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

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 330 244 283
Rank change year-on-year -86 +39 -79
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 265 322 345
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 1.02% 0.80%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.14% 3.17% 2.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 168 209 227
10th Percentile £396 £449 £417
25th Percentile £438 £525 £512
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £546 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.96% +4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £693
90th Percentile £738 £788 £780
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £581 £582
% change year-on-year -9.56% -0.26% +1.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 3
10th Percentile - £46.00 £62.00
25th Percentile - £50.50 £68.00
Median hourly rate - £58.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year - -25.64% +48.57%
75th Percentile - £67.75 -
90th Percentile - £73.60 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £66.50 £78.00
% change year-on-year - -14.74% -

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 12,412 10,148 13,310
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.24% 32.20% 30.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,795 6,030 8,796
10th Percentile £281 £263 £263
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £535 £545
Median % change year-on-year -6.45% -1.83% -0.91%
75th Percentile £626 £663 £660
90th Percentile £738 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 611 312 555
10th Percentile £14.25 £18.13 £15.50
25th Percentile £18.25 £23.30 £18.94
Median hourly rate £27.50 £33.77 £37.75
Median % change year-on-year -18.57% -10.54% +51.00%
75th Percentile £61.25 £64.56 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.75 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -15.38% -23.53% +102.38%

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 12 January 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 12 January 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 -95 217 £550 -8.33% 154
UK excluding London -34 146 £525 -9.56% 135
London -69 84 £600 - 35
North of England -8 66 £482 -6.82% 28
Work from Home -45 63 £575 -6.12% 43
Yorkshire -3 46 £518 +0.10% 17
South East -53 23 £522 -16.48% 41
Midlands -29 22 £528 +7.65% 22
North West -25 19 £450 -10.00% 6
Scotland +3 18 £450 -22.41% 3
South West -5 16 £650 +1.96% 25
West Midlands -23 14 £528 -34.06% 3
East of England -25 9 £413 -31.25% 12
East Midlands -15 8 £631 +42.12% 17
Wales -1 3 £214 -64.40% 5
North East -6 2 - - 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 6 (2.26%) OpenStack
1 6 (2.26%) SAS
2 5 (1.89%) Confluence
3 3 (1.13%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.38%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (2.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.89%) Weka
3 3 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.38%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.38%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 31 (11.70%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (2.64%) SAP ERP
3 5 (1.89%) SAP FI
4 4 (1.51%) Oracle ERP
4 4 (1.51%) SAP CO
4 4 (1.51%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.38%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.38%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 115 (43.40%) AWS
2 109 (41.13%) Azure
3 97 (36.60%) GCP
4 36 (13.58%) Serverless
5 20 (7.55%) GitHub
6 15 (5.66%) OCI
7 13 (4.91%) IaaS
8 11 (4.15%) Azure DevOps
8 11 (4.15%) PaaS
9 10 (3.77%) Cloud Computing
9 10 (3.77%) SuccessFactors
10 9 (3.40%) AWS KMS
10 9 (3.40%) SaaS
11 8 (3.02%) GitHub Actions
11 8 (3.02%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 6 (2.26%) Entra ID
12 6 (2.26%) Microsoft 365
12 6 (2.26%) Power Platform
13 5 (1.89%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 4 (1.51%) iPaaS
Communications & Networking
1 29 (10.94%) Firewall
2 19 (7.17%) Network Security
3 17 (6.42%) VPN
4 14 (5.28%) WAN
5 12 (4.53%) DNS
6 11 (4.15%) TCP/IP
7 7 (2.64%) SD-WAN
8 6 (2.26%) Internet
8 6 (2.26%) Kerberos
9 4 (1.51%) LAN
10 3 (1.13%) VXLAN
11 2 (0.75%) Cisco IOS
11 2 (0.75%) Cisco Nexus
11 2 (0.75%) DMZ
11 2 (0.75%) Ethernet VPN
11 2 (0.75%) IOS XR
11 2 (0.75%) Junos
11 2 (0.75%) Multicast
11 2 (0.75%) NetScaler
11 2 (0.75%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (15.09%) NoSQL
2 16 (6.04%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (3.77%) MongoDB
4 8 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
5 7 (2.64%) Oracle Database
5 7 (2.64%) Relational Database
6 6 (2.26%) Power BI
7 5 (1.89%) SQL Server
8 4 (1.51%) Data Mining
9 3 (1.13%) BigQuery
9 3 (1.13%) Oracle Exadata
10 2 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.75%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (0.75%) MySQL
10 2 (0.75%) RDBMS
10 2 (0.75%) Redis
10 2 (0.75%) SAP HANA
11 1 (0.38%) Amazon Aurora
11 1 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 1 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 49 (18.49%) Jenkins
2 45 (16.98%) GitLab
3 28 (10.57%) Liquibase
4 15 (5.66%) JIRA
5 9 (3.40%) Git
5 9 (3.40%) Postman
6 4 (1.51%) TeamCity
7 3 (1.13%) SoapUI
8 2 (0.75%) JUnit
8 2 (0.75%) Mocha
8 2 (0.75%) Vite
9 1 (0.38%) Cucumber
General
1 96 (36.23%) Finance
2 84 (31.70%) Social Skills
3 47 (17.74%) Banking
4 35 (13.21%) Public Sector
5 24 (9.06%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (9.06%) Financial Institution
6 11 (4.15%) Local Government
7 10 (3.77%) Presentation Skills
8 7 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (2.64%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.89%) Law
9 5 (1.89%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.51%) Police
11 3 (1.13%) Billing
11 3 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.13%) General Ledger
11 3 (1.13%) German Language
11 3 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.75%) Investment Banking
12 2 (0.75%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 50 (18.87%) Architect
2 42 (15.85%) Senior
3 35 (13.21%) Cloud Engineer
4 24 (9.06%) GCP Engineer
5 23 (8.68%) Software Engineer
6 20 (7.55%) DevOps Engineer
7 17 (6.42%) Analyst
7 17 (6.42%) Senior Software Engineer
8 16 (6.04%) AWS Engineer
9 14 (5.28%) Developer
10 13 (4.91%) Solutions Architect
11 12 (4.53%) SAP Manager
12 10 (3.77%) AWS Software Engineer
12 10 (3.77%) Consultant
13 9 (3.40%) Java Developer
13 9 (3.40%) Lead
14 8 (3.02%) Infrastructure Architect
14 8 (3.02%) Security Architect
14 8 (3.02%) Senior DevOps
14 8 (3.02%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (20.00%) REST
2 36 (13.58%) RESTful
3 33 (12.45%) Elastic Stack
4 12 (4.53%) Spring Boot
5 10 (3.77%) JSON
6 9 (3.40%) Kafka
6 9 (3.40%) OAuth
6 9 (3.40%) SOAP
6 9 (3.40%) Spring
7 8 (3.02%) JWT
7 8 (3.02%) Oracle Fusion
7 8 (3.02%) Web Services
7 8 (3.02%) XML
7 8 (3.02%) XSLT
8 7 (2.64%) Middleware
9 6 (2.26%) AngularJS
9 6 (2.26%) React
10 3 (1.13%) NumPy
10 3 (1.13%) Pandas
10 3 (1.13%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 52 (19.62%) Cloud Native
2 30 (11.32%) Distributed Systems
3 25 (9.43%) Data Centre
4 15 (5.66%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (4.91%) Private Cloud
6 10 (3.77%) Product Ownership
6 10 (3.77%) Security Posture
7 9 (3.40%) Cloud Security Posture
8 7 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (2.26%) Mainframe
10 5 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (1.89%) Grid Computing
10 5 (1.89%) PKI
11 4 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.51%) Distributed Applications
11 4 (1.51%) Legacy Applications
11 4 (1.51%) Replication
12 2 (0.75%) Data Structures
12 2 (0.75%) Management Information System
12 2 (0.75%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 59 (22.26%) Linux
2 26 (9.81%) Windows
3 9 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 7 (2.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (2.64%) Unix
5 6 (2.26%) VMS
6 5 (1.89%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (1.13%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (0.75%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.38%) CentOS
9 1 (0.38%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.38%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (40.38%) DevOps
2 94 (35.47%) Agile
3 85 (32.08%) CI/CD
4 75 (28.30%) Infrastructure as Code
5 52 (19.62%) Containerisation
6 46 (17.36%) Microservices
7 45 (16.98%) Migration
8 37 (13.96%) Cybersecurity
8 37 (13.96%) Software Engineering
9 35 (13.21%) Cost Optimisation
10 34 (12.83%) Computer Science
11 32 (12.08%) Root Cause Analysis
12 31 (11.70%) High Availability
12 31 (11.70%) Infrastructure Automation
13 30 (11.32%) Cryptography
13 30 (11.32%) Stakeholder Management
14 29 (10.94%) Change Management
14 29 (10.94%) Continuous Delivery
14 29 (10.94%) Non-Functional Testing
14 29 (10.94%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 73 (27.55%) Python
2 39 (14.72%) Go
3 33 (12.45%) Java
4 18 (6.79%) SQL
5 6 (2.26%) Bash
5 6 (2.26%) PowerShell
6 4 (1.51%) PL/SQL
7 3 (1.13%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.75%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.38%) ABAP
9 1 (0.38%) Bicep
9 1 (0.38%) C++
9 1 (0.38%) Perl
9 1 (0.38%) Ruby
9 1 (0.38%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.38%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 61 (23.02%) Security Cleared
2 47 (17.74%) Degree
3 39 (14.72%) SC Cleared
4 33 (12.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 30 (11.32%) Master's Degree
6 20 (7.55%) AWS Certification
7 13 (4.91%) Azure Certification
8 7 (2.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 6 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (2.26%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.89%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 5 (1.89%) CCSP
10 5 (1.89%) CISSP
10 5 (1.89%) DV Cleared
10 5 (1.89%) ISTQB
11 4 (1.51%) AWS Certified Developer
11 4 (1.51%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 4 (1.51%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.75%) PMP
12 2 (0.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (3.02%) GDPR
3 6 (2.26%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
3 6 (2.26%) NCSC
3 6 (2.26%) NIST
3 6 (2.26%) PCI DSS
3 6 (2.26%) SLA
4 5 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 27005
4 5 (1.89%) PSD2
4 5 (1.89%) QA
5 2 (0.75%) Accessibility
5 2 (0.75%) WCAG
6 1 (0.38%) COBIT
6 1 (0.38%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.38%) GAMP
6 1 (0.38%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.38%) ISO 15022
6 1 (0.38%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 57 (21.51%) Docker
2 14 (5.28%) Hyper-V
2 14 (5.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (2.26%) Active Directory
4 5 (1.89%) GPFS
4 5 (1.89%) Lustre
4 5 (1.89%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (1.89%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (1.51%) vSphere
6 3 (1.13%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.75%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.75%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.38%) Ceph
8 1 (0.38%) KVM
8 1 (0.38%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 76 (28.68%) Kubernetes
2 75 (28.30%) Terraform
3 57 (21.51%) Ansible
4 35 (13.21%) Grafana
4 35 (13.21%) Prometheus
5 7 (2.64%) Istio
6 4 (1.51%) Data Guard
6 4 (1.51%) Oracle RMAN
7 3 (1.13%) Kubeflow
7 3 (1.13%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (1.13%) vCenter Server
8 2 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.75%) Puppet
8 2 (0.75%) SCCM
8 2 (0.75%) vMotion
9 1 (0.38%) Consul
9 1 (0.38%) Demisto
9 1 (0.38%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.38%) Packer
9 1 (0.38%) Salt
Vendors
1 38 (14.34%) SAP
2 36 (13.58%) Splunk
3 33 (12.45%) Google
4 27 (10.19%) Microsoft
4 27 (10.19%) Oracle
5 23 (8.68%) VMware
6 10 (3.77%) Ariba
7 9 (3.40%) ServiceNow
8 8 (3.02%) Cisco
9 6 (2.26%) Palo Alto
10 5 (1.89%) Aruba
10 5 (1.89%) MuleSoft
11 3 (1.13%) F5
11 3 (1.13%) Fortinet
11 3 (1.13%) Mercator
11 3 (1.13%) Veeam
12 2 (0.75%) Arista
12 2 (0.75%) Brocade
12 2 (0.75%) Extreme Networks
12 2 (0.75%) Juniper