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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 132 104
Rank change year-on-year +31 -28 -11
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 975 521 774
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.30% 2.14% 2.08%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.09% 6.24% 6.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 619 347 564
10th Percentile £318 £312 £302
25th Percentile £404 £413 £424
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £520 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.81% -2.80% -2.73%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £680 £688
UK median daily rate £494 £500 £531
% change year-on-year -1.20% -5.88% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 11 33
10th Percentile £16.01 - £21.25
25th Percentile £18.07 £24.66 £23.80
Median hourly rate £22.81 £40.00 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -42.98% +60.84% +14.77%
75th Percentile £35.22 £43.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.71 £100.00 £41.25
UK median hourly rate £19.85 £37.50 £23.90
% change year-on-year -47.07% +56.90% +11.34%

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 13,746 8,349 11,322
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.41% 34.26% 30.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,618 5,376 7,328
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £526 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.18% -4.38% -2.65%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 736 362 842
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.01 £20.73 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £33.91 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.64% -7.10% +62.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.45 £83.32 £72.44
UK median hourly rate £42.30 £33.03 £35.50
% change year-on-year +28.08% -6.97% +59.51%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +22 341 £550 +4.76% 170
North of England +24 239 £474 +1.83% 52
South East +9 212 £463 +2.78% 99
Yorkshire -1 120 £365 -12.05% 22
North West +15 95 £481 -6.78% 23
Midlands -52 56 £465 -15.45% 25
West Midlands -48 51 £467 -15.12% 22
South West -22 50 £495 -13.91% 27
East of England -15 38 £492 +64.00% 26
North East +3 30 £625 +468.18% 7
East Midlands -32 4 £325 -36.97% 3
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 (2.15%) Confluence
2 15 (1.54%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (1.03%) CICS
5 4 (0.41%) Apache
5 4 (0.41%) CloudStack
5 4 (0.41%) nginx
5 4 (0.41%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.41%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.31%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.10%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.10%) IIS
Applications
1 13 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (1.03%) Microsoft Project
3 10 (1.03%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
5 5 (0.51%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.31%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.21%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.31%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.21%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.21%) Primavera
2 2 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 200 (20.51%) Azure
2 175 (17.95%) AWS
3 51 (5.23%) GCP
4 34 (3.49%) Microsoft 365
5 33 (3.38%) IaaS
6 32 (3.28%) SaaS
7 30 (3.08%) OCI
8 27 (2.77%) GitHub
9 18 (1.85%) Entra ID
10 17 (1.74%) PaaS
10 17 (1.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 12 (1.23%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 12 (1.23%) OpenShift
12 11 (1.13%) OneDrive
12 11 (1.13%) Power Platform
13 10 (1.03%) Azure DevOps
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
1 270 (27.69%) Firewall
2 178 (18.26%) WAN
3 166 (17.03%) BGP
4 130 (13.33%) OSPF
5 107 (10.97%) VXLAN
6 101 (10.36%) LAN
7 99 (10.15%) Network Security
8 96 (9.85%) SAN
9 95 (9.74%) DNS
10 91 (9.33%) VLAN
10 91 (9.33%) VPN
11 87 (8.92%) Structured Cabling
12 73 (7.49%) DHCP
13 71 (7.28%) Ethernet VPN
14 64 (6.56%) SD-WAN
15 53 (5.44%) BIG-IP
16 41 (4.21%) NX-OS
16 41 (4.21%) TCP/IP
17 39 (4.00%) NAS
17 39 (4.00%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.92%) DataStage
2 8 (0.82%) SQL Server
3 6 (0.62%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (0.62%) Power BI
4 5 (0.51%) Big Data
5 4 (0.41%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.41%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.41%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.31%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
6 3 (0.31%) GIS
7 2 (0.21%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.21%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.21%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.21%) Oracle Database 12c
7 2 (0.21%) Power Query
7 2 (0.21%) PowerPivot
8 1 (0.10%) MS Access
8 1 (0.10%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.10%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 55 (5.64%) JIRA
2 39 (4.00%) GitLab
3 32 (3.28%) Git
4 30 (3.08%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.62%) Maven
6 5 (0.51%) ScriptRunner
7 4 (0.41%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.41%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.41%) Subversion
8 3 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
8 3 (0.31%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.21%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.10%) AppScan
10 1 (0.10%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.10%) Metasploit
General
1 248 (25.44%) Social Skills
2 135 (13.85%) Finance
3 105 (10.77%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (7.08%) Public Sector
5 55 (5.64%) Documentation Skills
6 42 (4.31%) Banking
7 29 (2.97%) Telecoms
8 26 (2.67%) Legal
9 21 (2.15%) Manufacturing
10 20 (2.05%) Influencing Skills
11 19 (1.95%) Retail
12 13 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (1.03%) Law
14 9 (0.92%) Military
15 8 (0.82%) Aerospace
15 8 (0.82%) Marketing
15 8 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
16 6 (0.62%) Organisational Skills
17 5 (0.51%) Financial Institution
17 5 (0.51%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 159 (16.31%) Network Engineer
2 129 (13.23%) Architect
3 112 (11.49%) Senior
4 83 (8.51%) Data Centre Engineer
4 83 (8.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 66 (6.77%) Project Manager
6 50 (5.13%) Lead
7 45 (4.62%) Network Architect
8 43 (4.41%) IT Engineer
9 41 (4.21%) Field Engineer
10 38 (3.90%) Field Service Engineer
11 35 (3.59%) Data Centre Manager
12 33 (3.38%) Analyst
13 32 (3.28%) Infrastructure Manager
13 32 (3.28%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 30 (3.08%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 28 (2.87%) Support Engineer
16 25 (2.56%) Administrator
17 24 (2.46%) Infrastructure Project Manager
17 24 (2.46%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (3.38%) Middleware
2 30 (3.08%) 802.1X
3 11 (1.13%) LDAP
4 10 (1.03%) Redfish
5 7 (0.72%) Spring
6 6 (0.62%) Elastic Stack
6 6 (0.62%) REST
7 5 (0.51%) Jinja
7 5 (0.51%) Kafka
7 5 (0.51%) XML
8 4 (0.41%) ADO
8 4 (0.41%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.41%) YAML
9 3 (0.31%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.31%) EJB
9 3 (0.31%) Java EE
9 3 (0.31%) JSON
9 3 (0.31%) NETCONF
9 3 (0.31%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.31%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 62 (6.36%) Hybrid Cloud
2 44 (4.51%) Analytical Mindset
3 30 (3.08%) Clustering
4 29 (2.97%) PKI
5 27 (2.77%) Cloud Native
6 25 (2.56%) Fibre Optics
7 24 (2.46%) Enterprise Storage
8 23 (2.36%) Onboarding
9 21 (2.15%) Private Cloud
10 20 (2.05%) Driving Licence
10 20 (2.05%) Management Information System
11 19 (1.95%) Replication
12 15 (1.54%) CMDB
12 15 (1.54%) Public Cloud
12 15 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
14 11 (1.13%) Mainframe
15 10 (1.03%) SCADA
16 9 (0.92%) BYOD
16 9 (0.92%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 122 (12.51%) Windows
2 112 (11.49%) Linux
3 32 (3.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 32 (3.28%) Windows Server
4 22 (2.26%) Unix
5 21 (2.15%) AIX
6 16 (1.64%) Solaris
7 12 (1.23%) CentOS
8 8 (0.82%) Apple iOS
8 8 (0.82%) Mac OS
8 8 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.62%) VMS
10 5 (0.51%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.41%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.41%) HPUX
11 4 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
11 4 (0.41%) SUSE
12 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.21%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (17.03%) Problem-Solving
2 162 (16.62%) Migration
3 106 (10.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 97 (9.95%) Stakeholder Management
5 95 (9.74%) High Availability
6 94 (9.64%) ITIL
7 88 (9.03%) Infrastructure as Code
8 85 (8.72%) CI/CD
8 85 (8.72%) Continuous Improvement
9 78 (8.00%) Roadmaps
10 71 (7.28%) Load Balancing
11 69 (7.08%) Change Management
11 69 (7.08%) Project Management
12 67 (6.87%) Project Delivery
13 66 (6.77%) Agile
14 65 (6.67%) DevOps
15 63 (6.46%) Validation
16 58 (5.95%) ITSM
17 57 (5.85%) Zero Trust
18 56 (5.74%) Data Centre Operations
Programming Languages
1 122 (12.51%) Python
2 39 (4.00%) PowerShell
3 26 (2.67%) SQL
4 23 (2.36%) Bash
5 21 (2.15%) Java
6 16 (1.64%) Shell Script
7 11 (1.13%) COBOL
7 11 (1.13%) MATLAB
8 9 (0.92%) Bicep
9 8 (0.82%) Perl
10 7 (0.72%) ActionScript
10 7 (0.72%) PL/SQL
11 5 (0.51%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.41%) Lisp
13 3 (0.31%) VBA
14 2 (0.21%) C++
14 2 (0.21%) JCL
14 2 (0.21%) Korn
14 2 (0.21%) REXX
15 1 (0.10%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 289 (29.64%) Security Cleared
2 207 (21.23%) SC Cleared
3 193 (19.79%) Cisco Certification
4 123 (12.62%) CCNP
5 87 (8.92%) CCNA
6 71 (7.28%) DV Cleared
7 66 (6.77%) Degree
8 51 (5.23%) Network+ Certification
9 41 (4.21%) Microsoft Certification
10 36 (3.69%) A+ Certification
10 36 (3.69%) MCSE
11 25 (2.56%) Azure Certification
12 24 (2.46%) PMP
13 22 (2.26%) AWS Certification
14 21 (2.15%) City & Guilds
14 21 (2.15%) PMI Certification
15 19 (1.95%) CCIE
16 17 (1.74%) BICSI Certification
17 16 (1.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 15 (1.54%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (3.38%) SLA
2 23 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 23 (2.36%) NIST
3 20 (2.05%) PMO
4 15 (1.54%) GDPR
4 15 (1.54%) QA
5 10 (1.03%) PCI DSS
6 9 (0.92%) GRC
7 8 (0.82%) NCSC
8 6 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
9 5 (0.51%) RMADS
10 4 (0.41%) JSP 440
11 3 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.31%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.21%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.10%) COBIT
13 1 (0.10%) NEBOSH
13 1 (0.10%) SOC 1
System Software
1 90 (9.23%) VMware Infrastructure
2 51 (5.23%) Active Directory
3 30 (3.08%) Firmware
3 30 (3.08%) VMware ESXi
4 26 (2.67%) vSphere
5 24 (2.46%) Hyper-V
5 24 (2.46%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (2.15%) VMware NSX
7 13 (1.33%) Docker
8 11 (1.13%) KVM
9 7 (0.72%) NFS
10 5 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
10 5 (0.51%) SRDF
11 4 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.41%) VMware Workstation
12 3 (0.31%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.31%) Ceph
12 3 (0.31%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (0.31%) Terminal Services
12 3 (0.31%) UAG
Systems Management
1 121 (12.41%) Ansible
2 94 (9.64%) Terraform
3 47 (4.82%) FortiGate
4 44 (4.51%) Kubernetes
5 30 (3.08%) Grafana
6 26 (2.67%) Prometheus
7 23 (2.36%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (1.44%) 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 (1.03%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (1.03%) SCCM
12 9 (0.92%) PowerCLI
13 8 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
14 7 (0.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (0.72%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 7 (0.72%) vMotion
15 6 (0.62%) Nagios
Vendors
1 257 (26.36%) Cisco
2 134 (13.74%) VMware
3 125 (12.82%) Palo Alto
4 97 (9.95%) F5
5 87 (8.92%) Microsoft
6 78 (8.00%) Juniper
7 68 (6.97%) Dell
8 61 (6.26%) Arista
9 56 (5.74%) Fortinet
10 49 (5.03%) Aruba
11 47 (4.82%) ServiceNow
12 42 (4.31%) CheckPoint
13 40 (4.10%) SolarWinds
14 34 (3.49%) IBM
15 30 (3.08%) Red Hat
16 27 (2.77%) Splunk
17 26 (2.67%) Google
17 26 (2.67%) Oracle
18 22 (2.26%) Atlassian
18 22 (2.26%) Extreme Networks