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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 149 254 300
Rank change year-on-year +105 +46 -49
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 371 85 96
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.66% 0.68% 0.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.01% 0.75% 0.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 259 58 71
10th Percentile £363 £413 £418
25th Percentile £425 £468 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £536 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.72% -2.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £552 £600 £650
90th Percentile £638 £658 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £552 £575
% change year-on-year -4.89% -4.00% -4.17%
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% -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 18,456 11,389 17,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 82.65% 90.48% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,229 7,270 10,957
10th Percentile £273 £244 £235
25th Percentile £400 £379 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £580 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £671 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,919 742 1,944
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.99 £12.39
25th Percentile £18.32 £19.00 £15.16
Median hourly rate £31.25 £31.64 £31.80
Median % change year-on-year -1.23% -0.50% -11.67%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £77.30 £77.10 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.69% - -9.72%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +34 151 £500 -9.09% 94
North West +20 76 £550 -0.45% 53
South East +4 75 £525 +5.00% 74
Yorkshire -2 73 £475 -13.64% 33
Scotland +34 46 £450 -14.38% 6
Midlands -43 45 £525 +5.00% 27
West Midlands -26 39 £538 +0.09% 19
South West -2 28 £550 -8.52% 32
East of England -7 27 £450 -35.71% 10
East Midlands -32 6 £506 +6.58% 8
North East -6 5 £550 - 8
Wales -12 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 18 (4.85%) Confluence
2 15 (4.04%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (2.70%) Apache Spark
4 9 (2.43%) SharePoint
5 6 (1.62%) Apache
6 4 (1.08%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
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%) CICS
9 1 (0.27%) IIS
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
1 138 (37.20%) Azure
2 119 (32.08%) AWS
3 67 (18.06%) GitHub
4 52 (14.02%) GCP
5 44 (11.86%) GitHub Actions
6 35 (9.43%) Azure DevOps
7 34 (9.16%) Entra ID
8 29 (7.82%) Serverless
9 27 (7.28%) OpenShift
10 24 (6.47%) Azure AKS
11 22 (5.93%) Amazon EKS
11 22 (5.93%) AWS CloudFormation
12 19 (5.12%) AWS Lambda
13 17 (4.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 16 (4.31%) Amazon S3
15 15 (4.04%) Amazon EC2
16 12 (3.23%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 12 (3.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 11 (2.96%) PaaS
18 10 (2.70%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 38 (10.24%) Firewall
2 27 (7.28%) DNS
3 13 (3.50%) Network Security
4 12 (3.23%) TCP/IP
5 10 (2.70%) DHCP
5 10 (2.70%) WebEx
6 7 (1.89%) BGP
6 7 (1.89%) VLAN
7 6 (1.62%) Software-Defined Networking
8 5 (1.35%) SAN
8 5 (1.35%) SSL
8 5 (1.35%) VPN
8 5 (1.35%) VSAN
9 4 (1.08%) Fibre Channel
9 4 (1.08%) IPsec
9 4 (1.08%) MQTT
9 4 (1.08%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.81%) Internet
11 2 (0.54%) HTTP
11 2 (0.54%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (6.74%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (2.70%) NoSQL
2 10 (2.70%) SQL Server
3 9 (2.43%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (2.43%) DynamoDB
3 9 (2.43%) Metadata
3 9 (2.43%) Redis
4 8 (2.16%) Big Data
4 8 (2.16%) Hadoop
4 8 (2.16%) Power BI
4 8 (2.16%) Relational Database
5 6 (1.62%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (1.62%) 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%) Apache Hive
8 2 (0.54%) Impala
8 2 (0.54%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 55 (14.82%) Jenkins
2 46 (12.40%) GitLab
3 36 (9.70%) Git
4 35 (9.43%) JIRA
5 7 (1.89%) Bitbucket
5 7 (1.89%) Gatling
5 7 (1.89%) SonarQube
6 5 (1.35%) Artifactory
6 5 (1.35%) Maven
6 5 (1.35%) 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%) Introscope
9 2 (0.54%) Jaeger
9 2 (0.54%) Mockito
General
1 74 (19.95%) Social Skills
2 32 (8.63%) Finance
3 31 (8.36%) Public Sector
4 22 (5.93%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (5.12%) Banking
6 14 (3.77%) Legal
7 4 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (0.81%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.54%) Games
9 2 (0.54%) Law
10 1 (0.27%) Advertising
10 1 (0.27%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.27%) Electronics
10 1 (0.27%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.27%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.27%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.27%) Military
10 1 (0.27%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.27%) Retail
10 1 (0.27%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 191 (51.48%) Platform Engineer
2 67 (18.06%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 48 (12.94%) Senior
4 37 (9.97%) DevOps Engineer
5 36 (9.70%) Cloud Engineer
6 33 (8.89%) Azure Engineer
7 28 (7.55%) Azure Platform Engineer
8 24 (6.47%) Data Engineer
8 24 (6.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 23 (6.20%) AWS Engineer
10 22 (5.93%) Lead
11 21 (5.66%) Architect
12 14 (3.77%) AWS Platform Engineer
13 13 (3.50%) Software Engineer
14 12 (3.23%) DevSecOps Engineer
14 12 (3.23%) VMware Engineer
15 11 (2.96%) DevOps Platform Engineer
15 11 (2.96%) GCP Engineer
16 9 (2.43%) Project Manager
16 9 (2.43%) Senior Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (4.58%) Kafka
2 12 (3.23%) REST
3 11 (2.96%) YAML
4 10 (2.70%) Elastic Stack
4 10 (2.70%) XMPP
5 9 (2.43%) Keycloak
5 9 (2.43%) OAuth
5 9 (2.43%) OAuth2
5 9 (2.43%) OpenID
5 9 (2.43%) Playwright
6 8 (2.16%) ADO
6 8 (2.16%) Middleware
6 8 (2.16%) Node.js
7 7 (1.89%) OpenTelemetry
7 7 (1.89%) React
8 6 (1.62%) .NET
8 6 (1.62%) AWS CDK
9 5 (1.35%) LDAP
9 5 (1.35%) Spring
9 5 (1.35%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 35 (9.43%) Cloud Native
2 30 (8.09%) Product Ownership
3 16 (4.31%) PKI
3 16 (4.31%) Private Cloud
4 15 (4.04%) Onboarding
5 13 (3.50%) Data Centre
6 12 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
6 12 (3.23%) Hybrid Cloud
7 9 (2.43%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.16%) NHS
8 8 (2.16%) Security Posture
9 7 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.35%) Fat Client
10 5 (1.35%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.35%) Replication
10 5 (1.35%) Thin Client
10 5 (1.35%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (1.08%) NVMe
12 3 (0.81%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 88 (23.72%) Linux
2 62 (16.71%) Windows
3 27 (7.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (6.47%) Windows Server
5 13 (3.50%) Unix
6 6 (1.62%) 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 10
8 2 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.54%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.27%) CentOS
9 1 (0.27%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (45.01%) CI/CD
2 143 (38.54%) DevOps
3 133 (35.85%) Infrastructure as Code
4 73 (19.68%) Observability
5 68 (18.33%) Agile
6 67 (18.06%) Containerisation
7 59 (15.90%) Problem-Solving
8 58 (15.63%) Continuous Improvement
9 54 (14.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 48 (12.94%) Migration
11 43 (11.59%) Software Engineering
12 41 (11.05%) Infrastructure Automation
13 37 (9.97%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 36 (9.70%) DevSecOps
15 30 (8.09%) Roadmaps
16 29 (7.82%) Analytics
16 29 (7.82%) Cloud Security
17 28 (7.55%) Incident Response
17 28 (7.55%) Test Automation
18 27 (7.28%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 132 (35.58%) Python
2 71 (19.14%) Bash
3 63 (16.98%) PowerShell
4 30 (8.09%) Java
5 26 (7.01%) SQL
6 20 (5.39%) Bicep
7 15 (4.04%) Perl
8 8 (2.16%) TypeScript
9 7 (1.89%) C#
9 7 (1.89%) Scala
10 6 (1.62%) Go
10 6 (1.62%) JavaScript
11 4 (1.08%) Cypher
11 4 (1.08%) Groovy
11 4 (1.08%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.54%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.54%) C++
12 2 (0.54%) Jython
12 2 (0.54%) PHP
12 2 (0.54%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 145 (39.08%) Security Cleared
2 115 (31.00%) SC Cleared
3 20 (5.39%) DV Cleared
4 13 (3.50%) Degree
5 11 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (2.70%) CCNA
6 10 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (2.43%) CCDP
7 9 (2.43%) CCNP
8 6 (1.62%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.35%) Azure Certification
9 5 (1.35%) 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 17 (4.58%) NCSC
2 13 (3.50%) Data Quality
3 11 (2.96%) GDPR
4 7 (1.89%) QA
5 5 (1.35%) NIST
5 5 (1.35%) 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%) COBIT
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 59 (15.90%) Docker
2 47 (12.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 38 (10.24%) Active Directory
4 15 (4.04%) vSphere
5 14 (3.77%) Virtual Machines
6 10 (2.70%) VMware NSX
7 6 (1.62%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (1.08%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (1.08%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.54%) Firmware
11 1 (0.27%) GPFS
11 1 (0.27%) KVM
11 1 (0.27%) Squid
11 1 (0.27%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 131 (35.31%) Terraform
2 117 (31.54%) Kubernetes
3 69 (18.60%) Ansible
4 42 (11.32%) Grafana
5 35 (9.43%) Prometheus
6 23 (6.20%) Istio
7 14 (3.77%) Argo
8 11 (2.96%) Packer
9 10 (2.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 8 (2.16%) Microsoft Intune
11 7 (1.89%) linkerd
12 6 (1.62%) PowerCLI
12 6 (1.62%) Puppet
13 5 (1.35%) SCCM
13 5 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
13 5 (1.35%) vCenter Server
14 4 (1.08%) Rancher
14 4 (1.08%) vMotion
14 4 (1.08%) vRealize
15 3 (0.81%) Kibana
Vendors
1 59 (15.90%) VMware
2 52 (14.02%) Microsoft
3 33 (8.89%) Red Hat
4 31 (8.36%) Splunk
5 22 (5.93%) Cisco
6 21 (5.66%) Google
7 20 (5.39%) Dynatrace
8 18 (4.85%) Citrix
9 15 (4.04%) Oracle
10 11 (2.96%) ServiceNow
11 9 (2.43%) AppDynamics
11 9 (2.43%) F5
12 8 (2.16%) Databricks
13 6 (1.62%) Veeam
14 5 (1.35%) IBM
14 5 (1.35%) PeopleSoft
15 4 (1.08%) BiZZdesign
15 4 (1.08%) Dell
15 4 (1.08%) Greenplum
15 4 (1.08%) Palo Alto