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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 121 233 290
Rank change year-on-year +112 +57 -42
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 554 138 88
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.05% 0.91% 0.48%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.51% 1.02% 0.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 319 97 67
10th Percentile £388 £400 £410
25th Percentile £425 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -5.66% -11.67%
75th Percentile £581 £575 £675
90th Percentile £675 £636 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £525 £600
% change year-on-year +4.76% -12.50% -2.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 1 0
10th Percentile £66.50 - -
25th Percentile £74.26 £68.75 -
Median hourly rate £82.00 £72.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +13.10% - -
75th Percentile £98.82 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £100.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £77.50 £72.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +6.90% +31.82% -29.49%

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 22,054 13,551 15,359
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.63% 89.22% 83.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,950 8,183 9,201
10th Percentile £300 £240 £250
25th Percentile £406 £368 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £594 £575 £600
90th Percentile £685 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,355 1,310 1,591
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.85 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.33 £16.96 £16.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £23.05 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +90.72% -43.70% +3.38%
75th Percentile £68.65 £46.18 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.16 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -37.90% -4.71%

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 4 August 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 4 August 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 4 August 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 +71 193 £500 +5.26% 165
Yorkshire +50 109 £500 -4.76% 57
Midlands +7 103 £488 -2.50% 54
South East -6 102 £575 +15.00% 116
West Midlands -15 79 £470 -6.00% 25
North West +4 76 £506 +26.56% 99
South West +11 70 £550 -8.33% 86
Scotland +25 63 £438 -12.50% 39
East Midlands +13 23 £488 -18.75% 27
East of England +1 21 £550 +15.79% 19
North East -33 10 £438 -20.45% 9
Wales - 5 £325 - 15
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 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 23 (4.15%) Confluence
2 9 (1.62%) Apache Spark
3 7 (1.26%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.08%) Apache
5 5 (0.90%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (0.72%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.36%) Apache Superset
8 2 (0.36%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.36%) IBM HTTP Server
8 2 (0.36%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle HTTP Server
8 2 (0.36%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.36%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.36%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.36%) WebSphere Portal
9 1 (0.18%) Oracle Coherence
9 1 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.18%) Tuxedo
9 1 (0.18%) WebLogic
Applications
1 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
1 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
1 4 (0.72%) NetSuite
1 4 (0.72%) Sage X3
2 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 237 (42.78%) AWS
2 227 (40.97%) Azure
3 97 (17.51%) GCP
4 94 (16.97%) GitHub
5 79 (14.26%) GitHub Actions
6 60 (10.83%) Azure DevOps
7 45 (8.12%) Serverless
8 38 (6.86%) Amazon EKS
9 33 (5.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 31 (5.60%) AWS Lambda
11 29 (5.23%) Entra ID
11 29 (5.23%) Power Platform
12 27 (4.87%) Amazon S3
12 27 (4.87%) OpenShift
13 26 (4.69%) Amazon EC2
14 24 (4.33%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 23 (4.15%) AWS CloudFormation
16 22 (3.97%) Amazon ECS
16 22 (3.97%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 19 (3.43%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 52 (9.39%) DNS
2 46 (8.30%) Firewall
3 30 (5.42%) TCP/IP
4 28 (5.05%) DHCP
5 22 (3.97%) VPN
6 21 (3.79%) VSAN
7 20 (3.61%) Network Security
8 10 (1.81%) HTTP
9 7 (1.26%) SNMP
10 4 (0.72%) SSH
11 3 (0.54%) HTTPS
11 3 (0.54%) NAS
11 3 (0.54%) SAN
11 3 (0.54%) SSL
11 3 (0.54%) WAN
11 3 (0.54%) WebEx
12 2 (0.36%) Internet
12 2 (0.36%) LAN
12 2 (0.36%) Multicast
12 2 (0.36%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (5.78%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (4.33%) SQL Server
3 16 (2.89%) Data Warehouse
4 14 (2.53%) Power BI
5 13 (2.35%) DynamoDB
6 12 (2.17%) MySQL
6 12 (2.17%) Relational Database
7 9 (1.62%) Metadata
8 8 (1.44%) Amazon Redshift
8 8 (1.44%) NoSQL
9 7 (1.26%) Big Data
9 7 (1.26%) Oracle Exadata
10 6 (1.08%) Ataccama
10 6 (1.08%) BigQuery
10 6 (1.08%) Data Lake
10 6 (1.08%) Tableau
11 5 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
11 5 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
11 5 (0.90%) Neo4j
12 4 (0.72%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 82 (14.80%) Jenkins
2 57 (10.29%) Git
3 54 (9.75%) GitLab
4 40 (7.22%) JIRA
5 20 (3.61%) Bitbucket
6 8 (1.44%) Maven
7 7 (1.26%) Gatling
7 7 (1.26%) SonarQube
7 7 (1.26%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (1.08%) Artifactory
9 4 (0.72%) MSBuild
9 4 (0.72%) Visual Studio
10 3 (0.54%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.54%) Jaeger
10 3 (0.54%) JUnit
10 3 (0.54%) Mockito
10 3 (0.54%) Selenium
11 2 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.36%) MSI
11 2 (0.36%) Terragrunt
General
1 110 (19.86%) Social Skills
2 79 (14.26%) Finance
3 64 (11.55%) Public Sector
4 28 (5.05%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (4.69%) Banking
6 22 (3.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 15 (2.71%) Telecoms
8 14 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
9 13 (2.35%) Aerospace
10 9 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
10 9 (1.62%) Military
11 7 (1.26%) Billing
12 5 (0.90%) Legal
12 5 (0.90%) Retail
13 4 (0.72%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.72%) Health Technology
13 4 (0.72%) Law
13 4 (0.72%) Local Government
13 4 (0.72%) Police
14 3 (0.54%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 227 (40.97%) Platform Engineer
2 99 (17.87%) Senior
3 87 (15.70%) DevOps Engineer
4 74 (13.36%) Cloud Platform Engineer
5 58 (10.47%) Cloud Engineer
6 54 (9.75%) Data Engineer
7 46 (8.30%) Azure Engineer
8 44 (7.94%) Senior Platform Engineer
9 38 (6.86%) Architect
10 36 (6.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 34 (6.14%) AWS Engineer
12 30 (5.42%) Azure Platform Engineer
12 30 (5.42%) Lead
13 26 (4.69%) Developer
14 24 (4.33%) GCP Engineer
15 23 (4.15%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 22 (3.97%) DevOps Platform Engineer
17 21 (3.79%) Senior Data Engineer
17 21 (3.79%) Senior DevOps
17 21 (3.79%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (6.14%) Kafka
2 18 (3.25%) ARM Templates
2 18 (3.25%) REST
3 17 (3.07%) JSON
3 17 (3.07%) OpenTelemetry
4 14 (2.53%) OAuth
5 13 (2.35%) .NET
5 13 (2.35%) AWS CDK
5 13 (2.35%) OAuth2
6 12 (2.17%) Node.js
7 11 (1.99%) YAML
8 10 (1.81%) OpenID
8 10 (1.81%) React
8 10 (1.81%) Spring Boot
9 8 (1.44%) Playwright
9 8 (1.44%) SAML
9 8 (1.44%) Spring
10 7 (1.26%) LDAP
11 6 (1.08%) RESTful
11 6 (1.08%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 110 (19.86%) Cloud Native
2 46 (8.30%) Product Ownership
3 32 (5.78%) Hybrid Cloud
4 27 (4.87%) Distributed Systems
5 26 (4.69%) Data Centre
6 23 (4.15%) PKI
7 21 (3.79%) Data Protection Act
7 21 (3.79%) Onboarding
8 14 (2.53%) Enterprise Cloud
8 14 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
9 10 (1.81%) Public Cloud
10 9 (1.62%) Private Cloud
11 8 (1.44%) NHS
12 7 (1.26%) Management Information System
12 7 (1.26%) Replication
12 7 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
13 6 (1.08%) Data Structures
13 6 (1.08%) Linux Command Line
13 6 (1.08%) Security Posture
14 5 (0.90%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 118 (21.30%) Linux
2 60 (10.83%) Windows
3 27 (4.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 19 (3.43%) Windows Server
5 14 (2.53%) Unix
6 8 (1.44%) VMS
7 5 (0.90%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.36%) CentOS
8 2 (0.36%) Data ONTAP
8 2 (0.36%) Debian
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.36%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.36%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.18%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 298 (53.79%) CI/CD
2 284 (51.26%) DevOps
3 238 (42.96%) Infrastructure as Code
4 150 (27.08%) Observability
5 122 (22.02%) Agile
6 107 (19.31%) Containerisation
7 103 (18.59%) Continuous Improvement
8 86 (15.52%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 83 (14.98%) DevSecOps
10 80 (14.44%) Technical Leadership
11 77 (13.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 72 (13.00%) Migration
12 72 (13.00%) Problem-Solving
13 71 (12.82%) AI
14 59 (10.65%) Software Engineering
15 54 (9.75%) Roadmaps
16 53 (9.57%) Test Automation
17 50 (9.03%) Cloud Security
18 48 (8.66%) Scrum
19 47 (8.48%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 206 (37.18%) Python
2 94 (16.97%) PowerShell
3 92 (16.61%) Bash
4 56 (10.11%) Java
5 44 (7.94%) SQL
6 35 (6.32%) Bicep
7 17 (3.07%) Go
8 15 (2.71%) C#
9 11 (1.99%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.62%) Groovy
11 8 (1.44%) Scala
11 8 (1.44%) TypeScript
12 6 (1.08%) Shell Script
13 5 (0.90%) Perl
14 4 (0.72%) C++
15 2 (0.36%) Jython
15 2 (0.36%) PHP
15 2 (0.36%) VBScript
16 1 (0.18%) C
16 1 (0.18%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 186 (33.57%) Security Cleared
2 142 (25.63%) SC Cleared
3 44 (7.94%) DV Cleared
4 20 (3.61%) BPSS Clearance
4 20 (3.61%) Degree
5 19 (3.43%) AWS Certification
6 17 (3.07%) Azure Certification
7 12 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (1.99%) Microsoft Certification
8 11 (1.99%) SAFe Agilist
9 10 (1.81%) VCAP
10 9 (1.62%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 8 (1.44%) RHCE
12 6 (1.08%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 5 (0.90%) CISSP
14 3 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 3 (0.54%) Cisco Certification
15 2 (0.36%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
15 2 (0.36%) CompTIA Security+
15 2 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.25%) Data Quality
2 15 (2.71%) QA
3 12 (2.17%) Accessibility
4 8 (1.44%) GRC
4 8 (1.44%) NCSC
5 6 (1.08%) GDPR
6 4 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.72%) NIST
6 4 (0.72%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 2 (0.36%) GxP
9 1 (0.18%) NIST 800
System Software
1 100 (18.05%) Docker
2 45 (8.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 43 (7.76%) Active Directory
4 28 (5.05%) vSphere
5 21 (3.79%) VMware NSX
6 18 (3.25%) Hyper-V
7 13 (2.35%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (1.62%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.36%) EMC RecoverPoint
9 2 (0.36%) Firmware
9 2 (0.36%) NFS
9 2 (0.36%) Squid
9 2 (0.36%) SRDF
9 2 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.18%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 253 (45.67%) Terraform
2 192 (34.66%) Kubernetes
3 93 (16.79%) Ansible
4 37 (6.68%) Grafana
4 37 (6.68%) Prometheus
5 32 (5.78%) Argo
6 18 (3.25%) Istio
7 12 (2.17%) VxRail
8 8 (1.44%) Kustomize
8 8 (1.44%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (1.26%) Puppet
10 6 (1.08%) HAProxy
10 6 (1.08%) SCCM
10 6 (1.08%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.90%) Progress Chef
12 4 (0.72%) Packer
12 4 (0.72%) Podman
12 4 (0.72%) PowerCLI
12 4 (0.72%) Rancher
13 3 (0.54%) Check_MK
Vendors
1 79 (14.26%) Microsoft
2 52 (9.39%) VMware
3 45 (8.12%) Google
4 26 (4.69%) Red Hat
5 22 (3.97%) Oracle
6 21 (3.79%) Splunk
7 19 (3.43%) Databricks
8 16 (2.89%) ServiceNow
9 15 (2.71%) Dynatrace
10 11 (1.99%) CyberArk
11 8 (1.44%) Cisco
12 5 (0.90%) Citrix
12 5 (0.90%) Cribl.io
12 5 (0.90%) CrowdStrike
12 5 (0.90%) ForgeRock
12 5 (0.90%) PagerDuty
13 4 (0.72%) Dell
13 4 (0.72%) Foundry
13 4 (0.72%) NetApp
13 4 (0.72%) Sonatype