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 17 September 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 147 241 155
Rank change year-on-year +94 -86 -6
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 1,049 373 603
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.92% 1.13% 1.58%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.08% 1.24% 1.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 613 252 439
10th Percentile £350 £300 £325
25th Percentile £425 £375 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £484 £488
Median % change year-on-year +8.53% -0.77% -2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £599 £575
90th Percentile £661 £649 £644
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £483 £465
% change year-on-year +8.81% +3.72% -6.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 7 3
10th Percentile - £27.80 £46.00
25th Percentile £58.43 £29.00 £51.25
Median hourly rate £74.00 £30.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +146.67% -50.00% -14.29%
75th Percentile £78.75 £35.00 £68.50
90th Percentile £100.00 £54.20 £73.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 £52.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +42.31% -13.33% -15.79%

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 50,473 30,002 35,564
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 91.08% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,930 18,956 21,934
10th Percentile £328 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £626 £621 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,805 1,570 1,684
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.31 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -2.01%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +5.88%

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 17 September 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 +60 893 £536 +11.17% 788
UK excluding London +91 761 £525 +8.81% 508
Work from Home +26 216 £525 +16.67% 257
North of England +45 213 £533 +6.50% 148
South East +15 209 £550 +13.99% 130
London -15 206 £540 +8.00% 311
Midlands +15 106 £463 +2.78% 62
South West +17 101 £550 -0.45% 57
North West +12 89 £515 -1.90% 87
Yorkshire +11 79 £500 - 33
West Midlands -9 73 £475 +5.56% 39
Scotland +32 60 £525 +5.00% 44
North East +4 55 £600 -7.69% 30
East of England +8 50 £475 +31.03% 58
East Midlands +19 32 £450 -18.18% 23
Wales +13 27 £500 - 10
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 4
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -

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

For the 6 months to 17 September 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 1,029 (98.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 423 (40.32%) Security Cleared
3 338 (32.22%) Windows
4 314 (29.93%) Azure
5 282 (26.88%) VMware
6 269 (25.64%) SC Cleared
7 252 (24.02%) Microsoft
8 226 (21.54%) Windows Server
9 222 (21.16%) Active Directory
10 220 (20.97%) VMware Infrastructure
11 218 (20.78%) Infrastructure as Code
12 209 (19.92%) Linux
13 186 (17.73%) DNS
14 178 (16.97%) Terraform
15 175 (16.68%) PowerShell
16 157 (14.97%) Firewall
17 155 (14.78%) AWS
18 154 (14.68%) DV Cleared
19 138 (13.16%) CI/CD
19 138 (13.16%) DevOps
20 136 (12.96%) Python
21 132 (12.58%) DHCP
22 123 (11.73%) Ansible
23 117 (11.15%) Problem-Solving
24 114 (10.87%) Migration
25 103 (9.82%) Entra ID
26 101 (9.63%) Hyper-V
27 99 (9.44%) Kubernetes
28 91 (8.67%) Microsoft 365
29 80 (7.63%) Infrastructure Automation

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 61 (5.82%) Microsoft Exchange
2 34 (3.24%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.24%) CICS
3 13 (1.24%) Confluence
3 13 (1.24%) WebSphere
4 5 (0.48%) Apache
4 5 (0.48%) SharePoint Server
5 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2010
5 3 (0.29%) Skype for Business
6 2 (0.19%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.095%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.095%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2013
7 1 (0.095%) IIS
7 1 (0.095%) MS Project Server
7 1 (0.095%) OpenStack
Applications
1 9 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.095%) CINEMA 4D
3 1 (0.095%) Houdini
3 1 (0.095%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 6 (0.57%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.095%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 314 (29.93%) Azure
2 155 (14.78%) AWS
3 103 (9.82%) Entra ID
4 91 (8.67%) Microsoft 365
5 63 (6.01%) IaaS
6 51 (4.86%) OCI
7 50 (4.77%) GCP
8 43 (4.10%) GitHub
9 41 (3.91%) SaaS
10 33 (3.15%) PaaS
11 32 (3.05%) Azure DevOps
12 27 (2.57%) Azure Monitor
13 19 (1.81%) GitHub Actions
13 19 (1.81%) Nutanix
14 17 (1.62%) Azure AKS
15 12 (1.14%) OpenShift
16 11 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
17 8 (0.76%) Azure Sentinel
17 8 (0.76%) OneDrive
17 8 (0.76%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 186 (17.73%) DNS
2 157 (14.97%) Firewall
3 132 (12.58%) DHCP
4 61 (5.82%) VLAN
5 59 (5.62%) TCP/IP
6 54 (5.15%) VPN
7 52 (4.96%) SAN
8 43 (4.10%) Network Security
9 39 (3.72%) WAN
10 32 (3.05%) BIG-IP
10 32 (3.05%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 26 (2.48%) Wi-Fi
12 23 (2.19%) Ethernet VPN
13 22 (2.10%) LAN
13 22 (2.10%) SD-WAN
13 22 (2.10%) VXLAN
14 20 (1.91%) BGP
14 20 (1.91%) OSPF
14 20 (1.91%) VSAN
15 15 (1.43%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (4.86%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.10%) Oracle Exadata
3 17 (1.62%) Relational Database
4 15 (1.43%) Oracle Database
5 14 (1.33%) RDBMS
6 7 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
6 7 (0.67%) Data Lake
7 6 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
8 5 (0.48%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (0.38%) Big Data
9 4 (0.38%) Power BI
9 4 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
11 2 (0.19%) BigQuery
11 2 (0.19%) Data Mining
11 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 1 (0.095%) Flink
12 1 (0.095%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 48 (4.58%) GitLab
2 28 (2.67%) JIRA
3 26 (2.48%) Git
4 22 (2.10%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.38%) Chocolatey
6 3 (0.29%) Fiddler
7 1 (0.095%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.095%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.095%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.095%) CMake
7 1 (0.095%) Gerrit
7 1 (0.095%) Gradle
7 1 (0.095%) MLflow
7 1 (0.095%) MSI
7 1 (0.095%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.095%) Tricentis qTest
7 1 (0.095%) Visual Studio
General
1 116 (11.06%) Social Skills
2 71 (6.77%) Public Sector
3 50 (4.77%) Finance
4 44 (4.19%) Analytical Skills
5 35 (3.34%) Documentation Skills
6 17 (1.62%) Banking
7 15 (1.43%) Aerospace
8 14 (1.33%) Manufacturing
8 14 (1.33%) Military
9 13 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 12 (1.14%) Telecoms
11 10 (0.95%) Marketing
12 7 (0.67%) Law
13 6 (0.57%) Automotive
14 5 (0.48%) Legal
15 3 (0.29%) Investment Banking
16 2 (0.19%) Billing
16 2 (0.19%) Local Government
16 2 (0.19%) Pharmaceutical
17 1 (0.095%) Front Office
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 178 (16.97%) Terraform
2 17 (1.62%) Middleware
3 16 (1.53%) ARM Templates
4 14 (1.33%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 9 (0.86%) YAML
6 6 (0.57%) 802.1X
6 6 (0.57%) JSON
6 6 (0.57%) LDAP
6 6 (0.57%) OpenID
6 6 (0.57%) SAML
7 5 (0.48%) .NET
7 5 (0.48%) Flash
7 5 (0.48%) REST
8 4 (0.38%) Elastic Stack
9 3 (0.29%) Kafka
9 3 (0.29%) OAuth
10 2 (0.19%) OAuth2
10 2 (0.19%) RabbitMQ
10 2 (0.19%) React
10 2 (0.19%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 113 (10.77%) Data Centre
2 67 (6.39%) Hybrid Cloud
3 54 (5.15%) PKI
4 39 (3.72%) Public Cloud
5 29 (2.76%) Enterprise Storage
5 29 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 29 (2.76%) Replication
6 26 (2.48%) Cloud Native
7 21 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
8 18 (1.72%) Linux Command Line
8 18 (1.72%) Private Cloud
9 17 (1.62%) Clustering
10 16 (1.53%) Management Information System
11 15 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (1.24%) Mainframe
13 12 (1.14%) Operational Technology
14 10 (0.95%) SCADA
15 9 (0.86%) Driving Licence
16 8 (0.76%) Smartcard
16 8 (0.76%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 338 (32.22%) Windows
2 226 (21.54%) Windows Server
3 209 (19.92%) Linux
4 37 (3.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (1.91%) Windows 10
6 19 (1.81%) Windows Server 2019
7 18 (1.72%) Windows Server 2016
8 16 (1.53%) Ubuntu
8 16 (1.53%) VMS
9 14 (1.33%) AIX
9 14 (1.33%) CentOS
10 13 (1.24%) zOS
11 11 (1.05%) Android
11 11 (1.05%) Apple iOS
12 10 (0.95%) Mac OS
12 10 (0.95%) Windows Server 2012
13 9 (0.86%) Rocky
14 8 (0.76%) Unix
15 6 (0.57%) Debian
16 5 (0.48%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,029 (98.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 218 (20.78%) Infrastructure as Code
3 138 (13.16%) CI/CD
3 138 (13.16%) DevOps
4 117 (11.15%) Problem-Solving
5 114 (10.87%) Migration
6 80 (7.63%) Infrastructure Automation
7 71 (6.77%) Disaster Recovery
7 71 (6.77%) High Availability
8 66 (6.29%) Continuous Improvement
9 65 (6.20%) ITIL
9 65 (6.20%) Project Delivery
10 61 (5.82%) Platform Engineering
11 56 (5.34%) Validation
12 49 (4.67%) Root Cause Analysis
13 48 (4.58%) Zero Trust
14 43 (4.10%) Cybersecurity
14 43 (4.10%) Load Balancing
15 42 (4.00%) Agile
15 42 (4.00%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 175 (16.68%) PowerShell
2 136 (12.96%) Python
3 74 (7.05%) Bash
4 39 (3.72%) SQL
5 29 (2.76%) Bicep
6 13 (1.24%) C#
7 9 (0.86%) Java
8 7 (0.67%) ActionScript
8 7 (0.67%) Perl
9 6 (0.57%) Go
10 2 (0.19%) C++
10 2 (0.19%) VB
11 1 (0.095%) C
11 1 (0.095%) Groovy
11 1 (0.095%) MATLAB
11 1 (0.095%) PHP
11 1 (0.095%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.095%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.095%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 423 (40.32%) Security Cleared
2 269 (25.64%) SC Cleared
3 154 (14.68%) DV Cleared
4 39 (3.72%) Degree
5 35 (3.34%) Microsoft Certification
6 23 (2.19%) Azure Certification
7 21 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
8 20 (1.91%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 18 (1.72%) MCSE
10 14 (1.33%) CCNA
11 13 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
12 12 (1.14%) CCNP
12 12 (1.14%) VCAP
13 6 (0.57%) AWS Certification
13 6 (0.57%) MCSA
14 5 (0.48%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
15 4 (0.38%) JNCIP
15 4 (0.38%) JNCIS
15 4 (0.38%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (3.53%) QA
2 17 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 17 (1.62%) SLA
3 14 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
4 11 (1.05%) NCSC
4 11 (1.05%) NIST
5 6 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 3 (0.29%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.19%) NIST 800
7 2 (0.19%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.095%) FedRAMP
System Software
1 222 (21.16%) Active Directory
2 220 (20.97%) VMware Infrastructure
3 101 (9.63%) Hyper-V
4 72 (6.86%) vSphere
5 69 (6.58%) VMware ESXi
6 45 (4.29%) Virtual Machines
7 40 (3.81%) Docker
8 28 (2.67%) VMware NSX
9 24 (2.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (1.33%) Oracle RAC
11 13 (1.24%) NFS
12 11 (1.05%) Firmware
12 11 (1.05%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.67%) KVM
14 6 (0.57%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.57%) oVirt
15 5 (0.48%) GPFS
16 4 (0.38%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.29%) Terminal Services
18 2 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 123 (11.73%) Ansible
2 99 (9.44%) Kubernetes
3 64 (6.10%) Microsoft Intune
4 49 (4.67%) SCCM
5 37 (3.53%) vCenter Server
6 19 (1.81%) WSUS
7 18 (1.72%) SCOM
8 15 (1.43%) NetBackup
9 14 (1.33%) Data Guard
9 14 (1.33%) Oracle RMAN
9 14 (1.33%) Prometheus
10 11 (1.05%) Grafana
11 9 (0.86%) Puppet
11 9 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (0.76%) Failover Clustering
12 8 (0.76%) Nessus
13 6 (0.57%) FortiGate
13 6 (0.57%) Red Hat Satellite
13 6 (0.57%) VxRail
14 5 (0.48%) Podman
Vendors
1 282 (26.88%) VMware
2 252 (24.02%) Microsoft
3 62 (5.91%) Cisco
4 59 (5.62%) Citrix
5 46 (4.39%) NetApp
6 40 (3.81%) Oracle
7 37 (3.53%) Veeam
8 35 (3.34%) F5
9 32 (3.05%) Palo Alto
10 26 (2.48%) Google
10 26 (2.48%) Red Hat
11 20 (1.91%) IBM
12 19 (1.81%) Arista
13 18 (1.72%) Aruba
14 17 (1.62%) CyberArk
14 17 (1.62%) Dell
15 15 (1.43%) Juniper
15 15 (1.43%) ServiceNow
15 15 (1.43%) SolarWinds
16 12 (1.14%) Tenable