Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends in the South East

Infrastructure Engineer
England > South East

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the South East is £465, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 January 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 92 103
Rank change year-on-year -5 +11 -9
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 90 70 107
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 2.01% 2.15% 2.02%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.22% 2.31% 2.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 73 48 83
10th Percentile £219 £350 £302
25th Percentile £270 £360 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% - -
75th Percentile £538 £613 £536
90th Percentile £606 £675 £642
England median daily rate £483 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -3.50% +5.26% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 5
10th Percentile £71.20 - £57.45
25th Percentile £73.00 - £62.63
Median hourly rate £79.50 £24.18 £76.53
Median % change year-on-year +228.78% -68.40% +17.74%
75th Percentile £84.50 - -
90th Percentile £85.40 - -
England median hourly rate £32.00 £24.18 £23.00
% change year-on-year +32.34% +5.13% -63.97%

All Contract IT Job Roles
South East

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the South East. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the South East with a recognized job title 4,052 3,025 4,956
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.41% 92.91% 93.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,627 1,876 3,123
10th Percentile £255 £235 £205
25th Percentile £400 £398 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £600 £613 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
England median daily rate £503 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.29% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 349 106 350
10th Percentile £13.88 £18.60 £13.05
25th Percentile £16.50 £24.18 £19.62
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £47.95
Median % change year-on-year -40.82% -11.36% +10.22%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £62.54
90th Percentile £81.20 £69.38 £75.71
England median hourly rate £29.60 £35.00 £38.45
% change year-on-year -15.43% -8.98% +9.86%

Infrastructure Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Infrastructure Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Infrastructure Engineer job vacancy trend in the South East

Infrastructure Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Infrastructure Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Infrastructure Engineer job vacancies in the South East

Infrastructure Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Infrastructure Engineer in the South East over the 6 months to 24 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Infrastructure Engineer in the South East

Infrastructure Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Infrastructure Engineer job vacancies in the South East.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Infrastructure Engineer job vacancies in the South East

Infrastructure Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Infrastructure Engineer within the South East region over the 6 months to 24 January 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
Thames Valley -1 44 £325 -10.34% 23
Berkshire +14 42 £275 -21.43% 10
Hampshire -26 16 £556 -3.26% 16
Kent +3 11 £338 +3.45% 8
East Sussex +9 7 £333 -36.67% 6
Surrey -13 5 £500 +11.73% 6
West Sussex -11 3 £525 +40.00% 4
Buckinghamshire -8 1 - - 9
Oxfordshire - 1 £400 - 5
Infrastructure Engineer
England

Infrastructure Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East

For the 6 months to 24 January 2026, Infrastructure Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the South East region featuring Infrastructure Engineer in the job title.

1 89 (98.89%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 45 (50.00%) Windows
3 44 (48.89%) VMware
4 43 (47.78%) Microsoft
5 42 (46.67%) Security Cleared
6 36 (40.00%) Azure
6 36 (40.00%) VMware Infrastructure
7 33 (36.67%) Active Directory
8 30 (33.33%) SC Cleared
9 29 (32.22%) Linux
10 23 (25.56%) Problem-Solving
11 21 (23.33%) DNS
11 21 (23.33%) ITIL
12 20 (22.22%) DHCP
13 18 (20.00%) TCP/IP
14 17 (18.89%) Hyper-V
14 17 (18.89%) VLAN
15 15 (16.67%) AWS
15 15 (16.67%) Firewall
16 13 (14.44%) Disaster Recovery
17 12 (13.33%) DevOps
18 11 (12.22%) Ansible
18 11 (12.22%) Azure Certification
18 11 (12.22%) DV Cleared
18 11 (12.22%) Kubernetes
18 11 (12.22%) Microsoft Certification
18 11 (12.22%) Microsoft Exchange
18 11 (12.22%) Network+ Certification
18 11 (12.22%) Preventative Maintenance
18 11 (12.22%) SCCM

Infrastructure Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 11 (12.22%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (3.33%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.11%) Exchange Server 2010
Cloud Services
1 36 (40.00%) Azure
2 15 (16.67%) AWS
3 10 (11.11%) Entra ID
4 9 (10.00%) Microsoft 365
5 7 (7.78%) OneDrive
6 6 (6.67%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (5.56%) Azure Key Vault
7 5 (5.56%) Azure Monitor
8 4 (4.44%) AWS CloudFormation
8 4 (4.44%) Azure AKS
8 4 (4.44%) IaaS
9 3 (3.33%) PaaS
10 2 (2.22%) Nutanix
11 1 (1.11%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 1 (1.11%) Azure Logic Apps
11 1 (1.11%) Azure Sentinel
11 1 (1.11%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 21 (23.33%) DNS
2 20 (22.22%) DHCP
3 18 (20.00%) TCP/IP
4 17 (18.89%) VLAN
5 15 (16.67%) Firewall
6 10 (11.11%) SAN
7 9 (10.00%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (6.67%) 4G
9 2 (2.22%) Fibre Channel
9 2 (2.22%) LAN
9 2 (2.22%) WAN
10 1 (1.11%) MPLS
10 1 (1.11%) Network Security
10 1 (1.11%) SNMP
10 1 (1.11%) Unified Communications
10 1 (1.11%) VoIP
10 1 (1.11%) Wireless
10 1 (1.11%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.22%) SAP HANA
1 2 (2.22%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 1 (1.11%) GitLab
General
1 22 (24.44%) Social Skills
2 13 (14.44%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (6.67%) Public Sector
4 2 (2.22%) Retail
5 1 (1.11%) Aerospace
5 1 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
5 1 (1.11%) Finance
5 1 (1.11%) Legal
5 1 (1.11%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (2.22%) ADO
1 2 (2.22%) ARM Templates
2 1 (1.11%) RESTful
2 1 (1.11%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 12 (13.33%) Analytical Mindset
2 11 (12.22%) PKI
3 6 (6.67%) Replication
4 5 (5.56%) Clustering
5 3 (3.33%) Data Centre
5 3 (3.33%) Self-Motivation
6 2 (2.22%) NHS
7 1 (1.11%) Cloud Native
7 1 (1.11%) Cyber Defence
7 1 (1.11%) Fat Client
7 1 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
7 1 (1.11%) Management Information System
7 1 (1.11%) Private Cloud
7 1 (1.11%) Security Operations Centre
7 1 (1.11%) Smartphone
7 1 (1.11%) Thin Client
7 1 (1.11%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 45 (50.00%) Windows
2 29 (32.22%) Linux
3 10 (11.11%) Windows Server
4 8 (8.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 8 (8.89%) Windows 10
5 2 (2.22%) SUSE
5 2 (2.22%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
6 1 (1.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 89 (98.89%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 23 (25.56%) Problem-Solving
3 21 (23.33%) ITIL
4 13 (14.44%) Disaster Recovery
5 12 (13.33%) DevOps
6 11 (12.22%) Preventative Maintenance
6 11 (12.22%) Service Management
6 11 (12.22%) Virtual Infrastructure
7 10 (11.11%) DevSecOps
7 10 (11.11%) Infrastructure as Code
8 7 (7.78%) Architectural Design
8 7 (7.78%) Containerisation
8 7 (7.78%) Cybersecurity
8 7 (7.78%) Platform Engineering
9 6 (6.67%) Agile
9 6 (6.67%) Analytics
9 6 (6.67%) CI/CD
10 5 (5.56%) Log Analytics
10 5 (5.56%) Security Patching
10 5 (5.56%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 10 (11.11%) PowerShell
2 6 (6.67%) Bicep
3 5 (5.56%) Bash
3 5 (5.56%) Python
4 2 (2.22%) SQL
5 1 (1.11%) Go
5 1 (1.11%) Java
5 1 (1.11%) JavaScript
5 1 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 42 (46.67%) Security Cleared
2 30 (33.33%) SC Cleared
3 11 (12.22%) Azure Certification
3 11 (12.22%) DV Cleared
3 11 (12.22%) Microsoft Certification
3 11 (12.22%) Network+ Certification
3 11 (12.22%) Server+ Certification
4 4 (4.44%) AWS Certification
5 3 (3.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 3 (3.33%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 1 (1.11%) OCP
6 1 (1.11%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (7.78%) SLA
2 1 (1.11%) QA
System Software
1 36 (40.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 33 (36.67%) Active Directory
3 17 (18.89%) Hyper-V
4 10 (11.11%) Docker
5 7 (7.78%) vSphere
6 3 (3.33%) DFS Replication
6 3 (3.33%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (1.11%) Sendmail
7 1 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (1.11%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 11 (12.22%) Ansible
1 11 (12.22%) Kubernetes
1 11 (12.22%) SCCM
1 11 (12.22%) Terraform
2 8 (8.89%) Single Sign-On
3 7 (7.78%) Microsoft Intune
4 6 (6.67%) Red Hat Satellite
5 5 (5.56%) vCenter Server
6 4 (4.44%) VxRail
7 2 (2.22%) Dell DRAC
7 2 (2.22%) FortiGate
8 1 (1.11%) Fluentd
8 1 (1.11%) Grafana
8 1 (1.11%) Prometheus
8 1 (1.11%) Proxmox
8 1 (1.11%) Rundeck
8 1 (1.11%) Salt
Vendors
1 44 (48.89%) VMware
2 43 (47.78%) Microsoft
3 10 (11.11%) Red Hat
4 7 (7.78%) ServiceNow
5 6 (6.67%) Dell
6 5 (5.56%) Citrix
7 3 (3.33%) Fortinet
7 3 (3.33%) Veeam
8 2 (2.22%) Aruba
8 2 (2.22%) SAP
9 1 (1.11%) Arista
9 1 (1.11%) Ericsson
9 1 (1.11%) HP
9 1 (1.11%) Mavenir
9 1 (1.11%) NetApp
9 1 (1.11%) Oracle
9 1 (1.11%) Tanium