Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £536, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 October 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 149 240 175
Rank change year-on-year +91 -65 -26
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 1,067 381 541
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.95% 1.16% 1.44%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.12% 1.28% 1.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 618 255 382
10th Percentile £350 £255 £329
25th Percentile £425 £375 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £483 £475
Median % change year-on-year +11.17% +1.58% -5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £575
90th Percentile £658 £638 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £533 £465 £450
% change year-on-year +14.67% +3.33% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 10 3
10th Percentile £50.51 £25.70 £46.00
25th Percentile £58.43 £29.00 £51.25
Median hourly rate £75.00 £32.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +134.38% -46.67% -14.29%
75th Percentile £78.75 £35.00 £68.50
90th Percentile £100.00 £40.16 £73.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £75.00 £52.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +44.23% -13.33% -15.79%

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 50,334 29,798 35,032
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.11% 90.81% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,572 18,806 21,176
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £638 £620 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,026 1,619 1,521
10th Percentile £14.45 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.76 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -40.82% -4.49%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £74.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.74 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.44% -41.69% -2.16%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 +67 908 £538 +11.69% 806
UK excluding London +94 775 £533 +14.67% 585
Work from Home +17 228 £525 +21.74% 301
North of England +48 221 £563 +12.50% 168
South East +19 213 £560 +21.24% 136
London -20 208 £550 +8.91% 257
Midlands +21 103 £469 -5.30% 72
South West +20 99 £550 -0.45% 76
North West +18 99 £519 -5.64% 105
Yorkshire +13 74 £500 - 34
West Midlands 0 72 £475 -4.04% 42
Scotland +32 63 £525 +52.17% 56
North East +8 59 £600 +6.67% 31
East of England +11 56 £500 +36.52% 59
East Midlands +16 30 £450 -18.18% 30
Wales +11 26 £513 - 17
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 7
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -

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

For the 6 months to 6 October 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 1,036 (97.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 409 (38.33%) Security Cleared
3 325 (30.46%) Windows
4 322 (30.18%) Azure
5 283 (26.52%) VMware
6 257 (24.09%) Microsoft
7 253 (23.71%) SC Cleared
8 233 (21.84%) Infrastructure as Code
9 226 (21.18%) VMware Infrastructure
10 217 (20.34%) Windows Server
11 216 (20.24%) Active Directory
12 212 (19.87%) Linux
13 192 (17.99%) DNS
14 182 (17.06%) PowerShell
15 181 (16.96%) Terraform
16 164 (15.37%) Firewall
17 160 (15.00%) AWS
18 150 (14.06%) DV Cleared
19 144 (13.50%) CI/CD
20 142 (13.31%) Python
21 136 (12.75%) DevOps
22 131 (12.28%) DHCP
23 127 (11.90%) Ansible
24 118 (11.06%) Problem-Solving
25 117 (10.97%) Entra ID
26 116 (10.87%) Migration
27 101 (9.47%) Microsoft 365
28 99 (9.28%) Kubernetes
29 96 (9.00%) Hyper-V
30 83 (7.78%) 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 56 (5.25%) Microsoft Exchange
2 37 (3.47%) SharePoint
3 17 (1.59%) Confluence
4 13 (1.22%) CICS
4 13 (1.22%) WebSphere
5 6 (0.56%) Apache
6 5 (0.47%) SharePoint Server
7 3 (0.28%) Exchange Server 2010
7 3 (0.28%) nginx
7 3 (0.28%) Skype for Business
8 2 (0.19%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.19%) CloudStack
9 1 (0.094%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.094%) CMS
9 1 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2013
9 1 (0.094%) IIS
9 1 (0.094%) MS Project Server
9 1 (0.094%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.094%) Traefik
Applications
1 7 (0.66%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.094%) CINEMA 4D
3 1 (0.094%) Houdini
3 1 (0.094%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 8 (0.75%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.094%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 322 (30.18%) Azure
2 160 (15.00%) AWS
3 117 (10.97%) Entra ID
4 101 (9.47%) Microsoft 365
5 74 (6.94%) IaaS
6 51 (4.78%) OCI
7 50 (4.69%) GCP
8 45 (4.22%) GitHub
9 36 (3.37%) SaaS
10 32 (3.00%) PaaS
11 31 (2.91%) Azure Monitor
12 30 (2.81%) Azure DevOps
13 20 (1.87%) GitHub Actions
13 20 (1.87%) Nutanix
14 17 (1.59%) Azure AKS
15 13 (1.22%) Azure Data Factory
16 12 (1.12%) OpenShift
17 9 (0.84%) AWS CloudFormation
18 8 (0.75%) OneDrive
18 8 (0.75%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 192 (17.99%) DNS
2 164 (15.37%) Firewall
3 131 (12.28%) DHCP
4 62 (5.81%) TCP/IP
5 59 (5.53%) VPN
6 57 (5.34%) VLAN
7 55 (5.15%) SAN
8 44 (4.12%) Network Security
9 40 (3.75%) WAN
10 37 (3.47%) BIG-IP
11 34 (3.19%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 31 (2.91%) Wi-Fi
13 25 (2.34%) SD-WAN
14 23 (2.16%) LAN
15 21 (1.97%) Ethernet VPN
16 20 (1.87%) VXLAN
17 19 (1.78%) BGP
17 19 (1.78%) OSPF
17 19 (1.78%) VSAN
18 17 (1.59%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (4.97%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.06%) Oracle Exadata
3 17 (1.59%) Relational Database
4 15 (1.41%) Oracle Database
5 14 (1.31%) RDBMS
6 9 (0.84%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
7 7 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (0.56%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.47%) Big Data
9 5 (0.47%) Power BI
10 4 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 3 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
12 2 (0.19%) BigQuery
12 2 (0.19%) MySQL
12 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 1 (0.094%) Flink
13 1 (0.094%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 52 (4.87%) GitLab
2 34 (3.19%) JIRA
3 30 (2.81%) Git
4 26 (2.44%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.37%) Chocolatey
5 4 (0.37%) Fiddler
6 2 (0.19%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.094%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.094%) CMake
7 1 (0.094%) Gerrit
7 1 (0.094%) Gradle
7 1 (0.094%) MLflow
7 1 (0.094%) Tricentis qTest
7 1 (0.094%) Visual Studio
General
1 113 (10.59%) Social Skills
2 64 (6.00%) Finance
2 64 (6.00%) Public Sector
3 43 (4.03%) Analytical Skills
4 37 (3.47%) Documentation Skills
5 20 (1.87%) Banking
6 19 (1.78%) Telecoms
7 13 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.22%) Manufacturing
7 13 (1.22%) Military
8 12 (1.12%) Aerospace
9 10 (0.94%) Marketing
10 6 (0.56%) Automotive
10 6 (0.56%) Legal
11 4 (0.37%) Investment Banking
11 4 (0.37%) Law
12 2 (0.19%) Billing
12 2 (0.19%) Front Office
12 2 (0.19%) Local Government
12 2 (0.19%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 181 (16.96%) Terraform
2 18 (1.69%) ARM Templates
3 17 (1.59%) Middleware
4 14 (1.31%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 9 (0.84%) YAML
6 6 (0.56%) 802.1X
6 6 (0.56%) JSON
6 6 (0.56%) Kafka
6 6 (0.56%) LDAP
6 6 (0.56%) OpenID
7 5 (0.47%) .NET
7 5 (0.47%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (0.47%) Flash
7 5 (0.47%) OAuth
7 5 (0.47%) REST
8 4 (0.37%) SAML
9 3 (0.28%) OAuth2
10 2 (0.19%) Apache NiFi
10 2 (0.19%) Keycloak
10 2 (0.19%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 121 (11.34%) Data Centre
2 69 (6.47%) Hybrid Cloud
3 52 (4.87%) PKI
4 39 (3.66%) Public Cloud
5 31 (2.91%) Cloud Native
6 29 (2.72%) Onboarding
6 29 (2.72%) Replication
7 26 (2.44%) Enterprise Storage
8 24 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
9 21 (1.97%) Private Cloud
10 20 (1.87%) Linux Command Line
10 20 (1.87%) SCADA
11 17 (1.59%) Clustering
11 17 (1.59%) Management Information System
12 13 (1.22%) Mainframe
12 13 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
13 11 (1.03%) Operational Technology
14 10 (0.94%) Driving Licence
15 8 (0.75%) Data Protection Act
15 8 (0.75%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 325 (30.46%) Windows
2 217 (20.34%) Windows Server
3 212 (19.87%) Linux
4 40 (3.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (1.78%) VMS
6 18 (1.69%) Windows Server 2016
6 18 (1.69%) Windows Server 2019
7 16 (1.50%) Ubuntu
8 15 (1.41%) Windows 10
9 14 (1.31%) AIX
9 14 (1.31%) CentOS
10 13 (1.22%) zOS
11 11 (1.03%) Android
12 10 (0.94%) Apple iOS
12 10 (0.94%) Unix
13 9 (0.84%) Mac OS
13 9 (0.84%) Rocky
13 9 (0.84%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.47%) Debian
14 5 (0.47%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,036 (97.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 233 (21.84%) Infrastructure as Code
3 144 (13.50%) CI/CD
4 136 (12.75%) DevOps
5 118 (11.06%) Problem-Solving
6 116 (10.87%) Migration
7 83 (7.78%) Infrastructure Automation
8 72 (6.75%) Disaster Recovery
9 71 (6.65%) High Availability
10 68 (6.37%) Continuous Improvement
10 68 (6.37%) Project Delivery
11 63 (5.90%) Platform Engineering
12 61 (5.72%) ITIL
13 55 (5.15%) Validation
14 51 (4.78%) Root Cause Analysis
15 47 (4.40%) Cybersecurity
15 47 (4.40%) Vulnerability Remediation
16 46 (4.31%) Agile
17 45 (4.22%) Identity Access Management
18 43 (4.03%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 182 (17.06%) PowerShell
2 142 (13.31%) Python
3 75 (7.03%) Bash
4 45 (4.22%) SQL
5 30 (2.81%) Bicep
6 14 (1.31%) C#
7 11 (1.03%) Java
8 10 (0.94%) ActionScript
8 10 (0.94%) Perl
9 6 (0.56%) Go
10 3 (0.28%) C++
11 2 (0.19%) VB
12 1 (0.094%) C
12 1 (0.094%) Groovy
12 1 (0.094%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.094%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.094%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.094%) PHP
12 1 (0.094%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.094%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 409 (38.33%) Security Cleared
2 253 (23.71%) SC Cleared
3 150 (14.06%) DV Cleared
4 39 (3.66%) Degree
5 31 (2.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 23 (2.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 21 (1.97%) Azure Certification
8 18 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
9 15 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
10 14 (1.31%) MCSE
10 14 (1.31%) VCAP
11 12 (1.12%) CCNA
11 12 (1.12%) CCNP
12 7 (0.66%) AWS Certification
13 6 (0.56%) MCSA
14 5 (0.47%) DBS Check
15 4 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 4 (0.37%) BPSS Clearance
15 4 (0.37%) JNCIP
15 4 (0.37%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (4.22%) QA
2 17 (1.59%) SLA
3 13 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
5 9 (0.84%) NIST
6 7 (0.66%) NCSC
7 6 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
8 4 (0.37%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.19%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.19%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.094%) FedRAMP
11 1 (0.094%) GLBA
11 1 (0.094%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 226 (21.18%) VMware Infrastructure
2 216 (20.24%) Active Directory
3 96 (9.00%) Hyper-V
4 74 (6.94%) VMware ESXi
5 72 (6.75%) vSphere
6 54 (5.06%) Virtual Machines
7 42 (3.94%) Docker
8 30 (2.81%) VMware NSX
9 27 (2.53%) Virtual Desktop
10 17 (1.59%) Virtual Servers
11 14 (1.31%) Oracle RAC
12 13 (1.22%) NFS
13 12 (1.12%) Firmware
14 7 (0.66%) KVM
15 6 (0.56%) oVirt
16 5 (0.47%) GPFS
17 4 (0.37%) BitLocker
17 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 3 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
18 3 (0.28%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 127 (11.90%) Ansible
2 99 (9.28%) Kubernetes
3 65 (6.09%) Microsoft Intune
4 47 (4.40%) SCCM
5 38 (3.56%) vCenter Server
6 16 (1.50%) NetBackup
6 16 (1.50%) Prometheus
6 16 (1.50%) WSUS
7 15 (1.41%) SCOM
8 14 (1.31%) Data Guard
8 14 (1.31%) Oracle RMAN
9 13 (1.22%) Grafana
10 9 (0.84%) Failover Clustering
10 9 (0.84%) Nessus
10 9 (0.84%) Puppet
10 9 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.66%) VxRail
12 6 (0.56%) FortiGate
12 6 (0.56%) Red Hat Satellite
13 5 (0.47%) systemd
Vendors
1 283 (26.52%) VMware
2 257 (24.09%) Microsoft
3 61 (5.72%) Cisco
4 53 (4.97%) Citrix
5 50 (4.69%) NetApp
6 42 (3.94%) F5
7 41 (3.84%) Oracle
8 40 (3.75%) Veeam
9 32 (3.00%) Palo Alto
10 30 (2.81%) Red Hat
11 27 (2.53%) Google
12 21 (1.97%) IBM
13 19 (1.78%) Aruba
13 19 (1.78%) Dell
14 18 (1.69%) Arista
14 18 (1.69%) SolarWinds
15 17 (1.59%) CyberArk
16 16 (1.50%) Commvault
17 13 (1.22%) Juniper
17 13 (1.22%) ServiceNow