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 4 October 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 278 216 261
Rank change year-on-year -62 +45 -20
Contract jobs requiring an IT Engineer 522 404 345
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.96% 1.22% 0.91%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.04% 1.34% 0.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 348 243 223
10th Percentile £155 £126 £126
25th Percentile £164 £150 £160
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £200 £188 £200
Median % change year-on-year +6.67% -6.25% -
75th Percentile £263 £244 £300
90th Percentile £400 £388 £530
UK excluding London median daily rate £200 £170 £188
% change year-on-year +17.65% -9.33% -1.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 117 53
10th Percentile £17.72 £18.51 £12.00
25th Percentile £18.46 £18.87 £15.22
Median hourly rate £22.00 £25.15 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.52% +19.76% +18.51%
75th Percentile £25.75 - £24.18
90th Percentile £26.25 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £25.15 £18.70
% change year-on-year -12.52% +34.49% +5.53%

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 50,330 30,144 35,336
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.12% 90.83% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,591 19,030 21,429
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 £636 £623 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £741
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,999 1,630 1,541
10th Percentile £14.42 £13.75 £14.99
25th Percentile £19.77 £17.30 £20.75
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £42.91
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.39% -3.57%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.19 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.28 £74.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.74 £25.08 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.44% -41.69% -2.82%

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 4 October 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 4 October 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 4 October 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 -63 448 £200 +8.11% 613
UK excluding London -37 382 £200 +17.65% 489
London -60 131 £219 +9.50% 206
South East -52 87 £250 +34.23% 131
North of England -26 75 £200 +25.00% 91
East of England +7 61 £200 +14.29% 43
North West -11 54 £200 +25.00% 50
Midlands -52 49 £200 +23.08% 86
Scotland +1 47 £210 +10.53% 66
South West -49 47 £213 +26.87% 45
Work from Home -70 33 £310 -0.80% 204
East Midlands -9 26 £213 +66.67% 50
West Midlands -56 23 £185 -7.50% 35
Yorkshire -31 20 £200 +25.00% 32
Wales -5 13 £190 +11.76% 18
Northern Ireland +6 3 - - 13
North East -39 2 £175 +2.94% 10

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

For the 6 months to 4 October 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.

1 337 (64.56%) Windows
2 292 (55.94%) Microsoft
3 257 (49.23%) Microsoft 365
4 236 (45.21%) Active Directory
5 172 (32.95%) Customer Service
6 159 (30.46%) Windows 10
7 148 (28.35%) Problem-Solving
8 110 (21.07%) ITIL
9 94 (18.01%) Microsoft Intune
10 90 (17.24%) Azure
10 90 (17.24%) Security Cleared
11 85 (16.28%) ServiceNow
12 82 (15.71%) ITSM
13 80 (15.33%) Entra ID
13 80 (15.33%) SharePoint
14 79 (15.13%) SC Cleared
15 67 (12.84%) VPN
16 58 (11.11%) Microsoft Exchange
17 51 (9.77%) Asset Management
18 49 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
19 48 (9.20%) Windows Server
20 47 (9.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
21 46 (8.81%) DNS
21 46 (8.81%) TCP/IP
22 43 (8.24%) Break/Fix
23 42 (8.05%) A+ Certification
24 40 (7.66%) Service Delivery
25 39 (7.47%) Service Management
26 38 (7.28%) DHCP
27 37 (7.09%) Apple

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 80 (15.33%) SharePoint
2 58 (11.11%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (2.11%) HCL Notes
4 4 (0.77%) Confluence
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 35 (6.70%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.96%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.38%) Acrobat
4 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.77%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 257 (49.23%) Microsoft 365
2 90 (17.24%) Azure
3 80 (15.33%) Entra ID
4 35 (6.70%) OneDrive
5 16 (3.07%) AWS
6 12 (2.30%) SaaS
7 6 (1.15%) Mimecast
8 5 (0.96%) AWS Direct Connect
8 5 (0.96%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 5 (0.96%) IaaS
8 5 (0.96%) Nutanix
9 4 (0.77%) 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 EKS
11 2 (0.38%) Azure Sentinel
11 2 (0.38%) GitHub
11 2 (0.38%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 67 (12.84%) VPN
2 46 (8.81%) DNS
2 46 (8.81%) TCP/IP
3 38 (7.28%) DHCP
4 29 (5.56%) LAN
5 28 (5.36%) SAN
6 27 (5.17%) Wi-Fi
7 26 (4.98%) WAN
8 25 (4.79%) Firewall
9 15 (2.87%) VLAN
10 10 (1.92%) Wireless
11 9 (1.72%) Internet
12 7 (1.34%) Network Security
13 5 (0.96%) BGP
13 5 (0.96%) MPLS
13 5 (0.96%) OSPF
13 5 (0.96%) SD-WAN
13 5 (0.96%) Skype
13 5 (0.96%) WLAN
14 4 (0.77%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.34%) 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 (4.79%) JIRA
2 5 (0.96%) 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
1 254 (48.66%) Social Skills
2 68 (13.03%) Analytical Skills
3 31 (5.94%) Finance
4 26 (4.98%) Manufacturing
5 18 (3.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 18 (3.45%) Public Sector
5 18 (3.45%) Retail
6 13 (2.49%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (1.34%) Banking
7 7 (1.34%) Marketing
8 6 (1.15%) Legal
9 4 (0.77%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (0.57%) Italian Language
10 3 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.38%) Front Office
11 2 (0.38%) Military
11 2 (0.38%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.19%) Advertising
12 1 (0.19%) Back Office
12 1 (0.19%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (0.77%) Middleware
1 4 (0.77%) Terraform
1 4 (0.77%) 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 78 (14.94%) Onboarding
2 43 (8.24%) Data Centre
3 36 (6.90%) Driving Licence
4 25 (4.79%) Analytical Mindset
4 25 (4.79%) Video Conferencing
5 16 (3.07%) EPoS
6 14 (2.68%) Blackberry
7 11 (2.11%) Virtual Team
8 9 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (1.53%) CMDB
10 7 (1.34%) Digital Signage
10 7 (1.34%) iPhone
11 6 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
11 6 (1.15%) Operational Technology
12 5 (0.96%) Hybrid Cloud
12 5 (0.96%) iPad
12 5 (0.96%) SCADA
13 4 (0.77%) CCTV
14 3 (0.57%) Cyber Defence
14 3 (0.57%) Fat Client
Operating Systems
1 337 (64.56%) Windows
2 159 (30.46%) Windows 10
3 48 (9.20%) Windows Server
4 37 (7.09%) Mac OS
5 33 (6.32%) Apple iOS
6 27 (5.17%) Android
7 14 (2.68%) Linux
8 4 (0.77%) Unix
8 4 (0.77%) 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
1 172 (32.95%) Customer Service
2 148 (28.35%) Problem-Solving
3 110 (21.07%) ITIL
4 82 (15.71%) ITSM
5 51 (9.77%) Asset Management
6 49 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
7 47 (9.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 43 (8.24%) Break/Fix
9 40 (7.66%) Service Delivery
10 39 (7.47%) Service Management
11 36 (6.90%) Migration
12 34 (6.51%) User Experience
13 26 (4.98%) Cybersecurity
14 21 (4.02%) Root Cause Analysis
15 19 (3.64%) Disaster Recovery
15 19 (3.64%) Inventory Management
16 16 (3.07%) Customer Experience
17 15 (2.87%) Problem Management
18 14 (2.68%) Stakeholder Management
18 14 (2.68%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 36 (6.90%) PowerShell
2 16 (3.07%) Python
3 14 (2.68%) SQL
4 7 (1.34%) Java
5 5 (0.96%) 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 (17.24%) Security Cleared
2 79 (15.13%) SC Cleared
3 42 (8.05%) A+ Certification
4 35 (6.70%) Microsoft Certification
5 30 (5.75%) Network+ Certification
6 25 (4.79%) Degree
7 23 (4.41%) CCNA
7 23 (4.41%) Cisco Certification
7 23 (4.41%) MCSE
8 15 (2.87%) DV Cleared
9 13 (2.49%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 10 (1.92%) DBS Check
11 5 (0.96%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 4 (0.77%) BPSS Clearance
13 3 (0.57%) CEH
13 3 (0.57%) CISM
13 3 (0.57%) CISSP
14 2 (0.38%) Azure Certification
14 2 (0.38%) ISTQB
14 2 (0.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (6.51%) SLA
2 7 (1.34%) Cyber Essentials
3 4 (0.77%) GDPR
3 4 (0.77%) NCSC
4 3 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
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
6 1 (0.19%) GxP
6 1 (0.19%) ITGC
6 1 (0.19%) NIST
6 1 (0.19%) QA
System Software
1 236 (45.21%) Active Directory
2 23 (4.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 15 (2.87%) Hyper-V
4 4 (0.77%) Firmware
4 4 (0.77%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.57%) Docker
6 2 (0.38%) vSphere
7 1 (0.19%) KVM
Systems Management
1 94 (18.01%) Microsoft Intune
2 37 (7.09%) SCCM
3 8 (1.53%) WSUS
4 7 (1.34%) Ansible
4 7 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (0.96%) Jamf Pro
6 4 (0.77%) Kubernetes
7 3 (0.57%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.38%) Control-M
8 2 (0.38%) Dell DRAC
8 2 (0.38%) Failover Clustering
8 2 (0.38%) HP Fortify
8 2 (0.38%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.19%) Grafana
9 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 292 (55.94%) Microsoft
2 85 (16.28%) ServiceNow
3 37 (7.09%) Apple
4 32 (6.13%) VMware
5 27 (5.17%) Dell
6 26 (4.98%) Cisco
7 14 (2.68%) Lotus
8 12 (2.30%) HP
9 10 (1.92%) Citrix
10 9 (1.72%) Palo Alto
10 9 (1.72%) Samsung
11 8 (1.53%) Fortinet
11 8 (1.53%) Veeam
12 7 (1.34%) iManage
12 7 (1.34%) Remedy
13 5 (0.96%) IBM
13 5 (0.96%) Meraki
14 4 (0.77%) Google
14 4 (0.77%) Sophos
15 3 (0.57%) Freshdesk