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 17 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 347 257 260
Rank change year-on-year -90 +3 -50
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 237 352 448
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.97% 0.95%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.89% 3.13% 2.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 156 222 310
10th Percentile £406 £419 £412
25th Percentile £450 £490 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £696
90th Percentile £788 £774 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £563 £575
% change year-on-year -6.71% -2.13% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 4 6
10th Percentile - £45.70 £68.00
25th Percentile £42.50 £49.75 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £56.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.64% -28.21% +46.48%
75th Percentile £47.50 £62.88 -
90th Percentile - £71.65 £84.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £66.50 £78.00
% change year-on-year - -14.74% +92.59%

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 12,564 11,262 15,030
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.78% 31.03% 32.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,774 6,637 10,107
10th Percentile £275 £285 £275
25th Percentile £406 £410 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.77% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £638 £663 £667
90th Percentile £750 £788 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 678 363 505
10th Percentile £13.50 £17.08 £16.70
25th Percentile £17.84 £22.50 £20.75
Median hourly rate £26.64 £37.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.96% -15.73% +50.85%
75th Percentile £51.25 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.16 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.25 £37.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year -30.00% -18.80% +81.78%

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 17 November 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 17 November 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 -128 186 £566 -1.52% 166
UK excluding London -49 136 £525 -6.71% 97
London -65 77 £604 +1.94% 74
North of England -16 63 £475 -6.40% 19
Work from Home -59 59 £575 -0.78% 94
Yorkshire 0 49 £501 -4.52% 8
Scotland +18 32 £500 -12.17% 7
Midlands -17 22 £530 +6.00% 12
West Midlands -15 16 £530 +6.00% 7
North West -36 13 £450 -10.00% 10
South West +6 9 £625 -1.96% 12
East of England -19 9 £413 -29.79% 1
South East -56 9 £600 -2.04% 44
East Midlands -14 6 £631 +28.78% 4
Wales +4 3 £214 -65.82% 1
North East -6 2 - - 1

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 (2.53%) Confluence
1 6 (2.53%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.69%) SAS
3 2 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.84%) nginx
4 1 (0.42%) Apache
4 1 (0.42%) Apache Solr
4 1 (0.42%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.42%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (2.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (2.11%) Weka
3 3 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.42%) Adobe Premiere
4 1 (0.42%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 28 (11.81%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (2.53%) SAP ERP
3 4 (1.69%) SAP FI
4 3 (1.27%) SAP CO
4 3 (1.27%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.42%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.42%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 141 (59.49%) AWS
2 99 (41.77%) Azure
3 88 (37.13%) GCP
4 38 (16.03%) Serverless
5 36 (15.19%) GitHub
6 25 (10.55%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (7.17%) Azure DevOps
8 15 (6.33%) SaaS
9 11 (4.64%) SuccessFactors
10 9 (3.80%) AWS KMS
11 8 (3.38%) Power Platform
12 7 (2.95%) Entra ID
13 6 (2.53%) IaaS
14 5 (2.11%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 5 (2.11%) Cloud Computing
14 5 (2.11%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 5 (2.11%) Microsoft 365
14 5 (2.11%) OCI
14 5 (2.11%) PaaS
14 5 (2.11%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 25 (10.55%) Firewall
2 16 (6.75%) WAN
3 15 (6.33%) VPN
4 14 (5.91%) Network Security
5 9 (3.80%) TCP/IP
6 7 (2.95%) SD-WAN
6 7 (2.95%) VLAN
7 5 (2.11%) DNS
7 5 (2.11%) Internet
8 4 (1.69%) Cisco Nexus
9 3 (1.27%) BGP
9 3 (1.27%) Kerberos
9 3 (1.27%) LAN
9 3 (1.27%) OSPF
9 3 (1.27%) VXLAN
10 2 (0.84%) Cisco IOS
10 2 (0.84%) DHCP
10 2 (0.84%) DMZ
10 2 (0.84%) Reverse Proxy
10 2 (0.84%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (18.14%) NoSQL
2 16 (6.75%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (5.06%) MongoDB
4 8 (3.38%) Power BI
5 6 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (2.53%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.69%) Data Mining
6 4 (1.69%) Oracle Database
6 4 (1.69%) SQL Server
7 3 (1.27%) BigQuery
7 3 (1.27%) MySQL
8 2 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.84%) Apache Cassandra
8 2 (0.84%) RDBMS
8 2 (0.84%) Redis
8 2 (0.84%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.42%) Big Data
9 1 (0.42%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 51 (21.52%) Jenkins
2 46 (19.41%) GitLab
3 29 (12.24%) Liquibase
4 25 (10.55%) JIRA
5 22 (9.28%) Git
6 11 (4.64%) Bitbucket
7 9 (3.80%) IntelliJ
7 9 (3.80%) Visual Studio Code
8 8 (3.38%) PyCharm
8 8 (3.38%) Visual Studio
9 5 (2.11%) CircleCI
10 4 (1.69%) TeamCity
11 3 (1.27%) Artifactory
11 3 (1.27%) Vite
12 2 (0.84%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.84%) Mocha
12 2 (0.84%) Postman
12 2 (0.84%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.84%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.84%) webpack
General
1 104 (43.88%) Finance
2 82 (34.60%) Social Skills
3 48 (20.25%) Banking
4 37 (15.61%) Public Sector
5 28 (11.81%) Financial Institution
6 27 (11.39%) Analytical Skills
7 14 (5.91%) Local Government
8 12 (5.06%) Presentation Skills
9 10 (4.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 9 (3.80%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (2.11%) Law
12 4 (1.69%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.69%) Police
13 3 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (1.27%) Publishing
14 2 (0.84%) Digital Health
14 2 (0.84%) Marketing
14 2 (0.84%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.84%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 45 (18.99%) Architect
2 43 (18.14%) Senior
3 29 (12.24%) Cloud Engineer
4 25 (10.55%) DevOps Engineer
4 25 (10.55%) Software Engineer
5 22 (9.28%) Developer
6 19 (8.02%) AWS Engineer
7 17 (7.17%) GCP Engineer
7 17 (7.17%) Senior Software Engineer
8 16 (6.75%) Analyst
9 12 (5.06%) Java Developer
9 12 (5.06%) Solutions Architect
10 11 (4.64%) Python Engineer
11 10 (4.22%) AWS Software Engineer
11 10 (4.22%) Consultant
11 10 (4.22%) Security Architect
12 9 (3.80%) AWS DevOps
12 9 (3.80%) Lead
12 9 (3.80%) SAP Manager
13 8 (3.38%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (19.41%) REST
2 39 (16.46%) RESTful
3 36 (15.19%) Elastic Stack
4 13 (5.49%) Spring Boot
5 11 (4.64%) React
5 11 (4.64%) Spring
6 8 (3.38%) Kafka
7 6 (2.53%) AngularJS
8 5 (2.11%) GraphQL
9 4 (1.69%) CSS
9 4 (1.69%) HTML
9 4 (1.69%) Jest
9 4 (1.69%) Node.js
9 4 (1.69%) SAP Fiori
9 4 (1.69%) Web Services
10 3 (1.27%) JSON
10 3 (1.27%) Middleware
10 3 (1.27%) Next.js
11 2 (0.84%) AWS CDK
11 2 (0.84%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 51 (21.52%) Cloud Native
2 32 (13.50%) Distributed Systems
3 24 (10.13%) Data Centre
4 15 (6.33%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (5.06%) Private Cloud
6 11 (4.64%) Product Ownership
7 8 (3.38%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (2.95%) Security Posture
9 6 (2.53%) Cloud Security Posture
9 6 (2.53%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (2.53%) Mainframe
9 6 (2.53%) Replication
10 5 (2.11%) Distributed Applications
10 5 (2.11%) Grid Computing
11 4 (1.69%) Virtual Team
12 3 (1.27%) Data Structures
12 3 (1.27%) Management Information System
12 3 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
13 2 (0.84%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 61 (25.74%) Linux
2 26 (10.97%) Windows
3 8 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.27%) Unix
5 3 (1.27%) Windows Server 2016
5 3 (1.27%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.84%) VMS
7 1 (0.42%) CentOS
7 1 (0.42%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.42%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (43.88%) Agile
2 98 (41.35%) CI/CD
2 98 (41.35%) DevOps
3 79 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
4 54 (22.78%) Containerisation
5 53 (22.36%) Microservices
6 43 (18.14%) Software Engineering
7 41 (17.30%) Computer Science
8 39 (16.46%) High Availability
9 38 (16.03%) Cost Optimisation
10 37 (15.61%) Continuous Integration
11 35 (14.77%) Continuous Delivery
12 33 (13.92%) Problem-Solving
12 33 (13.92%) SDLC
12 33 (13.92%) Test Automation
13 32 (13.50%) Cryptography
13 32 (13.50%) Infrastructure Automation
14 31 (13.08%) Cybersecurity
14 31 (13.08%) Non-Functional Testing
14 31 (13.08%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 82 (34.60%) Python
2 56 (23.63%) Java
3 49 (20.68%) Go
4 18 (7.59%) TypeScript
5 12 (5.06%) SQL
6 9 (3.80%) C#
6 9 (3.80%) JavaScript
7 7 (2.95%) Bash
7 7 (2.95%) PowerShell
8 5 (2.11%) Kotlin
9 3 (1.27%) Groovy
10 1 (0.42%) ABAP
10 1 (0.42%) Bicep
10 1 (0.42%) C++
10 1 (0.42%) CodeQL
10 1 (0.42%) DAML
10 1 (0.42%) Perl
10 1 (0.42%) Ruby
10 1 (0.42%) Scala
10 1 (0.42%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 50 (21.10%) Degree
2 47 (19.83%) Security Cleared
3 39 (16.46%) Computer Science Degree
4 33 (13.92%) Master's Degree
5 32 (13.50%) SC Cleared
6 24 (10.13%) AWS Certification
7 14 (5.91%) Azure Certification
8 9 (3.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (2.95%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
10 6 (2.53%) CISSP
10 6 (2.53%) ISTQB
11 5 (2.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (2.11%) CCSP
11 5 (2.11%) DV Cleared
12 4 (1.69%) AWS Certified Developer
12 4 (1.69%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 3 (1.27%) SAP Certification
14 2 (0.84%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.84%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (3.38%) GDPR
3 7 (2.95%) NIST
3 7 (2.95%) QA
4 6 (2.53%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 6 (2.53%) NCSC
4 6 (2.53%) PCI DSS
5 5 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27005
5 5 (2.11%) PSD2
6 4 (1.69%) Data Quality
7 3 (1.27%) SLA
8 2 (0.84%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.84%) WCAG
9 1 (0.42%) GAMP
9 1 (0.42%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 59 (24.89%) Docker
2 10 (4.22%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.95%) Hyper-V
4 6 (2.53%) VMware NSX
5 5 (2.11%) Active Directory
5 5 (2.11%) GPFS
5 5 (2.11%) Lustre
5 5 (2.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 4 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (1.69%) vSphere
7 2 (0.84%) Firmware
8 1 (0.42%) Ceph
8 1 (0.42%) IAG
8 1 (0.42%) KVM
8 1 (0.42%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 90 (37.97%) Terraform
2 85 (35.86%) Kubernetes
3 63 (26.58%) Ansible
4 44 (18.57%) Grafana
5 43 (18.14%) Prometheus
6 4 (1.69%) Puppet
7 3 (1.27%) vCenter Server
8 2 (0.84%) HAProxy
8 2 (0.84%) Istio
8 2 (0.84%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.84%) vMotion
9 1 (0.42%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.42%) Consul
9 1 (0.42%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.42%) Demisto
9 1 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.42%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.42%) Salt
Vendors
1 37 (15.61%) Splunk
2 33 (13.92%) SAP
3 31 (13.08%) Microsoft
4 23 (9.70%) Google
5 18 (7.59%) VMware
6 17 (7.17%) Oracle
7 14 (5.91%) Cisco
8 7 (2.95%) Palo Alto
9 6 (2.53%) ServiceNow
10 5 (2.11%) Ariba
10 5 (2.11%) Aruba
11 4 (1.69%) Juniper
11 4 (1.69%) NetApp
12 3 (1.27%) F5
12 3 (1.27%) Fortinet
12 3 (1.27%) Mercator
12 3 (1.27%) Veeam
13 2 (0.84%) Brocade
13 2 (0.84%) Extreme Networks
13 2 (0.84%) Salesforce