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

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 163 256 291
Rank change year-on-year +93 +35 -38
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 292 88 121
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.54% 0.65% 0.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.82% 0.73% 0.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 225 62 78
10th Percentile £413 £428 £449
25th Percentile £461 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £595
90th Percentile £688 £656 £679
UK median daily rate £534 £555 £558
% change year-on-year -3.83% -0.45% -7.08%
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% -34.96%

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 16,019 12,024 17,825
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.62% 88.59% 86.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,822 7,020 11,191
10th Percentile £230 £231 £250
25th Percentile £381 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £594 £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 1,717 670 1,603
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £13.26
25th Percentile £17.14 £20.12 £16.00
Median hourly rate £24.71 £30.43 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.80% -18.85% +44.23%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.01 £62.50
90th Percentile £68.75 £74.47 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £36.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -9.72% +12.50%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 92 £525 -4.55% 95
South East +18 64 £525 - 118
North West +11 51 £550 -4.35% 37
Midlands -10 50 £540 +13.68% 43
West Midlands +11 47 £542 +30.17% 15
Yorkshire -35 37 £500 -9.09% 46
South West +16 34 £575 +4.55% 52
East of England +14 32 £475 -32.14% 41
Scotland +13 28 £500 -2.68% 24
North East - 7 £550 - 12
East Midlands -26 3 £525 +10.53% 26
Wales -2 2 £424 - 16
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 (7.88%) Confluence
2 13 (4.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.42%) SharePoint
4 9 (3.08%) nginx
5 6 (2.05%) Apache
6 5 (1.71%) OpenStack
7 3 (1.03%) Apache Spark
7 3 (1.03%) IIS
7 3 (1.03%) JBoss
7 3 (1.03%) SharePoint Server
8 2 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.68%) iPlanet
8 2 (0.68%) WebLogic
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 8 (2.74%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.34%) Finacle
1 1 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 111 (38.01%) Azure
2 108 (36.99%) AWS
3 48 (16.44%) GitHub
4 36 (12.33%) GCP
5 31 (10.62%) Entra ID
6 27 (9.25%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (8.22%) Azure DevOps
8 22 (7.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 22 (7.53%) Serverless
9 21 (7.19%) AWS CloudFormation
9 21 (7.19%) OpenShift
10 20 (6.85%) Amazon EC2
11 19 (6.51%) Amazon S3
12 17 (5.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 15 (5.14%) AWS Lambda
13 15 (5.14%) OCI
14 13 (4.45%) Amazon ECS
15 12 (4.11%) Amazon ELB
15 12 (4.11%) AWS KMS
15 12 (4.11%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 46 (15.75%) Firewall
2 36 (12.33%) DNS
3 12 (4.11%) FTP
3 12 (4.11%) HTTP
3 12 (4.11%) SMTP
3 12 (4.11%) SSH
4 10 (3.42%) TCP/IP
5 8 (2.74%) IMAP
5 8 (2.74%) OpenLDAP
6 7 (2.40%) DHCP
6 7 (2.40%) WebEx
7 6 (2.05%) BGP
7 6 (2.05%) Network Security
7 6 (2.05%) Software-Defined Networking
7 6 (2.05%) VLAN
8 5 (1.71%) IPsec
8 5 (1.71%) SD-WAN
9 4 (1.37%) Fibre Channel
10 3 (1.03%) MQTT
10 3 (1.03%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (8.22%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (7.53%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (3.77%) NoSQL
4 9 (3.08%) Redis
5 8 (2.74%) Amazon Aurora
5 8 (2.74%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (2.05%) Couchbase
6 6 (2.05%) SQL Server
7 5 (1.71%) Big Data
7 5 (1.71%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.37%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.37%) Hadoop
8 4 (1.37%) Neo4j
9 3 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.03%) Metadata
9 3 (1.03%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.68%) Apache Hive
10 2 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.68%) Oracle Database
11 1 (0.34%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 50 (17.12%) Jenkins
2 39 (13.36%) GitLab
3 30 (10.27%) Git
4 28 (9.59%) JIRA
5 12 (4.11%) SonarQube
5 12 (4.11%) Vagrant
6 4 (1.37%) Gatling
6 4 (1.37%) JMeter
6 4 (1.37%) LoadRunner
6 4 (1.37%) NeoLoad
6 4 (1.37%) Postman
7 3 (1.03%) MSI
7 3 (1.03%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.68%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.68%) Bitbucket Server
8 2 (0.68%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.68%) JUnit
8 2 (0.68%) Maven
8 2 (0.68%) Mockito
8 2 (0.68%) Selenium
General
1 57 (19.52%) Social Skills
2 34 (11.64%) Public Sector
3 22 (7.53%) Finance
4 19 (6.51%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (5.48%) Banking
6 15 (5.14%) Legal
7 9 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (3.08%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (2.05%) Retail
9 4 (1.37%) Games
9 4 (1.37%) Retail Banking
10 3 (1.03%) 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
1 151 (51.71%) Platform Engineer
2 44 (15.07%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 35 (11.99%) DevOps Engineer
4 28 (9.59%) AWS Engineer
4 28 (9.59%) Senior
5 21 (7.19%) AWS Platform Engineer
6 20 (6.85%) Lead
7 19 (6.51%) Architect
8 17 (5.82%) Azure Engineer
8 17 (5.82%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 16 (5.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 15 (5.14%) Azure Platform Engineer
11 14 (4.79%) Cloud Engineer
11 14 (4.79%) DevOps Platform Engineer
12 12 (4.11%) AWS DevOps
12 12 (4.11%) AWS DevOps Engineer
12 12 (4.11%) Data Engineer
13 9 (3.08%) Project Manager
14 7 (2.40%) Software Engineer
15 6 (2.05%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (5.48%) Kafka
1 16 (5.48%) YAML
2 14 (4.79%) LDAP
3 11 (3.77%) Elastic Stack
4 10 (3.42%) OpenID
4 10 (3.42%) REST
5 9 (3.08%) Keycloak
6 8 (2.74%) Node.js
7 7 (2.40%) XMPP
8 6 (2.05%) OAuth
8 6 (2.05%) Playwright
9 5 (1.71%) ADO
9 5 (1.71%) Middleware
9 5 (1.71%) Oracle Fusion
9 5 (1.71%) React
9 5 (1.71%) Spring
9 5 (1.71%) Spring Boot
10 4 (1.37%) OAuth2
10 4 (1.37%) SailPoint
10 4 (1.37%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.53%) Replication
2 19 (6.51%) Cloud Native
2 19 (6.51%) PKI
2 19 (6.51%) Product Ownership
3 15 (5.14%) Onboarding
4 13 (4.45%) Data Centre
5 12 (4.11%) Private Cloud
6 9 (3.08%) Distributed Systems
7 8 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (2.74%) NHS
8 7 (2.40%) Public Cloud
9 6 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (2.05%) Hybrid Cloud
10 5 (1.71%) Operational Technology
11 4 (1.37%) NVMe
12 3 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (1.03%) Management Information System
12 3 (1.03%) Security Posture
13 2 (0.68%) SCADA
13 2 (0.68%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 86 (29.45%) Linux
2 77 (26.37%) Windows
3 24 (8.22%) Windows Server
4 19 (6.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (5.48%) VMS
6 15 (5.14%) Amazon Linux
7 14 (4.79%) Unix
8 9 (3.08%) Windows 10
9 8 (2.74%) Ubuntu
10 4 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.68%) Solaris
11 2 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.34%) CentOS
12 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.34%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (45.89%) CI/CD
2 129 (44.18%) DevOps
3 107 (36.64%) Infrastructure as Code
4 60 (20.55%) Containerisation
5 51 (17.47%) Observability
6 44 (15.07%) Agile
6 44 (15.07%) Problem-Solving
7 37 (12.67%) DevSecOps
8 34 (11.64%) Continuous Improvement
8 34 (11.64%) Migration
9 32 (10.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 31 (10.62%) Software Engineering
11 30 (10.27%) Infrastructure Automation
12 29 (9.93%) Cloud Security
13 25 (8.56%) Cybersecurity
14 24 (8.22%) Performance Tuning
14 24 (8.22%) RBAC
15 23 (7.88%) Incident Response
16 22 (7.53%) Identity Access Management
16 22 (7.53%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 105 (35.96%) Python
2 52 (17.81%) Bash
3 50 (17.12%) PowerShell
4 23 (7.88%) Java
5 19 (6.51%) SQL
6 16 (5.48%) Perl
7 14 (4.79%) Groovy
8 10 (3.42%) Bicep
9 7 (2.40%) JavaScript
9 7 (2.40%) Shell Script
9 7 (2.40%) TypeScript
10 6 (2.05%) C#
10 6 (2.05%) Go
11 4 (1.37%) Cypher
11 4 (1.37%) 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
1 135 (46.23%) Security Cleared
2 107 (36.64%) SC Cleared
3 31 (10.62%) DV Cleared
4 16 (5.48%) AWS Certification
5 14 (4.79%) Degree
6 13 (4.45%) Azure Certification
7 9 (3.08%) CCNA
7 9 (3.08%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (2.74%) CCDP
8 8 (2.74%) CCNP
9 5 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 3 (1.03%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.03%) CSPO
11 2 (0.68%) NCDA
11 2 (0.68%) VCP6
12 1 (0.34%) Computer Science Degree
12 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.34%) Server+ Certification
12 1 (0.34%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (8.22%) NCSC
2 6 (2.05%) COBIT
3 5 (1.71%) GDPR
3 5 (1.71%) NIST
3 5 (1.71%) QA
4 4 (1.37%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.03%) NIST 800
6 2 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
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 64 (21.92%) Docker
2 47 (16.10%) Active Directory
3 43 (14.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (4.11%) DFS Replication
5 8 (2.74%) Dovecot
5 8 (2.74%) Postfix
5 8 (2.74%) Squid
5 8 (2.74%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (2.40%) VMware NSX
6 7 (2.40%) vSphere
7 4 (1.37%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (1.37%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.34%) GPFS
9 1 (0.34%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.34%) Tivoli Directory Server
9 1 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 118 (40.41%) Terraform
2 82 (28.08%) Kubernetes
3 51 (17.47%) Ansible
4 45 (15.41%) Grafana
5 36 (12.33%) Prometheus
6 12 (4.11%) Argo
7 11 (3.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 11 (3.77%) Istio
7 11 (3.77%) Proxmox
7 11 (3.77%) vCenter Server
8 8 (2.74%) Nessus
8 8 (2.74%) Packer
9 5 (1.71%) linkerd
9 5 (1.71%) Microsoft Intune
9 5 (1.71%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (1.37%) Kibana
10 4 (1.37%) SCCM
10 4 (1.37%) vMotion
10 4 (1.37%) vRealize
11 3 (1.03%) WSUS
Vendors
1 56 (19.18%) VMware
2 45 (15.41%) Microsoft
3 30 (10.27%) Splunk
4 27 (9.25%) Dynatrace
4 27 (9.25%) Red Hat
5 26 (8.90%) Cisco
6 21 (7.19%) ServiceNow
7 19 (6.51%) Oracle
8 14 (4.79%) Citrix
9 13 (4.45%) F5
9 13 (4.45%) IBM
10 10 (3.42%) AppDynamics
11 8 (2.74%) Jaspersoft
12 7 (2.40%) CheckPoint
12 7 (2.40%) Dell
12 7 (2.40%) Google
12 7 (2.40%) HP
12 7 (2.40%) Veeam
13 6 (2.05%) Confluent
14 4 (1.37%) Databricks