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

6 months to
3 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 165 254 282
Rank change year-on-year +89 +28 -16
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 285 88 120
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.56% 0.62% 0.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.82% 0.70% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 219 64 78
10th Percentile £413 £421 £449
25th Percentile £463 £463 £503
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £548
Median % change year-on-year - -4.11% -0.45%
75th Percentile £588 £623 £638
90th Percentile £688 £685 £679
UK median daily rate £540 £585 £563
% change year-on-year -7.69% +4.00% -6.25%
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 15,623 12,503 17,062
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 85.46% 87.48% 87.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,595 7,311 10,961
10th Percentile £222 £239 £250
25th Percentile £375 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,714 719 1,242
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £17.71
Median hourly rate £23.83 £30.78 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.60% -31.60% +50.70%
75th Percentile £53.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £73.75 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.75
% change year-on-year -22.62% -25.71% +25.00%

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 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 3 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 3 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 -11 80 £525 +2.44% 74
South East +39 66 £525 -7.49% 140
Midlands +6 60 £540 -15.95% 53
West Midlands +12 57 £540 -21.17% 26
North West +13 48 £550 -13.73% 33
South West +19 31 £575 +4.55% 61
East of England +9 31 £475 -32.14% 48
Yorkshire -42 29 £518 +3.50% 33
Scotland +3 26 £525 +2.19% 21
North East - 6 £550 - 8
East Midlands -23 3 £525 +10.53% 24
Wales 0 1 £422 - 10
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 25 (8.77%) Confluence
2 13 (4.56%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (3.86%) Apache
4 10 (3.51%) nginx
5 9 (3.16%) SharePoint
6 7 (2.46%) WebLogic
7 5 (1.75%) OpenStack
8 3 (1.05%) IIS
8 3 (1.05%) JBoss
8 3 (1.05%) SharePoint Server
9 2 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.70%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.70%) iPlanet
9 2 (0.70%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.70%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.35%) CICS
10 1 (0.35%) CMS
10 1 (0.35%) Documentum
10 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.35%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 10 (3.51%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 1 (0.35%) Finacle
1 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 113 (39.65%) AWS
2 112 (39.30%) Azure
3 45 (15.79%) GitHub
4 32 (11.23%) GCP
5 28 (9.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 26 (9.12%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (8.42%) Amazon EC2
7 24 (8.42%) OpenShift
8 23 (8.07%) Amazon S3
8 23 (8.07%) Entra ID
9 21 (7.37%) AWS CloudFormation
9 21 (7.37%) Azure DevOps
9 21 (7.37%) Serverless
9 21 (7.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 16 (5.61%) Amazon ELB
10 16 (5.61%) AWS KMS
11 15 (5.26%) Amazon ECS
11 15 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
12 13 (4.56%) Microsoft 365
12 13 (4.56%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 47 (16.49%) Firewall
2 39 (13.68%) DNS
3 16 (5.61%) FTP
3 16 (5.61%) HTTP
3 16 (5.61%) SMTP
3 16 (5.61%) SSH
4 10 (3.51%) IMAP
4 10 (3.51%) OpenLDAP
5 9 (3.16%) TCP/IP
6 7 (2.46%) WebEx
7 6 (2.11%) BGP
7 6 (2.11%) DHCP
7 6 (2.11%) Software-Defined Networking
7 6 (2.11%) VLAN
8 4 (1.40%) Network Security
9 3 (1.05%) Internet
9 3 (1.05%) IPsec
9 3 (1.05%) SD-WAN
9 3 (1.05%) Skype
9 3 (1.05%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (9.12%) Amazon RDS
1 26 (9.12%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (3.86%) NoSQL
2 11 (3.86%) Redis
3 10 (3.51%) Amazon Aurora
4 8 (2.81%) Amazon Redshift
5 6 (2.11%) Couchbase
5 6 (2.11%) SQL Server
6 5 (1.75%) DynamoDB
7 4 (1.40%) Big Data
7 4 (1.40%) Data Lake
8 3 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.05%) Hadoop
8 3 (1.05%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.70%) Apache Hive
9 2 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.70%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.70%) Oracle Database
10 1 (0.35%) SAP Data Services
10 1 (0.35%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 60 (21.05%) Jenkins
2 37 (12.98%) GitLab
3 35 (12.28%) Git
4 27 (9.47%) JIRA
5 16 (5.61%) Vagrant
6 12 (4.21%) SonarQube
7 3 (1.05%) MSI
8 2 (0.70%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.70%) Bitbucket Server
8 2 (0.70%) CA Release Automation
8 2 (0.70%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.70%) JUnit
8 2 (0.70%) Maven
8 2 (0.70%) Mockito
8 2 (0.70%) Selenium
8 2 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.70%) Spinnaker
9 1 (0.35%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.35%) Pylint
General
1 67 (23.51%) Social Skills
2 33 (11.58%) Public Sector
3 22 (7.72%) Finance
4 17 (5.96%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (5.61%) Banking
6 15 (5.26%) Legal
7 11 (3.86%) Presentation Skills
8 9 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (2.11%) Retail
10 4 (1.40%) Games
10 4 (1.40%) Retail Banking
11 3 (1.05%) Aerospace
11 3 (1.05%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.35%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.35%) Tech for Good
12 1 (0.35%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 159 (55.79%) Platform Engineer
2 48 (16.84%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 38 (13.33%) DevOps Engineer
4 33 (11.58%) AWS Engineer
5 26 (9.12%) Senior
6 23 (8.07%) AWS Platform Engineer
7 17 (5.96%) AWS DevOps
7 17 (5.96%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 17 (5.96%) Lead
8 16 (5.61%) Azure Engineer
8 16 (5.61%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 14 (4.91%) Architect
9 14 (4.91%) Azure Platform Engineer
9 14 (4.91%) Cloud Engineer
10 13 (4.56%) DevOps Platform Engineer
10 13 (4.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 12 (4.21%) Data Engineer
12 8 (2.81%) Software Engineer
13 6 (2.11%) Project Manager
13 6 (2.11%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (6.32%) Kafka
2 15 (5.26%) YAML
3 12 (4.21%) Elastic Stack
3 12 (4.21%) LDAP
4 9 (3.16%) Keycloak
5 8 (2.81%) OAuth
5 8 (2.81%) React
6 7 (2.46%) FastAPI
6 7 (2.46%) Middleware
6 7 (2.46%) REST
6 7 (2.46%) XMPP
7 6 (2.11%) Node.js
7 6 (2.11%) OAuth2
7 6 (2.11%) OpenID
7 6 (2.11%) Spring
7 6 (2.11%) Spring Boot
8 4 (1.40%) ADO
8 4 (1.40%) Oracle Fusion
8 4 (1.40%) RESTful
8 4 (1.40%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 26 (9.12%) Replication
2 19 (6.67%) PKI
3 18 (6.32%) Cloud Native
4 17 (5.96%) Product Ownership
5 15 (5.26%) Onboarding
6 11 (3.86%) Private Cloud
7 10 (3.51%) Data Centre
8 8 (2.81%) Distributed Systems
9 7 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (2.46%) NHS
10 6 (2.11%) Hybrid Cloud
11 5 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.75%) Public Cloud
12 3 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (1.05%) Operational Technology
13 2 (0.70%) Distributed Architecture
13 2 (0.70%) Fat Client
13 2 (0.70%) SCADA
13 2 (0.70%) Security Posture
13 2 (0.70%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 91 (31.93%) Linux
2 78 (27.37%) Windows
3 22 (7.72%) Windows Server
4 21 (7.37%) VMS
5 19 (6.67%) Amazon Linux
5 19 (6.67%) Unix
6 14 (4.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 10 (3.51%) Ubuntu
8 9 (3.16%) Windows 10
9 4 (1.40%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.70%) Solaris
11 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.35%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (45.96%) CI/CD
2 123 (43.16%) DevOps
3 102 (35.79%) Infrastructure as Code
4 61 (21.40%) Containerisation
5 60 (21.05%) Observability
6 45 (15.79%) Problem-Solving
7 41 (14.39%) Agile
8 36 (12.63%) Continuous Improvement
8 36 (12.63%) DevSecOps
9 35 (12.28%) Migration
10 30 (10.53%) Cloud Security
10 30 (10.53%) Software Engineering
11 28 (9.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 27 (9.47%) Incident Response
13 26 (9.12%) Infrastructure Automation
13 26 (9.12%) Performance Tuning
13 26 (9.12%) Service Management
13 26 (9.12%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 25 (8.77%) Configuration Management
15 24 (8.42%) AI
Programming Languages
1 107 (37.54%) Python
2 54 (18.95%) PowerShell
3 49 (17.19%) Bash
4 29 (10.18%) SQL
5 24 (8.42%) Java
6 18 (6.32%) Groovy
7 16 (5.61%) Perl
8 12 (4.21%) JavaScript
9 8 (2.81%) Bicep
9 8 (2.81%) C#
10 7 (2.46%) Shell Script
11 6 (2.11%) Go
12 3 (1.05%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.70%) Apex Code
13 2 (0.70%) PHP
13 2 (0.70%) SOQL
14 1 (0.35%) JCL
14 1 (0.35%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.35%) REXX
14 1 (0.35%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 143 (50.18%) Security Cleared
2 118 (41.40%) SC Cleared
3 31 (10.88%) DV Cleared
4 19 (6.67%) AWS Certification
5 15 (5.26%) Azure Certification
5 15 (5.26%) Degree
6 9 (3.16%) CCNA
6 9 (3.16%) Cisco Certification
7 8 (2.81%) CCDP
7 8 (2.81%) CCNP
8 5 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.05%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (1.05%) CSPO
9 3 (1.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 1 (0.35%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.35%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (7.37%) NCSC
2 6 (2.11%) COBIT
3 4 (1.40%) GDPR
4 3 (1.05%) Data Quality
4 3 (1.05%) NIST
5 2 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.70%) QA
5 2 (0.70%) WCAG
6 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.35%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.35%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 70 (24.56%) Docker
2 45 (15.79%) Active Directory
3 36 (12.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (5.61%) DFS Replication
5 10 (3.51%) Dovecot
5 10 (3.51%) Postfix
5 10 (3.51%) Squid
6 8 (2.81%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (1.75%) vSphere
8 4 (1.40%) Hyper-V
9 3 (1.05%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.35%) GPFS
10 1 (0.35%) Time Sharing Option
10 1 (0.35%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 1 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 122 (42.81%) Terraform
2 86 (30.18%) Kubernetes
3 50 (17.54%) Grafana
4 49 (17.19%) Ansible
5 46 (16.14%) Prometheus
6 13 (4.56%) Proxmox
7 11 (3.86%) Argo
7 11 (3.86%) vCenter Server
8 10 (3.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 10 (3.51%) Istio
8 10 (3.51%) Nessus
9 8 (2.81%) Packer
10 5 (1.75%) linkerd
11 4 (1.40%) Kibana
11 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (1.40%) Puppet
11 4 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (1.05%) Progress Chef
12 3 (1.05%) SCCM
12 3 (1.05%) WSUS
Vendors
1 50 (17.54%) VMware
2 45 (15.79%) Microsoft
3 36 (12.63%) Splunk
4 34 (11.93%) Dynatrace
5 29 (10.18%) Red Hat
6 27 (9.47%) Cisco
7 22 (7.72%) Oracle
8 21 (7.37%) ServiceNow
9 15 (5.26%) AppDynamics
10 13 (4.56%) Citrix
10 13 (4.56%) IBM
11 11 (3.86%) F5
12 10 (3.51%) Jaspersoft
13 7 (2.46%) CheckPoint
13 7 (2.46%) Dell
13 7 (2.46%) HP
14 6 (2.11%) Confluent
14 6 (2.11%) Veeam
15 4 (1.40%) Greenplum
15 4 (1.40%) SolarWinds