Infrastructure Engineering Contract Job Trends

Infrastructure Engineering
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Infrastructure Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 12 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 160 98
Rank change year-on-year +68 -62 +4
Contract jobs citing Infrastructure Engineering 1,520 579 904
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.85% 1.76% 2.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.36% 1.94% 2.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 917 356 663
10th Percentile £358 £330 £313
25th Percentile £425 £400 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.17% +5.00% -
75th Percentile £610 £600 £588
90th Percentile £675 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £530 £525 £475
% change year-on-year +0.95% +10.53% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 8 25
10th Percentile £48.00 £28.10 £49.68
25th Percentile £58.43 £29.00 £51.06
Median hourly rate £73.27 £42.44 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.65% -39.38% -3.45%
75th Percentile £78.75 £112.25 -
90th Percentile £100.00 £200.00 £74.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.54 £77.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year -5.79% +14.07% -3.57%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Infrastructure Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 45,292 29,826 33,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.48% 85.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,883 18,657 21,289
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £423 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,827 1,696 1,836
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.80 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.08
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.77% -1.96%
75th Percentile £68.00 £47.66 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.51 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.84 £42.50
% change year-on-year +92.47% -46.26% +17.24%

Infrastructure Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Infrastructure Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Infrastructure Engineering job vacancy trend in the UK

Infrastructure Engineering
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Infrastructure Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Infrastructure Engineering

Infrastructure Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Infrastructure Engineering over the 6 months to 12 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Infrastructure Engineering in the UK

Infrastructure Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Infrastructure Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Infrastructure Engineering

Infrastructure Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Infrastructure Engineering over the 6 months to 12 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Infrastructure Engineering in the UK

Infrastructure Engineering
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 Engineering within the UK over the 6 months to 12 August 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 +62 1,323 £538 +2.38% 1,185
UK excluding London +63 995 £530 +0.95% 662
London +52 409 £550 +2.33% 627
Work from Home +56 369 £538 +7.50% 427
North of England +42 293 £525 +2.44% 135
South East +31 286 £545 -0.97% 159
South West +29 135 £550 -1.12% 128
Midlands +16 129 £475 +11.76% 77
North West +28 127 £550 -8.33% 74
Yorkshire +9 123 £474 -5.20% 41
West Midlands +1 90 £525 +27.27% 48
Scotland +41 72 £573 +14.50% 61
East of England +12 59 £510 +13.33% 83
North East -2 53 £600 -7.69% 22
East Midlands +18 37 £450 - 29
Wales +17 29 £495 - 19
Northern Ireland +7 1 - - 15
Channel Islands - 1 £550 -

Infrastructure Engineering
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 63 (4.14%) Microsoft Exchange
2 39 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 33 (2.17%) Confluence
4 21 (1.38%) CICS
5 16 (1.05%) WebSphere
6 10 (0.66%) Apache
7 8 (0.53%) SAS
8 5 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
9 3 (0.20%) CloudStack
9 3 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2010
9 3 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 2 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
10 2 (0.13%) Apache Spark
10 2 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
10 2 (0.13%) JBoss
11 1 (0.066%) IBM HTTP Server
11 1 (0.066%) MS Project Server
11 1 (0.066%) nginx
11 1 (0.066%) Red Hat Fuse
11 1 (0.066%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 21 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.33%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.20%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.066%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.066%) Houdini
7 1 (0.066%) NUKE
7 1 (0.066%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.20%) Primavera
3 2 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.066%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.066%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 505 (33.22%) Azure
2 271 (17.83%) AWS
3 136 (8.95%) Entra ID
4 123 (8.09%) GCP
5 122 (8.03%) GitHub
6 115 (7.57%) Microsoft 365
7 81 (5.33%) GitHub Actions
8 78 (5.13%) Azure DevOps
9 75 (4.93%) IaaS
10 68 (4.47%) OCI
11 48 (3.16%) SaaS
12 43 (2.83%) PaaS
13 41 (2.70%) Azure Monitor
14 40 (2.63%) Azure AKS
15 33 (2.17%) Amazon EKS
15 33 (2.17%) Serverless
16 27 (1.78%) Amazon S3
16 27 (1.78%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (1.78%) Power Platform
17 24 (1.58%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 238 (15.66%) DNS
2 208 (13.68%) Firewall
3 152 (10.00%) DHCP
4 83 (5.46%) VPN
5 75 (4.93%) TCP/IP
6 72 (4.74%) Network Security
7 70 (4.61%) WAN
8 68 (4.47%) SAN
9 67 (4.41%) VLAN
10 43 (2.83%) LAN
11 42 (2.76%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 35 (2.30%) SD-WAN
13 34 (2.24%) BIG-IP
14 33 (2.17%) Wi-Fi
15 32 (2.11%) BGP
16 29 (1.91%) OSPF
17 28 (1.84%) Ethernet VPN
17 28 (1.84%) SSL
17 28 (1.84%) VXLAN
18 24 (1.58%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (4.21%) SQL Server
2 21 (1.38%) Oracle Exadata
3 18 (1.18%) Power BI
3 18 (1.18%) Relational Database
4 17 (1.12%) Oracle Database
5 13 (0.86%) Data Lake
5 13 (0.86%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (0.86%) RDBMS
6 12 (0.79%) Metadata
7 10 (0.66%) Elasticsearch
8 9 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
8 9 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
8 9 (0.59%) Data Warehouse
9 8 (0.53%) NoSQL
10 7 (0.46%) DynamoDB
10 7 (0.46%) Pentaho
11 6 (0.39%) Db2
12 5 (0.33%) BigQuery
12 5 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 4 (0.26%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 76 (5.00%) GitLab
2 74 (4.87%) Jenkins
3 58 (3.82%) Git
4 52 (3.42%) JIRA
5 8 (0.53%) Bitbucket
6 4 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.20%) Chocolatey
8 2 (0.13%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.13%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
8 2 (0.13%) Subversion
9 1 (0.066%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.066%) CMake
9 1 (0.066%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.066%) Gradle
9 1 (0.066%) IntelliJ
9 1 (0.066%) Introscope
9 1 (0.066%) Maven
9 1 (0.066%) MSI
9 1 (0.066%) PVCS
General
1 265 (17.43%) Social Skills
2 127 (8.36%) Finance
3 123 (8.09%) Public Sector
4 85 (5.59%) Analytical Skills
5 62 (4.08%) Documentation Skills
6 53 (3.49%) Banking
7 28 (1.84%) Telecoms
8 22 (1.45%) Legal
9 20 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 19 (1.25%) Retail
11 17 (1.12%) Aerospace
11 17 (1.12%) Military
12 16 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
12 16 (1.05%) Manufacturing
13 13 (0.86%) Law
14 12 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
15 10 (0.66%) Automotive
15 10 (0.66%) Marketing
16 6 (0.39%) Billing
17 5 (0.33%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,012 (66.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 293 (19.28%) Senior
3 232 (15.26%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
4 146 (9.61%) Cloud Engineer
5 110 (7.24%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
6 98 (6.45%) Azure Engineer
7 70 (4.61%) Azure Infrastructure Engineer
7 70 (4.61%) Network Engineer
8 60 (3.95%) Lead
9 54 (3.55%) DevOps Engineer
10 52 (3.42%) Network Infrastructure Engineer
11 49 (3.22%) VMware Engineer
12 47 (3.09%) Architect
13 46 (3.03%) Platform Engineer
14 44 (2.89%) IT Engineer
15 43 (2.83%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
16 41 (2.70%) Infrastructure Support
16 41 (2.70%) Support Engineer
17 38 (2.50%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
18 36 (2.37%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (1.97%) REST
2 26 (1.71%) ARM Templates
3 22 (1.45%) Middleware
4 15 (0.99%) JSON
4 15 (0.99%) YAML
5 14 (0.92%) SOAP
6 13 (0.86%) Oracle GoldenGate
7 12 (0.79%) Kafka
7 12 (0.79%) OpenID
7 12 (0.79%) SAML
8 11 (0.72%) Elastic Stack
9 10 (0.66%) Loki
9 10 (0.66%) OAuth
10 8 (0.53%) ModSecurity
11 7 (0.46%) .NET
11 7 (0.46%) 802.1X
11 7 (0.46%) Flash
11 7 (0.46%) LDAP
11 7 (0.46%) Web Services
12 6 (0.39%) WSDL
Miscellaneous
1 148 (9.74%) Data Centre
2 95 (6.25%) Hybrid Cloud
3 68 (4.47%) Cloud Native
4 61 (4.01%) PKI
5 57 (3.75%) Public Cloud
6 45 (2.96%) Replication
7 42 (2.76%) Onboarding
8 38 (2.50%) Enterprise Storage
9 29 (1.91%) Management Information System
10 27 (1.78%) Enterprise Cloud
11 25 (1.64%) Clustering
12 24 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
12 24 (1.58%) Private Cloud
13 23 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
14 22 (1.45%) Mainframe
15 20 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
16 19 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
17 15 (0.99%) Virtual Team
18 14 (0.92%) Enterprise Software
18 14 (0.92%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 406 (26.71%) Windows
2 271 (17.83%) Linux
3 254 (16.71%) Windows Server
4 62 (4.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (1.58%) Windows Server 2019
6 23 (1.51%) Unix
7 21 (1.38%) zOS
8 20 (1.32%) Windows Server 2016
9 19 (1.25%) VMS
10 18 (1.18%) Apple iOS
10 18 (1.18%) Windows 10
11 17 (1.12%) Android
12 16 (1.05%) CentOS
12 16 (1.05%) Ubuntu
13 14 (0.92%) AIX
13 14 (0.92%) Mac OS
14 11 (0.72%) Rocky
15 9 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
16 6 (0.39%) Debian
16 6 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 345 (22.70%) Infrastructure as Code
2 299 (19.67%) DevOps
3 284 (18.68%) CI/CD
4 190 (12.50%) Migration
5 181 (11.91%) Problem-Solving
6 151 (9.93%) Platform Engineering
7 139 (9.14%) Continuous Improvement
8 135 (8.88%) Agile
9 119 (7.83%) Infrastructure Automation
10 111 (7.30%) High Availability
11 101 (6.64%) AI
11 101 (6.64%) Project Delivery
12 100 (6.58%) Disaster Recovery
13 98 (6.45%) Stakeholder Management
14 94 (6.18%) Observability
15 87 (5.72%) ITIL
16 86 (5.66%) Containerisation
16 86 (5.66%) Validation
17 83 (5.46%) Cybersecurity
17 83 (5.46%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 267 (17.57%) Python
2 259 (17.04%) PowerShell
3 141 (9.28%) Bash
4 64 (4.21%) SQL
5 57 (3.75%) Bicep
6 32 (2.11%) Java
7 22 (1.45%) C#
7 22 (1.45%) Shell Script
8 10 (0.66%) Go
9 9 (0.59%) Perl
10 8 (0.53%) ActionScript
11 7 (0.46%) C++
11 7 (0.46%) JavaScript
12 6 (0.39%) JCL
12 6 (0.39%) TypeScript
13 5 (0.33%) C
14 3 (0.20%) Groovy
14 3 (0.20%) Kusto Query Language
14 3 (0.20%) PHP
15 2 (0.13%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 568 (37.37%) Security Cleared
2 384 (25.26%) SC Cleared
3 185 (12.17%) DV Cleared
4 60 (3.95%) Degree
5 43 (2.83%) Azure Certification
6 40 (2.63%) Microsoft Certification
7 37 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
8 27 (1.78%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 21 (1.38%) CCNA
10 20 (1.32%) AWS Certification
11 19 (1.25%) CCNP
11 19 (1.25%) CISSP
11 19 (1.25%) MCSE
12 13 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
12 13 (0.86%) VCAP
13 10 (0.66%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 9 (0.59%) CISM
14 9 (0.59%) PMI Certification
15 8 (0.53%) BPSS Clearance
16 7 (0.46%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (2.83%) QA
2 36 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 24 (1.58%) NIST
4 22 (1.45%) SLA
5 19 (1.25%) NCSC
6 16 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
7 9 (0.59%) Data Quality
8 8 (0.53%) PMO
9 7 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
9 7 (0.46%) GRC
10 6 (0.39%) GDPR
10 6 (0.39%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 4 (0.26%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.20%) JSP 440
13 2 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
13 2 (0.13%) IASME
13 2 (0.13%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 1 (0.066%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 269 (17.70%) VMware Infrastructure
2 267 (17.57%) Active Directory
3 110 (7.24%) Hyper-V
4 79 (5.20%) vSphere
5 78 (5.13%) Docker
5 78 (5.13%) VMware ESXi
6 61 (4.01%) Virtual Machines
7 47 (3.09%) VMware NSX
8 32 (2.11%) Virtual Desktop
9 19 (1.25%) NFS
10 13 (0.86%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.66%) Firmware
12 9 (0.59%) KVM
12 9 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
13 8 (0.53%) BitLocker
14 7 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.33%) GPFS
15 5 (0.33%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.26%) Ceph
17 3 (0.20%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 314 (20.66%) Terraform
2 194 (12.76%) Ansible
3 188 (12.37%) Kubernetes
4 76 (5.00%) Microsoft Intune
5 50 (3.29%) vCenter Server
6 45 (2.96%) SCCM
7 32 (2.11%) Grafana
8 28 (1.84%) Prometheus
9 27 (1.78%) Puppet
10 24 (1.58%) NetBackup
11 22 (1.45%) WSUS
12 20 (1.32%) Argo
12 20 (1.32%) Single Sign-On
13 18 (1.18%) SCOM
14 14 (0.92%) Istio
14 14 (0.92%) Nessus
14 14 (0.92%) Packer
15 13 (0.86%) Data Guard
15 13 (0.86%) Oracle RMAN
15 13 (0.86%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 367 (24.14%) Microsoft
2 338 (22.24%) VMware
3 82 (5.39%) Cisco
3 82 (5.39%) Citrix
4 60 (3.95%) Oracle
5 57 (3.75%) Google
6 51 (3.36%) F5
7 49 (3.22%) NetApp
8 44 (2.89%) Red Hat
9 43 (2.83%) Veeam
10 36 (2.37%) Palo Alto
11 34 (2.24%) ServiceNow
12 27 (1.78%) Dell
13 23 (1.51%) Aruba
13 23 (1.51%) IBM
14 22 (1.45%) Arista
15 21 (1.38%) CyberArk
16 20 (1.32%) Tenable
17 19 (1.25%) Juniper
17 19 (1.25%) Zscaler