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 15 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Mar 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 132 101
Rank change year-on-year +4 -31 +2
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 788 524 849
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.14% 2.11% 2.24%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.35% 6.21% 7.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 502 344 592
10th Percentile £288 £347 £295
25th Percentile £400 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.26% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £585 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £480 £518 £525
% change year-on-year -7.25% -1.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 12 37
10th Percentile £19.32 - £21.25
25th Percentile £24.23 £24.18 £22.08
Median hourly rate £25.77 £24.66 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year +4.50% -0.84% -36.31%
75th Percentile £72.34 £25.81 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £61.43 £41.25
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £24.66 £24.87
% change year-on-year +4.50% -0.84% +12.61%

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 12,419 8,439 11,692
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.67% 33.90% 30.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,880 5,433 7,643
10th Percentile £295 £285 £258
25th Percentile £411 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £545 £545
Median % change year-on-year -5.96% - -5.22%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £663
90th Percentile £749 £788 £775
UK median daily rate £501 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.67% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 615 298 789
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.95 £12.60
25th Percentile £19.00 £22.55 £15.50
Median hourly rate £37.50 £32.91 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year +13.96% +16.48% +22.03%
75th Percentile £67.75 £66.38 £57.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £84.30 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £36.16 £32.50 £28.00
% change year-on-year +11.26% +16.07% +24.44%

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 15 March 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 15 March 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 15 March 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 -17 284 £530 +0.95% 176
North of England +28 192 £470 +10.47% 64
South East +13 153 £455 +3.41% 129
North West +27 103 £500 - 33
Yorkshire -9 74 £365 -5.93% 24
Midlands -23 71 £472 -23.38% 38
West Midlands -36 59 £474 -24.16% 17
South West -51 32 £550 -0.90% 38
East of England -19 31 £478 +13.14% 49
North East 0 17 £175 +59.09% 7
East Midlands -23 12 £158 -65.00% 21
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 (3.17%) SharePoint
2 19 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 15 (1.90%) Confluence
4 8 (1.02%) CICS
5 4 (0.51%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.51%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.38%) GeoServer
6 3 (0.38%) nginx
6 3 (0.38%) Smallworld
7 2 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.25%) HCL Notes
7 2 (0.25%) Tomcat
Applications
1 48 (6.09%) Microsoft Office
2 24 (3.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 24 (3.05%) MS Visio
3 19 (2.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (1.90%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.38%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.38%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.25%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.25%) Primavera
4 1 (0.13%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 138 (17.51%) Azure
2 108 (13.71%) AWS
3 63 (7.99%) Microsoft 365
4 44 (5.58%) GCP
5 22 (2.79%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 16 (2.03%) Entra ID
6 16 (2.03%) SaaS
7 15 (1.90%) Power Platform
8 13 (1.65%) IaaS
9 12 (1.52%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 11 (1.40%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 11 (1.40%) PaaS
11 10 (1.27%) Azure DevOps
11 10 (1.27%) OpenShift
12 9 (1.14%) GitHub
13 8 (1.02%) Amazon S3
13 8 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (1.02%) AWS Direct Connect
13 8 (1.02%) OCI
14 7 (0.89%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 234 (29.70%) Firewall
2 150 (19.04%) WAN
3 119 (15.10%) BGP
4 94 (11.93%) LAN
5 84 (10.66%) OSPF
6 81 (10.28%) VPN
7 80 (10.15%) Network Security
8 69 (8.76%) Wireless
9 65 (8.25%) DNS
10 61 (7.74%) VXLAN
11 57 (7.23%) Structured Cabling
12 52 (6.60%) DHCP
12 52 (6.60%) VLAN
13 50 (6.35%) SAN
14 40 (5.08%) Cisco ISE
15 39 (4.95%) Ethernet VPN
16 37 (4.70%) Wi-Fi
17 33 (4.19%) SD-WAN
18 32 (4.06%) MPLS
19 30 (3.81%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (1.40%) Power BI
2 8 (1.02%) DataStage
3 5 (0.63%) GIS
3 5 (0.63%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (0.63%) Relational Database
3 5 (0.63%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.51%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.51%) Power Query
4 4 (0.51%) PowerPivot
5 3 (0.38%) Big Data
5 3 (0.38%) Geospatial Data
5 3 (0.38%) InfluxDB
5 3 (0.38%) QGIS
5 3 (0.38%) RDBMS
5 3 (0.38%) SAP Data Services
6 2 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.13%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.13%) Redis
7 1 (0.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 32 (4.06%) Git
2 26 (3.30%) JIRA
3 16 (2.03%) Jenkins
4 15 (1.90%) GitLab
5 10 (1.27%) Maven
6 4 (0.51%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.51%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.51%) Subversion
7 2 (0.25%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
8 1 (0.13%) AppScan
8 1 (0.13%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.13%) Metasploit
General
1 207 (26.27%) Social Skills
2 136 (17.26%) Finance
3 94 (11.93%) Analytical Skills
4 89 (11.29%) Public Sector
5 55 (6.98%) Documentation Skills
6 54 (6.85%) Telecoms
7 42 (5.33%) Banking
8 41 (5.20%) Manufacturing
9 31 (3.93%) Marketing
10 24 (3.05%) Electronics
11 19 (2.41%) Legal
12 18 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 18 (2.28%) Influencing Skills
12 18 (2.28%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (2.16%) Retail
14 12 (1.52%) Investment Banking
14 12 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
15 8 (1.02%) Military
16 7 (0.89%) Law
17 6 (0.76%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 135 (17.13%) Network Engineer
2 112 (14.21%) Architect
3 76 (9.64%) Project Manager
4 61 (7.74%) Senior
5 54 (6.85%) Data Centre Engineer
6 51 (6.47%) Analyst
7 43 (5.46%) Data Centre Manager
8 38 (4.82%) Network Architect
9 34 (4.31%) IT Support
9 34 (4.31%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 33 (4.19%) Lead
11 32 (4.06%) Infrastructure Manager
12 30 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 29 (3.68%) Cisco Engineer
13 29 (3.68%) Solutions Architect
14 27 (3.43%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 26 (3.30%) Infrastructure Project Manager
15 26 (3.30%) Support Engineer
16 25 (3.17%) Desktop Support
17 24 (3.05%) Data Centre Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (4.06%) 802.1X
2 23 (2.92%) Middleware
3 7 (0.89%) LDAP
4 6 (0.76%) Spring
5 5 (0.63%) RFC 2544
6 4 (0.51%) ADO
6 4 (0.51%) ARM Templates
6 4 (0.51%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (0.51%) Jinja
6 4 (0.51%) NETCONF
6 4 (0.51%) OpenConfig
6 4 (0.51%) Redfish
6 4 (0.51%) RESTCONF
6 4 (0.51%) Spring Boot
6 4 (0.51%) VML
6 4 (0.51%) XML
6 4 (0.51%) YANG
7 2 (0.25%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.25%) EJB
7 2 (0.25%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 39 (4.95%) Hybrid Cloud
2 25 (3.17%) Clustering
2 25 (3.17%) PKI
3 24 (3.05%) Analytical Mindset
4 19 (2.41%) Driving Licence
4 19 (2.41%) Onboarding
5 18 (2.28%) Public Cloud
6 17 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
7 16 (2.03%) Replication
8 14 (1.78%) Cloud Native
9 12 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
9 12 (1.52%) Mainframe
9 12 (1.52%) Management Information System
10 10 (1.27%) Fibre Optics
10 10 (1.27%) Private Cloud
11 8 (1.02%) BYOD
11 8 (1.02%) Enterprise Storage
11 8 (1.02%) VSAM
12 7 (0.89%) CMDB
12 7 (0.89%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 104 (13.20%) Windows
2 88 (11.17%) Linux
3 42 (5.33%) Windows Server
4 32 (4.06%) Android
4 32 (4.06%) Mac OS
5 26 (3.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (1.90%) Unix
7 13 (1.65%) AIX
8 10 (1.27%) CentOS
8 10 (1.27%) Solaris
9 6 (0.76%) VMS
10 5 (0.63%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.38%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.13%) Kali Linux
13 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (16.50%) Problem-Solving
2 129 (16.37%) Migration
3 97 (12.31%) Stakeholder Management
4 74 (9.39%) ITIL
5 67 (8.50%) Project Management
6 63 (7.99%) Continuous Improvement
7 61 (7.74%) Roadmaps
8 58 (7.36%) Change Management
8 58 (7.36%) High Availability
9 57 (7.23%) Project Delivery
10 56 (7.11%) Load Balancing
11 53 (6.73%) Agile
12 52 (6.60%) CI/CD
13 46 (5.84%) Data Centre Operations
14 44 (5.58%) Infrastructure as Code
15 43 (5.46%) Network Design
16 42 (5.33%) Cybersecurity
16 42 (5.33%) Service Management
17 41 (5.20%) DevOps
17 41 (5.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 74 (9.39%) Python
2 47 (5.96%) PowerShell
3 26 (3.30%) SQL
4 24 (3.05%) Bash
5 22 (2.79%) Java
6 16 (2.03%) Perl
7 11 (1.40%) Shell Script
8 9 (1.14%) COBOL
8 9 (1.14%) Lisp
9 7 (0.89%) MATLAB
10 6 (0.76%) Bicep
11 5 (0.63%) VBA
12 4 (0.51%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.25%) Korn
13 2 (0.25%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.13%) C#
14 1 (0.13%) C++
14 1 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.13%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 283 (35.91%) Security Cleared
2 214 (27.16%) SC Cleared
3 145 (18.40%) Cisco Certification
4 105 (13.32%) CCNP
5 71 (9.01%) Degree
6 58 (7.36%) DV Cleared
7 57 (7.23%) CCNA
8 24 (3.05%) CCIE
9 21 (2.66%) PMP
10 20 (2.54%) Network+ Certification
11 19 (2.41%) AWS Certification
11 19 (2.41%) PMI Certification
12 17 (2.16%) Microsoft Certification
13 16 (2.03%) A+ Certification
13 16 (2.03%) MCSE
14 15 (1.90%) JNCIS
15 14 (1.78%) Azure Certification
15 14 (1.78%) JNCIP
16 12 (1.52%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 11 (1.40%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (3.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 25 (3.17%) PMO
3 24 (3.05%) NIST
3 24 (3.05%) SLA
4 21 (2.66%) GDPR
5 17 (2.16%) PCI DSS
6 14 (1.78%) QA
7 9 (1.14%) NCSC
8 7 (0.89%) Data Quality
9 5 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.51%) GRC
11 3 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.38%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.13%) COBIT
12 1 (0.13%) ISO 22301
12 1 (0.13%) RMADS
12 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 66 (8.38%) VMware Infrastructure
2 58 (7.36%) Active Directory
3 34 (4.31%) VMware NSX
4 25 (3.17%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (2.54%) Firmware
6 17 (2.16%) Hyper-V
7 16 (2.03%) Docker
8 14 (1.78%) vSphere
9 11 (1.40%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (1.27%) KVM
11 3 (0.38%) PowerHA
12 2 (0.25%) Ceph
12 2 (0.25%) Lustre
12 2 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
12 2 (0.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.25%) SRDF
12 2 (0.25%) vCloud
12 2 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.13%) NFS
13 1 (0.13%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 74 (9.39%) Ansible
2 67 (8.50%) Terraform
3 46 (5.84%) FortiGate
4 36 (4.57%) Kubernetes
5 26 (3.30%) Grafana
6 20 (2.54%) SCCM
7 18 (2.28%) Prometheus
8 16 (2.03%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (0.89%) CASB
9 7 (0.89%) Check_MK
9 7 (0.89%) Podman
9 7 (0.89%) Red Hat Satellite
9 7 (0.89%) SCOM
9 7 (0.89%) vCenter Server
10 6 (0.76%) SCOrch
11 4 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.51%) Endace
11 4 (0.51%) Nagios
11 4 (0.51%) PowerCLI
11 4 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 253 (32.11%) Cisco
2 99 (12.56%) VMware
3 98 (12.44%) Palo Alto
4 82 (10.41%) Microsoft
5 78 (9.90%) Dell
6 70 (8.88%) Juniper
7 60 (7.61%) F5
8 43 (5.46%) HP
9 42 (5.33%) CheckPoint
10 40 (5.08%) ServiceNow
11 37 (4.70%) Aruba
12 34 (4.31%) Meraki
13 33 (4.19%) SolarWinds
14 32 (4.06%) Apple
15 30 (3.81%) SAP
16 27 (3.43%) Fortinet
17 26 (3.30%) IBM
17 26 (3.30%) Splunk
18 25 (3.17%) Arista
18 25 (3.17%) Citrix
464 Data Centre jobs in England