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

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 343 263
Rank change year-on-year -9 -80 -17
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 357 215 352
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.65% 0.91%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.98% 1.85% 2.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 140 228
10th Percentile £425 £358 £445
25th Percentile £513 £438 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £537 £575
Median % change year-on-year +11.73% -6.65% -6.08%
75th Percentile £688 £688 £750
90th Percentile £769 £756 £829
UK excluding London median daily rate £605 £500 £600
% change year-on-year +21.00% -16.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 3
10th Percentile - - £39.80
25th Percentile £71.25 £42.50 £44.38
Median hourly rate £72.50 £45.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +61.11% -16.67% -30.77%
75th Percentile £73.75 £47.50 £57.00
90th Percentile - - £57.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £48.25
% change year-on-year - - -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 18,014 11,597 11,797
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.58% 35.19% 30.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,925 7,128 7,553
10th Percentile £325 £304 £300
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £750 £763 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,003 564 602
10th Percentile £14.89 £15.13 £12.39
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.87 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £29.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.07% -34.44% +12.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £67.29
90th Percentile £85.00 £78.34 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £45.59
% change year-on-year +46.53% -34.20% +12.32%

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 15 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 15 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 +4 292 £600 - 419
UK excluding London -10 199 £605 +21.00% 189
Work from Home -5 105 £610 +17.87% 132
London -58 98 £608 -6.54% 287
North of England -32 69 £576 +27.98% 45
South East -27 54 £590 -14.18% 24
Yorkshire -21 41 £560 +39.30% 17
Midlands -20 34 £638 +18.72% 29
North West -40 25 £600 +33.33% 18
South West -30 23 £675 +10.20% 31
East Midlands 0 20 £638 +34.21% 10
Scotland -37 12 £440 -12.00% 30
West Midlands -38 10 £562 -8.20% 19
North East -37 7 £625 - 10
East of England -18 6 £475 -28.30% 3
Wales -15 1 - - 2
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 25

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 (2.80%) Apache
2 7 (1.96%) Confluence
3 6 (1.68%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (1.40%) OpenStack
5 3 (0.84%) CloudStack
5 3 (0.84%) SAS
5 3 (0.84%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.56%) IIS
6 2 (0.56%) nginx
6 2 (0.56%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.56%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.28%) WebLogic
Applications
1 12 (3.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.24%) 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 81 (22.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.68%) SAP Business One
2 6 (1.68%) SAP SD
3 5 (1.40%) SAP ERP
4 4 (1.12%) iTrent
5 3 (0.84%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.84%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.56%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.56%) SAP FI-GL
7 1 (0.28%) Exchequer
7 1 (0.28%) Oracle SCM
7 1 (0.28%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.28%) SAP FI-AR
7 1 (0.28%) SAP MDG
7 1 (0.28%) SAP MM
7 1 (0.28%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 143 (40.06%) Azure
2 124 (34.73%) AWS
3 63 (17.65%) GCP
4 26 (7.28%) SuccessFactors
5 22 (6.16%) GitHub
6 21 (5.88%) OCI
7 19 (5.32%) IaaS
8 18 (5.04%) PaaS
9 16 (4.48%) SaaS
10 14 (3.92%) OpenShift
11 12 (3.36%) Amazon EKS
11 12 (3.36%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (3.36%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 12 (3.36%) Serverless
12 10 (2.80%) AWS CloudFormation
12 10 (2.80%) Azure DevOps
13 7 (1.96%) Entra ID
13 7 (1.96%) Microsoft 365
14 6 (1.68%) Amazon ECS
15 5 (1.40%) AWS Direct Connect
Communications & Networking
1 30 (8.40%) Firewall
2 27 (7.56%) DNS
3 21 (5.88%) Network Security
4 17 (4.76%) TCP/IP
5 16 (4.48%) VSAN
6 15 (4.20%) VPN
7 13 (3.64%) LAN
7 13 (3.64%) WAN
8 11 (3.08%) DHCP
9 8 (2.24%) BGP
10 7 (1.96%) SAN
11 6 (1.68%) NAS
12 5 (1.40%) MPLS
12 5 (1.40%) VLAN
12 5 (1.40%) Wi-Fi
13 4 (1.12%) SNMP
13 4 (1.12%) TACACS
13 4 (1.12%) Wireless
14 3 (0.84%) SSH
14 3 (0.84%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.76%) Oracle Database
2 13 (3.64%) RDBMS
2 13 (3.64%) Relational Database
3 12 (3.36%) Oracle Exadata
4 8 (2.24%) MySQL
5 6 (1.68%) Data Warehouse
6 5 (1.40%) BigQuery
7 4 (1.12%) BusinessObjects
7 4 (1.12%) SQL Server
8 3 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (0.56%) PostgreSQL
9 2 (0.56%) Power BI
9 2 (0.56%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.28%) Amazon RDS
10 1 (0.28%) Big Data
10 1 (0.28%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.28%) NoSQL
10 1 (0.28%) SAP Data Services
10 1 (0.28%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 39 (10.92%) Git
2 21 (5.88%) Jenkins
3 15 (4.20%) GitLab
4 8 (2.24%) JIRA
5 6 (1.68%) JUnit
5 6 (1.68%) 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 1 (0.28%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.28%) LSMW
8 1 (0.28%) MSI
8 1 (0.28%) PVCS
General
1 99 (27.73%) Finance
2 58 (16.25%) Social Skills
3 41 (11.48%) Public Sector
4 21 (5.88%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (5.32%) Banking
6 13 (3.64%) Local Government
7 8 (2.24%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.24%) General Ledger
7 8 (2.24%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (1.96%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.40%) Billing
9 5 (1.40%) Military
9 5 (1.40%) Telecoms
10 4 (1.12%) Automotive
11 3 (0.84%) Legal
11 3 (0.84%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
11 3 (0.84%) Retail
12 2 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 87 (24.37%) Architect
2 57 (15.97%) Senior
3 48 (13.45%) Lead
4 38 (10.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 34 (9.52%) Solutions Architect
6 22 (6.16%) Consultant
6 22 (6.16%) DevOps Engineer
7 20 (5.60%) Technical Architect
8 19 (5.32%) Cloud Engineer
9 18 (5.04%) Developer
10 17 (4.76%) SAP Consultant
11 16 (4.48%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 15 (4.20%) Azure Specialist
12 15 (4.20%) Cloud Architect
13 13 (3.64%) Azure Engineer
14 12 (3.36%) Azure Architect
14 12 (3.36%) GCP Engineer
15 10 (2.80%) Analyst
15 10 (2.80%) Network Engineer
15 10 (2.80%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (4.76%) Kafka
2 16 (4.48%) Spring Boot
3 14 (3.92%) Middleware
4 12 (3.36%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 11 (3.08%) REST
5 11 (3.08%) Spring
6 8 (2.24%) SAP Fiori
7 7 (1.96%) NumPy
7 7 (1.96%) OAuth
7 7 (1.96%) Oracle Fusion
7 7 (1.96%) Pandas
8 6 (1.68%) Elastic Stack
8 6 (1.68%) JSON
8 6 (1.68%) XML
9 5 (1.40%) .NET
9 5 (1.40%) React
10 4 (1.12%) 802.1X
10 4 (1.12%) PyTorch
10 4 (1.12%) scikit-learn
10 4 (1.12%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 44 (12.32%) Cloud Native
2 30 (8.40%) Hybrid Cloud
3 27 (7.56%) Data Centre
4 24 (6.72%) Private Cloud
5 17 (4.76%) PKI
6 10 (2.80%) Onboarding
7 7 (1.96%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (1.96%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.68%) Data Structures
8 6 (1.68%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (1.68%) Virtual Team
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
11 3 (0.84%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (0.84%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 66 (18.49%) Linux
2 32 (8.96%) Windows
3 12 (3.36%) AIX
4 11 (3.08%) Ubuntu
5 9 (2.52%) Unix
6 8 (2.24%) Windows Server
7 6 (1.68%) 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
1 101 (28.29%) Migration
2 98 (27.45%) Infrastructure as Code
3 92 (25.77%) CI/CD
4 81 (22.69%) DevOps
5 57 (15.97%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 53 (14.85%) Stakeholder Management
7 52 (14.57%) Agile
8 41 (11.48%) Data Migration
9 36 (10.08%) ERP
10 35 (9.80%) Microservices
11 33 (9.24%) Validation
12 31 (8.68%) Infrastructure Automation
13 30 (8.40%) Containerisation
13 30 (8.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 29 (8.12%) Cloud Security
14 29 (8.12%) Identity Access Management
15 28 (7.84%) Technical Leadership
16 27 (7.56%) Problem-Solving
16 27 (7.56%) User Acceptance Testing
17 26 (7.28%) Architectural Patterns
Programming Languages
1 70 (19.61%) Python
2 31 (8.68%) PowerShell
3 30 (8.40%) Java
4 22 (6.16%) Bash
5 14 (3.92%) SQL
6 10 (2.80%) Bicep
6 10 (2.80%) JavaScript
7 6 (1.68%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.12%) Go
8 4 (1.12%) Ruby
9 3 (0.84%) ABAP
10 2 (0.56%) Groovy
10 2 (0.56%) Perl
10 2 (0.56%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.28%) C#
11 1 (0.28%) C++
11 1 (0.28%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.28%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.28%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 94 (26.33%) Security Cleared
2 77 (21.57%) SC Cleared
3 29 (8.12%) DV Cleared
4 26 (7.28%) Cisco Certification
5 14 (3.92%) AWS Certification
6 13 (3.64%) CCNP
7 11 (3.08%) Degree
7 11 (3.08%) VCAP
7 11 (3.08%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 9 (2.52%) Azure Certification
8 9 (2.52%) CISSP
9 8 (2.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (1.96%) ACCA
10 7 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (1.96%) CIMA
11 6 (1.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 5 (1.40%) CISM
12 5 (1.40%) JNCIS
13 4 (1.12%) JNCIE
13 4 (1.12%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.64%) NCSC
2 12 (3.36%) NIST
3 9 (2.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (1.96%) Data Quality
4 7 (1.96%) QA
5 6 (1.68%) GDPR
6 5 (1.40%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (1.40%) GRC
7 4 (1.12%) ISO 20022
8 3 (0.84%) Government Security Classifications
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%) ISO 22301
10 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 1 (0.28%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.28%) SLA
System Software
1 30 (8.40%) VMware Infrastructure
2 22 (6.16%) VMware NSX
3 19 (5.32%) Docker
4 18 (5.04%) Active Directory
5 13 (3.64%) Oracle RAC
6 12 (3.36%) vSphere
7 10 (2.80%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (1.96%) Postfix
8 7 (1.96%) 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 85 (23.81%) Terraform
2 59 (16.53%) Kubernetes
3 50 (14.01%) Ansible
4 13 (3.64%) Data Guard
4 13 (3.64%) Oracle RMAN
4 13 (3.64%) Prometheus
5 12 (3.36%) Istio
6 11 (3.08%) Grafana
7 9 (2.52%) vCenter Server
8 7 (1.96%) HAProxy
8 7 (1.96%) Packer
8 7 (1.96%) Single Sign-On
9 5 (1.40%) Kubeflow
9 5 (1.40%) VxRail
10 4 (1.12%) systemd
11 3 (0.84%) Check_MK
12 2 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 2 (0.56%) Argo
13 1 (0.28%) CASB
13 1 (0.28%) QRadar
Vendors
1 89 (24.93%) SAP
2 62 (17.37%) Microsoft
3 48 (13.45%) Oracle
4 41 (11.48%) VMware
5 35 (9.80%) Google
6 18 (5.04%) Cisco
7 12 (3.36%) Juniper
8 11 (3.08%) Ariba
9 9 (2.52%) Red Hat
10 8 (2.24%) F5
10 8 (2.24%) Splunk
11 7 (1.96%) Fortinet
11 7 (1.96%) ServiceNow
12 5 (1.40%) Citrix
12 5 (1.40%) Concur
12 5 (1.40%) CyberArk
13 4 (1.12%) Commvault
13 4 (1.12%) Dynatrace
13 4 (1.12%) MikroTik
13 4 (1.12%) MuleSoft