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

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 165 253 283
Rank change year-on-year +88 +30 -18
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 317 91 120
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.62% 0.67% 0.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.92% 0.75% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 237 62 78
10th Percentile £410 £414 £449
25th Percentile £450 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £524 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.29% -2.60% -2.27%
75th Percentile £580 £588 £587
90th Percentile £688 £653 £679
UK median daily rate £525 £560 £550
% change year-on-year -6.25% +1.82% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 1
10th Percentile £56.83 - -
25th Percentile £59.75 £59.39 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.42% -18.22% -22.00%
75th Percentile £80.00 £68.18 -
90th Percentile £81.80 - -
UK median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £60.00
% change year-on-year +16.42% +6.31% -35.14%

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 16,480 12,066 18,070
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.33% 88.82% 86.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,081 7,132 11,314
10th Percentile £238 £231 £250
25th Percentile £381 £380 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £497 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.47% -0.55% -
75th Percentile £575 £590 £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 1,781 657 1,710
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.44 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.17 £20.12 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.00 £30.88 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.03% -13.03% +18.89%
75th Percentile £58.75 £64.10 £62.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.56 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +9.38%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +12 107 £519 -5.68% 70
South East +13 64 £519 +3.75% 52
North West +16 56 £550 -4.35% 45
Midlands -12 49 £542 +14.00% 14
Yorkshire -34 48 £490 -10.91% 17
West Midlands +1 46 £546 +33.76% 11
Scotland +24 39 £490 -5.95% 17
South West +17 35 £575 +4.55% 24
East of England +3 31 £475 -32.14% 5
North East - 6 £550 - 8
East Midlands -28 3 £525 +10.53% 3
Wales 0 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 23 (7.26%) Confluence
2 13 (4.10%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.15%) SharePoint
4 9 (2.84%) nginx
5 5 (1.58%) Apache
5 5 (1.58%) Apache Spark
5 5 (1.58%) OpenStack
6 3 (0.95%) SharePoint Server
7 2 (0.63%) Apache Pulsar
7 2 (0.63%) IIS
7 2 (0.63%) JBoss
7 2 (0.63%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.32%) CICS
8 1 (0.32%) CMS
8 1 (0.32%) Documentum
8 1 (0.32%) iPlanet
8 1 (0.32%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.32%) Tuxedo
8 1 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 7 (2.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.32%) Finacle
1 1 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 121 (38.17%) Azure
2 116 (36.59%) AWS
3 55 (17.35%) GitHub
4 42 (13.25%) GCP
5 29 (9.15%) GitHub Actions
6 27 (8.52%) Entra ID
7 26 (8.20%) OpenShift
8 24 (7.57%) Azure DevOps
9 23 (7.26%) AWS CloudFormation
9 23 (7.26%) Serverless
10 21 (6.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 21 (6.62%) Azure AKS
11 18 (5.68%) OCI
12 17 (5.36%) Amazon EC2
12 17 (5.36%) Amazon S3
12 17 (5.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 15 (4.73%) AWS Lambda
14 13 (4.10%) Amazon EKS
15 12 (3.79%) Amazon ECS
15 12 (3.79%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 47 (14.83%) Firewall
2 35 (11.04%) DNS
3 11 (3.47%) TCP/IP
4 10 (3.15%) FTP
4 10 (3.15%) HTTP
4 10 (3.15%) SMTP
4 10 (3.15%) SSH
5 8 (2.52%) DHCP
5 8 (2.52%) Network Security
6 7 (2.21%) IMAP
6 7 (2.21%) OpenLDAP
6 7 (2.21%) WebEx
7 6 (1.89%) BGP
7 6 (1.89%) Software-Defined Networking
7 6 (1.89%) VLAN
8 5 (1.58%) SAN
9 4 (1.26%) Fibre Channel
10 3 (0.95%) MQTT
10 3 (0.95%) Skype
10 3 (0.95%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (7.89%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (5.99%) Amazon RDS
3 13 (4.10%) NoSQL
4 9 (2.84%) Redis
5 8 (2.52%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (2.52%) SQL Server
6 7 (2.21%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (2.21%) Big Data
7 6 (1.89%) Couchbase
7 6 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (1.89%) DynamoDB
8 5 (1.58%) Hadoop
8 5 (1.58%) Relational Database
9 4 (1.26%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.26%) Metadata
9 4 (1.26%) Neo4j
10 3 (0.95%) Tableau
11 2 (0.63%) Apache Hive
11 2 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.63%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 53 (16.72%) Jenkins
2 41 (12.93%) GitLab
3 33 (10.41%) JIRA
4 32 (10.09%) Git
5 12 (3.79%) SonarQube
6 10 (3.15%) Vagrant
7 4 (1.26%) Gatling
7 4 (1.26%) JMeter
7 4 (1.26%) LoadRunner
7 4 (1.26%) NeoLoad
7 4 (1.26%) Postman
8 3 (0.95%) MSI
8 3 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.63%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.63%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.63%) JUnit
9 2 (0.63%) Maven
9 2 (0.63%) Mockito
9 2 (0.63%) Selenium
9 2 (0.63%) Visual Studio
General
1 60 (18.93%) Social Skills
2 35 (11.04%) Public Sector
3 30 (9.46%) Finance
4 20 (6.31%) Banking
5 19 (5.99%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (4.73%) Legal
7 9 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.52%) Presentation Skills
9 6 (1.89%) Retail
10 4 (1.26%) Games
10 4 (1.26%) Retail Banking
11 3 (0.95%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.32%) Advertising
12 1 (0.32%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.32%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.32%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.32%) Tech for Good
12 1 (0.32%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 166 (52.37%) Platform Engineer
2 54 (17.03%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 33 (10.41%) DevOps Engineer
3 33 (10.41%) Senior
4 25 (7.89%) AWS Engineer
5 24 (7.57%) Cloud Engineer
6 22 (6.94%) Lead
7 19 (5.99%) AWS Platform Engineer
7 19 (5.99%) Azure Engineer
7 19 (5.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 18 (5.68%) Architect
8 18 (5.68%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 17 (5.36%) Azure Platform Engineer
10 15 (4.73%) Data Engineer
11 12 (3.79%) DevOps Platform Engineer
12 11 (3.47%) Project Manager
13 10 (3.15%) AWS DevOps
13 10 (3.15%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 7 (2.21%) Software Engineer
15 6 (1.89%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (5.68%) Kafka
2 16 (5.05%) YAML
3 12 (3.79%) LDAP
4 11 (3.47%) Elastic Stack
4 11 (3.47%) REST
5 9 (2.84%) OpenID
6 8 (2.52%) Keycloak
6 8 (2.52%) Node.js
7 7 (2.21%) OAuth
7 7 (2.21%) Oracle Fusion
7 7 (2.21%) React
7 7 (2.21%) XMPP
8 6 (1.89%) OAuth2
8 6 (1.89%) Playwright
8 6 (1.89%) Spring
8 6 (1.89%) Spring Boot
9 5 (1.58%) ADO
9 5 (1.58%) Middleware
10 4 (1.26%) .NET
10 4 (1.26%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 27 (8.52%) Cloud Native
2 20 (6.31%) Product Ownership
2 20 (6.31%) Replication
3 19 (5.99%) PKI
4 17 (5.36%) Onboarding
5 13 (4.10%) Data Centre
5 13 (4.10%) Private Cloud
6 12 (3.79%) Distributed Systems
7 10 (3.15%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.52%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (2.52%) NHS
9 7 (2.21%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (1.26%) NVMe
11 3 (0.95%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (0.95%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.95%) Operational Technology
11 3 (0.95%) Security Posture
11 3 (0.95%) Virtual Team
12 2 (0.63%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 90 (28.39%) Linux
2 76 (23.97%) Windows
3 24 (7.57%) Windows Server
4 19 (5.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (4.42%) Unix
5 14 (4.42%) VMS
6 13 (4.10%) Amazon Linux
7 9 (2.84%) Windows 10
8 7 (2.21%) Ubuntu
9 4 (1.26%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.63%) Solaris
11 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.32%) CentOS
12 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 148 (46.69%) CI/CD
2 136 (42.90%) DevOps
3 115 (36.28%) Infrastructure as Code
4 65 (20.50%) Containerisation
5 58 (18.30%) Observability
6 51 (16.09%) Problem-Solving
7 50 (15.77%) Agile
8 45 (14.20%) Continuous Improvement
9 41 (12.93%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 40 (12.62%) Migration
11 38 (11.99%) DevSecOps
12 33 (10.41%) Infrastructure Automation
13 32 (10.09%) Cloud Security
14 31 (9.78%) Software Engineering
15 27 (8.52%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 25 (7.89%) Incident Response
17 24 (7.57%) Performance Tuning
17 24 (7.57%) RBAC
17 24 (7.57%) Roadmaps
17 24 (7.57%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 118 (37.22%) Python
2 55 (17.35%) Bash
3 49 (15.46%) PowerShell
4 23 (7.26%) Java
4 23 (7.26%) SQL
5 15 (4.73%) Perl
6 12 (3.79%) Bicep
6 12 (3.79%) Groovy
7 8 (2.52%) Shell Script
7 8 (2.52%) TypeScript
8 7 (2.21%) JavaScript
9 6 (1.89%) C#
10 5 (1.58%) Go
11 4 (1.26%) Cypher
11 4 (1.26%) Scala
12 2 (0.63%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.63%) PHP
12 2 (0.63%) SOQL
13 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.32%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 135 (42.59%) Security Cleared
2 105 (33.12%) SC Cleared
3 30 (9.46%) DV Cleared
4 16 (5.05%) Degree
5 15 (4.73%) AWS Certification
6 12 (3.79%) Azure Certification
7 9 (2.84%) CCNA
7 9 (2.84%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (2.52%) CCDP
8 8 (2.52%) CCNP
9 6 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (1.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 3 (0.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.95%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (0.95%) CSPO
12 2 (0.63%) NCDA
12 2 (0.63%) VCP6
13 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.32%) RHCSA
13 1 (0.32%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.57%) NCSC
2 7 (2.21%) GDPR
3 6 (1.89%) COBIT
4 5 (1.58%) Data Quality
4 5 (1.58%) NIST
4 5 (1.58%) QA
5 3 (0.95%) NIST 800
5 3 (0.95%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.63%) WCAG
7 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.32%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.32%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 66 (20.82%) Docker
2 45 (14.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (13.25%) Active Directory
4 13 (4.10%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (3.15%) DFS Replication
5 10 (3.15%) vSphere
6 7 (2.21%) Dovecot
6 7 (2.21%) Postfix
6 7 (2.21%) Squid
6 7 (2.21%) VMware NSX
7 4 (1.26%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (1.26%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.95%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.32%) GPFS
9 1 (0.32%) KVM
9 1 (0.32%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.32%) Tivoli Directory Server
9 1 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 124 (39.12%) Terraform
2 102 (32.18%) Kubernetes
3 56 (17.67%) Ansible
4 47 (14.83%) Grafana
5 36 (11.36%) Prometheus
6 14 (4.42%) Istio
7 12 (3.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 11 (3.47%) vCenter Server
9 10 (3.15%) Argo
9 10 (3.15%) Proxmox
10 8 (2.52%) Packer
11 7 (2.21%) linkerd
11 7 (2.21%) Nessus
12 6 (1.89%) Microsoft Intune
13 5 (1.58%) SCCM
13 5 (1.58%) Single Sign-On
14 4 (1.26%) Kibana
14 4 (1.26%) vMotion
15 3 (0.95%) Progress Chef
15 3 (0.95%) vRealize
Vendors
1 57 (17.98%) VMware
2 43 (13.56%) Microsoft
3 31 (9.78%) Splunk
4 27 (8.52%) Dynatrace
4 27 (8.52%) Red Hat
5 26 (8.20%) Cisco
6 23 (7.26%) Oracle
7 19 (5.99%) ServiceNow
8 14 (4.42%) Citrix
8 14 (4.42%) F5
9 12 (3.79%) IBM
10 10 (3.15%) Google
11 9 (2.84%) AppDynamics
12 8 (2.52%) Veeam
13 7 (2.21%) CheckPoint
13 7 (2.21%) Dell
13 7 (2.21%) HP
13 7 (2.21%) Jaspersoft
14 6 (1.89%) Confluent
15 5 (1.58%) PeopleSoft