Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £497, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 February 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 219 202 152
Rank change year-on-year -17 -50 +27
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 493 398 718
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.20% 1.32% 1.62%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.31% 1.42% 1.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 366 272 516
10th Percentile £311 £310 £313
25th Percentile £400 £363 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £524 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.11% +10.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £608 £600
90th Percentile £638 £675 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -4.50% +5.26% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 16
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £26.25 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £34.00 £42.09 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.22% +83.00% -64.62%
75th Percentile £58.56 £95.00 £73.51
90th Percentile £78.93 £158.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £42.09 £23.00
% change year-on-year +30.67% +83.00% -60.00%

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 37,601 28,063 41,310
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.77% 92.89% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,630 17,563 27,190
10th Percentile £306 £293 £275
25th Percentile £408 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,287 822 2,342
10th Percentile £14.61 £16.25 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% - -10.88%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £71.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -7.69% -7.14% -5.74%

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 24 February 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 24 February 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 24 February 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 -20 438 £488 -7.14% 212
UK excluding London -13 337 £478 -4.50% 178
Work from Home +16 118 £463 - 62
London -61 115 £523 -0.48% 52
South East -9 96 £479 -4.35% 60
North of England -32 84 £456 +18.44% 45
South West +6 72 £550 -8.33% 33
Yorkshire -29 45 £363 -0.07% 21
North West -24 33 £471 +20.00% 19
East of England -7 29 £438 -4.53% 14
Midlands -60 28 £425 -15.00% 18
Scotland +7 21 £500 -9.09% 7
East Midlands -24 14 £450 -10.00% 2
West Midlands -63 14 £400 -15.79% 16
Wales -10 7 £550 +29.41% 1
North East -12 6 £488 +33.56% 5
Northern Ireland - 1 £375 -

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

For the 6 months to 24 February 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.

1 474 (96.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 185 (37.53%) Windows
3 182 (36.92%) Azure
4 173 (35.09%) Microsoft
5 155 (31.44%) VMware
6 140 (28.40%) Security Cleared
7 127 (25.76%) Active Directory
8 116 (23.53%) VMware Infrastructure
9 97 (19.68%) Windows Server
10 96 (19.47%) SC Cleared
11 95 (19.27%) Linux
12 88 (17.85%) Problem-Solving
13 87 (17.65%) Terraform
14 83 (16.84%) DevOps
15 82 (16.63%) PowerShell
16 80 (16.23%) DNS
16 80 (16.23%) Firewall
17 76 (15.42%) Microsoft 365
18 74 (15.01%) Infrastructure as Code
19 70 (14.20%) AWS
20 68 (13.79%) Hyper-V
21 65 (13.18%) ITIL
22 61 (12.37%) CI/CD
23 59 (11.97%) DHCP
24 55 (11.16%) Python
25 52 (10.55%) DV Cleared
26 49 (9.94%) Microsoft Intune
26 49 (9.94%) SCCM
27 47 (9.53%) Kubernetes
28 46 (9.33%) Ansible

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 45 (9.13%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 11 (2.23%) TPMS
4 7 (1.42%) IIS
5 6 (1.22%) Apache
6 4 (0.81%) Confluence
7 3 (0.61%) Exchange Server 2010
8 2 (0.41%) iPlanet
8 2 (0.41%) JBoss
8 2 (0.41%) nginx
8 2 (0.41%) Skype for Business
8 2 (0.41%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.41%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.20%) CICS
9 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 7 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (0.61%) Maximo
2 2 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 182 (36.92%) Azure
2 76 (15.42%) Microsoft 365
3 70 (14.20%) AWS
4 44 (8.92%) Entra ID
5 27 (5.48%) GitHub
6 24 (4.87%) GCP
7 23 (4.67%) PaaS
8 22 (4.46%) IaaS
9 20 (4.06%) Azure DevOps
10 18 (3.65%) Azure Monitor
10 18 (3.65%) Nutanix
11 16 (3.25%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 14 (2.84%) Azure Sentinel
13 10 (2.03%) Microsoft Purview
13 10 (2.03%) Mimecast
14 9 (1.83%) OCI
14 9 (1.83%) OneDrive
14 9 (1.83%) OpenShift
15 8 (1.62%) Azure AKS
15 8 (1.62%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 80 (16.23%) DNS
1 80 (16.23%) Firewall
2 59 (11.97%) DHCP
3 37 (7.51%) VPN
4 35 (7.10%) TCP/IP
5 31 (6.29%) WAN
6 29 (5.88%) VLAN
7 24 (4.87%) LAN
8 21 (4.26%) SAN
9 20 (4.06%) Wi-Fi
10 16 (3.25%) Network Security
11 14 (2.84%) SNMP
11 14 (2.84%) SSL
12 13 (2.64%) SSH
13 9 (1.83%) MPLS
14 7 (1.42%) SD-WAN
15 6 (1.22%) 4G
15 6 (1.22%) BGP
15 6 (1.22%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 5 (1.01%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (2.84%) SQL Server
2 5 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
2 5 (1.01%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (0.61%) Oracle Database
3 3 (0.61%) Power BI
4 2 (0.41%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (0.41%) DynamoDB
4 2 (0.41%) MySQL
4 2 (0.41%) SAP HANA
5 1 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.20%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.20%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 15 (3.04%) Jenkins
2 12 (2.43%) GitLab
3 8 (1.62%) JIRA
4 7 (1.42%) Artifactory
5 6 (1.22%) Git
6 3 (0.61%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.41%) Bitbucket Server
7 2 (0.41%) CA Release Automation
8 1 (0.20%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.20%) GoCD
8 1 (0.20%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.20%) MSI
General
1 86 (17.44%) Social Skills
2 49 (9.94%) Finance
2 49 (9.94%) Public Sector
3 42 (8.52%) Analytical Skills
4 21 (4.26%) Documentation Skills
5 12 (2.43%) Legal
6 10 (2.03%) Banking
7 9 (1.83%) Billing
8 8 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (1.42%) Military
10 6 (1.22%) Aviation
10 6 (1.22%) Local Government
10 6 (1.22%) Spanish Language
10 6 (1.22%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.81%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.61%) Retail
13 2 (0.41%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.20%) Investment Banking
14 1 (0.20%) Italian Language
14 1 (0.20%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (2.03%) LDAP
2 9 (1.83%) ARM Templates
2 9 (1.83%) SAML
3 7 (1.42%) OpenID
3 7 (1.42%) REST
4 5 (1.01%) Microsoft Graph
5 4 (0.81%) Keycloak
5 4 (0.81%) OAuth
5 4 (0.81%) SOAP
5 4 (0.81%) Web Services
6 3 (0.61%) ADO
6 3 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
6 3 (0.61%) Middleware
6 3 (0.61%) Oracle Fusion
6 3 (0.61%) YAML
7 2 (0.41%) .NET Core
7 2 (0.41%) Apache NiFi
7 2 (0.41%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.41%) OAuth2
7 2 (0.41%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 31 (6.29%) PKI
2 24 (4.87%) Data Centre
3 17 (3.45%) Hybrid Cloud
3 17 (3.45%) Public Cloud
4 12 (2.43%) Analytical Mindset
5 10 (2.03%) Onboarding
6 9 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (1.62%) Clustering
7 8 (1.62%) Private Cloud
8 7 (1.42%) Cloud Native
8 7 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
9 6 (1.22%) NHS
9 6 (1.22%) Replication
10 5 (1.01%) Enterprise Storage
11 3 (0.61%) Client/Server
11 3 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
11 3 (0.61%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (0.61%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (0.61%) Mobile App
12 2 (0.41%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 185 (37.53%) Windows
2 97 (19.68%) Windows Server
3 95 (19.27%) Linux
4 15 (3.04%) Windows 10
4 15 (3.04%) Windows Server 2019
5 13 (2.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (2.64%) Ubuntu
5 13 (2.64%) Windows Server 2012
6 10 (2.03%) VMS
6 10 (2.03%) Windows Server 2016
7 9 (1.83%) Unix
8 4 (0.81%) Android
8 4 (0.81%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.81%) Windows Server 2003
9 2 (0.41%) Debian
9 2 (0.41%) SUSE
9 2 (0.41%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 2 (0.41%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.20%) CentOS
10 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 474 (96.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 88 (17.85%) Problem-Solving
3 83 (16.84%) DevOps
4 74 (15.01%) Infrastructure as Code
5 65 (13.18%) ITIL
6 61 (12.37%) CI/CD
7 45 (9.13%) Cybersecurity
8 42 (8.52%) Disaster Recovery
9 41 (8.32%) Infrastructure Automation
9 41 (8.32%) Migration
10 39 (7.91%) Agile
11 31 (6.29%) Observability
12 26 (5.27%) Project Delivery
12 26 (5.27%) Service Management
13 24 (4.87%) Cloud Security
13 24 (4.87%) Containerisation
13 24 (4.87%) High Availability
13 24 (4.87%) Platform Engineering
14 23 (4.67%) Stakeholder Management
15 22 (4.46%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 82 (16.63%) PowerShell
2 55 (11.16%) Python
3 20 (4.06%) Bash
4 18 (3.65%) Bicep
5 9 (1.83%) SQL
6 8 (1.62%) JavaScript
6 8 (1.62%) PHP
7 6 (1.22%) Java
8 5 (1.01%) Perl
8 5 (1.01%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.41%) ActionScript
9 2 (0.41%) C#
9 2 (0.41%) Go
9 2 (0.41%) Groovy
10 1 (0.20%) C++
10 1 (0.20%) Kusto Query Language
10 1 (0.20%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.20%) Ruby
10 1 (0.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 140 (28.40%) Security Cleared
2 96 (19.47%) SC Cleared
3 52 (10.55%) DV Cleared
4 26 (5.27%) Azure Certification
5 21 (4.26%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.43%) Degree
7 11 (2.23%) FFIEC
7 11 (2.23%) Network+ Certification
7 11 (2.23%) Server+ Certification
8 8 (1.62%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.22%) CompTIA Security+
10 5 (1.01%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (1.01%) CCNA
10 5 (1.01%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (1.01%) CISSP
10 5 (1.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 4 (0.81%) CISM
11 4 (0.81%) Computer Science Degree
11 4 (0.81%) GIAC
11 4 (0.81%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (4.46%) NIST
2 15 (3.04%) GDPR
3 11 (2.23%) GLBA
3 11 (2.23%) PCI DSS
4 10 (2.03%) Cyber Essentials
4 10 (2.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (2.03%) SLA
5 4 (0.81%) NIST 800
6 3 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 2 (0.41%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.41%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.20%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 127 (25.76%) Active Directory
2 116 (23.53%) VMware Infrastructure
3 68 (13.79%) Hyper-V
4 39 (7.91%) Docker
5 32 (6.49%) vSphere
6 19 (3.85%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (2.43%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (2.23%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (1.62%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.81%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.61%) DFS Replication
11 3 (0.61%) Microsoft App-V
11 3 (0.61%) Sendmail
12 2 (0.41%) QEMU
12 2 (0.41%) SRDF
12 2 (0.41%) Tivoli Directory Server
13 1 (0.20%) etcd
13 1 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.20%) UAG
13 1 (0.20%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 87 (17.65%) Terraform
2 49 (9.94%) Microsoft Intune
2 49 (9.94%) SCCM
3 47 (9.53%) Kubernetes
4 46 (9.33%) Ansible
5 19 (3.85%) vCenter Server
6 18 (3.65%) Single Sign-On
7 9 (1.83%) VxRail
8 7 (1.42%) Grafana
8 7 (1.42%) Istio
8 7 (1.42%) Prometheus
8 7 (1.42%) SCOM
9 6 (1.22%) AirWatch
9 6 (1.22%) CASB
9 6 (1.22%) FortiGate
9 6 (1.22%) Red Hat Satellite
9 6 (1.22%) SCOrch
10 5 (1.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 5 (1.01%) Nessus
10 5 (1.01%) Puppet
Vendors
1 173 (35.09%) Microsoft
2 155 (31.44%) VMware
3 33 (6.69%) Cisco
4 29 (5.88%) Dell
5 22 (4.46%) Veeam
6 18 (3.65%) Google
7 16 (3.25%) Citrix
8 15 (3.04%) F5
8 15 (3.04%) Red Hat
8 15 (3.04%) Splunk
9 14 (2.84%) Thales
10 13 (2.64%) Oracle
10 13 (2.64%) SolarWinds
11 12 (2.43%) Palo Alto
12 11 (2.23%) ServiceNow
13 10 (2.03%) Aruba
14 9 (1.83%) Fortinet
14 9 (1.83%) HP
14 9 (1.83%) NetApp
15 6 (1.22%) CyberArk