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

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 295 272 283
Rank change year-on-year -23 +11 -61
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 372 277 345
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.81% 0.95% 0.79%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.50% 2.80% 2.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 240 197 233
10th Percentile £395 £449 £450
25th Percentile £475 £525 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £613 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% +2.08% -4.00%
75th Percentile £675 £694 £725
90th Percentile £725 £776 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £593 £600
% change year-on-year -7.17% -1.25% +7.62%
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% -47.97%
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 14,884 9,897 13,357
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.54% 33.87% 30.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,337 6,345 8,564
10th Percentile £300 £295 £263
25th Percentile £411 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.05% -2.55%
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 708 380 895
10th Percentile £15.79 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.75 £22.22 £15.39
Median hourly rate £44.50 £32.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.92% +16.07% +24.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.57 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £83.20 £66.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £31.76 £26.00
% change year-on-year +43.14% +22.15% +18.18%

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 8 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 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 8 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 -35 306 £560 -8.57% 85
UK excluding London -8 196 £550 -7.17% 62
London -87 114 £600 -4.00% 28
Work from Home +1 95 £600 -2.44% 50
North of England -16 65 £510 -13.92% 21
South East -32 51 £560 -6.67% 21
Midlands -31 37 £631 +14.77% 7
Yorkshire -27 33 £525 -12.32% 6
North West -10 31 £363 -38.82% 6
South West -6 29 £650 +1.96% 6
East Midlands -7 25 £638 +59.38% 1
Scotland -9 9 £500 -11.19% 4
West Midlands -58 9 £537 -23.96% 6
East of England -29 6 £413 -40.00% 5
Wales -10 3 £214 -63.98%
North East -16 2 - - 9
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 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
1 8 (2.15%) Confluence
2 7 (1.88%) SAS
3 6 (1.61%) 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 4 (1.08%) Microsoft Project
1 4 (1.08%) Weka
2 3 (0.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.27%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 71 (19.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.69%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (1.34%) SAP FI
4 4 (1.08%) SAP CO
4 4 (1.08%) SAP FI/CO
5 3 (0.81%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.54%) SAP SD
7 1 (0.27%) Exchequer
7 1 (0.27%) SAP Business One
Cloud Services
1 156 (41.94%) Azure
2 117 (31.45%) AWS
3 107 (28.76%) GCP
4 34 (9.14%) GitHub
5 24 (6.45%) SuccessFactors
6 23 (6.18%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 23 (6.18%) PaaS
7 22 (5.91%) IaaS
7 22 (5.91%) OCI
8 17 (4.57%) SaaS
8 17 (4.57%) Serverless
9 13 (3.49%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (2.96%) Azure DevOps
10 11 (2.96%) Cloud Computing
11 9 (2.42%) AWS CloudFormation
11 9 (2.42%) Power Platform
12 8 (2.15%) Microsoft 365
13 7 (1.88%) dbt
14 5 (1.34%) Nutanix
14 5 (1.34%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 34 (9.14%) Firewall
2 32 (8.60%) DNS
3 24 (6.45%) Network Security
4 17 (4.57%) VPN
5 13 (3.49%) LAN
5 13 (3.49%) TCP/IP
5 13 (3.49%) WAN
6 10 (2.69%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 7 (1.88%) Kerberos
8 6 (1.61%) Internet
9 5 (1.34%) DHCP
9 5 (1.34%) 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 12 (3.23%) NoSQL
2 10 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (2.42%) Oracle Database
4 8 (2.15%) BigQuery
4 8 (2.15%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (2.15%) Power BI
5 4 (1.08%) Oracle Exadata
5 4 (1.08%) SQL Server
6 3 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (0.81%) Data Vault
6 3 (0.81%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.81%) Relational Database
7 2 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.54%) MongoDB
7 2 (0.54%) Redis
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.27%) MySQL
8 1 (0.27%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.27%) SAP Data Services
8 1 (0.27%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 41 (11.02%) Jenkins
2 26 (6.99%) GitLab
3 18 (4.84%) JIRA
4 14 (3.76%) Git
4 14 (3.76%) Postman
5 9 (2.42%) SoapUI
6 7 (1.88%) Liquibase
7 4 (1.08%) TeamCity
8 2 (0.54%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.54%) Mocha
9 1 (0.27%) Ant
9 1 (0.27%) JUnit
9 1 (0.27%) LSMW
9 1 (0.27%) Maven
9 1 (0.27%) MSI
9 1 (0.27%) PVCS
9 1 (0.27%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.27%) Snyk
General
1 104 (27.96%) Finance
2 80 (21.51%) Social Skills
3 65 (17.47%) Public Sector
4 35 (9.41%) Banking
5 23 (6.18%) Local Government
6 18 (4.84%) Analytical Skills
7 12 (3.23%) Influencing Skills
8 11 (2.96%) Financial Institution
9 6 (1.61%) General Ledger
9 6 (1.61%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.61%) Manufacturing
10 5 (1.34%) Military
11 4 (1.08%) German Language
11 4 (1.08%) Law
12 3 (0.81%) Police
12 3 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.81%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.54%) Billing
13 2 (0.54%) Public Speaking
13 2 (0.54%) Retail
Job Titles
1 93 (25.00%) Architect
2 48 (12.90%) Senior
3 40 (10.75%) Lead
4 39 (10.48%) Cloud Engineer
5 31 (8.33%) GCP Engineer
6 28 (7.53%) Solutions Architect
7 24 (6.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 21 (5.65%) Technical Architect
9 17 (4.57%) Consultant
10 15 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
11 13 (3.49%) Azure Specialist
11 13 (3.49%) Cloud Architect
11 13 (3.49%) SAP Architect
11 13 (3.49%) Senior Cloud Engineer
12 12 (3.23%) Data Engineer
13 11 (2.96%) AWS Engineer
13 11 (2.96%) Developer
13 11 (2.96%) Infrastructure Architect
13 11 (2.96%) Platform Engineer
13 11 (2.96%) SAP Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (10.22%) REST
2 23 (6.18%) Middleware
3 16 (4.30%) OAuth
4 15 (4.03%) JSON
4 15 (4.03%) SOAP
5 14 (3.76%) JWT
5 14 (3.76%) Oracle Fusion
6 13 (3.49%) Web Services
6 13 (3.49%) XML
6 13 (3.49%) XSLT
7 11 (2.96%) Elastic Stack
7 11 (2.96%) RESTful
8 9 (2.42%) Spring Boot
9 8 (2.15%) NumPy
9 8 (2.15%) Pandas
10 7 (1.88%) Kafka
11 5 (1.34%) PyTorch
11 5 (1.34%) React
11 5 (1.34%) TensorFlow
12 4 (1.08%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 43 (11.56%) Cloud Native
2 21 (5.65%) Private Cloud
3 18 (4.84%) Data Centre
4 14 (3.76%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (2.69%) Distributed Systems
5 10 (2.69%) PKI
6 9 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (1.88%) Data Structures
7 7 (1.88%) Product Ownership
7 7 (1.88%) Security Posture
8 6 (1.61%) Legacy Applications
8 6 (1.61%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.34%) Cloud Security Posture
9 5 (1.34%) Grid Computing
10 4 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (0.81%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.81%) NHS
11 3 (0.81%) Onboarding
11 3 (0.81%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 57 (15.32%) Linux
2 28 (7.53%) Windows
3 10 (2.69%) Unix
4 9 (2.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (2.15%) Windows Server
5 8 (2.15%) Windows Server 2019
6 5 (1.34%) 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
1 121 (32.53%) DevOps
2 89 (23.92%) CI/CD
3 82 (22.04%) Infrastructure as Code
4 78 (20.97%) Migration
5 75 (20.16%) Agile
6 56 (15.05%) Stakeholder Management
7 43 (11.56%) Containerisation
7 43 (11.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 39 (10.48%) Analytics
8 39 (10.48%) Microservices
9 29 (7.80%) Cybersecurity
9 29 (7.80%) ERP
9 29 (7.80%) User Acceptance Testing
10 28 (7.53%) Cloud Security
11 26 (6.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 25 (6.72%) Problem-Solving
12 25 (6.72%) Project Delivery
13 23 (6.18%) Continuous Improvement
13 23 (6.18%) Infrastructure Automation
14 22 (5.91%) Architectural Patterns
Programming Languages
1 80 (21.51%) Python
2 23 (6.18%) SQL
3 17 (4.57%) Java
4 14 (3.76%) PowerShell
5 13 (3.49%) Go
6 11 (2.96%) Bash
7 6 (1.61%) Bicep
7 6 (1.61%) JavaScript
7 6 (1.61%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.34%) TypeScript
9 4 (1.08%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.81%) Ruby
11 1 (0.27%) C#
11 1 (0.27%) C++
11 1 (0.27%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.27%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 99 (26.61%) Security Cleared
2 72 (19.35%) SC Cleared
3 20 (5.38%) Degree
4 17 (4.57%) Cisco Certification
4 17 (4.57%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.49%) AWS Certification
6 10 (2.69%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (2.69%) Master's Degree
7 9 (2.42%) CCNP
7 9 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.42%) SAP Certification
8 8 (2.15%) CISSP
9 7 (1.88%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 7 (1.88%) ISTQB
10 6 (1.61%) Azure Certification
10 6 (1.61%) CISM
11 5 (1.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 5 (1.34%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 5 (1.34%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 4 (1.08%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (4.84%) NCSC
2 13 (3.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 12 (3.23%) NIST
3 12 (3.23%) QA
4 10 (2.69%) GDPR
5 6 (1.61%) SLA
6 5 (1.34%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (1.34%) Data Quality
6 5 (1.34%) GRC
7 4 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 4 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27005
8 2 (0.54%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.54%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.54%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.54%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.54%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.54%) PMO
8 2 (0.54%) PSD2
8 2 (0.54%) WCAG
9 1 (0.27%) COBIT
System Software
1 38 (10.22%) Docker
2 20 (5.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (4.57%) Hyper-V
4 11 (2.96%) Active Directory
5 6 (1.61%) 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 76 (20.43%) Terraform
2 74 (19.89%) Kubernetes
3 41 (11.02%) Ansible
4 19 (5.11%) Istio
5 14 (3.76%) Prometheus
6 12 (3.23%) Grafana
7 9 (2.42%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.88%) Kubeflow
9 6 (1.61%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (1.34%) Data Guard
10 5 (1.34%) Oracle RMAN
11 4 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (1.08%) HAProxy
11 4 (1.08%) SCCM
12 3 (0.81%) Argo
13 2 (0.54%) Puppet
13 2 (0.54%) Red Hat Satellite
14 1 (0.27%) Nessus
14 1 (0.27%) NetBackup
14 1 (0.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 78 (20.97%) SAP
2 56 (15.05%) Google
3 39 (10.48%) Oracle
4 35 (9.41%) VMware
5 33 (8.87%) Microsoft
6 18 (4.84%) Ariba
7 16 (4.30%) F5
8 14 (3.76%) Splunk
9 11 (2.96%) Palo Alto
10 10 (2.69%) MuleSoft
10 10 (2.69%) Red Hat
10 10 (2.69%) ServiceNow
11 8 (2.15%) Cisco
12 5 (1.34%) 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