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 4 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 107 121 101
Rank change year-on-year +14 -20 -7
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,006 584 818
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.29% 2.22% 2.19%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.95% 6.38% 7.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 605 387 578
10th Percentile £318 £303 £325
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £610 £625
90th Percentile £738 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £506 £538
% change year-on-year -1.19% -5.86% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 17 43
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £12.08
25th Percentile £18.07 £25.04 £21.66
Median hourly rate £19.85 £25.15 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -21.07% +1.13% +14.77%
75th Percentile £33.75 £43.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £66.25 £41.00
UK median hourly rate £19.85 £25.15 £23.80
% change year-on-year -21.07% +5.67% +14.95%

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 14,476 9,159 11,470
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.92% 34.77% 30.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,979 5,852 7,380
10th Percentile £313 £305 £281
25th Percentile £415 £408 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £638 £660 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £825
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £539
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.51% -2.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 787 434 832
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.14 £19.00 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £32.95 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.43% -12.15% +47.06%
75th Percentile £70.41 £60.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £87.16 £80.70 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £30.90 £36.27
% change year-on-year +42.25% -14.80% +53.40%

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 4 July 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 4 July 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 4 July 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 +19 372 £550 +3.29% 293
North of England +12 243 £476 +2.26% 54
South East +5 215 £500 +11.11% 121
Yorkshire -5 129 £365 -18.89% 21
North West +5 90 £500 -4.76% 30
Midlands -54 56 £460 -14.81% 30
West Midlands -54 51 £467 -13.15% 19
South West -29 49 £495 -10.00% 32
East of England -17 35 £513 +36.67% 39
North East -7 30 £625 +468.18% 3
East Midlands -24 4 £363 -32.87% 11
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 22 (2.19%) Confluence
2 16 (1.59%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (0.99%) CICS
5 5 (0.50%) Apache
5 5 (0.50%) CloudStack
5 5 (0.50%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.40%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.30%) nginx
7 3 (0.30%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.099%) IIS
8 1 (0.099%) SAS
Applications
1 13 (1.29%) Microsoft Excel
1 13 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 11 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.99%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.50%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.30%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.20%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.20%) Primavera
2 2 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.099%) OpenText MBPM
3 1 (0.099%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 214 (21.27%) Azure
2 183 (18.19%) AWS
3 54 (5.37%) GCP
4 40 (3.98%) IaaS
5 36 (3.58%) Microsoft 365
5 36 (3.58%) SaaS
6 33 (3.28%) GitHub
7 30 (2.98%) OCI
8 22 (2.19%) Entra ID
9 21 (2.09%) PaaS
9 21 (2.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 13 (1.29%) OneDrive
10 13 (1.29%) OpenShift
11 12 (1.19%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 11 (1.09%) Power Platform
13 9 (0.89%) Amazon EKS
13 9 (0.89%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (0.89%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (0.80%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 8 (0.80%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 267 (26.54%) Firewall
2 179 (17.79%) WAN
3 170 (16.90%) BGP
4 128 (12.72%) OSPF
5 113 (11.23%) DNS
6 107 (10.64%) VXLAN
7 102 (10.14%) LAN
8 99 (9.84%) SAN
9 95 (9.44%) VPN
10 90 (8.95%) Network Security
10 90 (8.95%) VLAN
11 83 (8.25%) Structured Cabling
12 80 (7.95%) DHCP
13 74 (7.36%) SD-WAN
14 71 (7.06%) Ethernet VPN
15 58 (5.77%) BIG-IP
16 56 (5.57%) TCP/IP
17 47 (4.67%) Wireless
18 43 (4.27%) NX-OS
19 42 (4.17%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (0.99%) SQL Server
2 9 (0.89%) DataStage
3 6 (0.60%) Big Data
3 6 (0.60%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (0.60%) Power BI
4 4 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
4 4 (0.40%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.40%) Oracle Database
4 4 (0.40%) Oracle Reports
4 4 (0.40%) SAP Data Services
5 3 (0.30%) Db2
5 3 (0.30%) GIS
6 2 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.20%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle Database 12c
7 1 (0.099%) Oracle Exadata
7 1 (0.099%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 64 (6.36%) JIRA
2 33 (3.28%) GitLab
3 26 (2.58%) Git
3 26 (2.58%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.40%) Atlassian Bamboo
4 4 (0.40%) Eclipse
4 4 (0.40%) Maven
4 4 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
4 4 (0.40%) Subversion
5 3 (0.30%) ScriptRunner
5 3 (0.30%) Zephyr
6 2 (0.20%) MSI
7 1 (0.099%) AppScan
7 1 (0.099%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.099%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.099%) Metasploit
General
1 253 (25.15%) Social Skills
2 142 (14.12%) Finance
3 107 (10.64%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (6.86%) Public Sector
5 48 (4.77%) Documentation Skills
6 44 (4.37%) Banking
7 41 (4.08%) Telecoms
8 29 (2.88%) Legal
9 25 (2.49%) Retail
10 24 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
11 17 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 16 (1.59%) Manufacturing
13 10 (0.99%) Military
13 10 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 8 (0.80%) Marketing
15 7 (0.70%) Law
15 7 (0.70%) Police
16 6 (0.60%) Financial Institution
16 6 (0.60%) Investment Banking
17 5 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 151 (15.01%) Network Engineer
2 144 (14.31%) Architect
3 119 (11.83%) Senior
4 100 (9.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 88 (8.75%) Data Centre Engineer
6 66 (6.56%) Project Manager
7 54 (5.37%) Network Architect
8 51 (5.07%) Lead
9 42 (4.17%) IT Engineer
10 40 (3.98%) Field Engineer
11 37 (3.68%) Infrastructure Manager
12 36 (3.58%) Field Service Engineer
13 33 (3.28%) Data Centre Manager
14 30 (2.98%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 28 (2.78%) Analyst
15 28 (2.78%) Support Engineer
16 27 (2.68%) Solutions Architect
17 25 (2.49%) Infrastructure Project Manager
17 25 (2.49%) IT Support
18 24 (2.39%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.08%) 802.1X
1 31 (3.08%) Middleware
2 10 (0.99%) Redfish
3 8 (0.80%) LDAP
3 8 (0.80%) REST
4 7 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
4 7 (0.70%) Spring
5 5 (0.50%) Jinja
5 5 (0.50%) Kafka
5 5 (0.50%) NETCONF
5 5 (0.50%) XML
6 4 (0.40%) .NET
6 4 (0.40%) GeoJSON
6 4 (0.40%) OpenConfig
6 4 (0.40%) RESTCONF
6 4 (0.40%) RESTful
6 4 (0.40%) Spring Boot
6 4 (0.40%) YAML
6 4 (0.40%) YANG
7 3 (0.30%) OpenLayers
Miscellaneous
1 69 (6.86%) Hybrid Cloud
2 42 (4.17%) Analytical Mindset
3 36 (3.58%) Cloud Native
4 33 (3.28%) PKI
5 31 (3.08%) Clustering
6 29 (2.88%) Fibre Optics
6 29 (2.88%) Private Cloud
7 28 (2.78%) Onboarding
8 27 (2.68%) Enterprise Storage
9 19 (1.89%) Driving Licence
9 19 (1.89%) Replication
10 16 (1.59%) Management Information System
11 15 (1.49%) CMDB
11 15 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
11 15 (1.49%) Public Cloud
12 13 (1.29%) Mainframe
13 11 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (0.99%) Operational Technology
14 10 (0.99%) SCADA
15 9 (0.89%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 131 (13.02%) Windows
2 101 (10.04%) Linux
3 37 (3.68%) Windows Server
4 28 (2.78%) Unix
5 26 (2.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 22 (2.19%) AIX
7 17 (1.69%) Solaris
8 10 (0.99%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.99%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.60%) CentOS
9 6 (0.60%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (0.50%) HPUX
10 5 (0.50%) Oracle Linux
10 5 (0.50%) SUSE
10 5 (0.50%) VMS
11 4 (0.40%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.20%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (18.39%) Migration
2 171 (17.00%) Problem-Solving
3 127 (12.62%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 110 (10.93%) Stakeholder Management
5 104 (10.34%) ITIL
6 93 (9.24%) Infrastructure as Code
7 91 (9.05%) CI/CD
8 89 (8.85%) High Availability
9 82 (8.15%) Roadmaps
10 81 (8.05%) Continuous Improvement
11 76 (7.55%) Agile
12 74 (7.36%) Change Management
13 72 (7.16%) Load Balancing
14 69 (6.86%) Project Delivery
15 68 (6.76%) Validation
15 68 (6.76%) Zero Trust
16 64 (6.36%) Project Management
17 63 (6.26%) DevOps
18 61 (6.06%) ITSM
19 60 (5.96%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 130 (12.92%) Python
2 36 (3.58%) PowerShell
3 26 (2.58%) SQL
4 21 (2.09%) Bash
5 17 (1.69%) Java
6 14 (1.39%) Bicep
7 12 (1.19%) Shell Script
8 11 (1.09%) COBOL
9 9 (0.89%) ActionScript
10 8 (0.80%) Perl
10 8 (0.80%) PL/SQL
11 6 (0.60%) JavaScript
11 6 (0.60%) MATLAB
12 4 (0.40%) C#
12 4 (0.40%) Lisp
13 2 (0.20%) C++
13 2 (0.20%) JCL
13 2 (0.20%) Korn
13 2 (0.20%) REXX
13 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 276 (27.44%) Security Cleared
2 181 (17.99%) SC Cleared
3 179 (17.79%) Cisco Certification
4 108 (10.74%) CCNP
5 86 (8.55%) DV Cleared
6 73 (7.26%) CCNA
7 64 (6.36%) Degree
8 49 (4.87%) Network+ Certification
9 40 (3.98%) Microsoft Certification
10 34 (3.38%) A+ Certification
10 34 (3.38%) MCSE
11 26 (2.58%) Azure Certification
12 23 (2.29%) AWS Certification
12 23 (2.29%) CCIE
13 22 (2.19%) City & Guilds
14 20 (1.99%) PMP
14 20 (1.99%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 18 (1.79%) PMI Certification
16 17 (1.69%) BICSI Certification
17 15 (1.49%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.08%) SLA
2 23 (2.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (2.19%) NIST
4 19 (1.89%) PMO
5 18 (1.79%) QA
6 16 (1.59%) GDPR
7 15 (1.49%) NCSC
8 10 (0.99%) GRC
9 9 (0.89%) PCI DSS
10 6 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
11 5 (0.50%) RMADS
12 4 (0.40%) JSP 440
13 3 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.20%) Accessibility
14 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
14 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 2 (0.20%) WCAG
15 1 (0.099%) COBIT
15 1 (0.099%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 96 (9.54%) VMware Infrastructure
2 50 (4.97%) Active Directory
3 34 (3.38%) VMware ESXi
4 29 (2.88%) Firmware
5 27 (2.68%) VMware NSX
5 27 (2.68%) vSphere
6 21 (2.09%) Hyper-V
6 21 (2.09%) Virtual Machines
7 15 (1.49%) Docker
8 9 (0.89%) NFS
9 8 (0.80%) KVM
10 6 (0.60%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.50%) SRDF
11 5 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.40%) BitLocker
12 4 (0.40%) Terminal Services
12 4 (0.40%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.30%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (0.30%) PowerHA
13 3 (0.30%) UAG
Systems Management
1 116 (11.53%) Ansible
2 96 (9.54%) Terraform
3 48 (4.77%) FortiGate
3 48 (4.77%) Kubernetes
4 30 (2.98%) Grafana
5 28 (2.78%) Prometheus
6 26 (2.58%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (1.49%) vCenter Server
8 11 (1.09%) NetBackup
9 10 (0.99%) Dell DRAC
9 10 (0.99%) Jamf Pro
10 9 (0.89%) Check_MK
10 9 (0.89%) PowerCLI
10 9 (0.89%) SCCM
11 8 (0.80%) vMotion
12 7 (0.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.70%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 6 (0.60%) Podman
13 6 (0.60%) Red Hat Satellite
14 5 (0.50%) EMC NetWorker
Vendors
1 251 (24.95%) Cisco
2 142 (14.12%) VMware
3 113 (11.23%) Palo Alto
4 104 (10.34%) Microsoft
5 100 (9.94%) F5
6 83 (8.25%) Juniper
7 65 (6.46%) Arista
7 65 (6.46%) Dell
8 64 (6.36%) Fortinet
9 50 (4.97%) ServiceNow
10 42 (4.17%) SolarWinds
11 37 (3.68%) Aruba
12 35 (3.48%) IBM
13 32 (3.18%) CheckPoint
14 30 (2.98%) Google
15 29 (2.88%) Splunk
16 28 (2.78%) Red Hat
17 24 (2.39%) Oracle
18 22 (2.19%) Extreme Networks
18 22 (2.19%) HP