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 27 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 106 128 101
Rank change year-on-year +22 -27 -7
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 954 509 781
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.29% 2.14% 2.14%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.11% 6.24% 6.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 618 338 573
10th Percentile £318 £334 £300
25th Percentile £405 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.84% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £609 £625
90th Percentile £725 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £485 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -3.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 13 32
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.18 £21.25
25th Percentile £18.07 - £23.43
Median hourly rate £19.85 £24.66 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -19.51% -0.84% +14.77%
75th Percentile £35.22 £43.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £75.16 - £41.25
UK median hourly rate £19.34 £27.50 £24.00
% change year-on-year -29.67% +14.58% +11.81%

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 13,414 8,160 11,238
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.20% 34.32% 30.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,443 5,332 7,352
10th Percentile £313 £300 £269
25th Percentile £413 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.80% -2.73% -3.51%
75th Percentile £630 £669 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -2.38% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 701 328 828
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.50 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £20.64 £15.17
Median hourly rate £42.50 £34.21 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.25% -3.65% +60.20%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.40 £82.50 £70.50
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £31.76 £34.11
% change year-on-year +29.09% -6.88% +55.02%

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 27 May 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 27 May 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 27 May 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 +10 332 £550 +4.76% 223
North of England +25 228 £474 +1.83% 61
South East +17 212 £463 +2.78% 87
Yorkshire -2 107 £365 -14.12% 25
North West +15 97 £481 -4.47% 28
Midlands -59 55 £466 -15.29% 25
South West -25 50 £495 -10.00% 26
West Midlands -51 49 £467 -15.12% 21
East of England -9 39 £492 +64.00% 25
North East +2 28 £625 +468.18% 8
East Midlands -31 5 £400 -27.27% 4
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 (2.10%) Confluence
2 13 (1.36%) SharePoint
3 10 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.94%) CICS
5 4 (0.42%) Apache
5 4 (0.42%) CloudStack
5 4 (0.42%) nginx
5 4 (0.42%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.42%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.31%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.10%) IIS
Applications
1 13 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 11 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
2 11 (1.15%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.31%) Adobe Illustrator
3 3 (0.31%) AutoCAD
3 3 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.21%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
1 3 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.21%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.10%) Maximo
3 1 (0.10%) Primavera
3 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 187 (19.60%) Azure
2 158 (16.56%) AWS
3 46 (4.82%) GCP
4 32 (3.35%) Microsoft 365
5 28 (2.94%) OCI
6 27 (2.83%) SaaS
7 26 (2.73%) IaaS
8 21 (2.20%) GitHub
9 18 (1.89%) Entra ID
10 17 (1.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 13 (1.36%) PaaS
12 12 (1.26%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 10 (1.05%) Power Platform
14 9 (0.94%) Azure Sentinel
14 9 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
14 9 (0.94%) OpenShift
15 8 (0.84%) Amazon EKS
15 8 (0.84%) Amazon GuardDuty
15 8 (0.84%) Azure DevOps
15 8 (0.84%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 266 (27.88%) Firewall
2 180 (18.87%) WAN
3 164 (17.19%) BGP
4 132 (13.84%) OSPF
5 108 (11.32%) LAN
6 103 (10.80%) VXLAN
7 98 (10.27%) Network Security
8 93 (9.75%) SAN
9 90 (9.43%) Structured Cabling
10 87 (9.12%) DNS
10 87 (9.12%) VLAN
11 86 (9.01%) VPN
12 68 (7.13%) Ethernet VPN
13 67 (7.02%) DHCP
14 56 (5.87%) SD-WAN
15 48 (5.03%) BIG-IP
16 39 (4.09%) NX-OS
17 38 (3.98%) Cisco Nexus
17 38 (3.98%) Wireless
18 37 (3.88%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.94%) DataStage
2 6 (0.63%) PostgreSQL
2 6 (0.63%) SQL Server
3 5 (0.52%) Power BI
4 4 (0.42%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.42%) Oracle Reports
4 4 (0.42%) SAP Data Services
5 3 (0.31%) Big Data
5 3 (0.31%) GIS
6 2 (0.21%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.21%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.21%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.21%) Oracle Database 12c
6 2 (0.21%) Power Query
6 2 (0.21%) PowerPivot
7 1 (0.10%) DB2
7 1 (0.10%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.10%) MS Access
7 1 (0.10%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.10%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 49 (5.14%) JIRA
2 37 (3.88%) GitLab
3 35 (3.67%) Git
4 26 (2.73%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.63%) Maven
6 5 (0.52%) ScriptRunner
7 4 (0.42%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.42%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (0.42%) Subversion
8 3 (0.31%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.21%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.10%) AppScan
10 1 (0.10%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.10%) Metasploit
General
1 243 (25.47%) Social Skills
2 138 (14.47%) Finance
3 106 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
4 71 (7.44%) Public Sector
5 59 (6.18%) Documentation Skills
6 43 (4.51%) Banking
7 28 (2.94%) Telecoms
8 26 (2.73%) Legal
9 24 (2.52%) Manufacturing
10 23 (2.41%) Retail
11 20 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
12 12 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 9 (0.94%) Military
14 8 (0.84%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.84%) Law
14 8 (0.84%) Marketing
14 8 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.52%) Financial Institution
16 5 (0.52%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 161 (16.88%) Network Engineer
2 127 (13.31%) Architect
3 113 (11.84%) Senior
4 79 (8.28%) Data Centre Engineer
5 73 (7.65%) Project Manager
6 69 (7.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 49 (5.14%) Lead
8 44 (4.61%) Network Architect
9 43 (4.51%) IT Engineer
10 42 (4.40%) Data Centre Manager
10 42 (4.40%) Field Engineer
11 39 (4.09%) Field Service Engineer
12 35 (3.67%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
13 31 (3.25%) Infrastructure Manager
14 27 (2.83%) Cisco Engineer
14 27 (2.83%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 26 (2.73%) Analyst
15 26 (2.73%) Solutions Architect
16 25 (2.62%) Administrator
16 25 (2.62%) Data Centre Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (3.46%) Middleware
2 32 (3.35%) 802.1X
3 11 (1.15%) LDAP
4 9 (0.94%) Redfish
5 7 (0.73%) Spring
6 6 (0.63%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (0.52%) Jinja
7 5 (0.52%) Kafka
7 5 (0.52%) REST
7 5 (0.52%) XML
8 4 (0.42%) ADO
8 4 (0.42%) Spring Boot
9 3 (0.31%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.31%) EJB
9 3 (0.31%) Java EE
9 3 (0.31%) JSON
9 3 (0.31%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.31%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.31%) VML
9 3 (0.31%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 58 (6.08%) Hybrid Cloud
2 45 (4.72%) Analytical Mindset
3 28 (2.94%) Clustering
4 27 (2.83%) PKI
5 25 (2.62%) Fibre Optics
6 22 (2.31%) Cloud Native
7 20 (2.10%) Driving Licence
7 20 (2.10%) Private Cloud
8 19 (1.99%) Management Information System
8 19 (1.99%) Onboarding
9 18 (1.89%) Replication
10 17 (1.78%) CMDB
10 17 (1.78%) Enterprise Storage
11 16 (1.68%) Public Cloud
12 15 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
14 11 (1.15%) Mainframe
15 9 (0.94%) BYOD
15 9 (0.94%) SCADA
15 9 (0.94%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 113 (11.84%) Windows
2 111 (11.64%) Linux
3 32 (3.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 30 (3.14%) Windows Server
5 22 (2.31%) Unix
6 21 (2.20%) AIX
7 16 (1.68%) Solaris
8 12 (1.26%) CentOS
9 8 (0.84%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.52%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.52%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.52%) VMS
11 4 (0.42%) HPUX
11 4 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
11 4 (0.42%) SUSE
12 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.21%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.10%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (17.40%) Problem-Solving
2 160 (16.77%) Migration
3 96 (10.06%) Stakeholder Management
4 90 (9.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 89 (9.33%) High Availability
5 89 (9.33%) ITIL
6 84 (8.81%) Continuous Improvement
7 81 (8.49%) Infrastructure as Code
8 79 (8.28%) Roadmaps
9 77 (8.07%) CI/CD
10 72 (7.55%) Change Management
11 70 (7.34%) Load Balancing
12 68 (7.13%) Project Delivery
12 68 (7.13%) Project Management
13 63 (6.60%) Agile
14 61 (6.39%) Validation
15 55 (5.77%) Zero Trust
16 54 (5.66%) Data Centre Operations
16 54 (5.66%) DevOps
17 53 (5.56%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 114 (11.95%) Python
2 35 (3.67%) PowerShell
3 25 (2.62%) SQL
4 23 (2.41%) Bash
5 21 (2.20%) Java
6 16 (1.68%) Shell Script
7 11 (1.15%) COBOL
7 11 (1.15%) MATLAB
8 8 (0.84%) Perl
9 7 (0.73%) Bicep
9 7 (0.73%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.52%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.42%) ActionScript
11 4 (0.42%) Lisp
12 3 (0.31%) VBA
13 2 (0.21%) C++
13 2 (0.21%) Korn
14 1 (0.10%) C
14 1 (0.10%) Groovy
14 1 (0.10%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 289 (30.29%) Security Cleared
2 209 (21.91%) SC Cleared
3 200 (20.96%) Cisco Certification
4 130 (13.63%) CCNP
5 91 (9.54%) CCNA
6 66 (6.92%) Degree
6 66 (6.92%) DV Cleared
7 52 (5.45%) Network+ Certification
8 40 (4.19%) Microsoft Certification
9 37 (3.88%) A+ Certification
9 37 (3.88%) MCSE
10 23 (2.41%) PMP
11 21 (2.20%) Azure Certification
11 21 (2.20%) CCIE
11 21 (2.20%) City & Guilds
12 20 (2.10%) PMI Certification
13 19 (1.99%) AWS Certification
14 17 (1.78%) BICSI Certification
15 16 (1.68%) JNCIS
16 15 (1.57%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (3.56%) SLA
2 22 (2.31%) NIST
3 20 (2.10%) PMO
4 19 (1.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 15 (1.57%) GDPR
6 14 (1.47%) QA
7 9 (0.94%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.84%) GRC
8 8 (0.84%) NCSC
9 6 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.31%) NIST 800
10 3 (0.31%) RMADS
11 2 (0.21%) Data Quality
11 2 (0.21%) JSP 440
11 2 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.10%) COBIT
12 1 (0.10%) NEBOSH
12 1 (0.10%) SOC 1
System Software
1 83 (8.70%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (5.03%) Active Directory
3 31 (3.25%) Firmware
4 26 (2.73%) vSphere
5 25 (2.62%) VMware ESXi
5 25 (2.62%) VMware NSX
6 23 (2.41%) Virtual Machines
7 20 (2.10%) Hyper-V
8 12 (1.26%) KVM
9 11 (1.15%) Docker
10 5 (0.52%) NFS
11 4 (0.42%) Ceph
11 4 (0.42%) SRDF
11 4 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.42%) VMware Workstation
12 3 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
12 3 (0.31%) PowerHA
12 3 (0.31%) UAG
12 3 (0.31%) Veritas Cluster Server
13 2 (0.21%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 114 (11.95%) Ansible
2 87 (9.12%) Terraform
3 47 (4.93%) FortiGate
4 41 (4.30%) Kubernetes
5 29 (3.04%) Grafana
6 25 (2.62%) Prometheus
7 19 (1.99%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (1.36%) Check_MK
9 11 (1.15%) Podman
9 11 (1.15%) Red Hat Satellite
10 10 (1.05%) NetBackup
10 10 (1.05%) SCCM
10 10 (1.05%) vCenter Server
11 9 (0.94%) Dell DRAC
12 7 (0.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.73%) PowerCLI
13 6 (0.63%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
14 5 (0.52%) Nagios
14 5 (0.52%) vMotion
Vendors
1 260 (27.25%) Cisco
2 130 (13.63%) VMware
3 128 (13.42%) Palo Alto
4 95 (9.96%) F5
5 84 (8.81%) Microsoft
6 74 (7.76%) Juniper
7 68 (7.13%) Dell
8 59 (6.18%) Arista
9 56 (5.87%) Aruba
10 50 (5.24%) CheckPoint
11 49 (5.14%) Fortinet
12 43 (4.51%) ServiceNow
13 40 (4.19%) SolarWinds
14 33 (3.46%) IBM
15 28 (2.94%) Red Hat
15 28 (2.94%) Splunk
16 26 (2.73%) Oracle
17 24 (2.52%) Google
18 22 (2.31%) Atlassian
18 22 (2.31%) Extreme Networks