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 31 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 332 271
Rank change year-on-year -20 -61 -22
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 354 233 347
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.71% 0.87%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.00% 2.04% 2.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 235 152 231
10th Percentile £432 £364 £445
25th Percentile £513 £450 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £550 £576
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.43% -7.55%
75th Percentile £688 £688 £750
90th Percentile £750 £750 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £610 £500 £600
% change year-on-year +22.00% -16.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 3
10th Percentile - £45.25 £39.80
25th Percentile £71.25 £49.38 £44.38
Median hourly rate £72.50 £57.50 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.09% +6.48% -30.77%
75th Percentile £73.75 £64.38 £57.00
90th Percentile - £67.75 £57.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £70.00 £48.25
% change year-on-year - +45.08% -38.14%

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 17,715 11,410 12,149
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.36% 34.79% 30.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,799 7,046 7,801
10th Percentile £320 £300 £300
25th Percentile £420 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £638 £641 £675
90th Percentile £750 £775 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 955 545 657
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.13 £12.28
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.87 £16.85
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.50 £41.25
Median % change year-on-year +49.02% -28.48% +10.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £77.00 £73.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £44.04
% change year-on-year +46.53% -31.88% -2.13%

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 31 July 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 31 July 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 -20 292 £610 +1.67% 177
UK excluding London +9 198 £610 +22.00% 86
London -68 100 £600 -7.69% 107
Work from Home -3 98 £618 +17.62% 60
North of England -38 68 £625 +38.89% 27
South East -26 54 £590 -8.35% 22
Yorkshire -34 36 £625 +48.81% 12
Midlands -27 33 £638 +18.72% 8
North West -40 29 £613 +32.43% 12
South West -19 24 £675 +22.73% 13
East Midlands +1 18 £638 +34.21% 4
Scotland -27 13 £500 - 7
West Midlands -52 12 £675 +10.12% 4
North East -37 7 £625 - 3
East of England -17 6 £475 -9.52%
Wales -17 1 - - 2
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 7

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 (2.82%) Apache
1 10 (2.82%) Confluence
2 5 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.41%) OpenStack
3 4 (1.13%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.85%) CloudStack
4 3 (0.85%) SAS
5 2 (0.56%) IIS
5 2 (0.56%) nginx
5 2 (0.56%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.56%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 9 (2.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.26%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.13%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.56%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.56%) Houdini
4 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.56%) NUKE
4 2 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.28%) Weka
Business Applications
1 75 (21.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.69%) SAP Business One
2 6 (1.69%) SAP SD
3 5 (1.41%) SAP ERP
4 4 (1.13%) iTrent
5 3 (0.85%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.56%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.56%) SAP FI-GL
7 1 (0.28%) Exchequer
7 1 (0.28%) Oracle SCM
7 1 (0.28%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.28%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.28%) SAP FI-AR
7 1 (0.28%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 140 (39.55%) Azure
2 122 (34.46%) AWS
3 67 (18.93%) GCP
4 26 (7.34%) SuccessFactors
5 24 (6.78%) GitHub
6 19 (5.37%) OCI
7 18 (5.08%) IaaS
8 17 (4.80%) PaaS
9 15 (4.24%) SaaS
10 14 (3.95%) OpenShift
11 13 (3.67%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 13 (3.67%) Serverless
12 12 (3.39%) Amazon EKS
12 12 (3.39%) GitHub Actions
13 10 (2.82%) AWS CloudFormation
14 9 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
15 6 (1.69%) Amazon ECS
16 5 (1.41%) Entra ID
16 5 (1.41%) Microsoft 365
17 4 (1.13%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 31 (8.76%) DNS
2 27 (7.63%) Firewall
3 20 (5.65%) Network Security
4 15 (4.24%) TCP/IP
4 15 (4.24%) VPN
5 12 (3.39%) LAN
5 12 (3.39%) VSAN
5 12 (3.39%) WAN
6 9 (2.54%) DHCP
7 8 (2.26%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 6 (1.69%) BGP
8 6 (1.69%) SAN
9 5 (1.41%) MPLS
9 5 (1.41%) NAS
9 5 (1.41%) VLAN
9 5 (1.41%) Wi-Fi
10 4 (1.13%) SNMP
10 4 (1.13%) TACACS
10 4 (1.13%) Wireless
11 3 (0.85%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.80%) Oracle Database
2 13 (3.67%) RDBMS
2 13 (3.67%) Relational Database
3 12 (3.39%) Oracle Exadata
4 9 (2.54%) MySQL
5 5 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (1.13%) BigQuery
6 4 (1.13%) BusinessObjects
6 4 (1.13%) SQL Server
7 3 (0.85%) PostgreSQL
7 3 (0.85%) Power BI
8 2 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.56%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
8 2 (0.56%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.28%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (0.28%) Big Data
9 1 (0.28%) Data Lake
9 1 (0.28%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.28%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 39 (11.02%) Git
2 24 (6.78%) Jenkins
3 18 (5.08%) GitLab
4 13 (3.67%) JIRA
5 7 (1.98%) JUnit
6 6 (1.69%) Postman
7 4 (1.13%) Hudson
7 4 (1.13%) SoapUI
8 3 (0.85%) Cucumber
8 3 (0.85%) Selenium
8 3 (0.85%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.85%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.56%) Liquibase
10 1 (0.28%) Ant
10 1 (0.28%) LSMW
10 1 (0.28%) Maven
10 1 (0.28%) MSI
10 1 (0.28%) PVCS
10 1 (0.28%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.28%) TeamCity
General
1 100 (28.25%) Finance
2 54 (15.25%) Social Skills
3 44 (12.43%) Public Sector
4 23 (6.50%) Banking
5 20 (5.65%) Analytical Skills
6 14 (3.95%) Local Government
7 9 (2.54%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (2.26%) General Ledger
9 7 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.98%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.41%) Billing
10 5 (1.41%) Military
10 5 (1.41%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.13%) Automotive
11 4 (1.13%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.13%) Legal
12 3 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.56%) Police
Job Titles
1 88 (24.86%) Architect
2 56 (15.82%) Senior
3 48 (13.56%) Lead
4 43 (12.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 34 (9.60%) Solutions Architect
6 24 (6.78%) DevOps Engineer
7 23 (6.50%) Cloud Engineer
8 20 (5.65%) Technical Architect
9 17 (4.80%) Consultant
10 16 (4.52%) Developer
10 16 (4.52%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 15 (4.24%) Azure Specialist
11 15 (4.24%) Cloud Architect
11 15 (4.24%) GCP Engineer
12 12 (3.39%) Azure Engineer
12 12 (3.39%) SAP Consultant
13 10 (2.82%) Azure Architect
14 9 (2.54%) Analyst
14 9 (2.54%) Network Architect
14 9 (2.54%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (4.80%) Kafka
2 16 (4.52%) Spring Boot
3 15 (4.24%) Middleware
4 13 (3.67%) REST
5 12 (3.39%) Oracle GoldenGate
6 11 (3.11%) Spring
7 8 (2.26%) SAP Fiori
8 7 (1.98%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (1.98%) OAuth
8 7 (1.98%) Oracle Fusion
8 7 (1.98%) React
9 6 (1.69%) JSON
9 6 (1.69%) NumPy
9 6 (1.69%) Pandas
10 5 (1.41%) SOAP
10 5 (1.41%) Web Services
11 4 (1.13%) .NET
11 4 (1.13%) 802.1X
11 4 (1.13%) PyTorch
11 4 (1.13%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 40 (11.30%) Cloud Native
2 25 (7.06%) Hybrid Cloud
3 22 (6.21%) Data Centre
4 20 (5.65%) Private Cloud
5 15 (4.24%) PKI
6 10 (2.82%) Onboarding
7 7 (1.98%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (1.98%) Management Information System
7 7 (1.98%) Virtual Team
8 6 (1.69%) AI Agents
8 6 (1.69%) Linux Command Line
9 5 (1.41%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.41%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.13%) Robotics
10 4 (1.13%) Security Posture
11 2 (0.56%) Distributed Systems
11 2 (0.56%) Market Risk
11 2 (0.56%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 64 (18.08%) Linux
2 30 (8.47%) Windows
3 12 (3.39%) AIX
4 11 (3.11%) Ubuntu
5 9 (2.54%) Unix
6 8 (2.26%) Windows Server
7 6 (1.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (1.13%) Debian
8 4 (1.13%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (0.85%) CentOS
9 3 (0.85%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.28%) Android
10 1 (0.28%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.28%) VMS
10 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 97 (27.40%) Migration
2 96 (27.12%) Infrastructure as Code
3 95 (26.84%) CI/CD
4 88 (24.86%) DevOps
5 64 (18.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 56 (15.82%) Agile
7 49 (13.84%) Stakeholder Management
8 37 (10.45%) Data Migration
9 36 (10.17%) Microservices
10 34 (9.60%) ERP
11 32 (9.04%) Containerisation
12 30 (8.47%) Cloud Security
12 30 (8.47%) Infrastructure Automation
12 30 (8.47%) Validation
13 28 (7.91%) Project Delivery
13 28 (7.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 27 (7.63%) Identity Access Management
15 25 (7.06%) Technical Leadership
16 24 (6.78%) Architectural Patterns
16 24 (6.78%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 69 (19.49%) Python
2 32 (9.04%) Java
3 28 (7.91%) PowerShell
4 19 (5.37%) Bash
5 14 (3.95%) SQL
6 12 (3.39%) JavaScript
7 9 (2.54%) Bicep
8 6 (1.69%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.13%) Go
9 4 (1.13%) Ruby
9 4 (1.13%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.56%) C++
10 2 (0.56%) Groovy
10 2 (0.56%) Perl
11 1 (0.28%) C#
11 1 (0.28%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.28%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.28%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 94 (26.55%) Security Cleared
2 77 (21.75%) SC Cleared
3 29 (8.19%) Cisco Certification
4 27 (7.63%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.67%) CCNP
6 12 (3.39%) AWS Certification
7 11 (3.11%) CISSP
7 11 (3.11%) Degree
7 11 (3.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 9 (2.54%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 9 (2.54%) Azure Certification
8 9 (2.54%) VCAP
9 8 (2.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 8 (2.26%) CISM
10 7 (1.98%) ACCA
10 7 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (1.98%) CIMA
11 5 (1.41%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 5 (1.41%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 5 (1.41%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.67%) NCSC
2 12 (3.39%) NIST
3 11 (3.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.82%) GDPR
5 8 (2.26%) QA
6 5 (1.41%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (1.41%) Government Security Classifications
6 5 (1.41%) GRC
7 4 (1.13%) Data Quality
7 4 (1.13%) ISO 20022
8 3 (0.85%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 3 (0.85%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.56%) PMO
10 1 (0.28%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.28%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
10 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 1 (0.28%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.28%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 24 (6.78%) VMware Infrastructure
2 21 (5.93%) Docker
3 18 (5.08%) VMware NSX
4 14 (3.95%) Active Directory
5 13 (3.67%) Oracle RAC
6 9 (2.54%) VMware ESXi
7 8 (2.26%) vSphere
8 7 (1.98%) Postfix
9 5 (1.41%) NFS
9 5 (1.41%) Varnish
9 5 (1.41%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (1.13%) Hyper-V
10 4 (1.13%) Sendmail
11 2 (0.56%) Dovecot
12 1 (0.28%) Firmware
12 1 (0.28%) GPFS
12 1 (0.28%) Lustre
12 1 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 1 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 85 (24.01%) Terraform
2 57 (16.10%) Kubernetes
3 48 (13.56%) Ansible
4 13 (3.67%) Data Guard
4 13 (3.67%) Oracle RMAN
5 12 (3.39%) Istio
5 12 (3.39%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.11%) Grafana
7 7 (1.98%) HAProxy
7 7 (1.98%) Packer
7 7 (1.98%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.69%) vCenter Server
9 4 (1.13%) Kubeflow
9 4 (1.13%) systemd
10 3 (0.85%) Argo
10 3 (0.85%) Check_MK
10 3 (0.85%) VxRail
11 2 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 1 (0.28%) CASB
12 1 (0.28%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 83 (23.45%) SAP
2 55 (15.54%) Microsoft
3 47 (13.28%) Oracle
4 38 (10.73%) Google
5 35 (9.89%) VMware
6 17 (4.80%) Cisco
7 14 (3.95%) F5
8 12 (3.39%) Ariba
9 11 (3.11%) Juniper
10 10 (2.82%) ServiceNow
11 9 (2.54%) Red Hat
12 7 (1.98%) Fortinet
12 7 (1.98%) Splunk
13 5 (1.41%) Citrix
13 5 (1.41%) Concur
13 5 (1.41%) CyberArk
14 4 (1.13%) Broadcom
14 4 (1.13%) Commvault
14 4 (1.13%) MikroTik
14 4 (1.13%) MuleSoft