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 29 September 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 241 171
Rank change year-on-year +99 -70 -22
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 1,075 373 555
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.97% 1.14% 1.47%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.13% 1.26% 1.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 630 247 393
10th Percentile £350 £253 £326
25th Percentile £425 £375 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £483 £475
Median % change year-on-year +8.81% +1.58% -5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £575
90th Percentile £663 £650 £643
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £472 £450
% change year-on-year +11.35% +4.78% -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 £74.00 £32.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +131.25% -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 £74.00 £52.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +42.31% -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 50,372 29,667 35,213
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.22% 91.00% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,736 18,751 21,351
10th Percentile £325 £275 £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 £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,923 1,598 1,565
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £41.92 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.68% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.61 £74.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.50% -41.69% -2.82%

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 29 September 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 29 September 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 29 September 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 +71 919 £538 +11.40% 708
UK excluding London +101 777 £525 +11.35% 492
Work from Home +24 225 £524 +18.08% 264
North of England +52 221 £540 +8.00% 150
London -9 214 £540 +8.00% 221
South East +18 213 £559 +18.73% 107
Midlands +24 105 £475 -4.04% 70
South West +18 102 £550 -0.90% 72
North West +16 96 £517 -6.00% 91
Yorkshire +18 79 £500 - 31
West Midlands +3 72 £475 -4.04% 45
Scotland +28 60 £525 +35.48% 46
North East +4 57 £600 +6.67% 30
East of England +11 55 £500 +30.72% 41
East Midlands +10 32 £450 -18.18% 25
Wales +12 26 £513 - 7
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 7
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -

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

For the 6 months to 29 September 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 1,048 (97.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 427 (39.72%) Security Cleared
3 337 (31.35%) Windows
4 317 (29.49%) Azure
5 284 (26.42%) VMware
6 265 (24.65%) SC Cleared
7 261 (24.28%) Microsoft
8 232 (21.58%) Infrastructure as Code
9 228 (21.21%) VMware Infrastructure
10 225 (20.93%) Windows Server
11 223 (20.74%) Active Directory
12 213 (19.81%) Linux
13 193 (17.95%) DNS
14 183 (17.02%) Terraform
15 179 (16.65%) PowerShell
16 164 (15.26%) Firewall
17 159 (14.79%) AWS
17 159 (14.79%) DV Cleared
18 145 (13.49%) CI/CD
19 140 (13.02%) DevOps
19 140 (13.02%) Python
20 133 (12.37%) DHCP
21 124 (11.53%) Ansible
22 119 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
23 118 (10.98%) Migration
24 110 (10.23%) Entra ID
25 101 (9.40%) Hyper-V
26 100 (9.30%) Kubernetes
27 95 (8.84%) Microsoft 365
28 86 (8.00%) 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 58 (5.40%) Microsoft Exchange
2 36 (3.35%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.49%) Confluence
4 13 (1.21%) CICS
4 13 (1.21%) WebSphere
5 5 (0.47%) Apache
5 5 (0.47%) SharePoint Server
6 3 (0.28%) Exchange Server 2010
6 3 (0.28%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.19%) CloudStack
8 1 (0.093%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.093%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.093%) CMS
8 1 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2013
8 1 (0.093%) IIS
8 1 (0.093%) MS Project Server
8 1 (0.093%) nginx
8 1 (0.093%) OpenStack
Applications
1 9 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.093%) CINEMA 4D
3 1 (0.093%) Houdini
3 1 (0.093%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 7 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.093%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 317 (29.49%) Azure
2 159 (14.79%) AWS
3 110 (10.23%) Entra ID
4 95 (8.84%) Microsoft 365
5 70 (6.51%) IaaS
6 51 (4.74%) OCI
7 50 (4.65%) GCP
8 43 (4.00%) GitHub
9 41 (3.81%) SaaS
10 34 (3.16%) PaaS
11 31 (2.88%) Azure DevOps
12 27 (2.51%) Azure Monitor
13 19 (1.77%) GitHub Actions
13 19 (1.77%) Nutanix
14 17 (1.58%) Azure AKS
15 12 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
15 12 (1.12%) OpenShift
16 8 (0.74%) AWS CloudFormation
16 8 (0.74%) Cohesity
16 8 (0.74%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 193 (17.95%) DNS
2 164 (15.26%) Firewall
3 133 (12.37%) DHCP
4 59 (5.49%) TCP/IP
4 59 (5.49%) VLAN
4 59 (5.49%) VPN
5 53 (4.93%) SAN
6 45 (4.19%) Network Security
7 39 (3.63%) WAN
8 35 (3.26%) BIG-IP
9 32 (2.98%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 30 (2.79%) Wi-Fi
11 24 (2.23%) SD-WAN
12 22 (2.05%) Ethernet VPN
12 22 (2.05%) LAN
13 21 (1.95%) VXLAN
14 19 (1.77%) BGP
14 19 (1.77%) OSPF
14 19 (1.77%) VSAN
15 17 (1.58%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (4.65%) SQL Server
2 22 (2.05%) Oracle Exadata
3 17 (1.58%) Relational Database
4 15 (1.40%) Oracle Database
5 14 (1.30%) RDBMS
6 8 (0.74%) Data Lake
7 7 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
8 6 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (0.56%) NoSQL
9 4 (0.37%) Azure SQL Database
9 4 (0.37%) Big Data
9 4 (0.37%) Power BI
9 4 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.28%) PostgreSQL
11 2 (0.19%) BigQuery
11 2 (0.19%) Data Mining
11 2 (0.19%) MySQL
11 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 2 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 1 (0.093%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 51 (4.74%) GitLab
2 33 (3.07%) JIRA
3 29 (2.70%) Git
4 24 (2.23%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.37%) Chocolatey
6 3 (0.28%) Fiddler
7 2 (0.19%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.093%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.093%) CMake
8 1 (0.093%) Gerrit
8 1 (0.093%) Gradle
8 1 (0.093%) MLflow
8 1 (0.093%) MSI
8 1 (0.093%) Tricentis qTest
8 1 (0.093%) Visual Studio
General
1 117 (10.88%) Social Skills
2 66 (6.14%) Public Sector
3 59 (5.49%) Finance
4 46 (4.28%) Analytical Skills
5 36 (3.35%) Documentation Skills
6 18 (1.67%) Banking
7 17 (1.58%) Telecoms
8 14 (1.30%) Aerospace
8 14 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 14 (1.30%) Manufacturing
9 13 (1.21%) Military
10 10 (0.93%) Marketing
11 7 (0.65%) Law
12 6 (0.56%) Automotive
12 6 (0.56%) Legal
13 3 (0.28%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.19%) Billing
14 2 (0.19%) Front Office
14 2 (0.19%) Local Government
14 2 (0.19%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 183 (17.02%) Terraform
2 17 (1.58%) ARM Templates
2 17 (1.58%) Middleware
3 14 (1.30%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 9 (0.84%) YAML
5 7 (0.65%) OpenID
6 6 (0.56%) 802.1X
6 6 (0.56%) JSON
6 6 (0.56%) LDAP
6 6 (0.56%) SAML
7 5 (0.47%) .NET
7 5 (0.47%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (0.47%) Flash
7 5 (0.47%) REST
8 4 (0.37%) Kafka
8 4 (0.37%) OAuth
9 2 (0.19%) OAuth2
9 2 (0.19%) RabbitMQ
9 2 (0.19%) React
9 2 (0.19%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 120 (11.16%) Data Centre
2 69 (6.42%) Hybrid Cloud
3 55 (5.12%) PKI
4 39 (3.63%) Public Cloud
5 30 (2.79%) Cloud Native
5 30 (2.79%) Onboarding
6 29 (2.70%) Replication
7 28 (2.60%) Enterprise Storage
8 23 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
9 20 (1.86%) Private Cloud
10 18 (1.67%) Clustering
10 18 (1.67%) Linux Command Line
11 17 (1.58%) SCADA
12 16 (1.49%) Management Information System
13 14 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
14 13 (1.21%) Mainframe
14 13 (1.21%) Operational Technology
15 10 (0.93%) Driving Licence
16 9 (0.84%) Smartcard
17 7 (0.65%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 337 (31.35%) Windows
2 225 (20.93%) Windows Server
3 213 (19.81%) Linux
4 40 (3.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (1.77%) VMS
6 18 (1.67%) Windows 10
6 18 (1.67%) Windows Server 2016
6 18 (1.67%) Windows Server 2019
7 16 (1.49%) Ubuntu
8 14 (1.30%) AIX
8 14 (1.30%) CentOS
9 13 (1.21%) zOS
10 11 (1.02%) Android
10 11 (1.02%) Apple iOS
11 10 (0.93%) Mac OS
11 10 (0.93%) Windows Server 2012
12 9 (0.84%) Rocky
12 9 (0.84%) Unix
13 5 (0.47%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.47%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,048 (97.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 232 (21.58%) Infrastructure as Code
3 145 (13.49%) CI/CD
4 140 (13.02%) DevOps
5 119 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
6 118 (10.98%) Migration
7 86 (8.00%) Infrastructure Automation
8 73 (6.79%) High Availability
9 71 (6.60%) Disaster Recovery
10 70 (6.51%) Continuous Improvement
11 68 (6.33%) Project Delivery
12 64 (5.95%) ITIL
13 62 (5.77%) Platform Engineering
14 56 (5.21%) Validation
15 52 (4.84%) Root Cause Analysis
16 46 (4.28%) Agile
16 46 (4.28%) Zero Trust
17 45 (4.19%) Identity Access Management
17 45 (4.19%) Vulnerability Remediation
18 44 (4.09%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 179 (16.65%) PowerShell
2 140 (13.02%) Python
3 73 (6.79%) Bash
4 40 (3.72%) SQL
5 31 (2.88%) Bicep
6 14 (1.30%) C#
7 10 (0.93%) Java
8 9 (0.84%) ActionScript
8 9 (0.84%) Perl
9 6 (0.56%) Go
10 3 (0.28%) C++
11 2 (0.19%) VB
12 1 (0.093%) C
12 1 (0.093%) Groovy
12 1 (0.093%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.093%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.093%) PHP
12 1 (0.093%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.093%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.093%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 427 (39.72%) Security Cleared
2 265 (24.65%) SC Cleared
3 159 (14.79%) DV Cleared
4 40 (3.72%) Degree
5 31 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
6 22 (2.05%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.95%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 19 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
9 14 (1.30%) MCSE
9 14 (1.30%) VCAP
10 13 (1.21%) CCNA
10 13 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
11 12 (1.12%) CCNP
12 6 (0.56%) AWS Certification
12 6 (0.56%) MCSA
13 5 (0.47%) DBS Check
14 4 (0.37%) BPSS Clearance
14 4 (0.37%) JNCIP
14 4 (0.37%) JNCIS
15 3 (0.28%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (3.81%) QA
2 17 (1.58%) SLA
3 14 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 11 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
5 10 (0.93%) NCSC
6 8 (0.74%) NIST
7 6 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 3 (0.28%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.19%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.19%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.093%) FedRAMP
System Software
1 228 (21.21%) VMware Infrastructure
2 223 (20.74%) Active Directory
3 101 (9.40%) Hyper-V
4 72 (6.70%) VMware ESXi
4 72 (6.70%) vSphere
5 47 (4.37%) Virtual Machines
6 43 (4.00%) Docker
7 28 (2.60%) Virtual Desktop
7 28 (2.60%) VMware NSX
8 17 (1.58%) Virtual Servers
9 14 (1.30%) Oracle RAC
10 13 (1.21%) NFS
11 11 (1.02%) Firmware
12 7 (0.65%) KVM
13 6 (0.56%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.56%) oVirt
14 5 (0.47%) GPFS
15 4 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 3 (0.28%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 124 (11.53%) Ansible
2 100 (9.30%) Kubernetes
3 66 (6.14%) Microsoft Intune
4 49 (4.56%) SCCM
5 36 (3.35%) vCenter Server
6 18 (1.67%) WSUS
7 17 (1.58%) SCOM
8 15 (1.40%) NetBackup
8 15 (1.40%) Prometheus
9 14 (1.30%) Data Guard
9 14 (1.30%) Oracle RMAN
10 12 (1.12%) Grafana
11 10 (0.93%) Nessus
11 10 (0.93%) Puppet
12 9 (0.84%) Failover Clustering
12 9 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (0.65%) VxRail
14 6 (0.56%) FortiGate
14 6 (0.56%) Red Hat Satellite
15 5 (0.47%) Packer
Vendors
1 284 (26.42%) VMware
2 261 (24.28%) Microsoft
3 62 (5.77%) Cisco
4 54 (5.02%) Citrix
5 47 (4.37%) NetApp
6 41 (3.81%) Oracle
7 39 (3.63%) F5
8 37 (3.44%) Veeam
9 32 (2.98%) Palo Alto
10 29 (2.70%) Red Hat
11 26 (2.42%) Google
12 20 (1.86%) IBM
13 19 (1.77%) Aruba
14 18 (1.67%) Arista
14 18 (1.67%) Dell
15 17 (1.58%) CyberArk
16 16 (1.49%) SolarWinds
17 15 (1.40%) Juniper
18 14 (1.30%) ServiceNow
18 14 (1.30%) Tenable