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 21 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 312 245 306
Rank change year-on-year -67 +61 -99
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 297 318 341
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.79% 1.01% 0.79%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.30% 3.13% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 186 208 220
10th Percentile £373 £448 £419
25th Percentile £433 £525 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £600 £582
Median % change year-on-year -11.67% +3.09% -3.00%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £700
90th Percentile £738 £788 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £522 £575 £582
% change year-on-year -9.22% -1.20% +0.34%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 3
10th Percentile - £46.00 £62.00
25th Percentile - £50.50 £68.00
Median hourly rate - £58.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year - -25.64% +48.57%
75th Percentile - £67.75 -
90th Percentile - £73.60 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £66.50 £78.00
% change year-on-year - -14.74% -

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 12,893 10,172 13,383
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.22% 32.31% 30.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,154 6,018 8,761
10th Percentile £278 £263 £258
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £533 £538
Median % change year-on-year -6.19% -0.93% -3.93%
75th Percentile £625 £663 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £753
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 618 314 671
10th Percentile £14.47 £18.73 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.34 £23.89 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.63 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.07% - +55.66%
75th Percentile £61.23 £65.00 £60.57
90th Percentile £74.78 £81.80 £72.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% -9.72% +80.00%

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 21 January 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 21 January 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 -68 249 £525 -12.50% 148
UK excluding London -37 163 £522 -9.22% 123
London -67 97 £600 - 41
Work from Home -37 71 £559 -8.59% 38
North of England -7 70 £482 -9.78% 28
Yorkshire -15 48 £500 -3.29% 12
Midlands -20 34 £525 +12.42% 13
South East -57 24 £522 -12.82% 43
North West -26 21 £450 -16.28% 7
East Midlands -14 19 £416 +4.00% 11
South West 0 17 £650 +1.96% 17
Scotland +5 16 £543 -6.47% 5
West Midlands -27 14 £528 -34.06% 1
East of England -24 9 £413 -31.25% 13
Wales -1 3 £214 -64.40% 4
North East -12 2 - - 9
Northern Ireland - 1 £385 - 2

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 (2.02%) OpenStack
1 6 (2.02%) SAS
2 5 (1.68%) Confluence
3 3 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.34%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (2.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.68%) Weka
3 2 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.34%) Adobe Premiere
4 1 (0.34%) Camtasia
4 1 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 45 (15.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (2.36%) SAP ERP
3 6 (2.02%) Oracle ERP
3 6 (2.02%) SAP FI
4 5 (1.68%) SAP CO
4 5 (1.68%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.34%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 118 (39.73%) Azure
2 115 (38.72%) AWS
3 104 (35.02%) GCP
4 35 (11.78%) Serverless
5 27 (9.09%) GitHub
6 17 (5.72%) OCI
7 15 (5.05%) Azure DevOps
8 14 (4.71%) IaaS
9 13 (4.38%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 12 (4.04%) PaaS
11 11 (3.70%) SuccessFactors
12 10 (3.37%) Cloud Computing
13 9 (3.03%) AWS KMS
13 9 (3.03%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (3.03%) SaaS
14 8 (2.69%) Power Platform
15 6 (2.02%) Entra ID
16 5 (1.68%) Microsoft 365
16 5 (1.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 4 (1.35%) iPaaS
Communications & Networking
1 30 (10.10%) Firewall
2 20 (6.73%) Network Security
3 18 (6.06%) VPN
4 15 (5.05%) WAN
5 13 (4.38%) DNS
6 12 (4.04%) TCP/IP
7 8 (2.69%) SD-WAN
8 7 (2.36%) Internet
9 6 (2.02%) Kerberos
10 5 (1.68%) LAN
11 3 (1.01%) Multicast
11 3 (1.01%) VXLAN
12 2 (0.67%) Cisco IOS
12 2 (0.67%) Cisco Nexus
12 2 (0.67%) DHCP
12 2 (0.67%) Ethernet VPN
12 2 (0.67%) IOS XR
12 2 (0.67%) Junos
12 2 (0.67%) NetScaler
12 2 (0.67%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (12.46%) NoSQL
2 16 (5.39%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (3.37%) MongoDB
4 8 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
4 8 (2.69%) Power BI
4 8 (2.69%) Relational Database
4 8 (2.69%) SQL Server
5 7 (2.36%) Oracle Database
6 4 (1.35%) BigQuery
6 4 (1.35%) Data Mining
7 3 (1.01%) Data Vault
7 3 (1.01%) Delta Lake
7 3 (1.01%) Oracle Exadata
8 2 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.67%) Apache Cassandra
8 2 (0.67%) MySQL
8 2 (0.67%) RDBMS
8 2 (0.67%) Redis
8 2 (0.67%) SAP HANA
9 1 (0.34%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 52 (17.51%) Jenkins
2 45 (15.15%) GitLab
3 24 (8.08%) Liquibase
4 20 (6.73%) JIRA
5 11 (3.70%) Git
5 11 (3.70%) Postman
6 4 (1.35%) SoapUI
6 4 (1.35%) TeamCity
7 2 (0.67%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.67%) JUnit
7 2 (0.67%) Mocha
7 2 (0.67%) Vite
General
1 109 (36.70%) Finance
2 92 (30.98%) Social Skills
3 50 (16.84%) Banking
4 48 (16.16%) Public Sector
5 24 (8.08%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (8.08%) Financial Institution
6 18 (6.06%) Local Government
7 10 (3.37%) Presentation Skills
8 8 (2.69%) Influencing Skills
9 7 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (1.68%) General Ledger
10 5 (1.68%) Law
10 5 (1.68%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.35%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.35%) Police
12 3 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (1.01%) German Language
12 3 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.67%) Digital Health
13 2 (0.67%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 59 (19.87%) Architect
2 44 (14.81%) Senior
3 35 (11.78%) Cloud Engineer
4 26 (8.75%) GCP Engineer
5 20 (6.73%) DevOps Engineer
5 20 (6.73%) Software Engineer
6 18 (6.06%) Analyst
6 18 (6.06%) Lead
7 17 (5.72%) Solutions Architect
8 15 (5.05%) AWS Engineer
8 15 (5.05%) Developer
9 14 (4.71%) Consultant
9 14 (4.71%) Senior Software Engineer
10 12 (4.04%) SAP Manager
11 11 (3.70%) Cloud Architect
12 10 (3.37%) Infrastructure Architect
13 9 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 9 (3.03%) Java Developer
13 9 (3.03%) Senior Cloud Engineer
14 8 (2.69%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (18.18%) REST
2 33 (11.11%) RESTful
3 30 (10.10%) Elastic Stack
4 13 (4.38%) OAuth
4 13 (4.38%) Spring Boot
5 12 (4.04%) JSON
6 11 (3.70%) JWT
6 11 (3.70%) Middleware
6 11 (3.70%) SOAP
7 10 (3.37%) Oracle Fusion
7 10 (3.37%) Spring
7 10 (3.37%) XML
7 10 (3.37%) XSLT
8 9 (3.03%) Kafka
8 9 (3.03%) Web Services
9 7 (2.36%) AngularJS
9 7 (2.36%) React
10 3 (1.01%) NumPy
10 3 (1.01%) Pandas
10 3 (1.01%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 50 (16.84%) Cloud Native
2 27 (9.09%) Distributed Systems
3 25 (8.42%) Data Centre
4 16 (5.39%) Hybrid Cloud
5 14 (4.71%) Private Cloud
6 10 (3.37%) Product Ownership
6 10 (3.37%) Security Posture
7 9 (3.03%) Cloud Security Posture
8 7 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (2.02%) Data Structures
9 6 (2.02%) Mainframe
10 5 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (1.68%) Grid Computing
10 5 (1.68%) PKI
11 4 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.35%) Distributed Applications
11 4 (1.35%) Legacy Applications
11 4 (1.35%) Replication
12 3 (1.01%) Reinsurance
13 2 (0.67%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 58 (19.53%) Linux
2 28 (9.43%) Windows
3 9 (3.03%) Windows Server
4 8 (2.69%) Unix
5 7 (2.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (2.02%) VMS
7 5 (1.68%) Windows Server 2019
8 3 (1.01%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.34%) CentOS
10 1 (0.34%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.34%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 114 (38.38%) DevOps
2 93 (31.31%) Agile
3 90 (30.30%) CI/CD
4 78 (26.26%) Infrastructure as Code
5 52 (17.51%) Migration
6 50 (16.84%) Containerisation
7 45 (15.15%) Microservices
8 42 (14.14%) Stakeholder Management
9 38 (12.79%) Cybersecurity
10 34 (11.45%) Software Engineering
11 32 (10.77%) Infrastructure Automation
11 32 (10.77%) Root Cause Analysis
12 31 (10.44%) Computer Science
12 31 (10.44%) Cost Optimisation
12 31 (10.44%) High Availability
12 31 (10.44%) Problem-Solving
13 27 (9.09%) Change Management
13 27 (9.09%) Cryptography
13 27 (9.09%) Data Security
14 26 (8.75%) Non-Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 83 (27.95%) Python
2 34 (11.45%) Go
3 30 (10.10%) Java
4 24 (8.08%) SQL
5 7 (2.36%) Bash
6 6 (2.02%) PowerShell
7 4 (1.35%) JavaScript
7 4 (1.35%) PL/SQL
8 3 (1.01%) TypeScript
9 2 (0.67%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.34%) ABAP
10 1 (0.34%) Bicep
10 1 (0.34%) C++
10 1 (0.34%) Perl
10 1 (0.34%) Ruby
10 1 (0.34%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 64 (21.55%) Security Cleared
2 43 (14.48%) Degree
3 41 (13.80%) SC Cleared
4 30 (10.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 27 (9.09%) Master's Degree
6 16 (5.39%) AWS Certification
7 13 (4.38%) Azure Certification
8 12 (4.04%) BPSS Clearance
9 7 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (2.02%) CCSP
10 6 (2.02%) ISTQB
11 5 (1.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (1.68%) CISSP
11 5 (1.68%) DV Cleared
12 4 (1.35%) AWS Certified Developer
12 4 (1.35%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 4 (1.35%) PMI Certification
12 4 (1.35%) SAP Certification
13 3 (1.01%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 2 (0.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (2.69%) GDPR
3 7 (2.36%) SLA
4 6 (2.02%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 6 (2.02%) NCSC
4 6 (2.02%) NIST
4 6 (2.02%) PCI DSS
5 5 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27005
5 5 (1.68%) PSD2
5 5 (1.68%) QA
6 4 (1.35%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.67%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.67%) WCAG
8 1 (0.34%) COBIT
8 1 (0.34%) GAMP
8 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.34%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.34%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 58 (19.53%) Docker
2 15 (5.05%) Hyper-V
2 15 (5.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (2.02%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.02%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.68%) GPFS
4 5 (1.68%) Lustre
4 5 (1.68%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 4 (1.35%) vSphere
6 3 (1.01%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.67%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.67%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.34%) Ceph
8 1 (0.34%) KVM
8 1 (0.34%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 79 (26.60%) Terraform
2 77 (25.93%) Kubernetes
3 56 (18.86%) Ansible
4 33 (11.11%) Prometheus
5 32 (10.77%) Grafana
6 11 (3.70%) Istio
7 4 (1.35%) Data Guard
7 4 (1.35%) Oracle RMAN
8 3 (1.01%) Kubeflow
8 3 (1.01%) Microsoft Intune
8 3 (1.01%) Puppet
8 3 (1.01%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.67%) SCCM
9 2 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.67%) vMotion
10 1 (0.34%) Demisto
10 1 (0.34%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.34%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 1 (0.34%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 52 (17.51%) SAP
2 38 (12.79%) Google
3 33 (11.11%) Splunk
4 32 (10.77%) Oracle
5 25 (8.42%) Microsoft
6 24 (8.08%) VMware
7 10 (3.37%) Ariba
8 9 (3.03%) Cisco
9 8 (2.69%) ServiceNow
10 7 (2.36%) Palo Alto
11 5 (1.68%) Aruba
11 5 (1.68%) Databricks
11 5 (1.68%) MuleSoft
12 4 (1.35%) F5
12 4 (1.35%) Fortinet
13 3 (1.01%) Informatica
13 3 (1.01%) Mercator
13 3 (1.01%) Red Hat
13 3 (1.01%) Veeam
14 2 (0.67%) Ericsson