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

6 months to
16 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 111 128 105
Rank change year-on-year +17 -23 -11
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 910 520 768
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.22% 2.14% 2.11%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.90% 6.30% 6.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 590 347 561
10th Percentile £318 £350 £300
25th Percentile £400 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -7.62% -0.47% -4.09%
75th Percentile £600 £603 £625
90th Percentile £725 £680 £700
UK median daily rate £485 £511 £525
% change year-on-year -5.13% -2.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 14 33
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.18 £21.25
25th Percentile £17.04 £24.66 £22.30
Median hourly rate £19.34 £26.08 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -25.84% +4.87% +14.77%
75th Percentile £33.75 £42.81 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.95 £43.75 £41.25
UK median hourly rate £19.34 £27.50 £24.00
% change year-on-year -29.67% +14.58% +10.75%

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 13,186 8,258 11,162
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.14% 34.04% 30.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,329 5,410 7,319
10th Percentile £313 £300 £269
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.19% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £626 £673 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £509 £525 £543
% change year-on-year -3.05% -3.23% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 670 328 812
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.58 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £20.64 £15.16
Median hourly rate £46.00 £33.96 £32.56
Median % change year-on-year +35.47% +4.29% +44.80%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £84.65 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £31.76 £31.25
% change year-on-year +33.82% +1.63% +38.98%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +11 316 £550 +4.27% 202
North of England +21 209 £464 +9.12% 81
South East 0 197 £463 +2.78% 90
Yorkshire -6 97 £365 -14.12% 27
North West +16 92 £481 -3.75% 40
Midlands -57 53 £460 -16.36% 35
South West -37 51 £495 -9.84% 31
West Midlands -54 47 £465 -15.45% 27
East of England -8 42 £487 +94.90% 32
North East 0 22 £400 +263.64% 14
East Midlands -25 5 £400 -27.27% 8
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 (2.20%) Confluence
2 13 (1.43%) SharePoint
3 10 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.99%) CICS
5 4 (0.44%) nginx
5 4 (0.44%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.44%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.33%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.22%) Apache
7 2 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.22%) CloudStack
Applications
1 16 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (1.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (1.21%) MS Visio
5 10 (1.10%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.33%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.22%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.22%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
1 3 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.22%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.11%) Maximo
3 1 (0.11%) Oracle Financials
3 1 (0.11%) Primavera
3 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 173 (19.01%) Azure
2 148 (16.26%) AWS
3 44 (4.84%) GCP
4 30 (3.30%) Microsoft 365
5 23 (2.53%) SaaS
6 20 (2.20%) OCI
7 19 (2.09%) IaaS
8 17 (1.87%) Entra ID
8 17 (1.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (1.65%) GitHub
10 13 (1.43%) PaaS
11 12 (1.32%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 11 (1.21%) Power Platform
13 10 (1.10%) OpenShift
14 9 (0.99%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 9 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
15 8 (0.88%) Amazon EKS
15 8 (0.88%) Azure DevOps
15 8 (0.88%) Azure Sentinel
16 7 (0.77%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 248 (27.25%) Firewall
2 172 (18.90%) WAN
3 154 (16.92%) BGP
4 124 (13.63%) OSPF
5 103 (11.32%) LAN
6 95 (10.44%) Network Security
7 88 (9.67%) VXLAN
8 86 (9.45%) SAN
8 86 (9.45%) VPN
9 85 (9.34%) Structured Cabling
10 76 (8.35%) DNS
10 76 (8.35%) VLAN
11 59 (6.48%) DHCP
11 59 (6.48%) Ethernet VPN
12 49 (5.38%) SD-WAN
13 39 (4.29%) BIG-IP
14 38 (4.18%) Wi-Fi
15 37 (4.07%) Cisco Nexus
16 34 (3.74%) NAS
16 34 (3.74%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.99%) DataStage
2 6 (0.66%) PostgreSQL
2 6 (0.66%) Power BI
3 5 (0.55%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.44%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.44%) SAP Data Services
5 3 (0.33%) Big Data
5 3 (0.33%) GIS
5 3 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
5 3 (0.33%) Power Query
5 3 (0.33%) PowerPivot
6 2 (0.22%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.22%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.22%) InfluxDB
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database 12c
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 42 (4.62%) JIRA
2 36 (3.96%) Git
3 32 (3.52%) GitLab
4 21 (2.31%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.77%) Maven
6 5 (0.55%) ScriptRunner
7 4 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.44%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (0.44%) Subversion
8 3 (0.33%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.22%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.11%) AppScan
10 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.11%) Metasploit
General
1 235 (25.82%) Social Skills
2 127 (13.96%) Finance
3 105 (11.54%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (7.69%) Public Sector
5 57 (6.26%) Documentation Skills
6 41 (4.51%) Banking
7 26 (2.86%) Telecoms
8 24 (2.64%) Legal
9 23 (2.53%) Retail
10 21 (2.31%) Manufacturing
11 19 (2.09%) Influencing Skills
12 12 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 9 (0.99%) Military
13 9 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (0.88%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.88%) Marketing
15 7 (0.77%) Law
16 6 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
17 5 (0.55%) Financial Institution
17 5 (0.55%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 157 (17.25%) Network Engineer
2 127 (13.96%) Architect
3 98 (10.77%) Senior
4 72 (7.91%) Data Centre Engineer
5 66 (7.25%) Project Manager
6 59 (6.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 44 (4.84%) IT Engineer
7 44 (4.84%) Lead
8 43 (4.73%) Network Architect
9 42 (4.62%) Field Engineer
10 41 (4.51%) Data Centre Manager
11 39 (4.29%) Field Service Engineer
12 35 (3.85%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
13 30 (3.30%) Analyst
14 27 (2.97%) Infrastructure Manager
15 26 (2.86%) Support Engineer
16 25 (2.75%) Administrator
16 25 (2.75%) Cisco Engineer
16 25 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
17 24 (2.64%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.41%) 802.1X
1 31 (3.41%) Middleware
2 11 (1.21%) LDAP
3 8 (0.88%) Redfish
4 7 (0.77%) Spring
5 6 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
6 5 (0.55%) Jinja
6 5 (0.55%) XML
7 4 (0.44%) ADO
7 4 (0.44%) Kafka
7 4 (0.44%) NETCONF
7 4 (0.44%) REST
7 4 (0.44%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.44%) VML
8 3 (0.33%) ARM Templates
8 3 (0.33%) OpenConfig
8 3 (0.33%) OpenLayers
8 3 (0.33%) RESTCONF
8 3 (0.33%) RFC 2544
8 3 (0.33%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 56 (6.15%) Hybrid Cloud
2 46 (5.05%) Analytical Mindset
3 28 (3.08%) Clustering
4 27 (2.97%) PKI
5 25 (2.75%) Fibre Optics
6 20 (2.20%) Cloud Native
7 18 (1.98%) Driving Licence
7 18 (1.98%) Management Information System
7 18 (1.98%) Replication
8 17 (1.87%) Onboarding
9 16 (1.76%) Public Cloud
10 15 (1.65%) CMDB
10 15 (1.65%) Enterprise Storage
10 15 (1.65%) Private Cloud
11 14 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
12 11 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (1.21%) Mainframe
13 10 (1.10%) SCADA
14 9 (0.99%) BYOD
14 9 (0.99%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 110 (12.09%) Windows
2 103 (11.32%) Linux
3 34 (3.74%) Windows Server
4 29 (3.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (2.42%) Unix
6 20 (2.20%) AIX
7 16 (1.76%) Solaris
8 12 (1.32%) CentOS
9 7 (0.77%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.66%) VMS
11 5 (0.55%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.44%) Apple iOS
12 4 (0.44%) HPUX
12 4 (0.44%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.44%) SUSE
13 3 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.11%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (18.24%) Problem-Solving
2 158 (17.36%) Migration
3 90 (9.89%) Stakeholder Management
4 85 (9.34%) ITIL
5 83 (9.12%) High Availability
6 81 (8.90%) Continuous Improvement
7 77 (8.46%) Roadmaps
8 73 (8.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 71 (7.80%) Infrastructure as Code
10 68 (7.47%) Change Management
10 68 (7.47%) CI/CD
11 66 (7.25%) Load Balancing
12 65 (7.14%) Project Management
13 64 (7.03%) Project Delivery
14 61 (6.70%) Validation
15 53 (5.82%) Customer Service
15 53 (5.82%) Data Centre Operations
16 52 (5.71%) Technical Leadership
17 51 (5.60%) Break/Fix
17 51 (5.60%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 97 (10.66%) Python
2 33 (3.63%) PowerShell
3 25 (2.75%) SQL
4 22 (2.42%) Java
5 21 (2.31%) Bash
6 16 (1.76%) Shell Script
7 11 (1.21%) COBOL
7 11 (1.21%) MATLAB
8 8 (0.88%) Perl
9 7 (0.77%) Bicep
10 6 (0.66%) PL/SQL
11 5 (0.55%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.44%) VBA
13 2 (0.22%) C++
13 2 (0.22%) Korn
13 2 (0.22%) Lisp
14 1 (0.11%) C
14 1 (0.11%) Groovy
14 1 (0.11%) R
14 1 (0.11%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 274 (30.11%) Security Cleared
2 200 (21.98%) SC Cleared
3 193 (21.21%) Cisco Certification
4 123 (13.52%) CCNP
5 86 (9.45%) CCNA
6 61 (6.70%) Degree
7 59 (6.48%) DV Cleared
8 48 (5.27%) Network+ Certification
9 40 (4.40%) Microsoft Certification
10 37 (4.07%) A+ Certification
10 37 (4.07%) MCSE
11 22 (2.42%) PMP
12 21 (2.31%) Azure Certification
12 21 (2.31%) CCIE
13 20 (2.20%) AWS Certification
13 20 (2.20%) City & Guilds
14 19 (2.09%) PMI Certification
15 17 (1.87%) BICSI Certification
16 16 (1.76%) JNCIS
17 14 (1.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.41%) SLA
2 21 (2.31%) PMO
3 20 (2.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 19 (2.09%) NIST
5 18 (1.98%) QA
6 15 (1.65%) GDPR
7 9 (0.99%) NCSC
7 9 (0.99%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.88%) GRC
9 6 (0.66%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.33%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
11 2 (0.22%) RMADS
11 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.11%) COBIT
12 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.11%) NEBOSH
12 1 (0.11%) SOC 1
System Software
1 78 (8.57%) VMware Infrastructure
2 46 (5.05%) Active Directory
3 30 (3.30%) Firmware
4 26 (2.86%) VMware NSX
5 25 (2.75%) vSphere
6 24 (2.64%) VMware ESXi
7 23 (2.53%) Virtual Machines
8 18 (1.98%) Hyper-V
9 11 (1.21%) Docker
10 10 (1.10%) KVM
11 4 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.44%) VMware Workstation
12 3 (0.33%) Microsoft App-V
12 3 (0.33%) NFS
12 3 (0.33%) PowerHA
12 3 (0.33%) SRDF
12 3 (0.33%) UAG
12 3 (0.33%) Veritas Cluster Server
13 2 (0.22%) vCloud
13 2 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 102 (11.21%) Ansible
2 79 (8.68%) Terraform
3 47 (5.16%) FortiGate
4 41 (4.51%) Kubernetes
5 29 (3.19%) Grafana
6 24 (2.64%) Prometheus
7 17 (1.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (1.43%) Check_MK
9 12 (1.32%) SCCM
10 11 (1.21%) Podman
10 11 (1.21%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (1.10%) NetBackup
11 10 (1.10%) vCenter Server
12 8 (0.88%) Dell DRAC
13 7 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.77%) PowerCLI
14 5 (0.55%) Endace
14 5 (0.55%) Nagios
14 5 (0.55%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.55%) vMotion
Vendors
1 251 (27.58%) Cisco
2 121 (13.30%) VMware
3 117 (12.86%) Palo Alto
4 85 (9.34%) F5
5 84 (9.23%) Microsoft
6 73 (8.02%) Juniper
7 69 (7.58%) Dell
8 50 (5.49%) Arista
9 47 (5.16%) Aruba
9 47 (5.16%) CheckPoint
10 45 (4.95%) Fortinet
11 40 (4.40%) ServiceNow
12 39 (4.29%) SolarWinds
13 31 (3.41%) IBM
14 28 (3.08%) Splunk
15 27 (2.97%) Red Hat
16 26 (2.86%) Meraki
16 26 (2.86%) Oracle
17 23 (2.53%) Google
18 22 (2.42%) Atlassian
461 Data Centre jobs in England