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

6 months to
29 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 244 310
Rank change year-on-year +111 +66 -55
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 452 108 87
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.73% 0.79% 0.41%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.11% 0.87% 0.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 274 76 60
10th Percentile £358 £375 £415
25th Percentile £424 £423 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £528
Median % change year-on-year - -5.21% -12.08%
75th Percentile £575 £577 £650
90th Percentile £668 £626 £701
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £575
% change year-on-year -0.94% -7.83% -6.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 1 0
10th Percentile £66.50 - -
25th Percentile £66.75 £68.75 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £72.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +2.43% - -
75th Percentile £78.57 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £84.40 - -
UK median hourly rate £75.00 £72.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +3.45% +19.83% -22.44%

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 21,402 12,396 17,548
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.87% 90.16% 82.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,688 7,601 10,310
10th Percentile £300 £235 £250
25th Percentile £405 £365 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £592 £575 £600
90th Percentile £687 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £515 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +2.23% -4.05% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,258 1,039 2,174
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.13 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.33 £16.95 £15.53
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.00 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +75.84% -34.42% +8.91%
75th Percentile £68.00 £54.38 £61.60
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.75 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +2.63%

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 29 June 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 29 June 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 29 June 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 +56 184 £488 -2.50% 55
Yorkshire +39 108 £500 -13.04% 16
North West +8 73 £469 +10.29% 32
Midlands -8 71 £488 -2.50% 35
South East -18 71 £513 +7.22% 74
Scotland +35 61 £450 -8.07% 12
West Midlands -25 53 £500 +2.56% 27
South West -4 42 £539 -10.21% 33
East of England - 20 £475 - 16
East Midlands +3 18 £488 -2.50% 8
Wales - 6 £325 - 5
North East -33 5 £453 -17.73% 8
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 (5.09%) Confluence
2 10 (2.21%) Apache Spark
3 6 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (0.88%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.66%) Apache
5 3 (0.66%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.44%) Apache Pulsar
6 2 (0.44%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
6 2 (0.44%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.44%) nginx
6 2 (0.44%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.44%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.44%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.44%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.44%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.22%) Oracle Coherence
7 1 (0.22%) SAS
7 1 (0.22%) Tuxedo
7 1 (0.22%) WebLogic
Applications
1 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.22%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.66%) NetSuite
2 3 (0.66%) Sage X3
3 1 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 181 (40.04%) Azure
2 171 (37.83%) AWS
3 81 (17.92%) GitHub
4 80 (17.70%) GCP
5 64 (14.16%) GitHub Actions
6 42 (9.29%) Azure DevOps
7 38 (8.41%) Serverless
8 36 (7.96%) Amazon EKS
9 31 (6.86%) OpenShift
10 30 (6.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 28 (6.19%) Entra ID
11 28 (6.19%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 26 (5.75%) Amazon S3
13 25 (5.53%) Amazon EC2
13 25 (5.53%) AWS Lambda
13 25 (5.53%) Azure AKS
14 22 (4.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 21 (4.65%) Power Platform
16 20 (4.42%) AWS CloudFormation
17 18 (3.98%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 25 (5.53%) Firewall
2 19 (4.20%) DNS
2 19 (4.20%) Network Security
3 15 (3.32%) VPN
4 8 (1.77%) SAN
5 7 (1.55%) SNMP
6 6 (1.33%) TCP/IP
6 6 (1.33%) VSAN
7 5 (1.11%) DHCP
7 5 (1.11%) NAS
8 4 (0.88%) Fibre Channel
8 4 (0.88%) HTTP
9 3 (0.66%) IPsec
9 3 (0.66%) MQTT
9 3 (0.66%) SD-WAN
9 3 (0.66%) SSL
9 3 (0.66%) WebEx
10 2 (0.44%) NetScaler
10 2 (0.44%) WAN
11 1 (0.22%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (6.19%) PostgreSQL
2 22 (4.87%) SQL Server
3 16 (3.54%) Data Warehouse
4 14 (3.10%) Relational Database
5 13 (2.88%) Power BI
6 10 (2.21%) DynamoDB
7 9 (1.99%) MySQL
7 9 (1.99%) NoSQL
8 8 (1.77%) Metadata
8 8 (1.77%) Neo4j
8 8 (1.77%) Tableau
9 7 (1.55%) Big Data
10 6 (1.33%) Amazon Redshift
10 6 (1.33%) Ataccama
11 5 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
11 5 (1.11%) BigQuery
11 5 (1.11%) Hadoop
12 4 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
13 3 (0.66%) Redis
13 3 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 78 (17.26%) Jenkins
2 48 (10.62%) GitLab
2 48 (10.62%) JIRA
3 45 (9.96%) Git
4 15 (3.32%) Bitbucket
5 10 (2.21%) Gatling
6 6 (1.33%) Artifactory
6 6 (1.33%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (1.11%) Maven
8 4 (0.88%) JMeter
8 4 (0.88%) LoadRunner
8 4 (0.88%) NeoLoad
8 4 (0.88%) Postman
8 4 (0.88%) Visual Studio
9 3 (0.66%) Jaeger
9 3 (0.66%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.44%) Introscope
10 2 (0.44%) MSBuild
10 2 (0.44%) MSI
10 2 (0.44%) Terragrunt
General
1 88 (19.47%) Social Skills
2 74 (16.37%) Finance
3 48 (10.62%) Public Sector
4 28 (6.19%) Banking
5 19 (4.20%) Analytical Skills
6 13 (2.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (1.55%) Aerospace
8 7 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.33%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.11%) Legal
10 5 (1.11%) Military
10 5 (1.11%) Retail
11 4 (0.88%) Billing
11 4 (0.88%) Financial Institution
11 4 (0.88%) Health Technology
11 4 (0.88%) Police
12 3 (0.66%) Investment Banking
12 3 (0.66%) Law
12 3 (0.66%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 187 (41.37%) Platform Engineer
2 74 (16.37%) DevOps Engineer
3 73 (16.15%) Senior
4 72 (15.93%) Cloud Platform Engineer
5 46 (10.18%) Cloud Engineer
6 44 (9.73%) Azure Engineer
7 42 (9.29%) Data Engineer
8 35 (7.74%) Azure Platform Engineer
9 32 (7.08%) Architect
10 29 (6.42%) Lead
11 27 (5.97%) Senior Platform Engineer
12 24 (5.31%) DevOps Platform Engineer
13 21 (4.65%) AWS Engineer
14 19 (4.20%) GCP Engineer
15 18 (3.98%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 17 (3.76%) Senior Data Engineer
16 17 (3.76%) Senior DevOps
16 17 (3.76%) Senior DevOps Engineer
17 16 (3.54%) Developer
17 16 (3.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (4.20%) Kafka
2 17 (3.76%) REST
3 14 (3.10%) OpenTelemetry
4 12 (2.65%) AWS CDK
4 12 (2.65%) Playwright
5 11 (2.43%) OAuth
6 10 (2.21%) .NET
6 10 (2.21%) Node.js
6 10 (2.21%) OAuth2
7 9 (1.99%) LDAP
7 9 (1.99%) OpenID
7 9 (1.99%) SailPoint
8 8 (1.77%) React
8 8 (1.77%) YAML
9 7 (1.55%) ADO
9 7 (1.55%) ARM Templates
9 7 (1.55%) JSON
9 7 (1.55%) Spring Boot
10 6 (1.33%) SOAP
11 5 (1.11%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 87 (19.25%) Cloud Native
2 40 (8.85%) Product Ownership
3 19 (4.20%) Onboarding
4 15 (3.32%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (3.32%) Private Cloud
5 13 (2.88%) Data Centre
6 12 (2.65%) Data Protection Act
6 12 (2.65%) Hybrid Cloud
7 10 (2.21%) Public Cloud
8 9 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
9 8 (1.77%) Enterprise Cloud
9 8 (1.77%) NHS
10 7 (1.55%) Replication
10 7 (1.55%) Security Posture
11 6 (1.33%) Management Information System
11 6 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (1.11%) Virtual Team
13 4 (0.88%) Legacy Systems
13 4 (0.88%) NVMe
13 4 (0.88%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 75 (16.59%) Linux
2 36 (7.96%) Windows
3 26 (5.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 14 (3.10%) Unix
5 9 (1.99%) Windows Server
6 7 (1.55%) VMS
7 4 (0.88%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.44%) CentOS
8 2 (0.44%) Data ONTAP
8 2 (0.44%) Debian
8 2 (0.44%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.44%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.44%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.44%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.22%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 242 (53.54%) CI/CD
2 227 (50.22%) DevOps
3 173 (38.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 108 (23.89%) Observability
5 99 (21.90%) Agile
6 75 (16.59%) Containerisation
7 74 (16.37%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 73 (16.15%) Continuous Improvement
9 72 (15.93%) Migration
10 52 (11.50%) Roadmaps
11 51 (11.28%) Test Automation
12 50 (11.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 50 (11.06%) Technical Leadership
13 47 (10.40%) Software Engineering
14 46 (10.18%) AI
15 44 (9.73%) Problem-Solving
16 42 (9.29%) Cloud Security
17 41 (9.07%) DevSecOps
18 40 (8.85%) Scrum
19 38 (8.41%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 158 (34.96%) Python
2 56 (12.39%) PowerShell
3 52 (11.50%) Bash
4 48 (10.62%) Java
5 36 (7.96%) SQL
6 23 (5.09%) Bicep
7 12 (2.65%) Go
7 12 (2.65%) Scala
8 9 (1.99%) TypeScript
9 7 (1.55%) C#
9 7 (1.55%) JavaScript
10 6 (1.33%) Groovy
11 5 (1.11%) Perl
12 4 (0.88%) Cypher
12 4 (0.88%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.44%) C++
13 2 (0.44%) Jython
13 2 (0.44%) PHP
13 2 (0.44%) VBScript
14 1 (0.22%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 130 (28.76%) Security Cleared
2 114 (25.22%) SC Cleared
3 15 (3.32%) BPSS Clearance
3 15 (3.32%) Degree
3 15 (3.32%) DV Cleared
4 12 (2.65%) Azure Certification
5 11 (2.43%) AWS Certification
5 11 (2.43%) SAFe Agilist
6 9 (1.99%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
6 9 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.77%) RHCE
8 5 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.88%) NCDA
9 4 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 3 (0.66%) CISSP
11 2 (0.44%) CCNA
11 2 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.44%) NCIE
11 2 (0.44%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.44%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (4.20%) Data Quality
2 15 (3.32%) QA
3 11 (2.43%) NCSC
4 8 (1.77%) GDPR
5 6 (1.33%) Accessibility
6 5 (1.11%) GRC
6 5 (1.11%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.66%) NIST
7 3 (0.66%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.44%) GxP
9 1 (0.22%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.22%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 58 (12.83%) Docker
2 28 (6.19%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (4.20%) Active Directory
4 17 (3.76%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (2.88%) vSphere
6 10 (2.21%) VMware NSX
7 7 (1.55%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.88%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 2 (0.44%) EMC RecoverPoint
9 2 (0.44%) Firmware
9 2 (0.44%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.44%) NFS
9 2 (0.44%) Squid
9 2 (0.44%) SRDF
9 2 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.22%) Ceph
10 1 (0.22%) KVM
10 1 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 175 (38.72%) Terraform
2 140 (30.97%) Kubernetes
3 64 (14.16%) Ansible
4 34 (7.52%) Grafana
5 32 (7.08%) Prometheus
6 25 (5.53%) Argo
7 18 (3.98%) Istio
8 7 (1.55%) Kustomize
9 6 (1.33%) HAProxy
9 6 (1.33%) PowerCLI
10 5 (1.11%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (1.11%) Packer
10 5 (1.11%) Puppet
10 5 (1.11%) vCenter Server
10 5 (1.11%) vRealize
11 4 (0.88%) Rancher
11 4 (0.88%) vMotion
12 3 (0.66%) NetBackup
12 3 (0.66%) Progress Chef
12 3 (0.66%) SCCM
Vendors
1 48 (10.62%) Microsoft
2 32 (7.08%) Google
3 30 (6.64%) VMware
4 23 (5.09%) Red Hat
5 21 (4.65%) Oracle
6 18 (3.98%) ServiceNow
7 15 (3.32%) Databricks
7 15 (3.32%) Splunk
8 12 (2.65%) Dynatrace
9 11 (2.43%) Cisco
10 6 (1.33%) Citrix
11 5 (1.11%) BiZZdesign
11 5 (1.11%) Brocade
11 5 (1.11%) Cribl.io
11 5 (1.11%) NetApp
12 4 (0.88%) F5
12 4 (0.88%) Foundry
12 4 (0.88%) PagerDuty
12 4 (0.88%) Pure Storage
12 4 (0.88%) Veeam