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 3 April 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 197 193 145
Rank change year-on-year -4 -48 +36
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 581 401 724
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.30% 1.38% 1.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.40% 1.49% 1.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 418 282 525
10th Percentile £325 £319 £310
25th Percentile £410 £378 £381
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 £638 £650 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% +3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 4 13
10th Percentile £26.25 - -
25th Percentile £53.75 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £68.52 £112.09 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.87% +387.35% -63.97%
75th Percentile £77.06 £200.00 £76.53
90th Percentile £80.11 - £77.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.52 £112.09 £22.75
% change year-on-year -38.87% +392.70% -62.43%

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 41,358 26,984 40,963
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.19% 92.80% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,778 17,737 26,805
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.45%
75th Percentile £613 £629 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £486 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +2.37% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,581 943 2,528
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £19.85 £20.47 £16.25
Median hourly rate £40.00 £32.50 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.08% -1.52% -25.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.16 £31.64 £33.00
% change year-on-year +26.91% -4.12% -21.43%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -13 509 £500 -4.76% 240
UK excluding London -9 398 £500 -4.76% 226
London -51 140 £500 -9.09% 35
Work from Home -8 115 £500 +5.26% 93
South East -20 109 £525 -2.33% 61
North of England -31 95 £394 -1.56% 67
South West +8 88 £550 -4.35% 40
Yorkshire -32 57 £350 -12.50% 22
Midlands -47 40 £428 +10.32% 29
North West -35 34 £413 -21.43% 37
Scotland +10 29 £535 -2.73% 8
East of England -27 29 £438 -6.82% 17
West Midlands -57 21 £413 +22.22% 22
East Midlands -20 19 £450 +12.50% 7
Wales -10 8 £550 +29.41% 6
North East -15 4 £500 +36.99% 8
Northern Ireland - 1 £375 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 3 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.

1 562 (96.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 196 (33.73%) Windows
3 191 (32.87%) Security Cleared
4 189 (32.53%) Azure
5 168 (28.92%) VMware
6 164 (28.23%) Microsoft
7 134 (23.06%) Active Directory
8 131 (22.55%) SC Cleared
9 129 (22.20%) VMware Infrastructure
10 118 (20.31%) Windows Server
11 105 (18.07%) PowerShell
12 103 (17.73%) Terraform
13 94 (16.18%) DevOps
14 93 (16.01%) DNS
15 92 (15.83%) Firewall
15 92 (15.83%) Linux
16 91 (15.66%) Infrastructure as Code
17 75 (12.91%) Problem-Solving
18 72 (12.39%) DV Cleared
19 70 (12.05%) CI/CD
19 70 (12.05%) Microsoft 365
20 67 (11.53%) DHCP
21 66 (11.36%) Python
22 63 (10.84%) Hyper-V
23 61 (10.50%) Kubernetes
24 57 (9.81%) Migration
25 55 (9.47%) AWS
25 55 (9.47%) ITIL
26 53 (9.12%) Infrastructure Automation
27 51 (8.78%) 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 47 (8.09%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (2.07%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.55%) TPMS
4 5 (0.86%) IIS
5 4 (0.69%) Apache
6 3 (0.52%) Confluence
6 3 (0.52%) Exchange Server 2010
7 2 (0.34%) nginx
8 1 (0.17%) CICS
8 1 (0.17%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.17%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.17%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.17%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 11 (1.89%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.34%) Maximo
2 1 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 189 (32.53%) Azure
2 70 (12.05%) Microsoft 365
3 55 (9.47%) AWS
4 42 (7.23%) Entra ID
5 40 (6.88%) GitHub
6 32 (5.51%) IaaS
7 31 (5.34%) GCP
8 29 (4.99%) PaaS
9 24 (4.13%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (3.61%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 19 (3.27%) Nutanix
12 17 (2.93%) Azure Monitor
13 15 (2.58%) SaaS
14 11 (1.89%) Azure Sentinel
15 10 (1.72%) OCI
16 9 (1.55%) Azure AKS
17 8 (1.38%) GitHub Actions
17 8 (1.38%) Microsoft Purview
18 7 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
18 7 (1.20%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 93 (16.01%) DNS
2 92 (15.83%) Firewall
3 67 (11.53%) DHCP
4 44 (7.57%) VPN
5 29 (4.99%) WAN
6 28 (4.82%) LAN
7 23 (3.96%) Network Security
7 23 (3.96%) TCP/IP
7 23 (3.96%) VLAN
8 19 (3.27%) SAN
9 12 (2.07%) SNMP
10 11 (1.89%) SSH
10 11 (1.89%) SSL
10 11 (1.89%) Wi-Fi
11 10 (1.72%) SMTP
12 9 (1.55%) MPLS
13 8 (1.38%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 7 (1.20%) BGP
14 7 (1.20%) VSAN
15 6 (1.03%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (3.61%) SQL Server
2 8 (1.38%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.52%) NonStop SQL
5 2 (0.34%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.34%) Data Mining
5 2 (0.34%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.34%) Power BI
5 2 (0.34%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.17%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.17%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.17%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.17%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 15 (2.58%) Jenkins
2 12 (2.07%) JIRA
3 10 (1.72%) GitLab
4 8 (1.38%) Artifactory
5 7 (1.20%) Git
6 3 (0.52%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.17%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.17%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.17%) GoCD
7 1 (0.17%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.17%) Introscope
7 1 (0.17%) MSI
7 1 (0.17%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 84 (14.46%) Social Skills
2 54 (9.29%) Public Sector
3 52 (8.95%) Finance
4 38 (6.54%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (3.44%) Documentation Skills
6 18 (3.10%) Legal
7 17 (2.93%) Banking
8 9 (1.55%) Billing
8 9 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (1.20%) Aerospace
10 6 (1.03%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.69%) Military
12 3 (0.52%) Law
12 3 (0.52%) Local Government
12 3 (0.52%) Retail
12 3 (0.52%) Spanish Language
13 2 (0.34%) Advertising
13 2 (0.34%) Aviation
13 2 (0.34%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.34%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (1.89%) REST
2 8 (1.38%) ARM Templates
2 8 (1.38%) LDAP
2 8 (1.38%) SOAP
3 5 (0.86%) SAML
3 5 (0.86%) Web Services
4 4 (0.69%) ADO
4 4 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
4 4 (0.69%) Keycloak
5 3 (0.52%) OpenID
5 3 (0.52%) Oracle Fusion
6 2 (0.34%) Apache NiFi
6 2 (0.34%) Flash
6 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Graph
6 2 (0.34%) Node.js
6 2 (0.34%) OAuth
6 2 (0.34%) OAuth2
6 2 (0.34%) YAML
7 1 (0.17%) Bazel
7 1 (0.17%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 41 (7.06%) PKI
2 36 (6.20%) Data Centre
3 23 (3.96%) Public Cloud
4 19 (3.27%) Hybrid Cloud
5 14 (2.41%) Enterprise Storage
5 14 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
6 12 (2.07%) Clustering
7 11 (1.89%) Onboarding
7 11 (1.89%) Private Cloud
8 10 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
9 9 (1.55%) Cloud Native
10 6 (1.03%) Replication
11 4 (0.69%) CCTV
11 4 (0.69%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (0.69%) NHS
11 4 (0.69%) Operational Technology
12 3 (0.52%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (0.52%) Client/Server
13 2 (0.34%) Acoustics
13 2 (0.34%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 196 (33.73%) Windows
2 118 (20.31%) Windows Server
3 92 (15.83%) Linux
4 18 (3.10%) Windows Server 2019
5 14 (2.41%) Ubuntu
5 14 (2.41%) Windows Server 2012
6 13 (2.24%) Windows 10
7 12 (2.07%) VMS
7 12 (2.07%) Windows Server 2016
8 11 (1.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 8 (1.38%) Unix
10 7 (1.20%) Windows Server 2003
11 3 (0.52%) Debian
12 2 (0.34%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.34%) CentOS
12 2 (0.34%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.34%) SUSE
12 2 (0.34%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.34%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 562 (96.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 94 (16.18%) DevOps
3 91 (15.66%) Infrastructure as Code
4 75 (12.91%) Problem-Solving
5 70 (12.05%) CI/CD
6 57 (9.81%) Migration
7 55 (9.47%) ITIL
8 53 (9.12%) Infrastructure Automation
9 50 (8.61%) Agile
10 48 (8.26%) Cybersecurity
10 48 (8.26%) Disaster Recovery
11 36 (6.20%) High Availability
12 31 (5.34%) Project Delivery
13 30 (5.16%) Platform Engineering
14 28 (4.82%) Cloud Security
14 28 (4.82%) Containerisation
15 27 (4.65%) Observability
16 25 (4.30%) Validation
17 24 (4.13%) Continuous Improvement
17 24 (4.13%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 105 (18.07%) PowerShell
2 66 (11.36%) Python
3 24 (4.13%) Bash
4 21 (3.61%) Bicep
5 18 (3.10%) SQL
6 9 (1.55%) PHP
7 8 (1.38%) JavaScript
8 6 (1.03%) C#
9 4 (0.69%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.52%) Java
11 2 (0.34%) ActionScript
11 2 (0.34%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.17%) Jython
12 1 (0.17%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.17%) Perl
12 1 (0.17%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 191 (32.87%) Security Cleared
2 131 (22.55%) SC Cleared
3 72 (12.39%) DV Cleared
4 18 (3.10%) Azure Certification
4 18 (3.10%) Degree
5 12 (2.07%) Cisco Certification
5 12 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
6 10 (1.72%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 9 (1.55%) CCNA
7 9 (1.55%) FFIEC
8 8 (1.38%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.03%) CompTIA Security+
10 5 (0.86%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (0.86%) CCNP
11 4 (0.69%) CISSP
11 4 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
11 4 (0.69%) GIAC
11 4 (0.69%) GSEC
11 4 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
11 4 (0.69%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.79%) NIST
2 17 (2.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (2.41%) Cyber Essentials
4 13 (2.24%) GDPR
5 11 (1.89%) SLA
6 9 (1.55%) GLBA
6 9 (1.55%) PCI DSS
7 6 (1.03%) QA
8 4 (0.69%) NCSC
9 3 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.52%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.17%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.17%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.17%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 134 (23.06%) Active Directory
2 129 (22.20%) VMware Infrastructure
3 63 (10.84%) Hyper-V
4 44 (7.57%) vSphere
5 37 (6.37%) Docker
6 33 (5.68%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (2.58%) VMware NSX
8 14 (2.41%) Virtual Machines
9 12 (2.07%) Virtual Desktop
10 9 (1.55%) BitLocker
11 7 (1.20%) Microsoft App-V
12 3 (0.52%) DFS Replication
12 3 (0.52%) Sendmail
13 2 (0.34%) Firmware
13 2 (0.34%) QEMU
13 2 (0.34%) SRDF
14 1 (0.17%) iptables
14 1 (0.17%) Terminal Services
14 1 (0.17%) UAG
14 1 (0.17%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 103 (17.73%) Terraform
2 61 (10.50%) Kubernetes
3 51 (8.78%) Ansible
4 45 (7.75%) Microsoft Intune
5 44 (7.57%) SCCM
6 29 (4.99%) vCenter Server
7 17 (2.93%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (1.89%) Puppet
9 10 (1.72%) Istio
9 10 (1.72%) SCOM
10 9 (1.55%) VxRail
10 9 (1.55%) WSUS
11 8 (1.38%) Grafana
11 8 (1.38%) Prometheus
12 7 (1.20%) vMotion
13 6 (1.03%) AirWatch
13 6 (1.03%) Nessus
13 6 (1.03%) Packer
13 6 (1.03%) vRealize
14 4 (0.69%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 168 (28.92%) VMware
2 164 (28.23%) Microsoft
3 37 (6.37%) Cisco
4 35 (6.02%) Citrix
5 28 (4.82%) Veeam
6 27 (4.65%) Dell
7 24 (4.13%) Google
8 16 (2.75%) NetApp
9 15 (2.58%) F5
10 14 (2.41%) Oracle
10 14 (2.41%) SolarWinds
11 13 (2.24%) Red Hat
11 13 (2.24%) Thales
12 11 (1.89%) Splunk
13 10 (1.72%) Fortinet
13 10 (1.72%) ServiceNow
14 8 (1.38%) Aruba
14 8 (1.38%) Palo Alto
15 7 (1.20%) HP
16 5 (0.86%) Juniper