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 28 September 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 202 318 324
Rank change year-on-year +116 +6 -72
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 790 262 247
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.45% 0.80% 0.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.58% 0.88% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 523 192 150
10th Percentile £413 £400 £386
25th Percentile £455 £425 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £551
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.17% +0.09%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £642
90th Percentile £681 £649 £701
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £515
% change year-on-year +2.50% -2.91% -6.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 7 0
10th Percentile £22.74 £29.00 -
25th Percentile £23.20 £29.50 -
Median hourly rate £76.50 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +70.00% - -
75th Percentile £81.25 £86.25 -
90th Percentile - £110.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.73 - -

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 50,147 29,864 35,507
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.20% 91.01% 92.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,583 18,880 21,565
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,922 1,610 1,584
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £41.72 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.89% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.61 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.57 £74.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.50% -41.69% -2.27%

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 28 September 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 28 September 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 28 September 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 +114 695 £525 +5.00% 1,405
UK excluding London +108 437 £513 +2.50% 745
London +58 300 £525 +0.96% 703
Work from Home +38 206 £540 +8.00% 520
North of England +36 141 £513 +13.89% 214
South East +30 136 £538 +7.50% 129
North West +9 85 £519 +18.57% 135
Midlands +21 78 £500 -9.09% 99
Yorkshire -2 48 £460 -14.42% 49
Scotland 0 45 £425 -15.00% 96
East Midlands +19 44 £500 +5.26% 46
West Midlands -18 33 £525 -4.55% 53
East of England -11 16 £493 +9.44% 60
South West -27 16 £575 - 90
North East -35 8 £525 +14.13% 30
Wales -8 7 - - 19

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

For the 6 months to 28 September 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.

1 380 (48.10%) Azure
2 309 (39.11%) Terraform
3 282 (35.70%) Infrastructure as Code
4 270 (34.18%) AWS
4 270 (34.18%) CI/CD
5 209 (26.46%) Kubernetes
6 208 (26.33%) Security Cleared
7 205 (25.95%) DevOps
8 192 (24.30%) Python
9 188 (23.80%) Microsoft
10 183 (23.16%) Cloud Security
11 164 (20.76%) PowerShell
12 158 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 154 (19.49%) GCP
14 147 (18.61%) SC Cleared
15 144 (18.23%) Platform Engineering
16 122 (15.44%) Windows
17 120 (15.19%) Entra ID
18 104 (13.16%) Active Directory
18 104 (13.16%) AI
19 99 (12.53%) Google
20 97 (12.28%) Migration
21 94 (11.90%) Containerisation
22 90 (11.39%) Observability
23 86 (10.89%) Agile
24 85 (10.76%) Firewall
24 85 (10.76%) GitHub
25 84 (10.63%) Docker
26 83 (10.51%) DNS
27 82 (10.38%) Linux

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 14 (1.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.52%) Apache
3 8 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (0.89%) SharePoint
5 6 (0.76%) Confluence
6 3 (0.38%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.38%) IIS
6 3 (0.38%) nginx
6 3 (0.38%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
8 1 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 380 (48.10%) Azure
2 270 (34.18%) AWS
3 154 (19.49%) GCP
4 120 (15.19%) Entra ID
5 85 (10.76%) GitHub
6 56 (7.09%) Azure DevOps
7 55 (6.96%) GitHub Actions
8 54 (6.84%) Serverless
9 52 (6.58%) IaaS
10 45 (5.70%) AWS CloudFormation
11 41 (5.19%) Azure Monitor
12 40 (5.06%) AWS Lambda
13 39 (4.94%) Azure AKS
13 39 (4.94%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 39 (4.94%) Microsoft 365
14 36 (4.56%) PaaS
15 35 (4.43%) Amazon EKS
16 33 (4.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 31 (3.92%) Amazon EC2
17 31 (3.92%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 85 (10.76%) Firewall
2 83 (10.51%) DNS
3 44 (5.57%) Network Security
4 37 (4.68%) VPN
5 21 (2.66%) DHCP
6 18 (2.28%) WAN
7 16 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.52%) Internet
9 8 (1.01%) VSAN
10 7 (0.89%) SD-WAN
10 7 (0.89%) VLAN
11 6 (0.76%) NGFW
12 5 (0.63%) Kerberos
13 4 (0.51%) BGP
13 4 (0.51%) LAN
13 4 (0.51%) SSL
13 4 (0.51%) Wireless
14 3 (0.38%) OSPF
14 3 (0.38%) Reverse Proxy
14 3 (0.38%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.29%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.66%) Amazon RDS
3 17 (2.15%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.65%) BigQuery
5 11 (1.39%) Data Lake
6 8 (1.01%) Oracle Exadata
7 7 (0.89%) DynamoDB
7 7 (0.89%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.76%) Amazon Athena
9 5 (0.63%) Oracle Database
10 4 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
11 3 (0.38%) Flink
11 3 (0.38%) Looker
11 3 (0.38%) Metadata
11 3 (0.38%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.38%) MySQL
11 3 (0.38%) Oracle Database 12c
12 2 (0.25%) Amazon QuickSight
12 2 (0.25%) Delta Lake
12 2 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 54 (6.84%) GitLab
2 45 (5.70%) Jenkins
3 36 (4.56%) Git
4 16 (2.03%) JIRA
5 8 (1.01%) Artifactory
6 7 (0.89%) Claude Code
7 6 (0.76%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.38%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.25%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.25%) Gatling
9 2 (0.25%) JMeter
9 2 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.13%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.13%) eggPlant
10 1 (0.13%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.13%) Selenium
10 1 (0.13%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.13%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 95 (12.03%) Finance
2 83 (10.51%) Social Skills
3 74 (9.37%) Public Sector
4 32 (4.05%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (3.29%) Banking
6 10 (1.27%) Manufacturing
7 9 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.01%) Legal
9 6 (0.76%) Investment Banking
10 5 (0.63%) Law
10 5 (0.63%) Local Government
10 5 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.51%) Front Office
12 3 (0.38%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.38%) Back Office
12 3 (0.38%) Italian Language
12 3 (0.38%) Military
12 3 (0.38%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (39.11%) Terraform
2 26 (3.29%) REST
3 19 (2.41%) ARM Templates
4 14 (1.77%) Kafka
5 13 (1.65%) OAuth
6 12 (1.52%) OAuth2
7 10 (1.27%) Spring
7 10 (1.27%) Spring Boot
8 8 (1.01%) .NET
8 8 (1.01%) AWS CDK
8 8 (1.01%) Keycloak
8 8 (1.01%) Node.js
8 8 (1.01%) OpenID
8 8 (1.01%) React
9 7 (0.89%) YAML
10 6 (0.76%) FastAPI
10 6 (0.76%) Flask
11 5 (0.63%) Azure Blueprints
12 4 (0.51%) Hugging Face
12 4 (0.51%) Model Context Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 126 (15.95%) Cloud Native
2 61 (7.72%) Security Posture
3 45 (5.70%) Enterprise Cloud
4 39 (4.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (4.05%) Cloud Security Posture
6 30 (3.80%) Onboarding
7 27 (3.42%) Enterprise Software
8 22 (2.78%) Data Centre
9 21 (2.66%) Management Information System
10 20 (2.53%) Distributed Systems
11 15 (1.90%) Public Cloud
12 14 (1.77%) Private Cloud
13 13 (1.65%) Product Ownership
14 11 (1.39%) Linux Command Line
15 10 (1.27%) PKI
16 8 (1.01%) AI Agents
16 8 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
17 6 (0.76%) Distributed Architecture
17 6 (0.76%) Legacy Systems
18 5 (0.63%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 122 (15.44%) Windows
2 82 (10.38%) Linux
3 60 (7.59%) Windows Server
4 31 (3.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.90%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.01%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.76%) VMS
8 3 (0.38%) CentOS
9 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.13%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 282 (35.70%) Infrastructure as Code
2 270 (34.18%) CI/CD
3 205 (25.95%) DevOps
4 183 (23.16%) Cloud Security
5 158 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 144 (18.23%) Platform Engineering
7 104 (13.16%) AI
8 97 (12.28%) Migration
9 94 (11.90%) Containerisation
10 90 (11.39%) Observability
11 86 (10.89%) Agile
12 65 (8.23%) Technical Leadership
13 62 (7.85%) Cybersecurity
14 61 (7.72%) DevSecOps
15 59 (7.47%) Infrastructure Automation
16 58 (7.34%) Deployment Automation
16 58 (7.34%) Software Engineering
17 55 (6.96%) Continuous Improvement
17 55 (6.96%) Problem-Solving
18 54 (6.84%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 192 (24.30%) Python
2 164 (20.76%) PowerShell
3 81 (10.25%) Bash
4 77 (9.75%) Bicep
5 64 (8.10%) SQL
6 38 (4.81%) Java
7 16 (2.03%) Shell Script
8 15 (1.90%) C#
9 11 (1.39%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.14%) Go
11 4 (0.51%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.38%) C
12 3 (0.38%) Scala
13 2 (0.25%) Groovy
13 2 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.13%) Apex Code
14 1 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.13%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.13%) R
14 1 (0.13%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 208 (26.33%) Security Cleared
2 147 (18.61%) SC Cleared
3 74 (9.37%) DV Cleared
4 47 (5.95%) Azure Certification
5 43 (5.44%) AWS Certification
6 35 (4.43%) Degree
7 22 (2.78%) Microsoft Certification
8 18 (2.28%) CISSP
9 12 (1.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (1.01%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (1.01%) MCSE
11 7 (0.89%) Cisco Certification
12 6 (0.76%) CISM
12 6 (0.76%) Computer Science Degree
12 6 (0.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 5 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 5 (0.63%) CCNP
14 3 (0.38%) CCIE
14 3 (0.38%) CEH
14 3 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 13 (1.65%) Data Quality
2 13 (1.65%) NIST
3 9 (1.14%) NCSC
4 8 (1.01%) QA
5 6 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
5 6 (0.76%) GDPR
6 4 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 4 (0.51%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.25%) SLA
9 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.13%) GRC
System Software
1 104 (13.16%) Active Directory
2 84 (10.63%) Docker
3 51 (6.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (4.68%) Virtual Machines
5 34 (4.30%) VMware ESXi
6 27 (3.42%) VMware NSX
7 23 (2.91%) Virtual Desktop
8 21 (2.66%) vSphere
9 15 (1.90%) vCloud
10 11 (1.39%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.76%) Squid
12 4 (0.51%) Firmware
12 4 (0.51%) NFS
13 3 (0.38%) Ceph
13 3 (0.38%) Dovecot
13 3 (0.38%) Postfix
14 2 (0.25%) IAG
14 2 (0.25%) KVM
14 2 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
15 1 (0.13%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 209 (26.46%) Kubernetes
2 53 (6.71%) Ansible
3 30 (3.80%) vCenter Server
4 27 (3.42%) SCOM
5 26 (3.29%) Microsoft Intune
6 24 (3.04%) Grafana
7 21 (2.66%) Prometheus
8 19 (2.41%) Progress Chef
9 16 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
10 14 (1.77%) Puppet
11 9 (1.14%) Istio
12 8 (1.01%) Cilium
13 6 (0.76%) Argo
13 6 (0.76%) Packer
14 5 (0.63%) VxRail
15 4 (0.51%) Suricata
16 3 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 3 (0.38%) HAProxy
16 3 (0.38%) Karpenter
16 3 (0.38%) vRealize
Vendors
1 188 (23.80%) Microsoft
2 99 (12.53%) Google
3 76 (9.62%) VMware
4 35 (4.43%) Oracle
5 27 (3.42%) Databricks
6 20 (2.53%) Red Hat
7 17 (2.15%) Okta
7 17 (2.15%) Palo Alto
8 16 (2.03%) Zscaler
9 14 (1.77%) SolarWinds
9 14 (1.77%) Splunk
10 13 (1.65%) Broadcom
10 13 (1.65%) Cisco
10 13 (1.65%) ServiceNow
11 12 (1.52%) OpenAI
12 9 (1.14%) CrowdStrike
12 9 (1.14%) New Relic
13 8 (1.01%) BeyondTrust
13 8 (1.01%) Dynatrace
14 7 (0.89%) Salesforce