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

6 months to
3 Mar 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 127 96
Rank change year-on-year 0 -31 +7
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 746 513 866
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.10% 2.05% 2.29%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.19% 6.12% 7.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 481 314 602
10th Percentile £278 £349 £283
25th Percentile £380 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.08% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £576 £638 £638
90th Percentile £675 £721 £700
UK median daily rate £476 £505 £525
% change year-on-year -5.69% -3.81% -2.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 13 37
10th Percentile £20.27 - £21.25
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.18 £22.08
Median hourly rate £26.50 £24.66 £25.12
Median % change year-on-year +7.46% -1.81% -54.83%
75th Percentile £72.00 £29.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £64.00 £51.75
UK median hourly rate £26.50 £24.18 £24.99
% change year-on-year +9.59% -3.25% +11.08%

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 12,050 8,383 11,710
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.85% 33.50% 30.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,655 5,250 7,652
10th Percentile £290 £275 £258
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £545 £545
Median % change year-on-year -5.96% - -5.22%
75th Percentile £630 £673 £657
90th Percentile £749 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 595 267 770
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.87 £12.99
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.55 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £35.00 £30.58
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% +14.45% +35.91%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £85.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £32.50 £30.16
% change year-on-year +3.08% +7.76% +34.13%

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 3 March 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 3 March 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 3 March 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 -15 261 £525 +0.96% 192
North of England +20 183 £472 -0.63% 70
South East +10 135 £448 -0.56% 134
North West +12 101 £500 - 34
Midlands -17 77 £466 -22.80% 40
Yorkshire -21 67 £365 -8.75% 31
West Midlands -18 63 £474 -21.91% 17
South West -31 34 £550 -3.08% 46
East of England -17 30 £478 +13.14% 47
North East +1 17 £175 - 5
East Midlands -23 14 £158 -65.00% 22
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 28 (3.75%) SharePoint
2 18 (2.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 15 (2.01%) Confluence
4 8 (1.07%) CICS
5 5 (0.67%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.54%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.40%) GeoServer
7 3 (0.40%) HCL Notes
7 3 (0.40%) nginx
7 3 (0.40%) Smallworld
8 2 (0.27%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.27%) Tomcat
Applications
1 51 (6.84%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (3.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (3.49%) MS Visio
3 22 (2.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (2.01%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.40%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
1 4 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.27%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.27%) Primavera
4 1 (0.13%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 128 (17.16%) Azure
2 102 (13.67%) AWS
3 63 (8.45%) Microsoft 365
4 37 (4.96%) GCP
5 20 (2.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 16 (2.14%) Power Platform
6 16 (2.14%) SaaS
7 14 (1.88%) Entra ID
8 13 (1.74%) IaaS
9 12 (1.61%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 12 (1.61%) OpenShift
10 11 (1.47%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 11 (1.47%) PaaS
11 9 (1.21%) Azure DevOps
12 8 (1.07%) Amazon S3
12 8 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (1.07%) AWS Direct Connect
12 8 (1.07%) GitHub
12 8 (1.07%) OCI
13 7 (0.94%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 221 (29.62%) Firewall
2 140 (18.77%) WAN
3 105 (14.08%) BGP
4 89 (11.93%) LAN
5 78 (10.46%) Network Security
6 74 (9.92%) OSPF
7 73 (9.79%) VPN
8 72 (9.65%) Wireless
9 62 (8.31%) DNS
10 52 (6.97%) VLAN
11 51 (6.84%) Structured Cabling
12 49 (6.57%) VXLAN
13 46 (6.17%) DHCP
14 44 (5.90%) SAN
15 38 (5.09%) Cisco ISE
16 37 (4.96%) Wi-Fi
17 33 (4.42%) Ethernet VPN
18 29 (3.89%) IPsec
19 28 (3.75%) MPLS
20 27 (3.62%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (1.88%) Power BI
2 8 (1.07%) DataStage
3 6 (0.80%) Relational Database
3 6 (0.80%) SQL Server
4 5 (0.67%) GIS
5 4 (0.54%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.54%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.54%) Power Query
5 4 (0.54%) PowerPivot
5 4 (0.54%) RDBMS
6 3 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (0.40%) InfluxDB
6 3 (0.40%) QGIS
6 3 (0.40%) SAP Data Services
7 1 (0.13%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.13%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.13%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.13%) Redis
7 1 (0.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 30 (4.02%) Git
2 23 (3.08%) JIRA
3 17 (2.28%) Jenkins
4 15 (2.01%) GitLab
5 10 (1.34%) Maven
6 4 (0.54%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.40%) Eclipse
7 3 (0.40%) Subversion
8 2 (0.27%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (0.27%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.13%) AppScan
9 1 (0.13%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.13%) Metasploit
General
1 197 (26.41%) Social Skills
2 131 (17.56%) Finance
3 87 (11.66%) Analytical Skills
4 85 (11.39%) Public Sector
5 55 (7.37%) Documentation Skills
6 51 (6.84%) Telecoms
7 40 (5.36%) Banking
7 40 (5.36%) Manufacturing
8 29 (3.89%) Marketing
9 24 (3.22%) Electronics
10 20 (2.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 18 (2.41%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (2.28%) Influencing Skills
13 16 (2.14%) Legal
14 12 (1.61%) Investment Banking
14 12 (1.61%) Organisational Skills
14 12 (1.61%) Retail
15 8 (1.07%) Military
16 6 (0.80%) Aerospace
16 6 (0.80%) Law
Job Titles
1 134 (17.96%) Network Engineer
2 102 (13.67%) Architect
3 72 (9.65%) Project Manager
4 57 (7.64%) Analyst
5 56 (7.51%) Senior
6 45 (6.03%) Data Centre Engineer
7 39 (5.23%) Network Architect
8 37 (4.96%) Data Centre Manager
9 35 (4.69%) IT Support
10 34 (4.56%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 31 (4.16%) Lead
12 29 (3.89%) Infrastructure Manager
13 27 (3.62%) Cisco Engineer
14 26 (3.49%) Support Engineer
15 25 (3.35%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 25 (3.35%) Desktop Support
15 25 (3.35%) Infrastructure Project Manager
15 25 (3.35%) Security Engineer
16 24 (3.22%) Solutions Architect
17 23 (3.08%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.16%) 802.1X
2 22 (2.95%) Middleware
3 7 (0.94%) LDAP
4 6 (0.80%) RFC 2544
4 6 (0.80%) Spring
5 4 (0.54%) ADO
5 4 (0.54%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.54%) Spring Boot
5 4 (0.54%) VML
6 3 (0.40%) NETCONF
6 3 (0.40%) OpenConfig
6 3 (0.40%) RESTCONF
6 3 (0.40%) XML
6 3 (0.40%) YANG
7 2 (0.27%) CSS
7 2 (0.27%) EJB
7 2 (0.27%) FIX Protocol
7 2 (0.27%) HTML
7 2 (0.27%) Java EE
7 2 (0.27%) Jinja
Miscellaneous
1 41 (5.50%) Hybrid Cloud
2 22 (2.95%) PKI
3 21 (2.82%) Analytical Mindset
4 20 (2.68%) Clustering
5 18 (2.41%) Public Cloud
5 18 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
6 17 (2.28%) Driving Licence
6 17 (2.28%) Onboarding
7 16 (2.14%) Replication
8 14 (1.88%) Management Information System
9 12 (1.61%) Cloud Native
9 12 (1.61%) Mainframe
10 11 (1.47%) Fibre Optics
11 10 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
11 10 (1.34%) Private Cloud
12 8 (1.07%) BYOD
12 8 (1.07%) Enterprise Storage
12 8 (1.07%) VSAM
13 7 (0.94%) CMDB
13 7 (0.94%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 100 (13.40%) Windows
2 85 (11.39%) Linux
3 39 (5.23%) Windows Server
4 32 (4.29%) Android
4 32 (4.29%) Mac OS
5 27 (3.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (2.14%) Unix
7 12 (1.61%) AIX
8 11 (1.47%) CentOS
9 10 (1.34%) Solaris
10 6 (0.80%) VMS
11 5 (0.67%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.40%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.13%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (17.43%) Migration
2 118 (15.82%) Problem-Solving
3 89 (11.93%) Stakeholder Management
4 68 (9.12%) ITIL
5 61 (8.18%) Project Management
6 54 (7.24%) Continuous Improvement
7 53 (7.10%) Project Delivery
8 52 (6.97%) Agile
9 51 (6.84%) Change Management
10 50 (6.70%) High Availability
11 49 (6.57%) Load Balancing
11 49 (6.57%) Roadmaps
12 48 (6.43%) CI/CD
13 45 (6.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 42 (5.63%) Data Centre Operations
14 42 (5.63%) Infrastructure as Code
15 41 (5.50%) Change Control
16 40 (5.36%) Network Design
17 39 (5.23%) ITSM
17 39 (5.23%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 63 (8.45%) Python
2 47 (6.30%) PowerShell
3 26 (3.49%) SQL
4 24 (3.22%) Bash
5 21 (2.82%) Java
6 16 (2.14%) Perl
7 11 (1.47%) Shell Script
8 9 (1.21%) Lisp
9 8 (1.07%) COBOL
10 7 (0.94%) MATLAB
11 5 (0.67%) Bicep
11 5 (0.67%) VBA
12 4 (0.54%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.27%) Korn
13 2 (0.27%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.13%) C#
14 1 (0.13%) C++
14 1 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.13%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 270 (36.19%) Security Cleared
2 208 (27.88%) SC Cleared
3 136 (18.23%) Cisco Certification
4 102 (13.67%) CCNP
5 62 (8.31%) Degree
6 56 (7.51%) CCNA
7 55 (7.37%) DV Cleared
8 21 (2.82%) CCIE
8 21 (2.82%) PMP
9 20 (2.68%) PMI Certification
10 19 (2.55%) AWS Certification
11 18 (2.41%) Network+ Certification
12 15 (2.01%) JNCIS
12 15 (2.01%) Microsoft Certification
13 14 (1.88%) A+ Certification
13 14 (1.88%) MCSE
14 13 (1.74%) JNCIP
15 12 (1.61%) CISSP
16 11 (1.47%) Azure Certification
16 11 (1.47%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (3.49%) PMO
2 20 (2.68%) NIST
2 20 (2.68%) SLA
3 19 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (2.55%) PCI DSS
4 14 (1.88%) GDPR
4 14 (1.88%) QA
5 9 (1.21%) NCSC
6 7 (0.94%) Data Quality
7 5 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
8 4 (0.54%) GRC
9 3 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.40%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.13%) COBIT
10 1 (0.13%) ISO 22301
10 1 (0.13%) RMADS
10 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 63 (8.45%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (6.97%) Active Directory
3 33 (4.42%) VMware NSX
4 23 (3.08%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (2.41%) Firmware
6 16 (2.14%) Hyper-V
7 14 (1.88%) vSphere
8 13 (1.74%) Docker
9 10 (1.34%) KVM
10 9 (1.21%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.27%) Ceph
11 2 (0.27%) Lustre
11 2 (0.27%) PowerHA
11 2 (0.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.27%) SRDF
11 2 (0.27%) vCloud
11 2 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.13%) NFS
12 1 (0.13%) Xen
Systems Management
1 69 (9.25%) Ansible
2 65 (8.71%) Terraform
3 45 (6.03%) FortiGate
4 25 (3.35%) Kubernetes
5 21 (2.82%) SCCM
6 19 (2.55%) Grafana
7 13 (1.74%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (1.34%) Prometheus
9 7 (0.94%) CASB
9 7 (0.94%) Check_MK
9 7 (0.94%) Podman
9 7 (0.94%) Red Hat Satellite
9 7 (0.94%) SCOM
10 6 (0.80%) SCOrch
10 6 (0.80%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.54%) Nagios
11 4 (0.54%) PowerCLI
11 4 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.40%) Endace
Vendors
1 245 (32.84%) Cisco
2 97 (13.00%) Palo Alto
3 96 (12.87%) VMware
4 78 (10.46%) Microsoft
5 72 (9.65%) Dell
6 67 (8.98%) Juniper
7 56 (7.51%) F5
8 43 (5.76%) HP
9 42 (5.63%) CheckPoint
10 40 (5.36%) ServiceNow
11 37 (4.96%) Aruba
12 34 (4.56%) Meraki
13 32 (4.29%) Apple
14 30 (4.02%) SolarWinds
15 28 (3.75%) SAP
16 27 (3.62%) Fortinet
17 24 (3.22%) Citrix
17 24 (3.22%) IBM
17 24 (3.22%) Oracle
18 23 (3.08%) Splunk
504 Data Centre jobs in England