Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £515, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 May 2026.

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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 214 153
Rank change year-on-year +53 -61 +29
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 778 374 669
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.61% 1.28% 1.57%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.75% 1.39% 1.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 535 259 508
10th Percentile £325 £325 £300
25th Percentile £413 £399 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% +16.67% -10.00%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £575
90th Percentile £663 £640 £646
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £463
% change year-on-year +2.00% +8.11% -2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 3 9
10th Percentile £44.20 £59.34 £20.99
25th Percentile £58.43 £112.09 £21.25
Median hourly rate £72.54 £200.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -63.73% +788.89% -63.48%
75th Percentile £77.06 - £77.00
90th Percentile £78.75 - £77.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £200.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year -63.73% +788.89% -61.88%

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 44,544 26,886 39,472
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.32% 92.37% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,258 17,494 25,719
10th Percentile £325 £293 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -3.23%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,901 1,057 2,674
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.69 £27.99 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +52.50% -23.32% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.50 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £26.34 £40.00
% change year-on-year +70.88% -34.16% -5.88%

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 21 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 21 May 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 21 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 +39 664 £525 - 197
UK excluding London +33 540 £510 +2.00% 181
Work from Home +32 168 £525 +7.14% 84
London -12 167 £525 - 37
South East +18 153 £515 -1.90% 56
North of England +1 141 £500 +25.00% 40
South West +14 93 £550 -4.35% 27
Midlands -16 66 £450 +12.50% 28
Yorkshire -21 64 £350 -15.15% 8
North West -9 53 £575 +49.35% 20
Scotland +18 43 £550 - 6
West Midlands -37 38 £525 +40.00% 13
East of England -15 30 £450 -3.54% 17
North East -6 27 £600 -7.69% 12
East Midlands -7 27 £450 +12.50% 15
Wales 0 15 £400 -5.88% 7
Northern Ireland - 2 £375 - 3

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

For the 6 months to 21 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.

1 761 (97.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 289 (37.15%) Security Cleared
3 246 (31.62%) Windows
4 240 (30.85%) Azure
5 202 (25.96%) VMware
6 201 (25.84%) SC Cleared
7 167 (21.47%) Microsoft
8 154 (19.79%) Windows Server
9 147 (18.89%) Active Directory
10 143 (18.38%) VMware Infrastructure
11 135 (17.35%) Infrastructure as Code
12 134 (17.22%) Terraform
13 122 (15.68%) Linux
14 120 (15.42%) DevOps
15 115 (14.78%) DNS
16 111 (14.27%) PowerShell
17 110 (14.14%) Firewall
18 104 (13.37%) AWS
18 104 (13.37%) DV Cleared
19 100 (12.85%) CI/CD
20 96 (12.34%) Python
21 93 (11.95%) Problem-Solving
22 82 (10.54%) DHCP
23 79 (10.15%) Kubernetes
24 74 (9.51%) Hyper-V
25 73 (9.38%) Ansible
26 70 (9.00%) Migration
27 66 (8.48%) Infrastructure Automation
28 63 (8.10%) Microsoft 365
29 59 (7.58%) 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 52 (6.68%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (1.41%) SharePoint
3 6 (0.77%) TPMS
4 4 (0.51%) Apache
4 4 (0.51%) Confluence
5 2 (0.26%) CloudStack
5 2 (0.26%) nginx
6 1 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
6 1 (0.13%) IBM HTTP Server
6 1 (0.13%) IIS
6 1 (0.13%) MS Project Server
6 1 (0.13%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.13%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 240 (30.85%) Azure
2 104 (13.37%) AWS
3 63 (8.10%) Microsoft 365
4 56 (7.20%) GitHub
5 44 (5.66%) GCP
6 40 (5.14%) Entra ID
7 38 (4.88%) IaaS
8 31 (3.98%) PaaS
9 30 (3.86%) OCI
10 28 (3.60%) SaaS
11 26 (3.34%) Azure DevOps
12 23 (2.96%) Nutanix
13 22 (2.83%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 21 (2.70%) Azure Monitor
15 16 (2.06%) GitHub Actions
16 15 (1.93%) Azure AKS
17 7 (0.90%) Cohesity
18 6 (0.77%) Azure Key Vault
18 6 (0.77%) Azure Sentinel
18 6 (0.77%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 115 (14.78%) DNS
2 110 (14.14%) Firewall
3 82 (10.54%) DHCP
4 42 (5.40%) WAN
5 39 (5.01%) VPN
6 34 (4.37%) VLAN
7 29 (3.73%) LAN
7 29 (3.73%) Network Security
8 27 (3.47%) SAN
9 26 (3.34%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 22 (2.83%) BGP
10 22 (2.83%) BIG-IP
11 21 (2.70%) Ethernet VPN
11 21 (2.70%) SD-WAN
12 20 (2.57%) VXLAN
13 18 (2.31%) OSPF
13 18 (2.31%) TCP/IP
14 16 (2.06%) Wi-Fi
15 12 (1.54%) SMTP
16 11 (1.41%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (4.11%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.16%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.39%) Data Mining
4 3 (0.39%) NonStop SQL
5 2 (0.26%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.26%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.26%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.26%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.26%) Power BI
6 1 (0.13%) Flink
6 1 (0.13%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.13%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.13%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.13%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.13%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 30 (3.86%) GitLab
2 22 (2.83%) Jenkins
3 12 (1.54%) JIRA
4 9 (1.16%) Git
5 8 (1.03%) Artifactory
6 4 (0.51%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.13%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.13%) CMake
7 1 (0.13%) GoCD
7 1 (0.13%) Gradle
7 1 (0.13%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.13%) Introscope
7 1 (0.13%) MSI
7 1 (0.13%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 96 (12.34%) Social Skills
2 70 (9.00%) Public Sector
3 49 (6.30%) Finance
4 43 (5.53%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (2.06%) Banking
6 16 (2.06%) Legal
7 12 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 11 (1.41%) Aerospace
9 9 (1.16%) Billing
9 9 (1.16%) Manufacturing
10 8 (1.03%) Marketing
11 6 (0.77%) Military
11 6 (0.77%) Telecoms
12 3 (0.39%) Law
12 3 (0.39%) Local Government
12 3 (0.39%) Retail
13 2 (0.26%) Advertising
13 2 (0.26%) Investment Banking
14 1 (0.13%) Mandarin Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (1.29%) LDAP
1 10 (1.29%) REST
2 8 (1.03%) Elastic Stack
2 8 (1.03%) SOAP
3 7 (0.90%) Flash
4 5 (0.64%) ARM Templates
4 5 (0.64%) Web Services
5 4 (0.51%) Keycloak
5 4 (0.51%) OpenID
6 3 (0.39%) ADO
6 3 (0.39%) Oracle Fusion
6 3 (0.39%) SAML
7 2 (0.26%) Apache NiFi
7 2 (0.26%) Bazel
7 2 (0.26%) Kafka
7 2 (0.26%) Middleware
7 2 (0.26%) Node.js
7 2 (0.26%) OAuth
7 2 (0.26%) OAuth2
7 2 (0.26%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 71 (9.13%) Data Centre
2 36 (4.63%) PKI
3 34 (4.37%) Hybrid Cloud
4 31 (3.98%) Public Cloud
5 16 (2.06%) Enterprise Storage
5 16 (2.06%) Onboarding
5 16 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
6 14 (1.80%) Cloud Native
6 14 (1.80%) Replication
7 11 (1.41%) Operational Technology
7 11 (1.41%) Private Cloud
8 9 (1.16%) Clustering
9 8 (1.03%) Virtual Team
10 7 (0.90%) Enterprise Software
11 6 (0.77%) SCADA
11 6 (0.77%) Smartcard
11 6 (0.77%) YubiKey
12 5 (0.64%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (0.64%) Linux Command Line
13 4 (0.51%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 246 (31.62%) Windows
2 154 (19.79%) Windows Server
3 122 (15.68%) Linux
4 21 (2.70%) Windows Server 2019
5 20 (2.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (2.19%) Ubuntu
6 17 (2.19%) Windows Server 2016
7 14 (1.80%) Windows 10
8 11 (1.41%) VMS
9 10 (1.29%) Apple iOS
10 9 (1.16%) Mac OS
11 8 (1.03%) Android
11 8 (1.03%) Unix
11 8 (1.03%) Windows Server 2012
12 7 (0.90%) Debian
12 7 (0.90%) Windows Server 2003
13 5 (0.64%) CentOS
14 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.13%) SUSE
14 1 (0.13%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 761 (97.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 135 (17.35%) Infrastructure as Code
3 120 (15.42%) DevOps
4 100 (12.85%) CI/CD
5 93 (11.95%) Problem-Solving
6 70 (9.00%) Migration
7 66 (8.48%) Infrastructure Automation
8 59 (7.58%) ITIL
9 54 (6.94%) Agile
10 52 (6.68%) Disaster Recovery
11 50 (6.43%) High Availability
12 44 (5.66%) Zero Trust
13 37 (4.76%) Cybersecurity
13 37 (4.76%) Project Delivery
14 34 (4.37%) Validation
15 30 (3.86%) Continuous Improvement
15 30 (3.86%) Load Balancing
16 29 (3.73%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 28 (3.60%) Containerisation
17 28 (3.60%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 111 (14.27%) PowerShell
2 96 (12.34%) Python
3 30 (3.86%) Bash
4 24 (3.08%) SQL
5 22 (2.83%) Bicep
6 14 (1.80%) C#
7 9 (1.16%) PHP
8 8 (1.03%) JavaScript
9 5 (0.64%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.39%) ActionScript
10 3 (0.39%) Java
11 2 (0.26%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.13%) C++
12 1 (0.13%) Jython
12 1 (0.13%) VB
Qualifications
1 289 (37.15%) Security Cleared
2 201 (25.84%) SC Cleared
3 104 (13.37%) DV Cleared
4 26 (3.34%) Degree
5 16 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
6 14 (1.80%) Azure Certification
7 13 (1.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 11 (1.41%) CCNA
9 9 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (0.90%) CCNP
10 7 (0.90%) MCSE
11 6 (0.77%) FFIEC
12 5 (0.64%) AWS Certification
12 5 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (0.64%) RHCA
13 4 (0.51%) CompTIA Security+
14 3 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 3 (0.39%) GIAC
14 3 (0.39%) GSEC
14 3 (0.39%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (2.57%) NIST
2 16 (2.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 16 (2.06%) QA
3 12 (1.54%) Cyber Essentials
4 11 (1.41%) SLA
5 9 (1.16%) GDPR
6 6 (0.77%) GLBA
6 6 (0.77%) NCSC
6 6 (0.77%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 3 (0.39%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.13%) FedRAMP
8 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 147 (18.89%) Active Directory
2 143 (18.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 74 (9.51%) Hyper-V
4 58 (7.46%) vSphere
5 42 (5.40%) VMware ESXi
6 39 (5.01%) Docker
7 23 (2.96%) Virtual Machines
8 22 (2.83%) VMware NSX
9 14 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
10 9 (1.16%) BitLocker
10 9 (1.16%) NFS
11 7 (0.90%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.64%) GPFS
13 4 (0.51%) Firmware
14 3 (0.39%) DFS Replication
15 2 (0.26%) QEMU
15 2 (0.26%) SRDF
15 2 (0.26%) UAG
15 2 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
15 2 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 134 (17.22%) Terraform
2 79 (10.15%) Kubernetes
3 73 (9.38%) Ansible
4 38 (4.88%) Microsoft Intune
5 33 (4.24%) SCCM
6 31 (3.98%) vCenter Server
7 15 (1.93%) WSUS
8 12 (1.54%) Grafana
8 12 (1.54%) Istio
8 12 (1.54%) SCOM
9 11 (1.41%) Prometheus
9 11 (1.41%) Puppet
10 10 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (1.16%) vRealize
11 9 (1.16%) VxRail
12 8 (1.03%) AirWatch
12 8 (1.03%) Nessus
12 8 (1.03%) Packer
13 7 (0.90%) vMotion
14 5 (0.64%) Podman
Vendors
1 202 (25.96%) VMware
2 167 (21.47%) Microsoft
3 53 (6.81%) Citrix
4 49 (6.30%) Cisco
5 37 (4.76%) Veeam
6 34 (4.37%) F5
7 29 (3.73%) Palo Alto
8 27 (3.47%) Google
9 25 (3.21%) Dell
10 24 (3.08%) NetApp
11 21 (2.70%) Red Hat
12 20 (2.57%) Aruba
13 19 (2.44%) Oracle
14 18 (2.31%) Arista
15 13 (1.67%) SolarWinds
16 12 (1.54%) Fortinet
16 12 (1.54%) ServiceNow
17 10 (1.29%) Thales
18 9 (1.16%) Splunk
18 9 (1.16%) Tenable