Infrastructure Engineer Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineer
UK

The median Infrastructure Engineer daily rate in the UK is £510, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 12 May 2026.

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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 175 209 151
Rank change year-on-year +34 -58 +34
Contract jobs requiring an Infrastructure Engineer 730 389 684
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.54% 1.33% 1.59%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.67% 1.44% 1.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 496 268 516
10th Percentile £325 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £385 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £463
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +13.51% -7.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £588
90th Percentile £653 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £500 £463
% change year-on-year +1.95% +8.16% -2.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 3 9
10th Percentile £46.40 £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 £78.75 - £77.00
90th Percentile - - £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 43,836 26,998 39,901
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.28% 92.47% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,861 17,609 25,964
10th Percentile £319 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.07% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.21% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,872 1,048 2,673
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.34 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £28.60 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.85% -23.73% -16.67%
75th Percentile £66.63 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.65% -31.25% -5.73%

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 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 12 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 12 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 +8 625 £515 -1.90% 220
UK excluding London +24 508 £510 +1.95% 194
London -20 159 £525 - 47
Work from Home +23 155 £517 +8.27% 79
South East -1 135 £520 -0.95% 56
North of England -11 129 £490 +20.62% 56
South West +8 90 £540 -6.09% 23
Yorkshire -23 64 £350 -15.15% 9
Midlands -16 63 £450 +16.13% 33
North West -15 46 £575 +26.37% 32
Scotland +16 40 £560 +1.82% 7
East of England -12 36 £450 -3.54% 16
West Midlands -47 34 £450 +33.33% 21
East Midlands -12 28 £450 +12.50% 12
North East -6 22 £600 -7.69% 15
Wales -1 16 £400 -5.88% 6
Northern Ireland - 2 £375 -

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

For the 6 months to 12 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.

1 713 (97.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 267 (36.58%) Security Cleared
3 240 (32.88%) Windows
4 229 (31.37%) Azure
5 194 (26.58%) VMware
6 189 (25.89%) SC Cleared
7 168 (23.01%) Microsoft
8 150 (20.55%) Active Directory
8 150 (20.55%) Windows Server
9 146 (20.00%) VMware Infrastructure
10 129 (17.67%) Terraform
11 125 (17.12%) Infrastructure as Code
12 116 (15.89%) PowerShell
13 113 (15.48%) DNS
14 111 (15.21%) DevOps
15 108 (14.79%) Firewall
16 107 (14.66%) Linux
17 94 (12.88%) CI/CD
18 93 (12.74%) DV Cleared
19 92 (12.60%) Problem-Solving
20 91 (12.47%) AWS
21 89 (12.19%) Python
22 79 (10.82%) DHCP
22 79 (10.82%) Hyper-V
22 79 (10.82%) Kubernetes
23 75 (10.27%) Ansible
24 67 (9.18%) Migration
25 66 (9.04%) Microsoft 365
26 62 (8.49%) Infrastructure Automation
27 55 (7.53%) 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 54 (7.40%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (1.64%) SharePoint
3 6 (0.82%) TPMS
4 5 (0.68%) Apache
5 3 (0.41%) Confluence
5 3 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2010
5 3 (0.41%) IIS
6 2 (0.27%) nginx
7 1 (0.14%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.14%) IBM HTTP Server
7 1 (0.14%) MS Project Server
7 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 12 (1.64%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 229 (31.37%) Azure
2 91 (12.47%) AWS
3 66 (9.04%) Microsoft 365
4 52 (7.12%) GitHub
5 41 (5.62%) Entra ID
5 41 (5.62%) GCP
6 36 (4.93%) IaaS
7 31 (4.25%) PaaS
8 27 (3.70%) SaaS
9 26 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
9 26 (3.56%) OCI
10 25 (3.42%) Nutanix
11 22 (3.01%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 21 (2.88%) Azure Monitor
13 14 (1.92%) Azure AKS
13 14 (1.92%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (1.10%) Microsoft Purview
15 7 (0.96%) Cohesity
16 6 (0.82%) AWS CloudFormation
16 6 (0.82%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 113 (15.48%) DNS
2 108 (14.79%) Firewall
3 79 (10.82%) DHCP
4 39 (5.34%) VPN
4 39 (5.34%) WAN
5 29 (3.97%) VLAN
6 28 (3.84%) LAN
6 28 (3.84%) Network Security
7 25 (3.42%) SAN
8 22 (3.01%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 22 (3.01%) TCP/IP
9 19 (2.60%) BGP
10 18 (2.47%) BIG-IP
10 18 (2.47%) Ethernet VPN
11 17 (2.33%) VXLAN
12 16 (2.19%) SD-WAN
13 15 (2.05%) OSPF
14 13 (1.78%) Wi-Fi
15 12 (1.64%) SMTP
16 11 (1.51%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (4.11%) SQL Server
2 9 (1.23%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.41%) Data Mining
4 3 (0.41%) NonStop SQL
5 2 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.27%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.27%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.27%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.27%) Power BI
6 1 (0.14%) Flink
6 1 (0.14%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.14%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.14%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.14%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.14%) TimescaleDB
Development Applications
1 23 (3.15%) GitLab
2 18 (2.47%) Jenkins
3 11 (1.51%) JIRA
4 9 (1.23%) Git
5 8 (1.10%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.41%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.14%) Chocolatey
7 1 (0.14%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.14%) GoCD
7 1 (0.14%) IntelliJ
7 1 (0.14%) Introscope
7 1 (0.14%) MSI
7 1 (0.14%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.14%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 90 (12.33%) Social Skills
2 69 (9.45%) Public Sector
3 49 (6.71%) Finance
4 43 (5.89%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (2.19%) Legal
7 15 (2.05%) Banking
8 14 (1.92%) Aerospace
8 14 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.23%) Billing
9 9 (1.23%) Manufacturing
10 6 (0.82%) Military
10 6 (0.82%) Telecoms
11 5 (0.68%) Marketing
12 4 (0.55%) Retail
13 3 (0.41%) Law
13 3 (0.41%) Local Government
14 2 (0.27%) Advertising
14 2 (0.27%) Investment Banking
15 1 (0.14%) Mandarin Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (1.37%) LDAP
1 10 (1.37%) REST
2 8 (1.10%) SOAP
3 7 (0.96%) Elastic Stack
3 7 (0.96%) Flash
4 5 (0.68%) Web Services
5 4 (0.55%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.55%) Keycloak
5 4 (0.55%) OpenID
6 3 (0.41%) ADO
6 3 (0.41%) Oracle Fusion
6 3 (0.41%) SAML
7 2 (0.27%) Apache NiFi
7 2 (0.27%) Kafka
7 2 (0.27%) Node.js
7 2 (0.27%) OAuth
7 2 (0.27%) OAuth2
8 1 (0.14%) Bazel
8 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Graph
8 1 (0.14%) Redfish
Miscellaneous
1 62 (8.49%) Data Centre
2 41 (5.62%) PKI
3 30 (4.11%) Hybrid Cloud
4 28 (3.84%) Public Cloud
5 18 (2.47%) Self-Motivation
6 16 (2.19%) Enterprise Storage
6 16 (2.19%) Onboarding
7 14 (1.92%) Replication
8 13 (1.78%) Cloud Native
9 11 (1.51%) Operational Technology
9 11 (1.51%) Private Cloud
10 10 (1.37%) Clustering
10 10 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
11 7 (0.96%) Virtual Team
12 6 (0.82%) SCADA
12 6 (0.82%) Smartcard
12 6 (0.82%) YubiKey
13 4 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
13 4 (0.55%) Linux Command Line
13 4 (0.55%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 240 (32.88%) Windows
2 150 (20.55%) Windows Server
3 107 (14.66%) Linux
4 22 (3.01%) Windows Server 2019
5 19 (2.60%) Windows Server 2016
6 16 (2.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (2.19%) Ubuntu
7 12 (1.64%) Windows 10
8 11 (1.51%) VMS
9 10 (1.37%) Apple iOS
9 10 (1.37%) Windows Server 2012
10 9 (1.23%) Mac OS
11 8 (1.10%) Android
11 8 (1.10%) Unix
12 6 (0.82%) Windows Server 2003
13 5 (0.68%) CentOS
13 5 (0.68%) Debian
14 1 (0.14%) AIX
14 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 713 (97.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 125 (17.12%) Infrastructure as Code
3 111 (15.21%) DevOps
4 94 (12.88%) CI/CD
5 92 (12.60%) Problem-Solving
6 67 (9.18%) Migration
7 62 (8.49%) Infrastructure Automation
8 55 (7.53%) ITIL
9 54 (7.40%) Agile
10 50 (6.85%) Disaster Recovery
11 48 (6.58%) High Availability
12 42 (5.75%) Cybersecurity
13 40 (5.48%) Zero Trust
14 34 (4.66%) Project Delivery
15 33 (4.52%) Validation
16 32 (4.38%) Containerisation
17 30 (4.11%) Continuous Improvement
18 29 (3.97%) Platform Engineering
19 27 (3.70%) Load Balancing
20 26 (3.56%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 116 (15.89%) PowerShell
2 89 (12.19%) Python
3 28 (3.84%) Bash
4 23 (3.15%) SQL
5 20 (2.74%) Bicep
6 13 (1.78%) C#
7 9 (1.23%) PHP
8 8 (1.10%) JavaScript
9 5 (0.68%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.27%) ActionScript
10 2 (0.27%) Java
10 2 (0.27%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.14%) C++
11 1 (0.14%) Jython
11 1 (0.14%) VB
Qualifications
1 267 (36.58%) Security Cleared
2 189 (25.89%) SC Cleared
3 93 (12.74%) DV Cleared
4 26 (3.56%) Degree
5 15 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
5 15 (2.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 13 (1.78%) Azure Certification
7 11 (1.51%) CCNA
7 11 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (1.10%) AWS Certification
9 7 (0.96%) MCSE
10 6 (0.82%) CCNP
10 6 (0.82%) CompTIA Security+
10 6 (0.82%) FFIEC
11 5 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 5 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (0.68%) RHCA
12 3 (0.41%) GIAC
12 3 (0.41%) GSEC
12 3 (0.41%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (2.60%) NIST
2 16 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 16 (2.19%) QA
3 13 (1.78%) Cyber Essentials
4 9 (1.23%) GDPR
4 9 (1.23%) SLA
5 6 (0.82%) GLBA
5 6 (0.82%) NCSC
5 6 (0.82%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 2 (0.27%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 150 (20.55%) Active Directory
2 146 (20.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 79 (10.82%) Hyper-V
4 53 (7.26%) vSphere
5 41 (5.62%) VMware ESXi
6 40 (5.48%) Docker
7 20 (2.74%) Virtual Machines
8 19 (2.60%) VMware NSX
9 12 (1.64%) Virtual Desktop
10 9 (1.23%) BitLocker
11 7 (0.96%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.82%) NFS
13 5 (0.68%) GPFS
14 4 (0.55%) Firmware
15 3 (0.41%) DFS Replication
15 3 (0.41%) Sendmail
16 2 (0.27%) QEMU
16 2 (0.27%) SRDF
16 2 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
16 2 (0.27%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 129 (17.67%) Terraform
2 79 (10.82%) Kubernetes
3 75 (10.27%) Ansible
4 38 (5.21%) Microsoft Intune
5 35 (4.79%) SCCM
6 30 (4.11%) vCenter Server
7 15 (2.05%) WSUS
8 12 (1.64%) Istio
8 12 (1.64%) SCOM
9 11 (1.51%) Grafana
9 11 (1.51%) Prometheus
9 11 (1.51%) Puppet
9 11 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
10 9 (1.23%) Nessus
10 9 (1.23%) vRealize
10 9 (1.23%) VxRail
11 8 (1.10%) AirWatch
11 8 (1.10%) Packer
12 7 (0.96%) vMotion
13 5 (0.68%) Podman
Vendors
1 194 (26.58%) VMware
2 168 (23.01%) Microsoft
3 45 (6.16%) Cisco
4 43 (5.89%) Citrix
5 36 (4.93%) Veeam
6 31 (4.25%) F5
7 27 (3.70%) Palo Alto
8 25 (3.42%) Google
9 24 (3.29%) Dell
10 22 (3.01%) NetApp
11 18 (2.47%) Oracle
12 17 (2.33%) Aruba
13 15 (2.05%) Arista
14 14 (1.92%) SolarWinds
15 12 (1.64%) Red Hat
16 11 (1.51%) Fortinet
17 10 (1.37%) ServiceNow
17 10 (1.37%) Thales
18 9 (1.23%) Splunk
18 9 (1.23%) Tenable