Platform Engineering Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Platform Engineering
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Platform Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 8 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 98 201 277
Rank change year-on-year +103 +76 0
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 660 178 93
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.37% 1.17% 0.52%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.93% 1.32% 0.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 384 122 67
10th Percentile £383 £400 £413
25th Percentile £425 £450 £464
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £516 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.67% - -12.50%
75th Percentile £588 £603 £647
90th Percentile £686 £663 £706
UK median daily rate £550 £530 £575
% change year-on-year +3.77% -7.83% -6.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 1 0
10th Percentile £66.50 - -
25th Percentile £71.11 £68.75 -
Median hourly rate £85.00 £72.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +17.24% - -
75th Percentile £99.71 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £100.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £77.50 £72.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +6.90% +31.82% -29.49%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK excluding London

Platform Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 22,552 13,524 14,696
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 80.99% 89.03% 82.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,042 8,124 8,623
10th Percentile £300 £238 £250
25th Percentile £408 £369 £391
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £656 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,548 1,375 1,263
10th Percentile £13.73 £14.00 £14.50
25th Percentile £17.25 £16.95 £18.45
Median hourly rate £42.50 £22.63 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +87.80% -47.37% +8.72%
75th Percentile £68.00 £43.75 £66.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +63.02% -41.51% +3.24%

Platform Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Platform Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Platform Engineering job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Platform Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Platform Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Platform Engineering

Platform Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Platform Engineering in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 8 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Platform Engineering in the UK excluding London

Platform Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Platform Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Platform Engineering

Platform Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Platform Engineering in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 8 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Platform Engineering in the UK excluding London

Platform Engineering
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Platform Engineering within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 8 September 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
North of England +67 222 £500 +11.11% 222
Yorkshire +65 131 £500 -4.76% 71
Midlands -3 117 £460 -11.54% 68
South East +2 116 £575 +17.59% 172
South West +19 88 £550 -8.33% 117
Scotland +25 83 £450 -17.43% 96
West Midlands -23 81 £450 -12.62% 28
North West +4 80 £525 +30.92% 132
East Midlands +20 35 £488 -30.36% 40
East of England -4 29 £525 -10.26% 57
North East -32 13 £425 -5.56% 20
Wales - 8 £325 - 10
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 42
Channel Islands - 1 - -
Platform Engineering
UK

Platform Engineering
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 19 (2.88%) Confluence
2 8 (1.21%) Apache Spark
3 7 (1.06%) Apache
3 7 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (1.06%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.45%) Apache Superset
4 3 (0.45%) OpenStack
4 3 (0.45%) Palantir Foundry
5 2 (0.30%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
5 2 (0.30%) IBM HTTP Server
5 2 (0.30%) Oracle HTTP Server
5 2 (0.30%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.30%) WebSphere
5 2 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
5 2 (0.30%) WebSphere Portal
6 1 (0.15%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.15%) nginx
6 1 (0.15%) Oracle Coherence
6 1 (0.15%) SAS
6 1 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 1 (0.15%) MS Visio
1 1 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.61%) NetSuite
2 4 (0.61%) Sage X3
3 1 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 285 (43.18%) AWS
2 279 (42.27%) Azure
3 117 (17.73%) GCP
4 114 (17.27%) GitHub
5 83 (12.58%) GitHub Actions
6 76 (11.52%) Azure DevOps
7 57 (8.64%) Serverless
8 42 (6.36%) Amazon EKS
8 42 (6.36%) Power Platform
9 36 (5.45%) AWS Lambda
10 34 (5.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 32 (4.85%) OpenShift
12 30 (4.55%) Entra ID
13 27 (4.09%) Azure Monitor
13 27 (4.09%) PowerApps
14 25 (3.79%) Amazon S3
15 24 (3.64%) Amazon EC2
15 24 (3.64%) Amazon ECS
15 24 (3.64%) Azure AKS
15 24 (3.64%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 66 (10.00%) DNS
2 53 (8.03%) Firewall
3 38 (5.76%) TCP/IP
4 35 (5.30%) DHCP
5 25 (3.79%) VSAN
6 24 (3.64%) VPN
7 19 (2.88%) Network Security
8 13 (1.97%) HTTP
9 6 (0.91%) SNMP
10 5 (0.76%) SSH
11 3 (0.45%) HTTPS
11 3 (0.45%) NAS
11 3 (0.45%) SAN
11 3 (0.45%) Software-Defined Networking
11 3 (0.45%) SSL
11 3 (0.45%) WAN
12 2 (0.30%) Internet
12 2 (0.30%) Intrusion Detection
12 2 (0.30%) LAN
12 2 (0.30%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (5.30%) PostgreSQL
2 28 (4.24%) SQL Server
3 16 (2.42%) Power BI
4 15 (2.27%) Data Warehouse
5 14 (2.12%) MySQL
6 13 (1.97%) DynamoDB
7 11 (1.67%) Relational Database
8 9 (1.36%) Amazon Redshift
8 9 (1.36%) Big Data
9 8 (1.21%) Oracle Exadata
10 7 (1.06%) Data Lake
10 7 (1.06%) Neo4j
11 6 (0.91%) Ataccama
11 6 (0.91%) BigQuery
11 6 (0.91%) NoSQL
11 6 (0.91%) Tableau
12 5 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
12 5 (0.76%) Delta Lake
13 4 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
13 4 (0.61%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 84 (12.73%) Jenkins
2 64 (9.70%) Git
3 62 (9.39%) GitLab
4 37 (5.61%) JIRA
5 21 (3.18%) Bitbucket
6 8 (1.21%) Claude Code
6 8 (1.21%) Maven
6 8 (1.21%) SonarQube
7 7 (1.06%) Gatling
7 7 (1.06%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.91%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.61%) MSBuild
9 4 (0.61%) Visual Studio
10 3 (0.45%) JUnit
10 3 (0.45%) Mockito
10 3 (0.45%) Selenium
11 2 (0.30%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.30%) Introscope
12 1 (0.15%) JMeter
12 1 (0.15%) LoadRunner
General
1 128 (19.39%) Social Skills
2 99 (15.00%) Finance
3 75 (11.36%) Public Sector
4 33 (5.00%) Banking
5 31 (4.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 29 (4.39%) Analytical Skills
7 19 (2.88%) Aerospace
8 15 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
8 15 (2.27%) Telecoms
9 8 (1.21%) Billing
9 8 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
9 8 (1.21%) Military
10 7 (1.06%) Investment Banking
11 6 (0.91%) Retail
12 5 (0.76%) Law
12 5 (0.76%) Local Government
13 4 (0.61%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.61%) Health Technology
13 4 (0.61%) Police
14 3 (0.45%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 267 (40.45%) Platform Engineer
2 132 (20.00%) Senior
3 101 (15.30%) DevOps Engineer
4 97 (14.70%) Cloud Platform Engineer
5 76 (11.52%) Cloud Engineer
6 65 (9.85%) Senior Platform Engineer
7 62 (9.39%) Data Engineer
8 51 (7.73%) Azure Engineer
9 45 (6.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 42 (6.36%) AWS Engineer
10 42 (6.36%) Developer
11 41 (6.21%) Architect
11 41 (6.21%) Lead
12 31 (4.70%) Azure Platform Engineer
13 30 (4.55%) DevOps Platform Engineer
14 27 (4.09%) Principal Engineer
14 27 (4.09%) Senior Data Engineer
15 26 (3.94%) GCP Engineer
16 25 (3.79%) AWS Platform Engineer
17 24 (3.64%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 310 (46.97%) Terraform
2 46 (6.97%) Kafka
3 25 (3.79%) JSON
4 23 (3.48%) ARM Templates
5 22 (3.33%) REST
6 17 (2.58%) AWS CDK
7 16 (2.42%) .NET
7 16 (2.42%) OAuth
7 16 (2.42%) OpenTelemetry
8 15 (2.27%) OAuth2
8 15 (2.27%) YAML
9 13 (1.97%) React
9 13 (1.97%) Spring Boot
10 12 (1.82%) Node.js
10 12 (1.82%) OpenID
11 10 (1.52%) SAML
11 10 (1.52%) Spring
12 8 (1.21%) Playwright
13 7 (1.06%) RESTful
14 6 (0.91%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 138 (20.91%) Cloud Native
2 56 (8.48%) Product Ownership
3 38 (5.76%) Distributed Systems
4 36 (5.45%) Hybrid Cloud
5 30 (4.55%) Onboarding
6 28 (4.24%) Data Protection Act
7 27 (4.09%) PKI
8 23 (3.48%) Data Centre
9 22 (3.33%) Private Cloud
10 20 (3.03%) Enterprise Cloud
10 20 (3.03%) Enterprise Software
11 14 (2.12%) Linux Command Line
11 14 (2.12%) Public Cloud
12 12 (1.82%) AI Agents
12 12 (1.82%) Management Information System
12 12 (1.82%) NHS
13 7 (1.06%) Low-Code
13 7 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
14 6 (0.91%) ARM Cortex
14 6 (0.91%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 135 (20.45%) Linux
2 65 (9.85%) Windows
3 28 (4.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 23 (3.48%) Windows Server
5 16 (2.42%) Unix
6 11 (1.67%) VMS
7 5 (0.76%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.45%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.30%) CentOS
9 2 (0.30%) Data ONTAP
9 2 (0.30%) Debian
9 2 (0.30%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.30%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.15%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 364 (55.15%) CI/CD
2 339 (51.36%) DevOps
3 301 (45.61%) Infrastructure as Code
4 191 (28.94%) Observability
5 143 (21.67%) Agile
6 132 (20.00%) Containerisation
7 123 (18.64%) Continuous Improvement
8 114 (17.27%) Technical Leadership
9 113 (17.12%) DevSecOps
10 105 (15.91%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 100 (15.15%) AI
12 90 (13.64%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 78 (11.82%) Software Engineering
14 75 (11.36%) Migration
14 75 (11.36%) Problem-Solving
15 66 (10.00%) Infrastructure Automation
16 65 (9.85%) Stakeholder Management
16 65 (9.85%) Test Automation
17 62 (9.39%) Cybersecurity
17 62 (9.39%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 241 (36.52%) Python
2 106 (16.06%) Bash
3 102 (15.45%) PowerShell
4 69 (10.45%) Java
5 46 (6.97%) Bicep
6 43 (6.52%) SQL
7 29 (4.39%) C#
8 20 (3.03%) JavaScript
9 19 (2.88%) Go
10 13 (1.97%) TypeScript
11 8 (1.21%) Scala
11 8 (1.21%) Shell Script
12 7 (1.06%) Groovy
13 6 (0.91%) Perl
14 4 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 3 (0.45%) C++
16 2 (0.30%) Jython
16 2 (0.30%) PHP
16 2 (0.30%) VBScript
17 1 (0.15%) Lua
Qualifications
1 202 (30.61%) Security Cleared
2 147 (22.27%) SC Cleared
3 57 (8.64%) DV Cleared
4 25 (3.79%) AWS Certification
5 24 (3.64%) Azure Certification
6 21 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
6 21 (3.18%) Degree
7 20 (3.03%) Microsoft Certification
8 13 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
9 12 (1.82%) VCAP
10 11 (1.67%) SAFe Agilist
11 10 (1.52%) CISSP
12 9 (1.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 7 (1.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 6 (0.91%) RHCE
15 5 (0.76%) Cisco Certification
16 4 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 4 (0.61%) CompTIA Security+
16 4 (0.61%) PMI Certification
16 4 (0.61%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.33%) QA
2 19 (2.88%) Accessibility
3 14 (2.12%) Data Quality
4 11 (1.67%) NCSC
5 7 (1.06%) GDPR
5 7 (1.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (1.06%) NIST
6 5 (0.76%) GRC
7 4 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials
7 4 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 4 (0.61%) WCAG
8 3 (0.45%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.30%) GxP
9 2 (0.30%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.30%) SLA
10 1 (0.15%) HL7
10 1 (0.15%) JSP 440
System Software
1 114 (17.27%) Docker
2 62 (9.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 44 (6.67%) Active Directory
4 35 (5.30%) vSphere
5 25 (3.79%) VMware NSX
6 22 (3.33%) Hyper-V
7 18 (2.73%) Virtual Machines
8 15 (2.27%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.76%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.30%) EMC RecoverPoint
10 2 (0.30%) NFS
10 2 (0.30%) Squid
10 2 (0.30%) SRDF
11 1 (0.15%) Ceph
11 1 (0.15%) Firmware
11 1 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.15%) zsh
Systems Management
1 256 (38.79%) Kubernetes
2 118 (17.88%) Ansible
3 37 (5.61%) Grafana
4 34 (5.15%) Prometheus
5 31 (4.70%) Argo
6 18 (2.73%) Istio
7 14 (2.12%) VxRail
8 11 (1.67%) Kustomize
9 10 (1.52%) vCenter Server
10 8 (1.21%) Microsoft Intune
11 7 (1.06%) Puppet
11 7 (1.06%) SCCM
12 6 (0.91%) HAProxy
12 6 (0.91%) Packer
13 5 (0.76%) PowerCLI
13 5 (0.76%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.61%) Podman
15 3 (0.45%) Check_MK
15 3 (0.45%) NetBackup
16 2 (0.30%) EMC NetWorker
Vendors
1 104 (15.76%) Microsoft
2 69 (10.45%) VMware
3 57 (8.64%) Google
4 28 (4.24%) Red Hat
5 25 (3.79%) Splunk
6 23 (3.48%) Oracle
7 21 (3.18%) Databricks
8 17 (2.58%) Dynatrace
9 15 (2.27%) ServiceNow
10 14 (2.12%) CyberArk
11 9 (1.36%) Salesforce
12 7 (1.06%) CrowdStrike
13 6 (0.91%) ForgeRock
14 5 (0.76%) Cisco
14 5 (0.76%) Cribl.io
14 5 (0.76%) NetApp
14 5 (0.76%) PagerDuty
15 4 (0.61%) Foundry
15 4 (0.61%) IBM
15 4 (0.61%) SAP