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

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 113 75 70
Rank change year-on-year -38 -5 -21
Contract jobs citing Infrastructure Engineering 46 47 69
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 1.61% 2.28% 2.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.88% 2.56% 2.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 21 46
10th Percentile £300 £263 £407
25th Percentile £315 £385 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +5.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £538
90th Percentile £675 £638 £606
England median daily rate £510 £538 £500
% change year-on-year -5.12% +7.50% -
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 £34.00 £63.14 £46.18
% change year-on-year -46.15% +36.73% -16.79%

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 2,448 1,837 2,427
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 85.89% 89.00% 86.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,567 1,115 1,581
10th Percentile £220 £275 £302
25th Percentile £361 £390 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £663 £675
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 206 107 245
10th Percentile £16.81 £17.30 £12.00
25th Percentile £22.89 £23.23 £15.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.00 £25.60
Median % change year-on-year +40.63% +25.00% -31.73%
75th Percentile £63.69 £59.13 £45.88
90th Percentile £76.00 £81.72 £54.20
England median hourly rate £29.00 £35.00 £33.78
% change year-on-year -17.14% +3.63% -6.18%

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 4 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 4 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 -2 29 £575 +26.37% 25
Lancashire -13 7 £300 -42.86% 11
Merseyside -10 6 £330 +53.49% 7
Cheshire -33 4 £368 -10.37% 12
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 (8.70%) IIS
2 3 (6.52%) Apache
2 3 (6.52%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (6.52%) SharePoint
3 2 (4.35%) Confluence
3 2 (4.35%) iPlanet
3 2 (4.35%) JBoss
3 2 (4.35%) WebSphere
3 2 (4.35%) WebSphere Application Server
4 1 (2.17%) nginx
4 1 (2.17%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 1 (2.17%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 11 (23.91%) AWS
1 11 (23.91%) Azure
2 9 (19.57%) Microsoft 365
3 6 (13.04%) Entra ID
4 5 (10.87%) SaaS
5 4 (8.70%) Nutanix
6 3 (6.52%) GitHub
7 2 (4.35%) AWS CloudFormation
7 2 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (4.35%) Azure Logic Apps
7 2 (4.35%) GCP
7 2 (4.35%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 2 (4.35%) Microsoft Purview
7 2 (4.35%) OpenShift
8 1 (2.17%) Azure AKS
8 1 (2.17%) Azure Functions
8 1 (2.17%) Azure Sentinel
8 1 (2.17%) Azure Storage
8 1 (2.17%) OCI
8 1 (2.17%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 10 (21.74%) DNS
2 9 (19.57%) Firewall
3 6 (13.04%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
4 5 (10.87%) TCP/IP
5 4 (8.70%) DHCP
5 4 (8.70%) NetScaler
6 3 (6.52%) BGP
7 2 (4.35%) BIG-IP
7 2 (4.35%) Kerberos
7 2 (4.35%) Network Security
7 2 (4.35%) Software-Defined Networking
7 2 (4.35%) SSH
7 2 (4.35%) VLAN
7 2 (4.35%) VPN
8 1 (2.17%) Ethernet VPN
8 1 (2.17%) Internet
8 1 (2.17%) Reverse Proxy
8 1 (2.17%) SSL
8 1 (2.17%) VXLAN
8 1 (2.17%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (6.52%) Oracle Database
2 1 (2.17%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (2.17%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 5 (10.87%) Jenkins
2 4 (8.70%) Git
2 4 (8.70%) JIRA
3 2 (4.35%) Bitbucket Server
3 2 (4.35%) CA Release Automation
3 2 (4.35%) GitLab
3 2 (4.35%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (2.17%) MSI
General
1 11 (23.91%) Finance
2 9 (19.57%) Public Sector
3 7 (15.22%) Social Skills
4 6 (13.04%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (8.70%) Banking
6 3 (6.52%) Military
7 2 (4.35%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (4.35%) Retail
8 1 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (2.17%) Legal
Job Titles
1 30 (65.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 10 (21.74%) Senior
3 9 (19.57%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
4 8 (17.39%) Platform Engineer
5 5 (10.87%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
5 5 (10.87%) Infrastructure Support
5 5 (10.87%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
5 5 (10.87%) IT Engineer
5 5 (10.87%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
5 5 (10.87%) IT Support
5 5 (10.87%) IT Support Engineer
5 5 (10.87%) Support Engineer
6 4 (8.70%) Analyst
6 4 (8.70%) Cybersecurity Engineer
6 4 (8.70%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
6 4 (8.70%) Security Engineer
6 4 (8.70%) Senior Security Engineer
7 2 (4.35%) GCP Engineer
7 2 (4.35%) Infrastructure Analyst
7 2 (4.35%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (4.35%) LDAP
1 2 (4.35%) OAuth
1 2 (4.35%) OpenID
1 2 (4.35%) SAML
2 1 (2.17%) ARM Templates
2 1 (2.17%) Hugging Face
2 1 (2.17%) LangChain
2 1 (2.17%) Microsoft Graph
2 1 (2.17%) vLLM
2 1 (2.17%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 11 (23.91%) Public Cloud
2 7 (15.22%) Private Cloud
3 3 (6.52%) Product Ownership
4 2 (4.35%) Data Centre
4 2 (4.35%) Tandem
5 1 (2.17%) AI Agents
5 1 (2.17%) CMDB
5 1 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (2.17%) Driving Licence
5 1 (2.17%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (2.17%) Onboarding
5 1 (2.17%) PKI
5 1 (2.17%) Taxonomies
5 1 (2.17%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 15 (32.61%) Windows
2 11 (23.91%) Linux
3 8 (17.39%) Windows Server
4 5 (10.87%) Windows Server 2019
5 4 (8.70%) Unix
5 4 (8.70%) Windows Server 2012
6 3 (6.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (2.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (34.78%) DevOps
2 11 (23.91%) Problem-Solving
3 10 (21.74%) CI/CD
3 10 (21.74%) Platform Engineering
3 10 (21.74%) Project Delivery
4 8 (17.39%) Cybersecurity
4 8 (17.39%) Infrastructure as Code
5 6 (13.04%) Containerisation
6 5 (10.87%) Business Continuity
6 5 (10.87%) ITIL
6 5 (10.87%) Load Balancing
6 5 (10.87%) Root Cause Analysis
7 4 (8.70%) AI
7 4 (8.70%) Computer Science
7 4 (8.70%) Continuous Improvement
7 4 (8.70%) Identity Access Management
7 4 (8.70%) Incident Response
7 4 (8.70%) Mentoring
7 4 (8.70%) Migration
7 4 (8.70%) Operational Stability
Programming Languages
1 13 (28.26%) Python
2 9 (19.57%) PowerShell
3 5 (10.87%) Bash
4 3 (6.52%) Perl
4 3 (6.52%) Shell Script
5 2 (4.35%) Groovy
5 2 (4.35%) Ruby
6 1 (2.17%) ActionScript
6 1 (2.17%) Bicep
6 1 (2.17%) SQL
Qualifications
1 12 (26.09%) Security Cleared
2 10 (21.74%) SC Cleared
3 4 (8.70%) BPSS Clearance
3 4 (8.70%) Degree
4 2 (4.35%) CCDP
4 2 (4.35%) CCNA
4 2 (4.35%) CCNP
4 2 (4.35%) Cisco Certification
4 2 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
4 2 (4.35%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
5 1 (2.17%) Azure Certification
5 1 (2.17%) CISM
5 1 (2.17%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.17%) Cyber Essentials
1 1 (2.17%) GDPR
System Software
1 13 (28.26%) Active Directory
2 9 (19.57%) Docker
2 9 (19.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (10.87%) vSphere
4 4 (8.70%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (4.35%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 2 (4.35%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (2.17%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 10 (21.74%) Terraform
2 8 (17.39%) Kubernetes
3 7 (15.22%) Microsoft Intune
3 7 (15.22%) SCCM
4 4 (8.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 3 (6.52%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (4.35%) CA Single Sign-On
6 2 (4.35%) CA Wily
6 2 (4.35%) Istio
6 2 (4.35%) Progress Chef
6 2 (4.35%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 12 (26.09%) F5
2 11 (23.91%) VMware
3 7 (15.22%) Microsoft
4 5 (10.87%) Citrix
5 4 (8.70%) IBM
5 4 (8.70%) Veeam
6 3 (6.52%) Oracle
6 3 (6.52%) Red Hat
7 2 (4.35%) AppDynamics
7 2 (4.35%) Broadcom
7 2 (4.35%) Gemalto
7 2 (4.35%) Google
7 2 (4.35%) Palo Alto
7 2 (4.35%) Splunk
7 2 (4.35%) Thales
8 1 (2.17%) AlienVault
8 1 (2.17%) Arista
8 1 (2.17%) ServiceNow
8 1 (2.17%) SolarWinds
8 1 (2.17%) Zscaler