3rd Line Engineer Contract Job Trends

Third Line Engineer
UK

The median Third Line Engineer daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 March 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 566 472 453
Rank change year-on-year -94 -19 +126
Contract jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 63 39 142
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.13% 0.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.16% 0.14% 0.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 35 82
10th Percentile £339 £241 £250
25th Percentile £413 £350 £283
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £390 £337
Median % change year-on-year +28.21% +15.81% -15.81%
75th Percentile - £481 £388
90th Percentile £638 £600 £475
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £375 £325
% change year-on-year +33.33% +15.38% -13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £24.66 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 39,729 27,628 41,284
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.88% 92.94% 92.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,809 17,866 27,104
10th Percentile £313 £297 £270
25th Percentile £410 £406 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.37%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £721 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £485
% change year-on-year +1.05% -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,476 879 2,491
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.32 £12.92
25th Percentile £19.08 £21.13 £16.25
Median hourly rate £35.71 £33.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.21% +1.54% -23.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £59.44
90th Percentile £75.79 £77.50 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year +7.69% - -20.36%

3rd Line Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

3rd Line Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

3rd Line Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

3rd Line Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing 3rd Line Engineer over the 6 months to 15 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for 3rd Line Engineer in the UK

3rd Line Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

3rd Line Engineer
Top 12 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing 3rd Line Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 15 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
England -72 63 £500 +25.00% 59
UK excluding London -63 38 £500 +33.33% 54
South East -33 27 £500 -9.09% 23
London -35 25 £450 +13.92% 13
Midlands -53 7 £400 +6.67% 7
Work from Home -35 5 £380 -5.00% 25
West Midlands -63 4 £400 +6.67% 5
South West -31 2 £500 +33.33% 2
East Midlands - 2 £248 - 2
East of England -28 1 - - 8
North West -30 1 - - 1
North of England -65 1 - - 13

3rd Line Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 15 March 2026, 3rd Line 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 featuring 3rd Line Engineer in the job title.

1 50 (79.37%) Security Cleared
2 37 (58.73%) DV Cleared
3 32 (50.79%) Windows
4 28 (44.44%) Active Directory
5 25 (39.68%) Windows Server
6 24 (38.10%) PowerShell
6 24 (38.10%) vCenter Server
7 22 (34.92%) VMware
8 21 (33.33%) ITSM
9 19 (30.16%) DNS
10 17 (26.98%) Microsoft
10 17 (26.98%) VPN
11 16 (25.40%) Juniper
11 16 (25.40%) VMware Infrastructure
12 15 (23.81%) Firewall
12 15 (23.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 14 (22.22%) DHCP
13 14 (22.22%) Linux
14 13 (20.63%) Cisco
14 13 (20.63%) Problem-Solving
15 12 (19.05%) Change Management
15 12 (19.05%) Cisco Firepower
15 12 (19.05%) Cisco IOS
15 12 (19.05%) Cisco ISE
15 12 (19.05%) Junos
15 12 (19.05%) SolarWinds
15 12 (19.05%) VMware NSX
16 11 (17.46%) Azure
16 11 (17.46%) Microsoft Exchange
16 11 (17.46%) NetApp

3rd Line Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 (17.46%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (3.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 11 (17.46%) Azure
2 9 (14.29%) Microsoft 365
3 7 (11.11%) Entra ID
4 6 (9.52%) IaaS
4 6 (9.52%) PaaS
5 3 (4.76%) AWS
6 2 (3.17%) Power Platform
6 2 (3.17%) PowerApps
7 1 (1.59%) GCP
7 1 (1.59%) Microsoft Purview
7 1 (1.59%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 19 (30.16%) DNS
2 17 (26.98%) VPN
3 15 (23.81%) Firewall
4 14 (22.22%) DHCP
5 12 (19.05%) Cisco Firepower
5 12 (19.05%) Cisco IOS
5 12 (19.05%) Cisco ISE
5 12 (19.05%) Junos
6 7 (11.11%) SMTP
7 6 (9.52%) WAN
8 5 (7.94%) NX-OS
9 4 (6.35%) BGP
9 4 (6.35%) IPsec
9 4 (6.35%) MPLS
10 3 (4.76%) VLAN
11 2 (3.17%) LAN
11 2 (3.17%) TCP/IP
12 1 (1.59%) DKIM
12 1 (1.59%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (9.52%) Elasticsearch
2 1 (1.59%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (1.59%) Data Mining
2 1 (1.59%) Power BI
2 1 (1.59%) SQL Server
General
1 9 (14.29%) Public Sector
1 9 (14.29%) Social Skills
2 8 (12.70%) Analytical Skills
3 2 (3.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 1 (1.59%) Aerospace
4 1 (1.59%) Law
4 1 (1.59%) Local Government
Miscellaneous
1 20 (31.75%) PKI
2 7 (11.11%) Clustering
3 6 (9.52%) Enterprise Storage
4 4 (6.35%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (3.17%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (1.59%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.59%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.59%) Operational Technology
6 1 (1.59%) Security Posture
6 1 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.59%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 32 (50.79%) Windows
2 25 (39.68%) Windows Server
3 14 (22.22%) Linux
4 6 (9.52%) Windows Server 2003
5 4 (6.35%) Windows 10
6 3 (4.76%) Mac OS
7 2 (3.17%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (1.59%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (33.33%) ITSM
2 15 (23.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 13 (20.63%) Problem-Solving
4 12 (19.05%) Change Management
5 10 (15.87%) Agile
5 10 (15.87%) ITIL
6 9 (14.29%) Service Management
7 6 (9.52%) Incident Management
7 6 (9.52%) Mentoring
8 5 (7.94%) Creative Thinking
8 5 (7.94%) Load Balancing
8 5 (7.94%) Platform Engineering
9 4 (6.35%) Change Control
9 4 (6.35%) Customer Service
9 4 (6.35%) Network Design
9 4 (6.35%) Network Virtualisation
9 4 (6.35%) Root Cause Analysis
9 4 (6.35%) Service Delivery
9 4 (6.35%) Zero Trust
10 3 (4.76%) Identity Management
Programming Languages
1 24 (38.10%) PowerShell
2 2 (3.17%) Bash
2 2 (3.17%) SQL
2 2 (3.17%) VBScript
3 1 (1.59%) Python
Qualifications
1 50 (79.37%) Security Cleared
2 37 (58.73%) DV Cleared
3 11 (17.46%) SC Cleared
4 3 (4.76%) Degree
4 3 (4.76%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (3.17%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 1 (1.59%) CCNA
6 1 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
6 1 (1.59%) MCSE
6 1 (1.59%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (6.35%) Cyber Essentials
1 4 (6.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (3.17%) GDPR
System Software
1 28 (44.44%) Active Directory
2 16 (25.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (19.05%) VMware NSX
4 9 (14.29%) Hyper-V
5 7 (11.11%) BitLocker
5 7 (11.11%) Microsoft App-V
5 7 (11.11%) VMware ESXi
6 6 (9.52%) Docker
7 4 (6.35%) Firmware
8 2 (3.17%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (1.59%) Terminal Services
9 1 (1.59%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 24 (38.10%) vCenter Server
2 10 (15.87%) SCCM
3 9 (14.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (11.11%) Ansible
4 7 (11.11%) vMotion
5 6 (9.52%) Kubernetes
5 6 (9.52%) Puppet
5 6 (9.52%) SCOM
6 2 (3.17%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (1.59%) Backup Exec
7 1 (1.59%) SCSM
Vendors
1 22 (34.92%) VMware
2 17 (26.98%) Microsoft
3 16 (25.40%) Juniper
4 13 (20.63%) Cisco
5 12 (19.05%) SolarWinds
6 11 (17.46%) NetApp
7 7 (11.11%) Citrix
8 5 (7.94%) Broadcom
9 2 (3.17%) Apple
9 2 (3.17%) HP
9 2 (3.17%) Proofpoint
10 1 (1.59%) Barracuda Networks
10 1 (1.59%) Dell
10 1 (1.59%) Google
10 1 (1.59%) McAfee
10 1 (1.59%) Red Hat
10 1 (1.59%) ServiceNow
10 1 (1.59%) Symantec
10 1 (1.59%) Trend Micro
10 1 (1.59%) Veeam