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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 315 257 298
Rank change year-on-year -58 +41 -88
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 352 305 341
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.82% 1.00% 0.76%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.47% 2.98% 2.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 212 224
10th Percentile £395 £426 £464
25th Percentile £470 £525 £509
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £585
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £675 £689 £700
90th Percentile £725 £767 £796
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £583 £582
% change year-on-year -7.30% +0.09% +1.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 1
10th Percentile - £48.40 -
25th Percentile £71.25 £56.50 -
Median hourly rate £72.50 £70.00 £58.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% +20.69% -10.08%
75th Percentile £73.75 £73.75 -
90th Percentile - £76.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £72.50 -

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 14,235 10,246 13,601
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.33% 33.43% 30.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,956 6,331 8,725
10th Percentile £286 £275 £255
25th Percentile £406 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £765 £753
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 663 350 858
10th Percentile £15.27 £17.45 £12.86
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £32.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% +8.33% +33.42%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.80 £83.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £31.76 £28.50
% change year-on-year +5.48% +11.44% +29.55%

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 7 March 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 7 March 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 -59 297 £552 -8.04% 127
UK excluding London -15 184 £540 -7.30% 95
London -67 115 £600 -4.00% 47
Work from Home -20 82 £575 -6.88% 92
North of England -12 74 £525 -8.70% 20
Midlands -27 44 £600 +28.48% 10
Yorkshire -24 43 £525 -9.87% 7
South East -48 32 £524 -12.75% 28
North West -18 30 £450 -8.16% 6
East Midlands -7 27 £600 +50.00% 3
South West -3 26 £625 -1.96% 18
West Midlands -41 15 £531 -33.63% 7
Scotland -2 9 £543 -3.64% 5
East of England -31 7 £413 -31.25% 9
Wales -1 3 £214 -63.98% 7
North East -10 2 - - 7
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 13 (3.69%) Confluence
2 7 (1.99%) OpenStack
3 6 (1.70%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (1.70%) SAS
4 2 (0.57%) Apache
4 2 (0.57%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.57%) Palantir Foundry
4 2 (0.57%) SharePoint
Applications
1 5 (1.42%) Weka
2 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 64 (18.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (2.56%) Oracle ERP
3 7 (1.99%) SAP ERP
3 7 (1.99%) SAP FI
4 6 (1.70%) SAP CO
4 6 (1.70%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.57%) SAP SD
6 1 (0.28%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 132 (37.50%) Azure
2 120 (34.09%) AWS
3 113 (32.10%) GCP
4 34 (9.66%) GitHub
5 30 (8.52%) Serverless
6 22 (6.25%) SuccessFactors
7 21 (5.97%) OCI
8 19 (5.40%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 18 (5.11%) IaaS
9 18 (5.11%) PaaS
10 15 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (3.41%) Cloud Computing
12 11 (3.13%) SaaS
13 10 (2.84%) AWS KMS
13 10 (2.84%) GitHub Actions
14 9 (2.56%) Power Platform
15 7 (1.99%) AWS CloudFormation
16 6 (1.70%) Microsoft 365
16 6 (1.70%) Nutanix
17 5 (1.42%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 34 (9.66%) Firewall
2 26 (7.39%) DNS
2 26 (7.39%) Network Security
3 21 (5.97%) VPN
4 16 (4.55%) TCP/IP
4 16 (4.55%) WAN
5 8 (2.27%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
5 8 (2.27%) LAN
6 7 (1.99%) Internet
6 7 (1.99%) SD-WAN
7 6 (1.70%) Kerberos
8 5 (1.42%) DHCP
9 4 (1.14%) Multicast
9 4 (1.14%) NetScaler
9 4 (1.14%) Wireless
10 3 (0.85%) BGP
10 3 (0.85%) MPLS
10 3 (0.85%) OSPF
10 3 (0.85%) VXLAN
11 2 (0.57%) IPv6
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (7.67%) NoSQL
2 16 (4.55%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (2.56%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (2.56%) Power BI
4 8 (2.27%) Oracle Database
5 6 (1.70%) BigQuery
6 5 (1.42%) MongoDB
6 5 (1.42%) SQL Server
7 4 (1.14%) Oracle Exadata
7 4 (1.14%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (0.85%) Data Vault
8 3 (0.85%) Delta Lake
9 2 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.57%) Redis
10 1 (0.28%) Apache Cassandra
10 1 (0.28%) Data Mining
10 1 (0.28%) Oracle Database 12c
10 1 (0.28%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.28%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 56 (15.91%) Jenkins
2 47 (13.35%) GitLab
3 25 (7.10%) JIRA
4 17 (4.83%) Liquibase
5 13 (3.69%) Postman
6 12 (3.41%) Git
7 8 (2.27%) SoapUI
8 5 (1.42%) TeamCity
9 2 (0.57%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.57%) Mocha
10 1 (0.28%) Ant
10 1 (0.28%) JUnit
10 1 (0.28%) Maven
10 1 (0.28%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.28%) Snyk
10 1 (0.28%) Vite
General
1 117 (33.24%) Finance
2 98 (27.84%) Social Skills
3 62 (17.61%) Public Sector
4 50 (14.20%) Banking
5 22 (6.25%) Local Government
6 21 (5.97%) Financial Institution
7 18 (5.11%) Analytical Skills
8 10 (2.84%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.70%) Investment Banking
10 5 (1.42%) General Ledger
10 5 (1.42%) Law
10 5 (1.42%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.14%) Military
11 4 (1.14%) Police
11 4 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.85%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (0.85%) German Language
13 2 (0.57%) Retail
13 2 (0.57%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 80 (22.73%) Architect
2 48 (13.64%) Senior
3 41 (11.65%) Cloud Engineer
4 34 (9.66%) GCP Engineer
5 29 (8.24%) Lead
6 25 (7.10%) Solutions Architect
7 20 (5.68%) DevOps Engineer
8 19 (5.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 18 (5.11%) Software Engineer
10 17 (4.83%) AWS Engineer
11 15 (4.26%) Consultant
11 15 (4.26%) Senior Cloud Engineer
12 13 (3.69%) Analyst
12 13 (3.69%) SAP Manager
12 13 (3.69%) Senior Software Engineer
13 12 (3.41%) Data Engineer
13 12 (3.41%) SAP Architect
13 12 (3.41%) Technical Architect
14 11 (3.13%) SAP Solutions Architect
14 11 (3.13%) Senior DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (13.92%) REST
2 24 (6.82%) Elastic Stack
2 24 (6.82%) RESTful
3 20 (5.68%) Middleware
4 15 (4.26%) JSON
4 15 (4.26%) OAuth
5 14 (3.98%) SOAP
6 13 (3.69%) JWT
7 12 (3.41%) Oracle Fusion
7 12 (3.41%) Web Services
7 12 (3.41%) XML
7 12 (3.41%) XSLT
8 9 (2.56%) Spring Boot
9 8 (2.27%) Kafka
10 6 (1.70%) React
11 5 (1.42%) NumPy
11 5 (1.42%) Pandas
12 4 (1.14%) PyTorch
12 4 (1.14%) Spring
12 4 (1.14%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 48 (13.64%) Cloud Native
2 23 (6.53%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (5.68%) Data Centre
4 17 (4.83%) Private Cloud
5 12 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
6 10 (2.84%) Product Ownership
7 7 (1.99%) PKI
8 6 (1.70%) Grid Computing
8 6 (1.70%) Legacy Applications
8 6 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.70%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.42%) Cloud Security Posture
9 5 (1.42%) Data Structures
10 4 (1.14%) Virtual Team
11 3 (0.85%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (0.85%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.85%) NHS
11 3 (0.85%) Reinsurance
11 3 (0.85%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 62 (17.61%) Linux
2 25 (7.10%) Windows
3 9 (2.56%) Unix
4 8 (2.27%) Windows Server
5 7 (1.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (1.99%) Windows Server 2019
6 5 (1.42%) VMS
7 4 (1.14%) Windows Server 2012
8 3 (0.85%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.85%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.57%) CentOS
10 1 (0.28%) AIX
10 1 (0.28%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (36.36%) DevOps
2 94 (26.70%) CI/CD
3 89 (25.28%) Agile
3 89 (25.28%) Infrastructure as Code
4 68 (19.32%) Migration
5 52 (14.77%) Containerisation
5 52 (14.77%) Stakeholder Management
6 45 (12.78%) Microservices
7 39 (11.08%) Analytics
8 36 (10.23%) Cybersecurity
9 33 (9.38%) Infrastructure Automation
9 33 (9.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 30 (8.52%) Root Cause Analysis
10 30 (8.52%) Software Engineering
11 27 (7.67%) ERP
12 26 (7.39%) Change Management
12 26 (7.39%) Problem-Solving
12 26 (7.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 25 (7.10%) Continuous Improvement
13 25 (7.10%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 88 (25.00%) Python
2 27 (7.67%) Go
3 25 (7.10%) SQL
4 21 (5.97%) Java
5 10 (2.84%) Bash
5 10 (2.84%) PowerShell
6 6 (1.70%) JavaScript
7 5 (1.42%) TypeScript
8 4 (1.14%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.85%) Ruby
9 3 (0.85%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.57%) Bicep
10 2 (0.57%) C++
11 1 (0.28%) ABAP
11 1 (0.28%) Perl
Qualifications
1 86 (24.43%) Security Cleared
2 62 (17.61%) SC Cleared
3 35 (9.94%) Degree
4 23 (6.53%) Computer Science Degree
4 23 (6.53%) Master's Degree
5 16 (4.55%) AWS Certification
6 12 (3.41%) Cisco Certification
7 10 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (2.27%) Azure Certification
8 8 (2.27%) CISSP
8 8 (2.27%) DV Cleared
8 8 (2.27%) ISTQB
8 8 (2.27%) SAP Certification
9 7 (1.99%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 6 (1.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 6 (1.70%) CISM
11 5 (1.42%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 5 (1.42%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 4 (1.14%) CCNP
12 4 (1.14%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 12 (3.41%) NCSC
3 11 (3.13%) QA
4 10 (2.84%) GDPR
5 8 (2.27%) NIST
6 7 (1.99%) SLA
7 5 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 5 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27005
8 4 (1.14%) GRC
9 3 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.85%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.57%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.57%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.57%) ISO 15022
10 2 (0.57%) ISO 20022
10 2 (0.57%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.57%) PSD2
10 2 (0.57%) WCAG
11 1 (0.28%) COBIT
11 1 (0.28%) RMADS
System Software
1 51 (14.49%) Docker
2 16 (4.55%) Hyper-V
2 16 (4.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (3.13%) Active Directory
4 7 (1.99%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.70%) vSphere
6 5 (1.42%) GPFS
6 5 (1.42%) Lustre
6 5 (1.42%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 4 (1.14%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (1.14%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.85%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.57%) NFS
9 2 (0.57%) Postfix
9 2 (0.57%) Varnish
10 1 (0.28%) Ceph
10 1 (0.28%) KVM
10 1 (0.28%) QEMU
10 1 (0.28%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 83 (23.58%) Terraform
2 82 (23.30%) Kubernetes
3 56 (15.91%) Ansible
4 28 (7.95%) Prometheus
5 26 (7.39%) Grafana
6 17 (4.83%) Istio
7 7 (1.99%) Single Sign-On
8 5 (1.42%) Data Guard
8 5 (1.42%) Kubeflow
8 5 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (1.42%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (1.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.14%) SCCM
10 3 (0.85%) Puppet
11 2 (0.57%) Argo
11 2 (0.57%) HAProxy
11 2 (0.57%) Red Hat Satellite
11 2 (0.57%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.57%) vMotion
12 1 (0.28%) Consul
Vendors
1 71 (20.17%) SAP
2 54 (15.34%) Google
3 35 (9.94%) Oracle
4 29 (8.24%) VMware
5 28 (7.95%) Splunk
6 21 (5.97%) Microsoft
7 14 (3.98%) F5
8 13 (3.69%) ServiceNow
9 12 (3.41%) Ariba
10 9 (2.56%) Cisco
10 9 (2.56%) Palo Alto
11 8 (2.27%) MuleSoft
12 6 (1.70%) Red Hat
13 5 (1.42%) Aruba
13 5 (1.42%) Databricks
13 5 (1.42%) Fortinet
14 4 (1.14%) Veeam
15 3 (0.85%) Arista
15 3 (0.85%) Informatica
15 3 (0.85%) Juniper