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 19 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 302 324 295
Rank change year-on-year +22 -29 -58
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 375 221 329
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.74% 0.74% 0.75%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.28% 2.15% 2.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 142 223
10th Percentile £400 £405 £446
25th Percentile £500 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £590 £600 £585
Median % change year-on-year -1.67% +2.56% -8.24%
75th Percentile £675 £698 £750
90th Percentile £725 £762 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £537 £600
% change year-on-year +11.73% -10.50% -2.83%
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 16,432 10,285 13,135
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.51% 34.49% 29.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,072 6,441 8,323
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.14% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £631 £650 £660
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 845 453 948
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £19.25 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £32.05 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +37.16% -10.10% +58.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.00 £61.63
90th Percentile £86.15 £81.35 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £31.29 £35.50
% change year-on-year +40.51% -11.87% +61.36%

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 -1 310 £600 -2.28% 64
UK excluding London +15 203 £600 +11.73% 41
London -68 110 £600 -9.43% 27
Work from Home +13 99 £610 +9.66% 33
North of England -23 66 £555 +3.35% 20
South East -24 56 £590 -1.67% 6
Midlands -27 37 £613 +14.06% 3
North West -19 32 £363 -32.50% 7
Yorkshire -32 32 £625 +29.87% 7
South West +3 29 £675 +22.73% 8
East Midlands +3 25 £625 +31.58%
Scotland -18 11 £425 -15.00% 2
West Midlands -54 8 £450 -22.58% 3
East of England -31 3 £593 +3.04%
North East -33 3 £650 - 7
Northern Ireland - 2 £385 - 1
Wales -17 1 - - 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 10 (2.67%) Confluence
2 9 (2.40%) Apache
3 5 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.33%) SAS
3 5 (1.33%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.53%) CloudStack
4 2 (0.53%) IIS
4 2 (0.53%) nginx
4 2 (0.53%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.53%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.53%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.27%) WebLogic
Applications
1 6 (1.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.07%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.27%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.27%) Weka
Business Applications
1 84 (22.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.60%) Oracle ERP
2 6 (1.60%) SAP Business One
3 5 (1.33%) SAP ERP
4 4 (1.07%) iTrent
4 4 (1.07%) SAP FI
5 3 (0.80%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.80%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.53%) SAP FI-GL
6 2 (0.53%) SAP SD
7 1 (0.27%) Exchequer
7 1 (0.27%) Oracle SCM
7 1 (0.27%) SAP FI-AR
Cloud Services
1 157 (41.87%) Azure
2 109 (29.07%) AWS
3 92 (24.53%) GCP
4 39 (10.40%) GitHub
5 24 (6.40%) SuccessFactors
6 23 (6.13%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 20 (5.33%) PaaS
8 19 (5.07%) GitHub Actions
8 19 (5.07%) IaaS
9 16 (4.27%) OCI
10 15 (4.00%) Serverless
11 14 (3.73%) SaaS
12 11 (2.93%) Azure DevOps
13 10 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
14 9 (2.40%) Cloud Computing
14 9 (2.40%) Power Platform
15 7 (1.87%) Microsoft 365
16 6 (1.60%) Amazon EKS
16 6 (1.60%) Azure Sentinel
16 6 (1.60%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 32 (8.53%) DNS
2 30 (8.00%) Firewall
3 25 (6.67%) Network Security
4 16 (4.27%) VPN
5 10 (2.67%) LAN
5 10 (2.67%) WAN
6 9 (2.40%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 7 (1.87%) SAN
7 7 (1.87%) VSAN
8 6 (1.60%) NAS
8 6 (1.60%) TCP/IP
9 5 (1.33%) Kerberos
9 5 (1.33%) Wireless
10 3 (0.80%) BIG-IP
10 3 (0.80%) DHCP
10 3 (0.80%) MPLS
10 3 (0.80%) SD-WAN
11 2 (0.53%) Multicast
11 2 (0.53%) NetScaler
11 2 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.93%) Oracle Database
2 8 (2.13%) Power BI
3 6 (1.60%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (1.60%) Oracle Exadata
3 6 (1.60%) Relational Database
3 6 (1.60%) SQL Server
4 5 (1.33%) BigQuery
4 5 (1.33%) RDBMS
5 4 (1.07%) BusinessObjects
6 3 (0.80%) Data Vault
6 3 (0.80%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.80%) MySQL
7 2 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.53%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.53%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.53%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.27%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.27%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 37 (9.87%) Jenkins
2 24 (6.40%) Git
3 19 (5.07%) JIRA
4 18 (4.80%) GitLab
5 9 (2.40%) Postman
6 6 (1.60%) SoapUI
7 4 (1.07%) Cucumber
7 4 (1.07%) Hudson
7 4 (1.07%) JUnit
7 4 (1.07%) TeamCity
8 3 (0.80%) Liquibase
8 3 (0.80%) Selenium
8 3 (0.80%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.80%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.27%) Ant
9 1 (0.27%) LSMW
9 1 (0.27%) MSI
9 1 (0.27%) PVCS
9 1 (0.27%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.27%) Snyk
General
1 110 (29.33%) Finance
2 61 (16.27%) Social Skills
3 53 (14.13%) Public Sector
4 34 (9.07%) Banking
5 21 (5.60%) Local Government
6 12 (3.20%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (3.20%) General Ledger
7 11 (2.93%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (1.87%) Financial Institution
9 6 (1.60%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.60%) Military
10 4 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (0.80%) Retail
12 2 (0.53%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.27%) Billing
13 1 (0.27%) Front Office
13 1 (0.27%) Legal
13 1 (0.27%) Retail Banking
13 1 (0.27%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 93 (24.80%) Architect
2 51 (13.60%) Lead
3 49 (13.07%) Senior
4 37 (9.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 31 (8.27%) Solutions Architect
6 28 (7.47%) Cloud Engineer
7 25 (6.67%) GCP Engineer
8 21 (5.60%) Azure Specialist
8 21 (5.60%) DevOps Engineer
9 20 (5.33%) Technical Architect
10 16 (4.27%) Cloud Architect
10 16 (4.27%) Consultant
11 13 (3.47%) Developer
12 12 (3.20%) Azure Architect
12 12 (3.20%) Azure Engineer
12 12 (3.20%) SAP Architect
13 11 (2.93%) Analyst
13 11 (2.93%) SAP Consultant
14 10 (2.67%) Infrastructure Architect
14 10 (2.67%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (5.33%) Middleware
2 17 (4.53%) REST
3 13 (3.47%) Kafka
4 12 (3.20%) Spring Boot
5 10 (2.67%) OAuth
5 10 (2.67%) Oracle Fusion
6 8 (2.13%) JSON
6 8 (2.13%) SOAP
7 7 (1.87%) JWT
7 7 (1.87%) Web Services
8 6 (1.60%) Elastic Stack
8 6 (1.60%) NumPy
8 6 (1.60%) Pandas
8 6 (1.60%) Spring
8 6 (1.60%) XML
8 6 (1.60%) XSLT
9 5 (1.33%) React
10 4 (1.07%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 4 (1.07%) SAP Fiori
10 4 (1.07%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 49 (13.07%) Cloud Native
2 18 (4.80%) Data Centre
3 17 (4.53%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (4.27%) Private Cloud
5 9 (2.40%) Onboarding
6 8 (2.13%) PKI
7 7 (1.87%) Data Structures
7 7 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.60%) Legacy Applications
8 6 (1.60%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.07%) AI Agents
9 4 (1.07%) Security Posture
10 3 (0.80%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.80%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.80%) Reinsurance
10 3 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (0.53%) Enterprise Cloud
11 2 (0.53%) Enterprise Storage
11 2 (0.53%) Grid Computing
11 2 (0.53%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 51 (13.60%) Linux
2 30 (8.00%) Windows
3 11 (2.93%) Unix
4 9 (2.40%) Windows Server
5 7 (1.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (1.60%) Ubuntu
6 6 (1.60%) Windows Server 2019
7 5 (1.33%) VMS
8 4 (1.07%) AIX
8 4 (1.07%) Debian
9 3 (0.80%) CentOS
9 3 (0.80%) Windows Server 2012
9 3 (0.80%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.27%) Android
10 1 (0.27%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (28.00%) DevOps
2 96 (25.60%) CI/CD
3 94 (25.07%) Infrastructure as Code
4 90 (24.00%) Migration
5 55 (14.67%) Agile
5 55 (14.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 53 (14.13%) Stakeholder Management
7 39 (10.40%) Analytics
8 38 (10.13%) Containerisation
9 36 (9.60%) ERP
9 36 (9.60%) User Acceptance Testing
10 35 (9.33%) Microservices
11 30 (8.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 29 (7.73%) Data Migration
13 28 (7.47%) Cloud Security
13 28 (7.47%) Validation
14 27 (7.20%) Identity Access Management
15 25 (6.67%) Cybersecurity
16 24 (6.40%) Problem-Solving
16 24 (6.40%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 71 (18.93%) Python
2 22 (5.87%) Java
3 21 (5.60%) PowerShell
4 20 (5.33%) SQL
5 13 (3.47%) Bash
6 8 (2.13%) Bicep
7 6 (1.60%) Go
7 6 (1.60%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.33%) Ruby
9 4 (1.07%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.07%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.80%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.53%) C++
11 2 (0.53%) Perl
12 1 (0.27%) C#
12 1 (0.27%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.27%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 89 (23.73%) Security Cleared
2 73 (19.47%) SC Cleared
3 24 (6.40%) Cisco Certification
4 19 (5.07%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.47%) Degree
6 12 (3.20%) CCNP
7 10 (2.67%) CISSP
8 9 (2.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 9 (2.40%) AWS Certification
9 8 (2.13%) Azure Certification
9 8 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (2.13%) SAP Certification
9 8 (2.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 7 (1.87%) ACCA
10 7 (1.87%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (1.87%) CIMA
10 7 (1.87%) CISM
11 6 (1.60%) ISTQB
12 5 (1.33%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 5 (1.33%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (4.00%) NIST
2 14 (3.73%) NCSC
3 12 (3.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.67%) GDPR
5 8 (2.13%) QA
6 5 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (1.33%) Data Quality
6 5 (1.33%) GRC
7 3 (0.80%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.53%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.53%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.53%) PMO
8 2 (0.53%) SLA
9 1 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.27%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.27%) ISO 22301
9 1 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 1 (0.27%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.27%) RMADS
System Software
1 27 (7.20%) Docker
2 25 (6.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (3.47%) Active Directory
3 13 (3.47%) VMware NSX
4 11 (2.93%) Hyper-V
5 7 (1.87%) Oracle RAC
5 7 (1.87%) Postfix
6 6 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (1.60%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (1.33%) NFS
7 5 (1.33%) Varnish
8 4 (1.07%) Sendmail
8 4 (1.07%) vSphere
9 2 (0.53%) Dovecot
9 2 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.27%) Firmware
10 1 (0.27%) GPFS
10 1 (0.27%) Lustre
10 1 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 84 (22.40%) Terraform
2 62 (16.53%) Kubernetes
3 38 (10.13%) Ansible
4 21 (5.60%) Istio
5 12 (3.20%) Prometheus
6 10 (2.67%) Grafana
7 8 (2.13%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.87%) Data Guard
8 7 (1.87%) HAProxy
8 7 (1.87%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.07%) Argo
9 4 (1.07%) Kubeflow
9 4 (1.07%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.07%) Packer
9 4 (1.07%) vCenter Server
10 3 (0.80%) SCCM
11 2 (0.53%) Check_MK
11 2 (0.53%) Puppet
11 2 (0.53%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 93 (24.80%) SAP
2 54 (14.40%) Google
3 51 (13.60%) Microsoft
4 39 (10.40%) Oracle
5 37 (9.87%) VMware
6 15 (4.00%) F5
7 14 (3.73%) Ariba
8 11 (2.93%) Red Hat
9 10 (2.67%) Cisco
10 9 (2.40%) ServiceNow
11 7 (1.87%) Splunk
12 6 (1.60%) MuleSoft
13 5 (1.33%) Citrix
13 5 (1.33%) Databricks
13 5 (1.33%) Palo Alto
14 4 (1.07%) CyberArk
14 4 (1.07%) Fortinet
14 4 (1.07%) Juniper
14 4 (1.07%) Veeam
15 3 (0.80%) Foundry