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

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 133 105
Rank change year-on-year +5 -28 -5
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 800 490 806
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.14% 2.01% 2.14%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.37% 5.93% 6.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 508 325 563
10th Percentile £293 £337 £284
25th Percentile £400 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £638
90th Percentile £691 £683 £700
UK median daily rate £480 £513 £520
% change year-on-year -6.34% -1.44% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 13 36
10th Percentile £16.01 - £21.25
25th Percentile £18.07 £24.18 £22.08
Median hourly rate £22.27 £24.66 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -9.71% -0.84% +14.77%
75th Percentile £69.99 £29.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £60.75 £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 12,552 8,264 11,630
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.53% 33.98% 30.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,986 5,390 7,588
10th Percentile £300 £300 £256
25th Percentile £412 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £544 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.70% -1.18% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £673 £663
90th Percentile £749 £788 £780
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.71% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 619 309 795
10th Percentile £15.62 £16.73 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.32 £22.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £40.50 £34.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.12% +23.64% +17.17%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £84.20 £67.80
UK median hourly rate £39.00 £32.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year +20.00% +18.18% +22.22%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +3 294 £540 +2.86% 177
North of England +26 186 £460 +8.12% 49
South East +16 161 £460 +4.55% 116
North West +19 98 £498 -0.50% 29
Yorkshire -14 72 £365 -4.33% 15
Midlands -30 69 £470 -24.80% 32
West Midlands -32 56 £474 -24.16% 13
East of England -18 33 £478 +13.14% 45
South West -49 32 £550 -0.90% 28
North East -4 18 £175 +59.09% 5
East Midlands -24 12 £158 -65.00% 19
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 (2.75%) SharePoint
2 16 (2.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 15 (1.88%) Confluence
4 8 (1.00%) CICS
5 4 (0.50%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.50%) 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 43 (5.38%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (2.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 22 (2.75%) MS Visio
3 17 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 13 (1.63%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.38%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.75%) 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
1 139 (17.38%) Azure
2 116 (14.50%) AWS
3 58 (7.25%) Microsoft 365
4 44 (5.50%) GCP
5 22 (2.75%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 16 (2.00%) SaaS
7 14 (1.75%) Entra ID
8 13 (1.63%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 13 (1.63%) IaaS
8 13 (1.63%) Power Platform
9 11 (1.38%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 10 (1.25%) PaaS
11 9 (1.13%) Azure DevOps
11 9 (1.13%) OpenShift
12 8 (1.00%) Amazon S3
12 8 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (1.00%) AWS Direct Connect
12 8 (1.00%) GitHub
13 7 (0.88%) AWS CloudTrail
13 7 (0.88%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 230 (28.75%) Firewall
2 152 (19.00%) WAN
3 127 (15.88%) BGP
4 95 (11.88%) LAN
5 91 (11.38%) OSPF
6 85 (10.63%) Network Security
6 85 (10.63%) VPN
7 70 (8.75%) Structured Cabling
8 65 (8.13%) DNS
9 63 (7.88%) Wireless
10 62 (7.75%) VXLAN
11 53 (6.63%) VLAN
12 51 (6.38%) SAN
13 50 (6.25%) DHCP
14 40 (5.00%) Ethernet VPN
15 39 (4.88%) Cisco ISE
16 33 (4.13%) Wi-Fi
17 32 (4.00%) SD-WAN
18 30 (3.75%) TCP/IP
19 29 (3.63%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.00%) DataStage
1 8 (1.00%) Power BI
2 5 (0.63%) GIS
2 5 (0.63%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (0.63%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.50%) MongoDB
3 4 (0.50%) Power Query
3 4 (0.50%) PowerPivot
4 3 (0.38%) Big Data
4 3 (0.38%) Geospatial Data
4 3 (0.38%) InfluxDB
4 3 (0.38%) QGIS
4 3 (0.38%) Relational Database
4 3 (0.38%) SAP Data Services
5 2 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.25%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.13%) Data Lake
6 1 (0.13%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.13%) Redis
6 1 (0.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 31 (3.88%) Git
2 27 (3.38%) JIRA
3 16 (2.00%) Jenkins
4 15 (1.88%) GitLab
5 9 (1.13%) Maven
6 4 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.50%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.50%) 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
1 216 (27.00%) Social Skills
2 133 (16.63%) Finance
3 95 (11.88%) Analytical Skills
4 88 (11.00%) Public Sector
5 52 (6.50%) Documentation Skills
6 51 (6.38%) Telecoms
7 41 (5.13%) Manufacturing
8 39 (4.88%) Banking
9 31 (3.88%) Marketing
10 23 (2.88%) Electronics
11 20 (2.50%) Legal
12 18 (2.25%) Retail
13 17 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 17 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
14 15 (1.88%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
16 11 (1.38%) Investment Banking
17 8 (1.00%) Law
17 8 (1.00%) Military
18 6 (0.75%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 134 (16.75%) Network Engineer
2 113 (14.13%) Architect
3 74 (9.25%) Project Manager
4 64 (8.00%) Senior
5 53 (6.63%) Data Centre Engineer
6 47 (5.88%) Analyst
7 42 (5.25%) Data Centre Manager
8 40 (5.00%) Network Architect
9 34 (4.25%) IT Support
9 34 (4.25%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 32 (4.00%) Infrastructure Manager
11 30 (3.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 30 (3.75%) Lead
12 28 (3.50%) Cisco Engineer
12 28 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
13 27 (3.38%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 26 (3.25%) Infrastructure Project Manager
15 25 (3.13%) Desktop Support
16 23 (2.88%) 2nd Line Support
16 23 (2.88%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (4.13%) 802.1X
2 22 (2.75%) Middleware
3 7 (0.88%) LDAP
4 6 (0.75%) Spring
5 4 (0.50%) ADO
5 4 (0.50%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (0.50%) Jinja
5 4 (0.50%) NETCONF
5 4 (0.50%) OpenConfig
5 4 (0.50%) Redfish
5 4 (0.50%) RESTCONF
5 4 (0.50%) Spring Boot
5 4 (0.50%) VML
5 4 (0.50%) XML
5 4 (0.50%) YANG
6 3 (0.38%) RFC 2544
7 2 (0.25%) Kafka
7 2 (0.25%) OpenLayers
7 2 (0.25%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 39 (4.88%) Hybrid Cloud
2 26 (3.25%) Analytical Mindset
2 26 (3.25%) Clustering
2 26 (3.25%) PKI
3 19 (2.38%) Driving Licence
3 19 (2.38%) Fibre Optics
4 17 (2.13%) Onboarding
5 16 (2.00%) Replication
5 16 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
6 14 (1.75%) Public Cloud
7 13 (1.63%) Cloud Native
7 13 (1.63%) Management Information System
8 10 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (1.25%) Mainframe
8 10 (1.25%) Private Cloud
9 9 (1.13%) CMDB
10 8 (1.00%) BYOD
10 8 (1.00%) Enterprise Storage
10 8 (1.00%) VSAM
11 7 (0.88%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 102 (12.75%) Windows
2 86 (10.75%) Linux
3 40 (5.00%) Windows Server
4 29 (3.63%) Android
4 29 (3.63%) Mac OS
5 25 (3.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (1.88%) Unix
7 13 (1.63%) AIX
8 10 (1.25%) Solaris
9 9 (1.13%) CentOS
10 6 (0.75%) VMS
11 5 (0.63%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.38%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.13%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (16.63%) Problem-Solving
2 131 (16.38%) Migration
3 97 (12.13%) Stakeholder Management
4 74 (9.25%) ITIL
5 66 (8.25%) Project Management
6 65 (8.13%) High Availability
7 63 (7.88%) Roadmaps
8 60 (7.50%) Continuous Improvement
9 59 (7.38%) Change Management
9 59 (7.38%) Load Balancing
10 57 (7.13%) Project Delivery
11 53 (6.63%) Agile
12 49 (6.13%) CI/CD
13 46 (5.75%) Data Centre Operations
14 45 (5.63%) Infrastructure as Code
15 43 (5.38%) Network Design
16 42 (5.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 41 (5.13%) Customer Service
17 41 (5.13%) Cybersecurity
17 41 (5.13%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 77 (9.63%) Python
2 46 (5.75%) PowerShell
3 24 (3.00%) Bash
4 22 (2.75%) Java
4 22 (2.75%) SQL
5 16 (2.00%) Perl
6 11 (1.38%) Shell Script
7 10 (1.25%) COBOL
8 7 (0.88%) Lisp
8 7 (0.88%) MATLAB
9 5 (0.63%) Bicep
9 5 (0.63%) VBA
10 4 (0.50%) JavaScript
11 2 (0.25%) C++
11 2 (0.25%) Korn
11 2 (0.25%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.13%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 279 (34.88%) Security Cleared
2 209 (26.13%) SC Cleared
3 152 (19.00%) Cisco Certification
4 108 (13.50%) CCNP
5 67 (8.38%) Degree
6 61 (7.63%) CCNA
7 59 (7.38%) DV Cleared
8 23 (2.88%) CCIE
9 22 (2.75%) Network+ Certification
9 22 (2.75%) PMP
10 20 (2.50%) AWS Certification
11 19 (2.38%) Microsoft Certification
12 18 (2.25%) A+ Certification
12 18 (2.25%) MCSE
12 18 (2.25%) PMI Certification
13 16 (2.00%) Azure Certification
13 16 (2.00%) JNCIS
14 14 (1.75%) JNCIP
15 12 (1.50%) JNCIA
15 12 (1.50%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (3.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 25 (3.13%) SLA
3 24 (3.00%) NIST
4 23 (2.88%) PMO
5 21 (2.63%) GDPR
6 17 (2.13%) PCI DSS
7 13 (1.63%) QA
8 9 (1.13%) NCSC
9 5 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
9 5 (0.63%) Data Quality
10 4 (0.50%) GRC
11 3 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.38%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.13%) COBIT
13 1 (0.13%) ISO 22301
13 1 (0.13%) RMADS
13 1 (0.13%) SOC 1
13 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 68 (8.50%) VMware Infrastructure
2 53 (6.63%) Active Directory
3 33 (4.13%) VMware NSX
4 22 (2.75%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (2.50%) Firmware
6 15 (1.88%) Docker
6 15 (1.88%) Hyper-V
7 14 (1.75%) vSphere
8 13 (1.63%) VMware ESXi
9 10 (1.25%) KVM
10 3 (0.38%) PowerHA
11 2 (0.25%) Ceph
11 2 (0.25%) Lustre
11 2 (0.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.25%) SRDF
11 2 (0.25%) vCloud
11 2 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.13%) NFS
12 1 (0.13%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 76 (9.50%) Ansible
2 67 (8.38%) Terraform
3 43 (5.38%) FortiGate
4 37 (4.63%) Kubernetes
5 26 (3.25%) Grafana
6 19 (2.38%) Prometheus
7 18 (2.25%) SCCM
8 14 (1.75%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (0.88%) Check_MK
9 7 (0.88%) Podman
9 7 (0.88%) Red Hat Satellite
9 7 (0.88%) SCOM
10 6 (0.75%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.63%) CASB
11 5 (0.63%) Endace
12 4 (0.50%) Dell DRAC
12 4 (0.50%) Nagios
12 4 (0.50%) PowerCLI
12 4 (0.50%) SCOrch
12 4 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 252 (31.50%) Cisco
2 101 (12.63%) Palo Alto
3 100 (12.50%) VMware
4 78 (9.75%) Microsoft
5 77 (9.63%) Dell
6 72 (9.00%) Juniper
7 59 (7.38%) F5
8 41 (5.13%) CheckPoint
9 40 (5.00%) HP
10 37 (4.63%) Aruba
11 34 (4.25%) ServiceNow
11 34 (4.25%) SolarWinds
12 33 (4.13%) Meraki
13 30 (3.75%) Arista
13 30 (3.75%) Fortinet
14 29 (3.63%) Apple
14 29 (3.63%) SAP
15 28 (3.50%) IBM
16 27 (3.38%) Splunk
17 23 (2.88%) Citrix