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 6 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 130 111
Rank change year-on-year +11 -19 -16
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 997 607 682
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.17% 2.20% 2.08%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.44% 6.13% 6.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 634 397 457
10th Percentile £327 £308 £370
25th Percentile £413 £406 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £650 £614 £619
90th Percentile £754 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.05% -2.33% -0.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 30 26
10th Percentile £16.01 £25.14 £11.75
25th Percentile £18.53 - £12.08
Median hourly rate £26.50 £25.15 £21.90
Median % change year-on-year +5.37% +14.84% -5.81%
75th Percentile £40.81 £38.56 £25.62
90th Percentile £88.65 £46.10 £28.63
UK median hourly rate £25.00 £25.15 £20.00
% change year-on-year -0.60% +25.75% -

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 15,488 9,905 10,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.70% 35.96% 30.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,452 6,251 6,324
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £408 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £684
90th Percentile £750 £775 £825
UK median daily rate £525 £519 £550
% change year-on-year +1.25% -5.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 983 488 459
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £14.02
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £38.25 £32.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.78% -40.45% +19.88%
75th Percentile £68.75 £60.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £77.50 £75.16
UK median hourly rate £38.39 £30.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +27.96% -36.84% +8.57%

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 6 September 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 6 September 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 6 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
London +15 420 £550 - 739
North of England -8 213 £500 +9.23% 97
South East -8 175 £539 +9.34% 141
Yorkshire 0 127 £475 +14.46% 29
North West -24 71 £503 -5.98% 38
South West -19 66 £600 +4.35% 71
Midlands -74 51 £450 -10.00% 43
West Midlands -62 41 £474 -5.20% 29
East of England -14 35 £479 -20.21% 79
North East -19 21 £625 - 30
East Midlands -22 9 £400 -25.93% 14
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 25 (2.51%) Confluence
2 17 (1.71%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (0.70%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.50%) Apache
5 5 (0.50%) CloudStack
6 3 (0.30%) IIS
7 2 (0.20%) CICS
8 1 (0.10%) nginx
8 1 (0.10%) SAS
8 1 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 20 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.70%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.50%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.20%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 13 (1.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.20%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.10%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.10%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 219 (21.97%) Azure
2 179 (17.95%) AWS
3 45 (4.51%) GCP
4 44 (4.41%) GitHub
5 37 (3.71%) SaaS
6 36 (3.61%) IaaS
7 31 (3.11%) Microsoft 365
8 29 (2.91%) OCI
9 25 (2.51%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.81%) Power Platform
11 15 (1.50%) PaaS
12 14 (1.40%) OneDrive
13 13 (1.30%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 12 (1.20%) Azure DevOps
15 11 (1.10%) OpenShift
16 9 (0.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 7 (0.70%) GitHub Actions
18 6 (0.60%) AWS Direct Connect
18 6 (0.60%) Azure Sentinel
19 5 (0.50%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 244 (24.47%) Firewall
2 161 (16.15%) WAN
3 156 (15.65%) BGP
4 121 (12.14%) DNS
5 100 (10.03%) VLAN
5 100 (10.03%) VXLAN
6 98 (9.83%) OSPF
7 93 (9.33%) SAN
8 92 (9.23%) Network Security
9 90 (9.03%) VPN
10 88 (8.83%) LAN
11 87 (8.73%) DHCP
12 72 (7.22%) TCP/IP
13 70 (7.02%) SD-WAN
14 64 (6.42%) Ethernet VPN
15 62 (6.22%) Structured Cabling
16 56 (5.62%) Wireless
17 49 (4.91%) Wi-Fi
18 47 (4.71%) BIG-IP
19 45 (4.51%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.71%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.50%) Power BI
3 11 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (1.00%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 10 (1.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 7 (0.70%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.60%) Big Data
7 5 (0.50%) Db2
7 5 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.40%) Oracle Database 12c
8 4 (0.40%) Oracle Reports
8 4 (0.40%) PostgreSQL
9 2 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.10%) DataStage
10 1 (0.10%) EDMS
10 1 (0.10%) MS Access
10 1 (0.10%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 67 (6.72%) JIRA
2 36 (3.61%) GitLab
3 23 (2.31%) Jenkins
4 22 (2.21%) Git
5 6 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.30%) ScriptRunner
6 3 (0.30%) Zephyr
7 2 (0.20%) MSI
7 2 (0.20%) Toad
8 1 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.10%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.10%) Claude Code
General
1 246 (24.67%) Social Skills
2 148 (14.84%) Finance
3 95 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
4 54 (5.42%) Banking
5 48 (4.81%) Public Sector
6 43 (4.31%) Telecoms
7 40 (4.01%) Documentation Skills
8 28 (2.81%) Retail
9 23 (2.31%) Legal
10 17 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
10 17 (1.71%) Manufacturing
11 13 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 10 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (0.90%) Police
14 7 (0.70%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.60%) Law
16 5 (0.50%) Investment Banking
16 5 (0.50%) Marketing
17 4 (0.40%) Cyber-Physical System
18 3 (0.30%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 164 (16.45%) Network Engineer
2 154 (15.45%) Architect
3 131 (13.14%) Senior
4 106 (10.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 71 (7.12%) Project Manager
6 67 (6.72%) Data Centre Engineer
7 61 (6.12%) Lead
8 58 (5.82%) Network Architect
9 39 (3.91%) Consultant
10 36 (3.61%) Data Centre Manager
10 36 (3.61%) IT Engineer
10 36 (3.61%) Senior Network Engineer
11 33 (3.31%) Infrastructure Manager
12 30 (3.01%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 29 (2.91%) Field Engineer
14 27 (2.71%) Solutions Architect
15 26 (2.61%) Field Service Engineer
16 24 (2.41%) Data Manager
16 24 (2.41%) Technical Manager
17 22 (2.21%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (9.73%) Terraform
2 24 (2.41%) Middleware
3 22 (2.21%) REST
4 15 (1.50%) 802.1X
5 13 (1.30%) YAML
6 11 (1.10%) JSON
7 8 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
7 8 (0.80%) LDAP
8 7 (0.70%) .NET
8 7 (0.70%) NETCONF
9 6 (0.60%) Redfish
9 6 (0.60%) SAML
10 5 (0.50%) OpenConfig
10 5 (0.50%) RESTCONF
10 5 (0.50%) YANG
11 4 (0.40%) GeoJSON
11 4 (0.40%) Kafka
11 4 (0.40%) RESTful
12 3 (0.30%) .NET Framework
13 2 (0.20%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 72 (7.22%) Hybrid Cloud
2 35 (3.51%) PKI
3 33 (3.31%) Private Cloud
4 32 (3.21%) Analytical Mindset
4 32 (3.21%) Cloud Native
5 28 (2.81%) Clustering
5 28 (2.81%) Public Cloud
6 27 (2.71%) Enterprise Storage
6 27 (2.71%) Fibre Optics
7 26 (2.61%) Replication
8 23 (2.31%) Onboarding
9 21 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
10 18 (1.81%) Operational Technology
11 15 (1.50%) CMDB
11 15 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
12 14 (1.40%) Management Information System
13 13 (1.30%) Driving Licence
14 11 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
14 11 (1.10%) Virtual Team
15 10 (1.00%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 148 (14.84%) Windows
2 99 (9.93%) Linux
3 49 (4.91%) Windows Server
4 29 (2.91%) Unix
5 18 (1.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (1.50%) AIX
7 11 (1.10%) Mac OS
8 10 (1.00%) Apple iOS
9 8 (0.80%) Solaris
9 8 (0.80%) VMS
10 6 (0.60%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.50%) HPUX
11 5 (0.50%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.50%) SUSE
11 5 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.40%) CentOS
12 4 (0.40%) Data ONTAP
12 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 220 (22.07%) Migration
2 154 (15.45%) Problem-Solving
3 134 (13.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 133 (13.34%) Stakeholder Management
5 100 (10.03%) Infrastructure as Code
6 99 (9.93%) ITIL
7 90 (9.03%) Agile
7 90 (9.03%) High Availability
8 85 (8.53%) CI/CD
9 76 (7.62%) Validation
10 74 (7.42%) Project Delivery
11 73 (7.32%) Continuous Improvement
12 70 (7.02%) Disaster Recovery
12 70 (7.02%) Roadmaps
13 68 (6.82%) Zero Trust
14 67 (6.72%) Change Management
15 64 (6.42%) Technical Leadership
16 59 (5.92%) ITSM
16 59 (5.92%) Load Balancing
16 59 (5.92%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 142 (14.24%) Python
2 56 (5.62%) PowerShell
3 35 (3.51%) SQL
4 30 (3.01%) Bash
5 11 (1.10%) ActionScript
6 10 (1.00%) Bicep
7 8 (0.80%) Shell Script
8 7 (0.70%) C#
8 7 (0.70%) PL/SQL
9 6 (0.60%) Perl
10 4 (0.40%) Go
10 4 (0.40%) Java
10 4 (0.40%) MATLAB
10 4 (0.40%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.30%) COBOL
11 3 (0.30%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.30%) Lisp
12 2 (0.20%) C++
12 2 (0.20%) JCL
12 2 (0.20%) REXX
Qualifications
1 266 (26.68%) Security Cleared
2 171 (17.15%) SC Cleared
3 146 (14.64%) Cisco Certification
4 93 (9.33%) DV Cleared
5 91 (9.13%) CCNP
6 57 (5.72%) Degree
7 54 (5.42%) CCNA
8 35 (3.51%) Network+ Certification
9 29 (2.91%) Microsoft Certification
10 28 (2.81%) AWS Certification
11 24 (2.41%) A+ Certification
11 24 (2.41%) MCSE
12 23 (2.31%) Azure Certification
12 23 (2.31%) CCIE
13 22 (2.21%) PMP
13 22 (2.21%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 20 (2.01%) CISSP
14 20 (2.01%) City & Guilds
14 20 (2.01%) PMI Certification
15 17 (1.71%) BICSI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (2.71%) QA
2 25 (2.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 25 (2.51%) SLA
3 20 (2.01%) NIST
4 15 (1.50%) PMO
5 11 (1.10%) GDPR
6 9 (0.90%) JSP 440
6 9 (0.90%) NCSC
7 8 (0.80%) GRC
8 4 (0.40%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.40%) RMADS
9 3 (0.30%) Data Quality
9 3 (0.30%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.20%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.20%) ISO 31000
10 2 (0.20%) ISO 9001
10 2 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 127 (12.74%) VMware Infrastructure
2 71 (7.12%) Active Directory
3 43 (4.31%) vSphere
4 41 (4.11%) VMware NSX
5 37 (3.71%) VMware ESXi
6 29 (2.91%) Docker
7 27 (2.71%) Hyper-V
8 24 (2.41%) Firmware
9 14 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (1.20%) NFS
11 6 (0.60%) Microsoft App-V
11 6 (0.60%) Virtual Desktop
12 5 (0.50%) PowerHA
13 4 (0.40%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.40%) SRDF
13 4 (0.40%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.40%) Veritas Cluster Server
13 4 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.30%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 132 (13.24%) Ansible
2 52 (5.22%) Kubernetes
3 32 (3.21%) FortiGate
4 24 (2.41%) Prometheus
5 21 (2.11%) Grafana
6 18 (1.81%) vCenter Server
7 17 (1.71%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (1.50%) VxRail
9 13 (1.30%) SCCM
10 12 (1.20%) Microsoft Clustering
10 12 (1.20%) vMotion
11 10 (1.00%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (1.00%) NetBackup
12 9 (0.90%) Dell DRAC
12 9 (0.90%) PowerCLI
12 9 (0.90%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 8 (0.80%) Nagios
13 8 (0.80%) SCOM
14 7 (0.70%) Check_MK
15 5 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 254 (25.48%) Cisco
2 172 (17.25%) VMware
3 114 (11.43%) Microsoft
4 112 (11.23%) Palo Alto
5 97 (9.73%) F5
6 66 (6.62%) Fortinet
6 66 (6.62%) Juniper
7 64 (6.42%) Arista
8 54 (5.42%) Dell
8 54 (5.42%) ServiceNow
9 39 (3.91%) Aruba
10 36 (3.61%) CheckPoint
11 29 (2.91%) Red Hat
12 24 (2.41%) Oracle
13 23 (2.31%) IBM
13 23 (2.31%) Veeam
14 22 (2.21%) Google
14 22 (2.21%) SolarWinds
15 21 (2.11%) Zscaler
16 19 (1.91%) Commvault