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 23 September 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 143 235 162
Rank change year-on-year +92 -73 -14
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 1,065 369 580
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.94% 1.13% 1.54%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.10% 1.24% 1.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 619 248 418
10th Percentile £350 £269 £325
25th Percentile £425 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £494 £486
Median % change year-on-year +6.33% +1.65% -2.85%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £575
90th Percentile £663 £650 £643
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £483 £450
% change year-on-year +8.81% +7.22% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 9 3
10th Percentile £55.04 £25.40 £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% -12.58%
75th Percentile £78.75 £35.00 £68.50
90th Percentile £100.00 £44.60 £73.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 £52.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +42.31% -13.33% -14.29%

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 50,606 29,766 35,027
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 91.04% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,920 18,783 21,484
10th Percentile £325 £276 £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 £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £733 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,907 1,587 1,616
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.79
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.69
Median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.70 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £69.65 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.08 £43.97
% change year-on-year +69.49% -42.97% +0.50%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +79 910 £536 +10.31% 830
UK excluding London +96 770 £525 +8.81% 576
Work from Home +18 222 £525 +16.67% 302
North of England +45 217 £533 +6.50% 167
London -5 213 £540 +8.00% 273
South East +22 210 £565 +17.10% 147
Midlands +19 109 £469 +4.17% 81
South West +18 100 £550 -0.90% 70
North West +10 92 £515 -6.36% 99
Yorkshire +11 79 £500 - 37
West Midlands +6 74 £475 +5.56% 54
Scotland +35 60 £525 +35.48% 50
North East +6 57 £600 -7.69% 33
East of England +8 53 £450 +17.65% 54
East Midlands +9 34 £450 -18.18% 27
Wales +13 26 £513 - 10
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 4
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -

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

For the 6 months to 23 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 1,041 (97.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 424 (39.81%) Security Cleared
3 340 (31.92%) Windows
4 315 (29.58%) Azure
5 286 (26.85%) VMware
6 268 (25.16%) SC Cleared
7 253 (23.76%) Microsoft
8 229 (21.50%) Windows Server
9 226 (21.22%) Infrastructure as Code
10 225 (21.13%) VMware Infrastructure
11 220 (20.66%) Active Directory
12 215 (20.19%) Linux
13 189 (17.75%) DNS
14 181 (17.00%) Terraform
15 176 (16.53%) PowerShell
16 164 (15.40%) Firewall
17 158 (14.84%) AWS
18 155 (14.55%) DV Cleared
19 145 (13.62%) CI/CD
20 141 (13.24%) Python
21 140 (13.15%) DevOps
22 133 (12.49%) DHCP
23 125 (11.74%) Ansible
24 120 (11.27%) Problem-Solving
25 116 (10.89%) Migration
26 107 (10.05%) Entra ID
27 101 (9.48%) Kubernetes
28 99 (9.30%) Hyper-V
29 94 (8.83%) Microsoft 365
30 84 (7.89%) 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 60 (5.63%) Microsoft Exchange
2 35 (3.29%) SharePoint
3 14 (1.31%) Confluence
4 13 (1.22%) CICS
4 13 (1.22%) WebSphere
5 5 (0.47%) Apache
5 5 (0.47%) SharePoint Server
6 3 (0.28%) Exchange Server 2010
6 3 (0.28%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.19%) CloudStack
8 1 (0.094%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.094%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2013
8 1 (0.094%) IIS
8 1 (0.094%) MS Project Server
8 1 (0.094%) nginx
8 1 (0.094%) OpenStack
Applications
1 9 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.094%) CINEMA 4D
3 1 (0.094%) Houdini
3 1 (0.094%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 6 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.094%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 315 (29.58%) Azure
2 158 (14.84%) AWS
3 107 (10.05%) Entra ID
4 94 (8.83%) Microsoft 365
5 68 (6.38%) IaaS
6 51 (4.79%) GCP
6 51 (4.79%) OCI
7 44 (4.13%) GitHub
8 41 (3.85%) SaaS
9 34 (3.19%) PaaS
10 32 (3.00%) Azure DevOps
11 27 (2.54%) Azure Monitor
12 19 (1.78%) GitHub Actions
12 19 (1.78%) Nutanix
13 17 (1.60%) Azure AKS
14 12 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
14 12 (1.13%) OpenShift
15 8 (0.75%) Azure Sentinel
15 8 (0.75%) OneDrive
16 7 (0.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 189 (17.75%) DNS
2 164 (15.40%) Firewall
3 133 (12.49%) DHCP
4 62 (5.82%) VLAN
5 61 (5.73%) TCP/IP
6 57 (5.35%) VPN
7 53 (4.98%) SAN
8 45 (4.23%) Network Security
9 38 (3.57%) WAN
10 34 (3.19%) BIG-IP
11 32 (3.00%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 27 (2.54%) Wi-Fi
13 23 (2.16%) Ethernet VPN
14 22 (2.07%) SD-WAN
14 22 (2.07%) VXLAN
15 21 (1.97%) LAN
16 20 (1.88%) BGP
16 20 (1.88%) OSPF
16 20 (1.88%) VSAN
17 16 (1.50%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (4.88%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.07%) Oracle Exadata
3 17 (1.60%) Relational Database
4 15 (1.41%) Oracle Database
5 14 (1.31%) RDBMS
6 8 (0.75%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
8 6 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (0.56%) 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 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
11 2 (0.19%) BigQuery
11 2 (0.19%) Data Mining
11 2 (0.19%) MySQL
11 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 1 (0.094%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 50 (4.69%) GitLab
2 30 (2.82%) JIRA
3 28 (2.63%) Git
4 24 (2.25%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.38%) Chocolatey
6 3 (0.28%) Fiddler
7 2 (0.19%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.094%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.094%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.094%) CMake
8 1 (0.094%) Gerrit
8 1 (0.094%) Gradle
8 1 (0.094%) MLflow
8 1 (0.094%) MSI
8 1 (0.094%) Tricentis qTest
8 1 (0.094%) Visual Studio
General
1 120 (11.27%) Social Skills
2 69 (6.48%) Public Sector
3 57 (5.35%) Finance
4 45 (4.23%) Analytical Skills
5 36 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
6 19 (1.78%) Banking
7 15 (1.41%) Aerospace
7 15 (1.41%) Manufacturing
7 15 (1.41%) Telecoms
8 14 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 14 (1.31%) Military
9 10 (0.94%) Marketing
10 7 (0.66%) Law
11 6 (0.56%) Automotive
12 4 (0.38%) Legal
13 3 (0.28%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.19%) Billing
14 2 (0.19%) Front Office
14 2 (0.19%) Local Government
14 2 (0.19%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 181 (17.00%) Terraform
2 17 (1.60%) ARM Templates
2 17 (1.60%) Middleware
3 14 (1.31%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 9 (0.85%) YAML
5 7 (0.66%) OpenID
6 6 (0.56%) 802.1X
6 6 (0.56%) JSON
6 6 (0.56%) LDAP
6 6 (0.56%) SAML
7 5 (0.47%) .NET
7 5 (0.47%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (0.47%) Flash
7 5 (0.47%) REST
8 4 (0.38%) Kafka
8 4 (0.38%) OAuth
9 2 (0.19%) OAuth2
9 2 (0.19%) RabbitMQ
9 2 (0.19%) React
9 2 (0.19%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 114 (10.70%) Data Centre
2 67 (6.29%) Hybrid Cloud
3 56 (5.26%) PKI
4 39 (3.66%) Public Cloud
5 30 (2.82%) Onboarding
6 29 (2.72%) Cloud Native
6 29 (2.72%) Replication
7 28 (2.63%) Enterprise Storage
8 23 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
9 20 (1.88%) Private Cloud
10 18 (1.69%) Clustering
10 18 (1.69%) Linux Command Line
11 17 (1.60%) Management Information System
12 16 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
13 14 (1.31%) SCADA
14 13 (1.22%) Mainframe
14 13 (1.22%) Operational Technology
15 10 (0.94%) Driving Licence
16 8 (0.75%) Smartcard
16 8 (0.75%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 340 (31.92%) Windows
2 229 (21.50%) Windows Server
3 215 (20.19%) Linux
4 39 (3.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (1.88%) Windows 10
6 18 (1.69%) VMS
6 18 (1.69%) Windows Server 2016
6 18 (1.69%) Windows Server 2019
7 16 (1.50%) Ubuntu
8 14 (1.31%) AIX
8 14 (1.31%) CentOS
9 13 (1.22%) zOS
10 11 (1.03%) Android
10 11 (1.03%) Apple iOS
11 10 (0.94%) Mac OS
11 10 (0.94%) Windows Server 2012
12 9 (0.85%) Rocky
13 8 (0.75%) Unix
14 6 (0.56%) Debian
15 5 (0.47%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,041 (97.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 226 (21.22%) Infrastructure as Code
3 145 (13.62%) CI/CD
4 140 (13.15%) DevOps
5 120 (11.27%) Problem-Solving
6 116 (10.89%) Migration
7 84 (7.89%) Infrastructure Automation
8 72 (6.76%) High Availability
9 70 (6.57%) Disaster Recovery
10 68 (6.38%) Continuous Improvement
11 65 (6.10%) ITIL
12 64 (6.01%) Project Delivery
13 61 (5.73%) Platform Engineering
14 58 (5.45%) Validation
15 50 (4.69%) Root Cause Analysis
16 46 (4.32%) Zero Trust
17 44 (4.13%) Agile
17 44 (4.13%) Identity Access Management
18 43 (4.04%) Vulnerability Remediation
19 42 (3.94%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 176 (16.53%) PowerShell
2 141 (13.24%) Python
3 74 (6.95%) Bash
4 41 (3.85%) SQL
5 30 (2.82%) Bicep
6 14 (1.31%) C#
7 10 (0.94%) Java
8 9 (0.85%) Perl
9 8 (0.75%) ActionScript
10 6 (0.56%) Go
11 3 (0.28%) C++
12 2 (0.19%) VB
13 1 (0.094%) C
13 1 (0.094%) Groovy
13 1 (0.094%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.094%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.094%) PHP
13 1 (0.094%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.094%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.094%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 424 (39.81%) Security Cleared
2 268 (25.16%) SC Cleared
3 155 (14.55%) DV Cleared
4 40 (3.76%) Degree
5 33 (3.10%) Microsoft Certification
6 23 (2.16%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
8 20 (1.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 16 (1.50%) MCSE
10 14 (1.31%) CCNA
11 13 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
12 12 (1.13%) CCNP
12 12 (1.13%) VCAP
13 7 (0.66%) AWS Certification
14 6 (0.56%) MCSA
15 5 (0.47%) DBS Check
16 4 (0.38%) BPSS Clearance
16 4 (0.38%) JNCIP
16 4 (0.38%) JNCIS
16 4 (0.38%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (3.76%) QA
2 17 (1.60%) SLA
3 15 (1.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 12 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
5 10 (0.94%) NCSC
6 8 (0.75%) NIST
7 6 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 3 (0.28%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.19%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.19%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.094%) FedRAMP
System Software
1 225 (21.13%) VMware Infrastructure
2 220 (20.66%) Active Directory
3 99 (9.30%) Hyper-V
4 72 (6.76%) VMware ESXi
5 71 (6.67%) vSphere
6 47 (4.41%) Virtual Machines
7 42 (3.94%) Docker
8 28 (2.63%) VMware NSX
9 27 (2.54%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (1.31%) Oracle RAC
10 14 (1.31%) Virtual Servers
11 13 (1.22%) NFS
12 11 (1.03%) Firmware
13 7 (0.66%) KVM
14 6 (0.56%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.56%) oVirt
15 5 (0.47%) GPFS
16 4 (0.38%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.28%) Terminal Services
18 2 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 125 (11.74%) Ansible
2 101 (9.48%) Kubernetes
3 65 (6.10%) Microsoft Intune
4 49 (4.60%) SCCM
5 37 (3.47%) vCenter Server
6 19 (1.78%) WSUS
7 18 (1.69%) SCOM
8 15 (1.41%) NetBackup
8 15 (1.41%) Prometheus
9 14 (1.31%) Data Guard
9 14 (1.31%) Oracle RMAN
10 12 (1.13%) Grafana
11 10 (0.94%) Puppet
12 9 (0.85%) Failover Clustering
12 9 (0.85%) Nessus
12 9 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (0.66%) VxRail
14 6 (0.56%) FortiGate
14 6 (0.56%) Red Hat Satellite
15 5 (0.47%) Packer
Vendors
1 286 (26.85%) VMware
2 253 (23.76%) Microsoft
3 63 (5.92%) Cisco
4 62 (5.82%) Citrix
5 45 (4.23%) NetApp
6 40 (3.76%) Oracle
7 36 (3.38%) F5
7 36 (3.38%) Veeam
8 33 (3.10%) Palo Alto
9 28 (2.63%) Red Hat
10 26 (2.44%) Google
11 20 (1.88%) IBM
12 19 (1.78%) Arista
12 19 (1.78%) Aruba
13 17 (1.60%) CyberArk
13 17 (1.60%) Dell
14 15 (1.41%) Juniper
14 15 (1.41%) ServiceNow
14 15 (1.41%) SolarWinds
15 13 (1.22%) Tenable