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 11 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 160 265 297
Rank change year-on-year +105 +32 -45
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 330 72 114
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.55% 0.56% 0.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.87% 0.62% 0.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 49 80
10th Percentile £363 £412 £418
25th Percentile £425 £463 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.10% -6.74%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £631
90th Percentile £638 £656 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £563 £550
% change year-on-year -6.67% +2.27% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 1 0
10th Percentile £59.75 - -
25th Percentile £66.50 £59.39 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 -
Median % change year-on-year +16.42% - -
75th Percentile - £68.18 -
90th Percentile £80.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £60.00
% change year-on-year +16.42% +6.31% -29.41%

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 17,689 11,541 18,193
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 83.02% 90.49% 85.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,712 7,219 11,137
10th Percentile £263 £230 £240
25th Percentile £400 £375 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.84% -2.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,882 695 1,932
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.17 £12.50
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.12 £15.38
Median hourly rate £26.55 £32.00 £31.80
Median % change year-on-year -17.02% +0.63% -9.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.71
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.25 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%

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 11 March 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 11 March 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 11 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
North of England +21 131 £518 -5.91% 95
South East +10 72 £525 +5.00% 99
North West +18 68 £550 -4.35% 47
Yorkshire -22 61 £475 -15.56% 39
Scotland +43 40 £437 -16.76% 12
Midlands -35 38 £538 +13.16% 25
West Midlands -24 35 £540 +32.35% 18
South West +8 27 £575 +4.55% 35
East of England -3 25 £450 -35.71% 30
North East -8 5 £550 - 9
East Midlands -36 3 £525 +10.53% 7
Wales -4 2 £424 - 9
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 16 (4.85%) Microsoft Exchange
2 13 (3.94%) Confluence
3 10 (3.03%) SharePoint
4 8 (2.42%) Apache Spark
5 4 (1.21%) Apache
5 4 (1.21%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.91%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.61%) Apache Pulsar
7 2 (0.61%) nginx
7 2 (0.61%) SharePoint Server
7 2 (0.61%) Tuxedo
8 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.30%) CICS
8 1 (0.30%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.30%) IIS
8 1 (0.30%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 1 (0.30%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
8 1 (0.30%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 3 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 119 (36.06%) Azure
2 102 (30.91%) AWS
3 57 (17.27%) GitHub
4 44 (13.33%) GCP
5 35 (10.61%) GitHub Actions
6 32 (9.70%) Entra ID
7 31 (9.39%) Azure DevOps
8 25 (7.58%) OpenShift
9 23 (6.97%) Serverless
10 21 (6.36%) Azure AKS
11 17 (5.15%) Amazon EKS
11 17 (5.15%) AWS CloudFormation
12 14 (4.24%) AWS Lambda
13 13 (3.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 12 (3.64%) SaaS
15 11 (3.33%) Amazon S3
16 10 (3.03%) Amazon EC2
16 10 (3.03%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 9 (2.73%) OCI
17 9 (2.73%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 35 (10.61%) Firewall
2 27 (8.18%) DNS
3 11 (3.33%) Network Security
3 11 (3.33%) TCP/IP
4 10 (3.03%) WebEx
5 9 (2.73%) DHCP
6 7 (2.12%) BGP
6 7 (2.12%) VLAN
7 6 (1.82%) Software-Defined Networking
8 5 (1.52%) SAN
9 4 (1.21%) Fibre Channel
9 4 (1.21%) IPsec
9 4 (1.21%) MQTT
9 4 (1.21%) SD-WAN
9 4 (1.21%) VPN
10 3 (0.91%) Internet
10 3 (0.91%) SSL
11 2 (0.61%) NAS
11 2 (0.61%) NetScaler
11 2 (0.61%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (5.76%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (3.03%) NoSQL
3 9 (2.73%) DynamoDB
3 9 (2.73%) Metadata
3 9 (2.73%) Redis
4 8 (2.42%) Big Data
4 8 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (1.82%) Hadoop
5 6 (1.82%) Relational Database
5 6 (1.82%) SQL Server
6 5 (1.52%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (1.21%) Amazon Redshift
7 4 (1.21%) Data Lake
7 4 (1.21%) Neo4j
8 3 (0.91%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.91%) Power BI
9 2 (0.61%) Apache Hive
9 2 (0.61%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.61%) Spark SQL
9 2 (0.61%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 40 (12.12%) Jenkins
2 38 (11.52%) GitLab
3 27 (8.18%) Git
4 25 (7.58%) JIRA
5 7 (2.12%) SonarQube
6 4 (1.21%) Gatling
6 4 (1.21%) JMeter
6 4 (1.21%) LoadRunner
6 4 (1.21%) MSI
6 4 (1.21%) NeoLoad
6 4 (1.21%) Postman
7 2 (0.61%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.61%) Jaeger
7 2 (0.61%) JUnit
7 2 (0.61%) Maven
7 2 (0.61%) Mockito
7 2 (0.61%) Selenium
7 2 (0.61%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.61%) Spinnaker
7 2 (0.61%) Visual Studio
General
1 64 (19.39%) Social Skills
2 29 (8.79%) Public Sector
3 27 (8.18%) Finance
4 21 (6.36%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (4.85%) Banking
6 15 (4.55%) Legal
7 5 (1.52%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (0.91%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.61%) Games
9 2 (0.61%) Law
9 2 (0.61%) Retail
9 2 (0.61%) Retail Banking
10 1 (0.30%) Advertising
10 1 (0.30%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.30%) Electronics
10 1 (0.30%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.30%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.30%) Military
10 1 (0.30%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.30%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 167 (50.61%) Platform Engineer
2 54 (16.36%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 38 (11.52%) Senior
4 29 (8.79%) DevOps Engineer
5 27 (8.18%) Cloud Engineer
6 25 (7.58%) Azure Engineer
7 23 (6.97%) Azure Platform Engineer
8 22 (6.67%) Architect
8 22 (6.67%) Lead
9 20 (6.06%) AWS Engineer
9 20 (6.06%) Data Engineer
10 19 (5.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 14 (4.24%) DevSecOps Engineer
12 13 (3.94%) AWS Platform Engineer
13 10 (3.03%) Project Manager
14 9 (2.73%) Software Engineer
15 8 (2.42%) DevOps Platform Engineer
15 8 (2.42%) GCP Engineer
15 8 (2.42%) VMware Engineer
16 6 (1.82%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (4.85%) Kafka
2 13 (3.94%) REST
2 13 (3.94%) YAML
3 10 (3.03%) XMPP
4 9 (2.73%) Keycloak
4 9 (2.73%) OpenID
5 8 (2.42%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (2.42%) OAuth
5 8 (2.42%) OAuth2
6 7 (2.12%) Middleware
6 7 (2.12%) Node.js
6 7 (2.12%) Oracle Fusion
6 7 (2.12%) React
7 6 (1.82%) .NET
7 6 (1.82%) ADO
7 6 (1.82%) Playwright
8 5 (1.52%) ARM Templates
8 5 (1.52%) LDAP
8 5 (1.52%) OpenAPI
8 5 (1.52%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 31 (9.39%) Cloud Native
2 26 (7.88%) Product Ownership
3 17 (5.15%) PKI
4 15 (4.55%) Data Centre
4 15 (4.55%) Private Cloud
5 14 (4.24%) Onboarding
6 12 (3.64%) Distributed Systems
6 12 (3.64%) Hybrid Cloud
7 11 (3.33%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.42%) NHS
8 8 (2.42%) Security Posture
9 7 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.52%) Fat Client
10 5 (1.52%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.52%) Replication
10 5 (1.52%) Thin Client
10 5 (1.52%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (1.21%) NVMe
Operating Systems
1 78 (23.64%) Linux
2 62 (18.79%) Windows
3 24 (7.27%) Windows Server
4 23 (6.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (2.73%) Unix
6 5 (1.52%) Windows 10
7 4 (1.21%) VMS
8 3 (0.91%) Amazon Linux
8 3 (0.91%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (0.91%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.61%) Solaris
9 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.30%) CentOS
10 1 (0.30%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.30%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.30%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (43.33%) CI/CD
2 128 (38.79%) DevOps
3 118 (35.76%) Infrastructure as Code
4 63 (19.09%) Observability
5 60 (18.18%) Containerisation
6 56 (16.97%) Problem-Solving
7 55 (16.67%) Agile
8 52 (15.76%) Continuous Improvement
9 47 (14.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 45 (13.64%) Migration
11 35 (10.61%) Software Engineering
12 34 (10.30%) Infrastructure Automation
13 33 (10.00%) DevSecOps
14 32 (9.70%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 27 (8.18%) Roadmaps
16 26 (7.88%) Cloud Security
17 25 (7.58%) Analytics
17 25 (7.58%) Identity Access Management
17 25 (7.58%) Incident Response
17 25 (7.58%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 118 (35.76%) Python
2 63 (19.09%) Bash
3 56 (16.97%) PowerShell
4 22 (6.67%) SQL
5 20 (6.06%) Java
6 15 (4.55%) Bicep
7 14 (4.24%) Perl
8 8 (2.42%) TypeScript
9 7 (2.12%) C#
9 7 (2.12%) JavaScript
10 5 (1.52%) Go
11 4 (1.21%) Cypher
11 4 (1.21%) Scala
12 3 (0.91%) Groovy
12 3 (0.91%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.61%) Apex Code
13 2 (0.61%) C++
13 2 (0.61%) PHP
13 2 (0.61%) SOQL
14 1 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 137 (41.52%) Security Cleared
2 108 (32.73%) SC Cleared
3 22 (6.67%) DV Cleared
4 12 (3.64%) Degree
5 10 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (2.73%) CCDP
6 9 (2.73%) CCNA
6 9 (2.73%) CCNP
6 9 (2.73%) Cisco Certification
7 6 (1.82%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.52%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 3 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.91%) CSPO
9 3 (0.91%) RHCE
10 2 (0.61%) NCDA
10 2 (0.61%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.61%) PMP
10 2 (0.61%) VCP6
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (5.76%) NCSC
2 12 (3.64%) Data Quality
3 11 (3.33%) GDPR
4 6 (1.82%) QA
5 5 (1.52%) NIST
5 5 (1.52%) PCI DSS
6 4 (1.21%) NIST 800
7 3 (0.91%) GRC
8 2 (0.61%) COBIT
8 2 (0.61%) WCAG
9 1 (0.30%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.30%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.30%) ISO 8583
9 1 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 48 (14.55%) Docker
2 47 (14.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (12.12%) Active Directory
4 12 (3.64%) Virtual Machines
5 11 (3.33%) vSphere
6 7 (2.12%) VMware NSX
7 4 (1.21%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (1.21%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.30%) Firmware
10 1 (0.30%) GPFS
10 1 (0.30%) KVM
10 1 (0.30%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 109 (33.03%) Terraform
2 102 (30.91%) Kubernetes
3 57 (17.27%) Ansible
4 39 (11.82%) Grafana
5 29 (8.79%) Prometheus
6 19 (5.76%) Istio
7 13 (3.94%) Argo
8 11 (3.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 9 (2.73%) Packer
10 8 (2.42%) Microsoft Intune
11 7 (2.12%) linkerd
11 7 (2.12%) vCenter Server
12 5 (1.52%) SCCM
12 5 (1.52%) Single Sign-On
13 4 (1.21%) Rancher
13 4 (1.21%) vMotion
14 3 (0.91%) Podman
14 3 (0.91%) PowerCLI
14 3 (0.91%) Proxmox
14 3 (0.91%) vRealize
Vendors
1 59 (17.88%) VMware
2 48 (14.55%) Microsoft
3 31 (9.39%) Splunk
4 29 (8.79%) Red Hat
5 24 (7.27%) Cisco
6 20 (6.06%) Dynatrace
7 18 (5.45%) Citrix
7 18 (5.45%) Oracle
8 14 (4.24%) Google
9 12 (3.64%) ServiceNow
10 10 (3.03%) F5
11 8 (2.42%) AppDynamics
12 7 (2.12%) Databricks
12 7 (2.12%) Veeam
13 5 (1.52%) PeopleSoft
14 4 (1.21%) BiZZdesign
14 4 (1.21%) Dell
14 4 (1.21%) Greenplum
14 4 (1.21%) IBM
14 4 (1.21%) Palo Alto