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

6 months to
15 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 241 308
Rank change year-on-year +98 +67 -67
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 419 97 90
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.64% 0.73% 0.42%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.01% 0.80% 0.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 267 64 63
10th Percentile £363 £401 £413
25th Percentile £420 £455 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -12.50%
75th Percentile £575 £591 £647
90th Percentile £650 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -6.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 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 £75.70 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £80.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £75.00 £72.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +3.45% +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 20,897 12,116 17,665
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.65% 90.60% 82.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,438 7,483 10,353
10th Percentile £300 £235 £250
25th Percentile £404 £370 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £684 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £513 £507 £525
% change year-on-year +1.08% -3.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,215 939 2,201
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.20 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.33 £16.95 £15.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +17.29%
75th Percentile £68.00 £58.63 £61.50
90th Percentile £81.05 £75.00 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £26.75 £37.18
% change year-on-year +64.34% -28.05% +6.23%

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 15 June 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 15 June 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 15 June 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 +47 173 £475 -9.95% 69
Yorkshire +25 99 £488 -11.36% 19
North West +13 71 £458 +1.67% 44
South East -15 68 £525 +10.53% 92
Scotland +23 59 £450 -8.07% 10
Midlands -22 51 £488 -5.98% 58
West Midlands -36 40 £500 -6.89% 48
South West +1 39 £545 -9.17% 37
East of England -6 26 £463 -33.93% 15
East Midlands -14 11 £488 -2.50% 10
Wales - 6 £374 - 6
North East -30 5 £453 -17.73% 6
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 23 (5.49%) Confluence
2 10 (2.39%) Apache Spark
3 6 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (0.95%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.72%) Apache
6 2 (0.48%) Apache Pulsar
6 2 (0.48%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
6 2 (0.48%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.48%) nginx
6 2 (0.48%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.48%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.48%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.48%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.48%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.48%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.24%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.24%) Oracle Coherence
7 1 (0.24%) Tuxedo
7 1 (0.24%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.48%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.48%) Sage X3
3 1 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 156 (37.23%) AWS
1 156 (37.23%) Azure
2 80 (19.09%) GitHub
3 69 (16.47%) GCP
4 65 (15.51%) GitHub Actions
5 40 (9.55%) Azure DevOps
6 36 (8.59%) Serverless
7 35 (8.35%) Amazon EKS
8 33 (7.88%) OpenShift
9 28 (6.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 27 (6.44%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 25 (5.97%) Amazon S3
12 24 (5.73%) Amazon EC2
12 24 (5.73%) AWS Lambda
13 23 (5.49%) Azure AKS
13 23 (5.49%) Entra ID
14 21 (5.01%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 20 (4.77%) AWS CloudFormation
16 18 (4.30%) Amazon ECS
16 18 (4.30%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 23 (5.49%) Firewall
2 17 (4.06%) Network Security
3 16 (3.82%) DNS
4 13 (3.10%) VPN
5 8 (1.91%) SAN
6 6 (1.43%) SNMP
6 6 (1.43%) TCP/IP
6 6 (1.43%) VSAN
7 5 (1.19%) DHCP
7 5 (1.19%) NAS
8 4 (0.95%) Fibre Channel
9 3 (0.72%) HTTP
9 3 (0.72%) IPsec
9 3 (0.72%) MQTT
9 3 (0.72%) SD-WAN
9 3 (0.72%) SSL
9 3 (0.72%) WebEx
10 2 (0.48%) Internet
10 2 (0.48%) NetScaler
11 1 (0.24%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (6.92%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (4.53%) SQL Server
3 14 (3.34%) Data Warehouse
3 14 (3.34%) Relational Database
4 13 (3.10%) Power BI
5 10 (2.39%) DynamoDB
6 9 (2.15%) MySQL
6 9 (2.15%) NoSQL
7 8 (1.91%) Metadata
7 8 (1.91%) Neo4j
7 8 (1.91%) Tableau
8 7 (1.67%) Big Data
9 6 (1.43%) Ataccama
9 6 (1.43%) Redis
10 5 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (1.19%) Hadoop
11 4 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
11 4 (0.95%) BigQuery
12 3 (0.72%) Amazon Athena
12 3 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 71 (16.95%) Jenkins
2 52 (12.41%) GitLab
3 47 (11.22%) JIRA
4 38 (9.07%) Git
5 14 (3.34%) Bitbucket
6 10 (2.39%) Gatling
7 6 (1.43%) Artifactory
8 5 (1.19%) Maven
9 4 (0.95%) JMeter
9 4 (0.95%) LoadRunner
9 4 (0.95%) NeoLoad
9 4 (0.95%) Postman
9 4 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.72%) Jaeger
10 3 (0.72%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.48%) Introscope
11 2 (0.48%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.48%) Visual Studio
12 1 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 1 (0.24%) MSI
General
1 80 (19.09%) Social Skills
2 62 (14.80%) Finance
3 44 (10.50%) Public Sector
4 26 (6.21%) Banking
5 14 (3.34%) Analytical Skills
6 9 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.19%) Legal
9 4 (0.95%) Health Technology
9 4 (0.95%) Military
9 4 (0.95%) Telecoms
10 3 (0.72%) Financial Institution
10 3 (0.72%) Law
10 3 (0.72%) Police
10 3 (0.72%) Retail
11 2 (0.48%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.48%) Billing
11 2 (0.48%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.48%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 172 (41.05%) Platform Engineer
2 71 (16.95%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 70 (16.71%) Senior
4 69 (16.47%) DevOps Engineer
5 41 (9.79%) Azure Engineer
5 41 (9.79%) Cloud Engineer
6 34 (8.11%) Azure Platform Engineer
7 31 (7.40%) Data Engineer
7 31 (7.40%) Lead
8 29 (6.92%) Architect
9 24 (5.73%) DevOps Platform Engineer
10 22 (5.25%) Senior Platform Engineer
11 20 (4.77%) AWS Engineer
12 18 (4.30%) GCP Engineer
13 17 (4.06%) Senior DevOps
13 17 (4.06%) Senior DevOps Engineer
13 17 (4.06%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 16 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 14 (3.34%) Developer
15 14 (3.34%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (4.30%) Kafka
2 15 (3.58%) REST
3 12 (2.86%) AWS CDK
3 12 (2.86%) OpenTelemetry
3 12 (2.86%) Playwright
4 10 (2.39%) Node.js
4 10 (2.39%) OAuth
5 9 (2.15%) LDAP
5 9 (2.15%) OAuth2
6 8 (1.91%) ADO
6 8 (1.91%) OpenID
7 7 (1.67%) .NET
7 7 (1.67%) React
7 7 (1.67%) Spring Boot
7 7 (1.67%) YAML
8 6 (1.43%) Keycloak
9 5 (1.19%) ARM Templates
9 5 (1.19%) SailPoint
9 5 (1.19%) SOAP
9 5 (1.19%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 75 (17.90%) Cloud Native
2 33 (7.88%) Product Ownership
3 18 (4.30%) Private Cloud
4 16 (3.82%) Onboarding
5 14 (3.34%) Distributed Systems
6 13 (3.10%) Data Centre
7 11 (2.63%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (2.39%) Hybrid Cloud
9 8 (1.91%) Public Cloud
10 7 (1.67%) NHS
10 7 (1.67%) Replication
10 7 (1.67%) Security Posture
11 5 (1.19%) Enterprise Cloud
11 5 (1.19%) Management Information System
11 5 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.19%) Virtual Team
12 4 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
12 4 (0.95%) NVMe
12 4 (0.95%) Operational Technology
12 4 (0.95%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 69 (16.47%) Linux
2 34 (8.11%) Windows
3 23 (5.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 15 (3.58%) Unix
5 8 (1.91%) Windows Server
6 7 (1.67%) VMS
7 2 (0.48%) CentOS
7 2 (0.48%) Data ONTAP
7 2 (0.48%) Oracle Linux
7 2 (0.48%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
7 2 (0.48%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.24%) Debian
8 1 (0.24%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.24%) Solaris
8 1 (0.24%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (54.18%) CI/CD
2 208 (49.64%) DevOps
3 166 (39.62%) Infrastructure as Code
4 95 (22.67%) Observability
5 89 (21.24%) Agile
6 69 (16.47%) Containerisation
7 66 (15.75%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 65 (15.51%) Continuous Improvement
9 64 (15.27%) Migration
10 52 (12.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 50 (11.93%) Software Engineering
12 46 (10.98%) Test Automation
13 44 (10.50%) Roadmaps
14 43 (10.26%) Technical Leadership
15 42 (10.02%) Problem-Solving
16 40 (9.55%) DevSecOps
17 39 (9.31%) AI
18 38 (9.07%) Cloud Security
19 35 (8.35%) Infrastructure Automation
20 34 (8.11%) GitOps
Programming Languages
1 150 (35.80%) Python
2 50 (11.93%) Bash
3 48 (11.46%) Java
3 48 (11.46%) PowerShell
4 29 (6.92%) SQL
5 21 (5.01%) Bicep
6 12 (2.86%) Go
6 12 (2.86%) Scala
7 8 (1.91%) TypeScript
8 5 (1.19%) C#
8 5 (1.19%) Groovy
8 5 (1.19%) JavaScript
8 5 (1.19%) Perl
9 4 (0.95%) Cypher
9 4 (0.95%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.72%) PHP
11 2 (0.48%) C++
11 2 (0.48%) Jython
12 1 (0.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 126 (30.07%) Security Cleared
2 107 (25.54%) SC Cleared
3 16 (3.82%) DV Cleared
4 14 (3.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (2.63%) SAFe Agilist
6 10 (2.39%) Degree
7 9 (2.15%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 7 (1.67%) Azure Certification
8 7 (1.67%) RHCE
9 5 (1.19%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.95%) Computer Science Degree
10 4 (0.95%) NCDA
10 4 (0.95%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 2 (0.48%) CCNA
11 2 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.48%) NCIE
11 2 (0.48%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.48%) PMP
11 2 (0.48%) VCP6
12 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (3.82%) QA
2 14 (3.34%) Data Quality
3 12 (2.86%) NCSC
4 8 (1.91%) GDPR
5 5 (1.19%) GRC
5 5 (1.19%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.95%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.72%) NIST
7 3 (0.72%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.48%) GxP
9 1 (0.24%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.24%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 52 (12.41%) Docker
2 32 (7.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (3.58%) Active Directory
3 15 (3.58%) Virtual Machines
4 13 (3.10%) vSphere
5 10 (2.39%) VMware NSX
6 7 (1.67%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.95%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 2 (0.48%) EMC RecoverPoint
8 2 (0.48%) Firmware
8 2 (0.48%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.48%) NFS
8 2 (0.48%) Squid
8 2 (0.48%) SRDF
8 2 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.24%) Ceph
9 1 (0.24%) KVM
9 1 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 164 (39.14%) Terraform
2 136 (32.46%) Kubernetes
3 65 (15.51%) Ansible
4 36 (8.59%) Grafana
5 34 (8.11%) Prometheus
6 27 (6.44%) Argo
7 21 (5.01%) Istio
8 7 (1.67%) Kustomize
9 6 (1.43%) HAProxy
9 6 (1.43%) PowerCLI
10 5 (1.19%) linkerd
10 5 (1.19%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (1.19%) Packer
10 5 (1.19%) Puppet
10 5 (1.19%) vCenter Server
10 5 (1.19%) vRealize
11 4 (0.95%) Rancher
11 4 (0.95%) vMotion
12 3 (0.72%) NetBackup
12 3 (0.72%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 41 (9.79%) Microsoft
2 37 (8.83%) VMware
3 28 (6.68%) Google
4 25 (5.97%) Red Hat
5 21 (5.01%) Oracle
6 14 (3.34%) ServiceNow
6 14 (3.34%) Splunk
7 13 (3.10%) Databricks
8 10 (2.39%) Cisco
9 9 (2.15%) Dynatrace
10 6 (1.43%) Citrix
11 5 (1.19%) BiZZdesign
11 5 (1.19%) Brocade
11 5 (1.19%) NetApp
12 4 (0.95%) Cribl.io
12 4 (0.95%) Dell
12 4 (0.95%) F5
12 4 (0.95%) IBM
12 4 (0.95%) Pure Storage
12 4 (0.95%) Veeam