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

6 months to
6 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 141 129 98
Rank change year-on-year -12 -31 +8
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 648 551 837
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.05% 2.02% 2.33%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.84% 6.21% 7.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 435 333 594
10th Percentile £278 £358 £311
25th Percentile £405 £431 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.10% -2.50%
75th Percentile £589 £613 £650
90th Percentile £695 £705 £725
UK median daily rate £499 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.95% -2.33% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 15 21
10th Percentile £21.83 £11.75 £20.50
25th Percentile £25.15 £16.02 £21.25
Median hourly rate £25.83 £24.18 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.80% +5.13% -64.62%
75th Percentile £45.31 £26.96 £38.75
90th Percentile £73.71 £48.45 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £24.18 £23.00
% change year-on-year +4.01% +5.13% -64.06%

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 11,098 8,874 11,356
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.18% 32.50% 31.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,037 5,340 7,655
10th Percentile £288 £275 £263
25th Percentile £410 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -3.51%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £675
90th Percentile £739 £780 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -5.66% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 546 261 480
10th Percentile £14.30 £17.25 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £23.80 £20.00
Median hourly rate £29.00 £37.00 £41.37
Median % change year-on-year -21.62% -10.55% +60.89%
75th Percentile £63.75 £66.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.20 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £33.54 £40.00
% change year-on-year -18.01% -16.15% +55.58%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 -14 239 £525 - 138
North of England -1 139 £475 -4.52% 66
South East -6 94 £450 -10.00% 106
North West +11 88 £523 +4.50% 24
Midlands +3 87 £451 -22.24% 21
West Midlands -2 70 £474 -18.28% 7
Yorkshire -40 47 £398 -5.36% 33
South West -27 35 £550 - 37
East of England -9 30 £492 +16.45% 32
East Midlands -12 17 £179 -71.40% 13
North East -8 7 £175 - 9
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 30 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 21 (3.24%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.54%) Confluence
4 9 (1.39%) OpenStack
5 7 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.77%) Apache
6 5 (0.77%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.62%) HCL Notes
8 3 (0.46%) CICS
8 3 (0.46%) GeoServer
8 3 (0.46%) Smallworld
8 3 (0.46%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.31%) FileNet
9 2 (0.31%) nginx
9 2 (0.31%) ThingWorx
9 2 (0.31%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.15%) IIS
10 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 53 (8.18%) Microsoft Office
2 31 (4.78%) Microsoft Excel
3 24 (3.70%) MS Visio
4 18 (2.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (2.16%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.15%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 6 (0.93%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.62%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.31%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.15%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.15%) Maximo
4 1 (0.15%) Primavera
4 1 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 115 (17.75%) Azure
2 86 (13.27%) AWS
3 65 (10.03%) Microsoft 365
4 33 (5.09%) GCP
5 25 (3.86%) Power Platform
6 14 (2.16%) OpenShift
7 13 (2.01%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 13 (2.01%) Entra ID
8 11 (1.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 9 (1.39%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 8 (1.23%) GitHub
10 8 (1.23%) npm
10 8 (1.23%) SaaS
11 7 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (1.08%) AWS Direct Connect
11 7 (1.08%) OCI
12 6 (0.93%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (0.93%) PaaS
13 5 (0.77%) IaaS
13 5 (0.77%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 192 (29.63%) Firewall
2 125 (19.29%) WAN
3 80 (12.35%) Wireless
4 73 (11.27%) VPN
5 69 (10.65%) BGP
6 68 (10.49%) LAN
7 58 (8.95%) Network Security
8 49 (7.56%) OSPF
8 49 (7.56%) Wi-Fi
9 46 (7.10%) DNS
10 42 (6.48%) VLAN
11 37 (5.71%) SAN
12 31 (4.78%) SD-WAN
13 29 (4.48%) Cisco ISE
13 29 (4.48%) DHCP
13 29 (4.48%) IPsec
13 29 (4.48%) VXLAN
14 28 (4.32%) MPLS
15 27 (4.17%) Structured Cabling
16 26 (4.01%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.40%) Power BI
2 14 (2.16%) Relational Database
3 8 (1.23%) RDBMS
3 8 (1.23%) SQL Server
4 6 (0.93%) NoSQL
5 5 (0.77%) Apache Hive
5 5 (0.77%) Hadoop
5 5 (0.77%) HBase
6 4 (0.62%) Data Mining
6 4 (0.62%) GIS
6 4 (0.62%) InfluxDB
6 4 (0.62%) Power Query
6 4 (0.62%) PowerPivot
7 3 (0.46%) Big Data
7 3 (0.46%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.46%) Data Vault
7 3 (0.46%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (0.46%) Metadata
7 3 (0.46%) PostgreSQL
7 3 (0.46%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 27 (4.17%) Git
2 19 (2.93%) Jenkins
3 13 (2.01%) GitLab
3 13 (2.01%) Sonatype Nexus
4 11 (1.70%) JIRA
4 11 (1.70%) Maven
5 8 (1.23%) SonarQube
6 3 (0.46%) ER Studio
6 3 (0.46%) ERwin
6 3 (0.46%) Gradle
6 3 (0.46%) Selenium
7 2 (0.31%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.31%) ScriptRunner
General
1 181 (27.93%) Social Skills
2 126 (19.44%) Finance
3 83 (12.81%) Analytical Skills
4 82 (12.65%) Public Sector
5 62 (9.57%) Telecoms
6 57 (8.80%) Banking
7 48 (7.41%) Documentation Skills
8 40 (6.17%) Manufacturing
9 25 (3.86%) Electronics
9 25 (3.86%) Marketing
10 21 (3.24%) Presentation Skills
11 18 (2.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 14 (2.16%) Organisational Skills
13 11 (1.70%) Retail
14 8 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
15 7 (1.08%) Front Office
15 7 (1.08%) Investment Banking
15 7 (1.08%) Law
15 7 (1.08%) Legal
15 7 (1.08%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 114 (17.59%) Network Engineer
2 101 (15.59%) Architect
3 65 (10.03%) Project Manager
4 60 (9.26%) Analyst
5 41 (6.33%) Senior
6 40 (6.17%) Network Architect
7 32 (4.94%) Data Centre Manager
8 27 (4.17%) IT Support
8 27 (4.17%) Lead
9 26 (4.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 26 (4.01%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 26 (4.01%) Security Engineer
10 25 (3.86%) Desktop Support
11 24 (3.70%) Cisco Engineer
11 24 (3.70%) Consultant
12 23 (3.55%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
12 23 (3.55%) 2nd Line Support
12 23 (3.55%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
12 23 (3.55%) Support Engineer
13 22 (3.40%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.55%) 802.1X
2 18 (2.78%) Middleware
3 8 (1.23%) RFC 2544
4 7 (1.08%) LDAP
5 5 (0.77%) Spark Streaming
6 4 (0.62%) ADO
6 4 (0.62%) Jinja
6 4 (0.62%) VML
7 2 (0.31%) ARM Templates
7 2 (0.31%) ModSecurity
7 2 (0.31%) NETCONF
7 2 (0.31%) OpenConfig
7 2 (0.31%) REST
7 2 (0.31%) RESTCONF
7 2 (0.31%) YANG
8 1 (0.15%) ASP.NET
8 1 (0.15%) Elastic Stack
8 1 (0.15%) JSSE
8 1 (0.15%) OpenLayers
8 1 (0.15%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 40 (6.17%) Hybrid Cloud
2 24 (3.70%) Public Cloud
3 21 (3.24%) Cloud Native
4 19 (2.93%) Self-Motivation
5 17 (2.62%) Replication
6 15 (2.31%) Mainframe
7 14 (2.16%) Driving Licence
8 13 (2.01%) Management Information System
8 13 (2.01%) Onboarding
9 12 (1.85%) Analytical Mindset
9 12 (1.85%) Fibre Optics
10 11 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
10 11 (1.70%) Private Cloud
11 9 (1.39%) PKI
12 8 (1.23%) Clustering
13 7 (1.08%) Product Ownership
13 7 (1.08%) SCADA
14 6 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
14 6 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
14 6 (0.93%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 86 (13.27%) Windows
2 60 (9.26%) Linux
3 39 (6.02%) Windows Server
4 38 (5.86%) Android
4 38 (5.86%) Mac OS
5 18 (2.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (1.54%) CentOS
6 10 (1.54%) Unix
7 6 (0.93%) Windows 10
7 6 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
8 4 (0.62%) VMS
8 4 (0.62%) Windows Server 2008
8 4 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (0.46%) Solaris
10 2 (0.31%) zOS
11 1 (0.15%) AIX
11 1 (0.15%) MVS
11 1 (0.15%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (16.51%) Migration
2 94 (14.51%) Problem-Solving
3 84 (12.96%) Stakeholder Management
4 58 (8.95%) ITIL
5 54 (8.33%) Agile
6 51 (7.87%) Project Management
7 46 (7.10%) Project Delivery
8 44 (6.79%) Network Design
8 44 (6.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 43 (6.64%) Business Intelligence
9 43 (6.64%) Change Management
9 43 (6.64%) DevOps
10 42 (6.48%) CI/CD
11 40 (6.17%) Infrastructure as Code
12 39 (6.02%) Customer Service
12 39 (6.02%) Load Balancing
13 38 (5.86%) Service Management
14 37 (5.71%) Programme Management
15 35 (5.40%) Continuous Improvement
15 35 (5.40%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 65 (10.03%) Python
2 42 (6.48%) PowerShell
3 33 (5.09%) SQL
4 19 (2.93%) Java
5 18 (2.78%) Bash
6 10 (1.54%) Perl
6 10 (1.54%) Shell Script
7 8 (1.23%) Lisp
8 5 (0.77%) MATLAB
8 5 (0.77%) VBA
9 2 (0.31%) Bicep
9 2 (0.31%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.15%) C
10 1 (0.15%) C#
10 1 (0.15%) C++
10 1 (0.15%) COBOL
10 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (0.15%) Go
10 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 224 (34.57%) Security Cleared
2 187 (28.86%) SC Cleared
3 95 (14.66%) Cisco Certification
4 75 (11.57%) CCNP
5 55 (8.49%) Degree
6 40 (6.17%) DV Cleared
7 36 (5.56%) CCNA
8 24 (3.70%) CCIE
9 21 (3.24%) AWS Certification
10 15 (2.31%) PMP
11 14 (2.16%) PMI Certification
12 12 (1.85%) CISSP
12 12 (1.85%) JNCIE
13 8 (1.23%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 7 (1.08%) Azure Certification
14 7 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
14 7 (1.08%) Network+ Certification
15 6 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 6 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
15 6 (0.93%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (3.09%) SLA
2 19 (2.93%) NIST
3 18 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (2.78%) PMO
4 17 (2.62%) PCI DSS
5 14 (2.16%) QA
6 12 (1.85%) GDPR
7 11 (1.70%) Data Quality
8 6 (0.93%) NCSC
9 3 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.15%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.15%) ISO 22301
11 1 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 1 (0.15%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
System Software
1 66 (10.19%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (7.41%) Active Directory
3 35 (5.40%) VMware NSX
4 22 (3.40%) Docker
5 17 (2.62%) Virtual Machines
6 16 (2.47%) Hyper-V
7 12 (1.85%) vSphere
8 9 (1.39%) Firmware
9 8 (1.23%) KVM
10 7 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
11 5 (0.77%) HDFS
12 3 (0.46%) Lustre
13 2 (0.31%) Ceph
13 2 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
13 2 (0.31%) NFS
13 2 (0.31%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.31%) SRDF
13 2 (0.31%) Xen
14 1 (0.15%) GPFS
14 1 (0.15%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 72 (11.11%) Ansible
2 61 (9.41%) Terraform
3 30 (4.63%) FortiGate
4 23 (3.55%) SCCM
5 18 (2.78%) Kubernetes
6 12 (1.85%) Grafana
7 11 (1.70%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (1.54%) SCOM
9 9 (1.39%) vCenter Server
10 7 (1.08%) CASB
10 7 (1.08%) Puppet
11 6 (0.93%) SCOrch
12 5 (0.77%) Check_MK
12 5 (0.77%) Hadoop YARN
12 5 (0.77%) Podman
12 5 (0.77%) Red Hat Satellite
12 5 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
13 4 (0.62%) Prometheus
14 3 (0.46%) Argo
14 3 (0.46%) Nagios
Vendors
1 225 (34.72%) Cisco
2 86 (13.27%) Palo Alto
3 85 (13.12%) VMware
4 83 (12.81%) Microsoft
5 61 (9.41%) Dell
6 53 (8.18%) Juniper
7 50 (7.72%) F5
8 46 (7.10%) HP
9 39 (6.02%) CheckPoint
10 38 (5.86%) Apple
11 30 (4.63%) Fortinet
11 30 (4.63%) SAP
11 30 (4.63%) ServiceNow
12 29 (4.48%) Aruba
12 29 (4.48%) Meraki
13 26 (4.01%) Oracle
14 17 (2.62%) Arista
15 16 (2.47%) Citrix
16 14 (2.16%) NetApp
16 14 (2.16%) Remedy