IT Engineer Contract Job Trends

IT Engineer
UK

The median IT Engineer daily rate in the UK is £200, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 27 September 2026.

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

6 months to
27 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 273 225 256
Rank change year-on-year -48 +31 -5
Contract jobs requiring an IT Engineer 525 411 351
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.96% 1.24% 0.92%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.04% 1.37% 0.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 346 247 224
10th Percentile £153 £126 £126
25th Percentile £165 £150 £160
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £200 £188 £200
Median % change year-on-year +6.67% -6.25% +3.90%
75th Percentile £263 £244 £332
90th Percentile £400 £393 £572
UK excluding London median daily rate £200 £170 £189
% change year-on-year +17.65% -9.93% +0.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 116 57
10th Percentile £17.72 £18.51 £11.90
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.87 £15.22
Median hourly rate £22.00 £25.15 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.52% +28.97% +10.05%
75th Percentile £25.75 - £24.15
90th Percentile £29.12 - £24.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £25.15 £18.27
% change year-on-year -12.52% +37.66% +3.10%

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 50,385 30,076 35,581
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.19% 91.01% 92.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,746 18,991 21,622
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £623 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,923 1,619 1,598
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.75
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -1.71%

IT Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'IT Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

IT Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

IT Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for IT Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for IT Engineer job vacancies in the UK

IT Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing IT Engineer over the 6 months to 27 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for IT Engineer in the UK

IT Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for IT Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for IT Engineer job vacancies in the UK

IT Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing IT Engineer over the 6 months to 27 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for IT Engineer in the UK

IT 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 IT Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 27 September 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 -55 452 £200 +6.67% 505
UK excluding London -34 387 £200 +17.65% 425
London -56 128 £224 +7.95% 162
South East -54 88 £250 +33.33% 122
North of England -28 76 £200 +25.00% 75
East of England +8 63 £200 +14.29% 38
North West -21 54 £200 +25.00% 47
South West -47 49 £200 +14.29% 33
Midlands -47 49 £200 +25.00% 82
Scotland +1 46 £208 +6.67% 53
Work from Home -45 32 £305 -2.40% 154
East Midlands -14 27 £213 +66.67% 44
West Midlands -58 22 £185 -5.13% 37
Yorkshire -36 21 £204 +27.50% 18
Wales -6 14 £190 +18.75% 17
Northern Ireland +3 2 - - 12
North East -38 2 £175 +2.94% 10

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

For the 6 months to 27 September 2026, IT 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 IT Engineer in the job title.

1 339 (64.57%) Windows
2 295 (56.19%) Microsoft
3 259 (49.33%) Microsoft 365
4 238 (45.33%) Active Directory
5 179 (34.10%) Customer Service
6 160 (30.48%) Windows 10
7 152 (28.95%) Problem-Solving
8 112 (21.33%) ITIL
9 96 (18.29%) Microsoft Intune
10 90 (17.14%) Security Cleared
11 87 (16.57%) Azure
12 85 (16.19%) ServiceNow
13 82 (15.62%) ITSM
14 80 (15.24%) SC Cleared
15 78 (14.86%) Entra ID
15 78 (14.86%) SharePoint
16 64 (12.19%) VPN
17 57 (10.86%) Microsoft Exchange
18 50 (9.52%) Asset Management
19 49 (9.33%) Continuous Improvement
20 48 (9.14%) Windows Server
21 47 (8.95%) Break/Fix
21 47 (8.95%) DNS
22 45 (8.57%) A+ Certification
22 45 (8.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
22 45 (8.57%) TCP/IP
23 40 (7.62%) Service Delivery
24 39 (7.43%) DHCP
24 39 (7.43%) SCCM
25 38 (7.24%) Microsoft Certification

IT 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 78 (14.86%) SharePoint
2 57 (10.86%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (2.10%) HCL Notes
4 4 (0.76%) Confluence
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 34 (6.48%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.95%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.38%) Acrobat
3 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.76%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 259 (49.33%) Microsoft 365
2 87 (16.57%) Azure
3 78 (14.86%) Entra ID
4 33 (6.29%) OneDrive
5 15 (2.86%) AWS
6 12 (2.29%) SaaS
7 6 (1.14%) Mimecast
8 5 (0.95%) IaaS
8 5 (0.95%) Nutanix
9 4 (0.76%) AWS Direct Connect
9 4 (0.76%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 4 (0.76%) Power Platform
10 3 (0.57%) Azure DevOps
10 3 (0.57%) Google Workspace
10 3 (0.57%) PaaS
10 3 (0.57%) PowerApps
11 2 (0.38%) Amazon EC2
11 2 (0.38%) Amazon EKS
11 2 (0.38%) Amazon S3
11 2 (0.38%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 64 (12.19%) VPN
2 47 (8.95%) DNS
3 45 (8.57%) TCP/IP
4 39 (7.43%) DHCP
5 31 (5.90%) SAN
6 27 (5.14%) LAN
7 26 (4.95%) Wi-Fi
8 25 (4.76%) WAN
9 24 (4.57%) Firewall
10 17 (3.24%) VLAN
11 10 (1.90%) Wireless
12 9 (1.71%) Internet
13 8 (1.52%) Network Security
14 5 (0.95%) BGP
14 5 (0.95%) OSPF
14 5 (0.95%) Skype
14 5 (0.95%) WLAN
15 4 (0.76%) IPv4
15 4 (0.76%) MPLS
15 4 (0.76%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.52%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.38%) Oracle Database
2 2 (0.38%) Power BI
2 2 (0.38%) Relational Database
2 2 (0.38%) Tableau
3 1 (0.19%) BusinessObjects
3 1 (0.19%) Crystal Reports
3 1 (0.19%) Db2
3 1 (0.19%) MariaDB
3 1 (0.19%) MySQL
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 25 (4.76%) JIRA
2 5 (0.95%) Git
3 3 (0.57%) Postman
3 3 (0.57%) SoapUI
4 2 (0.38%) eggPlant
4 2 (0.38%) JMeter
4 2 (0.38%) LoadRunner
4 2 (0.38%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.19%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.19%) GitLab
5 1 (0.19%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.19%) MSI
5 1 (0.19%) Robot Framework
5 1 (0.19%) Selenium
5 1 (0.19%) WebDriver
General
1 258 (49.14%) Social Skills
2 73 (13.90%) Analytical Skills
3 30 (5.71%) Finance
4 26 (4.95%) Manufacturing
5 19 (3.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 17 (3.24%) Public Sector
7 13 (2.48%) Organisational Skills
8 12 (2.29%) Retail
9 7 (1.33%) Banking
9 7 (1.33%) Marketing
10 6 (1.14%) Legal
11 4 (0.76%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (0.57%) Italian Language
12 3 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.38%) Front Office
13 2 (0.38%) Military
13 2 (0.38%) Telecoms
14 1 (0.19%) Back Office
14 1 (0.19%) Financial Institution
14 1 (0.19%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (0.76%) Middleware
1 4 (0.76%) Terraform
1 4 (0.76%) XML
2 3 (0.57%) Kafka
3 2 (0.38%) .NET
3 2 (0.38%) 802.1X
3 2 (0.38%) HTML
3 2 (0.38%) JSON
3 2 (0.38%) RabbitMQ
3 2 (0.38%) REST
3 2 (0.38%) SOAP
3 2 (0.38%) Web Services
3 2 (0.38%) XBRL
4 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Graph
4 1 (0.19%) ODBC
4 1 (0.19%) OpenID
4 1 (0.19%) PySpark
4 1 (0.19%) React
4 1 (0.19%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 79 (15.05%) Onboarding
2 47 (8.95%) Data Centre
3 29 (5.52%) Analytical Mindset
4 27 (5.14%) Driving Licence
5 24 (4.57%) Video Conferencing
6 14 (2.67%) Blackberry
7 12 (2.29%) Virtual Team
8 11 (2.10%) EPoS
9 9 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (1.52%) CMDB
11 7 (1.33%) Digital Signage
11 7 (1.33%) iPhone
11 7 (1.33%) Operational Technology
12 6 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
13 5 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
13 5 (0.95%) iPad
13 5 (0.95%) SCADA
14 4 (0.76%) CCTV
15 3 (0.57%) AI Agents
15 3 (0.57%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 339 (64.57%) Windows
2 160 (30.48%) Windows 10
3 48 (9.14%) Windows Server
4 37 (7.05%) Mac OS
5 33 (6.29%) Apple iOS
6 28 (5.33%) Android
7 14 (2.67%) Linux
8 4 (0.76%) Unix
8 4 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (0.57%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.38%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.19%) OS/2
11 1 (0.19%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (34.10%) Customer Service
2 152 (28.95%) Problem-Solving
3 112 (21.33%) ITIL
4 82 (15.62%) ITSM
5 50 (9.52%) Asset Management
6 49 (9.33%) Continuous Improvement
7 47 (8.95%) Break/Fix
8 45 (8.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 40 (7.62%) Service Delivery
10 38 (7.24%) Migration
11 37 (7.05%) Service Management
12 35 (6.67%) User Experience
13 24 (4.57%) Cybersecurity
14 20 (3.81%) Disaster Recovery
15 19 (3.62%) Inventory Management
16 17 (3.24%) Root Cause Analysis
17 16 (3.05%) Customer Experience
18 14 (2.67%) Change Management
18 14 (2.67%) Data Protection
19 13 (2.48%) Problem Management
Programming Languages
1 36 (6.86%) PowerShell
2 15 (2.86%) Python
3 14 (2.67%) SQL
4 7 (1.33%) Java
5 5 (0.95%) JavaScript
6 3 (0.57%) C#
7 2 (0.38%) VB.NET
8 1 (0.19%) Bicep
8 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 90 (17.14%) Security Cleared
2 80 (15.24%) SC Cleared
3 45 (8.57%) A+ Certification
4 38 (7.24%) Microsoft Certification
5 33 (6.29%) Network+ Certification
6 26 (4.95%) CCNA
6 26 (4.95%) Cisco Certification
6 26 (4.95%) MCSE
7 25 (4.76%) Degree
8 14 (2.67%) DV Cleared
9 13 (2.48%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 10 (1.90%) DBS Check
11 5 (0.95%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 3 (0.57%) BPSS Clearance
12 3 (0.57%) CEH
12 3 (0.57%) CISM
12 3 (0.57%) CISSP
13 2 (0.38%) Azure Certification
13 2 (0.38%) ISTQB
13 2 (0.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (6.29%) SLA
2 7 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
3 4 (0.76%) GDPR
4 3 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (0.57%) NCSC
4 3 (0.57%) PCI DSS
4 3 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 2 (0.38%) Data Quality
5 2 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
5 2 (0.38%) GxP
6 1 (0.19%) ITGC
6 1 (0.19%) NIST
6 1 (0.19%) QA
System Software
1 238 (45.33%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (2.86%) Hyper-V
4 4 (0.76%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.57%) Docker
5 3 (0.57%) Firmware
6 2 (0.38%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 96 (18.29%) Microsoft Intune
2 39 (7.43%) SCCM
3 9 (1.71%) WSUS
4 7 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (1.14%) Ansible
6 5 (0.95%) Jamf Pro
7 4 (0.76%) Kubernetes
8 2 (0.38%) Control-M
8 2 (0.38%) Dell DRAC
8 2 (0.38%) Failover Clustering
8 2 (0.38%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.38%) HP Fortify
8 2 (0.38%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.19%) Grafana
9 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 295 (56.19%) Microsoft
2 85 (16.19%) ServiceNow
3 35 (6.67%) Apple
4 31 (5.90%) VMware
5 30 (5.71%) Dell
6 24 (4.57%) Cisco
7 14 (2.67%) Lotus
8 11 (2.10%) Citrix
8 11 (2.10%) HP
9 9 (1.71%) Samsung
10 8 (1.52%) Palo Alto
10 8 (1.52%) Veeam
11 7 (1.33%) Fortinet
11 7 (1.33%) iManage
11 7 (1.33%) Remedy
12 5 (0.95%) IBM
13 4 (0.76%) Google
13 4 (0.76%) Sophos
14 3 (0.57%) Freshdesk
14 3 (0.57%) Meraki