Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 December 2025.

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

6 months to
29 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 235 188 149
Rank change year-on-year -47 -39 +35
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 441 459 758
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.20% 1.38% 1.75%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.31% 1.49% 1.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 313 319 542
10th Percentile £271 £324 £350
25th Percentile £363 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £613
90th Percentile £640 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £488
% change year-on-year - -7.69% +8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 4 17
10th Percentile £26.08 - £21.25
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.18 -
Median hourly rate £34.00 £34.59 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.71% +50.39% -54.00%
75th Percentile £60.79 £50.63 £72.50
90th Percentile £82.10 £56.25 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.75 £24.18 £23.00
% change year-on-year +188.46% +5.13% -39.27%

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 33,636 30,890 40,421
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.16% 92.72% 93.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,275 18,962 27,109
10th Percentile £295 £300 £282
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £640
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £487 £500
% change year-on-year -2.41% -2.65% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,972 959 1,551
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.52 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £19.15
Median hourly rate £25.47 £32.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.63% -27.78% +41.93%
75th Percentile £58.06 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.97 £73.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.94
% change year-on-year -22.62% -29.26% +77.99%

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 29 December 2025.

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 29 December 2025.

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 29 December 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
England -30 401 £472 -5.60% 534
UK excluding London -25 287 £450 - 494
Work from Home +12 122 £425 -0.58% 213
London -56 112 £525 - 85
South East -3 89 £450 +1.12% 113
North of England -26 67 £425 +4.62% 107
South West +5 61 £555 -3.48% 86
Yorkshire -32 33 £350 -11.11% 61
North West -13 30 £442 +8.74% 40
Midlands -44 30 £425 -19.81% 101
East of England +2 29 £413 -2.94% 50
West Midlands -30 22 £483 -29.56% 54
Scotland -20 11 £465 +3.33% 27
East Midlands -21 8 £415 -17.00% 43
Wales -12 5 £550 +22.22% 13
North East -4 4 £466 - 8
Northern Ireland -9 1 £375 - 5

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

For the 6 months to 29 December 2025, 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.

1 419 (95.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 174 (39.46%) Azure
3 169 (38.32%) Windows
4 157 (35.60%) Microsoft
5 128 (29.02%) VMware
6 125 (28.34%) Security Cleared
7 120 (27.21%) Active Directory
8 100 (22.68%) Linux
9 99 (22.45%) VMware Infrastructure
10 95 (21.54%) SC Cleared
11 94 (21.32%) Terraform
12 91 (20.63%) Firewall
13 88 (19.95%) Windows Server
14 79 (17.91%) DevOps
15 78 (17.69%) Problem-Solving
16 76 (17.23%) Microsoft 365
17 75 (17.01%) AWS
18 74 (16.78%) DNS
19 72 (16.33%) Infrastructure as Code
19 72 (16.33%) PowerShell
20 67 (15.19%) Ansible
21 66 (14.97%) ITIL
22 62 (14.06%) CI/CD
22 62 (14.06%) Hyper-V
23 60 (13.61%) Python
24 52 (11.79%) DHCP
24 52 (11.79%) TCP/IP
25 50 (11.34%) Infrastructure Automation
26 47 (10.66%) Entra ID
27 46 (10.43%) Microsoft Intune

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 43 (9.75%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.81%) Apache
4 7 (1.59%) IIS
4 7 (1.59%) TPMS
5 6 (1.36%) Confluence
6 3 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.68%) Exchange Server 2010
7 2 (0.45%) iPlanet
7 2 (0.45%) JBoss
7 2 (0.45%) nginx
7 2 (0.45%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.45%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.45%) WebSphere Application Server
8 1 (0.23%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.23%) CICS
8 1 (0.23%) Traefik
8 1 (0.23%) WebLogic
Applications
1 8 (1.81%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.45%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.23%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.68%) Maximo
2 2 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.23%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 174 (39.46%) Azure
2 76 (17.23%) Microsoft 365
3 75 (17.01%) AWS
4 47 (10.66%) Entra ID
5 24 (5.44%) IaaS
6 21 (4.76%) PaaS
7 19 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
8 18 (4.08%) Azure Monitor
9 17 (3.85%) GitHub
10 16 (3.63%) GCP
11 14 (3.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 14 (3.17%) Amazon S3
11 14 (3.17%) Azure Sentinel
12 12 (2.72%) Mimecast
13 11 (2.49%) Nutanix
14 10 (2.27%) Amazon EC2
14 10 (2.27%) Amazon ELB
14 10 (2.27%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 10 (2.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 9 (2.04%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 91 (20.63%) Firewall
2 74 (16.78%) DNS
3 52 (11.79%) DHCP
3 52 (11.79%) TCP/IP
4 45 (10.20%) VPN
5 29 (6.58%) WAN
6 28 (6.35%) VLAN
7 26 (5.90%) SSL
8 25 (5.67%) Wi-Fi
9 22 (4.99%) SAN
10 18 (4.08%) LAN
11 15 (3.40%) Network Security
12 9 (2.04%) SD-WAN
13 7 (1.59%) HTTP
13 7 (1.59%) MPLS
13 7 (1.59%) SNMP
13 7 (1.59%) SSH
14 6 (1.36%) 4G
15 4 (0.91%) Fibre Channel
15 4 (0.91%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (3.40%) SQL Server
2 3 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
3 2 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
3 2 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (0.45%) MySQL
3 2 (0.45%) Oracle Database
3 2 (0.45%) Power BI
3 2 (0.45%) SAP HANA
4 1 (0.23%) Apache Iceberg
4 1 (0.23%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.23%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.23%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (0.23%) Delta Lake
4 1 (0.23%) Parquet
4 1 (0.23%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (0.23%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 18 (4.08%) GitLab
2 17 (3.85%) Git
3 16 (3.63%) Jenkins
4 11 (2.49%) JIRA
5 4 (0.91%) Artifactory
5 4 (0.91%) Robot Framework
6 3 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.45%) Bitbucket Server
7 2 (0.45%) CA Release Automation
8 1 (0.23%) GoCD
8 1 (0.23%) MSI
General
1 89 (20.18%) Social Skills
2 52 (11.79%) Public Sector
3 44 (9.98%) Finance
4 39 (8.84%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (4.76%) Documentation Skills
6 11 (2.49%) Banking
7 10 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (2.27%) Military
8 9 (2.04%) Local Government
9 7 (1.59%) Billing
9 7 (1.59%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.36%) Aerospace
10 6 (1.36%) Aviation
10 6 (1.36%) Financial Institution
10 6 (1.36%) Manufacturing
10 6 (1.36%) Spanish Language
11 5 (1.13%) Legal
12 4 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.68%) Marketing
13 3 (0.68%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.49%) Middleware
2 9 (2.04%) SAML
3 8 (1.81%) ARM Templates
4 7 (1.59%) OpenID
5 6 (1.36%) REST
6 5 (1.13%) Microsoft Graph
7 4 (0.91%) AWS CDK
7 4 (0.91%) LDAP
7 4 (0.91%) OAuth
7 4 (0.91%) SOAP
7 4 (0.91%) Web Services
7 4 (0.91%) YAML
8 3 (0.68%) ADO
8 3 (0.68%) FIX Protocol
9 2 (0.45%) .NET
9 2 (0.45%) .NET Core
9 2 (0.45%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.45%) Node.js
9 2 (0.45%) OAuth2
9 2 (0.45%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 34 (7.71%) Data Centre
2 21 (4.76%) Hybrid Cloud
2 21 (4.76%) PKI
3 13 (2.95%) Analytical Mindset
3 13 (2.95%) Private Cloud
3 13 (2.95%) Replication
4 8 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
4 8 (1.81%) Onboarding
5 7 (1.59%) Clustering
5 7 (1.59%) Public Cloud
6 6 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (1.36%) NHS
6 6 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
7 5 (1.13%) Management Information System
8 4 (0.91%) Cloud Native
8 4 (0.91%) Linux Command Line
8 4 (0.91%) Mobile App
9 3 (0.68%) Cyber Threat
9 3 (0.68%) Legacy Systems
9 3 (0.68%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 169 (38.32%) Windows
2 100 (22.68%) Linux
3 88 (19.95%) Windows Server
4 16 (3.63%) Windows 10
5 13 (2.95%) Ubuntu
5 13 (2.95%) Unix
6 12 (2.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 10 (2.27%) Windows Server 2012
8 9 (2.04%) VMS
9 7 (1.59%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (1.59%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (1.36%) Android
11 5 (1.13%) Apple iOS
12 4 (0.91%) CentOS
13 3 (0.68%) Windows Server 2003
14 2 (0.45%) Debian
14 2 (0.45%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.45%) SUSE
14 2 (0.45%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
15 1 (0.23%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 419 (95.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 79 (17.91%) DevOps
3 78 (17.69%) Problem-Solving
4 72 (16.33%) Infrastructure as Code
5 66 (14.97%) ITIL
6 62 (14.06%) CI/CD
7 50 (11.34%) Infrastructure Automation
8 40 (9.07%) Disaster Recovery
9 39 (8.84%) Migration
10 35 (7.94%) High Availability
11 33 (7.48%) Cybersecurity
12 29 (6.58%) Observability
13 25 (5.67%) Agile
13 25 (5.67%) Service Management
14 24 (5.44%) Containerisation
15 19 (4.31%) Cloud Security
15 19 (4.31%) Configuration Management
15 19 (4.31%) DevSecOps
16 18 (4.08%) SIEM
17 17 (3.85%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 72 (16.33%) PowerShell
2 60 (13.61%) Python
3 31 (7.03%) Bash
4 16 (3.63%) Bicep
5 14 (3.17%) Perl
6 13 (2.95%) SQL
7 8 (1.81%) Java
8 7 (1.59%) JavaScript
8 7 (1.59%) Shell Script
9 6 (1.36%) Go
10 5 (1.13%) PHP
11 2 (0.45%) C#
11 2 (0.45%) Groovy
11 2 (0.45%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.23%) C++
12 1 (0.23%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.23%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.23%) Ruby
12 1 (0.23%) Scala
12 1 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 125 (28.34%) Security Cleared
2 95 (21.54%) SC Cleared
3 32 (7.26%) DV Cleared
4 31 (7.03%) Azure Certification
5 24 (5.44%) Microsoft Certification
6 17 (3.85%) Network+ Certification
7 15 (3.40%) Degree
8 12 (2.72%) Server+ Certification
9 9 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
10 7 (1.59%) AWS Certification
10 7 (1.59%) CCNA
10 7 (1.59%) FFIEC
11 6 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
11 6 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (1.13%) CISSP
12 5 (1.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 4 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 4 (0.91%) CISM
14 3 (0.68%) CompTIA Security+
14 3 (0.68%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (2.95%) NIST
2 12 (2.72%) GDPR
3 10 (2.27%) SLA
4 7 (1.59%) GLBA
4 7 (1.59%) PCI DSS
5 5 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (1.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.68%) NIST 800
6 3 (0.68%) QA
7 2 (0.45%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.45%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.23%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 120 (27.21%) Active Directory
2 99 (22.45%) VMware Infrastructure
3 62 (14.06%) Hyper-V
4 41 (9.30%) Docker
5 19 (4.31%) vSphere
6 10 (2.27%) Virtual Machines
7 9 (2.04%) Virtual Desktop
7 9 (2.04%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (1.81%) VMware NSX
9 3 (0.68%) DFS Replication
9 3 (0.68%) Sendmail
9 3 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.45%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.45%) QEMU
10 2 (0.45%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 1 (0.23%) etcd
11 1 (0.23%) Firmware
11 1 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 1 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.23%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 94 (21.32%) Terraform
2 67 (15.19%) Ansible
3 46 (10.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 45 (10.20%) SCCM
5 36 (8.16%) Kubernetes
6 14 (3.17%) vCenter Server
7 13 (2.95%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (1.81%) FortiGate
9 7 (1.59%) Prometheus
10 6 (1.36%) CASB
10 6 (1.36%) Grafana
10 6 (1.36%) Packer
10 6 (1.36%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (1.36%) SCOrch
11 4 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.91%) Nessus
11 4 (0.91%) SCOM
11 4 (0.91%) VxRail
11 4 (0.91%) WSUS
12 3 (0.68%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 157 (35.60%) Microsoft
2 128 (29.02%) VMware
3 30 (6.80%) Cisco
4 27 (6.12%) Palo Alto
5 23 (5.22%) F5
6 19 (4.31%) Red Hat
7 16 (3.63%) Veeam
8 15 (3.40%) Dell
8 15 (3.40%) ServiceNow
9 14 (3.17%) Citrix
9 14 (3.17%) Google
10 12 (2.72%) CheckPoint
11 11 (2.49%) Splunk
12 10 (2.27%) Aruba
13 9 (2.04%) HP
14 8 (1.81%) Oracle
14 8 (1.81%) SolarWinds
15 7 (1.59%) Fortinet
15 7 (1.59%) NetApp
16 6 (1.36%) Commvault