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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 130 99
Rank change year-on-year -1 -31 +3
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 735 526 868
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.08% 2.06% 2.29%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.13% 6.16% 7.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 475 323 606
10th Percentile £273 £350 £295
25th Percentile £383 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.45% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £580 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £711 £700
UK median daily rate £478 £509 £525
% change year-on-year -6.04% -3.10% -3.23%
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 11,982 8,540 11,760
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.84% 33.45% 30.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,622 5,321 7,684
10th Percentile £288 £275 £256
25th Percentile £410 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £545 £545
Median % change year-on-year -5.96% - -5.22%
75th Percentile £626 £670 £656
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £527
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.28% -4.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 592 271 772
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.95 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.60 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £35.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year -5.63% +17.71% +34.04%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £79.82 £85.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £32.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +3.08% +8.33% +33.42%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -22 260 £525 +0.96% 180
North of England +15 179 £474 -5.20% 83
South East +4 133 £445 -1.11% 179
North West +11 101 £500 - 38
Midlands -18 73 £470 -21.67% 51
Yorkshire -30 63 £383 -8.93% 36
West Midlands -23 59 £475 -20.92% 24
South West -39 34 £550 -3.08% 54
East of England -21 30 £478 +13.14% 56
North East +1 17 £175 - 9
East Midlands -18 14 £158 -70.70% 27
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 (3.81%) SharePoint
2 18 (2.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 15 (2.04%) Confluence
4 8 (1.09%) CICS
5 5 (0.68%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.54%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.41%) GeoServer
7 3 (0.41%) HCL Notes
7 3 (0.41%) nginx
7 3 (0.41%) Smallworld
8 2 (0.27%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.27%) Tomcat
Applications
1 51 (6.94%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (3.54%) Microsoft Excel
3 25 (3.40%) MS Visio
4 22 (2.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (1.90%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.41%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
1 4 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.41%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.27%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.14%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.14%) Maximo
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.14%) Primavera
4 1 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 126 (17.14%) Azure
2 100 (13.61%) AWS
3 63 (8.57%) Microsoft 365
4 37 (5.03%) GCP
5 19 (2.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 16 (2.18%) Power Platform
6 16 (2.18%) SaaS
7 14 (1.90%) Entra ID
8 13 (1.77%) IaaS
9 12 (1.63%) OpenShift
10 11 (1.50%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 11 (1.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 11 (1.50%) PaaS
11 9 (1.22%) Azure DevOps
12 8 (1.09%) Amazon S3
12 8 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (1.09%) GitHub
13 7 (0.95%) AWS CloudTrail
13 7 (0.95%) AWS KMS
13 7 (0.95%) npm
Communications & Networking
1 217 (29.52%) Firewall
2 138 (18.78%) WAN
3 103 (14.01%) BGP
4 88 (11.97%) LAN
5 75 (10.20%) Network Security
6 73 (9.93%) VPN
7 72 (9.80%) OSPF
7 72 (9.80%) Wireless
8 61 (8.30%) DNS
9 51 (6.94%) Structured Cabling
9 51 (6.94%) VLAN
10 47 (6.39%) VXLAN
11 45 (6.12%) DHCP
12 38 (5.17%) Cisco ISE
12 38 (5.17%) SAN
13 37 (5.03%) Wi-Fi
14 31 (4.22%) Ethernet VPN
15 29 (3.95%) IPsec
16 28 (3.81%) MPLS
17 27 (3.67%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (1.90%) Power BI
2 8 (1.09%) DataStage
3 6 (0.82%) Relational Database
3 6 (0.82%) SQL Server
4 5 (0.68%) 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 (0.41%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (0.41%) InfluxDB
6 3 (0.41%) QGIS
6 3 (0.41%) SAP Data Services
7 1 (0.14%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.14%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.14%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.14%) Redis
7 1 (0.14%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 29 (3.95%) Git
2 21 (2.86%) JIRA
3 17 (2.31%) Jenkins
4 15 (2.04%) GitLab
5 10 (1.36%) Maven
6 4 (0.54%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 3 (0.41%) Eclipse
7 3 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.41%) Subversion
8 2 (0.27%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (0.27%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.14%) AppScan
9 1 (0.14%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.14%) Metasploit
General
1 195 (26.53%) Social Skills
2 129 (17.55%) Finance
3 86 (11.70%) Analytical Skills
4 85 (11.56%) Public Sector
5 55 (7.48%) Documentation Skills
6 51 (6.94%) Telecoms
7 40 (5.44%) Banking
7 40 (5.44%) Manufacturing
8 29 (3.95%) Marketing
9 24 (3.27%) Electronics
10 20 (2.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 18 (2.45%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (2.31%) Influencing Skills
13 16 (2.18%) Legal
14 12 (1.63%) Investment Banking
14 12 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
14 12 (1.63%) Retail
15 8 (1.09%) Military
16 6 (0.82%) Aerospace
16 6 (0.82%) Law
Job Titles
1 134 (18.23%) Network Engineer
2 100 (13.61%) Architect
3 72 (9.80%) Project Manager
4 57 (7.76%) Analyst
5 56 (7.62%) Senior
6 43 (5.85%) Data Centre Engineer
7 38 (5.17%) Network Architect
8 36 (4.90%) Data Centre Manager
9 34 (4.63%) IT Support
9 34 (4.63%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 32 (4.35%) Lead
11 30 (4.08%) Infrastructure Manager
12 27 (3.67%) Cisco Engineer
13 25 (3.40%) Cisco Network Engineer
13 25 (3.40%) Desktop Support
13 25 (3.40%) Infrastructure Project Manager
13 25 (3.40%) Security Engineer
13 25 (3.40%) Support Engineer
14 24 (3.27%) Solutions Architect
15 23 (3.13%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.08%) 802.1X
2 22 (2.99%) Middleware
3 7 (0.95%) LDAP
4 6 (0.82%) RFC 2544
4 6 (0.82%) 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 (0.41%) NETCONF
6 3 (0.41%) OpenConfig
6 3 (0.41%) RESTCONF
6 3 (0.41%) XML
6 3 (0.41%) 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 40 (5.44%) Hybrid Cloud
2 21 (2.86%) PKI
3 20 (2.72%) Analytical Mindset
4 18 (2.45%) Public Cloud
4 18 (2.45%) Self-Motivation
5 17 (2.31%) Clustering
5 17 (2.31%) Driving Licence
5 17 (2.31%) Onboarding
6 14 (1.90%) Management Information System
7 13 (1.77%) Replication
8 12 (1.63%) Cloud Native
8 12 (1.63%) Mainframe
9 11 (1.50%) Fibre Optics
10 10 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
10 10 (1.36%) Private Cloud
11 8 (1.09%) BYOD
11 8 (1.09%) VSAM
12 7 (0.95%) CMDB
12 7 (0.95%) SCADA
12 7 (0.95%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 98 (13.33%) Windows
2 83 (11.29%) Linux
3 39 (5.31%) Windows Server
4 32 (4.35%) Android
4 32 (4.35%) Mac OS
5 27 (3.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (2.04%) Unix
7 11 (1.50%) CentOS
8 10 (1.36%) Solaris
9 9 (1.22%) AIX
10 6 (0.82%) VMS
11 5 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.41%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.14%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.14%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (16.87%) Migration
2 116 (15.78%) Problem-Solving
3 89 (12.11%) Stakeholder Management
4 62 (8.44%) ITIL
5 61 (8.30%) Project Management
6 54 (7.35%) Continuous Improvement
7 52 (7.07%) Project Delivery
8 51 (6.94%) Agile
9 49 (6.67%) Change Management
10 48 (6.53%) High Availability
11 47 (6.39%) CI/CD
11 47 (6.39%) Load Balancing
11 47 (6.39%) Roadmaps
12 44 (5.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 41 (5.58%) Infrastructure as Code
14 40 (5.44%) Network Design
15 39 (5.31%) Change Control
15 39 (5.31%) Service Management
16 38 (5.17%) Cybersecurity
16 38 (5.17%) Data Centre Operations
Programming Languages
1 59 (8.03%) Python
2 46 (6.26%) PowerShell
3 26 (3.54%) SQL
4 23 (3.13%) Bash
5 21 (2.86%) Java
6 14 (1.90%) Perl
7 11 (1.50%) Shell Script
8 9 (1.22%) Lisp
9 8 (1.09%) COBOL
10 7 (0.95%) MATLAB
11 5 (0.68%) Bicep
11 5 (0.68%) VBA
12 4 (0.54%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.27%) Korn
13 2 (0.27%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.14%) C#
14 1 (0.14%) C++
14 1 (0.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.14%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 269 (36.60%) Security Cleared
2 208 (28.30%) SC Cleared
3 134 (18.23%) Cisco Certification
4 102 (13.88%) CCNP
5 61 (8.30%) Degree
6 55 (7.48%) CCNA
7 54 (7.35%) DV Cleared
8 21 (2.86%) CCIE
8 21 (2.86%) PMP
9 19 (2.59%) AWS Certification
9 19 (2.59%) PMI Certification
10 17 (2.31%) Network+ Certification
11 15 (2.04%) JNCIS
12 14 (1.90%) Microsoft Certification
13 13 (1.77%) A+ Certification
13 13 (1.77%) JNCIP
13 13 (1.77%) MCSE
14 12 (1.63%) CISSP
15 11 (1.50%) JNCIA
16 10 (1.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (3.54%) PMO
2 20 (2.72%) NIST
2 20 (2.72%) SLA
3 19 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (2.59%) PCI DSS
4 14 (1.90%) GDPR
4 14 (1.90%) QA
5 9 (1.22%) NCSC
6 7 (0.95%) Data Quality
7 5 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
8 4 (0.54%) GRC
9 3 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.41%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.14%) COBIT
10 1 (0.14%) ISO 22301
10 1 (0.14%) RMADS
10 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.14%) SOC 2
System Software
1 59 (8.03%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (7.07%) Active Directory
3 33 (4.49%) VMware NSX
4 23 (3.13%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (2.18%) Hyper-V
6 14 (1.90%) Firmware
6 14 (1.90%) vSphere
7 13 (1.77%) Docker
8 10 (1.36%) KVM
9 9 (1.22%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.27%) Ceph
10 2 (0.27%) Lustre
10 2 (0.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.27%) SRDF
10 2 (0.27%) vCloud
10 2 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.14%) NFS
11 1 (0.14%) RHEV
11 1 (0.14%) Xen
Systems Management
1 68 (9.25%) Ansible
2 64 (8.71%) Terraform
3 44 (5.99%) FortiGate
4 25 (3.40%) Kubernetes
5 21 (2.86%) SCCM
6 18 (2.45%) Grafana
7 13 (1.77%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (1.36%) Prometheus
9 7 (0.95%) CASB
9 7 (0.95%) Check_MK
9 7 (0.95%) Podman
9 7 (0.95%) Red Hat Satellite
9 7 (0.95%) SCOM
10 6 (0.82%) SCOrch
10 6 (0.82%) 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 (0.41%) Endace
Vendors
1 241 (32.79%) Cisco
2 97 (13.20%) Palo Alto
3 90 (12.24%) VMware
4 78 (10.61%) Microsoft
5 71 (9.66%) Dell
6 64 (8.71%) Juniper
7 55 (7.48%) F5
8 43 (5.85%) HP
9 42 (5.71%) CheckPoint
10 40 (5.44%) ServiceNow
11 37 (5.03%) Aruba
12 33 (4.49%) Meraki
13 32 (4.35%) Apple
14 28 (3.81%) SAP
14 28 (3.81%) SolarWinds
15 27 (3.67%) Fortinet
16 24 (3.27%) Citrix
16 24 (3.27%) Oracle
17 22 (2.99%) Splunk
18 21 (2.86%) IBM