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 28 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 168 281 278
Rank change year-on-year +113 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 266 85 132
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.50% 0.52% 0.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.72% 0.61% 0.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 200 61 96
10th Percentile £413 £408 £465
25th Percentile £463 £463 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £522 £579
Median % change year-on-year +1.05% -9.77% +2.84%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £675 £675 £694
UK median daily rate £540 £600 £582
% change year-on-year -10.00% +3.09% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 2
10th Percentile £59.75 - -
25th Percentile £62.31 £59.39 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.42% -18.22% -22.00%
75th Percentile £78.57 £68.18 -
90th Percentile £83.00 - -
UK median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £63.50
% change year-on-year +16.42% +0.45% -33.94%

All Process and 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 15,504 13,983 17,941
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 87.33% 85.29% 88.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,448 7,984 11,664
10th Percentile £219 £243 £250
25th Percentile £368 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,746 906 1,268
10th Percentile £14.29 £15.10 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £19.59 £17.74
Median hourly rate £22.74 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.05% -26.97% +39.06%
75th Percentile £44.94 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £73.03 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £43.88
% change year-on-year -28.14% -20.24% +25.37%

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025. 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 -3 80 £525 +5.00% 22
Midlands +30 69 £525 -12.50% 11
West Midlands +19 66 £536 -21.75% 10
South East +47 57 £500 -12.28% 78
North West +22 52 £550 -13.73% 14
Scotland +6 29 £560 +12.00% 14
South West +26 28 £575 +0.88% 38
Yorkshire -44 25 £520 +4.52% 6
East of England -4 14 £525 -4.55% 13
North East - 6 £550 - 3
East Midlands -11 3 £525 +10.53% 1
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 36 (13.53%) Confluence
2 13 (4.89%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (4.51%) nginx
4 11 (4.14%) Apache
5 9 (3.38%) SharePoint
6 6 (2.26%) CICS
6 6 (2.26%) WebLogic
7 5 (1.88%) OpenStack
8 4 (1.50%) JBoss
9 3 (1.13%) Apache Spark
9 3 (1.13%) SharePoint Server
10 2 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
10 2 (0.75%) IIS
10 2 (0.75%) iPlanet
10 2 (0.75%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.75%) WebSphere Application Server
11 1 (0.38%) CMS
11 1 (0.38%) Documentum
11 1 (0.38%) Tomcat
Applications
1 12 (4.51%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 1 (0.38%) Finacle
1 1 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 111 (41.73%) AWS
2 102 (38.35%) Azure
3 41 (15.41%) GitHub
4 35 (13.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 31 (11.65%) Amazon EC2
5 31 (11.65%) OpenShift
6 30 (11.28%) Amazon S3
7 28 (10.53%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 27 (10.15%) GCP
9 23 (8.65%) Amazon ELB
9 23 (8.65%) AWS KMS
10 21 (7.89%) AWS CloudFormation
11 19 (7.14%) Serverless
12 18 (6.77%) Azure DevOps
12 18 (6.77%) GitHub Actions
13 17 (6.39%) Amazon ECS
13 17 (6.39%) Amazon EKS
14 16 (6.02%) Entra ID
15 15 (5.64%) AWS Lambda
15 15 (5.64%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 50 (18.80%) Firewall
2 43 (16.17%) DNS
3 23 (8.65%) SMTP
4 21 (7.89%) FTP
4 21 (7.89%) HTTP
4 21 (7.89%) SSH
5 12 (4.51%) IMAP
5 12 (4.51%) OpenLDAP
6 8 (3.01%) TCP/IP
7 7 (2.63%) WebEx
8 6 (2.26%) BGP
8 6 (2.26%) DHCP
8 6 (2.26%) Software-Defined Networking
8 6 (2.26%) VLAN
9 4 (1.50%) Network Security
10 3 (1.13%) Skype
11 2 (0.75%) IPsec
11 2 (0.75%) Kerberos
11 2 (0.75%) SD-WAN
11 2 (0.75%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (12.41%) Amazon RDS
2 25 (9.40%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (4.51%) Amazon Aurora
4 11 (4.14%) NoSQL
4 11 (4.14%) Redis
5 8 (3.01%) Amazon Redshift
6 6 (2.26%) Couchbase
6 6 (2.26%) SQL Server
7 5 (1.88%) Big Data
7 5 (1.88%) DynamoDB
7 5 (1.88%) Relational Database
8 4 (1.50%) Data Lake
9 3 (1.13%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.13%) Hadoop
10 2 (0.75%) Apache Hive
10 2 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.75%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.75%) Oracle Database
10 2 (0.75%) Power BI
11 1 (0.38%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 75 (28.20%) Jenkins
2 48 (18.05%) Git
3 38 (14.29%) JIRA
4 30 (11.28%) GitLab
5 23 (8.65%) Vagrant
6 13 (4.89%) SonarQube
7 4 (1.50%) Terragrunt
8 3 (1.13%) Bitbucket Server
8 3 (1.13%) CA Release Automation
8 3 (1.13%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.75%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.75%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 2 (0.75%) JUnit
9 2 (0.75%) Maven
9 2 (0.75%) Mockito
9 2 (0.75%) MSI
9 2 (0.75%) Selenium
9 2 (0.75%) Spinnaker
10 1 (0.38%) TeamCity
General
1 71 (26.69%) Social Skills
2 40 (15.04%) Public Sector
3 23 (8.65%) Finance
4 17 (6.39%) Banking
5 16 (6.02%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (5.64%) Legal
7 11 (4.14%) Presentation Skills
8 9 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (2.26%) Retail
10 4 (1.50%) Games
10 4 (1.50%) Retail Banking
11 3 (1.13%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.75%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.38%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.38%) Tech for Good
13 1 (0.38%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 162 (60.90%) Platform Engineer
2 50 (18.80%) DevOps Engineer
3 48 (18.05%) Cloud Platform Engineer
4 38 (14.29%) AWS Engineer
5 26 (9.77%) AWS Platform Engineer
6 21 (7.89%) AWS DevOps
6 21 (7.89%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 16 (6.02%) Senior
8 15 (5.64%) Azure Engineer
8 15 (5.64%) DevOps Platform Engineer
9 13 (4.89%) Data Engineer
10 12 (4.51%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 12 (4.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 11 (4.14%) Azure Platform Engineer
12 9 (3.38%) Architect
13 7 (2.63%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 7 (2.63%) Cloud Engineer
14 6 (2.26%) Lead
14 6 (2.26%) Python Engineer
14 6 (2.26%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (7.14%) YAML
2 18 (6.77%) Kafka
3 17 (6.39%) Elastic Stack
4 14 (5.26%) LDAP
5 13 (4.89%) React
6 12 (4.51%) Middleware
7 8 (3.01%) FastAPI
7 8 (3.01%) Keycloak
7 8 (3.01%) OAuth
8 7 (2.63%) REST
8 7 (2.63%) Spring Boot
8 7 (2.63%) XMPP
9 6 (2.26%) ISPF
9 6 (2.26%) OAuth2
9 6 (2.26%) Spring
10 5 (1.88%) Node.js
10 5 (1.88%) OpenID
10 5 (1.88%) RESTful
11 4 (1.50%) LangChain
11 4 (1.50%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 30 (11.28%) Replication
2 19 (7.14%) Cloud Native
3 16 (6.02%) Private Cloud
3 16 (6.02%) Product Ownership
4 15 (5.64%) Onboarding
4 15 (5.64%) PKI
5 10 (3.76%) Data Centre
6 8 (3.01%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (2.63%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (2.63%) NHS
8 6 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
8 6 (2.26%) Mainframe
8 6 (2.26%) VSAM
9 5 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.88%) IBM Mainframe
10 4 (1.50%) Public Cloud
11 3 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
12 2 (0.75%) Clustering
12 2 (0.75%) Fat Client
12 2 (0.75%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 107 (40.23%) Linux
2 82 (30.83%) Windows
3 27 (10.15%) VMS
4 26 (9.77%) Amazon Linux
5 20 (7.52%) Windows Server
6 18 (6.77%) Unix
7 16 (6.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 10 (3.76%) Ubuntu
9 9 (3.38%) Windows 10
10 6 (2.26%) zOS
11 3 (1.13%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.38%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (49.62%) DevOps
2 128 (48.12%) CI/CD
3 102 (38.35%) Infrastructure as Code
4 62 (23.31%) Containerisation
5 57 (21.43%) Observability
6 48 (18.05%) Agile
7 47 (17.67%) Configuration Management
8 46 (17.29%) Problem-Solving
9 43 (16.17%) Migration
10 37 (13.91%) Continuous Improvement
11 31 (11.65%) Cloud Security
12 26 (9.77%) Patch Management
12 26 (9.77%) Performance Tuning
12 26 (9.77%) Service Management
13 25 (9.40%) Change Management
13 25 (9.40%) Incident Response
14 24 (9.02%) DevSecOps
14 24 (9.02%) High Availability
14 24 (9.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 24 (9.02%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 117 (43.98%) Python
2 68 (25.56%) PowerShell
3 48 (18.05%) Bash
4 38 (14.29%) SQL
5 36 (13.53%) Java
6 25 (9.40%) Groovy
7 24 (9.02%) Perl
8 18 (6.77%) JavaScript
9 12 (4.51%) C#
10 7 (2.63%) Shell Script
11 6 (2.26%) CLIST
11 6 (2.26%) Go
11 6 (2.26%) JCL
11 6 (2.26%) REXX
12 3 (1.13%) Bicep
12 3 (1.13%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.75%) Apex Code
13 2 (0.75%) PHP
13 2 (0.75%) SOQL
14 1 (0.38%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 135 (50.75%) Security Cleared
2 114 (42.86%) SC Cleared
3 27 (10.15%) DV Cleared
4 19 (7.14%) AWS Certification
5 16 (6.02%) Degree
6 13 (4.89%) Azure Certification
7 9 (3.38%) CCNA
7 9 (3.38%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (3.01%) CCDP
8 8 (3.01%) CCNP
9 7 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.13%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.13%) CSPO
10 3 (1.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 2 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
12 1 (0.38%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.38%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.51%) NCSC
2 6 (2.26%) COBIT
3 4 (1.50%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.50%) GDPR
4 2 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (0.75%) NIST
4 2 (0.75%) WCAG
5 1 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.38%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.38%) QA
System Software
1 78 (29.32%) Docker
2 48 (18.05%) Active Directory
3 31 (11.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (7.89%) DFS Replication
5 12 (4.51%) Dovecot
5 12 (4.51%) Postfix
5 12 (4.51%) Squid
6 8 (3.01%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (2.26%) Time Sharing Option
8 4 (1.50%) Hyper-V
8 4 (1.50%) vSphere
9 3 (1.13%) VMware NSX
10 2 (0.75%) GPFS
10 2 (0.75%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.38%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 1 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 125 (46.99%) Terraform
2 91 (34.21%) Kubernetes
3 58 (21.80%) Grafana
4 53 (19.92%) Prometheus
5 51 (19.17%) Ansible
6 13 (4.89%) Proxmox
7 12 (4.51%) Nessus
7 12 (4.51%) Packer
8 11 (4.14%) vCenter Server
9 10 (3.76%) Argo
9 10 (3.76%) Istio
10 9 (3.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (2.26%) Kibana
11 6 (2.26%) OMEGAMON
12 5 (1.88%) CA Endevor
13 4 (1.50%) Progress Chef
13 4 (1.50%) Puppet
14 3 (1.13%) Microsoft Intune
14 3 (1.13%) Podman
14 3 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 46 (17.29%) Microsoft
2 40 (15.04%) VMware
3 37 (13.91%) Splunk
4 36 (13.53%) Red Hat
5 34 (12.78%) Dynatrace
6 27 (10.15%) Cisco
6 27 (10.15%) ServiceNow
7 21 (7.89%) Oracle
8 19 (7.14%) IBM
9 17 (6.39%) AppDynamics
10 12 (4.51%) Citrix
10 12 (4.51%) Jaspersoft
11 11 (4.14%) F5
12 8 (3.01%) Dell
12 8 (3.01%) HP
13 7 (2.63%) CheckPoint
14 6 (2.26%) Confluent
14 6 (2.26%) Databricks
14 6 (2.26%) Veeam
15 4 (1.50%) Palo Alto