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

6 months to
3 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 351 239 265
Rank change year-on-year -112 +26 -60
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 240 369 402
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.66% 1.03% 0.89%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.87% 3.27% 2.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 162 239 273
10th Percentile £406 £425 £401
25th Percentile £450 £500 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £543 £580 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.47% +0.87% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £688
90th Percentile £773 £782 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £575 £579
% change year-on-year -8.70% -0.61% +5.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 3
10th Percentile - £46.00 £62.00
25th Percentile - £50.50 £68.00
Median hourly rate - £58.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year - -25.64% +33.33%
75th Percentile - £67.75 -
90th Percentile - £73.60 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £66.50 £78.00
% change year-on-year - -14.74% -

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 12,864 11,277 14,264
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.51% 31.49% 31.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,988 6,661 9,540
10th Percentile £278 £281 £270
25th Percentile £406 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.77% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £630 £663 £670
90th Percentile £738 £788 £770
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 662 371 491
10th Percentile £13.50 £16.85 £16.75
25th Percentile £18.05 £22.50 £20.51
Median hourly rate £26.89 £35.00 £43.33
Median % change year-on-year -23.17% -19.22% +23.80%
75th Percentile £56.00 £66.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.16 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.50 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -18.46% -29.16% +58.75%

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 December 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 3 December 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 -118 191 £550 -4.35% 82
UK excluding London -49 142 £525 -8.70% 63
London -83 75 £601 +0.17% 40
North of England -24 64 £475 -6.40% 11
Work from Home -55 60 £575 -3.04% 164
Yorkshire +3 49 £488 -7.14% 3
Scotland +17 30 £500 -13.46% 4
Midlands -17 21 £530 +0.95% 5
West Midlands -17 15 £530 -18.46% 2
South East -55 15 £525 -8.70% 36
North West -37 14 £450 -10.00% 4
South West +5 11 £650 +13.04% 5
East of England -21 9 £413 -31.25% 1
East Midlands -16 6 £631 +28.78% 2
Wales -2 3 £214 -65.12% 2
North East -5 2 - - 4

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 6 (2.50%) Confluence
1 6 (2.50%) OpenStack
2 3 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (1.25%) SAS
3 1 (0.42%) Apache
3 1 (0.42%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.42%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (2.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (2.08%) Weka
3 3 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.42%) Adobe Premiere
4 1 (0.42%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 29 (12.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (2.92%) SAP ERP
3 4 (1.67%) SAP FI
4 3 (1.25%) SAP CO
4 3 (1.25%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.42%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.42%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 129 (53.75%) AWS
2 96 (40.00%) Azure
3 85 (35.42%) GCP
4 38 (15.83%) Serverless
5 29 (12.08%) GitHub
6 18 (7.50%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (7.08%) Azure DevOps
8 12 (5.00%) SaaS
9 11 (4.58%) SuccessFactors
10 9 (3.75%) AWS KMS
11 7 (2.92%) Entra ID
11 7 (2.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 7 (2.92%) IaaS
12 6 (2.50%) Cloud Computing
12 6 (2.50%) OCI
12 6 (2.50%) PaaS
12 6 (2.50%) Power Platform
13 5 (2.08%) GitHub Copilot
13 5 (2.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 4 (1.67%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 22 (9.17%) Firewall
2 16 (6.67%) WAN
3 14 (5.83%) Network Security
4 12 (5.00%) VPN
5 9 (3.75%) TCP/IP
6 7 (2.92%) SD-WAN
7 5 (2.08%) Internet
8 4 (1.67%) DNS
8 4 (1.67%) LAN
8 4 (1.67%) VLAN
9 3 (1.25%) Kerberos
9 3 (1.25%) VXLAN
10 2 (0.83%) BGP
10 2 (0.83%) Cisco Nexus
10 2 (0.83%) IOS XR
10 2 (0.83%) Junos
10 2 (0.83%) Multicast
10 2 (0.83%) NX-OS
10 2 (0.83%) OSPF
10 2 (0.83%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (17.92%) NoSQL
2 16 (6.67%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (5.00%) MongoDB
4 7 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (2.50%) Power BI
5 6 (2.50%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.67%) BigQuery
6 4 (1.67%) Data Mining
6 4 (1.67%) Oracle Database
6 4 (1.67%) SQL Server
7 2 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
7 2 (0.83%) Apache Cassandra
7 2 (0.83%) MySQL
7 2 (0.83%) RDBMS
7 2 (0.83%) Redis
7 2 (0.83%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.42%) Big Data
8 1 (0.42%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.42%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 52 (21.67%) Jenkins
2 46 (19.17%) GitLab
3 30 (12.50%) Liquibase
4 24 (10.00%) JIRA
5 18 (7.50%) Git
6 9 (3.75%) Bitbucket
6 9 (3.75%) IntelliJ
6 9 (3.75%) Visual Studio Code
7 8 (3.33%) PyCharm
7 8 (3.33%) Visual Studio
8 4 (1.67%) TeamCity
9 3 (1.25%) Postman
9 3 (1.25%) Vite
10 2 (0.83%) JUnit
10 2 (0.83%) Mocha
11 1 (0.42%) Spinnaker
General
1 101 (42.08%) Finance
2 81 (33.75%) Social Skills
3 47 (19.58%) Banking
4 37 (15.42%) Public Sector
5 28 (11.67%) Financial Institution
6 25 (10.42%) Analytical Skills
7 14 (5.83%) Local Government
8 12 (5.00%) Presentation Skills
9 9 (3.75%) Influencing Skills
10 8 (3.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (2.08%) Law
12 4 (1.67%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.67%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.67%) Police
13 3 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
13 3 (1.25%) Publishing
14 2 (0.83%) Billing
14 2 (0.83%) Digital Health
14 2 (0.83%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.83%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 42 (17.50%) Architect
2 39 (16.25%) Senior
3 31 (12.92%) Cloud Engineer
4 25 (10.42%) DevOps Engineer
5 23 (9.58%) Developer
5 23 (9.58%) Software Engineer
6 19 (7.92%) AWS Engineer
6 19 (7.92%) GCP Engineer
7 17 (7.08%) Senior Software Engineer
8 15 (6.25%) Analyst
9 12 (5.00%) Consultant
9 12 (5.00%) Java Developer
9 12 (5.00%) Python Engineer
9 12 (5.00%) Solutions Architect
10 10 (4.17%) AWS Software Engineer
11 9 (3.75%) AWS DevOps
11 9 (3.75%) Lead
11 9 (3.75%) SAP Manager
11 9 (3.75%) Security Architect
12 8 (3.33%) Cloud Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (20.83%) REST
2 37 (15.42%) RESTful
3 35 (14.58%) Elastic Stack
4 11 (4.58%) Spring
4 11 (4.58%) Spring Boot
5 9 (3.75%) React
6 7 (2.92%) Kafka
7 6 (2.50%) AngularJS
7 6 (2.50%) Middleware
8 5 (2.08%) GraphQL
9 4 (1.67%) JSON
9 4 (1.67%) Node.js
9 4 (1.67%) SAP Fiori
10 3 (1.25%) JWT
10 3 (1.25%) Next.js
10 3 (1.25%) NumPy
10 3 (1.25%) OAuth
10 3 (1.25%) Oracle Fusion
10 3 (1.25%) Pandas
10 3 (1.25%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 52 (21.67%) Cloud Native
2 33 (13.75%) Distributed Systems
3 23 (9.58%) Data Centre
4 15 (6.25%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (5.00%) Product Ownership
6 10 (4.17%) Private Cloud
7 8 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (3.33%) Security Posture
8 7 (2.92%) Cloud Security Posture
8 7 (2.92%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (2.50%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (2.50%) Mainframe
9 6 (2.50%) Replication
10 5 (2.08%) Distributed Applications
10 5 (2.08%) Grid Computing
10 5 (2.08%) PKI
11 4 (1.67%) Virtual Team
12 3 (1.25%) Data Structures
12 3 (1.25%) Management Information System
12 3 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 65 (27.08%) Linux
2 31 (12.92%) Windows
3 7 (2.92%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (1.25%) Unix
5 3 (1.25%) Windows Server 2016
5 3 (1.25%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.83%) VMS
7 1 (0.42%) CentOS
7 1 (0.42%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.42%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (42.92%) Agile
2 101 (42.08%) DevOps
3 97 (40.42%) CI/CD
4 76 (31.67%) Infrastructure as Code
5 55 (22.92%) Containerisation
6 45 (18.75%) Microservices
7 43 (17.92%) Software Engineering
8 41 (17.08%) Computer Science
9 38 (15.83%) High Availability
10 37 (15.42%) Cost Optimisation
11 35 (14.58%) Cybersecurity
12 34 (14.17%) Infrastructure Automation
13 32 (13.33%) Continuous Integration
13 32 (13.33%) Cryptography
13 32 (13.33%) Migration
13 32 (13.33%) Root Cause Analysis
14 31 (12.92%) Continuous Delivery
14 31 (12.92%) Non-Functional Testing
14 31 (12.92%) SDLC
14 31 (12.92%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 83 (34.58%) Python
2 49 (20.42%) Java
3 48 (20.00%) Go
4 14 (5.83%) SQL
5 11 (4.58%) TypeScript
6 9 (3.75%) C#
7 6 (2.50%) Bash
8 4 (1.67%) JavaScript
8 4 (1.67%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.42%) ABAP
9 1 (0.42%) Bicep
9 1 (0.42%) C++
9 1 (0.42%) CodeQL
9 1 (0.42%) DAML
9 1 (0.42%) Perl
9 1 (0.42%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.42%) Ruby
9 1 (0.42%) Scala
9 1 (0.42%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 51 (21.25%) Degree
2 48 (20.00%) Security Cleared
3 38 (15.83%) Computer Science Degree
4 33 (13.75%) Master's Degree
5 30 (12.50%) SC Cleared
6 23 (9.58%) AWS Certification
7 14 (5.83%) Azure Certification
8 9 (3.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (2.92%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
10 6 (2.50%) CISSP
10 6 (2.50%) ISTQB
11 5 (2.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 5 (2.08%) CCSP
11 5 (2.08%) DV Cleared
12 4 (1.67%) AWS Certified Developer
12 4 (1.67%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
13 3 (1.25%) SAP Certification
14 2 (0.83%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (3.33%) GDPR
3 7 (2.92%) NIST
3 7 (2.92%) QA
4 6 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 6 (2.50%) NCSC
4 6 (2.50%) PCI DSS
5 5 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27005
5 5 (2.08%) PSD2
6 4 (1.67%) SLA
7 2 (0.83%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.83%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.83%) WCAG
8 1 (0.42%) GAMP
8 1 (0.42%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 61 (25.42%) Docker
2 8 (3.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.92%) Hyper-V
4 5 (2.08%) Active Directory
4 5 (2.08%) GPFS
4 5 (2.08%) Lustre
4 5 (2.08%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (2.08%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (1.67%) VMware NSX
5 4 (1.67%) vSphere
6 1 (0.42%) Ceph
6 1 (0.42%) IAG
6 1 (0.42%) KVM
6 1 (0.42%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 87 (36.25%) Terraform
2 82 (34.17%) Kubernetes
3 61 (25.42%) Ansible
4 38 (15.83%) Grafana
5 37 (15.42%) Prometheus
6 4 (1.67%) Istio
7 3 (1.25%) Kubeflow
7 3 (1.25%) vCenter Server
8 2 (0.83%) vMotion
9 1 (0.42%) Consul
9 1 (0.42%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.42%) Demisto
9 1 (0.42%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.42%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.42%) Packer
9 1 (0.42%) Puppet
9 1 (0.42%) Salt
Vendors
1 37 (15.42%) Splunk
2 33 (13.75%) SAP
3 27 (11.25%) Microsoft
4 26 (10.83%) Google
5 17 (7.08%) Oracle
5 17 (7.08%) VMware
6 9 (3.75%) Cisco
7 6 (2.50%) Palo Alto
7 6 (2.50%) ServiceNow
8 5 (2.08%) Ariba
8 5 (2.08%) Aruba
9 4 (1.67%) NetApp
10 3 (1.25%) Fortinet
10 3 (1.25%) Mercator
10 3 (1.25%) MuleSoft
11 2 (0.83%) Arista
11 2 (0.83%) Brocade
11 2 (0.83%) Extreme Networks
11 2 (0.83%) Juniper
11 2 (0.83%) Veeam