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

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 320 331 290
Rank change year-on-year +11 -41 -47
Contract jobs citing Public Cloud 378 228 337
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 0.72% 0.78%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.22% 2.09% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 246 148 233
10th Percentile £419 £404 £446
25th Percentile £500 £479 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £600 £575
Median % change year-on-year - +4.35% -9.27%
75th Percentile £684 £694 £738
90th Percentile £725 £752 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £525 £594
% change year-on-year +14.29% -11.62% -4.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 2
10th Percentile - £45.25 £38.28
25th Percentile £71.25 £49.38 £40.56
Median hourly rate £72.50 £57.50 £46.25
Median % change year-on-year +26.09% +24.32% -40.71%
75th Percentile £73.75 £64.38 £52.06
90th Percentile - £67.75 £54.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £70.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year - +81.82% -50.64%

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 17,004 10,923 13,157
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.95% 34.62% 30.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,378 6,804 8,348
10th Percentile £313 £300 £281
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £539
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.51% -2.09%
75th Percentile £627 £650 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 869 502 918
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.50 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.92 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.90 £36.27
Median % change year-on-year +42.25% -14.80% +53.40%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £87.16 £78.58 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £35.83
% change year-on-year +46.53% -16.26% +49.93%

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 4 July 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 4 July 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 +3 313 £600 -2.04% 95
UK excluding London +27 206 £600 +14.29% 58
London -66 111 £600 -9.43% 44
Work from Home +1 104 £610 +13.54% 51
North of England -26 71 £625 +31.58% 23
South East -20 51 £595 -0.83% 11
Midlands -24 38 £625 +16.39% 2
Yorkshire -25 36 £638 +42.46% 10
North West -23 32 £450 -11.07% 10
South West -6 29 £675 +22.73% 13
East Midlands +6 26 £631 +32.89% 1
Scotland -23 12 £500 - 2
West Midlands -57 8 £450 -22.58% 1
North East -30 6 £650 - 4
East of England -30 4 £593 +7.73%
Northern Ireland - 2 £385 - 7
Wales -18 1 - -

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 10 (2.65%) Apache
1 10 (2.65%) Confluence
2 5 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.32%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.06%) OpenStack
4 3 (0.79%) CloudStack
4 3 (0.79%) SAS
5 2 (0.53%) IIS
5 2 (0.53%) nginx
5 2 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.53%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.53%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.26%) WebLogic
Applications
1 8 (2.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.79%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.26%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.26%) Houdini
5 1 (0.26%) NUKE
5 1 (0.26%) Weka
Business Applications
1 87 (23.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.59%) Oracle ERP
2 6 (1.59%) SAP Business One
3 5 (1.32%) SAP ERP
3 5 (1.32%) SAP SD
4 4 (1.06%) iTrent
4 4 (1.06%) SAP FI
5 3 (0.79%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.79%) SAP FI/CO
6 2 (0.53%) SAP FI-GL
7 1 (0.26%) Exchequer
7 1 (0.26%) Oracle SCM
7 1 (0.26%) SAP FI-AR
7 1 (0.26%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 146 (38.62%) Azure
2 117 (30.95%) AWS
3 82 (21.69%) GCP
4 33 (8.73%) GitHub
5 25 (6.61%) SuccessFactors
6 20 (5.29%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 20 (5.29%) IaaS
6 20 (5.29%) PaaS
7 19 (5.03%) OCI
8 15 (3.97%) GitHub Actions
8 15 (3.97%) SaaS
8 15 (3.97%) Serverless
9 12 (3.17%) OpenShift
10 11 (2.91%) Power Platform
11 10 (2.65%) Amazon EKS
11 10 (2.65%) AWS CloudFormation
11 10 (2.65%) Azure DevOps
12 7 (1.85%) Microsoft 365
13 6 (1.59%) Azure Sentinel
13 6 (1.59%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 28 (7.41%) DNS
2 25 (6.61%) Firewall
3 21 (5.56%) Network Security
4 12 (3.17%) VPN
5 11 (2.91%) LAN
5 11 (2.91%) WAN
6 9 (2.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
6 9 (2.38%) TCP/IP
7 8 (2.12%) SAN
8 7 (1.85%) NAS
8 7 (1.85%) VSAN
9 5 (1.32%) MPLS
9 5 (1.32%) Wireless
10 4 (1.06%) BGP
10 4 (1.06%) DHCP
11 3 (0.79%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.79%) HTTPS
11 3 (0.79%) Kerberos
11 3 (0.79%) SSH
11 3 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (3.70%) Oracle Database
2 11 (2.91%) Relational Database
3 10 (2.65%) Power BI
3 10 (2.65%) RDBMS
4 9 (2.38%) Oracle Exadata
5 7 (1.85%) SQL Server
6 5 (1.32%) BigQuery
7 4 (1.06%) BusinessObjects
7 4 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (1.06%) MySQL
8 3 (0.79%) Data Vault
8 3 (0.79%) Delta Lake
8 3 (0.79%) PostgreSQL
9 2 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.53%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (0.53%) SAP HANA
10 1 (0.26%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (0.26%) MongoDB
10 1 (0.26%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 33 (8.73%) Jenkins
2 29 (7.67%) Git
3 21 (5.56%) GitLab
4 19 (5.03%) JIRA
5 9 (2.38%) Postman
6 6 (1.59%) SoapUI
7 5 (1.32%) JUnit
8 4 (1.06%) Cucumber
8 4 (1.06%) Hudson
9 3 (0.79%) Liquibase
9 3 (0.79%) Selenium
9 3 (0.79%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.53%) TeamCity
11 1 (0.26%) Ant
11 1 (0.26%) LSMW
11 1 (0.26%) Maven
11 1 (0.26%) MSI
11 1 (0.26%) PVCS
11 1 (0.26%) Snyk
General
1 116 (30.69%) Finance
2 61 (16.14%) Social Skills
3 54 (14.29%) Public Sector
4 30 (7.94%) Banking
5 21 (5.56%) Local Government
6 16 (4.23%) Analytical Skills
7 11 (2.91%) Influencing Skills
8 10 (2.65%) General Ledger
9 7 (1.85%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.85%) Financial Institution
10 6 (1.59%) Investment Banking
10 6 (1.59%) Military
11 4 (1.06%) Billing
12 3 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.79%) Retail
12 3 (0.79%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.53%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.26%) Front Office
14 1 (0.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 1 (0.26%) Legal
Job Titles
1 90 (23.81%) Architect
2 56 (14.81%) Lead
3 53 (14.02%) Senior
4 39 (10.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 31 (8.20%) Solutions Architect
6 26 (6.88%) Cloud Engineer
7 22 (5.82%) GCP Engineer
8 21 (5.56%) Technical Architect
9 20 (5.29%) Azure Specialist
9 20 (5.29%) Consultant
10 18 (4.76%) DevOps Engineer
11 17 (4.50%) Cloud Architect
12 14 (3.70%) Developer
12 14 (3.70%) SAP Consultant
13 12 (3.17%) Azure Architect
13 12 (3.17%) SAP Architect
14 11 (2.91%) Analyst
15 10 (2.65%) Azure Engineer
15 10 (2.65%) SAP Solutions Architect
15 10 (2.65%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.03%) Middleware
2 18 (4.76%) REST
3 14 (3.70%) Kafka
3 14 (3.70%) Spring Boot
4 11 (2.91%) OAuth
5 10 (2.65%) Oracle Fusion
5 10 (2.65%) Spring
6 9 (2.38%) Oracle GoldenGate
7 8 (2.12%) JSON
7 8 (2.12%) SOAP
8 7 (1.85%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (1.85%) JWT
8 7 (1.85%) SAP Fiori
8 7 (1.85%) Web Services
9 6 (1.59%) NumPy
9 6 (1.59%) Pandas
9 6 (1.59%) React
9 6 (1.59%) XML
9 6 (1.59%) XSLT
10 4 (1.06%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 45 (11.90%) Cloud Native
2 20 (5.29%) Hybrid Cloud
3 19 (5.03%) Data Centre
4 18 (4.76%) Private Cloud
5 10 (2.65%) Onboarding
6 8 (2.12%) Data Structures
6 8 (2.12%) PKI
7 7 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.59%) AI Agents
8 6 (1.59%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.06%) Legacy Applications
9 4 (1.06%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.06%) Security Posture
10 3 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (0.79%) Reinsurance
10 3 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.53%) Cyber Threat
11 2 (0.53%) Greenfield Project
11 2 (0.53%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 55 (14.55%) Linux
2 30 (7.94%) Windows
3 10 (2.65%) Windows Server
4 9 (2.38%) AIX
4 9 (2.38%) Unix
5 7 (1.85%) Ubuntu
6 6 (1.59%) Windows Server 2019
7 5 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (1.06%) Debian
9 3 (0.79%) CentOS
9 3 (0.79%) Windows Server 2012
9 3 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.26%) Android
10 1 (0.26%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.26%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 98 (25.93%) DevOps
2 93 (24.60%) CI/CD
2 93 (24.60%) Infrastructure as Code
3 91 (24.07%) Migration
4 58 (15.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 56 (14.81%) Stakeholder Management
6 50 (13.23%) Agile
7 40 (10.58%) Analytics
8 38 (10.05%) Microservices
9 36 (9.52%) Containerisation
9 36 (9.52%) ERP
10 35 (9.26%) Data Migration
11 34 (8.99%) User Acceptance Testing
12 33 (8.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 30 (7.94%) Cloud Security
14 29 (7.67%) Problem-Solving
15 28 (7.41%) Identity Access Management
15 28 (7.41%) Validation
16 27 (7.14%) Project Delivery
17 26 (6.88%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 74 (19.58%) Python
2 25 (6.61%) Java
3 24 (6.35%) PowerShell
4 19 (5.03%) SQL
5 15 (3.97%) Bash
6 8 (2.12%) Bicep
7 7 (1.85%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.59%) Go
9 5 (1.32%) JavaScript
9 5 (1.32%) Ruby
9 5 (1.32%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.53%) C++
10 2 (0.53%) Groovy
10 2 (0.53%) Perl
11 1 (0.26%) C#
11 1 (0.26%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.26%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.26%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 89 (23.54%) Security Cleared
2 73 (19.31%) SC Cleared
3 27 (7.14%) Cisco Certification
4 20 (5.29%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.44%) CCNP
6 11 (2.91%) Degree
7 10 (2.65%) AWS Certification
7 10 (2.65%) CISSP
8 9 (2.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 9 (2.38%) Azure Certification
8 9 (2.38%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 8 (2.12%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 8 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (2.12%) SAP Certification
10 7 (1.85%) ACCA
10 7 (1.85%) CIMA
10 7 (1.85%) CISM
11 5 (1.32%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 5 (1.32%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 4 (1.06%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (3.97%) NIST
2 14 (3.70%) NCSC
3 12 (3.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.65%) GDPR
5 8 (2.12%) QA
6 6 (1.59%) Data Quality
7 5 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.32%) GRC
8 3 (0.79%) Government Security Classifications
8 3 (0.79%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.53%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.53%) PMO
9 2 (0.53%) SLA
10 1 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.26%) ISO 22301
10 1 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 1 (0.26%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.26%) RMADS
System Software
1 25 (6.61%) Docker
2 22 (5.82%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (3.44%) Active Directory
3 13 (3.44%) VMware NSX
4 10 (2.65%) Oracle RAC
5 7 (1.85%) Postfix
5 7 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (1.59%) Hyper-V
6 6 (1.59%) VMware ESXi
6 6 (1.59%) vSphere
7 5 (1.32%) NFS
7 5 (1.32%) Varnish
8 4 (1.06%) Sendmail
9 2 (0.53%) Dovecot
9 2 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.26%) Firmware
10 1 (0.26%) GPFS
10 1 (0.26%) Lustre
10 1 (0.26%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.26%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 85 (22.49%) Terraform
2 60 (15.87%) Kubernetes
3 39 (10.32%) Ansible
4 18 (4.76%) Istio
5 13 (3.44%) Prometheus
6 11 (2.91%) Grafana
7 10 (2.65%) Data Guard
7 10 (2.65%) Oracle RMAN
8 8 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (1.85%) HAProxy
10 4 (1.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (1.06%) Argo
10 4 (1.06%) Kubeflow
10 4 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (1.06%) Packer
10 4 (1.06%) vCenter Server
11 3 (0.79%) Check_MK
11 3 (0.79%) SCCM
12 2 (0.53%) Puppet
12 2 (0.53%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 96 (25.40%) SAP
2 50 (13.23%) Google
3 48 (12.70%) Microsoft
4 44 (11.64%) Oracle
5 34 (8.99%) VMware
6 17 (4.50%) F5
7 13 (3.44%) Ariba
7 13 (3.44%) Cisco
8 11 (2.91%) Red Hat
9 10 (2.65%) ServiceNow
10 8 (2.12%) Splunk
11 7 (1.85%) Fortinet
12 6 (1.59%) Juniper
13 5 (1.32%) Citrix
13 5 (1.32%) CyberArk
13 5 (1.32%) Databricks
13 5 (1.32%) MuleSoft
13 5 (1.32%) Palo Alto
13 5 (1.32%) Veeam
14 4 (1.06%) Foundry