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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 303 252 283
Rank change year-on-year -51 +31 -69
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 336 302 346
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.81% 0.99% 0.77%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.42% 2.98% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 211 209 225
10th Percentile £395 £435 £465
25th Percentile £468 £525 £510
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £608 £585
Median % change year-on-year -9.47% +3.85% -2.50%
75th Percentile £675 £694 £700
90th Percentile £725 £773 £795
UK excluding London median daily rate £534 £583 £582
% change year-on-year -8.41% +0.09% +1.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 1
Median hourly rate - £70.00 £58.00
Median % change year-on-year - +20.69% +10.48%
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £72.50 -

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 13,856 10,145 13,577
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.38% 33.33% 30.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,739 6,206 8,719
10th Percentile £281 £275 £256
25th Percentile £406 £408 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £527
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.28% -4.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 652 335 845
10th Percentile £15.35 £18.17 £12.99
25th Percentile £18.82 £22.85 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £32.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% +8.33% +33.42%
75th Percentile £65.00 £66.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £79.82 £83.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.00 £32.50 £31.13
% change year-on-year +1.54% +4.42% +41.48%

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 1 March 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 1 March 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 -48 284 £550 -8.90% 239
UK excluding London -23 175 £534 -8.41% 218
London -69 111 £600 -2.04% 41
Work from Home -18 77 £559 -9.15% 98
North of England -5 74 £525 -9.29% 39
Yorkshire -28 44 £525 -9.87% 16
Midlands -18 39 £530 +13.49% 35
North West -22 29 £450 -15.49% 15
South East -52 28 £524 -15.22% 62
South West -3 26 £625 -1.96% 35
East Midlands -6 22 £525 +31.25% 24
West Midlands -34 16 £530 -33.75% 10
Scotland -1 9 £543 -3.64% 7
East of England -37 7 £413 -31.25% 31
Wales -6 3 £214 -63.98% 10
North East -11 2 - - 8
Northern Ireland - 1 £385 - 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 13 (3.87%) Confluence
2 7 (2.08%) OpenStack
3 6 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (1.79%) SAS
4 2 (0.60%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.60%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.60%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.30%) Apache
Applications
1 5 (1.49%) Weka
2 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.30%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 56 (16.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (2.68%) Oracle ERP
3 7 (2.08%) SAP ERP
3 7 (2.08%) SAP FI
4 6 (1.79%) SAP CO
4 6 (1.79%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.60%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 124 (36.90%) Azure
2 118 (35.12%) AWS
3 112 (33.33%) GCP
4 33 (9.82%) GitHub
5 31 (9.23%) Serverless
6 20 (5.95%) OCI
7 18 (5.36%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 18 (5.36%) IaaS
7 18 (5.36%) PaaS
8 16 (4.76%) SuccessFactors
9 15 (4.46%) Azure DevOps
10 12 (3.57%) Cloud Computing
11 10 (2.98%) AWS KMS
11 10 (2.98%) GitHub Actions
11 10 (2.98%) SaaS
12 9 (2.68%) Power Platform
13 6 (1.79%) Microsoft 365
13 6 (1.79%) Nutanix
14 5 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
14 5 (1.49%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 34 (10.12%) Firewall
2 24 (7.14%) DNS
3 23 (6.85%) Network Security
4 20 (5.95%) VPN
5 16 (4.76%) TCP/IP
6 14 (4.17%) WAN
7 8 (2.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 7 (2.08%) Internet
8 7 (2.08%) SD-WAN
9 6 (1.79%) Kerberos
9 6 (1.79%) LAN
10 5 (1.49%) DHCP
11 4 (1.19%) Multicast
11 4 (1.19%) NetScaler
11 4 (1.19%) Wireless
12 3 (0.89%) BGP
12 3 (0.89%) MPLS
12 3 (0.89%) OSPF
12 3 (0.89%) VXLAN
13 2 (0.60%) IPv6
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (8.63%) NoSQL
2 16 (4.76%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (2.68%) Power BI
4 7 (2.08%) Oracle Database
5 6 (1.79%) BigQuery
6 5 (1.49%) MongoDB
6 5 (1.49%) SQL Server
7 3 (0.89%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (0.89%) Data Vault
7 3 (0.89%) Delta Lake
7 3 (0.89%) Oracle Exadata
7 3 (0.89%) Relational Database
8 2 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.60%) Redis
9 1 (0.30%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.30%) Data Mining
9 1 (0.30%) MySQL
9 1 (0.30%) Oracle Database 12c
9 1 (0.30%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 56 (16.67%) Jenkins
2 47 (13.99%) GitLab
3 25 (7.44%) JIRA
4 19 (5.65%) Liquibase
5 13 (3.87%) Postman
6 12 (3.57%) Git
7 8 (2.38%) SoapUI
8 5 (1.49%) TeamCity
9 2 (0.60%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.60%) Mocha
10 1 (0.30%) Ant
10 1 (0.30%) JUnit
10 1 (0.30%) Maven
10 1 (0.30%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.30%) Snyk
10 1 (0.30%) Vite
General
1 111 (33.04%) Finance
2 97 (28.87%) Social Skills
3 54 (16.07%) Public Sector
4 51 (15.18%) Banking
5 21 (6.25%) Local Government
6 19 (5.65%) Financial Institution
7 18 (5.36%) Analytical Skills
8 10 (2.98%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.79%) Investment Banking
10 5 (1.49%) General Ledger
10 5 (1.49%) Law
10 5 (1.49%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.19%) Police
11 4 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.89%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (0.89%) German Language
12 3 (0.89%) Military
13 2 (0.60%) Retail
13 2 (0.60%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 72 (21.43%) Architect
2 49 (14.58%) Senior
3 41 (12.20%) Cloud Engineer
4 33 (9.82%) GCP Engineer
5 25 (7.44%) Lead
6 23 (6.85%) Solutions Architect
7 20 (5.95%) DevOps Engineer
7 20 (5.95%) Software Engineer
8 18 (5.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 17 (5.06%) AWS Engineer
10 15 (4.46%) Senior Cloud Engineer
10 15 (4.46%) Senior Software Engineer
11 14 (4.17%) Consultant
12 13 (3.87%) Analyst
12 13 (3.87%) SAP Manager
13 12 (3.57%) Data Engineer
14 11 (3.27%) Developer
14 11 (3.27%) Senior DevOps
14 11 (3.27%) Senior DevOps Engineer
15 10 (2.98%) Infrastructure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (15.18%) REST
2 26 (7.74%) Elastic Stack
2 26 (7.74%) RESTful
3 16 (4.76%) Middleware
4 15 (4.46%) JSON
4 15 (4.46%) OAuth
5 14 (4.17%) SOAP
6 13 (3.87%) JWT
7 12 (3.57%) Oracle Fusion
7 12 (3.57%) Web Services
7 12 (3.57%) XML
7 12 (3.57%) XSLT
8 9 (2.68%) Spring Boot
9 8 (2.38%) Kafka
10 6 (1.79%) React
11 5 (1.49%) NumPy
11 5 (1.49%) Pandas
12 4 (1.19%) PyTorch
12 4 (1.19%) Spring
12 4 (1.19%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 48 (14.29%) Cloud Native
2 24 (7.14%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (5.95%) Data Centre
4 17 (5.06%) Private Cloud
5 12 (3.57%) Hybrid Cloud
6 10 (2.98%) Product Ownership
7 7 (2.08%) PKI
8 6 (1.79%) Grid Computing
8 6 (1.79%) Legacy Applications
8 6 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.79%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.49%) Cloud Security Posture
9 5 (1.49%) Data Structures
10 4 (1.19%) Virtual Team
11 3 (0.89%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (0.89%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.89%) NHS
11 3 (0.89%) Reinsurance
11 3 (0.89%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 59 (17.56%) Linux
2 23 (6.85%) Windows
3 9 (2.68%) Unix
4 8 (2.38%) Windows Server
5 7 (2.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (2.08%) Windows Server 2019
6 5 (1.49%) VMS
7 4 (1.19%) Windows Server 2012
8 3 (0.89%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.60%) CentOS
9 2 (0.60%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.30%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 126 (37.50%) DevOps
2 92 (27.38%) CI/CD
3 89 (26.49%) Agile
4 87 (25.89%) Infrastructure as Code
5 65 (19.35%) Migration
6 53 (15.77%) Containerisation
7 46 (13.69%) Microservices
8 45 (13.39%) Stakeholder Management
9 35 (10.42%) Cybersecurity
10 33 (9.82%) Analytics
11 32 (9.52%) Infrastructure Automation
11 32 (9.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 32 (9.52%) Software Engineering
12 31 (9.23%) Root Cause Analysis
13 27 (8.04%) Change Management
13 27 (8.04%) Problem-Solving
14 26 (7.74%) Computer Science
15 25 (7.44%) ERP
15 25 (7.44%) Project Delivery
16 24 (7.14%) Cost Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 89 (26.49%) Python
2 29 (8.63%) Go
3 25 (7.44%) SQL
4 21 (6.25%) Java
5 10 (2.98%) Bash
6 9 (2.68%) PowerShell
7 6 (1.79%) JavaScript
8 5 (1.49%) TypeScript
9 4 (1.19%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.89%) Ruby
10 3 (0.89%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.60%) Bicep
11 2 (0.60%) C++
12 1 (0.30%) ABAP
12 1 (0.30%) Perl
Qualifications
1 83 (24.70%) Security Cleared
2 59 (17.56%) SC Cleared
3 37 (11.01%) Degree
4 25 (7.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (7.14%) Master's Degree
6 14 (4.17%) AWS Certification
7 12 (3.57%) Cisco Certification
8 10 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (2.38%) CISSP
9 8 (2.38%) DV Cleared
9 8 (2.38%) ISTQB
10 7 (2.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 7 (2.08%) Azure Certification
10 7 (2.08%) SAP Certification
11 6 (1.79%) CISM
12 5 (1.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (1.49%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 5 (1.49%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 4 (1.19%) CCNP
13 4 (1.19%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (4.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 12 (3.57%) NCSC
3 10 (2.98%) GDPR
4 8 (2.38%) NIST
5 7 (2.08%) QA
5 7 (2.08%) SLA
6 5 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 5 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27005
7 3 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.89%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.60%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.60%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.60%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.60%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.60%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.60%) PSD2
8 2 (0.60%) WCAG
9 1 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.30%) COBIT
9 1 (0.30%) GRC
System Software
1 52 (15.48%) Docker
2 15 (4.46%) Hyper-V
2 15 (4.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.08%) Active Directory
3 7 (2.08%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (1.79%) vSphere
5 5 (1.49%) GPFS
5 5 (1.49%) Lustre
5 5 (1.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 4 (1.19%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.89%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.89%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.30%) Ceph
8 1 (0.30%) KVM
8 1 (0.30%) NFS
8 1 (0.30%) Postfix
8 1 (0.30%) QEMU
8 1 (0.30%) Sendmail
8 1 (0.30%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 82 (24.40%) Kubernetes
2 81 (24.11%) Terraform
3 55 (16.37%) Ansible
4 30 (8.93%) Prometheus
5 28 (8.33%) Grafana
6 16 (4.76%) Istio
7 5 (1.49%) Kubeflow
7 5 (1.49%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (1.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (1.19%) Data Guard
8 4 (1.19%) Oracle RMAN
8 4 (1.19%) SCCM
9 3 (0.89%) Puppet
9 3 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (0.60%) Argo
10 2 (0.60%) Red Hat Satellite
10 2 (0.60%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.60%) vMotion
11 1 (0.30%) Demisto
11 1 (0.30%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 63 (18.75%) SAP
2 54 (16.07%) Google
3 34 (10.12%) Oracle
4 30 (8.93%) Splunk
5 27 (8.04%) VMware
6 22 (6.55%) Microsoft
7 14 (4.17%) F5
8 13 (3.87%) ServiceNow
9 12 (3.57%) Ariba
10 9 (2.68%) Cisco
10 9 (2.68%) Palo Alto
11 6 (1.79%) MuleSoft
12 5 (1.49%) Aruba
12 5 (1.49%) Databricks
12 5 (1.49%) Fortinet
12 5 (1.49%) Red Hat
13 4 (1.19%) Veeam
14 3 (0.89%) Arista
14 3 (0.89%) Informatica
14 3 (0.89%) Juniper