Data Centre Contract Job Trends in England

Data Center
UK > England

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Data Centre in contract job vacancies in England. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Data Centre over the 6 months leading up to 21 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 127 102
Rank change year-on-year -13 -25 +1
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 710 541 862
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.03% 2.09% 2.27%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.97% 6.26% 7.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 461 325 601
10th Percentile £263 £349 £295
25th Percentile £380 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.08% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £627
90th Percentile £675 £720 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -7.32% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 12 38
10th Percentile £20.27 - £21.25
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.18 £22.13
Median hourly rate £26.50 £24.66 £31.31
Median % change year-on-year +7.46% -21.23% -48.25%
75th Percentile £72.00 £25.81 £40.94
90th Percentile £74.26 £56.93 £70.13
UK median hourly rate £26.14 £24.18 £25.12
% change year-on-year +8.09% -3.72% -54.83%

All Generic Skills
England

Data Centre falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 11,890 8,645 11,753
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.03% 33.44% 30.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,554 5,326 7,698
10th Percentile £280 £275 £256
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% -1.82% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £668 £660
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 590 260 761
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.13 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.83 £24.18 £17.00
Median hourly rate £33.00 £36.25 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.97% +11.54% +44.44%
75th Percentile £65.00 £66.13 £58.75
90th Percentile £76.80 £83.22 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.75 £32.91 £32.50
% change year-on-year -6.55% +1.25% +44.54%

Data Centre
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Centre relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Data Centre job vacancy trend in England

Data Centre
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Centre.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Centre

Data Centre
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Centre in England over the 6 months to 21 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Centre in England

Data Centre
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Centre.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Data Centre

Data Centre
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Centre in England over the 6 months to 21 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Centre in England

Data Centre
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Centre within the England region over the 6 months to 21 February 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
London -24 255 £515 -0.96% 145
North of England +6 167 £474 -4.72% 60
South East +8 126 £445 - 109
North West +12 100 £500 - 31
Midlands -22 73 £455 -22.88% 34
West Midlands -28 58 £470 -20.34% 21
Yorkshire -37 53 £438 +4.29% 26
South West -36 33 £550 -3.08% 22
East of England -15 29 £478 +13.14% 28
North East -6 17 £175 - 3
East Midlands -17 15 £158 -70.70% 13
Data Centre
UK

Data Centre
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 27 (3.80%) SharePoint
2 19 (2.68%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (2.39%) Confluence
4 7 (0.99%) OpenStack
5 6 (0.85%) CICS
6 4 (0.56%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.42%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.42%) GeoServer
7 3 (0.42%) HCL Notes
7 3 (0.42%) nginx
7 3 (0.42%) Smallworld
8 2 (0.28%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.14%) Apache
9 1 (0.14%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 49 (6.90%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (3.66%) MS Visio
3 24 (3.38%) Microsoft Excel
4 19 (2.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (1.97%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.42%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.14%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 5 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
3 3 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.28%) DELMIA
4 2 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.14%) Epicor iScala
5 1 (0.14%) Maximo
5 1 (0.14%) Primavera
5 1 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 117 (16.48%) Azure
2 104 (14.65%) AWS
3 61 (8.59%) Microsoft 365
4 34 (4.79%) GCP
5 17 (2.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 16 (2.25%) Power Platform
6 16 (2.25%) SaaS
7 14 (1.97%) OpenShift
8 12 (1.69%) Entra ID
9 11 (1.55%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 11 (1.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 11 (1.55%) IaaS
9 11 (1.55%) PaaS
10 9 (1.27%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (1.13%) Amazon S3
11 8 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (1.13%) GitHub
12 7 (0.99%) AWS CloudTrail
12 7 (0.99%) AWS Direct Connect
12 7 (0.99%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 203 (28.59%) Firewall
2 136 (19.15%) WAN
3 99 (13.94%) BGP
4 88 (12.39%) LAN
5 76 (10.70%) VPN
6 75 (10.56%) Network Security
7 73 (10.28%) Wireless
8 70 (9.86%) OSPF
9 54 (7.61%) DNS
10 48 (6.76%) VLAN
11 46 (6.48%) Structured Cabling
12 43 (6.06%) VXLAN
13 40 (5.63%) DHCP
14 37 (5.21%) SAN
14 37 (5.21%) Wi-Fi
15 36 (5.07%) Cisco ISE
16 31 (4.37%) IPsec
17 27 (3.80%) Ethernet VPN
18 25 (3.52%) MPLS
18 25 (3.52%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (1.97%) Power BI
2 8 (1.13%) DataStage
2 8 (1.13%) Relational Database
3 6 (0.85%) RDBMS
3 6 (0.85%) SQL Server
4 5 (0.70%) GIS
5 4 (0.56%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.56%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.56%) Power Query
5 4 (0.56%) PowerPivot
6 3 (0.42%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (0.42%) InfluxDB
6 3 (0.42%) QGIS
7 2 (0.28%) Big Data
7 2 (0.28%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.28%) Data Vault
7 2 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.28%) Metadata
7 2 (0.28%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 27 (3.80%) Git
2 21 (2.96%) JIRA
3 17 (2.39%) Jenkins
4 15 (2.11%) GitLab
5 9 (1.27%) Maven
6 5 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (0.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 2 (0.28%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.28%) Eclipse
8 2 (0.28%) ER Studio
8 2 (0.28%) ERwin
8 2 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (0.28%) ScriptRunner
8 2 (0.28%) Subversion
9 1 (0.14%) AppScan
9 1 (0.14%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.14%) Metasploit
General
1 196 (27.61%) Social Skills
2 122 (17.18%) Finance
3 88 (12.39%) Public Sector
4 84 (11.83%) Analytical Skills
5 57 (8.03%) Documentation Skills
6 51 (7.18%) Telecoms
7 40 (5.63%) Banking
7 40 (5.63%) Manufacturing
8 29 (4.08%) Marketing
9 24 (3.38%) Electronics
10 18 (2.54%) Presentation Skills
11 16 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 16 (2.25%) Legal
12 15 (2.11%) Influencing Skills
13 13 (1.83%) Retail
14 12 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
15 11 (1.55%) Investment Banking
16 8 (1.13%) Military
17 7 (0.99%) Law
18 6 (0.85%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 129 (18.17%) Network Engineer
2 96 (13.52%) Architect
3 69 (9.72%) Project Manager
4 59 (8.31%) Analyst
5 50 (7.04%) Senior
6 41 (5.77%) Data Centre Engineer
7 37 (5.21%) Network Architect
8 34 (4.79%) Lead
9 33 (4.65%) Data Centre Manager
10 32 (4.51%) IT Support
10 32 (4.51%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 29 (4.08%) Cisco Engineer
12 27 (3.80%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 26 (3.66%) Security Engineer
14 25 (3.52%) Desktop Support
14 25 (3.52%) Infrastructure Manager
15 24 (3.38%) Support Engineer
16 23 (3.24%) 2nd Line Support
16 23 (3.24%) Consultant
16 23 (3.24%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (3.94%) 802.1X
2 22 (3.10%) Middleware
3 7 (0.99%) LDAP
4 6 (0.85%) RFC 2544
4 6 (0.85%) Spring
5 4 (0.56%) ADO
5 4 (0.56%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.56%) Spring Boot
5 4 (0.56%) VML
6 2 (0.28%) AWS CDK
6 2 (0.28%) CSS
6 2 (0.28%) EJB
6 2 (0.28%) HTML
6 2 (0.28%) Java EE
6 2 (0.28%) Kafka
6 2 (0.28%) NETCONF
6 2 (0.28%) OpenConfig
6 2 (0.28%) RESTCONF
6 2 (0.28%) XML
6 2 (0.28%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 41 (5.77%) Hybrid Cloud
2 18 (2.54%) Analytical Mindset
2 18 (2.54%) Public Cloud
3 17 (2.39%) Onboarding
3 17 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
4 16 (2.25%) Driving Licence
4 16 (2.25%) PKI
5 15 (2.11%) Clustering
6 12 (1.69%) Cloud Native
6 12 (1.69%) Management Information System
6 12 (1.69%) Replication
7 11 (1.55%) Fibre Optics
8 10 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (1.41%) Mainframe
9 9 (1.27%) Private Cloud
10 7 (0.99%) BYOD
10 7 (0.99%) CMDB
10 7 (0.99%) SCADA
11 6 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
11 6 (0.85%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 91 (12.82%) Windows
2 79 (11.13%) Linux
3 38 (5.35%) Windows Server
4 32 (4.51%) Android
4 32 (4.51%) Mac OS
5 27 (3.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (1.97%) Unix
7 11 (1.55%) CentOS
8 8 (1.13%) Solaris
9 6 (0.85%) AIX
9 6 (0.85%) VMS
10 5 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.42%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.14%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.14%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (17.18%) Migration
2 113 (15.92%) Problem-Solving
3 90 (12.68%) Stakeholder Management
4 59 (8.31%) ITIL
5 58 (8.17%) Project Management
6 52 (7.32%) Project Delivery
7 51 (7.18%) Agile
8 49 (6.90%) Continuous Improvement
9 48 (6.76%) Change Management
10 45 (6.34%) CI/CD
10 45 (6.34%) High Availability
10 45 (6.34%) Roadmaps
11 44 (6.20%) Load Balancing
11 44 (6.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 40 (5.63%) Change Control
13 39 (5.49%) Customer Service
13 39 (5.49%) Infrastructure as Code
13 39 (5.49%) Network Design
14 38 (5.35%) Cybersecurity
15 37 (5.21%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 60 (8.45%) Python
2 46 (6.48%) PowerShell
3 26 (3.66%) SQL
4 22 (3.10%) Bash
5 20 (2.82%) Java
6 14 (1.97%) Perl
7 12 (1.69%) Shell Script
8 9 (1.27%) Lisp
9 7 (0.99%) MATLAB
10 6 (0.85%) COBOL
11 5 (0.70%) Bicep
11 5 (0.70%) VBA
12 4 (0.56%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.28%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.14%) C#
14 1 (0.14%) C++
14 1 (0.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.14%) Korn
14 1 (0.14%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 265 (37.32%) Security Cleared
2 209 (29.44%) SC Cleared
3 126 (17.75%) Cisco Certification
4 96 (13.52%) CCNP
5 61 (8.59%) Degree
6 52 (7.32%) DV Cleared
7 51 (7.18%) CCNA
8 22 (3.10%) CCIE
9 21 (2.96%) AWS Certification
10 20 (2.82%) PMP
11 18 (2.54%) PMI Certification
12 13 (1.83%) JNCIS
12 13 (1.83%) Microsoft Certification
12 13 (1.83%) Network+ Certification
13 12 (1.69%) A+ Certification
13 12 (1.69%) CISSP
13 12 (1.69%) MCSE
14 11 (1.55%) JNCIP
15 10 (1.41%) Azure Certification
16 9 (1.27%) JNCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (3.52%) PMO
2 21 (2.96%) SLA
3 19 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (2.68%) NIST
4 18 (2.54%) PCI DSS
5 15 (2.11%) GDPR
6 14 (1.97%) QA
7 9 (1.27%) Data Quality
8 8 (1.13%) NCSC
9 5 (0.70%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.56%) GRC
11 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.28%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.14%) COBIT
13 1 (0.14%) ISO 22301
13 1 (0.14%) RMADS
13 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 65 (9.15%) VMware Infrastructure
2 51 (7.18%) Active Directory
3 36 (5.07%) VMware NSX
4 24 (3.38%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (2.54%) Hyper-V
6 15 (2.11%) vSphere
7 12 (1.69%) Docker
7 12 (1.69%) KVM
8 11 (1.55%) Firmware
9 9 (1.27%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.28%) Ceph
10 2 (0.28%) Lustre
10 2 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.28%) SRDF
10 2 (0.28%) vCloud
11 1 (0.14%) HDFS
11 1 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.14%) NFS
11 1 (0.14%) RHEV
11 1 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 69 (9.72%) Ansible
2 67 (9.44%) Terraform
3 41 (5.77%) FortiGate
4 26 (3.66%) Kubernetes
5 21 (2.96%) SCCM
6 18 (2.54%) Grafana
7 10 (1.41%) Microsoft Intune
7 10 (1.41%) Prometheus
8 8 (1.13%) SCOM
9 7 (0.99%) CASB
9 7 (0.99%) Check_MK
9 7 (0.99%) Podman
9 7 (0.99%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (0.85%) SCOrch
10 6 (0.85%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.56%) Nagios
11 4 (0.56%) PowerCLI
11 4 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.42%) Endace
Vendors
1 237 (33.38%) Cisco
2 97 (13.66%) Palo Alto
3 90 (12.68%) VMware
4 72 (10.14%) Microsoft
5 68 (9.58%) Dell
6 63 (8.87%) Juniper
7 54 (7.61%) F5
8 44 (6.20%) CheckPoint
9 43 (6.06%) HP
10 37 (5.21%) Aruba
10 37 (5.21%) ServiceNow
11 33 (4.65%) Meraki
12 32 (4.51%) Apple
13 29 (4.08%) Fortinet
14 28 (3.94%) SAP
15 25 (3.52%) SolarWinds
16 24 (3.38%) Citrix
17 23 (3.24%) Oracle
18 19 (2.68%) Red Hat
18 19 (2.68%) Splunk