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

6 months to
6 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 235 318
Rank change year-on-year +104 +83 -60
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 471 117 85
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.77% 0.81% 0.40%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.17% 0.91% 0.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 287 82 59
10th Percentile £359 £400 £415
25th Percentile £424 £431 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -5.66% -11.67%
75th Percentile £575 £587 £650
90th Percentile £650 £634 £715
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £575
% change year-on-year -0.94% -7.83% -6.50%
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 21,737 12,908 17,485
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 81.92% 89.74% 83.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,865 7,889 10,316
10th Percentile £300 £235 £244
25th Percentile £405 £365 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £590 £575 £600
90th Percentile £680 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £516 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +2.18% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,289 1,102 2,135
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.13 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.33 £16.95 £15.62
Median hourly rate £43.96 £24.83 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +77.04% -34.86% +8.91%
75th Percentile £68.00 £52.38 £61.60
90th Percentile £81.05 £72.50 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% -2.41%

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 6 July 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 6 July 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 6 July 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 +59 189 £494 -1.25% 92
Yorkshire +38 110 £500 -13.04% 29
South East -4 78 £530 +8.38% 96
North West +8 75 £488 +14.71% 56
Midlands -14 74 £488 -2.50% 59
Scotland +28 63 £449 -20.88% 25
West Midlands -26 55 £500 +5.26% 40
South West +7 45 £550 -8.33% 65
East of England - 20 £549 - 24
East Midlands -3 18 £488 -2.50% 19
North East -32 6 £451 -17.95% 8
Wales - 6 £325 - 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 (4.88%) Confluence
2 10 (2.12%) Apache Spark
3 6 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (0.85%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.64%) Apache
5 3 (0.64%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.42%) Apache Pulsar
6 2 (0.42%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
6 2 (0.42%) IBM HTTP Server
6 2 (0.42%) nginx
6 2 (0.42%) OpenStack
6 2 (0.42%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.42%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.42%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.42%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.42%) WebSphere Portal
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle Coherence
7 1 (0.21%) SAS
7 1 (0.21%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 3 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.21%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
1 4 (0.85%) NetSuite
1 4 (0.85%) Sage X3
2 1 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 192 (40.76%) Azure
2 186 (39.49%) AWS
3 90 (19.11%) GCP
4 86 (18.26%) GitHub
5 67 (14.23%) GitHub Actions
6 45 (9.55%) Azure DevOps
7 38 (8.07%) Serverless
8 36 (7.64%) Amazon EKS
9 30 (6.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 29 (6.16%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 29 (6.16%) OpenShift
11 26 (5.52%) Amazon S3
11 26 (5.52%) Entra ID
12 25 (5.31%) Amazon EC2
12 25 (5.31%) AWS Lambda
12 25 (5.31%) Azure AKS
13 22 (4.67%) Power Platform
13 22 (4.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 20 (4.25%) AWS CloudFormation
15 19 (4.03%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 25 (5.31%) Firewall
2 21 (4.46%) DNS
3 20 (4.25%) Network Security
4 15 (3.18%) VPN
5 8 (1.70%) SAN
6 7 (1.49%) SNMP
7 6 (1.27%) TCP/IP
7 6 (1.27%) VSAN
8 5 (1.06%) DHCP
8 5 (1.06%) HTTP
8 5 (1.06%) NAS
9 4 (0.85%) Fibre Channel
10 3 (0.64%) IPsec
10 3 (0.64%) MQTT
10 3 (0.64%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.64%) SSL
10 3 (0.64%) WAN
10 3 (0.64%) WebEx
11 2 (0.42%) Internet
11 2 (0.42%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (5.94%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (5.10%) SQL Server
3 17 (3.61%) Data Warehouse
4 14 (2.97%) Relational Database
5 13 (2.76%) Power BI
6 10 (2.12%) DynamoDB
7 9 (1.91%) MySQL
8 8 (1.70%) Metadata
8 8 (1.70%) Neo4j
8 8 (1.70%) NoSQL
8 8 (1.70%) Tableau
9 7 (1.49%) Amazon Redshift
9 7 (1.49%) Big Data
10 6 (1.27%) Ataccama
10 6 (1.27%) BigQuery
11 5 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
11 5 (1.06%) Hadoop
12 4 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
12 4 (0.85%) MongoDB
13 3 (0.64%) Redis
Development Applications
1 80 (16.99%) Jenkins
2 50 (10.62%) GitLab
3 49 (10.40%) Git
4 48 (10.19%) JIRA
5 15 (3.18%) Bitbucket
6 10 (2.12%) Gatling
7 7 (1.49%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (1.27%) Artifactory
9 5 (1.06%) Maven
9 5 (1.06%) Visual Studio
10 4 (0.85%) JMeter
10 4 (0.85%) LoadRunner
10 4 (0.85%) NeoLoad
10 4 (0.85%) Postman
11 3 (0.64%) Jaeger
11 3 (0.64%) MSBuild
11 3 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 2 (0.42%) Introscope
12 2 (0.42%) MSI
12 2 (0.42%) Terragrunt
General
1 91 (19.32%) Social Skills
2 77 (16.35%) Finance
3 53 (11.25%) Public Sector
4 28 (5.94%) Banking
5 19 (4.03%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (3.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.70%) Aerospace
8 8 (1.70%) Telecoms
9 7 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.27%) Billing
11 5 (1.06%) Financial Institution
11 5 (1.06%) Legal
11 5 (1.06%) Military
11 5 (1.06%) Retail
12 4 (0.85%) Health Technology
12 4 (0.85%) Police
13 3 (0.64%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.64%) Law
13 3 (0.64%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 198 (42.04%) Platform Engineer
2 77 (16.35%) DevOps Engineer
2 77 (16.35%) Senior
3 71 (15.07%) Cloud Platform Engineer
4 47 (9.98%) Cloud Engineer
4 47 (9.98%) Data Engineer
5 44 (9.34%) Azure Engineer
6 34 (7.22%) Architect
7 33 (7.01%) Azure Platform Engineer
8 30 (6.37%) Senior Platform Engineer
9 29 (6.16%) Lead
10 24 (5.10%) DevOps Platform Engineer
11 22 (4.67%) AWS Engineer
12 21 (4.46%) GCP Engineer
13 19 (4.03%) Senior Data Engineer
13 19 (4.03%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 17 (3.61%) Developer
14 17 (3.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 17 (3.61%) Senior DevOps
14 17 (3.61%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (4.67%) Kafka
2 17 (3.61%) REST
3 15 (3.18%) OpenTelemetry
4 12 (2.55%) AWS CDK
4 12 (2.55%) Playwright
5 11 (2.34%) .NET
5 11 (2.34%) OAuth
6 10 (2.12%) Node.js
6 10 (2.12%) OAuth2
7 9 (1.91%) LDAP
7 9 (1.91%) OpenID
7 9 (1.91%) SailPoint
8 8 (1.70%) JSON
8 8 (1.70%) React
8 8 (1.70%) Spring Boot
8 8 (1.70%) YAML
9 7 (1.49%) ADO
10 6 (1.27%) ARM Templates
10 6 (1.27%) SOAP
10 6 (1.27%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 92 (19.53%) Cloud Native
2 41 (8.70%) Product Ownership
3 20 (4.25%) Onboarding
4 16 (3.40%) Distributed Systems
4 16 (3.40%) Hybrid Cloud
5 14 (2.97%) Data Protection Act
5 14 (2.97%) Private Cloud
6 13 (2.76%) Data Centre
7 11 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (2.12%) Enterprise Cloud
8 10 (2.12%) Public Cloud
9 8 (1.70%) NHS
10 7 (1.49%) Replication
10 7 (1.49%) Security Posture
11 6 (1.27%) Management Information System
11 6 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (1.06%) Virtual Team
13 4 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
13 4 (0.85%) NVMe
13 4 (0.85%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 80 (16.99%) Linux
2 38 (8.07%) Windows
3 26 (5.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 14 (2.97%) Unix
5 10 (2.12%) Windows Server
6 8 (1.70%) VMS
7 4 (0.85%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.42%) CentOS
8 2 (0.42%) Data ONTAP
8 2 (0.42%) Debian
8 2 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.42%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.42%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.21%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 252 (53.50%) CI/CD
2 242 (51.38%) DevOps
3 184 (39.07%) Infrastructure as Code
4 118 (25.05%) Observability
5 103 (21.87%) Agile
6 82 (17.41%) Containerisation
7 79 (16.77%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 76 (16.14%) Continuous Improvement
9 73 (15.50%) Migration
10 56 (11.89%) Technical Leadership
11 53 (11.25%) AI
11 53 (11.25%) Test Automation
12 52 (11.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 52 (11.04%) Roadmaps
13 46 (9.77%) Problem-Solving
14 45 (9.55%) Software Engineering
15 44 (9.34%) DevSecOps
16 42 (8.92%) Cloud Security
16 42 (8.92%) Scrum
17 39 (8.28%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 172 (36.52%) Python
2 59 (12.53%) PowerShell
3 56 (11.89%) Bash
4 51 (10.83%) Java
5 38 (8.07%) SQL
6 24 (5.10%) Bicep
7 13 (2.76%) Go
8 12 (2.55%) Scala
9 9 (1.91%) TypeScript
10 8 (1.70%) C#
10 8 (1.70%) JavaScript
11 7 (1.49%) Groovy
12 5 (1.06%) Perl
12 5 (1.06%) Shell Script
13 4 (0.85%) Cypher
14 2 (0.42%) C++
14 2 (0.42%) Jython
14 2 (0.42%) PHP
14 2 (0.42%) VBScript
15 1 (0.21%) C
Qualifications
1 134 (28.45%) Security Cleared
2 117 (24.84%) SC Cleared
3 15 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
3 15 (3.18%) Degree
3 15 (3.18%) DV Cleared
4 12 (2.55%) AWS Certification
5 11 (2.34%) Azure Certification
5 11 (2.34%) SAFe Agilist
6 9 (1.91%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
6 9 (1.91%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.70%) RHCE
8 6 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.85%) CISSP
9 4 (0.85%) NCDA
9 4 (0.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 2 (0.42%) CCNA
10 2 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.42%) NCIE
10 2 (0.42%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.42%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (4.03%) Data Quality
2 16 (3.40%) QA
3 9 (1.91%) NCSC
4 8 (1.70%) GDPR
5 7 (1.49%) Accessibility
6 5 (1.06%) GRC
6 5 (1.06%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.64%) NIST
7 3 (0.64%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.42%) GxP
9 1 (0.21%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.21%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 65 (13.80%) Docker
2 28 (5.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (4.03%) Active Directory
4 17 (3.61%) Virtual Machines
5 13 (2.76%) vSphere
6 10 (2.12%) VMware NSX
7 7 (1.49%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.85%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 2 (0.42%) EMC RecoverPoint
9 2 (0.42%) Firmware
9 2 (0.42%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.42%) NFS
9 2 (0.42%) Squid
9 2 (0.42%) SRDF
9 2 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.21%) Ceph
10 1 (0.21%) KVM
10 1 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 188 (39.92%) Terraform
2 149 (31.63%) Kubernetes
3 68 (14.44%) Ansible
4 38 (8.07%) Grafana
5 35 (7.43%) Prometheus
6 26 (5.52%) Argo
7 18 (3.82%) Istio
8 8 (1.70%) Kustomize
9 6 (1.27%) HAProxy
9 6 (1.27%) PowerCLI
10 5 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (1.06%) Packer
10 5 (1.06%) Puppet
10 5 (1.06%) vCenter Server
10 5 (1.06%) vRealize
11 4 (0.85%) Rancher
11 4 (0.85%) vMotion
12 3 (0.64%) NetBackup
12 3 (0.64%) Progress Chef
12 3 (0.64%) SCCM
Vendors
1 52 (11.04%) Microsoft
2 35 (7.43%) Google
3 30 (6.37%) VMware
4 22 (4.67%) Red Hat
5 21 (4.46%) Oracle
6 18 (3.82%) ServiceNow
7 15 (3.18%) Databricks
7 15 (3.18%) Splunk
8 12 (2.55%) Dynatrace
9 11 (2.34%) Cisco
10 7 (1.49%) NetApp
11 6 (1.27%) Citrix
12 5 (1.06%) BiZZdesign
12 5 (1.06%) Brocade
12 5 (1.06%) Cribl.io
12 5 (1.06%) PagerDuty
13 4 (0.85%) F5
13 4 (0.85%) Foundry
13 4 (0.85%) Pure Storage
13 4 (0.85%) Veeam