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 12 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 257 299
Rank change year-on-year +113 +42 -63
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 387 80 87
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.60% 0.63% 0.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.97% 0.69% 0.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 255 51 59
10th Percentile £363 £413 £415
25th Percentile £416 £490 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £537 £538
Median % change year-on-year -9.22% -0.09% -8.51%
75th Percentile £551 £603 £650
90th Percentile £638 £663 £715
UK median daily rate £520 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -5.45% -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £66.50 £68.75 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £72.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +2.43% - -
75th Percentile £80.00 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £83.60 - -
UK median hourly rate £74.26 £72.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +2.43% +19.83% -25.77%

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 19,643 11,572 17,299
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.11% 90.46% 84.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,827 7,241 10,314
10th Percentile £300 £235 £250
25th Percentile £400 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £478 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.93% -4.40% -
75th Percentile £588 £581 £600
90th Percentile £680 £658 £688
UK median daily rate £505 £519 £525
% change year-on-year -2.69% -1.24% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,076 834 2,058
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £12.33
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.33 £15.26
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.50 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.81% -30.26% +8.57%
75th Percentile £67.50 £64.31 £61.25
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £42.40 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +47.48% -21.23% +0.29%

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 12 May 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 12 May 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 12 May 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 +40 144 £474 -11.24% 73
South East +6 79 £525 +7.36% 93
Yorkshire +10 74 £475 -13.64% 18
North West +17 67 £450 -14.29% 46
Scotland +39 57 £450 -14.29% 10
Midlands -20 49 £492 -8.38% 34
West Midlands -37 37 £500 -8.00% 22
East of England +3 34 £475 -40.63% 12
South West -19 24 £531 -11.46% 24
East Midlands -25 12 £488 -2.50% 11
North East -14 5 £453 -17.73% 9
Wales -10 2 £424 - 3
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 23 (5.94%) Confluence
2 9 (2.33%) Apache Spark
3 5 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.29%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (1.03%) Apache
4 4 (1.03%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.52%) Apache Pulsar
5 2 (0.52%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
5 2 (0.52%) IBM HTTP Server
5 2 (0.52%) nginx
5 2 (0.52%) Oracle HTTP Server
5 2 (0.52%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.52%) Tuxedo
5 2 (0.52%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.52%) WebSphere
5 2 (0.52%) WebSphere Application Server
5 2 (0.52%) WebSphere Portal
6 1 (0.26%) Apache Superset
6 1 (0.26%) IIS
6 1 (0.26%) SAS
Applications
1 3 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 142 (36.69%) Azure
2 131 (33.85%) AWS
3 74 (19.12%) GitHub
4 59 (15.25%) GitHub Actions
5 54 (13.95%) GCP
6 40 (10.34%) Azure DevOps
7 34 (8.79%) Amazon EKS
8 30 (7.75%) OpenShift
9 29 (7.49%) Serverless
10 26 (6.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 26 (6.72%) Azure AKS
10 26 (6.72%) Entra ID
11 22 (5.68%) AWS CloudFormation
12 21 (5.43%) Amazon EC2
13 20 (5.17%) AWS Lambda
14 19 (4.91%) Amazon S3
15 18 (4.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 17 (4.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 16 (4.13%) Snowflake
18 13 (3.36%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 23 (5.94%) Firewall
2 20 (5.17%) DNS
3 11 (2.84%) Network Security
3 11 (2.84%) VPN
4 10 (2.58%) TCP/IP
5 9 (2.33%) DHCP
6 6 (1.55%) SAN
6 6 (1.55%) SNMP
6 6 (1.55%) VSAN
7 5 (1.29%) SSL
8 4 (1.03%) Fibre Channel
8 4 (1.03%) IPsec
8 4 (1.03%) MQTT
8 4 (1.03%) SD-WAN
9 3 (0.78%) Internet
9 3 (0.78%) NAS
9 3 (0.78%) WebEx
10 2 (0.52%) HTTP
10 2 (0.52%) NetScaler
11 1 (0.26%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (8.01%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (4.39%) SQL Server
3 14 (3.62%) Relational Database
4 13 (3.36%) Power BI
5 9 (2.33%) MySQL
6 8 (2.07%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (2.07%) DynamoDB
6 8 (2.07%) Metadata
6 8 (2.07%) Redis
6 8 (2.07%) Tableau
7 7 (1.81%) NoSQL
8 6 (1.55%) Big Data
9 5 (1.29%) Hadoop
10 4 (1.03%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (1.03%) Neo4j
11 3 (0.78%) Amazon Athena
11 3 (0.78%) Ataccama
11 3 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 2 (0.52%) Semantic Layer
12 2 (0.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 63 (16.28%) Jenkins
2 49 (12.66%) GitLab
3 44 (11.37%) JIRA
4 40 (10.34%) Git
5 13 (3.36%) Bitbucket
6 10 (2.58%) Gatling
7 7 (1.81%) Artifactory
8 5 (1.29%) Maven
8 5 (1.29%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (1.03%) JMeter
9 4 (1.03%) LoadRunner
9 4 (1.03%) NeoLoad
9 4 (1.03%) Postman
10 3 (0.78%) Jaeger
10 3 (0.78%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.52%) Introscope
11 2 (0.52%) MSI
11 2 (0.52%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.52%) Visual Studio
General
1 74 (19.12%) Social Skills
2 44 (11.37%) Finance
3 39 (10.08%) Public Sector
4 20 (5.17%) Banking
5 12 (3.10%) Analytical Skills
6 6 (1.55%) Legal
7 4 (1.03%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.03%) Health Technology
8 3 (0.78%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.52%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.52%) Investment Banking
9 2 (0.52%) Law
9 2 (0.52%) Military
9 2 (0.52%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.26%) Advertising
10 1 (0.26%) Electronics
10 1 (0.26%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.26%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.26%) Retail
Job Titles
1 167 (43.15%) Platform Engineer
2 66 (17.05%) Senior
3 64 (16.54%) DevOps Engineer
4 61 (15.76%) Cloud Platform Engineer
5 37 (9.56%) Cloud Engineer
6 36 (9.30%) Azure Engineer
7 29 (7.49%) Azure Platform Engineer
8 28 (7.24%) Architect
9 25 (6.46%) DevOps Platform Engineer
10 24 (6.20%) Lead
11 22 (5.68%) Data Engineer
12 21 (5.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 20 (5.17%) Senior DevOps
13 20 (5.17%) Senior DevOps Engineer
14 19 (4.91%) Senior Platform Engineer
15 16 (4.13%) GCP Engineer
15 16 (4.13%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 15 (3.88%) AWS Engineer
17 14 (3.62%) Software Engineer
18 12 (3.10%) Scrum Master
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (4.13%) Kafka
2 15 (3.88%) REST
3 12 (3.10%) OpenTelemetry
4 11 (2.84%) Playwright
5 10 (2.58%) AWS CDK
6 8 (2.07%) .NET
6 8 (2.07%) ADO
6 8 (2.07%) Keycloak
6 8 (2.07%) LDAP
6 8 (2.07%) Node.js
7 7 (1.81%) Elastic Stack
7 7 (1.81%) OAuth
7 7 (1.81%) OAuth2
7 7 (1.81%) OpenID
7 7 (1.81%) YAML
8 6 (1.55%) Spring
8 6 (1.55%) Spring Boot
9 5 (1.29%) Middleware
9 5 (1.29%) React
9 5 (1.29%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 61 (15.76%) Cloud Native
2 24 (6.20%) Product Ownership
3 18 (4.65%) Private Cloud
4 16 (4.13%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (3.62%) Onboarding
5 14 (3.62%) PKI
6 12 (3.10%) Data Centre
7 11 (2.84%) Hybrid Cloud
8 10 (2.58%) Public Cloud
9 8 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
10 7 (1.81%) Security Posture
11 5 (1.29%) Operational Technology
11 5 (1.29%) Virtual Team
12 4 (1.03%) Enterprise Cloud
12 4 (1.03%) Management Information System
12 4 (1.03%) NVMe
12 4 (1.03%) Replication
13 3 (0.78%) Clustering
13 3 (0.78%) NHS
13 3 (0.78%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 75 (19.38%) Linux
2 42 (10.85%) Windows
3 20 (5.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 16 (4.13%) Unix
5 11 (2.84%) Windows Server
6 4 (1.03%) VMS
7 3 (0.78%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.52%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.52%) Solaris
8 2 (0.52%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.26%) CentOS
9 1 (0.26%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.26%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (51.42%) CI/CD
2 170 (43.93%) DevOps
3 141 (36.43%) Infrastructure as Code
4 79 (20.41%) Observability
5 76 (19.64%) Agile
6 65 (16.80%) Containerisation
7 56 (14.47%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 55 (14.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 55 (14.21%) Migration
9 54 (13.95%) Continuous Improvement
10 48 (12.40%) Software Engineering
11 41 (10.59%) Problem-Solving
12 39 (10.08%) DevSecOps
13 38 (9.82%) Roadmaps
14 35 (9.04%) GitOps
15 34 (8.79%) Infrastructure Automation
15 34 (8.79%) Technical Leadership
16 32 (8.27%) Test Automation
17 31 (8.01%) Root Cause Analysis
18 30 (7.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 138 (35.66%) Python
2 58 (14.99%) Bash
3 50 (12.92%) PowerShell
4 43 (11.11%) Java
5 24 (6.20%) SQL
6 21 (5.43%) Bicep
7 10 (2.58%) Scala
8 8 (2.07%) Go
8 8 (2.07%) TypeScript
9 7 (1.81%) C#
9 7 (1.81%) Perl
10 5 (1.29%) Groovy
10 5 (1.29%) JavaScript
10 5 (1.29%) Shell Script
11 4 (1.03%) Cypher
12 3 (0.78%) PHP
13 2 (0.52%) C++
13 2 (0.52%) Jython
14 1 (0.26%) C
14 1 (0.26%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 126 (32.56%) Security Cleared
2 98 (25.32%) SC Cleared
3 16 (4.13%) DV Cleared
4 12 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (2.84%) Degree
6 9 (2.33%) SAFe Agilist
7 8 (2.07%) AWS Certification
7 8 (2.07%) Azure Certification
8 7 (1.81%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 6 (1.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 5 (1.29%) RHCE
11 4 (1.03%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.78%) NCDA
13 2 (0.52%) CCNA
13 2 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.52%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.52%) PMP
13 2 (0.52%) VCP6
14 1 (0.26%) CCDP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.62%) QA
2 13 (3.36%) NCSC
3 12 (3.10%) Data Quality
4 9 (2.33%) GDPR
5 5 (1.29%) PCI DSS
6 4 (1.03%) GRC
6 4 (1.03%) NIST
6 4 (1.03%) NIST 800
7 3 (0.78%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.26%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 55 (14.21%) Docker
2 40 (10.34%) VMware Infrastructure
3 23 (5.94%) Active Directory
4 15 (3.88%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (3.36%) vSphere
6 10 (2.58%) VMware NSX
7 7 (1.81%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (1.29%) Hyper-V
9 4 (1.03%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 3 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.52%) Firmware
12 1 (0.26%) Ceph
12 1 (0.26%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 1 (0.26%) GPFS
12 1 (0.26%) KVM
12 1 (0.26%) NFS
12 1 (0.26%) Squid
12 1 (0.26%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 139 (35.92%) Terraform
2 127 (32.82%) Kubernetes
3 72 (18.60%) Ansible
4 37 (9.56%) Grafana
5 34 (8.79%) Prometheus
6 26 (6.72%) Istio
7 23 (5.94%) Argo
8 6 (1.55%) HAProxy
8 6 (1.55%) linkerd
8 6 (1.55%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (1.55%) PowerCLI
8 6 (1.55%) Puppet
9 5 (1.29%) Packer
9 5 (1.29%) Rancher
9 5 (1.29%) vCenter Server
9 5 (1.29%) vRealize
10 4 (1.03%) SCCM
10 4 (1.03%) vMotion
11 3 (0.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 3 (0.78%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 47 (12.14%) VMware
2 40 (10.34%) Microsoft
3 24 (6.20%) Google
4 22 (5.68%) Red Hat
4 22 (5.68%) Splunk
5 21 (5.43%) Oracle
6 16 (4.13%) Dynatrace
6 16 (4.13%) ServiceNow
7 10 (2.58%) Cisco
8 7 (1.81%) Citrix
9 6 (1.55%) Databricks
10 5 (1.29%) PeopleSoft
10 5 (1.29%) Veeam
11 4 (1.03%) BiZZdesign
11 4 (1.03%) Brocade
11 4 (1.03%) Cribl.io
11 4 (1.03%) Dell
11 4 (1.03%) F5
11 4 (1.03%) IBM
11 4 (1.03%) NetApp