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 1 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 134 101
Rank change year-on-year +10 -33 -7
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 855 512 817
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.12% 2.10% 2.20%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.53% 6.15% 7.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 547 336 586
10th Percentile £318 £337 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £481 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -6.22% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 14 37
10th Percentile - £24.18 £21.25
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.30 £22.08
Median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -21.57% -0.84% +12.61%
75th Percentile £28.00 £43.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.06 £58.63 £41.25
UK median hourly rate £19.34 £26.08 £24.44
% change year-on-year -25.84% +6.73% +12.76%

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 13,102 8,323 11,487
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.45% 34.19% 30.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,310 5,446 7,519
10th Percentile £306 £300 £263
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £548 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.44% -0.41% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 667 322 827
10th Percentile £16.14 £16.40 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £21.25 £15.17
Median hourly rate £47.00 £33.91 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +38.60% +12.43% +34.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.94 £61.30
90th Percentile £86.60 £84.90 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £45.46 £32.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +39.88% +8.33% +33.42%

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 1 May 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 1 May 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 1 May 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 +11 300 £550 +4.76% 169
North of England +23 190 £458 +17.67% 57
South East +8 187 £458 +1.67% 93
Yorkshire +3 91 £365 -2.67% 20
North West +4 84 £481 -3.75% 27
Midlands -63 53 £470 -14.55% 33
South West -30 51 £500 -8.76% 42
West Midlands -49 47 £472 -18.97% 24
East of England -12 37 £478 +24.16% 35
North East -3 17 £400 +263.64% 10
East Midlands -31 5 £400 -27.27% 9
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 (2.46%) Confluence
2 12 (1.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (1.29%) SharePoint
4 9 (1.05%) CICS
5 4 (0.47%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.47%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.35%) nginx
7 2 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.23%) Tomcat
Applications
1 18 (2.11%) Microsoft Excel
1 18 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (1.52%) MS Visio
4 11 (1.29%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.35%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.23%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.23%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 4 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.23%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.23%) Primavera
4 1 (0.12%) Maximo
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 149 (17.43%) Azure
2 127 (14.85%) AWS
3 40 (4.68%) GCP
4 31 (3.63%) Microsoft 365
5 21 (2.46%) SaaS
6 17 (1.99%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 16 (1.87%) OCI
8 15 (1.75%) Entra ID
8 15 (1.75%) IaaS
9 13 (1.52%) GitHub
10 12 (1.40%) Power Platform
11 11 (1.29%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 11 (1.29%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 11 (1.29%) PaaS
12 10 (1.17%) OpenShift
13 9 (1.05%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (0.82%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (0.82%) AWS KMS
14 7 (0.82%) Azure Sentinel
14 7 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 236 (27.60%) Firewall
2 160 (18.71%) WAN
3 147 (17.19%) BGP
4 116 (13.57%) OSPF
5 95 (11.11%) LAN
6 90 (10.53%) Network Security
7 82 (9.59%) VPN
7 82 (9.59%) VXLAN
8 75 (8.77%) Structured Cabling
9 71 (8.30%) SAN
10 64 (7.49%) DNS
11 63 (7.37%) VLAN
12 55 (6.43%) Ethernet VPN
13 48 (5.61%) DHCP
14 40 (4.68%) SD-WAN
15 35 (4.09%) BIG-IP
15 35 (4.09%) Wi-Fi
16 34 (3.98%) Cisco Nexus
16 34 (3.98%) Wireless
17 32 (3.74%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.05%) DataStage
2 7 (0.82%) Power BI
3 5 (0.58%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (0.58%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.47%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.47%) Power Query
4 4 (0.47%) PowerPivot
4 4 (0.47%) SAP Data Services
5 3 (0.35%) Big Data
5 3 (0.35%) InfluxDB
6 2 (0.23%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.23%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.23%) GIS
6 2 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (0.23%) RDBMS
6 2 (0.23%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.12%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.12%) DB2
7 1 (0.12%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.12%) MS Access
Development Applications
1 41 (4.80%) JIRA
2 36 (4.21%) Git
3 24 (2.81%) GitLab
4 19 (2.22%) Jenkins
5 9 (1.05%) Maven
6 5 (0.58%) ScriptRunner
7 4 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.47%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (0.47%) Subversion
8 3 (0.35%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.23%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.12%) AppScan
10 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.12%) Metasploit
General
1 229 (26.78%) Social Skills
2 120 (14.04%) Finance
3 107 (12.51%) Analytical Skills
4 71 (8.30%) Public Sector
5 50 (5.85%) Documentation Skills
6 44 (5.15%) Banking
7 28 (3.27%) Telecoms
8 23 (2.69%) Legal
9 22 (2.57%) Retail
10 17 (1.99%) Influencing Skills
10 17 (1.99%) Manufacturing
11 12 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 11 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
13 9 (1.05%) Military
14 8 (0.94%) Marketing
15 7 (0.82%) Aerospace
15 7 (0.82%) Law
16 6 (0.70%) Investment Banking
16 6 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
17 5 (0.58%) Portuguese Language
Job Titles
1 149 (17.43%) Network Engineer
2 115 (13.45%) Architect
3 87 (10.18%) Senior
4 69 (8.07%) Data Centre Engineer
5 66 (7.72%) Project Manager
6 48 (5.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 42 (4.91%) Data Centre Manager
7 42 (4.91%) Lead
8 40 (4.68%) IT Engineer
9 38 (4.44%) Field Engineer
9 38 (4.44%) Network Architect
10 35 (4.09%) Field Service Engineer
11 34 (3.98%) Analyst
12 32 (3.74%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
13 26 (3.04%) Cisco Engineer
13 26 (3.04%) Infrastructure Manager
14 25 (2.92%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 24 (2.81%) Data Centre Project Manager
16 23 (2.69%) Support Engineer
17 22 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.63%) 802.1X
2 29 (3.39%) Middleware
3 9 (1.05%) LDAP
4 8 (0.94%) Redfish
5 6 (0.70%) Spring
6 5 (0.58%) Jinja
6 5 (0.58%) NETCONF
6 5 (0.58%) XML
7 4 (0.47%) ADO
7 4 (0.47%) ARM Templates
7 4 (0.47%) Elastic Stack
7 4 (0.47%) OpenConfig
7 4 (0.47%) REST
7 4 (0.47%) RESTCONF
7 4 (0.47%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.47%) VML
7 4 (0.47%) YANG
8 3 (0.35%) Kafka
8 3 (0.35%) RFC 2544
9 2 (0.23%) OpenLayers
Miscellaneous
1 52 (6.08%) Hybrid Cloud
2 43 (5.03%) Analytical Mindset
3 29 (3.39%) Clustering
4 27 (3.16%) PKI
5 23 (2.69%) Fibre Optics
6 20 (2.34%) Cloud Native
6 20 (2.34%) Driving Licence
7 17 (1.99%) Management Information System
7 17 (1.99%) Onboarding
7 17 (1.99%) Replication
8 16 (1.87%) Public Cloud
8 16 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
9 15 (1.75%) Private Cloud
10 14 (1.64%) Enterprise Storage
11 13 (1.52%) CMDB
12 12 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
12 12 (1.40%) Mainframe
13 9 (1.05%) BYOD
13 9 (1.05%) SCADA
13 9 (1.05%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 104 (12.16%) Windows
2 92 (10.76%) Linux
3 36 (4.21%) Windows Server
4 27 (3.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (2.46%) Unix
6 18 (2.11%) AIX
7 15 (1.75%) Solaris
8 11 (1.29%) CentOS
9 6 (0.70%) VMS
9 6 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (0.58%) Android
10 5 (0.58%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.47%) HPUX
11 4 (0.47%) Oracle Linux
11 4 (0.47%) SUSE
12 3 (0.35%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.23%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
14 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 158 (18.48%) Problem-Solving
2 151 (17.66%) Migration
3 90 (10.53%) Stakeholder Management
4 79 (9.24%) ITIL
5 78 (9.12%) Continuous Improvement
6 73 (8.54%) High Availability
7 68 (7.95%) Roadmaps
8 65 (7.60%) Project Management
9 64 (7.49%) Change Management
10 63 (7.37%) Infrastructure as Code
11 61 (7.13%) Load Balancing
12 60 (7.02%) CI/CD
13 59 (6.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 58 (6.78%) Project Delivery
15 53 (6.20%) Validation
16 50 (5.85%) Break/Fix
17 49 (5.73%) Data Centre Operations
18 48 (5.61%) Technical Leadership
19 47 (5.50%) Customer Service
19 47 (5.50%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 86 (10.06%) Python
2 34 (3.98%) PowerShell
3 23 (2.69%) Java
3 23 (2.69%) SQL
4 16 (1.87%) Bash
5 14 (1.64%) Shell Script
6 11 (1.29%) COBOL
7 9 (1.05%) MATLAB
8 8 (0.94%) Perl
9 6 (0.70%) Bicep
10 5 (0.58%) VBA
11 4 (0.47%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.47%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.35%) Lisp
13 2 (0.23%) C++
13 2 (0.23%) Korn
14 1 (0.12%) C
14 1 (0.12%) Groovy
14 1 (0.12%) Ruby
14 1 (0.12%) VB
Qualifications
1 274 (32.05%) Security Cleared
2 196 (22.92%) SC Cleared
3 179 (20.94%) Cisco Certification
4 112 (13.10%) CCNP
5 77 (9.01%) CCNA
6 62 (7.25%) DV Cleared
7 59 (6.90%) Degree
8 39 (4.56%) Network+ Certification
9 34 (3.98%) Microsoft Certification
10 33 (3.86%) A+ Certification
10 33 (3.86%) MCSE
11 22 (2.57%) PMP
12 21 (2.46%) CCIE
13 19 (2.22%) PMI Certification
14 18 (2.11%) City & Guilds
15 16 (1.87%) AWS Certification
15 16 (1.87%) Azure Certification
15 16 (1.87%) JNCIS
16 15 (1.75%) BICSI Certification
17 14 (1.64%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (3.16%) SLA
2 22 (2.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 22 (2.57%) PMO
3 19 (2.22%) NIST
3 19 (2.22%) QA
4 17 (1.99%) GDPR
5 11 (1.29%) PCI DSS
6 9 (1.05%) NCSC
7 8 (0.94%) GRC
8 5 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.35%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.23%) Data Quality
10 2 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.12%) COBIT
11 1 (0.12%) NEBOSH
11 1 (0.12%) RMADS
11 1 (0.12%) SOC 1
System Software
1 71 (8.30%) VMware Infrastructure
2 46 (5.38%) Active Directory
3 33 (3.86%) VMware NSX
4 26 (3.04%) Firmware
5 22 (2.57%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (2.46%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (2.46%) vSphere
7 17 (1.99%) Hyper-V
8 10 (1.17%) Docker
8 10 (1.17%) KVM
9 3 (0.35%) NFS
9 3 (0.35%) PowerHA
9 3 (0.35%) SRDF
9 3 (0.35%) UAG
9 3 (0.35%) Veritas Cluster Server
10 2 (0.23%) Ceph
10 2 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.23%) vCloud
10 2 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.23%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 94 (10.99%) Ansible
2 75 (8.77%) Terraform
3 47 (5.50%) FortiGate
4 38 (4.44%) Kubernetes
5 28 (3.27%) Grafana
6 21 (2.46%) Prometheus
7 13 (1.52%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (1.52%) SCCM
8 10 (1.17%) vCenter Server
9 9 (1.05%) Check_MK
9 9 (1.05%) NetBackup
9 9 (1.05%) Podman
9 9 (1.05%) Red Hat Satellite
10 8 (0.94%) Dell DRAC
11 7 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 7 (0.82%) PowerCLI
12 6 (0.70%) SCOM
13 5 (0.58%) Endace
13 5 (0.58%) Nagios
13 5 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 238 (27.84%) Cisco
2 112 (13.10%) VMware
3 111 (12.98%) Palo Alto
4 80 (9.36%) Microsoft
5 79 (9.24%) F5
6 74 (8.65%) Juniper
7 69 (8.07%) Dell
8 44 (5.15%) Arista
9 43 (5.03%) Aruba
10 42 (4.91%) CheckPoint
11 37 (4.33%) Fortinet
12 34 (3.98%) SolarWinds
13 29 (3.39%) ServiceNow
13 29 (3.39%) Splunk
14 28 (3.27%) IBM
15 24 (2.81%) Oracle
15 24 (2.81%) Red Hat
16 23 (2.69%) Meraki
17 22 (2.57%) Atlassian
17 22 (2.57%) Extreme Networks