England -33 65 £505 +9.19% 27
South East -43 59 £538 +3.66% 36
Scotland +22 46 £451 -14.19% 3
North West -14 32 £500 +20.92% 21
Midlands -48 28 £525 +5.00% 8
Yorkshire -29 26 £481 -3.75% 6
West Midlands -41 23 £525 - 7
East of England -7 22 £505 +2.54% 5
South West -14 15 £550 -2.22% 25
North East -36 7 £525 +5.00%
East Midlands -24 5 £413 -13.16% 1

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

For the 6 months to 12 June 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.

1 273 (45.96%) Azure
2 271 (45.62%) Terraform
3 261 (43.94%) AWS
4 244 (41.08%) CI/CD
5 226 (38.05%) Infrastructure as Code
6 201 (33.84%) DevOps
7 148 (24.92%) Python
8 145 (24.41%) Security Cleared
9 140 (23.57%) Kubernetes
10 132 (22.22%) GCP
11 124 (20.88%) Cloud Security
12 116 (19.53%) SC Cleared
13 111 (18.69%) Microsoft
14 110 (18.52%) Platform Engineering
15 108 (18.18%) GitHub
16 97 (16.33%) Google
17 96 (16.16%) PowerShell
18 95 (15.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
19 87 (14.65%) Migration
20 75 (12.63%) Containerisation
21 73 (12.29%) GitHub Actions
21 73 (12.29%) Windows
22 69 (11.62%) Agile
22 69 (11.62%) AI
23 64 (10.77%) Firewall
24 63 (10.61%) Docker
25 61 (10.27%) Serverless
26 59 (9.93%) Observability
27 58 (9.76%) Bash
28 57 (9.60%) Problem-Solving

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 (1.18%) Confluence
1 7 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (1.01%) Apache
3 5 (0.84%) nginx
4 3 (0.51%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.51%) IIS
4 3 (0.51%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.51%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.34%) CloudStack
6 1 (0.17%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.17%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.17%) SAS
6 1 (0.17%) Traefik
Business Applications
1 1 (0.17%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 273 (45.96%) Azure
2 261 (43.94%) AWS
3 132 (22.22%) GCP
4 108 (18.18%) GitHub
5 73 (12.29%) GitHub Actions
6 61 (10.27%) Serverless
7 52 (8.75%) Entra ID
8 46 (7.74%) Azure DevOps
9 43 (7.24%) AWS CloudFormation
10 41 (6.90%) Azure AKS
11 39 (6.57%) Amazon S3
11 39 (6.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 38 (6.40%) IaaS
12 38 (6.40%) PaaS
13 37 (6.23%) AWS Lambda
14 35 (5.89%) Amazon EKS
15 32 (5.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 30 (5.05%) Amazon ECS
17 29 (4.88%) Amazon EC2
18 23 (3.87%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 64 (10.77%) Firewall
2 46 (7.74%) DNS
3 27 (4.55%) Network Security
3 27 (4.55%) VPN
4 9 (1.52%) DHCP
4 9 (1.52%) WAN
5 8 (1.35%) TCP/IP
6 5 (0.84%) Reverse Proxy
6 5 (0.84%) SSL
7 4 (0.67%) SD-WAN
7 4 (0.67%) Software-Defined Networking
7 4 (0.67%) VLAN
8 3 (0.51%) BGP
8 3 (0.51%) Internet
8 3 (0.51%) SMTP
9 2 (0.34%) DKIM
9 2 (0.34%) IPv4
9 2 (0.34%) Kerberos
9 2 (0.34%) SAN
9 2 (0.34%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.53%) SQL Server
2 13 (2.19%) Amazon Athena
2 13 (2.19%) DynamoDB
3 11 (1.85%) BigQuery
4 10 (1.68%) Amazon RDS
5 8 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.84%) Oracle Database
8 4 (0.67%) Amazon QuickSight
9 3 (0.51%) Big Data
9 3 (0.51%) Metadata
9 3 (0.51%) MySQL
9 3 (0.51%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (0.51%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.34%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.34%) Redis
10 2 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 1 (0.17%) Delta Lake
11 1 (0.17%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 53 (8.92%) Jenkins
2 51 (8.59%) GitLab
3 41 (6.90%) Git
4 14 (2.36%) JIRA
5 10 (1.68%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.51%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.51%) Selenium
6 3 (0.51%) Team Foundation Server
7 2 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.34%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.34%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.34%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.34%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.17%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.17%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.17%) Gatling
8 1 (0.17%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.17%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.17%) TestRail
8 1 (0.17%) Travis CI
General
1 79 (13.30%) Social Skills
2 64 (10.77%) Finance
3 45 (7.58%) Public Sector
4 24 (4.04%) Banking
5 23 (3.87%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 9 (1.52%) Retail
8 7 (1.18%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.01%) Legal
9 6 (1.01%) Telecoms
10 5 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.67%) Law
11 4 (0.67%) Local Government
11 4 (0.67%) Marketing
11 4 (0.67%) Military
12 3 (0.51%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.51%) Police
13 2 (0.34%) Billing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (3.37%) REST
2 14 (2.36%) Node.js
2 14 (2.36%) React
2 14 (2.36%) Spring
2 14 (2.36%) Spring Boot
3 12 (2.02%) OAuth
3 12 (2.02%) OAuth2
4 11 (1.85%) Kafka
5 9 (1.52%) .NET
5 9 (1.52%) OpenTelemetry
6 7 (1.18%) ARM Templates
6 7 (1.18%) OpenID
7 6 (1.01%) AngularJS
7 6 (1.01%) LangChain
7 6 (1.01%) Model Context Protocol
8 5 (0.84%) AWS CDK
8 5 (0.84%) Oracle Fusion
8 5 (0.84%) Playwright
8 5 (0.84%) YAML
9 4 (0.67%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 114 (19.19%) Cloud Native
2 28 (4.71%) Hybrid Cloud
2 28 (4.71%) Public Cloud
3 23 (3.87%) Data Centre
4 21 (3.54%) Security Posture
5 17 (2.86%) Enterprise Cloud
6 16 (2.69%) Onboarding
7 14 (2.36%) Enterprise Software
8 13 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
9 11 (1.85%) Product Ownership
10 10 (1.68%) Management Information System
11 9 (1.52%) Cloud Security Posture
12 8 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
12 8 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
13 6 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
14 5 (0.84%) Legacy Systems
14 5 (0.84%) Private Cloud
15 4 (0.67%) AI Agents
15 4 (0.67%) PKI
15 4 (0.67%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 73 (12.29%) Windows
2 40 (6.73%) Linux
3 39 (6.57%) Windows Server
4 12 (2.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.84%) Ubuntu
6 4 (0.67%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (0.51%) CentOS
8 2 (0.34%) VMS
8 2 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.17%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 244 (41.08%) CI/CD
2 226 (38.05%) Infrastructure as Code
3 201 (33.84%) DevOps
4 124 (20.88%) Cloud Security
5 110 (18.52%) Platform Engineering
6 95 (15.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 87 (14.65%) Migration
8 75 (12.63%) Containerisation
9 69 (11.62%) Agile
9 69 (11.62%) AI
10 59 (9.93%) Observability
11 57 (9.60%) Problem-Solving
12 51 (8.59%) Continuous Improvement
12 51 (8.59%) Infrastructure Automation
13 50 (8.42%) Software Engineering
14 45 (7.58%) Technical Leadership
15 44 (7.41%) Cybersecurity
16 39 (6.57%) DevSecOps
17 34 (5.72%) Mentoring
18 33 (5.56%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 148 (24.92%) Python
2 96 (16.16%) PowerShell
3 58 (9.76%) Bash
4 48 (8.08%) SQL
5 39 (6.57%) Bicep
6 34 (5.72%) Java
7 15 (2.53%) C#
8 12 (2.02%) Go
9 11 (1.85%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.68%) TypeScript
11 5 (0.84%) Groovy
12 2 (0.34%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.34%) Ruby
13 1 (0.17%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.17%) Cypher
13 1 (0.17%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.17%) Perl
13 1 (0.17%) R
13 1 (0.17%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 145 (24.41%) Security Cleared
2 116 (19.53%) SC Cleared
3 45 (7.58%) Azure Certification
4 36 (6.06%) AWS Certification
5 30 (5.05%) DV Cleared
6 19 (3.20%) Degree
7 16 (2.69%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 14 (2.36%) Microsoft Certification
9 13 (2.19%) CISSP
10 11 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
11 9 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
12 8 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
13 7 (1.18%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
14 6 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 5 (0.84%) TOGAF Certification
16 4 (0.67%) CCSP
16 4 (0.67%) MCSE
17 3 (0.51%) CCNP
17 3 (0.51%) CISM
17 3 (0.51%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (2.36%) NIST
2 11 (1.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (1.85%) NCSC
3 10 (1.68%) GDPR
3 10 (1.68%) QA
4 6 (1.01%) PCI DSS
5 4 (0.67%) Data Quality
6 3 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.34%) SLA
7 2 (0.34%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.17%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.17%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.17%) GRC
8 1 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 63 (10.61%) Docker
2 46 (7.74%) Active Directory
3 20 (3.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (2.86%) Virtual Desktop
4 17 (2.86%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (2.86%) VMware NSX
5 16 (2.69%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (2.36%) vSphere
7 10 (1.68%) Hyper-V
8 9 (1.52%) vCloud
9 7 (1.18%) Squid
10 3 (0.51%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.51%) Firmware
10 3 (0.51%) Postfix
11 2 (0.34%) Ceph
11 2 (0.34%) KVM
11 2 (0.34%) NFS
Systems Management
1 271 (45.62%) Terraform
2 140 (23.57%) Kubernetes
3 37 (6.23%) Ansible
4 24 (4.04%) Grafana
5 22 (3.70%) Prometheus
6 20 (3.37%) Single Sign-On
7 15 (2.53%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (2.36%) Argo
8 14 (2.36%) Istio
8 14 (2.36%) Progress Chef
9 13 (2.19%) vCenter Server
10 12 (2.02%) Puppet
11 11 (1.85%) SCOM
12 8 (1.35%) Packer
13 6 (1.01%) Cilium
14 4 (0.67%) HAProxy
14 4 (0.67%) Salt
14 4 (0.67%) Suricata
15 3 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 2 (0.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 111 (18.69%) Microsoft
2 97 (16.33%) Google
3 36 (6.06%) VMware
4 23 (3.87%) Oracle
5 15 (2.53%) Palo Alto
5 15 (2.53%) Zscaler
6 13 (2.19%) Red Hat
7 9 (1.52%) Cisco
7 9 (1.52%) Dynatrace
8 8 (1.35%) Okta
8 8 (1.35%) Salesforce
9 7 (1.18%) ServiceNow
9 7 (1.18%) Splunk
10 6 (1.01%) Databricks
10 6 (1.01%) OpenAI
11 5 (0.84%) Citrix
11 5 (0.84%) CrowdStrike
11 5 (0.84%) Fortinet
11 5 (0.84%) Rapid7
12 4 (0.67%) Juniper