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

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 163 263 290
Rank change year-on-year +100 +27 -32
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 332 84 121
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.61% 0.63% 0.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.92% 0.70% 0.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 250 58 81
10th Percentile £399 £411 £421
25th Percentile £426 £463 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -2.33% -4.66%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £646 £656 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £566 £550
% change year-on-year -7.28% +2.95% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 1 0
10th Percentile £59.75 - -
25th Percentile £67.44 £59.39 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 -
Median % change year-on-year +16.42% - -
75th Percentile £75.70 £68.18 -
90th Percentile £80.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £60.00
% change year-on-year +16.42% +6.31% -29.41%

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 17,289 11,927 17,868
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.03% 89.80% 86.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,518 7,185 11,032
10th Percentile £255 £231 £248
25th Percentile £393 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.28% -1.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £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 1,846 656 1,791
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.26 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.41% -8.57% -
75th Percentile £61.18 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £75.00 £71.75
UK median hourly rate £25.94 £33.00 £33.07
% change year-on-year -21.39% -0.20% -5.53%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +10 116 £518 -4.17% 68
South East +18 72 £506 +1.25% 71
North West +9 61 £550 -0.45% 43
Yorkshire -30 52 £475 -13.64% 18
Midlands -20 44 £540 +13.68% 14
Scotland +34 42 £463 -11.06% 15
West Midlands -14 41 £542 +32.72% 14
South West +6 33 £575 +4.55% 16
East of England +5 30 £475 -32.14% 5
North East - 6 £550 - 7
East Midlands -30 3 £525 +10.53%
Wales -1 2 £424 - 6
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 18 (5.42%) Confluence
2 16 (4.82%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (3.31%) SharePoint
4 8 (2.41%) Apache Spark
5 5 (1.51%) nginx
6 4 (1.20%) Apache
6 4 (1.20%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.90%) SharePoint Server
8 2 (0.60%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.60%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.30%) CICS
9 1 (0.30%) CMS
9 1 (0.30%) Documentum
9 1 (0.30%) IIS
9 1 (0.30%) JBoss
9 1 (0.30%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 3 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
1 3 (0.90%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 1 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 119 (35.84%) Azure
2 112 (33.73%) AWS
3 56 (16.87%) GitHub
4 42 (12.65%) GCP
5 32 (9.64%) Entra ID
5 32 (9.64%) GitHub Actions
6 29 (8.73%) Azure DevOps
7 26 (7.83%) Serverless
8 25 (7.53%) OpenShift
9 24 (7.23%) AWS CloudFormation
10 21 (6.33%) Azure AKS
11 19 (5.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 18 (5.42%) AWS Lambda
13 16 (4.82%) OCI
14 14 (4.22%) Amazon EKS
14 14 (4.22%) Amazon S3
15 13 (3.92%) Amazon EC2
15 13 (3.92%) SaaS
16 12 (3.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 10 (3.01%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 40 (12.05%) Firewall
2 31 (9.34%) DNS
3 11 (3.31%) Network Security
4 10 (3.01%) TCP/IP
5 9 (2.71%) WebEx
6 8 (2.41%) DHCP
7 7 (2.11%) BGP
7 7 (2.11%) VLAN
8 6 (1.81%) Software-Defined Networking
9 5 (1.51%) SAN
10 4 (1.20%) Fibre Channel
10 4 (1.20%) FTP
10 4 (1.20%) HTTP
10 4 (1.20%) IPsec
10 4 (1.20%) MQTT
10 4 (1.20%) SD-WAN
10 4 (1.20%) SMTP
10 4 (1.20%) SSH
10 4 (1.20%) VPN
11 3 (0.90%) IMAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (6.33%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (4.22%) Amazon RDS
3 13 (3.92%) NoSQL
4 9 (2.71%) Metadata
5 8 (2.41%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (2.41%) Big Data
5 8 (2.41%) DynamoDB
5 8 (2.41%) Redis
5 8 (2.41%) SQL Server
6 6 (1.81%) Couchbase
6 6 (1.81%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (1.81%) Hadoop
7 5 (1.51%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.20%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.20%) Neo4j
9 3 (0.90%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.90%) Amazon Aurora
9 3 (0.90%) Power BI
10 2 (0.60%) Spark SQL
10 2 (0.60%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 47 (14.16%) Jenkins
2 40 (12.05%) GitLab
3 28 (8.43%) Git
4 27 (8.13%) JIRA
5 9 (2.71%) SonarQube
6 4 (1.20%) Gatling
6 4 (1.20%) JMeter
6 4 (1.20%) LoadRunner
6 4 (1.20%) NeoLoad
6 4 (1.20%) Postman
6 4 (1.20%) Vagrant
7 3 (0.90%) MSI
8 2 (0.60%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.60%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.60%) JUnit
8 2 (0.60%) Maven
8 2 (0.60%) Mockito
8 2 (0.60%) Selenium
8 2 (0.60%) Spinnaker
8 2 (0.60%) Visual Studio
General
1 66 (19.88%) Social Skills
2 31 (9.34%) Public Sector
3 28 (8.43%) Finance
4 20 (6.02%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (4.82%) Banking
5 16 (4.82%) Legal
6 7 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
7 4 (1.20%) Retail
7 4 (1.20%) Retail Banking
8 3 (0.90%) Telecoms
9 2 (0.60%) Games
9 2 (0.60%) Law
10 1 (0.30%) Advertising
10 1 (0.30%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.30%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.30%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.30%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.30%) Tech for Good
Job Titles
1 174 (52.41%) Platform Engineer
2 54 (16.27%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 33 (9.94%) Senior
4 30 (9.04%) DevOps Engineer
5 25 (7.53%) Cloud Engineer
6 23 (6.93%) AWS Engineer
6 23 (6.93%) Lead
7 21 (6.33%) Architect
7 21 (6.33%) Azure Engineer
8 20 (6.02%) Data Engineer
9 19 (5.72%) Azure Platform Engineer
10 18 (5.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 17 (5.12%) AWS Platform Engineer
12 15 (4.52%) DevSecOps Engineer
13 11 (3.31%) DevOps Platform Engineer
13 11 (3.31%) Project Manager
14 10 (3.01%) Software Engineer
15 7 (2.11%) VMware Engineer
16 6 (1.81%) GCP Engineer
16 6 (1.81%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.72%) Kafka
2 15 (4.52%) YAML
3 13 (3.92%) REST
4 9 (2.71%) Elastic Stack
4 9 (2.71%) XMPP
5 8 (2.41%) Keycloak
5 8 (2.41%) OAuth
5 8 (2.41%) OAuth2
5 8 (2.41%) OpenID
6 7 (2.11%) LDAP
6 7 (2.11%) Middleware
6 7 (2.11%) Node.js
6 7 (2.11%) Oracle Fusion
6 7 (2.11%) React
7 6 (1.81%) ADO
7 6 (1.81%) Playwright
8 5 (1.51%) .NET
8 5 (1.51%) ARM Templates
8 5 (1.51%) OpenAPI
8 5 (1.51%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 32 (9.64%) Cloud Native
2 24 (7.23%) Product Ownership
3 19 (5.72%) PKI
4 17 (5.12%) Onboarding
5 15 (4.52%) Private Cloud
6 13 (3.92%) Distributed Systems
6 13 (3.92%) Replication
7 11 (3.31%) Data Centre
7 11 (3.31%) Public Cloud
8 10 (3.01%) Hybrid Cloud
9 9 (2.71%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (2.41%) NHS
11 6 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
11 6 (1.81%) Security Posture
12 5 (1.51%) Operational Technology
12 5 (1.51%) Virtual Team
13 4 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (1.20%) Fat Client
13 4 (1.20%) NVMe
13 4 (1.20%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 87 (26.20%) Linux
2 69 (20.78%) Windows
3 24 (7.23%) Windows Server
4 22 (6.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 12 (3.61%) Unix
6 9 (2.71%) Windows 10
7 8 (2.41%) VMS
8 7 (2.11%) Amazon Linux
9 4 (1.20%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.90%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.60%) Solaris
11 2 (0.60%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.30%) CentOS
12 1 (0.30%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 151 (45.48%) CI/CD
2 136 (40.96%) DevOps
3 123 (37.05%) Infrastructure as Code
4 62 (18.67%) Observability
5 59 (17.77%) Containerisation
6 54 (16.27%) Problem-Solving
7 53 (15.96%) Agile
8 51 (15.36%) Continuous Improvement
9 46 (13.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 45 (13.55%) Migration
11 36 (10.84%) Software Engineering
12 35 (10.54%) Infrastructure Automation
13 34 (10.24%) DevSecOps
14 31 (9.34%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 29 (8.73%) Cloud Security
16 26 (7.83%) Incident Response
16 26 (7.83%) Roadmaps
17 25 (7.53%) RBAC
18 24 (7.23%) Cybersecurity
18 24 (7.23%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 121 (36.45%) Python
2 59 (17.77%) Bash
3 53 (15.96%) PowerShell
4 21 (6.33%) Java
4 21 (6.33%) SQL
5 15 (4.52%) Bicep
6 14 (4.22%) Perl
7 8 (2.41%) TypeScript
8 7 (2.11%) C#
8 7 (2.11%) Groovy
8 7 (2.11%) JavaScript
8 7 (2.11%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.20%) Cypher
9 4 (1.20%) Go
9 4 (1.20%) Scala
10 2 (0.60%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.60%) C++
10 2 (0.60%) PHP
10 2 (0.60%) SOQL
11 1 (0.30%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 138 (41.57%) Security Cleared
2 107 (32.23%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.83%) DV Cleared
4 13 (3.92%) Degree
5 11 (3.31%) AWS Certification
6 9 (2.71%) CCDP
6 9 (2.71%) CCNA
6 9 (2.71%) CCNP
6 9 (2.71%) Cisco Certification
7 8 (2.41%) Azure Certification
7 8 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.51%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 3 (0.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (0.90%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.90%) CSPO
9 3 (0.90%) RHCE
10 2 (0.60%) NCDA
10 2 (0.60%) VCP6
11 1 (0.30%) RHCSA
11 1 (0.30%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.63%) NCSC
2 11 (3.31%) Data Quality
3 10 (3.01%) GDPR
4 6 (1.81%) NIST
5 5 (1.51%) QA
6 4 (1.20%) COBIT
6 4 (1.20%) NIST 800
6 4 (1.20%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.60%) WCAG
8 1 (0.30%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.30%) GRC
8 1 (0.30%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.30%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 52 (15.66%) Docker
2 49 (14.76%) VMware Infrastructure
3 44 (13.25%) Active Directory
4 14 (4.22%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (3.01%) vSphere
6 7 (2.11%) VMware NSX
7 4 (1.20%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
7 4 (1.20%) DFS Replication
7 4 (1.20%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.90%) Dovecot
8 3 (0.90%) Postfix
8 3 (0.90%) Squid
8 3 (0.90%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.30%) GPFS
9 1 (0.30%) KVM
9 1 (0.30%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 122 (36.75%) Terraform
2 102 (30.72%) Kubernetes
3 56 (16.87%) Ansible
4 42 (12.65%) Grafana
5 31 (9.34%) Prometheus
6 17 (5.12%) Istio
7 12 (3.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 11 (3.31%) vCenter Server
9 10 (3.01%) Argo
10 9 (2.71%) Packer
11 7 (2.11%) linkerd
11 7 (2.11%) Microsoft Intune
12 6 (1.81%) Proxmox
13 5 (1.51%) SCCM
13 5 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
14 4 (1.20%) Kibana
14 4 (1.20%) vMotion
15 3 (0.90%) Nessus
15 3 (0.90%) Puppet
15 3 (0.90%) WSUS
Vendors
1 61 (18.37%) VMware
2 48 (14.46%) Microsoft
3 29 (8.73%) Red Hat
3 29 (8.73%) Splunk
4 27 (8.13%) Cisco
5 26 (7.83%) Dynatrace
6 19 (5.72%) Oracle
7 17 (5.12%) Citrix
8 14 (4.22%) ServiceNow
9 12 (3.61%) F5
9 12 (3.61%) Google
10 10 (3.01%) IBM
11 8 (2.41%) Veeam
12 7 (2.11%) AppDynamics
13 6 (1.81%) Confluent
13 6 (1.81%) Databricks
14 5 (1.51%) Dell
14 5 (1.51%) HP
14 5 (1.51%) PeopleSoft
15 4 (1.20%) CheckPoint