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 1 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 149 252 303
Rank change year-on-year +103 +51 -50
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 369 87 92
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.64% 0.69% 0.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.99% 0.76% 0.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 256 59 67
10th Percentile £363 £413 £418
25th Percentile £421 £472 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £537 £543
Median % change year-on-year -6.89% -1.10% -5.57%
75th Percentile £552 £601 £650
90th Percentile £638 £658 £693
UK median daily rate £525 £552 £569
% change year-on-year -4.89% -2.95% -5.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 2 0
10th Percentile £59.75 £60.33 -
25th Percentile £66.50 £61.73 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £68.14 -
Median % change year-on-year +8.98% - -
75th Percentile - £74.23 -
90th Percentile £82.40 £75.44 -
UK median hourly rate £74.26 £68.14 £60.00
% change year-on-year +8.98% +13.57% -26.38%

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 18,558 11,399 17,976
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 82.51% 90.53% 85.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,291 7,254 10,970
10th Percentile £273 £243 £237
25th Percentile £400 £378 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -3.00% -
75th Percentile £580 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,932 748 1,948
10th Percentile £14.47 £14.99 £12.37
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £15.13
Median hourly rate £34.07 £31.50 £31.65
Median % change year-on-year +8.14% -0.47% -12.69%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.71
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.53 £70.55
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £32.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +10.94% -1.54% -11.33%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 +33 153 £500 -9.09% 94
North West +17 76 £550 -0.45% 53
Yorkshire -2 75 £475 -13.64% 33
South East +4 73 £525 +5.00% 74
Scotland +38 45 £449 -14.48% 6
Midlands -39 45 £525 +5.00% 27
West Midlands -27 39 £530 -1.30% 19
South West -5 27 £550 -5.98% 32
East of England -6 26 £438 -37.50% 10
East Midlands -31 6 £506 +6.58% 8
North East -8 5 £550 - 8
Wales -9 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 17 (4.61%) Confluence
2 14 (3.79%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.71%) Apache Spark
4 9 (2.44%) SharePoint
5 6 (1.63%) Apache
6 4 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (1.08%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.81%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.54%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.54%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.54%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.54%) nginx
8 2 (0.54%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.54%) Tuxedo
8 2 (0.54%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.54%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.54%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.27%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.27%) CICS
9 1 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 3 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 136 (36.86%) Azure
2 121 (32.79%) AWS
3 69 (18.70%) GitHub
4 51 (13.82%) GCP
5 47 (12.74%) GitHub Actions
6 35 (9.49%) Azure DevOps
7 33 (8.94%) Entra ID
8 28 (7.59%) OpenShift
9 27 (7.32%) Serverless
10 24 (6.50%) Azure AKS
11 22 (5.96%) Amazon EKS
12 21 (5.69%) AWS CloudFormation
13 18 (4.88%) AWS Lambda
14 17 (4.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 16 (4.34%) Amazon S3
16 15 (4.07%) Amazon EC2
17 12 (3.25%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 12 (3.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 11 (2.98%) PaaS
19 10 (2.71%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 37 (10.03%) Firewall
2 27 (7.32%) DNS
3 13 (3.52%) Network Security
4 12 (3.25%) TCP/IP
5 10 (2.71%) DHCP
5 10 (2.71%) WebEx
6 7 (1.90%) BGP
6 7 (1.90%) VLAN
7 6 (1.63%) Software-Defined Networking
8 5 (1.36%) SAN
8 5 (1.36%) SSL
8 5 (1.36%) VPN
8 5 (1.36%) VSAN
9 4 (1.08%) Fibre Channel
9 4 (1.08%) IPsec
9 4 (1.08%) MQTT
9 4 (1.08%) SD-WAN
10 2 (0.54%) Internet
10 2 (0.54%) NAS
10 2 (0.54%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (6.78%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (2.71%) SQL Server
3 9 (2.44%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (2.44%) DynamoDB
3 9 (2.44%) Metadata
3 9 (2.44%) Redis
4 8 (2.17%) Big Data
4 8 (2.17%) Hadoop
4 8 (2.17%) NoSQL
4 8 (2.17%) Power BI
4 8 (2.17%) Relational Database
5 5 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
5 5 (1.36%) Amazon Redshift
6 4 (1.08%) Data Lake
6 4 (1.08%) Neo4j
6 4 (1.08%) Tableau
7 3 (0.81%) Amazon Athena
8 2 (0.54%) BigQuery
8 2 (0.54%) Impala
8 2 (0.54%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 55 (14.91%) Jenkins
2 47 (12.74%) GitLab
3 34 (9.21%) Git
3 34 (9.21%) JIRA
4 7 (1.90%) Bitbucket
4 7 (1.90%) Gatling
5 6 (1.63%) SonarQube
6 5 (1.36%) Artifactory
6 5 (1.36%) Maven
6 5 (1.36%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (1.08%) JMeter
7 4 (1.08%) LoadRunner
7 4 (1.08%) MSI
7 4 (1.08%) NeoLoad
7 4 (1.08%) Postman
8 3 (0.81%) Spinnaker
9 2 (0.54%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.54%) Jaeger
9 2 (0.54%) Mockito
9 2 (0.54%) Selenium
General
1 72 (19.51%) Social Skills
2 31 (8.40%) Finance
2 31 (8.40%) Public Sector
3 22 (5.96%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (4.88%) Banking
5 13 (3.52%) Legal
6 3 (0.81%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (0.81%) Telecoms
7 2 (0.54%) Games
7 2 (0.54%) Law
8 1 (0.27%) Advertising
8 1 (0.27%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.27%) Electronics
8 1 (0.27%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.27%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.27%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.27%) Military
8 1 (0.27%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.27%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 192 (52.03%) Platform Engineer
2 67 (18.16%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 48 (13.01%) Senior
4 37 (10.03%) DevOps Engineer
5 36 (9.76%) Cloud Engineer
6 33 (8.94%) Azure Engineer
7 28 (7.59%) Azure Platform Engineer
8 24 (6.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 23 (6.23%) Data Engineer
10 22 (5.96%) AWS Engineer
10 22 (5.96%) Lead
11 21 (5.69%) Architect
12 14 (3.79%) AWS Platform Engineer
13 13 (3.52%) Software Engineer
14 12 (3.25%) VMware Engineer
15 11 (2.98%) DevOps Platform Engineer
15 11 (2.98%) DevSecOps Engineer
15 11 (2.98%) GCP Engineer
15 11 (2.98%) Senior Platform Engineer
16 8 (2.17%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (4.34%) Kafka
2 12 (3.25%) REST
3 10 (2.71%) Elastic Stack
3 10 (2.71%) XMPP
3 10 (2.71%) YAML
4 9 (2.44%) Keycloak
4 9 (2.44%) OAuth
4 9 (2.44%) OAuth2
4 9 (2.44%) OpenID
4 9 (2.44%) Playwright
5 8 (2.17%) ADO
5 8 (2.17%) Node.js
6 7 (1.90%) OpenTelemetry
6 7 (1.90%) React
7 6 (1.63%) .NET
7 6 (1.63%) AWS CDK
7 6 (1.63%) Middleware
8 5 (1.36%) LDAP
8 5 (1.36%) OpenAPI
8 5 (1.36%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 39 (10.57%) Cloud Native
2 31 (8.40%) Product Ownership
3 16 (4.34%) PKI
3 16 (4.34%) Private Cloud
4 15 (4.07%) Onboarding
5 13 (3.52%) Data Centre
6 12 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
7 11 (2.98%) Hybrid Cloud
8 9 (2.44%) Public Cloud
9 8 (2.17%) NHS
9 8 (2.17%) Security Posture
10 7 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.36%) Fat Client
11 5 (1.36%) Operational Technology
11 5 (1.36%) Thin Client
11 5 (1.36%) Virtual Team
12 4 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (1.08%) NVMe
12 4 (1.08%) Replication
13 3 (0.81%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 87 (23.58%) Linux
2 60 (16.26%) Windows
3 27 (7.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (6.50%) Windows Server
5 12 (3.25%) Unix
6 6 (1.63%) VMS
7 3 (0.81%) Amazon Linux
7 3 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.54%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.54%) Solaris
8 2 (0.54%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.54%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.27%) CentOS
9 1 (0.27%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.27%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (46.07%) CI/CD
2 144 (39.02%) DevOps
3 135 (36.59%) Infrastructure as Code
4 77 (20.87%) Observability
5 67 (18.16%) Containerisation
6 64 (17.34%) Agile
7 57 (15.45%) Continuous Improvement
7 57 (15.45%) Problem-Solving
8 53 (14.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 49 (13.28%) Migration
10 45 (12.20%) Software Engineering
11 41 (11.11%) Infrastructure Automation
12 37 (10.03%) Site Reliability Engineering
13 35 (9.49%) DevSecOps
14 32 (8.67%) Roadmaps
15 29 (7.86%) Cloud Security
16 28 (7.59%) Analytics
17 27 (7.32%) Incident Response
18 26 (7.05%) GitOps
18 26 (7.05%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 134 (36.31%) Python
2 71 (19.24%) Bash
3 62 (16.80%) PowerShell
4 30 (8.13%) Java
5 26 (7.05%) SQL
6 20 (5.42%) Bicep
7 15 (4.07%) Perl
8 8 (2.17%) TypeScript
9 7 (1.90%) C#
9 7 (1.90%) Scala
10 6 (1.63%) Go
10 6 (1.63%) JavaScript
11 4 (1.08%) Cypher
11 4 (1.08%) Groovy
11 4 (1.08%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.54%) C++
12 2 (0.54%) Jython
12 2 (0.54%) PHP
13 1 (0.27%) C
13 1 (0.27%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 144 (39.02%) Security Cleared
2 114 (30.89%) SC Cleared
3 19 (5.15%) DV Cleared
4 13 (3.52%) Degree
5 11 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (2.71%) CCNA
6 10 (2.71%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (2.44%) CCDP
7 9 (2.44%) CCNP
8 6 (1.63%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.36%) Azure Certification
9 5 (1.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 4 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (0.81%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 3 (0.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.81%) CSPO
11 3 (0.81%) RHCE
11 3 (0.81%) SAFe Agilist
12 2 (0.54%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.54%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (4.34%) NCSC
2 13 (3.52%) Data Quality
3 11 (2.98%) GDPR
4 7 (1.90%) QA
5 5 (1.36%) NIST
5 5 (1.36%) PCI DSS
6 4 (1.08%) NIST 800
7 3 (0.81%) GRC
8 2 (0.54%) WCAG
9 1 (0.27%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.27%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.27%) ISO 8583
9 1 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 58 (15.72%) Docker
2 48 (13.01%) VMware Infrastructure
3 37 (10.03%) Active Directory
4 15 (4.07%) Virtual Machines
4 15 (4.07%) vSphere
5 10 (2.71%) VMware NSX
6 6 (1.63%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (1.08%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (1.08%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.54%) Firmware
10 1 (0.27%) Ceph
10 1 (0.27%) GPFS
10 1 (0.27%) KVM
10 1 (0.27%) Squid
10 1 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 131 (35.50%) Terraform
2 117 (31.71%) Kubernetes
3 69 (18.70%) Ansible
4 42 (11.38%) Grafana
5 35 (9.49%) Prometheus
6 23 (6.23%) Istio
7 15 (4.07%) Argo
8 11 (2.98%) Packer
9 10 (2.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 7 (1.90%) linkerd
10 7 (1.90%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (1.63%) PowerCLI
11 6 (1.63%) Puppet
12 5 (1.36%) Single Sign-On
12 5 (1.36%) vCenter Server
13 4 (1.08%) Rancher
13 4 (1.08%) SCCM
13 4 (1.08%) vMotion
13 4 (1.08%) vRealize
14 3 (0.81%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 60 (16.26%) VMware
2 51 (13.82%) Microsoft
3 33 (8.94%) Red Hat
4 31 (8.40%) Splunk
5 22 (5.96%) Cisco
6 21 (5.69%) Google
7 19 (5.15%) Dynatrace
8 18 (4.88%) Citrix
9 15 (4.07%) Oracle
10 11 (2.98%) ServiceNow
11 9 (2.44%) AppDynamics
12 8 (2.17%) Databricks
12 8 (2.17%) F5
13 5 (1.36%) PeopleSoft
13 5 (1.36%) Veeam
14 4 (1.08%) BiZZdesign
14 4 (1.08%) Greenplum
14 4 (1.08%) IBM
14 4 (1.08%) Palo Alto
15 3 (0.81%) Brocade