Cloud Engineer Contract Job Trends

Cloud Engineer
UK

The median Cloud Engineer daily rate in the UK is £513, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 203 315 326
Rank change year-on-year +112 +11 -79
Contract jobs requiring a Cloud Engineer 794 252 248
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.45% 0.76% 0.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.57% 0.84% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 528 182 151
10th Percentile £411 £400 £400
25th Percentile £450 £448 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £551
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -9.26% +0.18%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £638
90th Percentile £675 £638 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 7 0
10th Percentile - £29.00 -
25th Percentile £23.20 £29.50 -
Median hourly rate £77.00 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +71.11% - -
75th Percentile £81.25 £86.25 -
90th Percentile - £110.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 - -

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 50,612 30,015 35,830
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.27% 91.09% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,983 18,953 22,040
10th Percentile £325 £278 £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 £626 £623 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,861 1,585 1,681
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +2.86%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +120 693 £525 +5.00% 1,346
UK excluding London +103 437 £510 +2.00% 672
London +61 305 £525 +1.69% 702
Work from Home +25 198 £540 +8.00% 486
North of England +24 138 £513 +13.89% 210
South East +24 132 £538 +7.50% 130
North West +11 84 £519 +16.90% 136
Midlands +10 74 £500 -8.26% 84
Scotland +19 52 £437 -20.55% 79
Yorkshire -2 46 £455 -15.35% 49
East Midlands +19 42 £500 +5.26% 39
West Midlands -24 31 £525 -4.55% 45
East of England -8 19 £488 +0.52% 45
South West -26 16 £575 +4.55% 80
North East -47 8 £525 +14.13% 25
Wales -5 7 - - 17

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

For the 6 months to 19 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.

1 374 (47.10%) Azure
2 312 (39.29%) Terraform
3 281 (35.39%) Infrastructure as Code
4 274 (34.51%) AWS
5 272 (34.26%) CI/CD
6 210 (26.45%) DevOps
7 209 (26.32%) Security Cleared
8 208 (26.20%) Kubernetes
9 196 (24.69%) Python
10 180 (22.67%) Cloud Security
10 180 (22.67%) Microsoft
11 164 (20.65%) GCP
12 163 (20.53%) PowerShell
13 161 (20.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 151 (19.02%) Platform Engineering
15 148 (18.64%) SC Cleared
16 120 (15.11%) Windows
17 116 (14.61%) Entra ID
18 107 (13.48%) Google
19 105 (13.22%) AI
20 104 (13.10%) Active Directory
21 93 (11.71%) Containerisation
21 93 (11.71%) Migration
22 92 (11.59%) Agile
23 90 (11.34%) Observability
24 86 (10.83%) GitHub
25 84 (10.58%) Firewall
26 83 (10.45%) DNS
26 83 (10.45%) Docker
26 83 (10.45%) 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 (1.76%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.51%) Apache
3 8 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
3 8 (1.01%) SharePoint
4 6 (0.76%) Confluence
5 3 (0.38%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.38%) IIS
5 3 (0.38%) nginx
5 3 (0.38%) OpenStack
5 3 (0.38%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.25%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 374 (47.10%) Azure
2 274 (34.51%) AWS
3 164 (20.65%) GCP
4 116 (14.61%) Entra ID
5 86 (10.83%) GitHub
6 55 (6.93%) Azure DevOps
6 55 (6.93%) GitHub Actions
6 55 (6.93%) Serverless
7 50 (6.30%) IaaS
8 47 (5.92%) AWS CloudFormation
9 41 (5.16%) AWS Lambda
9 41 (5.16%) Azure Monitor
10 39 (4.91%) Azure AKS
10 39 (4.91%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 37 (4.66%) PaaS
12 35 (4.41%) Amazon EKS
13 34 (4.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 34 (4.28%) Microsoft 365
14 33 (4.16%) Amazon EC2
15 32 (4.03%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 84 (10.58%) Firewall
2 83 (10.45%) DNS
3 43 (5.42%) Network Security
4 37 (4.66%) VPN
5 21 (2.64%) DHCP
6 18 (2.27%) WAN
7 16 (2.02%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.51%) Internet
9 7 (0.88%) SD-WAN
9 7 (0.88%) VLAN
10 6 (0.76%) NGFW
10 6 (0.76%) VSAN
11 5 (0.63%) Kerberos
11 5 (0.63%) SSL
12 4 (0.50%) BGP
12 4 (0.50%) LAN
12 4 (0.50%) Wireless
13 3 (0.38%) IPv4
13 3 (0.38%) Reverse Proxy
13 3 (0.38%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (3.27%) SQL Server
2 21 (2.64%) Amazon RDS
3 17 (2.14%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (1.64%) BigQuery
5 11 (1.39%) Data Lake
6 8 (1.01%) Oracle Exadata
7 7 (0.88%) DynamoDB
7 7 (0.88%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.76%) Amazon Athena
9 5 (0.63%) Oracle Database
10 4 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
10 4 (0.50%) Big Data
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%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 56 (7.05%) GitLab
2 47 (5.92%) Jenkins
3 40 (5.04%) Git
4 18 (2.27%) JIRA
5 8 (1.01%) Artifactory
6 7 (0.88%) Claude Code
7 6 (0.76%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.38%) Selenium
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
9 2 (0.25%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.25%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.13%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.13%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.13%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.13%) TestRail
General
1 97 (12.22%) Finance
2 82 (10.33%) Social Skills
3 76 (9.57%) Public Sector
4 32 (4.03%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (3.27%) Banking
6 10 (1.26%) Manufacturing
7 9 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (0.88%) Legal
10 6 (0.76%) Investment Banking
11 5 (0.63%) Law
11 5 (0.63%) Local Government
11 5 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
12 4 (0.50%) Front Office
12 4 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.38%) Italian Language
13 3 (0.38%) Marketing
13 3 (0.38%) Military
13 3 (0.38%) Police
13 3 (0.38%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (39.29%) Terraform
2 25 (3.15%) REST
3 19 (2.39%) ARM Templates
4 14 (1.76%) Kafka
5 13 (1.64%) OAuth
6 12 (1.51%) OAuth2
7 11 (1.39%) Spring
7 11 (1.39%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.13%) Node.js
9 8 (1.01%) .NET
9 8 (1.01%) AWS CDK
9 8 (1.01%) Keycloak
9 8 (1.01%) OpenID
10 7 (0.88%) React
10 7 (0.88%) YAML
11 6 (0.76%) FastAPI
11 6 (0.76%) Flask
12 5 (0.63%) Azure Blueprints
12 5 (0.63%) PySpark
13 4 (0.50%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 126 (15.87%) Cloud Native
2 61 (7.68%) Security Posture
3 47 (5.92%) Enterprise Cloud
4 38 (4.79%) Hybrid Cloud
5 32 (4.03%) Cloud Security Posture
6 31 (3.90%) Onboarding
7 26 (3.27%) Enterprise Software
8 21 (2.64%) Management Information System
9 20 (2.52%) Data Centre
9 20 (2.52%) Distributed Systems
10 16 (2.02%) Public Cloud
11 13 (1.64%) Product Ownership
12 12 (1.51%) Private Cloud
13 11 (1.39%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (1.26%) PKI
15 8 (1.01%) AI Agents
15 8 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
16 7 (0.88%) Legacy Systems
17 6 (0.76%) Distributed Architecture
18 5 (0.63%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 120 (15.11%) Windows
2 83 (10.45%) Linux
3 61 (7.68%) Windows Server
4 31 (3.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.89%) Windows Server 2019
6 8 (1.01%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.50%) 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
1 281 (35.39%) Infrastructure as Code
2 272 (34.26%) CI/CD
3 210 (26.45%) DevOps
4 180 (22.67%) Cloud Security
5 161 (20.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 151 (19.02%) Platform Engineering
7 105 (13.22%) AI
8 93 (11.71%) Containerisation
8 93 (11.71%) Migration
9 92 (11.59%) Agile
10 90 (11.34%) Observability
11 67 (8.44%) Technical Leadership
12 61 (7.68%) DevSecOps
13 60 (7.56%) Continuous Improvement
13 60 (7.56%) Cybersecurity
14 59 (7.43%) Infrastructure Automation
14 59 (7.43%) Software Engineering
15 56 (7.05%) Deployment Automation
16 55 (6.93%) Problem-Solving
17 53 (6.68%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 196 (24.69%) Python
2 163 (20.53%) PowerShell
3 82 (10.33%) Bash
4 77 (9.70%) Bicep
5 64 (8.06%) SQL
6 39 (4.91%) Java
7 16 (2.02%) Shell Script
8 15 (1.89%) C#
9 11 (1.39%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.26%) Go
11 4 (0.50%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.38%) C
12 3 (0.38%) Groovy
12 3 (0.38%) Scala
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%) Perl
14 1 (0.13%) R
Qualifications
1 209 (26.32%) Security Cleared
2 148 (18.64%) SC Cleared
3 74 (9.32%) DV Cleared
4 46 (5.79%) Azure Certification
5 43 (5.42%) AWS Certification
6 35 (4.41%) Degree
7 22 (2.77%) Microsoft Certification
8 18 (2.27%) CISSP
9 12 (1.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (1.01%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (1.01%) MCSE
11 7 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
12 6 (0.76%) CISM
12 6 (0.76%) Computer Science Degree
13 5 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 5 (0.63%) CCNP
13 5 (0.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 3 (0.38%) CCIE
14 3 (0.38%) CEH
14 3 (0.38%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (1.76%) Data Quality
3 11 (1.39%) NIST
3 11 (1.39%) QA
4 9 (1.13%) NCSC
5 6 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
5 6 (0.76%) GDPR
6 4 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 3 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.25%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.25%) SLA
9 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.13%) GRC
9 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 104 (13.10%) Active Directory
2 83 (10.45%) Docker
3 51 (6.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (4.28%) Virtual Machines
4 34 (4.28%) VMware ESXi
5 27 (3.40%) VMware NSX
6 22 (2.77%) Virtual Desktop
7 21 (2.64%) vSphere
8 15 (1.89%) vCloud
9 11 (1.39%) Hyper-V
10 7 (0.88%) Squid
11 4 (0.50%) Firmware
11 4 (0.50%) NFS
12 3 (0.38%) Ceph
12 3 (0.38%) Dovecot
12 3 (0.38%) Postfix
13 2 (0.25%) KVM
13 2 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.13%) BitLocker
14 1 (0.13%) IAG
Systems Management
1 208 (26.20%) Kubernetes
2 53 (6.68%) Ansible
3 31 (3.90%) vCenter Server
4 27 (3.40%) Microsoft Intune
4 27 (3.40%) SCOM
5 23 (2.90%) Grafana
6 20 (2.52%) Prometheus
7 19 (2.39%) Progress Chef
8 16 (2.02%) Single Sign-On
9 14 (1.76%) Puppet
10 9 (1.13%) Istio
11 8 (1.01%) Cilium
12 6 (0.76%) Argo
12 6 (0.76%) Packer
13 5 (0.63%) VxRail
14 4 (0.50%) Suricata
15 3 (0.38%) FortiGate
15 3 (0.38%) HAProxy
15 3 (0.38%) Karpenter
15 3 (0.38%) vRealize
Vendors
1 180 (22.67%) Microsoft
2 107 (13.48%) Google
3 76 (9.57%) VMware
4 36 (4.53%) Oracle
5 26 (3.27%) Databricks
6 19 (2.39%) Red Hat
7 17 (2.14%) Okta
8 16 (2.02%) Zscaler
9 15 (1.89%) Palo Alto
10 14 (1.76%) SolarWinds
11 13 (1.64%) Broadcom
12 12 (1.51%) OpenAI
12 12 (1.51%) Splunk
13 11 (1.39%) ServiceNow
14 10 (1.26%) Cisco
15 9 (1.13%) CrowdStrike
15 9 (1.13%) Salesforce
16 8 (1.01%) BeyondTrust
16 8 (1.01%) Dynatrace
16 8 (1.01%) New Relic