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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 121 127 98
Rank change year-on-year +6 -29 +6
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 775 534 859
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.13% 2.09% 2.27%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.30% 6.22% 7.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 499 330 597
10th Percentile £277 £350 £295
25th Percentile £375 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £580 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £714 £700
UK median daily rate £476 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -7.07% -2.38% -4.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 13 37
10th Percentile £20.00 - £21.25
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.18 £22.08
Median hourly rate £26.14 £24.66 £25.12
Median % change year-on-year +5.98% -1.81% -54.83%
75th Percentile £72.34 £29.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £64.00 £51.75
UK median hourly rate £26.14 £24.18 £24.99
% change year-on-year +8.09% -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 12,311 8,582 11,654
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.83% 33.59% 30.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,799 5,391 7,624
10th Percentile £290 £281 £258
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £547 £546
Median % change year-on-year -6.31% +0.14% -5.00%
75th Percentile £628 £669 £658
90th Percentile £750 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £527
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.28% -4.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 608 275 763
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.83 £12.89
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.55 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.75 £35.89 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year -5.96% +19.00% +34.04%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £84.36 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £32.50 £30.08
% change year-on-year +3.08% +8.05% +33.78%

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 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 6 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 6 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 -19 273 £525 +0.48% 186
North of England +13 189 £472 -0.63% 53
South East +5 145 £450 - 111
North West +27 102 £500 - 26
Midlands -20 76 £466 -23.24% 33
Yorkshire -16 72 £365 -8.75% 22
West Midlands -20 62 £474 -21.91% 17
South West -41 35 £550 -3.08% 31
East of England -15 32 £478 +13.14% 30
North East -1 17 £175 +59.09% 5
East Midlands -16 14 £158 -65.00% 16
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 (3.61%) SharePoint
2 18 (2.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 16 (2.06%) Confluence
4 8 (1.03%) CICS
5 5 (0.65%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.52%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.39%) GeoServer
7 3 (0.39%) nginx
7 3 (0.39%) Smallworld
8 2 (0.26%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.26%) HCL Notes
8 2 (0.26%) Tomcat
Applications
1 51 (6.58%) Microsoft Office
2 27 (3.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (3.48%) MS Visio
3 23 (2.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (1.94%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.39%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.52%) Oracle Financials
1 4 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.39%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.26%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.26%) Primavera
4 1 (0.13%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 133 (17.16%) Azure
2 105 (13.55%) AWS
3 63 (8.13%) Microsoft 365
4 39 (5.03%) GCP
5 21 (2.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 16 (2.06%) Power Platform
6 16 (2.06%) SaaS
7 14 (1.81%) Entra ID
8 13 (1.68%) IaaS
9 12 (1.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 12 (1.55%) OpenShift
10 11 (1.42%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 11 (1.42%) PaaS
11 9 (1.16%) Azure DevOps
12 8 (1.03%) Amazon S3
12 8 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (1.03%) AWS Direct Connect
12 8 (1.03%) GitHub
12 8 (1.03%) OCI
13 7 (0.90%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 227 (29.29%) Firewall
2 144 (18.58%) WAN
3 111 (14.32%) BGP
4 89 (11.48%) LAN
5 79 (10.19%) Network Security
5 79 (10.19%) VPN
6 77 (9.94%) OSPF
7 72 (9.29%) Wireless
8 62 (8.00%) DNS
9 54 (6.97%) Structured Cabling
10 52 (6.71%) VXLAN
11 51 (6.58%) VLAN
12 46 (5.94%) DHCP
13 44 (5.68%) SAN
14 38 (4.90%) Cisco ISE
14 38 (4.90%) Wi-Fi
15 34 (4.39%) Ethernet VPN
16 31 (4.00%) MPLS
17 29 (3.74%) IPsec
17 29 (3.74%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (1.81%) Power BI
2 8 (1.03%) DataStage
3 6 (0.77%) Relational Database
3 6 (0.77%) SQL Server
4 5 (0.65%) GIS
5 4 (0.52%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.52%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.52%) Power Query
5 4 (0.52%) PowerPivot
5 4 (0.52%) RDBMS
6 3 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (0.39%) InfluxDB
6 3 (0.39%) QGIS
6 3 (0.39%) 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 31 (4.00%) Git
2 25 (3.23%) JIRA
3 17 (2.19%) Jenkins
4 15 (1.94%) GitLab
5 11 (1.42%) Maven
6 4 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.52%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.52%) Subversion
7 2 (0.26%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.26%) ScriptRunner
8 1 (0.13%) AppScan
8 1 (0.13%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.13%) Metasploit
General
1 203 (26.19%) Social Skills
2 141 (18.19%) Finance
3 90 (11.61%) Analytical Skills
4 89 (11.48%) Public Sector
5 55 (7.10%) Documentation Skills
6 51 (6.58%) Telecoms
7 41 (5.29%) Banking
8 40 (5.16%) Manufacturing
9 30 (3.87%) Marketing
10 24 (3.10%) Electronics
11 20 (2.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 18 (2.32%) Influencing Skills
12 18 (2.32%) Presentation Skills
13 16 (2.06%) Legal
14 15 (1.94%) Retail
15 12 (1.55%) Investment Banking
15 12 (1.55%) Organisational Skills
16 8 (1.03%) Military
17 7 (0.90%) Law
18 6 (0.77%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 135 (17.42%) Network Engineer
2 104 (13.42%) Architect
3 77 (9.94%) Project Manager
4 58 (7.48%) Senior
5 56 (7.23%) Analyst
6 50 (6.45%) Data Centre Engineer
7 41 (5.29%) Data Centre Manager
8 39 (5.03%) Network Architect
9 34 (4.39%) IT Support
9 34 (4.39%) Lead
9 34 (4.39%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 30 (3.87%) Infrastructure Manager
11 28 (3.61%) Cisco Engineer
12 26 (3.35%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 26 (3.35%) Infrastructure Project Manager
12 26 (3.35%) Support Engineer
13 25 (3.23%) Desktop Support
13 25 (3.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 25 (3.23%) Security Engineer
13 25 (3.23%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.00%) 802.1X
2 21 (2.71%) Middleware
3 7 (0.90%) LDAP
4 6 (0.77%) RFC 2544
4 6 (0.77%) Spring
5 4 (0.52%) ADO
5 4 (0.52%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.52%) NETCONF
5 4 (0.52%) OpenConfig
5 4 (0.52%) RESTCONF
5 4 (0.52%) Spring Boot
5 4 (0.52%) VML
5 4 (0.52%) XML
5 4 (0.52%) YANG
6 3 (0.39%) Jinja
6 3 (0.39%) Redfish
7 2 (0.26%) Kafka
7 2 (0.26%) OpenLayers
7 2 (0.26%) Oracle Fusion
7 2 (0.26%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 42 (5.42%) Hybrid Cloud
2 22 (2.84%) Analytical Mindset
2 22 (2.84%) PKI
3 20 (2.58%) Clustering
4 19 (2.45%) Onboarding
4 19 (2.45%) Self-Motivation
5 18 (2.32%) Driving Licence
5 18 (2.32%) Public Cloud
6 16 (2.06%) Replication
7 14 (1.81%) Management Information System
8 13 (1.68%) Cloud Native
9 12 (1.55%) Mainframe
10 11 (1.42%) Fibre Optics
11 10 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
11 10 (1.29%) Private Cloud
12 8 (1.03%) BYOD
12 8 (1.03%) Enterprise Storage
12 8 (1.03%) VSAM
13 7 (0.90%) CMDB
13 7 (0.90%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 103 (13.29%) Windows
2 87 (11.23%) Linux
3 42 (5.42%) Windows Server
4 32 (4.13%) Android
4 32 (4.13%) Mac OS
5 27 (3.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (1.94%) Unix
7 12 (1.55%) AIX
8 11 (1.42%) CentOS
9 10 (1.29%) Solaris
10 6 (0.77%) VMS
11 5 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.39%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.13%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (17.03%) Migration
2 123 (15.87%) Problem-Solving
3 94 (12.13%) Stakeholder Management
4 69 (8.90%) ITIL
5 67 (8.65%) Project Management
6 58 (7.48%) Change Management
6 58 (7.48%) Project Delivery
7 56 (7.23%) Agile
7 56 (7.23%) Roadmaps
8 55 (7.10%) Continuous Improvement
9 50 (6.45%) High Availability
9 50 (6.45%) Load Balancing
10 49 (6.32%) CI/CD
11 45 (5.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 44 (5.68%) Data Centre Operations
13 43 (5.55%) Infrastructure as Code
14 41 (5.29%) Change Control
14 41 (5.29%) Cybersecurity
14 41 (5.29%) Network Design
15 40 (5.16%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 70 (9.03%) Python
2 47 (6.06%) PowerShell
3 27 (3.48%) SQL
4 24 (3.10%) Bash
5 22 (2.84%) Java
6 16 (2.06%) Perl
7 11 (1.42%) Shell Script
8 9 (1.16%) Lisp
9 8 (1.03%) COBOL
10 7 (0.90%) MATLAB
11 5 (0.65%) Bicep
11 5 (0.65%) VBA
12 4 (0.52%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.26%) Korn
13 2 (0.26%) 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
1 275 (35.48%) Security Cleared
2 212 (27.35%) SC Cleared
3 140 (18.06%) Cisco Certification
4 105 (13.55%) CCNP
5 65 (8.39%) Degree
6 56 (7.23%) CCNA
7 55 (7.10%) DV Cleared
8 23 (2.97%) CCIE
9 22 (2.84%) PMP
10 20 (2.58%) PMI Certification
11 19 (2.45%) AWS Certification
12 18 (2.32%) Network+ Certification
13 15 (1.94%) JNCIS
13 15 (1.94%) Microsoft Certification
14 14 (1.81%) A+ Certification
14 14 (1.81%) MCSE
15 13 (1.68%) JNCIP
16 12 (1.55%) CISSP
16 12 (1.55%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
17 11 (1.42%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.61%) PMO
2 22 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 21 (2.71%) SLA
4 20 (2.58%) NIST
5 19 (2.45%) PCI DSS
6 17 (2.19%) GDPR
7 16 (2.06%) QA
8 9 (1.16%) NCSC
9 7 (0.90%) Data Quality
10 5 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.52%) GRC
12 3 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
12 3 (0.39%) NIST 800
13 1 (0.13%) COBIT
13 1 (0.13%) ISO 22301
13 1 (0.13%) RMADS
13 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 62 (8.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 55 (7.10%) Active Directory
3 33 (4.26%) VMware NSX
4 23 (2.97%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (2.45%) Firmware
6 15 (1.94%) Hyper-V
7 14 (1.81%) vSphere
8 13 (1.68%) Docker
9 10 (1.29%) KVM
10 9 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.26%) Ceph
11 2 (0.26%) Lustre
11 2 (0.26%) PowerHA
11 2 (0.26%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.26%) SRDF
11 2 (0.26%) vCloud
11 2 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.13%) NFS
12 1 (0.13%) Xen
Systems Management
1 74 (9.55%) Ansible
2 66 (8.52%) Terraform
3 44 (5.68%) FortiGate
4 29 (3.74%) Kubernetes
5 21 (2.71%) Grafana
5 21 (2.71%) SCCM
6 16 (2.06%) Microsoft Intune
7 12 (1.55%) Prometheus
8 7 (0.90%) CASB
8 7 (0.90%) Check_MK
8 7 (0.90%) Podman
8 7 (0.90%) Red Hat Satellite
8 7 (0.90%) SCOM
9 6 (0.77%) SCOrch
9 6 (0.77%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (0.52%) Nagios
10 4 (0.52%) PowerCLI
10 4 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
11 3 (0.39%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 249 (32.13%) Cisco
2 97 (12.52%) Palo Alto
3 94 (12.13%) VMware
4 81 (10.45%) Microsoft
5 74 (9.55%) Dell
6 69 (8.90%) Juniper
7 58 (7.48%) F5
8 42 (5.42%) CheckPoint
8 42 (5.42%) HP
9 39 (5.03%) ServiceNow
10 37 (4.77%) Aruba
11 34 (4.39%) Meraki
12 32 (4.13%) Apple
13 30 (3.87%) SolarWinds
14 29 (3.74%) SAP
15 28 (3.61%) Fortinet
16 25 (3.23%) Oracle
17 24 (3.10%) Citrix
17 24 (3.10%) IBM
18 23 (2.97%) Splunk
413 Data Centre jobs in England