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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 304 280 291
Rank change year-on-year -24 +11 -57
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 366 266 334
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.77% 0.91% 0.77%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.40% 2.67% 2.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 186 224
10th Percentile £395 £449 £450
25th Percentile £475 £514 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £604 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +0.63% -4.00%
75th Percentile £675 £694 £750
90th Percentile £725 £766 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £560 £589 £600
% change year-on-year -4.96% -1.79% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 1
10th Percentile - £45.70 -
25th Percentile £71.25 £49.75 £36.75
Median hourly rate £72.50 £56.50 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.32% +46.75% -47.26%
75th Percentile £73.75 £63.25 £40.25
90th Percentile - £67.30 -
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 15,237 9,961 13,216
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.15% 34.01% 30.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,496 6,365 8,485
10th Percentile £306 £300 £263
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £656
90th Percentile £738 £775 £795
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 724 398 911
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.67 £21.06 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.46 £32.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +39.88% +7.76% +34.13%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £86.00 £82.71 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £31.42 £28.38
% change year-on-year +51.30% +10.73% +28.98%

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 3 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 3 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 -32 298 £588 -4.78% 64
UK excluding London -13 188 £560 -4.96% 49
London -73 113 £600 -6.80% 20
Work from Home +5 97 £605 +0.83% 26
North of England -23 55 £550 +2.42% 10
South East -41 52 £557 -9.84% 19
Midlands -46 32 £638 +18.72% 4
South West +2 30 £650 +13.04% 9
North West -20 30 £350 -34.82% 6
East Midlands -13 25 £638 +34.21% 2
Yorkshire -28 25 £560 +16.36% 2
Scotland -16 12 £500 -12.51% 3
East of England -39 5 £444 -26.04% 5
West Midlands -58 4 £759 +7.40% 2
Wales -15 2 £214 -63.55%
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 6 (1.64%) SAS
3 4 (1.09%) Apache
3 4 (1.09%) OpenStack
4 3 (0.82%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
6 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 6 (1.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.82%) Weka
4 2 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.27%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 77 (21.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.73%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (1.37%) SAP Business One
3 5 (1.37%) SAP FI
4 4 (1.09%) SAP CO
4 4 (1.09%) SAP FI/CO
5 3 (0.82%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.55%) SAP SD
7 1 (0.27%) Exchequer
7 1 (0.27%) iTrent
7 1 (0.27%) SAP FI-AR
Cloud Services
1 158 (43.17%) Azure
2 102 (27.87%) AWS
3 91 (24.86%) GCP
4 35 (9.56%) GitHub
5 25 (6.83%) PaaS
6 23 (6.28%) SuccessFactors
7 22 (6.01%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 22 (6.01%) IaaS
8 21 (5.74%) OCI
9 16 (4.37%) SaaS
10 15 (4.10%) GitHub Actions
11 11 (3.01%) Serverless
12 10 (2.73%) Cloud Computing
13 9 (2.46%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (2.46%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (2.46%) Power Platform
14 8 (2.19%) Microsoft 365
15 7 (1.91%) dbt
16 6 (1.64%) Azure Sentinel
16 6 (1.64%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 33 (9.02%) Firewall
2 32 (8.74%) DNS
3 26 (7.10%) Network Security
4 17 (4.64%) VPN
5 13 (3.55%) LAN
5 13 (3.55%) WAN
6 12 (3.28%) TCP/IP
7 10 (2.73%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 6 (1.64%) Internet
8 6 (1.64%) Kerberos
9 5 (1.37%) DHCP
9 5 (1.37%) Wireless
10 4 (1.09%) BGP
10 4 (1.09%) Multicast
10 4 (1.09%) NetScaler
10 4 (1.09%) OSPF
11 3 (0.82%) MPLS
11 3 (0.82%) SD-WAN
11 3 (0.82%) VSAN
12 2 (0.55%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (2.46%) Data Warehouse
2 8 (2.19%) BigQuery
2 8 (2.19%) Oracle Database
2 8 (2.19%) Power BI
3 4 (1.09%) Oracle Exadata
3 4 (1.09%) Relational Database
3 4 (1.09%) SQL Server
4 3 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
4 3 (0.82%) Data Vault
4 3 (0.82%) Delta Lake
5 2 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (0.55%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.55%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.27%) BusinessObjects
6 1 (0.27%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.27%) MySQL
6 1 (0.27%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.27%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.27%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 32 (8.74%) Jenkins
2 17 (4.64%) GitLab
2 17 (4.64%) JIRA
3 14 (3.83%) Git
4 13 (3.55%) Postman
5 9 (2.46%) SoapUI
6 4 (1.09%) Liquibase
6 4 (1.09%) TeamCity
7 2 (0.55%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.55%) Hudson
8 1 (0.27%) Ant
8 1 (0.27%) JUnit
8 1 (0.27%) LSMW
8 1 (0.27%) Maven
8 1 (0.27%) MSI
8 1 (0.27%) PVCS
8 1 (0.27%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.27%) Snyk
General
1 101 (27.60%) Finance
2 71 (19.40%) Social Skills
3 57 (15.57%) Public Sector
4 31 (8.47%) Banking
5 19 (5.19%) Local Government
6 17 (4.64%) Analytical Skills
7 13 (3.55%) Influencing Skills
8 9 (2.46%) General Ledger
9 7 (1.91%) Financial Institution
9 7 (1.91%) Investment Banking
10 5 (1.37%) Military
11 4 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.09%) German Language
12 3 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.82%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.82%) Retail
12 3 (0.82%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.55%) Billing
13 2 (0.55%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 97 (26.50%) Architect
2 43 (11.75%) Lead
3 42 (11.48%) Senior
4 31 (8.47%) Solutions Architect
5 29 (7.92%) Cloud Engineer
6 25 (6.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 24 (6.56%) GCP Engineer
8 21 (5.74%) Technical Architect
9 18 (4.92%) Azure Specialist
10 17 (4.64%) Cloud Architect
10 17 (4.64%) Consultant
11 13 (3.55%) SAP Architect
12 12 (3.28%) Data Engineer
12 12 (3.28%) DevOps Engineer
13 11 (3.01%) Azure Architect
13 11 (3.01%) Developer
13 11 (3.01%) Infrastructure Architect
13 11 (3.01%) SAP Solutions Architect
14 10 (2.73%) Analyst
14 10 (2.73%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (7.92%) REST
2 23 (6.28%) Middleware
3 16 (4.37%) Oracle Fusion
4 15 (4.10%) OAuth
5 14 (3.83%) JSON
5 14 (3.83%) SOAP
6 13 (3.55%) JWT
7 12 (3.28%) Web Services
7 12 (3.28%) XML
7 12 (3.28%) XSLT
8 9 (2.46%) Spring Boot
9 8 (2.19%) NumPy
9 8 (2.19%) Pandas
10 7 (1.91%) Kafka
11 5 (1.37%) PyTorch
11 5 (1.37%) TensorFlow
12 4 (1.09%) scikit-learn
12 4 (1.09%) Spring
13 3 (0.82%) React
13 3 (0.82%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 44 (12.02%) Cloud Native
2 21 (5.74%) Data Centre
3 18 (4.92%) Private Cloud
4 12 (3.28%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (2.46%) PKI
7 7 (1.91%) Data Structures
8 6 (1.64%) Legacy Applications
8 6 (1.64%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.64%) Security Posture
8 6 (1.64%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.09%) Grid Computing
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%) NHS
10 3 (0.82%) Reinsurance
11 2 (0.55%) AI Agents
11 2 (0.55%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 46 (12.57%) Linux
2 27 (7.38%) Windows
3 10 (2.73%) Unix
4 7 (1.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (1.91%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.91%) Windows Server 2019
5 5 (1.37%) VMS
6 4 (1.09%) Windows Server 2012
7 3 (0.82%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (0.55%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.27%) AIX
9 1 (0.27%) CentOS
9 1 (0.27%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (29.23%) DevOps
2 82 (22.40%) CI/CD
2 82 (22.40%) Migration
3 76 (20.77%) Infrastructure as Code
4 63 (17.21%) Agile
5 52 (14.21%) Stakeholder Management
6 41 (11.20%) Analytics
6 41 (11.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 39 (10.66%) ERP
8 37 (10.11%) Containerisation
9 32 (8.74%) User Acceptance Testing
10 30 (8.20%) Microservices
11 29 (7.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 27 (7.38%) Cybersecurity
13 26 (7.10%) Cloud Security
13 26 (7.10%) Project Delivery
14 25 (6.83%) Problem-Solving
15 23 (6.28%) Validation
16 22 (6.01%) Architectural Patterns
16 22 (6.01%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 71 (19.40%) Python
2 21 (5.74%) SQL
3 17 (4.64%) Java
4 13 (3.55%) PowerShell
5 9 (2.46%) Bash
6 6 (1.64%) Bicep
6 6 (1.64%) Go
6 6 (1.64%) Shell Script
7 4 (1.09%) JavaScript
7 4 (1.09%) PL/SQL
7 4 (1.09%) Ruby
7 4 (1.09%) TypeScript
8 2 (0.55%) C++
9 1 (0.27%) C#
9 1 (0.27%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.27%) Perl
9 1 (0.27%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 89 (24.32%) Security Cleared
2 67 (18.31%) SC Cleared
3 20 (5.46%) Cisco Certification
4 18 (4.92%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.55%) Degree
6 10 (2.73%) AWS Certification
6 10 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (2.73%) CCNP
6 10 (2.73%) CISSP
7 9 (2.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 9 (2.46%) SAP Certification
8 7 (1.91%) Azure Certification
8 7 (1.91%) CISM
9 6 (1.64%) ISTQB
10 5 (1.37%) ACCA
10 5 (1.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 5 (1.37%) CIMA
10 5 (1.37%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
10 5 (1.37%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 4 (1.09%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.83%) NIST
2 13 (3.55%) NCSC
3 11 (3.01%) GDPR
4 10 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.73%) QA
5 6 (1.64%) SLA
6 5 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (1.37%) Data Quality
6 5 (1.37%) GRC
7 2 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.55%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.55%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.55%) PMO
8 1 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.27%) COBIT
8 1 (0.27%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.27%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.27%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.27%) RMADS
System Software
1 27 (7.38%) Docker
2 20 (5.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (4.10%) Hyper-V
4 12 (3.28%) Active Directory
5 6 (1.64%) VMware NSX
6 4 (1.09%) NFS
6 4 (1.09%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (1.09%) Postfix
6 4 (1.09%) Varnish
6 4 (1.09%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (1.09%) vSphere
7 3 (0.82%) GPFS
7 3 (0.82%) Lustre
7 3 (0.82%) Sendmail
7 3 (0.82%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 2 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.27%) Firmware
9 1 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 66 (18.03%) Terraform
2 60 (16.39%) Kubernetes
3 31 (8.47%) Ansible
4 18 (4.92%) Istio
5 9 (2.46%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (1.91%) Kubeflow
7 6 (1.64%) Microsoft Intune
7 6 (1.64%) Prometheus
8 4 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (1.09%) Data Guard
8 4 (1.09%) Grafana
8 4 (1.09%) HAProxy
8 4 (1.09%) Oracle RMAN
8 4 (1.09%) SCCM
9 3 (0.82%) Argo
9 3 (0.82%) Puppet
10 2 (0.55%) Red Hat Satellite
11 1 (0.27%) FortiGate
11 1 (0.27%) Nessus
11 1 (0.27%) Salt
Vendors
1 85 (23.22%) SAP
2 52 (14.21%) Google
3 41 (11.20%) Microsoft
4 40 (10.93%) Oracle
5 33 (9.02%) VMware
6 16 (4.37%) Ariba
6 16 (4.37%) F5
7 11 (3.01%) Palo Alto
8 10 (2.73%) MuleSoft
8 10 (2.73%) Red Hat
8 10 (2.73%) ServiceNow
9 8 (2.19%) Cisco
10 6 (1.64%) Splunk
11 5 (1.37%) Databricks
12 4 (1.09%) Juniper
12 4 (1.09%) Veeam
13 3 (0.82%) Arista
13 3 (0.82%) Foundry
13 3 (0.82%) IBM
13 3 (0.82%) Informatica