Data Centre Operations Contract Job Trends in the North West

Data Center Operations
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring Data Centre Operations skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 166 129 120
Rank change year-on-year -37 -9 +17
Contract jobs citing Data Centre Operations 4 2 2
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 0.10% 0.091% 0.083%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.13% 0.10% 0.098%
Number of daily rates quoted 4 2 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £375 £413 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 -
75th Percentile £457 £438 -
90th Percentile £469 - -
England median daily rate £425 £413 £488
% change year-on-year +3.03% -15.43% -11.32%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North West

Data Centre Operations falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 3,161 1,958 2,031
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 82.55% 88.72% 84.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,843 1,264 1,220
10th Percentile £280 £282 £313
25th Percentile £400 £375 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £599 £575 £588
90th Percentile £680 £668 £680
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.40% -4.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 127 169
10th Percentile £16.16 £13.50 £10.95
25th Percentile £24.79 £18.87 £16.06
Median hourly rate £45.00 £27.38 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +64.38% -21.79% +14.20%
75th Percentile £71.91 £56.88 £51.91
90th Percentile £85.00 £74.25 £70.90
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +4.83%

Data Centre Operations
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Centre Operations relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Data Centre Operations job vacancy trend in the North West

Data Centre Operations
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Data Centre Operations.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Data Centre Operations

Data Centre Operations
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Data Centre Operations.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Data Centre Operations

Data Centre Operations
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Centre Operations within the North West region over the 6 months to 17 August 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
Manchester -32 2 £464 +9.06% 1
Lancashire - 2 £400 - 1
Data Centre Operations
England

Data Centre Operations
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 2 (50.00%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (50.00%) SharePoint
Cloud Services
1 2 (50.00%) Azure
1 2 (50.00%) Entra ID
1 2 (50.00%) IaaS
1 2 (50.00%) Microsoft 365
1 2 (50.00%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 2 (50.00%) DNS
1 2 (50.00%) SAN
1 2 (50.00%) VPN
2 1 (25.00%) Fibre Channel
2 1 (25.00%) NAS
General
1 2 (50.00%) Social Skills
2 1 (25.00%) Legal
Job Titles
1 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 1 (25.00%) Administrator
2 1 (25.00%) Backup Administrator
2 1 (25.00%) IBM Storage Administrator
2 1 (25.00%) SAN Administrator
2 1 (25.00%) SAN Storage Administrator
2 1 (25.00%) Senior
2 1 (25.00%) Senior Wintel Engineer
2 1 (25.00%) Storage Administrator
2 1 (25.00%) Storage and Backup Administrator
2 1 (25.00%) Wintel Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (25.00%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 4 (100.00%) Data Centre
2 1 (25.00%) Driving Licence
2 1 (25.00%) Enterprise Storage
2 1 (25.00%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 3 (75.00%) Windows
2 2 (50.00%) Windows Server
3 1 (25.00%) AIX
3 1 (25.00%) Linux
3 1 (25.00%) Unix
3 1 (25.00%) Windows Server 2012
3 1 (25.00%) Windows Server 2016
3 1 (25.00%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 1 (25.00%) Data Protection
2 1 (25.00%) Infrastructure Maintenance
2 1 (25.00%) Multi-Factor Authentication
2 1 (25.00%) Performance Tuning
2 1 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
2 1 (25.00%) Storage Management
Programming Languages
1 1 (25.00%) Bash
1 1 (25.00%) PowerShell
1 1 (25.00%) Python
System Software
1 2 (50.00%) Active Directory
1 2 (50.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 1 (25.00%) Firmware
2 1 (25.00%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 2 (50.00%) SCCM
1 2 (50.00%) WSUS
2 1 (25.00%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 3 (75.00%) VMware
2 2 (50.00%) Citrix
2 2 (50.00%) Microsoft
3 1 (25.00%) Brocade
3 1 (25.00%) Cisco
3 1 (25.00%) IBM