Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 30 July 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 145 227 143
Rank change year-on-year +82 -84 +17
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 997 380 669
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.88% 1.16% 1.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.03% 1.27% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 602 247 507
10th Percentile £350 £329 £317
25th Percentile £425 £400 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +10.53% -5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £575
90th Percentile £674 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £475
% change year-on-year - +10.53% -3.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 4 4
10th Percentile £48.00 £42.30 £67.73
25th Percentile £58.43 £60.75 £73.69
Median hourly rate £72.54 £138.50 £77.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.62% +79.87% +8.07%
75th Percentile £78.75 £200.00 £77.25
90th Percentile £92.50 - £77.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £200.00 £72.75
% change year-on-year -63.73% +174.91% +0.34%

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 49,068 30,025 37,043
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.63% 91.50% 92.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,609 19,114 23,981
10th Percentile £331 £282 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,359 1,460 2,193
10th Percentile £15.50 £13.69 £14.05
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £19.09
Median hourly rate £43.61 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +73.38% -40.82% -1.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +7.50%

Infrastructure Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Infrastructure Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Infrastructure Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Infrastructure Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Infrastructure Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Infrastructure Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Infrastructure Engineer over the 6 months to 30 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Infrastructure Engineer in the UK

Infrastructure Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Infrastructure Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Infrastructure Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Infrastructure Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Infrastructure Engineer over the 6 months to 30 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Infrastructure Engineer in the UK

Infrastructure Engineer
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Infrastructure Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 30 July 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 +70 857 £525 - 241
UK excluding London +71 700 £525 - 189
South East +29 217 £536 -2.47% 59
London +29 217 £525 +2.69% 76
Work from Home +28 203 £538 +7.50% 95
North of England +23 193 £575 +9.52% 38
South West +19 104 £549 -0.18% 34
Midlands -14 83 £450 - 27
Yorkshire -4 81 £453 -9.50% 13
North West -8 72 £575 -4.17% 19
West Midlands -37 52 £475 +5.56% 20
North East -5 50 £600 -7.69% 7
Scotland +19 45 £570 +17.22% 9
East of England -5 33 £450 +5.88% 23
East Midlands +9 30 £450 +5.88% 7
Wales +11 27 £500 - 4
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -
Northern Ireland - 1 - -

Infrastructure Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 30 July 2026, Infrastructure 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 Infrastructure Engineer in the job title.

1 984 (98.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 398 (39.92%) Security Cleared
3 302 (30.29%) Azure
4 299 (29.99%) Windows
5 265 (26.58%) SC Cleared
6 249 (24.97%) VMware
7 221 (22.17%) Microsoft
8 202 (20.26%) Active Directory
9 195 (19.56%) Windows Server
10 191 (19.16%) VMware Infrastructure
11 188 (18.86%) Infrastructure as Code
12 175 (17.55%) Terraform
13 172 (17.25%) Linux
14 170 (17.05%) DNS
15 155 (15.55%) PowerShell
16 144 (14.44%) Firewall
17 141 (14.14%) DevOps
18 140 (14.04%) DV Cleared
19 137 (13.74%) AWS
20 130 (13.04%) Python
21 127 (12.74%) CI/CD
22 122 (12.24%) DHCP
23 114 (11.43%) Ansible
24 104 (10.43%) Migration
25 95 (9.53%) Kubernetes
26 94 (9.43%) Problem-Solving
27 86 (8.63%) Hyper-V
28 79 (7.92%) Entra ID
29 76 (7.62%) Microsoft 365
30 71 (7.12%) vSphere

Infrastructure 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 53 (5.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 27 (2.71%) SharePoint
3 14 (1.40%) WebSphere
4 13 (1.30%) CICS
5 8 (0.80%) Confluence
6 4 (0.40%) SharePoint Server
7 3 (0.30%) Apache
7 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2010
8 2 (0.20%) CloudStack
9 1 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
9 1 (0.10%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.10%) MS Project Server
9 1 (0.10%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.10%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 10 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.10%) CINEMA 4D
3 1 (0.10%) Houdini
3 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.10%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 302 (30.29%) Azure
2 137 (13.74%) AWS
3 79 (7.92%) Entra ID
4 76 (7.62%) Microsoft 365
5 60 (6.02%) GitHub
6 56 (5.62%) GCP
7 53 (5.32%) IaaS
8 50 (5.02%) OCI
9 39 (3.91%) SaaS
10 36 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
11 34 (3.41%) PaaS
12 27 (2.71%) Azure Monitor
13 23 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
14 21 (2.11%) Azure AKS
15 16 (1.60%) Nutanix
16 12 (1.20%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 8 (0.80%) Azure Sentinel
17 8 (0.80%) Cohesity
18 7 (0.70%) OneDrive
18 7 (0.70%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 170 (17.05%) DNS
2 144 (14.44%) Firewall
3 122 (12.24%) DHCP
4 55 (5.52%) VLAN
5 52 (5.22%) SAN
6 49 (4.91%) VPN
7 45 (4.51%) TCP/IP
8 41 (4.11%) WAN
9 37 (3.71%) Network Security
10 32 (3.21%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 30 (3.01%) BIG-IP
12 25 (2.51%) LAN
13 24 (2.41%) Wi-Fi
14 23 (2.31%) Ethernet VPN
15 22 (2.21%) SD-WAN
15 22 (2.21%) VSAN
15 22 (2.21%) VXLAN
16 20 (2.01%) BGP
16 20 (2.01%) OSPF
17 13 (1.30%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (4.81%) SQL Server
2 17 (1.71%) Oracle Exadata
3 15 (1.50%) Relational Database
4 14 (1.40%) Oracle Database
5 12 (1.20%) RDBMS
6 9 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
7 7 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.40%) PostgreSQL
8 4 (0.40%) Power BI
9 3 (0.30%) Big Data
9 3 (0.30%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.30%) NonStop SQL
9 3 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.20%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.20%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.20%) DynamoDB
11 1 (0.10%) Flink
11 1 (0.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.10%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 43 (4.31%) GitLab
2 27 (2.71%) Jenkins
2 27 (2.71%) JIRA
3 21 (2.11%) Git
4 4 (0.40%) Chocolatey
5 3 (0.30%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.10%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.10%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.10%) CMake
6 1 (0.10%) Gradle
6 1 (0.10%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.10%) Introscope
6 1 (0.10%) MLflow
6 1 (0.10%) MSI
6 1 (0.10%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.10%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 107 (10.73%) Social Skills
2 72 (7.22%) Public Sector
3 46 (4.61%) Finance
4 40 (4.01%) Analytical Skills
5 32 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (2.01%) Banking
7 17 (1.71%) Legal
8 13 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 11 (1.10%) Aerospace
10 10 (1.00%) Manufacturing
10 10 (1.00%) Marketing
11 9 (0.90%) Military
11 9 (0.90%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.40%) Automotive
12 4 (0.40%) Law
13 2 (0.20%) Advertising
13 2 (0.20%) Billing
13 2 (0.20%) Local Government
13 2 (0.20%) Retail
14 1 (0.10%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (1.71%) Middleware
2 12 (1.20%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 11 (1.10%) ARM Templates
4 8 (0.80%) REST
5 7 (0.70%) Flash
6 6 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (0.50%) 802.1X
7 5 (0.50%) OpenID
8 4 (0.40%) .NET
8 4 (0.40%) JSON
8 4 (0.40%) LDAP
8 4 (0.40%) SAML
8 4 (0.40%) SOAP
8 4 (0.40%) YAML
9 3 (0.30%) Kafka
10 2 (0.20%) Node.js
10 2 (0.20%) OAuth
10 2 (0.20%) OAuth2
10 2 (0.20%) RabbitMQ
10 2 (0.20%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 116 (11.63%) Data Centre
2 53 (5.32%) PKI
3 52 (5.22%) Hybrid Cloud
4 43 (4.31%) Public Cloud
5 27 (2.71%) Enterprise Storage
6 25 (2.51%) Cloud Native
6 25 (2.51%) Onboarding
7 23 (2.31%) Replication
8 17 (1.71%) Clustering
8 17 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
9 13 (1.30%) Linux Command Line
9 13 (1.30%) Mainframe
10 12 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
11 11 (1.10%) Management Information System
12 10 (1.00%) Operational Technology
12 10 (1.00%) Private Cloud
13 9 (0.90%) Smartcard
14 8 (0.80%) Enterprise Software
14 8 (0.80%) Virtual Team
15 7 (0.70%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 299 (29.99%) Windows
2 195 (19.56%) Windows Server
3 172 (17.25%) Linux
4 33 (3.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (2.01%) Windows Server 2019
6 18 (1.81%) Windows Server 2016
7 17 (1.71%) Windows 10
8 13 (1.30%) AIX
8 13 (1.30%) VMS
8 13 (1.30%) zOS
9 11 (1.10%) Ubuntu
10 10 (1.00%) Apple iOS
10 10 (1.00%) Mac OS
11 9 (0.90%) Android
11 9 (0.90%) CentOS
12 8 (0.80%) Unix
13 7 (0.70%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.60%) Debian
14 6 (0.60%) Rocky
14 6 (0.60%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 984 (98.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 188 (18.86%) Infrastructure as Code
3 141 (14.14%) DevOps
4 127 (12.74%) CI/CD
5 104 (10.43%) Migration
6 94 (9.43%) Problem-Solving
7 70 (7.02%) Infrastructure Automation
8 68 (6.82%) High Availability
9 60 (6.02%) Continuous Improvement
10 58 (5.82%) Disaster Recovery
10 58 (5.82%) Project Delivery
11 55 (5.52%) ITIL
12 52 (5.22%) Validation
13 47 (4.71%) Zero Trust
14 46 (4.61%) Agile
14 46 (4.61%) Platform Engineering
15 39 (3.91%) Cybersecurity
16 36 (3.61%) Root Cause Analysis
17 35 (3.51%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 34 (3.41%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 155 (15.55%) PowerShell
2 130 (13.04%) Python
3 60 (6.02%) Bash
4 37 (3.71%) SQL
5 25 (2.51%) Bicep
6 17 (1.71%) C#
7 11 (1.10%) Java
8 7 (0.70%) ActionScript
9 6 (0.60%) Go
10 5 (0.50%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.30%) JavaScript
12 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.10%) C
13 1 (0.10%) C++
13 1 (0.10%) Jython
13 1 (0.10%) Perl
13 1 (0.10%) PHP
13 1 (0.10%) VB
Qualifications
1 398 (39.92%) Security Cleared
2 265 (26.58%) SC Cleared
3 140 (14.04%) DV Cleared
4 36 (3.61%) Degree
5 28 (2.81%) Microsoft Certification
6 22 (2.21%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 21 (2.11%) Cisco Certification
8 19 (1.91%) Azure Certification
9 17 (1.71%) MCSE
10 13 (1.30%) CCNA
10 13 (1.30%) VCAP
11 11 (1.10%) CCNP
12 8 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
13 6 (0.60%) RHCA
14 5 (0.50%) MCSA
15 4 (0.40%) AWS Certification
15 4 (0.40%) DBS Check
15 4 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
16 3 (0.30%) JNCIP
16 3 (0.30%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (2.91%) QA
2 19 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (1.60%) SLA
4 13 (1.30%) Cyber Essentials
4 13 (1.30%) NIST
5 9 (0.90%) NCSC
6 6 (0.60%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 3 (0.30%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.20%) GDPR
8 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.10%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.10%) FedRAMP
9 1 (0.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 202 (20.26%) Active Directory
2 191 (19.16%) VMware Infrastructure
3 86 (8.63%) Hyper-V
4 71 (7.12%) vSphere
5 67 (6.72%) VMware ESXi
6 43 (4.31%) Virtual Machines
7 36 (3.61%) Docker
8 35 (3.51%) VMware NSX
9 23 (2.31%) Virtual Desktop
10 12 (1.20%) NFS
10 12 (1.20%) Oracle RAC
11 9 (0.90%) BitLocker
12 8 (0.80%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.60%) KVM
14 5 (0.50%) GPFS
14 5 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
15 4 (0.40%) Firmware
15 4 (0.40%) Terminal Services
16 2 (0.20%) SRDF
16 2 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 175 (17.55%) Terraform
2 114 (11.43%) Ansible
3 95 (9.53%) Kubernetes
4 52 (5.22%) Microsoft Intune
5 44 (4.41%) vCenter Server
6 38 (3.81%) SCCM
7 18 (1.81%) WSUS
8 14 (1.40%) Prometheus
9 13 (1.30%) NetBackup
9 13 (1.30%) Puppet
10 12 (1.20%) Data Guard
10 12 (1.20%) Oracle RMAN
11 11 (1.10%) Grafana
11 11 (1.10%) SCOM
12 9 (0.90%) Nessus
12 9 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
13 8 (0.80%) Istio
13 8 (0.80%) vMotion
13 8 (0.80%) vRealize
14 7 (0.70%) VxRail
Vendors
1 249 (24.97%) VMware
2 221 (22.17%) Microsoft
3 62 (6.22%) Citrix
4 57 (5.72%) Cisco
5 39 (3.91%) Oracle
6 37 (3.71%) F5
6 37 (3.71%) NetApp
7 34 (3.41%) Veeam
8 33 (3.31%) Google
9 31 (3.11%) Palo Alto
10 25 (2.51%) Red Hat
11 21 (2.11%) Aruba
11 21 (2.11%) Dell
12 20 (2.01%) IBM
13 19 (1.91%) Arista
14 16 (1.60%) Juniper
15 15 (1.50%) ServiceNow
15 15 (1.50%) Tenable
16 12 (1.20%) CyberArk
17 11 (1.10%) HP