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 13 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 330 323 288
Rank change year-on-year -7 -35 -44
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 380 235 347
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.72% 0.72% 0.81%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.18% 2.08% 2.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 247 153 238
10th Percentile £416 £401 £445
25th Percentile £500 £475 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year - +4.35% -8.00%
75th Percentile £675 £694 £734
90th Percentile £725 £754 £829
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £513 £598
% change year-on-year +17.07% -14.23% -2.45%
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 17,434 11,307 13,019
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.09% 34.60% 30.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,677 7,024 8,258
10th Percentile £313 £300 £281
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £627 £649 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 879 530 872
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.48 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.94 £18.87 £15.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £31.50 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +39.58% -13.71% +32.25%
75th Percentile £70.00 £58.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £87.50 £77.62 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £31.91 £36.05
% change year-on-year +37.78% -11.49% +2.99%

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 13 July 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 13 July 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 -2 315 £600 -2.04% 180
UK excluding London +18 208 £600 +17.07% 126
London -65 112 £600 -9.43% 110
Work from Home -2 106 £610 +6.09% 67
North of England -27 73 £625 +31.58% 24
South East -37 52 £590 -1.67% 13
Midlands -19 38 £625 +16.39% 20
Yorkshire -23 37 £625 +48.81% 13
North West -34 33 £625 +23.52% 7
East Midlands +7 26 £631 +32.89% 2
South West -10 25 £613 +11.36% 29
Scotland -28 13 £500 - 12
West Midlands -60 8 £450 -26.53% 18
North East -28 7 £625 - 4
East of England -20 6 £475 -13.64%
Northern Ireland - 2 £385 - 24
Wales -16 1 - - 4

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 6 (1.58%) OpenStack
3 5 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.32%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.79%) CloudStack
4 3 (0.79%) SAS
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 10 (2.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.32%) MS Visio
4 4 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.26%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.26%) Houdini
6 1 (0.26%) NUKE
6 1 (0.26%) Weka
Business Applications
1 86 (22.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.58%) Oracle ERP
2 6 (1.58%) SAP Business One
3 5 (1.32%) SAP ERP
3 5 (1.32%) SAP SD
4 4 (1.05%) iTrent
4 4 (1.05%) SAP FI
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
1 144 (37.89%) Azure
2 123 (32.37%) AWS
3 80 (21.05%) GCP
4 33 (8.68%) GitHub
5 24 (6.32%) SuccessFactors
6 21 (5.53%) OCI
7 20 (5.26%) IaaS
7 20 (5.26%) PaaS
8 19 (5.00%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 16 (4.21%) SaaS
10 15 (3.95%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (3.95%) OpenShift
10 15 (3.95%) Serverless
11 11 (2.89%) Amazon EKS
11 11 (2.89%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (2.89%) Azure DevOps
11 11 (2.89%) Power Platform
12 7 (1.84%) Microsoft 365
13 6 (1.58%) Azure Sentinel
13 6 (1.58%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 27 (7.11%) DNS
2 26 (6.84%) Firewall
3 21 (5.53%) Network Security
4 13 (3.42%) LAN
4 13 (3.42%) WAN
5 12 (3.16%) TCP/IP
6 11 (2.89%) VPN
7 9 (2.37%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 8 (2.11%) SAN
9 7 (1.84%) BGP
9 7 (1.84%) MPLS
9 7 (1.84%) NAS
9 7 (1.84%) VSAN
10 5 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
10 5 (1.32%) Wireless
11 4 (1.05%) DHCP
11 4 (1.05%) SNMP
11 4 (1.05%) TACACS
12 3 (0.79%) BIG-IP
12 3 (0.79%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (4.21%) Oracle Database
2 12 (3.16%) RDBMS
2 12 (3.16%) Relational Database
3 11 (2.89%) Oracle Exadata
4 10 (2.63%) Power BI
5 7 (1.84%) SQL Server
6 5 (1.32%) BigQuery
7 4 (1.05%) BusinessObjects
7 4 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (1.05%) MySQL
8 3 (0.79%) Data Vault
8 3 (0.79%) Delta Lake
8 3 (0.79%) PostgreSQL
9 2 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.53%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (0.53%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.26%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.26%) MongoDB
10 1 (0.26%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 36 (9.47%) Git
2 32 (8.42%) Jenkins
3 23 (6.05%) GitLab
4 18 (4.74%) JIRA
5 9 (2.37%) Postman
6 6 (1.58%) JUnit
6 6 (1.58%) SoapUI
7 4 (1.05%) Cucumber
7 4 (1.05%) Hudson
8 3 (0.79%) Liquibase
8 3 (0.79%) Selenium
8 3 (0.79%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.53%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.26%) Ant
10 1 (0.26%) LSMW
10 1 (0.26%) MSI
10 1 (0.26%) PVCS
10 1 (0.26%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.26%) Snyk
General
1 117 (30.79%) Finance
2 65 (17.11%) Social Skills
3 56 (14.74%) Public Sector
4 29 (7.63%) Banking
5 21 (5.53%) Local Government
6 20 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
7 11 (2.89%) Influencing Skills
8 10 (2.63%) General Ledger
9 7 (1.84%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.84%) Financial Institution
9 7 (1.84%) Military
10 5 (1.32%) Investment Banking
10 5 (1.32%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.05%) Billing
12 3 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.79%) Retail
13 2 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.53%) Legal
13 2 (0.53%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.26%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 91 (23.95%) Architect
2 56 (14.74%) Lead
2 56 (14.74%) Senior
3 40 (10.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 33 (8.68%) Solutions Architect
5 26 (6.84%) Cloud Engineer
6 23 (6.05%) DevOps Engineer
7 22 (5.79%) Consultant
7 22 (5.79%) Technical Architect
8 19 (5.00%) GCP Engineer
9 17 (4.47%) Cloud Architect
10 16 (4.21%) Azure Specialist
11 15 (3.95%) Developer
12 14 (3.68%) SAP Consultant
13 12 (3.16%) SAP Architect
14 11 (2.89%) Azure Architect
14 11 (2.89%) Azure Engineer
14 11 (2.89%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 10 (2.63%) Data Engineer
15 10 (2.63%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.00%) Middleware
2 18 (4.74%) REST
3 15 (3.95%) Kafka
3 15 (3.95%) Spring Boot
4 12 (3.16%) OAuth
5 11 (2.89%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 11 (2.89%) Spring
6 10 (2.63%) Oracle Fusion
7 8 (2.11%) JSON
7 8 (2.11%) SOAP
8 7 (1.84%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (1.84%) JWT
8 7 (1.84%) React
8 7 (1.84%) SAP Fiori
8 7 (1.84%) Web Services
9 6 (1.58%) NumPy
9 6 (1.58%) Pandas
9 6 (1.58%) XML
9 6 (1.58%) XSLT
10 4 (1.05%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 45 (11.84%) Cloud Native
2 22 (5.79%) Hybrid Cloud
3 21 (5.53%) Data Centre
4 20 (5.26%) Private Cloud
5 10 (2.63%) Onboarding
6 8 (2.11%) PKI
7 7 (1.84%) Data Structures
7 7 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.58%) AI Agents
8 6 (1.58%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
9 4 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (1.05%) Legacy Applications
9 4 (1.05%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.05%) Security Posture
10 3 (0.79%) Reinsurance
10 3 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (0.53%) Cyber Threat
11 2 (0.53%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 2 (0.53%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 58 (15.26%) Linux
2 29 (7.63%) Windows
3 11 (2.89%) AIX
4 10 (2.63%) Windows Server
5 8 (2.11%) Unix
6 7 (1.84%) Ubuntu
7 6 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (1.58%) Windows Server 2019
8 4 (1.05%) Debian
9 3 (0.79%) CentOS
9 3 (0.79%) Windows Server 2012
9 3 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.26%) Android
10 1 (0.26%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.26%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (26.58%) CI/CD
2 100 (26.32%) DevOps
3 98 (25.79%) Infrastructure as Code
4 93 (24.47%) Migration
5 60 (15.79%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 55 (14.47%) Stakeholder Management
7 54 (14.21%) Agile
8 40 (10.53%) Analytics
9 39 (10.26%) Microservices
10 38 (10.00%) Containerisation
11 37 (9.74%) Data Migration
12 36 (9.47%) ERP
13 33 (8.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 33 (8.68%) User Acceptance Testing
14 32 (8.42%) Problem-Solving
15 31 (8.16%) Cloud Security
16 29 (7.63%) Identity Access Management
16 29 (7.63%) Project Delivery
17 27 (7.11%) Infrastructure Automation
17 27 (7.11%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 78 (20.53%) Python
2 26 (6.84%) Java
3 25 (6.58%) PowerShell
4 19 (5.00%) SQL
5 15 (3.95%) Bash
6 8 (2.11%) Bicep
6 8 (2.11%) JavaScript
7 7 (1.84%) Go
8 6 (1.58%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.32%) Ruby
9 5 (1.32%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.53%) C++
10 2 (0.53%) Groovy
10 2 (0.53%) Perl
11 1 (0.26%) C#
11 1 (0.26%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.26%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.26%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 92 (24.21%) Security Cleared
2 77 (20.26%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.63%) Cisco Certification
4 20 (5.26%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.42%) CCNP
6 12 (3.16%) Degree
7 11 (2.89%) AWS Certification
8 10 (2.63%) CISSP
9 9 (2.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 9 (2.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 9 (2.37%) Azure Certification
9 9 (2.37%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 8 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
10 8 (2.11%) SAP Certification
11 7 (1.84%) ACCA
11 7 (1.84%) CIMA
11 7 (1.84%) CISM
12 5 (1.32%) CCIE
12 5 (1.32%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 5 (1.32%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
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%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.53%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.53%) PMO
10 1 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
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%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.26%) RMADS
System Software
1 24 (6.32%) Docker
2 21 (5.53%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (3.42%) Active Directory
3 13 (3.42%) VMware NSX
4 12 (3.16%) Oracle RAC
5 7 (1.84%) Postfix
5 7 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (1.84%) VMware ESXi
6 6 (1.58%) vSphere
7 5 (1.32%) NFS
7 5 (1.32%) Varnish
8 4 (1.05%) Hyper-V
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 86 (22.63%) Terraform
2 61 (16.05%) Kubernetes
3 44 (11.58%) Ansible
4 17 (4.47%) Istio
5 14 (3.68%) Prometheus
6 12 (3.16%) Data Guard
6 12 (3.16%) Grafana
6 12 (3.16%) Oracle RMAN
7 8 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.84%) HAProxy
9 5 (1.32%) Packer
10 4 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (1.05%) Argo
10 4 (1.05%) Kubeflow
10 4 (1.05%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (1.05%) vCenter Server
11 3 (0.79%) Check_MK
11 3 (0.79%) SCCM
12 2 (0.53%) Red Hat Satellite
13 1 (0.26%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 95 (25.00%) SAP
2 52 (13.68%) Microsoft
3 48 (12.63%) Google
4 46 (12.11%) Oracle
5 33 (8.68%) VMware
6 19 (5.00%) F5
7 15 (3.95%) Cisco
8 13 (3.42%) Ariba
9 12 (3.16%) Red Hat
10 10 (2.63%) ServiceNow
11 9 (2.37%) Fortinet
12 8 (2.11%) Juniper
12 8 (2.11%) Splunk
13 5 (1.32%) Citrix
13 5 (1.32%) CyberArk
13 5 (1.32%) Databricks
13 5 (1.32%) MuleSoft
13 5 (1.32%) Palo Alto
13 5 (1.32%) Veeam
14 4 (1.05%) Foundry