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 August 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 147 226 142
Rank change year-on-year +79 -84 +24
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 1,010 395 659
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.89% 1.19% 1.68%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.04% 1.31% 1.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 609 253 498
10th Percentile £350 £329 £318
25th Percentile £425 £400 £391
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £478
Median % change year-on-year - +9.95% -4.50%
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% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 5 4
10th Percentile £48.00 £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 £92.50 - £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 49,411 30,266 36,487
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.62% 91.43% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,780 19,222 23,643
10th Percentile £331 £281 £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 3,407 1,492 2,092
10th Percentile £15.36 £13.65 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.89 £54.19 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +76.94% -41.51% +10.19%

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 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 2 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 2 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 +62 868 £525 - 315
UK excluding London +67 709 £525 - 249
South East +29 222 £536 -2.47% 69
London +28 220 £540 +2.86% 96
Work from Home +18 205 £538 +7.50% 108
North of England +22 195 £550 +4.76% 48
South West +23 105 £549 -4.52% 65
Yorkshire +1 84 £400 -20.00% 17
Midlands -6 83 £450 - 25
North West -13 71 £575 -4.17% 27
West Midlands -31 53 £475 +5.56% 19
North East +1 50 £600 -7.69% 6
Scotland +27 47 £571 +17.48% 11
East of England -4 33 £450 +5.88% 27
East Midlands +6 29 £450 +5.88% 6
Wales +12 26 £463 - 6
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 3

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

For the 6 months to 2 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.

1 997 (98.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 408 (40.40%) Security Cleared
3 306 (30.30%) Windows
4 304 (30.10%) Azure
5 271 (26.83%) SC Cleared
6 256 (25.35%) VMware
7 225 (22.28%) Microsoft
8 205 (20.30%) Active Directory
9 196 (19.41%) Windows Server
10 195 (19.31%) VMware Infrastructure
11 190 (18.81%) Infrastructure as Code
12 181 (17.92%) Linux
13 177 (17.52%) Terraform
14 174 (17.23%) DNS
15 158 (15.64%) PowerShell
16 146 (14.46%) Firewall
17 142 (14.06%) DV Cleared
18 141 (13.96%) DevOps
19 138 (13.66%) AWS
20 132 (13.07%) Python
21 128 (12.67%) CI/CD
22 126 (12.48%) DHCP
23 116 (11.49%) Ansible
24 107 (10.59%) Migration
25 98 (9.70%) Problem-Solving
26 95 (9.41%) Kubernetes
27 90 (8.91%) Hyper-V
28 80 (7.92%) Entra ID
29 77 (7.62%) Microsoft 365
30 72 (7.13%) 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 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 4 (0.40%) 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 3 (0.30%) 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
1 304 (30.10%) Azure
2 138 (13.66%) AWS
3 80 (7.92%) Entra ID
4 77 (7.62%) Microsoft 365
5 60 (5.94%) GitHub
6 57 (5.64%) GCP
7 53 (5.25%) IaaS
8 50 (4.95%) OCI
9 39 (3.86%) SaaS
10 36 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
11 34 (3.37%) PaaS
12 27 (2.67%) Azure Monitor
13 23 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
14 21 (2.08%) Azure AKS
15 15 (1.49%) Nutanix
16 12 (1.19%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 8 (0.79%) Azure Sentinel
17 8 (0.79%) Cohesity
18 7 (0.69%) OneDrive
18 7 (0.69%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 174 (17.23%) DNS
2 146 (14.46%) Firewall
3 126 (12.48%) DHCP
4 55 (5.45%) VLAN
5 52 (5.15%) SAN
6 50 (4.95%) VPN
7 47 (4.65%) TCP/IP
8 42 (4.16%) WAN
9 39 (3.86%) Network Security
10 32 (3.17%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 30 (2.97%) BIG-IP
12 25 (2.48%) LAN
13 24 (2.38%) Wi-Fi
14 23 (2.28%) Ethernet VPN
15 22 (2.18%) SD-WAN
15 22 (2.18%) VSAN
15 22 (2.18%) VXLAN
16 20 (1.98%) BGP
16 20 (1.98%) OSPF
17 13 (1.29%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (4.85%) SQL Server
2 18 (1.78%) Oracle Exadata
3 15 (1.49%) Relational Database
4 14 (1.39%) Oracle Database
5 12 (1.19%) RDBMS
6 9 (0.89%) Elasticsearch
7 7 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.40%) PostgreSQL
8 4 (0.40%) Power BI
9 3 (0.30%) Big Data
9 3 (0.30%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.30%) NonStop SQL
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%) Flink
11 1 (0.099%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.099%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 43 (4.26%) GitLab
2 27 (2.67%) Jenkins
2 27 (2.67%) JIRA
3 23 (2.28%) Git
4 4 (0.40%) Chocolatey
5 3 (0.30%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.099%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.099%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.099%) CMake
6 1 (0.099%) Gradle
6 1 (0.099%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.099%) Introscope
6 1 (0.099%) MLflow
6 1 (0.099%) MSI
6 1 (0.099%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.099%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 110 (10.89%) Social Skills
2 72 (7.13%) Public Sector
3 45 (4.46%) Finance
4 41 (4.06%) Analytical Skills
5 34 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (1.98%) Banking
7 17 (1.68%) Legal
8 13 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 11 (1.09%) Aerospace
10 10 (0.99%) Manufacturing
10 10 (0.99%) Marketing
11 9 (0.89%) Military
11 9 (0.89%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.50%) Automotive
12 5 (0.50%) Law
13 2 (0.20%) Advertising
13 2 (0.20%) Billing
13 2 (0.20%) Local Government
13 2 (0.20%) Retail
14 1 (0.099%) Mandarin Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (1.68%) Middleware
2 12 (1.19%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 11 (1.09%) 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
1 118 (11.68%) Data Centre
2 54 (5.35%) PKI
3 53 (5.25%) Hybrid Cloud
4 43 (4.26%) Public Cloud
5 28 (2.77%) Enterprise Storage
6 25 (2.48%) Cloud Native
6 25 (2.48%) Onboarding
7 23 (2.28%) Replication
8 17 (1.68%) Clustering
8 17 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
9 14 (1.39%) Linux Command Line
10 13 (1.29%) Mainframe
11 12 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
12 11 (1.09%) Management Information System
13 10 (0.99%) Operational Technology
14 9 (0.89%) Private Cloud
14 9 (0.89%) Smartcard
15 8 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
15 8 (0.79%) Virtual Team
16 7 (0.69%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 306 (30.30%) Windows
2 196 (19.41%) Windows Server
3 181 (17.92%) Linux
4 34 (3.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (1.98%) Windows Server 2019
6 18 (1.78%) Windows Server 2016
7 17 (1.68%) Windows 10
8 13 (1.29%) AIX
8 13 (1.29%) VMS
8 13 (1.29%) zOS
9 12 (1.19%) Ubuntu
10 10 (0.99%) Apple iOS
10 10 (0.99%) Mac OS
11 9 (0.89%) Android
11 9 (0.89%) CentOS
12 8 (0.79%) Unix
13 6 (0.59%) Debian
13 6 (0.59%) Rocky
13 6 (0.59%) Windows Server 2003
13 6 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 997 (98.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 190 (18.81%) Infrastructure as Code
3 141 (13.96%) DevOps
4 128 (12.67%) CI/CD
5 107 (10.59%) Migration
6 98 (9.70%) Problem-Solving
7 72 (7.13%) Infrastructure Automation
8 70 (6.93%) High Availability
9 62 (6.14%) Continuous Improvement
10 60 (5.94%) Disaster Recovery
10 60 (5.94%) Project Delivery
11 55 (5.45%) ITIL
12 53 (5.25%) Validation
13 47 (4.65%) Zero Trust
14 46 (4.55%) Agile
14 46 (4.55%) Platform Engineering
15 39 (3.86%) Cybersecurity
16 35 (3.47%) Root Cause Analysis
16 35 (3.47%) Service Management
16 35 (3.47%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 158 (15.64%) PowerShell
2 132 (13.07%) Python
3 65 (6.44%) Bash
4 37 (3.66%) SQL
5 25 (2.48%) Bicep
6 17 (1.68%) C#
7 11 (1.09%) Java
8 7 (0.69%) ActionScript
9 6 (0.59%) Go
10 5 (0.50%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.30%) JavaScript
12 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.099%) C
13 1 (0.099%) C++
13 1 (0.099%) Jython
13 1 (0.099%) Perl
13 1 (0.099%) PHP
13 1 (0.099%) VB
Qualifications
1 408 (40.40%) Security Cleared
2 271 (26.83%) SC Cleared
3 142 (14.06%) DV Cleared
4 36 (3.56%) Degree
5 28 (2.77%) Microsoft Certification
6 22 (2.18%) Cisco Certification
6 22 (2.18%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 19 (1.88%) Azure Certification
8 17 (1.68%) MCSE
9 13 (1.29%) CCNA
9 13 (1.29%) VCAP
10 12 (1.19%) CCNP
11 8 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
12 6 (0.59%) RHCA
13 5 (0.50%) DBS Check
13 5 (0.50%) MCSA
14 4 (0.40%) AWS Certification
14 4 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
14 4 (0.40%) JNCIP
14 4 (0.40%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (2.87%) QA
2 19 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (1.58%) SLA
4 13 (1.29%) Cyber Essentials
4 13 (1.29%) NIST
5 9 (0.89%) NCSC
6 6 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 3 (0.30%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.20%) GDPR
8 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.099%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.099%) FedRAMP
9 1 (0.099%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 205 (20.30%) Active Directory
2 195 (19.31%) VMware Infrastructure
3 90 (8.91%) Hyper-V
4 70 (6.93%) vSphere
5 68 (6.73%) VMware ESXi
6 43 (4.26%) Virtual Machines
7 35 (3.47%) Docker
7 35 (3.47%) VMware NSX
8 22 (2.18%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (1.19%) NFS
9 12 (1.19%) Oracle RAC
10 9 (0.89%) BitLocker
11 8 (0.79%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.59%) KVM
13 5 (0.50%) Firmware
13 5 (0.50%) GPFS
13 5 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.40%) Terminal Services
15 2 (0.20%) SRDF
15 2 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 177 (17.52%) Terraform
2 116 (11.49%) Ansible
3 95 (9.41%) Kubernetes
4 51 (5.05%) Microsoft Intune
5 45 (4.46%) vCenter Server
6 40 (3.96%) SCCM
7 18 (1.78%) WSUS
8 16 (1.58%) NetBackup
9 14 (1.39%) Prometheus
9 14 (1.39%) SCOM
10 13 (1.29%) Puppet
11 12 (1.19%) Data Guard
11 12 (1.19%) Oracle RMAN
12 11 (1.09%) Grafana
13 9 (0.89%) Nessus
13 9 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
13 9 (0.89%) vMotion
14 8 (0.79%) Istio
14 8 (0.79%) vRealize
15 7 (0.69%) VxRail
Vendors
1 256 (25.35%) VMware
2 225 (22.28%) Microsoft
3 65 (6.44%) Citrix
4 58 (5.74%) Cisco
5 40 (3.96%) Oracle
6 37 (3.66%) NetApp
7 36 (3.56%) F5
8 34 (3.37%) Veeam
9 33 (3.27%) Google
10 30 (2.97%) Palo Alto
11 26 (2.57%) Red Hat
12 22 (2.18%) Dell
13 21 (2.08%) Aruba
14 20 (1.98%) IBM
15 19 (1.88%) Arista
16 17 (1.68%) Juniper
17 15 (1.49%) CyberArk
17 15 (1.49%) ServiceNow
17 15 (1.49%) Tenable
18 14 (1.39%) SolarWinds