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 24 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 139 116 96
Rank change year-on-year -23 -20 +13
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 631 667 949
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.09% 2.14% 2.42%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.72% 6.79% 7.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 401 402 659
10th Percentile £220 £358 £319
25th Percentile £380 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £531 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.40% -1.62% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £706 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 24 18
10th Percentile £23.96 £11.75 £19.92
25th Percentile - £12.08 £22.02
Median hourly rate £25.15 £20.80 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.94% -9.59% -64.06%
75th Percentile £34.00 £27.44 £60.31
90th Percentile £68.07 £30.56 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £23.80 £23.00
% change year-on-year +5.67% +3.48% -63.49%

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 11,022 9,830 12,623
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.43% 31.57% 32.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,901 5,869 8,584
10th Percentile £285 £300 £275
25th Percentile £408 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.45% - -2.65%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £775
UK median daily rate £510 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -5.12% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 587 314 460
10th Percentile £13.95 £16.04 £17.00
25th Percentile £18.25 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £28.00 £45.00 £44.75
Median % change year-on-year -37.78% +0.56% +27.86%
75th Percentile £57.50 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.22 £77.55
UK median hourly rate £27.00 £35.13 £44.50
% change year-on-year -23.13% -21.07% +29.93%

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 24 November 2025.

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 24 November 2025.

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 24 November 2025. 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 -14 262 £525 -4.02% 102
North of England -10 137 £488 -2.50% 33
Midlands -2 93 £437 -25.04% 28
North West +7 75 £550 +10.00% 24
West Midlands 0 70 £470 -19.38% 22
South East -39 69 £431 -15.02% 108
Yorkshire -21 57 £422 +0.36% 5
South West -28 35 £550 - 26
East of England -21 24 £600 +45.90% 27
East Midlands +1 23 £358 -17.80% 6
North East -5 8 £175 - 4
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 (4.75%) SharePoint
2 21 (3.33%) Confluence
3 20 (3.17%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (1.27%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.79%) Apache
5 5 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.79%) Apache Spark
6 4 (0.63%) HCL Notes
7 3 (0.48%) CICS
7 3 (0.48%) GeoServer
7 3 (0.48%) nginx
7 3 (0.48%) Smallworld
7 3 (0.48%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.32%) FileNet
8 2 (0.32%) ThingWorx
8 2 (0.32%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.16%) IIS
9 1 (0.16%) OpenEdge
9 1 (0.16%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 56 (8.87%) Microsoft Office
2 33 (5.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 26 (4.12%) MS Visio
4 17 (2.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (2.06%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.16%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 6 (0.95%) Payment Gateway
2 5 (0.79%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.63%) Oracle Financials
4 2 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.16%) Epicor iScala
5 1 (0.16%) Primavera
5 1 (0.16%) StreamServe
Cloud Services
1 116 (18.38%) Azure
2 89 (14.10%) AWS
3 68 (10.78%) Microsoft 365
4 35 (5.55%) GCP
5 23 (3.65%) Power Platform
6 19 (3.01%) Entra ID
7 14 (2.22%) OpenShift
8 13 (2.06%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 11 (1.74%) SaaS
10 10 (1.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 9 (1.43%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 8 (1.27%) PaaS
13 7 (1.11%) IaaS
13 7 (1.11%) npm
13 7 (1.11%) OCI
14 6 (0.95%) Akamai
14 6 (0.95%) AWS Direct Connect
15 5 (0.79%) AWS CloudFormation
15 5 (0.79%) GitHub
15 5 (0.79%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 176 (27.89%) Firewall
2 102 (16.16%) WAN
3 98 (15.53%) Wireless
4 59 (9.35%) BGP
5 58 (9.19%) VPN
6 56 (8.87%) DNS
7 51 (8.08%) LAN
8 38 (6.02%) Network Security
9 37 (5.86%) DHCP
9 37 (5.86%) OSPF
9 37 (5.86%) SAN
10 36 (5.71%) Wi-Fi
11 35 (5.55%) SD-WAN
12 34 (5.39%) Cisco ISE
13 32 (5.07%) VLAN
14 31 (4.91%) VXLAN
15 30 (4.75%) Cisco Nexus
16 28 (4.44%) MPLS
17 27 (4.28%) TCP/IP
18 21 (3.33%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (3.17%) Power BI
2 14 (2.22%) Relational Database
3 8 (1.27%) RDBMS
3 8 (1.27%) SQL Server
4 6 (0.95%) NoSQL
5 5 (0.79%) Apache Hive
5 5 (0.79%) Hadoop
5 5 (0.79%) HBase
5 5 (0.79%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.63%) Data Mining
6 4 (0.63%) GIS
6 4 (0.63%) InfluxDB
6 4 (0.63%) Oracle Database
7 3 (0.48%) Big Data
7 3 (0.48%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.48%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (0.48%) DataStage
7 3 (0.48%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (0.48%) QGIS
7 3 (0.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 18 (2.85%) Git
2 16 (2.54%) JIRA
3 12 (1.90%) Jenkins
3 12 (1.90%) Sonatype Nexus
4 11 (1.74%) Maven
5 9 (1.43%) GitLab
5 9 (1.43%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.63%) Gradle
6 4 (0.63%) Selenium
7 3 (0.48%) ER Studio
7 3 (0.48%) ERwin
8 2 (0.32%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.16%) Fiddler
9 1 (0.16%) Postman
9 1 (0.16%) TeamCity
General
1 161 (25.52%) Social Skills
2 129 (20.44%) Finance
3 73 (11.57%) Public Sector
4 69 (10.94%) Analytical Skills
5 68 (10.78%) Telecoms
6 67 (10.62%) Banking
7 33 (5.23%) Documentation Skills
8 31 (4.91%) Manufacturing
9 25 (3.96%) Electronics
9 25 (3.96%) Marketing
10 20 (3.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 20 (3.17%) Presentation Skills
11 14 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
12 12 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (1.11%) Investment Banking
13 7 (1.11%) Local Government
13 7 (1.11%) Retail
14 6 (0.95%) Front Office
14 6 (0.95%) Legal
15 5 (0.79%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 102 (16.16%) Network Engineer
2 94 (14.90%) Architect
3 68 (10.78%) Analyst
4 48 (7.61%) Project Manager
5 35 (5.55%) Senior
6 31 (4.91%) Network Architect
6 31 (4.91%) Support Engineer
7 30 (4.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 28 (4.44%) IT Support
8 28 (4.44%) Security Engineer
9 27 (4.28%) Data Centre Manager
10 26 (4.12%) Consultant
11 25 (3.96%) Desktop Support
11 25 (3.96%) Infrastructure Manager
12 23 (3.65%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
12 23 (3.65%) 2nd Line Support
12 23 (3.65%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
13 22 (3.49%) Lead
14 21 (3.33%) Business Analyst
14 21 (3.33%) Cisco Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (2.85%) 802.1X
2 17 (2.69%) Middleware
3 15 (2.38%) RFC 2544
4 5 (0.79%) Spark Streaming
5 4 (0.63%) Jinja
6 2 (0.32%) ARM Templates
6 2 (0.32%) LDAP
6 2 (0.32%) ModSecurity
6 2 (0.32%) REST
7 1 (0.16%) .NET
7 1 (0.16%) ASP.NET
7 1 (0.16%) eBPF
7 1 (0.16%) EJB
7 1 (0.16%) NETCONF
7 1 (0.16%) OpenConfig
7 1 (0.16%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (0.16%) RESTCONF
7 1 (0.16%) VML
7 1 (0.16%) Web Services
7 1 (0.16%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 35 (5.55%) Hybrid Cloud
2 25 (3.96%) Cloud Native
3 22 (3.49%) Public Cloud
4 21 (3.33%) Replication
5 19 (3.01%) Driving Licence
6 16 (2.54%) Fibre Optics
6 16 (2.54%) Onboarding
7 14 (2.22%) Mainframe
8 13 (2.06%) Private Cloud
9 11 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
9 11 (1.74%) PKI
9 11 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
10 10 (1.58%) Management Information System
11 9 (1.43%) Clustering
11 9 (1.43%) Product Ownership
12 8 (1.27%) SCADA
13 6 (0.95%) Analytical Mindset
13 6 (0.95%) Distributed Systems
13 6 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
13 6 (0.95%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 93 (14.74%) Windows
2 57 (9.03%) Linux
3 47 (7.45%) Android
4 45 (7.13%) Mac OS
5 38 (6.02%) Windows Server
6 17 (2.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (2.54%) Unix
8 10 (1.58%) CentOS
9 6 (0.95%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.95%) Windows 10
10 4 (0.63%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.63%) Windows Server 2008
10 4 (0.63%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.48%) Solaris
12 2 (0.32%) AIX
12 2 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.32%) zOS
13 1 (0.16%) MVS
13 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 116 (18.38%) Migration
2 77 (12.20%) Problem-Solving
3 72 (11.41%) Stakeholder Management
4 63 (9.98%) Agile
5 50 (7.92%) ITIL
6 49 (7.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 46 (7.29%) Service Management
8 45 (7.13%) Customer Service
9 43 (6.81%) Change Management
10 42 (6.66%) CI/CD
11 41 (6.50%) Business Intelligence
11 41 (6.50%) Infrastructure as Code
12 39 (6.18%) Network Design
12 39 (6.18%) Roadmaps
13 38 (6.02%) DevOps
14 37 (5.86%) Load Balancing
15 36 (5.71%) High Availability
15 36 (5.71%) Project Delivery
16 35 (5.55%) Cybersecurity
17 33 (5.23%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 63 (9.98%) Python
2 40 (6.34%) PowerShell
3 32 (5.07%) SQL
4 18 (2.85%) Java
5 16 (2.54%) Bash
6 10 (1.58%) Perl
7 8 (1.27%) Lisp
8 6 (0.95%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.63%) Go
10 3 (0.48%) Bicep
10 3 (0.48%) C
10 3 (0.48%) VBA
11 2 (0.32%) AWK
11 2 (0.32%) C#
11 2 (0.32%) JavaScript
11 2 (0.32%) sed
12 1 (0.16%) C++
12 1 (0.16%) COBOL
12 1 (0.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.16%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 198 (31.38%) Security Cleared
2 166 (26.31%) SC Cleared
3 71 (11.25%) Cisco Certification
4 47 (7.45%) CCNP
5 45 (7.13%) Degree
6 42 (6.66%) DV Cleared
7 23 (3.65%) CCIE
8 21 (3.33%) CCNA
9 18 (2.85%) AWS Certification
10 13 (2.06%) CISSP
11 11 (1.74%) JNCIE
12 8 (1.27%) Computer Science Degree
12 8 (1.27%) PMP
12 8 (1.27%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 7 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 7 (1.11%) CCSP
13 7 (1.11%) PMI Certification
14 6 (0.95%) BPSS Clearance
14 6 (0.95%) VCAP
15 5 (0.79%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (3.17%) SLA
2 19 (3.01%) NIST
2 19 (3.01%) PCI DSS
3 17 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (2.69%) PMO
4 13 (2.06%) GDPR
5 12 (1.90%) QA
6 11 (1.74%) Data Quality
7 4 (0.63%) NCSC
8 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
8 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.16%) GRC
9 1 (0.16%) ISO 22301
9 1 (0.16%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 1 (0.16%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 66 (10.46%) VMware Infrastructure
2 53 (8.40%) Active Directory
3 33 (5.23%) VMware NSX
4 23 (3.65%) Docker
5 16 (2.54%) vSphere
6 15 (2.38%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.74%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (1.11%) Firmware
8 7 (1.11%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.79%) HDFS
10 4 (0.63%) KVM
10 4 (0.63%) NFS
11 3 (0.48%) GPFS
12 2 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.16%) Lustre
13 1 (0.16%) Samba
13 1 (0.16%) SRDF
13 1 (0.16%) Veritas Cluster Server
13 1 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.16%) Xen
Systems Management
1 63 (9.98%) Ansible
2 55 (8.72%) Terraform
3 31 (4.91%) FortiGate
4 25 (3.96%) SCCM
5 18 (2.85%) Kubernetes
6 13 (2.06%) Microsoft Intune
7 10 (1.58%) Grafana
8 9 (1.43%) SCOM
8 9 (1.43%) vCenter Server
9 7 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.95%) CASB
10 6 (0.95%) Puppet
11 5 (0.79%) Hadoop YARN
11 5 (0.79%) SCOrch
12 4 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.63%) Argo
13 3 (0.48%) Jamf Pro
13 3 (0.48%) OPNET
13 3 (0.48%) PowerCLI
13 3 (0.48%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 216 (34.23%) Cisco
2 96 (15.21%) Microsoft
3 84 (13.31%) VMware
4 62 (9.83%) Dell
5 60 (9.51%) F5
6 54 (8.56%) HP
7 52 (8.24%) Palo Alto
8 51 (8.08%) Juniper
9 44 (6.97%) Apple
10 31 (4.91%) Fortinet
11 30 (4.75%) SAP
11 30 (4.75%) ServiceNow
12 25 (3.96%) Meraki
12 25 (3.96%) Oracle
13 22 (3.49%) SolarWinds
14 21 (3.33%) Arista
15 17 (2.69%) CheckPoint
16 16 (2.54%) Remedy
17 15 (2.38%) Citrix
18 14 (2.22%) NetApp