Cloud Native Contract Job Trends

Cloud Native
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Cloud Native in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Cloud Native over the 6 months leading up to 16 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 214 280
Rank change year-on-year +135 +66 -20
Contract jobs citing Cloud Native 1,385 378 344
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.21% 1.28% 0.77%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 9.69% 3.80% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 942 264 217
10th Percentile £393 £409 £463
25th Percentile £450 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% - -7.69%
75th Percentile £638 £680 £680
90th Percentile £750 £838 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £550 £578
% change year-on-year -9.09% -4.76% -7.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 2 2
10th Percentile £35.00 £57.98 £32.55
25th Percentile £59.88 £62.06 £36.79
Median hourly rate £68.50 £70.25 £43.86
Median % change year-on-year -2.49% +60.17% -43.77%
75th Percentile £95.00 £79.56 £50.93
90th Percentile £102.50 £84.33 £55.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £90.00 £85.00 -
% change year-on-year +5.88% - -

All Generic Skills
UK

Cloud Native falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 14,295 9,960 13,464
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.16% 33.69% 30.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,986 6,324 8,621
10th Percentile £291 £281 £256
25th Percentile £408 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £497 £500
% change year-on-year -4.34% -0.69% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 668 359 865
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.95 £12.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.25 £15.50
Median hourly rate £37.50 £32.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% +18.18% +22.22%
75th Percentile £68.19 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £83.20 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £31.42 £26.00
% change year-on-year +33.48% +20.85% +16.83%

Cloud Native
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Cloud Native relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Cloud Native job vacancy trend in the UK

Cloud Native
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Cloud Native.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Cloud Native

Cloud Native
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Cloud Native over the 6 months to 16 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Cloud Native in the UK

Cloud Native
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Cloud Native.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Cloud Native

Cloud Native
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Cloud Native over the 6 months to 16 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Cloud Native in the UK

Cloud Native
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 Native within the UK over the 6 months to 16 March 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 +154 1,145 £537 -6.61% 568
London +135 667 £563 -2.17% 231
UK excluding London +115 501 £500 -9.09% 431
Work from Home +97 399 £530 -11.63% 293
North of England +61 186 £525 -8.70% 122
South East +12 96 £475 -19.83% 117
North West +31 92 £547 -12.52% 58
Midlands +18 91 £523 +8.97% 49
Yorkshire +19 87 £500 -9.09% 51
West Midlands 0 67 £600 +18.58% 28
Scotland +29 56 £440 -16.19% 27
South West +19 53 £600 - 63
East of England -2 40 £550 -15.35% 40
East Midlands -11 24 £438 +1.63% 21
North East -5 7 £545 -0.91% 15
Wales - 2 £363 - 11

Cloud Native
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 67 (4.84%) Apache Spark
2 56 (4.04%) Confluence
3 33 (2.38%) Apache Airflow
4 32 (2.31%) Apache
5 11 (0.79%) nginx
6 10 (0.72%) OpenStack
6 10 (0.72%) SharePoint
7 7 (0.51%) SAS
8 4 (0.29%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.22%) ArcGIS
9 3 (0.22%) Camunda
10 2 (0.14%) Apache Pulsar
10 2 (0.14%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.14%) Appian
10 2 (0.14%) CMS
10 2 (0.14%) GeoServer
10 2 (0.14%) JBoss
10 2 (0.14%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.14%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.072%) Ethereum
Applications
1 7 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
2 5 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.29%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.22%) LaTeX
5 1 (0.072%) CPLEX
5 1 (0.072%) Maya
5 1 (0.072%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.072%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.072%) Notion
Business Applications
1 6 (0.43%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.072%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.072%) Distributed Ledger
5 1 (0.072%) Exchequer
5 1 (0.072%) Quorum
5 1 (0.072%) R3 Corda
5 1 (0.072%) SAP BPC
5 1 (0.072%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.072%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 779 (56.25%) AWS
2 630 (45.49%) Azure
3 294 (21.23%) GCP
4 293 (21.16%) Serverless
5 263 (18.99%) GitHub
6 168 (12.13%) Amazon S3
7 159 (11.48%) GitHub Actions
8 158 (11.41%) Azure DevOps
9 142 (10.25%) AWS CloudFormation
9 142 (10.25%) AWS Lambda
10 103 (7.44%) Azure AKS
11 89 (6.43%) Amazon EKS
12 86 (6.21%) Amazon ECS
13 83 (5.99%) OpenShift
14 70 (5.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 68 (4.91%) Power Platform
16 65 (4.69%) Amazon EC2
17 62 (4.48%) Azure Functions
18 61 (4.40%) SaaS
19 57 (4.12%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 71 (5.13%) Firewall
2 44 (3.18%) Network Security
3 42 (3.03%) DNS
4 29 (2.09%) VPN
5 13 (0.94%) 5G
6 12 (0.87%) 4G
6 12 (0.87%) WAN
7 11 (0.79%) 3GPP
8 9 (0.65%) NX-OS
9 7 (0.51%) MPLS
9 7 (0.51%) Reverse Proxy
10 6 (0.43%) BGP
10 6 (0.43%) HTTP
10 6 (0.43%) SD-WAN
11 5 (0.36%) Intrusion Detection
11 5 (0.36%) LTE
11 5 (0.36%) NaaS
12 4 (0.29%) Internet
12 4 (0.29%) LAN
12 4 (0.29%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (9.03%) PostgreSQL
2 84 (6.06%) NoSQL
3 54 (3.90%) Data Lake
4 53 (3.83%) DynamoDB
5 52 (3.75%) Metadata
5 52 (3.75%) Power BI
6 48 (3.47%) Amazon RDS
7 46 (3.32%) Amazon Athena
7 46 (3.32%) SQL Server
8 40 (2.89%) Data Warehouse
9 37 (2.67%) MongoDB
10 33 (2.38%) Relational Database
11 31 (2.24%) BigQuery
12 30 (2.17%) Azure SQL Database
12 30 (2.17%) MySQL
13 28 (2.02%) Redis
14 24 (1.73%) Big Data
15 22 (1.59%) Amazon Redshift
15 22 (1.59%) Delta Lake
16 21 (1.52%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 208 (15.02%) Jenkins
2 148 (10.69%) Git
3 143 (10.32%) GitLab
4 86 (6.21%) JIRA
5 23 (1.66%) Liquibase
6 22 (1.59%) JUnit
7 19 (1.37%) MLflow
8 13 (0.94%) JMeter
9 12 (0.87%) Postman
9 12 (0.87%) Selenium
10 11 (0.79%) Cypress.io
10 11 (0.79%) SonarQube
11 10 (0.72%) Cucumber
12 9 (0.65%) Mockito
13 8 (0.58%) Gatling
13 8 (0.58%) REST Assured
14 7 (0.51%) Mocha
14 7 (0.51%) Snyk
15 5 (0.36%) Bitbucket
15 5 (0.36%) CircleCI
General
1 330 (23.83%) Social Skills
2 253 (18.27%) Finance
3 185 (13.36%) Public Sector
4 104 (7.51%) Banking
5 70 (5.05%) Analytical Skills
6 39 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 30 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
8 22 (1.59%) Retail
9 21 (1.52%) Financial Institution
9 21 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 21 (1.52%) Investment Banking
10 17 (1.23%) Front Office
11 16 (1.16%) Telecoms
12 13 (0.94%) Aviation
13 11 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
14 9 (0.65%) Legal
15 8 (0.58%) Billing
16 7 (0.51%) Marketing
17 6 (0.43%) Military
17 6 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 356 (25.70%) Architect
2 233 (16.82%) Developer
3 205 (14.80%) Senior
4 134 (9.68%) Lead
5 105 (7.58%) Data Engineer
6 96 (6.93%) Solutions Architect
7 90 (6.50%) DevOps Engineer
8 89 (6.43%) AWS Engineer
9 86 (6.21%) Cloud Engineer
10 85 (6.14%) Software Engineer
11 49 (3.54%) Azure Engineer
12 48 (3.47%) Senior Developer
13 47 (3.39%) Cloud Architect
13 47 (3.39%) Java Developer
14 44 (3.18%) Full-Stack Developer
14 44 (3.18%) Technical Architect
15 38 (2.74%) Backend Developer
15 38 (2.74%) Security Engineer
16 36 (2.60%) Python Developer
16 36 (2.60%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 150 (10.83%) Node.js
2 144 (10.40%) REST
3 129 (9.31%) Kafka
4 121 (8.74%) .NET
5 115 (8.30%) React
6 113 (8.16%) Spring
7 96 (6.93%) RESTful
8 93 (6.71%) Spring Boot
9 73 (5.27%) AngularJS
10 64 (4.62%) GraphQL
11 59 (4.26%) OAuth
12 54 (3.90%) OpenTelemetry
13 49 (3.54%) Playwright
13 49 (3.54%) PySpark
14 42 (3.03%) OAuth2
14 42 (3.03%) OpenID
15 36 (2.60%) Vue
16 35 (2.53%) .NET Core
17 34 (2.45%) PyTorch
18 33 (2.38%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 145 (10.47%) Distributed Systems
2 66 (4.77%) Product Ownership
3 51 (3.68%) Onboarding
4 50 (3.61%) Hybrid Cloud
4 50 (3.61%) Legacy Systems
5 44 (3.18%) Public Cloud
6 35 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
6 35 (2.53%) Security Posture
7 33 (2.38%) Virtual Team
8 29 (2.09%) AI Agents
9 23 (1.66%) Algorithms
10 22 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
11 20 (1.44%) Data Centre
12 17 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
12 17 (1.23%) Management Information System
13 16 (1.16%) Fixed Income
14 15 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
15 14 (1.01%) Distributed Computing
15 14 (1.01%) Mobile App
15 14 (1.01%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 113 (8.16%) Linux
2 26 (1.88%) Windows
3 23 (1.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 21 (1.52%) Unix
5 10 (0.72%) VMS
6 4 (0.29%) Windows Server
7 2 (0.14%) Android
7 2 (0.14%) Solaris
7 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
7 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.072%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.072%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 834 (60.22%) CI/CD
2 717 (51.77%) DevOps
3 450 (32.49%) Infrastructure as Code
4 439 (31.70%) Agile
5 375 (27.08%) Containerisation
6 354 (25.56%) Microservices
7 288 (20.79%) AI
8 248 (17.91%) Observability
9 245 (17.69%) Problem-Solving
10 239 (17.26%) Software Engineering
11 219 (15.81%) Migration
12 215 (15.52%) Test Automation
13 200 (14.44%) Analytics
13 200 (14.44%) Machine Learning
14 167 (12.06%) Data Pipeline
15 164 (11.84%) Event-Driven
16 160 (11.55%) Data Engineering
17 159 (11.48%) Roadmaps
18 155 (11.19%) Data Modelling
19 146 (10.54%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 516 (37.26%) Python
2 295 (21.30%) SQL
3 258 (18.63%) Java
4 125 (9.03%) TypeScript
5 94 (6.79%) C#
6 86 (6.21%) Bash
7 72 (5.20%) Go
8 71 (5.13%) JavaScript
9 55 (3.97%) Bicep
10 48 (3.47%) PowerShell
11 21 (1.52%) Shell Script
12 14 (1.01%) Ruby
12 14 (1.01%) Scala
13 10 (0.72%) Kotlin
14 8 (0.58%) R
15 6 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
15 6 (0.43%) PL/SQL
16 5 (0.36%) C++
16 5 (0.36%) Korn
16 5 (0.36%) VBA
Qualifications
1 297 (21.44%) Security Cleared
2 255 (18.41%) SC Cleared
3 114 (8.23%) Degree
4 80 (5.78%) AWS Certification
5 62 (4.48%) Azure Certification
5 62 (4.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 43 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
7 41 (2.96%) TOGAF Certification
8 36 (2.60%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 35 (2.53%) CISSP
9 35 (2.53%) Master's Degree
10 26 (1.88%) DV Cleared
11 22 (1.59%) CISM
12 15 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
13 14 (1.01%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 14 (1.01%) PhD
14 11 (0.79%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (0.58%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
16 7 (0.51%) CCIE
17 6 (0.43%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (5.56%) QA
2 76 (5.49%) GDPR
3 73 (5.27%) NIST
4 71 (5.13%) Data Quality
5 56 (4.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 25 (1.81%) PCI DSS
7 22 (1.59%) NCSC
8 18 (1.30%) Accessibility
8 18 (1.30%) EU AI Act
9 13 (0.94%) SLA
10 10 (0.72%) SOC 2
11 9 (0.65%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.65%) PSD2
12 8 (0.58%) ISO 20022
13 7 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 7 (0.51%) SEPA
14 6 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 6 (0.43%) GRC
15 5 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 5 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 366 (26.43%) Docker
2 42 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (1.88%) VMware NSX
4 23 (1.66%) vSphere
5 21 (1.52%) Active Directory
6 15 (1.08%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.29%) Snort
9 2 (0.14%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 2 (0.14%) Ceph
10 1 (0.072%) Citrix Hypervisor
10 1 (0.072%) Embedded Firmware
10 1 (0.072%) etcd
10 1 (0.072%) Firmware
10 1 (0.072%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 503 (36.32%) Kubernetes
2 423 (30.54%) Terraform
3 132 (9.53%) Grafana
4 109 (7.87%) Prometheus
5 90 (6.50%) Ansible
6 55 (3.97%) Argo
7 22 (1.59%) Istio
8 14 (1.01%) Puppet
9 13 (0.94%) vCenter Server
10 12 (0.87%) Kibana
10 12 (0.87%) Kustomize
11 11 (0.79%) FortiGate
11 11 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.72%) Progress Chef
13 7 (0.51%) logstash
14 6 (0.43%) linkerd
14 6 (0.43%) Microsoft Intune
14 6 (0.43%) Packer
15 5 (0.36%) CSIRT
15 5 (0.36%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 224 (16.17%) Microsoft
2 130 (9.39%) Databricks
3 110 (7.94%) Google
4 68 (4.91%) Splunk
5 56 (4.04%) Red Hat
5 56 (4.04%) VMware
6 40 (2.89%) Oracle
7 27 (1.95%) CyberArk
8 25 (1.81%) Cisco
8 25 (1.81%) OpenAI
9 23 (1.66%) ServiceNow
10 22 (1.59%) Dynatrace
11 19 (1.37%) Foundry
12 17 (1.23%) SAP
13 13 (0.94%) Pure Storage
13 13 (0.94%) Salesforce
14 12 (0.87%) MuleSoft
15 11 (0.79%) BiZZdesign
16 10 (0.72%) AppDynamics
16 10 (0.72%) Informatica