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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 126 136 106
Rank change year-on-year +10 -30 -9
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 812 502 813
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.13% 2.07% 2.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.40% 6.08% 7.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 517 336 576
10th Percentile £303 £337 £295
25th Percentile £406 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £700 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £485 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -5.83% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 14 36
10th Percentile £16.01 - £21.25
25th Percentile £18.39 £24.18 £22.06
Median hourly rate £23.71 £24.66 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -3.86% -0.84% +14.77%
75th Percentile £71.49 £40.13 £40.00
90th Percentile £75.83 £58.63 £41.25
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £24.66 £24.87
% change year-on-year +1.99% -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 12,693 8,255 11,599
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.25% 34.05% 30.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,074 5,409 7,581
10th Percentile £300 £300 £263
25th Percentile £412 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.96% -0.91% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £669 £670
90th Percentile £747 £776 £788
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 632 314 804
10th Percentile £15.79 £16.69 £12.49
25th Percentile £19.85 £22.72 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.00 £34.75 £27.75
Median % change year-on-year +29.50% +25.23% +23.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.49 £84.70 £67.38
UK median hourly rate £43.60 £32.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year +34.16% +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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -12 299 £540 +2.86% 184
North of England +24 187 £460 +8.24% 53
South East +7 163 £475 -5.00% 115
North West +15 97 £500 - 28
Yorkshire -9 75 £365 -5.93% 17
Midlands -33 67 £474 -24.16% 32
West Midlands -30 54 £475 -24.08% 14
East of England -16 35 £478 +13.14% 45
South West -42 35 £538 -2.09% 31
North East +3 17 £175 +59.09% 8
East Midlands -23 12 £200 -55.56% 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 20 (2.46%) SharePoint
2 16 (1.97%) Confluence
3 15 (1.85%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.99%) 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 34 (4.19%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (2.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (2.46%) MS Visio
4 17 (2.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (1.60%) 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
2 120 (14.78%) AWS
3 49 (6.03%) 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 9 (1.11%) Azure DevOps
11 9 (1.11%) GitHub
11 9 (1.11%) OpenShift
12 8 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (0.99%) AWS Direct Connect
13 7 (0.86%) Amazon S3
13 7 (0.86%) AWS CloudTrail
13 7 (0.86%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 237 (29.19%) Firewall
2 155 (19.09%) WAN
3 136 (16.75%) BGP
4 99 (12.19%) OSPF
5 95 (11.70%) LAN
6 87 (10.71%) VPN
7 85 (10.47%) Network Security
8 71 (8.74%) Structured Cabling
9 67 (8.25%) DNS
10 64 (7.88%) VXLAN
11 62 (7.64%) VLAN
12 60 (7.39%) SAN
13 55 (6.77%) Wireless
14 53 (6.53%) DHCP
15 42 (5.17%) Ethernet VPN
16 38 (4.68%) Cisco ISE
17 34 (4.19%) SD-WAN
18 32 (3.94%) Wi-Fi
19 31 (3.82%) TCP/IP
20 29 (3.57%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (0.99%) DataStage
1 8 (0.99%) Power BI
2 5 (0.62%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (0.49%) MongoDB
3 4 (0.49%) Power Query
3 4 (0.49%) PowerPivot
3 4 (0.49%) SAP Data Services
3 4 (0.49%) SQL Server
4 3 (0.37%) Big Data
4 3 (0.37%) InfluxDB
5 2 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.25%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.25%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.25%) GIS
5 2 (0.25%) RDBMS
5 2 (0.25%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.12%) DB2
6 1 (0.12%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.12%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 33 (4.06%) Git
2 31 (3.82%) JIRA
3 18 (2.22%) Jenkins
4 16 (1.97%) 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%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
8 1 (0.12%) AppScan
8 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.12%) Metasploit
General
1 215 (26.48%) Social Skills
2 130 (16.01%) Finance
3 98 (12.07%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (9.85%) Public Sector
5 53 (6.53%) Documentation Skills
6 41 (5.05%) Banking
6 41 (5.05%) Telecoms
7 32 (3.94%) Manufacturing
8 23 (2.83%) Marketing
9 22 (2.71%) Legal
10 20 (2.46%) Retail
11 17 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
12 16 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 15 (1.85%) Electronics
13 15 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
14 11 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
15 10 (1.23%) Investment Banking
16 8 (0.99%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.99%) Law
16 8 (0.99%) Military
Job Titles
1 141 (17.36%) Network Engineer
2 118 (14.53%) Architect
3 74 (9.11%) Project Manager
4 73 (8.99%) Senior
5 61 (7.51%) Data Centre Engineer
6 44 (5.42%) Data Centre Manager
7 42 (5.17%) Analyst
8 41 (5.05%) Network Architect
9 34 (4.19%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 30 (3.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 30 (3.69%) Infrastructure Manager
10 30 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
11 29 (3.57%) IT Engineer
11 29 (3.57%) Lead
12 28 (3.45%) Cisco Engineer
12 28 (3.45%) IT Support
13 27 (3.33%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 25 (3.08%) Field Engineer
15 24 (2.96%) Field Service Engineer
15 24 (2.96%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (4.06%) 802.1X
2 27 (3.33%) Middleware
3 9 (1.11%) LDAP
4 6 (0.74%) Spring
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%) Jinja
6 4 (0.49%) NETCONF
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%) RFC 2544
8 2 (0.25%) Java EE
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 15 (1.85%) Management Information System
9 13 (1.60%) Cloud Native
9 13 (1.60%) Public Cloud
10 11 (1.35%) CMDB
10 11 (1.35%) Mainframe
11 10 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
11 10 (1.23%) Private Cloud
12 9 (1.11%) Enterprise Storage
13 8 (0.99%) BYOD
13 8 (0.99%) VSAM
14 7 (0.86%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 103 (12.68%) Windows
2 86 (10.59%) Linux
3 38 (4.68%) Windows Server
4 27 (3.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (2.46%) Android
5 20 (2.46%) Mac OS
6 14 (1.72%) Unix
7 13 (1.60%) AIX
8 11 (1.35%) CentOS
9 10 (1.23%) Solaris
10 7 (0.86%) VMS
11 5 (0.62%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.37%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.12%) Debian
14 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (16.75%) Problem-Solving
2 130 (16.01%) Migration
3 94 (11.58%) Stakeholder Management
4 75 (9.24%) ITIL
5 66 (8.13%) High Availability
6 65 (8.00%) Project Management
6 65 (8.00%) Roadmaps
7 62 (7.64%) Continuous Improvement
8 61 (7.51%) Load Balancing
9 60 (7.39%) Project Delivery
10 59 (7.27%) Change Management
11 49 (6.03%) Agile
11 49 (6.03%) CI/CD
12 47 (5.79%) Infrastructure as Code
13 46 (5.67%) Data Centre Operations
14 44 (5.42%) Network Design
15 43 (5.30%) Customer Service
15 43 (5.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 42 (5.17%) Technical Leadership
17 41 (5.05%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 82 (10.10%) Python
2 45 (5.54%) PowerShell
3 24 (2.96%) Bash
4 22 (2.71%) Java
5 20 (2.46%) SQL
6 16 (1.97%) Perl
7 13 (1.60%) Shell Script
8 10 (1.23%) COBOL
9 9 (1.11%) MATLAB
10 6 (0.74%) Lisp
11 5 (0.62%) Bicep
11 5 (0.62%) VBA
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
1 273 (33.62%) Security Cleared
2 202 (24.88%) SC Cleared
3 162 (19.95%) Cisco Certification
4 113 (13.92%) CCNP
5 69 (8.50%) CCNA
6 66 (8.13%) Degree
7 58 (7.14%) 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%) Azure Certification
13 16 (1.97%) JNCIS
14 14 (1.72%) JNCIP
15 12 (1.48%) JNCIA
15 12 (1.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 27 (3.33%) SLA
2 24 (2.96%) 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 68 (8.37%) VMware Infrastructure
2 54 (6.65%) Active Directory
3 31 (3.82%) 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%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.12%) Xen
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
1 249 (30.67%) Cisco
2 103 (12.68%) Palo Alto
3 100 (12.32%) VMware
4 79 (9.73%) Microsoft
5 75 (9.24%) Juniper
6 72 (8.87%) Dell
7 61 (7.51%) F5
8 40 (4.93%) CheckPoint
9 36 (4.43%) Arista
9 36 (4.43%) Aruba
9 36 (4.43%) ServiceNow
10 35 (4.31%) Fortinet
11 34 (4.19%) SolarWinds
12 33 (4.06%) Meraki
13 31 (3.82%) HP
14 28 (3.45%) IBM
15 27 (3.33%) Splunk
16 23 (2.83%) Citrix
16 23 (2.83%) Red Hat
17 22 (2.71%) Google