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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 328 248 283
Rank change year-on-year -80 +35 -70
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 280 326 339
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.75% 1.02% 0.80%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.20% 3.17% 2.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 178 213 221
10th Percentile £361 £450 £413
25th Percentile £438 £525 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £600 £582
Median % change year-on-year -10.42% +3.09% -3.00%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £700
90th Percentile £738 £788 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £581 £582
% change year-on-year -9.56% -0.26% +1.22%
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 12,745 10,268 13,171
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.27% 32.23% 30.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,049 6,101 8,667
10th Percentile £278 £263 £263
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £531 £549
Median % change year-on-year -5.75% -3.37% -1.79%
75th Percentile £625 £656 £660
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 610 321 569
10th Percentile £14.25 £18.50 £15.31
25th Percentile £18.23 £23.59 £18.93
Median hourly rate £27.50 £34.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.29% -8.00% +57.63%
75th Percentile £61.07 £64.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.30 £80.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £32.50 £41.23
% change year-on-year -15.83% -21.17% +99.18%

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 16 January 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 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 16 January 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 -79 231 £537 -10.46% 113
UK excluding London -33 150 £525 -9.56% 90
London -57 94 £600 - 37
North of England -5 69 £482 -9.78% 24
Work from Home -43 67 £575 -6.12% 32
Yorkshire -15 47 £515 -0.39% 13
South East -56 24 £522 -15.81% 30
Midlands -29 22 £528 +7.65% 10
North West -11 21 £450 -16.28% 5
Scotland +3 18 £450 -22.41% 2
South West -2 16 £650 +1.96% 14
West Midlands -26 14 £528 -34.06% 2
East of England -23 9 £413 -31.25% 7
East Midlands -21 8 £631 +42.12% 7
Wales 0 3 £214 -64.40% 3
North East -12 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 6 (2.14%) OpenStack
1 6 (2.14%) SAS
2 5 (1.79%) Confluence
3 3 (1.07%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.36%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (2.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.79%) Weka
3 3 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.36%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.36%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 32 (11.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (2.50%) SAP ERP
3 6 (2.14%) Oracle ERP
4 5 (1.79%) SAP FI
5 4 (1.43%) SAP CO
5 4 (1.43%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.36%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.36%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 117 (41.79%) AWS
2 116 (41.43%) Azure
3 104 (37.14%) GCP
4 36 (12.86%) Serverless
5 23 (8.21%) GitHub
6 17 (6.07%) OCI
7 14 (5.00%) Azure DevOps
7 14 (5.00%) IaaS
8 12 (4.29%) PaaS
9 11 (3.93%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 11 (3.93%) SuccessFactors
10 10 (3.57%) Cloud Computing
10 10 (3.57%) GitHub Actions
11 9 (3.21%) AWS KMS
11 9 (3.21%) SaaS
12 6 (2.14%) Entra ID
12 6 (2.14%) Microsoft 365
12 6 (2.14%) Power Platform
13 5 (1.79%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 4 (1.43%) iPaaS
Communications & Networking
1 29 (10.36%) Firewall
2 20 (7.14%) Network Security
3 18 (6.43%) VPN
4 14 (5.00%) WAN
5 13 (4.64%) DNS
6 11 (3.93%) TCP/IP
7 7 (2.50%) SD-WAN
8 6 (2.14%) Internet
8 6 (2.14%) Kerberos
9 4 (1.43%) LAN
10 3 (1.07%) VXLAN
11 2 (0.71%) BGP
11 2 (0.71%) Broadband
11 2 (0.71%) DHCP
11 2 (0.71%) DMZ
11 2 (0.71%) IOS XR
11 2 (0.71%) IPv6
11 2 (0.71%) Junos
11 2 (0.71%) NX-OS
11 2 (0.71%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (14.29%) NoSQL
2 16 (5.71%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (3.57%) MongoDB
4 8 (2.86%) Data Warehouse
4 8 (2.86%) Relational Database
4 8 (2.86%) SQL Server
5 7 (2.50%) Oracle Database
6 6 (2.14%) Power BI
7 4 (1.43%) BigQuery
7 4 (1.43%) Data Mining
8 3 (1.07%) Data Vault
8 3 (1.07%) Delta Lake
8 3 (1.07%) Oracle Exadata
9 2 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.71%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.71%) MySQL
9 2 (0.71%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.71%) Redis
9 2 (0.71%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 52 (18.57%) Jenkins
2 45 (16.07%) GitLab
3 28 (10.00%) Liquibase
4 19 (6.79%) JIRA
5 11 (3.93%) Postman
6 9 (3.21%) Git
7 4 (1.43%) SoapUI
7 4 (1.43%) TeamCity
8 2 (0.71%) JUnit
8 2 (0.71%) Mocha
8 2 (0.71%) Vite
9 1 (0.36%) Cucumber
General
1 98 (35.00%) Finance
2 84 (30.00%) Social Skills
3 51 (18.21%) Banking
4 36 (12.86%) Public Sector
5 24 (8.57%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (8.57%) Financial Institution
6 11 (3.93%) Local Government
7 10 (3.57%) Presentation Skills
8 7 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.79%) Law
9 5 (1.79%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.43%) Police
11 3 (1.07%) Billing
11 3 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.07%) General Ledger
11 3 (1.07%) German Language
11 3 (1.07%) Investment Banking
11 3 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.71%) Welsh Language
Job Titles
1 54 (19.29%) Architect
2 44 (15.71%) Senior
3 36 (12.86%) Cloud Engineer
4 26 (9.29%) GCP Engineer
5 23 (8.21%) Software Engineer
6 20 (7.14%) DevOps Engineer
7 18 (6.43%) Analyst
8 17 (6.07%) AWS Engineer
8 17 (6.07%) Senior Software Engineer
9 15 (5.36%) Developer
10 13 (4.64%) Solutions Architect
11 12 (4.29%) SAP Manager
12 10 (3.57%) AWS Software Engineer
12 10 (3.57%) Consultant
12 10 (3.57%) Infrastructure Architect
13 9 (3.21%) Cloud Architect
13 9 (3.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 9 (3.21%) Java Developer
13 9 (3.21%) Lead
13 9 (3.21%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (20.36%) REST
2 36 (12.86%) RESTful
3 33 (11.79%) Elastic Stack
4 12 (4.29%) JSON
4 12 (4.29%) OAuth
4 12 (4.29%) Spring Boot
5 11 (3.93%) JWT
5 11 (3.93%) SOAP
6 10 (3.57%) Oracle Fusion
6 10 (3.57%) XML
6 10 (3.57%) XSLT
7 9 (3.21%) Kafka
7 9 (3.21%) Spring
7 9 (3.21%) Web Services
8 7 (2.50%) Middleware
9 6 (2.14%) AngularJS
9 6 (2.14%) React
10 3 (1.07%) NumPy
10 3 (1.07%) Pandas
10 3 (1.07%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 54 (19.29%) Cloud Native
2 30 (10.71%) Distributed Systems
3 25 (8.93%) Data Centre
4 15 (5.36%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (4.64%) Private Cloud
6 10 (3.57%) Product Ownership
6 10 (3.57%) Security Posture
7 9 (3.21%) Cloud Security Posture
8 7 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (2.14%) Data Structures
9 6 (2.14%) Mainframe
10 5 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (1.79%) Grid Computing
10 5 (1.79%) PKI
11 4 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.43%) Distributed Applications
11 4 (1.43%) Legacy Applications
11 4 (1.43%) Replication
12 3 (1.07%) Reinsurance
13 2 (0.71%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 60 (21.43%) Linux
2 28 (10.00%) Windows
3 9 (3.21%) Windows Server
4 8 (2.86%) Unix
5 7 (2.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (2.14%) VMS
7 5 (1.79%) Windows Server 2019
8 3 (1.07%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.71%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.36%) CentOS
10 1 (0.36%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.36%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 113 (40.36%) DevOps
2 97 (34.64%) Agile
3 89 (31.79%) CI/CD
4 79 (28.21%) Infrastructure as Code
5 53 (18.93%) Containerisation
6 48 (17.14%) Migration
7 47 (16.79%) Microservices
8 38 (13.57%) Cybersecurity
9 37 (13.21%) Software Engineering
10 35 (12.50%) Cost Optimisation
11 34 (12.14%) Computer Science
12 32 (11.43%) Infrastructure Automation
12 32 (11.43%) Problem-Solving
12 32 (11.43%) Root Cause Analysis
13 31 (11.07%) High Availability
13 31 (11.07%) Stakeholder Management
14 30 (10.71%) Change Management
14 30 (10.71%) Cryptography
15 29 (10.36%) Continuous Delivery
15 29 (10.36%) Non-Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 81 (28.93%) Python
2 39 (13.93%) Go
3 33 (11.79%) Java
4 22 (7.86%) SQL
5 6 (2.14%) Bash
5 6 (2.14%) PowerShell
6 4 (1.43%) PL/SQL
7 3 (1.07%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.71%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.71%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.36%) ABAP
9 1 (0.36%) Bicep
9 1 (0.36%) C++
9 1 (0.36%) Perl
9 1 (0.36%) Ruby
9 1 (0.36%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 64 (22.86%) Security Cleared
2 47 (16.79%) Degree
3 41 (14.64%) SC Cleared
4 33 (11.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 30 (10.71%) Master's Degree
6 20 (7.14%) AWS Certification
7 13 (4.64%) Azure Certification
8 7 (2.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 7 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (2.14%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (2.14%) ISTQB
10 5 (1.79%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 5 (1.79%) CCSP
10 5 (1.79%) CISSP
10 5 (1.79%) DV Cleared
11 4 (1.43%) AWS Certified Developer
11 4 (1.43%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 4 (1.43%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.71%) PMP
12 2 (0.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 8 (2.86%) GDPR
3 7 (2.50%) SLA
4 6 (2.14%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 6 (2.14%) NCSC
4 6 (2.14%) NIST
4 6 (2.14%) PCI DSS
5 5 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27005
5 5 (1.79%) PSD2
5 5 (1.79%) QA
6 4 (1.43%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.71%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.71%) WCAG
8 1 (0.36%) COBIT
8 1 (0.36%) GAMP
8 1 (0.36%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.36%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.36%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 58 (20.71%) Docker
2 15 (5.36%) Hyper-V
2 15 (5.36%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (2.14%) Active Directory
4 5 (1.79%) GPFS
4 5 (1.79%) Lustre
4 5 (1.79%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 5 (1.79%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (1.43%) vSphere
6 3 (1.07%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.71%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.36%) Ceph
8 1 (0.36%) KVM
8 1 (0.36%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 80 (28.57%) Terraform
2 79 (28.21%) Kubernetes
3 57 (20.36%) Ansible
4 35 (12.50%) Grafana
4 35 (12.50%) Prometheus
5 9 (3.21%) Istio
6 4 (1.43%) Data Guard
6 4 (1.43%) Oracle RMAN
7 3 (1.07%) Kubeflow
7 3 (1.07%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (1.07%) Puppet
7 3 (1.07%) vCenter Server
8 2 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.71%) SCCM
8 2 (0.71%) vMotion
9 1 (0.36%) Consul
9 1 (0.36%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.36%) Packer
9 1 (0.36%) Salt
9 1 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 39 (13.93%) SAP
2 38 (13.57%) Google
3 36 (12.86%) Splunk
4 32 (11.43%) Oracle
5 27 (9.64%) Microsoft
6 24 (8.57%) VMware
7 10 (3.57%) Ariba
8 9 (3.21%) ServiceNow
9 8 (2.86%) Cisco
10 7 (2.50%) Palo Alto
11 5 (1.79%) Aruba
11 5 (1.79%) MuleSoft
12 3 (1.07%) Databricks
12 3 (1.07%) F5
12 3 (1.07%) Fortinet
12 3 (1.07%) Informatica
12 3 (1.07%) Mercator
12 3 (1.07%) Veeam
13 2 (0.71%) Ericsson
13 2 (0.71%) IBM