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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 108 132 105
Rank change year-on-year +24 -27 -10
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 920 523 772
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.23% 2.16% 2.12%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.97% 6.32% 6.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 601 349 566
10th Percentile £318 £335 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.62% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £625
90th Percentile £725 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £482 £508 £525
% change year-on-year -4.98% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 14 33
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.18 £21.25
25th Percentile £16.53 £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 £74.01 £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 13,200 8,279 11,192
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.02% 34.19% 30.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,339 5,404 7,342
10th Percentile £313 £300 £266
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.19% -2.27% -3.64%
75th Percentile £628 £670 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -2.38% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 668 338 818
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.03 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £20.64 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.00 £33.91 £34.11
Median % change year-on-year +32.70% -0.57% +51.68%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.40 £83.59 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year +32.05% +0.83% +41.51%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +9 313 £550 +4.27% 189
North of England +20 220 £469 +0.75% 66
South East +10 202 £463 +2.78% 98
Yorkshire -3 101 £365 -14.12% 29
North West +18 96 £481 -4.47% 28
Midlands -48 53 £460 -16.36% 29
South West -31 50 £495 -10.00% 34
West Midlands -49 47 £465 -15.45% 26
East of England -4 41 £487 +94.90% 26
North East +1 25 £513 +365.91% 9
East Midlands -27 5 £400 -27.27% 3
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 19 (2.07%) Confluence
2 12 (1.30%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.98%) CICS
5 4 (0.43%) Apache
5 4 (0.43%) CloudStack
5 4 (0.43%) nginx
5 4 (0.43%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.43%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.33%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.11%) IIS
Applications
1 14 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (1.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (1.20%) MS Visio
4 10 (1.09%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.33%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.22%) AutoCAD
6 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%) Primavera
3 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 180 (19.57%) Azure
2 151 (16.41%) AWS
3 45 (4.89%) GCP
4 31 (3.37%) Microsoft 365
5 25 (2.72%) SaaS
6 24 (2.61%) OCI
7 22 (2.39%) IaaS
8 19 (2.07%) Entra ID
9 18 (1.96%) GitHub
10 17 (1.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 13 (1.41%) PaaS
12 12 (1.30%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 10 (1.09%) OpenShift
13 10 (1.09%) Power Platform
14 9 (0.98%) GitHub Actions
15 8 (0.87%) Amazon EKS
15 8 (0.87%) Amazon GuardDuty
15 8 (0.87%) Azure DevOps
15 8 (0.87%) Azure Sentinel
16 7 (0.76%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 259 (28.15%) Firewall
2 177 (19.24%) WAN
3 157 (17.07%) BGP
4 127 (13.80%) OSPF
5 106 (11.52%) LAN
6 100 (10.87%) Network Security
7 95 (10.33%) VXLAN
8 89 (9.67%) SAN
9 86 (9.35%) Structured Cabling
9 86 (9.35%) VPN
10 81 (8.80%) VLAN
11 79 (8.59%) DNS
12 64 (6.96%) Ethernet VPN
13 61 (6.63%) DHCP
14 53 (5.76%) SD-WAN
15 43 (4.67%) BIG-IP
16 37 (4.02%) Wi-Fi
17 36 (3.91%) Cisco Nexus
18 35 (3.80%) NX-OS
19 34 (3.70%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.98%) DataStage
2 6 (0.65%) PostgreSQL
2 6 (0.65%) SQL Server
3 5 (0.54%) Power BI
4 4 (0.43%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
4 4 (0.43%) SAP Data Services
5 3 (0.33%) Big Data
5 3 (0.33%) GIS
6 2 (0.22%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.22%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database 12c
6 2 (0.22%) Power Query
6 2 (0.22%) PowerPivot
7 1 (0.11%) DB2
7 1 (0.11%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.11%) MS Access
7 1 (0.11%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.11%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 43 (4.67%) JIRA
2 36 (3.91%) Git
3 35 (3.80%) GitLab
4 23 (2.50%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.65%) Maven
6 5 (0.54%) ScriptRunner
7 4 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.43%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (0.43%) 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
1 232 (25.22%) Social Skills
2 128 (13.91%) Finance
3 104 (11.30%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (7.61%) Public Sector
5 56 (6.09%) Documentation Skills
6 41 (4.46%) Banking
7 25 (2.72%) Telecoms
8 23 (2.50%) Legal
9 22 (2.39%) Manufacturing
9 22 (2.39%) Retail
10 19 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
11 11 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (0.98%) Military
13 8 (0.87%) Aerospace
13 8 (0.87%) Marketing
13 8 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.76%) Law
14 7 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
15 5 (0.54%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.54%) Portuguese Language
Job Titles
1 157 (17.07%) Network Engineer
2 127 (13.80%) Architect
3 103 (11.20%) Senior
4 73 (7.93%) Data Centre Engineer
5 67 (7.28%) Project Manager
6 65 (7.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 45 (4.89%) Lead
8 44 (4.78%) IT Engineer
8 44 (4.78%) Network Architect
9 42 (4.57%) Data Centre Manager
9 42 (4.57%) Field Engineer
10 39 (4.24%) Field Service Engineer
11 35 (3.80%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 28 (3.04%) Infrastructure Manager
13 26 (2.83%) Analyst
13 26 (2.83%) Solutions Architect
14 25 (2.72%) Administrator
14 25 (2.72%) Cisco Engineer
15 24 (2.61%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 24 (2.61%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (3.59%) 802.1X
1 33 (3.59%) Middleware
2 11 (1.20%) LDAP
3 9 (0.98%) Redfish
4 7 (0.76%) Spring
5 6 (0.65%) Elastic Stack
6 5 (0.54%) Jinja
6 5 (0.54%) Kafka
6 5 (0.54%) XML
7 4 (0.43%) ADO
7 4 (0.43%) NETCONF
7 4 (0.43%) REST
7 4 (0.43%) Spring Boot
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%) YAML
8 3 (0.33%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 56 (6.09%) Hybrid Cloud
2 46 (5.00%) Analytical Mindset
3 28 (3.04%) Clustering
4 27 (2.93%) PKI
5 25 (2.72%) Fibre Optics
6 20 (2.17%) Cloud Native
7 19 (2.07%) Onboarding
8 18 (1.96%) Driving Licence
8 18 (1.96%) Management Information System
9 17 (1.85%) Private Cloud
9 17 (1.85%) Replication
10 16 (1.74%) CMDB
10 16 (1.74%) Enterprise Storage
10 16 (1.74%) Public Cloud
10 16 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
11 11 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (1.20%) Mainframe
12 9 (0.98%) BYOD
12 9 (0.98%) SCADA
12 9 (0.98%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 110 (11.96%) Windows
2 108 (11.74%) Linux
3 32 (3.48%) Windows Server
4 30 (3.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (2.39%) Unix
6 20 (2.17%) AIX
7 16 (1.74%) Solaris
8 12 (1.30%) CentOS
9 8 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.65%) VMS
11 5 (0.54%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.43%) Apple iOS
12 4 (0.43%) HPUX
12 4 (0.43%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.43%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.43%) SUSE
13 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.11%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 164 (17.83%) Problem-Solving
2 158 (17.17%) Migration
3 87 (9.46%) Stakeholder Management
4 86 (9.35%) ITIL
5 85 (9.24%) High Availability
6 82 (8.91%) Continuous Improvement
7 80 (8.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 78 (8.48%) Roadmaps
9 77 (8.37%) Infrastructure as Code
10 73 (7.93%) CI/CD
11 68 (7.39%) Change Management
11 68 (7.39%) Load Balancing
12 66 (7.17%) Project Management
13 65 (7.07%) Project Delivery
14 62 (6.74%) Validation
15 54 (5.87%) Technical Leadership
16 53 (5.76%) Data Centre Operations
16 53 (5.76%) Runbook
17 52 (5.65%) DevOps
17 52 (5.65%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 106 (11.52%) Python
2 35 (3.80%) PowerShell
3 25 (2.72%) SQL
4 22 (2.39%) Bash
5 21 (2.28%) Java
6 16 (1.74%) Shell Script
7 11 (1.20%) COBOL
7 11 (1.20%) MATLAB
8 8 (0.87%) Perl
9 7 (0.76%) Bicep
9 7 (0.76%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.54%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.33%) VBA
12 2 (0.22%) C++
12 2 (0.22%) Korn
12 2 (0.22%) Lisp
13 1 (0.11%) Groovy
13 1 (0.11%) JCL
13 1 (0.11%) REXX
13 1 (0.11%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 273 (29.67%) Security Cleared
2 201 (21.85%) SC Cleared
3 193 (20.98%) Cisco Certification
4 123 (13.37%) CCNP
5 88 (9.57%) CCNA
6 62 (6.74%) Degree
7 58 (6.30%) DV Cleared
8 49 (5.33%) Network+ Certification
9 40 (4.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 37 (4.02%) A+ Certification
10 37 (4.02%) MCSE
11 21 (2.28%) Azure Certification
11 21 (2.28%) PMP
12 20 (2.17%) CCIE
12 20 (2.17%) City & Guilds
13 19 (2.07%) AWS Certification
13 19 (2.07%) PMI Certification
14 17 (1.85%) BICSI Certification
15 16 (1.74%) JNCIS
16 14 (1.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.48%) SLA
2 20 (2.17%) NIST
3 19 (2.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (2.07%) PMO
4 16 (1.74%) QA
5 15 (1.63%) GDPR
6 9 (0.98%) NCSC
7 8 (0.87%) GRC
7 8 (0.87%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.33%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.22%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.22%) RMADS
10 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.11%) COBIT
11 1 (0.11%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.11%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.11%) SOC 1
System Software
1 82 (8.91%) VMware Infrastructure
2 47 (5.11%) Active Directory
3 31 (3.37%) Firmware
4 26 (2.83%) VMware NSX
4 26 (2.83%) vSphere
5 24 (2.61%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (2.61%) VMware ESXi
6 20 (2.17%) Hyper-V
7 12 (1.30%) KVM
8 11 (1.20%) Docker
9 5 (0.54%) NFS
10 4 (0.43%) Ceph
10 4 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (0.43%) VMware Workstation
11 3 (0.33%) Microsoft App-V
11 3 (0.33%) PowerHA
11 3 (0.33%) SRDF
11 3 (0.33%) UAG
11 3 (0.33%) Veritas Cluster Server
12 2 (0.22%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 110 (11.96%) Ansible
2 84 (9.13%) Terraform
3 47 (5.11%) FortiGate
4 41 (4.46%) Kubernetes
5 28 (3.04%) Grafana
6 24 (2.61%) Prometheus
7 18 (1.96%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (1.41%) Check_MK
9 12 (1.30%) SCCM
10 11 (1.20%) Podman
10 11 (1.20%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (1.09%) NetBackup
11 10 (1.09%) vCenter Server
12 9 (0.98%) Dell DRAC
13 7 (0.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.76%) PowerCLI
14 6 (0.65%) Tivoli Storage Manager
15 5 (0.54%) Endace
15 5 (0.54%) Nagios
15 5 (0.54%) vMotion
Vendors
1 255 (27.72%) Cisco
2 127 (13.80%) Palo Alto
2 127 (13.80%) VMware
3 89 (9.67%) F5
4 85 (9.24%) Microsoft
5 75 (8.15%) Juniper
6 69 (7.50%) Dell
7 54 (5.87%) Arista
8 52 (5.65%) Aruba
9 48 (5.22%) CheckPoint
10 47 (5.11%) Fortinet
11 41 (4.46%) ServiceNow
12 40 (4.35%) SolarWinds
13 32 (3.48%) IBM
14 28 (3.04%) Splunk
15 27 (2.93%) Red Hat
16 25 (2.72%) Oracle
17 24 (2.61%) Google
17 24 (2.61%) Meraki
18 22 (2.39%) Extreme Networks