Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 January 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 223 207 143
Rank change year-on-year -16 -64 +39
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 460 404 749
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.23% 1.27% 1.73%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.35% 1.37% 1.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 332 281 546
10th Percentile £276 £313 £350
25th Percentile £363 £368 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% +2.63%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £608
90th Percentile £640 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 4 18
10th Percentile £26.10 - £20.86
25th Percentile £26.25 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £34.00 £34.59 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.71% +50.39% -59.18%
75th Percentile £45.20 £50.63 £72.35
90th Percentile £75.70 £56.25 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.25 £24.18 £23.00
% change year-on-year +70.60% +5.13% -54.00%

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 34,093 29,528 40,309
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.39% 92.82% 93.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,578 18,084 26,785
10th Percentile £300 £288 £279
25th Percentile £405 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £500
% change year-on-year -0.42% -4.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,999 895 1,806
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.68 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.22 £18.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £41.37
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -21.43% +18.19%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £64.52
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £44.20
% change year-on-year -22.62% -26.47% +52.41%

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 17 January 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 17 January 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 17 January 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 -22 412 £479 -4.35% 336
UK excluding London -3 306 £450 -5.26% 326
Work from Home +33 129 £450 +9.09% 112
London -51 109 £525 - 45
South East +2 88 £450 - 96
North of England -31 76 £400 -3.03% 67
South West +7 66 £550 -8.33% 51
Yorkshire -31 39 £350 -15.15% 34
North West -14 33 £442 +10.44% 21
Midlands -38 29 £415 -17.00% 46
East of England 0 28 £425 -4.66% 44
West Midlands -38 20 £413 -33.20% 16
Scotland -2 17 £465 -15.45% 14
East Midlands -26 9 £415 -17.00% 28
Wales -9 5 £550 +22.22% 10
North East -9 4 £471 - 15
Northern Ireland - 1 £375 - 4

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

For the 6 months to 17 January 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.

1 440 (95.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 176 (38.26%) Windows
3 169 (36.74%) Azure
4 162 (35.22%) Microsoft
5 136 (29.57%) VMware
6 130 (28.26%) Security Cleared
7 116 (25.22%) Active Directory
8 101 (21.96%) Linux
8 101 (21.96%) VMware Infrastructure
9 96 (20.87%) SC Cleared
10 91 (19.78%) Terraform
11 90 (19.57%) Windows Server
12 86 (18.70%) Firewall
13 85 (18.48%) DevOps
14 84 (18.26%) Problem-Solving
15 79 (17.17%) AWS
15 79 (17.17%) Microsoft 365
16 74 (16.09%) PowerShell
17 73 (15.87%) Infrastructure as Code
18 72 (15.65%) DNS
19 67 (14.57%) Ansible
20 66 (14.35%) Hyper-V
21 64 (13.91%) CI/CD
22 62 (13.48%) ITIL
22 62 (13.48%) Python
23 52 (11.30%) Infrastructure Automation
24 51 (11.09%) DHCP
25 48 (10.43%) SCCM
25 48 (10.43%) TCP/IP
26 47 (10.22%) Microsoft Intune

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 42 (9.13%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 10 (2.17%) TPMS
4 8 (1.74%) Apache
5 7 (1.52%) IIS
6 5 (1.09%) Confluence
7 3 (0.65%) Exchange Server 2010
8 2 (0.43%) iPlanet
8 2 (0.43%) JBoss
8 2 (0.43%) nginx
8 2 (0.43%) Skype for Business
8 2 (0.43%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.43%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.22%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.22%) CICS
9 1 (0.22%) Traefik
9 1 (0.22%) WebLogic
Applications
1 8 (1.74%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.22%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.65%) Maximo
2 2 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.22%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 169 (36.74%) Azure
2 79 (17.17%) AWS
2 79 (17.17%) Microsoft 365
3 44 (9.57%) Entra ID
4 23 (5.00%) IaaS
5 20 (4.35%) PaaS
6 19 (4.13%) Azure DevOps
6 19 (4.13%) GCP
7 18 (3.91%) Azure Monitor
8 16 (3.48%) GitHub
9 15 (3.26%) Amazon S3
10 14 (3.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 14 (3.04%) Azure Sentinel
10 14 (3.04%) Nutanix
11 13 (2.83%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 11 (2.39%) Mimecast
13 10 (2.17%) Amazon EC2
13 10 (2.17%) Amazon ELB
13 10 (2.17%) SaaS
13 10 (2.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 86 (18.70%) Firewall
2 72 (15.65%) DNS
3 51 (11.09%) DHCP
4 48 (10.43%) TCP/IP
5 44 (9.57%) VPN
6 31 (6.74%) WAN
7 27 (5.87%) SSL
7 27 (5.87%) VLAN
8 25 (5.43%) Wi-Fi
9 21 (4.57%) SAN
10 20 (4.35%) LAN
11 17 (3.70%) Network Security
12 10 (2.17%) SNMP
12 10 (2.17%) SSH
13 8 (1.74%) SD-WAN
14 7 (1.52%) MPLS
15 6 (1.30%) 4G
15 6 (1.30%) HTTP
16 4 (0.87%) BGP
17 3 (0.65%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (3.26%) SQL Server
2 4 (0.87%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (0.43%) MySQL
4 2 (0.43%) Oracle Database
4 2 (0.43%) Power BI
4 2 (0.43%) SAP HANA
5 1 (0.22%) Apache Iceberg
5 1 (0.22%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.22%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.22%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.22%) Delta Lake
5 1 (0.22%) Parquet
5 1 (0.22%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.22%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 18 (3.91%) GitLab
1 18 (3.91%) Jenkins
2 16 (3.48%) Git
3 9 (1.96%) JIRA
4 4 (0.87%) Artifactory
4 4 (0.87%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.65%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.43%) Bitbucket Server
6 2 (0.43%) CA Release Automation
6 2 (0.43%) GoCD
7 1 (0.22%) MSI
General
1 92 (20.00%) Social Skills
2 51 (11.09%) Public Sector
3 47 (10.22%) Finance
4 43 (9.35%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (4.78%) Documentation Skills
6 10 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 10 (2.17%) Military
7 9 (1.96%) Banking
8 8 (1.74%) Billing
8 8 (1.74%) Local Government
9 7 (1.52%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.30%) Aerospace
10 6 (1.30%) Aviation
10 6 (1.30%) Spanish Language
11 5 (1.09%) Financial Institution
11 5 (1.09%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.87%) Legal
13 3 (0.65%) Marketing
13 3 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.65%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (1.96%) SAML
2 8 (1.74%) ARM Templates
2 8 (1.74%) Middleware
3 7 (1.52%) OpenID
3 7 (1.52%) REST
4 6 (1.30%) LDAP
5 5 (1.09%) Microsoft Graph
6 4 (0.87%) OAuth
6 4 (0.87%) SOAP
6 4 (0.87%) Web Services
6 4 (0.87%) YAML
7 3 (0.65%) ADO
7 3 (0.65%) AWS CDK
7 3 (0.65%) Keycloak
8 2 (0.43%) .NET
8 2 (0.43%) .NET Core
8 2 (0.43%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.43%) OAuth2
8 2 (0.43%) WPF
9 1 (0.22%) EDI
Miscellaneous
1 29 (6.30%) Data Centre
2 25 (5.43%) PKI
3 17 (3.70%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
5 12 (2.61%) Private Cloud
6 11 (2.39%) Replication
7 9 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
7 9 (1.96%) Public Cloud
8 8 (1.74%) Clustering
9 7 (1.52%) Onboarding
10 6 (1.30%) NHS
10 6 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.09%) Management Information System
12 4 (0.87%) Cloud Native
12 4 (0.87%) Mobile App
13 3 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
13 3 (0.65%) Enterprise Storage
13 3 (0.65%) Linux Command Line
13 3 (0.65%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 176 (38.26%) Windows
2 101 (21.96%) Linux
3 90 (19.57%) Windows Server
4 16 (3.48%) Windows 10
5 13 (2.83%) Ubuntu
6 12 (2.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 12 (2.61%) Unix
7 11 (2.39%) Windows Server 2012
8 9 (1.96%) VMS
9 7 (1.52%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (1.30%) Android
10 6 (1.30%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (1.09%) Apple iOS
12 4 (0.87%) Windows Server 2003
13 3 (0.65%) CentOS
14 2 (0.43%) Debian
14 2 (0.43%) SUSE
14 2 (0.43%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
15 1 (0.22%) Mac OS
15 1 (0.22%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 440 (95.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 85 (18.48%) DevOps
3 84 (18.26%) Problem-Solving
4 73 (15.87%) Infrastructure as Code
5 64 (13.91%) CI/CD
6 62 (13.48%) ITIL
7 52 (11.30%) Infrastructure Automation
8 40 (8.70%) Cybersecurity
9 39 (8.48%) Disaster Recovery
10 38 (8.26%) Migration
11 36 (7.83%) High Availability
12 32 (6.96%) Agile
12 32 (6.96%) Observability
13 24 (5.22%) Containerisation
13 24 (5.22%) Service Management
14 21 (4.57%) Roadmaps
14 21 (4.57%) Stakeholder Management
15 19 (4.13%) Business Continuity
15 19 (4.13%) Project Delivery
16 18 (3.91%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 74 (16.09%) PowerShell
2 62 (13.48%) Python
3 28 (6.09%) Bash
4 15 (3.26%) Bicep
5 12 (2.61%) Perl
6 11 (2.39%) SQL
7 7 (1.52%) Java
7 7 (1.52%) JavaScript
8 6 (1.30%) PHP
9 5 (1.09%) Go
9 5 (1.09%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.43%) C#
10 2 (0.43%) Groovy
11 1 (0.22%) C++
11 1 (0.22%) Kusto Query Language
11 1 (0.22%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.22%) Ruby
11 1 (0.22%) Scala
11 1 (0.22%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.22%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 130 (28.26%) Security Cleared
2 96 (20.87%) SC Cleared
3 38 (8.26%) DV Cleared
4 28 (6.09%) Azure Certification
5 22 (4.78%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (3.04%) Network+ Certification
7 12 (2.61%) Degree
7 12 (2.61%) Server+ Certification
8 10 (2.17%) FFIEC
9 7 (1.52%) AWS Certification
10 6 (1.30%) BPSS Clearance
10 6 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (1.30%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (1.09%) CCNA
11 5 (1.09%) CISSP
11 5 (1.09%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 4 (0.87%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.87%) CISM
12 4 (0.87%) CompTIA Security+
13 3 (0.65%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.91%) NIST
2 14 (3.04%) GDPR
3 12 (2.61%) SLA
4 10 (2.17%) GLBA
4 10 (2.17%) PCI DSS
5 7 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (1.30%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.65%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.43%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.43%) QA
8 2 (0.43%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.22%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 116 (25.22%) Active Directory
2 101 (21.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 66 (14.35%) Hyper-V
4 42 (9.13%) Docker
5 21 (4.57%) vSphere
6 12 (2.61%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (1.96%) Virtual Desktop
8 9 (1.96%) VMware NSX
9 3 (0.65%) BitLocker
9 3 (0.65%) DFS Replication
9 3 (0.65%) Sendmail
9 3 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.43%) Firmware
10 2 (0.43%) Microsoft App-V
10 2 (0.43%) QEMU
10 2 (0.43%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 1 (0.22%) etcd
11 1 (0.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 1 (0.22%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 91 (19.78%) Terraform
2 67 (14.57%) Ansible
3 48 (10.43%) SCCM
4 47 (10.22%) Microsoft Intune
5 40 (8.70%) Kubernetes
6 17 (3.70%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (3.70%) vCenter Server
7 8 (1.74%) FortiGate
8 7 (1.52%) VxRail
9 6 (1.30%) CASB
9 6 (1.30%) Prometheus
9 6 (1.30%) Red Hat Satellite
9 6 (1.30%) SCOrch
10 5 (1.09%) AirWatch
10 5 (1.09%) Grafana
10 5 (1.09%) Istio
10 5 (1.09%) Packer
10 5 (1.09%) SCOM
11 4 (0.87%) Nessus
11 4 (0.87%) WSUS
Vendors
1 162 (35.22%) Microsoft
2 136 (29.57%) VMware
3 28 (6.09%) Cisco
4 25 (5.43%) Palo Alto
5 22 (4.78%) F5
6 20 (4.35%) Dell
7 18 (3.91%) Veeam
8 16 (3.48%) Red Hat
9 15 (3.26%) Citrix
9 15 (3.26%) Google
9 15 (3.26%) Splunk
10 14 (3.04%) ServiceNow
11 12 (2.61%) Thales
12 11 (2.39%) CheckPoint
12 11 (2.39%) SolarWinds
13 10 (2.17%) Aruba
14 8 (1.74%) HP
15 7 (1.52%) NetApp
15 7 (1.52%) Oracle
16 6 (1.30%) Fortinet