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 19 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 107 81 60
Rank change year-on-year -26 -21 -10
Contract jobs citing Infrastructure Engineering 54 48 83
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 1.79% 2.39% 2.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.11% 2.65% 3.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 23 59
10th Percentile £300 £305 £313
25th Percentile £336 £368 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -6.48% +10.53% -
75th Percentile £588 £538 £538
90th Percentile £675 £635 £613
England median daily rate £513 £538 £488
% change year-on-year -4.65% +10.26% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 10
10th Percentile £61.20 - £37.63
25th Percentile £63.38 £59.39 £45.00
Median hourly rate £69.38 £63.79 £45.59
Median % change year-on-year +8.77% +39.91% -
75th Percentile £73.01 £68.18 £46.18
90th Percentile £73.76 - -
England median hourly rate £48.50 £63.79 £46.18
% change year-on-year -23.96% +38.12% -21.85%

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 2,561 1,811 2,445
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 84.97% 90.32% 86.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,625 1,132 1,595
10th Percentile £220 £281 £309
25th Percentile £370 £391 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.21% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £656 £675
England median daily rate £504 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.05% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 219 113 263
10th Percentile £18.67 £16.60 £11.00
25th Percentile £25.08 £22.98 £13.62
Median hourly rate £45.00 £31.76 £23.45
Median % change year-on-year +41.69% +35.44% -37.13%
75th Percentile £67.04 £59.90 £45.00
90th Percentile £76.30 £79.97 £52.61
England median hourly rate £31.45 £33.40 £32.50
% change year-on-year -5.84% +2.77% -10.41%

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 19 March 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 19 March 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 -1 34 £575 +49.35% 22
Cheshire -19 8 £453 -24.50% 5
Lancashire -13 7 £300 -31.43% 17
Merseyside -13 5 £330 +53.49% 7
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 4 (7.41%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (5.56%) SharePoint
3 2 (3.70%) Confluence
3 2 (3.70%) IIS
4 1 (1.85%) Apache
4 1 (1.85%) nginx
4 1 (1.85%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 2 (3.70%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 19 (35.19%) Azure
2 10 (18.52%) AWS
2 10 (18.52%) Microsoft 365
3 9 (16.67%) Entra ID
4 5 (9.26%) GitHub
4 5 (9.26%) SaaS
5 4 (7.41%) Azure DevOps
5 4 (7.41%) GCP
5 4 (7.41%) Nutanix
5 4 (7.41%) Serverless
6 3 (5.56%) Azure Monitor
6 3 (5.56%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (3.70%) AWS CloudFormation
7 2 (3.70%) Azure AKS
7 2 (3.70%) Azure Functions
7 2 (3.70%) Azure Logic Apps
7 2 (3.70%) Azure Storage
7 2 (3.70%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 1 (1.85%) Microsoft Purview
8 1 (1.85%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 11 (20.37%) Firewall
2 10 (18.52%) DNS
3 6 (11.11%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 5 (9.26%) TCP/IP
5 4 (7.41%) DHCP
5 4 (7.41%) NetScaler
6 3 (5.56%) BGP
7 2 (3.70%) BIG-IP
7 2 (3.70%) Software-Defined Networking
7 2 (3.70%) SSH
7 2 (3.70%) VLAN
7 2 (3.70%) VPN
8 1 (1.85%) Ethernet VPN
8 1 (1.85%) Internet
8 1 (1.85%) Network Security
8 1 (1.85%) OSPF
8 1 (1.85%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (1.85%) SSL
8 1 (1.85%) VXLAN
8 1 (1.85%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (1.85%) Oracle Database
2 1 (1.85%) Power BI
2 1 (1.85%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 4 (7.41%) Git
1 4 (7.41%) JIRA
2 3 (5.56%) GitLab
3 2 (3.70%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.85%) MSI
General
1 10 (18.52%) Finance
1 10 (18.52%) Social Skills
2 7 (12.96%) Analytical Skills
2 7 (12.96%) Public Sector
3 5 (9.26%) Banking
4 3 (5.56%) Retail
5 2 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
5 2 (3.70%) Military
6 1 (1.85%) Legal
6 1 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 30 (55.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 9 (16.67%) Platform Engineer
3 8 (14.81%) Senior
4 7 (12.96%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 5 (9.26%) Analyst
5 5 (9.26%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
5 5 (9.26%) Infrastructure Support
5 5 (9.26%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
5 5 (9.26%) IT Engineer
5 5 (9.26%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
5 5 (9.26%) IT Support
5 5 (9.26%) IT Support Engineer
5 5 (9.26%) Support Engineer
6 4 (7.41%) Architect
6 4 (7.41%) Cybersecurity Engineer
6 4 (7.41%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
6 4 (7.41%) Security Engineer
6 4 (7.41%) Senior Security Engineer
7 3 (5.56%) Infrastructure Analyst
7 3 (5.56%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (3.70%) ARM Templates
1 2 (3.70%) GraphQL
1 2 (3.70%) OAuth
1 2 (3.70%) REST
2 1 (1.85%) Hugging Face
2 1 (1.85%) LangChain
2 1 (1.85%) Microsoft Graph
2 1 (1.85%) vLLM
2 1 (1.85%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 11 (20.37%) Public Cloud
2 7 (12.96%) Private Cloud
3 4 (7.41%) Data Centre
4 3 (5.56%) Product Ownership
5 2 (3.70%) AI Agents
5 2 (3.70%) Driving Licence
5 2 (3.70%) Tandem
6 1 (1.85%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.85%) CMDB
6 1 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.85%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (1.85%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.85%) PKI
6 1 (1.85%) Taxonomies
6 1 (1.85%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 14 (25.93%) Windows
2 11 (20.37%) Linux
3 9 (16.67%) Windows Server
4 5 (9.26%) Windows Server 2019
5 4 (7.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (7.41%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (3.70%) Unix
7 1 (1.85%) CentOS
7 1 (1.85%) Ubuntu
7 1 (1.85%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (35.19%) DevOps
2 14 (25.93%) Infrastructure as Code
3 13 (24.07%) CI/CD
4 12 (22.22%) Containerisation
4 12 (22.22%) Problem-Solving
4 12 (22.22%) Project Delivery
5 11 (20.37%) Platform Engineering
6 9 (16.67%) Migration
7 8 (14.81%) Cybersecurity
8 6 (11.11%) Business Continuity
8 6 (11.11%) Observability
8 6 (11.11%) Root Cause Analysis
9 5 (9.26%) Data Protection
9 5 (9.26%) High Availability
9 5 (9.26%) Incident Response
9 5 (9.26%) ITIL
9 5 (9.26%) Load Balancing
9 5 (9.26%) Stakeholder Management
10 4 (7.41%) Continuous Improvement
10 4 (7.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 15 (27.78%) Python
2 11 (20.37%) PowerShell
3 7 (12.96%) Bash
4 4 (7.41%) Bicep
5 3 (5.56%) Perl
6 2 (3.70%) Ruby
7 1 (1.85%) ActionScript
7 1 (1.85%) Shell Script
7 1 (1.85%) SQL
Qualifications
1 11 (20.37%) Security Cleared
2 9 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 4 (7.41%) BPSS Clearance
3 4 (7.41%) Degree
4 3 (5.56%) Azure Certification
5 2 (3.70%) CCDP
5 2 (3.70%) CCNA
5 2 (3.70%) CCNP
5 2 (3.70%) Cisco Certification
5 2 (3.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (3.70%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 1 (1.85%) CISM
6 1 (1.85%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (3.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 2 (3.70%) NIST
2 1 (1.85%) Cyber Essentials
2 1 (1.85%) GDPR
System Software
1 13 (24.07%) Active Directory
2 12 (22.22%) Docker
3 10 (18.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (9.26%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (9.26%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (9.26%) vSphere
5 3 (5.56%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 14 (25.93%) Kubernetes
2 12 (22.22%) Terraform
3 8 (14.81%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (12.96%) SCCM
5 4 (7.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 3 (5.56%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (3.70%) Grafana
7 2 (3.70%) Istio
7 2 (3.70%) Prometheus
8 1 (1.85%) Ansible
8 1 (1.85%) Argo
8 1 (1.85%) Progress Chef
8 1 (1.85%) Puppet
Vendors
1 12 (22.22%) VMware
2 11 (20.37%) F5
3 10 (18.52%) Microsoft
4 5 (9.26%) Citrix
4 5 (9.26%) Red Hat
5 4 (7.41%) Veeam
6 2 (3.70%) Gemalto
6 2 (3.70%) Google
6 2 (3.70%) IBM
6 2 (3.70%) Thales
7 1 (1.85%) AlienVault
7 1 (1.85%) Arista
7 1 (1.85%) Cisco
7 1 (1.85%) Ivanti
7 1 (1.85%) Oracle
7 1 (1.85%) Palo Alto
7 1 (1.85%) Qualys
7 1 (1.85%) ServiceNow
7 1 (1.85%) SolarWinds