Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £483, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 22 January 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 226 210 142
Rank change year-on-year -16 -68 +39
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 476 392 750
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.26% 1.24% 1.74%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.38% 1.33% 1.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 345 270 545
10th Percentile £284 £310 £350
25th Percentile £363 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £480
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% +4.17% +1.05%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £638 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -1.89% - +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% -63.31%
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 34,562 29,431 40,133
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.43% 92.83% 93.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,880 18,000 26,627
10th Percentile £300 £289 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £500
% change year-on-year -0.58% -4.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,053 885 1,927
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.92 £13.50
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -18.75% +14.29%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £62.96
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £74.37
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £40.41
% change year-on-year -22.62% -19.58% +34.71%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 +3 427 £483 -3.50% 305
UK excluding London -12 318 £466 -1.89% 278
Work from Home +38 131 £450 +9.09% 119
London -50 114 £525 - 54
South East -13 87 £459 +1.94% 77
North of England -24 82 £425 +3.03% 69
South West +13 73 £550 -8.33% 47
Yorkshire -30 41 £350 -15.15% 33
North West -14 36 £459 +14.63% 22
East of England +1 28 £425 -4.66% 33
Midlands -48 28 £415 -17.00% 38
West Midlands -44 20 £413 -33.20% 19
Scotland -1 18 £465 -15.45% 10
East Midlands -21 8 £415 -17.00% 19
North East -10 5 £475 - 16
Wales -15 5 £550 +22.22% 6
Northern Ireland - 1 £375 - 2

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

For the 6 months to 22 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.

1 453 (95.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 179 (37.61%) Windows
3 175 (36.76%) Azure
4 164 (34.45%) Microsoft
5 138 (28.99%) VMware
6 137 (28.78%) Security Cleared
7 116 (24.37%) Active Directory
8 103 (21.64%) Linux
9 102 (21.43%) VMware Infrastructure
10 96 (20.17%) SC Cleared
11 94 (19.75%) Terraform
12 89 (18.70%) DevOps
12 89 (18.70%) Windows Server
13 87 (18.28%) Firewall
14 85 (17.86%) Problem-Solving
15 80 (16.81%) AWS
16 79 (16.60%) Microsoft 365
17 77 (16.18%) Infrastructure as Code
18 75 (15.76%) PowerShell
19 73 (15.34%) DNS
20 67 (14.08%) CI/CD
21 66 (13.87%) Ansible
22 65 (13.66%) Hyper-V
23 63 (13.24%) ITIL
23 63 (13.24%) Python
24 53 (11.13%) Infrastructure Automation
25 51 (10.71%) DHCP
26 49 (10.29%) SCCM
27 48 (10.08%) Microsoft Intune
27 48 (10.08%) TCP/IP

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 (8.82%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (2.31%) SharePoint
2 11 (2.31%) TPMS
3 8 (1.68%) Apache
4 7 (1.47%) IIS
5 5 (1.05%) Confluence
6 3 (0.63%) Exchange Server 2010
7 2 (0.42%) iPlanet
7 2 (0.42%) JBoss
7 2 (0.42%) nginx
7 2 (0.42%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.42%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.42%) WebSphere Application Server
8 1 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.21%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.21%) CICS
8 1 (0.21%) Traefik
8 1 (0.21%) WebLogic
Applications
1 8 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.42%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (0.63%) Maximo
2 2 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.21%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 175 (36.76%) Azure
2 80 (16.81%) AWS
3 79 (16.60%) Microsoft 365
4 45 (9.45%) Entra ID
5 24 (5.04%) IaaS
6 21 (4.41%) PaaS
7 20 (4.20%) GCP
8 19 (3.99%) Azure DevOps
9 18 (3.78%) Azure Monitor
9 18 (3.78%) GitHub
10 15 (3.15%) Amazon S3
11 14 (2.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 14 (2.94%) Azure Sentinel
11 14 (2.94%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 14 (2.94%) Nutanix
12 11 (2.31%) Mimecast
13 10 (2.10%) Amazon EC2
13 10 (2.10%) Amazon ELB
13 10 (2.10%) SaaS
13 10 (2.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 87 (18.28%) Firewall
2 73 (15.34%) DNS
3 51 (10.71%) DHCP
4 48 (10.08%) TCP/IP
5 44 (9.24%) VPN
6 32 (6.72%) WAN
7 28 (5.88%) VLAN
8 27 (5.67%) SSL
9 25 (5.25%) Wi-Fi
10 23 (4.83%) SAN
11 21 (4.41%) LAN
12 18 (3.78%) Network Security
13 11 (2.31%) SNMP
13 11 (2.31%) SSH
14 8 (1.68%) SD-WAN
15 7 (1.47%) MPLS
16 6 (1.26%) 4G
17 5 (1.05%) HTTP
18 4 (0.84%) BGP
19 3 (0.63%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (2.94%) SQL Server
2 4 (0.84%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (0.42%) MySQL
4 2 (0.42%) Oracle Database
4 2 (0.42%) Power BI
4 2 (0.42%) SAP HANA
5 1 (0.21%) Apache Iceberg
5 1 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.21%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.21%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.21%) Delta Lake
5 1 (0.21%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.21%) Parquet
5 1 (0.21%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.21%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 19 (3.99%) GitLab
1 19 (3.99%) Jenkins
2 16 (3.36%) Git
3 9 (1.89%) JIRA
4 6 (1.26%) Artifactory
5 4 (0.84%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.42%) Bitbucket Server
6 2 (0.42%) CA Release Automation
6 2 (0.42%) GoCD
6 2 (0.42%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.21%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.21%) MSI
General
1 93 (19.54%) Social Skills
2 53 (11.13%) Public Sector
3 51 (10.71%) Finance
4 42 (8.82%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (4.83%) Documentation Skills
6 10 (2.10%) Banking
6 10 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 10 (2.10%) Military
7 9 (1.89%) Billing
8 8 (1.68%) Local Government
9 7 (1.47%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.26%) Aerospace
10 6 (1.26%) Aviation
10 6 (1.26%) Spanish Language
11 5 (1.05%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.84%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.84%) Legal
13 3 (0.63%) Marketing
13 3 (0.63%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.63%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (1.89%) SAML
2 8 (1.68%) ARM Templates
2 8 (1.68%) Middleware
3 7 (1.47%) LDAP
3 7 (1.47%) OpenID
3 7 (1.47%) REST
4 5 (1.05%) Microsoft Graph
5 4 (0.84%) OAuth
5 4 (0.84%) SOAP
5 4 (0.84%) Web Services
6 3 (0.63%) ADO
6 3 (0.63%) AWS CDK
6 3 (0.63%) Keycloak
6 3 (0.63%) YAML
7 2 (0.42%) .NET
7 2 (0.42%) .NET Core
7 2 (0.42%) Apache NiFi
7 2 (0.42%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (0.42%) OAuth2
7 2 (0.42%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 29 (6.09%) Data Centre
2 25 (5.25%) PKI
3 17 (3.57%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (2.73%) Analytical Mindset
5 12 (2.52%) Private Cloud
6 11 (2.31%) Replication
7 9 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
7 9 (1.89%) Public Cloud
8 8 (1.68%) Clustering
9 7 (1.47%) Onboarding
9 7 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (1.26%) NHS
11 5 (1.05%) Cloud Native
11 5 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.05%) Management Information System
12 4 (0.84%) Mobile App
13 3 (0.63%) Cyber Threat
13 3 (0.63%) Enterprise Storage
13 3 (0.63%) Linux Command Line
13 3 (0.63%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 179 (37.61%) Windows
2 103 (21.64%) Linux
3 89 (18.70%) Windows Server
4 17 (3.57%) Windows 10
5 13 (2.73%) Ubuntu
6 12 (2.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 12 (2.52%) Unix
7 10 (2.10%) Windows Server 2012
8 9 (1.89%) VMS
9 7 (1.47%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (1.47%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (1.26%) Android
10 6 (1.26%) Apple iOS
11 4 (0.84%) Windows Server 2003
12 3 (0.63%) CentOS
13 2 (0.42%) Debian
13 2 (0.42%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.42%) SUSE
13 2 (0.42%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.42%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 453 (95.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 89 (18.70%) DevOps
3 85 (17.86%) Problem-Solving
4 77 (16.18%) Infrastructure as Code
5 67 (14.08%) CI/CD
6 63 (13.24%) ITIL
7 53 (11.13%) Infrastructure Automation
8 43 (9.03%) Cybersecurity
9 41 (8.61%) Migration
10 40 (8.40%) Disaster Recovery
11 37 (7.77%) High Availability
12 34 (7.14%) Agile
12 34 (7.14%) Observability
13 24 (5.04%) Containerisation
13 24 (5.04%) Service Management
14 23 (4.83%) Roadmaps
15 22 (4.62%) Stakeholder Management
16 20 (4.20%) Platform Engineering
17 19 (3.99%) Business Continuity
17 19 (3.99%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 75 (15.76%) PowerShell
2 63 (13.24%) Python
3 29 (6.09%) Bash
4 15 (3.15%) Bicep
5 12 (2.52%) SQL
6 11 (2.31%) Perl
7 7 (1.47%) Java
7 7 (1.47%) JavaScript
8 6 (1.26%) PHP
9 5 (1.05%) Go
9 5 (1.05%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.42%) C#
10 2 (0.42%) Groovy
11 1 (0.21%) ActionScript
11 1 (0.21%) C++
11 1 (0.21%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.21%) Ruby
11 1 (0.21%) Scala
11 1 (0.21%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.21%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 137 (28.78%) Security Cleared
2 96 (20.17%) SC Cleared
3 44 (9.24%) DV Cleared
4 28 (5.88%) Azure Certification
5 22 (4.62%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (2.94%) Network+ Certification
7 13 (2.73%) Degree
8 12 (2.52%) Server+ Certification
9 11 (2.31%) FFIEC
10 7 (1.47%) AWS Certification
11 6 (1.26%) BPSS Clearance
11 6 (1.26%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (1.05%) CCNA
12 5 (1.05%) CISSP
12 5 (1.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 4 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 4 (0.84%) CISM
13 4 (0.84%) CompTIA Security+
14 3 (0.63%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.99%) NIST
2 15 (3.15%) GDPR
3 12 (2.52%) SLA
4 11 (2.31%) GLBA
4 11 (2.31%) PCI DSS
5 7 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.63%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.42%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.42%) QA
8 2 (0.42%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.21%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 116 (24.37%) Active Directory
2 102 (21.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 65 (13.66%) Hyper-V
4 43 (9.03%) Docker
5 21 (4.41%) vSphere
6 13 (2.73%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (2.10%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (1.89%) Virtual Desktop
8 9 (1.89%) VMware NSX
9 4 (0.84%) BitLocker
10 3 (0.63%) DFS Replication
10 3 (0.63%) Sendmail
10 3 (0.63%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.42%) Firmware
11 2 (0.42%) Microsoft App-V
11 2 (0.42%) QEMU
11 2 (0.42%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 1 (0.21%) etcd
12 1 (0.21%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 1 (0.21%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 94 (19.75%) Terraform
2 66 (13.87%) Ansible
3 49 (10.29%) SCCM
4 48 (10.08%) Microsoft Intune
5 41 (8.61%) Kubernetes
6 17 (3.57%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (3.57%) vCenter Server
7 8 (1.68%) FortiGate
8 7 (1.47%) VxRail
9 6 (1.26%) AirWatch
9 6 (1.26%) CASB
9 6 (1.26%) Grafana
9 6 (1.26%) Prometheus
9 6 (1.26%) Red Hat Satellite
9 6 (1.26%) SCOrch
10 5 (1.05%) Istio
10 5 (1.05%) Packer
10 5 (1.05%) SCOM
11 4 (0.84%) Nessus
11 4 (0.84%) WSUS
Vendors
1 164 (34.45%) Microsoft
2 138 (28.99%) VMware
3 29 (6.09%) Cisco
4 25 (5.25%) Palo Alto
5 22 (4.62%) F5
6 19 (3.99%) Dell
6 19 (3.99%) Veeam
7 16 (3.36%) Google
7 16 (3.36%) Red Hat
7 16 (3.36%) Splunk
8 14 (2.94%) Citrix
8 14 (2.94%) ServiceNow
9 13 (2.73%) Thales
10 12 (2.52%) CheckPoint
11 11 (2.31%) SolarWinds
12 10 (2.10%) Aruba
13 9 (1.89%) HP
14 8 (1.68%) Oracle
15 7 (1.47%) Fortinet
15 7 (1.47%) NetApp