Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £538, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 12 October 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 144 240 173
Rank change year-on-year +96 -67 -24
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 1,065 382 540
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.95% 1.16% 1.43%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.12% 1.28% 1.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 622 256 383
10th Percentile £350 £255 £329
25th Percentile £425 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year +13.16% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £583
90th Percentile £650 £644 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +20.00% - -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 10 2
10th Percentile £33.64 £25.70 £44.25
25th Percentile £58.43 £29.00 £46.88
Median hourly rate £75.00 £32.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +134.38% -39.05% -26.32%
75th Percentile £77.50 £35.00 £56.88
90th Percentile £100.00 £40.16 £58.75
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 50,217 29,909 35,127
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.02% 90.83% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,441 18,891 21,218
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,086 1,644 1,451
10th Percentile £14.31 £13.75 £15.00
25th Percentile £19.34 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -39.05% -8.30%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.18 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +66.84% -41.18% -4.49%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +71 908 £540 +13.68% 657
UK excluding London +99 782 £540 +20.00% 480
Work from Home +22 226 £525 +21.74% 243
North of England +59 223 £563 +12.50% 128
South East +23 216 £570 +26.67% 108
London -17 206 £540 +3.35% 220
South West +23 103 £570 +3.17% 58
North West +20 101 £519 -5.64% 79
Midlands +21 97 £475 +5.56% 59
Yorkshire +18 74 £425 -15.00% 27
West Midlands 0 70 £475 +5.56% 35
Scotland +39 66 £525 +52.17% 57
North East +6 58 £600 +6.67% 23
East of England +14 57 £488 +27.45% 46
Wales +9 26 £525 - 22
East Midlands +9 26 £450 -18.18% 24
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 7
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -

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

For the 6 months to 12 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 1,031 (96.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 413 (38.78%) Security Cleared
3 322 (30.23%) Windows
4 318 (29.86%) Azure
5 282 (26.48%) VMware
6 266 (24.98%) Microsoft
7 250 (23.47%) SC Cleared
8 240 (22.54%) Infrastructure as Code
9 225 (21.13%) VMware Infrastructure
10 222 (20.85%) Active Directory
11 219 (20.56%) Windows Server
12 218 (20.47%) Linux
13 194 (18.22%) DNS
14 190 (17.84%) PowerShell
15 188 (17.65%) Terraform
16 170 (15.96%) Firewall
17 154 (14.46%) DV Cleared
18 149 (13.99%) AWS
19 143 (13.43%) CI/CD
19 143 (13.43%) Python
20 137 (12.86%) DevOps
21 133 (12.49%) DHCP
22 130 (12.21%) Ansible
23 121 (11.36%) Entra ID
24 112 (10.52%) Migration
24 112 (10.52%) Problem-Solving
25 101 (9.48%) Microsoft 365
26 96 (9.01%) Kubernetes
27 94 (8.83%) Hyper-V
28 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 55 (5.16%) Microsoft Exchange
2 37 (3.47%) SharePoint
3 17 (1.60%) 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%) nginx
6 3 (0.28%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.19%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.19%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.19%) CMS
8 1 (0.094%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2013
8 1 (0.094%) IIS
8 1 (0.094%) MS Project Server
8 1 (0.094%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.094%) Traefik
Applications
1 7 (0.66%) 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 8 (0.75%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.094%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 318 (29.86%) Azure
2 149 (13.99%) AWS
3 121 (11.36%) Entra ID
4 101 (9.48%) Microsoft 365
5 73 (6.85%) IaaS
6 51 (4.79%) OCI
7 44 (4.13%) GitHub
8 43 (4.04%) GCP
9 35 (3.29%) Azure Monitor
10 31 (2.91%) SaaS
11 29 (2.72%) Azure DevOps
12 28 (2.63%) PaaS
13 20 (1.88%) GitHub Actions
13 20 (1.88%) Nutanix
14 16 (1.50%) Azure AKS
15 13 (1.22%) Azure Data Factory
16 12 (1.13%) OpenShift
17 10 (0.94%) Azure Sentinel
18 9 (0.85%) AWS CloudFormation
19 8 (0.75%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 194 (18.22%) DNS
2 170 (15.96%) Firewall
3 133 (12.49%) DHCP
4 66 (6.20%) TCP/IP
5 62 (5.82%) VPN
6 55 (5.16%) SAN
6 55 (5.16%) VLAN
7 46 (4.32%) Network Security
8 39 (3.66%) WAN
9 38 (3.57%) BIG-IP
10 33 (3.10%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 30 (2.82%) Wi-Fi
12 24 (2.25%) SD-WAN
13 22 (2.07%) LAN
14 21 (1.97%) Ethernet VPN
15 20 (1.88%) VXLAN
16 19 (1.78%) BGP
16 19 (1.78%) OSPF
16 19 (1.78%) VSAN
17 17 (1.60%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (4.69%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.07%) Oracle Exadata
3 16 (1.50%) Relational Database
4 15 (1.41%) Oracle Database
5 14 (1.31%) RDBMS
6 9 (0.85%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (0.56%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.47%) Big Data
9 5 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
9 5 (0.47%) Power BI
10 4 (0.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 3 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
12 2 (0.19%) BigQuery
12 2 (0.19%) MySQL
12 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 1 (0.094%) InfluxDB
13 1 (0.094%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 51 (4.79%) GitLab
2 34 (3.19%) JIRA
3 29 (2.72%) Git
4 25 (2.35%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.38%) Chocolatey
5 4 (0.38%) Fiddler
6 2 (0.19%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.094%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.094%) CMake
7 1 (0.094%) Gerrit
7 1 (0.094%) Gradle
7 1 (0.094%) MLflow
7 1 (0.094%) Tricentis qTest
7 1 (0.094%) Visual Studio
General
1 114 (10.70%) Social Skills
2 69 (6.48%) Finance
3 63 (5.92%) Public Sector
4 42 (3.94%) Analytical Skills
5 35 (3.29%) Documentation Skills
6 22 (2.07%) Banking
7 21 (1.97%) Telecoms
8 14 (1.31%) Military
9 13 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 10 (0.94%) Marketing
11 9 (0.85%) Manufacturing
12 8 (0.75%) Aerospace
12 8 (0.75%) Legal
13 6 (0.56%) Automotive
14 4 (0.38%) Investment Banking
14 4 (0.38%) Law
15 2 (0.19%) Billing
15 2 (0.19%) Front Office
15 2 (0.19%) Local Government
15 2 (0.19%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 188 (17.65%) Terraform
2 22 (2.07%) ARM Templates
3 17 (1.60%) Middleware
4 14 (1.31%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 9 (0.85%) YAML
6 7 (0.66%) LDAP
7 6 (0.56%) 802.1X
7 6 (0.56%) JSON
7 6 (0.56%) OpenID
7 6 (0.56%) REST
8 5 (0.47%) .NET
8 5 (0.47%) Flash
8 5 (0.47%) OAuth
9 4 (0.38%) Elastic Stack
9 4 (0.38%) Kafka
9 4 (0.38%) SAML
10 3 (0.28%) OAuth2
11 2 (0.19%) Apache NiFi
11 2 (0.19%) Keycloak
11 2 (0.19%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 121 (11.36%) Data Centre
2 73 (6.85%) Hybrid Cloud
3 52 (4.88%) PKI
4 39 (3.66%) Public Cloud
5 31 (2.91%) Onboarding
6 30 (2.82%) Cloud Native
7 29 (2.72%) Replication
8 26 (2.44%) Enterprise Storage
9 24 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
10 23 (2.16%) SCADA
11 21 (1.97%) Private Cloud
12 20 (1.88%) Linux Command Line
13 18 (1.69%) Management Information System
14 17 (1.60%) Clustering
15 13 (1.22%) Mainframe
16 12 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
17 11 (1.03%) Operational Technology
18 10 (0.94%) Driving Licence
19 8 (0.75%) Data Protection Act
19 8 (0.75%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 322 (30.23%) Windows
2 219 (20.56%) Windows Server
3 218 (20.47%) Linux
4 39 (3.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (1.78%) VMS
5 19 (1.78%) Windows Server 2019
6 16 (1.50%) Ubuntu
7 15 (1.41%) Windows Server 2016
8 14 (1.31%) AIX
8 14 (1.31%) CentOS
8 14 (1.31%) Windows 10
9 13 (1.22%) zOS
10 10 (0.94%) Unix
10 10 (0.94%) Windows Server 2012
11 9 (0.85%) Rocky
12 5 (0.47%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.38%) Android
13 4 (0.38%) Data ONTAP
13 4 (0.38%) Debian
13 4 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,031 (96.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 240 (22.54%) Infrastructure as Code
3 143 (13.43%) CI/CD
4 137 (12.86%) DevOps
5 112 (10.52%) Migration
5 112 (10.52%) Problem-Solving
6 84 (7.89%) Infrastructure Automation
7 75 (7.04%) Disaster Recovery
8 72 (6.76%) High Availability
9 70 (6.57%) Continuous Improvement
10 69 (6.48%) ITIL
11 68 (6.38%) Platform Engineering
12 67 (6.29%) Project Delivery
13 57 (5.35%) Validation
14 55 (5.16%) Cybersecurity
15 53 (4.98%) Vulnerability Remediation
16 51 (4.79%) Root Cause Analysis
17 47 (4.41%) Agile
17 47 (4.41%) Identity Access Management
18 44 (4.13%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 190 (17.84%) PowerShell
2 143 (13.43%) Python
3 81 (7.61%) Bash
4 43 (4.04%) SQL
5 35 (3.29%) Bicep
6 13 (1.22%) C#
7 11 (1.03%) Java
7 11 (1.03%) Perl
8 10 (0.94%) ActionScript
9 6 (0.56%) Go
10 3 (0.28%) C++
11 2 (0.19%) VB
12 1 (0.094%) C
12 1 (0.094%) Groovy
12 1 (0.094%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.094%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.094%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.094%) PHP
12 1 (0.094%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 413 (38.78%) Security Cleared
2 250 (23.47%) SC Cleared
3 154 (14.46%) DV Cleared
4 41 (3.85%) Degree
5 31 (2.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 22 (2.07%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 21 (1.97%) Azure Certification
8 18 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
9 15 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
10 14 (1.31%) MCSE
10 14 (1.31%) VCAP
11 12 (1.13%) CCNA
11 12 (1.13%) CCNP
12 7 (0.66%) AWS Certification
13 6 (0.56%) MCSA
14 5 (0.47%) DBS Check
15 4 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 4 (0.38%) BPSS Clearance
15 4 (0.38%) JNCIP
15 4 (0.38%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (4.32%) QA
2 17 (1.60%) SLA
3 13 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 9 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
4 9 (0.85%) NIST
5 8 (0.75%) NCSC
6 6 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
7 4 (0.38%) Data Quality
8 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.19%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.19%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.094%) FedRAMP
10 1 (0.094%) GDPR
10 1 (0.094%) GLBA
10 1 (0.094%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 225 (21.13%) VMware Infrastructure
2 222 (20.85%) Active Directory
3 94 (8.83%) Hyper-V
4 74 (6.95%) VMware ESXi
4 74 (6.95%) vSphere
5 54 (5.07%) Virtual Machines
6 44 (4.13%) Docker
7 29 (2.72%) VMware NSX
8 27 (2.54%) Virtual Desktop
9 18 (1.69%) Virtual Servers
10 14 (1.31%) Oracle RAC
11 13 (1.22%) NFS
12 12 (1.13%) Firmware
13 7 (0.66%) KVM
14 6 (0.56%) oVirt
15 5 (0.47%) GPFS
16 4 (0.38%) BitLocker
16 4 (0.38%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 3 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.28%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 130 (12.21%) Ansible
2 96 (9.01%) Kubernetes
3 70 (6.57%) Microsoft Intune
4 53 (4.98%) SCCM
5 37 (3.47%) vCenter Server
6 16 (1.50%) NetBackup
7 15 (1.41%) Prometheus
7 15 (1.41%) SCOM
8 14 (1.31%) Data Guard
8 14 (1.31%) Oracle RMAN
8 14 (1.31%) WSUS
9 12 (1.13%) Grafana
10 9 (0.85%) Failover Clustering
10 9 (0.85%) Nessus
10 9 (0.85%) Puppet
10 9 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (0.75%) FortiGate
11 8 (0.75%) VxRail
12 6 (0.56%) Red Hat Satellite
13 5 (0.47%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 282 (26.48%) VMware
2 266 (24.98%) Microsoft
3 62 (5.82%) Cisco
4 51 (4.79%) Citrix
5 48 (4.51%) NetApp
6 43 (4.04%) F5
7 41 (3.85%) Oracle
8 39 (3.66%) Veeam
9 34 (3.19%) Palo Alto
10 29 (2.72%) Red Hat
11 27 (2.54%) Google
12 21 (1.97%) IBM
13 20 (1.88%) Dell
14 19 (1.78%) Aruba
15 18 (1.69%) Arista
16 17 (1.60%) CyberArk
16 17 (1.60%) SolarWinds
17 16 (1.50%) Commvault
18 13 (1.22%) Juniper
18 13 (1.22%) ServiceNow