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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 300 282 285
Rank change year-on-year -18 +3 -58
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 369 266 341
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.80% 0.91% 0.78%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.48% 2.68% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 239 186 229
10th Percentile £395 £451 £460
25th Percentile £478 £525 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £565 £615 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.06% +2.42% -4.00%
75th Percentile £675 £698 £750
90th Percentile £725 £778 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £593 £600
% change year-on-year -7.17% -1.25% +6.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 1
10th Percentile - £48.40 -
25th Percentile £71.25 £56.50 £36.75
Median hourly rate £72.50 £70.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +81.82% -47.26%
75th Percentile £73.75 £73.75 £40.25
90th Percentile - £76.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £72.50 £38.50
% change year-on-year - +88.31% -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 14,881 9,912 13,377
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.34% 33.77% 30.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,309 6,359 8,581
10th Percentile £300 £296 £263
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 703 381 907
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.82 £22.27 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.46 £32.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.88% +20.37% +20.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £83.20 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £32.28 £25.50
% change year-on-year +47.30% +26.57% +15.91%

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 April 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 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 April 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 -31 302 £565 -8.13% 55
UK excluding London 0 190 £550 -7.17% 37
London -83 112 £600 -4.76% 23
Work from Home +12 99 £600 -2.83% 26
North of England -33 57 £525 -10.64% 9
South East -37 54 £552 -9.18% 13
Midlands -44 33 £638 +20.68% 4
North West -15 31 £363 -35.81% 6
South West -3 30 £650 +13.04% 6
Yorkshire -34 26 £550 -8.14%
East Midlands -9 25 £638 +59.38%
Scotland -9 9 £500 -13.79% 4
East of England -26 6 £413 -40.00% 2
West Midlands -56 5 £892 +26.30% 4
Wales -12 2 £214 -63.55%
Northern Ireland - 1 £385 -

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 8 (2.17%) Apache Airflow
1 8 (2.17%) Confluence
2 7 (1.90%) SAS
3 6 (1.63%) OpenStack
4 4 (1.08%) Apache
5 3 (0.81%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.54%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 6 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.08%) Microsoft Project
2 4 (1.08%) Weka
3 2 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.27%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 74 (20.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.71%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (1.36%) SAP Business One
4 4 (1.08%) SAP FI
5 3 (0.81%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.81%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.54%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.54%) SAP SD
7 1 (0.27%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 156 (42.28%) Azure
2 109 (29.54%) AWS
3 96 (26.02%) GCP
4 36 (9.76%) GitHub
5 23 (6.23%) Google Kubernetes Engine
5 23 (6.23%) SuccessFactors
6 22 (5.96%) IaaS
6 22 (5.96%) PaaS
7 21 (5.69%) OCI
8 16 (4.34%) SaaS
9 15 (4.07%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (2.98%) Azure DevOps
11 10 (2.71%) Cloud Computing
12 9 (2.44%) AWS CloudFormation
12 9 (2.44%) Power Platform
12 9 (2.44%) Serverless
13 8 (2.17%) Entra ID
13 8 (2.17%) Microsoft 365
14 7 (1.90%) dbt
15 6 (1.63%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 34 (9.21%) Firewall
2 32 (8.67%) DNS
3 27 (7.32%) Network Security
4 17 (4.61%) VPN
5 13 (3.52%) LAN
5 13 (3.52%) TCP/IP
5 13 (3.52%) WAN
6 10 (2.71%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 7 (1.90%) Kerberos
8 6 (1.63%) Internet
9 5 (1.36%) DHCP
9 5 (1.36%) Wireless
10 4 (1.08%) BGP
10 4 (1.08%) Multicast
10 4 (1.08%) NetScaler
10 4 (1.08%) OSPF
11 3 (0.81%) MPLS
11 3 (0.81%) SD-WAN
11 3 (0.81%) VSAN
11 3 (0.81%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
2 9 (2.44%) Oracle Database
3 8 (2.17%) BigQuery
3 8 (2.17%) Power BI
4 4 (1.08%) Oracle Exadata
4 4 (1.08%) Relational Database
4 4 (1.08%) SQL Server
5 3 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (0.81%) Data Vault
5 3 (0.81%) Delta Lake
5 3 (0.81%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (0.54%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.27%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.27%) MySQL
7 1 (0.27%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.27%) SAP Data Services
7 1 (0.27%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 34 (9.21%) Jenkins
2 19 (5.15%) GitLab
3 17 (4.61%) JIRA
4 14 (3.79%) Git
5 13 (3.52%) Postman
6 9 (2.44%) SoapUI
7 5 (1.36%) Liquibase
8 4 (1.08%) TeamCity
9 2 (0.54%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.27%) Ant
10 1 (0.27%) Hudson
10 1 (0.27%) JUnit
10 1 (0.27%) LSMW
10 1 (0.27%) Maven
10 1 (0.27%) MSI
10 1 (0.27%) PVCS
10 1 (0.27%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.27%) Snyk
General
1 101 (27.37%) Finance
2 75 (20.33%) Social Skills
3 61 (16.53%) Public Sector
4 30 (8.13%) Banking
5 22 (5.96%) Local Government
6 19 (5.15%) Analytical Skills
7 13 (3.52%) Influencing Skills
8 9 (2.44%) General Ledger
9 8 (2.17%) Financial Institution
10 6 (1.63%) Investment Banking
10 6 (1.63%) Manufacturing
11 5 (1.36%) Military
12 4 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (1.08%) German Language
12 4 (1.08%) Law
13 3 (0.81%) Police
13 3 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.81%) Retail
13 3 (0.81%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.54%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 96 (26.02%) Architect
2 45 (12.20%) Senior
3 41 (11.11%) Lead
4 32 (8.67%) Cloud Engineer
5 29 (7.86%) Solutions Architect
6 25 (6.78%) GCP Engineer
7 24 (6.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 21 (5.69%) Technical Architect
9 17 (4.61%) Consultant
10 15 (4.07%) Azure Specialist
10 15 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
11 14 (3.79%) Cloud Architect
12 13 (3.52%) SAP Architect
12 13 (3.52%) Senior Cloud Engineer
13 12 (3.25%) Data Engineer
13 12 (3.25%) SAP Solutions Architect
14 11 (2.98%) Analyst
14 11 (2.98%) Developer
14 11 (2.98%) Infrastructure Architect
15 10 (2.71%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (8.13%) REST
2 23 (6.23%) Middleware
3 15 (4.07%) OAuth
3 15 (4.07%) Oracle Fusion
4 14 (3.79%) JSON
4 14 (3.79%) SOAP
5 13 (3.52%) JWT
6 12 (3.25%) Web Services
6 12 (3.25%) XML
6 12 (3.25%) XSLT
7 9 (2.44%) Spring Boot
8 8 (2.17%) NumPy
8 8 (2.17%) Pandas
9 7 (1.90%) Kafka
10 5 (1.36%) PyTorch
10 5 (1.36%) TensorFlow
11 4 (1.08%) Elastic Stack
11 4 (1.08%) RESTful
11 4 (1.08%) scikit-learn
11 4 (1.08%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 44 (11.92%) Cloud Native
2 21 (5.69%) Data Centre
3 20 (5.42%) Private Cloud
4 13 (3.52%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (2.98%) Legacy Systems
6 10 (2.71%) PKI
7 7 (1.90%) Data Structures
7 7 (1.90%) Product Ownership
7 7 (1.90%) Security Posture
8 6 (1.63%) Legacy Applications
8 6 (1.63%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.63%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.36%) Cloud Security Posture
9 5 (1.36%) Grid Computing
10 3 (0.81%) Distributed Systems
10 3 (0.81%) Enterprise Software
10 3 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (0.81%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.81%) NHS
10 3 (0.81%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 50 (13.55%) Linux
2 28 (7.59%) Windows
3 10 (2.71%) Unix
4 9 (2.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (2.17%) Windows Server
5 8 (2.17%) Windows Server 2019
6 5 (1.36%) VMS
7 4 (1.08%) Windows Server 2012
7 4 (1.08%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (0.81%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.54%) CentOS
10 1 (0.27%) AIX
10 1 (0.27%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (30.35%) DevOps
2 84 (22.76%) CI/CD
3 83 (22.49%) Migration
4 77 (20.87%) Infrastructure as Code
5 65 (17.62%) Agile
6 53 (14.36%) Stakeholder Management
7 42 (11.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 40 (10.84%) Analytics
9 36 (9.76%) Containerisation
10 32 (8.67%) ERP
10 32 (8.67%) User Acceptance Testing
11 31 (8.40%) Cloud Security
11 31 (8.40%) Microservices
12 29 (7.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 26 (7.05%) Problem-Solving
14 25 (6.78%) Project Delivery
14 25 (6.78%) Validation
15 24 (6.50%) Cybersecurity
16 23 (6.23%) Identity Access Management
17 22 (5.96%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 75 (20.33%) Python
2 22 (5.96%) SQL
3 18 (4.88%) Java
4 14 (3.79%) PowerShell
5 11 (2.98%) Bash
6 7 (1.90%) Go
7 6 (1.63%) Bicep
7 6 (1.63%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.08%) JavaScript
8 4 (1.08%) PL/SQL
8 4 (1.08%) Ruby
8 4 (1.08%) TypeScript
9 2 (0.54%) C++
10 1 (0.27%) C#
10 1 (0.27%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.27%) Perl
10 1 (0.27%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 100 (27.10%) Security Cleared
2 75 (20.33%) SC Cleared
3 20 (5.42%) Cisco Certification
4 19 (5.15%) DV Cleared
5 14 (3.79%) Degree
6 13 (3.52%) AWS Certification
7 11 (2.98%) CISSP
8 10 (2.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 10 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
9 9 (2.44%) Azure Certification
9 9 (2.44%) CCNP
9 9 (2.44%) SAP Certification
10 7 (1.90%) ISTQB
11 6 (1.63%) CCSP
11 6 (1.63%) CISM
12 5 (1.36%) ACCA
12 5 (1.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (1.36%) CIMA
12 5 (1.36%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 5 (1.36%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (4.88%) NCSC
2 16 (4.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (4.07%) NIST
4 13 (3.52%) GDPR
5 10 (2.71%) QA
6 6 (1.63%) SLA
7 5 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.36%) Data Quality
7 5 (1.36%) GRC
8 4 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 4 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27005
9 2 (0.54%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.54%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.54%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.54%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.54%) PMO
9 2 (0.54%) PSD2
10 1 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.27%) COBIT
10 1 (0.27%) RMADS
System Software
1 32 (8.67%) Docker
2 20 (5.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (4.61%) Hyper-V
4 11 (2.98%) Active Directory
5 6 (1.63%) VMware NSX
6 4 (1.08%) GPFS
6 4 (1.08%) Lustre
6 4 (1.08%) NFS
6 4 (1.08%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (1.08%) Postfix
6 4 (1.08%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 4 (1.08%) Varnish
6 4 (1.08%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (1.08%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (1.08%) vSphere
7 3 (0.81%) Sendmail
8 2 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.27%) Firmware
9 1 (0.27%) KVM
9 1 (0.27%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 70 (18.97%) Terraform
2 67 (18.16%) Kubernetes
3 35 (9.49%) Ansible
4 19 (5.15%) Istio
5 9 (2.44%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (1.90%) Kubeflow
6 7 (1.90%) Prometheus
7 6 (1.63%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (1.36%) Grafana
9 4 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.08%) Data Guard
9 4 (1.08%) HAProxy
9 4 (1.08%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (1.08%) SCCM
10 3 (0.81%) Argo
10 3 (0.81%) Puppet
11 2 (0.54%) Red Hat Satellite
12 1 (0.27%) FortiGate
12 1 (0.27%) Nessus
12 1 (0.27%) Salt
Vendors
1 81 (21.95%) SAP
2 52 (14.09%) Google
3 40 (10.84%) Oracle
4 39 (10.57%) Microsoft
5 35 (9.49%) VMware
6 17 (4.61%) Ariba
7 16 (4.34%) F5
8 11 (2.98%) Palo Alto
9 10 (2.71%) MuleSoft
9 10 (2.71%) Red Hat
9 10 (2.71%) ServiceNow
10 8 (2.17%) Cisco
11 7 (1.90%) Splunk
12 5 (1.36%) Databricks
13 4 (1.08%) Juniper
13 4 (1.08%) Veeam
14 3 (0.81%) Arista
14 3 (0.81%) Foundry
14 3 (0.81%) IBM
14 3 (0.81%) Informatica