Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £510, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 May 2026.

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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 172 210 156
Rank change year-on-year +38 -54 +32
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 732 376 664
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.53% 1.29% 1.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.66% 1.40% 1.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 498 260 500
10th Percentile £325 £312 £300
25th Percentile £413 £384 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £463
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +13.51% -7.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £575
90th Percentile £658 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £463
% change year-on-year - +8.11% -2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 3 9
10th Percentile £46.40 £59.34 £20.99
25th Percentile £58.43 £112.09 £21.25
Median hourly rate £72.54 £200.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -63.73% +788.89% -63.48%
75th Percentile £78.75 - £77.00
90th Percentile - - £77.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £200.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year -63.73% +788.89% -61.88%

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 44,018 26,871 39,592
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.30% 92.45% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,969 17,507 25,749
10th Percentile £320 £296 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £614 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.21% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,868 1,042 2,669
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.20 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.09 £28.60 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +50.66% -23.08% -17.38%
75th Percentile £66.50 £62.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.02
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +63.64% -31.25% -5.88%

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 15 May 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 15 May 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 15 May 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 +12 628 £515 -1.90% 211
UK excluding London +27 511 £500 - 181
London -27 158 £525 - 50
Work from Home +41 156 £520 +9.47% 74
South East -2 139 £515 -1.90% 51
North of England -6 130 £495 +21.85% 50
South West +15 92 £540 -6.09% 29
Yorkshire -25 63 £350 -15.15% 11
Midlands -28 62 £450 +16.13% 26
North West -9 48 £575 +26.37% 26
Scotland +22 42 £525 -4.55% 6
West Midlands -44 34 £450 +33.33% 15
East of England -19 33 £450 -3.54% 14
East Midlands -8 27 £450 +12.50% 11
North East -7 22 £600 -7.69% 13
Wales +1 14 £400 -5.88% 7
Northern Ireland - 2 £375 -

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

For the 6 months to 15 May 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.

1 715 (97.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 268 (36.61%) Security Cleared
3 235 (32.10%) Windows
4 229 (31.28%) Azure
5 192 (26.23%) VMware
6 188 (25.68%) SC Cleared
7 163 (22.27%) Microsoft
8 145 (19.81%) Windows Server
9 144 (19.67%) Active Directory
10 142 (19.40%) VMware Infrastructure
11 131 (17.90%) Terraform
12 126 (17.21%) Infrastructure as Code
13 112 (15.30%) DevOps
13 112 (15.30%) DNS
14 111 (15.16%) Linux
15 110 (15.03%) PowerShell
16 108 (14.75%) Firewall
17 95 (12.98%) AWS
17 95 (12.98%) CI/CD
17 95 (12.98%) DV Cleared
18 94 (12.84%) Problem-Solving
19 92 (12.57%) Python
20 80 (10.93%) DHCP
20 80 (10.93%) Kubernetes
21 77 (10.52%) Hyper-V
22 76 (10.38%) Ansible
23 66 (9.02%) Migration
24 64 (8.74%) Microsoft 365
25 61 (8.33%) Infrastructure Automation
26 57 (7.79%) ITIL

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 51 (6.97%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (1.50%) SharePoint
3 6 (0.82%) TPMS
4 5 (0.68%) Apache
5 4 (0.55%) Confluence
6 3 (0.41%) IIS
7 2 (0.27%) nginx
8 1 (0.14%) CloudStack
8 1 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
8 1 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.14%) MS Project Server
8 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (1.64%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 229 (31.28%) Azure
2 95 (12.98%) AWS
3 64 (8.74%) Microsoft 365
4 53 (7.24%) GitHub
5 43 (5.87%) GCP
6 40 (5.46%) Entra ID
7 36 (4.92%) IaaS
8 31 (4.23%) PaaS
9 27 (3.69%) SaaS
10 26 (3.55%) OCI
11 25 (3.42%) Nutanix
12 24 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
13 22 (3.01%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 19 (2.60%) Azure Monitor
15 15 (2.05%) GitHub Actions
16 14 (1.91%) Azure AKS
17 7 (0.96%) Cohesity
17 7 (0.96%) Microsoft Purview
18 6 (0.82%) Azure Sentinel
18 6 (0.82%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 112 (15.30%) DNS
2 108 (14.75%) Firewall
3 80 (10.93%) DHCP
4 40 (5.46%) VPN
4 40 (5.46%) WAN
5 33 (4.51%) VLAN
6 30 (4.10%) LAN
7 29 (3.96%) Network Security
8 27 (3.69%) SAN
9 22 (3.01%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 22 (3.01%) TCP/IP
10 19 (2.60%) BGP
11 18 (2.46%) BIG-IP
11 18 (2.46%) Ethernet VPN
11 18 (2.46%) SD-WAN
12 17 (2.32%) VXLAN
13 15 (2.05%) OSPF
13 15 (2.05%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (1.64%) SMTP
15 11 (1.50%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (4.10%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.23%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.41%) Data Mining
4 3 (0.41%) NonStop SQL
5 2 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.27%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.27%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.27%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.27%) Power BI
6 1 (0.14%) Flink
6 1 (0.14%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.14%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.14%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.14%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.14%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 25 (3.42%) GitLab
2 20 (2.73%) Jenkins
3 11 (1.50%) JIRA
4 9 (1.23%) Git
5 8 (1.09%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.41%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.14%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.14%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.14%) GoCD
7 1 (0.14%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.14%) Introscope
7 1 (0.14%) MSI
7 1 (0.14%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 93 (12.70%) Social Skills
2 68 (9.29%) Public Sector
3 49 (6.69%) Finance
4 43 (5.87%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (2.19%) Legal
7 15 (2.05%) Banking
8 13 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 12 (1.64%) Aerospace
10 9 (1.23%) Billing
10 9 (1.23%) Manufacturing
11 6 (0.82%) Marketing
11 6 (0.82%) Military
11 6 (0.82%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.55%) Retail
13 3 (0.41%) Law
13 3 (0.41%) Local Government
14 2 (0.27%) Advertising
14 2 (0.27%) Investment Banking
15 1 (0.14%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (1.37%) LDAP
1 10 (1.37%) REST
2 8 (1.09%) SOAP
3 7 (0.96%) Elastic Stack
3 7 (0.96%) Flash
4 5 (0.68%) Web Services
5 4 (0.55%) Keycloak
5 4 (0.55%) OpenID
6 3 (0.41%) ADO
6 3 (0.41%) ARM Templates
6 3 (0.41%) Oracle Fusion
6 3 (0.41%) SAML
7 2 (0.27%) Apache NiFi
7 2 (0.27%) Kafka
7 2 (0.27%) Node.js
7 2 (0.27%) OAuth
7 2 (0.27%) OAuth2
8 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Graph
8 1 (0.14%) React
8 1 (0.14%) Redfish
Miscellaneous
1 64 (8.74%) Data Centre
2 38 (5.19%) PKI
3 30 (4.10%) Hybrid Cloud
4 28 (3.83%) Public Cloud
5 18 (2.46%) Self-Motivation
6 16 (2.19%) Enterprise Storage
6 16 (2.19%) Onboarding
7 14 (1.91%) Replication
8 13 (1.78%) Cloud Native
9 11 (1.50%) Operational Technology
9 11 (1.50%) Private Cloud
10 9 (1.23%) Clustering
10 9 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (1.09%) Virtual Team
12 6 (0.82%) SCADA
12 6 (0.82%) Smartcard
12 6 (0.82%) YubiKey
13 4 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
13 4 (0.55%) Linux Command Line
13 4 (0.55%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 235 (32.10%) Windows
2 145 (19.81%) Windows Server
3 111 (15.16%) Linux
4 21 (2.87%) Windows Server 2019
5 18 (2.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (2.32%) Windows Server 2016
7 16 (2.19%) Ubuntu
8 12 (1.64%) Windows 10
9 11 (1.50%) VMS
10 10 (1.37%) Apple iOS
11 9 (1.23%) Mac OS
12 8 (1.09%) Android
12 8 (1.09%) Unix
12 8 (1.09%) Windows Server 2012
13 7 (0.96%) Windows Server 2003
14 5 (0.68%) CentOS
14 5 (0.68%) Debian
15 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.14%) Rocky
15 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 715 (97.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 126 (17.21%) Infrastructure as Code
3 112 (15.30%) DevOps
4 95 (12.98%) CI/CD
5 94 (12.84%) Problem-Solving
6 66 (9.02%) Migration
7 61 (8.33%) Infrastructure Automation
8 57 (7.79%) ITIL
9 54 (7.38%) Agile
10 47 (6.42%) Disaster Recovery
11 46 (6.28%) High Availability
12 42 (5.74%) Cybersecurity
13 38 (5.19%) Zero Trust
14 34 (4.64%) Project Delivery
15 33 (4.51%) Validation
16 31 (4.23%) Containerisation
17 29 (3.96%) Continuous Improvement
17 29 (3.96%) Platform Engineering
18 26 (3.55%) Load Balancing
18 26 (3.55%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 110 (15.03%) PowerShell
2 92 (12.57%) Python
3 31 (4.23%) Bash
4 23 (3.14%) SQL
5 19 (2.60%) Bicep
6 13 (1.78%) C#
7 9 (1.23%) PHP
8 8 (1.09%) JavaScript
9 5 (0.68%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.27%) ActionScript
10 2 (0.27%) Java
10 2 (0.27%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.14%) C++
11 1 (0.14%) Jython
11 1 (0.14%) VB
Qualifications
1 268 (36.61%) Security Cleared
2 188 (25.68%) SC Cleared
3 95 (12.98%) DV Cleared
4 26 (3.55%) Degree
5 15 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
5 15 (2.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 12 (1.64%) Azure Certification
7 11 (1.50%) CCNA
8 10 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
9 8 (1.09%) AWS Certification
10 7 (0.96%) MCSE
11 6 (0.82%) CCNP
11 6 (0.82%) FFIEC
12 5 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (0.68%) RHCA
13 4 (0.55%) CompTIA Security+
14 3 (0.41%) APMG
14 3 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
14 3 (0.41%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (2.60%) NIST
2 16 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 16 (2.19%) QA
3 13 (1.78%) Cyber Essentials
4 9 (1.23%) GDPR
4 9 (1.23%) SLA
5 6 (0.82%) GLBA
5 6 (0.82%) NCSC
5 6 (0.82%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 2 (0.27%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 144 (19.67%) Active Directory
2 142 (19.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 77 (10.52%) Hyper-V
4 55 (7.51%) vSphere
5 41 (5.60%) Docker
6 40 (5.46%) VMware ESXi
7 22 (3.01%) Virtual Machines
8 20 (2.73%) VMware NSX
9 12 (1.64%) Virtual Desktop
10 9 (1.23%) BitLocker
11 8 (1.09%) NFS
12 7 (0.96%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.68%) GPFS
14 4 (0.55%) Firmware
15 3 (0.41%) DFS Replication
16 2 (0.27%) QEMU
16 2 (0.27%) SRDF
16 2 (0.27%) UAG
16 2 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
17 1 (0.14%) KVM
Systems Management
1 131 (17.90%) Terraform
2 80 (10.93%) Kubernetes
3 76 (10.38%) Ansible
4 38 (5.19%) Microsoft Intune
5 33 (4.51%) SCCM
6 31 (4.23%) vCenter Server
7 15 (2.05%) WSUS
8 12 (1.64%) Istio
8 12 (1.64%) SCOM
9 11 (1.50%) Grafana
9 11 (1.50%) Puppet
10 10 (1.37%) Prometheus
11 9 (1.23%) Nessus
11 9 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (1.23%) vRealize
11 9 (1.23%) VxRail
12 8 (1.09%) AirWatch
12 8 (1.09%) Packer
13 7 (0.96%) vMotion
14 5 (0.68%) Podman
Vendors
1 192 (26.23%) VMware
2 163 (22.27%) Microsoft
3 49 (6.69%) Cisco
4 43 (5.87%) Citrix
5 37 (5.05%) Veeam
6 30 (4.10%) F5
7 27 (3.69%) Google
7 27 (3.69%) Palo Alto
8 24 (3.28%) Dell
8 24 (3.28%) NetApp
9 18 (2.46%) Oracle
10 17 (2.32%) Aruba
11 16 (2.19%) SolarWinds
12 15 (2.05%) Arista
13 14 (1.91%) Red Hat
14 11 (1.50%) Fortinet
14 11 (1.50%) ServiceNow
15 10 (1.37%) Thales
16 9 (1.23%) Splunk
16 9 (1.23%) Tenable