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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 304 274 289
Rank change year-on-year -30 +15 -61
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 365 271 350
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.80% 0.93% 0.80%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.46% 2.74% 2.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 234 191 234
10th Percentile £395 £453 £454
25th Percentile £486 £525 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £570 £613 £600
Median % change year-on-year -6.94% +2.08% -4.00%
75th Percentile £675 £700 £725
90th Percentile £725 £769 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £552 £593 £600
% change year-on-year -6.88% -1.25% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 1
10th Percentile - £48.40 -
25th Percentile £71.25 £56.50 £36.75
Median hourly rate £72.50 £70.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +81.82% -47.97%
75th Percentile £73.75 £73.75 £40.25
90th Percentile - £76.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £72.50 £38.50
% change year-on-year - +88.31% -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 14,853 9,894 13,370
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.45% 33.86% 30.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,302 6,351 8,566
10th Percentile £300 £288 £263
25th Percentile £412 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.05% -2.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 706 383 901
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.31 £22.27 £15.25
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +18.18% +22.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.63 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.45 £83.20 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.52 £31.91 £26.00
% change year-on-year +48.94% +22.71% +18.18%

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 11 April 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 11 April 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 -27 299 £575 -6.12% 85
UK excluding London -15 188 £552 -6.88% 62
London -91 113 £600 -4.00% 28
Work from Home -3 94 £600 -2.44% 50
North of England -30 57 £525 -10.64% 21
South East -40 51 £560 -6.67% 21
Midlands -37 33 £638 +15.91% 7
North West -9 31 £363 -35.81% 6
South West -3 30 £650 +13.04% 6
Yorkshire -33 26 £550 -8.14% 6
East Midlands -17 25 £638 +59.38% 1
Scotland -7 9 £500 -13.79% 4
East of England -27 7 £413 -40.00% 5
West Midlands -60 5 £892 +26.30% 6
Wales -10 2 £214 -63.98%
North East -16 1 - - 9
Northern Ireland - 1 £385 -

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 (2.19%) Apache Airflow
1 8 (2.19%) Confluence
2 7 (1.92%) SAS
3 6 (1.64%) OpenStack
4 4 (1.10%) Apache
5 3 (0.82%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 4 (1.10%) Microsoft Project
1 4 (1.10%) Weka
2 3 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.27%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 70 (19.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.74%) Oracle ERP
3 4 (1.10%) SAP FI
4 3 (0.82%) SAP CO
4 3 (0.82%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.55%) SAP Business One
5 2 (0.55%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.55%) SAP SD
6 1 (0.27%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 157 (43.01%) Azure
2 110 (30.14%) AWS
3 99 (27.12%) GCP
4 34 (9.32%) GitHub
5 24 (6.58%) SuccessFactors
6 23 (6.30%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 23 (6.30%) IaaS
6 23 (6.30%) PaaS
7 22 (6.03%) OCI
8 16 (4.38%) SaaS
9 13 (3.56%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (3.01%) Azure DevOps
10 11 (3.01%) Cloud Computing
11 10 (2.74%) Serverless
12 9 (2.47%) AWS CloudFormation
12 9 (2.47%) Power Platform
13 8 (2.19%) Microsoft 365
14 7 (1.92%) dbt
14 7 (1.92%) Entra ID
15 5 (1.37%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 34 (9.32%) Firewall
2 32 (8.77%) DNS
3 26 (7.12%) Network Security
4 17 (4.66%) VPN
5 13 (3.56%) LAN
5 13 (3.56%) TCP/IP
5 13 (3.56%) WAN
6 10 (2.74%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
7 7 (1.92%) Kerberos
8 6 (1.64%) Internet
9 5 (1.37%) DHCP
9 5 (1.37%) Wireless
10 4 (1.10%) BGP
10 4 (1.10%) Multicast
10 4 (1.10%) NetScaler
10 4 (1.10%) OSPF
11 3 (0.82%) MPLS
11 3 (0.82%) SD-WAN
11 3 (0.82%) VSAN
11 3 (0.82%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (2.74%) Data Warehouse
2 9 (2.47%) Oracle Database
3 8 (2.19%) BigQuery
3 8 (2.19%) Power BI
4 5 (1.37%) NoSQL
5 4 (1.10%) Oracle Exadata
5 4 (1.10%) Relational Database
5 4 (1.10%) SQL Server
6 3 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (0.82%) Data Vault
6 3 (0.82%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.55%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.55%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
8 1 (0.27%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.27%) MySQL
8 1 (0.27%) Redis
8 1 (0.27%) SAP Data Services
8 1 (0.27%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 35 (9.59%) Jenkins
2 20 (5.48%) GitLab
3 17 (4.66%) JIRA
4 14 (3.84%) Git
4 14 (3.84%) Postman
5 9 (2.47%) SoapUI
6 5 (1.37%) Liquibase
7 4 (1.10%) TeamCity
8 2 (0.55%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.27%) Ant
9 1 (0.27%) Hudson
9 1 (0.27%) JUnit
9 1 (0.27%) LSMW
9 1 (0.27%) Maven
9 1 (0.27%) Mocha
9 1 (0.27%) MSI
9 1 (0.27%) PVCS
9 1 (0.27%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.27%) Snyk
General
1 99 (27.12%) Finance
2 74 (20.27%) Social Skills
3 61 (16.71%) Public Sector
4 31 (8.49%) Banking
5 22 (6.03%) Local Government
6 18 (4.93%) Analytical Skills
7 12 (3.29%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (2.19%) Financial Institution
9 6 (1.64%) General Ledger
9 6 (1.64%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.64%) Manufacturing
10 5 (1.37%) Military
11 4 (1.10%) German Language
11 4 (1.10%) Law
12 3 (0.82%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (0.82%) Police
12 3 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.82%) Retail
12 3 (0.82%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 94 (25.75%) Architect
2 46 (12.60%) Senior
3 39 (10.68%) Lead
4 34 (9.32%) Cloud Engineer
5 28 (7.67%) Solutions Architect
6 26 (7.12%) GCP Engineer
7 24 (6.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 21 (5.75%) Technical Architect
9 17 (4.66%) Consultant
10 15 (4.11%) DevOps Engineer
11 14 (3.84%) Azure Specialist
11 14 (3.84%) Cloud Architect
11 14 (3.84%) SAP Architect
12 13 (3.56%) Senior Cloud Engineer
13 12 (3.29%) Data Engineer
13 12 (3.29%) SAP Solutions Architect
14 11 (3.01%) Analyst
14 11 (3.01%) Infrastructure Architect
14 11 (3.01%) Platform Engineer
15 10 (2.74%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (8.77%) REST
2 23 (6.30%) Middleware
3 16 (4.38%) OAuth
4 15 (4.11%) JSON
4 15 (4.11%) SOAP
5 14 (3.84%) JWT
5 14 (3.84%) Oracle Fusion
6 13 (3.56%) Web Services
6 13 (3.56%) XML
6 13 (3.56%) XSLT
7 9 (2.47%) Spring Boot
8 8 (2.19%) NumPy
8 8 (2.19%) Pandas
9 7 (1.92%) Kafka
10 5 (1.37%) Elastic Stack
10 5 (1.37%) PyTorch
10 5 (1.37%) RESTful
10 5 (1.37%) TensorFlow
11 4 (1.10%) React
11 4 (1.10%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 42 (11.51%) Cloud Native
2 20 (5.48%) Data Centre
2 20 (5.48%) Private Cloud
3 13 (3.56%) Hybrid Cloud
4 10 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
4 10 (2.74%) PKI
5 7 (1.92%) Data Structures
5 7 (1.92%) Product Ownership
5 7 (1.92%) Security Posture
6 6 (1.64%) Legacy Applications
6 6 (1.64%) Virtual Team
7 5 (1.37%) Cloud Security Posture
7 5 (1.37%) Grid Computing
8 4 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
9 3 (0.82%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (0.82%) NHS
9 3 (0.82%) Onboarding
9 3 (0.82%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 51 (13.97%) Linux
2 28 (7.67%) Windows
3 10 (2.74%) Unix
4 9 (2.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (2.19%) Windows Server
5 8 (2.19%) Windows Server 2019
6 5 (1.37%) VMS
7 4 (1.10%) Windows Server 2012
7 4 (1.10%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (0.82%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.55%) CentOS
10 1 (0.27%) AIX
10 1 (0.27%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (31.51%) DevOps
2 83 (22.74%) CI/CD
3 80 (21.92%) Migration
4 76 (20.82%) Infrastructure as Code
5 67 (18.36%) Agile
6 52 (14.25%) Stakeholder Management
7 42 (11.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 39 (10.68%) Analytics
9 36 (9.86%) Containerisation
10 33 (9.04%) Microservices
11 30 (8.22%) Cloud Security
12 29 (7.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 29 (7.95%) User Acceptance Testing
13 28 (7.67%) ERP
14 26 (7.12%) Problem-Solving
15 25 (6.85%) Cybersecurity
15 25 (6.85%) Project Delivery
16 22 (6.03%) Architectural Patterns
16 22 (6.03%) Continuous Improvement
16 22 (6.03%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 75 (20.55%) Python
2 22 (6.03%) SQL
3 17 (4.66%) Java
4 14 (3.84%) PowerShell
5 11 (3.01%) Bash
6 8 (2.19%) Go
7 6 (1.64%) Bicep
7 6 (1.64%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.37%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.10%) PL/SQL
9 4 (1.10%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.82%) Ruby
11 1 (0.27%) C#
11 1 (0.27%) C++
11 1 (0.27%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.27%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 97 (26.58%) Security Cleared
2 73 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 19 (5.21%) Cisco Certification
4 17 (4.66%) DV Cleared
5 14 (3.84%) Degree
6 13 (3.56%) AWS Certification
7 10 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (2.74%) CISSP
8 9 (2.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 9 (2.47%) CCNP
8 9 (2.47%) SAP Certification
9 8 (2.19%) Azure Certification
10 7 (1.92%) ISTQB
11 6 (1.64%) CISM
12 5 (1.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (1.37%) CCSP
12 5 (1.37%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 5 (1.37%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 5 (1.37%) Master's Degree
13 4 (1.10%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (4.93%) NCSC
2 15 (4.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (3.84%) NIST
4 12 (3.29%) GDPR
5 11 (3.01%) QA
6 6 (1.64%) SLA
7 5 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.37%) Data Quality
7 5 (1.37%) GRC
8 4 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 4 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27005
9 2 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.55%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.55%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.55%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.55%) PMO
9 2 (0.55%) PSD2
10 1 (0.27%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.27%) RMADS
10 1 (0.27%) WCAG
System Software
1 33 (9.04%) Docker
2 20 (5.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (4.66%) Hyper-V
4 11 (3.01%) Active Directory
5 6 (1.64%) VMware NSX
6 4 (1.10%) GPFS
6 4 (1.10%) Lustre
6 4 (1.10%) NFS
6 4 (1.10%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (1.10%) Postfix
6 4 (1.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 4 (1.10%) Varnish
6 4 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (1.10%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (1.10%) vSphere
7 3 (0.82%) Sendmail
8 2 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.27%) Ceph
9 1 (0.27%) KVM
9 1 (0.27%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 69 (18.90%) Terraform
2 68 (18.63%) Kubernetes
3 35 (9.59%) Ansible
4 19 (5.21%) Istio
5 9 (2.47%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (2.19%) Prometheus
7 7 (1.92%) Kubeflow
8 6 (1.64%) Grafana
8 6 (1.64%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.10%) Data Guard
9 4 (1.10%) HAProxy
9 4 (1.10%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (1.10%) SCCM
10 3 (0.82%) Argo
11 2 (0.55%) 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 77 (21.10%) SAP
2 53 (14.52%) Google
3 39 (10.68%) Oracle
4 35 (9.59%) Microsoft
4 35 (9.59%) VMware
5 17 (4.66%) Ariba
6 16 (4.38%) F5
7 11 (3.01%) Palo Alto
8 10 (2.74%) MuleSoft
8 10 (2.74%) Red Hat
8 10 (2.74%) ServiceNow
9 8 (2.19%) Cisco
9 8 (2.19%) Splunk
10 5 (1.37%) Databricks
11 4 (1.10%) Juniper
11 4 (1.10%) Veeam
12 3 (0.82%) Arista
12 3 (0.82%) Foundry
12 3 (0.82%) IBM
12 3 (0.82%) Informatica