3rd Line Infrastructure Support Contracts

Third Line Infrastructure Support
UK

The median Third Line Infrastructure Support daily rate in the UK is £575, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 510 577 697
Rank change year-on-year +67 +120 +144
Contract jobs requiring a 3rd Line Infrastructure Support 10 5 21
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.034% 0.011% 0.035%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.037% 0.012% 0.037%
Number of daily rates quoted 10 5 15
10th Percentile - £260 £323
25th Percentile £563 £275 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £340 £400
Median % change year-on-year +69.12% -15.00% +2.56%
75th Percentile £617 £370 £450
90th Percentile £623 £381 £543
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £340 £375
% change year-on-year +69.12% -9.33% +29.31%

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 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

3rd Line Infrastructure Support
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured 3rd Line Infrastructure Support in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for 3rd Line Infrastructure Support in the UK

3rd Line Infrastructure Support
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing 3rd Line Infrastructure Support.

Daily rate trend for 3rd Line Infrastructure Support in the UK

3rd Line Infrastructure Support
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing 3rd Line Infrastructure Support.

Hourly rate trend for 3rd Line Infrastructure Support in the UK

3rd Line Infrastructure Support
Top 3 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing 3rd Line Infrastructure Support within the UK over the 6 months to 1 May 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
UK excluding London +68 10 £575 +69.12% 1
England +64 10 £575 +91.67% 1
South East +55 10 £575 +53.33%

3rd Line Infrastructure Support Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, 3rd Line Infrastructure Support contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring 3rd Line Infrastructure Support in the job title.

1 10 (100.00%) Windows
1 10 (100.00%) DHCP
1 10 (100.00%) DNS
1 10 (100.00%) Microsoft
1 10 (100.00%) Active Directory
1 10 (100.00%) Firewall
1 10 (100.00%) VMware
1 10 (100.00%) VMware Infrastructure
1 10 (100.00%) PaaS
1 10 (100.00%) DevOps
1 10 (100.00%) IaaS
1 10 (100.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 7 (70.00%) Windows Server
2 7 (70.00%) vCenter Server
2 7 (70.00%) Amazon RDS
2 7 (70.00%) Data Centre
2 7 (70.00%) GCP
2 7 (70.00%) vMotion
2 7 (70.00%) Kubernetes
2 7 (70.00%) BitLocker
2 7 (70.00%) Elasticsearch
2 7 (70.00%) OpenShift
2 7 (70.00%) Ansible
2 7 (70.00%) Docker
2 7 (70.00%) Hyper-V
2 7 (70.00%) Puppet
2 7 (70.00%) VMware ESXi
2 7 (70.00%) Machine Learning
2 7 (70.00%) Big Data
2 7 (70.00%) Software Deployment

3rd Line Infrastructure Support Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 7 (70.00%) Microsoft Exchange
Cloud Services
1 10 (100.00%) IaaS
1 10 (100.00%) PaaS
2 7 (70.00%) AWS
2 7 (70.00%) GCP
2 7 (70.00%) OpenShift
3 3 (30.00%) Azure
Communications & Networking
1 10 (100.00%) DHCP
1 10 (100.00%) DNS
1 10 (100.00%) Firewall
2 7 (70.00%) SMTP
2 7 (70.00%) VPN
3 3 (30.00%) Fibre Channel
3 3 (30.00%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (70.00%) Amazon RDS
1 7 (70.00%) Big Data
1 7 (70.00%) Elasticsearch
General
1 6 (60.00%) Public Sector
Miscellaneous
1 7 (70.00%) Clustering
1 7 (70.00%) Data Centre
1 7 (70.00%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 10 (100.00%) Windows
2 7 (70.00%) Linux
2 7 (70.00%) Windows Server
3 2 (20.00%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (100.00%) DevOps
1 10 (100.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 7 (70.00%) Artificial Intelligence
2 7 (70.00%) Machine Learning
2 7 (70.00%) Software Deployment
3 3 (30.00%) Cybersecurity
3 3 (30.00%) Infrastructure as Code
3 3 (30.00%) ITIL
3 3 (30.00%) Security Patching
Programming Languages
1 7 (70.00%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 7 (70.00%) Degree
1 7 (70.00%) DV Cleared
1 7 (70.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (30.00%) SLA
System Software
1 10 (100.00%) Active Directory
1 10 (100.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 7 (70.00%) BitLocker
2 7 (70.00%) Docker
2 7 (70.00%) Hyper-V
2 7 (70.00%) Microsoft App-V
2 7 (70.00%) Terminal Services
2 7 (70.00%) VMware ESXi
3 3 (30.00%) DFS Replication
3 3 (30.00%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 7 (70.00%) Ansible
1 7 (70.00%) Kubernetes
1 7 (70.00%) Nagios
1 7 (70.00%) Puppet
1 7 (70.00%) vCenter Server
1 7 (70.00%) vMotion
Vendors
1 10 (100.00%) Microsoft
1 10 (100.00%) VMware
2 7 (70.00%) Citrix
2 7 (70.00%) Google
2 7 (70.00%) HP
2 7 (70.00%) Symantec