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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 302 287 301
Rank change year-on-year -15 +14 -56
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 364 248 318
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.76% 0.85% 0.75%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.38% 2.52% 2.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 227 170 214
10th Percentile £398 £436 £450
25th Percentile £500 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £675 £694 £750
90th Percentile £725 £763 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £570 £589 £600
% change year-on-year -3.27% -1.79% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £71.25 - £36.75
Median hourly rate £72.50 £70.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +81.82% -49.01%
75th Percentile £73.75 - £40.25
90th Percentile - - -
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 15,280 9,849 12,966
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.04% 33.89% 30.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,488 6,289 8,351
10th Percentile £313 £300 £270
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.14% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £670
90th Percentile £738 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £482 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 726 393 901
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.79 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.00 £20.75 £15.17
Median hourly rate £42.60 £32.05 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +32.93% +1.75% +40.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.50 £83.37 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £30.93 £30.00
% change year-on-year +53.70% +3.10% +36.36%

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 15 May 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 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 15 May 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 -34 294 £588 -4.40% 76
UK excluding London 0 189 £570 -3.27% 51
London -75 107 £600 -7.69% 32
Work from Home +15 95 £610 +1.67% 34
North of England -25 56 £550 +2.42% 11
South East -33 53 £557 -8.35% 20
Midlands -41 33 £638 +18.72% 5
South West -1 32 £675 +17.39% 11
North West -15 31 £350 -34.82% 6
East Midlands -8 25 £638 +34.21% 2
Yorkshire -36 25 £560 +16.36% 3
Scotland -5 12 £425 -22.73% 2
West Midlands -59 5 £625 -11.50% 3
East of England -36 3 £593 -1.25% 1
Wales -12 1 - -
Northern Ireland - 1 £385 - 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 8 (2.20%) Confluence
2 6 (1.65%) Apache
2 6 (1.65%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (1.65%) SAS
3 3 (0.82%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.55%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (0.27%) CloudStack
5 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 6 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.10%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.27%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.27%) Weka
Business Applications
1 78 (21.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.75%) Oracle ERP
3 6 (1.65%) SAP Business One
4 5 (1.37%) SAP ERP
5 4 (1.10%) SAP CO
5 4 (1.10%) SAP FI
5 4 (1.10%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.82%) iTrent
7 2 (0.55%) SAP SD
8 1 (0.27%) Exchequer
8 1 (0.27%) Oracle SCM
8 1 (0.27%) SAP FI-AR
Cloud Services
1 151 (41.48%) Azure
2 92 (25.27%) AWS
3 87 (23.90%) GCP
4 37 (10.16%) GitHub
5 26 (7.14%) PaaS
6 24 (6.59%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 24 (6.59%) IaaS
7 23 (6.32%) SuccessFactors
8 20 (5.49%) OCI
9 15 (4.12%) GitHub Actions
10 14 (3.85%) SaaS
11 12 (3.30%) Serverless
12 10 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (2.47%) Power Platform
14 8 (2.20%) Cloud Computing
14 8 (2.20%) Microsoft 365
15 6 (1.65%) Azure Sentinel
15 6 (1.65%) Entra ID
16 5 (1.37%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 34 (9.34%) DNS
2 32 (8.79%) Firewall
3 23 (6.32%) Network Security
4 17 (4.67%) VPN
5 13 (3.57%) LAN
5 13 (3.57%) WAN
6 10 (2.75%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 10 (2.75%) TCP/IP
7 6 (1.65%) Kerberos
8 5 (1.37%) DHCP
8 5 (1.37%) Wireless
9 4 (1.10%) BGP
9 4 (1.10%) Multicast
9 4 (1.10%) NAS
9 4 (1.10%) NetScaler
9 4 (1.10%) OSPF
9 4 (1.10%) SAN
10 3 (0.82%) MPLS
10 3 (0.82%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.82%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
1 8 (2.20%) Oracle Database
1 8 (2.20%) Power BI
2 6 (1.65%) BigQuery
3 4 (1.10%) Oracle Exadata
3 4 (1.10%) Relational Database
3 4 (1.10%) SQL Server
4 3 (0.82%) BusinessObjects
4 3 (0.82%) Data Vault
4 3 (0.82%) Delta Lake
5 2 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (0.55%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
5 2 (0.55%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.27%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.27%) MySQL
6 1 (0.27%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.27%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 37 (10.16%) Jenkins
2 18 (4.95%) Git
3 17 (4.67%) GitLab
3 17 (4.67%) JIRA
4 15 (4.12%) Postman
5 9 (2.47%) SoapUI
6 4 (1.10%) Cucumber
6 4 (1.10%) Liquibase
6 4 (1.10%) TeamCity
7 3 (0.82%) JUnit
8 2 (0.55%) Hudson
8 2 (0.55%) Selenium
8 2 (0.55%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.55%) 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 98 (26.92%) Finance
2 65 (17.86%) Social Skills
3 49 (13.46%) Public Sector
4 34 (9.34%) Banking
5 16 (4.40%) Local Government
6 15 (4.12%) Analytical Skills
7 11 (3.02%) Influencing Skills
8 10 (2.75%) General Ledger
9 7 (1.92%) Financial Institution
9 7 (1.92%) Investment Banking
10 5 (1.37%) Military
11 4 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.10%) German Language
12 3 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.82%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.82%) Retail
13 2 (0.55%) Public Speaking
13 2 (0.55%) Telecoms
14 1 (0.27%) Billing
14 1 (0.27%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 96 (26.37%) Architect
2 43 (11.81%) Lead
3 41 (11.26%) Senior
4 30 (8.24%) Cloud Engineer
5 29 (7.97%) Solutions Architect
6 28 (7.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 27 (7.42%) GCP Engineer
8 21 (5.77%) Azure Specialist
8 21 (5.77%) Technical Architect
9 16 (4.40%) Cloud Architect
9 16 (4.40%) Consultant
10 14 (3.85%) DevOps Engineer
11 13 (3.57%) SAP Architect
12 12 (3.30%) Azure Architect
13 11 (3.02%) Analyst
13 11 (3.02%) Data Engineer
13 11 (3.02%) Developer
13 11 (3.02%) Infrastructure Architect
13 11 (3.02%) SAP Solutions Architect
14 10 (2.75%) Senior Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (7.97%) REST
2 24 (6.59%) Middleware
3 16 (4.40%) Oracle Fusion
4 15 (4.12%) OAuth
4 15 (4.12%) SOAP
5 14 (3.85%) JSON
6 13 (3.57%) JWT
6 13 (3.57%) Web Services
7 12 (3.30%) XML
7 12 (3.30%) XSLT
8 9 (2.47%) Kafka
8 9 (2.47%) Spring Boot
9 6 (1.65%) NumPy
9 6 (1.65%) Pandas
10 4 (1.10%) Elastic Stack
10 4 (1.10%) PyTorch
10 4 (1.10%) Spring
10 4 (1.10%) TensorFlow
11 3 (0.82%) PySpark
11 3 (0.82%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 43 (11.81%) Cloud Native
2 19 (5.22%) Data Centre
3 17 (4.67%) Private Cloud
4 14 (3.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 9 (2.47%) PKI
6 8 (2.20%) Data Structures
7 7 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (1.92%) Security Posture
8 6 (1.65%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.65%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.37%) Legacy Applications
10 3 (0.82%) Cloud Security Posture
10 3 (0.82%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (0.82%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.82%) Reinsurance
11 2 (0.55%) AI Agents
11 2 (0.55%) Distributed Systems
11 2 (0.55%) Grid Computing
11 2 (0.55%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 45 (12.36%) Linux
2 27 (7.42%) Windows
3 11 (3.02%) Unix
4 8 (2.20%) Windows Server
5 7 (1.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (1.92%) Windows Server 2019
6 5 (1.37%) VMS
7 4 (1.10%) Windows Server 2012
8 3 (0.82%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.82%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.55%) Debian
10 1 (0.27%) AIX
10 1 (0.27%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (29.40%) DevOps
2 86 (23.63%) CI/CD
3 83 (22.80%) Migration
4 81 (22.25%) Infrastructure as Code
5 53 (14.56%) Agile
6 51 (14.01%) Stakeholder Management
7 45 (12.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 42 (11.54%) ERP
9 40 (10.99%) Analytics
10 36 (9.89%) Containerisation
11 33 (9.07%) User Acceptance Testing
12 32 (8.79%) Microservices
13 29 (7.97%) Cloud Security
14 28 (7.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 26 (7.14%) Cybersecurity
16 25 (6.87%) Data Migration
16 25 (6.87%) Project Delivery
17 24 (6.59%) Validation
18 23 (6.32%) Architectural Patterns
19 22 (6.04%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 69 (18.96%) Python
2 22 (6.04%) SQL
3 17 (4.67%) Java
4 14 (3.85%) PowerShell
5 8 (2.20%) Bash
6 7 (1.92%) Bicep
6 7 (1.92%) Shell Script
7 6 (1.65%) Go
8 5 (1.37%) Ruby
9 4 (1.10%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.10%) PL/SQL
9 4 (1.10%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.55%) C++
10 2 (0.55%) Perl
11 1 (0.27%) C#
11 1 (0.27%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.27%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 88 (24.18%) Security Cleared
2 68 (18.68%) SC Cleared
3 21 (5.77%) Cisco Certification
4 18 (4.95%) DV Cleared
5 12 (3.30%) Degree
6 11 (3.02%) CCNP
7 10 (2.75%) CISSP
8 9 (2.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 9 (2.47%) SAP Certification
9 8 (2.20%) AWS Certification
9 8 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (1.92%) ACCA
10 7 (1.92%) Azure Certification
10 7 (1.92%) CIMA
10 7 (1.92%) CISM
11 6 (1.65%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 6 (1.65%) ISTQB
12 5 (1.37%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 5 (1.37%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 4 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.85%) NIST
2 13 (3.57%) NCSC
3 11 (3.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.75%) GDPR
5 8 (2.20%) QA
6 6 (1.65%) SLA
7 5 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.37%) Data Quality
7 5 (1.37%) GRC
8 2 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.55%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.55%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.55%) PMO
9 1 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.27%) COBIT
9 1 (0.27%) HIPAA
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 26 (7.14%) Docker
2 20 (5.49%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (3.30%) Active Directory
4 11 (3.02%) Hyper-V
5 7 (1.92%) VMware NSX
6 5 (1.37%) NFS
6 5 (1.37%) Postfix
6 5 (1.37%) Varnish
6 5 (1.37%) vSphere
7 4 (1.10%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (1.10%) Sendmail
7 4 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
7 4 (1.10%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.27%) Firmware
9 1 (0.27%) GPFS
9 1 (0.27%) Lustre
9 1 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 69 (18.96%) Terraform
2 61 (16.76%) Kubernetes
3 32 (8.79%) Ansible
4 22 (6.04%) Istio
5 9 (2.47%) Prometheus
5 9 (2.47%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (1.92%) Grafana
7 6 (1.65%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (1.37%) HAProxy
8 5 (1.37%) Kubeflow
9 4 (1.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.10%) Data Guard
9 4 (1.10%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (1.10%) SCCM
10 3 (0.82%) Argo
10 3 (0.82%) Puppet
11 2 (0.55%) Red Hat Satellite
12 1 (0.27%) FortiGate
12 1 (0.27%) Nessus
12 1 (0.27%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 88 (24.18%) SAP
2 51 (14.01%) Google
3 44 (12.09%) Microsoft
4 39 (10.71%) Oracle
5 31 (8.52%) VMware
6 16 (4.40%) Ariba
6 16 (4.40%) F5
7 10 (2.75%) MuleSoft
7 10 (2.75%) Red Hat
7 10 (2.75%) ServiceNow
8 7 (1.92%) Cisco
8 7 (1.92%) Palo Alto
9 6 (1.65%) Splunk
10 5 (1.37%) Databricks
10 5 (1.37%) Veeam
11 3 (0.82%) Arista
11 3 (0.82%) Citrix
11 3 (0.82%) Fortinet
11 3 (0.82%) Foundry
11 3 (0.82%) IBM