Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £522, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 238 308 323
Rank change year-on-year +70 +15 -67
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 511 225 295
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 0.77% 0.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.17% 0.83% 0.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 343 171 201
10th Percentile £400 £400 £400
25th Percentile £456 £431 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £616 £616 £625
90th Percentile £693 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £500 £524
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.53% -4.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 3
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £25.13 - £27.50
Median hourly rate £25.25 - £30.00
75th Percentile £39.56 - £32.50
90th Percentile £48.08 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £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 43,571 27,048 40,454
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 92.55% 92.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,878 17,685 26,353
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +2.87% -3.55% -1.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,816 1,030 2,658
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.38 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.07 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.36% -19.25% -20.00%
75th Percentile £66.00 £62.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £28.75 £38.50
% change year-on-year +58.12% -25.32% -9.41%

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 30 April 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 30 April 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 30 April 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 +59 423 £525 - 143
London +57 245 £525 - 52
UK excluding London +13 210 £520 +4.00% 106
Work from Home +2 124 £510 +2.00% 76
North of England -44 53 £500 +11.11% 28
South East -28 43 £510 -9.33% 30
Scotland +25 41 £451 -14.19% 6
Midlands -56 28 £675 +38.46% 16
North West -25 25 £544 +20.83% 16
Yorkshire -33 25 £481 +13.24% 9
East of England -20 24 £505 +2.54% 7
West Midlands -44 23 £675 +14.89% 12
South West -14 22 £550 -4.35% 16
East Midlands -30 5 £496 +4.47% 4
North East -21 3 £525 -12.50% 3

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

For the 6 months to 30 April 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.

1 226 (44.23%) Terraform
2 222 (43.44%) Azure
3 221 (43.25%) AWS
4 203 (39.73%) CI/CD
5 197 (38.55%) Infrastructure as Code
6 177 (34.64%) DevOps
7 145 (28.38%) Security Cleared
8 125 (24.46%) Kubernetes
8 125 (24.46%) SC Cleared
9 119 (23.29%) GCP
9 119 (23.29%) Python
10 108 (21.14%) GitHub
11 102 (19.96%) Cloud Security
12 91 (17.81%) Microsoft
13 89 (17.42%) Google
14 79 (15.46%) Platform Engineering
15 76 (14.87%) Agile
15 76 (14.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 75 (14.68%) PowerShell
17 70 (13.70%) Containerisation
18 67 (13.11%) GitHub Actions
19 66 (12.92%) Migration
20 60 (11.74%) Docker
21 52 (10.18%) Serverless
22 49 (9.59%) AI
22 49 (9.59%) Observability
23 48 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
23 48 (9.39%) Firewall
24 44 (8.61%) Jenkins
25 43 (8.41%) AWS CloudFormation

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 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (1.17%) Confluence
3 5 (0.98%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.78%) Apache
5 3 (0.59%) nginx
6 2 (0.39%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.20%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.20%) SAS
7 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 2 (0.39%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.20%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 222 (43.44%) Azure
2 221 (43.25%) AWS
3 119 (23.29%) GCP
4 108 (21.14%) GitHub
5 67 (13.11%) GitHub Actions
6 52 (10.18%) Serverless
7 43 (8.41%) AWS CloudFormation
7 43 (8.41%) Azure DevOps
7 43 (8.41%) Entra ID
8 38 (7.44%) Azure AKS
9 36 (7.05%) PaaS
10 34 (6.65%) Amazon S3
11 32 (6.26%) Amazon EKS
11 32 (6.26%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 30 (5.87%) AWS Lambda
12 30 (5.87%) IaaS
13 27 (5.28%) Amazon ECS
14 20 (3.91%) OCI
14 20 (3.91%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 19 (3.72%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 48 (9.39%) Firewall
2 18 (3.52%) DNS
2 18 (3.52%) Network Security
2 18 (3.52%) VPN
3 6 (1.17%) Cisco Firepower
3 6 (1.17%) Reverse Proxy
4 5 (0.98%) Cisco IOS
4 5 (0.98%) Cisco ISE
4 5 (0.98%) Junos
4 5 (0.98%) NX-OS
5 4 (0.78%) DHCP
5 4 (0.78%) Software-Defined Networking
6 3 (0.59%) BGP
6 3 (0.59%) SMTP
7 2 (0.39%) DKIM
7 2 (0.39%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.39%) Unified Communications
7 2 (0.39%) VLAN
8 1 (0.20%) NGFW
8 1 (0.20%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.94%) Amazon Athena
2 12 (2.35%) BigQuery
3 11 (2.15%) DynamoDB
4 8 (1.57%) Amazon RDS
5 7 (1.37%) Amazon Redshift
5 7 (1.37%) SQL Server
6 6 (1.17%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
6 6 (1.17%) Power BI
7 5 (0.98%) Data Lake
7 5 (0.98%) NoSQL
8 4 (0.78%) Amazon QuickSight
8 4 (0.78%) Data Warehouse
8 4 (0.78%) Oracle Database
9 3 (0.59%) Big Data
9 3 (0.59%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (0.39%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.39%) Metadata
10 2 (0.39%) Mixpanel
10 2 (0.39%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 44 (8.61%) Jenkins
2 36 (7.05%) Git
3 34 (6.65%) GitLab
4 7 (1.37%) JIRA
5 4 (0.78%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.59%) 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 (0.20%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.20%) Chocolatey
8 1 (0.20%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.20%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.20%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.20%) RStudio
8 1 (0.20%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.20%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.20%) Travis CI
General
1 70 (13.70%) Social Skills
2 61 (11.94%) Finance
3 44 (8.61%) Public Sector
4 19 (3.72%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (3.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 17 (3.33%) Banking
7 11 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.76%) Retail
9 7 (1.37%) Aeronautics
10 6 (1.17%) Legal
10 6 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
11 5 (0.98%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.78%) Investment Banking
12 4 (0.78%) Marketing
13 3 (0.59%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.59%) Military
13 3 (0.59%) Police
14 2 (0.39%) Billing
14 2 (0.39%) Law
14 2 (0.39%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (4.50%) REST
2 21 (4.11%) Node.js
3 13 (2.54%) Kafka
3 13 (2.54%) React
4 11 (2.15%) OpenTelemetry
5 10 (1.96%) .NET
6 9 (1.76%) ARM Templates
6 9 (1.76%) OAuth
6 9 (1.76%) Spring
7 8 (1.57%) OAuth2
7 8 (1.57%) OpenID
7 8 (1.57%) Oracle Fusion
7 8 (1.57%) Playwright
7 8 (1.57%) Spring Boot
8 7 (1.37%) AngularJS
8 7 (1.37%) LangChain
8 7 (1.37%) OpenAPI
8 7 (1.37%) SOAP
9 6 (1.17%) Web Services
10 5 (0.98%) NestJS
Miscellaneous
1 86 (16.83%) Cloud Native
2 29 (5.68%) Public Cloud
3 17 (3.33%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (2.94%) Data Centre
5 10 (1.96%) Product Ownership
6 9 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (1.76%) Onboarding
6 9 (1.76%) Security Posture
7 7 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
7 7 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (1.17%) Cyber Threat
8 6 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (1.17%) PKI
9 5 (0.98%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (0.98%) Virtual Team
10 4 (0.78%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (0.59%) Cloud Security Posture
11 3 (0.59%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.59%) Replication
12 2 (0.39%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 39 (7.63%) Windows
2 29 (5.68%) Linux
3 18 (3.52%) Windows Server
4 4 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (0.78%) Unix
5 3 (0.59%) VMS
6 1 (0.20%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 203 (39.73%) CI/CD
2 197 (38.55%) Infrastructure as Code
3 177 (34.64%) DevOps
4 102 (19.96%) Cloud Security
5 79 (15.46%) Platform Engineering
6 76 (14.87%) Agile
6 76 (14.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 70 (13.70%) Containerisation
8 66 (12.92%) Migration
9 49 (9.59%) AI
9 49 (9.59%) Observability
10 48 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
11 42 (8.22%) Infrastructure Automation
12 41 (8.02%) DevSecOps
13 40 (7.83%) Problem-Solving
14 38 (7.44%) Cybersecurity
15 37 (7.24%) Software Engineering
16 35 (6.85%) Mentoring
17 30 (5.87%) Microservices
18 27 (5.28%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 119 (23.29%) Python
2 75 (14.68%) PowerShell
3 42 (8.22%) SQL
4 35 (6.85%) Bash
5 29 (5.68%) Bicep
6 27 (5.28%) Java
7 17 (3.33%) C#
8 14 (2.74%) TypeScript
9 10 (1.96%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.76%) Go
11 4 (0.78%) BeanShell
11 4 (0.78%) Groovy
11 4 (0.78%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.39%) Ruby
13 1 (0.20%) C
13 1 (0.20%) Cypher
13 1 (0.20%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.20%) R
Qualifications
1 145 (28.38%) Security Cleared
2 125 (24.46%) SC Cleared
3 41 (8.02%) Azure Certification
4 29 (5.68%) AWS Certification
5 19 (3.72%) DV Cleared
6 16 (3.13%) Degree
7 15 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
8 13 (2.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 13 (2.54%) CISSP
9 11 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
10 9 (1.76%) Cisco Certification
10 9 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (1.37%) CISM
12 6 (1.17%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 6 (1.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 5 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
14 4 (0.78%) CCSP
15 3 (0.59%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
15 3 (0.59%) CCNP
15 3 (0.59%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (2.35%) GDPR
2 11 (2.15%) NCSC
2 11 (2.15%) NIST
3 10 (1.96%) QA
4 9 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (1.17%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.17%) PCI DSS
6 5 (0.98%) GRC
7 2 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (0.39%) SLA
7 2 (0.39%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.20%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.20%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 60 (11.74%) Docker
2 27 (5.28%) Active Directory
3 16 (3.13%) Virtual Desktop
4 13 (2.54%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (2.35%) VMware NSX
6 8 (1.57%) vSphere
7 7 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
8 6 (1.17%) Firmware
8 6 (1.17%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.20%) Squid
Systems Management
1 226 (44.23%) Terraform
2 125 (24.46%) Kubernetes
3 26 (5.09%) Prometheus
4 21 (4.11%) Ansible
4 21 (4.11%) Grafana
5 17 (3.33%) Istio
6 15 (2.94%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (2.54%) Single Sign-On
8 12 (2.35%) Argo
9 7 (1.37%) Packer
10 6 (1.17%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.98%) Progress Chef
11 5 (0.98%) Puppet
12 4 (0.78%) Salt
13 2 (0.39%) Cilium
13 2 (0.39%) Consul
14 1 (0.20%) HAProxy
14 1 (0.20%) Kibana
14 1 (0.20%) PaperCut
14 1 (0.20%) Podman
Vendors
1 91 (17.81%) Microsoft
2 89 (17.42%) Google
3 20 (3.91%) Oracle
4 16 (3.13%) VMware
5 12 (2.35%) Dynatrace
6 11 (2.15%) Cisco
6 11 (2.15%) Databricks
7 10 (1.96%) ServiceNow
8 8 (1.57%) Splunk
9 7 (1.37%) Salesforce
10 6 (1.17%) Juniper
11 5 (0.98%) Broadcom
11 5 (0.98%) Citrix
11 5 (0.98%) Fortinet
11 5 (0.98%) PeopleSoft
11 5 (0.98%) Ping Identity
11 5 (0.98%) Rapid7
11 5 (0.98%) SolarWinds
12 4 (0.78%) Palo Alto
12 4 (0.78%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud