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

6 months to
22 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 132 104
Rank change year-on-year +28 -28 -9
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 930 514 772
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.25% 2.14% 2.12%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.03% 6.27% 6.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 609 342 567
10th Percentile £318 £350 £300
25th Percentile £400 £416 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.62% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £609 £625
90th Percentile £725 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £485 £508 £525
% change year-on-year -4.43% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 13 33
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.18 £21.25
25th Percentile £16.53 - £22.30
Median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -21.57% -0.84% +14.77%
75th Percentile £33.75 £43.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.01 - £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 13,228 8,200 11,179
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.03% 34.20% 30.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,350 5,365 7,328
10th Percentile £313 £300 £268
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.63% -2.36% -3.51%
75th Percentile £630 £671 £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 674 328 818
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.03 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £20.59 £15.17
Median hourly rate £44.94 £33.91 £34.11
Median % change year-on-year +32.51% -0.57% +51.68%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.47 £84.15 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £31.91 £31.50
% change year-on-year +31.45% +1.29% +41.51%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 +16 317 £550 +4.76% 196
North of England +24 222 £472 +1.29% 60
South East +8 205 £463 +2.78% 98
Yorkshire -1 103 £365 -14.12% 25
North West +12 96 £481 -4.47% 26
Midlands -58 53 £460 -16.36% 29
South West -24 50 £495 -10.00% 36
West Midlands -47 47 £465 -15.45% 24
East of England -6 41 £487 +62.42% 24
North East -4 25 £513 +365.91% 9
East Midlands -24 5 £400 -27.27% 5
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 19 (2.04%) Confluence
2 12 (1.29%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.97%) CICS
5 4 (0.43%) Apache
5 4 (0.43%) CloudStack
5 4 (0.43%) nginx
5 4 (0.43%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.43%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.32%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.11%) IIS
Applications
1 14 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (1.18%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.32%) Adobe Illustrator
4 3 (0.32%) AutoCAD
4 3 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.22%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
1 3 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.22%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.11%) Maximo
3 1 (0.11%) Primavera
3 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 181 (19.46%) Azure
2 151 (16.24%) AWS
3 46 (4.95%) GCP
4 32 (3.44%) Microsoft 365
5 25 (2.69%) SaaS
6 24 (2.58%) OCI
7 23 (2.47%) IaaS
8 19 (2.04%) Entra ID
8 19 (2.04%) GitHub
9 17 (1.83%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 13 (1.40%) PaaS
11 12 (1.29%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 10 (1.08%) OpenShift
12 10 (1.08%) Power Platform
13 9 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (0.86%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (0.86%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 8 (0.86%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (0.86%) Azure Sentinel
15 7 (0.75%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 260 (27.96%) Firewall
2 178 (19.14%) WAN
3 158 (16.99%) BGP
4 128 (13.76%) OSPF
5 107 (11.51%) LAN
6 100 (10.75%) Network Security
7 96 (10.32%) VXLAN
8 89 (9.57%) SAN
9 88 (9.46%) VPN
10 87 (9.35%) Structured Cabling
11 81 (8.71%) VLAN
12 80 (8.60%) DNS
13 65 (6.99%) Ethernet VPN
14 61 (6.56%) DHCP
15 53 (5.70%) SD-WAN
16 44 (4.73%) BIG-IP
17 37 (3.98%) Wi-Fi
18 36 (3.87%) Cisco Nexus
19 35 (3.76%) NX-OS
20 34 (3.66%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.97%) DataStage
2 6 (0.65%) PostgreSQL
2 6 (0.65%) SQL Server
3 5 (0.54%) Power BI
4 4 (0.43%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
4 4 (0.43%) SAP Data Services
5 3 (0.32%) Big Data
5 3 (0.32%) GIS
6 2 (0.22%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.22%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database 12c
6 2 (0.22%) Power Query
6 2 (0.22%) PowerPivot
7 1 (0.11%) DB2
7 1 (0.11%) MS Access
7 1 (0.11%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.11%) Star Schema
7 1 (0.11%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 44 (4.73%) JIRA
2 36 (3.87%) Git
3 35 (3.76%) GitLab
4 24 (2.58%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.65%) Maven
6 5 (0.54%) ScriptRunner
7 4 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.43%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (0.43%) Subversion
8 3 (0.32%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.22%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.11%) AppScan
10 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.11%) Metasploit
General
1 236 (25.38%) Social Skills
2 130 (13.98%) Finance
3 106 (11.40%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (7.53%) Public Sector
5 56 (6.02%) Documentation Skills
6 42 (4.52%) Banking
7 26 (2.80%) Telecoms
8 23 (2.47%) Legal
9 22 (2.37%) Manufacturing
9 22 (2.37%) Retail
10 20 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
11 12 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (0.97%) Military
13 8 (0.86%) Aerospace
13 8 (0.86%) Marketing
13 8 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.75%) Law
14 7 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
15 5 (0.54%) Investment Banking
15 5 (0.54%) Portuguese Language
Job Titles
1 157 (16.88%) Network Engineer
2 128 (13.76%) Architect
3 103 (11.08%) Senior
4 74 (7.96%) Data Centre Engineer
5 68 (7.31%) Project Manager
6 66 (7.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 46 (4.95%) Lead
8 44 (4.73%) IT Engineer
8 44 (4.73%) Network Architect
9 42 (4.52%) Data Centre Manager
9 42 (4.52%) Field Engineer
10 39 (4.19%) Field Service Engineer
11 35 (3.76%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 30 (3.23%) Infrastructure Manager
13 27 (2.90%) Analyst
14 26 (2.80%) Solutions Architect
15 25 (2.69%) Administrator
15 25 (2.69%) Cisco Engineer
15 25 (2.69%) Support Engineer
16 24 (2.58%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (3.55%) 802.1X
1 33 (3.55%) Middleware
2 11 (1.18%) LDAP
3 9 (0.97%) Redfish
4 7 (0.75%) Spring
5 6 (0.65%) Elastic Stack
6 5 (0.54%) Jinja
6 5 (0.54%) Kafka
6 5 (0.54%) XML
7 4 (0.43%) ADO
7 4 (0.43%) NETCONF
7 4 (0.43%) REST
7 4 (0.43%) Spring Boot
8 3 (0.32%) ARM Templates
8 3 (0.32%) OpenConfig
8 3 (0.32%) OpenLayers
8 3 (0.32%) RESTCONF
8 3 (0.32%) RFC 2544
8 3 (0.32%) YAML
8 3 (0.32%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 56 (6.02%) Hybrid Cloud
2 46 (4.95%) Analytical Mindset
3 28 (3.01%) Clustering
4 27 (2.90%) PKI
5 25 (2.69%) Fibre Optics
6 20 (2.15%) Cloud Native
7 19 (2.04%) Onboarding
7 19 (2.04%) Private Cloud
8 18 (1.94%) Driving Licence
8 18 (1.94%) Management Information System
9 17 (1.83%) Replication
10 16 (1.72%) CMDB
10 16 (1.72%) Enterprise Storage
10 16 (1.72%) Public Cloud
10 16 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
11 11 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (1.18%) Mainframe
12 9 (0.97%) BYOD
12 9 (0.97%) SCADA
12 9 (0.97%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 110 (11.83%) Windows
2 108 (11.61%) Linux
3 32 (3.44%) Windows Server
4 30 (3.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (2.37%) Unix
6 20 (2.15%) AIX
7 16 (1.72%) Solaris
8 12 (1.29%) CentOS
9 8 (0.86%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.65%) VMS
11 5 (0.54%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.43%) Apple iOS
12 4 (0.43%) HPUX
12 4 (0.43%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.43%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.43%) SUSE
13 3 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.11%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 165 (17.74%) Problem-Solving
2 159 (17.10%) Migration
3 90 (9.68%) Stakeholder Management
4 87 (9.35%) ITIL
5 85 (9.14%) High Availability
6 84 (9.03%) Continuous Improvement
7 83 (8.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 78 (8.39%) Roadmaps
9 77 (8.28%) Infrastructure as Code
10 74 (7.96%) CI/CD
11 68 (7.31%) Change Management
11 68 (7.31%) Load Balancing
12 66 (7.10%) Project Delivery
12 66 (7.10%) Project Management
13 63 (6.77%) Validation
14 55 (5.91%) Agile
15 54 (5.81%) Technical Leadership
16 53 (5.70%) Data Centre Operations
16 53 (5.70%) Network Design
16 53 (5.70%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 107 (11.51%) Python
2 36 (3.87%) PowerShell
3 26 (2.80%) SQL
4 22 (2.37%) Bash
5 21 (2.26%) Java
6 16 (1.72%) Shell Script
7 11 (1.18%) COBOL
7 11 (1.18%) MATLAB
8 8 (0.86%) Perl
9 7 (0.75%) Bicep
9 7 (0.75%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.54%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.32%) VBA
12 2 (0.22%) ActionScript
12 2 (0.22%) C++
12 2 (0.22%) Korn
12 2 (0.22%) Lisp
13 1 (0.11%) Go
13 1 (0.11%) R
13 1 (0.11%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 279 (30.00%) Security Cleared
2 204 (21.94%) SC Cleared
3 192 (20.65%) Cisco Certification
4 122 (13.12%) CCNP
5 87 (9.35%) CCNA
6 64 (6.88%) Degree
7 62 (6.67%) DV Cleared
8 49 (5.27%) Network+ Certification
9 40 (4.30%) Microsoft Certification
10 37 (3.98%) A+ Certification
10 37 (3.98%) MCSE
11 21 (2.26%) Azure Certification
11 21 (2.26%) PMP
12 20 (2.15%) CCIE
12 20 (2.15%) City & Guilds
13 19 (2.04%) AWS Certification
13 19 (2.04%) PMI Certification
14 17 (1.83%) BICSI Certification
15 16 (1.72%) JNCIS
16 14 (1.51%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.44%) SLA
2 20 (2.15%) NIST
2 20 (2.15%) PMO
3 19 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 15 (1.61%) GDPR
4 15 (1.61%) QA
5 9 (0.97%) NCSC
6 8 (0.86%) GRC
6 8 (0.86%) PCI DSS
7 6 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.32%) NIST 800
8 3 (0.32%) RMADS
9 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.22%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.11%) COBIT
10 1 (0.11%) NEBOSH
10 1 (0.11%) SOC 1
System Software
1 82 (8.82%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (5.16%) Active Directory
3 31 (3.33%) Firmware
4 26 (2.80%) VMware NSX
4 26 (2.80%) vSphere
5 24 (2.58%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (2.58%) VMware ESXi
6 20 (2.15%) Hyper-V
7 12 (1.29%) KVM
8 11 (1.18%) Docker
9 5 (0.54%) NFS
10 4 (0.43%) Ceph
10 4 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (0.43%) VMware Workstation
11 3 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
11 3 (0.32%) PowerHA
11 3 (0.32%) SRDF
11 3 (0.32%) UAG
11 3 (0.32%) Veritas Cluster Server
12 2 (0.22%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 110 (11.83%) Ansible
2 85 (9.14%) Terraform
3 47 (5.05%) FortiGate
4 41 (4.41%) Kubernetes
5 28 (3.01%) Grafana
6 24 (2.58%) Prometheus
7 19 (2.04%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (1.40%) Check_MK
9 12 (1.29%) SCCM
10 11 (1.18%) Podman
10 11 (1.18%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (1.08%) NetBackup
11 10 (1.08%) vCenter Server
12 9 (0.97%) Dell DRAC
13 7 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.75%) PowerCLI
14 6 (0.65%) Tivoli Storage Manager
15 5 (0.54%) Endace
15 5 (0.54%) Nagios
15 5 (0.54%) vMotion
Vendors
1 254 (27.31%) Cisco
2 127 (13.66%) VMware
3 126 (13.55%) Palo Alto
4 90 (9.68%) F5
5 86 (9.25%) Microsoft
6 74 (7.96%) Juniper
7 68 (7.31%) Dell
8 54 (5.81%) Arista
9 51 (5.48%) Aruba
10 48 (5.16%) CheckPoint
11 46 (4.95%) Fortinet
12 41 (4.41%) ServiceNow
13 40 (4.30%) SolarWinds
14 32 (3.44%) IBM
15 28 (3.01%) Splunk
16 27 (2.90%) Red Hat
17 25 (2.69%) Oracle
18 24 (2.58%) Google
19 23 (2.47%) Meraki
20 22 (2.37%) Atlassian
434 Data Centre jobs in England