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 11 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 259 308
Rank change year-on-year +116 +49 -54
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 387 81 95
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.68% 0.64% 0.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.04% 0.71% 0.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 263 55 68
10th Percentile £363 £418 £418
25th Percentile £420 £490 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £538
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% - -6.52%
75th Percentile £550 £603 £650
90th Percentile £638 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £561 £575
% change year-on-year -6.46% -2.39% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 1 0
10th Percentile £59.75 - -
25th Percentile £66.50 £68.75 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £72.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +2.43% - -
75th Percentile £77.13 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £81.20 - -
UK median hourly rate £74.26 £72.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +2.43% +20.83% -26.38%

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 18,947 11,478 17,781
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 82.10% 90.53% 85.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,542 7,298 10,788
10th Percentile £280 £240 £237
25th Percentile £400 £381 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £487 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £581 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £665 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,988 774 1,972
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.70 £12.30
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.21 £15.13
Median hourly rate £37.00 £29.12 £33.03
Median % change year-on-year +27.08% -11.86% -6.76%
75th Percentile £65.60 £65.00 £59.00
90th Percentile £78.40 £76.25 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £36.71 £31.04 £33.07
% change year-on-year +18.27% -6.12% -8.15%

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 11 April 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 11 April 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 11 April 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 +56 162 £494 -10.23% 94
North West +37 80 £550 -0.45% 53
Yorkshire +11 79 £475 -17.39% 33
South East +6 78 £525 +5.00% 74
Midlands -28 48 £525 +1.25% 27
Scotland +36 47 £449 -14.48% 6
West Midlands -30 40 £525 -3.40% 19
East of England -6 27 £438 -45.31% 10
South West -12 26 £544 -9.56% 32
North East -9 8 £550 - 8
East Midlands -36 8 £488 - 8
Wales -7 2 £424 - 9
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 17 (4.39%) Confluence
2 13 (3.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (2.84%) Apache Spark
4 8 (2.07%) SharePoint
5 6 (1.55%) Apache
6 5 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
7 4 (1.03%) OpenStack
8 3 (0.78%) WebLogic
9 2 (0.52%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.52%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
9 2 (0.52%) IBM HTTP Server
9 2 (0.52%) nginx
9 2 (0.52%) Oracle HTTP Server
9 2 (0.52%) Tuxedo
9 2 (0.52%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.52%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.52%) WebSphere Portal
10 1 (0.26%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.26%) CICS
10 1 (0.26%) SAS
Applications
1 3 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 142 (36.69%) Azure
2 127 (32.82%) AWS
3 72 (18.60%) GitHub
4 53 (13.70%) GCP
5 51 (13.18%) GitHub Actions
6 40 (10.34%) Azure DevOps
7 34 (8.79%) Entra ID
8 31 (8.01%) OpenShift
9 27 (6.98%) Amazon EKS
10 26 (6.72%) Serverless
11 24 (6.20%) Azure AKS
12 19 (4.91%) AWS CloudFormation
13 17 (4.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 17 (4.39%) AWS Lambda
14 15 (3.88%) Amazon EC2
14 15 (3.88%) Amazon S3
15 14 (3.62%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 11 (2.84%) PaaS
16 11 (2.84%) Snowflake
16 11 (2.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 37 (9.56%) Firewall
2 25 (6.46%) DNS
3 14 (3.62%) Network Security
4 11 (2.84%) TCP/IP
5 10 (2.58%) DHCP
5 10 (2.58%) WebEx
6 7 (1.81%) BGP
6 7 (1.81%) VLAN
6 7 (1.81%) VPN
7 6 (1.55%) SAN
7 6 (1.55%) Software-Defined Networking
7 6 (1.55%) VSAN
8 5 (1.29%) SSL
9 4 (1.03%) Fibre Channel
9 4 (1.03%) IPsec
9 4 (1.03%) MQTT
9 4 (1.03%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.78%) NAS
11 2 (0.52%) NetScaler
11 2 (0.52%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (6.98%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (2.84%) SQL Server
3 10 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (2.58%) Redis
3 10 (2.58%) Relational Database
4 9 (2.33%) Big Data
4 9 (2.33%) DynamoDB
4 9 (2.33%) Metadata
4 9 (2.33%) NoSQL
4 9 (2.33%) Power BI
5 8 (2.07%) Hadoop
6 5 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (1.29%) Amazon Redshift
6 5 (1.29%) Tableau
7 4 (1.03%) Neo4j
8 3 (0.78%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.78%) Data Lake
8 3 (0.78%) MySQL
8 3 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 2 (0.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 56 (14.47%) Jenkins
2 48 (12.40%) GitLab
3 38 (9.82%) Git
3 38 (9.82%) JIRA
4 7 (1.81%) Bitbucket
4 7 (1.81%) Gatling
5 6 (1.55%) SonarQube
6 5 (1.29%) Artifactory
6 5 (1.29%) Maven
6 5 (1.29%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (1.03%) JMeter
7 4 (1.03%) LoadRunner
7 4 (1.03%) MSI
7 4 (1.03%) NeoLoad
7 4 (1.03%) Postman
8 3 (0.78%) Spinnaker
9 2 (0.52%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.52%) Jaeger
9 2 (0.52%) Mockito
9 2 (0.52%) Terragrunt
General
1 75 (19.38%) Social Skills
2 35 (9.04%) Finance
3 34 (8.79%) Public Sector
4 23 (5.94%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (4.65%) Banking
6 14 (3.62%) Legal
7 4 (1.03%) Telecoms
8 3 (0.78%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (0.52%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.52%) Health Technology
9 2 (0.52%) Law
9 2 (0.52%) Military
10 1 (0.26%) Advertising
10 1 (0.26%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.26%) Electronics
10 1 (0.26%) Games
10 1 (0.26%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.26%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.26%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.26%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 192 (49.61%) Platform Engineer
2 64 (16.54%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 59 (15.25%) Senior
4 46 (11.89%) DevOps Engineer
5 35 (9.04%) Cloud Engineer
6 34 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
7 28 (7.24%) Azure Platform Engineer
8 25 (6.46%) Data Engineer
9 24 (6.20%) Architect
9 24 (6.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 23 (5.94%) Lead
11 19 (4.91%) AWS Engineer
12 15 (3.88%) Senior Platform Engineer
13 14 (3.62%) Software Engineer
14 13 (3.36%) DevOps Platform Engineer
14 13 (3.36%) GCP Engineer
15 12 (3.10%) VMware Engineer
16 11 (2.84%) Senior DevOps
16 11 (2.84%) Senior DevOps Engineer
17 10 (2.58%) DevSecOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (4.65%) Kafka
2 14 (3.62%) REST
3 10 (2.58%) Keycloak
3 10 (2.58%) XMPP
4 9 (2.33%) Elastic Stack
4 9 (2.33%) OAuth
4 9 (2.33%) OAuth2
4 9 (2.33%) OpenID
4 9 (2.33%) Playwright
4 9 (2.33%) YAML
5 8 (2.07%) ADO
5 8 (2.07%) Node.js
5 8 (2.07%) React
5 8 (2.07%) Spring
5 8 (2.07%) Spring Boot
6 7 (1.81%) OpenTelemetry
7 6 (1.55%) .NET
7 6 (1.55%) AWS CDK
7 6 (1.55%) Middleware
8 5 (1.29%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 47 (12.14%) Cloud Native
2 31 (8.01%) Product Ownership
3 18 (4.65%) Private Cloud
4 15 (3.88%) PKI
5 14 (3.62%) Data Centre
6 12 (3.10%) Distributed Systems
6 12 (3.10%) Onboarding
7 11 (2.84%) Hybrid Cloud
7 11 (2.84%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
8 8 (2.07%) NHS
8 8 (2.07%) Security Posture
9 6 (1.55%) Replication
10 5 (1.29%) Fat Client
10 5 (1.29%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.29%) Thin Client
10 5 (1.29%) Virtual Team
11 4 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (1.03%) NVMe
12 3 (0.78%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 90 (23.26%) Linux
2 59 (15.25%) Windows
3 29 (7.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (6.20%) Windows Server
5 14 (3.62%) Unix
6 6 (1.55%) VMS
7 3 (0.78%) Amazon Linux
7 3 (0.78%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.52%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.52%) Solaris
8 2 (0.52%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.26%) CentOS
9 1 (0.26%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.26%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.26%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 181 (46.77%) CI/CD
2 155 (40.05%) DevOps
3 140 (36.18%) Infrastructure as Code
4 81 (20.93%) Observability
5 71 (18.35%) Agile
5 71 (18.35%) Containerisation
6 60 (15.50%) Continuous Improvement
7 57 (14.73%) Problem-Solving
8 55 (14.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 54 (13.95%) Migration
10 49 (12.66%) Software Engineering
11 40 (10.34%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 39 (10.08%) Infrastructure Automation
13 35 (9.04%) DevSecOps
14 34 (8.79%) Roadmaps
15 32 (8.27%) GitOps
16 29 (7.49%) Cloud Security
16 29 (7.49%) Test Automation
17 28 (7.24%) Analytics
18 27 (6.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 135 (34.88%) Python
2 71 (18.35%) Bash
3 63 (16.28%) PowerShell
4 36 (9.30%) Java
5 28 (7.24%) SQL
6 21 (5.43%) Bicep
7 15 (3.88%) Perl
8 8 (2.07%) C#
8 8 (2.07%) JavaScript
8 8 (2.07%) TypeScript
9 7 (1.81%) Scala
10 5 (1.29%) Go
11 4 (1.03%) Cypher
11 4 (1.03%) Groovy
11 4 (1.03%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.52%) C++
12 2 (0.52%) Jython
12 2 (0.52%) PHP
13 1 (0.26%) C
13 1 (0.26%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 148 (38.24%) Security Cleared
2 117 (30.23%) SC Cleared
3 18 (4.65%) DV Cleared
4 13 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 13 (3.36%) Degree
5 10 (2.58%) CCNA
5 10 (2.58%) Cisco Certification
6 9 (2.33%) CCDP
6 9 (2.33%) CCNP
7 7 (1.81%) Azure Certification
8 6 (1.55%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 4 (1.03%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.78%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 3 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.78%) CSPO
10 3 (0.78%) NCDA
10 3 (0.78%) RHCE
10 3 (0.78%) SAFe Agilist
11 2 (0.52%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (3.88%) NCSC
2 14 (3.62%) Data Quality
3 9 (2.33%) GDPR
3 9 (2.33%) QA
4 4 (1.03%) NIST
4 4 (1.03%) NIST 800
4 4 (1.03%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.78%) GRC
6 2 (0.52%) WCAG
7 1 (0.26%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.26%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.26%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 59 (15.25%) Docker
2 49 (12.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (9.30%) Active Directory
4 16 (4.13%) vSphere
5 15 (3.88%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (2.33%) VMware NSX
7 7 (1.81%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (1.29%) Hyper-V
9 4 (1.03%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 3 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.52%) Firmware
12 1 (0.26%) Ceph
12 1 (0.26%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 1 (0.26%) GPFS
12 1 (0.26%) KVM
12 1 (0.26%) NFS
12 1 (0.26%) Squid
12 1 (0.26%) SRDF
12 1 (0.26%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 138 (35.66%) Terraform
2 126 (32.56%) Kubernetes
3 71 (18.35%) Ansible
4 43 (11.11%) Grafana
5 36 (9.30%) Prometheus
6 26 (6.72%) Istio
7 20 (5.17%) Argo
8 11 (2.84%) Packer
9 9 (2.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 7 (1.81%) linkerd
10 7 (1.81%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (1.55%) PowerCLI
11 6 (1.55%) Puppet
12 5 (1.29%) Rancher
12 5 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
12 5 (1.29%) vCenter Server
13 4 (1.03%) SCCM
13 4 (1.03%) vMotion
13 4 (1.03%) vRealize
14 3 (0.78%) Kibana
Vendors
1 61 (15.76%) VMware
2 49 (12.66%) Microsoft
3 34 (8.79%) Red Hat
4 32 (8.27%) Splunk
5 22 (5.68%) Cisco
5 22 (5.68%) Google
6 19 (4.91%) Dynatrace
7 18 (4.65%) Citrix
8 16 (4.13%) Oracle
8 16 (4.13%) ServiceNow
9 9 (2.33%) AppDynamics
10 7 (1.81%) Databricks
10 7 (1.81%) F5
11 5 (1.29%) IBM
11 5 (1.29%) PeopleSoft
11 5 (1.29%) Veeam
12 4 (1.03%) Brocade
12 4 (1.03%) Dell
12 4 (1.03%) NetApp
12 4 (1.03%) Palo Alto