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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 125 97
Rank change year-on-year -9 -28 +6
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 709 536 856
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.03% 2.11% 2.27%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.96% 6.31% 7.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 460 322 594
10th Percentile £261 £349 £295
25th Percentile £384 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £479 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £630
90th Percentile £675 £712 £700
UK median daily rate £476 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -7.07% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 12 36
10th Percentile £20.27 - £21.25
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.18 £22.08
Median hourly rate £26.50 £24.66 £31.31
Median % change year-on-year +7.46% -21.23% -46.07%
75th Percentile £72.00 £25.81 £40.31
90th Percentile £74.26 £56.93 £54.38
UK median hourly rate £26.14 £24.18 £25.12
% change year-on-year +8.09% -3.72% -35.69%

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 11,899 8,493 11,697
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.02% 33.46% 30.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,578 5,252 7,655
10th Percentile £283 £275 £256
25th Percentile £408 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.96% -0.91% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £669 £656
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 585 255 755
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.17 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.82 £24.18 £16.54
Median hourly rate £32.50 £37.00 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.16% +17.46% +40.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.05 £83.33 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.50 £33.77 £30.58
% change year-on-year -9.68% +10.43% +36.00%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 -24 253 £515 -0.96% 153
North of England +3 168 £474 -5.20% 64
South East +5 128 £445 -1.11% 100
North West +11 98 £500 - 32
Midlands -28 72 £460 -22.03% 35
West Midlands -32 57 £472 -20.00% 20
Yorkshire -27 56 £438 +4.29% 30
South West -34 32 £550 -1.79% 24
East of England -14 29 £478 +13.14% 29
North East -1 17 £175 - 2
East Midlands -22 15 £158 -70.70% 15
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 27 (3.81%) SharePoint
2 16 (2.26%) Confluence
2 16 (2.26%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.85%) CICS
3 6 (0.85%) OpenStack
4 4 (0.56%) WebLogic
5 3 (0.42%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.42%) GeoServer
5 3 (0.42%) HCL Notes
5 3 (0.42%) nginx
5 3 (0.42%) Smallworld
6 2 (0.28%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.14%) Apache
7 1 (0.14%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 49 (6.91%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (3.53%) MS Visio
3 24 (3.39%) Microsoft Excel
4 19 (2.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (1.97%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.42%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
1 4 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.28%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.14%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.14%) Maximo
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.14%) Primavera
4 1 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 116 (16.36%) Azure
2 101 (14.25%) AWS
3 60 (8.46%) Microsoft 365
4 34 (4.80%) GCP
5 17 (2.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 16 (2.26%) Power Platform
6 16 (2.26%) SaaS
7 13 (1.83%) OpenShift
8 12 (1.69%) Entra ID
9 11 (1.55%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 11 (1.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 11 (1.55%) IaaS
9 11 (1.55%) PaaS
10 9 (1.27%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (1.13%) Amazon S3
11 8 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (1.13%) GitHub
12 7 (0.99%) AWS CloudTrail
12 7 (0.99%) AWS KMS
12 7 (0.99%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 205 (28.91%) Firewall
2 136 (19.18%) WAN
3 97 (13.68%) BGP
4 88 (12.41%) LAN
5 75 (10.58%) Network Security
6 73 (10.30%) VPN
7 71 (10.01%) Wireless
8 68 (9.59%) OSPF
9 55 (7.76%) DNS
10 48 (6.77%) VLAN
11 47 (6.63%) Structured Cabling
12 42 (5.92%) VXLAN
13 40 (5.64%) DHCP
14 38 (5.36%) SAN
15 37 (5.22%) Wi-Fi
16 36 (5.08%) Cisco ISE
17 31 (4.37%) IPsec
18 26 (3.67%) Ethernet VPN
19 25 (3.53%) TCP/IP
20 24 (3.39%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (1.97%) Power BI
2 8 (1.13%) DataStage
2 8 (1.13%) Relational Database
3 6 (0.85%) RDBMS
3 6 (0.85%) SQL Server
4 5 (0.71%) GIS
5 4 (0.56%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.56%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.56%) Power Query
5 4 (0.56%) PowerPivot
6 3 (0.42%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (0.42%) InfluxDB
6 3 (0.42%) QGIS
7 2 (0.28%) Big Data
7 2 (0.28%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.28%) Data Vault
7 2 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.28%) Metadata
7 2 (0.28%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 27 (3.81%) Git
2 21 (2.96%) JIRA
3 17 (2.40%) Jenkins
4 15 (2.12%) GitLab
5 10 (1.41%) Maven
6 4 (0.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 3 (0.42%) Eclipse
7 3 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.42%) Subversion
8 2 (0.28%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.28%) ER Studio
8 2 (0.28%) ERwin
8 2 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (0.28%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.14%) AppScan
9 1 (0.14%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.14%) Metasploit
General
1 194 (27.36%) Social Skills
2 121 (17.07%) Finance
3 88 (12.41%) Public Sector
4 82 (11.57%) Analytical Skills
5 56 (7.90%) Documentation Skills
6 52 (7.33%) Telecoms
7 40 (5.64%) Banking
7 40 (5.64%) Manufacturing
8 29 (4.09%) Marketing
9 24 (3.39%) Electronics
10 18 (2.54%) Presentation Skills
11 16 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 16 (2.26%) Legal
12 15 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
13 13 (1.83%) Retail
14 12 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
15 11 (1.55%) Investment Banking
16 8 (1.13%) Military
17 7 (0.99%) Law
18 6 (0.85%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 128 (18.05%) Network Engineer
2 97 (13.68%) Architect
3 69 (9.73%) Project Manager
4 59 (8.32%) Analyst
5 50 (7.05%) Senior
6 40 (5.64%) Data Centre Engineer
7 37 (5.22%) Network Architect
8 33 (4.65%) Data Centre Manager
9 32 (4.51%) IT Support
9 32 (4.51%) Lead
9 32 (4.51%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 27 (3.81%) Cisco Engineer
11 26 (3.67%) Security Engineer
12 25 (3.53%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 25 (3.53%) Desktop Support
12 25 (3.53%) Infrastructure Manager
13 24 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
14 23 (3.24%) 2nd Line Support
14 23 (3.24%) Consultant
14 23 (3.24%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (4.09%) 802.1X
2 21 (2.96%) Middleware
3 7 (0.99%) LDAP
4 6 (0.85%) RFC 2544
4 6 (0.85%) Spring
5 4 (0.56%) ADO
5 4 (0.56%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.56%) Spring Boot
5 4 (0.56%) VML
6 3 (0.42%) XML
7 2 (0.28%) CSS
7 2 (0.28%) EJB
7 2 (0.28%) HTML
7 2 (0.28%) Java EE
7 2 (0.28%) Kafka
7 2 (0.28%) NETCONF
7 2 (0.28%) OpenLayers
7 2 (0.28%) REST
7 2 (0.28%) RESTCONF
7 2 (0.28%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 40 (5.64%) Hybrid Cloud
2 18 (2.54%) Analytical Mindset
2 18 (2.54%) Public Cloud
3 17 (2.40%) Driving Licence
3 17 (2.40%) PKI
3 17 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
4 15 (2.12%) Clustering
4 15 (2.12%) Onboarding
5 13 (1.83%) Replication
6 12 (1.69%) Cloud Native
7 11 (1.55%) Fibre Optics
7 11 (1.55%) Management Information System
8 10 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (1.41%) Mainframe
9 9 (1.27%) Private Cloud
10 7 (0.99%) CMDB
10 7 (0.99%) SCADA
11 6 (0.85%) BYOD
11 6 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
11 6 (0.85%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 89 (12.55%) Windows
2 78 (11.00%) Linux
3 36 (5.08%) Windows Server
4 32 (4.51%) Android
4 32 (4.51%) Mac OS
5 27 (3.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (1.83%) Unix
7 11 (1.55%) CentOS
8 8 (1.13%) Solaris
9 7 (0.99%) AIX
10 6 (0.85%) VMS
11 5 (0.71%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.42%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.14%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.14%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 120 (16.93%) Migration
2 112 (15.80%) Problem-Solving
3 89 (12.55%) Stakeholder Management
4 60 (8.46%) ITIL
5 58 (8.18%) Project Management
6 51 (7.19%) Agile
6 51 (7.19%) Project Delivery
7 49 (6.91%) Continuous Improvement
8 48 (6.77%) Change Management
9 46 (6.49%) High Availability
10 45 (6.35%) CI/CD
10 45 (6.35%) Load Balancing
10 45 (6.35%) Roadmaps
11 44 (6.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 40 (5.64%) Change Control
13 39 (5.50%) Customer Service
13 39 (5.50%) Network Design
14 38 (5.36%) Cybersecurity
14 38 (5.36%) Infrastructure as Code
15 37 (5.22%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 58 (8.18%) Python
2 46 (6.49%) PowerShell
3 27 (3.81%) SQL
4 23 (3.24%) Bash
5 21 (2.96%) Java
6 14 (1.97%) Perl
7 12 (1.69%) Shell Script
8 9 (1.27%) Lisp
9 7 (0.99%) MATLAB
10 6 (0.85%) COBOL
11 5 (0.71%) Bicep
11 5 (0.71%) VBA
12 4 (0.56%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.28%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.14%) C#
14 1 (0.14%) C++
14 1 (0.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.14%) Korn
14 1 (0.14%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 269 (37.94%) Security Cleared
2 210 (29.62%) SC Cleared
3 125 (17.63%) Cisco Certification
4 95 (13.40%) CCNP
5 60 (8.46%) Degree
6 55 (7.76%) DV Cleared
7 51 (7.19%) CCNA
8 20 (2.82%) AWS Certification
8 20 (2.82%) CCIE
8 20 (2.82%) PMP
9 18 (2.54%) PMI Certification
10 14 (1.97%) JNCIS
11 13 (1.83%) Microsoft Certification
11 13 (1.83%) Network+ Certification
12 12 (1.69%) A+ Certification
12 12 (1.69%) CISSP
12 12 (1.69%) JNCIP
12 12 (1.69%) MCSE
13 10 (1.41%) Azure Certification
13 10 (1.41%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (3.53%) PMO
2 20 (2.82%) SLA
3 19 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (2.68%) NIST
4 18 (2.54%) PCI DSS
5 15 (2.12%) GDPR
6 14 (1.97%) QA
7 9 (1.27%) Data Quality
8 8 (1.13%) NCSC
9 5 (0.71%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.56%) GRC
11 3 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.28%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.14%) COBIT
13 1 (0.14%) ISO 22301
13 1 (0.14%) RMADS
13 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 61 (8.60%) VMware Infrastructure
2 49 (6.91%) Active Directory
3 33 (4.65%) VMware NSX
4 23 (3.24%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (2.26%) Hyper-V
6 14 (1.97%) vSphere
7 12 (1.69%) Docker
8 11 (1.55%) Firmware
9 10 (1.41%) KVM
10 9 (1.27%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.28%) Ceph
11 2 (0.28%) Lustre
11 2 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.28%) SRDF
11 2 (0.28%) vCloud
12 1 (0.14%) HDFS
12 1 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.14%) NFS
12 1 (0.14%) RHEV
12 1 (0.14%) UAG
Systems Management
1 66 (9.31%) Ansible
2 64 (9.03%) Terraform
3 42 (5.92%) FortiGate
4 24 (3.39%) Kubernetes
5 21 (2.96%) SCCM
6 18 (2.54%) Grafana
7 10 (1.41%) Microsoft Intune
7 10 (1.41%) Prometheus
8 7 (0.99%) CASB
8 7 (0.99%) Check_MK
8 7 (0.99%) Podman
8 7 (0.99%) Red Hat Satellite
8 7 (0.99%) SCOM
9 6 (0.85%) SCOrch
9 6 (0.85%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (0.56%) Nagios
10 4 (0.56%) PowerCLI
10 4 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
11 3 (0.42%) Endace
Vendors
1 236 (33.29%) Cisco
2 97 (13.68%) Palo Alto
3 87 (12.27%) VMware
4 69 (9.73%) Microsoft
5 67 (9.45%) Dell
6 64 (9.03%) Juniper
7 54 (7.62%) F5
8 44 (6.21%) CheckPoint
9 43 (6.06%) HP
10 37 (5.22%) Aruba
10 37 (5.22%) ServiceNow
11 33 (4.65%) Meraki
12 32 (4.51%) Apple
13 28 (3.95%) Fortinet
13 28 (3.95%) SAP
14 26 (3.67%) SolarWinds
15 24 (3.39%) Oracle
16 22 (3.10%) Citrix
17 19 (2.68%) Red Hat
17 19 (2.68%) Splunk