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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 137 104
Rank change year-on-year +34 -33 -10
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 965 512 785
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.31% 2.14% 2.14%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.15% 6.23% 6.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 619 347 578
10th Percentile £318 £321 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £520 £531
Median % change year-on-year -4.81% -2.12% -3.41%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £625
90th Percentile £725 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £492 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -1.60% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 10 31
10th Percentile £16.01 - £21.25
25th Percentile £18.07 £24.66 £23.80
Median hourly rate £19.85 £38.75 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -48.77% +55.81% +14.77%
75th Percentile £37.87 £43.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.71 £57.75 £41.25
UK median hourly rate £19.34 £32.75 £24.00
% change year-on-year -40.94% +36.44% +11.81%

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 13,505 8,218 11,282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.29% 34.35% 30.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,486 5,348 7,377
10th Percentile £313 £300 £270
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% -3.64% -3.51%
75th Percentile £631 £663 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £513 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -2.38% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 705 336 833
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.98 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £20.64 £15.17
Median hourly rate £44.50 £34.13 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.40% -3.87% +59.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.80 £82.85 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £41.00 £32.43 £34.00
% change year-on-year +26.43% -4.62% +54.55%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +7 337 £550 +4.76% 188
North of England +26 233 £474 +6.46% 61
South East +14 210 £463 +2.78% 89
Yorkshire +3 113 £365 -14.12% 27
North West +21 96 £488 -3.20% 27
Midlands -43 58 £467 -15.12% 23
West Midlands -46 52 £468 -14.83% 20
South West -25 50 £495 -13.91% 29
East of England -8 39 £492 +64.00% 35
North East 0 28 £625 +468.18% 7
East Midlands -26 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 20 (2.07%) Confluence
2 13 (1.35%) SharePoint
3 10 (1.04%) CICS
3 10 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (0.41%) Apache
4 4 (0.41%) CloudStack
4 4 (0.41%) nginx
4 4 (0.41%) OpenStack
4 4 (0.41%) WebLogic
5 3 (0.31%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.10%) IIS
Applications
1 13 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 11 (1.14%) MS Visio
3 10 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (1.04%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.31%) Adobe Illustrator
4 3 (0.31%) AutoCAD
4 3 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.21%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
1 3 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.21%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.10%) Maximo
3 1 (0.10%) Primavera
3 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 191 (19.79%) Azure
2 161 (16.68%) AWS
3 47 (4.87%) GCP
4 32 (3.32%) Microsoft 365
5 28 (2.90%) IaaS
5 28 (2.90%) OCI
5 28 (2.90%) SaaS
6 25 (2.59%) GitHub
7 18 (1.87%) Entra ID
8 17 (1.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 13 (1.35%) PaaS
10 12 (1.24%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 11 (1.14%) OpenShift
12 10 (1.04%) GitHub Actions
12 10 (1.04%) Power Platform
13 9 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (0.83%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (0.83%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 8 (0.83%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (0.83%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 268 (27.77%) Firewall
2 177 (18.34%) WAN
3 161 (16.68%) BGP
4 129 (13.37%) OSPF
5 106 (10.98%) LAN
6 102 (10.57%) VXLAN
7 99 (10.26%) Network Security
8 96 (9.95%) SAN
9 90 (9.33%) VLAN
10 89 (9.22%) DNS
11 87 (9.02%) Structured Cabling
11 87 (9.02%) VPN
12 68 (7.05%) DHCP
13 67 (6.94%) Ethernet VPN
14 57 (5.91%) SD-WAN
15 50 (5.18%) BIG-IP
16 40 (4.15%) NX-OS
17 39 (4.04%) NAS
18 38 (3.94%) Wireless
19 36 (3.73%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.93%) DataStage
2 8 (0.83%) SQL Server
3 6 (0.62%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (0.52%) Power BI
5 4 (0.41%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.41%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.41%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.31%) Big Data
6 3 (0.31%) GIS
7 2 (0.21%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.21%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.21%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.21%) Oracle Database 12c
7 2 (0.21%) Power Query
7 2 (0.21%) PowerPivot
8 1 (0.10%) DB2
8 1 (0.10%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.10%) MS Access
8 1 (0.10%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.10%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 52 (5.39%) JIRA
2 37 (3.83%) GitLab
3 35 (3.63%) Git
4 30 (3.11%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.62%) Maven
6 5 (0.52%) ScriptRunner
7 4 (0.41%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.41%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.41%) Subversion
8 3 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
8 3 (0.31%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.21%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.10%) AppScan
10 1 (0.10%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.10%) Metasploit
General
1 247 (25.60%) Social Skills
2 138 (14.30%) Finance
3 106 (10.98%) Analytical Skills
4 71 (7.36%) Public Sector
5 57 (5.91%) Documentation Skills
6 44 (4.56%) Banking
7 27 (2.80%) Telecoms
8 26 (2.69%) Legal
9 22 (2.28%) Manufacturing
9 22 (2.28%) Retail
10 20 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
11 12 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 10 (1.04%) Law
13 9 (0.93%) Military
14 8 (0.83%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.83%) Marketing
14 8 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.52%) Financial Institution
16 5 (0.52%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 162 (16.79%) Network Engineer
2 131 (13.58%) Architect
3 114 (11.81%) Senior
4 79 (8.19%) Data Centre Engineer
5 73 (7.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 73 (7.56%) Project Manager
6 50 (5.18%) Lead
7 45 (4.66%) Network Architect
8 43 (4.46%) IT Engineer
9 42 (4.35%) Field Engineer
10 40 (4.15%) Data Centre Manager
11 39 (4.04%) Field Service Engineer
12 34 (3.52%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
13 32 (3.32%) Infrastructure Manager
14 28 (2.90%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 27 (2.80%) Analyst
16 26 (2.69%) Solutions Architect
17 25 (2.59%) Administrator
17 25 (2.59%) Cisco Engineer
18 24 (2.49%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (3.42%) Middleware
2 31 (3.21%) 802.1X
3 11 (1.14%) LDAP
4 9 (0.93%) Redfish
5 7 (0.73%) Spring
6 6 (0.62%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (0.52%) Jinja
7 5 (0.52%) Kafka
7 5 (0.52%) XML
8 4 (0.41%) ADO
8 4 (0.41%) REST
8 4 (0.41%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.41%) YAML
9 3 (0.31%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.31%) EJB
9 3 (0.31%) Java EE
9 3 (0.31%) JSON
9 3 (0.31%) NETCONF
9 3 (0.31%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.31%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 61 (6.32%) Hybrid Cloud
2 45 (4.66%) Analytical Mindset
3 28 (2.90%) Clustering
4 27 (2.80%) PKI
5 25 (2.59%) Cloud Native
5 25 (2.59%) Fibre Optics
6 22 (2.28%) Enterprise Storage
7 21 (2.18%) Onboarding
7 21 (2.18%) Private Cloud
8 20 (2.07%) Driving Licence
8 20 (2.07%) Management Information System
8 20 (2.07%) Replication
9 17 (1.76%) CMDB
9 17 (1.76%) Public Cloud
10 15 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
11 12 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.24%) Mainframe
12 9 (0.93%) BYOD
12 9 (0.93%) SCADA
12 9 (0.93%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 115 (11.92%) Windows
2 112 (11.61%) Linux
3 32 (3.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 30 (3.11%) Windows Server
5 22 (2.28%) Unix
6 21 (2.18%) AIX
7 16 (1.66%) Solaris
8 12 (1.24%) CentOS
9 8 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
10 7 (0.73%) VMS
11 5 (0.52%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.52%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.52%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.41%) Data ONTAP
12 4 (0.41%) HPUX
12 4 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.41%) SUSE
13 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.21%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (17.31%) Problem-Solving
2 162 (16.79%) Migration
3 99 (10.26%) Stakeholder Management
4 94 (9.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 91 (9.43%) High Availability
6 89 (9.22%) ITIL
7 85 (8.81%) Continuous Improvement
8 84 (8.70%) Infrastructure as Code
9 80 (8.29%) CI/CD
9 80 (8.29%) Roadmaps
10 70 (7.25%) Load Balancing
10 70 (7.25%) Project Delivery
10 70 (7.25%) Project Management
11 69 (7.15%) Change Management
12 66 (6.84%) Agile
13 62 (6.42%) Validation
14 60 (6.22%) DevOps
15 56 (5.80%) Zero Trust
16 55 (5.70%) Network Design
17 54 (5.60%) Data Centre Operations
Programming Languages
1 118 (12.23%) Python
2 38 (3.94%) PowerShell
3 25 (2.59%) SQL
4 24 (2.49%) Bash
5 21 (2.18%) Java
6 16 (1.66%) Shell Script
7 11 (1.14%) COBOL
7 11 (1.14%) MATLAB
8 8 (0.83%) Perl
9 7 (0.73%) Bicep
9 7 (0.73%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.62%) ActionScript
11 5 (0.52%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.41%) Lisp
13 3 (0.31%) VBA
14 2 (0.21%) C++
14 2 (0.21%) JCL
14 2 (0.21%) Korn
14 2 (0.21%) REXX
15 1 (0.10%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 290 (30.05%) Security Cleared
2 209 (21.66%) SC Cleared
3 196 (20.31%) Cisco Certification
4 126 (13.06%) CCNP
5 89 (9.22%) CCNA
6 68 (7.05%) DV Cleared
7 64 (6.63%) Degree
8 52 (5.39%) Network+ Certification
9 40 (4.15%) Microsoft Certification
10 37 (3.83%) A+ Certification
10 37 (3.83%) MCSE
11 23 (2.38%) Azure Certification
11 23 (2.38%) PMP
12 21 (2.18%) City & Guilds
13 20 (2.07%) CCIE
13 20 (2.07%) PMI Certification
14 19 (1.97%) AWS Certification
15 17 (1.76%) BICSI Certification
15 17 (1.76%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 16 (1.66%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (3.52%) SLA
2 22 (2.28%) NIST
3 19 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (1.97%) PMO
4 15 (1.55%) GDPR
4 15 (1.55%) QA
5 9 (0.93%) PCI DSS
6 8 (0.83%) GRC
6 8 (0.83%) NCSC
7 6 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
8 4 (0.41%) RMADS
9 3 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.31%) JSP 440
9 3 (0.31%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.21%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.10%) COBIT
11 1 (0.10%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.10%) SOC 1
System Software
1 89 (9.22%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (4.97%) Active Directory
3 31 (3.21%) Firmware
4 28 (2.90%) VMware ESXi
5 27 (2.80%) vSphere
6 26 (2.69%) VMware NSX
7 25 (2.59%) Virtual Machines
8 21 (2.18%) Hyper-V
9 12 (1.24%) KVM
10 11 (1.14%) Docker
11 7 (0.73%) NFS
12 6 (0.62%) SRDF
13 4 (0.41%) Ceph
13 4 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.41%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.31%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.31%) PowerHA
14 3 (0.31%) UAG
14 3 (0.31%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 115 (11.92%) Ansible
2 87 (9.02%) Terraform
3 47 (4.87%) FortiGate
4 43 (4.46%) Kubernetes
5 30 (3.11%) Grafana
6 26 (2.69%) Prometheus
7 19 (1.97%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (1.35%) Check_MK
9 12 (1.24%) vCenter Server
10 11 (1.14%) NetBackup
10 11 (1.14%) Podman
10 11 (1.14%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (1.04%) SCCM
12 9 (0.93%) Dell DRAC
12 9 (0.93%) PowerCLI
13 7 (0.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.73%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.52%) EMC NetWorker
14 5 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
14 5 (0.52%) Nagios
Vendors
1 260 (26.94%) Cisco
2 136 (14.09%) VMware
3 127 (13.16%) Palo Alto
4 95 (9.84%) F5
5 83 (8.60%) Microsoft
6 75 (7.77%) Juniper
7 72 (7.46%) Dell
8 59 (6.11%) Arista
9 52 (5.39%) Aruba
9 52 (5.39%) Fortinet
10 46 (4.77%) CheckPoint
11 45 (4.66%) ServiceNow
12 41 (4.25%) SolarWinds
13 35 (3.63%) IBM
14 30 (3.11%) Red Hat
15 28 (2.90%) Splunk
16 26 (2.69%) Oracle
17 24 (2.49%) Google
18 22 (2.28%) Atlassian
18 22 (2.28%) Extreme Networks