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 26 August 2026.

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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 239 152
Rank change year-on-year +96 -87 0
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 1,042 377 634
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 1.15% 1.63%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.10% 1.26% 1.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 612 244 476
10th Percentile £350 £329 £325
25th Percentile £425 £384 £397
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £482
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% +3.73% -3.60%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £575
90th Percentile £675 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £470
% change year-on-year +5.00% +6.38% -6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 6 5
10th Percentile £44.76 £27.50 £51.00
25th Percentile £58.43 £29.00 £63.75
Median hourly rate £72.54 £30.00 £77.00
Median % change year-on-year +141.80% -61.04% +8.07%
75th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 -
90th Percentile £100.00 £141.50 £77.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £77.00 £72.75
% change year-on-year -5.79% +5.84% +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 49,591 29,856 36,116
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.45% 91.25% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,677 18,858 22,961
10th Percentile £325 £278 £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 £622 £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 3,535 1,578 1,930
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.68 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.51 £17.08 £19.50
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -1.44%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.19% -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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 +81 896 £525 +5.00% 174
UK excluding London +84 733 £525 +5.00% 159
London +17 228 £550 +5.26% 32
South East +35 224 £545 +1.33% 40
Work from Home +28 213 £531 +12.43% 55
North of England +32 205 £515 -1.44% 43
South West +17 105 £550 -0.90% 35
Midlands +2 91 £475 +5.56% 13
North West +2 84 £515 -14.17% 21
Yorkshire +9 81 £370 -26.00% 12
West Midlands -23 63 £475 +5.56% 8
Scotland +25 50 £538 +5.13% 9
North East -1 50 £600 -7.69% 10
East of England -10 36 £450 +17.65% 27
Wales +10 27 £500 - 1
East Midlands +4 27 £450 +5.88% 5
Northern Ireland - 1 - -
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -

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

For the 6 months to 26 August 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 1,025 (98.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 426 (40.88%) Security Cleared
3 325 (31.19%) Windows
4 315 (30.23%) Azure
5 280 (26.87%) SC Cleared
6 268 (25.72%) VMware
7 244 (23.42%) Microsoft
8 214 (20.54%) Windows Server
9 210 (20.15%) Active Directory
9 210 (20.15%) VMware Infrastructure
10 206 (19.77%) Infrastructure as Code
11 196 (18.81%) Linux
12 183 (17.56%) DNS
13 182 (17.47%) Terraform
14 177 (16.99%) PowerShell
15 155 (14.88%) Firewall
16 147 (14.11%) DV Cleared
17 146 (14.01%) AWS
18 143 (13.72%) DevOps
19 137 (13.15%) Python
20 131 (12.57%) CI/CD
20 131 (12.57%) DHCP
21 121 (11.61%) Ansible
22 111 (10.65%) Migration
22 111 (10.65%) Problem-Solving
23 98 (9.40%) Kubernetes
24 95 (9.12%) Hyper-V
25 89 (8.54%) Entra ID
26 85 (8.16%) Microsoft 365
27 77 (7.39%) High Availability

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 58 (5.57%) Microsoft Exchange
2 30 (2.88%) SharePoint
3 14 (1.34%) WebSphere
4 13 (1.25%) CICS
5 9 (0.86%) Confluence
6 5 (0.48%) SharePoint Server
7 3 (0.29%) Apache
7 3 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2010
8 2 (0.19%) CloudStack
9 1 (0.096%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.096%) Exchange Server 2013
9 1 (0.096%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.096%) IIS
9 1 (0.096%) MS Project Server
9 1 (0.096%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.096%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.096%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 10 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.096%) CINEMA 4D
3 1 (0.096%) Houdini
3 1 (0.096%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.096%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.096%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 315 (30.23%) Azure
2 146 (14.01%) AWS
3 89 (8.54%) Entra ID
4 85 (8.16%) Microsoft 365
5 59 (5.66%) IaaS
6 53 (5.09%) GitHub
7 52 (4.99%) GCP
7 52 (4.99%) OCI
8 41 (3.93%) SaaS
9 39 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
10 34 (3.26%) PaaS
11 31 (2.98%) Azure Monitor
12 24 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
13 21 (2.02%) Azure AKS
14 17 (1.63%) Nutanix
15 10 (0.96%) OpenShift
16 9 (0.86%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 8 (0.77%) Azure Sentinel
17 8 (0.77%) OneDrive
17 8 (0.77%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 183 (17.56%) DNS
2 155 (14.88%) Firewall
3 131 (12.57%) DHCP
4 57 (5.47%) VPN
5 55 (5.28%) VLAN
6 54 (5.18%) TCP/IP
7 52 (4.99%) SAN
8 42 (4.03%) Network Security
9 41 (3.93%) WAN
10 31 (2.98%) BIG-IP
10 31 (2.98%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 25 (2.40%) Wi-Fi
12 24 (2.30%) LAN
13 23 (2.21%) Ethernet VPN
13 23 (2.21%) SD-WAN
14 22 (2.11%) VXLAN
15 20 (1.92%) BGP
15 20 (1.92%) OSPF
15 20 (1.92%) VSAN
16 14 (1.34%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (5.09%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.11%) Oracle Exadata
3 17 (1.63%) Relational Database
4 16 (1.54%) Oracle Database
5 14 (1.34%) RDBMS
6 8 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
7 6 (0.58%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.38%) PostgreSQL
8 4 (0.38%) Power BI
8 4 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 3 (0.29%) Big Data
9 3 (0.29%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.29%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.29%) NonStop SQL
10 2 (0.19%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.096%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.096%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 45 (4.32%) GitLab
2 26 (2.50%) JIRA
3 22 (2.11%) Git
3 22 (2.11%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.48%) Chocolatey
5 3 (0.29%) Fiddler
6 1 (0.096%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.096%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.096%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.096%) CMake
6 1 (0.096%) Gradle
6 1 (0.096%) Introscope
6 1 (0.096%) MLflow
6 1 (0.096%) MSI
6 1 (0.096%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.096%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 117 (11.23%) Social Skills
2 74 (7.10%) Public Sector
3 45 (4.32%) Analytical Skills
4 44 (4.22%) Finance
5 37 (3.55%) Documentation Skills
6 22 (2.11%) Banking
7 14 (1.34%) Aerospace
7 14 (1.34%) Military
8 12 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 11 (1.06%) Manufacturing
10 10 (0.96%) Marketing
10 10 (0.96%) Telecoms
11 8 (0.77%) Legal
12 7 (0.67%) Law
13 6 (0.58%) Automotive
14 4 (0.38%) Investment Banking
15 2 (0.19%) Advertising
15 2 (0.19%) Billing
15 2 (0.19%) Local Government
15 2 (0.19%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 182 (17.47%) Terraform
2 18 (1.73%) Middleware
3 15 (1.44%) ARM Templates
4 14 (1.34%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 8 (0.77%) YAML
6 7 (0.67%) REST
7 6 (0.58%) 802.1X
7 6 (0.58%) JSON
7 6 (0.58%) OpenID
8 5 (0.48%) Elastic Stack
8 5 (0.48%) Flash
8 5 (0.48%) SAML
9 4 (0.38%) .NET
9 4 (0.38%) LDAP
10 3 (0.29%) Kafka
10 3 (0.29%) OAuth
10 3 (0.29%) SOAP
11 2 (0.19%) OAuth2
11 2 (0.19%) RabbitMQ
11 2 (0.19%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 120 (11.52%) Data Centre
2 59 (5.66%) Hybrid Cloud
3 57 (5.47%) PKI
4 37 (3.55%) Public Cloud
5 32 (3.07%) Enterprise Storage
6 27 (2.59%) Onboarding
6 27 (2.59%) Replication
7 24 (2.30%) Cloud Native
8 18 (1.73%) Clustering
8 18 (1.73%) Self-Motivation
9 17 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
10 15 (1.44%) Linux Command Line
10 15 (1.44%) Management Information System
11 13 (1.25%) Mainframe
11 13 (1.25%) Private Cloud
12 11 (1.06%) Operational Technology
13 9 (0.86%) Driving Licence
14 8 (0.77%) Enterprise Software
14 8 (0.77%) Smartcard
14 8 (0.77%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 325 (31.19%) Windows
2 214 (20.54%) Windows Server
3 196 (18.81%) Linux
4 36 (3.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (1.92%) Windows Server 2016
6 19 (1.82%) Windows 10
6 19 (1.82%) Windows Server 2019
7 15 (1.44%) AIX
7 15 (1.44%) VMS
8 14 (1.34%) Ubuntu
9 13 (1.25%) zOS
10 12 (1.15%) CentOS
11 11 (1.06%) Apple iOS
12 10 (0.96%) Android
12 10 (0.96%) Mac OS
13 9 (0.86%) Windows Server 2012
14 7 (0.67%) Rocky
15 6 (0.58%) Debian
16 5 (0.48%) Unix
16 5 (0.48%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,025 (98.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 206 (19.77%) Infrastructure as Code
3 143 (13.72%) DevOps
4 131 (12.57%) CI/CD
5 111 (10.65%) Migration
5 111 (10.65%) Problem-Solving
6 77 (7.39%) High Availability
6 77 (7.39%) Infrastructure Automation
7 69 (6.62%) Disaster Recovery
8 68 (6.53%) Continuous Improvement
9 63 (6.05%) ITIL
10 59 (5.66%) Platform Engineering
10 59 (5.66%) Project Delivery
11 58 (5.57%) Validation
12 48 (4.61%) Zero Trust
13 46 (4.41%) Root Cause Analysis
14 44 (4.22%) Agile
15 42 (4.03%) Identity Access Management
16 41 (3.93%) Cybersecurity
17 40 (3.84%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 177 (16.99%) PowerShell
2 137 (13.15%) Python
3 74 (7.10%) Bash
4 39 (3.74%) SQL
5 30 (2.88%) Bicep
6 17 (1.63%) C#
7 10 (0.96%) Java
8 6 (0.58%) ActionScript
8 6 (0.58%) Go
9 3 (0.29%) Perl
10 2 (0.19%) C++
10 2 (0.19%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.19%) VB
11 1 (0.096%) C
11 1 (0.096%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.096%) Jython
11 1 (0.096%) PHP
11 1 (0.096%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.096%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 426 (40.88%) Security Cleared
2 280 (26.87%) SC Cleared
3 147 (14.11%) DV Cleared
4 38 (3.65%) Degree
5 32 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
6 23 (2.21%) Azure Certification
7 20 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
7 20 (1.92%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 18 (1.73%) MCSE
9 13 (1.25%) CCNA
9 13 (1.25%) VCAP
10 11 (1.06%) CCNP
11 10 (0.96%) Computer Science Degree
12 6 (0.58%) MCSA
13 5 (0.48%) DBS Check
14 4 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
14 4 (0.38%) JNCIP
14 4 (0.38%) JNCIS
14 4 (0.38%) RHCA
15 3 (0.29%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (3.26%) QA
2 19 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (1.54%) SLA
4 12 (1.15%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (1.15%) NIST
5 10 (0.96%) NCSC
6 6 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 3 (0.29%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.19%) GDPR
8 2 (0.19%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.19%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.096%) FedRAMP
9 1 (0.096%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 210 (20.15%) Active Directory
1 210 (20.15%) VMware Infrastructure
2 95 (9.12%) Hyper-V
3 71 (6.81%) vSphere
4 68 (6.53%) VMware ESXi
5 45 (4.32%) Virtual Machines
6 34 (3.26%) Docker
7 32 (3.07%) VMware NSX
8 24 (2.30%) Virtual Desktop
9 14 (1.34%) Oracle RAC
10 12 (1.15%) NFS
11 10 (0.96%) Firmware
12 9 (0.86%) BitLocker
13 8 (0.77%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.67%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.58%) KVM
16 5 (0.48%) GPFS
17 4 (0.38%) Terminal Services
18 2 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
19 1 (0.096%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 121 (11.61%) Ansible
2 98 (9.40%) Kubernetes
3 59 (5.66%) Microsoft Intune
4 44 (4.22%) vCenter Server
5 42 (4.03%) SCCM
6 19 (1.82%) WSUS
7 18 (1.73%) SCOM
8 17 (1.63%) NetBackup
9 15 (1.44%) Prometheus
10 14 (1.34%) Data Guard
10 14 (1.34%) Oracle RMAN
11 12 (1.15%) Grafana
12 10 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
13 9 (0.86%) Puppet
14 8 (0.77%) Nessus
14 8 (0.77%) vMotion
14 8 (0.77%) vRealize
15 7 (0.67%) FortiGate
16 6 (0.58%) Packer
16 6 (0.58%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 268 (25.72%) VMware
2 244 (23.42%) Microsoft
3 65 (6.24%) Citrix
4 58 (5.57%) Cisco
5 43 (4.13%) NetApp
6 42 (4.03%) Oracle
7 34 (3.26%) F5
7 34 (3.26%) Veeam
8 32 (3.07%) Palo Alto
9 29 (2.78%) Google
10 27 (2.59%) Red Hat
11 20 (1.92%) IBM
12 19 (1.82%) Arista
12 19 (1.82%) Aruba
13 17 (1.63%) CyberArk
13 17 (1.63%) Juniper
13 17 (1.63%) ServiceNow
14 16 (1.54%) Dell
15 14 (1.34%) SolarWinds
15 14 (1.34%) Tenable