Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 3 May 2026.

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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 179 201 148
Rank change year-on-year +22 -53 +27
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 700 400 694
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.48% 1.37% 1.60%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.60% 1.48% 1.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 475 276 517
10th Percentile £325 £308 £310
25th Percentile £413 £378 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £467
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +12.42% -6.60%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £594
90th Percentile £650 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £525 £465
% change year-on-year -2.86% +12.91% -0.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 4 10
10th Percentile £42.40 - £21.12
25th Percentile £58.43 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £72.54 £112.09 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.28% +149.09% -28.21%
75th Percentile £78.75 £200.00 £77.00
90th Percentile - - £77.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £112.09 £22.50
% change year-on-year -35.28% +398.18% -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 43,737 27,092 40,275
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.28% 92.50% 92.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,961 17,699 26,220
10th Percentile £315 £300 £276
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.82% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,818 1,043 2,672
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.42
Median % change year-on-year +51.72% -20.37% -19.07%
75th Percentile £66.00 £62.50 £61.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £28.00 £39.55
% change year-on-year +62.36% -29.20% -6.94%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +2 599 £510 -2.86% 247
UK excluding London +17 482 £510 -2.86% 235
London -35 157 £506 -3.57% 43
Work from Home +25 148 £500 +2.56% 93
South East -12 128 £525 -4.55% 63
North of England -18 114 £458 +11.03% 68
South West +16 96 £540 -6.09% 30
Yorkshire -21 63 £350 -15.15% 22
Midlands -33 59 £450 +20.00% 28
North West -21 41 £575 +9.52% 32
Scotland +5 37 £500 -9.09% 12
East of England -23 34 £450 -3.54% 25
East Midlands -10 29 £450 +12.50% 14
West Midlands -46 29 £440 +46.67% 14
Wales -3 15 £400 -5.88% 12
North East -16 13 £600 -7.69% 14
Northern Ireland - 2 £375 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 3 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.

1 683 (97.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 258 (36.86%) Security Cleared
3 229 (32.71%) Windows
4 221 (31.57%) Azure
5 189 (27.00%) VMware
6 183 (26.14%) SC Cleared
7 169 (24.14%) Microsoft
8 147 (21.00%) Active Directory
9 143 (20.43%) Windows Server
10 142 (20.29%) VMware Infrastructure
11 124 (17.71%) Terraform
12 113 (16.14%) Infrastructure as Code
12 113 (16.14%) PowerShell
13 109 (15.57%) DevOps
14 107 (15.29%) DNS
15 102 (14.57%) Firewall
16 101 (14.43%) Linux
17 92 (13.14%) DV Cleared
18 91 (13.00%) Problem-Solving
19 87 (12.43%) CI/CD
20 81 (11.57%) Python
21 78 (11.14%) Kubernetes
22 77 (11.00%) Hyper-V
23 76 (10.86%) AWS
24 74 (10.57%) DHCP
25 68 (9.71%) Microsoft 365
26 66 (9.43%) Ansible
27 65 (9.29%) Migration
28 58 (8.29%) ITIL
29 57 (8.14%) 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 (7.86%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.71%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.14%) TPMS
4 4 (0.57%) Apache
5 3 (0.43%) Exchange Server 2010
5 3 (0.43%) IIS
6 2 (0.29%) Confluence
6 2 (0.29%) nginx
7 1 (0.14%) CICS
7 1 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
7 1 (0.14%) MS Project Server
7 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Maximo
1 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 221 (31.57%) Azure
2 76 (10.86%) AWS
3 68 (9.71%) Microsoft 365
4 50 (7.14%) GitHub
5 45 (6.43%) Entra ID
6 39 (5.57%) GCP
7 36 (5.14%) IaaS
8 31 (4.43%) PaaS
9 26 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
9 26 (3.71%) SaaS
10 24 (3.43%) Nutanix
11 22 (3.14%) Azure Monitor
12 21 (3.00%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 20 (2.86%) OCI
14 15 (2.14%) Azure AKS
15 13 (1.86%) GitHub Actions
16 8 (1.14%) Azure Sentinel
16 8 (1.14%) Microsoft Copilot
16 8 (1.14%) Microsoft Purview
17 7 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 107 (15.29%) DNS
2 102 (14.57%) Firewall
3 74 (10.57%) DHCP
4 41 (5.86%) VPN
5 35 (5.00%) WAN
6 29 (4.14%) VLAN
7 28 (4.00%) Network Security
8 26 (3.71%) LAN
9 22 (3.14%) SAN
10 21 (3.00%) TCP/IP
11 18 (2.57%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 16 (2.29%) BGP
13 14 (2.00%) BIG-IP
13 14 (2.00%) Ethernet VPN
14 13 (1.86%) VXLAN
14 13 (1.86%) Wi-Fi
15 12 (1.71%) OSPF
15 12 (1.71%) SD-WAN
15 12 (1.71%) SMTP
16 11 (1.57%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (4.14%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.29%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.43%) Data Mining
4 3 (0.43%) NonStop SQL
5 2 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.29%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.29%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.14%) Flink
6 1 (0.14%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.14%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.14%) Power BI
6 1 (0.14%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.14%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 18 (2.57%) GitLab
2 17 (2.43%) Jenkins
3 12 (1.71%) JIRA
4 8 (1.14%) Artifactory
4 8 (1.14%) Git
5 3 (0.43%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.14%) Chocolatey
6 1 (0.14%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.14%) GoCD
6 1 (0.14%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.14%) Introscope
6 1 (0.14%) MSI
6 1 (0.14%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 91 (13.00%) Social Skills
2 70 (10.00%) Public Sector
3 49 (7.00%) Finance
4 42 (6.00%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (3.14%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (2.29%) Legal
7 14 (2.00%) Banking
8 13 (1.86%) Aerospace
8 13 (1.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.29%) Billing
10 8 (1.14%) Manufacturing
11 6 (0.86%) Military
11 6 (0.86%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.57%) Retail
13 3 (0.43%) Law
13 3 (0.43%) Local Government
14 2 (0.29%) Advertising
14 2 (0.29%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.29%) Marketing
14 2 (0.29%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (1.43%) REST
2 9 (1.29%) LDAP
3 8 (1.14%) SOAP
4 6 (0.86%) ARM Templates
5 5 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
5 5 (0.71%) Flash
5 5 (0.71%) SAML
5 5 (0.71%) Web Services
6 4 (0.57%) Keycloak
6 4 (0.57%) OAuth
6 4 (0.57%) OAuth2
6 4 (0.57%) OpenID
7 3 (0.43%) ADO
7 3 (0.43%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.29%) Apache NiFi
8 2 (0.29%) Kafka
8 2 (0.29%) Node.js
9 1 (0.14%) 802.1X
9 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Graph
9 1 (0.14%) React
Miscellaneous
1 54 (7.71%) Data Centre
2 41 (5.86%) PKI
3 25 (3.57%) Hybrid Cloud
3 25 (3.57%) Public Cloud
4 18 (2.57%) Self-Motivation
5 16 (2.29%) Enterprise Storage
6 15 (2.14%) Onboarding
7 12 (1.71%) Cloud Native
7 12 (1.71%) Private Cloud
7 12 (1.71%) Replication
8 11 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
9 10 (1.43%) Clustering
9 10 (1.43%) Operational Technology
10 6 (0.86%) SCADA
11 5 (0.71%) Smartcard
11 5 (0.71%) Virtual Team
11 5 (0.71%) YubiKey
12 4 (0.57%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (0.57%) Legacy Systems
12 4 (0.57%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 229 (32.71%) Windows
2 143 (20.43%) Windows Server
3 101 (14.43%) Linux
4 21 (3.00%) Windows Server 2019
5 19 (2.71%) Windows Server 2016
6 15 (2.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (2.14%) Ubuntu
7 11 (1.57%) VMS
7 11 (1.57%) Windows Server 2012
8 10 (1.43%) Apple iOS
8 10 (1.43%) Windows 10
9 8 (1.14%) Android
9 8 (1.14%) Mac OS
10 7 (1.00%) Unix
11 6 (0.86%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.57%) CentOS
12 4 (0.57%) Debian
13 1 (0.14%) AIX
13 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 683 (97.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 113 (16.14%) Infrastructure as Code
3 109 (15.57%) DevOps
4 91 (13.00%) Problem-Solving
5 87 (12.43%) CI/CD
6 65 (9.29%) Migration
7 58 (8.29%) ITIL
8 57 (8.14%) Infrastructure Automation
9 52 (7.43%) Agile
10 47 (6.71%) Disaster Recovery
11 44 (6.29%) Cybersecurity
12 43 (6.14%) High Availability
13 34 (4.86%) Zero Trust
14 33 (4.71%) Project Delivery
15 32 (4.57%) Validation
16 31 (4.43%) Containerisation
17 28 (4.00%) Cloud Security
17 28 (4.00%) Platform Engineering
18 27 (3.86%) Continuous Improvement
18 27 (3.86%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 113 (16.14%) PowerShell
2 81 (11.57%) Python
3 25 (3.57%) Bash
4 24 (3.43%) SQL
5 21 (3.00%) Bicep
6 12 (1.71%) C#
7 9 (1.29%) PHP
8 8 (1.14%) JavaScript
9 5 (0.71%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.43%) Java
11 2 (0.29%) ActionScript
11 2 (0.29%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.14%) C++
12 1 (0.14%) Jython
12 1 (0.14%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.14%) VB
Qualifications
1 258 (36.86%) Security Cleared
2 183 (26.14%) SC Cleared
3 92 (13.14%) DV Cleared
4 24 (3.43%) Degree
5 15 (2.14%) Azure Certification
5 15 (2.14%) Cisco Certification
6 14 (2.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 13 (1.86%) Microsoft Certification
8 12 (1.71%) CCNA
9 8 (1.14%) AWS Certification
9 8 (1.14%) FFIEC
10 7 (1.00%) MCSE
11 6 (0.86%) CompTIA Security+
12 5 (0.71%) CCNP
12 5 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (0.71%) RHCA
13 4 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 4 (0.57%) GIAC
13 4 (0.57%) GSEC
13 4 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.14%) NIST
2 17 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (2.14%) QA
4 13 (1.86%) Cyber Essentials
5 12 (1.71%) GDPR
6 10 (1.43%) SLA
7 8 (1.14%) GLBA
7 8 (1.14%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.86%) NCSC
9 3 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.43%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.14%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 147 (21.00%) Active Directory
2 142 (20.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 77 (11.00%) Hyper-V
4 49 (7.00%) vSphere
5 39 (5.57%) Docker
6 38 (5.43%) VMware ESXi
7 19 (2.71%) Virtual Machines
7 19 (2.71%) VMware NSX
8 12 (1.71%) Virtual Desktop
9 9 (1.29%) BitLocker
10 7 (1.00%) Microsoft App-V
11 4 (0.57%) Firmware
12 3 (0.43%) DFS Replication
12 3 (0.43%) GPFS
12 3 (0.43%) NFS
12 3 (0.43%) Sendmail
13 2 (0.29%) QEMU
13 2 (0.29%) SRDF
13 2 (0.29%) UAG
13 2 (0.29%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 124 (17.71%) Terraform
2 78 (11.14%) Kubernetes
3 66 (9.43%) Ansible
4 41 (5.86%) Microsoft Intune
5 35 (5.00%) SCCM
6 30 (4.29%) vCenter Server
7 15 (2.14%) Single Sign-On
8 14 (2.00%) WSUS
9 12 (1.71%) SCOM
10 11 (1.57%) Istio
10 11 (1.57%) Puppet
11 9 (1.29%) Grafana
11 9 (1.29%) Nessus
11 9 (1.29%) Prometheus
11 9 (1.29%) VxRail
12 8 (1.14%) AirWatch
12 8 (1.14%) Packer
13 7 (1.00%) vMotion
13 7 (1.00%) vRealize
14 5 (0.71%) Podman
Vendors
1 189 (27.00%) VMware
2 169 (24.14%) Microsoft
3 44 (6.29%) Cisco
4 42 (6.00%) Citrix
5 34 (4.86%) Veeam
6 27 (3.86%) F5
7 26 (3.71%) Dell
8 24 (3.43%) Google
9 21 (3.00%) NetApp
9 21 (3.00%) Palo Alto
10 17 (2.43%) Oracle
11 14 (2.00%) Aruba
12 13 (1.86%) Red Hat
12 13 (1.86%) SolarWinds
13 12 (1.71%) Fortinet
13 12 (1.71%) Thales
14 11 (1.57%) Arista
15 9 (1.29%) ServiceNow
15 9 (1.29%) Splunk
16 8 (1.14%) Tenable