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 9 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 310 313 310
Rank change year-on-year +3 -3 -74
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 378 222 316
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.76% 0.76% 0.73%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.35% 2.22% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 139 215
10th Percentile £400 £405 £450
25th Percentile £500 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £600 £598
Median % change year-on-year -4.09% +0.42% -6.27%
75th Percentile £675 £697 £750
90th Percentile £713 £764 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £590 £544 £600
% change year-on-year +8.56% -9.42% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 2
10th Percentile - £45.25 £38.28
25th Percentile £71.25 £49.38 £40.56
Median hourly rate £72.50 £57.50 £46.25
Median % change year-on-year +26.09% +24.32% -40.71%
75th Percentile £73.75 £64.38 £52.06
90th Percentile - £67.75 £54.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £70.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year - +81.82% -50.64%

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 16,092 9,990 13,006
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.39% 34.13% 30.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,906 6,277 8,314
10th Percentile £313 £300 £274
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £660
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.68% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 809 424 930
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.82 £20.33 £15.28
Median hourly rate £42.30 £33.03 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.08% -6.97% +59.51%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.24 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.42 £82.25 £71.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £32.43 £35.00
% change year-on-year +35.55% -7.34% +59.09%

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 9 June 2026.

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 17 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 9 June 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 -4 309 £600 -3.61% 69
UK excluding London +28 203 £590 +8.56% 48
London -77 109 £600 -10.28% 27
Work from Home 0 100 £610 +9.66% 56
North of England -26 64 £538 +0.09% 18
South East -15 56 £583 -2.92% 16
Midlands -29 38 £625 +16.39% 3
North West -14 33 £350 -34.82% 7
Yorkshire -34 30 £576 +19.67% 7
South West -1 29 £675 +22.73% 8
East Midlands -6 27 £625 +31.58%
Scotland -17 12 £425 -15.00% 2
West Midlands -53 7 £450 -22.58% 3
East of England -34 3 £593 +3.04%
Northern Ireland - 2 £385 -
Wales -14 1 - - 1
North East -25 1 - - 5

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 10 (2.65%) Confluence
2 9 (2.38%) Apache
3 5 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.32%) SAS
3 5 (1.32%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.79%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.53%) CloudStack
5 2 (0.53%) IIS
5 2 (0.53%) nginx
5 2 (0.53%) OpenStack
5 2 (0.53%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.53%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.26%) WebLogic
Applications
1 6 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.06%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.26%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.26%) Weka
Business Applications
1 87 (23.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.65%) Oracle ERP
3 6 (1.59%) SAP Business One
4 5 (1.32%) SAP ERP
4 5 (1.32%) SAP FI
5 4 (1.06%) iTrent
5 4 (1.06%) SAP CO
5 4 (1.06%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.79%) SAP SD
7 2 (0.53%) SAP FI-GL
8 1 (0.26%) Exchequer
8 1 (0.26%) Oracle SCM
8 1 (0.26%) SAP FI-AR
Cloud Services
1 159 (42.06%) Azure
2 109 (28.84%) AWS
3 93 (24.60%) GCP
4 38 (10.05%) GitHub
5 24 (6.35%) IaaS
5 24 (6.35%) PaaS
5 24 (6.35%) SuccessFactors
6 22 (5.82%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 18 (4.76%) GitHub Actions
7 18 (4.76%) OCI
8 15 (3.97%) Serverless
9 13 (3.44%) SaaS
10 10 (2.65%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (2.65%) Azure DevOps
11 9 (2.38%) Cloud Computing
11 9 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
11 9 (2.38%) Power Platform
12 7 (1.85%) OpenShift
13 6 (1.59%) Azure Sentinel
13 6 (1.59%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 36 (9.52%) DNS
2 32 (8.47%) Firewall
3 23 (6.08%) Network Security
4 17 (4.50%) VPN
5 10 (2.65%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 10 (2.65%) LAN
5 10 (2.65%) WAN
6 8 (2.12%) TCP/IP
7 7 (1.85%) SAN
8 6 (1.59%) NAS
8 6 (1.59%) VSAN
9 5 (1.32%) DHCP
9 5 (1.32%) Kerberos
9 5 (1.32%) Wireless
10 4 (1.06%) NetScaler
11 3 (0.79%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.79%) MPLS
11 3 (0.79%) SD-WAN
12 2 (0.53%) BGP
12 2 (0.53%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.12%) Oracle Database
1 8 (2.12%) Power BI
2 6 (1.59%) Data Warehouse
2 6 (1.59%) SQL Server
3 5 (1.32%) BigQuery
3 5 (1.32%) Relational Database
4 4 (1.06%) BusinessObjects
4 4 (1.06%) Oracle Exadata
5 3 (0.79%) Data Vault
5 3 (0.79%) Delta Lake
5 3 (0.79%) MySQL
5 3 (0.79%) RDBMS
6 2 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (0.53%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (0.53%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.26%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.26%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.26%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.26%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 36 (9.52%) Jenkins
2 21 (5.56%) Git
3 20 (5.29%) JIRA
4 16 (4.23%) GitLab
5 13 (3.44%) Postman
6 9 (2.38%) SoapUI
7 4 (1.06%) Cucumber
7 4 (1.06%) Hudson
7 4 (1.06%) TeamCity
8 3 (0.79%) JUnit
8 3 (0.79%) Liquibase
9 2 (0.53%) Selenium
9 2 (0.53%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.53%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.26%) Ant
10 1 (0.26%) LSMW
10 1 (0.26%) Maven
10 1 (0.26%) MSI
10 1 (0.26%) PVCS
10 1 (0.26%) Snyk
General
1 112 (29.63%) Finance
2 66 (17.46%) Social Skills
3 51 (13.49%) Public Sector
4 36 (9.52%) Banking
5 19 (5.03%) Local Government
6 14 (3.70%) Analytical Skills
7 12 (3.17%) General Ledger
8 11 (2.91%) Influencing Skills
9 7 (1.85%) Financial Institution
9 7 (1.85%) Investment Banking
10 6 (1.59%) Military
11 5 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (0.79%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.79%) Retail
13 2 (0.53%) Billing
13 2 (0.53%) German Language
13 2 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.53%) Telecoms
14 1 (0.26%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 92 (24.34%) Architect
2 50 (13.23%) Lead
3 47 (12.43%) Senior
4 36 (9.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 31 (8.20%) Solutions Architect
6 28 (7.41%) Cloud Engineer
7 25 (6.61%) GCP Engineer
8 21 (5.56%) Azure Specialist
9 20 (5.29%) Technical Architect
10 19 (5.03%) DevOps Engineer
11 17 (4.50%) Consultant
12 16 (4.23%) Cloud Architect
13 13 (3.44%) Developer
13 13 (3.44%) SAP Architect
14 12 (3.17%) Analyst
14 12 (3.17%) Azure Architect
14 12 (3.17%) SAP Consultant
15 11 (2.91%) Azure Engineer
15 11 (2.91%) Infrastructure Architect
15 11 (2.91%) SAP Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (6.35%) REST
2 21 (5.56%) Middleware
3 15 (3.97%) OAuth
4 14 (3.70%) Oracle Fusion
5 13 (3.44%) JSON
5 13 (3.44%) SOAP
5 13 (3.44%) Spring Boot
6 12 (3.17%) Kafka
7 11 (2.91%) JWT
7 11 (2.91%) Web Services
8 10 (2.65%) XML
8 10 (2.65%) XSLT
9 6 (1.59%) NumPy
9 6 (1.59%) Pandas
9 6 (1.59%) Spring
10 5 (1.32%) Elastic Stack
10 5 (1.32%) React
11 4 (1.06%) PyTorch
11 4 (1.06%) SAP Fiori
11 4 (1.06%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 47 (12.43%) Cloud Native
2 19 (5.03%) Data Centre
2 19 (5.03%) Private Cloud
3 17 (4.50%) Hybrid Cloud
4 8 (2.12%) Data Structures
4 8 (2.12%) PKI
5 7 (1.85%) Legacy Applications
5 7 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
5 7 (1.85%) Onboarding
6 6 (1.59%) Security Posture
6 6 (1.59%) Virtual Team
7 3 (0.79%) AI Agents
7 3 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
7 3 (0.79%) Management Information System
7 3 (0.79%) Reinsurance
7 3 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (0.53%) Cloud Security Posture
8 2 (0.53%) Distributed Systems
8 2 (0.53%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 48 (12.70%) Linux
2 29 (7.67%) Windows
3 13 (3.44%) Unix
4 11 (2.91%) Windows Server
5 8 (2.12%) Windows Server 2019
6 7 (1.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (1.59%) Ubuntu
8 5 (1.32%) VMS
8 5 (1.32%) Windows Server 2012
9 4 (1.06%) Debian
10 3 (0.79%) CentOS
10 3 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.53%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (29.63%) DevOps
2 94 (24.87%) CI/CD
3 89 (23.54%) Infrastructure as Code
4 87 (23.02%) Migration
5 56 (14.81%) Stakeholder Management
6 55 (14.55%) Agile
7 53 (14.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 43 (11.38%) ERP
9 40 (10.58%) Analytics
9 40 (10.58%) Containerisation
10 38 (10.05%) Microservices
11 36 (9.52%) User Acceptance Testing
12 31 (8.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 30 (7.94%) Cloud Security
14 28 (7.41%) Data Migration
14 28 (7.41%) Validation
15 27 (7.14%) Problem-Solving
15 27 (7.14%) Project Delivery
16 26 (6.88%) Identity Access Management
17 25 (6.61%) Architectural Patterns
Programming Languages
1 71 (18.78%) Python
2 23 (6.08%) Java
3 21 (5.56%) PowerShell
3 21 (5.56%) SQL
4 13 (3.44%) Bash
5 8 (2.12%) Bicep
6 7 (1.85%) Shell Script
7 6 (1.59%) Go
8 5 (1.32%) Ruby
9 4 (1.06%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.06%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.79%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.53%) C++
11 2 (0.53%) Perl
12 1 (0.26%) C#
12 1 (0.26%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.26%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 88 (23.28%) Security Cleared
2 73 (19.31%) SC Cleared
3 23 (6.08%) Cisco Certification
4 18 (4.76%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.44%) Degree
6 12 (3.17%) CCNP
7 10 (2.65%) CISSP
8 9 (2.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 9 (2.38%) AWS Certification
8 9 (2.38%) SAP Certification
9 8 (2.12%) Azure Certification
9 8 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (1.85%) ACCA
10 7 (1.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (1.85%) CIMA
10 7 (1.85%) CISM
10 7 (1.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 6 (1.59%) ISTQB
12 5 (1.32%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 5 (1.32%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.70%) NCSC
1 14 (3.70%) NIST
2 11 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (2.65%) GDPR
4 8 (2.12%) QA
5 5 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (1.32%) Data Quality
5 5 (1.32%) GRC
5 5 (1.32%) SLA
6 3 (0.79%) ISO 15022
6 3 (0.79%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.53%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.53%) PMO
8 1 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.26%) COBIT
8 1 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.26%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
8 1 (0.26%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.26%) RMADS
System Software
1 29 (7.67%) Docker
2 26 (6.88%) VMware Infrastructure
3 14 (3.70%) Active Directory
4 12 (3.17%) Hyper-V
4 12 (3.17%) VMware NSX
5 7 (1.85%) Postfix
6 6 (1.59%) vSphere
7 5 (1.32%) NFS
7 5 (1.32%) Varnish
7 5 (1.32%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (1.06%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (1.06%) Sendmail
8 4 (1.06%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (1.06%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.53%) Dovecot
10 1 (0.26%) Firmware
10 1 (0.26%) GPFS
10 1 (0.26%) Lustre
10 1 (0.26%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.26%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 78 (20.63%) Terraform
2 64 (16.93%) Kubernetes
3 34 (8.99%) Ansible
4 20 (5.29%) Istio
5 10 (2.65%) Prometheus
6 9 (2.38%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (2.12%) Grafana
8 7 (1.85%) HAProxy
9 6 (1.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 6 (1.59%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (1.06%) Data Guard
10 4 (1.06%) Kubeflow
10 4 (1.06%) Oracle RMAN
10 4 (1.06%) SCCM
11 3 (0.79%) Argo
11 3 (0.79%) Packer
11 3 (0.79%) Puppet
11 3 (0.79%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.53%) Check_MK
12 2 (0.53%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 97 (25.66%) SAP
2 53 (14.02%) Google
3 49 (12.96%) Microsoft
4 40 (10.58%) Oracle
5 38 (10.05%) VMware
6 18 (4.76%) F5
7 16 (4.23%) Ariba
8 12 (3.17%) Red Hat
9 10 (2.65%) Cisco
10 9 (2.38%) ServiceNow
11 7 (1.85%) MuleSoft
11 7 (1.85%) Splunk
12 6 (1.59%) Veeam
13 5 (1.32%) Citrix
13 5 (1.32%) Databricks
13 5 (1.32%) Palo Alto
14 4 (1.06%) Fortinet
14 4 (1.06%) IBM
14 4 (1.06%) Juniper
15 3 (0.79%) Commvault