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 5 April 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 572 481 476
Rank change year-on-year -91 -5 +73
Contract jobs requiring a 3rd Line Engineer 59 49 125
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.13% 0.17% 0.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.14% 0.18% 0.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 43 77
10th Percentile £313 £247 £250
25th Percentile £413 £358 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £405 £350
Median % change year-on-year +23.46% +15.71% -12.50%
75th Percentile £511 £588 £388
90th Percentile £638 £600 £480
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £467 £325
% change year-on-year +7.18% +43.54% -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 41,784 27,118 40,940
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.22% 92.78% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,031 17,841 26,815
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.31%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.63% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,612 956 2,534
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.91 £20.26 £16.25
Median hourly rate £40.00 £32.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -5.26% -24.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.06 £31.29 £34.61
% change year-on-year +31.21% -9.58% -18.32%

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 5 April 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 10 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 5 April 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 -94 59 £500 +12.17% 57
UK excluding London -92 34 £500 +7.18% 55
London -45 25 £500 +24.88% 9
South East -42 24 £500 -12.05% 19
Midlands -63 7 £335 -10.67% 5
Work from Home -37 6 £335 -16.25% 14
West Midlands -57 3 £400 +6.67% 2
South West -24 2 £500 +33.33% 4
East Midlands - 2 £248 - 3
East of England -32 1 - - 8

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

For the 6 months to 5 April 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 48 (81.36%) Security Cleared
2 36 (61.02%) DV Cleared
3 32 (54.24%) Windows
4 26 (44.07%) Active Directory
5 25 (42.37%) Windows Server
6 24 (40.68%) PowerShell
6 24 (40.68%) VMware
7 21 (35.59%) vCenter Server
8 20 (33.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 19 (32.20%) DNS
9 19 (32.20%) VMware Infrastructure
10 18 (30.51%) Microsoft
11 17 (28.81%) ITSM
12 16 (27.12%) Firewall
13 15 (25.42%) Linux
13 15 (25.42%) VPN
14 14 (23.73%) DHCP
14 14 (23.73%) NetApp
14 14 (23.73%) SCCM
15 12 (20.34%) Change Management
15 12 (20.34%) Problem-Solving
16 11 (18.64%) SC Cleared
17 10 (16.95%) Agile
17 10 (16.95%) Hyper-V
17 10 (16.95%) Juniper
18 9 (15.25%) Azure
18 9 (15.25%) Cisco
18 9 (15.25%) ITIL
19 8 (13.56%) Ansible
19 8 (13.56%) BitLocker

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 8 (13.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (1.69%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (5.08%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 9 (15.25%) Azure
2 7 (11.86%) IaaS
2 7 (11.86%) PaaS
3 6 (10.17%) Microsoft 365
4 4 (6.78%) Entra ID
5 3 (5.08%) AWS
6 1 (1.69%) GCP
6 1 (1.69%) Power Platform
6 1 (1.69%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 19 (32.20%) DNS
2 16 (27.12%) Firewall
3 15 (25.42%) VPN
4 14 (23.73%) DHCP
5 8 (13.56%) Cisco Firepower
5 8 (13.56%) Cisco IOS
5 8 (13.56%) Cisco ISE
5 8 (13.56%) Junos
5 8 (13.56%) SMTP
6 5 (8.47%) NX-OS
7 4 (6.78%) WAN
8 3 (5.08%) VLAN
9 2 (3.39%) BGP
9 2 (3.39%) DKIM
9 2 (3.39%) IPsec
9 2 (3.39%) LAN
9 2 (3.39%) MPLS
9 2 (3.39%) TCP/IP
10 1 (1.69%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (11.86%) Elasticsearch
2 3 (5.08%) Data Mining
3 1 (1.69%) Amazon RDS
General
1 9 (15.25%) Social Skills
2 8 (13.56%) Analytical Skills
2 8 (13.56%) Public Sector
3 2 (3.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 1 (1.69%) Aerospace
4 1 (1.69%) Law
Miscellaneous
1 19 (32.20%) PKI
2 8 (13.56%) Clustering
3 7 (11.86%) Enterprise Storage
4 4 (6.78%) Analytical Mindset
5 2 (3.39%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (1.69%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.69%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.69%) Operational Technology
6 1 (1.69%) Security Posture
6 1 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.69%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 32 (54.24%) Windows
2 25 (42.37%) Windows Server
3 15 (25.42%) Linux
4 7 (11.86%) Windows Server 2003
5 4 (6.78%) Windows 10
6 2 (3.39%) Mac OS
7 1 (1.69%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (33.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 17 (28.81%) ITSM
3 12 (20.34%) Change Management
3 12 (20.34%) Problem-Solving
4 10 (16.95%) Agile
5 9 (15.25%) ITIL
6 7 (11.86%) Incident Management
7 6 (10.17%) Service Delivery
8 5 (8.47%) Creative Thinking
8 5 (8.47%) Mentoring
8 5 (8.47%) Platform Engineering
8 5 (8.47%) Service Management
9 4 (6.78%) Network Virtualisation
10 3 (5.08%) Change Control
10 3 (5.08%) Customer Service
10 3 (5.08%) Identity Management
10 3 (5.08%) Infrastructure Monitoring
10 3 (5.08%) Performance Metrics
10 3 (5.08%) Root Cause Analysis
10 3 (5.08%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 24 (40.68%) PowerShell
2 2 (3.39%) VBScript
3 1 (1.69%) Bash
3 1 (1.69%) Python
3 1 (1.69%) SQL
Qualifications
1 48 (81.36%) Security Cleared
2 36 (61.02%) DV Cleared
3 11 (18.64%) SC Cleared
4 3 (5.08%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (3.39%) Degree
5 2 (3.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 1 (1.69%) CCNA
6 1 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
6 1 (1.69%) MCSE
6 1 (1.69%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (6.78%) Cyber Essentials
1 4 (6.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (3.39%) GDPR
System Software
1 26 (44.07%) Active Directory
2 19 (32.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 10 (16.95%) Hyper-V
4 8 (13.56%) BitLocker
4 8 (13.56%) Microsoft App-V
4 8 (13.56%) VMware ESXi
4 8 (13.56%) VMware NSX
5 7 (11.86%) Docker
6 4 (6.78%) Firmware
7 3 (5.08%) vSphere
8 2 (3.39%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (1.69%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 21 (35.59%) vCenter Server
2 14 (23.73%) SCCM
3 8 (13.56%) Ansible
3 8 (13.56%) SCOM
3 8 (13.56%) vMotion
4 7 (11.86%) Kubernetes
4 7 (11.86%) Microsoft Intune
4 7 (11.86%) Puppet
5 3 (5.08%) Backup Exec
5 3 (5.08%) SCSM
6 1 (1.69%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 24 (40.68%) VMware
2 18 (30.51%) Microsoft
3 14 (23.73%) NetApp
4 10 (16.95%) Juniper
5 9 (15.25%) Cisco
6 8 (13.56%) Citrix
6 8 (13.56%) SolarWinds
7 5 (8.47%) Broadcom
8 4 (6.78%) HP
9 3 (5.08%) McAfee
9 3 (5.08%) Trend Micro
9 3 (5.08%) Veeam
10 2 (3.39%) Proofpoint
11 1 (1.69%) Apple
11 1 (1.69%) Barracuda Networks
11 1 (1.69%) Dell
11 1 (1.69%) Google
11 1 (1.69%) Red Hat
11 1 (1.69%) ServiceNow
11 1 (1.69%) Symantec