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 2 October 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 145 233 179
Rank change year-on-year +88 -54 -40
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 1,076 381 550
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.96% 1.15% 1.44%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.13% 1.26% 1.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 627 252 390
10th Percentile £350 £255 £328
25th Percentile £425 £375 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £483 £475
Median % change year-on-year +8.81% +1.58% -5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £575
90th Percentile £665 £638 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £465 £450
% change year-on-year +12.90% +3.33% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 10 3
10th Percentile £52.78 £25.70 £46.00
25th Percentile £58.43 £29.00 £51.25
Median hourly rate £75.00 £32.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +134.38% -46.67% -15.79%
75th Percentile £78.75 £35.00 £68.50
90th Percentile £100.00 £40.16 £73.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £75.00 £52.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +44.23% -13.33% -17.24%

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 50,598 30,120 35,393
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.17% 90.94% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,800 19,028 21,472
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% -0.94%
75th Percentile £631 £623 £638
90th Percentile £734 £725 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,975 1,619 1,553
10th Percentile £14.45 £13.75 £14.88
25th Percentile £19.78 £17.30 £20.75
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £68.31 £74.97
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.87 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.97% -41.69% -1.88%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 +76 918 £538 +11.98% 817
UK excluding London +103 780 £525 +12.90% 577
Work from Home +15 224 £525 +23.53% 301
North of England +50 222 £545 +9.00% 163
South East +18 213 £558 +19.89% 137
London -12 212 £540 +8.00% 274
Midlands +17 106 £469 -5.30% 73
South West +22 100 £550 -0.45% 80
North West +13 97 £517 -6.00% 101
Yorkshire +21 77 £500 - 31
West Midlands +7 74 £475 -4.04% 46
Scotland +30 62 £525 +35.48% 54
North East +4 59 £600 +6.67% 33
East of England +12 56 £500 +36.52% 57
East Midlands +11 31 £450 -18.18% 27
Wales +13 26 £513 - 13
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 7

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

For the 6 months to 2 October 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 1,046 (97.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 422 (39.22%) Security Cleared
3 333 (30.95%) Windows
4 321 (29.83%) Azure
5 286 (26.58%) VMware
6 263 (24.44%) SC Cleared
7 260 (24.16%) Microsoft
8 234 (21.75%) Infrastructure as Code
9 228 (21.19%) VMware Infrastructure
10 223 (20.72%) Windows Server
11 222 (20.63%) Active Directory
12 209 (19.42%) Linux
13 188 (17.47%) DNS
14 183 (17.01%) PowerShell
14 183 (17.01%) Terraform
15 161 (14.96%) Firewall
16 159 (14.78%) AWS
17 155 (14.41%) DV Cleared
18 144 (13.38%) CI/CD
19 140 (13.01%) Python
20 137 (12.73%) DevOps
21 130 (12.08%) DHCP
22 126 (11.71%) Ansible
23 118 (10.97%) Migration
23 118 (10.97%) Problem-Solving
24 116 (10.78%) Entra ID
25 100 (9.29%) Microsoft 365
26 98 (9.11%) Hyper-V
26 98 (9.11%) Kubernetes
27 86 (7.99%) 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 58 (5.39%) Microsoft Exchange
2 38 (3.53%) SharePoint
3 17 (1.58%) Confluence
4 13 (1.21%) CICS
4 13 (1.21%) WebSphere
5 5 (0.46%) Apache
5 5 (0.46%) SharePoint Server
6 3 (0.28%) Exchange Server 2010
6 3 (0.28%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.19%) CloudStack
8 1 (0.093%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.093%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.093%) CMS
8 1 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2013
8 1 (0.093%) IIS
8 1 (0.093%) MS Project Server
8 1 (0.093%) nginx
8 1 (0.093%) OpenStack
Applications
1 9 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.093%) CINEMA 4D
3 1 (0.093%) Houdini
3 1 (0.093%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 8 (0.74%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.093%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 321 (29.83%) Azure
2 159 (14.78%) AWS
3 116 (10.78%) Entra ID
4 100 (9.29%) Microsoft 365
5 71 (6.60%) IaaS
6 51 (4.74%) OCI
7 50 (4.65%) GCP
8 44 (4.09%) GitHub
9 37 (3.44%) SaaS
10 33 (3.07%) PaaS
11 31 (2.88%) Azure DevOps
12 29 (2.70%) Azure Monitor
13 20 (1.86%) GitHub Actions
13 20 (1.86%) Nutanix
14 17 (1.58%) Azure AKS
15 12 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
15 12 (1.12%) OpenShift
16 9 (0.84%) OneDrive
17 8 (0.74%) AWS CloudFormation
17 8 (0.74%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 188 (17.47%) DNS
2 161 (14.96%) Firewall
3 130 (12.08%) DHCP
4 60 (5.58%) TCP/IP
5 59 (5.48%) VLAN
6 58 (5.39%) VPN
7 54 (5.02%) SAN
8 43 (4.00%) Network Security
9 39 (3.62%) WAN
10 35 (3.25%) BIG-IP
11 32 (2.97%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 30 (2.79%) Wi-Fi
13 24 (2.23%) SD-WAN
14 22 (2.04%) LAN
15 21 (1.95%) Ethernet VPN
16 20 (1.86%) VSAN
16 20 (1.86%) VXLAN
17 19 (1.77%) BGP
17 19 (1.77%) OSPF
18 17 (1.58%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (4.83%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.04%) Oracle Exadata
3 17 (1.58%) Relational Database
4 15 (1.39%) Oracle Database
5 14 (1.30%) RDBMS
6 8 (0.74%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
8 6 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (0.56%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
10 4 (0.37%) Big Data
10 4 (0.37%) Power BI
10 4 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 3 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
12 2 (0.19%) BigQuery
12 2 (0.19%) Data Mining
12 2 (0.19%) MySQL
12 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 1 (0.093%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 51 (4.74%) GitLab
2 33 (3.07%) JIRA
3 29 (2.70%) Git
4 25 (2.32%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.37%) Chocolatey
6 3 (0.28%) Fiddler
7 2 (0.19%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.093%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.093%) CMake
8 1 (0.093%) Gerrit
8 1 (0.093%) Gradle
8 1 (0.093%) MLflow
8 1 (0.093%) MSI
8 1 (0.093%) Tricentis qTest
8 1 (0.093%) Visual Studio
General
1 117 (10.87%) Social Skills
2 65 (6.04%) Public Sector
3 62 (5.76%) Finance
4 44 (4.09%) Analytical Skills
5 36 (3.35%) Documentation Skills
6 18 (1.67%) Banking
6 18 (1.67%) Telecoms
7 15 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 14 (1.30%) Aerospace
8 14 (1.30%) Manufacturing
9 13 (1.21%) Military
10 10 (0.93%) Marketing
11 6 (0.56%) Automotive
11 6 (0.56%) Legal
12 5 (0.46%) Law
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
1 183 (17.01%) Terraform
2 17 (1.58%) ARM Templates
2 17 (1.58%) Middleware
3 14 (1.30%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 9 (0.84%) YAML
5 6 (0.56%) 802.1X
5 6 (0.56%) JSON
5 6 (0.56%) LDAP
6 5 (0.46%) .NET
6 5 (0.46%) Elastic Stack
6 5 (0.46%) Flash
6 5 (0.46%) OpenID
6 5 (0.46%) REST
7 4 (0.37%) Kafka
7 4 (0.37%) OAuth
7 4 (0.37%) SAML
8 2 (0.19%) OAuth2
8 2 (0.19%) RabbitMQ
8 2 (0.19%) React
8 2 (0.19%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 120 (11.15%) Data Centre
2 68 (6.32%) Hybrid Cloud
3 53 (4.93%) PKI
4 38 (3.53%) Public Cloud
5 31 (2.88%) Cloud Native
6 29 (2.70%) Replication
7 28 (2.60%) Onboarding
8 26 (2.42%) Enterprise Storage
9 24 (2.23%) Distributed Systems
10 21 (1.95%) Private Cloud
11 20 (1.86%) SCADA
12 19 (1.77%) Linux Command Line
13 17 (1.58%) Clustering
14 16 (1.49%) Management Information System
15 13 (1.21%) Mainframe
15 13 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
16 11 (1.02%) Operational Technology
17 10 (0.93%) Driving Licence
18 8 (0.74%) Smartcard
19 7 (0.65%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 333 (30.95%) Windows
2 223 (20.72%) Windows Server
3 209 (19.42%) Linux
4 40 (3.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (1.67%) VMS
5 18 (1.67%) Windows Server 2016
5 18 (1.67%) Windows Server 2019
6 16 (1.49%) Ubuntu
6 16 (1.49%) Windows 10
7 14 (1.30%) AIX
7 14 (1.30%) CentOS
8 13 (1.21%) zOS
9 11 (1.02%) Android
9 11 (1.02%) Apple iOS
10 10 (0.93%) Mac OS
10 10 (0.93%) Unix
11 9 (0.84%) Rocky
11 9 (0.84%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.46%) Debian
12 5 (0.46%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,046 (97.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 234 (21.75%) Infrastructure as Code
3 144 (13.38%) CI/CD
4 137 (12.73%) DevOps
5 118 (10.97%) Migration
5 118 (10.97%) Problem-Solving
6 86 (7.99%) Infrastructure Automation
7 73 (6.78%) Disaster Recovery
8 71 (6.60%) High Availability
9 69 (6.41%) Continuous Improvement
9 69 (6.41%) Project Delivery
10 64 (5.95%) ITIL
11 62 (5.76%) Platform Engineering
12 57 (5.30%) Validation
13 51 (4.74%) Root Cause Analysis
14 47 (4.37%) Vulnerability Remediation
15 45 (4.18%) Agile
16 44 (4.09%) Cybersecurity
16 44 (4.09%) Identity Access Management
17 43 (4.00%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 183 (17.01%) PowerShell
2 140 (13.01%) Python
3 73 (6.78%) Bash
4 43 (4.00%) SQL
5 29 (2.70%) Bicep
6 14 (1.30%) C#
7 10 (0.93%) Java
7 10 (0.93%) Perl
8 9 (0.84%) ActionScript
9 6 (0.56%) Go
10 3 (0.28%) C++
11 2 (0.19%) VB
12 1 (0.093%) C
12 1 (0.093%) Groovy
12 1 (0.093%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.093%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.093%) PHP
12 1 (0.093%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.093%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.093%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 422 (39.22%) Security Cleared
2 263 (24.44%) SC Cleared
3 155 (14.41%) DV Cleared
4 40 (3.72%) Degree
5 31 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
6 23 (2.14%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 21 (1.95%) Azure Certification
8 18 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
9 14 (1.30%) Computer Science Degree
9 14 (1.30%) MCSE
9 14 (1.30%) VCAP
10 12 (1.12%) CCNA
10 12 (1.12%) CCNP
11 7 (0.65%) AWS Certification
12 6 (0.56%) MCSA
13 5 (0.46%) DBS Check
14 4 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 4 (0.37%) BPSS Clearance
14 4 (0.37%) JNCIP
14 4 (0.37%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (4.00%) QA
2 17 (1.58%) SLA
3 14 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 11 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (0.74%) NIST
6 7 (0.65%) NCSC
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 (0.093%) FedRAMP
System Software
1 228 (21.19%) VMware Infrastructure
2 222 (20.63%) Active Directory
3 98 (9.11%) Hyper-V
4 74 (6.88%) VMware ESXi
4 74 (6.88%) vSphere
5 50 (4.65%) Virtual Machines
6 41 (3.81%) Docker
7 30 (2.79%) VMware NSX
8 27 (2.51%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (1.58%) Virtual Servers
10 14 (1.30%) Oracle RAC
11 13 (1.21%) NFS
12 11 (1.02%) Firmware
13 7 (0.65%) KVM
14 6 (0.56%) oVirt
15 5 (0.46%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.46%) GPFS
16 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 3 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.28%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 126 (11.71%) Ansible
2 98 (9.11%) Kubernetes
3 68 (6.32%) Microsoft Intune
4 49 (4.55%) SCCM
5 37 (3.44%) vCenter Server
6 17 (1.58%) SCOM
7 16 (1.49%) NetBackup
7 16 (1.49%) WSUS
8 14 (1.30%) Data Guard
8 14 (1.30%) Oracle RMAN
8 14 (1.30%) Prometheus
9 11 (1.02%) Grafana
10 9 (0.84%) Failover Clustering
10 9 (0.84%) Nessus
10 9 (0.84%) Puppet
10 9 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.65%) VxRail
12 6 (0.56%) FortiGate
12 6 (0.56%) Red Hat Satellite
13 5 (0.46%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 286 (26.58%) VMware
2 260 (24.16%) Microsoft
3 60 (5.58%) Cisco
4 53 (4.93%) Citrix
5 49 (4.55%) NetApp
6 41 (3.81%) Oracle
7 40 (3.72%) Veeam
8 39 (3.62%) F5
9 32 (2.97%) Palo Alto
10 29 (2.70%) Red Hat
11 26 (2.42%) Google
12 21 (1.95%) IBM
13 19 (1.77%) Aruba
13 19 (1.77%) Dell
14 18 (1.67%) Arista
15 17 (1.58%) CyberArk
15 17 (1.58%) SolarWinds
16 15 (1.39%) Commvault
17 14 (1.30%) Juniper
17 14 (1.30%) ServiceNow