Infrastructure Engineering Contract Job Trends in the North West

Infrastructure Engineering
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Infrastructure Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 24 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 111 80 66
Rank change year-on-year -31 -14 -7
Contract jobs citing Infrastructure Engineering 51 45 76
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 1.61% 2.31% 2.74%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.93% 2.56% 3.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 30 21 49
10th Percentile £314 £325 £313
25th Percentile £406 £385 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year -3.14% +16.67% -5.26%
75th Percentile £641 £575 £531
90th Percentile £688 £638 £613
England median daily rate £520 £525 £480
% change year-on-year -0.95% +9.38% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 10
10th Percentile - - £37.63
25th Percentile - - £45.00
Median hourly rate - - £45.59
75th Percentile - - £46.18
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £72.54 £62.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +16.06% +35.34% -27.66%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

Infrastructure 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 North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,647 1,761 2,403
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.48% 90.31% 86.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,643 1,134 1,555
10th Percentile £263 £300 £306
25th Percentile £375 £396 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £464 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.37% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £653 £665 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 233 109 245
10th Percentile £19.96 £16.21 £10.95
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.72 £13.25
Median hourly rate £46.43 £32.00 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +45.09% +52.38% -40.00%
75th Percentile £71.91 £60.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.78 £54.00
England median hourly rate £42.50 £30.62 £35.00
% change year-on-year +38.82% -12.53% -6.67%

Infrastructure Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Infrastructure Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Infrastructure Engineering job vacancy trend in the North West

Infrastructure Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Infrastructure Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Infrastructure Engineering

Infrastructure Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Infrastructure Engineering in the North West over the 6 months to 24 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Infrastructure Engineering in the North West

Infrastructure Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Infrastructure Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Infrastructure Engineering

Infrastructure Engineering
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Infrastructure Engineering within the North West region over the 6 months to 24 April 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
Manchester 0 38 £575 +49.35% 24
Cheshire -18 6 £487 -22.16% 2
Merseyside -12 5 £330 +53.49% 3
Cumbria -4 1 - -
Lancashire -15 1 £74 -83.03% 19
Infrastructure Engineering
England

Infrastructure Engineering
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 1 (1.96%) IIS
1 1 (1.96%) Microsoft Exchange
1 1 (1.96%) nginx
1 1 (1.96%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (3.92%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.96%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 18 (35.29%) Azure
2 11 (21.57%) AWS
3 7 (13.73%) Microsoft 365
4 6 (11.76%) Entra ID
5 5 (9.80%) GitHub
5 5 (9.80%) SaaS
6 4 (7.84%) Azure DevOps
6 4 (7.84%) GCP
6 4 (7.84%) Nutanix
6 4 (7.84%) Serverless
7 3 (5.88%) Azure Monitor
7 3 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
8 2 (3.92%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (3.92%) Azure AKS
8 2 (3.92%) Azure Functions
8 2 (3.92%) Azure Logic Apps
8 2 (3.92%) Azure Storage
8 2 (3.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 1 (1.96%) Azure Sentinel
9 1 (1.96%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 12 (23.53%) DNS
2 10 (19.61%) Firewall
3 9 (17.65%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 5 (9.80%) TCP/IP
5 4 (7.84%) DHCP
5 4 (7.84%) NetScaler
6 3 (5.88%) BIG-IP
7 2 (3.92%) BGP
7 2 (3.92%) Ethernet VPN
7 2 (3.92%) OSPF
7 2 (3.92%) VPN
7 2 (3.92%) VXLAN
8 1 (1.96%) Internet
8 1 (1.96%) Network Security
8 1 (1.96%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (1.96%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (1.96%) Oracle Database
2 1 (1.96%) Power BI
2 1 (1.96%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 4 (7.84%) Git
2 3 (5.88%) GitLab
3 2 (3.92%) Jenkins
3 2 (3.92%) JIRA
General
1 8 (15.69%) Finance
2 7 (13.73%) Public Sector
3 5 (9.80%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (9.80%) Social Skills
4 4 (7.84%) Banking
5 3 (5.88%) Retail
6 2 (3.92%) Military
7 1 (1.96%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 31 (60.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 9 (17.65%) Senior
3 8 (15.69%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
4 6 (11.76%) Platform Engineer
5 5 (9.80%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
5 5 (9.80%) Infrastructure Support
5 5 (9.80%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
5 5 (9.80%) IT Engineer
5 5 (9.80%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
5 5 (9.80%) IT Support
5 5 (9.80%) IT Support Engineer
5 5 (9.80%) Support Engineer
6 4 (7.84%) Architect
6 4 (7.84%) Cybersecurity Engineer
6 4 (7.84%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
6 4 (7.84%) Security Engineer
6 4 (7.84%) Senior Security Engineer
7 3 (5.88%) Analyst
7 3 (5.88%) Infrastructure Analyst
7 3 (5.88%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (3.92%) ARM Templates
1 2 (3.92%) GraphQL
1 2 (3.92%) OAuth
1 2 (3.92%) REST
2 1 (1.96%) Flash
2 1 (1.96%) Hugging Face
2 1 (1.96%) LangChain
2 1 (1.96%) vLLM
Miscellaneous
1 13 (25.49%) Public Cloud
2 5 (9.80%) Private Cloud
3 2 (3.92%) AI Agents
3 2 (3.92%) Data Centre
3 2 (3.92%) Data Protection Act
3 2 (3.92%) Driving Licence
4 1 (1.96%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (1.96%) CMDB
4 1 (1.96%) Linux Command Line
4 1 (1.96%) Onboarding
4 1 (1.96%) PKI
4 1 (1.96%) Replication
4 1 (1.96%) Taxonomies
4 1 (1.96%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 9 (17.65%) Linux
2 8 (15.69%) Windows
3 6 (11.76%) Windows Server
4 5 (9.80%) Windows Server 2019
5 4 (7.84%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (1.96%) CentOS
6 1 (1.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (1.96%) Ubuntu
6 1 (1.96%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (39.22%) DevOps
2 15 (29.41%) Project Delivery
3 14 (27.45%) Infrastructure as Code
4 13 (25.49%) CI/CD
5 10 (19.61%) Containerisation
5 10 (19.61%) Problem-Solving
6 8 (15.69%) Platform Engineering
7 7 (13.73%) Migration
8 6 (11.76%) Business Continuity
8 6 (11.76%) Load Balancing
8 6 (11.76%) Observability
8 6 (11.76%) Root Cause Analysis
9 5 (9.80%) Data Protection
10 4 (7.84%) AI
10 4 (7.84%) Cybersecurity
10 4 (7.84%) Mentoring
10 4 (7.84%) Operational Stability
10 4 (7.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 3 (5.88%) Incident Response
11 3 (5.88%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 10 (19.61%) Python
2 7 (13.73%) PowerShell
3 4 (7.84%) Bash
3 4 (7.84%) Bicep
4 2 (3.92%) Ruby
5 1 (1.96%) ActionScript
5 1 (1.96%) Shell Script
5 1 (1.96%) SQL
Qualifications
1 8 (15.69%) Security Cleared
2 6 (11.76%) SC Cleared
3 3 (5.88%) Azure Certification
3 3 (5.88%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (1.96%) CISM
4 1 (1.96%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (3.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 2 (3.92%) NIST
2 1 (1.96%) Cyber Essentials
2 1 (1.96%) GDPR
System Software
1 12 (23.53%) Docker
2 8 (15.69%) Active Directory
3 7 (13.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (9.80%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (9.80%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (9.80%) vSphere
5 3 (5.88%) Hyper-V
6 1 (1.96%) GPFS
6 1 (1.96%) NFS
Systems Management
1 14 (27.45%) Kubernetes
2 12 (23.53%) Terraform
3 6 (11.76%) Microsoft Intune
4 5 (9.80%) SCCM
5 4 (7.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (5.88%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (3.92%) Grafana
7 2 (3.92%) Istio
7 2 (3.92%) Prometheus
8 1 (1.96%) Ansible
8 1 (1.96%) Argo
8 1 (1.96%) Progress Chef
8 1 (1.96%) Puppet
Vendors
1 14 (27.45%) F5
2 9 (17.65%) VMware
3 8 (15.69%) Microsoft
4 4 (7.84%) Veeam
5 2 (3.92%) Arista
5 2 (3.92%) Google
5 2 (3.92%) Oracle
5 2 (3.92%) Palo Alto
5 2 (3.92%) Red Hat
5 2 (3.92%) ServiceNow
6 1 (1.96%) AlienVault
6 1 (1.96%) Citrix
6 1 (1.96%) DocuSign
6 1 (1.96%) IBM
6 1 (1.96%) Qualys
6 1 (1.96%) SolarWinds