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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 162 263 292
Rank change year-on-year +101 +29 -38
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 313 84 122
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.62% 0.62% 0.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.92% 0.70% 0.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 235 59 78
10th Percentile £413 £413 £449
25th Percentile £452 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £580 £588 £587
90th Percentile £688 £656 £679
UK median daily rate £529 £573 £550
% change year-on-year -7.62% +4.09% -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 16,314 11,985 18,228
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.31% 88.71% 86.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,003 7,018 11,412
10th Percentile £231 £232 £250
25th Percentile £381 £380 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £498 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.66% -0.35% -
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 1,748 659 1,715
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.49 £13.02
25th Percentile £17.14 £20.12 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.00 £31.50 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.63% -11.27% +22.41%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.93 £62.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.50 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -7.14% +8.53%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +6 105 £525 -4.55% 62
South East +23 65 £525 +5.00% 56
North West +14 57 £550 -4.35% 32
Midlands -13 49 £542 +14.00% 12
West Midlands +8 46 £546 +33.76% 7
Yorkshire -32 44 £500 -9.09% 22
South West +15 36 £575 +4.55% 24
Scotland +21 35 £500 -4.03% 18
East of England +10 31 £475 -32.14% 4
North East - 7 £550 - 8
East Midlands -28 3 £525 +10.53% 5
Wales +4 2 £424 - 5
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 22 (7.03%) Confluence
2 13 (4.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.19%) SharePoint
4 9 (2.88%) nginx
5 6 (1.92%) Apache
6 5 (1.60%) Apache Spark
6 5 (1.60%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.96%) IIS
7 3 (0.96%) JBoss
7 3 (0.96%) SharePoint Server
8 2 (0.64%) iPlanet
8 2 (0.64%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.64%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.64%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.32%) Apache Pulsar
9 1 (0.32%) CMS
9 1 (0.32%) Documentum
9 1 (0.32%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.32%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 7 (2.24%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.32%) Finacle
1 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 120 (38.34%) Azure
2 112 (35.78%) AWS
3 52 (16.61%) GitHub
4 39 (12.46%) GCP
5 31 (9.90%) Entra ID
6 28 (8.95%) GitHub Actions
7 27 (8.63%) OpenShift
8 25 (7.99%) Azure DevOps
9 24 (7.67%) Serverless
10 22 (7.03%) AWS CloudFormation
11 20 (6.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 18 (5.75%) Amazon EC2
12 18 (5.75%) Amazon S3
12 18 (5.75%) OCI
13 17 (5.43%) Azure AKS
14 16 (5.11%) AWS Lambda
14 16 (5.11%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 12 (3.83%) Amazon ECS
15 12 (3.83%) Microsoft 365
15 12 (3.83%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 46 (14.70%) Firewall
2 35 (11.18%) DNS
3 11 (3.51%) TCP/IP
4 10 (3.19%) FTP
4 10 (3.19%) HTTP
4 10 (3.19%) SMTP
4 10 (3.19%) SSH
5 8 (2.56%) DHCP
5 8 (2.56%) Network Security
6 7 (2.24%) IMAP
6 7 (2.24%) OpenLDAP
6 7 (2.24%) WebEx
7 6 (1.92%) BGP
7 6 (1.92%) Software-Defined Networking
7 6 (1.92%) VLAN
8 5 (1.60%) IPsec
8 5 (1.60%) SAN
8 5 (1.60%) SD-WAN
9 4 (1.28%) Fibre Channel
10 3 (0.96%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (7.67%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (6.39%) Amazon RDS
3 12 (3.83%) NoSQL
4 9 (2.88%) Redis
5 8 (2.56%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (2.56%) SQL Server
6 7 (2.24%) Amazon Aurora
6 7 (2.24%) Big Data
7 6 (1.92%) Couchbase
7 6 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (1.92%) DynamoDB
8 5 (1.60%) Hadoop
8 5 (1.60%) Relational Database
9 4 (1.28%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.28%) Metadata
9 4 (1.28%) Neo4j
10 3 (0.96%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.96%) Tableau
11 2 (0.64%) Apache Hive
11 2 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 49 (15.65%) Jenkins
2 40 (12.78%) GitLab
3 31 (9.90%) Git
4 30 (9.58%) JIRA
5 12 (3.83%) SonarQube
6 10 (3.19%) Vagrant
7 4 (1.28%) Gatling
7 4 (1.28%) JMeter
7 4 (1.28%) LoadRunner
7 4 (1.28%) NeoLoad
7 4 (1.28%) Postman
8 3 (0.96%) MSI
8 3 (0.96%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.64%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.64%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.64%) JUnit
9 2 (0.64%) Maven
9 2 (0.64%) Mockito
9 2 (0.64%) Selenium
9 2 (0.64%) Visual Studio
General
1 61 (19.49%) Social Skills
2 35 (11.18%) Public Sector
3 28 (8.95%) Finance
4 19 (6.07%) Analytical Skills
4 19 (6.07%) Banking
5 15 (4.79%) Legal
6 9 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.56%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (1.92%) Retail
9 4 (1.28%) Games
9 4 (1.28%) Retail Banking
10 3 (0.96%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.32%) Advertising
11 1 (0.32%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.32%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.32%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.32%) Tech for Good
11 1 (0.32%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 164 (52.40%) Platform Engineer
2 53 (16.93%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 33 (10.54%) DevOps Engineer
3 33 (10.54%) Senior
4 26 (8.31%) AWS Engineer
5 22 (7.03%) Cloud Engineer
5 22 (7.03%) Lead
6 20 (6.39%) Architect
6 20 (6.39%) AWS Platform Engineer
6 20 (6.39%) Azure Engineer
7 19 (6.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 18 (5.75%) Azure Platform Engineer
8 18 (5.75%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 15 (4.79%) Data Engineer
10 13 (4.15%) DevOps Platform Engineer
11 10 (3.19%) AWS DevOps
11 10 (3.19%) AWS DevOps Engineer
11 10 (3.19%) Project Manager
12 7 (2.24%) Software Engineer
13 6 (1.92%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (5.43%) Kafka
2 16 (5.11%) YAML
3 13 (4.15%) LDAP
4 11 (3.51%) Elastic Stack
5 10 (3.19%) OpenID
5 10 (3.19%) REST
6 9 (2.88%) Keycloak
7 8 (2.56%) Node.js
8 7 (2.24%) OAuth
8 7 (2.24%) Oracle Fusion
8 7 (2.24%) XMPP
9 6 (1.92%) Playwright
9 6 (1.92%) React
9 6 (1.92%) Spring
9 6 (1.92%) Spring Boot
10 5 (1.60%) ADO
10 5 (1.60%) Middleware
10 5 (1.60%) OAuth2
11 4 (1.28%) .NET
11 4 (1.28%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 26 (8.31%) Cloud Native
2 20 (6.39%) Product Ownership
2 20 (6.39%) Replication
3 19 (6.07%) PKI
4 17 (5.43%) Onboarding
5 13 (4.15%) Data Centre
5 13 (4.15%) Private Cloud
6 11 (3.51%) Distributed Systems
7 9 (2.88%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.56%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (2.56%) NHS
9 7 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
10 5 (1.60%) Operational Technology
11 4 (1.28%) NVMe
12 3 (0.96%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (0.96%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.96%) Security Posture
13 2 (0.64%) Fat Client
13 2 (0.64%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 89 (28.43%) Linux
2 78 (24.92%) Windows
3 25 (7.99%) Windows Server
4 19 (6.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (4.47%) Unix
5 14 (4.47%) VMS
6 13 (4.15%) Amazon Linux
7 9 (2.88%) Windows 10
8 7 (2.24%) Ubuntu
9 4 (1.28%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.96%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.64%) Solaris
11 2 (0.64%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.32%) CentOS
12 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 145 (46.33%) CI/CD
2 134 (42.81%) DevOps
3 113 (36.10%) Infrastructure as Code
4 63 (20.13%) Containerisation
5 56 (17.89%) Observability
6 49 (15.65%) Problem-Solving
7 47 (15.02%) Agile
8 41 (13.10%) Continuous Improvement
8 41 (13.10%) Migration
9 38 (12.14%) DevSecOps
10 37 (11.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 33 (10.54%) Infrastructure Automation
12 31 (9.90%) Software Engineering
13 29 (9.27%) Cloud Security
14 25 (7.99%) Cybersecurity
14 25 (7.99%) Test Automation
15 24 (7.67%) RBAC
16 23 (7.35%) Incident Response
16 23 (7.35%) Performance Tuning
16 23 (7.35%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 111 (35.46%) Python
2 53 (16.93%) Bash
3 48 (15.34%) PowerShell
4 23 (7.35%) Java
4 23 (7.35%) SQL
5 15 (4.79%) Perl
6 12 (3.83%) Groovy
7 11 (3.51%) Bicep
8 8 (2.56%) Shell Script
9 7 (2.24%) TypeScript
10 6 (1.92%) C#
10 6 (1.92%) JavaScript
11 5 (1.60%) Go
12 4 (1.28%) Cypher
12 4 (1.28%) Scala
13 2 (0.64%) Apex Code
13 2 (0.64%) PHP
13 2 (0.64%) SOQL
14 1 (0.32%) CLIST
14 1 (0.32%) Rust
Qualifications
1 134 (42.81%) Security Cleared
2 104 (33.23%) SC Cleared
3 30 (9.58%) DV Cleared
4 15 (4.79%) AWS Certification
5 14 (4.47%) Degree
6 12 (3.83%) Azure Certification
7 9 (2.88%) CCNA
7 9 (2.88%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (2.56%) CCDP
8 8 (2.56%) CCNP
9 5 (1.60%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 3 (0.96%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.96%) CSPO
11 2 (0.64%) NCDA
11 2 (0.64%) VCP6
12 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.32%) RHCE
12 1 (0.32%) Server+ Certification
12 1 (0.32%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.67%) NCSC
2 7 (2.24%) GDPR
3 6 (1.92%) COBIT
4 5 (1.60%) Data Quality
4 5 (1.60%) NIST
4 5 (1.60%) QA
5 3 (0.96%) NIST 800
6 2 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.64%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.64%) WCAG
7 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.32%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 64 (20.45%) Docker
2 47 (15.02%) Active Directory
3 45 (14.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (4.15%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (3.19%) DFS Replication
5 10 (3.19%) vSphere
6 7 (2.24%) Dovecot
6 7 (2.24%) Postfix
6 7 (2.24%) Squid
6 7 (2.24%) VMware NSX
7 4 (1.28%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (1.28%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.96%) 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
1 123 (39.30%) Terraform
2 93 (29.71%) Kubernetes
3 55 (17.57%) Ansible
4 44 (14.06%) Grafana
5 34 (10.86%) Prometheus
6 13 (4.15%) Istio
7 12 (3.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 11 (3.51%) Argo
8 11 (3.51%) vCenter Server
9 10 (3.19%) Proxmox
10 8 (2.56%) Packer
11 7 (2.24%) Nessus
12 6 (1.92%) linkerd
12 6 (1.92%) Microsoft Intune
13 5 (1.60%) SCCM
13 5 (1.60%) Single Sign-On
14 4 (1.28%) Kibana
14 4 (1.28%) vMotion
15 3 (0.96%) Podman
15 3 (0.96%) vRealize
Vendors
1 57 (18.21%) VMware
2 46 (14.70%) Microsoft
3 31 (9.90%) Splunk
4 28 (8.95%) Red Hat
5 26 (8.31%) Cisco
5 26 (8.31%) Dynatrace
6 23 (7.35%) Oracle
7 19 (6.07%) ServiceNow
8 14 (4.47%) Citrix
8 14 (4.47%) F5
9 13 (4.15%) IBM
10 10 (3.19%) AppDynamics
11 8 (2.56%) Google
11 8 (2.56%) Veeam
12 7 (2.24%) CheckPoint
12 7 (2.24%) Dell
12 7 (2.24%) HP
12 7 (2.24%) Jaspersoft
13 6 (1.92%) Confluent
14 5 (1.60%) PeopleSoft