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

6 months to
10 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 157 256 284
Rank change year-on-year +99 +28 -37
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 317 89 125
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.61% 0.66% 0.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.91% 0.74% 0.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 60 83
10th Percentile £410 £413 £434
25th Percentile £450 £463 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £586
90th Percentile £669 £656 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £573 £550
% change year-on-year -8.30% +4.09% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 1 1
10th Percentile £58.78 - -
25th Percentile £62.31 £59.39 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.42% -18.22% -0.95%
75th Percentile £78.57 £68.18 -
90th Percentile £80.60 - -
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 16,557 11,954 18,139
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 84.17% 89.02% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,137 7,043 11,315
10th Percentile £233 £232 £248
25th Percentile £381 £378 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.50% - -
75th Percentile £575 £590 £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 1,788 643 1,732
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.25 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £20.12 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £31.08 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.08% -11.20% +10.55%
75th Percentile £60.00 £64.50 £60.88
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.97 £72.90
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £33.07
% change year-on-year -22.62% -1.71% +1.74%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +7 110 £518 -5.91% 75
South East +26 67 £506 +1.25% 57
North West +19 59 £550 -4.35% 46
Yorkshire -33 48 £480 -12.73% 20
Midlands -17 45 £541 +13.84% 18
West Midlands -7 42 £542 +32.72% 14
Scotland +25 38 £490 -5.95% 20
South West +18 35 £575 +4.55% 20
East of England +9 29 £475 -32.14% 9
North East - 6 £550 - 9
East Midlands -33 3 £525 +10.53% 4
Wales -4 2 £424 - 7
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 19 (5.99%) Confluence
2 14 (4.42%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.15%) SharePoint
4 8 (2.52%) nginx
5 6 (1.89%) Apache Spark
6 5 (1.58%) Apache
6 5 (1.58%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.95%) SharePoint Server
8 2 (0.63%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.63%) IIS
8 2 (0.63%) JBoss
8 2 (0.63%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.32%) CICS
9 1 (0.32%) Documentum
9 1 (0.32%) iPlanet
9 1 (0.32%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.32%) Tuxedo
9 1 (0.32%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 6 (1.89%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.32%) Finacle
1 1 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
1 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 118 (37.22%) Azure
2 113 (35.65%) AWS
3 56 (17.67%) GitHub
4 40 (12.62%) GCP
5 30 (9.46%) GitHub Actions
6 27 (8.52%) Entra ID
7 25 (7.89%) OpenShift
8 24 (7.57%) Azure DevOps
9 23 (7.26%) AWS CloudFormation
9 23 (7.26%) Serverless
10 21 (6.62%) Azure AKS
11 20 (6.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 16 (5.05%) Amazon EC2
12 16 (5.05%) Amazon S3
12 16 (5.05%) OCI
12 16 (5.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 15 (4.73%) AWS Lambda
14 14 (4.42%) Amazon EKS
15 12 (3.79%) Microsoft 365
15 12 (3.79%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 44 (13.88%) Firewall
2 33 (10.41%) DNS
3 11 (3.47%) TCP/IP
4 9 (2.84%) Network Security
5 8 (2.52%) DHCP
5 8 (2.52%) FTP
5 8 (2.52%) HTTP
5 8 (2.52%) SMTP
5 8 (2.52%) SSH
6 7 (2.21%) BGP
6 7 (2.21%) VLAN
6 7 (2.21%) WebEx
7 6 (1.89%) IMAP
7 6 (1.89%) OpenLDAP
7 6 (1.89%) Software-Defined Networking
8 5 (1.58%) SAN
9 4 (1.26%) Fibre Channel
10 3 (0.95%) Internet
10 3 (0.95%) IPsec
10 3 (0.95%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (7.57%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (5.68%) Amazon RDS
3 13 (4.10%) NoSQL
4 9 (2.84%) Redis
5 8 (2.52%) Amazon Redshift
5 8 (2.52%) SQL Server
6 7 (2.21%) Big Data
7 6 (1.89%) Amazon Aurora
7 6 (1.89%) Couchbase
7 6 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
7 6 (1.89%) DynamoDB
8 5 (1.58%) Hadoop
8 5 (1.58%) Relational Database
9 4 (1.26%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.26%) Metadata
9 4 (1.26%) Neo4j
10 3 (0.95%) Tableau
11 2 (0.63%) Apache Hive
11 2 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
11 2 (0.63%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 52 (16.40%) Jenkins
2 41 (12.93%) GitLab
3 31 (9.78%) Git
4 29 (9.15%) JIRA
5 11 (3.47%) SonarQube
6 8 (2.52%) Vagrant
7 4 (1.26%) Gatling
7 4 (1.26%) JMeter
7 4 (1.26%) LoadRunner
7 4 (1.26%) NeoLoad
7 4 (1.26%) Postman
8 3 (0.95%) MSI
8 3 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.63%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.63%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.63%) JUnit
9 2 (0.63%) Maven
9 2 (0.63%) Mockito
9 2 (0.63%) Selenium
9 2 (0.63%) Spinnaker
General
1 61 (19.24%) Social Skills
2 33 (10.41%) Public Sector
3 28 (8.83%) Finance
4 19 (5.99%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (5.68%) Banking
6 14 (4.42%) Legal
7 7 (2.21%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (2.21%) Presentation Skills
8 4 (1.26%) Games
8 4 (1.26%) Retail
8 4 (1.26%) Retail Banking
9 3 (0.95%) Telecoms
10 1 (0.32%) Advertising
10 1 (0.32%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.32%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.32%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.32%) Law
10 1 (0.32%) Tech for Good
10 1 (0.32%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 169 (53.31%) Platform Engineer
2 53 (16.72%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 33 (10.41%) Senior
4 30 (9.46%) DevOps Engineer
5 24 (7.57%) AWS Engineer
5 24 (7.57%) Cloud Engineer
6 22 (6.94%) Lead
7 19 (5.99%) AWS Platform Engineer
7 19 (5.99%) Azure Engineer
7 19 (5.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 18 (5.68%) Architect
9 17 (5.36%) Azure Platform Engineer
9 17 (5.36%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 15 (4.73%) Data Engineer
11 11 (3.47%) DevOps Platform Engineer
11 11 (3.47%) Project Manager
12 10 (3.15%) Software Engineer
13 8 (2.52%) AWS DevOps
13 8 (2.52%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 7 (2.21%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (5.68%) Kafka
2 15 (4.73%) YAML
3 11 (3.47%) Elastic Stack
3 11 (3.47%) LDAP
3 11 (3.47%) REST
4 9 (2.84%) OpenID
5 8 (2.52%) Keycloak
5 8 (2.52%) Node.js
6 7 (2.21%) OAuth
6 7 (2.21%) Oracle Fusion
6 7 (2.21%) React
6 7 (2.21%) XMPP
7 6 (1.89%) OAuth2
7 6 (1.89%) Playwright
7 6 (1.89%) Spring
7 6 (1.89%) Spring Boot
8 5 (1.58%) ADO
8 5 (1.58%) Middleware
9 4 (1.26%) .NET
9 4 (1.26%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 29 (9.15%) Cloud Native
2 21 (6.62%) Product Ownership
3 19 (5.99%) PKI
4 18 (5.68%) Replication
5 17 (5.36%) Onboarding
6 16 (5.05%) Private Cloud
7 12 (3.79%) Data Centre
7 12 (3.79%) Distributed Systems
8 10 (3.15%) Public Cloud
9 8 (2.52%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (2.52%) NHS
10 7 (2.21%) Hybrid Cloud
11 6 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
12 4 (1.26%) NVMe
12 4 (1.26%) Security Posture
13 3 (0.95%) Analytical Mindset
13 3 (0.95%) Management Information System
13 3 (0.95%) Operational Technology
13 3 (0.95%) Virtual Team
14 2 (0.63%) Fat Client
Operating Systems
1 91 (28.71%) Linux
2 73 (23.03%) Windows
3 25 (7.89%) Windows Server
4 20 (6.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 14 (4.42%) Unix
6 12 (3.79%) VMS
7 11 (3.47%) Amazon Linux
8 9 (2.84%) Windows 10
9 6 (1.89%) Ubuntu
10 4 (1.26%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.63%) Solaris
12 2 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
13 1 (0.32%) CentOS
13 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 146 (46.06%) CI/CD
2 132 (41.64%) DevOps
3 114 (35.96%) Infrastructure as Code
4 65 (20.50%) Containerisation
5 57 (17.98%) Observability
6 52 (16.40%) Problem-Solving
7 48 (15.14%) Agile
8 45 (14.20%) Continuous Improvement
9 42 (13.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 39 (12.30%) Migration
11 37 (11.67%) DevSecOps
12 34 (10.73%) Software Engineering
13 31 (9.78%) Infrastructure Automation
14 30 (9.46%) Cloud Security
15 28 (8.83%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 24 (7.57%) RBAC
16 24 (7.57%) Roadmaps
17 23 (7.26%) Incident Response
17 23 (7.26%) Performance Tuning
17 23 (7.26%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 119 (37.54%) Python
2 57 (17.98%) Bash
3 48 (15.14%) PowerShell
4 23 (7.26%) SQL
5 22 (6.94%) Java
6 15 (4.73%) Perl
7 12 (3.79%) Bicep
8 10 (3.15%) Groovy
9 8 (2.52%) Shell Script
9 8 (2.52%) TypeScript
10 7 (2.21%) JavaScript
11 6 (1.89%) C#
12 5 (1.58%) Go
13 4 (1.26%) Cypher
13 4 (1.26%) Scala
14 2 (0.63%) Apex Code
14 2 (0.63%) PHP
14 2 (0.63%) SOQL
15 1 (0.32%) C++
15 1 (0.32%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 137 (43.22%) Security Cleared
2 107 (33.75%) SC Cleared
3 29 (9.15%) DV Cleared
4 15 (4.73%) AWS Certification
4 15 (4.73%) Degree
5 11 (3.47%) Azure Certification
6 10 (3.15%) CCNA
6 10 (3.15%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (2.84%) CCDP
7 9 (2.84%) CCNP
8 6 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 3 (0.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.95%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.95%) CSPO
11 2 (0.63%) NCDA
11 2 (0.63%) VCP6
12 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.32%) RHCSA
12 1 (0.32%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.26%) NCSC
2 7 (2.21%) GDPR
3 5 (1.58%) Data Quality
3 5 (1.58%) NIST
3 5 (1.58%) QA
4 4 (1.26%) COBIT
5 3 (0.95%) NIST 800
5 3 (0.95%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.63%) WCAG
7 1 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.32%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.32%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 62 (19.56%) Docker
2 48 (15.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (13.25%) Active Directory
4 14 (4.42%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (3.15%) vSphere
6 8 (2.52%) DFS Replication
7 7 (2.21%) VMware NSX
8 6 (1.89%) Dovecot
8 6 (1.89%) Postfix
8 6 (1.89%) Squid
9 4 (1.26%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 4 (1.26%) Hyper-V
10 3 (0.95%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.32%) GPFS
11 1 (0.32%) KVM
11 1 (0.32%) Time Sharing Option
11 1 (0.32%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 1 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 120 (37.85%) Terraform
2 102 (32.18%) Kubernetes
3 55 (17.35%) Ansible
4 45 (14.20%) Grafana
5 34 (10.73%) Prometheus
6 14 (4.42%) Istio
7 12 (3.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 11 (3.47%) vCenter Server
9 10 (3.15%) Argo
10 9 (2.84%) Proxmox
11 8 (2.52%) Packer
12 7 (2.21%) linkerd
13 6 (1.89%) Microsoft Intune
13 6 (1.89%) Nessus
14 5 (1.58%) SCCM
14 5 (1.58%) Single Sign-On
15 4 (1.26%) Kibana
15 4 (1.26%) vMotion
16 3 (0.95%) Progress Chef
16 3 (0.95%) vRealize
Vendors
1 60 (18.93%) VMware
2 43 (13.56%) Microsoft
3 31 (9.78%) Splunk
4 27 (8.52%) Red Hat
5 26 (8.20%) Cisco
6 25 (7.89%) Dynatrace
7 21 (6.62%) Oracle
8 17 (5.36%) ServiceNow
9 15 (4.73%) Citrix
10 12 (3.79%) F5
11 11 (3.47%) IBM
12 10 (3.15%) Google
13 9 (2.84%) AppDynamics
14 8 (2.52%) Veeam
15 6 (1.89%) Confluent
15 6 (1.89%) Jaspersoft
16 5 (1.58%) Databricks
16 5 (1.58%) Dell
16 5 (1.58%) HP
16 5 (1.58%) PeopleSoft