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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 301 266 285
Rank change year-on-year -35 +19 -68
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 361 281 340
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.82% 0.96% 0.77%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.48% 2.84% 2.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 232 198 229
10th Percentile £395 £450 £475
25th Percentile £480 £525 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £611 £600
Median % change year-on-year -10.02% +1.88% -2.83%
75th Percentile £664 £692 £725
90th Percentile £700 £788 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £543 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -9.58% - +6.19%
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% -10.42%
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 14,558 9,892 13,416
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.21% 33.73% 30.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,159 6,283 8,598
10th Percentile £300 £287 £255
25th Percentile £408 £409 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 682 368 866
10th Percentile £15.60 £16.95 £12.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.44 £15.42
Median hourly rate £37.10 £32.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.15% +18.18% +22.22%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.20 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £31.76 £26.00
% change year-on-year +32.05% +22.15% +18.18%

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 21 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 21 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 -41 301 £550 -10.20% 90
UK excluding London -9 186 £543 -9.58% 66
London -72 117 £600 -4.00% 32
Work from Home -6 85 £600 -2.44% 52
North of England -17 70 £525 -9.87% 22
Midlands -26 42 £600 +9.09% 6
Yorkshire -24 40 £525 -9.87% 5
South East -54 39 £525 -12.50% 23
North West -9 29 £363 -37.90% 7
South West -2 27 £600 -5.88% 6
East Midlands -10 25 £638 +59.38% 2
West Midlands -51 14 £525 -25.66% 4
Scotland -7 8 £500 -11.19% 6
East of England -23 6 £413 -31.25% 6
Wales -6 3 £214 -63.98%
North East - 2 - - 10
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 (3.32%) Confluence
2 8 (2.22%) SAS
3 7 (1.94%) OpenStack
4 6 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.83%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.55%) Apache
6 2 (0.55%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.55%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 5 (1.39%) Weka
2 4 (1.11%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 65 (18.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.77%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (1.39%) SAP FI
4 4 (1.11%) SAP CO
4 4 (1.11%) SAP FI/CO
5 3 (0.83%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.55%) SAP SD
7 1 (0.28%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 141 (39.06%) Azure
2 123 (34.07%) AWS
3 116 (32.13%) GCP
4 36 (9.97%) GitHub
5 27 (7.48%) Serverless
6 22 (6.09%) OCI
7 21 (5.82%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 21 (5.82%) SuccessFactors
8 18 (4.99%) PaaS
9 17 (4.71%) IaaS
10 15 (4.16%) Azure DevOps
11 13 (3.60%) SaaS
12 12 (3.32%) Cloud Computing
13 11 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
14 10 (2.77%) AWS KMS
15 9 (2.49%) AWS CloudFormation
15 9 (2.49%) Power Platform
16 8 (2.22%) Microsoft 365
17 6 (1.66%) Nutanix
18 5 (1.39%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 37 (10.25%) Firewall
2 29 (8.03%) DNS
3 26 (7.20%) Network Security
4 23 (6.37%) VPN
5 18 (4.99%) WAN
6 16 (4.43%) TCP/IP
7 11 (3.05%) LAN
8 9 (2.49%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 8 (2.22%) Kerberos
9 8 (2.22%) SD-WAN
10 7 (1.94%) Internet
11 5 (1.39%) DHCP
11 5 (1.39%) Wireless
12 4 (1.11%) BGP
12 4 (1.11%) Multicast
12 4 (1.11%) NetScaler
12 4 (1.11%) OSPF
13 3 (0.83%) MPLS
13 3 (0.83%) VSAN
13 3 (0.83%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (5.82%) NoSQL
2 16 (4.43%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
4 10 (2.77%) Oracle Database
5 8 (2.22%) Power BI
6 6 (1.66%) BigQuery
7 4 (1.11%) Oracle Exadata
7 4 (1.11%) SQL Server
8 3 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (0.83%) Data Vault
8 3 (0.83%) Delta Lake
8 3 (0.83%) MongoDB
8 3 (0.83%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.55%) Redis
10 1 (0.28%) Apache Cassandra
10 1 (0.28%) Oracle Database 12c
10 1 (0.28%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.28%) SAP Data Services
10 1 (0.28%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 53 (14.68%) Jenkins
2 43 (11.91%) GitLab
3 23 (6.37%) JIRA
4 14 (3.88%) Postman
5 13 (3.60%) Liquibase
6 12 (3.32%) Git
7 9 (2.49%) SoapUI
8 4 (1.11%) TeamCity
9 2 (0.55%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.55%) Mocha
10 1 (0.28%) Ant
10 1 (0.28%) JUnit
10 1 (0.28%) LSMW
10 1 (0.28%) Maven
10 1 (0.28%) MSI
10 1 (0.28%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.28%) Snyk
General
1 109 (30.19%) Finance
2 90 (24.93%) Social Skills
3 61 (16.90%) Public Sector
4 43 (11.91%) Banking
5 23 (6.37%) Local Government
6 19 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
6 19 (5.26%) Financial Institution
7 10 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
8 6 (1.66%) Investment Banking
8 6 (1.66%) Manufacturing
9 5 (1.39%) General Ledger
9 5 (1.39%) Law
10 4 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (1.11%) German Language
10 4 (1.11%) Military
10 4 (1.11%) Police
11 3 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.55%) Digital Health
12 2 (0.55%) Public Speaking
Job Titles
1 86 (23.82%) Architect
2 49 (13.57%) Senior
3 40 (11.08%) Cloud Engineer
4 35 (9.70%) GCP Engineer
5 34 (9.42%) Lead
6 27 (7.48%) Solutions Architect
7 21 (5.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 19 (5.26%) Consultant
9 18 (4.99%) DevOps Engineer
10 16 (4.43%) Technical Architect
11 15 (4.16%) AWS Engineer
11 15 (4.16%) Software Engineer
12 13 (3.60%) Senior Cloud Engineer
13 12 (3.32%) Data Engineer
13 12 (3.32%) Infrastructure Architect
13 12 (3.32%) SAP Architect
14 11 (3.05%) Cloud Architect
14 11 (3.05%) Developer
14 11 (3.05%) SAP Solutions Architect
15 10 (2.77%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (13.02%) REST
2 23 (6.37%) Middleware
3 20 (5.54%) Elastic Stack
3 20 (5.54%) RESTful
4 16 (4.43%) JSON
4 16 (4.43%) OAuth
5 15 (4.16%) SOAP
6 14 (3.88%) JWT
7 13 (3.60%) Oracle Fusion
7 13 (3.60%) XML
7 13 (3.60%) XSLT
8 12 (3.32%) Web Services
9 9 (2.49%) Spring Boot
10 7 (1.94%) Kafka
11 5 (1.39%) NumPy
11 5 (1.39%) Pandas
11 5 (1.39%) React
12 4 (1.11%) Node.js
12 4 (1.11%) Spring
12 4 (1.11%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 48 (13.30%) Cloud Native
2 19 (5.26%) Distributed Systems
3 18 (4.99%) Data Centre
3 18 (4.99%) Private Cloud
4 14 (3.88%) Hybrid Cloud
5 9 (2.49%) PKI
5 9 (2.49%) Product Ownership
6 6 (1.66%) Data Structures
6 6 (1.66%) Grid Computing
6 6 (1.66%) Legacy Applications
6 6 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (1.66%) Security Posture
6 6 (1.66%) Virtual Team
7 5 (1.39%) Cloud Security Posture
8 4 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
9 3 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (0.83%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (0.83%) NHS
9 3 (0.83%) Reinsurance
10 2 (0.55%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 65 (18.01%) Linux
2 28 (7.76%) Windows
3 9 (2.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 9 (2.49%) Unix
3 9 (2.49%) Windows Server
3 9 (2.49%) Windows Server 2019
4 5 (1.39%) Windows Server 2016
5 4 (1.11%) VMS
5 4 (1.11%) Windows Server 2012
6 3 (0.83%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.55%) CentOS
8 1 (0.28%) AIX
8 1 (0.28%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (36.01%) DevOps
2 96 (26.59%) CI/CD
3 89 (24.65%) Infrastructure as Code
4 87 (24.10%) Agile
5 76 (21.05%) Migration
6 56 (15.51%) Stakeholder Management
7 51 (14.13%) Containerisation
8 44 (12.19%) Microservices
9 39 (10.80%) Analytics
10 37 (10.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 33 (9.14%) Cybersecurity
12 31 (8.59%) Infrastructure Automation
13 28 (7.76%) User Acceptance Testing
14 27 (7.48%) Project Delivery
15 26 (7.20%) Root Cause Analysis
15 26 (7.20%) Software Engineering
16 25 (6.93%) Continuous Improvement
16 25 (6.93%) Problem-Solving
17 24 (6.65%) ERP
17 24 (6.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 87 (24.10%) Python
2 24 (6.65%) SQL
3 23 (6.37%) Go
4 19 (5.26%) Java
5 13 (3.60%) PowerShell
6 11 (3.05%) Bash
7 7 (1.94%) JavaScript
8 6 (1.66%) TypeScript
9 4 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 3 (0.83%) Ruby
10 3 (0.83%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.55%) C++
12 1 (0.28%) ABAP
12 1 (0.28%) Bicep
12 1 (0.28%) C#
12 1 (0.28%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.28%) Perl
12 1 (0.28%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 90 (24.93%) Security Cleared
2 66 (18.28%) SC Cleared
3 30 (8.31%) Degree
4 19 (5.26%) Computer Science Degree
4 19 (5.26%) Master's Degree
5 13 (3.60%) AWS Certification
5 13 (3.60%) Cisco Certification
6 11 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (2.77%) DV Cleared
8 8 (2.22%) CISSP
8 8 (2.22%) SAP Certification
9 7 (1.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 7 (1.94%) ISTQB
10 6 (1.66%) Azure Certification
10 6 (1.66%) CISM
11 5 (1.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 5 (1.39%) CCNP
11 5 (1.39%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 5 (1.39%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 4 (1.11%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 14 (3.88%) NCSC
2 12 (3.32%) QA
3 10 (2.77%) GDPR
3 10 (2.77%) NIST
4 6 (1.66%) SLA
5 5 (1.39%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (1.39%) GRC
5 5 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
5 5 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27005
6 4 (1.11%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.55%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.55%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.55%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.55%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.55%) PSD2
7 2 (0.55%) WCAG
8 1 (0.28%) COBIT
8 1 (0.28%) PMO
System Software
1 46 (12.74%) Docker
2 20 (5.54%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (4.71%) Hyper-V
4 12 (3.32%) Active Directory
5 6 (1.66%) vSphere
6 5 (1.39%) GPFS
6 5 (1.39%) Lustre
6 5 (1.39%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 5 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (1.39%) VMware NSX
7 4 (1.11%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.55%) NFS
8 2 (0.55%) Postfix
8 2 (0.55%) Varnish
9 1 (0.28%) Ceph
9 1 (0.28%) Firmware
9 1 (0.28%) KVM
9 1 (0.28%) QEMU
9 1 (0.28%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 84 (23.27%) Terraform
2 82 (22.71%) Kubernetes
3 56 (15.51%) Ansible
4 25 (6.93%) Prometheus
5 23 (6.37%) Grafana
6 18 (4.99%) Istio
7 9 (2.49%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.66%) Microsoft Intune
9 5 (1.39%) Data Guard
9 5 (1.39%) Kubeflow
9 5 (1.39%) Oracle RMAN
10 4 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (1.11%) SCCM
11 3 (0.83%) Puppet
12 2 (0.55%) Argo
12 2 (0.55%) HAProxy
12 2 (0.55%) Red Hat Satellite
12 2 (0.55%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.55%) vMotion
13 1 (0.28%) Demisto
Vendors
1 72 (19.94%) SAP
2 55 (15.24%) Google
3 38 (10.53%) Oracle
4 33 (9.14%) VMware
5 26 (7.20%) Microsoft
6 24 (6.65%) Splunk
7 16 (4.43%) Ariba
8 15 (4.16%) F5
9 12 (3.32%) Cisco
10 11 (3.05%) Palo Alto
11 10 (2.77%) MuleSoft
11 10 (2.77%) ServiceNow
12 8 (2.22%) Red Hat
13 6 (1.66%) Aruba
14 5 (1.39%) Databricks
14 5 (1.39%) Fortinet
15 4 (1.11%) Juniper
15 4 (1.11%) Veeam
16 3 (0.83%) IBM
16 3 (0.83%) Informatica