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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 255 283
Rank change year-on-year +94 +28 -25
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 289 91 123
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.57% 0.65% 0.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.84% 0.74% 0.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 224 65 78
10th Percentile £413 £412 £438
25th Percentile £463 £463 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.82% -1.77%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £624
90th Percentile £688 £675 £679
UK median daily rate £535 £575 £560
% change year-on-year -6.96% +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 15,699 12,288 16,912
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 85.19% 88.14% 87.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,638 7,201 10,747
10th Percentile £222 £233 £250
25th Percentile £375 £378 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £598 £600
90th Percentile £675 £678 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,685 691 1,294
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.14 £20.06 £16.75
Median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £43.83
Median % change year-on-year -21.76% -30.52% +51.12%
75th Percentile £55.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.75 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -19.75% +16.41%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 87 £525 - 69
South East +33 65 £525 -7.49% 100
Midlands +1 57 £540 -1.82% 32
West Midlands +9 54 £540 -15.95% 11
North West +20 48 £550 -9.28% 25
Yorkshire -43 36 £518 -1.43% 35
East of England +13 34 £475 -32.14% 35
South West +16 32 £575 +4.55% 49
Scotland +2 23 £525 +2.19% 19
North East - 6 £550 - 10
East Midlands -26 3 £525 +10.53% 20
Wales +1 1 £422 - 13
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 (7.96%) Confluence
2 13 (4.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (3.81%) Apache
4 9 (3.11%) nginx
4 9 (3.11%) SharePoint
5 7 (2.42%) WebLogic
6 5 (1.73%) OpenStack
7 3 (1.04%) IIS
7 3 (1.04%) JBoss
7 3 (1.04%) SharePoint Server
8 2 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.69%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.69%) iPlanet
8 2 (0.69%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.69%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.35%) CICS
9 1 (0.35%) CMS
9 1 (0.35%) Documentum
9 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.35%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 9 (3.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 1 (0.35%) Finacle
1 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 115 (39.79%) AWS
1 115 (39.79%) Azure
2 46 (15.92%) GitHub
3 37 (12.80%) GCP
4 28 (9.69%) Entra ID
5 27 (9.34%) GitHub Actions
6 26 (9.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 22 (7.61%) Amazon EC2
8 21 (7.27%) Amazon S3
8 21 (7.27%) AWS CloudFormation
8 21 (7.27%) Azure DevOps
8 21 (7.27%) Serverless
9 20 (6.92%) OpenShift
10 19 (6.57%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 15 (5.19%) AWS Lambda
12 14 (4.84%) Amazon ECS
12 14 (4.84%) Amazon ELB
12 14 (4.84%) AWS KMS
13 13 (4.50%) OCI
14 12 (4.15%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 46 (15.92%) Firewall
2 37 (12.80%) DNS
3 14 (4.84%) FTP
3 14 (4.84%) HTTP
3 14 (4.84%) SMTP
3 14 (4.84%) SSH
4 9 (3.11%) IMAP
4 9 (3.11%) OpenLDAP
4 9 (3.11%) TCP/IP
5 7 (2.42%) WebEx
6 6 (2.08%) BGP
6 6 (2.08%) DHCP
6 6 (2.08%) Software-Defined Networking
6 6 (2.08%) VLAN
7 5 (1.73%) Network Security
8 3 (1.04%) Internet
8 3 (1.04%) IPsec
8 3 (1.04%) SD-WAN
8 3 (1.04%) Skype
8 3 (1.04%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (8.65%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (8.30%) Amazon RDS
3 11 (3.81%) NoSQL
4 9 (3.11%) Amazon Aurora
4 9 (3.11%) Redis
5 8 (2.77%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (2.08%) Couchbase
6 6 (2.08%) SQL Server
7 5 (1.73%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.38%) Big Data
8 4 (1.38%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.38%) Neo4j
9 3 (1.04%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.04%) Hadoop
9 3 (1.04%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.69%) Apache Hive
10 2 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.69%) Oracle Database
11 1 (0.35%) MongoDB
11 1 (0.35%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 56 (19.38%) Jenkins
2 42 (14.53%) GitLab
3 33 (11.42%) Git
4 28 (9.69%) JIRA
5 14 (4.84%) Vagrant
6 12 (4.15%) SonarQube
7 4 (1.38%) Gatling
7 4 (1.38%) JMeter
7 4 (1.38%) LoadRunner
7 4 (1.38%) NeoLoad
7 4 (1.38%) Postman
8 3 (1.04%) MSI
9 2 (0.69%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.69%) Bitbucket Server
9 2 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.69%) JUnit
9 2 (0.69%) Maven
9 2 (0.69%) Mockito
9 2 (0.69%) Selenium
9 2 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 63 (21.80%) Social Skills
2 31 (10.73%) Public Sector
3 21 (7.27%) Finance
4 18 (6.23%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (5.54%) Banking
6 15 (5.19%) Legal
7 10 (3.46%) Presentation Skills
8 9 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (2.08%) Retail
10 4 (1.38%) Games
10 4 (1.38%) Retail Banking
11 3 (1.04%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.69%) Aerospace
13 1 (0.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.35%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.35%) Tech for Good
13 1 (0.35%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 151 (52.25%) Platform Engineer
2 45 (15.57%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 36 (12.46%) DevOps Engineer
4 30 (10.38%) AWS Engineer
5 28 (9.69%) Senior
6 22 (7.61%) AWS Platform Engineer
7 21 (7.27%) Lead
8 17 (5.88%) Architect
8 17 (5.88%) DevSecOps Engineer
9 16 (5.54%) Azure Engineer
10 15 (5.19%) Cloud Engineer
11 14 (4.84%) AWS DevOps
11 14 (4.84%) AWS DevOps Engineer
11 14 (4.84%) Azure Platform Engineer
12 13 (4.50%) DevOps Platform Engineer
12 13 (4.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 12 (4.15%) Data Engineer
14 8 (2.77%) Project Manager
14 8 (2.77%) Software Engineer
15 6 (2.08%) Implementation Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (5.54%) Kafka
1 16 (5.54%) YAML
2 15 (5.19%) LDAP
3 11 (3.81%) Elastic Stack
4 10 (3.46%) OpenID
4 10 (3.46%) REST
5 9 (3.11%) Keycloak
6 7 (2.42%) Node.js
6 7 (2.42%) XMPP
7 6 (2.08%) Middleware
7 6 (2.08%) OAuth
7 6 (2.08%) Playwright
7 6 (2.08%) React
7 6 (2.08%) Spring
7 6 (2.08%) Spring Boot
8 4 (1.38%) ADO
8 4 (1.38%) FastAPI
8 4 (1.38%) OAuth2
8 4 (1.38%) SailPoint
8 4 (1.38%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 24 (8.30%) Replication
2 19 (6.57%) Cloud Native
2 19 (6.57%) PKI
3 18 (6.23%) Product Ownership
4 15 (5.19%) Onboarding
5 11 (3.81%) Private Cloud
6 10 (3.46%) Data Centre
7 9 (3.11%) Distributed Systems
8 7 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (2.42%) NHS
9 6 (2.08%) Hybrid Cloud
9 6 (2.08%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (1.04%) Management Information System
11 3 (1.04%) Operational Technology
12 2 (0.69%) Distributed Architecture
12 2 (0.69%) SCADA
12 2 (0.69%) Security Posture
12 2 (0.69%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 88 (30.45%) Linux
2 75 (25.95%) Windows
3 22 (7.61%) Windows Server
4 19 (6.57%) Unix
5 18 (6.23%) VMS
6 17 (5.88%) Amazon Linux
7 14 (4.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 9 (3.11%) Ubuntu
8 9 (3.11%) Windows 10
9 4 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.69%) Solaris
11 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.35%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (46.71%) CI/CD
2 126 (43.60%) DevOps
3 104 (35.99%) Infrastructure as Code
4 60 (20.76%) Containerisation
5 58 (20.07%) Observability
6 44 (15.22%) Problem-Solving
7 40 (13.84%) Agile
8 38 (13.15%) Continuous Improvement
9 37 (12.80%) DevSecOps
10 34 (11.76%) Migration
11 32 (11.07%) Software Engineering
12 31 (10.73%) Cloud Security
13 29 (10.03%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 28 (9.69%) Incident Response
15 27 (9.34%) Infrastructure Automation
16 26 (9.00%) Service Management
17 25 (8.65%) Performance Tuning
17 25 (8.65%) RBAC
18 24 (8.30%) Site Reliability Engineering
19 23 (7.96%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 104 (35.99%) Python
2 48 (16.61%) Bash
2 48 (16.61%) PowerShell
3 25 (8.65%) Java
3 25 (8.65%) SQL
4 16 (5.54%) Groovy
5 15 (5.19%) Perl
6 9 (3.11%) Bicep
6 9 (3.11%) JavaScript
7 7 (2.42%) Shell Script
7 7 (2.42%) TypeScript
8 6 (2.08%) C#
8 6 (2.08%) Go
9 4 (1.38%) Cypher
9 4 (1.38%) Scala
10 2 (0.69%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.69%) PHP
10 2 (0.69%) SOQL
11 1 (0.35%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.35%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 142 (49.13%) Security Cleared
2 116 (40.14%) SC Cleared
3 29 (10.03%) DV Cleared
4 17 (5.88%) AWS Certification
5 14 (4.84%) Azure Certification
5 14 (4.84%) Degree
6 9 (3.11%) CCNA
6 9 (3.11%) Cisco Certification
7 8 (2.77%) CCDP
7 8 (2.77%) CCNP
8 5 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.04%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (1.04%) CSPO
9 3 (1.04%) 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 22 (7.61%) NCSC
2 6 (2.08%) COBIT
3 5 (1.73%) QA
4 4 (1.38%) GDPR
5 3 (1.04%) Data Quality
5 3 (1.04%) NIST
6 2 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.69%) WCAG
7 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.35%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.35%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 66 (22.84%) Docker
2 44 (15.22%) Active Directory
3 37 (12.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (4.84%) DFS Replication
5 9 (3.11%) Dovecot
5 9 (3.11%) Postfix
5 9 (3.11%) Squid
6 8 (2.77%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (1.73%) vSphere
8 4 (1.38%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
8 4 (1.38%) Hyper-V
9 3 (1.04%) 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
1 121 (41.87%) Terraform
2 84 (29.07%) Kubernetes
3 46 (15.92%) Ansible
4 45 (15.57%) Grafana
5 41 (14.19%) Prometheus
6 12 (4.15%) Proxmox
7 11 (3.81%) Argo
7 11 (3.81%) Istio
7 11 (3.81%) vCenter Server
8 10 (3.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 9 (3.11%) Nessus
10 8 (2.77%) Packer
11 5 (1.73%) linkerd
12 4 (1.38%) Kibana
12 4 (1.38%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
13 3 (1.04%) Progress Chef
13 3 (1.04%) Puppet
13 3 (1.04%) SCCM
13 3 (1.04%) WSUS
Vendors
1 50 (17.30%) VMware
2 43 (14.88%) Microsoft
3 35 (12.11%) Splunk
4 34 (11.76%) Dynatrace
5 27 (9.34%) Cisco
5 27 (9.34%) Red Hat
6 23 (7.96%) ServiceNow
7 22 (7.61%) Oracle
8 15 (5.19%) AppDynamics
9 13 (4.50%) Citrix
9 13 (4.50%) IBM
10 11 (3.81%) F5
11 9 (3.11%) Jaspersoft
12 7 (2.42%) CheckPoint
12 7 (2.42%) Dell
12 7 (2.42%) Google
12 7 (2.42%) HP
13 6 (2.08%) Confluent
13 6 (2.08%) Veeam
14 4 (1.38%) SolarWinds