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 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 361 263 263
Rank change year-on-year -98 0 -59
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 234 331 450
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.90% 0.96%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.87% 2.93% 3.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 151 204 317
10th Percentile £406 £414 £413
25th Percentile £450 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% - -4.17%
75th Percentile £681 £675 £700
90th Percentile £800 £773 £756
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £560 £583
% change year-on-year -6.25% -3.86% +1.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 6
10th Percentile - £53.20 £68.00
25th Percentile £42.50 £55.00 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £58.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.41% -25.64% +44.44%
75th Percentile £47.50 £67.75 -
90th Percentile - £73.60 £84.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £66.50 £78.00
% change year-on-year - -14.74% +92.59%

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 12,501 11,296 15,004
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.76% 30.75% 32.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,714 6,683 10,126
10th Percentile £278 £275 £280
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £656 £672
90th Percentile £750 £788 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £499 £500
% change year-on-year -4.71% -0.30% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 680 349 498
10th Percentile £13.50 £16.82 £17.00
25th Percentile £18.22 £22.22 £21.05
Median hourly rate £27.00 £40.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.50% -10.11% +64.94%
75th Percentile £50.00 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.16 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £41.88 £46.18
% change year-on-year -37.91% -9.32% +100.78%

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 November 2025.

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 7 November 2025. 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 -108 180 £566 +0.67% 311
UK excluding London -39 137 £525 -6.25% 246
London -68 74 £612 +3.29% 132
North of England -10 63 £475 -5.71% 46
Work from Home -51 56 £588 +2.17% 187
Yorkshire +7 50 £501 -4.52% 17
Scotland +35 34 £500 +4.11% 21
Midlands -11 22 £530 +6.00% 23
West Midlands -19 16 £530 +6.00% 12
North West -37 12 £450 -10.00% 23
South East -44 10 £644 +11.96% 127
South West +2 8 £600 -5.88% 21
East of England -17 8 £513 -12.77% 1
East Midlands -18 6 £631 +28.78% 9
Wales +8 3 £309 -50.51% 3
North East -8 2 - - 6

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 7 (2.99%) Confluence
2 5 (2.14%) OpenStack
3 4 (1.71%) SAS
4 2 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.85%) nginx
5 1 (0.43%) Apache
5 1 (0.43%) Apache Solr
5 1 (0.43%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.43%) Oracle Service Bus
5 1 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.43%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.43%) WebLogic
Applications
1 8 (3.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (1.71%) Weka
3 1 (0.43%) Adobe Premiere
3 1 (0.43%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 27 (11.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (2.56%) SAP ERP
3 4 (1.71%) SAP FI
4 3 (1.28%) SAP CO
4 3 (1.28%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.43%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.43%) Oracle BPM
5 1 (0.43%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 140 (59.83%) AWS
2 98 (41.88%) Azure
3 86 (36.75%) GCP
4 41 (17.52%) GitHub
5 38 (16.24%) Serverless
6 28 (11.97%) GitHub Actions
7 20 (8.55%) Azure DevOps
8 16 (6.84%) SaaS
9 11 (4.70%) SuccessFactors
10 9 (3.85%) AWS KMS
11 8 (3.42%) Entra ID
11 8 (3.42%) Power Platform
12 6 (2.56%) Microsoft 365
13 5 (2.14%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 5 (2.14%) GitHub Copilot
13 5 (2.14%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 5 (2.14%) IaaS
13 5 (2.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 4 (1.71%) OCI
14 4 (1.71%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 23 (9.83%) Firewall
2 18 (7.69%) WAN
3 15 (6.41%) VPN
4 11 (4.70%) Network Security
5 8 (3.42%) TCP/IP
6 7 (2.99%) SD-WAN
6 7 (2.99%) VLAN
7 5 (2.14%) DNS
7 5 (2.14%) LAN
8 3 (1.28%) BGP
8 3 (1.28%) Kerberos
8 3 (1.28%) OSPF
8 3 (1.28%) VXLAN
9 2 (0.85%) Cisco Nexus
9 2 (0.85%) Ethernet VPN
9 2 (0.85%) IPsec
9 2 (0.85%) Multicast
9 2 (0.85%) Reverse Proxy
9 2 (0.85%) SAN
9 2 (0.85%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (18.38%) NoSQL
2 16 (6.84%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (5.13%) MongoDB
4 8 (3.42%) Power BI
5 7 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (2.56%) Relational Database
7 4 (1.71%) Data Mining
7 4 (1.71%) Oracle Database
7 4 (1.71%) SQL Server
8 3 (1.28%) BigQuery
8 3 (1.28%) MySQL
9 2 (0.85%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.85%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.85%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.85%) Redis
9 2 (0.85%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
10 1 (0.43%) Big Data
10 1 (0.43%) Data Lake
10 1 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 55 (23.50%) Jenkins
2 47 (20.09%) GitLab
3 29 (12.39%) Liquibase
4 28 (11.97%) JIRA
5 24 (10.26%) Git
6 13 (5.56%) Bitbucket
7 11 (4.70%) IntelliJ
7 11 (4.70%) Visual Studio Code
8 10 (4.27%) PyCharm
8 10 (4.27%) Visual Studio
9 6 (2.56%) CircleCI
10 5 (2.14%) TeamCity
11 3 (1.28%) Artifactory
11 3 (1.28%) Vite
12 2 (0.85%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.85%) Mocha
12 2 (0.85%) Postman
12 2 (0.85%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.85%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.85%) webpack
General
1 103 (44.02%) Finance
2 79 (33.76%) Social Skills
3 49 (20.94%) Banking
4 32 (13.68%) Public Sector
5 28 (11.97%) Financial Institution
6 26 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
7 13 (5.56%) Local Government
8 11 (4.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (3.85%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (3.85%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (2.14%) Law
11 4 (1.71%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.71%) Police
12 3 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (1.28%) Publishing
13 2 (0.85%) Billing
13 2 (0.85%) Legal
13 2 (0.85%) Marketing
13 2 (0.85%) Military
Job Titles
1 46 (19.66%) Architect
2 45 (19.23%) Senior
3 29 (12.39%) Cloud Engineer
4 27 (11.54%) DevOps Engineer
5 25 (10.68%) Software Engineer
6 24 (10.26%) Developer
7 21 (8.97%) AWS Engineer
8 17 (7.26%) GCP Engineer
8 17 (7.26%) Senior Software Engineer
9 15 (6.41%) Analyst
10 13 (5.56%) Java Developer
11 12 (5.13%) Python Engineer
12 11 (4.70%) Solutions Architect
12 11 (4.70%) Technical Architect
13 10 (4.27%) AWS DevOps
13 10 (4.27%) AWS Software Engineer
13 10 (4.27%) Consultant
13 10 (4.27%) Security Architect
14 9 (3.85%) Cloud Architect
14 9 (3.85%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (18.80%) REST
2 39 (16.67%) RESTful
3 36 (15.38%) Elastic Stack
4 14 (5.98%) Spring Boot
5 12 (5.13%) React
5 12 (5.13%) Spring
6 8 (3.42%) Kafka
7 6 (2.56%) AngularJS
7 6 (2.56%) Middleware
7 6 (2.56%) Node.js
8 5 (2.14%) GraphQL
9 4 (1.71%) CSS
9 4 (1.71%) HTML
9 4 (1.71%) Jest
9 4 (1.71%) SAP Fiori
9 4 (1.71%) Web Services
10 3 (1.28%) JSON
10 3 (1.28%) Next.js
10 3 (1.28%) Oracle Fusion
11 2 (0.85%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 51 (21.79%) Cloud Native
2 32 (13.68%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (8.55%) Data Centre
4 15 (6.41%) Hybrid Cloud
5 11 (4.70%) Private Cloud
5 11 (4.70%) Product Ownership
6 7 (2.99%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (2.99%) Security Posture
7 6 (2.56%) Cloud Security Posture
7 6 (2.56%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.56%) Mainframe
7 6 (2.56%) Replication
7 6 (2.56%) Virtual Team
8 5 (2.14%) Distributed Applications
9 4 (1.71%) Grid Computing
10 3 (1.28%) Data Structures
10 3 (1.28%) Management Information System
10 3 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (0.85%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 62 (26.50%) Linux
2 28 (11.97%) Windows
3 8 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.28%) Unix
5 3 (1.28%) Windows Server 2016
5 3 (1.28%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.85%) VMS
7 1 (0.43%) CentOS
7 1 (0.43%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.43%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (44.87%) Agile
2 104 (44.44%) CI/CD
3 102 (43.59%) DevOps
4 81 (34.62%) Infrastructure as Code
5 55 (23.50%) Containerisation
5 55 (23.50%) Microservices
6 44 (18.80%) Software Engineering
7 41 (17.52%) Computer Science
8 39 (16.67%) High Availability
9 38 (16.24%) Continuous Integration
9 38 (16.24%) Cost Optimisation
10 36 (15.38%) Continuous Delivery
10 36 (15.38%) SDLC
10 36 (15.38%) Test Automation
11 32 (13.68%) Cryptography
11 32 (13.68%) Infrastructure Automation
11 32 (13.68%) Problem-Solving
12 31 (13.25%) Non-Functional Testing
12 31 (13.25%) Root Cause Analysis
13 30 (12.82%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 82 (35.04%) Python
2 60 (25.64%) Java
3 50 (21.37%) Go
4 21 (8.97%) TypeScript
5 12 (5.13%) SQL
6 11 (4.70%) C#
7 10 (4.27%) JavaScript
8 7 (2.99%) PowerShell
9 6 (2.56%) Bash
9 6 (2.56%) Kotlin
10 3 (1.28%) Groovy
11 1 (0.43%) ABAP
11 1 (0.43%) Bicep
11 1 (0.43%) CodeQL
11 1 (0.43%) DAML
11 1 (0.43%) Perl
11 1 (0.43%) Ruby
11 1 (0.43%) Scala
11 1 (0.43%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.43%) WebLogic Scripting Tool
Qualifications
1 48 (20.51%) Degree
2 44 (18.80%) Security Cleared
3 39 (16.67%) Computer Science Degree
4 32 (13.68%) Master's Degree
5 31 (13.25%) SC Cleared
6 22 (9.40%) AWS Certification
7 13 (5.56%) Azure Certification
8 9 (3.85%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (2.99%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (2.56%) CISSP
10 6 (2.56%) ISTQB
11 5 (2.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
11 5 (2.14%) CCSP
12 4 (1.71%) AWS Certified Developer
12 4 (1.71%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 4 (1.71%) DV Cleared
13 3 (1.28%) SAP Certification
14 2 (0.85%) CCNP
14 2 (0.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (3.42%) GDPR
3 7 (2.99%) NIST
3 7 (2.99%) QA
4 6 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 6 (2.56%) NCSC
4 6 (2.56%) PCI DSS
5 5 (2.14%) Data Quality
5 5 (2.14%) ISO/IEC 27005
5 5 (2.14%) PSD2
6 3 (1.28%) SLA
7 2 (0.85%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.85%) WCAG
8 1 (0.43%) GAMP
8 1 (0.43%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 59 (25.21%) Docker
2 8 (3.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (2.56%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.56%) VMware NSX
4 4 (1.71%) GPFS
4 4 (1.71%) Hyper-V
4 4 (1.71%) Lustre
4 4 (1.71%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 4 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.71%) vSphere
5 2 (0.85%) Firmware
6 1 (0.43%) Ceph
6 1 (0.43%) IAG
6 1 (0.43%) KVM
6 1 (0.43%) QEMU
6 1 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 95 (40.60%) Terraform
2 88 (37.61%) Kubernetes
3 67 (28.63%) Ansible
4 46 (19.66%) Grafana
5 44 (18.80%) Prometheus
6 4 (1.71%) Puppet
6 4 (1.71%) vCenter Server
7 2 (0.85%) HAProxy
7 2 (0.85%) Istio
7 2 (0.85%) Kubeflow
7 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (0.85%) vMotion
8 1 (0.43%) Cisco CUCM
8 1 (0.43%) Consul
8 1 (0.43%) Data Guard
8 1 (0.43%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 1 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.43%) Salt
8 1 (0.43%) SCOM
Vendors
1 37 (15.81%) Splunk
2 32 (13.68%) Microsoft
2 32 (13.68%) SAP
3 23 (9.83%) Google
4 15 (6.41%) Oracle
4 15 (6.41%) VMware
5 13 (5.56%) Cisco
6 7 (2.99%) ServiceNow
7 5 (2.14%) Ariba
7 5 (2.14%) Aruba
8 4 (1.71%) NetApp
9 3 (1.28%) Dell
9 3 (1.28%) F5
9 3 (1.28%) Fortinet
9 3 (1.28%) Mercator
9 3 (1.28%) Palo Alto
9 3 (1.28%) Veeam
10 2 (0.85%) Databricks
10 2 (0.85%) Extreme Networks
10 2 (0.85%) Salesforce