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

6 months to
6 Feb 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 138 129 91
Rank change year-on-year -9 -38 +14
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 665 527 894
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.99% 2.01% 2.35%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.76% 6.07% 7.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 446 311 633
10th Percentile £267 £349 £300
25th Percentile £381 £425 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.62% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £580 £638 £631
90th Percentile £681 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £481 £518 £525
% change year-on-year -7.00% -1.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 12 38
10th Percentile £21.27 £20.68 £21.25
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.18 £22.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £24.42 £31.31
Median % change year-on-year +5.53% -22.00% -48.25%
75th Percentile £67.25 £25.81 £40.94
90th Percentile £73.90 £56.93 £70.13
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £24.18 £31.31
% change year-on-year +6.58% -22.77% -46.07%

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 11,538 8,682 11,834
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.54% 33.05% 31.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,382 5,235 7,845
10th Percentile £276 £268 £253
25th Percentile £406 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £545
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% +0.92% -5.22%
75th Percentile £630 £673 £660
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £527
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.28% -4.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 566 245 740
10th Percentile £15.42 £18.51 £13.41
25th Percentile £18.58 £24.18 £17.00
Median hourly rate £30.75 £37.00 £32.41
Median % change year-on-year -16.89% +14.16% +44.14%
75th Percentile £63.75 £66.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £74.84 £83.20 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £35.00 £32.12
% change year-on-year -17.14% +8.98% +44.05%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -30 236 £525 - 199
North of England +7 156 £475 -4.52% 67
South East -9 103 £445 +1.14% 116
North West +23 93 £517 +3.35% 34
Midlands -23 75 £445 -24.58% 29
West Midlands -18 60 £474 -19.66% 22
Yorkshire -38 49 £454 +8.10% 22
South West -22 36 £550 - 27
East of England -22 29 £485 +14.79% 35
North East 0 17 £175 - 11
East Midlands -19 15 £158 -70.70% 7
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 28 (4.21%) SharePoint
2 23 (3.46%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (1.80%) Confluence
4 9 (1.35%) OpenStack
5 7 (1.05%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.75%) Apache
6 5 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.60%) HCL Notes
8 3 (0.45%) CICS
8 3 (0.45%) GeoServer
8 3 (0.45%) Smallworld
9 1 (0.15%) nginx
9 1 (0.15%) WebLogic
Applications
1 50 (7.52%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (3.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (3.91%) MS Visio
3 18 (2.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (2.11%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.30%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.15%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 6 (0.90%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.60%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.30%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.15%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.15%) Maximo
4 1 (0.15%) Primavera
4 1 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 111 (16.69%) Azure
2 93 (13.98%) AWS
3 61 (9.17%) Microsoft 365
4 29 (4.36%) GCP
5 18 (2.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 17 (2.56%) Power Platform
7 14 (2.11%) OpenShift
8 13 (1.95%) Entra ID
8 13 (1.95%) SaaS
9 12 (1.80%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 11 (1.65%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 9 (1.35%) AWS Direct Connect
12 8 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (1.20%) Azure DevOps
12 8 (1.20%) IaaS
12 8 (1.20%) PaaS
13 7 (1.05%) Amazon S3
13 7 (1.05%) AWS CloudTrail
13 7 (1.05%) GitHub
13 7 (1.05%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 192 (28.87%) Firewall
2 130 (19.55%) WAN
3 83 (12.48%) BGP
4 79 (11.88%) LAN
5 77 (11.58%) VPN
6 75 (11.28%) Wireless
7 72 (10.83%) Network Security
8 57 (8.57%) OSPF
9 47 (7.07%) VLAN
10 44 (6.62%) DNS
11 41 (6.17%) Wi-Fi
12 39 (5.86%) Structured Cabling
13 32 (4.81%) SAN
14 30 (4.51%) Cisco ISE
15 29 (4.36%) DHCP
16 28 (4.21%) IPsec
16 28 (4.21%) TCP/IP
17 27 (4.06%) VXLAN
18 25 (3.76%) MPLS
18 25 (3.76%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (2.41%) Power BI
2 10 (1.50%) Relational Database
3 7 (1.05%) RDBMS
4 6 (0.90%) DataStage
4 6 (0.90%) SQL Server
5 5 (0.75%) Apache Hive
5 5 (0.75%) Hadoop
5 5 (0.75%) HBase
6 4 (0.60%) Power Query
6 4 (0.60%) PowerPivot
7 3 (0.45%) Big Data
7 3 (0.45%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.45%) Data Vault
7 3 (0.45%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (0.45%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (0.45%) InfluxDB
7 3 (0.45%) Metadata
7 3 (0.45%) NoSQL
7 3 (0.45%) QGIS
7 3 (0.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 23 (3.46%) Git
2 17 (2.56%) Jenkins
3 14 (2.11%) GitLab
4 13 (1.95%) JIRA
5 7 (1.05%) Maven
6 5 (0.75%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.45%) ER Studio
7 3 (0.45%) ERwin
8 2 (0.30%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (0.30%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.15%) AppScan
9 1 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.15%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.15%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
General
1 186 (27.97%) Social Skills
2 121 (18.20%) Finance
3 89 (13.38%) Public Sector
4 88 (13.23%) Analytical Skills
5 56 (8.42%) Documentation Skills
6 54 (8.12%) Telecoms
7 43 (6.47%) Banking
8 41 (6.17%) Manufacturing
9 29 (4.36%) Marketing
10 25 (3.76%) Electronics
11 18 (2.71%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (1.95%) Retail
14 12 (1.80%) Legal
15 11 (1.65%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
17 8 (1.20%) Investment Banking
18 6 (0.90%) Law
18 6 (0.90%) Local Government
18 6 (0.90%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 124 (18.65%) Network Engineer
2 93 (13.98%) Architect
3 66 (9.92%) Project Manager
4 55 (8.27%) Analyst
5 39 (5.86%) Senior
6 37 (5.56%) Network Architect
7 33 (4.96%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 32 (4.81%) Data Centre Engineer
9 31 (4.66%) Lead
10 29 (4.36%) Cisco Engineer
10 29 (4.36%) Data Centre Manager
10 29 (4.36%) IT Support
11 27 (4.06%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 27 (4.06%) Security Engineer
12 26 (3.91%) Consultant
13 25 (3.76%) Desktop Support
14 23 (3.46%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
14 23 (3.46%) 2nd Line Support
14 23 (3.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 23 (3.46%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (3.01%) Middleware
2 19 (2.86%) 802.1X
3 8 (1.20%) RFC 2544
4 7 (1.05%) LDAP
5 5 (0.75%) Spark Streaming
6 4 (0.60%) ADO
6 4 (0.60%) VML
7 3 (0.45%) ARM Templates
8 2 (0.30%) AWS CDK
8 2 (0.30%) CSS
8 2 (0.30%) HTML
8 2 (0.30%) Kafka
8 2 (0.30%) ModSecurity
8 2 (0.30%) NETCONF
8 2 (0.30%) OpenConfig
8 2 (0.30%) REST
8 2 (0.30%) RESTCONF
8 2 (0.30%) YANG
9 1 (0.15%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (0.15%) JSSE
Miscellaneous
1 41 (6.17%) Hybrid Cloud
2 22 (3.31%) Public Cloud
3 19 (2.86%) Self-Motivation
4 17 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 15 (2.26%) Analytical Mindset
6 14 (2.11%) Driving Licence
6 14 (2.11%) Fibre Optics
6 14 (2.11%) Private Cloud
7 13 (1.95%) Replication
8 12 (1.80%) Management Information System
9 11 (1.65%) Cloud Native
10 9 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (1.35%) Mainframe
11 8 (1.20%) PKI
11 8 (1.20%) SCADA
12 6 (0.90%) CMDB
12 6 (0.90%) Legacy Systems
12 6 (0.90%) Security Posture
13 5 (0.75%) Operational Technology
13 5 (0.75%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 79 (11.88%) Windows
2 70 (10.53%) Linux
3 38 (5.71%) Windows Server
4 34 (5.11%) Android
4 34 (5.11%) Mac OS
5 20 (3.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.65%) CentOS
7 9 (1.35%) Unix
8 6 (0.90%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.75%) VMS
9 5 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.45%) AIX
10 3 (0.45%) Solaris
10 3 (0.45%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.15%) Kali Linux
12 1 (0.15%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 109 (16.39%) Migration
2 100 (15.04%) Problem-Solving
3 82 (12.33%) Stakeholder Management
4 52 (7.82%) ITIL
5 51 (7.67%) Project Delivery
6 50 (7.52%) Project Management
7 49 (7.37%) Agile
8 44 (6.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 43 (6.47%) CI/CD
10 42 (6.32%) Continuous Improvement
11 40 (6.02%) Network Design
12 39 (5.86%) Business Intelligence
12 39 (5.86%) Change Management
13 38 (5.71%) DevOps
14 37 (5.56%) Change Control
14 37 (5.56%) Customer Service
14 37 (5.56%) Infrastructure as Code
14 37 (5.56%) Programme Management
15 36 (5.41%) Cybersecurity
15 36 (5.41%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 62 (9.32%) Python
2 45 (6.77%) PowerShell
3 24 (3.61%) SQL
4 19 (2.86%) Bash
5 13 (1.95%) Shell Script
6 11 (1.65%) Perl
7 10 (1.50%) Java
8 9 (1.35%) Lisp
9 7 (1.05%) MATLAB
10 5 (0.75%) VBA
11 3 (0.45%) Bicep
11 3 (0.45%) COBOL
12 2 (0.30%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.15%) C#
13 1 (0.15%) C++
13 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.15%) Korn
13 1 (0.15%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 245 (36.84%) Security Cleared
2 204 (30.68%) SC Cleared
3 110 (16.54%) Cisco Certification
4 89 (13.38%) CCNP
5 58 (8.72%) Degree
6 45 (6.77%) CCNA
7 44 (6.62%) DV Cleared
8 23 (3.46%) CCIE
9 21 (3.16%) AWS Certification
10 17 (2.56%) PMP
11 15 (2.26%) PMI Certification
12 11 (1.65%) CISSP
12 11 (1.65%) JNCIE
13 9 (1.35%) A+ Certification
13 9 (1.35%) MCSE
13 9 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
13 9 (1.35%) Network+ Certification
13 9 (1.35%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 8 (1.20%) Azure Certification
14 8 (1.20%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.31%) PMO
2 19 (2.86%) SLA
3 17 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (2.56%) NIST
3 17 (2.56%) PCI DSS
4 15 (2.26%) GDPR
5 14 (2.11%) QA
6 11 (1.65%) Data Quality
7 8 (1.20%) NCSC
8 4 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
8 4 (0.60%) GRC
9 2 (0.30%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.15%) COBIT
10 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.15%) ISO 22301
10 1 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 1 (0.15%) RMADS
10 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
System Software
1 70 (10.53%) VMware Infrastructure
2 49 (7.37%) Active Directory
3 38 (5.71%) VMware NSX
4 21 (3.16%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (2.41%) Hyper-V
6 14 (2.11%) vSphere
7 12 (1.80%) Docker
8 10 (1.50%) Firmware
8 10 (1.50%) KVM
8 10 (1.50%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.75%) HDFS
10 2 (0.30%) Ceph
10 2 (0.30%) Lustre
10 2 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
10 2 (0.30%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.30%) vCloud
11 1 (0.15%) NFS
11 1 (0.15%) SRDF
11 1 (0.15%) UAG
11 1 (0.15%) Xen
Systems Management
1 70 (10.53%) Ansible
2 61 (9.17%) Terraform
3 30 (4.51%) FortiGate
4 23 (3.46%) SCCM
5 19 (2.86%) Kubernetes
6 15 (2.26%) Grafana
7 11 (1.65%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (1.50%) vCenter Server
9 9 (1.35%) SCOM
10 8 (1.20%) Prometheus
11 7 (1.05%) Check_MK
11 7 (1.05%) Podman
11 7 (1.05%) Red Hat Satellite
12 6 (0.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (0.90%) CASB
12 6 (0.90%) Puppet
12 6 (0.90%) SCOrch
13 5 (0.75%) Hadoop YARN
14 4 (0.60%) Nagios
14 4 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 230 (34.59%) Cisco
2 96 (14.44%) Palo Alto
3 93 (13.98%) VMware
4 76 (11.43%) Microsoft
5 65 (9.77%) Dell
6 51 (7.67%) Juniper
7 43 (6.47%) F5
7 43 (6.47%) HP
8 41 (6.17%) CheckPoint
9 34 (5.11%) Apple
9 34 (5.11%) Meraki
10 33 (4.96%) Aruba
11 31 (4.66%) ServiceNow
12 30 (4.51%) Fortinet
13 29 (4.36%) SAP
14 21 (3.16%) Citrix
15 19 (2.86%) Oracle
16 15 (2.26%) SolarWinds
17 14 (2.11%) Remedy
18 13 (1.95%) Arista
440 Data Centre jobs in England