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 19 April 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 199 199 148
Rank change year-on-year 0 -51 +29
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 643 398 711
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.39% 1.35% 1.63%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.51% 1.46% 1.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 444 278 526
10th Percentile £325 £309 £310
25th Percentile £413 £376 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -5.00%
75th Percentile £591 £600 £598
90th Percentile £650 £650 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% +3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 4 10
10th Percentile £33.40 - £21.12
25th Percentile £58.43 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £68.52 £112.09 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.87% +149.09% -29.51%
75th Percentile £78.19 £200.00 £77.00
90th Percentile £78.75 - £77.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.52 £112.09 £22.50
% change year-on-year -38.87% +398.18% -62.84%

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 42,592 27,248 40,561
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.22% 92.60% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,414 17,867 26,505
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,707 994 2,611
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.55 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £19.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £30.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.73% -13.00% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.60 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.70 £75.43 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £29.53 £36.27
% change year-on-year +45.64% -18.60% -14.17%

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 19 April 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 19 April 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 19 April 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 -5 553 £500 -4.76% 213
UK excluding London +1 438 £500 -4.76% 194
London -22 151 £500 -4.76% 42
Work from Home +2 122 £500 +4.71% 84
South East -10 114 £536 -5.65% 53
North of England -32 102 £413 +1.54% 52
South West +17 92 £550 -4.35% 30
Yorkshire -21 63 £350 -12.50% 19
Midlands -38 51 £450 +16.13% 29
North West -31 35 £451 -14.05% 22
East of England -15 34 £450 -3.54% 19
Scotland +8 31 £500 -9.09% 7
West Midlands -50 26 £415 +22.96% 23
East Midlands -13 25 £450 +12.50% 5
Wales -1 14 £413 -2.94% 9
North East -16 5 £500 +36.99% 11
Northern Ireland - 2 £375 -

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

For the 6 months to 19 April 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.

1 625 (97.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 226 (35.15%) Security Cleared
3 217 (33.75%) Windows
4 202 (31.42%) Azure
5 185 (28.77%) VMware
6 163 (25.35%) Microsoft
7 156 (24.26%) SC Cleared
8 144 (22.40%) VMware Infrastructure
9 141 (21.93%) Active Directory
10 132 (20.53%) Windows Server
11 109 (16.95%) Terraform
12 107 (16.64%) PowerShell
13 103 (16.02%) DNS
14 100 (15.55%) DevOps
15 97 (15.09%) Linux
16 96 (14.93%) Infrastructure as Code
17 94 (14.62%) Firewall
18 84 (13.06%) DV Cleared
18 84 (13.06%) Problem-Solving
19 74 (11.51%) CI/CD
19 74 (11.51%) DHCP
19 74 (11.51%) Hyper-V
20 68 (10.58%) Kubernetes
20 68 (10.58%) Python
21 67 (10.42%) AWS
21 67 (10.42%) Microsoft 365
22 65 (10.11%) Migration
23 55 (8.55%) Ansible
23 55 (8.55%) Infrastructure Automation
24 54 (8.40%) ITIL

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 50 (7.78%) Microsoft Exchange
2 10 (1.56%) SharePoint
3 8 (1.24%) TPMS
4 4 (0.62%) Apache
5 3 (0.47%) Exchange Server 2010
5 3 (0.47%) IIS
6 2 (0.31%) Confluence
6 2 (0.31%) nginx
7 1 (0.16%) CICS
7 1 (0.16%) IBM HTTP Server
7 1 (0.16%) Skype for Business
7 1 (0.16%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.16%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.16%) Maximo
1 1 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 202 (31.42%) Azure
2 67 (10.42%) AWS
2 67 (10.42%) Microsoft 365
3 43 (6.69%) GitHub
4 41 (6.38%) Entra ID
5 37 (5.75%) GCP
6 36 (5.60%) IaaS
7 32 (4.98%) PaaS
8 26 (4.04%) Azure DevOps
9 21 (3.27%) SaaS
10 20 (3.11%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 20 (3.11%) Nutanix
11 15 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
12 11 (1.71%) Azure AKS
12 11 (1.71%) Azure Sentinel
13 10 (1.56%) OCI
14 8 (1.24%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (1.24%) Microsoft Purview
15 7 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (1.09%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 103 (16.02%) DNS
2 94 (14.62%) Firewall
3 74 (11.51%) DHCP
4 43 (6.69%) VPN
5 29 (4.51%) WAN
6 28 (4.35%) LAN
6 28 (4.35%) VLAN
7 26 (4.04%) Network Security
8 24 (3.73%) TCP/IP
9 22 (3.42%) SAN
10 11 (1.71%) SMTP
10 11 (1.71%) SNMP
11 10 (1.56%) SSH
11 10 (1.56%) SSL
11 10 (1.56%) VSAN
12 9 (1.40%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 9 (1.40%) MPLS
12 9 (1.40%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (1.09%) BGP
14 6 (0.93%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (3.73%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.40%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.47%) Data Mining
4 3 (0.47%) NonStop SQL
5 2 (0.31%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.31%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.31%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.31%) Power BI
6 1 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.16%) Flink
6 1 (0.16%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.16%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.16%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.16%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.16%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.16%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 16 (2.49%) Jenkins
2 13 (2.02%) GitLab
3 11 (1.71%) JIRA
4 8 (1.24%) Artifactory
4 8 (1.24%) Git
5 3 (0.47%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.16%) Chocolatey
6 1 (0.16%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.16%) GoCD
6 1 (0.16%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.16%) Introscope
6 1 (0.16%) MSI
6 1 (0.16%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 86 (13.37%) Social Skills
2 62 (9.64%) Public Sector
3 50 (7.78%) Finance
4 40 (6.22%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
6 17 (2.64%) Banking
6 17 (2.64%) Legal
7 11 (1.71%) Aerospace
7 11 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 9 (1.40%) Billing
9 6 (0.93%) Manufacturing
9 6 (0.93%) Telecoms
10 5 (0.78%) Military
11 4 (0.62%) Retail
12 3 (0.47%) Law
12 3 (0.47%) Local Government
13 2 (0.31%) Advertising
13 2 (0.31%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.31%) Spanish Language
14 1 (0.16%) Mandarin Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (1.87%) REST
2 9 (1.40%) LDAP
3 8 (1.24%) SOAP
4 6 (0.93%) ARM Templates
5 5 (0.78%) Elastic Stack
5 5 (0.78%) SAML
5 5 (0.78%) Web Services
6 4 (0.62%) Keycloak
7 3 (0.47%) ADO
7 3 (0.47%) OAuth
7 3 (0.47%) OAuth2
7 3 (0.47%) OpenID
7 3 (0.47%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.31%) Apache NiFi
8 2 (0.31%) Flash
8 2 (0.31%) Kafka
8 2 (0.31%) Node.js
9 1 (0.16%) 802.1X
9 1 (0.16%) Bazel
9 1 (0.16%) React
Miscellaneous
1 41 (6.38%) Data Centre
1 41 (6.38%) PKI
2 24 (3.73%) Public Cloud
3 17 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (2.49%) Self-Motivation
5 15 (2.33%) Enterprise Storage
6 13 (2.02%) Private Cloud
7 12 (1.87%) Onboarding
8 11 (1.71%) Clustering
8 11 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
9 9 (1.40%) Cloud Native
9 9 (1.40%) Replication
10 6 (0.93%) Operational Technology
11 4 (0.62%) Analytical Mindset
11 4 (0.62%) CCTV
11 4 (0.62%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (0.62%) Smartcard
11 4 (0.62%) Virtual Team
11 4 (0.62%) YubiKey
12 3 (0.47%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 217 (33.75%) Windows
2 132 (20.53%) Windows Server
3 97 (15.09%) Linux
4 19 (2.95%) Windows Server 2019
5 18 (2.80%) Windows Server 2016
6 14 (2.18%) Ubuntu
6 14 (2.18%) VMS
6 14 (2.18%) Windows Server 2012
7 12 (1.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (1.87%) Windows 10
8 9 (1.40%) Apple iOS
9 8 (1.24%) Mac OS
9 8 (1.24%) Unix
10 7 (1.09%) Android
10 7 (1.09%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (0.62%) Debian
12 2 (0.31%) CentOS
12 2 (0.31%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.16%) SUSE
13 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 625 (97.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 100 (15.55%) DevOps
3 96 (14.93%) Infrastructure as Code
4 84 (13.06%) Problem-Solving
5 74 (11.51%) CI/CD
6 65 (10.11%) Migration
7 55 (8.55%) Infrastructure Automation
8 54 (8.40%) ITIL
9 52 (8.09%) Agile
10 48 (7.47%) Disaster Recovery
11 47 (7.31%) Cybersecurity
12 36 (5.60%) High Availability
13 32 (4.98%) Platform Engineering
14 31 (4.82%) Project Delivery
15 29 (4.51%) Validation
16 28 (4.35%) Cloud Security
16 28 (4.35%) Containerisation
17 26 (4.04%) Observability
18 25 (3.89%) Zero Trust
19 23 (3.58%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 107 (16.64%) PowerShell
2 68 (10.58%) Python
3 24 (3.73%) Bash
4 20 (3.11%) Bicep
5 19 (2.95%) SQL
6 9 (1.40%) PHP
7 8 (1.24%) C#
7 8 (1.24%) JavaScript
8 5 (0.78%) Shell Script
9 3 (0.47%) Java
10 2 (0.31%) ActionScript
10 2 (0.31%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.16%) Jython
11 1 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
11 1 (0.16%) Perl
11 1 (0.16%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.16%) VB
Qualifications
1 226 (35.15%) Security Cleared
2 156 (24.26%) SC Cleared
3 84 (13.06%) DV Cleared
4 22 (3.42%) Degree
5 15 (2.33%) Azure Certification
6 14 (2.18%) Cisco Certification
7 12 (1.87%) Microsoft Certification
7 12 (1.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 11 (1.71%) CCNA
9 8 (1.24%) AWS Certification
9 8 (1.24%) FFIEC
10 6 (0.93%) CompTIA Security+
10 6 (0.93%) MCSE
11 5 (0.78%) BPSS Clearance
11 5 (0.78%) CCNP
12 4 (0.62%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
12 4 (0.62%) GIAC
12 4 (0.62%) GSEC
12 4 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (3.27%) NIST
2 15 (2.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (2.18%) Cyber Essentials
4 12 (1.87%) GDPR
5 10 (1.56%) SLA
6 9 (1.40%) QA
7 8 (1.24%) GLBA
7 8 (1.24%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.93%) NCSC
9 3 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.47%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.16%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 144 (22.40%) VMware Infrastructure
2 141 (21.93%) Active Directory
3 74 (11.51%) Hyper-V
4 49 (7.62%) vSphere
5 39 (6.07%) Docker
6 38 (5.91%) VMware ESXi
7 19 (2.95%) VMware NSX
8 15 (2.33%) Virtual Machines
9 13 (2.02%) Virtual Desktop
10 9 (1.40%) BitLocker
11 7 (1.09%) Microsoft App-V
12 3 (0.47%) DFS Replication
12 3 (0.47%) Firmware
12 3 (0.47%) Sendmail
13 2 (0.31%) QEMU
13 2 (0.31%) SRDF
13 2 (0.31%) UAG
14 1 (0.16%) iptables
14 1 (0.16%) Terminal Services
14 1 (0.16%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 109 (16.95%) Terraform
2 68 (10.58%) Kubernetes
3 55 (8.55%) Ansible
4 42 (6.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 40 (6.22%) SCCM
6 33 (5.13%) vCenter Server
7 15 (2.33%) Single Sign-On
8 13 (2.02%) WSUS
9 11 (1.71%) Puppet
9 11 (1.71%) SCOM
10 10 (1.56%) Istio
11 9 (1.40%) Grafana
11 9 (1.40%) Prometheus
11 9 (1.40%) VxRail
12 8 (1.24%) AirWatch
12 8 (1.24%) Nessus
12 8 (1.24%) Packer
13 7 (1.09%) vMotion
13 7 (1.09%) vRealize
14 5 (0.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 185 (28.77%) VMware
2 163 (25.35%) Microsoft
3 44 (6.84%) Cisco
4 39 (6.07%) Citrix
5 32 (4.98%) Veeam
6 27 (4.20%) Dell
7 24 (3.73%) Google
8 19 (2.95%) NetApp
9 16 (2.49%) F5
10 15 (2.33%) SolarWinds
11 14 (2.18%) Oracle
12 13 (2.02%) Red Hat
13 12 (1.87%) Fortinet
13 12 (1.87%) Thales
14 10 (1.56%) Palo Alto
14 10 (1.56%) Splunk
15 8 (1.24%) Aruba
15 8 (1.24%) ServiceNow
16 7 (1.09%) HP
16 7 (1.09%) Tenable