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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 348 334 269
Rank change year-on-year -14 -65 -12
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 349 218 338
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.66% 0.87%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.95% 1.89% 2.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 234 142 219
10th Percentile £426 £358 £440
25th Percentile £513 £440 £490
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £537 £593
Median % change year-on-year +11.73% -9.37% -3.27%
75th Percentile £688 £684 £750
90th Percentile £750 £750 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £605 £500 £600
% change year-on-year +21.00% -16.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 3
10th Percentile - - £39.80
25th Percentile £71.25 £42.50 £44.38
Median hourly rate £72.50 £45.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +61.11% -16.67% -30.77%
75th Percentile £73.75 £47.50 £57.00
90th Percentile - - £57.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £48.25
% change year-on-year - - -38.14%

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 17,853 11,559 11,823
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.45% 35.06% 30.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,839 7,131 7,573
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £750 £768 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 997 557 607
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.13 £12.45
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.87 £18.27
Median hourly rate £43.50 £29.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +47.46% -34.44% +12.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £56.00 £67.01
90th Percentile £85.00 £77.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £29.30 £45.00
% change year-on-year +50.03% -34.89% +12.04%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 +2 288 £600 - 474
UK excluding London -14 196 £605 +21.00% 217
Work from Home -4 99 £610 +19.61% 162
London -63 98 £600 -7.69% 319
North of England -42 65 £600 +33.33% 58
South East -27 54 £590 -14.18% 31
Yorkshire -25 37 £576 +43.26% 20
Midlands -24 35 £638 +18.72% 31
North West -36 25 £600 +33.33% 27
South West -20 23 £675 +22.73% 30
East Midlands +8 20 £638 +34.21% 12
Scotland -28 12 £440 -12.00% 36
West Midlands -38 11 £562 -8.20% 19
North East -36 7 £625 - 11
East of England -17 6 £475 -9.52% 4
Wales -13 1 - - 2
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 25

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 (2.87%) Apache
1 10 (2.87%) Confluence
2 5 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.43%) OpenStack
3 3 (0.86%) CloudStack
3 3 (0.86%) SAS
3 3 (0.86%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.57%) IIS
4 2 (0.57%) nginx
4 2 (0.57%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.57%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.29%) WebLogic
Applications
1 12 (3.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.29%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.15%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.57%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 2 (0.57%) Houdini
4 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.57%) NUKE
4 2 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.29%) Weka
Business Applications
1 76 (21.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.72%) SAP Business One
3 5 (1.43%) SAP ERP
3 5 (1.43%) SAP SD
4 4 (1.15%) iTrent
5 3 (0.86%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.57%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.57%) SAP FI-GL
7 1 (0.29%) Exchequer
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle SCM
7 1 (0.29%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.29%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.29%) SAP FI-AR
7 1 (0.29%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 141 (40.40%) Azure
2 120 (34.38%) AWS
3 61 (17.48%) GCP
4 26 (7.45%) SuccessFactors
5 22 (6.30%) GitHub
6 21 (6.02%) OCI
7 19 (5.44%) IaaS
8 18 (5.16%) PaaS
9 16 (4.58%) SaaS
10 14 (4.01%) OpenShift
11 12 (3.44%) Amazon EKS
11 12 (3.44%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (3.44%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 12 (3.44%) Serverless
12 10 (2.87%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (2.01%) Entra ID
14 7 (2.01%) Microsoft 365
15 6 (1.72%) Amazon ECS
16 4 (1.15%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 29 (8.31%) Firewall
2 26 (7.45%) DNS
3 21 (6.02%) Network Security
4 16 (4.58%) TCP/IP
5 15 (4.30%) VPN
5 15 (4.30%) VSAN
6 12 (3.44%) LAN
6 12 (3.44%) WAN
7 10 (2.87%) DHCP
8 7 (2.01%) SAN
9 6 (1.72%) BGP
9 6 (1.72%) NAS
10 5 (1.43%) MPLS
10 5 (1.43%) VLAN
10 5 (1.43%) Wi-Fi
11 4 (1.15%) SNMP
11 4 (1.15%) TACACS
11 4 (1.15%) Wireless
12 3 (0.86%) SSH
12 3 (0.86%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (4.87%) Oracle Database
2 13 (3.72%) RDBMS
2 13 (3.72%) Relational Database
3 12 (3.44%) Oracle Exadata
4 8 (2.29%) MySQL
5 5 (1.43%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (1.15%) BigQuery
6 4 (1.15%) BusinessObjects
6 4 (1.15%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (0.57%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.57%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.57%) Power BI
7 2 (0.57%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.29%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.29%) Big Data
8 1 (0.29%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.29%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.29%) SAP Data Services
8 1 (0.29%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 38 (10.89%) Git
2 21 (6.02%) Jenkins
3 15 (4.30%) GitLab
4 11 (3.15%) JIRA
5 6 (1.72%) JUnit
5 6 (1.72%) Postman
6 4 (1.15%) Hudson
7 3 (0.86%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.86%) Selenium
7 3 (0.86%) SoapUI
7 3 (0.86%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.86%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.29%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.29%) LSMW
8 1 (0.29%) MSI
8 1 (0.29%) PVCS
General
1 99 (28.37%) Finance
2 54 (15.47%) Social Skills
3 43 (12.32%) Public Sector
4 21 (6.02%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (5.44%) Banking
6 13 (3.72%) Local Government
7 9 (2.58%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (2.29%) General Ledger
9 7 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.01%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.43%) Billing
10 5 (1.43%) Military
10 5 (1.43%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.15%) Automotive
11 4 (1.15%) Legal
12 3 (0.86%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.86%) Retail
13 2 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 88 (25.21%) Architect
2 54 (15.47%) Senior
3 48 (13.75%) Lead
4 38 (10.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 35 (10.03%) Solutions Architect
6 22 (6.30%) DevOps Engineer
7 21 (6.02%) Cloud Engineer
8 20 (5.73%) Technical Architect
9 18 (5.16%) Developer
10 17 (4.87%) Consultant
11 16 (4.58%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 15 (4.30%) Azure Specialist
12 15 (4.30%) Cloud Architect
13 12 (3.44%) Azure Architect
13 12 (3.44%) Azure Engineer
13 12 (3.44%) GCP Engineer
13 12 (3.44%) SAP Consultant
14 10 (2.87%) Analyst
15 9 (2.58%) Network Architect
15 9 (2.58%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (4.87%) Kafka
2 16 (4.58%) Spring Boot
3 14 (4.01%) Middleware
4 12 (3.44%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 11 (3.15%) REST
5 11 (3.15%) Spring
6 8 (2.29%) SAP Fiori
7 7 (2.01%) OAuth
7 7 (2.01%) Oracle Fusion
8 6 (1.72%) Elastic Stack
8 6 (1.72%) JSON
8 6 (1.72%) NumPy
8 6 (1.72%) Pandas
8 6 (1.72%) XML
9 5 (1.43%) React
10 4 (1.15%) 802.1X
10 4 (1.15%) NETCONF
10 4 (1.15%) OpenID
10 4 (1.15%) RESTCONF
10 4 (1.15%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 42 (12.03%) Cloud Native
2 27 (7.74%) Hybrid Cloud
3 22 (6.30%) Data Centre
4 20 (5.73%) Private Cloud
5 17 (4.87%) PKI
6 10 (2.87%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.01%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (2.01%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.72%) Data Structures
8 6 (1.72%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (1.72%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.43%) AI Agents
9 5 (1.43%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.15%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.15%) Robotics
10 4 (1.15%) Security Posture
11 3 (0.86%) Enterprise Cloud
11 3 (0.86%) Enterprise Software
12 2 (0.57%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 64 (18.34%) Linux
2 31 (8.88%) Windows
3 12 (3.44%) AIX
4 11 (3.15%) Ubuntu
5 9 (2.58%) Unix
6 8 (2.29%) Windows Server
7 6 (1.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (1.15%) Debian
8 4 (1.15%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (0.86%) CentOS
9 3 (0.86%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.29%) Android
10 1 (0.29%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.29%) VMS
10 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (30.09%) Migration
2 94 (26.93%) Infrastructure as Code
3 90 (25.79%) CI/CD
4 81 (23.21%) DevOps
5 57 (16.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 55 (15.76%) Agile
7 54 (15.47%) Stakeholder Management
8 41 (11.75%) Data Migration
9 36 (10.32%) ERP
10 35 (10.03%) Microservices
11 33 (9.46%) Validation
12 30 (8.60%) Cloud Security
12 30 (8.60%) Identity Access Management
12 30 (8.60%) Infrastructure Automation
12 30 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 29 (8.31%) Containerisation
14 27 (7.74%) Technical Leadership
14 27 (7.74%) User Acceptance Testing
15 26 (7.45%) Architectural Patterns
15 26 (7.45%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 67 (19.20%) Python
2 30 (8.60%) Java
3 29 (8.31%) PowerShell
4 20 (5.73%) Bash
5 13 (3.72%) SQL
6 10 (2.87%) JavaScript
7 9 (2.58%) Bicep
8 6 (1.72%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.15%) Ruby
10 3 (0.86%) ABAP
10 3 (0.86%) Go
11 2 (0.57%) Groovy
11 2 (0.57%) Perl
11 2 (0.57%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.29%) C#
12 1 (0.29%) C++
12 1 (0.29%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.29%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 97 (27.79%) Security Cleared
2 79 (22.64%) SC Cleared
3 29 (8.31%) Cisco Certification
4 28 (8.02%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.72%) AWS Certification
5 13 (3.72%) CCNP
6 12 (3.44%) CISSP
7 11 (3.15%) Degree
7 11 (3.15%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 10 (2.87%) VCAP
9 9 (2.58%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 9 (2.58%) Azure Certification
10 8 (2.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 8 (2.29%) CISM
11 7 (2.01%) ACCA
11 7 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
11 7 (2.01%) CIMA
12 6 (1.72%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 5 (1.43%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 5 (1.43%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (3.72%) NCSC
2 12 (3.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 12 (3.44%) NIST
3 9 (2.58%) GDPR
4 7 (2.01%) Data Quality
4 7 (2.01%) QA
5 5 (1.43%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (1.43%) Government Security Classifications
5 5 (1.43%) GRC
6 4 (1.15%) ISO 20022
7 3 (0.86%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 3 (0.86%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.57%) PMO
9 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.29%) ISO 22301
9 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.29%) SLA
System Software
1 28 (8.02%) VMware Infrastructure
2 21 (6.02%) VMware NSX
3 18 (5.16%) Docker
4 17 (4.87%) Active Directory
5 13 (3.72%) Oracle RAC
6 11 (3.15%) vSphere
7 9 (2.58%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (2.01%) Postfix
8 7 (2.01%) Virtual Machines
9 5 (1.43%) NFS
9 5 (1.43%) Varnish
10 4 (1.15%) Hyper-V
10 4 (1.15%) Sendmail
11 2 (0.57%) Dovecot
12 1 (0.29%) Firmware
12 1 (0.29%) GPFS
12 1 (0.29%) Lustre
12 1 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.29%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 1 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 83 (23.78%) Terraform
2 54 (15.47%) Kubernetes
3 48 (13.75%) Ansible
4 13 (3.72%) Data Guard
4 13 (3.72%) Oracle RMAN
5 12 (3.44%) Istio
5 12 (3.44%) Prometheus
6 11 (3.15%) Grafana
7 8 (2.29%) vCenter Server
8 7 (2.01%) HAProxy
8 7 (2.01%) Packer
8 7 (2.01%) Single Sign-On
9 4 (1.15%) Kubeflow
9 4 (1.15%) systemd
9 4 (1.15%) VxRail
10 3 (0.86%) Check_MK
11 2 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 2 (0.57%) Argo
12 1 (0.29%) CASB
12 1 (0.29%) vMotion
Vendors
1 84 (24.07%) SAP
2 61 (17.48%) Microsoft
3 48 (13.75%) Oracle
4 39 (11.17%) VMware
5 33 (9.46%) Google
6 17 (4.87%) Cisco
7 11 (3.15%) Ariba
7 11 (3.15%) Juniper
8 10 (2.87%) ServiceNow
9 9 (2.58%) Red Hat
10 8 (2.29%) F5
11 7 (2.01%) Fortinet
11 7 (2.01%) Splunk
12 5 (1.43%) Citrix
12 5 (1.43%) Concur
12 5 (1.43%) CyberArk
13 4 (1.15%) Broadcom
13 4 (1.15%) Dynatrace
13 4 (1.15%) MikroTik
13 4 (1.15%) MuleSoft