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

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 133 105
Rank change year-on-year +9 -28 -6
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 802 503 813
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.11% 2.06% 2.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.34% 6.03% 7.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 511 336 576
10th Percentile £310 £337 £295
25th Percentile £405 £413 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £700 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £485 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -5.83% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 14 36
10th Percentile £16.01 - £21.25
25th Percentile £18.39 £24.18 £22.06
Median hourly rate £23.71 £24.66 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -3.86% -0.84% +14.77%
75th Percentile £71.49 £40.13 £40.00
90th Percentile £75.83 £58.63 £41.25
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £24.66 £24.87
% change year-on-year +1.99% -0.84% +14.77%

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 12,648 8,336 11,600
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.35% 34.09% 30.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,026 5,465 7,578
10th Percentile £300 £300 £262
25th Percentile £412 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.96% -0.91% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £670 £670
90th Percentile £749 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.71% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 637 315 802
10th Percentile £15.77 £16.70 £12.49
25th Percentile £19.75 £22.61 £15.17
Median hourly rate £44.50 £34.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.99% +25.45% +22.22%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.70 £84.60 £67.38
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £32.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year +30.77% +18.18% +22.30%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +2 301 £550 +4.76% 184
North of England +26 185 £460 +8.12% 53
South East +1 159 £475 -5.00% 115
North West +13 95 £500 - 28
Yorkshire -14 75 £365 -5.93% 17
Midlands -33 66 £474 -24.16% 32
West Midlands -28 54 £475 -24.08% 14
South West -43 34 £550 - 31
East of England -20 33 £478 +13.14% 45
North East +3 17 £175 +59.09% 8
East Midlands -29 11 £200 -55.56% 18
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 21 (2.62%) SharePoint
2 16 (2.00%) Confluence
3 15 (1.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (1.00%) CICS
5 4 (0.50%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.50%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.37%) nginx
7 2 (0.25%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.25%) HCL Notes
7 2 (0.25%) Tomcat
Applications
1 35 (4.36%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (2.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 21 (2.62%) MS Visio
4 17 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (1.62%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.37%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.75%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.25%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.25%) Primavera
4 1 (0.12%) Maximo
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 140 (17.46%) Azure
2 119 (14.84%) AWS
3 50 (6.23%) Microsoft 365
4 45 (5.61%) GCP
5 22 (2.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 17 (2.12%) SaaS
7 14 (1.75%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 14 (1.75%) Entra ID
7 14 (1.75%) IaaS
8 13 (1.62%) Power Platform
9 11 (1.37%) Amazon GuardDuty
9 11 (1.37%) PaaS
10 9 (1.12%) Azure DevOps
10 9 (1.12%) GitHub
10 9 (1.12%) OpenShift
11 8 (1.00%) Amazon S3
11 8 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (1.00%) AWS Direct Connect
12 7 (0.87%) AWS CloudTrail
12 7 (0.87%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 232 (28.93%) Firewall
2 152 (18.95%) WAN
3 132 (16.46%) BGP
4 95 (11.85%) LAN
4 95 (11.85%) OSPF
5 85 (10.60%) Network Security
5 85 (10.60%) VPN
6 70 (8.73%) Structured Cabling
7 63 (7.86%) DNS
7 63 (7.86%) VXLAN
8 58 (7.23%) VLAN
9 55 (6.86%) SAN
10 54 (6.73%) Wireless
11 49 (6.11%) DHCP
12 41 (5.11%) Ethernet VPN
13 37 (4.61%) Cisco ISE
14 33 (4.11%) SD-WAN
15 32 (3.99%) Wi-Fi
16 31 (3.87%) TCP/IP
17 29 (3.62%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.00%) DataStage
1 8 (1.00%) Power BI
2 5 (0.62%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (0.62%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.50%) MongoDB
3 4 (0.50%) Power Query
3 4 (0.50%) PowerPivot
3 4 (0.50%) SAP Data Services
4 3 (0.37%) Big Data
4 3 (0.37%) InfluxDB
5 2 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.25%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.25%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.25%) GIS
5 2 (0.25%) RDBMS
5 2 (0.25%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.12%) DB2
6 1 (0.12%) Redis
6 1 (0.12%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 31 (3.87%) Git
2 29 (3.62%) JIRA
3 16 (2.00%) Jenkins
4 15 (1.87%) GitLab
5 9 (1.12%) Maven
6 4 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.50%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.50%) Subversion
7 2 (0.25%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
7 2 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
8 1 (0.12%) AppScan
8 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.12%) Metasploit
General
1 215 (26.81%) Social Skills
2 128 (15.96%) Finance
3 94 (11.72%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (9.98%) Public Sector
5 51 (6.36%) Documentation Skills
6 42 (5.24%) Telecoms
7 40 (4.99%) Banking
8 32 (3.99%) Manufacturing
9 23 (2.87%) Marketing
10 22 (2.74%) Legal
11 19 (2.37%) Retail
12 17 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
13 16 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 15 (1.87%) Electronics
14 15 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
15 12 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (1.25%) Investment Banking
17 8 (1.00%) Law
17 8 (1.00%) Military
18 6 (0.75%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 137 (17.08%) Network Engineer
2 117 (14.59%) Architect
3 75 (9.35%) Project Manager
4 71 (8.85%) Senior
5 60 (7.48%) Data Centre Engineer
6 43 (5.36%) Data Centre Manager
7 42 (5.24%) Analyst
8 41 (5.11%) Network Architect
9 34 (4.24%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 32 (3.99%) Infrastructure Manager
11 30 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
12 29 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 29 (3.62%) Lead
13 28 (3.49%) Cisco Engineer
14 27 (3.37%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 27 (3.37%) IT Support
15 26 (3.24%) Infrastructure Project Manager
15 26 (3.24%) IT Engineer
16 24 (2.99%) Support Engineer
17 22 (2.74%) Field Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (3.99%) 802.1X
2 23 (2.87%) Middleware
3 7 (0.87%) LDAP
4 6 (0.75%) Spring
5 5 (0.62%) Redfish
6 4 (0.50%) ADO
6 4 (0.50%) ARM Templates
6 4 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (0.50%) Jinja
6 4 (0.50%) NETCONF
6 4 (0.50%) OpenConfig
6 4 (0.50%) RESTCONF
6 4 (0.50%) Spring Boot
6 4 (0.50%) VML
6 4 (0.50%) XML
6 4 (0.50%) YANG
7 3 (0.37%) RFC 2544
8 2 (0.25%) Kafka
8 2 (0.25%) OpenLayers
8 2 (0.25%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 41 (5.11%) Hybrid Cloud
2 27 (3.37%) Analytical Mindset
3 26 (3.24%) Clustering
3 26 (3.24%) PKI
4 20 (2.49%) Driving Licence
5 19 (2.37%) Fibre Optics
6 18 (2.24%) Onboarding
7 16 (2.00%) Replication
7 16 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
8 13 (1.62%) Cloud Native
8 13 (1.62%) Management Information System
8 13 (1.62%) Public Cloud
9 11 (1.37%) Mainframe
10 10 (1.25%) CMDB
10 10 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
10 10 (1.25%) Private Cloud
11 8 (1.00%) BYOD
11 8 (1.00%) Enterprise Storage
11 8 (1.00%) VSAM
12 7 (0.87%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 103 (12.84%) Windows
2 85 (10.60%) Linux
3 39 (4.86%) Windows Server
4 25 (3.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (2.62%) Android
5 21 (2.62%) Mac OS
6 15 (1.87%) Unix
7 13 (1.62%) AIX
8 10 (1.25%) Solaris
9 9 (1.12%) CentOS
10 6 (0.75%) VMS
11 5 (0.62%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.37%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
14 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (16.46%) Problem-Solving
2 129 (16.08%) Migration
3 96 (11.97%) Stakeholder Management
4 75 (9.35%) ITIL
5 66 (8.23%) Project Management
6 65 (8.10%) High Availability
6 65 (8.10%) Roadmaps
7 62 (7.73%) Continuous Improvement
8 60 (7.48%) Load Balancing
9 59 (7.36%) Project Delivery
10 58 (7.23%) Change Management
11 50 (6.23%) CI/CD
12 49 (6.11%) Agile
13 46 (5.74%) Infrastructure as Code
14 45 (5.61%) Data Centre Operations
15 44 (5.49%) Network Design
16 43 (5.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 42 (5.24%) Technical Leadership
18 40 (4.99%) Customer Service
18 40 (4.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 81 (10.10%) Python
2 46 (5.74%) PowerShell
3 24 (2.99%) Bash
4 22 (2.74%) Java
5 21 (2.62%) SQL
6 16 (2.00%) Perl
7 11 (1.37%) Shell Script
8 10 (1.25%) COBOL
9 7 (0.87%) MATLAB
10 6 (0.75%) Lisp
11 5 (0.62%) Bicep
11 5 (0.62%) VBA
12 4 (0.50%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.25%) C++
13 2 (0.25%) Korn
13 2 (0.25%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.12%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 270 (33.67%) Security Cleared
2 200 (24.94%) SC Cleared
3 154 (19.20%) Cisco Certification
4 109 (13.59%) CCNP
5 66 (8.23%) Degree
6 63 (7.86%) CCNA
7 60 (7.48%) DV Cleared
8 23 (2.87%) CCIE
8 23 (2.87%) Network+ Certification
9 22 (2.74%) PMP
10 20 (2.49%) AWS Certification
10 20 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
11 19 (2.37%) A+ Certification
11 19 (2.37%) MCSE
12 18 (2.24%) PMI Certification
13 16 (2.00%) Azure Certification
13 16 (2.00%) JNCIS
14 14 (1.75%) JNCIP
15 12 (1.50%) JNCIA
15 12 (1.50%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (3.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 25 (3.12%) SLA
3 24 (2.99%) PMO
4 23 (2.87%) NIST
5 21 (2.62%) GDPR
6 17 (2.12%) PCI DSS
7 14 (1.75%) QA
8 9 (1.12%) NCSC
9 5 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.50%) GRC
11 3 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.37%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.25%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.12%) COBIT
13 1 (0.12%) NEBOSH
13 1 (0.12%) RMADS
13 1 (0.12%) SOC 1
System Software
1 69 (8.60%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (6.48%) Active Directory
3 32 (3.99%) VMware NSX
4 21 (2.62%) Firmware
5 20 (2.49%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (1.87%) Docker
6 15 (1.87%) Hyper-V
7 14 (1.75%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (1.75%) vSphere
8 10 (1.25%) KVM
9 3 (0.37%) PowerHA
10 2 (0.25%) Ceph
10 2 (0.25%) Lustre
10 2 (0.25%) NFS
10 2 (0.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.25%) SRDF
10 2 (0.25%) vCloud
10 2 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.12%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 80 (9.98%) Ansible
2 70 (8.73%) Terraform
3 44 (5.49%) FortiGate
4 38 (4.74%) Kubernetes
5 27 (3.37%) Grafana
6 20 (2.49%) Prometheus
7 17 (2.12%) SCCM
8 14 (1.75%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (0.87%) Check_MK
9 7 (0.87%) Podman
9 7 (0.87%) Red Hat Satellite
9 7 (0.87%) SCOM
10 5 (0.62%) Dell DRAC
10 5 (0.62%) Endace
10 5 (0.62%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.50%) CASB
11 4 (0.50%) Nagios
11 4 (0.50%) PowerCLI
11 4 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 245 (30.55%) Cisco
2 103 (12.84%) Palo Alto
3 100 (12.47%) VMware
4 79 (9.85%) Microsoft
5 73 (9.10%) Juniper
6 70 (8.73%) Dell
7 60 (7.48%) F5
8 40 (4.99%) CheckPoint
9 36 (4.49%) Aruba
10 34 (4.24%) Arista
10 34 (4.24%) ServiceNow
11 33 (4.11%) Fortinet
11 33 (4.11%) Meraki
11 33 (4.11%) SolarWinds
12 32 (3.99%) HP
13 28 (3.49%) IBM
14 27 (3.37%) Splunk
15 23 (2.87%) Citrix
16 22 (2.74%) Google
17 21 (2.62%) Red Hat