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 7 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 358 348 259
Rank change year-on-year -10 -89 +4
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 355 216 335
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.65% 0.89%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.87% 1.82% 2.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 240 137 199
10th Percentile £419 £382 £424
25th Percentile £501 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £537 £565
Median % change year-on-year +11.73% -4.96% -5.83%
75th Percentile £688 £688 £672
90th Percentile £788 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £590 £525 £560
% change year-on-year +12.38% -6.25% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 2
10th Percentile - - £52.60
25th Percentile - £42.50 £53.50
Median hourly rate £57.00 £45.00 £56.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.67% -19.64% -28.21%
75th Percentile - £47.50 £57.50
90th Percentile - - £57.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £58.00
% change year-on-year - - -25.64%

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 18,971 11,895 11,447
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.55% 36.03% 30.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,329 7,295 6,856
10th Percentile £322 £300 £275
25th Percentile £425 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £526
Median % change year-on-year +1.32% -1.49% -4.36%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £669
90th Percentile £750 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,305 616 414
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.78 £15.62
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.82 £22.70
Median hourly rate £36.00 £28.06 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.29% -42.14% +8.38%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.85 £72.50 £75.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.82 £29.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +23.52% -49.43% +14.70%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 -5 286 £600 +2.13% 549
UK excluding London -40 191 £590 +12.38% 291
London -49 102 £650 +4.84% 333
North of England -26 89 £575 +27.78% 65
Work from Home -31 87 £610 +13.59% 237
Yorkshire -12 55 £538 +13.16% 18
South East -40 35 £566 -17.64% 55
North West -25 29 £625 +38.89% 35
Midlands -38 24 £600 +11.73% 26
Scotland -38 19 £520 +4.00% 54
South West -33 15 £675 +12.50% 38
West Midlands -43 12 £675 -3.64% 16
East Midlands -17 10 £588 +16.11% 10
North East - 9 £602 - 12
East of England -23 8 £593 -17.57% 20
Wales -13 1 - - 8
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 27

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 7 (1.97%) IIS
2 6 (1.69%) Apache
2 6 (1.69%) OpenStack
3 3 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (0.85%) CloudStack
3 3 (0.85%) Confluence
3 3 (0.85%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.56%) nginx
4 2 (0.56%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.56%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 14 (3.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.82%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (1.97%) MS Visio
4 4 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.56%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.56%) Houdini
5 2 (0.56%) NUKE
5 2 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.28%) Weka
Business Applications
1 58 (16.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.97%) SAP SD
3 6 (1.69%) SAP Business One
4 5 (1.41%) SAP ERP
5 4 (1.13%) iTrent
6 3 (0.85%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.56%) Cloudability
7 2 (0.56%) SAP CO
7 2 (0.56%) SAP FI-GL
8 1 (0.28%) Distributed Ledger
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle SCM
8 1 (0.28%) SAP FI/CO
8 1 (0.28%) SAP FI-AR
8 1 (0.28%) SAP MDG
8 1 (0.28%) SAP MM
8 1 (0.28%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 159 (44.79%) AWS
2 149 (41.97%) Azure
3 92 (25.92%) GCP
4 29 (8.17%) GitHub
5 22 (6.20%) SaaS
6 20 (5.63%) OCI
7 19 (5.35%) IaaS
8 15 (4.23%) OpenShift
9 14 (3.94%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (3.66%) Entra ID
10 13 (3.66%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 12 (3.38%) Amazon EKS
11 12 (3.38%) Azure DevOps
12 11 (3.10%) AWS CloudFormation
13 10 (2.82%) PaaS
13 10 (2.82%) SuccessFactors
14 9 (2.54%) Serverless
15 8 (2.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 7 (1.97%) Azure Sentinel
17 6 (1.69%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 41 (11.55%) Firewall
2 29 (8.17%) DNS
3 25 (7.04%) Network Security
4 18 (5.07%) TCP/IP
5 14 (3.94%) VSAN
6 12 (3.38%) VPN
7 11 (3.10%) BIG-IP
7 11 (3.10%) DHCP
8 10 (2.82%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 9 (2.54%) BGP
9 9 (2.54%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 9 (2.54%) WAN
10 7 (1.97%) LAN
10 7 (1.97%) SAN
11 6 (1.69%) NAS
12 5 (1.41%) Wi-Fi
13 4 (1.13%) MPLS
13 4 (1.13%) SNMP
13 4 (1.13%) TACACS
13 4 (1.13%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (4.23%) Oracle Database
2 13 (3.66%) RDBMS
2 13 (3.66%) Relational Database
3 12 (3.38%) Oracle Exadata
4 9 (2.54%) MySQL
5 7 (1.97%) SQL Server
6 5 (1.41%) Oracle Reports
6 5 (1.41%) SAP HANA
7 4 (1.13%) Amazon Redshift
7 4 (1.13%) BigQuery
7 4 (1.13%) BusinessObjects
8 3 (0.85%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (0.85%) Metadata
8 3 (0.85%) MongoDB
8 3 (0.85%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.85%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.85%) Power Query
8 3 (0.85%) PowerPivot
9 2 (0.56%) Power BI
10 1 (0.28%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 41 (11.55%) Git
2 30 (8.45%) Jenkins
3 16 (4.51%) GitLab
4 10 (2.82%) JIRA
5 9 (2.54%) JUnit
6 7 (1.97%) SonarQube
6 7 (1.97%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (1.13%) Cucumber
7 4 (1.13%) Hudson
7 4 (1.13%) Maven
8 3 (0.85%) Postman
8 3 (0.85%) Selenium
9 1 (0.28%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.28%) Liquibase
General
1 108 (30.42%) Finance
2 78 (21.97%) Social Skills
3 37 (10.42%) Public Sector
4 23 (6.48%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (6.20%) Banking
6 11 (3.10%) Influencing Skills
7 9 (2.54%) Billing
7 9 (2.54%) General Ledger
8 8 (2.25%) Military
9 7 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.97%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (1.41%) Local Government
10 5 (1.41%) Manufacturing
10 5 (1.41%) Retail
10 5 (1.41%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.13%) Automotive
11 4 (1.13%) Legal
11 4 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.85%) Police
Job Titles
1 93 (26.20%) Architect
2 60 (16.90%) Senior
3 39 (10.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 35 (9.86%) Solutions Architect
5 33 (9.30%) Lead
6 26 (7.32%) DevOps Engineer
7 23 (6.48%) Consultant
7 23 (6.48%) Technical Architect
8 21 (5.92%) Developer
8 21 (5.92%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
9 18 (5.07%) Cloud Architect
10 15 (4.23%) Cloud Engineer
10 15 (4.23%) Security Architect
11 14 (3.94%) Analyst
11 14 (3.94%) Python Developer
12 13 (3.66%) Network Engineer
12 13 (3.66%) Platform Engineer
13 12 (3.38%) Azure Specialist
13 12 (3.38%) SAP Consultant
14 11 (3.10%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (25.07%) Terraform
2 21 (5.92%) Kafka
3 17 (4.79%) Spring Boot
4 13 (3.66%) Spring
5 12 (3.38%) Oracle GoldenGate
6 10 (2.82%) REST
6 10 (2.82%) SAP Fiori
7 7 (1.97%) Web Services
8 6 (1.69%) Elastic Stack
8 6 (1.69%) JSON
8 6 (1.69%) React
9 5 (1.41%) .NET
9 5 (1.41%) Middleware
9 5 (1.41%) OAuth
9 5 (1.41%) OpenID
9 5 (1.41%) Pandas
10 4 (1.13%) AngularJS
10 4 (1.13%) JPA
10 4 (1.13%) Oracle Fusion
10 4 (1.13%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 65 (18.31%) Cloud Native
2 50 (14.08%) Data Centre
3 38 (10.70%) Hybrid Cloud
4 30 (8.45%) Private Cloud
5 15 (4.23%) PKI
6 13 (3.66%) Management Information System
6 13 (3.66%) Onboarding
7 9 (2.54%) AI Agents
8 8 (2.25%) Data Structures
8 8 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
8 8 (2.25%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (2.25%) Security Posture
8 8 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
9 7 (1.97%) Enterprise Cloud
9 7 (1.97%) Legacy Applications
10 6 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (1.69%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.41%) Mobile Payment
11 5 (1.41%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 65 (18.31%) Linux
2 35 (9.86%) Windows
3 13 (3.66%) Windows Server
4 12 (3.38%) AIX
5 10 (2.82%) Unix
6 9 (2.54%) Ubuntu
7 4 (1.13%) VMS
8 3 (0.85%) Debian
8 3 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.56%) CentOS
10 1 (0.28%) Android
10 1 (0.28%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.28%) Rocky
10 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 108 (30.42%) CI/CD
2 99 (27.89%) Infrastructure as Code
3 95 (26.76%) Migration
4 81 (22.82%) DevOps
5 71 (20.00%) Agile
6 64 (18.03%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 56 (15.77%) Stakeholder Management
8 40 (11.27%) Cloud Security
8 40 (11.27%) Microservices
9 39 (10.99%) Problem-Solving
10 38 (10.70%) Data Migration
11 35 (9.86%) Observability
12 33 (9.30%) Event-Driven
12 33 (9.30%) Security Architecture
13 32 (9.01%) Architectural Patterns
13 32 (9.01%) Containerisation
13 32 (9.01%) Infrastructure Automation
13 32 (9.01%) Technical Leadership
14 31 (8.73%) ERP
14 31 (8.73%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 88 (24.79%) Python
2 34 (9.58%) Java
3 28 (7.89%) Bash
3 28 (7.89%) PowerShell
4 13 (3.66%) SQL
5 9 (2.54%) ActionScript
5 9 (2.54%) Go
5 9 (2.54%) JavaScript
6 7 (1.97%) Bicep
7 6 (1.69%) Groovy
7 6 (1.69%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.13%) ABAP
8 4 (1.13%) Ruby
9 3 (0.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 3 (0.85%) Perl
10 1 (0.28%) C++
10 1 (0.28%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.28%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.28%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 89 (25.07%) Security Cleared
2 72 (20.28%) SC Cleared
3 29 (8.17%) Cisco Certification
4 22 (6.20%) AWS Certification
5 21 (5.92%) DV Cleared
6 18 (5.07%) CISSP
7 17 (4.79%) Degree
8 12 (3.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 12 (3.38%) Azure Certification
8 12 (3.38%) VCAP
9 11 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
9 11 (3.10%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 10 (2.82%) CCNP
10 10 (2.82%) CISM
11 9 (2.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 9 (2.54%) CCSP
12 8 (2.25%) CREST Certified
13 7 (1.97%) ACCA
13 7 (1.97%) CIMA
14 6 (1.69%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (4.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (3.94%) NIST
3 11 (3.10%) GDPR
4 7 (1.97%) Data Quality
5 6 (1.69%) NCSC
5 6 (1.69%) PCI DSS
6 5 (1.41%) GRC
6 5 (1.41%) ISO 20022
6 5 (1.41%) ISO 31000
6 5 (1.41%) ISO 9001
6 5 (1.41%) ISO/IEC 27005
7 4 (1.13%) ISO 15022
8 3 (0.85%) Government Security Classifications
8 3 (0.85%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.56%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.28%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 29 (8.17%) VMware Infrastructure
2 23 (6.48%) Docker
3 18 (5.07%) VMware NSX
4 15 (4.23%) Active Directory
5 13 (3.66%) Oracle RAC
6 12 (3.38%) vSphere
7 10 (2.82%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (2.54%) Virtual Machines
9 5 (1.41%) ISA Server
10 3 (0.85%) Postfix
11 2 (0.56%) Dovecot
11 2 (0.56%) Hyper-V
11 2 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
12 1 (0.28%) GPFS
12 1 (0.28%) Lustre
12 1 (0.28%) NFS
12 1 (0.28%) Sendmail
12 1 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 1 (0.28%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 69 (19.44%) Kubernetes
2 51 (14.37%) Ansible
3 18 (5.07%) Grafana
4 16 (4.51%) Prometheus
5 13 (3.66%) Data Guard
5 13 (3.66%) Oracle RMAN
6 11 (3.10%) vCenter Server
7 7 (1.97%) Istio
7 7 (1.97%) Packer
8 6 (1.69%) CASB
9 5 (1.41%) VxRail
10 4 (1.13%) Puppet
10 4 (1.13%) systemd
11 3 (0.85%) Check_MK
11 3 (0.85%) HAProxy
12 2 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 2 (0.56%) Argo
12 2 (0.56%) Progress Chef
13 1 (0.28%) Cilium
13 1 (0.28%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 74 (20.85%) SAP
2 72 (20.28%) Microsoft
3 54 (15.21%) Google
4 45 (12.68%) Oracle
5 35 (9.86%) VMware
6 26 (7.32%) Cisco
7 21 (5.92%) F5
8 14 (3.94%) Splunk
9 11 (3.10%) Juniper
10 9 (2.54%) Fortinet
11 8 (2.25%) Ariba
11 8 (2.25%) CyberArk
12 7 (1.97%) Dynatrace
12 7 (1.97%) ServiceNow
13 6 (1.69%) IBM
13 6 (1.69%) Red Hat
14 5 (1.41%) Centrify
14 5 (1.41%) Commvault
14 5 (1.41%) Qualys
14 5 (1.41%) Tripwire