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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 159 255 284
Rank change year-on-year +96 +29 -27
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 296 89 121
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.57% 0.64% 0.60%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.85% 0.73% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 228 62 78
10th Percentile £413 £428 £449
25th Percentile £463 £463 £503
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.82% -1.77%
75th Percentile £588 £597 £620
90th Percentile £688 £675 £679
UK median daily rate £534 £575 £560
% change year-on-year -7.17% +2.68% -6.67%
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% -37.58%

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 16,018 12,254 17,380
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.95% 88.42% 86.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,833 7,178 10,945
10th Percentile £230 £232 £250
25th Percentile £380 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.50% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £676 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,727 684 1,514
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.14 £20.09 £16.15
Median hourly rate £24.00 £30.62 £39.55
Median % change year-on-year -21.61% -22.59% +52.12%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.50 £62.54
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.31 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £37.01
% change year-on-year -22.62% -12.19% +15.66%

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 23 January 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 23 January 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 23 January 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 -1 91 £525 -4.55% 102
South East +29 63 £525 -7.49% 140
Midlands +1 57 £540 +13.68% 50
West Midlands +3 54 £540 -21.17% 16
North West +10 50 £550 -4.35% 39
Yorkshire -39 37 £518 -5.91% 48
South West +24 34 £575 +4.55% 75
East of England +8 33 £475 -32.14% 64
Scotland +9 27 £500 -2.68% 24
North East - 7 £550 - 15
East Midlands -27 3 £525 +10.53% 34
Wales -2 1 £422 - 26
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 (8.11%) Confluence
2 13 (4.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (3.72%) Apache
4 10 (3.38%) nginx
4 10 (3.38%) SharePoint
5 7 (2.36%) WebLogic
6 5 (1.69%) OpenStack
7 3 (1.01%) IIS
7 3 (1.01%) JBoss
7 3 (1.01%) SharePoint Server
8 2 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.68%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.68%) iPlanet
8 2 (0.68%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.68%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.34%) CICS
9 1 (0.34%) CMS
9 1 (0.34%) Documentum
9 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.34%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 9 (3.04%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 1 (0.34%) Finacle
1 1 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 116 (39.19%) AWS
2 112 (37.84%) Azure
3 48 (16.22%) GitHub
4 36 (12.16%) GCP
5 30 (10.14%) Entra ID
6 27 (9.12%) GitHub Actions
7 25 (8.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 22 (7.43%) Amazon EC2
9 21 (7.09%) Amazon S3
9 21 (7.09%) AWS CloudFormation
9 21 (7.09%) Azure DevOps
9 21 (7.09%) OpenShift
9 21 (7.09%) Serverless
10 19 (6.42%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 15 (5.07%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (5.07%) OCI
12 14 (4.73%) Amazon ECS
12 14 (4.73%) Amazon ELB
12 14 (4.73%) AWS KMS
13 12 (4.05%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 46 (15.54%) Firewall
2 37 (12.50%) DNS
3 14 (4.73%) FTP
3 14 (4.73%) HTTP
3 14 (4.73%) SMTP
3 14 (4.73%) SSH
4 9 (3.04%) IMAP
4 9 (3.04%) OpenLDAP
4 9 (3.04%) TCP/IP
5 7 (2.36%) WebEx
6 6 (2.03%) BGP
6 6 (2.03%) DHCP
6 6 (2.03%) Network Security
6 6 (2.03%) Software-Defined Networking
6 6 (2.03%) VLAN
7 4 (1.35%) Fibre Channel
7 4 (1.35%) IPsec
7 4 (1.35%) SD-WAN
8 3 (1.01%) Internet
8 3 (1.01%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (8.45%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (8.11%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (3.72%) NoSQL
4 9 (3.04%) Amazon Aurora
4 9 (3.04%) Redis
5 8 (2.70%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (2.03%) Couchbase
6 6 (2.03%) SQL Server
7 5 (1.69%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.35%) Big Data
8 4 (1.35%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.35%) Neo4j
9 3 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.01%) Hadoop
9 3 (1.01%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.68%) Apache Hive
10 2 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.68%) Metadata
10 2 (0.68%) Oracle Database
11 1 (0.34%) Tableau Server
Development Applications
1 52 (17.57%) Jenkins
2 41 (13.85%) GitLab
3 31 (10.47%) Git
4 29 (9.80%) JIRA
5 14 (4.73%) Vagrant
6 12 (4.05%) SonarQube
7 4 (1.35%) Gatling
7 4 (1.35%) JMeter
7 4 (1.35%) LoadRunner
7 4 (1.35%) NeoLoad
7 4 (1.35%) Postman
8 3 (1.01%) MSI
8 3 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.68%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.68%) Bitbucket Server
9 2 (0.68%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.68%) JUnit
9 2 (0.68%) Maven
9 2 (0.68%) Mockito
9 2 (0.68%) Selenium
General
1 63 (21.28%) Social Skills
2 36 (12.16%) Public Sector
3 21 (7.09%) Finance
4 18 (6.08%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (5.07%) Banking
5 15 (5.07%) Legal
6 10 (3.38%) Presentation Skills
7 9 (3.04%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.03%) Retail
9 4 (1.35%) Games
9 4 (1.35%) Retail Banking
10 3 (1.01%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.68%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.34%) Tech for Good
12 1 (0.34%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 155 (52.36%) Platform Engineer
2 45 (15.20%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 37 (12.50%) DevOps Engineer
4 30 (10.14%) AWS Engineer
5 28 (9.46%) Senior
6 22 (7.43%) AWS Platform Engineer
7 21 (7.09%) Lead
8 18 (6.08%) Architect
9 17 (5.74%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 16 (5.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 15 (5.07%) Azure Engineer
11 15 (5.07%) Cloud Engineer
11 15 (5.07%) DevOps Platform Engineer
12 14 (4.73%) AWS DevOps
12 14 (4.73%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 13 (4.39%) Azure Platform Engineer
14 12 (4.05%) Data Engineer
15 9 (3.04%) Project Manager
16 7 (2.36%) Software Engineer
17 6 (2.03%) Implementation Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (5.41%) Kafka
1 16 (5.41%) YAML
2 15 (5.07%) LDAP
3 11 (3.72%) Elastic Stack
4 10 (3.38%) OpenID
4 10 (3.38%) REST
5 9 (3.04%) Keycloak
6 8 (2.70%) Node.js
7 7 (2.36%) XMPP
8 6 (2.03%) OAuth
8 6 (2.03%) Playwright
9 5 (1.69%) Middleware
9 5 (1.69%) Oracle Fusion
9 5 (1.69%) React
9 5 (1.69%) Spring
9 5 (1.69%) Spring Boot
10 4 (1.35%) .NET
10 4 (1.35%) OAuth2
10 4 (1.35%) SailPoint
10 4 (1.35%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 24 (8.11%) Replication
2 19 (6.42%) PKI
3 18 (6.08%) Cloud Native
3 18 (6.08%) Product Ownership
4 15 (5.07%) Onboarding
5 13 (4.39%) Data Centre
6 11 (3.72%) Private Cloud
7 9 (3.04%) Distributed Systems
8 8 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (2.36%) Hybrid Cloud
9 7 (2.36%) NHS
10 6 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (2.03%) Public Cloud
11 4 (1.35%) NVMe
11 4 (1.35%) Operational Technology
12 3 (1.01%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (1.01%) Management Information System
12 3 (1.01%) Security Posture
13 2 (0.68%) SCADA
13 2 (0.68%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 94 (31.76%) Linux
2 82 (27.70%) Windows
3 23 (7.77%) Windows Server
4 19 (6.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 19 (6.42%) Unix
5 18 (6.08%) VMS
6 17 (5.74%) Amazon Linux
7 9 (3.04%) Ubuntu
7 9 (3.04%) Windows 10
8 4 (1.35%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.68%) Solaris
10 1 (0.34%) CentOS
10 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.34%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (45.61%) CI/CD
2 129 (43.58%) DevOps
3 107 (36.15%) Infrastructure as Code
4 60 (20.27%) Containerisation
5 57 (19.26%) Observability
6 43 (14.53%) Agile
7 42 (14.19%) Problem-Solving
8 38 (12.84%) Continuous Improvement
9 37 (12.50%) DevSecOps
10 33 (11.15%) Migration
11 31 (10.47%) Cloud Security
11 31 (10.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 31 (10.47%) Software Engineering
12 29 (9.80%) Infrastructure Automation
13 28 (9.46%) Incident Response
14 26 (8.78%) Service Management
15 25 (8.45%) Performance Tuning
16 24 (8.11%) Cybersecurity
16 24 (8.11%) RBAC
17 23 (7.77%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 108 (36.49%) Python
2 52 (17.57%) Bash
3 51 (17.23%) PowerShell
4 24 (8.11%) Java
4 24 (8.11%) SQL
5 17 (5.74%) Perl
6 16 (5.41%) Groovy
7 9 (3.04%) Bicep
8 8 (2.70%) JavaScript
9 7 (2.36%) Shell Script
9 7 (2.36%) TypeScript
10 6 (2.03%) C#
10 6 (2.03%) Go
11 4 (1.35%) Cypher
11 4 (1.35%) Scala
12 2 (0.68%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.68%) PHP
12 2 (0.68%) SOQL
13 1 (0.34%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.34%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 142 (47.97%) Security Cleared
2 114 (38.51%) SC Cleared
3 31 (10.47%) DV Cleared
4 17 (5.74%) AWS Certification
5 14 (4.73%) Azure Certification
5 14 (4.73%) Degree
6 9 (3.04%) CCNA
6 9 (3.04%) Cisco Certification
7 8 (2.70%) CCDP
7 8 (2.70%) CCNP
8 5 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 3 (1.01%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (1.01%) CSPO
10 2 (0.68%) NCDA
10 2 (0.68%) VCP6
11 1 (0.34%) Computer Science Degree
11 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.34%) Server+ Certification
11 1 (0.34%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.77%) NCSC
2 6 (2.03%) COBIT
3 5 (1.69%) QA
4 4 (1.35%) GDPR
4 4 (1.35%) NIST
5 3 (1.01%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.68%) NIST 800
6 2 (0.68%) WCAG
7 1 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.34%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 65 (21.96%) Docker
2 46 (15.54%) Active Directory
3 42 (14.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (4.73%) DFS Replication
5 9 (3.04%) Dovecot
5 9 (3.04%) Postfix
5 9 (3.04%) Squid
6 8 (2.70%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (2.36%) VMware NSX
8 6 (2.03%) vSphere
9 4 (1.35%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 4 (1.35%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.34%) GPFS
10 1 (0.34%) Time Sharing Option
10 1 (0.34%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 1 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 121 (40.88%) Terraform
2 83 (28.04%) Kubernetes
3 51 (17.23%) Ansible
4 48 (16.22%) Grafana
5 39 (13.18%) Prometheus
6 12 (4.05%) Argo
6 12 (4.05%) Proxmox
7 11 (3.72%) Istio
7 11 (3.72%) vCenter Server
8 10 (3.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 9 (3.04%) Nessus
10 8 (2.70%) Packer
11 5 (1.69%) linkerd
11 5 (1.69%) Single Sign-On
12 4 (1.35%) Kibana
12 4 (1.35%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (1.35%) vMotion
12 4 (1.35%) vRealize
13 3 (1.01%) Progress Chef
13 3 (1.01%) Puppet
Vendors
1 55 (18.58%) VMware
2 44 (14.86%) Microsoft
3 35 (11.82%) Splunk
4 33 (11.15%) Dynatrace
5 31 (10.47%) Cisco
6 27 (9.12%) Red Hat
7 24 (8.11%) Oracle
8 23 (7.77%) ServiceNow
9 15 (5.07%) AppDynamics
10 14 (4.73%) Citrix
11 13 (4.39%) IBM
12 12 (4.05%) F5
13 9 (3.04%) Jaspersoft
14 7 (2.36%) CheckPoint
14 7 (2.36%) Dell
14 7 (2.36%) Google
14 7 (2.36%) HP
15 6 (2.03%) Confluent
15 6 (2.03%) Veeam
16 4 (1.35%) SolarWinds