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

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 346 240 263
Rank change year-on-year -106 +23 -46
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 256 354 389
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 1.04% 0.88%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.99% 3.25% 2.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 168 227 262
10th Percentile £396 £441 £413
25th Percentile £450 £509 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £758 £783 £752
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £575 £582
% change year-on-year -8.70% -1.20% +2.11%
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% +48.57%
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 12,884 10,892 13,886
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.95% 31.96% 31.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,046 6,517 9,247
10th Percentile £275 £270 £263
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.51% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £663 £668
90th Percentile £738 £775 £769
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 649 340 494
10th Percentile £13.84 £17.48 £16.50
25th Percentile £18.00 £22.72 £20.50
Median hourly rate £27.21 £32.75 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.92% -22.94% +21.43%
75th Percentile £60.25 £64.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £78.47 £76.68
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.21 £32.50 £45.21
% change year-on-year -16.28% -28.11% +53.25%

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 20 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 20 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 -110 202 £558 -7.08% 56
UK excluding London -41 144 £525 -8.70% 38
London -68 81 £602 +0.33% 29
North of England -9 66 £476 -4.90% 9
Work from Home -50 66 £575 -5.93% 23
Yorkshire -13 49 £488 -5.71% 3
Scotland +17 28 £500 -13.46% 1
Midlands -22 23 £530 +7.07% 1
North West -21 16 £450 -10.00% 4
West Midlands -19 15 £530 -18.46% 1
South East -78 15 £524 -10.13% 17
South West 0 11 £650 +13.04% 9
East of England -27 9 £413 -31.25% 2
East Midlands -14 8 £631 +42.12%
Wales +2 3 £214 -64.40%
North East -7 2 - - 2

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 (2.34%) Confluence
1 6 (2.34%) OpenStack
2 4 (1.56%) SAS
3 3 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.39%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (2.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.95%) Weka
3 3 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.39%) Adobe Premiere
4 1 (0.39%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 30 (11.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (2.73%) SAP ERP
3 5 (1.95%) SAP FI
4 4 (1.56%) Oracle ERP
4 4 (1.56%) SAP CO
4 4 (1.56%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.39%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.39%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.39%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 126 (49.22%) AWS
2 98 (38.28%) Azure
3 87 (33.98%) GCP
4 38 (14.84%) Serverless
5 25 (9.77%) GitHub
6 15 (5.86%) Azure DevOps
7 13 (5.08%) GitHub Actions
7 13 (5.08%) IaaS
7 13 (5.08%) OCI
8 11 (4.30%) PaaS
8 11 (4.30%) SaaS
9 9 (3.52%) AWS KMS
9 9 (3.52%) SuccessFactors
10 8 (3.13%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 6 (2.34%) Cloud Computing
11 6 (2.34%) Entra ID
11 6 (2.34%) Microsoft 365
11 6 (2.34%) Power Platform
12 5 (1.95%) GitHub Copilot
12 5 (1.95%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 24 (9.38%) Firewall
2 15 (5.86%) Network Security
3 14 (5.47%) WAN
4 12 (4.69%) VPN
5 11 (4.30%) TCP/IP
6 7 (2.73%) DNS
6 7 (2.73%) SD-WAN
7 6 (2.34%) Internet
8 4 (1.56%) Kerberos
9 3 (1.17%) DHCP
9 3 (1.17%) LAN
9 3 (1.17%) VXLAN
10 2 (0.78%) Cisco IOS
10 2 (0.78%) Ethernet VPN
10 2 (0.78%) IOS XR
10 2 (0.78%) IPv6
10 2 (0.78%) Multicast
10 2 (0.78%) NX-OS
10 2 (0.78%) OSPF
10 2 (0.78%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (16.80%) NoSQL
2 16 (6.25%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (4.69%) MongoDB
4 7 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
4 7 (2.73%) Relational Database
5 6 (2.34%) Power BI
6 5 (1.95%) Oracle Database
6 5 (1.95%) SQL Server
7 4 (1.56%) Data Mining
8 3 (1.17%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.78%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.78%) MySQL
9 2 (0.78%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.78%) Redis
9 2 (0.78%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
10 1 (0.39%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.39%) Oracle Database 12c
10 1 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 52 (20.31%) Jenkins
2 46 (17.97%) GitLab
3 30 (11.72%) Liquibase
4 23 (8.98%) JIRA
5 16 (6.25%) Git
6 9 (3.52%) Postman
7 7 (2.73%) Bitbucket
7 7 (2.73%) IntelliJ
7 7 (2.73%) Visual Studio Code
8 6 (2.34%) PyCharm
8 6 (2.34%) Visual Studio
9 3 (1.17%) SoapUI
9 3 (1.17%) TeamCity
9 3 (1.17%) Vite
10 2 (0.78%) JUnit
10 2 (0.78%) Mocha
11 1 (0.39%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.39%) Spinnaker
General
1 103 (40.23%) Finance
2 86 (33.59%) Social Skills
3 48 (18.75%) Banking
4 36 (14.06%) Public Sector
5 27 (10.55%) Financial Institution
6 26 (10.16%) Analytical Skills
7 12 (4.69%) Local Government
8 11 (4.30%) Presentation Skills
9 8 (3.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 8 (3.13%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.95%) Law
10 5 (1.95%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.56%) Police
12 3 (1.17%) Billing
12 3 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (1.17%) German Language
12 3 (1.17%) Investment Banking
12 3 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.78%) Publishing
13 2 (0.78%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 42 (16.41%) Architect
2 38 (14.84%) Senior
3 35 (13.67%) Cloud Engineer
4 24 (9.38%) DevOps Engineer
4 24 (9.38%) Software Engineer
5 21 (8.20%) Developer
6 20 (7.81%) GCP Engineer
7 18 (7.03%) AWS Engineer
8 17 (6.64%) Senior Software Engineer
9 14 (5.47%) Analyst
10 13 (5.08%) Solutions Architect
11 12 (4.69%) SAP Manager
12 11 (4.30%) Consultant
12 11 (4.30%) Java Developer
12 11 (4.30%) Python Engineer
13 10 (3.91%) AWS Software Engineer
14 9 (3.52%) Lead
15 8 (3.13%) Cloud Software Engineer
15 8 (3.13%) Security Architect
15 8 (3.13%) Senior Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (22.66%) REST
2 38 (14.84%) RESTful
3 35 (13.67%) Elastic Stack
4 12 (4.69%) Spring Boot
5 11 (4.30%) Spring
6 10 (3.91%) JSON
7 9 (3.52%) OAuth
7 9 (3.52%) SOAP
8 8 (3.13%) JWT
8 8 (3.13%) Kafka
8 8 (3.13%) Oracle Fusion
8 8 (3.13%) Web Services
8 8 (3.13%) XML
8 8 (3.13%) XSLT
9 7 (2.73%) AngularJS
9 7 (2.73%) Middleware
9 7 (2.73%) React
10 5 (1.95%) GraphQL
11 4 (1.56%) SAP Fiori
12 3 (1.17%) Next.js
Miscellaneous
1 51 (19.92%) Cloud Native
2 32 (12.50%) Distributed Systems
3 24 (9.38%) Data Centre
4 15 (5.86%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (5.08%) Private Cloud
6 12 (4.69%) Product Ownership
7 10 (3.91%) Security Posture
8 9 (3.52%) Cloud Security Posture
9 7 (2.73%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
10 6 (2.34%) Mainframe
11 5 (1.95%) Distributed Applications
11 5 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
11 5 (1.95%) Grid Computing
11 5 (1.95%) PKI
11 5 (1.95%) Replication
12 3 (1.17%) Data Structures
12 3 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
13 2 (0.78%) Legacy Applications
13 2 (0.78%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 63 (24.61%) Linux
2 30 (11.72%) Windows
3 9 (3.52%) Windows Server
4 5 (1.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (1.95%) Unix
4 5 (1.95%) Windows Server 2019
5 3 (1.17%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.78%) VMS
6 2 (0.78%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (0.39%) CentOS
7 1 (0.39%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.39%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 109 (42.58%) DevOps
2 102 (39.84%) Agile
3 93 (36.33%) CI/CD
4 76 (29.69%) Infrastructure as Code
5 57 (22.27%) Containerisation
6 48 (18.75%) Microservices
7 43 (16.80%) Software Engineering
8 38 (14.84%) Computer Science
9 37 (14.45%) Cost Optimisation
10 36 (14.06%) High Availability
11 35 (13.67%) Cybersecurity
11 35 (13.67%) Infrastructure Automation
11 35 (13.67%) Migration
12 34 (13.28%) Root Cause Analysis
13 33 (12.89%) Problem-Solving
14 32 (12.50%) Continuous Integration
14 32 (12.50%) Cryptography
15 31 (12.11%) Change Management
15 31 (12.11%) Continuous Delivery
15 31 (12.11%) Non-Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 83 (32.42%) Python
2 47 (18.36%) Java
3 46 (17.97%) Go
4 16 (6.25%) SQL
5 9 (3.52%) TypeScript
6 7 (2.73%) C#
7 6 (2.34%) Bash
7 6 (2.34%) PowerShell
8 3 (1.17%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.78%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.39%) ABAP
10 1 (0.39%) Bicep
10 1 (0.39%) C++
10 1 (0.39%) DAML
10 1 (0.39%) Perl
10 1 (0.39%) Ruby
10 1 (0.39%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.39%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 56 (21.88%) Security Cleared
2 49 (19.14%) Degree
3 37 (14.45%) Computer Science Degree
4 36 (14.06%) SC Cleared
5 32 (12.50%) Master's Degree
6 22 (8.59%) AWS Certification
7 13 (5.08%) Azure Certification
8 9 (3.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 6 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 5 (1.95%) CCSP
10 5 (1.95%) CISSP
10 5 (1.95%) DV Cleared
11 4 (1.56%) AWS Certified Developer
11 4 (1.56%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 4 (1.56%) ISTQB
12 3 (1.17%) SAP Certification
13 2 (0.78%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.78%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (3.13%) GDPR
3 6 (2.34%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
3 6 (2.34%) NCSC
3 6 (2.34%) NIST
3 6 (2.34%) PCI DSS
3 6 (2.34%) QA
3 6 (2.34%) SLA
4 5 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27005
4 5 (1.95%) PSD2
5 2 (0.78%) Accessibility
5 2 (0.78%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.78%) WCAG
6 1 (0.39%) COBIT
6 1 (0.39%) GAMP
6 1 (0.39%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.39%) ISO 15022
6 1 (0.39%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 63 (24.61%) Docker
2 9 (3.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (3.13%) Hyper-V
4 6 (2.34%) Active Directory
5 5 (1.95%) GPFS
5 5 (1.95%) Lustre
5 5 (1.95%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 5 (1.95%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.95%) vSphere
6 3 (1.17%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.39%) Ceph
8 1 (0.39%) IAG
8 1 (0.39%) KVM
8 1 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.39%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 84 (32.81%) Terraform
2 83 (32.42%) Kubernetes
3 60 (23.44%) Ansible
4 37 (14.45%) Grafana
4 37 (14.45%) Prometheus
5 5 (1.95%) Istio
6 3 (1.17%) Kubeflow
6 3 (1.17%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (1.17%) vCenter Server
7 2 (0.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.78%) Data Guard
7 2 (0.78%) Oracle RMAN
7 2 (0.78%) Puppet
7 2 (0.78%) SCCM
7 2 (0.78%) vMotion
8 1 (0.39%) Consul
8 1 (0.39%) Demisto
8 1 (0.39%) Packer
8 1 (0.39%) Salt
8 1 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 38 (14.84%) Splunk
2 37 (14.45%) SAP
3 26 (10.16%) Google
4 25 (9.77%) Microsoft
4 25 (9.77%) Oracle
5 18 (7.03%) VMware
6 9 (3.52%) Ariba
6 9 (3.52%) ServiceNow
7 8 (3.13%) Cisco
8 6 (2.34%) Palo Alto
9 5 (1.95%) Aruba
10 4 (1.56%) MuleSoft
11 3 (1.17%) F5
11 3 (1.17%) Fortinet
11 3 (1.17%) Mercator
11 3 (1.17%) Veeam
12 2 (0.78%) Arista
12 2 (0.78%) Brocade
12 2 (0.78%) Extreme Networks
12 2 (0.78%) IBM