3rd Line Engineer Contract Job Trends

Third Line Engineer
UK

The median Third Line Engineer daily rate in the UK is £488, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 November 2025.

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

6 months to
24 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 508 500 467
Rank change year-on-year -8 -33 +116
Contract jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 84 59 156
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.24% 0.16% 0.34%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.26% 0.17% 0.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 72 40 74
10th Percentile £301 £273 £258
25th Percentile £400 £361 £290
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £403 £342
Median % change year-on-year +21.12% +17.78% -8.87%
75th Percentile £500 £466 £400
90th Percentile £550 £538 £484
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £375 £325
% change year-on-year +33.33% +15.38% -13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 0
10th Percentile - £21.84 -
25th Percentile £29.00 £22.72 -
Median hourly rate £30.00 £24.18 -
Median % change year-on-year +24.07% - -
75th Percentile £60.32 £42.09 -
90th Percentile £77.90 £52.84 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £89.63 £23.34 -
% change year-on-year +284.02% - -

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 32,350 33,960 43,317
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.99% 92.81% 93.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,481 20,515 29,296
10th Percentile £280 £300 £290
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,914 1,266 1,538
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.22 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.50 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.75
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.79% +49.17%
75th Percentile £56.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +80.00%

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 24 November 2025.

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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing 3rd Line Engineer over the 6 months to 24 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for 3rd Line Engineer in the UK

3rd Line Engineer
Top 13 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 24 November 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
England -7 80 £500 +25.00% 69
UK excluding London -5 63 £500 +33.33% 67
South East +26 36 £500 +25.00% 40
London -11 19 £425 +1.19% 12
West Midlands -6 17 £400 +45.45% 3
Midlands -19 17 £400 +45.45% 7
Work from Home +13 15 £288 -29.01% 17
South West +3 4 £350 -6.67% 5
Wales +1 3 £200 -45.21% 3
Scotland +2 1 - -
East of England -14 1 £350 -17.65% 8
North West -21 1 - -
North of England -38 1 - - 6

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

For the 6 months to 24 November 2025, 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 59 (70.24%) Security Cleared
2 41 (48.81%) Active Directory
3 39 (46.43%) Windows
4 35 (41.67%) DV Cleared
5 34 (40.48%) Juniper
6 29 (34.52%) Cisco
7 27 (32.14%) Windows Server
8 26 (30.95%) Junos
8 26 (30.95%) Microsoft
9 25 (29.76%) ITSM
10 24 (28.57%) SC Cleared
10 24 (28.57%) vCenter Server
11 22 (26.19%) Azure
12 21 (25.00%) SolarWinds
12 21 (25.00%) VMware NSX
12 21 (25.00%) VPN
12 21 (25.00%) WAN
13 20 (23.81%) Cisco Firepower
13 20 (23.81%) Cisco IOS
13 20 (23.81%) Cisco ISE
14 19 (22.62%) Microsoft 365
14 19 (22.62%) Microsoft Intune
15 18 (21.43%) Service Management
16 16 (19.05%) Firewall
16 16 (19.05%) VMware
17 15 (17.86%) Load Balancing
17 15 (17.86%) Microsoft Exchange
17 15 (17.86%) PowerShell
18 14 (16.67%) BGP
18 14 (16.67%) Entra ID

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 15 (17.86%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (7.14%) SharePoint
3 4 (4.76%) SharePoint Server
4 3 (3.57%) Apache
4 3 (3.57%) Exchange Server 2003
4 3 (3.57%) Exchange Server 2007
4 3 (3.57%) Exchange Server 2010
4 3 (3.57%) Exchange Server 2013
4 3 (3.57%) Office Communications Server
4 3 (3.57%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 5 (5.95%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (1.19%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 22 (26.19%) Azure
2 19 (22.62%) Microsoft 365
3 14 (16.67%) Entra ID
4 4 (4.76%) AWS
5 2 (2.38%) Microsoft Purview
5 2 (2.38%) Nutanix
5 2 (2.38%) Power Platform
6 1 (1.19%) GCP
6 1 (1.19%) Google Workspace
6 1 (1.19%) IaaS
6 1 (1.19%) OneDrive
6 1 (1.19%) PaaS
6 1 (1.19%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 26 (30.95%) Junos
2 21 (25.00%) VPN
2 21 (25.00%) WAN
3 20 (23.81%) Cisco Firepower
3 20 (23.81%) Cisco IOS
3 20 (23.81%) Cisco ISE
4 16 (19.05%) Firewall
5 14 (16.67%) BGP
5 14 (16.67%) IPsec
5 14 (16.67%) MPLS
6 13 (15.48%) DNS
7 10 (11.90%) DHCP
8 6 (7.14%) SAN
9 5 (5.95%) LAN
10 4 (4.76%) NX-OS
10 4 (4.76%) TCP/IP
11 3 (3.57%) DDNS
12 2 (2.38%) Wi-Fi
13 1 (1.19%) VLAN
13 1 (1.19%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (4.76%) SQL Server
2 1 (1.19%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 3 (3.57%) MSI
1 3 (3.57%) Robot Framework
1 3 (3.57%) Sonatype Nexus
2 1 (1.19%) JIRA
General
1 11 (13.10%) Social Skills
2 9 (10.71%) Public Sector
3 4 (4.76%) Analytical Skills
3 4 (4.76%) Local Government
4 3 (3.57%) Finance
5 2 (2.38%) Banking
6 1 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (2.38%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 25 (29.76%) PKI
2 4 (4.76%) Self-Motivation
3 3 (3.57%) Data Centre
3 3 (3.57%) Onboarding
3 3 (3.57%) Replication
4 2 (2.38%) Analytical Mindset
4 2 (2.38%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (1.19%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 39 (46.43%) Windows
2 27 (32.14%) Windows Server
3 6 (7.14%) Linux
3 6 (7.14%) Mac OS
3 6 (7.14%) Windows 10
4 4 (4.76%) Windows Server 2019
5 3 (3.57%) CentOS
5 3 (3.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (3.57%) Windows Server 2003
6 2 (2.38%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (29.76%) ITSM
2 18 (21.43%) Service Management
3 15 (17.86%) Load Balancing
4 11 (13.10%) Network Design
4 11 (13.10%) Problem-Solving
5 10 (11.90%) ITIL
6 8 (9.52%) Cybersecurity
7 7 (8.33%) Change Management
7 7 (8.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 6 (7.14%) Agile
8 6 (7.14%) Migration
8 6 (7.14%) Project Delivery
9 5 (5.95%) Mentoring
9 5 (5.95%) Root Cause Analysis
9 5 (5.95%) Workflow
10 4 (4.76%) Business Intelligence
10 4 (4.76%) Customer Service
10 4 (4.76%) DevOps
10 4 (4.76%) Zero Trust
11 3 (3.57%) Batch Scripting
Programming Languages
1 15 (17.86%) PowerShell
2 4 (4.76%) Bash
3 3 (3.57%) PHP
3 3 (3.57%) Python
4 1 (1.19%) SQL
4 1 (1.19%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 59 (70.24%) Security Cleared
2 35 (41.67%) DV Cleared
3 24 (28.57%) SC Cleared
4 3 (3.57%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (2.38%) Degree
5 2 (2.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 1 (1.19%) A+ Certification
6 1 (1.19%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.57%) GDPR
1 3 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (2.38%) Cyber Essentials
2 2 (2.38%) SLA
System Software
1 41 (48.81%) Active Directory
2 21 (25.00%) VMware NSX
3 10 (11.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (5.95%) Hyper-V
5 3 (3.57%) Brightmail
5 3 (3.57%) Firmware
5 3 (3.57%) ISA Server
5 3 (3.57%) vSphere
6 2 (2.38%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (2.38%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (1.19%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 24 (28.57%) vCenter Server
2 19 (22.62%) Microsoft Intune
3 8 (9.52%) SCCM
4 5 (5.95%) Jamf Pro
5 4 (4.76%) SCOM
5 4 (4.76%) Terraform
6 3 (3.57%) AirWatch
6 3 (3.57%) Ansible
6 3 (3.57%) Microsoft Clustering
6 3 (3.57%) WMI
7 2 (2.38%) FortiGate
8 1 (1.19%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 1 (1.19%) McAfee ePO
8 1 (1.19%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 34 (40.48%) Juniper
2 29 (34.52%) Cisco
3 26 (30.95%) Microsoft
4 21 (25.00%) SolarWinds
5 16 (19.05%) VMware
6 5 (5.95%) Apple
7 4 (4.76%) Broadcom
8 3 (3.57%) CheckPoint
8 3 (3.57%) HP
8 3 (3.57%) Palo Alto
8 3 (3.57%) Sophos
9 2 (2.38%) Adobe
9 2 (2.38%) Proofpoint
10 1 (1.19%) Canon
10 1 (1.19%) McAfee
10 1 (1.19%) QNAP
10 1 (1.19%) Red Hat
10 1 (1.19%) ServiceNow
10 1 (1.19%) Veeam
10 1 (1.19%) Veritas