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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 109 130 101
Rank change year-on-year +21 -29 -10
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 976 545 795
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.26% 2.19% 2.11%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.95% 6.33% 6.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 607 359 565
10th Percentile £318 £302 £310
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £538
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -3.72% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £693
UK median daily rate £495 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -1.00% -6.98% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 15 41
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £12.08
25th Percentile £18.52 £24.85 £22.08
Median hourly rate £25.39 £25.15 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year +0.93% +1.13% +14.77%
75th Percentile £34.85 £43.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.49 £77.50 £41.25
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £25.15 £24.00
% change year-on-year -8.55% +4.79% +12.89%

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 14,053 8,610 11,453
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.60% 34.62% 30.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,769 5,532 7,351
10th Percentile £313 £303 £275
25th Percentile £415 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.48%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.14% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 768 390 859
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.14 £20.07 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £33.89 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.73% -7.16% +62.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £86.52 £82.50 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £32.05 £35.65
% change year-on-year +37.16% -10.10% +58.55%

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 19 June 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 +12 348 £550 +4.76% 151
North of England +14 241 £474 +5.33% 46
South East +2 208 £463 +2.78% 89
Yorkshire -10 123 £365 -16.57% 19
North West +13 94 £494 -1.94% 20
Midlands -50 58 £466 -15.29% 27
West Midlands -47 54 £470 -14.47% 19
South West -15 50 £495 -13.91% 35
East of England -13 38 £492 +31.20% 27
North East -6 30 £625 +468.18% 7
East Midlands -24 3 £325 -36.97% 8
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 24 (2.46%) Confluence
2 18 (1.84%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (1.02%) CICS
5 4 (0.41%) Apache
5 4 (0.41%) CloudStack
5 4 (0.41%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.41%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.31%) nginx
6 3 (0.31%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.10%) IIS
Applications
1 13 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 11 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
3 9 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
3 9 (0.92%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.51%) AutoCAD
5 3 (0.31%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.20%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.20%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.20%) Primavera
2 2 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 207 (21.21%) Azure
2 178 (18.24%) AWS
3 52 (5.33%) GCP
4 37 (3.79%) IaaS
5 35 (3.59%) GitHub
5 35 (3.59%) Microsoft 365
6 33 (3.38%) SaaS
7 30 (3.07%) OCI
8 21 (2.15%) Entra ID
9 19 (1.95%) PaaS
10 18 (1.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 13 (1.33%) Azure DevOps
11 13 (1.33%) OneDrive
12 12 (1.23%) OpenShift
12 12 (1.23%) Power Platform
13 10 (1.02%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 9 (0.92%) Amazon EKS
14 9 (0.92%) Azure Sentinel
14 9 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
15 8 (0.82%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 266 (27.25%) Firewall
2 172 (17.62%) WAN
3 164 (16.80%) BGP
4 125 (12.81%) OSPF
5 104 (10.66%) DNS
5 104 (10.66%) VXLAN
6 98 (10.04%) LAN
7 96 (9.84%) SAN
8 90 (9.22%) VLAN
9 89 (9.12%) Network Security
10 87 (8.91%) VPN
11 86 (8.81%) Structured Cabling
12 76 (7.79%) DHCP
13 68 (6.97%) Ethernet VPN
13 68 (6.97%) SD-WAN
14 55 (5.64%) BIG-IP
15 48 (4.92%) TCP/IP
16 43 (4.41%) NX-OS
17 42 (4.30%) Wireless
18 39 (4.00%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.92%) DataStage
1 9 (0.92%) SQL Server
2 7 (0.72%) Power BI
3 6 (0.61%) Big Data
3 6 (0.61%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.41%) Geospatial Data
4 4 (0.41%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.41%) Oracle Reports
4 4 (0.41%) SAP Data Services
5 3 (0.31%) GIS
6 2 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
6 2 (0.20%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.20%) Oracle Database 12c
6 2 (0.20%) Power Query
6 2 (0.20%) PowerPivot
7 1 (0.10%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 62 (6.35%) JIRA
2 39 (4.00%) GitLab
3 32 (3.28%) Git
3 32 (3.28%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.51%) ScriptRunner
5 4 (0.41%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 4 (0.41%) Eclipse
5 4 (0.41%) Maven
5 4 (0.41%) Subversion
6 3 (0.31%) Zephyr
7 2 (0.20%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.20%) MSI
7 2 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.10%) AppScan
8 1 (0.10%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.10%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.10%) Metasploit
General
1 254 (26.02%) Social Skills
2 137 (14.04%) Finance
3 103 (10.55%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (6.97%) Public Sector
5 59 (6.05%) Documentation Skills
6 42 (4.30%) Banking
7 33 (3.38%) Telecoms
8 29 (2.97%) Legal
9 20 (2.05%) Manufacturing
9 20 (2.05%) Retail
10 19 (1.95%) Influencing Skills
11 17 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 10 (1.02%) Military
13 9 (0.92%) Law
14 8 (0.82%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.82%) Marketing
15 7 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
15 7 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
16 5 (0.51%) Investment Banking
16 5 (0.51%) Police
Job Titles
1 157 (16.09%) Network Engineer
2 128 (13.11%) Architect
3 111 (11.37%) Senior
4 88 (9.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 85 (8.71%) Data Centre Engineer
6 64 (6.56%) Project Manager
7 49 (5.02%) Lead
8 42 (4.30%) IT Engineer
9 41 (4.20%) Network Architect
10 40 (4.10%) Field Engineer
11 36 (3.69%) Field Service Engineer
12 32 (3.28%) Data Centre Manager
13 31 (3.18%) Infrastructure Manager
14 30 (3.07%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 30 (3.07%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 29 (2.97%) Analyst
16 28 (2.87%) Solutions Architect
16 28 (2.87%) Support Engineer
17 25 (2.56%) IT Support
18 24 (2.46%) Cisco Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (3.28%) Middleware
2 31 (3.18%) 802.1X
3 11 (1.13%) LDAP
4 10 (1.02%) Redfish
5 8 (0.82%) REST
6 7 (0.72%) Spring
7 6 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
8 5 (0.51%) Jinja
8 5 (0.51%) Kafka
8 5 (0.51%) XML
9 4 (0.41%) ADO
9 4 (0.41%) GeoJSON
9 4 (0.41%) RESTful
9 4 (0.41%) Spring Boot
9 4 (0.41%) YAML
10 3 (0.31%) .NET Framework
10 3 (0.31%) ARM Templates
10 3 (0.31%) OpenLayers
10 3 (0.31%) RFC 2544
10 3 (0.31%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 60 (6.15%) Hybrid Cloud
2 42 (4.30%) Analytical Mindset
3 33 (3.38%) Cloud Native
4 31 (3.18%) Clustering
5 29 (2.97%) PKI
6 27 (2.77%) Onboarding
7 26 (2.66%) Enterprise Storage
8 25 (2.56%) Fibre Optics
9 21 (2.15%) Management Information System
9 21 (2.15%) Private Cloud
10 20 (2.05%) Driving Licence
11 18 (1.84%) Replication
12 15 (1.54%) CMDB
13 14 (1.43%) Public Cloud
14 13 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
15 12 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
16 11 (1.13%) Mainframe
17 10 (1.02%) SCADA
18 9 (0.92%) BYOD
18 9 (0.92%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 128 (13.11%) Windows
2 107 (10.96%) Linux
3 32 (3.28%) Windows Server
4 31 (3.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (2.36%) Unix
6 22 (2.25%) AIX
7 17 (1.74%) Solaris
8 11 (1.13%) CentOS
9 10 (1.02%) Apple iOS
9 10 (1.02%) Mac OS
10 6 (0.61%) VMS
10 6 (0.61%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.51%) HPUX
11 5 (0.51%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.51%) SUSE
11 5 (0.51%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.41%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.20%) zOS
15 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 174 (17.83%) Migration
2 163 (16.70%) Problem-Solving
3 113 (11.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 102 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
5 96 (9.84%) ITIL
6 94 (9.63%) Infrastructure as Code
7 93 (9.53%) High Availability
8 92 (9.43%) CI/CD
9 83 (8.50%) Continuous Improvement
10 76 (7.79%) Roadmaps
11 74 (7.58%) Agile
12 71 (7.27%) Change Management
13 70 (7.17%) Load Balancing
14 69 (7.07%) DevOps
15 66 (6.76%) Project Delivery
16 65 (6.66%) Project Management
16 65 (6.66%) Validation
17 60 (6.15%) ITSM
17 60 (6.15%) Zero Trust
18 58 (5.94%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 128 (13.11%) Python
2 40 (4.10%) PowerShell
3 28 (2.87%) SQL
4 23 (2.36%) Bash
5 17 (1.74%) Java
6 16 (1.64%) Shell Script
7 14 (1.43%) Bicep
8 11 (1.13%) COBOL
8 11 (1.13%) MATLAB
9 9 (0.92%) ActionScript
10 8 (0.82%) Perl
11 7 (0.72%) PL/SQL
12 6 (0.61%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.41%) Lisp
14 3 (0.31%) C#
14 3 (0.31%) VBA
15 2 (0.20%) C++
15 2 (0.20%) JCL
15 2 (0.20%) REXX
15 2 (0.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 276 (28.28%) Security Cleared
2 197 (20.18%) SC Cleared
3 186 (19.06%) Cisco Certification
4 115 (11.78%) CCNP
5 85 (8.71%) CCNA
6 69 (7.07%) DV Cleared
7 68 (6.97%) Degree
8 49 (5.02%) Network+ Certification
9 40 (4.10%) Microsoft Certification
10 34 (3.48%) A+ Certification
10 34 (3.48%) MCSE
11 27 (2.77%) Azure Certification
12 25 (2.56%) PMP
13 24 (2.46%) AWS Certification
14 23 (2.36%) PMI Certification
15 21 (2.15%) City & Guilds
16 19 (1.95%) CCIE
17 17 (1.74%) BICSI Certification
18 16 (1.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 15 (1.54%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (3.28%) SLA
2 23 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (2.25%) NIST
4 20 (2.05%) PMO
5 17 (1.74%) QA
6 16 (1.64%) GDPR
7 11 (1.13%) NCSC
8 10 (1.02%) GRC
9 9 (0.92%) PCI DSS
10 6 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
11 5 (0.51%) RMADS
12 4 (0.41%) JSP 440
13 3 (0.31%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.20%) Accessibility
14 2 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
14 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 2 (0.20%) WCAG
15 1 (0.10%) COBIT
15 1 (0.10%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 93 (9.53%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (5.33%) Active Directory
3 33 (3.38%) VMware ESXi
4 29 (2.97%) Firmware
5 25 (2.56%) vSphere
6 24 (2.46%) Hyper-V
7 23 (2.36%) Virtual Machines
8 22 (2.25%) VMware NSX
9 14 (1.43%) Docker
10 11 (1.13%) KVM
11 7 (0.72%) NFS
12 6 (0.61%) Microsoft App-V
13 5 (0.51%) SRDF
14 4 (0.41%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.41%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
14 4 (0.41%) VMware Workstation
15 3 (0.31%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.31%) UAG
15 3 (0.31%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 119 (12.19%) Ansible
2 96 (9.84%) Terraform
3 48 (4.92%) FortiGate
4 47 (4.82%) Kubernetes
5 29 (2.97%) Grafana
6 27 (2.77%) Prometheus
7 26 (2.66%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (1.54%) vCenter Server
9 13 (1.33%) Check_MK
10 11 (1.13%) NetBackup
10 11 (1.13%) Podman
10 11 (1.13%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (1.02%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (1.02%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.92%) PowerCLI
13 8 (0.82%) SCCM
13 8 (0.82%) vMotion
14 7 (0.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (0.72%) Tivoli Storage Manager
15 6 (0.61%) Nagios
Vendors
1 253 (25.92%) Cisco
2 139 (14.24%) VMware
3 120 (12.30%) Palo Alto
4 96 (9.84%) F5
5 95 (9.73%) Microsoft
6 77 (7.89%) Juniper
7 65 (6.66%) Dell
8 62 (6.35%) Arista
9 57 (5.84%) Fortinet
10 49 (5.02%) ServiceNow
11 45 (4.61%) Aruba
12 40 (4.10%) SolarWinds
13 35 (3.59%) CheckPoint
13 35 (3.59%) IBM
14 33 (3.38%) Red Hat
15 28 (2.87%) Google
16 27 (2.77%) Splunk
17 24 (2.46%) Oracle
18 22 (2.25%) Atlassian
18 22 (2.25%) HP