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 12 July 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 152 221 138
Rank change year-on-year +69 -83 +30
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 963 397 732
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.82% 1.22% 1.71%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.97% 1.32% 1.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 608 260 552
10th Percentile £350 £328 £310
25th Percentile £425 £396 £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 £664 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £463
% change year-on-year - +13.51% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 4 5
10th Percentile £49.60 £42.30 £37.47
25th Percentile £58.43 £60.75 £63.75
Median hourly rate £72.54 £138.50 £77.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.62% +79.87% +10.00%
75th Percentile £78.75 £200.00 -
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 48,976 30,008 39,912
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.87% 93.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,674 19,142 25,677
10th Percentile £325 £287 £288
25th Percentile £418 £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 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,289 1,390 2,727
10th Percentile £15.83 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.33 £17.00
Median hourly rate £43.50 £26.50 £39.55
Median % change year-on-year +64.15% -33.00% -8.02%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.25 £62.98
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +1.14%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +59 826 £525 - 261
UK excluding London +54 678 £525 - 238
London +20 207 £525 - 52
North of England +22 197 £575 +9.52% 56
Work from Home +31 190 £540 +8.00% 114
South East +13 185 £536 -2.47% 76
South West +26 113 £538 -4.44% 45
Midlands +2 84 £450 +12.50% 30
Yorkshire -7 80 £500 - 20
North West -2 75 £575 +9.52% 26
North East +3 52 £600 -7.69% 12
West Midlands -37 50 £475 +18.75% 21
Scotland +13 44 £570 +17.22% 10
East Midlands +9 33 £450 +12.50% 9
East of England -17 32 £450 - 11
Wales +10 26 £463 - 5
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 7
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -

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

For the 6 months to 12 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.

1 945 (98.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 376 (39.04%) Security Cleared
3 290 (30.11%) Windows
4 278 (28.87%) Azure
5 248 (25.75%) SC Cleared
6 242 (25.13%) VMware
7 198 (20.56%) Microsoft
8 189 (19.63%) Active Directory
8 189 (19.63%) Windows Server
9 182 (18.90%) VMware Infrastructure
10 173 (17.96%) Infrastructure as Code
11 160 (16.61%) Terraform
12 159 (16.51%) Linux
13 155 (16.10%) DNS
14 137 (14.23%) PowerShell
15 136 (14.12%) AWS
15 136 (14.12%) DV Cleared
16 134 (13.91%) DevOps
17 132 (13.71%) Firewall
18 126 (13.08%) Python
19 119 (12.36%) CI/CD
20 106 (11.01%) DHCP
21 97 (10.07%) Ansible
22 94 (9.76%) Kubernetes
22 94 (9.76%) Migration
23 92 (9.55%) Problem-Solving
24 84 (8.72%) Hyper-V
25 70 (7.27%) vSphere
26 69 (7.17%) High Availability
27 67 (6.96%) 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 51 (5.30%) Microsoft Exchange
2 17 (1.77%) SharePoint
3 10 (1.04%) WebSphere
4 9 (0.93%) CICS
5 7 (0.73%) Confluence
6 3 (0.31%) Apache
6 3 (0.31%) Exchange Server 2010
7 2 (0.21%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.21%) TPMS
8 1 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.10%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.10%) MS Project Server
8 1 (0.10%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.10%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 7 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.10%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 278 (28.87%) Azure
2 136 (14.12%) AWS
3 65 (6.75%) Microsoft 365
4 61 (6.33%) GitHub
5 59 (6.13%) Entra ID
6 52 (5.40%) GCP
7 47 (4.88%) OCI
8 45 (4.67%) IaaS
9 36 (3.74%) SaaS
10 33 (3.43%) PaaS
11 31 (3.22%) Azure DevOps
12 22 (2.28%) Azure Monitor
12 22 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
13 21 (2.18%) Azure AKS
14 19 (1.97%) Nutanix
15 14 (1.45%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 8 (0.83%) Cohesity
17 7 (0.73%) Azure Stack
17 7 (0.73%) OpenShift
18 6 (0.62%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 155 (16.10%) DNS
2 132 (13.71%) Firewall
3 106 (11.01%) DHCP
4 52 (5.40%) SAN
5 49 (5.09%) VLAN
6 41 (4.26%) WAN
7 40 (4.15%) VPN
8 36 (3.74%) Network Security
9 33 (3.43%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 31 (3.22%) TCP/IP
11 30 (3.12%) BIG-IP
12 25 (2.60%) LAN
13 24 (2.49%) BGP
14 23 (2.39%) Ethernet VPN
15 22 (2.28%) SD-WAN
15 22 (2.28%) VXLAN
16 20 (2.08%) OSPF
17 19 (1.97%) Wi-Fi
18 17 (1.77%) VSAN
19 14 (1.45%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (4.05%) SQL Server
2 13 (1.35%) Oracle Database
2 13 (1.35%) Relational Database
3 12 (1.25%) Oracle Exadata
4 10 (1.04%) RDBMS
5 9 (0.93%) Elasticsearch
6 8 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.42%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (0.42%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.31%) Big Data
8 3 (0.31%) Data Mining
8 3 (0.31%) NonStop SQL
8 3 (0.31%) Power BI
9 2 (0.21%) BigQuery
9 2 (0.21%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.21%) DynamoDB
9 2 (0.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.10%) Flink
10 1 (0.10%) MongoDB
10 1 (0.10%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 45 (4.67%) GitLab
2 27 (2.80%) Jenkins
2 27 (2.80%) JIRA
3 17 (1.77%) Git
4 4 (0.42%) Artifactory
4 4 (0.42%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.21%) Chocolatey
5 2 (0.21%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.10%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.10%) CMake
6 1 (0.10%) GoCD
6 1 (0.10%) Gradle
6 1 (0.10%) IntelliJ
6 1 (0.10%) Introscope
6 1 (0.10%) MLflow
6 1 (0.10%) MSI
6 1 (0.10%) Robot Framework
General
1 109 (11.32%) Social Skills
2 73 (7.58%) Public Sector
3 52 (5.40%) Finance
4 34 (3.53%) Analytical Skills
5 32 (3.32%) Documentation Skills
6 19 (1.97%) Banking
6 19 (1.97%) Legal
7 13 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 11 (1.14%) Aerospace
9 10 (1.04%) Manufacturing
9 10 (1.04%) Marketing
10 7 (0.73%) Military
11 5 (0.52%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.42%) Law
13 3 (0.31%) 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 (0.10%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (1.35%) Middleware
2 10 (1.04%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 8 (0.83%) LDAP
4 7 (0.73%) Flash
4 7 (0.73%) REST
5 6 (0.62%) Elastic Stack
6 5 (0.52%) ARM Templates
6 5 (0.52%) Keycloak
6 5 (0.52%) OpenID
7 4 (0.42%) JSON
7 4 (0.42%) SAML
7 4 (0.42%) SOAP
7 4 (0.42%) YAML
8 3 (0.31%) Apache NiFi
8 3 (0.31%) Kafka
8 3 (0.31%) Oracle Fusion
9 2 (0.21%) 802.1X
9 2 (0.21%) Bazel
9 2 (0.21%) OAuth2
9 2 (0.21%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 113 (11.73%) Data Centre
2 50 (5.19%) PKI
3 49 (5.09%) Hybrid Cloud
4 41 (4.26%) Public Cloud
5 26 (2.70%) Cloud Native
6 24 (2.49%) Enterprise Storage
7 23 (2.39%) Onboarding
8 17 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
9 16 (1.66%) Replication
10 14 (1.45%) Clustering
11 11 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
12 10 (1.04%) Linux Command Line
12 10 (1.04%) Operational Technology
12 10 (1.04%) Private Cloud
13 9 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (0.93%) Mainframe
13 9 (0.93%) Smartcard
14 8 (0.83%) Management Information System
14 8 (0.83%) Virtual Team
15 7 (0.73%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 290 (30.11%) Windows
2 189 (19.63%) Windows Server
3 159 (16.51%) Linux
4 31 (3.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (2.28%) Windows Server 2019
6 18 (1.87%) Windows Server 2016
7 17 (1.77%) Windows 10
8 12 (1.25%) Ubuntu
9 11 (1.14%) AIX
10 10 (1.04%) Apple iOS
10 10 (1.04%) VMS
11 9 (0.93%) Mac OS
11 9 (0.93%) Unix
11 9 (0.93%) Windows Server 2012
11 9 (0.93%) zOS
12 8 (0.83%) Android
12 8 (0.83%) CentOS
13 6 (0.62%) Debian
13 6 (0.62%) Windows Server 2003
14 4 (0.42%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 945 (98.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 173 (17.96%) Infrastructure as Code
3 134 (13.91%) DevOps
4 119 (12.36%) CI/CD
5 94 (9.76%) Migration
6 92 (9.55%) Problem-Solving
7 69 (7.17%) High Availability
8 66 (6.85%) Infrastructure Automation
9 57 (5.92%) Project Delivery
10 56 (5.82%) Disaster Recovery
11 53 (5.50%) Agile
12 49 (5.09%) Validation
13 48 (4.98%) Zero Trust
14 47 (4.88%) Continuous Improvement
14 47 (4.88%) ITIL
15 38 (3.95%) Cybersecurity
15 38 (3.95%) Platform Engineering
16 35 (3.63%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 33 (3.43%) Containerisation
18 31 (3.22%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 137 (14.23%) PowerShell
2 126 (13.08%) Python
3 48 (4.98%) Bash
4 33 (3.43%) SQL
5 20 (2.08%) Bicep
6 16 (1.66%) C#
7 10 (1.04%) Java
8 8 (0.83%) ActionScript
9 5 (0.52%) Go
9 5 (0.52%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.42%) PHP
11 3 (0.31%) JavaScript
12 2 (0.21%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.10%) C
13 1 (0.10%) C++
13 1 (0.10%) Jython
13 1 (0.10%) Perl
13 1 (0.10%) VB
Qualifications
1 376 (39.04%) Security Cleared
2 248 (25.75%) SC Cleared
3 136 (14.12%) DV Cleared
4 30 (3.12%) Degree
5 22 (2.28%) Microsoft Certification
6 17 (1.77%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 16 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
8 15 (1.56%) MCSE
9 14 (1.45%) Azure Certification
10 11 (1.14%) CCNA
11 8 (0.83%) CCNP
11 8 (0.83%) VCAP
12 5 (0.52%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (0.52%) MCSA
12 5 (0.52%) RHCA
13 4 (0.42%) AWS Certification
14 3 (0.31%) APMG
14 3 (0.31%) CompTIA Security+
14 3 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
14 3 (0.31%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (2.80%) QA
2 22 (2.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (1.97%) NIST
4 16 (1.66%) Cyber Essentials
5 11 (1.14%) SLA
6 8 (0.83%) NCSC
7 6 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 6 (0.62%) Disclosure Scotland
8 4 (0.42%) GDPR
9 3 (0.31%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.21%) GLBA
10 2 (0.21%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.10%) FedRAMP
11 1 (0.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 189 (19.63%) Active Directory
2 182 (18.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 84 (8.72%) Hyper-V
4 70 (7.27%) vSphere
5 67 (6.96%) VMware ESXi
6 35 (3.63%) Docker
7 33 (3.43%) Virtual Machines
8 30 (3.12%) VMware NSX
9 21 (2.18%) Virtual Desktop
10 12 (1.25%) NFS
11 10 (1.04%) BitLocker
11 10 (1.04%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.83%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.52%) Firmware
13 5 (0.52%) GPFS
14 4 (0.42%) KVM
14 4 (0.42%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.31%) Virtual Servers
16 2 (0.21%) SRDF
16 2 (0.21%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 160 (16.61%) Terraform
2 97 (10.07%) Ansible
3 94 (9.76%) Kubernetes
4 43 (4.47%) Microsoft Intune
5 42 (4.36%) vCenter Server
6 34 (3.53%) SCCM
7 17 (1.77%) WSUS
8 15 (1.56%) SCOM
9 14 (1.45%) Prometheus
10 13 (1.35%) Grafana
10 13 (1.35%) Puppet
10 13 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (1.04%) Data Guard
11 10 (1.04%) NetBackup
11 10 (1.04%) Oracle RMAN
12 9 (0.93%) Istio
12 9 (0.93%) Nessus
12 9 (0.93%) VxRail
13 8 (0.83%) vMotion
13 8 (0.83%) vRealize
Vendors
1 242 (25.13%) VMware
2 198 (20.56%) Microsoft
3 62 (6.44%) Citrix
4 57 (5.92%) Cisco
5 40 (4.15%) F5
6 34 (3.53%) Oracle
7 32 (3.32%) NetApp
7 32 (3.32%) Veeam
8 31 (3.22%) Palo Alto
9 30 (3.12%) Google
10 26 (2.70%) Dell
10 26 (2.70%) Red Hat
11 21 (2.18%) Aruba
12 20 (2.08%) Arista
13 16 (1.66%) IBM
13 16 (1.66%) ServiceNow
14 13 (1.35%) Juniper
14 13 (1.35%) SolarWinds
14 13 (1.35%) Tenable
15 11 (1.14%) Fortinet