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 20 September 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 265 220 260
Rank change year-on-year -45 +40 -13
Contract jobs requiring an IT Engineer 531 409 343
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.97% 1.24% 0.89%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.05% 1.36% 0.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 351 251 218
10th Percentile £150 £126 £126
25th Percentile £164 £150 £163
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £200 £188 £200
Median % change year-on-year +6.67% -6.25% -
75th Percentile £263 £244 £347
90th Percentile £400 £400 £579
UK excluding London median daily rate £200 £160 £200
% change year-on-year +25.00% -20.00% +8.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 111 58
10th Percentile £17.72 £18.51 £11.75
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 - £24.08
90th Percentile £35.22 - £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 50,359 29,970 35,820
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 91.09% 92.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,785 18,920 22,014
10th Percentile £325 £278 £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 £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,867 1,585 1,673
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.29 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.16 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +2.68%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -52 458 £200 +8.11% 405
UK excluding London -38 395 £200 +25.00% 363
London -61 126 £219 +3.06% 116
South East -45 90 £250 +56.25% 92
North of England -22 80 £200 +25.00% 78
East of England +3 60 £200 +14.29% 38
North West -15 54 £200 +25.00% 51
Midlands -57 52 £200 +25.00% 65
South West -47 51 £190 +18.75% 32
Scotland +1 46 £192 +1.46% 44
Work from Home -65 30 £310 -0.80% 114
East Midlands -16 28 £213 +66.67% 33
Yorkshire -31 25 £204 +27.50% 19
West Midlands -58 24 £185 -5.13% 32
Wales -5 14 £190 +18.75% 17
Northern Ireland +6 2 - - 5
North East -43 2 £175 +2.94% 8

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

For the 6 months to 20 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.

1 344 (64.78%) Windows
2 294 (55.37%) Microsoft
3 260 (48.96%) Microsoft 365
4 242 (45.57%) Active Directory
5 183 (34.46%) Customer Service
6 161 (30.32%) Windows 10
7 156 (29.38%) Problem-Solving
8 111 (20.90%) ITIL
9 97 (18.27%) Microsoft Intune
10 93 (17.51%) Security Cleared
11 87 (16.38%) Azure
12 84 (15.82%) SC Cleared
12 84 (15.82%) ServiceNow
13 80 (15.07%) ITSM
14 79 (14.88%) SharePoint
15 78 (14.69%) Entra ID
16 62 (11.68%) VPN
17 59 (11.11%) Microsoft Exchange
18 50 (9.42%) A+ Certification
19 49 (9.23%) Asset Management
19 49 (9.23%) Break/Fix
19 49 (9.23%) Continuous Improvement
19 49 (9.23%) Windows Server
20 47 (8.85%) DNS
21 45 (8.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
22 43 (8.10%) TCP/IP
23 42 (7.91%) Microsoft Certification
24 40 (7.53%) Service Delivery
25 39 (7.34%) DHCP
25 39 (7.34%) SCCM

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 79 (14.88%) SharePoint
2 59 (11.11%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (2.07%) HCL Notes
4 4 (0.75%) Confluence
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 32 (6.03%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.75%) 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 (0.75%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 260 (48.96%) Microsoft 365
2 87 (16.38%) Azure
3 78 (14.69%) Entra ID
4 34 (6.40%) OneDrive
5 14 (2.64%) AWS
6 12 (2.26%) SaaS
7 6 (1.13%) Mimecast
8 5 (0.94%) IaaS
8 5 (0.94%) Nutanix
9 4 (0.75%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (0.75%) Power Platform
10 3 (0.56%) Amazon EC2
10 3 (0.56%) Amazon S3
10 3 (0.56%) AWS Direct Connect
10 3 (0.56%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 3 (0.56%) Google Workspace
10 3 (0.56%) PaaS
10 3 (0.56%) PowerApps
11 2 (0.38%) Amazon EKS
11 2 (0.38%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 62 (11.68%) VPN
2 47 (8.85%) DNS
3 43 (8.10%) TCP/IP
4 39 (7.34%) DHCP
5 36 (6.78%) SAN
6 27 (5.08%) LAN
7 25 (4.71%) Wi-Fi
8 24 (4.52%) WAN
9 22 (4.14%) Firewall
10 19 (3.58%) VLAN
11 10 (1.88%) Internet
11 10 (1.88%) Wireless
12 9 (1.69%) Network Security
13 6 (1.13%) Skype
14 5 (0.94%) IPv4
14 5 (0.94%) IPv6
14 5 (0.94%) WLAN
15 4 (0.75%) BGP
15 4 (0.75%) OSPF
15 4 (0.75%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.69%) 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 27 (5.08%) JIRA
2 5 (0.94%) Git
3 3 (0.56%) Postman
3 3 (0.56%) 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
1 260 (48.96%) Social Skills
2 77 (14.50%) Analytical Skills
3 29 (5.46%) Finance
4 25 (4.71%) Manufacturing
5 19 (3.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 16 (3.01%) Public Sector
7 13 (2.45%) Organisational Skills
8 12 (2.26%) Retail
9 7 (1.32%) Marketing
10 6 (1.13%) Banking
10 6 (1.13%) Legal
11 5 (0.94%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (0.56%) Italian Language
12 3 (0.56%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.38%) Military
13 2 (0.38%) Telecoms
14 1 (0.19%) Advertising
14 1 (0.19%) Financial Institution
14 1 (0.19%) Law
14 1 (0.19%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (0.94%) Terraform
2 4 (0.75%) Middleware
2 4 (0.75%) XML
3 3 (0.56%) Kafka
4 2 (0.38%) .NET
4 2 (0.38%) 802.1X
4 2 (0.38%) HTML
4 2 (0.38%) JSON
4 2 (0.38%) RabbitMQ
4 2 (0.38%) REST
4 2 (0.38%) SOAP
4 2 (0.38%) Web Services
4 2 (0.38%) XBRL
5 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Graph
5 1 (0.19%) ODBC
5 1 (0.19%) OpenID
5 1 (0.19%) PySpark
5 1 (0.19%) React
5 1 (0.19%) Redfish
5 1 (0.19%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 76 (14.31%) Onboarding
2 51 (9.60%) Data Centre
3 33 (6.21%) Analytical Mindset
4 26 (4.90%) Driving Licence
5 23 (4.33%) Video Conferencing
6 14 (2.64%) Blackberry
7 13 (2.45%) Virtual Team
8 12 (2.26%) EPoS
9 10 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (1.51%) CMDB
11 7 (1.32%) Digital Signage
11 7 (1.32%) iPhone
11 7 (1.32%) Operational Technology
12 6 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
12 6 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
13 5 (0.94%) iPad
13 5 (0.94%) SCADA
14 4 (0.75%) CCTV
15 3 (0.56%) AI Agents
15 3 (0.56%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 344 (64.78%) Windows
2 161 (30.32%) Windows 10
3 49 (9.23%) Windows Server
4 36 (6.78%) Mac OS
5 33 (6.21%) Apple iOS
6 28 (5.27%) Android
7 14 (2.64%) Linux
8 4 (0.75%) Unix
8 4 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (0.56%) 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
1 183 (34.46%) Customer Service
2 156 (29.38%) Problem-Solving
3 111 (20.90%) ITIL
4 80 (15.07%) ITSM
5 49 (9.23%) Asset Management
5 49 (9.23%) Break/Fix
5 49 (9.23%) Continuous Improvement
6 45 (8.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 40 (7.53%) Service Delivery
8 36 (6.78%) Migration
8 36 (6.78%) Service Management
9 35 (6.59%) User Experience
10 22 (4.14%) Cybersecurity
11 21 (3.95%) Disaster Recovery
11 21 (3.95%) Inventory Management
12 15 (2.82%) Change Management
12 15 (2.82%) Customer Experience
12 15 (2.82%) Root Cause Analysis
13 14 (2.64%) Data Protection
14 13 (2.45%) Process Improvement
Programming Languages
1 38 (7.16%) PowerShell
2 15 (2.82%) SQL
3 14 (2.64%) Python
4 7 (1.32%) Java
5 5 (0.94%) JavaScript
6 4 (0.75%) C#
7 2 (0.38%) VB.NET
8 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 93 (17.51%) Security Cleared
2 84 (15.82%) SC Cleared
3 50 (9.42%) A+ Certification
4 42 (7.91%) Microsoft Certification
5 38 (7.16%) Network+ Certification
6 30 (5.65%) CCNA
6 30 (5.65%) Cisco Certification
6 30 (5.65%) MCSE
7 25 (4.71%) Degree
8 13 (2.45%) DV Cleared
8 13 (2.45%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 10 (1.88%) DBS Check
10 5 (0.94%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (0.56%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (0.56%) CEH
11 3 (0.56%) CISM
11 3 (0.56%) CISSP
12 2 (0.38%) Azure Certification
12 2 (0.38%) ISTQB
12 2 (0.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (6.03%) SLA
2 7 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
3 5 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (0.75%) GDPR
5 3 (0.56%) NCSC
5 3 (0.56%) NIST
5 3 (0.56%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 2 (0.38%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
6 2 (0.38%) GxP
7 1 (0.19%) ITGC
7 1 (0.19%) QA
System Software
1 242 (45.57%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (3.20%) Hyper-V
4 4 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.56%) Docker
5 3 (0.56%) Firmware
5 3 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.38%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 97 (18.27%) Microsoft Intune
2 39 (7.34%) SCCM
3 10 (1.88%) WSUS
4 8 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (1.32%) Ansible
6 5 (0.94%) Jamf Pro
7 4 (0.75%) Kubernetes
8 3 (0.56%) Dell DRAC
9 2 (0.38%) Control-M
9 2 (0.38%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.38%) HP Fortify
9 2 (0.38%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.19%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.19%) Grafana
10 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 294 (55.37%) Microsoft
2 84 (15.82%) ServiceNow
3 35 (6.59%) Apple
4 34 (6.40%) Dell
5 31 (5.84%) VMware
6 22 (4.14%) Cisco
7 14 (2.64%) Lotus
8 11 (2.07%) Citrix
9 10 (1.88%) HP
10 9 (1.69%) Samsung
11 8 (1.51%) Veeam
12 7 (1.32%) iManage
12 7 (1.32%) Palo Alto
12 7 (1.32%) Remedy
13 6 (1.13%) Fortinet
14 5 (0.94%) IBM
15 4 (0.75%) Google
15 4 (0.75%) Sophos
16 3 (0.56%) Oracle
16 3 (0.56%) SAP