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 19 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 156 263 279
Rank change year-on-year +107 +16 -16
Contract jobs citing Platform Engineering 288 94 122
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.59% 0.63% 0.62%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.84% 0.72% 0.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 221 64 84
10th Percentile £413 £433 £463
25th Percentile £463 £464 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £588 £623 £650
90th Percentile £663 £682 £696
UK median daily rate £540 £600 £563
% change year-on-year -10.00% +6.67% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 1
10th Percentile £55.85 - -
25th Percentile £59.75 £59.39 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.42% -18.22% -22.00%
75th Percentile £77.13 £68.18 -
90th Percentile £82.40 - -
UK median hourly rate £74.26 £63.79 £60.00
% change year-on-year +16.42% +6.31% -37.58%

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 15,617 13,041 17,394
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 86.01% 86.97% 88.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,535 7,668 11,224
10th Percentile £220 £235 £250
25th Percentile £375 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £477 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.60% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,767 762 1,227
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.50 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.03 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.50 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.69% -26.97% +39.06%
75th Percentile £48.75 £64.01 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £71.25 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £43.33
% change year-on-year -22.62% -24.99% +23.80%

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 19 December 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 19 December 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 19 December 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 -7 80 £525 - 73
South East +33 68 £506 -11.18% 96
Midlands +11 67 £535 -10.83% 46
West Midlands +21 64 £539 -21.39% 27
North West +16 52 £550 -13.73% 32
South West +20 30 £575 +0.88% 63
Scotland +6 28 £545 +6.34% 15
East of England +3 26 £475 -20.83% 39
Yorkshire -44 25 £518 +3.50% 36
North East - 6 £550 - 5
East Midlands -18 3 £525 +10.53% 16
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 31 (10.76%) Confluence
2 13 (4.51%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (3.82%) Apache
3 11 (3.82%) nginx
4 9 (3.13%) SharePoint
5 7 (2.43%) WebLogic
6 5 (1.74%) OpenStack
7 4 (1.39%) CICS
7 4 (1.39%) JBoss
8 3 (1.04%) IIS
8 3 (1.04%) SharePoint Server
9 2 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.69%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.69%) iPlanet
9 2 (0.69%) WebSphere
9 2 (0.69%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.35%) CMS
10 1 (0.35%) Documentum
10 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.35%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 11 (3.82%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 1 (0.35%) Finacle
1 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 119 (41.32%) AWS
2 112 (38.89%) Azure
3 44 (15.28%) GitHub
4 32 (11.11%) GCP
5 31 (10.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 29 (10.07%) OpenShift
7 27 (9.38%) Amazon EC2
8 26 (9.03%) Amazon S3
9 24 (8.33%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 23 (7.99%) GitHub Actions
11 21 (7.29%) AWS CloudFormation
11 21 (7.29%) Serverless
12 19 (6.60%) Amazon ELB
12 19 (6.60%) AWS KMS
12 19 (6.60%) Entra ID
13 18 (6.25%) Azure DevOps
14 16 (5.56%) Amazon ECS
15 15 (5.21%) Amazon EKS
15 15 (5.21%) AWS Lambda
16 14 (4.86%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 47 (16.32%) Firewall
2 41 (14.24%) DNS
3 19 (6.60%) SMTP
4 18 (6.25%) FTP
4 18 (6.25%) HTTP
4 18 (6.25%) SSH
5 11 (3.82%) IMAP
5 11 (3.82%) OpenLDAP
6 9 (3.13%) TCP/IP
7 7 (2.43%) WebEx
8 6 (2.08%) BGP
8 6 (2.08%) DHCP
8 6 (2.08%) Software-Defined Networking
8 6 (2.08%) VLAN
9 4 (1.39%) Network Security
10 3 (1.04%) IPsec
10 3 (1.04%) SD-WAN
10 3 (1.04%) Skype
10 3 (1.04%) SSL
11 2 (0.69%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (10.07%) Amazon RDS
2 28 (9.72%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (4.17%) Redis
4 11 (3.82%) Amazon Aurora
5 10 (3.47%) NoSQL
6 8 (2.78%) Amazon Redshift
7 6 (2.08%) Couchbase
7 6 (2.08%) SQL Server
8 5 (1.74%) DynamoDB
9 4 (1.39%) Big Data
9 4 (1.39%) Data Lake
9 4 (1.39%) Relational Database
10 3 (1.04%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (1.04%) Elasticsearch
10 3 (1.04%) Hadoop
11 2 (0.69%) Apache Hive
11 2 (0.69%) MongoDB
11 2 (0.69%) Oracle Database
11 2 (0.69%) Power BI
12 1 (0.35%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Development Applications
1 68 (23.61%) Jenkins
2 44 (15.28%) Git
3 36 (12.50%) GitLab
4 34 (11.81%) JIRA
5 19 (6.60%) Vagrant
6 13 (4.51%) SonarQube
7 3 (1.04%) Bitbucket Server
7 3 (1.04%) CA Release Automation
7 3 (1.04%) MSI
7 3 (1.04%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (1.04%) Terragrunt
8 2 (0.69%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.69%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.69%) JUnit
8 2 (0.69%) Maven
8 2 (0.69%) Mockito
8 2 (0.69%) Selenium
8 2 (0.69%) Spinnaker
9 1 (0.35%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.35%) Pylint
General
1 67 (23.26%) Social Skills
2 37 (12.85%) Public Sector
3 23 (7.99%) Finance
4 17 (5.90%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (5.90%) Banking
5 15 (5.21%) Legal
6 11 (3.82%) Presentation Skills
7 9 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.08%) Retail
9 4 (1.39%) Games
9 4 (1.39%) Retail Banking
10 3 (1.04%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.69%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.35%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.35%) Tech for Good
12 1 (0.35%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 166 (57.64%) Platform Engineer
2 48 (16.67%) DevOps Engineer
3 47 (16.32%) Cloud Platform Engineer
4 37 (12.85%) AWS Engineer
5 25 (8.68%) AWS Platform Engineer
6 23 (7.99%) Senior
7 20 (6.94%) AWS DevOps
7 20 (6.94%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 15 (5.21%) DevOps Platform Engineer
9 14 (4.86%) Azure Engineer
9 14 (4.86%) DevSecOps Engineer
10 13 (4.51%) Data Engineer
10 13 (4.51%) Lead
11 12 (4.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 11 (3.82%) Architect
13 10 (3.47%) Azure Platform Engineer
13 10 (3.47%) Cloud Engineer
14 8 (2.78%) Software Engineer
15 6 (2.08%) Implementation Specialist
15 6 (2.08%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (6.60%) Kafka
2 16 (5.56%) YAML
3 14 (4.86%) Elastic Stack
4 13 (4.51%) LDAP
5 11 (3.82%) React
6 10 (3.47%) Keycloak
6 10 (3.47%) Middleware
7 8 (2.78%) OAuth
8 7 (2.43%) FastAPI
8 7 (2.43%) REST
8 7 (2.43%) Spring Boot
8 7 (2.43%) XMPP
9 6 (2.08%) OAuth2
9 6 (2.08%) OpenID
9 6 (2.08%) Spring
10 5 (1.74%) ADO
11 4 (1.39%) ISPF
11 4 (1.39%) Oracle Fusion
11 4 (1.39%) RESTful
11 4 (1.39%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 28 (9.72%) Replication
2 19 (6.60%) Cloud Native
3 18 (6.25%) PKI
4 16 (5.56%) Private Cloud
4 16 (5.56%) Product Ownership
5 15 (5.21%) Onboarding
6 11 (3.82%) Data Centre
7 8 (2.78%) Distributed Systems
8 7 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (2.43%) NHS
9 6 (2.08%) Hybrid Cloud
10 5 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.74%) Public Cloud
11 4 (1.39%) Mainframe
11 4 (1.39%) VSAM
12 3 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (1.04%) IBM Mainframe
12 3 (1.04%) Operational Technology
13 2 (0.69%) Distributed Architecture
13 2 (0.69%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 97 (33.68%) Linux
2 81 (28.13%) Windows
3 23 (7.99%) VMS
4 22 (7.64%) Amazon Linux
4 22 (7.64%) Windows Server
5 18 (6.25%) Unix
6 15 (5.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 10 (3.47%) Ubuntu
8 9 (3.13%) Windows 10
9 4 (1.39%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (1.39%) zOS
10 1 (0.35%) Solaris
10 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (46.53%) CI/CD
2 131 (45.49%) DevOps
3 105 (36.46%) Infrastructure as Code
4 61 (21.18%) Containerisation
4 61 (21.18%) Observability
5 47 (16.32%) Problem-Solving
6 46 (15.97%) Agile
7 43 (14.93%) Migration
8 37 (12.85%) Continuous Improvement
9 36 (12.50%) Configuration Management
10 31 (10.76%) DevSecOps
11 29 (10.07%) Cloud Security
12 27 (9.38%) Incident Response
12 27 (9.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 27 (9.38%) Performance Tuning
13 26 (9.03%) Service Management
13 26 (9.03%) Software Engineering
14 25 (8.68%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 23 (7.99%) Cybersecurity
15 23 (7.99%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 115 (39.93%) Python
2 63 (21.88%) PowerShell
3 49 (17.01%) Bash
4 34 (11.81%) SQL
5 32 (11.11%) Java
6 21 (7.29%) Groovy
7 19 (6.60%) Perl
8 16 (5.56%) JavaScript
9 10 (3.47%) C#
10 7 (2.43%) Shell Script
11 6 (2.08%) Go
12 4 (1.39%) Bicep
12 4 (1.39%) CLIST
12 4 (1.39%) JCL
12 4 (1.39%) REXX
13 3 (1.04%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.69%) Apex Code
14 2 (0.69%) SOQL
15 1 (0.35%) COBOL
15 1 (0.35%) PHP
Qualifications
1 146 (50.69%) Security Cleared
2 122 (42.36%) SC Cleared
3 30 (10.42%) DV Cleared
4 19 (6.60%) AWS Certification
5 15 (5.21%) Degree
6 13 (4.51%) Azure Certification
7 9 (3.13%) CCNA
7 9 (3.13%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (2.78%) CCDP
8 8 (2.78%) CCNP
9 7 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.04%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.04%) CSPO
10 3 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 1 (0.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.35%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (5.90%) NCSC
2 6 (2.08%) COBIT
3 4 (1.39%) Data Quality
3 4 (1.39%) GDPR
4 3 (1.04%) NIST
5 2 (0.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.69%) WCAG
6 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.35%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.35%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.35%) QA
System Software
1 73 (25.35%) Docker
2 48 (16.67%) Active Directory
3 35 (12.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (6.25%) DFS Replication
5 11 (3.82%) Dovecot
5 11 (3.82%) Postfix
5 11 (3.82%) Squid
6 8 (2.78%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (1.74%) vSphere
8 4 (1.39%) Hyper-V
8 4 (1.39%) Time Sharing Option
9 3 (1.04%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.35%) GPFS
10 1 (0.35%) Tivoli Directory Server
10 1 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 127 (44.10%) Terraform
2 94 (32.64%) Kubernetes
3 56 (19.44%) Grafana
4 54 (18.75%) Ansible
5 52 (18.06%) Prometheus
6 14 (4.86%) Argo
7 13 (4.51%) Istio
7 13 (4.51%) Proxmox
8 11 (3.82%) Nessus
8 11 (3.82%) vCenter Server
9 10 (3.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 9 (3.13%) Packer
11 7 (2.43%) Kibana
12 5 (1.74%) linkerd
13 4 (1.39%) Microsoft Intune
13 4 (1.39%) OMEGAMON
13 4 (1.39%) Progress Chef
13 4 (1.39%) Puppet
13 4 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
14 3 (1.04%) Podman
Vendors
1 49 (17.01%) VMware
2 48 (16.67%) Microsoft
3 38 (13.19%) Splunk
4 34 (11.81%) Dynatrace
5 33 (11.46%) Red Hat
6 27 (9.38%) Cisco
7 24 (8.33%) ServiceNow
8 21 (7.29%) Oracle
9 16 (5.56%) AppDynamics
9 16 (5.56%) IBM
10 13 (4.51%) Citrix
11 11 (3.82%) F5
11 11 (3.82%) Jaspersoft
12 7 (2.43%) CheckPoint
12 7 (2.43%) Dell
12 7 (2.43%) HP
13 6 (2.08%) Confluent
13 6 (2.08%) Veeam
14 4 (1.39%) Greenplum
14 4 (1.39%) SolarWinds