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 28 February 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 226 197 152
Rank change year-on-year -29 -45 +30
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 500 396 716
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.20% 1.29% 1.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.31% 1.39% 1.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 374 270 514
10th Percentile £313 £312 £313
25th Percentile £400 £370 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £611 £600
90th Percentile £638 £675 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £501 £475
% change year-on-year -3.60% +5.37% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 17
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% -63.97%
75th Percentile £58.56 £95.00 £76.53
90th Percentile £78.93 £158.00 £76.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £42.09 £23.00
% change year-on-year +30.67% +83.00% -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 38,243 28,404 41,374
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.82% 92.82% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,036 17,847 27,236
10th Percentile £310 £293 £275
25th Percentile £409 £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 2,330 852 2,355
10th Percentile £14.64 £16.25 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.50 £34.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.60% -0.71% -12.50%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.50 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -3.08% -7.14% -6.67%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -15 442 £500 -4.76% 182
UK excluding London -26 347 £483 -3.60% 156
Work from Home +10 118 £475 +1.33% 59
London -55 112 £525 - 42
South East -7 101 £483 -5.90% 53
North of England -29 83 £456 +18.44% 44
South West +4 76 £539 -10.21% 29
Yorkshire -35 44 £363 +3.50% 21
North West -30 33 £471 +17.75% 19
Midlands -56 29 £425 -15.00% 12
East of England -11 28 £450 -1.80% 14
Scotland +4 23 £500 -9.09% 5
East Midlands -15 15 £450 -10.00% 3
West Midlands -56 14 £400 -15.79% 9
Wales -12 7 £550 +29.41% 1
North East -11 6 £488 +33.56% 4
Northern Ireland - 1 £375 -

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

For the 6 months to 28 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.

1 480 (96.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 184 (36.80%) Windows
3 182 (36.40%) Azure
4 170 (34.00%) Microsoft
5 156 (31.20%) VMware
6 143 (28.60%) Security Cleared
7 127 (25.40%) Active Directory
8 117 (23.40%) VMware Infrastructure
9 102 (20.40%) SC Cleared
10 98 (19.60%) Windows Server
11 93 (18.60%) Linux
12 88 (17.60%) Problem-Solving
13 85 (17.00%) Terraform
14 83 (16.60%) DevOps
14 83 (16.60%) PowerShell
15 79 (15.80%) DNS
15 79 (15.80%) Firewall
16 75 (15.00%) Infrastructure as Code
16 75 (15.00%) Microsoft 365
17 71 (14.20%) AWS
18 67 (13.40%) Hyper-V
19 64 (12.80%) ITIL
20 62 (12.40%) CI/CD
21 60 (12.00%) DHCP
22 57 (11.40%) Python
23 50 (10.00%) DV Cleared
24 48 (9.60%) SCCM
25 47 (9.40%) Ansible
25 47 (9.40%) Microsoft Intune
26 44 (8.80%) Cybersecurity

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 44 (8.80%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (2.20%) SharePoint
3 10 (2.00%) TPMS
4 7 (1.40%) IIS
5 6 (1.20%) Apache
6 5 (1.00%) Confluence
7 3 (0.60%) Exchange Server 2010
8 2 (0.40%) iPlanet
8 2 (0.40%) JBoss
8 2 (0.40%) nginx
8 2 (0.40%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.40%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.20%) CICS
9 1 (0.20%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.20%) Traefik
Applications
1 8 (1.60%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (0.60%) Maximo
2 2 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 182 (36.40%) Azure
2 75 (15.00%) Microsoft 365
3 71 (14.20%) AWS
4 44 (8.80%) Entra ID
5 28 (5.60%) GitHub
6 25 (5.00%) GCP
7 22 (4.40%) PaaS
8 21 (4.20%) IaaS
9 18 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
9 18 (3.60%) Nutanix
10 17 (3.40%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 16 (3.20%) Azure Monitor
12 14 (2.80%) Azure Sentinel
13 10 (2.00%) Microsoft Purview
14 9 (1.80%) Mimecast
14 9 (1.80%) OCI
14 9 (1.80%) OneDrive
14 9 (1.80%) OpenShift
15 7 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (1.40%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 79 (15.80%) DNS
1 79 (15.80%) Firewall
2 60 (12.00%) DHCP
3 37 (7.40%) VPN
4 35 (7.00%) TCP/IP
5 32 (6.40%) WAN
6 29 (5.80%) VLAN
7 25 (5.00%) LAN
8 21 (4.20%) SAN
9 20 (4.00%) Wi-Fi
10 16 (3.20%) Network Security
11 13 (2.60%) SNMP
11 13 (2.60%) SSL
12 12 (2.40%) SSH
13 9 (1.80%) MPLS
14 7 (1.40%) SD-WAN
15 6 (1.20%) 4G
15 6 (1.20%) BGP
15 6 (1.20%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
15 6 (1.20%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.40%) SQL Server
2 5 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
2 5 (1.00%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (0.60%) Oracle Database
3 3 (0.60%) Power BI
4 2 (0.40%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (0.40%) DynamoDB
4 2 (0.40%) MySQL
4 2 (0.40%) 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 16 (3.20%) Jenkins
2 12 (2.40%) GitLab
3 9 (1.80%) JIRA
4 8 (1.60%) Git
5 7 (1.40%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.60%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.40%) Bitbucket Server
7 2 (0.40%) CA Release Automation
8 1 (0.20%) GoCD
8 1 (0.20%) IntelliJ
8 1 (0.20%) MSI
General
1 85 (17.00%) Social Skills
2 49 (9.80%) Public Sector
3 47 (9.40%) Finance
4 42 (8.40%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (4.20%) Documentation Skills
6 14 (2.80%) Legal
7 10 (2.00%) Banking
8 9 (1.80%) Billing
8 9 (1.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.20%) Aviation
9 6 (1.20%) Local Government
9 6 (1.20%) Military
9 6 (1.20%) Spanish Language
10 5 (1.00%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.80%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.60%) Retail
13 1 (0.20%) Back Office
13 1 (0.20%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.20%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.20%) Italian Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (2.00%) LDAP
2 9 (1.80%) SAML
3 8 (1.60%) ARM Templates
3 8 (1.60%) REST
4 7 (1.40%) OpenID
5 5 (1.00%) SOAP
6 4 (0.80%) Keycloak
6 4 (0.80%) Microsoft Graph
6 4 (0.80%) OAuth
6 4 (0.80%) Web Services
7 3 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
7 3 (0.60%) Middleware
7 3 (0.60%) Oracle Fusion
7 3 (0.60%) YAML
8 2 (0.40%) .NET
8 2 (0.40%) ADO
8 2 (0.40%) AWS CDK
8 2 (0.40%) Flash
8 2 (0.40%) Software Packaging
8 2 (0.40%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 30 (6.00%) PKI
2 25 (5.00%) Data Centre
3 18 (3.60%) Public Cloud
4 17 (3.40%) Hybrid Cloud
5 12 (2.40%) Analytical Mindset
6 10 (2.00%) Clustering
6 10 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
7 9 (1.80%) Onboarding
8 8 (1.60%) Private Cloud
9 7 (1.40%) Cloud Native
10 6 (1.20%) NHS
10 6 (1.20%) Replication
11 5 (1.00%) Enterprise Storage
11 5 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
12 4 (0.80%) Legacy Systems
13 3 (0.60%) Client/Server
13 3 (0.60%) Data Protection Act
14 2 (0.40%) CCTV
14 2 (0.40%) Mobile App
14 2 (0.40%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 184 (36.80%) Windows
2 98 (19.60%) Windows Server
3 93 (18.60%) Linux
4 16 (3.20%) Windows Server 2019
5 13 (2.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (2.60%) Ubuntu
5 13 (2.60%) Windows 10
5 13 (2.60%) Windows Server 2012
6 10 (2.00%) VMS
6 10 (2.00%) Windows Server 2016
7 9 (1.80%) Unix
8 4 (0.80%) Windows Server 2003
9 3 (0.60%) Android
9 3 (0.60%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.40%) Debian
10 2 (0.40%) SUSE
10 2 (0.40%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 2 (0.40%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.20%) CentOS
11 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 480 (96.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 88 (17.60%) Problem-Solving
3 83 (16.60%) DevOps
4 75 (15.00%) Infrastructure as Code
5 64 (12.80%) ITIL
6 62 (12.40%) CI/CD
7 44 (8.80%) Cybersecurity
7 44 (8.80%) Infrastructure Automation
8 42 (8.40%) Disaster Recovery
9 41 (8.20%) Agile
9 41 (8.20%) Migration
10 30 (6.00%) Observability
11 29 (5.80%) Service Management
12 28 (5.60%) High Availability
13 27 (5.40%) Project Delivery
14 24 (4.80%) Cloud Security
14 24 (4.80%) Platform Engineering
15 23 (4.60%) Containerisation
16 21 (4.20%) Roadmaps
16 21 (4.20%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 83 (16.60%) PowerShell
2 57 (11.40%) Python
3 22 (4.40%) Bash
4 15 (3.00%) Bicep
5 10 (2.00%) SQL
6 8 (1.60%) JavaScript
6 8 (1.60%) PHP
7 5 (1.00%) Java
7 5 (1.00%) Shell Script
8 4 (0.80%) Perl
9 2 (0.40%) ActionScript
9 2 (0.40%) C#
9 2 (0.40%) Go
9 2 (0.40%) 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
1 143 (28.60%) Security Cleared
2 102 (20.40%) SC Cleared
3 50 (10.00%) DV Cleared
4 26 (5.20%) Azure Certification
5 21 (4.20%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.40%) Degree
7 11 (2.20%) Network+ Certification
7 11 (2.20%) Server+ Certification
8 10 (2.00%) FFIEC
9 9 (1.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 8 (1.60%) AWS Certification
10 8 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (1.20%) CCNA
11 6 (1.20%) CompTIA Security+
12 5 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
12 5 (1.00%) CISSP
13 4 (0.80%) CCNP
13 4 (0.80%) CISM
13 4 (0.80%) GIAC
13 4 (0.80%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (4.20%) NIST
2 14 (2.80%) GDPR
3 10 (2.00%) Cyber Essentials
3 10 (2.00%) GLBA
3 10 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (2.00%) PCI DSS
4 9 (1.80%) SLA
5 4 (0.80%) NIST 800
6 3 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 2 (0.40%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.40%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.20%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 127 (25.40%) Active Directory
2 117 (23.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 67 (13.40%) Hyper-V
4 36 (7.20%) Docker
5 32 (6.40%) vSphere
6 21 (4.20%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (2.40%) Virtual Desktop
8 11 (2.20%) Virtual Machines
9 8 (1.60%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.80%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.60%) DFS Replication
11 3 (0.60%) Microsoft App-V
11 3 (0.60%) Sendmail
12 2 (0.40%) QEMU
12 2 (0.40%) SRDF
12 2 (0.40%) 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 85 (17.00%) Terraform
2 48 (9.60%) SCCM
3 47 (9.40%) Ansible
3 47 (9.40%) Microsoft Intune
4 44 (8.80%) Kubernetes
5 19 (3.80%) vCenter Server
6 18 (3.60%) Single Sign-On
7 9 (1.80%) VxRail
8 8 (1.60%) Istio
9 7 (1.40%) Grafana
9 7 (1.40%) Prometheus
9 7 (1.40%) Puppet
9 7 (1.40%) SCOM
10 6 (1.20%) AirWatch
10 6 (1.20%) CASB
10 6 (1.20%) FortiGate
10 6 (1.20%) Progress Chef
10 6 (1.20%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (1.20%) SCOrch
11 5 (1.00%) Nessus
Vendors
1 170 (34.00%) Microsoft
2 156 (31.20%) VMware
3 31 (6.20%) Cisco
4 30 (6.00%) Dell
5 21 (4.20%) Citrix
5 21 (4.20%) Veeam
6 18 (3.60%) Google
7 15 (3.00%) F5
8 14 (2.80%) Red Hat
8 14 (2.80%) Splunk
8 14 (2.80%) Thales
9 13 (2.60%) Oracle
10 12 (2.40%) SolarWinds
11 11 (2.20%) Palo Alto
11 11 (2.20%) ServiceNow
12 10 (2.00%) Aruba
13 9 (1.80%) Fortinet
13 9 (1.80%) NetApp
14 8 (1.60%) HP
15 6 (1.20%) CyberArk