3rd Line Support Engineer Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Third Line Support Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Third Line Support Engineer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 December 2025.

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

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 360 348 344
Rank change year-on-year -12 -4 +87
Contract jobs requiring a 3rd Line Support Engineer 45 9 57
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.25% 0.060% 0.29%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.28% 0.065% 0.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 40 7 26
10th Percentile £348 £250 £259
25th Percentile £400 £255 £295
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £350 £325
Median % change year-on-year +35.71% +7.69% -13.33%
75th Percentile £500 £444 £445
90th Percentile - £456 £481
UK median daily rate £475 £420 £325
% change year-on-year +13.10% +29.23% -13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 0
Median hourly rate - £23.34 -
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £24.18 -
% change year-on-year +24.07% - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. 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 UK excluding London with a recognized job title 16,258 13,848 18,397
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.05% 92.36% 93.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,006 8,265 12,022
10th Percentile £210 £213 £213
25th Percentile £369 £363 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £489 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -2.20% -
75th Percentile £575 £591 £600
90th Percentile £675 £676 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,634 795 1,208
10th Percentile £13.85 £15.41 £14.36
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -27.78% +80.76%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.61 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.16 £71.25 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.47 £34.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -25.09% -23.60% +48.33%

3rd Line Support Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring '3rd Line Support Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

3rd Line Support Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

3rd Line Support Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Support Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Support Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

3rd Line Support Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing 3rd Line Support Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 18 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for 3rd Line Support Engineer in the UK excluding London

3rd Line Support Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Support Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for 3rd Line Support Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

3rd Line Support Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing 3rd Line Support Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 18 December 2025. 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
South East - 22 £500 - 9
Midlands -24 17 £400 +53.85% 5
West Midlands -18 16 £400 +53.85% 1
South West - 3 £388 -
Scotland +3 1 - - 1
North West -18 1 - - 3
East of England -21 1 £350 -12.50% 4
North of England -51 1 - - 17
East Midlands - 1 £275 - 4
3rd Line Support Engineer
UK

3rd Line Support Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 18 December 2025, 3rd Line Support 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 UK excluding London region featuring 3rd Line Support Engineer in the job title.

1 38 (84.44%) Security Cleared
2 28 (62.22%) Juniper
3 24 (53.33%) Windows
4 22 (48.89%) Active Directory
4 22 (48.89%) DV Cleared
5 20 (44.44%) Junos
6 19 (42.22%) Cisco
6 19 (42.22%) Windows Server
7 16 (35.56%) Service Management
7 16 (35.56%) SolarWinds
7 16 (35.56%) vCenter Server
7 16 (35.56%) VMware NSX
7 16 (35.56%) VPN
8 15 (33.33%) Cisco Firepower
8 15 (33.33%) Cisco IOS
8 15 (33.33%) Cisco ISE
8 15 (33.33%) ITSM
8 15 (33.33%) SC Cleared
9 14 (31.11%) Load Balancing
10 13 (28.89%) BGP
10 13 (28.89%) IPsec
10 13 (28.89%) MPLS
10 13 (28.89%) WAN
11 10 (22.22%) Network Design
12 9 (20.00%) VMware
13 8 (17.78%) Microsoft
13 8 (17.78%) Problem-Solving
14 7 (15.56%) Microsoft 365
14 7 (15.56%) VMware Infrastructure
15 6 (13.33%) Azure

3rd Line Support Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 5 (11.11%) Microsoft Exchange
1 5 (11.11%) SharePoint
2 3 (6.67%) SharePoint Server
3 2 (4.44%) Exchange Server 2003
3 2 (4.44%) Exchange Server 2007
3 2 (4.44%) Exchange Server 2010
3 2 (4.44%) Exchange Server 2013
3 2 (4.44%) Office Communications Server
3 2 (4.44%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (4.44%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (2.22%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 7 (15.56%) Microsoft 365
2 6 (13.33%) Azure
3 3 (6.67%) Entra ID
4 1 (2.22%) AWS
4 1 (2.22%) Google Workspace
4 1 (2.22%) Microsoft Purview
4 1 (2.22%) Nutanix
4 1 (2.22%) Power Platform
4 1 (2.22%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 20 (44.44%) Junos
2 16 (35.56%) VPN
3 15 (33.33%) Cisco Firepower
3 15 (33.33%) Cisco IOS
3 15 (33.33%) Cisco ISE
4 13 (28.89%) BGP
4 13 (28.89%) IPsec
4 13 (28.89%) MPLS
4 13 (28.89%) WAN
5 4 (8.89%) DNS
6 3 (6.67%) DHCP
7 2 (4.44%) DDNS
7 2 (4.44%) Firewall
7 2 (4.44%) SAN
8 1 (2.22%) Skype
8 1 (2.22%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (8.89%) SQL Server
2 1 (2.22%) Power BI
General
1 5 (11.11%) Public Sector
1 5 (11.11%) Social Skills
2 3 (6.67%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (2.22%) Law
Miscellaneous
1 19 (42.22%) PKI
2 4 (8.89%) Self-Motivation
3 2 (4.44%) Replication
4 1 (2.22%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 24 (53.33%) Windows
2 19 (42.22%) Windows Server
3 5 (11.11%) Linux
4 4 (8.89%) Windows 10
5 2 (4.44%) Windows Server 2003
5 2 (4.44%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (2.22%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (35.56%) Service Management
2 15 (33.33%) ITSM
3 14 (31.11%) Load Balancing
4 10 (22.22%) Network Design
5 8 (17.78%) Problem-Solving
6 6 (13.33%) Migration
7 4 (8.89%) Project Delivery
8 3 (6.67%) Agile
8 3 (6.67%) Business Intelligence
8 3 (6.67%) ITIL
8 3 (6.67%) Platform Engineering
9 2 (4.44%) Architectural Design
9 2 (4.44%) Content Management
9 2 (4.44%) Enterprise Content Management
9 2 (4.44%) Enterprise Search
9 2 (4.44%) High Availability
9 2 (4.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 2 (4.44%) Workflow
9 2 (4.44%) Workflow Management
10 1 (2.22%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 2 (4.44%) PowerShell
2 1 (2.22%) SQL
Qualifications
1 38 (84.44%) Security Cleared
2 22 (48.89%) DV Cleared
3 15 (33.33%) SC Cleared
4 1 (2.22%) Degree
4 1 (2.22%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (2.22%) SLA
System Software
1 22 (48.89%) Active Directory
2 16 (35.56%) VMware NSX
3 7 (15.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (8.89%) Hyper-V
5 2 (4.44%) Brightmail
5 2 (4.44%) ISA Server
5 2 (4.44%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 16 (35.56%) vCenter Server
2 3 (6.67%) Microsoft Intune
3 2 (4.44%) Microsoft Clustering
3 2 (4.44%) SCCM
3 2 (4.44%) SCOM
4 1 (2.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 28 (62.22%) Juniper
2 19 (42.22%) Cisco
3 16 (35.56%) SolarWinds
4 9 (20.00%) VMware
5 8 (17.78%) Microsoft
6 2 (4.44%) CheckPoint
7 1 (2.22%) HP
7 1 (2.22%) QNAP
7 1 (2.22%) Red Hat
7 1 (2.22%) Veeam
7 1 (2.22%) Veritas