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 9 July 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 147 214 145
Rank change year-on-year +67 -69 +23
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 944 394 723
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.80% 1.22% 1.67%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.95% 1.33% 1.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 599 259 552
10th Percentile £350 £325 £310
25th Percentile £425 £385 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +10.53% -5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £575
90th Percentile £663 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £463
% change year-on-year - +13.51% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 3 5
10th Percentile £49.20 £64.00 £37.47
25th Percentile £58.43 £115.00 £63.75
Median hourly rate £72.54 £200.00 £77.00
Median % change year-on-year -63.73% +159.74% +10.00%
75th Percentile £78.75 - -
90th Percentile - - £77.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £200.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year -63.73% +196.30% -3.57%

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 48,533 29,683 40,331
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.47% 91.90% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,422 18,950 25,979
10th Percentile £325 £288 £286
25th Percentile £419 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.50% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,255 1,354 2,780
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.33 £16.65
Median hourly rate £43.50 £26.39 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.87% -29.64% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £55.87 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.10 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +0.50%

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 9 July 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 9 July 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 9 July 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 +55 807 £525 - 249
UK excluding London +56 661 £525 - 227
London +8 205 £525 - 52
North of England +13 191 £575 +9.52% 60
Work from Home +32 190 £540 +8.00% 97
South East +19 178 £536 -2.47% 60
South West +24 112 £538 -6.52% 46
Midlands -14 81 £450 +12.50% 30
Yorkshire -11 76 £480 -4.00% 23
North West +1 73 £575 +9.52% 27
North East +5 52 £600 -7.69% 12
West Midlands -41 49 £475 +18.75% 24
Scotland +20 45 £570 +17.22% 10
East of England -16 32 £450 - 10
East Midlands +9 31 £450 +12.50% 6
Wales +10 25 £500 - 6
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 7
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -

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

For the 6 months to 9 July 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.

1 926 (98.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 370 (39.19%) Security Cleared
3 287 (30.40%) Windows
4 272 (28.81%) Azure
5 242 (25.64%) SC Cleared
6 236 (25.00%) VMware
7 189 (20.02%) Microsoft
8 188 (19.92%) Windows Server
9 182 (19.28%) Active Directory
10 176 (18.64%) VMware Infrastructure
11 169 (17.90%) Infrastructure as Code
12 156 (16.53%) Terraform
13 153 (16.21%) Linux
14 152 (16.10%) DNS
15 135 (14.30%) PowerShell
16 133 (14.09%) AWS
16 133 (14.09%) DV Cleared
17 131 (13.88%) DevOps
17 131 (13.88%) Firewall
18 125 (13.24%) Python
19 116 (12.29%) CI/CD
20 104 (11.02%) DHCP
21 96 (10.17%) Ansible
22 91 (9.64%) Kubernetes
23 90 (9.53%) Problem-Solving
24 88 (9.32%) Migration
25 84 (8.90%) Hyper-V
26 68 (7.20%) High Availability
26 68 (7.20%) vSphere
27 66 (6.99%) VMware ESXi

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 (5.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (1.48%) SharePoint
3 10 (1.06%) WebSphere
4 9 (0.95%) CICS
5 7 (0.74%) Confluence
6 3 (0.32%) Apache
6 3 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2010
7 2 (0.21%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.21%) TPMS
8 1 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.11%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.11%) MS Project Server
8 1 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.11%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 7 (0.74%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 272 (28.81%) Azure
2 133 (14.09%) AWS
3 61 (6.46%) GitHub
4 59 (6.25%) Microsoft 365
5 54 (5.72%) Entra ID
6 52 (5.51%) GCP
7 44 (4.66%) OCI
8 42 (4.45%) IaaS
9 36 (3.81%) SaaS
10 33 (3.50%) PaaS
11 29 (3.07%) Azure DevOps
12 22 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
13 21 (2.22%) Azure Monitor
14 20 (2.12%) Azure AKS
15 19 (2.01%) Nutanix
16 14 (1.48%) Google Kubernetes Engine
17 8 (0.85%) Cohesity
18 7 (0.74%) Azure Stack
18 7 (0.74%) OpenShift
19 5 (0.53%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 152 (16.10%) DNS
2 131 (13.88%) Firewall
3 104 (11.02%) DHCP
4 50 (5.30%) SAN
5 47 (4.98%) VLAN
6 41 (4.34%) WAN
7 40 (4.24%) VPN
8 36 (3.81%) Network Security
9 33 (3.50%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 30 (3.18%) BIG-IP
10 30 (3.18%) TCP/IP
11 25 (2.65%) LAN
12 24 (2.54%) BGP
13 23 (2.44%) Ethernet VPN
14 22 (2.33%) SD-WAN
14 22 (2.33%) VXLAN
15 20 (2.12%) OSPF
16 18 (1.91%) Wi-Fi
17 16 (1.69%) VSAN
18 14 (1.48%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (3.92%) SQL Server
2 11 (1.17%) Oracle Database
2 11 (1.17%) Relational Database
3 9 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
3 9 (0.95%) Oracle Exadata
4 8 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
4 8 (0.85%) RDBMS
5 4 (0.42%) Azure SQL Database
5 4 (0.42%) PostgreSQL
6 3 (0.32%) Big Data
6 3 (0.32%) Data Mining
6 3 (0.32%) NonStop SQL
6 3 (0.32%) Power BI
7 2 (0.21%) BigQuery
7 2 (0.21%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.11%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.11%) Flink
8 1 (0.11%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.11%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 44 (4.66%) GitLab
2 27 (2.86%) Jenkins
2 27 (2.86%) JIRA
3 15 (1.59%) Git
4 4 (0.42%) Artifactory
4 4 (0.42%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.11%) Chocolatey
5 1 (0.11%) Claude Code
5 1 (0.11%) CMake
5 1 (0.11%) GoCD
5 1 (0.11%) Gradle
5 1 (0.11%) IntelliJ
5 1 (0.11%) Introscope
5 1 (0.11%) MLflow
5 1 (0.11%) MSI
5 1 (0.11%) Robot Framework
5 1 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 107 (11.33%) Social Skills
2 72 (7.63%) Public Sector
3 51 (5.40%) Finance
4 34 (3.60%) Analytical Skills
5 31 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
6 19 (2.01%) Legal
7 18 (1.91%) Banking
8 14 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 11 (1.17%) Aerospace
10 10 (1.06%) Manufacturing
10 10 (1.06%) Marketing
11 7 (0.74%) Military
12 4 (0.42%) Law
12 4 (0.42%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.32%) Billing
14 2 (0.21%) Advertising
14 2 (0.21%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.21%) Local Government
14 2 (0.21%) Retail
15 1 (0.11%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (1.38%) Middleware
2 8 (0.85%) LDAP
2 8 (0.85%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 7 (0.74%) Flash
3 7 (0.74%) REST
4 6 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
5 5 (0.53%) ARM Templates
5 5 (0.53%) Keycloak
5 5 (0.53%) OpenID
6 4 (0.42%) JSON
6 4 (0.42%) SAML
6 4 (0.42%) SOAP
6 4 (0.42%) YAML
7 3 (0.32%) Apache NiFi
7 3 (0.32%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.21%) 802.1X
8 2 (0.21%) Bazel
8 2 (0.21%) Node.js
8 2 (0.21%) OAuth
8 2 (0.21%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 109 (11.55%) Data Centre
2 50 (5.30%) PKI
3 48 (5.08%) Hybrid Cloud
4 40 (4.24%) Public Cloud
5 26 (2.75%) Cloud Native
6 23 (2.44%) Enterprise Storage
6 23 (2.44%) Onboarding
7 17 (1.80%) Self-Motivation
8 15 (1.59%) Clustering
9 14 (1.48%) Replication
10 11 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
11 10 (1.06%) Operational Technology
11 10 (1.06%) Private Cloud
12 9 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
12 9 (0.95%) Linux Command Line
12 9 (0.95%) Mainframe
12 9 (0.95%) Smartcard
13 8 (0.85%) Management Information System
13 8 (0.85%) Virtual Team
14 7 (0.74%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 287 (30.40%) Windows
2 188 (19.92%) Windows Server
3 153 (16.21%) Linux
4 30 (3.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (2.22%) Windows Server 2019
6 17 (1.80%) Windows 10
6 17 (1.80%) Windows Server 2016
7 12 (1.27%) Ubuntu
8 10 (1.06%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.95%) AIX
9 9 (0.95%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.95%) Unix
9 9 (0.95%) VMS
9 9 (0.95%) Windows Server 2012
9 9 (0.95%) zOS
10 8 (0.85%) Android
10 8 (0.85%) CentOS
11 7 (0.74%) Windows Server 2003
12 6 (0.64%) Debian
13 4 (0.42%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 926 (98.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 169 (17.90%) Infrastructure as Code
3 131 (13.88%) DevOps
4 116 (12.29%) CI/CD
5 90 (9.53%) Problem-Solving
6 88 (9.32%) Migration
7 68 (7.20%) High Availability
8 65 (6.89%) Infrastructure Automation
9 54 (5.72%) Disaster Recovery
10 53 (5.61%) Agile
10 53 (5.61%) Project Delivery
11 48 (5.08%) Validation
11 48 (5.08%) Zero Trust
12 45 (4.77%) Continuous Improvement
12 45 (4.77%) ITIL
13 36 (3.81%) Cybersecurity
14 34 (3.60%) Platform Engineering
14 34 (3.60%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 32 (3.39%) Containerisation
16 31 (3.28%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 135 (14.30%) PowerShell
2 125 (13.24%) Python
3 47 (4.98%) Bash
4 32 (3.39%) SQL
5 20 (2.12%) Bicep
6 16 (1.69%) C#
7 10 (1.06%) Java
8 8 (0.85%) ActionScript
9 5 (0.53%) Go
9 5 (0.53%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.42%) PHP
11 3 (0.32%) JavaScript
12 2 (0.21%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.11%) C
13 1 (0.11%) C++
13 1 (0.11%) Jython
13 1 (0.11%) Perl
13 1 (0.11%) VB
Qualifications
1 370 (39.19%) Security Cleared
2 242 (25.64%) SC Cleared
3 133 (14.09%) DV Cleared
4 29 (3.07%) Degree
5 20 (2.12%) Microsoft Certification
6 17 (1.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 16 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
8 15 (1.59%) MCSE
9 13 (1.38%) Azure Certification
10 11 (1.17%) CCNA
11 8 (0.85%) CCNP
11 8 (0.85%) VCAP
12 5 (0.53%) RHCA
13 4 (0.42%) AWS Certification
13 4 (0.42%) Computer Science Degree
13 4 (0.42%) MCSA
14 3 (0.32%) APMG
14 3 (0.32%) CompTIA Security+
14 3 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
14 3 (0.32%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (2.86%) QA
2 22 (2.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (2.01%) NIST
4 16 (1.69%) Cyber Essentials
5 10 (1.06%) SLA
6 8 (0.85%) NCSC
7 6 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 5 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
9 4 (0.42%) GDPR
10 3 (0.32%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.21%) GLBA
11 2 (0.21%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.11%) FedRAMP
12 1 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 182 (19.28%) Active Directory
2 176 (18.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 84 (8.90%) Hyper-V
4 68 (7.20%) vSphere
5 66 (6.99%) VMware ESXi
6 35 (3.71%) Docker
7 30 (3.18%) VMware NSX
8 29 (3.07%) Virtual Machines
9 21 (2.22%) Virtual Desktop
10 12 (1.27%) NFS
11 11 (1.17%) BitLocker
12 9 (0.95%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.85%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.53%) Firmware
14 5 (0.53%) GPFS
15 4 (0.42%) KVM
15 4 (0.42%) Terminal Services
16 3 (0.32%) Virtual Servers
17 2 (0.21%) UAG
17 2 (0.21%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 156 (16.53%) Terraform
2 96 (10.17%) Ansible
3 91 (9.64%) Kubernetes
4 41 (4.34%) vCenter Server
5 40 (4.24%) Microsoft Intune
6 33 (3.50%) SCCM
7 17 (1.80%) WSUS
8 15 (1.59%) SCOM
9 14 (1.48%) Puppet
10 13 (1.38%) Prometheus
10 13 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
11 12 (1.27%) Grafana
12 10 (1.06%) NetBackup
13 9 (0.95%) Istio
13 9 (0.95%) Nessus
13 9 (0.95%) vMotion
13 9 (0.95%) vRealize
13 9 (0.95%) VxRail
14 8 (0.85%) Data Guard
14 8 (0.85%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 236 (25.00%) VMware
2 189 (20.02%) Microsoft
3 63 (6.67%) Citrix
4 57 (6.04%) Cisco
5 40 (4.24%) F5
6 32 (3.39%) NetApp
7 31 (3.28%) Oracle
7 31 (3.28%) Palo Alto
7 31 (3.28%) Veeam
8 30 (3.18%) Google
9 26 (2.75%) Red Hat
10 24 (2.54%) Dell
11 21 (2.22%) Aruba
12 20 (2.12%) Arista
13 16 (1.69%) IBM
14 15 (1.59%) ServiceNow
15 13 (1.38%) Juniper
15 13 (1.38%) SolarWinds
16 12 (1.27%) Tenable
17 11 (1.17%) Fortinet