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

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 319 328 295
Rank change year-on-year +9 -33 -53
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 380 223 329
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.75% 0.74% 0.76%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.27% 2.13% 2.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 245 145 226
10th Percentile £413 £402 £445
25th Percentile £500 £480 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £580
Median % change year-on-year - +3.45% -9.02%
75th Percentile £688 £694 £750
90th Percentile £725 £753 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £525 £600
% change year-on-year +14.29% -12.50% -2.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 2
10th Percentile - £45.25 £38.28
25th Percentile £71.25 £49.38 £40.56
Median hourly rate £72.50 £57.50 £46.25
Median % change year-on-year +26.09% +24.32% -40.71%
75th Percentile £73.75 £64.38 £52.06
90th Percentile - £67.75 £54.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £70.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year - +81.82% -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 16,745 10,494 13,082
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.85% 34.61% 30.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,252 6,549 8,293
10th Percentile £313 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £663
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 858 478 929
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £19.00 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.10 £31.04 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +38.86% -14.96% +62.22%
75th Percentile £70.00 £58.46 £62.50
90th Percentile £86.52 £80.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.25 £36.05
% change year-on-year +45.32% -16.08% +60.20%

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 27 June 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 27 June 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 -9 316 £600 -2.04% 60
UK excluding London +10 204 £600 +14.29% 42
London -68 115 £600 -7.69% 28
Work from Home -2 104 £610 +9.66% 31
North of England -21 70 £568 +19.57% 18
South East -23 52 £590 -1.67% 8
Midlands -31 37 £613 +14.06% 2
Yorkshire -10 36 £638 +34.21% 8
North West -33 31 £375 -25.89% 5
South West -10 29 £675 +22.73% 4
East Midlands +7 25 £625 +31.58% 1
Scotland -14 11 £425 -15.00% 3
West Midlands -56 8 £450 -22.58% 1
North East -32 5 £650 - 6
East of England -28 4 £593 +7.73% 1
Northern Ireland - 2 £385 - 5
Wales -16 1 - - 1

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 (2.63%) Apache
1 10 (2.63%) Confluence
2 5 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.32%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.05%) OpenStack
3 4 (1.05%) SAS
4 3 (0.79%) CloudStack
5 2 (0.53%) IIS
5 2 (0.53%) nginx
5 2 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.53%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.53%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.26%) WebLogic
Applications
1 8 (2.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.58%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.79%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.26%) Weka
Business Applications
1 87 (22.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.58%) Oracle ERP
2 6 (1.58%) SAP Business One
3 5 (1.32%) SAP ERP
4 4 (1.05%) iTrent
4 4 (1.05%) SAP FI
4 4 (1.05%) SAP SD
5 3 (0.79%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.79%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.53%) SAP FI-GL
7 1 (0.26%) Exchequer
7 1 (0.26%) Oracle SCM
7 1 (0.26%) SAP FI-AR
7 1 (0.26%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 152 (40.00%) Azure
2 112 (29.47%) AWS
3 87 (22.89%) GCP
4 36 (9.47%) GitHub
5 25 (6.58%) SuccessFactors
6 21 (5.53%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 20 (5.26%) IaaS
7 20 (5.26%) PaaS
8 17 (4.47%) GitHub Actions
8 17 (4.47%) OCI
9 15 (3.95%) SaaS
9 15 (3.95%) Serverless
10 11 (2.89%) Azure DevOps
10 11 (2.89%) OpenShift
11 10 (2.63%) AWS CloudFormation
11 10 (2.63%) Power Platform
12 9 (2.37%) Amazon EKS
13 7 (1.84%) Cloud Computing
13 7 (1.84%) Microsoft 365
14 6 (1.58%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 29 (7.63%) DNS
2 28 (7.37%) Firewall
3 23 (6.05%) Network Security
4 13 (3.42%) VPN
5 11 (2.89%) LAN
5 11 (2.89%) WAN
6 9 (2.37%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 8 (2.11%) SAN
7 8 (2.11%) TCP/IP
8 7 (1.84%) NAS
8 7 (1.84%) VSAN
9 5 (1.32%) MPLS
9 5 (1.32%) Wireless
10 4 (1.05%) BGP
10 4 (1.05%) Kerberos
11 3 (0.79%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.79%) DHCP
11 3 (0.79%) SSH
11 3 (0.79%) Structured Cabling
11 3 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.16%) Oracle Database
2 9 (2.37%) Power BI
3 8 (2.11%) Relational Database
4 7 (1.84%) Oracle Exadata
4 7 (1.84%) RDBMS
4 7 (1.84%) SQL Server
5 5 (1.32%) BigQuery
5 5 (1.32%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (1.05%) BusinessObjects
7 3 (0.79%) Data Vault
7 3 (0.79%) Delta Lake
7 3 (0.79%) MySQL
7 3 (0.79%) PostgreSQL
8 2 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.53%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
8 2 (0.53%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.26%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.26%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.26%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 36 (9.47%) Jenkins
2 26 (6.84%) Git
3 19 (5.00%) GitLab
3 19 (5.00%) JIRA
4 9 (2.37%) Postman
5 6 (1.58%) SoapUI
6 4 (1.05%) Cucumber
6 4 (1.05%) Hudson
6 4 (1.05%) JUnit
7 3 (0.79%) Liquibase
7 3 (0.79%) Selenium
7 3 (0.79%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.79%) TeamCity
8 1 (0.26%) LSMW
8 1 (0.26%) Maven
8 1 (0.26%) MSI
8 1 (0.26%) PVCS
8 1 (0.26%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.26%) Snyk
General
1 116 (30.53%) Finance
2 62 (16.32%) Social Skills
3 53 (13.95%) Public Sector
4 32 (8.42%) Banking
5 21 (5.53%) Local Government
6 16 (4.21%) Analytical Skills
7 11 (2.89%) General Ledger
7 11 (2.89%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (1.84%) Financial Institution
9 6 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (1.58%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.58%) Military
10 3 (0.79%) Billing
10 3 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (0.79%) Retail
10 3 (0.79%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.53%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.26%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (0.26%) German Language
12 1 (0.26%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 92 (24.21%) Architect
2 55 (14.47%) Lead
3 51 (13.42%) Senior
4 37 (9.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 31 (8.16%) Solutions Architect
6 27 (7.11%) Cloud Engineer
7 23 (6.05%) GCP Engineer
8 21 (5.53%) Azure Specialist
9 20 (5.26%) DevOps Engineer
9 20 (5.26%) Technical Architect
10 19 (5.00%) Consultant
11 17 (4.47%) Cloud Architect
12 13 (3.42%) Developer
12 13 (3.42%) SAP Consultant
13 12 (3.16%) Analyst
13 12 (3.16%) Azure Architect
13 12 (3.16%) SAP Architect
14 11 (2.89%) Azure Engineer
15 10 (2.63%) Data Engineer
15 10 (2.63%) SAP Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.00%) Middleware
2 17 (4.47%) REST
3 14 (3.68%) Kafka
4 13 (3.42%) Spring Boot
5 10 (2.63%) OAuth
5 10 (2.63%) Oracle Fusion
6 8 (2.11%) JSON
6 8 (2.11%) SOAP
6 8 (2.11%) Spring
7 7 (1.84%) Elastic Stack
7 7 (1.84%) JWT
7 7 (1.84%) Web Services
8 6 (1.58%) NumPy
8 6 (1.58%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 6 (1.58%) Pandas
8 6 (1.58%) SAP Fiori
8 6 (1.58%) XML
8 6 (1.58%) XSLT
9 5 (1.32%) React
10 4 (1.05%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 48 (12.63%) Cloud Native
2 20 (5.26%) Data Centre
2 20 (5.26%) Hybrid Cloud
3 18 (4.74%) Private Cloud
4 10 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 8 (2.11%) Data Structures
5 8 (2.11%) PKI
6 7 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.58%) AI Agents
7 6 (1.58%) Virtual Team
8 5 (1.32%) Legacy Applications
9 4 (1.05%) Security Posture
10 3 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.79%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.79%) Reinsurance
10 3 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (0.53%) Cyber Threat
11 2 (0.53%) Enterprise Storage
11 2 (0.53%) Grid Computing
11 2 (0.53%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 52 (13.68%) Linux
2 30 (7.89%) Windows
3 10 (2.63%) Unix
3 10 (2.63%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.84%) Ubuntu
5 6 (1.58%) AIX
5 6 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (1.58%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (1.05%) Debian
7 3 (0.79%) CentOS
7 3 (0.79%) VMS
7 3 (0.79%) Windows Server 2012
7 3 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.26%) Android
8 1 (0.26%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (26.84%) DevOps
2 94 (24.74%) CI/CD
2 94 (24.74%) Infrastructure as Code
3 91 (23.95%) Migration
4 56 (14.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 55 (14.47%) Stakeholder Management
6 51 (13.42%) Agile
7 41 (10.79%) Analytics
8 37 (9.74%) Containerisation
8 37 (9.74%) Microservices
9 36 (9.47%) ERP
10 35 (9.21%) User Acceptance Testing
11 33 (8.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 31 (8.16%) Data Migration
13 30 (7.89%) Cloud Security
14 29 (7.63%) Validation
15 28 (7.37%) Problem-Solving
16 27 (7.11%) Identity Access Management
16 27 (7.11%) Project Delivery
17 25 (6.58%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 75 (19.74%) Python
2 24 (6.32%) Java
2 24 (6.32%) PowerShell
3 19 (5.00%) SQL
4 15 (3.95%) Bash
5 8 (2.11%) Bicep
6 6 (1.58%) Go
6 6 (1.58%) Shell Script
7 5 (1.32%) Ruby
8 4 (1.05%) JavaScript
8 4 (1.05%) TypeScript
9 2 (0.53%) C++
9 2 (0.53%) Groovy
9 2 (0.53%) Perl
9 2 (0.53%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.26%) C#
10 1 (0.26%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.26%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 87 (22.89%) Security Cleared
2 71 (18.68%) SC Cleared
3 27 (7.11%) Cisco Certification
4 19 (5.00%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.42%) CCNP
6 12 (3.16%) Degree
7 10 (2.63%) AWS Certification
7 10 (2.63%) CISSP
8 9 (2.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 9 (2.37%) Azure Certification
8 9 (2.37%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 8 (2.11%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 8 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (2.11%) SAP Certification
10 7 (1.84%) ACCA
10 7 (1.84%) CIMA
10 7 (1.84%) CISM
11 5 (1.32%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 5 (1.32%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 5 (1.32%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (3.95%) NIST
2 14 (3.68%) NCSC
3 12 (3.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.63%) GDPR
5 8 (2.11%) QA
6 6 (1.58%) Data Quality
7 5 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.32%) GRC
8 3 (0.79%) Government Security Classifications
8 3 (0.79%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.53%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.53%) PMO
9 2 (0.53%) SLA
10 1 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.26%) ISO 22301
10 1 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 1 (0.26%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.26%) RMADS
System Software
1 26 (6.84%) Docker
2 23 (6.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (3.42%) Active Directory
3 13 (3.42%) VMware NSX
4 8 (2.11%) Hyper-V
4 8 (2.11%) Oracle RAC
5 7 (1.84%) Postfix
5 7 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (1.58%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (1.32%) NFS
7 5 (1.32%) Varnish
7 5 (1.32%) vSphere
8 4 (1.05%) Sendmail
9 2 (0.53%) Dovecot
9 2 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.26%) Firmware
10 1 (0.26%) GPFS
10 1 (0.26%) Lustre
10 1 (0.26%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.26%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 85 (22.37%) Terraform
2 63 (16.58%) Kubernetes
3 39 (10.26%) Ansible
4 19 (5.00%) Istio
5 13 (3.42%) Prometheus
6 11 (2.89%) Grafana
7 8 (2.11%) Data Guard
7 8 (2.11%) Oracle RMAN
7 8 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.84%) HAProxy
9 4 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.05%) Argo
9 4 (1.05%) Kubeflow
9 4 (1.05%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.05%) Packer
9 4 (1.05%) vCenter Server
10 3 (0.79%) Check_MK
10 3 (0.79%) SCCM
11 2 (0.53%) Puppet
11 2 (0.53%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 96 (25.26%) SAP
2 53 (13.95%) Google
3 51 (13.42%) Microsoft
4 42 (11.05%) Oracle
5 35 (9.21%) VMware
6 17 (4.47%) F5
7 14 (3.68%) Ariba
8 13 (3.42%) Cisco
9 11 (2.89%) Red Hat
10 10 (2.63%) ServiceNow
11 8 (2.11%) Splunk
12 7 (1.84%) Fortinet
13 6 (1.58%) Juniper
14 5 (1.32%) Citrix
14 5 (1.32%) CyberArk
14 5 (1.32%) Databricks
14 5 (1.32%) MuleSoft
14 5 (1.32%) Palo Alto
14 5 (1.32%) Veeam
15 4 (1.05%) Commvault