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 5 August 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 217 147
Rank change year-on-year +75 -70 +15
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 1,010 394 658
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.90% 1.20% 1.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.05% 1.31% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 601 253 495
10th Percentile £350 £329 £319
25th Percentile £425 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £484
Median % change year-on-year - +8.47% -3.20%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £575
90th Percentile £675 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £475
% change year-on-year - +10.53% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 5 4
10th Percentile £43.53 £27.60 £67.73
25th Percentile £58.43 £30.00 £73.69
Median hourly rate £72.54 £77.00 £77.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.79% - +6.21%
75th Percentile £78.75 £200.00 £77.25
90th Percentile £100.00 - £77.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £138.50 £72.75
% change year-on-year -47.62% +90.38% +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 49,279 30,093 36,428
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.64% 91.45% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,675 19,115 23,531
10th Percentile £330 £282 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £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 3,419 1,494 2,063
10th Percentile £15.23 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.14 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.99 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.10 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.10 £25.15 £43.90
% change year-on-year +75.33% -42.71% +17.07%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +54 868 £525 - 395
UK excluding London +68 708 £525 - 274
South East +31 223 £541 -1.71% 70
London +32 222 £545 +3.81% 158
Work from Home +32 207 £538 +7.50% 144
North of England +33 193 £550 +4.76% 61
South West +14 102 £549 -0.18% 71
Midlands -10 86 £450 - 27
Yorkshire +1 83 £370 -26.00% 21
North West -12 70 £575 -4.17% 33
West Midlands -27 56 £475 +5.56% 19
North East +1 50 £600 -7.69% 9
Scotland +24 47 £571 +17.48% 18
East of England -5 33 £450 +5.88% 21
East Midlands +10 29 £450 +5.88% 8
Wales +13 27 £463 - 11
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 5 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.

1 998 (98.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 409 (40.50%) Security Cleared
3 307 (30.40%) Azure
4 306 (30.30%) Windows
5 274 (27.13%) SC Cleared
6 256 (25.35%) VMware
7 226 (22.38%) Microsoft
8 203 (20.10%) Active Directory
9 197 (19.50%) VMware Infrastructure
9 197 (19.50%) Windows Server
10 194 (19.21%) Infrastructure as Code
11 184 (18.22%) Linux
12 178 (17.62%) Terraform
13 172 (17.03%) DNS
14 162 (16.04%) PowerShell
15 145 (14.36%) Firewall
16 143 (14.16%) DevOps
17 142 (14.06%) AWS
18 139 (13.76%) DV Cleared
19 135 (13.37%) Python
20 130 (12.87%) CI/CD
21 126 (12.48%) DHCP
22 120 (11.88%) Ansible
23 111 (10.99%) Migration
24 100 (9.90%) Problem-Solving
25 97 (9.60%) Kubernetes
26 92 (9.11%) Hyper-V
27 81 (8.02%) Entra ID
28 76 (7.52%) Microsoft 365
29 73 (7.23%) 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 53 (5.25%) Microsoft Exchange
2 28 (2.77%) SharePoint
3 14 (1.39%) WebSphere
4 13 (1.29%) CICS
5 8 (0.79%) Confluence
6 5 (0.50%) SharePoint Server
7 3 (0.30%) Apache
7 3 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2010
8 2 (0.20%) CloudStack
9 1 (0.099%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2013
9 1 (0.099%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.099%) MS Project Server
9 1 (0.099%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.099%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 10 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.099%) CINEMA 4D
3 1 (0.099%) Houdini
3 1 (0.099%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.099%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.099%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 307 (30.40%) Azure
2 142 (14.06%) AWS
3 81 (8.02%) Entra ID
4 76 (7.52%) Microsoft 365
5 58 (5.74%) GCP
5 58 (5.74%) GitHub
6 54 (5.35%) IaaS
7 50 (4.95%) OCI
8 39 (3.86%) SaaS
9 36 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
10 34 (3.37%) PaaS
11 27 (2.67%) Azure Monitor
12 23 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
13 21 (2.08%) Azure AKS
14 16 (1.58%) Nutanix
15 12 (1.19%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 8 (0.79%) Azure Sentinel
16 8 (0.79%) Cohesity
16 8 (0.79%) OpenShift
17 7 (0.69%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 172 (17.03%) DNS
2 145 (14.36%) Firewall
3 126 (12.48%) DHCP
4 54 (5.35%) VLAN
5 52 (5.15%) SAN
6 51 (5.05%) VPN
7 49 (4.85%) TCP/IP
8 41 (4.06%) WAN
9 38 (3.76%) Network Security
10 30 (2.97%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 29 (2.87%) BIG-IP
12 24 (2.38%) LAN
12 24 (2.38%) Wi-Fi
13 23 (2.28%) Ethernet VPN
14 22 (2.18%) SD-WAN
14 22 (2.18%) VSAN
14 22 (2.18%) VXLAN
15 20 (1.98%) BGP
15 20 (1.98%) OSPF
16 13 (1.29%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (4.85%) SQL Server
2 20 (1.98%) Oracle Exadata
3 16 (1.58%) Relational Database
4 15 (1.49%) Oracle Database
5 13 (1.29%) RDBMS
6 9 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
7 7 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.40%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.30%) Big Data
9 3 (0.30%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.30%) NonStop SQL
9 3 (0.30%) Power BI
9 3 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (0.20%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.20%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.20%) DynamoDB
11 1 (0.099%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.099%) MongoDB
11 1 (0.099%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 43 (4.26%) GitLab
2 27 (2.67%) Jenkins
3 26 (2.57%) JIRA
4 24 (2.38%) Git
5 4 (0.40%) Chocolatey
6 3 (0.30%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.099%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.099%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.099%) CMake
7 1 (0.099%) Fiddler
7 1 (0.099%) Gradle
7 1 (0.099%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.099%) Introscope
7 1 (0.099%) MLflow
7 1 (0.099%) MSI
7 1 (0.099%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.099%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 112 (11.09%) Social Skills
2 72 (7.13%) Public Sector
3 43 (4.26%) Finance
4 40 (3.96%) Analytical Skills
5 35 (3.47%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (1.98%) Banking
7 13 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.29%) Legal
8 12 (1.19%) Aerospace
9 10 (0.99%) Manufacturing
9 10 (0.99%) Marketing
9 10 (0.99%) Military
10 9 (0.89%) Telecoms
11 6 (0.59%) Law
12 5 (0.50%) Automotive
13 2 (0.20%) Advertising
13 2 (0.20%) Billing
13 2 (0.20%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.20%) Local Government
13 2 (0.20%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (1.68%) Middleware
2 13 (1.29%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 12 (1.19%) ARM Templates
4 8 (0.79%) REST
5 7 (0.69%) Flash
6 6 (0.59%) 802.1X
6 6 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (0.50%) OpenID
8 4 (0.40%) .NET
8 4 (0.40%) JSON
8 4 (0.40%) LDAP
8 4 (0.40%) SAML
8 4 (0.40%) SOAP
8 4 (0.40%) YAML
9 3 (0.30%) Kafka
10 2 (0.20%) Node.js
10 2 (0.20%) OAuth
10 2 (0.20%) OAuth2
10 2 (0.20%) RabbitMQ
10 2 (0.20%) React
Miscellaneous
1 117 (11.58%) Data Centre
2 54 (5.35%) Hybrid Cloud
3 53 (5.25%) PKI
4 40 (3.96%) Public Cloud
5 28 (2.77%) Enterprise Storage
6 26 (2.57%) Cloud Native
7 25 (2.48%) Onboarding
8 24 (2.38%) Replication
9 18 (1.78%) Clustering
10 17 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (1.39%) Linux Command Line
12 13 (1.29%) Mainframe
12 13 (1.29%) Management Information System
13 12 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
14 10 (0.99%) Operational Technology
15 9 (0.89%) Private Cloud
15 9 (0.89%) Smartcard
16 8 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
16 8 (0.79%) Virtual Team
17 7 (0.69%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 306 (30.30%) Windows
2 197 (19.50%) Windows Server
3 184 (18.22%) Linux
4 34 (3.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (1.88%) Windows Server 2019
6 18 (1.78%) Windows Server 2016
7 17 (1.68%) Windows 10
8 14 (1.39%) AIX
9 13 (1.29%) VMS
9 13 (1.29%) zOS
10 12 (1.19%) Ubuntu
11 10 (0.99%) Apple iOS
11 10 (0.99%) Mac OS
12 9 (0.89%) Android
12 9 (0.89%) CentOS
13 8 (0.79%) Unix
14 6 (0.59%) Debian
14 6 (0.59%) Rocky
14 6 (0.59%) Windows Server 2003
14 6 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 998 (98.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 194 (19.21%) Infrastructure as Code
3 143 (14.16%) DevOps
4 130 (12.87%) CI/CD
5 111 (10.99%) Migration
6 100 (9.90%) Problem-Solving
7 73 (7.23%) High Availability
8 71 (7.03%) Infrastructure Automation
9 65 (6.44%) Continuous Improvement
10 63 (6.24%) Disaster Recovery
11 59 (5.84%) Project Delivery
12 55 (5.45%) ITIL
13 52 (5.15%) Validation
14 48 (4.75%) Platform Engineering
15 47 (4.65%) Zero Trust
16 46 (4.55%) Agile
17 39 (3.86%) Cybersecurity
18 37 (3.66%) Root Cause Analysis
19 36 (3.56%) Containerisation
20 35 (3.47%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 162 (16.04%) PowerShell
2 135 (13.37%) Python
3 69 (6.83%) Bash
4 37 (3.66%) SQL
5 26 (2.57%) Bicep
6 17 (1.68%) C#
7 11 (1.09%) Java
8 6 (0.59%) ActionScript
8 6 (0.59%) Go
9 5 (0.50%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.30%) JavaScript
11 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.099%) C
12 1 (0.099%) C++
12 1 (0.099%) Jython
12 1 (0.099%) Perl
12 1 (0.099%) PHP
12 1 (0.099%) VB
Qualifications
1 409 (40.50%) Security Cleared
2 274 (27.13%) SC Cleared
3 139 (13.76%) DV Cleared
4 38 (3.76%) Degree
5 29 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 23 (2.28%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 22 (2.18%) Cisco Certification
8 20 (1.98%) Azure Certification
9 17 (1.68%) MCSE
10 13 (1.29%) CCNA
10 13 (1.29%) VCAP
11 12 (1.19%) CCNP
12 10 (0.99%) Computer Science Degree
13 6 (0.59%) RHCA
14 5 (0.50%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.50%) MCSA
15 4 (0.40%) AWS Certification
15 4 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
15 4 (0.40%) JNCIP
15 4 (0.40%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (2.87%) QA
2 19 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (1.49%) SLA
4 13 (1.29%) Cyber Essentials
5 12 (1.19%) NIST
6 9 (0.89%) NCSC
7 6 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.20%) GDPR
9 2 (0.20%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.099%) Data Quality
10 1 (0.099%) FedRAMP
10 1 (0.099%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 203 (20.10%) Active Directory
2 197 (19.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 92 (9.11%) Hyper-V
4 69 (6.83%) vSphere
5 67 (6.63%) VMware ESXi
6 44 (4.36%) Virtual Machines
7 36 (3.56%) Docker
8 35 (3.47%) VMware NSX
9 22 (2.18%) Virtual Desktop
10 13 (1.29%) Oracle RAC
11 12 (1.19%) NFS
12 9 (0.89%) BitLocker
13 8 (0.79%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.69%) Firmware
15 6 (0.59%) KVM
16 5 (0.50%) GPFS
16 5 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
17 4 (0.40%) Terminal Services
18 2 (0.20%) SRDF
18 2 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 178 (17.62%) Terraform
2 120 (11.88%) Ansible
3 97 (9.60%) Kubernetes
4 52 (5.15%) Microsoft Intune
5 44 (4.36%) vCenter Server
6 38 (3.76%) SCCM
7 18 (1.78%) WSUS
8 16 (1.58%) NetBackup
9 14 (1.39%) Prometheus
9 14 (1.39%) Puppet
10 13 (1.29%) Data Guard
10 13 (1.29%) Oracle RMAN
10 13 (1.29%) SCOM
11 11 (1.09%) Grafana
12 9 (0.89%) Istio
12 9 (0.89%) Nessus
12 9 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
12 9 (0.89%) vMotion
13 8 (0.79%) vRealize
14 6 (0.59%) Packer
Vendors
1 256 (25.35%) VMware
2 226 (22.38%) Microsoft
3 65 (6.44%) Citrix
4 56 (5.54%) Cisco
5 40 (3.96%) Oracle
6 38 (3.76%) NetApp
7 34 (3.37%) Google
8 33 (3.27%) F5
8 33 (3.27%) Veeam
9 30 (2.97%) Palo Alto
10 27 (2.67%) Red Hat
11 21 (2.08%) Aruba
12 20 (1.98%) Dell
12 20 (1.98%) IBM
13 19 (1.88%) Arista
14 17 (1.68%) Juniper
15 16 (1.58%) CyberArk
16 15 (1.49%) ServiceNow
16 15 (1.49%) Tenable
17 14 (1.39%) SolarWinds