Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £510, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 May 2026.

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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 162 217 152
Rank change year-on-year +55 -65 +39
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 756 378 668
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.58% 1.29% 1.57%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.71% 1.39% 1.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 515 261 505
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £385 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £463
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +13.51% -7.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £575
90th Percentile £654 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £463
% change year-on-year +2.00% +8.11% -2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 3 9
10th Percentile £46.40 £59.34 £20.99
25th Percentile £58.43 £112.09 £21.25
Median hourly rate £72.54 £200.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -63.73% +788.89% -63.48%
75th Percentile £78.75 - £77.00
90th Percentile - - £77.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £200.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year -63.73% +788.89% -61.88%

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 44,273 27,145 39,538
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 92.37% 92.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,095 17,684 25,719
10th Percentile £325 £293 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -2.82%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,901 1,049 2,672
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.82
25th Percentile £20.31 £18.13 £16.29
Median hourly rate £43.00 £28.15 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +52.75% -22.88% -18.89%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.13 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.90% -32.19% -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 18 May 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 18 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Infrastructure Engineer in the UK

Infrastructure Engineer
Top 17 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 18 May 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 +39 648 £515 -1.90% 203
UK excluding London +30 530 £510 +2.00% 180
Work from Home +38 161 £525 +10.53% 78
London -15 160 £525 - 43
South East +2 152 £515 -1.90% 51
North of England -9 134 £500 +23.08% 49
South West +15 92 £545 -5.22% 28
Yorkshire -27 63 £350 -15.15% 11
Midlands -24 62 £450 +16.13% 25
North West -12 50 £575 +26.37% 25
Scotland +21 42 £525 -4.55% 6
East of England -15 34 £450 -3.54% 15
West Midlands -39 34 £450 +33.33% 15
East Midlands -7 27 £450 +12.50% 10
North East -6 24 £600 -7.69% 13
Wales -2 15 £400 -5.88% 8
Northern Ireland - 2 £375 -

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

For the 6 months to 18 May 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.

1 739 (97.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 278 (36.77%) Security Cleared
3 241 (31.88%) Windows
4 234 (30.95%) Azure
5 198 (26.19%) VMware
6 194 (25.66%) SC Cleared
7 165 (21.83%) Microsoft
8 149 (19.71%) Windows Server
9 147 (19.44%) Active Directory
10 144 (19.05%) VMware Infrastructure
11 131 (17.33%) Terraform
12 129 (17.06%) Infrastructure as Code
13 119 (15.74%) Linux
14 115 (15.21%) DNS
15 113 (14.95%) DevOps
16 112 (14.81%) PowerShell
17 111 (14.68%) Firewall
18 100 (13.23%) AWS
19 99 (13.10%) DV Cleared
20 96 (12.70%) CI/CD
21 95 (12.57%) Python
22 94 (12.43%) Problem-Solving
23 83 (10.98%) DHCP
24 80 (10.58%) Kubernetes
25 78 (10.32%) Hyper-V
26 76 (10.05%) Ansible
27 67 (8.86%) Migration
28 63 (8.33%) Microsoft 365
29 62 (8.20%) Infrastructure Automation
30 60 (7.94%) ITIL

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 51 (6.75%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (1.46%) SharePoint
3 6 (0.79%) Apache
3 6 (0.79%) TPMS
4 4 (0.53%) Confluence
5 3 (0.40%) IIS
6 2 (0.26%) CloudStack
6 2 (0.26%) nginx
7 1 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
7 1 (0.13%) IBM HTTP Server
7 1 (0.13%) MS Project Server
7 1 (0.13%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 234 (30.95%) Azure
2 100 (13.23%) AWS
3 63 (8.33%) Microsoft 365
4 53 (7.01%) GitHub
5 43 (5.69%) GCP
6 41 (5.42%) Entra ID
7 36 (4.76%) IaaS
8 31 (4.10%) PaaS
9 28 (3.70%) OCI
9 28 (3.70%) SaaS
10 25 (3.31%) Nutanix
11 24 (3.17%) Azure DevOps
12 22 (2.91%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 21 (2.78%) Azure Monitor
14 15 (1.98%) GitHub Actions
15 14 (1.85%) Azure AKS
16 7 (0.93%) Cohesity
17 6 (0.79%) Azure Sentinel
17 6 (0.79%) Azure Stack
17 6 (0.79%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 115 (15.21%) DNS
2 111 (14.68%) Firewall
3 83 (10.98%) DHCP
4 40 (5.29%) VPN
4 40 (5.29%) WAN
5 34 (4.50%) VLAN
6 29 (3.84%) LAN
6 29 (3.84%) Network Security
7 27 (3.57%) SAN
8 23 (3.04%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 22 (2.91%) TCP/IP
10 20 (2.65%) BGP
11 19 (2.51%) BIG-IP
11 19 (2.51%) Ethernet VPN
11 19 (2.51%) SD-WAN
12 18 (2.38%) VXLAN
13 16 (2.12%) OSPF
13 16 (2.12%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (1.59%) SMTP
15 11 (1.46%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (3.97%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.19%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.40%) Data Mining
4 3 (0.40%) NonStop SQL
5 2 (0.26%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.26%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.26%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.26%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.26%) Power BI
6 1 (0.13%) Flink
6 1 (0.13%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.13%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.13%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.13%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.13%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 26 (3.44%) GitLab
2 20 (2.65%) Jenkins
3 11 (1.46%) JIRA
4 9 (1.19%) Git
5 8 (1.06%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.40%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.13%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.13%) GoCD
7 1 (0.13%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.13%) Introscope
7 1 (0.13%) MSI
7 1 (0.13%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 94 (12.43%) Social Skills
2 69 (9.13%) Public Sector
3 49 (6.48%) Finance
4 42 (5.56%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (2.12%) Legal
7 15 (1.98%) Banking
8 12 (1.59%) Aerospace
8 12 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.19%) Billing
9 9 (1.19%) Manufacturing
10 8 (1.06%) Marketing
11 6 (0.79%) Military
11 6 (0.79%) Telecoms
12 3 (0.40%) Law
12 3 (0.40%) Local Government
12 3 (0.40%) Retail
13 2 (0.26%) Advertising
13 2 (0.26%) Investment Banking
14 1 (0.13%) Mandarin Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (1.32%) LDAP
1 10 (1.32%) REST
2 8 (1.06%) Elastic Stack
2 8 (1.06%) SOAP
3 7 (0.93%) Flash
4 5 (0.66%) ARM Templates
4 5 (0.66%) Web Services
5 4 (0.53%) Keycloak
5 4 (0.53%) OpenID
6 3 (0.40%) ADO
6 3 (0.40%) Oracle Fusion
6 3 (0.40%) SAML
7 2 (0.26%) Apache NiFi
7 2 (0.26%) Kafka
7 2 (0.26%) Node.js
7 2 (0.26%) OAuth
7 2 (0.26%) OAuth2
8 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Graph
8 1 (0.13%) React
8 1 (0.13%) Redfish
Miscellaneous
1 67 (8.86%) Data Centre
2 40 (5.29%) PKI
3 32 (4.23%) Hybrid Cloud
4 31 (4.10%) Public Cloud
5 18 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
6 16 (2.12%) Enterprise Storage
6 16 (2.12%) Onboarding
7 14 (1.85%) Cloud Native
7 14 (1.85%) Replication
8 11 (1.46%) Operational Technology
8 11 (1.46%) Private Cloud
9 9 (1.19%) Clustering
9 9 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
10 8 (1.06%) Virtual Team
11 6 (0.79%) SCADA
11 6 (0.79%) Smartcard
11 6 (0.79%) YubiKey
12 4 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (0.53%) Linux Command Line
12 4 (0.53%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 241 (31.88%) Windows
2 149 (19.71%) Windows Server
3 119 (15.74%) Linux
4 21 (2.78%) Windows Server 2019
5 20 (2.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (2.25%) Windows Server 2016
7 16 (2.12%) Ubuntu
8 14 (1.85%) Windows 10
9 11 (1.46%) VMS
10 10 (1.32%) Apple iOS
11 9 (1.19%) Mac OS
12 8 (1.06%) Android
12 8 (1.06%) Unix
12 8 (1.06%) Windows Server 2012
13 7 (0.93%) Debian
13 7 (0.93%) Windows Server 2003
14 5 (0.66%) CentOS
15 1 (0.13%) AIX
15 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.13%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 739 (97.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 129 (17.06%) Infrastructure as Code
3 113 (14.95%) DevOps
4 96 (12.70%) CI/CD
5 94 (12.43%) Problem-Solving
6 67 (8.86%) Migration
7 62 (8.20%) Infrastructure Automation
8 60 (7.94%) ITIL
9 54 (7.14%) Agile
10 50 (6.61%) Disaster Recovery
10 50 (6.61%) High Availability
11 42 (5.56%) Zero Trust
12 41 (5.42%) Cybersecurity
13 35 (4.63%) Project Delivery
14 34 (4.50%) Validation
15 31 (4.10%) Containerisation
16 29 (3.84%) Continuous Improvement
16 29 (3.84%) Platform Engineering
17 28 (3.70%) Load Balancing
18 27 (3.57%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 112 (14.81%) PowerShell
2 95 (12.57%) Python
3 32 (4.23%) Bash
4 23 (3.04%) SQL
5 21 (2.78%) Bicep
6 13 (1.72%) C#
7 9 (1.19%) PHP
8 8 (1.06%) JavaScript
9 5 (0.66%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.26%) ActionScript
10 2 (0.26%) Java
10 2 (0.26%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.13%) C++
11 1 (0.13%) Jython
11 1 (0.13%) VB
Qualifications
1 278 (36.77%) Security Cleared
2 194 (25.66%) SC Cleared
3 99 (13.10%) DV Cleared
4 25 (3.31%) Degree
5 16 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
5 16 (2.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 13 (1.72%) Azure Certification
7 11 (1.46%) CCNA
8 9 (1.19%) AWS Certification
8 9 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (0.93%) CCNP
9 7 (0.93%) MCSE
10 6 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 6 (0.79%) FFIEC
11 5 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (0.66%) RHCA
12 4 (0.53%) CompTIA Security+
13 3 (0.40%) GIAC
13 3 (0.40%) GSEC
13 3 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (2.51%) NIST
2 16 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 16 (2.12%) QA
3 13 (1.72%) Cyber Essentials
4 11 (1.46%) SLA
5 9 (1.19%) GDPR
6 6 (0.79%) GLBA
6 6 (0.79%) NCSC
6 6 (0.79%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 2 (0.26%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 147 (19.44%) Active Directory
2 144 (19.05%) VMware Infrastructure
3 78 (10.32%) Hyper-V
4 56 (7.41%) vSphere
5 41 (5.42%) Docker
6 40 (5.29%) VMware ESXi
7 22 (2.91%) Virtual Machines
7 22 (2.91%) VMware NSX
8 14 (1.85%) Virtual Desktop
9 9 (1.19%) BitLocker
9 9 (1.19%) NFS
10 7 (0.93%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.66%) GPFS
12 4 (0.53%) Firmware
13 3 (0.40%) DFS Replication
14 2 (0.26%) QEMU
14 2 (0.26%) SRDF
14 2 (0.26%) UAG
14 2 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 131 (17.33%) Terraform
2 80 (10.58%) Kubernetes
3 76 (10.05%) Ansible
4 37 (4.89%) Microsoft Intune
5 33 (4.37%) SCCM
6 31 (4.10%) vCenter Server
7 15 (1.98%) WSUS
8 12 (1.59%) Grafana
8 12 (1.59%) Istio
8 12 (1.59%) SCOM
9 11 (1.46%) Prometheus
9 11 (1.46%) Puppet
10 9 (1.19%) Single Sign-On
10 9 (1.19%) vRealize
10 9 (1.19%) VxRail
11 8 (1.06%) AirWatch
11 8 (1.06%) Nessus
12 7 (0.93%) Packer
12 7 (0.93%) vMotion
13 5 (0.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 198 (26.19%) VMware
2 165 (21.83%) Microsoft
3 51 (6.75%) Citrix
4 50 (6.61%) Cisco
5 37 (4.89%) Veeam
6 31 (4.10%) F5
7 29 (3.84%) Palo Alto
8 27 (3.57%) Google
9 24 (3.17%) Dell
9 24 (3.17%) NetApp
10 18 (2.38%) Aruba
10 18 (2.38%) Oracle
10 18 (2.38%) Red Hat
11 16 (2.12%) Arista
12 15 (1.98%) SolarWinds
13 12 (1.59%) Fortinet
14 11 (1.46%) ServiceNow
15 10 (1.32%) Thales
16 9 (1.19%) Splunk
16 9 (1.19%) Tenable