Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 May 2026.

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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 179 201 154
Rank change year-on-year +22 -47 +32
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 715 391 693
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.50% 1.33% 1.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.63% 1.44% 1.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 484 269 519
10th Percentile £325 £310 £308
25th Percentile £413 £385 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £465
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +12.91% -7.01%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £588
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £465
% change year-on-year -4.76% +12.91% -1.07%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 4 9
10th Percentile £46.40 - £20.99
25th Percentile £58.43 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £72.54 £112.09 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -35.28% +398.18% -63.48%
75th Percentile £78.75 £200.00 £77.00
90th Percentile - - £77.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £112.09 £22.50
% change year-on-year -35.28% +398.18% -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 43,929 27,125 40,035
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 92.53% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,003 17,719 26,065
10th Percentile £318 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.75% -2.10% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,852 1,052 2,665
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.72% -20.55% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.25 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £28.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +62.36% -30.00% -4.76%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +4 614 £511 -2.62% 261
UK excluding London +20 495 £500 -4.76% 248
London -17 157 £525 - 49
Work from Home +26 152 £500 +4.17% 141
South East 0 130 £525 -4.55% 75
North of England -10 120 £465 +12.73% 68
South West +12 97 £539 -6.30% 26
Yorkshire -28 64 £350 -15.15% 17
Midlands -30 62 £450 +20.00% 24
North West -24 43 £575 +9.52% 35
Scotland +13 37 £500 -9.09% 13
East of England -19 35 £450 -3.54% 29
West Midlands -40 32 £450 +50.00% 14
East Midlands -6 29 £450 +12.50% 10
North East -13 16 £600 -7.69% 16
Wales -6 15 £400 -5.88% 14
Northern Ireland - 2 £375 - 2

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

For the 6 months to 6 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.

1 698 (97.62%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 262 (36.64%) Security Cleared
3 231 (32.31%) Windows
4 223 (31.19%) Azure
5 192 (26.85%) VMware
6 187 (26.15%) SC Cleared
7 169 (23.64%) Microsoft
8 148 (20.70%) Active Directory
9 144 (20.14%) VMware Infrastructure
9 144 (20.14%) Windows Server
10 127 (17.76%) Terraform
11 116 (16.22%) Infrastructure as Code
12 113 (15.80%) PowerShell
13 110 (15.38%) DevOps
13 110 (15.38%) DNS
14 103 (14.41%) Firewall
15 101 (14.13%) Linux
16 92 (12.87%) DV Cleared
17 91 (12.73%) Problem-Solving
18 90 (12.59%) CI/CD
19 82 (11.47%) Python
20 79 (11.05%) AWS
20 79 (11.05%) Hyper-V
21 78 (10.91%) Kubernetes
22 76 (10.63%) DHCP
23 70 (9.79%) Ansible
24 68 (9.51%) Microsoft 365
25 65 (9.09%) Migration
26 59 (8.25%) Infrastructure Automation
27 57 (7.97%) 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 54 (7.55%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.68%) SharePoint
3 7 (0.98%) TPMS
4 4 (0.56%) Apache
5 3 (0.42%) Confluence
5 3 (0.42%) Exchange Server 2010
5 3 (0.42%) IIS
6 2 (0.28%) nginx
7 1 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
7 1 (0.14%) MS Project Server
7 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Maximo
1 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 223 (31.19%) Azure
2 79 (11.05%) AWS
3 68 (9.51%) Microsoft 365
4 51 (7.13%) GitHub
5 43 (6.01%) Entra ID
6 40 (5.59%) GCP
7 36 (5.03%) IaaS
8 31 (4.34%) PaaS
9 26 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
9 26 (3.64%) SaaS
10 24 (3.36%) Nutanix
11 22 (3.08%) Azure Monitor
11 22 (3.08%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 21 (2.94%) OCI
13 15 (2.10%) Azure AKS
14 13 (1.82%) GitHub Actions
15 8 (1.12%) Azure Sentinel
15 8 (1.12%) Microsoft Copilot
15 8 (1.12%) Microsoft Purview
16 6 (0.84%) Cohesity
Communications & Networking
1 110 (15.38%) DNS
2 103 (14.41%) Firewall
3 76 (10.63%) DHCP
4 42 (5.87%) VPN
5 36 (5.03%) WAN
6 30 (4.20%) VLAN
7 29 (4.06%) Network Security
8 28 (3.92%) LAN
9 22 (3.08%) SAN
10 21 (2.94%) TCP/IP
11 19 (2.66%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 17 (2.38%) BGP
13 15 (2.10%) BIG-IP
13 15 (2.10%) Ethernet VPN
14 14 (1.96%) VXLAN
15 13 (1.82%) OSPF
15 13 (1.82%) SD-WAN
15 13 (1.82%) Wi-Fi
16 12 (1.68%) SMTP
17 11 (1.54%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (4.06%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.26%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.42%) Data Mining
4 3 (0.42%) NonStop SQL
5 2 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.28%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.28%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.14%) Flink
6 1 (0.14%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.14%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.14%) Power BI
6 1 (0.14%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.14%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 19 (2.66%) GitLab
2 18 (2.52%) Jenkins
3 11 (1.54%) JIRA
4 8 (1.12%) Artifactory
4 8 (1.12%) Git
5 3 (0.42%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.14%) Chocolatey
6 1 (0.14%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.14%) GoCD
6 1 (0.14%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.14%) Introscope
6 1 (0.14%) MSI
6 1 (0.14%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 90 (12.59%) Social Skills
2 69 (9.65%) Public Sector
3 48 (6.71%) Finance
4 42 (5.87%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (2.24%) Legal
7 14 (1.96%) Aerospace
8 13 (1.82%) Banking
8 13 (1.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.26%) Billing
9 9 (1.26%) Manufacturing
10 6 (0.84%) Military
10 6 (0.84%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.56%) Retail
12 3 (0.42%) Law
12 3 (0.42%) Local Government
12 3 (0.42%) Marketing
13 2 (0.28%) Advertising
13 2 (0.28%) Investment Banking
14 1 (0.14%) Mandarin Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (1.40%) REST
2 9 (1.26%) LDAP
3 8 (1.12%) SOAP
4 6 (0.84%) ARM Templates
4 6 (0.84%) Flash
5 5 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
5 5 (0.70%) SAML
5 5 (0.70%) Web Services
6 4 (0.56%) Keycloak
6 4 (0.56%) OAuth
6 4 (0.56%) OAuth2
6 4 (0.56%) OpenID
7 3 (0.42%) ADO
7 3 (0.42%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.28%) Apache NiFi
8 2 (0.28%) Kafka
8 2 (0.28%) Node.js
9 1 (0.14%) Bazel
9 1 (0.14%) React
9 1 (0.14%) Redfish
Miscellaneous
1 56 (7.83%) Data Centre
2 40 (5.59%) PKI
3 26 (3.64%) Hybrid Cloud
3 26 (3.64%) Public Cloud
4 18 (2.52%) Self-Motivation
5 16 (2.24%) Enterprise Storage
5 16 (2.24%) Onboarding
6 13 (1.82%) Replication
7 12 (1.68%) Cloud Native
7 12 (1.68%) Private Cloud
8 11 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
9 10 (1.40%) Clustering
9 10 (1.40%) Operational Technology
10 7 (0.98%) Virtual Team
11 6 (0.84%) SCADA
11 6 (0.84%) Smartcard
11 6 (0.84%) YubiKey
12 4 (0.56%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (0.56%) Legacy Systems
12 4 (0.56%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 231 (32.31%) Windows
2 144 (20.14%) Windows Server
3 101 (14.13%) Linux
4 21 (2.94%) Windows Server 2019
5 19 (2.66%) Windows Server 2016
6 15 (2.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (2.10%) Ubuntu
7 11 (1.54%) VMS
7 11 (1.54%) Windows 10
7 11 (1.54%) Windows Server 2012
8 10 (1.40%) Apple iOS
9 8 (1.12%) Android
9 8 (1.12%) Mac OS
10 7 (0.98%) Unix
11 6 (0.84%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.56%) CentOS
12 4 (0.56%) Debian
13 1 (0.14%) AIX
13 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 698 (97.62%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 116 (16.22%) Infrastructure as Code
3 110 (15.38%) DevOps
4 91 (12.73%) Problem-Solving
5 90 (12.59%) CI/CD
6 65 (9.09%) Migration
7 59 (8.25%) Infrastructure Automation
8 57 (7.97%) ITIL
9 53 (7.41%) Agile
10 47 (6.57%) Disaster Recovery
11 44 (6.15%) High Availability
12 42 (5.87%) Cybersecurity
13 35 (4.90%) Zero Trust
14 33 (4.62%) Project Delivery
15 32 (4.48%) Validation
16 31 (4.34%) Containerisation
17 29 (4.06%) Continuous Improvement
18 28 (3.92%) Platform Engineering
19 26 (3.64%) Cloud Security
19 26 (3.64%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 113 (15.80%) PowerShell
2 82 (11.47%) Python
3 25 (3.50%) Bash
4 24 (3.36%) SQL
5 21 (2.94%) Bicep
6 12 (1.68%) C#
7 9 (1.26%) PHP
8 8 (1.12%) JavaScript
9 5 (0.70%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.42%) Java
11 2 (0.28%) ActionScript
11 2 (0.28%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.14%) C++
12 1 (0.14%) Jython
12 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.14%) VB
Qualifications
1 262 (36.64%) Security Cleared
2 187 (26.15%) SC Cleared
3 92 (12.87%) DV Cleared
4 26 (3.64%) Degree
5 16 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
6 15 (2.10%) Azure Certification
7 14 (1.96%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 13 (1.82%) CCNA
8 13 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (0.98%) AWS Certification
9 7 (0.98%) FFIEC
9 7 (0.98%) MCSE
10 6 (0.84%) CCNP
10 6 (0.84%) CompTIA Security+
11 5 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (0.70%) RHCA
12 4 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.56%) GIAC
12 4 (0.56%) GSEC
13 3 (0.42%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (2.94%) NIST
2 17 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (2.10%) QA
4 13 (1.82%) Cyber Essentials
5 10 (1.40%) GDPR
6 9 (1.26%) SLA
7 7 (0.98%) GLBA
7 7 (0.98%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.84%) NCSC
9 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.42%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 148 (20.70%) Active Directory
2 144 (20.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 79 (11.05%) Hyper-V
4 51 (7.13%) vSphere
5 39 (5.45%) Docker
5 39 (5.45%) VMware ESXi
6 20 (2.80%) Virtual Machines
7 19 (2.66%) VMware NSX
8 12 (1.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 9 (1.26%) BitLocker
10 7 (0.98%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.56%) Firmware
11 4 (0.56%) GPFS
11 4 (0.56%) NFS
12 3 (0.42%) DFS Replication
12 3 (0.42%) Sendmail
13 2 (0.28%) QEMU
13 2 (0.28%) SRDF
13 2 (0.28%) UAG
13 2 (0.28%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 127 (17.76%) Terraform
2 78 (10.91%) Kubernetes
3 70 (9.79%) Ansible
4 39 (5.45%) Microsoft Intune
5 35 (4.90%) SCCM
6 30 (4.20%) vCenter Server
7 15 (2.10%) WSUS
8 13 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (1.68%) Istio
9 12 (1.68%) SCOM
10 11 (1.54%) Puppet
11 10 (1.40%) Nessus
12 9 (1.26%) Grafana
12 9 (1.26%) Packer
12 9 (1.26%) Prometheus
12 9 (1.26%) VxRail
13 8 (1.12%) AirWatch
13 8 (1.12%) vRealize
14 7 (0.98%) vMotion
15 5 (0.70%) Podman
Vendors
1 192 (26.85%) VMware
2 169 (23.64%) Microsoft
3 47 (6.57%) Cisco
4 42 (5.87%) Citrix
5 35 (4.90%) Veeam
6 28 (3.92%) F5
7 26 (3.64%) Dell
8 25 (3.50%) Google
9 22 (3.08%) NetApp
9 22 (3.08%) Palo Alto
10 18 (2.52%) Oracle
11 15 (2.10%) Aruba
12 14 (1.96%) SolarWinds
13 13 (1.82%) Red Hat
14 12 (1.68%) Arista
15 11 (1.54%) Fortinet
15 11 (1.54%) Thales
16 9 (1.26%) ServiceNow
16 9 (1.26%) Tenable
17 8 (1.12%) Splunk