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

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 109 133 102
Rank change year-on-year +24 -31 -10
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 976 524 786
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.29% 2.13% 2.10%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.02% 6.19% 6.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 613 351 566
10th Percentile £318 £300 £303
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £538
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £693
UK median daily rate £494 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -1.20% -6.98% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 13 37
10th Percentile £16.01 - £12.08
25th Percentile £18.16 £24.66 £22.30
Median hourly rate £21.00 £37.50 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -44.00% +50.78% +14.77%
75th Percentile £34.49 £43.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.60 £88.75 £41.25
UK median hourly rate £19.85 £32.75 £23.90
% change year-on-year -39.38% +37.01% +12.42%

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 13,903 8,469 11,374
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.56% 34.43% 30.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,688 5,462 7,333
10th Percentile £316 £300 £275
25th Percentile £415 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 750 374 853
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.04 £20.73 £15.39
Median hourly rate £42.30 £33.91 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.74% -7.10% +62.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.55 £83.82 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £33.05 £35.58
% change year-on-year +24.05% -7.10% +58.75%

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 13 June 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 13 June 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 13 June 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 +22 344 £550 +4.76% 165
North of England +20 241 £474 +11.53% 49
South East +7 209 £469 +4.17% 94
Yorkshire -1 122 £365 -9.32% 21
North West +12 95 £481 -4.47% 22
Midlands -50 58 £465 -13.49% 22
West Midlands -42 53 £467 -13.15% 18
South West -12 52 £495 -13.91% 38
East of England -11 38 £492 +31.20% 25
North East -5 30 £625 +468.18% 6
East Midlands -25 4 £325 -36.97% 4
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 23 (2.36%) Confluence
2 18 (1.84%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (1.02%) CICS
5 4 (0.41%) Apache
5 4 (0.41%) CloudStack
5 4 (0.41%) nginx
5 4 (0.41%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.41%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.31%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.10%) IIS
Applications
1 13 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 11 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
3 9 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.92%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.51%) AutoCAD
5 3 (0.31%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.20%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.20%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.20%) Primavera
2 2 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 206 (21.11%) Azure
2 178 (18.24%) AWS
3 51 (5.23%) GCP
4 35 (3.59%) Microsoft 365
5 34 (3.48%) IaaS
6 32 (3.28%) GitHub
6 32 (3.28%) SaaS
7 30 (3.07%) OCI
8 21 (2.15%) Entra ID
9 19 (1.95%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 17 (1.74%) PaaS
11 13 (1.33%) OneDrive
12 12 (1.23%) Power Platform
13 11 (1.13%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (1.13%) OpenShift
14 10 (1.02%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 9 (0.92%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (0.92%) Azure Sentinel
15 9 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
16 8 (0.82%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 269 (27.56%) Firewall
2 176 (18.03%) WAN
3 166 (17.01%) BGP
4 129 (13.22%) OSPF
5 106 (10.86%) VXLAN
6 100 (10.25%) LAN
7 99 (10.14%) DNS
8 97 (9.94%) SAN
9 95 (9.73%) Network Security
10 92 (9.43%) VLAN
11 88 (9.02%) VPN
12 85 (8.71%) Structured Cabling
13 76 (7.79%) DHCP
14 70 (7.17%) Ethernet VPN
15 67 (6.86%) SD-WAN
16 54 (5.53%) BIG-IP
17 46 (4.71%) TCP/IP
18 42 (4.30%) NX-OS
18 42 (4.30%) Wireless
19 39 (4.00%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (1.02%) SQL Server
2 9 (0.92%) DataStage
3 7 (0.72%) Power BI
4 6 (0.61%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (0.51%) Big Data
6 4 (0.41%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.41%) Oracle Reports
6 4 (0.41%) SAP Data Services
7 3 (0.31%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
7 3 (0.31%) GIS
8 2 (0.20%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.20%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.20%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.20%) Oracle Database 12c
8 2 (0.20%) Power Query
8 2 (0.20%) PowerPivot
9 1 (0.10%) MS Access
9 1 (0.10%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 59 (6.05%) JIRA
2 39 (4.00%) GitLab
3 31 (3.18%) Git
3 31 (3.18%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.51%) Maven
4 5 (0.51%) ScriptRunner
5 4 (0.41%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 4 (0.41%) Eclipse
5 4 (0.41%) Subversion
6 3 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.31%) Zephyr
7 2 (0.20%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.10%) AppScan
8 1 (0.10%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.10%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.10%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.10%) MSI
General
1 250 (25.61%) Social Skills
2 134 (13.73%) Finance
3 104 (10.66%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (7.07%) Public Sector
5 55 (5.64%) Documentation Skills
6 43 (4.41%) Banking
7 31 (3.18%) Telecoms
8 28 (2.87%) Legal
9 20 (2.05%) Manufacturing
9 20 (2.05%) Retail
10 19 (1.95%) Influencing Skills
11 16 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 10 (1.02%) Law
12 10 (1.02%) Military
13 8 (0.82%) Aerospace
13 8 (0.82%) Marketing
13 8 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
14 6 (0.61%) Organisational Skills
15 5 (0.51%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.51%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 158 (16.19%) Network Engineer
2 129 (13.22%) Architect
3 110 (11.27%) Senior
4 84 (8.61%) Data Centre Engineer
4 84 (8.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 63 (6.45%) Project Manager
6 52 (5.33%) Lead
7 44 (4.51%) IT Engineer
8 43 (4.41%) Network Architect
9 41 (4.20%) Field Engineer
10 38 (3.89%) Field Service Engineer
11 32 (3.28%) Data Centre Manager
11 32 (3.28%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 30 (3.07%) Analyst
12 30 (3.07%) Infrastructure Manager
12 30 (3.07%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 28 (2.87%) Support Engineer
14 27 (2.77%) Solutions Architect
15 25 (2.56%) Administrator
15 25 (2.56%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (3.38%) Middleware
2 30 (3.07%) 802.1X
3 11 (1.13%) LDAP
4 10 (1.02%) Redfish
5 7 (0.72%) REST
5 7 (0.72%) Spring
6 6 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (0.51%) Jinja
7 5 (0.51%) Kafka
7 5 (0.51%) XML
8 4 (0.41%) ADO
8 4 (0.41%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.41%) YAML
9 3 (0.31%) CSS
9 3 (0.31%) EJB
9 3 (0.31%) HTML
9 3 (0.31%) Java EE
9 3 (0.31%) JSON
9 3 (0.31%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.31%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 60 (6.15%) Hybrid Cloud
2 44 (4.51%) Analytical Mindset
3 30 (3.07%) Cloud Native
3 30 (3.07%) Clustering
4 29 (2.97%) PKI
5 25 (2.56%) Enterprise Storage
5 25 (2.56%) Fibre Optics
5 25 (2.56%) Onboarding
6 21 (2.15%) Private Cloud
7 20 (2.05%) Management Information System
8 19 (1.95%) Driving Licence
9 18 (1.84%) Replication
10 15 (1.54%) CMDB
10 15 (1.54%) Public Cloud
11 13 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
13 11 (1.13%) Mainframe
14 10 (1.02%) SCADA
15 9 (0.92%) Operational Technology
15 9 (0.92%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 128 (13.11%) Windows
2 110 (11.27%) Linux
3 33 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 32 (3.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (2.36%) Unix
6 22 (2.25%) AIX
7 17 (1.74%) Solaris
8 11 (1.13%) CentOS
9 10 (1.02%) Apple iOS
9 10 (1.02%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.61%) VMS
12 5 (0.51%) HPUX
12 5 (0.51%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.51%) SUSE
12 5 (0.51%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.41%) Data ONTAP
14 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.20%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (17.42%) Migration
2 167 (17.11%) Problem-Solving
3 108 (11.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 99 (10.14%) Stakeholder Management
5 94 (9.63%) High Availability
6 93 (9.53%) ITIL
7 90 (9.22%) Infrastructure as Code
8 89 (9.12%) CI/CD
9 83 (8.50%) Continuous Improvement
10 77 (7.89%) Roadmaps
11 71 (7.27%) Agile
12 70 (7.17%) Change Management
12 70 (7.17%) Load Balancing
13 69 (7.07%) Project Delivery
14 67 (6.86%) Project Management
15 66 (6.76%) DevOps
16 64 (6.56%) Validation
17 60 (6.15%) ITSM
18 58 (5.94%) Zero Trust
19 57 (5.84%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 126 (12.91%) Python
2 40 (4.10%) PowerShell
3 27 (2.77%) SQL
4 23 (2.36%) Bash
5 20 (2.05%) Java
6 16 (1.64%) Shell Script
7 11 (1.13%) Bicep
7 11 (1.13%) COBOL
7 11 (1.13%) MATLAB
8 8 (0.82%) ActionScript
8 8 (0.82%) Perl
9 7 (0.72%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.61%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.41%) Lisp
12 3 (0.31%) VBA
13 2 (0.20%) C#
13 2 (0.20%) C++
13 2 (0.20%) JCL
13 2 (0.20%) Korn
13 2 (0.20%) REXX
Qualifications
1 281 (28.79%) Security Cleared
2 202 (20.70%) SC Cleared
3 190 (19.47%) Cisco Certification
4 119 (12.19%) CCNP
5 86 (8.81%) CCNA
6 69 (7.07%) Degree
6 69 (7.07%) DV Cleared
7 51 (5.23%) Network+ Certification
8 41 (4.20%) Microsoft Certification
9 36 (3.69%) A+ Certification
9 36 (3.69%) MCSE
10 27 (2.77%) Azure Certification
11 24 (2.46%) AWS Certification
11 24 (2.46%) PMP
12 21 (2.15%) City & Guilds
12 21 (2.15%) PMI Certification
13 19 (1.95%) CCIE
14 17 (1.74%) BICSI Certification
15 16 (1.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 15 (1.54%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.28%) SLA
2 23 (2.36%) NIST
3 22 (2.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 20 (2.05%) PMO
5 16 (1.64%) GDPR
6 15 (1.54%) QA
7 10 (1.02%) GRC
7 10 (1.02%) NCSC
7 10 (1.02%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
9 5 (0.51%) RMADS
10 4 (0.41%) JSP 440
11 3 (0.31%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.10%) COBIT
13 1 (0.10%) NEBOSH
13 1 (0.10%) SOC 1
13 1 (0.10%) WCAG
System Software
1 90 (9.22%) VMware Infrastructure
2 53 (5.43%) Active Directory
3 31 (3.18%) VMware ESXi
4 29 (2.97%) Firmware
5 25 (2.56%) vSphere
6 24 (2.46%) Hyper-V
6 24 (2.46%) Virtual Machines
7 20 (2.05%) VMware NSX
8 12 (1.23%) Docker
9 11 (1.13%) KVM
10 7 (0.72%) NFS
11 5 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
11 5 (0.51%) SRDF
12 4 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.41%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.31%) BitLocker
13 3 (0.31%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (0.31%) PowerHA
13 3 (0.31%) UAG
13 3 (0.31%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 120 (12.30%) Ansible
2 95 (9.73%) Terraform
3 48 (4.92%) FortiGate
4 45 (4.61%) Kubernetes
5 29 (2.97%) Grafana
6 26 (2.66%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (2.66%) Prometheus
7 14 (1.43%) vCenter Server
8 13 (1.33%) Check_MK
9 11 (1.13%) NetBackup
9 11 (1.13%) Podman
9 11 (1.13%) Red Hat Satellite
10 10 (1.02%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (1.02%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (1.02%) SCCM
11 9 (0.92%) PowerCLI
12 7 (0.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.72%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 7 (0.72%) vMotion
13 5 (0.51%) Nagios
Vendors
1 258 (26.43%) Cisco
2 136 (13.93%) VMware
3 126 (12.91%) Palo Alto
4 97 (9.94%) F5
5 93 (9.53%) Microsoft
6 79 (8.09%) Juniper
7 67 (6.86%) Dell
8 61 (6.25%) Arista
9 57 (5.84%) Fortinet
10 49 (5.02%) ServiceNow
11 48 (4.92%) Aruba
12 40 (4.10%) SolarWinds
13 39 (4.00%) CheckPoint
14 34 (3.48%) IBM
15 33 (3.38%) Red Hat
16 27 (2.77%) Splunk
17 26 (2.66%) Google
17 26 (2.66%) Oracle
18 22 (2.25%) Atlassian
18 22 (2.25%) Extreme Networks