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 24 October 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 331 263 255
Rank change year-on-year -68 -8 -47
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 233 328 472
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.88% 0.99%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.93% 2.88% 3.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 146 201 341
10th Percentile £406 £413 £413
25th Percentile £450 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £560 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.11% -2.61% -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £663 £700
90th Percentile £775 £769 £760
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £600
% change year-on-year -4.55% -8.33% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 7
10th Percentile - £53.20 £70.00
25th Percentile £42.50 £55.00 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £58.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.41% -25.64% +44.44%
75th Percentile £47.50 £67.75 £84.00
90th Percentile - £73.60 £90.00
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 12,054 11,387 15,337
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.85% 30.72% 32.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,406 6,779 10,451
10th Percentile £286 £277 £300
25th Percentile £406 £412 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.30% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £638 £663 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 652 377 475
10th Percentile £13.94 £16.99 £16.95
25th Percentile £18.16 £23.30 £21.03
Median hourly rate £27.00 £45.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.00% +1.12% +71.15%
75th Percentile £51.25 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.16 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -49.70% +8.27% +105.24%

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 24 October 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 24 October 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 -106 176 £550 - 140
UK excluding London -33 136 £525 -4.55% 102
London -54 71 £603 +9.64% 58
North of England -12 62 £475 -5.00% 20
Work from Home -36 58 £575 +2.68% 83
Yorkshire +12 47 £488 -2.50% 8
Scotland +27 35 £500 +4.11% 4
Midlands -21 24 £530 +7.07% 7
West Midlands -3 15 £530 +6.00% 5
North West -34 14 £450 -10.00% 6
East of England -7 9 £613 +4.26% 1
East Midlands -9 9 £537 +14.87% 2
South East -42 9 £688 +19.57% 55
South West +7 7 £588 +2.17% 13
Wales -1 2 £405 -35.20% 2
North East -5 2 - - 6

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 (4.29%) Confluence
2 3 (1.29%) SAS
3 2 (0.86%) nginx
3 2 (0.86%) OpenStack
3 2 (0.86%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.43%) Apache
4 1 (0.43%) Apache Solr
4 1 (0.43%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.43%) Oracle Service Bus
4 1 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.43%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (3.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (2.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.86%) Weka
4 1 (0.43%) Adobe Premiere
4 1 (0.43%) Camtasia
4 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.43%) Notion
4 1 (0.43%) Trello
Business Applications
1 28 (12.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (2.58%) SAP ERP
3 5 (2.15%) SAP FI
4 4 (1.72%) SAP CO
4 4 (1.72%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.43%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.43%) Oracle BPM
5 1 (0.43%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.43%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 140 (60.09%) AWS
2 96 (41.20%) Azure
3 85 (36.48%) GCP
4 45 (19.31%) GitHub
5 39 (16.74%) Serverless
6 32 (13.73%) GitHub Actions
7 19 (8.15%) Azure DevOps
8 17 (7.30%) SaaS
9 11 (4.72%) SuccessFactors
10 10 (4.29%) Power Platform
11 9 (3.86%) AWS KMS
11 9 (3.86%) Entra ID
12 7 (3.00%) Microsoft 365
13 6 (2.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (2.58%) AWS CloudFormation
13 6 (2.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 5 (2.15%) Amazon S3
14 5 (2.15%) AWS Lambda
14 5 (2.15%) IaaS
14 5 (2.15%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (9.01%) Firewall
2 20 (8.58%) WAN
3 16 (6.87%) VPN
4 10 (4.29%) Network Security
5 7 (3.00%) SD-WAN
6 6 (2.58%) LAN
6 6 (2.58%) TCP/IP
6 6 (2.58%) VLAN
7 5 (2.15%) DNS
8 3 (1.29%) BGP
8 3 (1.29%) OSPF
9 2 (0.86%) Cisco Nexus
9 2 (0.86%) DHCP
9 2 (0.86%) Ethernet VPN
9 2 (0.86%) IPsec
9 2 (0.86%) Kerberos
9 2 (0.86%) Multicast
9 2 (0.86%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.86%) SAN
9 2 (0.86%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (18.03%) NoSQL
2 16 (6.87%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (5.15%) MongoDB
4 9 (3.86%) Power BI
5 6 (2.58%) Relational Database
6 5 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
6 5 (2.15%) SQL Server
7 4 (1.72%) Data Mining
7 4 (1.72%) Oracle Database
8 3 (1.29%) DynamoDB
8 3 (1.29%) MySQL
9 2 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.86%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.86%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.86%) Redis
10 1 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.43%) Big Data
10 1 (0.43%) Data Lake
10 1 (0.43%) Elasticsearch
10 1 (0.43%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 57 (24.46%) Jenkins
2 45 (19.31%) GitLab
3 32 (13.73%) JIRA
4 28 (12.02%) Liquibase
5 25 (10.73%) Git
6 13 (5.58%) Bitbucket
7 11 (4.72%) IntelliJ
7 11 (4.72%) Visual Studio Code
8 10 (4.29%) PyCharm
8 10 (4.29%) Visual Studio
9 7 (3.00%) Artifactory
9 7 (3.00%) CircleCI
10 5 (2.15%) TeamCity
11 3 (1.29%) Vite
12 2 (0.86%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.86%) Postman
12 2 (0.86%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.86%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.86%) Subversion
12 2 (0.86%) webpack
General
1 102 (43.78%) Finance
2 78 (33.48%) Social Skills
3 49 (21.03%) Banking
4 28 (12.02%) Public Sector
5 27 (11.59%) Financial Institution
6 26 (11.16%) Analytical Skills
7 11 (4.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (4.72%) Presentation Skills
8 10 (4.29%) Local Government
9 9 (3.86%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (2.15%) Law
11 4 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.72%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.72%) Police
12 3 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (1.29%) Publishing
13 2 (0.86%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.86%) Legal
13 2 (0.86%) Marketing
13 2 (0.86%) Military
Job Titles
1 48 (20.60%) Architect
2 45 (19.31%) Senior
3 30 (12.88%) Cloud Engineer
4 26 (11.16%) Developer
4 26 (11.16%) DevOps Engineer
5 24 (10.30%) Software Engineer
6 21 (9.01%) AWS Engineer
7 18 (7.73%) GCP Engineer
8 17 (7.30%) Analyst
9 16 (6.87%) Senior Software Engineer
10 13 (5.58%) Java Developer
10 13 (5.58%) Technical Architect
11 11 (4.72%) Solutions Architect
12 10 (4.29%) AWS DevOps
12 10 (4.29%) Python Engineer
12 10 (4.29%) Security Architect
13 9 (3.86%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 9 (3.86%) AWS Software Engineer
13 9 (3.86%) Senior DevOps
13 9 (3.86%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (18.45%) REST
2 40 (17.17%) RESTful
3 35 (15.02%) Elastic Stack
4 14 (6.01%) Spring Boot
5 12 (5.15%) React
5 12 (5.15%) Spring
6 11 (4.72%) Kafka
7 8 (3.43%) Node.js
8 7 (3.00%) Middleware
9 6 (2.58%) AngularJS
10 5 (2.15%) CSS
10 5 (2.15%) GraphQL
10 5 (2.15%) HTML
10 5 (2.15%) JSON
10 5 (2.15%) SAP Fiori
11 4 (1.72%) Jest
11 4 (1.72%) Web Services
12 3 (1.29%) ActiveMQ
12 3 (1.29%) Next.js
12 3 (1.29%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 50 (21.46%) Cloud Native
2 31 (13.30%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (8.58%) Data Centre
4 14 (6.01%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (4.72%) Product Ownership
6 8 (3.43%) Private Cloud
6 8 (3.43%) Virtual Team
7 6 (2.58%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (2.58%) Mainframe
7 6 (2.58%) Replication
7 6 (2.58%) Security Posture
8 5 (2.15%) Cloud Security Posture
8 5 (2.15%) Distributed Applications
9 4 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.29%) Data Structures
10 3 (1.29%) Management Information System
10 3 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (0.86%) Grid Computing
11 2 (0.86%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 61 (26.18%) Linux
2 29 (12.45%) Windows
3 8 (3.43%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.29%) Unix
5 2 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.86%) VMS
5 2 (0.86%) Windows Server 2016
5 2 (0.86%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.43%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (45.06%) CI/CD
2 103 (44.21%) Agile
3 97 (41.63%) DevOps
4 85 (36.48%) Infrastructure as Code
5 58 (24.89%) Containerisation
5 58 (24.89%) Microservices
6 43 (18.45%) Computer Science
6 43 (18.45%) Continuous Integration
7 42 (18.03%) Software Engineering
8 39 (16.74%) Cost Optimisation
9 37 (15.88%) High Availability
10 36 (15.45%) Continuous Delivery
11 35 (15.02%) Test Automation
12 34 (14.59%) SDLC
13 33 (14.16%) Problem-Solving
14 31 (13.30%) Cryptography
14 31 (13.30%) Root Cause Analysis
15 30 (12.88%) Mentoring
15 30 (12.88%) Non-Functional Testing
16 29 (12.45%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 82 (35.19%) Python
2 62 (26.61%) Java
3 50 (21.46%) Go
4 22 (9.44%) TypeScript
5 12 (5.15%) C#
5 12 (5.15%) JavaScript
6 10 (4.29%) SQL
7 7 (3.00%) PowerShell
8 6 (2.58%) Bash
8 6 (2.58%) Kotlin
9 4 (1.72%) Groovy
9 4 (1.72%) Perl
10 2 (0.86%) Bicep
11 1 (0.43%) ABAP
11 1 (0.43%) CodeQL
11 1 (0.43%) DAML
11 1 (0.43%) Scala
11 1 (0.43%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.43%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.43%) WebLogic Scripting Tool
Qualifications
1 51 (21.89%) Degree
2 41 (17.60%) Computer Science Degree
3 40 (17.17%) Security Cleared
4 30 (12.88%) Master's Degree
5 28 (12.02%) SC Cleared
6 20 (8.58%) AWS Certification
7 13 (5.58%) Azure Certification
8 9 (3.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 6 (2.58%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (2.58%) ISTQB
10 5 (2.15%) CISSP
11 4 (1.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 4 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
11 4 (1.72%) CCSP
12 3 (1.29%) AWS Certified Developer
12 3 (1.29%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 3 (1.29%) DV Cleared
12 3 (1.29%) SAP Certification
13 2 (0.86%) JNCIA
13 2 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 6 (2.58%) GDPR
2 6 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
2 6 (2.58%) NCSC
2 6 (2.58%) NIST
2 6 (2.58%) QA
3 5 (2.15%) Data Quality
3 5 (2.15%) ISO/IEC 27005
3 5 (2.15%) PCI DSS
4 4 (1.72%) PSD2
4 4 (1.72%) SLA
5 2 (0.86%) Accessibility
5 2 (0.86%) WCAG
6 1 (0.43%) GAMP
6 1 (0.43%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 56 (24.03%) Docker
2 8 (3.43%) Active Directory
2 8 (3.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (3.00%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (2.58%) VMware NSX
5 4 (1.72%) vSphere
6 2 (0.86%) Firmware
6 2 (0.86%) GPFS
6 2 (0.86%) Lustre
6 2 (0.86%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.43%) IAG
7 1 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 101 (43.35%) Terraform
2 86 (36.91%) Kubernetes
3 68 (29.18%) Ansible
4 46 (19.74%) Grafana
5 44 (18.88%) Prometheus
6 5 (2.15%) Puppet
7 4 (1.72%) vCenter Server
8 2 (0.86%) HAProxy
8 2 (0.86%) Istio
8 2 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.86%) vMotion
9 1 (0.43%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.43%) Consul
9 1 (0.43%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.43%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.43%) Salt
9 1 (0.43%) SCOM
Vendors
1 36 (15.45%) Splunk
2 35 (15.02%) Microsoft
3 33 (14.16%) SAP
4 25 (10.73%) Google
5 13 (5.58%) Cisco
6 11 (4.72%) Oracle
6 11 (4.72%) VMware
7 7 (3.00%) ServiceNow
8 6 (2.58%) Ariba
9 5 (2.15%) Aruba
9 5 (2.15%) IBM
10 4 (1.72%) NetApp
10 4 (1.72%) Red Hat
11 3 (1.29%) Dell
11 3 (1.29%) F5
11 3 (1.29%) Fortinet
11 3 (1.29%) Mercator
11 3 (1.29%) Palo Alto
11 3 (1.29%) Veeam
12 2 (0.86%) Extreme Networks