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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 127 114
Rank change year-on-year +4 -13 -16
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,017 619 667
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.20% 2.23% 2.08%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.38% 6.13% 6.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 643 405 414
10th Percentile £350 £279 £359
25th Percentile £425 £381 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.85% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £656 £613 £613
90th Percentile £750 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £506 £525
% change year-on-year +3.75% -3.62% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 34 25
10th Percentile £17.18 - £11.75
25th Percentile £19.33 - £12.08
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% +5.67% +2.37%
75th Percentile £53.81 £35.00 £27.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £59.08 £28.75
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £22.50
% change year-on-year +29.22% +11.78% -2.17%

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 15,943 10,102 9,917
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.42% 36.39% 30.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,577 6,329 5,986
10th Percentile £325 £300 £294
25th Percentile £425 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year - -3.23% -1.36%
75th Percentile £650 £645 £675
90th Percentile £750 £763 £825
UK median daily rate £525 £518 £526
% change year-on-year +1.38% -1.55% -4.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,164 528 367
10th Percentile £13.94 £15.13 £15.84
25th Percentile £17.57 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £34.62 £30.00 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% -46.90% +22.35%
75th Percentile £67.89 £56.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.81 £73.75 £75.16
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £28.13 £47.50
% change year-on-year +33.33% -40.79% +5.56%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 +13 408 £550 +0.69% 1,304
North of England -1 227 £500 +5.26% 232
South East -8 174 £525 +27.27% 320
Yorkshire +9 134 £500 +11.11% 55
North West -22 73 £538 +0.47% 119
Midlands -56 66 £488 +1.30% 136
South West -22 59 £650 +18.18% 75
West Midlands -56 55 £500 +0.81% 101
East of England -3 48 £500 -16.67% 147
North East -14 26 £625 +257.14% 58
East Midlands -16 11 £413 -8.33% 35
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 27 (2.65%) Confluence
2 17 (1.67%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.88%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.69%) IIS
6 5 (0.49%) Apache
6 5 (0.49%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.098%) CICS
7 1 (0.098%) nginx
7 1 (0.098%) SAS
7 1 (0.098%) Tomcat
Applications
1 19 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.98%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.49%) AutoCAD
6 5 (0.49%) Navisworks
6 5 (0.49%) Revit
7 2 (0.20%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 11 (1.08%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.20%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.098%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.098%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.098%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 229 (22.52%) Azure
2 179 (17.60%) AWS
3 56 (5.51%) GCP
4 50 (4.92%) GitHub
5 45 (4.42%) IaaS
6 37 (3.64%) SaaS
7 35 (3.44%) Entra ID
8 33 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
9 29 (2.85%) OCI
10 20 (1.97%) PaaS
11 17 (1.67%) OpenShift
12 16 (1.57%) Azure DevOps
12 16 (1.57%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 15 (1.47%) Power Platform
14 14 (1.38%) OneDrive
15 13 (1.28%) AWS Direct Connect
16 11 (1.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 7 (0.69%) Azure Monitor
18 5 (0.49%) Azure Sentinel
18 5 (0.49%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 239 (23.50%) Firewall
2 155 (15.24%) WAN
3 146 (14.36%) BGP
4 123 (12.09%) DNS
5 102 (10.03%) Network Security
6 95 (9.34%) VLAN
7 91 (8.95%) VXLAN
8 89 (8.75%) LAN
8 89 (8.75%) VPN
9 86 (8.46%) OSPF
10 85 (8.36%) SAN
11 83 (8.16%) DHCP
12 76 (7.47%) TCP/IP
13 73 (7.18%) SD-WAN
14 65 (6.39%) Ethernet VPN
15 56 (5.51%) Wireless
16 53 (5.21%) Wi-Fi
17 50 (4.92%) BIG-IP
18 49 (4.82%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
19 46 (4.52%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (3.64%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.47%) Power BI
3 11 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (0.98%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 10 (0.98%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 7 (0.69%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (0.39%) Db2
8 4 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.39%) Oracle Database 12c
8 4 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
9 3 (0.29%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.29%) Big Data
9 3 (0.29%) PostgreSQL
10 2 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.20%) Flink
10 2 (0.20%) Metadata
10 2 (0.20%) Sybase ASE
10 2 (0.20%) Sybase IQ
Development Applications
1 68 (6.69%) JIRA
2 36 (3.54%) GitLab
3 28 (2.75%) Jenkins
4 22 (2.16%) Git
5 6 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.29%) ScriptRunner
6 3 (0.29%) Zephyr
7 2 (0.20%) MSI
7 2 (0.20%) Toad
8 1 (0.098%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.098%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.098%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.098%) Cucumber
General
1 252 (24.78%) Social Skills
2 162 (15.93%) Finance
3 83 (8.16%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (5.80%) Banking
5 45 (4.42%) Telecoms
6 44 (4.33%) Public Sector
7 39 (3.83%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (2.46%) Retail
9 22 (2.16%) Legal
10 16 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
10 16 (1.57%) Manufacturing
11 15 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
12 12 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.69%) Police
14 6 (0.59%) Financial Institution
14 6 (0.59%) Investment Banking
15 5 (0.49%) Cyber-Physical System
15 5 (0.49%) Law
15 5 (0.49%) Presentation Skills
16 4 (0.39%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 163 (16.03%) Network Engineer
2 158 (15.54%) Architect
3 121 (11.90%) Senior
4 111 (10.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 75 (7.37%) Project Manager
6 73 (7.18%) Lead
7 69 (6.78%) Data Centre Engineer
8 65 (6.39%) Network Architect
9 40 (3.93%) Consultant
10 38 (3.74%) Data Centre Manager
11 33 (3.24%) Senior Network Engineer
12 30 (2.95%) Infrastructure Manager
12 30 (2.95%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 29 (2.85%) IT Engineer
14 27 (2.65%) Analyst
14 27 (2.65%) Technical Manager
15 25 (2.46%) Solutions Architect
16 24 (2.36%) Data Manager
17 23 (2.26%) Data Centre Project Manager
18 22 (2.16%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (10.42%) Terraform
2 27 (2.65%) REST
3 18 (1.77%) YAML
4 15 (1.47%) Middleware
5 14 (1.38%) .NET
5 14 (1.38%) 802.1X
5 14 (1.38%) JSON
6 6 (0.59%) LDAP
6 6 (0.59%) NETCONF
6 6 (0.59%) SAML
7 5 (0.49%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (0.49%) OpenConfig
7 5 (0.49%) Redfish
7 5 (0.49%) RESTCONF
7 5 (0.49%) YANG
8 4 (0.39%) GeoJSON
8 4 (0.39%) Kafka
8 4 (0.39%) RESTful
9 3 (0.29%) .NET Framework
9 3 (0.29%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 78 (7.67%) Hybrid Cloud
2 44 (4.33%) Public Cloud
3 33 (3.24%) Cloud Native
4 32 (3.15%) Enterprise Storage
4 32 (3.15%) Private Cloud
5 30 (2.95%) PKI
6 27 (2.65%) Replication
7 23 (2.26%) Clustering
8 22 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
8 22 (2.16%) Onboarding
9 19 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
9 19 (1.87%) Operational Technology
9 19 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
10 17 (1.67%) Fibre Optics
10 17 (1.67%) Management Information System
11 15 (1.47%) CMDB
12 13 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
13 11 (1.08%) Driving Licence
13 11 (1.08%) Virtual Team
14 10 (0.98%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 166 (16.32%) Windows
2 102 (10.03%) Linux
3 68 (6.69%) Windows Server
4 29 (2.85%) Unix
5 16 (1.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (1.28%) AIX
7 11 (1.08%) Mac OS
8 10 (0.98%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.69%) Solaris
9 7 (0.69%) VMS
10 6 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.49%) HPUX
11 5 (0.49%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.49%) SUSE
11 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.39%) Data ONTAP
12 4 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.29%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (22.81%) Migration
2 157 (15.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 151 (14.85%) Problem-Solving
4 144 (14.16%) Stakeholder Management
5 116 (11.41%) Infrastructure as Code
6 100 (9.83%) Agile
7 97 (9.54%) ITIL
8 94 (9.24%) CI/CD
9 85 (8.36%) Continuous Improvement
10 84 (8.26%) Validation
11 83 (8.16%) High Availability
11 83 (8.16%) Project Delivery
12 79 (7.77%) Disaster Recovery
13 76 (7.47%) Change Management
14 73 (7.18%) Zero Trust
15 71 (6.98%) Roadmaps
16 68 (6.69%) Cybersecurity
17 63 (6.19%) Technical Leadership
18 62 (6.10%) DevOps
19 59 (5.80%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 145 (14.26%) Python
2 66 (6.49%) PowerShell
3 48 (4.72%) SQL
4 31 (3.05%) Bash
5 17 (1.67%) ActionScript
6 14 (1.38%) C#
7 11 (1.08%) Bicep
7 11 (1.08%) T-SQL
8 7 (0.69%) PL/SQL
9 6 (0.59%) Perl
9 6 (0.59%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.39%) Go
11 3 (0.29%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.29%) Lisp
12 2 (0.20%) Java
12 2 (0.20%) JCL
12 2 (0.20%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.20%) REXX
12 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.098%) Korn
Qualifications
1 262 (25.76%) Security Cleared
2 170 (16.72%) SC Cleared
3 123 (12.09%) Cisco Certification
4 97 (9.54%) DV Cleared
5 78 (7.67%) CCNP
6 55 (5.41%) Degree
7 40 (3.93%) CCNA
8 30 (2.95%) AWS Certification
9 27 (2.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 26 (2.56%) Network+ Certification
11 24 (2.36%) CCIE
11 24 (2.36%) CISSP
12 23 (2.26%) Azure Certification
13 22 (2.16%) Microsoft Certification
13 22 (2.16%) PMI Certification
14 21 (2.06%) PMP
15 19 (1.87%) VCAP
16 17 (1.67%) A+ Certification
16 17 (1.67%) MCSE
17 14 (1.38%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (2.56%) QA
2 25 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 24 (2.36%) SLA
4 23 (2.26%) NIST
5 14 (1.38%) GRC
5 14 (1.38%) PMO
6 11 (1.08%) GDPR
7 9 (0.88%) JSP 440
7 9 (0.88%) NCSC
8 8 (0.79%) PCI DSS
9 6 (0.59%) ISO 31000
9 6 (0.59%) ISO 9001
9 6 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 4 (0.39%) NIST 800
10 4 (0.39%) RMADS
11 3 (0.29%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.20%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 2 (0.20%) HIPAA
System Software
1 139 (13.67%) VMware Infrastructure
2 78 (7.67%) Active Directory
3 52 (5.11%) vSphere
4 46 (4.52%) VMware NSX
5 35 (3.44%) VMware ESXi
6 31 (3.05%) Hyper-V
7 30 (2.95%) Docker
8 25 (2.46%) Firmware
9 14 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (1.08%) NFS
11 7 (0.69%) Virtual Desktop
12 6 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.49%) ISA Server
13 5 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.39%) PowerHA
14 4 (0.39%) SRDF
15 3 (0.29%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.29%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.29%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 133 (13.08%) Ansible
2 53 (5.21%) Kubernetes
3 31 (3.05%) FortiGate
4 19 (1.87%) vCenter Server
5 18 (1.77%) Microsoft Intune
5 18 (1.77%) Prometheus
6 15 (1.47%) Grafana
6 15 (1.47%) VxRail
7 12 (1.18%) Microsoft Clustering
7 12 (1.18%) SCCM
8 11 (1.08%) vMotion
9 10 (0.98%) Jamf Pro
9 10 (0.98%) PowerCLI
10 9 (0.88%) NetBackup
10 9 (0.88%) SCOM
10 9 (0.88%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 8 (0.79%) Dell DRAC
12 7 (0.69%) Nagios
13 6 (0.59%) CASB
14 5 (0.49%) Check_MK
Vendors
1 247 (24.29%) Cisco
2 180 (17.70%) VMware
3 129 (12.68%) Microsoft
4 115 (11.31%) Palo Alto
5 99 (9.73%) F5
6 61 (6.00%) Fortinet
7 56 (5.51%) ServiceNow
8 55 (5.41%) Arista
9 54 (5.31%) Juniper
10 45 (4.42%) Dell
11 40 (3.93%) Aruba
12 34 (3.34%) CheckPoint
13 31 (3.05%) Oracle
13 31 (3.05%) Red Hat
13 31 (3.05%) Veeam
14 28 (2.75%) Google
15 27 (2.65%) Commvault
16 24 (2.36%) SolarWinds
16 24 (2.36%) Zscaler
17 23 (2.26%) NetApp