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 20 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 367 245 261
Rank change year-on-year -122 +16 -57
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 242 360 432
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.99% 0.94%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.89% 3.18% 2.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 159 230 298
10th Percentile £406 £424 £404
25th Percentile £450 £491 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £775 £776 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £563 £582
% change year-on-year -6.71% -3.31% +1.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 4 6
10th Percentile - £45.70 £68.00
25th Percentile £42.50 £49.75 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £56.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.64% -28.21% +46.48%
75th Percentile £47.50 £62.88 -
90th Percentile - £71.65 £84.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £66.50 £78.00
% change year-on-year - -14.74% +92.59%

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 12,806 11,332 14,704
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.78% 31.06% 31.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,912 6,693 9,879
10th Percentile £275 £285 £275
25th Percentile £406 £410 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £663 £664
90th Percentile £738 £787 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 691 363 493
10th Percentile £13.50 £17.11 £16.75
25th Percentile £18.25 £22.50 £20.85
Median hourly rate £27.33 £37.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.14% -16.85% +48.33%
75th Percentile £53.44 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.16 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.54 £37.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -25.58% -19.88% +84.72%

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 20 November 2025.

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 16 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 20 November 2025. 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 -112 191 £565 -1.74% 155
UK excluding London -45 138 £525 -6.71% 93
London -86 80 £603 +1.77% 64
North of England -25 64 £475 -6.40% 15
Work from Home -68 60 £588 +1.38% 101
Yorkshire -2 50 £488 -7.14% 7
Scotland +21 32 £500 -12.17% 7
Midlands -13 22 £530 +6.00% 12
West Midlands -19 16 £530 +6.00% 7
North West -36 13 £450 -10.00% 7
South West -1 10 £650 +1.96% 12
East of England -25 9 £413 -29.79% 1
South East -56 9 £600 -2.04% 42
East Midlands -17 6 £631 +28.78% 4
Wales +5 3 £214 -65.82% 4
North East -8 2 - - 1

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 6 (2.48%) Confluence
1 6 (2.48%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.65%) SAS
3 3 (1.24%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.83%) nginx
5 1 (0.41%) Apache
5 1 (0.41%) Apache Solr
5 1 (0.41%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.41%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (2.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (2.07%) Weka
3 3 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.41%) Adobe Premiere
4 1 (0.41%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 28 (11.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (2.48%) SAP ERP
3 4 (1.65%) SAP FI
4 3 (1.24%) SAP CO
4 3 (1.24%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.41%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.41%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 142 (58.68%) AWS
2 100 (41.32%) Azure
3 90 (37.19%) GCP
4 38 (15.70%) Serverless
5 37 (15.29%) GitHub
6 25 (10.33%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (7.02%) Azure DevOps
8 14 (5.79%) SaaS
9 11 (4.55%) SuccessFactors
10 9 (3.72%) AWS KMS
11 8 (3.31%) Power Platform
12 7 (2.89%) Entra ID
12 7 (2.89%) IaaS
13 6 (2.48%) Cloud Computing
13 6 (2.48%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 6 (2.48%) OCI
13 6 (2.48%) PaaS
14 5 (2.07%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 5 (2.07%) GitHub Copilot
14 5 (2.07%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 26 (10.74%) Firewall
2 16 (6.61%) WAN
3 15 (6.20%) Network Security
3 15 (6.20%) VPN
4 9 (3.72%) TCP/IP
5 7 (2.89%) SD-WAN
5 7 (2.89%) VLAN
6 5 (2.07%) DNS
6 5 (2.07%) Internet
7 4 (1.65%) Cisco Nexus
8 3 (1.24%) BGP
8 3 (1.24%) Kerberos
8 3 (1.24%) LAN
8 3 (1.24%) OSPF
8 3 (1.24%) VXLAN
9 2 (0.83%) DHCP
9 2 (0.83%) DMZ
9 2 (0.83%) IOS XR
9 2 (0.83%) SAN
9 2 (0.83%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (17.77%) NoSQL
2 16 (6.61%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (4.96%) MongoDB
4 8 (3.31%) Power BI
5 7 (2.89%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (2.48%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.65%) BigQuery
7 4 (1.65%) Data Mining
7 4 (1.65%) Oracle Database
7 4 (1.65%) SQL Server
8 3 (1.24%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (1.24%) MySQL
9 2 (0.83%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.83%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.83%) Redis
9 2 (0.83%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
10 1 (0.41%) Big Data
10 1 (0.41%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 52 (21.49%) Jenkins
2 46 (19.01%) GitLab
3 30 (12.40%) Liquibase
4 25 (10.33%) JIRA
5 21 (8.68%) Git
6 11 (4.55%) Bitbucket
7 9 (3.72%) IntelliJ
7 9 (3.72%) Visual Studio Code
8 8 (3.31%) PyCharm
8 8 (3.31%) Visual Studio
9 5 (2.07%) CircleCI
10 4 (1.65%) TeamCity
11 3 (1.24%) Postman
11 3 (1.24%) Vite
12 2 (0.83%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.83%) JUnit
12 2 (0.83%) Mocha
12 2 (0.83%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.83%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.83%) webpack
General
1 105 (43.39%) Finance
2 83 (34.30%) Social Skills
3 49 (20.25%) Banking
4 38 (15.70%) Public Sector
5 28 (11.57%) Financial Institution
6 27 (11.16%) Analytical Skills
7 14 (5.79%) Local Government
8 12 (4.96%) Presentation Skills
9 10 (4.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 9 (3.72%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (2.07%) Law
12 4 (1.65%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.65%) Police
13 3 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (1.24%) Publishing
14 2 (0.83%) Billing
14 2 (0.83%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.83%) Marketing
14 2 (0.83%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 45 (18.60%) Architect
2 43 (17.77%) Senior
3 30 (12.40%) Cloud Engineer
4 25 (10.33%) DevOps Engineer
4 25 (10.33%) Software Engineer
5 23 (9.50%) Developer
6 19 (7.85%) AWS Engineer
7 18 (7.44%) GCP Engineer
8 17 (7.02%) Senior Software Engineer
9 16 (6.61%) Analyst
10 12 (4.96%) Java Developer
10 12 (4.96%) Python Engineer
10 12 (4.96%) Solutions Architect
11 10 (4.13%) AWS Software Engineer
11 10 (4.13%) Consultant
11 10 (4.13%) Security Architect
12 9 (3.72%) AWS DevOps
12 9 (3.72%) Lead
12 9 (3.72%) SAP Manager
13 8 (3.31%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (19.83%) REST
2 39 (16.12%) RESTful
3 36 (14.88%) Elastic Stack
4 13 (5.37%) Spring Boot
5 11 (4.55%) React
5 11 (4.55%) Spring
6 8 (3.31%) Kafka
7 6 (2.48%) AngularJS
8 5 (2.07%) GraphQL
8 5 (2.07%) Web Services
9 4 (1.65%) CSS
9 4 (1.65%) HTML
9 4 (1.65%) Jest
9 4 (1.65%) JSON
9 4 (1.65%) Node.js
9 4 (1.65%) SAP Fiori
10 3 (1.24%) NumPy
10 3 (1.24%) OAuth
10 3 (1.24%) Oracle Fusion
10 3 (1.24%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 53 (21.90%) Cloud Native
2 33 (13.64%) Distributed Systems
3 24 (9.92%) Data Centre
4 15 (6.20%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (4.96%) Private Cloud
5 12 (4.96%) Product Ownership
6 8 (3.31%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (2.89%) Data Protection Act
7 7 (2.89%) Security Posture
8 6 (2.48%) Cloud Security Posture
8 6 (2.48%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (2.48%) Mainframe
8 6 (2.48%) Replication
9 5 (2.07%) Distributed Applications
9 5 (2.07%) Grid Computing
10 4 (1.65%) Virtual Team
11 3 (1.24%) Data Structures
11 3 (1.24%) Management Information System
11 3 (1.24%) PKI
11 3 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 61 (25.21%) Linux
2 26 (10.74%) Windows
3 8 (3.31%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.24%) Unix
5 3 (1.24%) Windows Server 2016
5 3 (1.24%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.83%) VMS
7 1 (0.41%) CentOS
7 1 (0.41%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.41%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (42.98%) Agile
2 102 (42.15%) DevOps
3 101 (41.74%) CI/CD
4 81 (33.47%) Infrastructure as Code
5 56 (23.14%) Containerisation
6 52 (21.49%) Microservices
7 45 (18.60%) Software Engineering
8 41 (16.94%) Computer Science
9 40 (16.53%) High Availability
10 39 (16.12%) Cost Optimisation
11 37 (15.29%) Continuous Integration
12 35 (14.46%) Continuous Delivery
13 33 (13.64%) Cybersecurity
13 33 (13.64%) Infrastructure Automation
13 33 (13.64%) Problem-Solving
13 33 (13.64%) SDLC
13 33 (13.64%) Test Automation
14 32 (13.22%) Cryptography
14 32 (13.22%) Root Cause Analysis
15 31 (12.81%) Non-Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 84 (34.71%) Python
2 56 (23.14%) Java
3 49 (20.25%) Go
4 18 (7.44%) TypeScript
5 14 (5.79%) SQL
6 9 (3.72%) C#
7 8 (3.31%) JavaScript
8 7 (2.89%) Bash
9 6 (2.48%) PowerShell
10 5 (2.07%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.83%) Groovy
12 1 (0.41%) ABAP
12 1 (0.41%) Bicep
12 1 (0.41%) C++
12 1 (0.41%) CodeQL
12 1 (0.41%) DAML
12 1 (0.41%) Perl
12 1 (0.41%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.41%) Ruby
12 1 (0.41%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 50 (20.66%) Degree
1 50 (20.66%) Security Cleared
2 39 (16.12%) Computer Science Degree
3 34 (14.05%) SC Cleared
4 33 (13.64%) Master's Degree
5 24 (9.92%) AWS Certification
6 14 (5.79%) Azure Certification
7 9 (3.72%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 7 (2.89%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (2.48%) CISSP
9 6 (2.48%) DV Cleared
9 6 (2.48%) ISTQB
10 5 (2.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 5 (2.07%) CCSP
11 4 (1.65%) AWS Certified Developer
11 4 (1.65%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 3 (1.24%) SAP Certification
13 2 (0.83%) BC Cleared
13 2 (0.83%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (3.31%) GDPR
3 7 (2.89%) NIST
3 7 (2.89%) QA
4 6 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 6 (2.48%) NCSC
4 6 (2.48%) PCI DSS
5 5 (2.07%) ISO/IEC 27005
5 5 (2.07%) PSD2
6 4 (1.65%) Data Quality
7 3 (1.24%) SLA
8 2 (0.83%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.83%) WCAG
9 1 (0.41%) GAMP
9 1 (0.41%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 61 (25.21%) Docker
2 10 (4.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.89%) Hyper-V
4 6 (2.48%) VMware NSX
5 5 (2.07%) Active Directory
5 5 (2.07%) GPFS
5 5 (2.07%) Lustre
5 5 (2.07%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 5 (2.07%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (1.65%) vSphere
7 2 (0.83%) Firmware
8 1 (0.41%) Ceph
8 1 (0.41%) IAG
8 1 (0.41%) KVM
8 1 (0.41%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 92 (38.02%) Terraform
2 87 (35.95%) Kubernetes
3 62 (25.62%) Ansible
4 44 (18.18%) Grafana
5 43 (17.77%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.24%) Istio
6 3 (1.24%) Kubeflow
6 3 (1.24%) Puppet
6 3 (1.24%) vCenter Server
7 2 (0.83%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.83%) vMotion
8 1 (0.41%) Cisco CUCM
8 1 (0.41%) Consul
8 1 (0.41%) Data Guard
8 1 (0.41%) Demisto
8 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.41%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 1 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.41%) Salt
Vendors
1 37 (15.29%) Splunk
2 33 (13.64%) SAP
3 32 (13.22%) Microsoft
4 25 (10.33%) Google
5 18 (7.44%) Oracle
5 18 (7.44%) VMware
6 14 (5.79%) Cisco
7 7 (2.89%) Palo Alto
8 6 (2.48%) ServiceNow
9 5 (2.07%) Ariba
9 5 (2.07%) Aruba
10 4 (1.65%) Juniper
10 4 (1.65%) NetApp
11 3 (1.24%) F5
11 3 (1.24%) Fortinet
11 3 (1.24%) Mercator
11 3 (1.24%) Veeam
12 2 (0.83%) Brocade
12 2 (0.83%) Extreme Networks
12 2 (0.83%) Salesforce