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 3 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 133 103
Rank change year-on-year +6 -30 -4
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 812 503 816
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.12% 2.07% 2.17%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.39% 6.09% 7.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 516 337 578
10th Percentile £312 £337 £295
25th Percentile £405 £425 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.62% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £636
90th Percentile £713 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £481 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -6.10% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 14 36
10th Percentile £16.01 - £21.25
25th Percentile £18.07 £24.18 £22.06
Median hourly rate £22.27 £24.66 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -9.71% -0.84% +14.77%
75th Percentile £72.00 £40.13 £40.00
90th Percentile £76.36 £58.63 £41.25
UK median hourly rate £23.71 £24.66 £24.87
% change year-on-year -3.86% -0.84% +14.77%

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 12,705 8,258 11,563
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.13% 34.06% 30.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,078 5,419 7,560
10th Percentile £300 £300 £263
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £543 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.53% -1.36% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £669 £672
90th Percentile £748 £776 £788
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £536
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.05% -2.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 632 310 799
10th Percentile £15.79 £16.67 £12.36
25th Percentile £19.96 £22.33 £15.16
Median hourly rate £45.23 £34.25 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +32.06% +24.55% +22.22%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.49 £85.00 £66.35
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year +38.46% +18.18% +22.30%

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 3 April 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 3 April 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 3 April 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 -2 299 £530 +0.95% 184
North of England +28 186 £460 +8.12% 53
South East +3 163 £475 -5.00% 115
North West +14 97 £500 - 28
Yorkshire -13 74 £365 -5.93% 17
Midlands -32 64 £474 -24.16% 32
West Midlands -40 52 £474 -24.16% 14
South West -41 37 £525 -4.20% 31
East of England -26 34 £478 +13.14% 45
North East +2 17 £175 +59.09% 8
East Midlands -23 11 £201 -59.75% 18
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 18 (2.22%) SharePoint
2 16 (1.97%) Confluence
3 15 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (1.11%) CICS
5 4 (0.49%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.49%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.37%) nginx
7 2 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.25%) HCL Notes
7 2 (0.25%) Tomcat
Applications
1 32 (3.94%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (2.71%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (2.22%) MS Visio
4 16 (1.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (1.48%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.37%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.74%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.25%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.25%) Primavera
4 1 (0.12%) Maximo
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 142 (17.49%) Azure
2 121 (14.90%) AWS
3 47 (5.79%) Microsoft 365
4 45 (5.54%) GCP
5 22 (2.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 17 (2.09%) SaaS
7 15 (1.85%) IaaS
8 14 (1.72%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 14 (1.72%) Entra ID
9 13 (1.60%) Power Platform
10 11 (1.35%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 11 (1.35%) PaaS
11 10 (1.23%) GitHub
12 9 (1.11%) Azure DevOps
12 9 (1.11%) OpenShift
13 8 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (0.99%) AWS Direct Connect
14 7 (0.86%) Amazon S3
14 7 (0.86%) AWS CloudTrail
14 7 (0.86%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 238 (29.31%) Firewall
2 155 (19.09%) WAN
3 135 (16.63%) BGP
4 99 (12.19%) OSPF
5 93 (11.45%) LAN
6 87 (10.71%) VPN
7 86 (10.59%) Network Security
8 70 (8.62%) Structured Cabling
9 65 (8.00%) DNS
9 65 (8.00%) VXLAN
10 61 (7.51%) VLAN
11 60 (7.39%) SAN
12 52 (6.40%) Wireless
13 51 (6.28%) DHCP
14 42 (5.17%) Ethernet VPN
15 37 (4.56%) Cisco ISE
16 33 (4.06%) SD-WAN
17 31 (3.82%) TCP/IP
17 31 (3.82%) Wi-Fi
18 29 (3.57%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.11%) DataStage
2 8 (0.99%) Power BI
3 5 (0.62%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.49%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.49%) Power Query
4 4 (0.49%) PowerPivot
4 4 (0.49%) SAP Data Services
4 4 (0.49%) SQL Server
5 3 (0.37%) Big Data
5 3 (0.37%) InfluxDB
6 2 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.25%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.25%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.25%) GIS
6 2 (0.25%) RDBMS
6 2 (0.25%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.12%) DB2
7 1 (0.12%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.12%) MS Access
7 1 (0.12%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 34 (4.19%) Git
2 31 (3.82%) JIRA
3 18 (2.22%) Jenkins
4 17 (2.09%) GitLab
5 9 (1.11%) Maven
6 4 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.49%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.49%) Subversion
7 2 (0.25%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
8 1 (0.12%) AppScan
8 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.12%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.12%) Rational DOORS
General
1 217 (26.72%) Social Skills
2 127 (15.64%) Finance
3 96 (11.82%) Analytical Skills
4 77 (9.48%) Public Sector
5 53 (6.53%) Documentation Skills
6 40 (4.93%) Banking
7 39 (4.80%) Telecoms
8 30 (3.69%) Manufacturing
9 23 (2.83%) Legal
10 21 (2.59%) Marketing
11 20 (2.46%) Retail
12 18 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
13 15 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 15 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
14 13 (1.60%) Electronics
15 11 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
16 9 (1.11%) Investment Banking
17 8 (0.99%) Law
17 8 (0.99%) Military
18 7 (0.86%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 144 (17.73%) Network Engineer
2 118 (14.53%) Architect
3 73 (8.99%) Senior
4 72 (8.87%) Project Manager
5 61 (7.51%) Data Centre Engineer
6 44 (5.42%) Data Centre Manager
7 42 (5.17%) Network Architect
8 41 (5.05%) Analyst
9 34 (4.19%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 31 (3.82%) Lead
11 30 (3.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 30 (3.69%) Infrastructure Manager
12 29 (3.57%) IT Engineer
12 29 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
13 27 (3.33%) Cisco Engineer
14 26 (3.20%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 26 (3.20%) IT Support
15 25 (3.08%) Field Engineer
16 24 (2.96%) Field Service Engineer
16 24 (2.96%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (4.06%) 802.1X
2 28 (3.45%) Middleware
3 9 (1.11%) LDAP
4 6 (0.74%) Spring
5 5 (0.62%) Jinja
5 5 (0.62%) NETCONF
5 5 (0.62%) Redfish
6 4 (0.49%) ADO
6 4 (0.49%) ARM Templates
6 4 (0.49%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (0.49%) OpenConfig
6 4 (0.49%) RESTCONF
6 4 (0.49%) Spring Boot
6 4 (0.49%) VML
6 4 (0.49%) XML
6 4 (0.49%) YANG
7 3 (0.37%) Kafka
7 3 (0.37%) REST
7 3 (0.37%) RFC 2544
8 2 (0.25%) OpenLayers
Miscellaneous
1 42 (5.17%) Hybrid Cloud
2 30 (3.69%) Analytical Mindset
3 27 (3.33%) Clustering
4 26 (3.20%) PKI
5 21 (2.59%) Driving Licence
6 19 (2.34%) Fibre Optics
6 19 (2.34%) Onboarding
7 16 (1.97%) Replication
7 16 (1.97%) Self-Motivation
8 14 (1.72%) Management Information System
8 14 (1.72%) Public Cloud
9 13 (1.60%) Cloud Native
10 12 (1.48%) CMDB
10 12 (1.48%) Mainframe
10 12 (1.48%) Private Cloud
11 11 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
12 9 (1.11%) BYOD
12 9 (1.11%) Enterprise Storage
12 9 (1.11%) VSAM
13 7 (0.86%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 103 (12.68%) Windows
2 86 (10.59%) Linux
3 38 (4.68%) Windows Server
4 26 (3.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 18 (2.22%) Android
5 18 (2.22%) Mac OS
6 15 (1.85%) Unix
7 14 (1.72%) AIX
8 11 (1.35%) CentOS
8 11 (1.35%) Solaris
9 7 (0.86%) VMS
10 5 (0.62%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.37%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.12%) Debian
13 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (16.87%) Problem-Solving
2 131 (16.13%) Migration
3 93 (11.45%) Stakeholder Management
4 75 (9.24%) ITIL
5 65 (8.00%) Roadmaps
6 64 (7.88%) High Availability
7 63 (7.76%) Project Management
8 62 (7.64%) Continuous Improvement
9 61 (7.51%) Load Balancing
10 59 (7.27%) Change Management
11 57 (7.02%) Project Delivery
12 49 (6.03%) Agile
12 49 (6.03%) CI/CD
13 48 (5.91%) Infrastructure as Code
14 46 (5.67%) Data Centre Operations
15 44 (5.42%) Network Design
15 44 (5.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 42 (5.17%) Customer Service
16 42 (5.17%) ITSM
16 42 (5.17%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 82 (10.10%) Python
2 44 (5.42%) PowerShell
3 24 (2.96%) Bash
4 22 (2.71%) Java
5 21 (2.59%) SQL
6 16 (1.97%) Perl
7 13 (1.60%) Shell Script
8 11 (1.35%) COBOL
9 9 (1.11%) MATLAB
10 6 (0.74%) VBA
11 5 (0.62%) Bicep
11 5 (0.62%) Lisp
12 4 (0.49%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.25%) C++
13 2 (0.25%) Korn
13 2 (0.25%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.12%) Go
14 1 (0.12%) Ruby
14 1 (0.12%) Scala
14 1 (0.12%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 274 (33.74%) Security Cleared
2 202 (24.88%) SC Cleared
3 163 (20.07%) Cisco Certification
4 113 (13.92%) CCNP
5 69 (8.50%) CCNA
6 65 (8.00%) Degree
7 59 (7.27%) DV Cleared
8 28 (3.45%) Network+ Certification
9 23 (2.83%) CCIE
9 23 (2.83%) Microsoft Certification
10 22 (2.71%) A+ Certification
10 22 (2.71%) MCSE
10 22 (2.71%) PMP
11 20 (2.46%) AWS Certification
12 18 (2.22%) PMI Certification
13 16 (1.97%) JNCIS
14 15 (1.85%) Azure Certification
15 14 (1.72%) JNCIP
16 12 (1.48%) JNCIA
16 12 (1.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 27 (3.33%) SLA
2 23 (2.83%) PMO
3 22 (2.71%) GDPR
3 22 (2.71%) NIST
4 17 (2.09%) PCI DSS
5 15 (1.85%) QA
6 8 (0.99%) NCSC
7 5 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
8 4 (0.49%) GRC
9 3 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.25%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.25%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.12%) COBIT
11 1 (0.12%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.12%) RMADS
11 1 (0.12%) SOC 1
System Software
1 69 (8.50%) VMware Infrastructure
2 54 (6.65%) Active Directory
3 32 (3.94%) VMware NSX
4 21 (2.59%) Firmware
4 21 (2.59%) Virtual Machines
5 15 (1.85%) Hyper-V
6 14 (1.72%) Docker
6 14 (1.72%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (1.60%) vSphere
8 10 (1.23%) KVM
9 3 (0.37%) PowerHA
10 2 (0.25%) Ceph
10 2 (0.25%) Lustre
10 2 (0.25%) NFS
10 2 (0.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.25%) SRDF
10 2 (0.25%) vCloud
10 2 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.12%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.12%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 82 (10.10%) Ansible
2 68 (8.37%) Terraform
3 46 (5.67%) FortiGate
4 37 (4.56%) Kubernetes
5 27 (3.33%) Grafana
6 20 (2.46%) Prometheus
7 17 (2.09%) SCCM
8 15 (1.85%) Microsoft Intune
9 9 (1.11%) Check_MK
9 9 (1.11%) Podman
9 9 (1.11%) Red Hat Satellite
10 7 (0.86%) SCOM
11 5 (0.62%) Dell DRAC
11 5 (0.62%) Endace
11 5 (0.62%) vCenter Server
12 4 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.49%) CASB
12 4 (0.49%) Nagios
12 4 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
13 3 (0.37%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 244 (30.05%) Cisco
2 103 (12.68%) Palo Alto
3 102 (12.56%) VMware
4 80 (9.85%) Microsoft
5 75 (9.24%) Juniper
6 70 (8.62%) Dell
7 61 (7.51%) F5
8 41 (5.05%) CheckPoint
9 37 (4.56%) Arista
10 36 (4.43%) Aruba
10 36 (4.43%) Fortinet
11 35 (4.31%) ServiceNow
12 34 (4.19%) SolarWinds
13 32 (3.94%) Meraki
14 29 (3.57%) HP
15 28 (3.45%) IBM
16 27 (3.33%) Splunk
17 22 (2.71%) Citrix
17 22 (2.71%) Google
17 22 (2.71%) Red Hat