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 18 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 158 259 296
Rank change year-on-year +101 +37 -43
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 330 85 119
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.64% 0.63% 0.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.94% 0.71% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 245 57 78
10th Percentile £402 £411 £429
25th Percentile £438 £463 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £587
90th Percentile £655 £656 £683
UK median daily rate £525 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 1 1
10th Percentile £59.75 - -
25th Percentile £64.88 £59.39 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.42% -18.22% -0.95%
75th Percentile £77.13 £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 16,977 11,972 17,956
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.13% 89.34% 86.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,342 7,126 11,102
10th Percentile £248 £233 £250
25th Percentile £385 £375 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.04% -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 1,821 636 1,758
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.47 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £20.12 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £30.78 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.29% -12.06% +6.22%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -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 18 February 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 18 February 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 18 February 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 +13 115 £518 -5.91% 65
South East +19 68 £519 +3.75% 67
North West +20 62 £550 -4.35% 39
Yorkshire -28 50 £475 -13.64% 15
Midlands -16 46 £542 +14.00% 13
Scotland +33 43 £463 -11.90% 14
West Midlands -7 43 £546 +33.76% 12
South West +12 34 £575 +4.55% 22
East of England +1 30 £475 -32.14% 4
North East - 6 £550 - 12
East Midlands -25 3 £525 +10.53% 1
Wales -2 2 £424 - 7
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 (5.45%) Confluence
2 15 (4.55%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.03%) SharePoint
4 8 (2.42%) Apache Spark
5 6 (1.82%) nginx
6 5 (1.52%) Apache
7 4 (1.21%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.91%) SharePoint Server
9 2 (0.61%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.61%) IIS
9 2 (0.61%) JBoss
9 2 (0.61%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
10 1 (0.30%) CICS
10 1 (0.30%) CMS
10 1 (0.30%) Documentum
10 1 (0.30%) iPlanet
10 1 (0.30%) Tuxedo
10 1 (0.30%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 4 (1.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 3 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 121 (36.67%) Azure
2 114 (34.55%) AWS
3 57 (17.27%) GitHub
4 43 (13.03%) GCP
5 32 (9.70%) GitHub Actions
6 31 (9.39%) Entra ID
7 27 (8.18%) Azure DevOps
8 25 (7.58%) AWS CloudFormation
8 25 (7.58%) Serverless
9 24 (7.27%) OpenShift
10 21 (6.36%) Azure AKS
11 20 (6.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 17 (5.15%) AWS Lambda
13 16 (4.85%) OCI
14 15 (4.55%) Amazon EC2
14 15 (4.55%) Amazon S3
15 14 (4.24%) Amazon EKS
15 14 (4.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 12 (3.64%) SaaS
17 11 (3.33%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 42 (12.73%) Firewall
2 32 (9.70%) DNS
3 11 (3.33%) Network Security
4 10 (3.03%) TCP/IP
5 8 (2.42%) DHCP
5 8 (2.42%) WebEx
6 7 (2.12%) BGP
6 7 (2.12%) VLAN
7 6 (1.82%) FTP
7 6 (1.82%) HTTP
7 6 (1.82%) SMTP
7 6 (1.82%) Software-Defined Networking
7 6 (1.82%) SSH
8 5 (1.52%) SAN
9 4 (1.21%) Fibre Channel
9 4 (1.21%) IMAP
9 4 (1.21%) OpenLDAP
9 4 (1.21%) VPN
10 3 (0.91%) MQTT
10 3 (0.91%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (6.67%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (4.85%) Amazon RDS
3 13 (3.94%) NoSQL
4 9 (2.73%) Metadata
5 8 (2.42%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (2.42%) Big Data
5 8 (2.42%) DynamoDB
5 8 (2.42%) Redis
5 8 (2.42%) SQL Server
6 6 (1.82%) Couchbase
6 6 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (1.82%) Hadoop
7 5 (1.52%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.21%) Amazon Aurora
8 4 (1.21%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.21%) Neo4j
9 3 (0.91%) Power BI
10 2 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (0.61%) Spark SQL
10 2 (0.61%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 50 (15.15%) Jenkins
2 41 (12.42%) GitLab
3 31 (9.39%) Git
4 28 (8.48%) JIRA
5 10 (3.03%) SonarQube
6 6 (1.82%) Vagrant
7 4 (1.21%) Gatling
7 4 (1.21%) JMeter
7 4 (1.21%) LoadRunner
7 4 (1.21%) NeoLoad
7 4 (1.21%) Postman
8 3 (0.91%) MSI
8 3 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.61%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.61%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.61%) JUnit
9 2 (0.61%) Maven
9 2 (0.61%) Mockito
9 2 (0.61%) Selenium
9 2 (0.61%) Spinnaker
General
1 63 (19.09%) Social Skills
2 31 (9.39%) Public Sector
3 29 (8.79%) Finance
4 19 (5.76%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (5.15%) Banking
6 15 (4.55%) Legal
7 7 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (1.21%) Retail
9 4 (1.21%) Retail Banking
10 3 (0.91%) Games
10 3 (0.91%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.61%) Law
12 1 (0.30%) Advertising
12 1 (0.30%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.30%) Electronics
12 1 (0.30%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.30%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.30%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 175 (53.03%) Platform Engineer
2 56 (16.97%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 33 (10.00%) Senior
4 32 (9.70%) DevOps Engineer
5 25 (7.58%) Cloud Engineer
6 24 (7.27%) AWS Engineer
7 23 (6.97%) Lead
8 22 (6.67%) Azure Engineer
9 20 (6.06%) Architect
9 20 (6.06%) Azure Platform Engineer
9 20 (6.06%) Data Engineer
10 19 (5.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 17 (5.15%) AWS Platform Engineer
12 16 (4.85%) DevSecOps Engineer
13 12 (3.64%) DevOps Platform Engineer
14 11 (3.33%) Project Manager
15 10 (3.03%) Software Engineer
16 7 (2.12%) AWS DevOps
16 7 (2.12%) AWS DevOps Engineer
16 7 (2.12%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (5.45%) Kafka
2 15 (4.55%) YAML
3 13 (3.94%) REST
4 10 (3.03%) Elastic Stack
5 9 (2.73%) LDAP
5 9 (2.73%) OAuth
5 9 (2.73%) OpenID
6 8 (2.42%) Keycloak
6 8 (2.42%) OAuth2
6 8 (2.42%) XMPP
7 7 (2.12%) Node.js
7 7 (2.12%) Oracle Fusion
7 7 (2.12%) React
8 6 (1.82%) Playwright
8 6 (1.82%) Spring
8 6 (1.82%) Spring Boot
9 5 (1.52%) ARM Templates
9 5 (1.52%) Middleware
9 5 (1.52%) OpenAPI
9 5 (1.52%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 32 (9.70%) Cloud Native
2 23 (6.97%) Product Ownership
3 19 (5.76%) PKI
4 18 (5.45%) Onboarding
5 16 (4.85%) Private Cloud
5 16 (4.85%) Replication
6 13 (3.94%) Distributed Systems
7 12 (3.64%) Data Centre
8 10 (3.03%) Public Cloud
9 9 (2.73%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
10 8 (2.42%) NHS
11 6 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
12 5 (1.52%) Security Posture
13 4 (1.21%) NVMe
13 4 (1.21%) Operational Technology
13 4 (1.21%) Virtual Team
14 3 (0.91%) Analytical Mindset
14 3 (0.91%) Reference Data
14 3 (0.91%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 88 (26.67%) Linux
2 72 (21.82%) Windows
3 26 (7.88%) Windows Server
4 20 (6.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (3.94%) Unix
6 10 (3.03%) VMS
7 9 (2.73%) Amazon Linux
7 9 (2.73%) Windows 10
8 4 (1.21%) Ubuntu
8 4 (1.21%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.91%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.61%) Solaris
10 2 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.30%) CentOS
11 1 (0.30%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 150 (45.45%) CI/CD
2 136 (41.21%) DevOps
3 119 (36.06%) Infrastructure as Code
4 62 (18.79%) Containerisation
5 61 (18.48%) Observability
6 53 (16.06%) Problem-Solving
7 50 (15.15%) Agile
7 50 (15.15%) Continuous Improvement
8 46 (13.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 45 (13.64%) Migration
10 36 (10.91%) Software Engineering
11 35 (10.61%) DevSecOps
12 34 (10.30%) Infrastructure Automation
13 31 (9.39%) Cloud Security
14 29 (8.79%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 26 (7.88%) Roadmaps
16 25 (7.58%) RBAC
17 24 (7.27%) Incident Response
17 24 (7.27%) Test Automation
18 23 (6.97%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 122 (36.97%) Python
2 57 (17.27%) Bash
3 52 (15.76%) PowerShell
4 23 (6.97%) Java
5 22 (6.67%) SQL
6 15 (4.55%) Perl
7 14 (4.24%) Bicep
8 10 (3.03%) Groovy
9 8 (2.42%) Shell Script
9 8 (2.42%) TypeScript
10 7 (2.12%) C#
10 7 (2.12%) JavaScript
11 4 (1.21%) Cypher
11 4 (1.21%) Go
11 4 (1.21%) Scala
12 2 (0.61%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.61%) C++
12 2 (0.61%) PHP
12 2 (0.61%) SOQL
13 1 (0.30%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 138 (41.82%) Security Cleared
2 108 (32.73%) SC Cleared
3 28 (8.48%) DV Cleared
4 14 (4.24%) Degree
5 13 (3.94%) AWS Certification
6 10 (3.03%) CCNA
6 10 (3.03%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (2.73%) Azure Certification
7 9 (2.73%) CCDP
7 9 (2.73%) CCNP
8 8 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 3 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.91%) CSPO
11 2 (0.61%) NCDA
11 2 (0.61%) VCP6
12 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.30%) RHCSA
12 1 (0.30%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.67%) NCSC
2 11 (3.33%) Data Quality
3 9 (2.73%) GDPR
4 5 (1.52%) NIST
4 5 (1.52%) QA
5 4 (1.21%) COBIT
6 3 (0.91%) NIST 800
6 3 (0.91%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.61%) WCAG
8 1 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.30%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.30%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 59 (17.88%) Docker
2 49 (14.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 44 (13.33%) Active Directory
4 14 (4.24%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (3.03%) vSphere
6 7 (2.12%) VMware NSX
7 6 (1.82%) DFS Replication
8 4 (1.21%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (1.21%) Dovecot
8 4 (1.21%) Hyper-V
8 4 (1.21%) Postfix
8 4 (1.21%) Squid
9 3 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.30%) GPFS
10 1 (0.30%) KVM
10 1 (0.30%) Time Sharing Option
10 1 (0.30%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 1 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 123 (37.27%) Terraform
2 102 (30.91%) Kubernetes
3 56 (16.97%) Ansible
4 44 (13.33%) Grafana
5 33 (10.00%) Prometheus
6 16 (4.85%) Istio
7 12 (3.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 11 (3.33%) vCenter Server
9 10 (3.03%) Argo
10 9 (2.73%) Packer
11 7 (2.12%) linkerd
11 7 (2.12%) Microsoft Intune
11 7 (2.12%) Proxmox
12 5 (1.52%) SCCM
12 5 (1.52%) Single Sign-On
13 4 (1.21%) Kibana
13 4 (1.21%) Nessus
13 4 (1.21%) vMotion
14 3 (0.91%) Puppet
14 3 (0.91%) WSUS
Vendors
1 61 (18.48%) VMware
2 46 (13.94%) Microsoft
3 30 (9.09%) Splunk
4 27 (8.18%) Cisco
4 27 (8.18%) Red Hat
5 26 (7.88%) Dynatrace
6 20 (6.06%) Oracle
7 16 (4.85%) Citrix
7 16 (4.85%) ServiceNow
8 12 (3.64%) F5
8 12 (3.64%) Google
9 11 (3.33%) IBM
10 8 (2.42%) AppDynamics
10 8 (2.42%) Veeam
11 6 (1.82%) Confluent
11 6 (1.82%) Databricks
12 5 (1.52%) CheckPoint
12 5 (1.52%) Dell
12 5 (1.52%) HP
12 5 (1.52%) PeopleSoft