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 7 April 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 197 193 150
Rank change year-on-year -4 -43 +36
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 609 401 722
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.34% 1.37% 1.64%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.45% 1.48% 1.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 431 281 524
10th Percentile £325 £319 £310
25th Percentile £413 £378 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% -5.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £638 £650 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% +10.53% +4.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 4 12
10th Percentile £34.15 - -
25th Percentile £58.43 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £72.54 £112.09 £45.25
Median % change year-on-year -35.28% +147.71% -29.12%
75th Percentile £78.75 £200.00 £76.65
90th Percentile £79.50 - £77.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £112.09 £22.50
% change year-on-year -35.28% +398.18% -62.84%

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 42,056 27,143 40,722
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.24% 92.76% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,180 17,855 26,652
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.05%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,649 962 2,545
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.00 £20.24 £16.25
Median hourly rate £40.00 £31.76 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.94% -6.59% -23.65%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.62 £30.93 £35.00
% change year-on-year +34.55% -11.63% -17.38%

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 7 April 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 7 April 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 7 April 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 -13 533 £500 -4.76% 240
UK excluding London -3 420 £500 -4.76% 226
London -44 144 £500 -4.76% 35
Work from Home -1 116 £500 +5.26% 93
South East -16 115 £525 -2.33% 61
North of England -34 100 £413 +3.13% 67
South West +10 90 £550 -4.35% 40
Yorkshire -23 60 £356 -10.94% 22
Midlands -46 45 £440 +13.55% 29
North West -22 36 £413 -21.43% 37
East of England -24 31 £438 -6.82% 17
Scotland +10 29 £535 -2.73% 8
West Midlands -51 23 £413 +22.22% 22
East Midlands -18 22 £450 +12.50% 7
Wales -7 10 £550 +29.41% 6
North East -17 4 £500 +36.99% 8
Northern Ireland - 1 £375 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 7 April 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.

1 590 (96.88%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 206 (33.83%) Windows
3 202 (33.17%) Security Cleared
4 194 (31.86%) Azure
5 176 (28.90%) VMware
6 169 (27.75%) Microsoft
7 139 (22.82%) Active Directory
8 138 (22.66%) SC Cleared
9 136 (22.33%) VMware Infrastructure
10 127 (20.85%) Windows Server
11 108 (17.73%) PowerShell
12 105 (17.24%) Terraform
13 99 (16.26%) DNS
14 96 (15.76%) DevOps
14 96 (15.76%) Linux
15 93 (15.27%) Firewall
15 93 (15.27%) Infrastructure as Code
16 80 (13.14%) Problem-Solving
17 78 (12.81%) DV Cleared
18 72 (11.82%) DHCP
18 72 (11.82%) Microsoft 365
19 70 (11.49%) CI/CD
20 67 (11.00%) Hyper-V
20 67 (11.00%) Python
21 62 (10.18%) Kubernetes
22 61 (10.02%) Migration
23 57 (9.36%) AWS
24 56 (9.20%) ITIL
25 54 (8.87%) Infrastructure Automation
26 52 (8.54%) Ansible

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 (8.05%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.97%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.48%) TPMS
4 5 (0.82%) IIS
5 4 (0.66%) Apache
6 3 (0.49%) Confluence
6 3 (0.49%) Exchange Server 2010
7 2 (0.33%) nginx
8 1 (0.16%) CICS
8 1 (0.16%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.16%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.16%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.16%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (1.97%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.33%) Maximo
2 1 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 194 (31.86%) Azure
2 72 (11.82%) Microsoft 365
3 57 (9.36%) AWS
4 43 (7.06%) Entra ID
5 41 (6.73%) GitHub
6 32 (5.25%) IaaS
7 31 (5.09%) GCP
8 29 (4.76%) PaaS
9 24 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (3.45%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 19 (3.12%) Nutanix
12 17 (2.79%) Azure Monitor
13 15 (2.46%) SaaS
14 12 (1.97%) Azure Sentinel
15 10 (1.64%) OCI
16 9 (1.48%) Azure AKS
17 8 (1.31%) GitHub Actions
17 8 (1.31%) Microsoft Purview
18 7 (1.15%) Microsoft Copilot
18 7 (1.15%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 99 (16.26%) DNS
2 93 (15.27%) Firewall
3 72 (11.82%) DHCP
4 45 (7.39%) VPN
5 30 (4.93%) WAN
6 29 (4.76%) LAN
7 26 (4.27%) VLAN
8 24 (3.94%) Network Security
8 24 (3.94%) TCP/IP
9 21 (3.45%) SAN
10 12 (1.97%) SNMP
10 12 (1.97%) Wi-Fi
11 11 (1.81%) SMTP
11 11 (1.81%) SSH
11 11 (1.81%) SSL
12 9 (1.48%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 9 (1.48%) MPLS
13 7 (1.15%) BGP
13 7 (1.15%) VSAN
14 6 (0.99%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (3.78%) SQL Server
2 8 (1.31%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.49%) Data Mining
4 3 (0.49%) NonStop SQL
5 2 (0.33%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.33%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.33%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.33%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.33%) Power BI
5 2 (0.33%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.16%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.16%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.16%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.16%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 15 (2.46%) Jenkins
2 12 (1.97%) JIRA
3 10 (1.64%) GitLab
4 8 (1.31%) Artifactory
5 7 (1.15%) Git
6 3 (0.49%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.16%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.16%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.16%) GoCD
7 1 (0.16%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.16%) Introscope
7 1 (0.16%) MSI
7 1 (0.16%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 87 (14.29%) Social Skills
2 56 (9.20%) Public Sector
3 52 (8.54%) Finance
4 40 (6.57%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
6 18 (2.96%) Legal
7 17 (2.79%) Banking
8 10 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.48%) Aerospace
9 9 (1.48%) Billing
10 6 (0.99%) Telecoms
11 5 (0.82%) Military
12 4 (0.66%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.49%) Law
13 3 (0.49%) Local Government
13 3 (0.49%) Retail
13 3 (0.49%) Spanish Language
14 2 (0.33%) Advertising
14 2 (0.33%) Aviation
14 2 (0.33%) Investment Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (1.81%) REST
2 8 (1.31%) ARM Templates
2 8 (1.31%) LDAP
2 8 (1.31%) SOAP
3 5 (0.82%) SAML
3 5 (0.82%) Web Services
4 4 (0.66%) ADO
4 4 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
4 4 (0.66%) Keycloak
5 3 (0.49%) OpenID
5 3 (0.49%) Oracle Fusion
6 2 (0.33%) Apache NiFi
6 2 (0.33%) Flash
6 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Graph
6 2 (0.33%) Node.js
6 2 (0.33%) OAuth
6 2 (0.33%) OAuth2
6 2 (0.33%) YAML
7 1 (0.16%) EDI
7 1 (0.16%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 42 (6.90%) PKI
2 38 (6.24%) Data Centre
3 24 (3.94%) Public Cloud
4 20 (3.28%) Hybrid Cloud
5 15 (2.46%) Enterprise Storage
5 15 (2.46%) Self-Motivation
6 12 (1.97%) Clustering
6 12 (1.97%) Onboarding
6 12 (1.97%) Private Cloud
7 10 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
8 9 (1.48%) Cloud Native
9 7 (1.15%) Replication
10 4 (0.66%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (0.66%) CCTV
10 4 (0.66%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (0.66%) NHS
10 4 (0.66%) Operational Technology
11 3 (0.49%) Client/Server
11 3 (0.49%) Virtual Team
12 2 (0.33%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 206 (33.83%) Windows
2 127 (20.85%) Windows Server
3 96 (15.76%) Linux
4 18 (2.96%) Windows Server 2019
5 14 (2.30%) Ubuntu
5 14 (2.30%) Windows 10
5 14 (2.30%) Windows Server 2012
5 14 (2.30%) Windows Server 2016
6 13 (2.13%) VMS
7 12 (1.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (1.31%) Unix
9 7 (1.15%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (0.66%) Debian
11 2 (0.33%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.33%) CentOS
11 2 (0.33%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.33%) SUSE
11 2 (0.33%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 2 (0.33%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.16%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 590 (96.88%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 96 (15.76%) DevOps
3 93 (15.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 80 (13.14%) Problem-Solving
5 70 (11.49%) CI/CD
6 61 (10.02%) Migration
7 56 (9.20%) ITIL
8 54 (8.87%) Infrastructure Automation
9 51 (8.37%) Agile
10 48 (7.88%) Cybersecurity
10 48 (7.88%) Disaster Recovery
11 38 (6.24%) High Availability
12 33 (5.42%) Project Delivery
13 30 (4.93%) Platform Engineering
14 29 (4.76%) Containerisation
15 28 (4.60%) Cloud Security
16 27 (4.43%) Observability
16 27 (4.43%) Validation
17 24 (3.94%) Continuous Improvement
17 24 (3.94%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 108 (17.73%) PowerShell
2 67 (11.00%) Python
3 25 (4.11%) Bash
4 21 (3.45%) Bicep
5 18 (2.96%) SQL
6 9 (1.48%) PHP
7 8 (1.31%) JavaScript
8 6 (0.99%) C#
9 4 (0.66%) Shell Script
10 3 (0.49%) Java
11 2 (0.33%) ActionScript
11 2 (0.33%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.16%) Jython
12 1 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.16%) Perl
12 1 (0.16%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 202 (33.17%) Security Cleared
2 138 (22.66%) SC Cleared
3 78 (12.81%) DV Cleared
4 18 (2.96%) Azure Certification
4 18 (2.96%) Degree
5 13 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
5 13 (2.13%) Microsoft Certification
6 11 (1.81%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 10 (1.64%) CCNA
8 9 (1.48%) FFIEC
9 8 (1.31%) AWS Certification
10 6 (0.99%) CompTIA Security+
11 5 (0.82%) BPSS Clearance
11 5 (0.82%) CCNP
11 5 (0.82%) MCSE
12 4 (0.66%) CISSP
12 4 (0.66%) GIAC
12 4 (0.66%) GSEC
12 4 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
12 4 (0.66%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.61%) NIST
2 18 (2.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (2.46%) Cyber Essentials
4 13 (2.13%) GDPR
5 11 (1.81%) SLA
6 9 (1.48%) GLBA
6 9 (1.48%) PCI DSS
7 6 (0.99%) QA
8 4 (0.66%) NCSC
9 3 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.49%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.16%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 139 (22.82%) Active Directory
2 136 (22.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 67 (11.00%) Hyper-V
4 46 (7.55%) vSphere
5 38 (6.24%) Docker
6 34 (5.58%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (2.63%) Virtual Machines
7 16 (2.63%) VMware NSX
8 12 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
9 9 (1.48%) BitLocker
10 7 (1.15%) Microsoft App-V
11 3 (0.49%) DFS Replication
11 3 (0.49%) Sendmail
12 2 (0.33%) Firmware
12 2 (0.33%) QEMU
12 2 (0.33%) SRDF
13 1 (0.16%) iptables
13 1 (0.16%) Terminal Services
13 1 (0.16%) UAG
13 1 (0.16%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 105 (17.24%) Terraform
2 62 (10.18%) Kubernetes
3 52 (8.54%) Ansible
4 46 (7.55%) Microsoft Intune
5 45 (7.39%) SCCM
6 29 (4.76%) vCenter Server
7 17 (2.79%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (1.81%) Puppet
8 11 (1.81%) SCOM
8 11 (1.81%) WSUS
9 10 (1.64%) Istio
10 9 (1.48%) VxRail
11 8 (1.31%) Grafana
11 8 (1.31%) Prometheus
12 7 (1.15%) vMotion
12 7 (1.15%) vRealize
13 6 (0.99%) AirWatch
13 6 (0.99%) Nessus
13 6 (0.99%) Packer
14 4 (0.66%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 176 (28.90%) VMware
2 169 (27.75%) Microsoft
3 40 (6.57%) Cisco
4 37 (6.08%) Citrix
5 30 (4.93%) Veeam
6 27 (4.43%) Dell
7 24 (3.94%) Google
8 19 (3.12%) NetApp
9 16 (2.63%) F5
10 15 (2.46%) SolarWinds
11 14 (2.30%) Oracle
11 14 (2.30%) Red Hat
12 13 (2.13%) Thales
13 11 (1.81%) Splunk
14 10 (1.64%) Fortinet
14 10 (1.64%) ServiceNow
15 8 (1.31%) Aruba
15 8 (1.31%) Palo Alto
16 7 (1.15%) HP
17 5 (0.82%) Juniper