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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 170 275 285
Rank change year-on-year +105 +10 -19
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 279 86 127
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.56% 0.54% 0.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.80% 0.63% 0.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 61 91
10th Percentile £413 £408 £465
25th Percentile £463 £463 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £522 £563
Median % change year-on-year +0.57% -7.20% +1.12%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £644
90th Percentile £671 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £540 £600 £575
% change year-on-year -10.00% +4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 1
10th Percentile £55.85 - -
25th Percentile £59.75 £59.39 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.42% -18.22% -22.00%
75th Percentile £77.13 £68.18 -
90th Percentile £82.40 - -
UK median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £60.00
% change year-on-year +16.42% +6.31% -37.58%

All Process and 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 15,488 13,615 17,925
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 86.73% 85.92% 88.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,453 7,914 11,623
10th Percentile £215 £241 £250
25th Percentile £373 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,748 854 1,266
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.20 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £19.59 £17.72
Median hourly rate £22.63 £32.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.37% -23.53% +30.77%
75th Percentile £44.95 £64.93 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.33 £73.75 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.13 £33.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -23.86% -22.35% +21.43%

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025. 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 +2 83 £525 +2.44% 33
Midlands +22 70 £525 -12.50% 21
West Midlands +29 67 £535 -21.90% 19
South East +35 60 £500 -10.71% 70
North West +28 54 £550 -13.73% 19
South West +15 30 £575 +0.88% 41
Scotland +13 28 £545 +9.00% 11
Yorkshire -42 26 £519 +3.75% 10
East of England +5 19 £475 -13.64% 12
North East - 6 £550 - 4
East Midlands -17 3 £525 +10.53% 2
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 33 (11.83%) Confluence
2 13 (4.66%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (3.94%) Apache
3 11 (3.94%) nginx
4 9 (3.23%) SharePoint
5 7 (2.51%) WebLogic
6 6 (2.15%) CICS
7 5 (1.79%) OpenStack
8 4 (1.43%) JBoss
9 3 (1.08%) Apache Spark
9 3 (1.08%) IIS
9 3 (1.08%) SharePoint Server
10 2 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
10 2 (0.72%) iPlanet
10 2 (0.72%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.72%) WebSphere Application Server
11 1 (0.36%) CMS
11 1 (0.36%) Documentum
11 1 (0.36%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.36%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 11 (3.94%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 1 (0.36%) Finacle
1 1 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 115 (41.22%) AWS
2 108 (38.71%) Azure
3 41 (14.70%) GitHub
4 33 (11.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 29 (10.39%) Amazon EC2
5 29 (10.39%) OpenShift
6 28 (10.04%) Amazon S3
6 28 (10.04%) GCP
7 26 (9.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 21 (7.53%) Amazon ELB
8 21 (7.53%) AWS CloudFormation
8 21 (7.53%) AWS KMS
8 21 (7.53%) Serverless
9 20 (7.17%) GitHub Actions
10 18 (6.45%) Azure DevOps
10 18 (6.45%) Entra ID
11 16 (5.73%) Amazon ECS
11 16 (5.73%) Amazon EKS
12 15 (5.38%) AWS Lambda
13 14 (5.02%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 49 (17.56%) Firewall
2 43 (15.41%) DNS
3 21 (7.53%) SMTP
4 20 (7.17%) FTP
4 20 (7.17%) HTTP
4 20 (7.17%) SSH
5 11 (3.94%) IMAP
5 11 (3.94%) OpenLDAP
6 9 (3.23%) TCP/IP
7 7 (2.51%) WebEx
8 6 (2.15%) BGP
8 6 (2.15%) DHCP
8 6 (2.15%) Software-Defined Networking
8 6 (2.15%) VLAN
9 4 (1.43%) Network Security
10 3 (1.08%) Skype
10 3 (1.08%) SSL
11 2 (0.72%) Internet
11 2 (0.72%) IPsec
11 2 (0.72%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (11.11%) Amazon RDS
2 26 (9.32%) PostgreSQL
3 11 (3.94%) Amazon Aurora
4 10 (3.58%) NoSQL
4 10 (3.58%) Redis
5 8 (2.87%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (2.15%) Couchbase
6 6 (2.15%) SQL Server
7 5 (1.79%) DynamoDB
7 5 (1.79%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.43%) Big Data
8 4 (1.43%) Data Lake
9 3 (1.08%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.08%) Hadoop
10 2 (0.72%) Apache Hive
10 2 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.72%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.72%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.72%) Power BI
11 1 (0.36%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Development Applications
1 71 (25.45%) Jenkins
2 45 (16.13%) Git
3 36 (12.90%) JIRA
4 33 (11.83%) GitLab
5 21 (7.53%) Vagrant
6 13 (4.66%) SonarQube
7 3 (1.08%) Bitbucket Server
7 3 (1.08%) CA Release Automation
7 3 (1.08%) MSI
7 3 (1.08%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (1.08%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.72%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.72%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.72%) JUnit
8 2 (0.72%) Maven
8 2 (0.72%) Mockito
8 2 (0.72%) Selenium
8 2 (0.72%) Spinnaker
9 1 (0.36%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.36%) Pylint
General
1 68 (24.37%) Social Skills
2 39 (13.98%) Public Sector
3 24 (8.60%) Finance
4 17 (6.09%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (6.09%) Banking
5 15 (5.38%) Legal
6 11 (3.94%) Presentation Skills
7 9 (3.23%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.15%) Retail
9 4 (1.43%) Games
9 4 (1.43%) Retail Banking
10 3 (1.08%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.72%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.36%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.36%) Tech for Good
12 1 (0.36%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 165 (59.14%) Platform Engineer
2 48 (17.20%) DevOps Engineer
3 47 (16.85%) Cloud Platform Engineer
4 37 (13.26%) AWS Engineer
5 25 (8.96%) AWS Platform Engineer
6 20 (7.17%) AWS DevOps
6 20 (7.17%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 19 (6.81%) Senior
8 16 (5.73%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (5.38%) DevOps Platform Engineer
10 13 (4.66%) Data Engineer
10 13 (4.66%) DevSecOps Engineer
11 12 (4.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 11 (3.94%) Azure Platform Engineer
13 10 (3.58%) Architect
14 9 (3.23%) Lead
15 8 (2.87%) Cloud Engineer
16 6 (2.15%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 6 (2.15%) Implementation Specialist
16 6 (2.15%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (6.09%) Kafka
1 17 (6.09%) YAML
2 15 (5.38%) Elastic Stack
3 13 (4.66%) LDAP
4 12 (4.30%) React
5 11 (3.94%) Middleware
6 8 (2.87%) Keycloak
6 8 (2.87%) OAuth
7 7 (2.51%) FastAPI
7 7 (2.51%) REST
7 7 (2.51%) Spring Boot
7 7 (2.51%) XMPP
8 6 (2.15%) ISPF
8 6 (2.15%) OAuth2
8 6 (2.15%) OpenID
8 6 (2.15%) Spring
9 5 (1.79%) Node.js
10 4 (1.43%) ADO
10 4 (1.43%) Oracle Fusion
10 4 (1.43%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 29 (10.39%) Replication
2 21 (7.53%) Cloud Native
3 18 (6.45%) PKI
4 16 (5.73%) Product Ownership
5 15 (5.38%) Onboarding
6 14 (5.02%) Private Cloud
7 11 (3.94%) Data Centre
8 8 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
8 8 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (2.51%) NHS
10 6 (2.15%) Hybrid Cloud
10 6 (2.15%) Mainframe
10 6 (2.15%) VSAM
11 5 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.79%) IBM Mainframe
11 5 (1.79%) Public Cloud
12 3 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
13 2 (0.72%) Clustering
13 2 (0.72%) Fat Client
13 2 (0.72%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 103 (36.92%) Linux
2 84 (30.11%) Windows
3 25 (8.96%) VMS
4 24 (8.60%) Amazon Linux
5 22 (7.89%) Windows Server
6 18 (6.45%) Unix
7 16 (5.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 10 (3.58%) Ubuntu
9 9 (3.23%) Windows 10
10 6 (2.15%) zOS
11 4 (1.43%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.36%) Solaris
12 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (46.95%) DevOps
2 130 (46.59%) CI/CD
3 103 (36.92%) Infrastructure as Code
4 62 (22.22%) Containerisation
5 58 (20.79%) Observability
6 48 (17.20%) Agile
7 47 (16.85%) Problem-Solving
8 44 (15.77%) Migration
9 42 (15.05%) Configuration Management
10 39 (13.98%) Continuous Improvement
11 30 (10.75%) Cloud Security
12 27 (9.68%) DevSecOps
12 27 (9.68%) Performance Tuning
13 26 (9.32%) Service Management
14 25 (8.96%) Incident Response
14 25 (8.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 25 (8.96%) Patch Management
15 24 (8.60%) Change Management
16 23 (8.24%) AI
16 23 (8.24%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 118 (42.29%) Python
2 66 (23.66%) PowerShell
3 48 (17.20%) Bash
4 36 (12.90%) SQL
5 34 (12.19%) Java
6 23 (8.24%) Groovy
7 22 (7.89%) Perl
8 17 (6.09%) JavaScript
9 11 (3.94%) C#
10 7 (2.51%) Shell Script
11 6 (2.15%) CLIST
11 6 (2.15%) Go
11 6 (2.15%) JCL
11 6 (2.15%) REXX
12 4 (1.43%) Bicep
13 3 (1.08%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.72%) Apex Code
14 2 (0.72%) PHP
14 2 (0.72%) SOQL
15 1 (0.36%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 138 (49.46%) Security Cleared
2 116 (41.58%) SC Cleared
3 28 (10.04%) DV Cleared
4 19 (6.81%) AWS Certification
5 15 (5.38%) Degree
6 13 (4.66%) Azure Certification
7 9 (3.23%) CCNA
7 9 (3.23%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (2.87%) CCDP
8 8 (2.87%) CCNP
9 7 (2.51%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.08%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.08%) CSPO
10 3 (1.08%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 1 (0.36%) Computer Science Degree
11 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.36%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (4.66%) NCSC
2 6 (2.15%) COBIT
3 4 (1.43%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.43%) GDPR
4 2 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.72%) NIST
4 2 (0.72%) WCAG
5 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.36%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.36%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.36%) QA
System Software
1 77 (27.60%) Docker
2 49 (17.56%) Active Directory
3 32 (11.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (7.17%) DFS Replication
5 11 (3.94%) Dovecot
5 11 (3.94%) Postfix
5 11 (3.94%) Squid
6 8 (2.87%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (2.15%) Time Sharing Option
8 5 (1.79%) vSphere
9 4 (1.43%) Hyper-V
10 3 (1.08%) VMware NSX
11 2 (0.72%) GPFS
11 2 (0.72%) Virtual Desktop
12 1 (0.36%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 1 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 125 (44.80%) Terraform
2 91 (32.62%) Kubernetes
3 56 (20.07%) Grafana
4 53 (19.00%) Ansible
5 51 (18.28%) Prometheus
6 13 (4.66%) Proxmox
7 11 (3.94%) Argo
7 11 (3.94%) Nessus
7 11 (3.94%) vCenter Server
8 10 (3.58%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 10 (3.58%) Istio
8 10 (3.58%) Packer
9 6 (2.15%) Kibana
9 6 (2.15%) OMEGAMON
10 5 (1.79%) CA Endevor
11 4 (1.43%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (1.43%) Progress Chef
11 4 (1.43%) Puppet
11 4 (1.43%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (1.08%) Podman
Vendors
1 49 (17.56%) Microsoft
2 43 (15.41%) VMware
3 37 (13.26%) Splunk
4 34 (12.19%) Dynatrace
4 34 (12.19%) Red Hat
5 27 (9.68%) Cisco
6 26 (9.32%) ServiceNow
7 21 (7.53%) Oracle
8 19 (6.81%) IBM
9 17 (6.09%) AppDynamics
10 13 (4.66%) Citrix
11 11 (3.94%) F5
11 11 (3.94%) Jaspersoft
12 8 (2.87%) Dell
12 8 (2.87%) HP
13 7 (2.51%) CheckPoint
14 6 (2.15%) Confluent
14 6 (2.15%) Databricks
14 6 (2.15%) Veeam
15 4 (1.43%) Palo Alto