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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 302 258 301
Rank change year-on-year -44 +43 -93
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 347 296 334
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.81% 1.01% 0.75%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.45% 2.99% 2.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 221 205 224
10th Percentile £395 £446 £469
25th Percentile £471 £525 £512
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £608 £585
Median % change year-on-year -9.47% +3.85% -4.88%
75th Percentile £663 £688 £700
90th Percentile £700 £780 £796
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £596 £582
% change year-on-year -9.85% +2.45% +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 14,184 9,892 13,540
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.22% 33.61% 30.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,915 6,217 8,666
10th Percentile £288 £278 £255
25th Percentile £408 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 668 346 876
10th Percentile £15.31 £16.95 £12.56
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.33 £15.75
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +14.04% +26.75%
75th Percentile £67.25 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £83.20 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.32 £31.76 £26.66
% change year-on-year +14.36% +19.13% +21.18%

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 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 12 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 -55 288 £550 -8.90% 108
UK excluding London -29 177 £538 -9.85% 71
London -70 115 £600 -2.04% 49
Work from Home -14 81 £588 -4.47% 76
North of England -13 71 £525 -9.87% 19
Yorkshire -31 40 £525 -12.32% 5
Midlands -27 39 £575 +17.35% 11
South East -57 32 £524 -13.83% 18
North West -18 30 £450 -15.49% 6
South West +2 26 £588 -7.84% 14
East Midlands -12 23 £600 +35.14% 4
West Midlands -49 14 £525 -34.38% 7
Scotland -8 9 £543 -3.64% 5
East of England -31 6 £413 -31.25% 2
Wales -6 3 £214 -63.98% 4
North East -12 2 - - 8
Northern Ireland - 1 £385 -

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 12 (3.46%) Confluence
2 7 (2.02%) OpenStack
2 7 (2.02%) SAS
3 6 (1.73%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.86%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.58%) Apache
5 2 (0.58%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.58%) Palantir Foundry
6 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 5 (1.44%) Weka
2 3 (0.86%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.29%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 60 (17.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.88%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (1.44%) SAP FI
4 4 (1.15%) SAP CO
4 4 (1.15%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.58%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.58%) SAP SD
6 1 (0.29%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 131 (37.75%) Azure
2 118 (34.01%) AWS
3 111 (31.99%) GCP
4 34 (9.80%) GitHub
5 28 (8.07%) Serverless
6 22 (6.34%) OCI
7 21 (6.05%) SuccessFactors
8 20 (5.76%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 18 (5.19%) IaaS
9 18 (5.19%) PaaS
10 14 (4.03%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (3.46%) Cloud Computing
11 12 (3.46%) SaaS
12 10 (2.88%) AWS KMS
12 10 (2.88%) GitHub Actions
12 10 (2.88%) Power Platform
13 8 (2.31%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (2.02%) Microsoft 365
15 6 (1.73%) Nutanix
16 5 (1.44%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 35 (10.09%) Firewall
2 27 (7.78%) Network Security
3 26 (7.49%) DNS
4 22 (6.34%) VPN
5 16 (4.61%) TCP/IP
5 16 (4.61%) WAN
6 8 (2.31%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 8 (2.31%) LAN
7 7 (2.02%) Internet
7 7 (2.02%) Kerberos
7 7 (2.02%) SD-WAN
8 5 (1.44%) DHCP
9 4 (1.15%) Multicast
9 4 (1.15%) NetScaler
9 4 (1.15%) Wireless
10 3 (0.86%) BGP
10 3 (0.86%) MPLS
10 3 (0.86%) OSPF
10 3 (0.86%) VXLAN
11 2 (0.58%) IPv6
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (6.63%) NoSQL
2 16 (4.61%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (2.88%) Data Warehouse
4 9 (2.59%) Oracle Database
4 9 (2.59%) Power BI
5 6 (1.73%) BigQuery
6 4 (1.15%) MongoDB
6 4 (1.15%) Oracle Exadata
6 4 (1.15%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.15%) SQL Server
7 3 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (0.86%) Data Vault
7 3 (0.86%) Delta Lake
8 2 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.58%) Redis
9 1 (0.29%) Apache Cassandra
9 1 (0.29%) Data Mining
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle Database 12c
9 1 (0.29%) RDBMS
9 1 (0.29%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 52 (14.99%) Jenkins
2 43 (12.39%) GitLab
3 24 (6.92%) JIRA
4 14 (4.03%) Liquibase
4 14 (4.03%) Postman
5 11 (3.17%) Git
6 9 (2.59%) SoapUI
7 4 (1.15%) TeamCity
8 2 (0.58%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.58%) Mocha
9 1 (0.29%) Ant
9 1 (0.29%) JUnit
9 1 (0.29%) Maven
9 1 (0.29%) MSI
9 1 (0.29%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.29%) Snyk
9 1 (0.29%) Vite
General
1 106 (30.55%) Finance
2 94 (27.09%) Social Skills
3 60 (17.29%) Public Sector
4 46 (13.26%) Banking
5 22 (6.34%) Local Government
6 19 (5.48%) Analytical Skills
7 18 (5.19%) Financial Institution
8 11 (3.17%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.73%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.73%) Manufacturing
10 5 (1.44%) General Ledger
10 5 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (1.44%) Law
11 4 (1.15%) German Language
11 4 (1.15%) Military
11 4 (1.15%) Police
11 4 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.86%) Documentation Skills
13 2 (0.58%) Digital Health
13 2 (0.58%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 82 (23.63%) Architect
2 45 (12.97%) Senior
3 39 (11.24%) Cloud Engineer
4 34 (9.80%) GCP Engineer
5 31 (8.93%) Lead
6 26 (7.49%) Solutions Architect
7 19 (5.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 17 (4.90%) DevOps Engineer
9 15 (4.32%) AWS Engineer
9 15 (4.32%) Consultant
9 15 (4.32%) Software Engineer
10 13 (3.75%) Analyst
10 13 (3.75%) Senior Cloud Engineer
11 12 (3.46%) Data Engineer
11 12 (3.46%) Developer
11 12 (3.46%) SAP Architect
11 12 (3.46%) Technical Architect
12 11 (3.17%) Cloud Architect
12 11 (3.17%) Infrastructure Architect
12 11 (3.17%) SAP Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (13.54%) REST
2 21 (6.05%) Elastic Stack
2 21 (6.05%) Middleware
3 20 (5.76%) RESTful
4 16 (4.61%) JSON
4 16 (4.61%) OAuth
5 15 (4.32%) SOAP
6 14 (4.03%) JWT
7 13 (3.75%) Oracle Fusion
7 13 (3.75%) XML
7 13 (3.75%) XSLT
8 12 (3.46%) Web Services
9 9 (2.59%) Spring Boot
10 7 (2.02%) Kafka
11 6 (1.73%) React
12 5 (1.44%) NumPy
12 5 (1.44%) Pandas
13 4 (1.15%) PyTorch
13 4 (1.15%) Spring
13 4 (1.15%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 45 (12.97%) Cloud Native
2 20 (5.76%) Data Centre
2 20 (5.76%) Distributed Systems
3 17 (4.90%) Private Cloud
4 12 (3.46%) Hybrid Cloud
5 9 (2.59%) Product Ownership
6 7 (2.02%) PKI
7 6 (1.73%) Grid Computing
7 6 (1.73%) Legacy Applications
7 6 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (1.73%) Security Posture
8 5 (1.44%) Cloud Security Posture
8 5 (1.44%) Data Structures
9 4 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (1.15%) Virtual Team
10 3 (0.86%) Enterprise Software
10 3 (0.86%) Greenfield Project
10 3 (0.86%) NHS
10 3 (0.86%) Reinsurance
11 2 (0.58%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 60 (17.29%) Linux
2 26 (7.49%) Windows
3 9 (2.59%) Unix
3 9 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 8 (2.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 8 (2.31%) Windows Server 2019
5 4 (1.15%) VMS
5 4 (1.15%) Windows Server 2012
5 4 (1.15%) Windows Server 2016
6 3 (0.86%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.58%) CentOS
8 1 (0.29%) AIX
8 1 (0.29%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (36.02%) DevOps
2 90 (25.94%) CI/CD
3 87 (25.07%) Agile
4 84 (24.21%) Infrastructure as Code
5 69 (19.88%) Migration
6 55 (15.85%) Stakeholder Management
7 49 (14.12%) Containerisation
8 43 (12.39%) Microservices
9 40 (11.53%) Analytics
10 34 (9.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 33 (9.51%) Cybersecurity
12 30 (8.65%) Infrastructure Automation
13 27 (7.78%) Root Cause Analysis
13 27 (7.78%) Software Engineering
14 26 (7.49%) Problem-Solving
14 26 (7.49%) User Acceptance Testing
15 25 (7.20%) Cloud Security
15 25 (7.20%) Continuous Improvement
15 25 (7.20%) Project Delivery
16 23 (6.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 84 (24.21%) Python
2 24 (6.92%) Go
2 24 (6.92%) SQL
3 20 (5.76%) Java
4 12 (3.46%) PowerShell
5 10 (2.88%) Bash
6 6 (1.73%) JavaScript
7 5 (1.44%) TypeScript
8 4 (1.15%) PL/SQL
9 3 (0.86%) Ruby
9 3 (0.86%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.58%) Bicep
10 2 (0.58%) C++
11 1 (0.29%) ABAP
11 1 (0.29%) Perl
11 1 (0.29%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 87 (25.07%) Security Cleared
2 63 (18.16%) SC Cleared
3 32 (9.22%) Degree
4 20 (5.76%) Computer Science Degree
4 20 (5.76%) Master's Degree
5 15 (4.32%) AWS Certification
6 12 (3.46%) Cisco Certification
7 10 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (2.31%) Azure Certification
8 8 (2.31%) CISSP
8 8 (2.31%) DV Cleared
8 8 (2.31%) ISTQB
8 8 (2.31%) SAP Certification
9 7 (2.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 6 (1.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 6 (1.73%) CISM
11 5 (1.44%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 5 (1.44%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 4 (1.15%) CCNP
12 4 (1.15%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (4.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 12 (3.46%) NCSC
2 12 (3.46%) QA
3 10 (2.88%) GDPR
4 8 (2.31%) NIST
5 7 (2.02%) SLA
6 5 (1.44%) GRC
6 5 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
6 5 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27005
7 3 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.86%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.58%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.58%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.58%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.58%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.58%) PSD2
8 2 (0.58%) WCAG
9 1 (0.29%) COBIT
9 1 (0.29%) RMADS
System Software
1 47 (13.54%) Docker
2 17 (4.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (4.61%) Hyper-V
4 13 (3.75%) Active Directory
5 6 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.73%) vSphere
6 5 (1.44%) GPFS
6 5 (1.44%) Lustre
6 5 (1.44%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 4 (1.15%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (1.15%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.86%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.58%) NFS
9 2 (0.58%) Postfix
9 2 (0.58%) Varnish
10 1 (0.29%) Ceph
10 1 (0.29%) KVM
10 1 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.29%) QEMU
10 1 (0.29%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 81 (23.34%) Kubernetes
1 81 (23.34%) Terraform
2 54 (15.56%) Ansible
3 25 (7.20%) Prometheus
4 23 (6.63%) Grafana
5 17 (4.90%) Istio
6 9 (2.59%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (1.73%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (1.44%) Data Guard
8 5 (1.44%) Kubeflow
8 5 (1.44%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (1.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.15%) SCCM
10 3 (0.86%) Puppet
11 2 (0.58%) Argo
11 2 (0.58%) HAProxy
11 2 (0.58%) Red Hat Satellite
11 2 (0.58%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.58%) vMotion
12 1 (0.29%) Packer
Vendors
1 67 (19.31%) SAP
2 53 (15.27%) Google
3 37 (10.66%) Oracle
4 30 (8.65%) VMware
5 25 (7.20%) Splunk
6 22 (6.34%) Microsoft
7 14 (4.03%) Ariba
7 14 (4.03%) F5
8 13 (3.75%) ServiceNow
9 9 (2.59%) Cisco
9 9 (2.59%) Palo Alto
10 8 (2.31%) MuleSoft
11 7 (2.02%) Red Hat
12 5 (1.44%) Aruba
12 5 (1.44%) Databricks
12 5 (1.44%) Fortinet
13 4 (1.15%) Veeam
14 3 (0.86%) Arista
14 3 (0.86%) Informatica
14 3 (0.86%) Juniper