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

6 months to
22 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 110 129 106
Rank change year-on-year +19 -23 -16
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 982 549 793
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.27% 2.20% 2.10%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.95% 6.34% 6.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 607 366 562
10th Percentile £318 £301 £310
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £538
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £625
90th Percentile £725 £688 £692
UK median daily rate £495 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -1.00% -6.98% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 15 42
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £12.08
25th Percentile £18.16 £24.85 £22.08
Median hourly rate £25.00 £25.15 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -0.60% +1.13% +14.77%
75th Percentile £34.49 £43.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.45 £77.50 £41.13
UK median hourly rate £21.00 £25.15 £23.90
% change year-on-year -16.50% +5.23% +12.42%

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 14,137 8,665 11,419
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.66% 34.71% 30.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,820 5,564 7,330
10th Percentile £315 £303 £280
25th Percentile £415 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.31%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £800
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 776 393 854
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.18
25th Percentile £21.15 £20.45 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £33.89 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.73% -7.16% +62.29%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £86.13 £82.22 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.60 £32.05 £35.65
% change year-on-year +32.93% -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 22 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 22 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 22 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 +6 349 £550 +2.80% 141
North of England +12 242 £474 +5.33% 48
South East +9 210 £475 +5.56% 92
Yorkshire -5 125 £365 -16.57% 20
North West +11 93 £497 -2.07% 19
Midlands -48 57 £467 -13.15% 28
West Midlands -46 53 £474 -11.81% 19
South West -28 50 £495 -13.91% 35
East of England -9 39 £492 +64.00% 22
North East -9 30 £625 +468.18% 9
East Midlands -25 3 £325 -36.97% 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 24 (2.44%) Confluence
2 18 (1.83%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.12%) 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 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 11 (1.12%) 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
1 210 (21.38%) Azure
2 180 (18.33%) AWS
3 52 (5.30%) GCP
4 37 (3.77%) IaaS
5 36 (3.67%) GitHub
6 35 (3.56%) Microsoft 365
7 33 (3.36%) SaaS
8 30 (3.05%) OCI
9 21 (2.14%) Entra ID
10 19 (1.93%) PaaS
10 19 (1.93%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 13 (1.32%) Azure DevOps
11 13 (1.32%) OneDrive
12 12 (1.22%) OpenShift
12 12 (1.22%) Power Platform
13 11 (1.12%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 9 (0.92%) Amazon EKS
14 9 (0.92%) Azure Sentinel
14 9 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
15 8 (0.81%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 269 (27.39%) Firewall
2 175 (17.82%) WAN
3 166 (16.90%) BGP
4 127 (12.93%) OSPF
5 105 (10.69%) DNS
6 104 (10.59%) VXLAN
7 99 (10.08%) LAN
8 97 (9.88%) SAN
9 92 (9.37%) VLAN
10 91 (9.27%) Network Security
11 90 (9.16%) VPN
12 87 (8.86%) Structured Cabling
13 76 (7.74%) DHCP
14 71 (7.23%) SD-WAN
15 68 (6.92%) Ethernet VPN
16 56 (5.70%) BIG-IP
17 49 (4.99%) TCP/IP
18 43 (4.38%) NX-OS
19 42 (4.28%) Wireless
20 40 (4.07%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.92%) DataStage
1 9 (0.92%) SQL Server
2 7 (0.71%) 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 63 (6.42%) JIRA
2 39 (3.97%) GitLab
3 32 (3.26%) Git
3 32 (3.26%) 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 (25.87%) Social Skills
2 137 (13.95%) Finance
3 103 (10.49%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (6.92%) Public Sector
5 59 (6.01%) Documentation Skills
6 42 (4.28%) Banking
7 33 (3.36%) Telecoms
8 29 (2.95%) Legal
9 21 (2.14%) Retail
10 20 (2.04%) Manufacturing
11 19 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
12 17 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (1.02%) Military
14 9 (0.92%) Law
15 8 (0.81%) Aerospace
15 8 (0.81%) Marketing
16 7 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
16 7 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
17 5 (0.51%) Investment Banking
17 5 (0.51%) Police
Job Titles
1 156 (15.89%) Network Engineer
2 132 (13.44%) Architect
3 113 (11.51%) Senior
4 90 (9.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 85 (8.66%) Data Centre Engineer
6 65 (6.62%) Project Manager
7 49 (4.99%) Lead
8 45 (4.58%) Network Architect
9 42 (4.28%) IT Engineer
10 40 (4.07%) Field Engineer
11 36 (3.67%) Field Service Engineer
12 32 (3.26%) Data Centre Manager
13 31 (3.16%) Infrastructure Manager
14 30 (3.05%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 29 (2.95%) Analyst
15 29 (2.95%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 28 (2.85%) Solutions Architect
16 28 (2.85%) Support Engineer
17 25 (2.55%) IT Support
18 24 (2.44%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (3.26%) Middleware
2 31 (3.16%) 802.1X
3 11 (1.12%) LDAP
4 10 (1.02%) Redfish
5 8 (0.81%) REST
6 7 (0.71%) 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 63 (6.42%) Hybrid Cloud
2 42 (4.28%) Analytical Mindset
3 34 (3.46%) Cloud Native
4 31 (3.16%) Clustering
5 29 (2.95%) PKI
6 27 (2.75%) Enterprise Storage
6 27 (2.75%) Onboarding
7 26 (2.65%) Fibre Optics
8 24 (2.44%) Private Cloud
9 21 (2.14%) Management Information System
10 20 (2.04%) Driving Licence
11 18 (1.83%) Replication
12 15 (1.53%) CMDB
13 14 (1.43%) Public Cloud
14 12 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
14 12 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
15 11 (1.12%) Mainframe
16 10 (1.02%) SCADA
17 9 (0.92%) BYOD
17 9 (0.92%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 128 (13.03%) Windows
2 107 (10.90%) Linux
3 32 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 31 (3.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (2.34%) Unix
6 22 (2.24%) AIX
7 17 (1.73%) Solaris
8 11 (1.12%) 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
1 175 (17.82%) Migration
2 164 (16.70%) Problem-Solving
3 115 (11.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 105 (10.69%) Stakeholder Management
5 98 (9.98%) ITIL
6 94 (9.57%) Infrastructure as Code
7 93 (9.47%) High Availability
8 92 (9.37%) CI/CD
9 84 (8.55%) Continuous Improvement
10 76 (7.74%) Roadmaps
11 75 (7.64%) Agile
12 71 (7.23%) Change Management
13 70 (7.13%) Load Balancing
14 69 (7.03%) DevOps
15 67 (6.82%) Project Delivery
15 67 (6.82%) Validation
16 66 (6.72%) Project Management
17 64 (6.52%) Zero Trust
18 60 (6.11%) ITSM
19 59 (6.01%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 129 (13.14%) Python
2 40 (4.07%) PowerShell
3 28 (2.85%) SQL
4 23 (2.34%) Bash
5 17 (1.73%) Java
6 16 (1.63%) Shell Script
7 14 (1.43%) Bicep
8 11 (1.12%) COBOL
8 11 (1.12%) MATLAB
9 9 (0.92%) ActionScript
10 8 (0.81%) Perl
11 7 (0.71%) 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%) Korn
15 2 (0.20%) REXX
Qualifications
1 278 (28.31%) Security Cleared
2 194 (19.76%) SC Cleared
3 186 (18.94%) Cisco Certification
4 115 (11.71%) CCNP
5 84 (8.55%) CCNA
6 74 (7.54%) DV Cleared
7 68 (6.92%) Degree
8 49 (4.99%) Network+ Certification
9 40 (4.07%) Microsoft Certification
10 34 (3.46%) A+ Certification
10 34 (3.46%) MCSE
11 27 (2.75%) Azure Certification
12 26 (2.65%) PMP
13 24 (2.44%) AWS Certification
13 24 (2.44%) PMI Certification
14 21 (2.14%) City & Guilds
15 19 (1.93%) CCIE
16 17 (1.73%) BICSI Certification
16 17 (1.73%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 15 (1.53%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (3.36%) SLA
2 23 (2.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (2.24%) NIST
4 20 (2.04%) PMO
5 17 (1.73%) QA
6 16 (1.63%) GDPR
7 13 (1.32%) 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 94 (9.57%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (5.30%) Active Directory
3 34 (3.46%) VMware ESXi
4 29 (2.95%) Firmware
5 25 (2.55%) vSphere
6 24 (2.44%) Hyper-V
6 24 (2.44%) VMware NSX
7 23 (2.34%) Virtual Machines
8 14 (1.43%) Docker
9 11 (1.12%) KVM
10 7 (0.71%) NFS
11 6 (0.61%) Microsoft App-V
12 5 (0.51%) SRDF
13 4 (0.41%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.41%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.41%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.31%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.31%) UAG
14 3 (0.31%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 120 (12.22%) Ansible
2 97 (9.88%) Terraform
3 49 (4.99%) FortiGate
4 47 (4.79%) Kubernetes
5 29 (2.95%) Grafana
6 27 (2.75%) Prometheus
7 26 (2.65%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (1.53%) vCenter Server
9 13 (1.32%) Check_MK
10 11 (1.12%) NetBackup
10 11 (1.12%) Podman
10 11 (1.12%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (1.02%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (1.02%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.92%) PowerCLI
13 8 (0.81%) SCCM
13 8 (0.81%) vMotion
14 7 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (0.71%) Tivoli Storage Manager
15 6 (0.61%) Nagios
Vendors
1 254 (25.87%) Cisco
2 142 (14.46%) VMware
3 122 (12.42%) Palo Alto
4 97 (9.88%) F5
4 97 (9.88%) Microsoft
5 79 (8.04%) Juniper
6 65 (6.62%) Dell
7 62 (6.31%) Arista
8 59 (6.01%) Fortinet
9 49 (4.99%) ServiceNow
10 45 (4.58%) Aruba
11 41 (4.18%) SolarWinds
12 35 (3.56%) CheckPoint
12 35 (3.56%) IBM
13 33 (3.36%) Red Hat
14 28 (2.85%) Google
15 27 (2.75%) Splunk
16 24 (2.44%) Oracle
17 22 (2.24%) Atlassian
17 22 (2.24%) HP