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

6 months to
9 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 355 323 280
Rank change year-on-year -32 -43 -27
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 356 231 340
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.66% 0.70% 0.88%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.98% 1.99% 2.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 238 150 222
10th Percentile £427 £362 £444
25th Percentile £513 £450 £490
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £550 £591
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -6.98% -4.37%
75th Percentile £688 £688 £750
90th Percentile £761 £751 £836
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £500 £600
% change year-on-year +20.00% -16.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 3
10th Percentile - £45.25 £39.80
25th Percentile £71.25 £49.38 £44.38
Median hourly rate £72.50 £57.50 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.09% +6.48% -30.77%
75th Percentile £73.75 £64.38 £57.00
90th Percentile - £67.75 £57.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £70.00 £48.25
% change year-on-year - +45.08% -38.14%

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 17,946 11,604 11,808
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.49% 35.02% 30.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,899 7,155 7,586
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £639 £675
90th Percentile £750 £772 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 999 556 608
10th Percentile £15.23 £15.13 £12.36
25th Percentile £19.47 £18.87 £18.27
Median hourly rate £43.56 £29.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +47.66% -34.44% +15.38%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £67.11
90th Percentile £85.00 £77.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +46.53% -33.33% +7.78%

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 9 August 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 9 August 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 -16 294 £600 - 288
UK excluding London +5 200 £600 +20.00% 128
London -87 100 £608 -6.54% 179
Work from Home -16 99 £618 +17.62% 92
North of England -34 66 £600 +33.33% 36
South East -30 54 £590 -14.18% 23
Yorkshire -19 37 £600 +42.86% 17
Midlands -23 37 £638 +18.72% 16
North West -35 26 £600 +33.33% 14
South West -20 25 £675 +22.73% 25
East Midlands +6 21 £631 +32.89% 10
Scotland -30 12 £440 -12.00% 10
West Midlands -41 12 £675 +10.12% 6
North East -37 7 £625 - 5
East of England -18 6 £475 -9.52% 3
Wales -19 1 - - 2
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 13

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 (2.81%) Apache
1 10 (2.81%) Confluence
2 5 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.40%) OpenStack
3 3 (0.84%) CloudStack
3 3 (0.84%) SAS
3 3 (0.84%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.56%) IIS
4 2 (0.56%) nginx
4 2 (0.56%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.56%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 12 (3.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.12%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.56%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.56%) Houdini
4 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.56%) NUKE
4 2 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.28%) Weka
Business Applications
1 78 (21.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.69%) SAP Business One
3 5 (1.40%) SAP ERP
3 5 (1.40%) SAP SD
4 4 (1.12%) iTrent
5 3 (0.84%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.56%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.56%) SAP FI-GL
7 1 (0.28%) Exchequer
7 1 (0.28%) Oracle SCM
7 1 (0.28%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.28%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.28%) SAP FI-AR
7 1 (0.28%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 141 (39.61%) Azure
2 122 (34.27%) AWS
3 66 (18.54%) GCP
4 26 (7.30%) SuccessFactors
5 24 (6.74%) GitHub
6 21 (5.90%) OCI
7 19 (5.34%) IaaS
8 18 (5.06%) PaaS
9 16 (4.49%) SaaS
10 14 (3.93%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 14 (3.93%) OpenShift
11 12 (3.37%) Amazon EKS
11 12 (3.37%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (3.37%) Serverless
12 10 (2.81%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (2.53%) Azure DevOps
14 6 (1.69%) Amazon ECS
14 6 (1.69%) Entra ID
14 6 (1.69%) Microsoft 365
15 4 (1.12%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 29 (8.15%) Firewall
2 27 (7.58%) DNS
3 21 (5.90%) Network Security
4 16 (4.49%) TCP/IP
5 15 (4.21%) VPN
5 15 (4.21%) VSAN
6 12 (3.37%) LAN
6 12 (3.37%) WAN
7 10 (2.81%) DHCP
8 7 (1.97%) SAN
9 6 (1.69%) BGP
9 6 (1.69%) NAS
10 5 (1.40%) MPLS
10 5 (1.40%) VLAN
10 5 (1.40%) Wi-Fi
11 4 (1.12%) SNMP
11 4 (1.12%) TACACS
11 4 (1.12%) Wireless
12 3 (0.84%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 3 (0.84%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.78%) Oracle Database
2 13 (3.65%) RDBMS
2 13 (3.65%) Relational Database
3 12 (3.37%) Oracle Exadata
4 8 (2.25%) MySQL
5 5 (1.40%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (1.12%) BigQuery
6 4 (1.12%) BusinessObjects
6 4 (1.12%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.56%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.56%) Power BI
7 2 (0.56%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.28%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.28%) Big Data
8 1 (0.28%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.28%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.28%) SAP Data Services
8 1 (0.28%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 38 (10.67%) Git
2 23 (6.46%) Jenkins
3 18 (5.06%) GitLab
4 11 (3.09%) JIRA
5 6 (1.69%) JUnit
5 6 (1.69%) Postman
6 4 (1.12%) Hudson
7 3 (0.84%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.84%) Selenium
7 3 (0.84%) SoapUI
7 3 (0.84%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.84%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.56%) Liquibase
9 1 (0.28%) LSMW
9 1 (0.28%) MSI
9 1 (0.28%) PVCS
9 1 (0.28%) TeamCity
General
1 103 (28.93%) Finance
2 56 (15.73%) Social Skills
3 44 (12.36%) Public Sector
4 22 (6.18%) Banking
5 21 (5.90%) Analytical Skills
6 14 (3.93%) Local Government
7 9 (2.53%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (2.25%) General Ledger
9 7 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.97%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.40%) Billing
10 5 (1.40%) Military
10 5 (1.40%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.12%) Automotive
11 4 (1.12%) Legal
12 3 (0.84%) Investment Banking
12 3 (0.84%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.84%) Retail
Job Titles
1 88 (24.72%) Architect
2 58 (16.29%) Senior
3 48 (13.48%) Lead
4 40 (11.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 35 (9.83%) Solutions Architect
6 24 (6.74%) DevOps Engineer
7 23 (6.46%) Cloud Engineer
8 20 (5.62%) Technical Architect
9 17 (4.78%) Consultant
9 17 (4.78%) Developer
10 16 (4.49%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 15 (4.21%) Azure Specialist
11 15 (4.21%) Cloud Architect
11 15 (4.21%) GCP Engineer
12 12 (3.37%) Azure Engineer
12 12 (3.37%) SAP Consultant
13 11 (3.09%) Azure Architect
14 10 (2.81%) Analyst
15 9 (2.53%) Network Architect
15 9 (2.53%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (4.78%) Kafka
2 16 (4.49%) Spring Boot
3 15 (4.21%) Middleware
4 12 (3.37%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 12 (3.37%) REST
5 11 (3.09%) Spring
6 8 (2.25%) SAP Fiori
7 7 (1.97%) Elastic Stack
7 7 (1.97%) OAuth
7 7 (1.97%) Oracle Fusion
8 6 (1.69%) JSON
8 6 (1.69%) NumPy
8 6 (1.69%) Pandas
8 6 (1.69%) React
8 6 (1.69%) XML
9 4 (1.12%) .NET
9 4 (1.12%) 802.1X
9 4 (1.12%) OpenID
9 4 (1.12%) SOAP
9 4 (1.12%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 42 (11.80%) Cloud Native
2 27 (7.58%) Hybrid Cloud
3 22 (6.18%) Data Centre
4 20 (5.62%) Private Cloud
5 17 (4.78%) PKI
6 10 (2.81%) Onboarding
7 7 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (1.97%) Management Information System
7 7 (1.97%) Virtual Team
8 6 (1.69%) Data Structures
8 6 (1.69%) Linux Command Line
9 5 (1.40%) AI Agents
9 5 (1.40%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.12%) Robotics
10 4 (1.12%) Security Posture
11 3 (0.84%) Enterprise Cloud
12 2 (0.56%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 2 (0.56%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 65 (18.26%) Linux
2 31 (8.71%) Windows
3 12 (3.37%) AIX
4 11 (3.09%) Ubuntu
5 9 (2.53%) Unix
6 8 (2.25%) Windows Server
7 6 (1.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (1.12%) Debian
8 4 (1.12%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (0.84%) CentOS
9 3 (0.84%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.28%) Android
10 1 (0.28%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.28%) VMS
10 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (29.21%) Migration
2 98 (27.53%) Infrastructure as Code
3 94 (26.40%) CI/CD
4 86 (24.16%) DevOps
5 60 (16.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 55 (15.45%) Agile
6 55 (15.45%) Stakeholder Management
7 41 (11.52%) Data Migration
8 35 (9.83%) ERP
8 35 (9.83%) Microservices
9 33 (9.27%) Validation
10 31 (8.71%) Cloud Security
10 31 (8.71%) Containerisation
10 31 (8.71%) Infrastructure Automation
11 29 (8.15%) Identity Access Management
11 29 (8.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 27 (7.58%) Technical Leadership
12 27 (7.58%) User Acceptance Testing
13 26 (7.30%) Problem-Solving
14 25 (7.02%) Architectural Patterns
Programming Languages
1 69 (19.38%) Python
2 30 (8.43%) Java
3 29 (8.15%) PowerShell
4 20 (5.62%) Bash
5 14 (3.93%) SQL
6 11 (3.09%) JavaScript
7 9 (2.53%) Bicep
8 6 (1.69%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.12%) Go
9 4 (1.12%) Ruby
10 3 (0.84%) ABAP
10 3 (0.84%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.56%) Groovy
11 2 (0.56%) Perl
12 1 (0.28%) C#
12 1 (0.28%) C++
12 1 (0.28%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.28%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.28%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 96 (26.97%) Security Cleared
2 78 (21.91%) SC Cleared
3 29 (8.15%) Cisco Certification
4 28 (7.87%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.65%) AWS Certification
5 13 (3.65%) CCNP
6 12 (3.37%) CISSP
7 11 (3.09%) Degree
7 11 (3.09%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 10 (2.81%) VCAP
9 9 (2.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 9 (2.53%) Azure Certification
10 8 (2.25%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (2.25%) CISM
11 7 (1.97%) ACCA
11 7 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
11 7 (1.97%) CIMA
12 6 (1.69%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 5 (1.40%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 5 (1.40%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.65%) NCSC
2 12 (3.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 12 (3.37%) NIST
3 9 (2.53%) GDPR
4 8 (2.25%) QA
5 7 (1.97%) Data Quality
6 5 (1.40%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (1.40%) Government Security Classifications
6 5 (1.40%) GRC
7 4 (1.12%) ISO 20022
8 3 (0.84%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 3 (0.84%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.56%) PMO
10 1 (0.28%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.28%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
10 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 1 (0.28%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.28%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 28 (7.87%) VMware Infrastructure
2 21 (5.90%) VMware NSX
3 20 (5.62%) Docker
4 16 (4.49%) Active Directory
5 13 (3.65%) Oracle RAC
6 11 (3.09%) vSphere
7 9 (2.53%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (1.97%) Postfix
8 7 (1.97%) Virtual Machines
9 5 (1.40%) NFS
9 5 (1.40%) Varnish
10 4 (1.12%) Hyper-V
10 4 (1.12%) Sendmail
11 2 (0.56%) Dovecot
12 1 (0.28%) Firmware
12 1 (0.28%) GPFS
12 1 (0.28%) Lustre
12 1 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 1 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 87 (24.44%) Terraform
2 57 (16.01%) Kubernetes
3 49 (13.76%) Ansible
4 13 (3.65%) Data Guard
4 13 (3.65%) Istio
4 13 (3.65%) Oracle RMAN
4 13 (3.65%) Prometheus
5 12 (3.37%) Grafana
6 8 (2.25%) vCenter Server
7 7 (1.97%) HAProxy
7 7 (1.97%) Packer
7 7 (1.97%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (1.12%) Kubeflow
8 4 (1.12%) systemd
8 4 (1.12%) VxRail
9 3 (0.84%) Argo
9 3 (0.84%) Check_MK
10 2 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 1 (0.28%) AirWatch
11 1 (0.28%) CASB
Vendors
1 86 (24.16%) SAP
2 60 (16.85%) Microsoft
3 48 (13.48%) Oracle
4 39 (10.96%) VMware
5 37 (10.39%) Google
6 17 (4.78%) Cisco
7 12 (3.37%) Ariba
8 11 (3.09%) Juniper
9 10 (2.81%) ServiceNow
10 9 (2.53%) F5
10 9 (2.53%) Red Hat
11 8 (2.25%) Splunk
12 7 (1.97%) Fortinet
13 5 (1.40%) Citrix
13 5 (1.40%) Concur
13 5 (1.40%) CyberArk
14 4 (1.12%) Broadcom
14 4 (1.12%) Dynatrace
14 4 (1.12%) MikroTik
14 4 (1.12%) MuleSoft