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 30 May 2026.

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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 154 207 155
Rank change year-on-year +53 -52 +17
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 824 371 674
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.68% 1.28% 1.57%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.82% 1.39% 1.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 565 250 514
10th Percentile £325 £328 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +16.67% -10.00%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £575
90th Percentile £663 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £500 £456
% change year-on-year +4.50% +9.59% -3.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 2 7
10th Percentile £44.20 - £20.73
25th Percentile £58.43 - £21.25
Median hourly rate £72.54 £200.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -63.73% +196.30% +5.73%
75th Percentile £77.06 - £77.00
90th Percentile £78.75 - £77.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £200.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year -63.73% +788.89% -64.16%

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 45,367 26,659 39,830
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.33% 92.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,689 17,296 25,850
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -4.00% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,009 1,048 2,796
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.87 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.79% -25.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £59.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £25.31 £40.00
% change year-on-year +72.28% -36.73% -6.98%

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 30 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 30 May 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 30 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 +48 706 £525 - 204
UK excluding London +41 575 £523 +4.50% 203
Work from Home +28 184 £540 +8.00% 71
London -9 176 £525 - 30
South East +6 161 £531 +1.09% 57
North of England +9 157 £500 +23.08% 47
South West +14 95 £550 -4.35% 42
Midlands -20 70 £450 +12.50% 22
Yorkshire -27 69 £350 -16.42% 11
North West -10 59 £575 +49.35% 25
Scotland +21 45 £570 +8.57% 13
West Midlands -49 42 £500 +25.00% 13
North East -1 34 £600 -7.69% 11
East of England -20 33 £475 +3.66% 16
East Midlands -3 27 £450 +12.50% 9
Wales +1 15 £400 -30.43% 10
Northern Ireland - 2 £375 - 1
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -

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

For the 6 months to 30 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.

1 807 (97.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 308 (37.38%) Security Cleared
3 259 (31.43%) Windows
4 258 (31.31%) Azure
5 215 (26.09%) VMware
6 214 (25.97%) SC Cleared
7 175 (21.24%) Microsoft
8 162 (19.66%) Windows Server
9 155 (18.81%) Active Directory
9 155 (18.81%) VMware Infrastructure
10 148 (17.96%) Infrastructure as Code
11 141 (17.11%) Terraform
12 127 (15.41%) DNS
13 126 (15.29%) DevOps
14 125 (15.17%) Linux
15 115 (13.96%) Firewall
15 115 (13.96%) PowerShell
16 114 (13.83%) AWS
17 110 (13.35%) DV Cleared
18 106 (12.86%) Python
19 105 (12.74%) CI/CD
20 93 (11.29%) Problem-Solving
21 92 (11.17%) DHCP
22 79 (9.59%) Ansible
23 78 (9.47%) Kubernetes
24 75 (9.10%) Hyper-V
24 75 (9.10%) Migration
25 69 (8.37%) Infrastructure Automation
26 65 (7.89%) Microsoft 365
27 63 (7.65%) vSphere

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 49 (5.95%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (1.33%) SharePoint
3 6 (0.73%) TPMS
4 4 (0.49%) Apache
4 4 (0.49%) Confluence
5 2 (0.24%) CloudStack
6 1 (0.12%) IBM HTTP Server
6 1 (0.12%) IIS
6 1 (0.12%) MS Project Server
6 1 (0.12%) nginx
6 1 (0.12%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.12%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 258 (31.31%) Azure
2 114 (13.83%) AWS
3 65 (7.89%) Microsoft 365
4 58 (7.04%) GitHub
5 49 (5.95%) GCP
6 42 (5.10%) Entra ID
7 39 (4.73%) IaaS
8 34 (4.13%) OCI
9 31 (3.76%) PaaS
9 31 (3.76%) SaaS
10 28 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
11 24 (2.91%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 24 (2.91%) Nutanix
12 21 (2.55%) Azure Monitor
13 16 (1.94%) GitHub Actions
14 15 (1.82%) Azure AKS
15 8 (0.97%) Cohesity
16 6 (0.73%) Azure Key Vault
16 6 (0.73%) Azure Sentinel
16 6 (0.73%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 127 (15.41%) DNS
2 115 (13.96%) Firewall
3 92 (11.17%) DHCP
4 43 (5.22%) WAN
5 39 (4.73%) VPN
6 37 (4.49%) VLAN
7 31 (3.76%) Network Security
7 31 (3.76%) SAN
8 29 (3.52%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 29 (3.52%) LAN
9 25 (3.03%) BIG-IP
10 23 (2.79%) BGP
11 22 (2.67%) Ethernet VPN
11 22 (2.67%) SD-WAN
12 21 (2.55%) TCP/IP
12 21 (2.55%) VXLAN
13 19 (2.31%) OSPF
14 16 (1.94%) Wi-Fi
15 15 (1.82%) VSAN
16 12 (1.46%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (4.00%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.97%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.36%) Data Mining
4 3 (0.36%) NonStop SQL
4 3 (0.36%) Power BI
5 2 (0.24%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.24%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.24%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.24%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.12%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.12%) Flink
6 1 (0.12%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.12%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.12%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.12%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.12%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 31 (3.76%) GitLab
2 24 (2.91%) Jenkins
3 15 (1.82%) JIRA
4 9 (1.09%) Git
5 8 (0.97%) Artifactory
6 4 (0.49%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.12%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.12%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.12%) CMake
7 1 (0.12%) GoCD
7 1 (0.12%) Gradle
7 1 (0.12%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.12%) Introscope
7 1 (0.12%) MSI
7 1 (0.12%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 97 (11.77%) Social Skills
2 71 (8.62%) Public Sector
3 51 (6.19%) Finance
4 44 (5.34%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
6 17 (2.06%) Banking
7 16 (1.94%) Legal
8 12 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 11 (1.33%) Aerospace
10 10 (1.21%) Billing
11 9 (1.09%) Manufacturing
12 8 (0.97%) Marketing
13 6 (0.73%) Telecoms
14 5 (0.61%) Military
15 4 (0.49%) Local Government
16 3 (0.36%) Law
16 3 (0.36%) Retail
17 2 (0.24%) Advertising
17 2 (0.24%) Investment Banking
18 1 (0.12%) Mandarin Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (1.33%) REST
2 9 (1.09%) LDAP
3 8 (0.97%) SOAP
4 7 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
4 7 (0.85%) Flash
5 5 (0.61%) ARM Templates
5 5 (0.61%) Web Services
6 4 (0.49%) Keycloak
6 4 (0.49%) OpenID
7 3 (0.36%) ADO
7 3 (0.36%) Oracle Fusion
7 3 (0.36%) SAML
7 3 (0.36%) YAML
8 2 (0.24%) .NET
8 2 (0.24%) JSON
8 2 (0.24%) Kafka
8 2 (0.24%) Middleware
8 2 (0.24%) Node.js
8 2 (0.24%) OAuth
8 2 (0.24%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 80 (9.71%) Data Centre
2 40 (4.85%) Hybrid Cloud
3 36 (4.37%) PKI
4 35 (4.25%) Public Cloud
5 19 (2.31%) Onboarding
6 18 (2.18%) Cloud Native
7 17 (2.06%) Enterprise Storage
8 16 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
9 13 (1.58%) Private Cloud
9 13 (1.58%) Replication
10 11 (1.33%) Operational Technology
11 9 (1.09%) Clustering
12 8 (0.97%) Virtual Team
13 7 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
14 6 (0.73%) SCADA
14 6 (0.73%) Smartcard
14 6 (0.73%) YubiKey
15 5 (0.61%) Data Protection Act
15 5 (0.61%) Distributed Systems
15 5 (0.61%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 259 (31.43%) Windows
2 162 (19.66%) Windows Server
3 125 (15.17%) Linux
4 22 (2.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (2.55%) Windows Server 2019
6 16 (1.94%) Windows Server 2016
7 15 (1.82%) Ubuntu
8 14 (1.70%) Windows 10
9 11 (1.33%) VMS
10 10 (1.21%) Apple iOS
11 9 (1.09%) Mac OS
12 8 (0.97%) Android
12 8 (0.97%) Debian
12 8 (0.97%) Unix
13 7 (0.85%) Windows Server 2003
13 7 (0.85%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.61%) CentOS
15 1 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.12%) SUSE
15 1 (0.12%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 807 (97.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 148 (17.96%) Infrastructure as Code
3 126 (15.29%) DevOps
4 105 (12.74%) CI/CD
5 93 (11.29%) Problem-Solving
6 75 (9.10%) Migration
7 69 (8.37%) Infrastructure Automation
8 58 (7.04%) High Availability
9 57 (6.92%) ITIL
10 56 (6.80%) Agile
10 56 (6.80%) Disaster Recovery
11 49 (5.95%) Zero Trust
12 41 (4.98%) Project Delivery
13 37 (4.49%) Cybersecurity
14 35 (4.25%) Validation
15 34 (4.13%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 32 (3.88%) Load Balancing
17 30 (3.64%) Continuous Improvement
18 28 (3.40%) Observability
18 28 (3.40%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 115 (13.96%) PowerShell
2 106 (12.86%) Python
3 33 (4.00%) Bash
4 24 (2.91%) SQL
5 22 (2.67%) Bicep
6 14 (1.70%) C#
7 9 (1.09%) PHP
8 8 (0.97%) JavaScript
9 5 (0.61%) ActionScript
9 5 (0.61%) Java
9 5 (0.61%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.24%) Go
10 2 (0.24%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.12%) C
11 1 (0.12%) C++
11 1 (0.12%) Jython
11 1 (0.12%) VB
Qualifications
1 308 (37.38%) Security Cleared
2 214 (25.97%) SC Cleared
3 110 (13.35%) DV Cleared
4 24 (2.91%) Degree
5 17 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
5 17 (2.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 13 (1.58%) Azure Certification
7 12 (1.46%) CCNA
8 11 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
9 9 (1.09%) MCSE
10 8 (0.97%) CCNP
11 7 (0.85%) VCAP
12 6 (0.73%) FFIEC
13 5 (0.61%) RHCA
14 4 (0.49%) AWS Certification
14 4 (0.49%) CompTIA Security+
14 4 (0.49%) Computer Science Degree
15 3 (0.36%) APMG
15 3 (0.36%) GIAC
15 3 (0.36%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (2.55%) NIST
2 17 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (1.94%) QA
4 12 (1.46%) Cyber Essentials
5 11 (1.33%) SLA
6 9 (1.09%) GDPR
7 6 (0.73%) GLBA
7 6 (0.73%) NCSC
7 6 (0.73%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 3 (0.36%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.24%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.12%) FedRAMP
10 1 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 155 (18.81%) Active Directory
1 155 (18.81%) VMware Infrastructure
2 75 (9.10%) Hyper-V
3 63 (7.65%) vSphere
4 51 (6.19%) VMware ESXi
5 36 (4.37%) Docker
6 29 (3.52%) VMware NSX
7 23 (2.79%) Virtual Machines
8 13 (1.58%) Virtual Desktop
9 10 (1.21%) NFS
10 9 (1.09%) BitLocker
11 7 (0.85%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.61%) Firmware
12 5 (0.61%) GPFS
13 3 (0.36%) DFS Replication
13 3 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
14 2 (0.24%) QEMU
14 2 (0.24%) SRDF
14 2 (0.24%) UAG
14 2 (0.24%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 141 (17.11%) Terraform
2 79 (9.59%) Ansible
3 78 (9.47%) Kubernetes
4 38 (4.61%) Microsoft Intune
5 35 (4.25%) vCenter Server
6 31 (3.76%) SCCM
7 14 (1.70%) WSUS
8 12 (1.46%) Grafana
8 12 (1.46%) Istio
8 12 (1.46%) SCOM
9 11 (1.33%) Prometheus
9 11 (1.33%) Puppet
10 9 (1.09%) vRealize
10 9 (1.09%) VxRail
11 8 (0.97%) AirWatch
11 8 (0.97%) Nessus
11 8 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
12 7 (0.85%) Packer
12 7 (0.85%) vMotion
13 5 (0.61%) Podman
Vendors
1 215 (26.09%) VMware
2 175 (21.24%) Microsoft
3 55 (6.67%) Citrix
4 50 (6.07%) Cisco
5 37 (4.49%) F5
6 36 (4.37%) Veeam
7 32 (3.88%) Palo Alto
8 28 (3.40%) Google
9 25 (3.03%) Dell
10 24 (2.91%) NetApp
11 23 (2.79%) Red Hat
12 22 (2.67%) Aruba
13 19 (2.31%) Arista
13 19 (2.31%) Oracle
14 13 (1.58%) SolarWinds
15 12 (1.46%) ServiceNow
16 11 (1.33%) Fortinet
17 10 (1.21%) Tenable
17 10 (1.21%) Thales
18 9 (1.09%) Splunk