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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 309 301 295
Rank change year-on-year -8 -6 -61
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 362 238 312
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.75% 0.82% 0.73%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.35% 2.41% 2.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 228 159 213
10th Percentile £400 £419 £450
25th Percentile £500 £510 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £675 £691 £750
90th Percentile £725 £750 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £583 £575 £625
% change year-on-year +1.38% -8.00% +2.04%
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 15,414 9,893 12,931
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.95% 33.99% 30.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,564 6,299 8,335
10th Percentile £313 £300 £268
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £743 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.11% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 729 396 900
10th Percentile £16.00 £16.24 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.64 £20.45 £15.17
Median hourly rate £41.94 £31.76 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +32.05% +0.83% +41.51%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.40 £82.85 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.00 £30.39 £30.00
% change year-on-year +51.37% +1.30% +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 21 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 21 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 -4 291 £600 -1.64% 84
UK excluding London -6 189 £583 +1.38% 59
London -64 104 £600 -5.88% 38
Work from Home -4 98 £610 +1.67% 53
North of England -31 55 £550 +2.42% 12
South East -27 53 £563 -6.25% 16
Midlands -30 35 £631 +17.55% 8
South West -5 31 £675 +17.39% 11
North West -19 31 £350 -34.82% 7
East Midlands -6 26 £619 +30.26% 4
Yorkshire -32 24 £568 +18.02% 3
Scotland -11 12 £425 -19.05% 6
West Midlands -54 6 £525 -25.66% 4
East of England -27 3 £593 +3.04% 2
Wales -14 1 - -
Northern Ireland - 1 £385 - 4

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 (2.21%) Apache
1 8 (2.21%) Confluence
2 6 (1.66%) SAS
3 5 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (1.10%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.55%) CloudStack
5 2 (0.55%) OpenStack
5 2 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
6 1 (0.28%) IIS
6 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.28%) nginx
6 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
Applications
1 6 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.10%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.28%) Weka
Business Applications
1 79 (21.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.76%) Oracle ERP
3 6 (1.66%) SAP Business One
4 5 (1.38%) SAP ERP
4 5 (1.38%) SAP FI
5 4 (1.10%) iTrent
5 4 (1.10%) SAP CO
5 4 (1.10%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.55%) SAP SD
7 1 (0.28%) Exchequer
7 1 (0.28%) Oracle SCM
7 1 (0.28%) SAP FI-AR
7 1 (0.28%) SAP FI-GL
Cloud Services
1 151 (41.71%) Azure
2 94 (25.97%) AWS
3 84 (23.20%) GCP
4 35 (9.67%) GitHub
5 25 (6.91%) PaaS
6 24 (6.63%) IaaS
7 23 (6.35%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 23 (6.35%) SuccessFactors
8 19 (5.25%) OCI
9 14 (3.87%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (3.59%) SaaS
11 12 (3.31%) Serverless
12 10 (2.76%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (2.49%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (2.49%) Power Platform
14 8 (2.21%) Microsoft 365
15 7 (1.93%) Cloud Computing
16 6 (1.66%) Azure Sentinel
16 6 (1.66%) Entra ID
17 5 (1.38%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 35 (9.67%) DNS
2 33 (9.12%) Firewall
3 22 (6.08%) Network Security
4 17 (4.70%) VPN
5 12 (3.31%) LAN
5 12 (3.31%) WAN
6 10 (2.76%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 10 (2.76%) TCP/IP
7 6 (1.66%) Kerberos
7 6 (1.66%) NAS
7 6 (1.66%) SAN
8 5 (1.38%) DHCP
8 5 (1.38%) Wireless
9 4 (1.10%) BGP
9 4 (1.10%) Multicast
9 4 (1.10%) NetScaler
9 4 (1.10%) OSPF
10 3 (0.83%) MPLS
10 3 (0.83%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.83%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.21%) Oracle Database
1 8 (2.21%) Power BI
2 7 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
3 5 (1.38%) BigQuery
3 5 (1.38%) SQL Server
4 4 (1.10%) BusinessObjects
4 4 (1.10%) Oracle Exadata
4 4 (1.10%) Relational Database
5 3 (0.83%) Data Vault
5 3 (0.83%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (0.55%) MySQL
6 2 (0.55%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (0.55%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.28%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.28%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.28%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.28%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 36 (9.94%) Jenkins
2 18 (4.97%) Git
3 17 (4.70%) GitLab
3 17 (4.70%) JIRA
4 14 (3.87%) Postman
5 9 (2.49%) SoapUI
6 4 (1.10%) Cucumber
6 4 (1.10%) TeamCity
7 3 (0.83%) Hudson
7 3 (0.83%) JUnit
7 3 (0.83%) Liquibase
8 2 (0.55%) Selenium
8 2 (0.55%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.55%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.28%) Ant
9 1 (0.28%) LSMW
9 1 (0.28%) MSI
9 1 (0.28%) PVCS
9 1 (0.28%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.28%) Snyk
General
1 98 (27.07%) Finance
2 63 (17.40%) Social Skills
3 48 (13.26%) Public Sector
4 34 (9.39%) Banking
5 17 (4.70%) Local Government
6 15 (4.14%) Analytical Skills
7 11 (3.04%) General Ledger
7 11 (3.04%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (1.93%) Financial Institution
8 7 (1.93%) Investment Banking
9 5 (1.38%) Military
10 4 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.10%) German Language
11 3 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.83%) Retail
12 2 (0.55%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.55%) Public Speaking
12 2 (0.55%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.28%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.28%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 94 (25.97%) Architect
2 43 (11.88%) Lead
3 42 (11.60%) Senior
4 31 (8.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 29 (8.01%) Cloud Engineer
5 29 (8.01%) Solutions Architect
6 26 (7.18%) GCP Engineer
7 21 (5.80%) Azure Specialist
8 20 (5.52%) Technical Architect
9 16 (4.42%) Cloud Architect
9 16 (4.42%) Consultant
10 14 (3.87%) DevOps Engineer
11 13 (3.59%) SAP Architect
12 12 (3.31%) Azure Architect
13 11 (3.04%) Analyst
13 11 (3.04%) Infrastructure Architect
13 11 (3.04%) SAP Solutions Architect
14 10 (2.76%) Developer
14 10 (2.76%) Platform Engineer
14 10 (2.76%) Senior Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (7.18%) REST
2 23 (6.35%) Middleware
3 15 (4.14%) Oracle Fusion
4 14 (3.87%) OAuth
4 14 (3.87%) SOAP
5 13 (3.59%) JSON
6 12 (3.31%) JWT
6 12 (3.31%) Web Services
7 11 (3.04%) XML
7 11 (3.04%) XSLT
8 9 (2.49%) Kafka
8 9 (2.49%) Spring Boot
9 5 (1.38%) Elastic Stack
9 5 (1.38%) NumPy
9 5 (1.38%) Pandas
10 4 (1.10%) Spring
11 3 (0.83%) PySpark
11 3 (0.83%) PyTorch
11 3 (0.83%) React
11 3 (0.83%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 41 (11.33%) Cloud Native
2 20 (5.52%) Data Centre
3 17 (4.70%) Private Cloud
4 15 (4.14%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (2.76%) PKI
6 8 (2.21%) Data Structures
7 7 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (1.93%) Security Posture
8 6 (1.66%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.66%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.38%) Legacy Applications
10 3 (0.83%) Cloud Security Posture
10 3 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (0.83%) Management Information System
10 3 (0.83%) Reinsurance
11 2 (0.55%) Cyber Threat
11 2 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (0.55%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 2 (0.55%) Enterprise Storage
11 2 (0.55%) Grid Computing
Operating Systems
1 47 (12.98%) Linux
2 29 (8.01%) Windows
3 11 (3.04%) Unix
4 9 (2.49%) Windows Server
5 7 (1.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (1.93%) Windows Server 2019
6 5 (1.38%) Ubuntu
6 5 (1.38%) VMS
7 4 (1.10%) Debian
7 4 (1.10%) Windows Server 2012
8 3 (0.83%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.55%) CentOS
10 1 (0.28%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (28.73%) DevOps
2 83 (22.93%) Migration
3 82 (22.65%) CI/CD
4 78 (21.55%) Infrastructure as Code
5 51 (14.09%) Agile
6 50 (13.81%) Stakeholder Management
7 48 (13.26%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 41 (11.33%) ERP
9 40 (11.05%) Analytics
10 34 (9.39%) Containerisation
11 33 (9.12%) User Acceptance Testing
12 32 (8.84%) Microservices
13 29 (8.01%) Cloud Security
13 29 (8.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 26 (7.18%) Data Migration
14 26 (7.18%) Project Delivery
14 26 (7.18%) Validation
15 24 (6.63%) Identity Access Management
16 23 (6.35%) Cybersecurity
16 23 (6.35%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 66 (18.23%) Python
2 20 (5.52%) SQL
3 17 (4.70%) Java
4 15 (4.14%) PowerShell
5 9 (2.49%) Bash
6 7 (1.93%) Bicep
6 7 (1.93%) Shell Script
7 5 (1.38%) Go
7 5 (1.38%) Ruby
8 4 (1.10%) JavaScript
8 4 (1.10%) PL/SQL
8 4 (1.10%) TypeScript
9 2 (0.55%) C++
9 2 (0.55%) Perl
10 1 (0.28%) C#
10 1 (0.28%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.28%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 87 (24.03%) Security Cleared
2 68 (18.78%) SC Cleared
3 22 (6.08%) Cisco Certification
4 18 (4.97%) DV Cleared
5 12 (3.31%) CCNP
6 11 (3.04%) Degree
7 10 (2.76%) CISSP
8 9 (2.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 9 (2.49%) AWS Certification
8 9 (2.49%) SAP Certification
9 8 (2.21%) Azure Certification
9 8 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (1.93%) ACCA
10 7 (1.93%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (1.93%) CIMA
10 7 (1.93%) CISM
11 6 (1.66%) ISTQB
12 5 (1.38%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 5 (1.38%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 4 (1.10%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.87%) NIST
2 13 (3.59%) NCSC
3 11 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.76%) GDPR
5 8 (2.21%) QA
6 6 (1.66%) SLA
7 5 (1.38%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.38%) Data Quality
7 5 (1.38%) 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 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.28%) COBIT
9 1 (0.28%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
9 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 1 (0.28%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.28%) RMADS
System Software
1 24 (6.63%) Docker
2 21 (5.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (3.59%) Active Directory
4 11 (3.04%) Hyper-V
5 9 (2.49%) VMware NSX
6 6 (1.66%) Postfix
6 6 (1.66%) vSphere
7 5 (1.38%) NFS
7 5 (1.38%) Varnish
8 4 (1.10%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (1.10%) Sendmail
8 4 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.28%) Dovecot
11 1 (0.28%) Firmware
11 1 (0.28%) GPFS
11 1 (0.28%) Lustre
11 1 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 67 (18.51%) Terraform
2 60 (16.57%) Kubernetes
3 33 (9.12%) Ansible
4 21 (5.80%) Istio
5 10 (2.76%) Prometheus
6 9 (2.49%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (2.21%) Grafana
8 6 (1.66%) HAProxy
8 6 (1.66%) Microsoft Intune
9 5 (1.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (1.10%) Data Guard
10 4 (1.10%) Kubeflow
10 4 (1.10%) Oracle RMAN
10 4 (1.10%) SCCM
11 3 (0.83%) Argo
11 3 (0.83%) Puppet
12 2 (0.55%) Check_MK
12 2 (0.55%) Red Hat Satellite
13 1 (0.28%) FortiGate
13 1 (0.28%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 91 (25.14%) SAP
2 49 (13.54%) Google
3 45 (12.43%) Microsoft
4 39 (10.77%) Oracle
5 34 (9.39%) VMware
6 17 (4.70%) Ariba
6 17 (4.70%) F5
7 11 (3.04%) Red Hat
8 10 (2.76%) ServiceNow
9 9 (2.49%) Cisco
9 9 (2.49%) MuleSoft
10 6 (1.66%) Palo Alto
10 6 (1.66%) Splunk
10 6 (1.66%) Veeam
11 5 (1.38%) Citrix
11 5 (1.38%) Databricks
12 4 (1.10%) Fortinet
13 3 (0.83%) Commvault
13 3 (0.83%) Foundry
13 3 (0.83%) Juniper