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 10 April 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 199 187 146
Rank change year-on-year -12 -41 +40
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 621 399 727
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.35% 1.37% 1.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.47% 1.47% 1.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 437 278 530
10th Percentile £325 £312 £310
25th Percentile £413 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -5.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £644 £650 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% +4.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 4 12
10th Percentile £38.10 - -
25th Percentile £58.43 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £72.54 £112.09 £45.25
Median % change year-on-year -35.28% +147.71% -29.12%
75th Percentile £78.75 £200.00 £76.65
90th Percentile £79.25 - £77.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £112.09 £22.50
% change year-on-year -35.28% +398.18% -62.84%

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 42,318 27,076 40,821
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 92.68% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,340 17,810 26,699
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,659 966 2,580
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.95 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.09 £20.12 £16.25
Median hourly rate £40.54 £31.58 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.37% -9.77% -21.81%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £30.20 £35.00
% change year-on-year +38.87% -13.71% -17.38%

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 10 April 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 10 April 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 10 April 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 -6 541 £500 -4.76% 240
UK excluding London +5 421 £500 -4.76% 226
London -44 148 £500 -4.76% 35
Work from Home -5 117 £500 +8.11% 93
South East -13 113 £525 -4.55% 61
North of England -37 100 £413 +3.13% 67
South West +13 92 £550 -4.35% 40
Yorkshire -22 60 £350 -12.50% 22
Midlands -40 47 £450 +16.13% 29
North West -19 36 £413 -21.43% 37
East of England -22 32 £450 -3.54% 17
Scotland +10 28 £535 -2.73% 8
East Midlands -18 24 £450 +12.50% 7
West Midlands -54 23 £400 +18.52% 22
Wales -11 10 £550 +29.41% 6
North East -18 5 £500 +36.99% 8
Northern Ireland - 1 £375 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 10 April 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.

1 602 (96.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 211 (33.98%) Security Cleared
3 210 (33.82%) Windows
4 202 (32.53%) Azure
5 176 (28.34%) VMware
6 167 (26.89%) Microsoft
7 146 (23.51%) SC Cleared
8 137 (22.06%) Active Directory
9 136 (21.90%) VMware Infrastructure
10 123 (19.81%) Windows Server
11 107 (17.23%) Terraform
12 106 (17.07%) PowerShell
13 98 (15.78%) DNS
14 97 (15.62%) DevOps
14 97 (15.62%) Linux
15 94 (15.14%) Infrastructure as Code
16 92 (14.81%) Firewall
17 82 (13.20%) Problem-Solving
18 80 (12.88%) DV Cleared
19 73 (11.76%) CI/CD
20 71 (11.43%) DHCP
21 69 (11.11%) AWS
21 69 (11.11%) Microsoft 365
22 68 (10.95%) Hyper-V
23 67 (10.79%) Python
24 64 (10.31%) Kubernetes
25 63 (10.14%) Migration
26 56 (9.02%) ITIL
27 55 (8.86%) Infrastructure Automation
28 54 (8.70%) Ansible

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 48 (7.73%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (1.77%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.29%) TPMS
4 5 (0.81%) Apache
5 4 (0.64%) IIS
6 3 (0.48%) Exchange Server 2010
7 2 (0.32%) Confluence
7 2 (0.32%) nginx
8 1 (0.16%) CICS
8 1 (0.16%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.16%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.16%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.16%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (1.93%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.32%) Maximo
2 1 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 202 (32.53%) Azure
2 69 (11.11%) AWS
2 69 (11.11%) Microsoft 365
3 42 (6.76%) Entra ID
3 42 (6.76%) GitHub
4 37 (5.96%) GCP
5 36 (5.80%) IaaS
6 33 (5.31%) PaaS
7 24 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
8 20 (3.22%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 20 (3.22%) SaaS
9 19 (3.06%) Nutanix
10 17 (2.74%) Azure Monitor
11 12 (1.93%) Azure Sentinel
12 10 (1.61%) Azure AKS
12 10 (1.61%) OCI
13 8 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (1.29%) Microsoft Purview
14 7 (1.13%) Microsoft Copilot
14 7 (1.13%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 98 (15.78%) DNS
2 92 (14.81%) Firewall
3 71 (11.43%) DHCP
4 45 (7.25%) VPN
5 29 (4.67%) WAN
6 28 (4.51%) LAN
7 26 (4.19%) VLAN
8 24 (3.86%) Network Security
9 23 (3.70%) TCP/IP
10 22 (3.54%) SAN
11 12 (1.93%) Wi-Fi
12 11 (1.77%) SMTP
12 11 (1.77%) SNMP
13 10 (1.61%) SSH
13 10 (1.61%) SSL
14 9 (1.45%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 9 (1.45%) MPLS
15 7 (1.13%) BGP
15 7 (1.13%) VSAN
16 6 (0.97%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.54%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.45%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.48%) Data Mining
4 3 (0.48%) NonStop SQL
5 2 (0.32%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.32%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.32%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.32%) Power BI
5 2 (0.32%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.16%) Flink
6 1 (0.16%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.16%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.16%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.16%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.16%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 16 (2.58%) Jenkins
2 11 (1.77%) GitLab
2 11 (1.77%) JIRA
3 8 (1.29%) Artifactory
3 8 (1.29%) Git
4 3 (0.48%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.16%) Chocolatey
5 1 (0.16%) Claude Code
5 1 (0.16%) GoCD
5 1 (0.16%) IntelliJ
5 1 (0.16%) Introscope
5 1 (0.16%) MSI
5 1 (0.16%) Robot Framework
5 1 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 88 (14.17%) Social Skills
2 60 (9.66%) Public Sector
3 49 (7.89%) Finance
4 40 (6.44%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
6 18 (2.90%) Legal
7 17 (2.74%) Banking
8 10 (1.61%) Aerospace
9 9 (1.45%) Billing
9 9 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (0.81%) Manufacturing
10 5 (0.81%) Military
10 5 (0.81%) Telecoms
11 3 (0.48%) Law
11 3 (0.48%) Local Government
11 3 (0.48%) Retail
11 3 (0.48%) Spanish Language
12 2 (0.32%) Advertising
12 2 (0.32%) Aviation
12 2 (0.32%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (1.77%) REST
2 8 (1.29%) ARM Templates
2 8 (1.29%) LDAP
2 8 (1.29%) SOAP
3 5 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
3 5 (0.81%) SAML
3 5 (0.81%) Web Services
4 4 (0.64%) Keycloak
5 3 (0.48%) ADO
5 3 (0.48%) OpenID
5 3 (0.48%) Oracle Fusion
6 2 (0.32%) Apache NiFi
6 2 (0.32%) Flash
6 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Graph
6 2 (0.32%) Node.js
6 2 (0.32%) OAuth
6 2 (0.32%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.16%) 802.1X
7 1 (0.16%) Kafka
7 1 (0.16%) React
Miscellaneous
1 42 (6.76%) PKI
2 39 (6.28%) Data Centre
3 24 (3.86%) Public Cloud
4 20 (3.22%) Hybrid Cloud
5 15 (2.42%) Enterprise Storage
5 15 (2.42%) Self-Motivation
6 12 (1.93%) Clustering
6 12 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
6 12 (1.93%) Private Cloud
7 11 (1.77%) Onboarding
8 9 (1.45%) Cloud Native
9 8 (1.29%) Replication
10 4 (0.64%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (0.64%) CCTV
10 4 (0.64%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (0.64%) NHS
10 4 (0.64%) Operational Technology
11 3 (0.48%) Client/Server
11 3 (0.48%) Virtual Team
12 2 (0.32%) YubiKey
Operating Systems
1 210 (33.82%) Windows
2 123 (19.81%) Windows Server
3 97 (15.62%) Linux
4 18 (2.90%) Windows Server 2019
5 16 (2.58%) Windows Server 2016
6 14 (2.25%) Ubuntu
6 14 (2.25%) Windows Server 2012
7 13 (2.09%) Windows 10
8 12 (1.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (1.93%) VMS
9 9 (1.45%) Apple iOS
10 8 (1.29%) Android
10 8 (1.29%) Mac OS
10 8 (1.29%) Unix
11 7 (1.13%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.64%) Debian
13 2 (0.32%) CentOS
13 2 (0.32%) SUSE
13 2 (0.32%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.32%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 602 (96.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 97 (15.62%) DevOps
3 94 (15.14%) Infrastructure as Code
4 82 (13.20%) Problem-Solving
5 73 (11.76%) CI/CD
6 63 (10.14%) Migration
7 56 (9.02%) ITIL
8 55 (8.86%) Infrastructure Automation
9 51 (8.21%) Agile
10 48 (7.73%) Disaster Recovery
11 47 (7.57%) Cybersecurity
12 37 (5.96%) High Availability
13 31 (4.99%) Platform Engineering
13 31 (4.99%) Project Delivery
14 30 (4.83%) Cloud Security
15 28 (4.51%) Containerisation
15 28 (4.51%) Validation
16 27 (4.35%) Observability
17 24 (3.86%) Continuous Improvement
17 24 (3.86%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 106 (17.07%) PowerShell
2 67 (10.79%) Python
3 25 (4.03%) Bash
4 20 (3.22%) Bicep
5 18 (2.90%) SQL
6 9 (1.45%) PHP
7 8 (1.29%) JavaScript
8 7 (1.13%) C#
9 5 (0.81%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.48%) Java
11 2 (0.32%) ActionScript
11 2 (0.32%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.16%) Jython
12 1 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.16%) Perl
12 1 (0.16%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 211 (33.98%) Security Cleared
2 146 (23.51%) SC Cleared
3 80 (12.88%) DV Cleared
4 18 (2.90%) Degree
5 17 (2.74%) Azure Certification
6 13 (2.09%) Cisco Certification
6 13 (2.09%) Microsoft Certification
7 11 (1.77%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 10 (1.61%) CCNA
9 8 (1.29%) AWS Certification
9 8 (1.29%) FFIEC
10 6 (0.97%) CompTIA Security+
11 5 (0.81%) BPSS Clearance
11 5 (0.81%) CCNP
11 5 (0.81%) MCSE
12 4 (0.64%) CISSP
12 4 (0.64%) GIAC
12 4 (0.64%) GSEC
12 4 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
12 4 (0.64%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (3.38%) NIST
2 16 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (2.25%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (1.93%) GDPR
5 11 (1.77%) SLA
6 8 (1.29%) GLBA
6 8 (1.29%) PCI DSS
7 7 (1.13%) QA
8 4 (0.64%) NCSC
9 3 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.48%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.16%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 137 (22.06%) Active Directory
2 136 (21.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 68 (10.95%) Hyper-V
4 45 (7.25%) vSphere
5 39 (6.28%) Docker
6 34 (5.48%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (2.58%) VMware NSX
8 15 (2.42%) Virtual Machines
9 12 (1.93%) Virtual Desktop
10 9 (1.45%) BitLocker
11 7 (1.13%) Microsoft App-V
12 3 (0.48%) DFS Replication
12 3 (0.48%) Sendmail
13 2 (0.32%) Firmware
13 2 (0.32%) QEMU
13 2 (0.32%) SRDF
14 1 (0.16%) iptables
14 1 (0.16%) Terminal Services
14 1 (0.16%) UAG
14 1 (0.16%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 107 (17.23%) Terraform
2 64 (10.31%) Kubernetes
3 54 (8.70%) Ansible
4 44 (7.09%) Microsoft Intune
5 43 (6.92%) SCCM
6 30 (4.83%) vCenter Server
7 16 (2.58%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (1.77%) Puppet
8 11 (1.77%) SCOM
9 10 (1.61%) Istio
9 10 (1.61%) WSUS
10 9 (1.45%) Grafana
10 9 (1.45%) Prometheus
10 9 (1.45%) VxRail
11 8 (1.29%) AirWatch
12 7 (1.13%) Packer
12 7 (1.13%) vMotion
12 7 (1.13%) vRealize
13 6 (0.97%) Nessus
14 4 (0.64%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 176 (28.34%) VMware
2 167 (26.89%) Microsoft
3 40 (6.44%) Cisco
4 35 (5.64%) Citrix
5 30 (4.83%) Veeam
6 26 (4.19%) Dell
7 23 (3.70%) Google
8 19 (3.06%) NetApp
9 16 (2.58%) F5
10 15 (2.42%) SolarWinds
11 14 (2.25%) Oracle
11 14 (2.25%) Red Hat
12 12 (1.93%) Thales
13 10 (1.61%) Fortinet
13 10 (1.61%) ServiceNow
13 10 (1.61%) Splunk
14 8 (1.29%) Aruba
14 8 (1.29%) Palo Alto
15 7 (1.13%) HP
16 5 (0.81%) Juniper