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

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 131 91
Rank change year-on-year -10 -40 +15
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 648 542 882
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.00% 2.03% 2.34%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.75% 6.21% 7.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 433 326 624
10th Percentile £272 £350 £300
25th Percentile £380 £428 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £483 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -7.09% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 13 31
10th Percentile £21.46 £13.46 £21.25
25th Percentile £25.15 - £22.50
Median hourly rate £26.14 £24.18 £25.12
Median % change year-on-year +8.09% -3.72% -58.49%
75th Percentile £59.19 £24.66 £40.63
90th Percentile £73.80 £53.85 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £24.18 £25.12
% change year-on-year +6.58% -3.72% -58.49%

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 11,262 8,731 11,727
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.75% 32.75% 31.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,197 5,252 7,807
10th Percentile £282 £274 £255
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £670
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £530 £538
% change year-on-year -5.66% -1.40% -3.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 551 243 660
10th Percentile £15.25 £18.51 £14.13
25th Percentile £18.50 £24.18 £17.72
Median hourly rate £30.00 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +7.14% +55.66%
75th Percentile £63.05 £67.51 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.20 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £28.05 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -19.87% - +58.51%

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 25 January 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 25 January 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 25 January 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 -29 232 £528 +0.48% 148
North of England -1 148 £475 -4.52% 98
South East -3 101 £445 -1.11% 174
North West +14 89 £519 +3.70% 37
Midlands -12 77 £411 -29.09% 43
West Midlands -18 62 £472 -18.62% 20
Yorkshire -31 50 £438 +4.29% 37
South West -26 34 £550 - 50
East of England -13 30 £485 +14.79% 74
East Midlands -19 15 £158 -70.70% 23
North East -4 12 £175 - 25
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 30 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 22 (3.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.54%) Confluence
4 9 (1.39%) OpenStack
5 7 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.77%) Apache
6 5 (0.77%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.62%) HCL Notes
8 3 (0.46%) GeoServer
8 3 (0.46%) Smallworld
8 3 (0.46%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.31%) CICS
9 2 (0.31%) nginx
9 2 (0.31%) ThingWorx
9 2 (0.31%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.15%) IIS
10 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 51 (7.87%) Microsoft Office
2 33 (5.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 26 (4.01%) MS Visio
4 21 (3.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (2.16%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.15%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.15%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 6 (0.93%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.62%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.31%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.15%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.15%) Maximo
4 1 (0.15%) Primavera
4 1 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 104 (16.05%) Azure
2 88 (13.58%) AWS
3 58 (8.95%) Microsoft 365
4 32 (4.94%) GCP
5 23 (3.55%) Power Platform
6 15 (2.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 13 (2.01%) OpenShift
7 13 (2.01%) SaaS
8 10 (1.54%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 10 (1.54%) Entra ID
9 9 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
9 9 (1.39%) AWS Direct Connect
9 9 (1.39%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 8 (1.23%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 8 (1.23%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (1.23%) GitHub
11 7 (1.08%) IaaS
11 7 (1.08%) npm
11 7 (1.08%) PaaS
12 6 (0.93%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 189 (29.17%) Firewall
2 126 (19.44%) WAN
3 80 (12.35%) Wireless
4 75 (11.57%) BGP
5 71 (10.96%) LAN
5 71 (10.96%) VPN
6 65 (10.03%) Network Security
7 50 (7.72%) OSPF
8 48 (7.41%) DNS
9 45 (6.94%) VLAN
10 43 (6.64%) Wi-Fi
11 35 (5.40%) SAN
12 33 (5.09%) Structured Cabling
13 30 (4.63%) Cisco ISE
14 29 (4.48%) DHCP
14 29 (4.48%) IPsec
15 28 (4.32%) TCP/IP
15 28 (4.32%) VXLAN
16 25 (3.86%) MPLS
17 24 (3.70%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.40%) Power BI
2 12 (1.85%) Relational Database
3 7 (1.08%) RDBMS
3 7 (1.08%) SQL Server
4 6 (0.93%) NoSQL
5 5 (0.77%) Apache Hive
5 5 (0.77%) Hadoop
5 5 (0.77%) HBase
6 4 (0.62%) Data Mining
6 4 (0.62%) GIS
6 4 (0.62%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.62%) Power Query
6 4 (0.62%) PowerPivot
7 3 (0.46%) Big Data
7 3 (0.46%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.46%) Data Vault
7 3 (0.46%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (0.46%) InfluxDB
7 3 (0.46%) QGIS
7 3 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 25 (3.86%) Git
2 22 (3.40%) Jenkins
3 16 (2.47%) GitLab
4 11 (1.70%) JIRA
5 9 (1.39%) Maven
5 9 (1.39%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.93%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.46%) ER Studio
7 3 (0.46%) ERwin
8 2 (0.31%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.31%) Gradle
8 2 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (0.31%) ScriptRunner
8 2 (0.31%) Selenium
General
1 178 (27.47%) Social Skills
2 119 (18.36%) Finance
3 90 (13.89%) Analytical Skills
4 82 (12.65%) Public Sector
5 55 (8.49%) Telecoms
6 50 (7.72%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (7.41%) Banking
8 38 (5.86%) Manufacturing
9 28 (4.32%) Marketing
10 25 (3.86%) Electronics
11 23 (3.55%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (2.01%) Retail
14 12 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
15 9 (1.39%) Legal
16 7 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
16 7 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 7 (1.08%) Law
16 7 (1.08%) Local Government
17 6 (0.93%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 121 (18.67%) Network Engineer
2 92 (14.20%) Architect
3 65 (10.03%) Project Manager
4 62 (9.57%) Analyst
5 40 (6.17%) Senior
6 34 (5.25%) Network Architect
7 30 (4.63%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
8 29 (4.48%) Data Centre Manager
8 29 (4.48%) Lead
9 28 (4.32%) Security Engineer
10 27 (4.17%) Cisco Engineer
10 27 (4.17%) IT Support
11 25 (3.86%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 25 (3.86%) Data Centre Engineer
11 25 (3.86%) Desktop Support
12 24 (3.70%) Consultant
12 24 (3.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 23 (3.55%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
13 23 (3.55%) 2nd Line Support
13 23 (3.55%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.55%) 802.1X
2 22 (3.40%) Middleware
3 9 (1.39%) LDAP
4 7 (1.08%) RFC 2544
5 5 (0.77%) Spark Streaming
6 4 (0.62%) ADO
6 4 (0.62%) VML
7 3 (0.46%) ARM Templates
8 2 (0.31%) AWS CDK
8 2 (0.31%) CSS
8 2 (0.31%) HTML
8 2 (0.31%) ModSecurity
8 2 (0.31%) NETCONF
8 2 (0.31%) OpenConfig
8 2 (0.31%) REST
8 2 (0.31%) RESTCONF
8 2 (0.31%) YANG
9 1 (0.15%) .NET
9 1 (0.15%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (0.15%) Jinja
Miscellaneous
1 40 (6.17%) Hybrid Cloud
2 24 (3.70%) Public Cloud
3 18 (2.78%) Self-Motivation
4 17 (2.62%) Onboarding
5 16 (2.47%) Cloud Native
6 15 (2.31%) Replication
7 14 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
7 14 (2.16%) Mainframe
8 13 (2.01%) Driving Licence
8 13 (2.01%) Fibre Optics
8 13 (2.01%) Private Cloud
9 12 (1.85%) Management Information System
10 11 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
11 9 (1.39%) PKI
11 9 (1.39%) SCADA
12 7 (1.08%) Product Ownership
13 6 (0.93%) Clustering
13 6 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
13 6 (0.93%) Operational Technology
14 5 (0.77%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 78 (12.04%) Windows
2 64 (9.88%) Linux
3 41 (6.33%) Windows Server
4 35 (5.40%) Android
4 35 (5.40%) Mac OS
5 21 (3.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.70%) CentOS
7 6 (0.93%) Unix
7 6 (0.93%) Windows 10
7 6 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
8 4 (0.62%) VMS
8 4 (0.62%) Windows Server 2008
8 4 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.31%) Solaris
9 2 (0.31%) zOS
10 1 (0.15%) MVS
10 1 (0.15%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (15.74%) Migration
2 96 (14.81%) Problem-Solving
3 78 (12.04%) Stakeholder Management
4 58 (8.95%) ITIL
5 51 (7.87%) Agile
6 49 (7.56%) Project Management
7 48 (7.41%) Project Delivery
8 45 (6.94%) CI/CD
9 43 (6.64%) Business Intelligence
9 43 (6.64%) DevOps
9 43 (6.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 42 (6.48%) Infrastructure as Code
11 39 (6.02%) Change Management
11 39 (6.02%) Continuous Improvement
11 39 (6.02%) Network Design
12 37 (5.71%) Programme Management
13 36 (5.56%) Customer Service
13 36 (5.56%) Cybersecurity
13 36 (5.56%) Service Management
14 35 (5.40%) Change Control
Programming Languages
1 63 (9.72%) Python
2 42 (6.48%) PowerShell
3 30 (4.63%) SQL
4 20 (3.09%) Bash
5 15 (2.31%) Java
6 12 (1.85%) Shell Script
7 10 (1.54%) Perl
8 8 (1.23%) Lisp
9 7 (1.08%) MATLAB
10 5 (0.77%) VBA
11 3 (0.46%) Bicep
11 3 (0.46%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.15%) C#
12 1 (0.15%) C++
12 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.15%) Go
12 1 (0.15%) Korn
12 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.15%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 237 (36.57%) Security Cleared
2 197 (30.40%) SC Cleared
3 102 (15.74%) Cisco Certification
4 81 (12.50%) CCNP
5 57 (8.80%) Degree
6 44 (6.79%) DV Cleared
7 42 (6.48%) CCNA
8 24 (3.70%) CCIE
9 23 (3.55%) AWS Certification
10 15 (2.31%) PMP
11 14 (2.16%) PMI Certification
12 12 (1.85%) CISSP
12 12 (1.85%) JNCIE
13 8 (1.23%) A+ Certification
13 8 (1.23%) Azure Certification
13 8 (1.23%) MCSE
13 8 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
13 8 (1.23%) Network+ Certification
13 8 (1.23%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 7 (1.08%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (3.09%) SLA
2 19 (2.93%) PMO
3 15 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 14 (2.16%) NIST
4 14 (2.16%) PCI DSS
4 14 (2.16%) QA
5 13 (2.01%) Data Quality
6 11 (1.70%) GDPR
7 7 (1.08%) NCSC
8 2 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.31%) GRC
9 1 (0.15%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.15%) ISO 22301
9 1 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 1 (0.15%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.15%) RMADS
9 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
System Software
1 67 (10.34%) VMware Infrastructure
2 50 (7.72%) Active Directory
3 38 (5.86%) VMware NSX
4 19 (2.93%) Docker
5 18 (2.78%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (2.31%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.70%) vSphere
8 9 (1.39%) Firmware
9 8 (1.23%) KVM
10 7 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
11 5 (0.77%) HDFS
12 3 (0.46%) Lustre
13 2 (0.31%) Ceph
13 2 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
13 2 (0.31%) NFS
13 2 (0.31%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.31%) SRDF
13 2 (0.31%) vCloud
13 2 (0.31%) Xen
14 1 (0.15%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 69 (10.65%) Ansible
2 65 (10.03%) Terraform
3 31 (4.78%) FortiGate
4 24 (3.70%) SCCM
5 21 (3.24%) Kubernetes
6 13 (2.01%) Grafana
7 10 (1.54%) Microsoft Intune
8 9 (1.39%) vCenter Server
9 8 (1.23%) SCOM
10 7 (1.08%) Check_MK
10 7 (1.08%) Podman
10 7 (1.08%) Puppet
10 7 (1.08%) Red Hat Satellite
11 6 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (0.93%) CASB
11 6 (0.93%) Prometheus
11 6 (0.93%) SCOrch
12 5 (0.77%) Hadoop YARN
13 4 (0.62%) Nagios
13 4 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 227 (35.03%) Cisco
2 90 (13.89%) Palo Alto
3 89 (13.73%) VMware
4 78 (12.04%) Microsoft
5 62 (9.57%) Dell
6 55 (8.49%) Juniper
7 49 (7.56%) F5
8 45 (6.94%) HP
9 43 (6.64%) CheckPoint
10 35 (5.40%) Apple
11 32 (4.94%) Meraki
12 31 (4.78%) Aruba
13 30 (4.63%) SAP
13 30 (4.63%) ServiceNow
14 29 (4.48%) Fortinet
15 23 (3.55%) Oracle
16 19 (2.93%) Citrix
17 15 (2.31%) Google
18 14 (2.16%) Remedy
18 14 (2.16%) SolarWinds