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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 116 226 298
Rank change year-on-year +110 +72 -46
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 552 133 84
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.04% 0.88% 0.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.50% 0.99% 0.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 324 92 63
10th Percentile £363 £400 £408
25th Percentile £414 £450 £457
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £675
90th Percentile £666 £634 £738
UK median daily rate £543 £530 £600
% change year-on-year +2.36% -11.67% -2.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 1 0
10th Percentile £66.50 - -
25th Percentile £74.26 £68.75 -
Median hourly rate £82.00 £72.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +13.10% - -
75th Percentile £99.41 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £100.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £77.50 £72.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +6.90% +31.82% -29.49%

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 22,108 13,425 15,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.74% 89.27% 82.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,058 8,130 9,549
10th Percentile £300 £236 £250
25th Percentile £406 £365 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £592 £575 £600
90th Percentile £676 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £521 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.10% -4.76% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,312 1,277 1,720
10th Percentile £14.45 £14.00 £13.18
25th Percentile £19.69 £16.95 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £23.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +87.06% -41.25% -
75th Percentile £68.75 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.49 £70.16 £74.04
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 +70 203 £500 +11.11% 137
Yorkshire +52 114 £500 -4.76% 50
Midlands +6 95 £488 -2.50% 47
South East -11 95 £554 +10.80% 91
North West +13 81 £513 +27.49% 78
Scotland +33 74 £425 -15.00% 21
West Midlands -15 71 £488 -2.50% 25
South West +17 64 £550 -8.33% 55
East Midlands +9 23 £488 -18.75% 22
East of England -3 19 £551 +16.00% 17
North East -33 10 £438 -20.45% 9
Wales - 5 £325 - 12
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 3
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 24 (4.35%) Confluence
2 10 (1.81%) Apache Spark
3 8 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (0.91%) Apache
4 5 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
5 4 (0.72%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.36%) Apache Pulsar
7 2 (0.36%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
7 2 (0.36%) IBM HTTP Server
7 2 (0.36%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.36%) Oracle HTTP Server
7 2 (0.36%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.36%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.36%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.36%) WebSphere Portal
8 1 (0.18%) nginx
8 1 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.18%) Tuxedo
8 1 (0.18%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
1 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
1 4 (0.72%) NetSuite
1 4 (0.72%) Sage X3
2 1 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 238 (43.12%) AWS
2 222 (40.22%) Azure
3 98 (17.75%) GCP
4 94 (17.03%) GitHub
5 75 (13.59%) GitHub Actions
6 53 (9.60%) Azure DevOps
7 46 (8.33%) Serverless
8 44 (7.97%) Amazon EKS
9 34 (6.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 31 (5.62%) AWS Lambda
11 29 (5.25%) OpenShift
12 28 (5.07%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 27 (4.89%) Amazon S3
13 27 (4.89%) Power Platform
14 25 (4.53%) Amazon EC2
14 25 (4.53%) AWS CloudFormation
14 25 (4.53%) Entra ID
15 23 (4.17%) Azure AKS
15 23 (4.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 21 (3.80%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 44 (7.97%) DNS
2 42 (7.61%) Firewall
3 24 (4.35%) TCP/IP
4 22 (3.99%) DHCP
4 22 (3.99%) Network Security
5 20 (3.62%) VPN
6 15 (2.72%) VSAN
7 9 (1.63%) HTTP
8 7 (1.27%) SNMP
9 5 (0.91%) NAS
9 5 (0.91%) SAN
10 4 (0.72%) SSH
11 3 (0.54%) SSL
11 3 (0.54%) WAN
11 3 (0.54%) WebEx
12 2 (0.36%) HTTPS
12 2 (0.36%) Internet
12 2 (0.36%) LAN
12 2 (0.36%) Multicast
13 1 (0.18%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (6.16%) PostgreSQL
2 26 (4.71%) SQL Server
3 18 (3.26%) Data Warehouse
4 14 (2.54%) Relational Database
5 13 (2.36%) DynamoDB
5 13 (2.36%) Power BI
6 12 (2.17%) MySQL
7 9 (1.63%) Metadata
7 9 (1.63%) NoSQL
8 8 (1.45%) Amazon Redshift
8 8 (1.45%) Big Data
8 8 (1.45%) Tableau
9 6 (1.09%) Ataccama
9 6 (1.09%) BigQuery
9 6 (1.09%) Data Lake
10 5 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
10 5 (0.91%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (0.91%) MongoDB
10 5 (0.91%) Neo4j
11 4 (0.72%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 87 (15.76%) Jenkins
2 55 (9.96%) Git
3 53 (9.60%) GitLab
4 46 (8.33%) JIRA
5 20 (3.62%) Bitbucket
6 8 (1.45%) Maven
7 7 (1.27%) Gatling
7 7 (1.27%) SonarQube
7 7 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (1.09%) Artifactory
8 6 (1.09%) Visual Studio
9 4 (0.72%) MSBuild
10 3 (0.54%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.54%) Jaeger
11 2 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.36%) Introscope
11 2 (0.36%) Mockito
11 2 (0.36%) MSI
11 2 (0.36%) Selenium
11 2 (0.36%) Terragrunt
General
1 108 (19.57%) Social Skills
2 86 (15.58%) Finance
3 64 (11.59%) Public Sector
4 29 (5.25%) Banking
5 26 (4.71%) Analytical Skills
6 21 (3.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
8 13 (2.36%) Telecoms
9 9 (1.63%) Influencing Skills
10 8 (1.45%) Aerospace
10 8 (1.45%) Military
11 7 (1.27%) Billing
12 5 (0.91%) Financial Institution
12 5 (0.91%) Legal
12 5 (0.91%) Retail
13 4 (0.72%) Health Technology
13 4 (0.72%) Police
14 3 (0.54%) Investment Banking
14 3 (0.54%) Local Government
14 3 (0.54%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 234 (42.39%) Platform Engineer
2 95 (17.21%) Senior
3 87 (15.76%) DevOps Engineer
4 81 (14.67%) Cloud Platform Engineer
5 61 (11.05%) Cloud Engineer
6 59 (10.69%) Data Engineer
7 47 (8.51%) Azure Engineer
8 42 (7.61%) Senior Platform Engineer
9 34 (6.16%) Architect
10 33 (5.98%) Azure Platform Engineer
11 32 (5.80%) AWS Engineer
12 31 (5.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 30 (5.43%) Lead
14 24 (4.35%) GCP Engineer
14 24 (4.35%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 23 (4.17%) Developer
15 23 (4.17%) Senior Data Engineer
16 22 (3.99%) DevOps Platform Engineer
17 20 (3.62%) Senior DevOps
17 20 (3.62%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (6.16%) Kafka
2 19 (3.44%) OpenTelemetry
3 16 (2.90%) OAuth
3 16 (2.90%) REST
4 15 (2.72%) JSON
4 15 (2.72%) OAuth2
5 13 (2.36%) .NET
5 13 (2.36%) ARM Templates
5 13 (2.36%) AWS CDK
6 12 (2.17%) Node.js
6 12 (2.17%) React
7 11 (1.99%) YAML
8 10 (1.81%) OpenID
8 10 (1.81%) Spring Boot
9 8 (1.45%) Playwright
9 8 (1.45%) SAML
9 8 (1.45%) Spring
10 7 (1.27%) LDAP
11 6 (1.09%) SOAP
12 5 (0.91%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 110 (19.93%) Cloud Native
2 44 (7.97%) Product Ownership
3 27 (4.89%) Distributed Systems
4 24 (4.35%) Onboarding
5 23 (4.17%) Data Protection Act
5 23 (4.17%) Hybrid Cloud
6 22 (3.99%) Data Centre
7 16 (2.90%) PKI
8 14 (2.54%) Enterprise Cloud
8 14 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
9 11 (1.99%) Public Cloud
10 10 (1.81%) Private Cloud
11 7 (1.27%) NHS
11 7 (1.27%) Replication
11 7 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
12 6 (1.09%) Data Structures
12 6 (1.09%) Linux Command Line
12 6 (1.09%) Management Information System
12 6 (1.09%) Security Posture
12 6 (1.09%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 111 (20.11%) Linux
2 54 (9.78%) Windows
3 27 (4.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 15 (2.72%) Windows Server
5 14 (2.54%) Unix
6 8 (1.45%) VMS
7 5 (0.91%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.36%) CentOS
8 2 (0.36%) Data ONTAP
8 2 (0.36%) Debian
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.36%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.36%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.18%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 296 (53.62%) CI/CD
2 280 (50.72%) DevOps
3 225 (40.76%) Infrastructure as Code
4 150 (27.17%) Observability
5 119 (21.56%) Agile
6 103 (18.66%) Containerisation
7 101 (18.30%) Continuous Improvement
8 89 (16.12%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 76 (13.77%) Technical Leadership
10 75 (13.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 75 (13.59%) Migration
11 72 (13.04%) DevSecOps
12 70 (12.68%) Problem-Solving
13 67 (12.14%) AI
14 56 (10.14%) Software Engineering
15 54 (9.78%) Roadmaps
16 53 (9.60%) Test Automation
17 50 (9.06%) Cloud Security
18 47 (8.51%) Scrum
19 43 (7.79%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 210 (38.04%) Python
2 86 (15.58%) Bash
3 84 (15.22%) PowerShell
4 56 (10.14%) Java
5 46 (8.33%) SQL
6 32 (5.80%) Bicep
7 17 (3.08%) Go
8 13 (2.36%) C#
9 11 (1.99%) JavaScript
10 10 (1.81%) Groovy
11 9 (1.63%) TypeScript
12 8 (1.45%) Scala
13 7 (1.27%) Shell Script
14 5 (0.91%) Perl
15 4 (0.72%) C++
16 2 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 2 (0.36%) Jython
16 2 (0.36%) PHP
16 2 (0.36%) VBScript
17 1 (0.18%) Ada
Qualifications
1 170 (30.80%) Security Cleared
2 133 (24.09%) SC Cleared
3 36 (6.52%) DV Cleared
4 21 (3.80%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (3.44%) Degree
6 17 (3.08%) AWS Certification
7 12 (2.17%) Azure Certification
8 11 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (1.99%) SAFe Agilist
9 9 (1.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 9 (1.63%) Microsoft Certification
9 9 (1.63%) RHCE
10 7 (1.27%) VCAP
11 4 (0.72%) CISSP
12 3 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 2 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
13 2 (0.36%) NCDA
13 2 (0.36%) NCIE
13 2 (0.36%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.36%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.26%) Data Quality
2 15 (2.72%) QA
3 10 (1.81%) Accessibility
4 8 (1.45%) GRC
5 7 (1.27%) GDPR
6 6 (1.09%) NCSC
6 6 (1.09%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.54%) NIST
8 2 (0.36%) GxP
8 2 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.18%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.18%) ISO 8583
9 1 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 93 (16.85%) Docker
2 39 (7.07%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (6.52%) Active Directory
4 24 (4.35%) vSphere
5 17 (3.08%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (2.72%) VMware NSX
7 13 (2.36%) Hyper-V
8 8 (1.45%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.36%) EMC RecoverPoint
9 2 (0.36%) Firmware
9 2 (0.36%) NFS
9 2 (0.36%) Squid
9 2 (0.36%) SRDF
9 2 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.18%) Ceph
10 1 (0.18%) KVM
10 1 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 239 (43.30%) Terraform
2 192 (34.78%) Kubernetes
3 87 (15.76%) Ansible
4 39 (7.07%) Grafana
4 39 (7.07%) Prometheus
5 31 (5.62%) Argo
6 18 (3.26%) Istio
7 8 (1.45%) Kustomize
7 8 (1.45%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (1.45%) VxRail
8 7 (1.27%) Puppet
9 6 (1.09%) HAProxy
9 6 (1.09%) SCCM
10 5 (0.91%) Progress Chef
10 5 (0.91%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.72%) Packer
11 4 (0.72%) PowerCLI
11 4 (0.72%) Rancher
12 3 (0.54%) NetBackup
12 3 (0.54%) Podman
Vendors
1 70 (12.68%) Microsoft
2 44 (7.97%) Google
3 43 (7.79%) VMware
4 25 (4.53%) Red Hat
5 23 (4.17%) Oracle
5 23 (4.17%) Splunk
6 19 (3.44%) Databricks
7 16 (2.90%) Dynatrace
7 16 (2.90%) ServiceNow
8 9 (1.63%) CyberArk
9 8 (1.45%) Cisco
10 5 (0.91%) Citrix
10 5 (0.91%) Cribl.io
10 5 (0.91%) ForgeRock
10 5 (0.91%) PagerDuty
11 4 (0.72%) CrowdStrike
11 4 (0.72%) NetApp
11 4 (0.72%) Sage
11 4 (0.72%) Salesforce
11 4 (0.72%) Sonatype