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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 74 84 63
Rank change year-on-year +10 -21 -11
Contract jobs citing Infrastructure Engineering 91 41 79
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 2.60% 2.06% 2.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.13% 2.30% 3.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 58 19 52
10th Percentile £350 £313 £313
25th Percentile £401 £368 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year +4.79% +16.67% -5.26%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £541
90th Percentile £679 £580 £624
England median daily rate £525 £525 £500
% change year-on-year - +5.00% -1.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 10
10th Percentile - - £37.63
25th Percentile - - £45.00
Median hourly rate £33.64 - £45.59
75th Percentile - - £46.18
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £72.54 £72.50 £54.88
% change year-on-year +0.06% +32.12% -24.31%

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 2,911 1,783 2,378
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 83.27% 89.64% 83.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,715 1,186 1,451
10th Percentile £300 £306 £308
25th Percentile £400 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £455 £495
Median % change year-on-year +4.45% -8.13% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £553 £585
90th Percentile £675 £664 £675
England median daily rate £520 £518 £525
% change year-on-year +0.48% -1.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 101 270
10th Percentile £17.33 £12.82 £11.00
25th Percentile £27.14 £19.25 £14.15
Median hourly rate £55.00 £32.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.88% +6.67% -1.77%
75th Percentile £76.00 £63.40 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £83.41 £66.61
England median hourly rate £47.00 £27.13 £37.63
% change year-on-year +73.27% -27.91% +5.54%

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 June 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 June 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 -8 50 £513 +15.82% 34
Lancashire +8 27 £575 +31.43% 14
Cheshire +1 8 £487 -3.66% 6
Merseyside -8 4 £350 +62.79% 5
Cumbria -15 2 £350 -33.33% 2
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 2 (2.20%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (1.10%) Confluence
2 1 (1.10%) nginx
2 1 (1.10%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (2.20%) Chatbot
2 1 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (1.10%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 33 (36.26%) Azure
2 22 (24.18%) AWS
3 14 (15.38%) OCI
3 14 (15.38%) SaaS
4 7 (7.69%) Entra ID
4 7 (7.69%) GCP
4 7 (7.69%) Microsoft 365
5 6 (6.59%) GitHub
6 5 (5.49%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (4.40%) Serverless
8 3 (3.30%) Azure Monitor
8 3 (3.30%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (2.20%) Azure AKS
9 2 (2.20%) Azure Functions
9 2 (2.20%) Azure Logic Apps
9 2 (2.20%) Azure Storage
9 2 (2.20%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 2 (2.20%) Nutanix
10 1 (1.10%) Azure Key Vault
10 1 (1.10%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 26 (28.57%) Firewall
2 20 (21.98%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
3 14 (15.38%) BIG-IP
4 12 (13.19%) BGP
4 12 (13.19%) DNS
4 12 (13.19%) Ethernet VPN
4 12 (13.19%) OSPF
4 12 (13.19%) VXLAN
5 11 (12.09%) WLAN
6 10 (10.99%) SD-WAN
6 10 (10.99%) WAN
6 10 (10.99%) Wi-Fi
7 3 (3.30%) Network Security
7 3 (3.30%) SAN
8 2 (2.20%) DHCP
8 2 (2.20%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
8 2 (2.20%) NetScaler
8 2 (2.20%) TCP/IP
8 2 (2.20%) VPN
9 1 (1.10%) DMZ
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (4.40%) Relational Database
2 3 (3.30%) Oracle Database
2 3 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (2.20%) Oracle Exadata
3 2 (2.20%) RDBMS
3 2 (2.20%) SQL Server
4 1 (1.10%) MongoDB
4 1 (1.10%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 15 (16.48%) GitLab
2 6 (6.59%) Git
3 4 (4.40%) Jenkins
4 2 (2.20%) JIRA
5 1 (1.10%) Claude Code
General
1 13 (14.29%) Public Sector
2 8 (8.79%) Finance
3 7 (7.69%) Social Skills
4 5 (5.49%) Banking
5 3 (3.30%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (3.30%) Military
5 3 (3.30%) Retail
6 1 (1.10%) Games
6 1 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 66 (72.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 34 (37.36%) Senior
3 32 (35.16%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
4 5 (5.49%) Infrastructure Support
5 4 (4.40%) Architect
5 4 (4.40%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
5 4 (4.40%) IT Engineer
5 4 (4.40%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
5 4 (4.40%) IT Support
5 4 (4.40%) IT Support Engineer
5 4 (4.40%) Platform Engineer
5 4 (4.40%) Security Engineer
5 4 (4.40%) Support Engineer
6 3 (3.30%) Analyst
6 3 (3.30%) Azure Engineer
6 3 (3.30%) Cybersecurity Engineer
6 3 (3.30%) Infrastructure Analyst
6 3 (3.30%) Infrastructure Security Engineer
6 3 (3.30%) Infrastructure Services Engineer
6 3 (3.30%) Senior Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (2.20%) ARM Templates
1 2 (2.20%) GraphQL
1 2 (2.20%) OAuth
1 2 (2.20%) Oracle GoldenGate
1 2 (2.20%) REST
2 1 (1.10%) Flash
2 1 (1.10%) Hugging Face
2 1 (1.10%) JSON
2 1 (1.10%) Kafka
2 1 (1.10%) LangChain
2 1 (1.10%) Middleware
2 1 (1.10%) vLLM
Miscellaneous
1 15 (16.48%) Data Centre
2 13 (14.29%) Public Cloud
3 10 (10.99%) Hybrid Cloud
4 9 (9.89%) Cloud Native
5 3 (3.30%) Private Cloud
6 2 (2.20%) AI Agents
6 2 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (2.20%) Driving Licence
6 2 (2.20%) Linux Command Line
6 2 (2.20%) Onboarding
7 1 (1.10%) Algorithms
7 1 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.10%) Animation
7 1 (1.10%) CMDB
7 1 (1.10%) Data Structures
7 1 (1.10%) Management Information System
7 1 (1.10%) NHS
7 1 (1.10%) Replication
7 1 (1.10%) Security Posture
7 1 (1.10%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 13 (14.29%) Linux
2 11 (12.09%) Windows
3 8 (8.79%) Windows Server
4 3 (3.30%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (2.20%) AIX
5 2 (2.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (2.20%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (1.10%) CentOS
6 1 (1.10%) Ubuntu
6 1 (1.10%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (35.16%) Infrastructure as Code
2 27 (29.67%) DevOps
3 26 (28.57%) CI/CD
4 17 (18.68%) Project Delivery
5 15 (16.48%) Load Balancing
6 14 (15.38%) High Availability
6 14 (15.38%) Zero Trust
7 11 (12.09%) Network Architecture
7 11 (12.09%) Network Design
8 10 (10.99%) Migration
8 10 (10.99%) Site Reliability Engineering
9 9 (9.89%) Containerisation
10 8 (8.79%) Problem-Solving
11 7 (7.69%) Platform Engineering
12 6 (6.59%) AI
12 6 (6.59%) Root Cause Analysis
13 5 (5.49%) Agile
13 5 (5.49%) Business Continuity
13 5 (5.49%) Data Protection
13 5 (5.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 24 (26.37%) Python
2 11 (12.09%) PowerShell
3 7 (7.69%) Bash
4 6 (6.59%) Bicep
5 2 (2.20%) ActionScript
6 1 (1.10%) C#
6 1 (1.10%) Shell Script
6 1 (1.10%) SQL
Qualifications
1 15 (16.48%) Security Cleared
2 9 (9.89%) SC Cleared
3 4 (4.40%) Azure Certification
4 2 (2.20%) Degree
5 1 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 4 (4.40%) NIST
2 1 (1.10%) SLA
System Software
1 11 (12.09%) Docker
2 10 (10.99%) Active Directory
3 8 (8.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (7.69%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (3.30%) Hyper-V
5 3 (3.30%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (2.20%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (2.20%) vSphere
7 1 (1.10%) GPFS
7 1 (1.10%) NFS
Systems Management
1 28 (30.77%) Terraform
2 17 (18.68%) Ansible
3 14 (15.38%) Kubernetes
4 4 (4.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (2.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (2.20%) Data Guard
5 2 (2.20%) Grafana
5 2 (2.20%) Istio
5 2 (2.20%) Oracle RMAN
5 2 (2.20%) Prometheus
5 2 (2.20%) SCCM
5 2 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (1.10%) Argo
6 1 (1.10%) Backup Exec
6 1 (1.10%) Packer
6 1 (1.10%) Progress Chef
6 1 (1.10%) Puppet
6 1 (1.10%) vCenter Server
6 1 (1.10%) WSUS
Vendors
1 24 (26.37%) F5
2 13 (14.29%) Palo Alto
3 11 (12.09%) Arista
3 11 (12.09%) Microsoft
4 10 (10.99%) Aruba
4 10 (10.99%) VMware
5 4 (4.40%) Oracle
6 3 (3.30%) Red Hat
6 3 (3.30%) Veeam
7 2 (2.20%) Google
7 2 (2.20%) ServiceNow
8 1 (1.10%) Cisco
8 1 (1.10%) Citrix
8 1 (1.10%) DocuSign
8 1 (1.10%) IBM
8 1 (1.10%) Perforce
8 1 (1.10%) Symantec
8 1 (1.10%) Tanium