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

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 139 127 92
Rank change year-on-year -12 -35 +16
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 649 539 869
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.01% 2.02% 2.36%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.76% 6.20% 7.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 434 327 615
10th Percentile £278 £350 £300
25th Percentile £381 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £627 £638
90th Percentile £688 £718 £704
UK median daily rate £492 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -5.38% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 12 28
10th Percentile £21.46 £12.60 £21.03
25th Percentile £25.15 £23.21 £21.81
Median hourly rate £26.14 £24.18 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.09% +2.89% -62.55%
75th Percentile £59.19 £25.81 £41.25
90th Percentile £73.80 £56.93 £76.33
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £24.18 £24.00
% change year-on-year +6.58% +0.75% -61.75%

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 11,268 8,698 11,529
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.90% 32.64% 31.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,195 5,221 7,700
10th Percentile £281 £270 £258
25th Percentile £406 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £675
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £533 £538
% change year-on-year -6.19% -0.93% -3.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 549 249 615
10th Percentile £15.20 £18.43 £14.38
25th Percentile £18.50 £24.18 £18.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £39.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.08% +9.86% +57.88%
75th Percentile £61.50 £68.75 £61.38
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.56 £72.65
UK median hourly rate £27.63 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -21.07% - +55.66%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -19 235 £525 +0.48% 153
North of England +1 147 £475 -4.52% 87
South East -5 100 £445 +1.14% 170
North West +7 88 £519 +3.70% 37
Midlands -15 79 £431 -25.69% 44
West Midlands -12 63 £474 -18.28% 21
Yorkshire -33 50 £438 +4.29% 31
South West -26 34 £550 - 43
East of England -15 30 £485 +14.79% 70
East Midlands -21 16 £158 -70.70% 22
North East -5 12 £175 - 20
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 29 (4.47%) 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%) GeoServer
8 3 (0.46%) Smallworld
8 3 (0.46%) Tomcat
9 2 (0.31%) CICS
9 2 (0.31%) nginx
9 2 (0.31%) ThingWorx
9 2 (0.31%) WebSphere
10 1 (0.15%) FileNet
10 1 (0.15%) IIS
10 1 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 50 (7.70%) Microsoft Office
2 33 (5.08%) Microsoft Excel
3 26 (4.01%) MS Visio
4 20 (3.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (2.16%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.15%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 6 (0.92%) 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
1 108 (16.64%) Azure
2 93 (14.33%) AWS
3 58 (8.94%) Microsoft 365
4 33 (5.08%) GCP
5 24 (3.70%) Power Platform
6 15 (2.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 13 (2.00%) OpenShift
7 13 (2.00%) SaaS
8 10 (1.54%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 10 (1.54%) Entra ID
9 9 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
9 9 (1.39%) AWS Direct Connect
9 9 (1.39%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 8 (1.23%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 8 (1.23%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (1.23%) GitHub
11 7 (1.08%) npm
11 7 (1.08%) OCI
11 7 (1.08%) PaaS
12 6 (0.92%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 190 (29.28%) Firewall
2 127 (19.57%) WAN
3 80 (12.33%) Wireless
4 76 (11.71%) BGP
5 71 (10.94%) LAN
6 70 (10.79%) VPN
7 63 (9.71%) Network Security
8 52 (8.01%) OSPF
9 47 (7.24%) DNS
10 46 (7.09%) Wi-Fi
11 44 (6.78%) VLAN
12 38 (5.86%) SAN
13 32 (4.93%) VXLAN
14 30 (4.62%) Cisco ISE
14 30 (4.62%) Structured Cabling
15 28 (4.31%) DHCP
15 28 (4.31%) IPsec
16 27 (4.16%) MPLS
16 27 (4.16%) SD-WAN
16 27 (4.16%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (3.39%) Power BI
2 12 (1.85%) Relational Database
3 7 (1.08%) RDBMS
3 7 (1.08%) SQL Server
4 6 (0.92%) 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%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.62%) Power Query
6 4 (0.62%) PowerPivot
7 3 (0.46%) Big Data
7 3 (0.46%) Data Vault
7 3 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
7 3 (0.46%) DataStage
7 3 (0.46%) InfluxDB
7 3 (0.46%) Metadata
7 3 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 28 (4.31%) Git
2 23 (3.54%) Jenkins
3 16 (2.47%) GitLab
4 11 (1.69%) JIRA
5 10 (1.54%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (1.39%) Maven
7 7 (1.08%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.46%) ER Studio
8 3 (0.46%) ERwin
9 2 (0.31%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.31%) Gradle
9 2 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
9 2 (0.31%) ScriptRunner
9 2 (0.31%) Selenium
General
1 173 (26.66%) Social Skills
2 123 (18.95%) Finance
3 88 (13.56%) Analytical Skills
4 83 (12.79%) Public Sector
5 57 (8.78%) Telecoms
6 51 (7.86%) Banking
7 47 (7.24%) Documentation Skills
8 37 (5.70%) Manufacturing
9 27 (4.16%) Marketing
10 25 (3.85%) Electronics
11 21 (3.24%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (2.00%) Retail
14 12 (1.85%) Organisational Skills
15 7 (1.08%) Front Office
15 7 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
15 7 (1.08%) Investment Banking
15 7 (1.08%) Law
15 7 (1.08%) Legal
15 7 (1.08%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 124 (19.11%) Network Engineer
2 95 (14.64%) Architect
3 63 (9.71%) Project Manager
4 60 (9.24%) Analyst
5 43 (6.63%) Senior
6 35 (5.39%) Network Architect
7 30 (4.62%) Data Centre Manager
8 29 (4.47%) Cisco Engineer
8 29 (4.47%) Lead
8 29 (4.47%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
9 28 (4.31%) Security Engineer
10 27 (4.16%) Cisco Network Engineer
10 27 (4.16%) IT Support
11 25 (3.85%) Data Centre Engineer
11 25 (3.85%) Desktop Support
11 25 (3.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 24 (3.70%) Consultant
13 23 (3.54%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
13 23 (3.54%) 2nd Line Support
13 23 (3.54%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.54%) 802.1X
2 22 (3.39%) Middleware
3 9 (1.39%) LDAP
4 7 (1.08%) RFC 2544
5 5 (0.77%) Spark Streaming
6 4 (0.62%) ADO
6 4 (0.62%) Jinja
6 4 (0.62%) VML
7 3 (0.46%) ARM Templates
8 2 (0.31%) AWS CDK
8 2 (0.31%) CSS
8 2 (0.31%) HTML
8 2 (0.31%) ModSecurity
8 2 (0.31%) NETCONF
8 2 (0.31%) OpenConfig
8 2 (0.31%) REST
8 2 (0.31%) RESTCONF
8 2 (0.31%) YANG
9 1 (0.15%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (0.15%) OpenLayers
Miscellaneous
1 39 (6.01%) Hybrid Cloud
2 23 (3.54%) Public Cloud
3 18 (2.77%) Self-Motivation
4 17 (2.62%) Cloud Native
4 17 (2.62%) Onboarding
5 15 (2.31%) Replication
6 14 (2.16%) Mainframe
7 13 (2.00%) Analytical Mindset
7 13 (2.00%) Fibre Optics
7 13 (2.00%) Management Information System
8 12 (1.85%) Driving Licence
8 12 (1.85%) Private Cloud
9 11 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
10 10 (1.54%) PKI
11 9 (1.39%) SCADA
12 7 (1.08%) Product Ownership
13 6 (0.92%) Clustering
13 6 (0.92%) Distributed Systems
13 6 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
13 6 (0.92%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 80 (12.33%) Windows
2 65 (10.02%) Linux
3 42 (6.47%) Windows Server
4 35 (5.39%) Android
4 35 (5.39%) Mac OS
5 21 (3.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.69%) CentOS
7 10 (1.54%) Unix
8 6 (0.92%) Windows 10
8 6 (0.92%) Windows Server 2019
9 4 (0.62%) VMS
9 4 (0.62%) Windows Server 2008
9 4 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.31%) Solaris
10 2 (0.31%) zOS
11 1 (0.15%) MVS
11 1 (0.15%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (15.72%) Migration
2 94 (14.48%) Problem-Solving
3 81 (12.48%) Stakeholder Management
4 60 (9.24%) ITIL
5 56 (8.63%) Agile
6 49 (7.55%) Project Delivery
6 49 (7.55%) Project Management
7 47 (7.24%) CI/CD
8 46 (7.09%) DevOps
9 43 (6.63%) Business Intelligence
9 43 (6.63%) Infrastructure as Code
10 41 (6.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 40 (6.16%) Network Design
12 39 (6.01%) Change Management
12 39 (6.01%) Customer Service
12 39 (6.01%) Service Management
13 38 (5.86%) Continuous Improvement
14 37 (5.70%) Programme Management
15 35 (5.39%) Change Control
15 35 (5.39%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 68 (10.48%) Python
2 43 (6.63%) PowerShell
3 31 (4.78%) SQL
4 20 (3.08%) Bash
5 16 (2.47%) Java
6 12 (1.85%) Shell Script
7 10 (1.54%) Perl
8 8 (1.23%) Lisp
9 7 (1.08%) MATLAB
10 5 (0.77%) VBA
11 3 (0.46%) Bicep
11 3 (0.46%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.15%) C#
12 1 (0.15%) C++
12 1 (0.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.15%) Go
12 1 (0.15%) Korn
12 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.15%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 238 (36.67%) Security Cleared
2 197 (30.35%) SC Cleared
3 100 (15.41%) Cisco Certification
4 80 (12.33%) CCNP
5 56 (8.63%) Degree
6 44 (6.78%) DV Cleared
7 40 (6.16%) CCNA
8 24 (3.70%) CCIE
9 23 (3.54%) AWS Certification
10 15 (2.31%) PMP
11 14 (2.16%) PMI Certification
12 12 (1.85%) JNCIE
13 11 (1.69%) CISSP
14 8 (1.23%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 7 (1.08%) A+ Certification
15 7 (1.08%) BPSS Clearance
15 7 (1.08%) MCSE
15 7 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
15 7 (1.08%) Network+ Certification
15 7 (1.08%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (3.08%) SLA
2 19 (2.93%) PMO
3 15 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 14 (2.16%) NIST
4 14 (2.16%) PCI DSS
4 14 (2.16%) QA
5 13 (2.00%) Data Quality
6 11 (1.69%) GDPR
7 6 (0.92%) NCSC
8 1 (0.15%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.15%) GRC
8 1 (0.15%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.15%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
System Software
1 68 (10.48%) VMware Infrastructure
2 50 (7.70%) Active Directory
3 38 (5.86%) VMware NSX
4 20 (3.08%) Docker
5 18 (2.77%) Virtual Machines
6 16 (2.47%) Hyper-V
7 10 (1.54%) 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%) vCloud
13 2 (0.31%) Xen
14 1 (0.15%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 72 (11.09%) Ansible
2 65 (10.02%) Terraform
3 31 (4.78%) FortiGate
4 25 (3.85%) SCCM
5 20 (3.08%) Kubernetes
6 13 (2.00%) Grafana
7 9 (1.39%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (1.39%) vCenter Server
8 8 (1.23%) SCOM
9 7 (1.08%) Check_MK
9 7 (1.08%) Podman
9 7 (1.08%) Puppet
9 7 (1.08%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 6 (0.92%) CASB
10 6 (0.92%) Prometheus
10 6 (0.92%) SCOrch
11 5 (0.77%) Hadoop YARN
12 4 (0.62%) Nagios
12 4 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 226 (34.82%) Cisco
2 90 (13.87%) VMware
3 88 (13.56%) Palo Alto
4 77 (11.86%) Microsoft
5 61 (9.40%) Dell
6 54 (8.32%) Juniper
7 49 (7.55%) F5
8 45 (6.93%) HP
9 41 (6.32%) CheckPoint
10 35 (5.39%) Apple
11 31 (4.78%) Aruba
11 31 (4.78%) Meraki
12 30 (4.62%) SAP
12 30 (4.62%) ServiceNow
13 29 (4.47%) Fortinet
14 24 (3.70%) Oracle
15 19 (2.93%) Citrix
16 17 (2.62%) Arista
17 15 (2.31%) Google
18 14 (2.16%) SolarWinds