Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £483, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 January 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 218 208 140
Rank change year-on-year -10 -68 +35
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 486 390 762
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.28% 1.23% 1.73%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.40% 1.33% 1.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 351 264 557
10th Percentile £285 £310 £338
25th Percentile £363 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% +5.26% -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £638 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -1.89% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 4 18
10th Percentile £26.10 - £20.86
25th Percentile £26.25 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £34.00 £34.59 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.71% +50.39% -63.97%
75th Percentile £45.20 £50.63 £72.35
90th Percentile £75.70 £56.25 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.25 £24.18 £23.00
% change year-on-year +70.60% +5.13% -60.00%

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 34,755 29,351 41,026
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.46% 92.84% 93.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,967 17,954 27,186
10th Percentile £300 £291 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £723 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £477 £500
% change year-on-year +0.16% -4.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,062 872 2,014
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.92 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.64
Median hourly rate £27.72 £32.50 £38.10
Median % change year-on-year -14.72% -14.69% +9.53%
75th Percentile £60.72 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.98 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £30.98 £40.00
% change year-on-year -16.07% -22.56% +33.33%

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 24 January 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 24 January 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 24 January 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 -4 437 £483 -3.50% 292
UK excluding London +4 323 £466 -1.89% 268
Work from Home +26 134 £450 +12.50% 115
London -29 120 £525 - 50
South East -5 90 £465 +3.33% 77
North of England -24 83 £425 +3.03% 64
South West +10 72 £550 -8.33% 46
Yorkshire -37 41 £350 -15.15% 29
North West -16 37 £459 +14.63% 22
East of England +3 28 £425 -4.66% 32
Midlands -46 28 £415 -17.00% 36
West Midlands -49 20 £413 -25.00% 18
Scotland -3 19 £465 -15.45% 8
East Midlands -25 8 £415 -17.00% 18
North East -10 5 £475 - 14
Wales -16 5 £550 +22.22% 6
Northern Ireland - 1 £375 - 2

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

For the 6 months to 24 January 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.

1 462 (95.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 183 (37.65%) Windows
3 180 (37.04%) Azure
4 171 (35.19%) Microsoft
5 143 (29.42%) VMware
6 138 (28.40%) Security Cleared
7 119 (24.49%) Active Directory
8 105 (21.60%) VMware Infrastructure
9 102 (20.99%) Linux
10 97 (19.96%) SC Cleared
11 95 (19.55%) Terraform
12 93 (19.14%) DevOps
13 91 (18.72%) Windows Server
14 89 (18.31%) Firewall
14 89 (18.31%) Problem-Solving
15 82 (16.87%) AWS
16 81 (16.67%) Microsoft 365
17 78 (16.05%) Infrastructure as Code
17 78 (16.05%) PowerShell
18 75 (15.43%) DNS
19 67 (13.79%) Hyper-V
20 66 (13.58%) CI/CD
21 65 (13.37%) Ansible
22 64 (13.17%) ITIL
22 64 (13.17%) Python
23 52 (10.70%) DHCP
23 52 (10.70%) Infrastructure Automation
24 51 (10.49%) Microsoft Intune
25 50 (10.29%) SCCM
26 49 (10.08%) TCP/IP

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 43 (8.85%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (2.26%) SharePoint
2 11 (2.26%) TPMS
3 8 (1.65%) Apache
4 7 (1.44%) IIS
5 5 (1.03%) Confluence
6 3 (0.62%) Exchange Server 2010
7 2 (0.41%) iPlanet
7 2 (0.41%) JBoss
7 2 (0.41%) nginx
7 2 (0.41%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.41%) WebSphere
7 2 (0.41%) WebSphere Application Server
8 1 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.21%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.21%) CICS
8 1 (0.21%) Traefik
8 1 (0.21%) WebLogic
Applications
1 8 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (0.62%) Maximo
2 2 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.21%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 180 (37.04%) Azure
2 82 (16.87%) AWS
3 81 (16.67%) Microsoft 365
4 44 (9.05%) Entra ID
5 24 (4.94%) IaaS
6 21 (4.32%) GCP
6 21 (4.32%) PaaS
7 19 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
7 19 (3.91%) GitHub
8 18 (3.70%) Azure Monitor
9 16 (3.29%) Nutanix
10 15 (3.09%) Amazon S3
11 14 (2.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 14 (2.88%) Azure Sentinel
11 14 (2.88%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 11 (2.26%) Mimecast
13 10 (2.06%) Amazon EC2
13 10 (2.06%) Amazon ELB
13 10 (2.06%) SaaS
13 10 (2.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 89 (18.31%) Firewall
2 75 (15.43%) DNS
3 52 (10.70%) DHCP
4 49 (10.08%) TCP/IP
5 44 (9.05%) VPN
6 32 (6.58%) WAN
7 28 (5.76%) VLAN
8 26 (5.35%) SSL
9 25 (5.14%) Wi-Fi
10 24 (4.94%) SAN
11 21 (4.32%) LAN
12 19 (3.91%) Network Security
13 12 (2.47%) SNMP
14 11 (2.26%) SSH
15 8 (1.65%) SD-WAN
16 7 (1.44%) MPLS
17 6 (1.23%) 4G
18 5 (1.03%) HTTP
19 4 (0.82%) BGP
19 4 (0.82%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (2.88%) SQL Server
2 4 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.41%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (0.41%) MySQL
4 2 (0.41%) Oracle Database
4 2 (0.41%) Power BI
4 2 (0.41%) SAP HANA
5 1 (0.21%) Apache Iceberg
5 1 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.21%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.21%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.21%) Delta Lake
5 1 (0.21%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.21%) Parquet
5 1 (0.21%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.21%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 19 (3.91%) GitLab
1 19 (3.91%) Jenkins
2 16 (3.29%) Git
3 8 (1.65%) JIRA
4 7 (1.44%) Artifactory
5 4 (0.82%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.41%) Bitbucket Server
6 2 (0.41%) CA Release Automation
6 2 (0.41%) GoCD
6 2 (0.41%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.21%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.21%) MSI
General
1 95 (19.55%) Social Skills
2 54 (11.11%) Public Sector
3 53 (10.91%) Finance
4 44 (9.05%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (4.53%) Documentation Skills
6 10 (2.06%) Banking
6 10 (2.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 10 (2.06%) Military
7 9 (1.85%) Billing
8 8 (1.65%) Local Government
8 8 (1.65%) Telecoms
9 6 (1.23%) Aerospace
9 6 (1.23%) Aviation
9 6 (1.23%) Spanish Language
10 5 (1.03%) Legal
10 5 (1.03%) Manufacturing
11 4 (0.82%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.62%) Marketing
12 3 (0.62%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.62%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (1.85%) SAML
2 8 (1.65%) ARM Templates
2 8 (1.65%) Middleware
3 7 (1.44%) LDAP
3 7 (1.44%) OpenID
3 7 (1.44%) REST
4 5 (1.03%) Microsoft Graph
5 4 (0.82%) OAuth
5 4 (0.82%) SOAP
5 4 (0.82%) Web Services
6 3 (0.62%) ADO
6 3 (0.62%) AWS CDK
6 3 (0.62%) Keycloak
6 3 (0.62%) YAML
7 2 (0.41%) .NET
7 2 (0.41%) .NET Core
7 2 (0.41%) Apache NiFi
7 2 (0.41%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (0.41%) OAuth2
7 2 (0.41%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 30 (6.17%) Data Centre
2 25 (5.14%) PKI
3 19 (3.91%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
4 13 (2.67%) Private Cloud
5 11 (2.26%) Replication
6 10 (2.06%) Public Cloud
7 9 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
8 8 (1.65%) Clustering
8 8 (1.65%) Onboarding
9 7 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (1.23%) NHS
11 5 (1.03%) Cloud Native
11 5 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.03%) Management Information System
12 4 (0.82%) Mobile App
13 3 (0.62%) Client/Server
13 3 (0.62%) Cyber Threat
13 3 (0.62%) Enterprise Storage
13 3 (0.62%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 183 (37.65%) Windows
2 102 (20.99%) Linux
3 91 (18.72%) Windows Server
4 17 (3.50%) Windows 10
5 12 (2.47%) Ubuntu
5 12 (2.47%) Unix
5 12 (2.47%) Windows Server 2012
6 11 (2.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 10 (2.06%) VMS
8 9 (1.85%) Windows Server 2019
9 7 (1.44%) Windows Server 2016
10 6 (1.23%) Android
10 6 (1.23%) Apple iOS
11 4 (0.82%) Windows Server 2003
12 3 (0.62%) CentOS
13 2 (0.41%) Debian
13 2 (0.41%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.41%) SUSE
13 2 (0.41%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.41%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 462 (95.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 93 (19.14%) DevOps
3 89 (18.31%) Problem-Solving
4 78 (16.05%) Infrastructure as Code
5 66 (13.58%) CI/CD
6 64 (13.17%) ITIL
7 52 (10.70%) Infrastructure Automation
8 45 (9.26%) Migration
9 43 (8.85%) Cybersecurity
10 42 (8.64%) Disaster Recovery
11 38 (7.82%) High Availability
12 36 (7.41%) Agile
13 34 (7.00%) Observability
14 24 (4.94%) Service Management
15 23 (4.73%) Containerisation
15 23 (4.73%) Roadmaps
16 22 (4.53%) Stakeholder Management
17 21 (4.32%) Platform Engineering
18 20 (4.12%) Business Continuity
18 20 (4.12%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 78 (16.05%) PowerShell
2 64 (13.17%) Python
3 29 (5.97%) Bash
4 15 (3.09%) Bicep
5 12 (2.47%) SQL
6 11 (2.26%) Perl
7 7 (1.44%) Java
7 7 (1.44%) JavaScript
8 6 (1.23%) PHP
9 5 (1.03%) Go
9 5 (1.03%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.41%) C#
10 2 (0.41%) Groovy
11 1 (0.21%) ActionScript
11 1 (0.21%) C++
11 1 (0.21%) Kusto Query Language
11 1 (0.21%) Ruby
11 1 (0.21%) Scala
11 1 (0.21%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.21%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 138 (28.40%) Security Cleared
2 97 (19.96%) SC Cleared
3 44 (9.05%) DV Cleared
4 27 (5.56%) Azure Certification
5 22 (4.53%) Microsoft Certification
6 13 (2.67%) Degree
6 13 (2.67%) Network+ Certification
7 12 (2.47%) Server+ Certification
8 11 (2.26%) FFIEC
9 7 (1.44%) AWS Certification
10 6 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
10 6 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (1.03%) CCNA
11 5 (1.03%) CISSP
11 5 (1.03%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 4 (0.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.82%) CISM
12 4 (0.82%) CompTIA Security+
13 3 (0.62%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.91%) NIST
2 15 (3.09%) GDPR
3 12 (2.47%) SLA
4 11 (2.26%) GLBA
4 11 (2.26%) PCI DSS
5 7 (1.44%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.62%) NIST 800
7 2 (0.41%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.41%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.21%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.21%) QA
System Software
1 119 (24.49%) Active Directory
2 105 (21.60%) VMware Infrastructure
3 67 (13.79%) Hyper-V
4 43 (8.85%) Docker
5 24 (4.94%) vSphere
6 13 (2.67%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (2.47%) Virtual Machines
8 10 (2.06%) Virtual Desktop
9 9 (1.85%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.82%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.62%) DFS Replication
11 3 (0.62%) Sendmail
11 3 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.41%) Firmware
12 2 (0.41%) Microsoft App-V
12 2 (0.41%) QEMU
12 2 (0.41%) Tivoli Directory Server
13 1 (0.21%) etcd
13 1 (0.21%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.21%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 95 (19.55%) Terraform
2 65 (13.37%) Ansible
3 51 (10.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 50 (10.29%) SCCM
5 42 (8.64%) Kubernetes
6 17 (3.50%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (3.50%) vCenter Server
7 8 (1.65%) FortiGate
8 7 (1.44%) AirWatch
8 7 (1.44%) Grafana
8 7 (1.44%) Prometheus
8 7 (1.44%) VxRail
9 6 (1.23%) CASB
9 6 (1.23%) Red Hat Satellite
9 6 (1.23%) SCOrch
10 5 (1.03%) Istio
10 5 (1.03%) Packer
10 5 (1.03%) SCOM
11 4 (0.82%) Nessus
11 4 (0.82%) WSUS
Vendors
1 171 (35.19%) Microsoft
2 143 (29.42%) VMware
3 30 (6.17%) Cisco
4 25 (5.14%) Palo Alto
5 23 (4.73%) F5
6 20 (4.12%) Veeam
7 19 (3.91%) Dell
8 17 (3.50%) Google
9 16 (3.29%) Red Hat
9 16 (3.29%) Splunk
10 15 (3.09%) Citrix
11 14 (2.88%) ServiceNow
12 13 (2.67%) Thales
13 12 (2.47%) CheckPoint
14 11 (2.26%) SolarWinds
15 10 (2.06%) Aruba
16 9 (1.85%) HP
16 9 (1.85%) Oracle
17 8 (1.65%) Fortinet
18 7 (1.44%) NetApp