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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 139 259 305
Rank change year-on-year +120 +46 -56
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 394 76 94
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.64% 0.60% 0.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.02% 0.66% 0.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 264 49 65
10th Percentile £363 £413 £418
25th Percentile £418 £479 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £537 £543
Median % change year-on-year -8.14% -1.10% -6.86%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £650
90th Percentile £638 £665 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -5.45% -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £66.50 £68.75 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £72.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +2.43% - -
75th Percentile £80.00 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £82.40 - -
UK median hourly rate £74.26 £72.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +2.43% +19.83% -22.44%

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 19,526 11,543 17,608
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.41% 90.48% 84.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,832 7,256 10,521
10th Percentile £290 £235 £250
25th Percentile £400 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.62% -3.10% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £678 £661 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,050 819 2,050
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £12.34
25th Percentile £19.02 £17.44 £15.29
Median hourly rate £43.69 £27.76 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +57.38% -25.34% +3.28%
75th Percentile £67.25 £64.51 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.05 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.65
% change year-on-year +43.29% -18.65% -4.42%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 +52 154 £475 -11.63% 66
Yorkshire +22 86 £475 -13.64% 18
South East +5 78 £519 +3.75% 61
North West +13 65 £450 -14.69% 39
Scotland +35 56 £450 -14.29% 9
Midlands -43 47 £492 -8.38% 21
West Midlands -36 35 £500 -8.00% 11
East of England +4 34 £475 -40.63% 15
South West -13 25 £575 -4.37% 27
East Midlands -23 12 £488 -2.50% 9
North East -15 5 £453 -17.73% 9
Wales -7 2 £424 - 4
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 21 (5.33%) Confluence
2 11 (2.79%) Apache Spark
3 7 (1.78%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.02%) Apache
5 4 (1.02%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.51%) Apache Pulsar
6 2 (0.51%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
6 2 (0.51%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.51%) nginx
6 2 (0.51%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.51%) Tuxedo
6 2 (0.51%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.51%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.51%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.51%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.25%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.25%) IIS
7 1 (0.25%) SAS
Applications
1 3 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 147 (37.31%) Azure
2 137 (34.77%) AWS
3 81 (20.56%) GitHub
4 63 (15.99%) GitHub Actions
5 57 (14.47%) GCP
6 42 (10.66%) Azure DevOps
7 30 (7.61%) Amazon EKS
7 30 (7.61%) OpenShift
7 30 (7.61%) Serverless
8 28 (7.11%) Entra ID
9 26 (6.60%) Azure AKS
10 25 (6.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 22 (5.58%) AWS CloudFormation
12 21 (5.33%) AWS Lambda
13 19 (4.82%) Amazon EC2
13 19 (4.82%) Amazon S3
14 18 (4.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 15 (3.81%) Snowflake
15 15 (3.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 14 (3.55%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 26 (6.60%) Firewall
2 23 (5.84%) DNS
3 11 (2.79%) Network Security
4 10 (2.54%) TCP/IP
4 10 (2.54%) VPN
5 9 (2.28%) DHCP
6 6 (1.52%) SAN
6 6 (1.52%) SNMP
6 6 (1.52%) VSAN
7 5 (1.27%) SSL
7 5 (1.27%) WebEx
8 4 (1.02%) Fibre Channel
8 4 (1.02%) IPsec
8 4 (1.02%) MQTT
8 4 (1.02%) SD-WAN
9 3 (0.76%) Internet
9 3 (0.76%) NAS
10 2 (0.51%) HTTP
10 2 (0.51%) NetScaler
11 1 (0.25%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (8.63%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (4.31%) SQL Server
3 16 (4.06%) Relational Database
4 14 (3.55%) Power BI
5 9 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
5 9 (2.28%) DynamoDB
5 9 (2.28%) Metadata
5 9 (2.28%) Redis
6 8 (2.03%) Big Data
6 8 (2.03%) MySQL
6 8 (2.03%) NoSQL
6 8 (2.03%) Tableau
7 7 (1.78%) Hadoop
8 5 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
9 4 (1.02%) Amazon Redshift
9 4 (1.02%) Neo4j
10 3 (0.76%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (0.76%) Data Lake
10 3 (0.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 2 (0.51%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 63 (15.99%) Jenkins
2 48 (12.18%) GitLab
3 42 (10.66%) JIRA
4 40 (10.15%) Git
5 11 (2.79%) Bitbucket
6 10 (2.54%) Gatling
7 7 (1.78%) Artifactory
8 5 (1.27%) Maven
8 5 (1.27%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (1.02%) JMeter
9 4 (1.02%) LoadRunner
9 4 (1.02%) MSI
9 4 (1.02%) NeoLoad
9 4 (1.02%) Postman
10 3 (0.76%) Jaeger
10 3 (0.76%) Spinnaker
11 2 (0.51%) Introscope
11 2 (0.51%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.51%) Visual Studio
General
1 78 (19.80%) Social Skills
2 43 (10.91%) Finance
3 40 (10.15%) Public Sector
4 20 (5.08%) Banking
5 12 (3.05%) Analytical Skills
6 9 (2.28%) Legal
7 4 (1.02%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.02%) Health Technology
7 4 (1.02%) Telecoms
8 3 (0.76%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.51%) Investment Banking
9 2 (0.51%) Law
9 2 (0.51%) Military
10 1 (0.25%) Advertising
10 1 (0.25%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.25%) Electronics
10 1 (0.25%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.25%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.25%) Retail
Job Titles
1 174 (44.16%) Platform Engineer
2 66 (16.75%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 65 (16.50%) Senior
4 62 (15.74%) DevOps Engineer
5 37 (9.39%) Cloud Engineer
6 36 (9.14%) Azure Engineer
7 29 (7.36%) Azure Platform Engineer
8 28 (7.11%) Architect
9 24 (6.09%) Lead
10 23 (5.84%) DevOps Platform Engineer
11 22 (5.58%) Data Engineer
12 21 (5.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 20 (5.08%) AWS Engineer
14 19 (4.82%) Senior Platform Engineer
15 18 (4.57%) Senior DevOps
15 18 (4.57%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 16 (4.06%) GCP Engineer
17 15 (3.81%) Site Reliability Engineer
18 11 (2.79%) AWS Platform Engineer
18 11 (2.79%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (4.31%) Kafka
2 15 (3.81%) REST
3 12 (3.05%) OpenTelemetry
4 10 (2.54%) Playwright
5 9 (2.28%) AWS CDK
5 9 (2.28%) Keycloak
6 8 (2.03%) .NET
6 8 (2.03%) ADO
6 8 (2.03%) Node.js
7 7 (1.78%) Elastic Stack
7 7 (1.78%) OAuth
7 7 (1.78%) OAuth2
7 7 (1.78%) OpenID
7 7 (1.78%) YAML
8 6 (1.52%) LDAP
8 6 (1.52%) Spring
8 6 (1.52%) Spring Boot
9 5 (1.27%) Middleware
9 5 (1.27%) React
9 5 (1.27%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 63 (15.99%) Cloud Native
2 27 (6.85%) Product Ownership
3 18 (4.57%) Private Cloud
4 16 (4.06%) Distributed Systems
5 15 (3.81%) Onboarding
6 14 (3.55%) PKI
7 12 (3.05%) Data Centre
7 12 (3.05%) Hybrid Cloud
8 10 (2.54%) Public Cloud
9 9 (2.28%) Security Posture
10 8 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (2.03%) NHS
11 5 (1.27%) Fat Client
11 5 (1.27%) Operational Technology
11 5 (1.27%) Thin Client
11 5 (1.27%) Virtual Team
12 4 (1.02%) Enterprise Cloud
12 4 (1.02%) Management Information System
12 4 (1.02%) NVMe
12 4 (1.02%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 77 (19.54%) Linux
2 42 (10.66%) Windows
3 19 (4.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 17 (4.31%) Unix
5 11 (2.79%) Windows Server
6 4 (1.02%) VMS
7 3 (0.76%) Amazon Linux
7 3 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.51%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.51%) Solaris
8 2 (0.51%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.25%) CentOS
9 1 (0.25%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.25%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 200 (50.76%) CI/CD
2 176 (44.67%) DevOps
3 148 (37.56%) Infrastructure as Code
4 83 (21.07%) Observability
5 79 (20.05%) Agile
6 65 (16.50%) Containerisation
7 56 (14.21%) Continuous Improvement
8 54 (13.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 54 (13.71%) Migration
9 53 (13.45%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 48 (12.18%) Software Engineering
11 42 (10.66%) Problem-Solving
11 42 (10.66%) Roadmaps
12 40 (10.15%) DevSecOps
13 36 (9.14%) GitOps
13 36 (9.14%) Infrastructure Automation
14 34 (8.63%) Technical Leadership
15 32 (8.12%) Test Automation
16 30 (7.61%) AI
16 30 (7.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 144 (36.55%) Python
2 59 (14.97%) Bash
3 50 (12.69%) PowerShell
4 40 (10.15%) Java
5 25 (6.35%) SQL
6 21 (5.33%) Bicep
7 10 (2.54%) Scala
8 8 (2.03%) Go
8 8 (2.03%) TypeScript
9 7 (1.78%) C#
9 7 (1.78%) JavaScript
9 7 (1.78%) Perl
10 5 (1.27%) Groovy
11 4 (1.02%) Cypher
11 4 (1.02%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.51%) C++
12 2 (0.51%) Jython
12 2 (0.51%) PHP
13 1 (0.25%) C
13 1 (0.25%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 134 (34.01%) Security Cleared
2 105 (26.65%) SC Cleared
3 17 (4.31%) DV Cleared
4 14 (3.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (2.79%) Degree
6 8 (2.03%) AWS Certification
6 8 (2.03%) Azure Certification
7 7 (1.78%) SAFe Agilist
8 6 (1.52%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 6 (1.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 4 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (1.02%) RHCE
10 3 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.76%) CSPO
10 3 (0.76%) NCDA
11 2 (0.51%) CCNA
11 2 (0.51%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.51%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.51%) PMP
11 2 (0.51%) VCP6
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.55%) Data Quality
1 14 (3.55%) NCSC
1 14 (3.55%) QA
2 10 (2.54%) GDPR
3 5 (1.27%) PCI DSS
4 4 (1.02%) GRC
4 4 (1.02%) NIST
4 4 (1.02%) NIST 800
5 3 (0.76%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.25%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.25%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 57 (14.47%) Docker
2 40 (10.15%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (6.85%) Active Directory
4 15 (3.81%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (3.30%) vSphere
6 10 (2.54%) VMware NSX
7 7 (1.78%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (1.27%) Hyper-V
9 4 (1.02%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 3 (0.76%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.51%) Firmware
12 1 (0.25%) Ceph
12 1 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 1 (0.25%) GPFS
12 1 (0.25%) KVM
12 1 (0.25%) NFS
12 1 (0.25%) Squid
12 1 (0.25%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 148 (37.56%) Terraform
2 128 (32.49%) Kubernetes
3 74 (18.78%) Ansible
4 42 (10.66%) Grafana
5 37 (9.39%) Prometheus
6 27 (6.85%) Istio
7 23 (5.84%) Argo
8 8 (2.03%) Packer
9 7 (1.78%) linkerd
10 6 (1.52%) HAProxy
10 6 (1.52%) Microsoft Intune
10 6 (1.52%) PowerCLI
10 6 (1.52%) Puppet
10 6 (1.52%) Rancher
11 5 (1.27%) vCenter Server
11 5 (1.27%) vRealize
12 4 (1.02%) SCCM
12 4 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
12 4 (1.02%) vMotion
13 3 (0.76%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 48 (12.18%) VMware
2 45 (11.42%) Microsoft
3 28 (7.11%) Splunk
4 24 (6.09%) Google
5 22 (5.58%) Red Hat
6 20 (5.08%) Oracle
7 16 (4.06%) Dynatrace
7 16 (4.06%) ServiceNow
8 12 (3.05%) Cisco
9 9 (2.28%) Citrix
10 7 (1.78%) Databricks
11 6 (1.52%) Cribl.io
12 5 (1.27%) PeopleSoft
12 5 (1.27%) Veeam
13 4 (1.02%) BiZZdesign
13 4 (1.02%) Brocade
13 4 (1.02%) Dell
13 4 (1.02%) F5
13 4 (1.02%) IBM
13 4 (1.02%) NetApp