Public Cloud Contract Job Trends

Public Cloud
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Public Cloud in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Public Cloud over the 6 months leading up to 7 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 346 238 270
Rank change year-on-year -108 +32 -63
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 243 378 402
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 1.06% 0.88%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.89% 3.35% 2.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 163 247 273
10th Percentile £406 £433 £406
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £583 £575
Median % change year-on-year -5.58% +1.30% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £770 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £575 £582
% change year-on-year -8.70% -1.20% +5.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 3
10th Percentile - £46.00 £62.00
25th Percentile - £50.50 £68.00
Median hourly rate - £58.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year - -25.64% +33.33%
75th Percentile - £67.75 -
90th Percentile - £73.60 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £66.50 £78.00
% change year-on-year - -14.74% -

All Generic Skills
UK

Public Cloud 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 12,839 11,268 14,386
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.39% 31.55% 31.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,002 6,687 9,627
10th Percentile £275 £275 £270
25th Percentile £406 £410 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.51% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £630 £663 £669
90th Percentile £738 £775 £772
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 652 367 497
10th Percentile £13.50 £16.81 £16.67
25th Percentile £17.98 £22.50 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.50 £34.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.06% -20.00% +21.43%
75th Percentile £56.06 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.19 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £32.50 £45.21
% change year-on-year -20.00% -28.11% +53.25%

Public Cloud
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Public Cloud job vacancy trend in the UK

Public Cloud
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Public Cloud
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Cloud over the 6 months to 7 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Public Cloud in the UK

Public Cloud
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Public Cloud
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 Public Cloud within the UK over the 6 months to 7 December 2025. 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 -131 192 £550 -4.35% 145
UK excluding London -57 142 £525 -8.70% 134
London -88 75 £601 +0.17% 38
North of England -15 65 £476 -5.61% 26
Work from Home -64 62 £575 -4.17% 116
Yorkshire -4 49 £488 -5.71% 9
Scotland +18 29 £500 -13.46% 10
Midlands -24 21 £530 +0.95% 18
West Midlands -17 15 £530 -18.46% 10
North West -25 15 £450 -10.00% 13
South East -73 15 £525 -9.29% 49
South West -9 11 £650 +13.04% 15
East of England -18 9 £413 -31.25% 13
East Midlands -17 6 £631 +28.78% 7
Wales +2 3 £214 -65.12% 4
North East -2 2 - - 4

Public Cloud
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 6 (2.47%) Confluence
1 6 (2.47%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.65%) SAS
3 3 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.41%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (2.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (2.06%) Weka
3 3 (1.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.41%) Adobe Premiere
4 1 (0.41%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 29 (11.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (2.88%) SAP ERP
3 4 (1.65%) SAP FI
4 3 (1.23%) SAP CO
4 3 (1.23%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.41%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.41%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 126 (51.85%) AWS
2 94 (38.68%) Azure
3 84 (34.57%) GCP
4 38 (15.64%) Serverless
5 27 (11.11%) GitHub
6 16 (6.58%) Azure DevOps
6 16 (6.58%) GitHub Actions
7 12 (4.94%) SaaS
8 11 (4.53%) SuccessFactors
9 9 (3.70%) AWS KMS
10 8 (3.29%) IaaS
10 8 (3.29%) OCI
11 7 (2.88%) Entra ID
11 7 (2.88%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 7 (2.88%) PaaS
12 6 (2.47%) Cloud Computing
12 6 (2.47%) Power Platform
13 5 (2.06%) GitHub Copilot
13 5 (2.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 4 (1.65%) Azure ExpressRoute
Communications & Networking
1 23 (9.47%) Firewall
2 15 (6.17%) WAN
3 14 (5.76%) Network Security
4 12 (4.94%) VPN
5 9 (3.70%) TCP/IP
6 7 (2.88%) SD-WAN
7 5 (2.06%) Internet
8 4 (1.65%) DNS
8 4 (1.65%) Kerberos
8 4 (1.65%) VLAN
9 3 (1.23%) LAN
9 3 (1.23%) VXLAN
10 2 (0.82%) BGP
10 2 (0.82%) DHCP
10 2 (0.82%) DMZ
10 2 (0.82%) IOS XR
10 2 (0.82%) IPv6
10 2 (0.82%) OSPF
10 2 (0.82%) SAN
10 2 (0.82%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (17.70%) NoSQL
2 16 (6.58%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (4.94%) MongoDB
4 8 (3.29%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (2.47%) Power BI
5 6 (2.47%) Relational Database
6 5 (2.06%) Oracle Database
7 4 (1.65%) Data Mining
7 4 (1.65%) SQL Server
8 3 (1.23%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.82%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.82%) MySQL
9 2 (0.82%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.82%) Redis
9 2 (0.82%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
10 1 (0.41%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.41%) Oracle Database 12c
10 1 (0.41%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 51 (20.99%) Jenkins
2 46 (18.93%) GitLab
3 30 (12.35%) Liquibase
4 23 (9.47%) JIRA
5 17 (7.00%) Git
6 8 (3.29%) Bitbucket
6 8 (3.29%) IntelliJ
6 8 (3.29%) Visual Studio Code
7 7 (2.88%) PyCharm
7 7 (2.88%) Visual Studio
8 4 (1.65%) Postman
8 4 (1.65%) TeamCity
9 3 (1.23%) Vite
10 2 (0.82%) JUnit
10 2 (0.82%) Mocha
11 1 (0.41%) Spinnaker
General
1 99 (40.74%) Finance
2 81 (33.33%) Social Skills
3 46 (18.93%) Banking
4 38 (15.64%) Public Sector
5 27 (11.11%) Financial Institution
6 26 (10.70%) Analytical Skills
7 14 (5.76%) Local Government
8 12 (4.94%) Presentation Skills
9 8 (3.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 8 (3.29%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (2.06%) Law
11 4 (1.65%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.65%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (1.65%) Police
12 3 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (1.23%) Publishing
13 2 (0.82%) Billing
13 2 (0.82%) Digital Health
13 2 (0.82%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.82%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 42 (17.28%) Architect
2 38 (15.64%) Senior
3 32 (13.17%) Cloud Engineer
4 25 (10.29%) DevOps Engineer
5 23 (9.47%) Software Engineer
6 22 (9.05%) Developer
7 19 (7.82%) AWS Engineer
7 19 (7.82%) GCP Engineer
8 17 (7.00%) Senior Software Engineer
9 15 (6.17%) Analyst
10 13 (5.35%) Solutions Architect
11 12 (4.94%) Consultant
11 12 (4.94%) Java Developer
11 12 (4.94%) Python Engineer
12 11 (4.53%) SAP Manager
13 10 (4.12%) AWS Software Engineer
13 10 (4.12%) Lead
14 9 (3.70%) AWS DevOps
14 9 (3.70%) Security Architect
15 8 (3.29%) Cloud Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (20.99%) REST
2 37 (15.23%) RESTful
3 35 (14.40%) Elastic Stack
4 11 (4.53%) Spring
4 11 (4.53%) Spring Boot
5 9 (3.70%) React
6 7 (2.88%) Kafka
7 6 (2.47%) AngularJS
7 6 (2.47%) Middleware
8 5 (2.06%) GraphQL
8 5 (2.06%) JSON
9 4 (1.65%) JWT
9 4 (1.65%) Node.js
9 4 (1.65%) OAuth
9 4 (1.65%) Oracle Fusion
9 4 (1.65%) SAP Fiori
9 4 (1.65%) SOAP
9 4 (1.65%) Web Services
9 4 (1.65%) XML
9 4 (1.65%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 52 (21.40%) Cloud Native
2 32 (13.17%) Distributed Systems
3 24 (9.88%) Data Centre
4 14 (5.76%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (4.94%) Product Ownership
6 10 (4.12%) Private Cloud
7 8 (3.29%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (3.29%) Security Posture
8 7 (2.88%) Cloud Security Posture
8 7 (2.88%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (2.47%) Mainframe
9 6 (2.47%) Replication
10 5 (2.06%) Distributed Applications
10 5 (2.06%) Grid Computing
10 5 (2.06%) PKI
11 3 (1.23%) Data Structures
11 3 (1.23%) Management Information System
11 3 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.23%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 64 (26.34%) Linux
2 30 (12.35%) Windows
3 7 (2.88%) Windows Server
4 5 (2.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.23%) Unix
5 3 (1.23%) Windows Server 2016
5 3 (1.23%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.82%) VMS
7 1 (0.41%) CentOS
7 1 (0.41%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.41%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (41.98%) Agile
2 101 (41.56%) DevOps
3 95 (39.09%) CI/CD
4 76 (31.28%) Infrastructure as Code
5 56 (23.05%) Containerisation
6 45 (18.52%) Microservices
7 43 (17.70%) Software Engineering
8 41 (16.87%) Computer Science
9 38 (15.64%) High Availability
10 37 (15.23%) Cost Optimisation
11 35 (14.40%) Cybersecurity
12 34 (13.99%) Infrastructure Automation
13 33 (13.58%) Migration
14 32 (13.17%) Continuous Integration
14 32 (13.17%) Cryptography
14 32 (13.17%) Root Cause Analysis
15 31 (12.76%) Continuous Delivery
15 31 (12.76%) Non-Functional Testing
15 31 (12.76%) SDLC
15 31 (12.76%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 81 (33.33%) Python
2 48 (19.75%) Go
2 48 (19.75%) Java
3 15 (6.17%) SQL
4 10 (4.12%) TypeScript
5 8 (3.29%) C#
6 6 (2.47%) Bash
7 4 (1.65%) JavaScript
7 4 (1.65%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.82%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.41%) ABAP
9 1 (0.41%) Bicep
9 1 (0.41%) C++
9 1 (0.41%) DAML
9 1 (0.41%) Perl
9 1 (0.41%) Ruby
9 1 (0.41%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 51 (20.99%) Degree
2 50 (20.58%) Security Cleared
3 38 (15.64%) Computer Science Degree
4 33 (13.58%) Master's Degree
5 31 (12.76%) SC Cleared
6 23 (9.47%) AWS Certification
7 14 (5.76%) Azure Certification
8 9 (3.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (2.88%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
10 6 (2.47%) CISSP
10 6 (2.47%) ISTQB
11 5 (2.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (2.06%) CCSP
11 5 (2.06%) DV Cleared
12 4 (1.65%) AWS Certified Developer
12 4 (1.65%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 3 (1.23%) SAP Certification
14 2 (0.82%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.82%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (3.29%) GDPR
3 7 (2.88%) NIST
4 6 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 6 (2.47%) NCSC
4 6 (2.47%) PCI DSS
4 6 (2.47%) QA
5 5 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 27005
5 5 (2.06%) PSD2
6 4 (1.65%) SLA
7 2 (0.82%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.82%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.82%) WCAG
8 1 (0.41%) GAMP
8 1 (0.41%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 61 (25.10%) Docker
2 8 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.88%) Hyper-V
4 5 (2.06%) Active Directory
4 5 (2.06%) GPFS
4 5 (2.06%) Lustre
4 5 (2.06%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (2.06%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (1.65%) VMware NSX
5 4 (1.65%) vSphere
6 1 (0.41%) Ceph
6 1 (0.41%) IAG
6 1 (0.41%) KVM
6 1 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.41%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 86 (35.39%) Terraform
2 81 (33.33%) Kubernetes
3 61 (25.10%) Ansible
4 38 (15.64%) Grafana
5 37 (15.23%) Prometheus
6 4 (1.65%) Istio
7 3 (1.23%) Kubeflow
7 3 (1.23%) vCenter Server
8 2 (0.82%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.82%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (0.82%) vMotion
9 1 (0.41%) Consul
9 1 (0.41%) Demisto
9 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.41%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.41%) Packer
9 1 (0.41%) Puppet
9 1 (0.41%) Salt
Vendors
1 37 (15.23%) Splunk
2 35 (14.40%) SAP
3 28 (11.52%) Microsoft
4 25 (10.29%) Google
5 19 (7.82%) Oracle
6 17 (7.00%) VMware
7 9 (3.70%) Cisco
8 7 (2.88%) Ariba
8 7 (2.88%) ServiceNow
9 6 (2.47%) Palo Alto
10 5 (2.06%) Aruba
11 4 (1.65%) NetApp
12 3 (1.23%) Fortinet
12 3 (1.23%) Mercator
12 3 (1.23%) MuleSoft
13 2 (0.82%) Arista
13 2 (0.82%) Brocade
13 2 (0.82%) Extreme Networks
13 2 (0.82%) Juniper
13 2 (0.82%) Veeam