Data Centre Contract Job Trends in the South East

Data Center
England > South East

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Data Centre in contract job vacancies in the South East. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Data Centre over the 6 months leading up to 3 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 65 65
Rank change year-on-year +9 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 214 98 159
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 3.39% 3.04% 2.78%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 11.35% 9.41% 9.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 125 69 107
10th Percentile £303 £274 £300
25th Percentile £400 £338 £399
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £515
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -12.62% +3.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £608
90th Percentile £769 £650 £648
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 3 12
10th Percentile £16.01 - £11.96
25th Percentile £19.34 - -
Median hourly rate £25.00 £24.66 £12.08
Median % change year-on-year +1.38% +104.14% -
75th Percentile £33.75 £104.19 £21.47
90th Percentile £35.22 £151.90 £24.00
England median hourly rate £20.43 £25.15 £24.87
% change year-on-year -18.79% +1.13% +14.77%

All Generic Skills
South East

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 the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 1,885 1,041 1,643
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 29.84% 32.28% 28.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,205 632 963
10th Percentile £281 £210 £213
25th Percentile £406 £350 £373
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% - -
75th Percentile £600 £595 £617
90th Percentile £700 £660 £690
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 99 173
10th Percentile £17.50 £15.13 £11.79
25th Percentile £27.47 £16.95 £17.64
Median hourly rate £63.00 £33.89 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +85.92% -38.39% +4.76%
75th Percentile £85.43 £61.12 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £85.50 £75.16
England median hourly rate £43.96 £32.95 £37.50
% change year-on-year +33.43% -12.15% +57.63%

Data Centre
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Data Centre job vacancy trend in the South East

Data Centre
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Data Centre.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Data Centre

Data Centre
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Centre in the South East over the 6 months to 3 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Centre in the South East

Data Centre
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Data Centre.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Data Centre

Data Centre
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Centre in the South East over the 6 months to 3 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Centre in the South East

Data Centre
Contract Job Locations in the South East

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 South East region over the 6 months to 3 July 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
Thames Valley +20 140 £463 -1.86% 48
Berkshire +21 118 £400 - 35
Hampshire -8 59 £550 +7.32% 24
Buckinghamshire -24 21 £525 -1.87% 8
Surrey -25 8 £475 +58.33% 23
Kent +1 5 £445 +4.71% 1
West Sussex -20 3 £550 -24.14% 6
Oxfordshire - 1 £500 - 5
Data Centre
England

Data Centre
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 12 (5.61%) SharePoint
2 1 (0.47%) Confluence
2 1 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.47%) OpenStack
Applications
1 6 (2.80%) MS Visio
2 4 (1.87%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (1.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.47%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 48 (22.43%) Azure
2 37 (17.29%) AWS
3 14 (6.54%) Microsoft 365
4 10 (4.67%) OneDrive
5 7 (3.27%) GCP
6 6 (2.80%) Azure Sentinel
6 6 (2.80%) Entra ID
7 5 (2.34%) IaaS
8 3 (1.40%) PaaS
8 3 (1.40%) SaaS
8 3 (1.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 2 (0.93%) AWS Direct Connect
9 2 (0.93%) Power Platform
10 1 (0.47%) AWS CloudFormation
10 1 (0.47%) dbt
10 1 (0.47%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 64 (29.91%) Firewall
1 64 (29.91%) WAN
2 63 (29.44%) LAN
3 49 (22.90%) BGP
4 45 (21.03%) DNS
5 42 (19.63%) OSPF
6 41 (19.16%) DHCP
7 31 (14.49%) VPN
7 31 (14.49%) VXLAN
8 29 (13.55%) Ethernet VPN
9 27 (12.62%) BIG-IP
10 22 (10.28%) Junos
10 22 (10.28%) TCP/IP
11 21 (9.81%) SD-WAN
12 20 (9.35%) Cisco Nexus
13 18 (8.41%) Cisco ISE
13 18 (8.41%) Structured Cabling
14 17 (7.94%) SAN
15 15 (7.01%) MPLS
16 14 (6.54%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (0.93%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 4 (1.87%) Eclipse
1 4 (1.87%) Maven
1 4 (1.87%) Subversion
2 3 (1.40%) Sonatype Nexus
3 2 (0.93%) JIRA
4 1 (0.47%) Git
General
1 62 (28.97%) Social Skills
2 22 (10.28%) Analytical Skills
3 15 (7.01%) Finance
4 12 (5.61%) Documentation Skills
4 12 (5.61%) Telecoms
5 11 (5.14%) Public Sector
6 10 (4.67%) Retail
7 9 (4.21%) Manufacturing
8 8 (3.74%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (2.80%) Legal
10 5 (2.34%) Military
10 5 (2.34%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (1.40%) Marketing
12 2 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.47%) Billing
Job Titles
1 39 (18.22%) Network Engineer
2 24 (11.21%) Architect
3 19 (8.88%) Network Architect
3 19 (8.88%) Senior
4 17 (7.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 15 (7.01%) Analyst
5 15 (7.01%) Data Centre Engineer
6 14 (6.54%) Firewall Specialist
6 14 (6.54%) IT Engineer
6 14 (6.54%) Network Specialist
7 13 (6.07%) Data Analyst
7 13 (6.07%) Data Centre Analyst
7 13 (6.07%) IT Support
8 12 (5.61%) Project Manager
9 11 (5.14%) Field Engineer
9 11 (5.14%) Field Service Engineer
10 10 (4.67%) Senior Network Engineer
11 9 (4.21%) Data Centre Manager
11 9 (4.21%) Lead
12 8 (3.74%) Data Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (12.15%) 802.1X
2 4 (1.87%) XML
3 3 (1.40%) NETCONF
3 3 (1.40%) OpenConfig
3 3 (1.40%) RESTCONF
3 3 (1.40%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 22 (10.28%) Clustering
1 22 (10.28%) PKI
2 17 (7.94%) Hybrid Cloud
3 15 (7.01%) Analytical Mindset
4 10 (4.67%) Fibre Optics
5 8 (3.74%) Driving Licence
6 7 (3.27%) Private Cloud
7 6 (2.80%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (1.87%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 4 (1.87%) Public Cloud
8 4 (1.87%) Replication
9 3 (1.40%) Cloud Native
9 3 (1.40%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.93%) Management Information System
11 1 (0.47%) Data Protection Act
11 1 (0.47%) Enterprise Software
11 1 (0.47%) iSeries
11 1 (0.47%) NHS
11 1 (0.47%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 50 (23.36%) Windows
2 15 (7.01%) Linux
3 10 (4.67%) Apple iOS
3 10 (4.67%) Mac OS
4 8 (3.74%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.47%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (26.64%) Problem-Solving
2 47 (21.96%) ITIL
3 31 (14.49%) High Availability
3 31 (14.49%) Migration
4 30 (14.02%) Load Balancing
5 25 (11.68%) ITSM
6 24 (11.21%) Identity Access Management
6 24 (11.21%) Roadmaps
7 23 (10.75%) Observability
8 22 (10.28%) Customer Service
9 21 (9.81%) Change Management
10 20 (9.35%) Disaster Recovery
10 20 (9.35%) Project Delivery
11 19 (8.88%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 19 (8.88%) Stakeholder Management
12 16 (7.48%) Agile
12 16 (7.48%) Continuous Improvement
13 15 (7.01%) Project Management
13 15 (7.01%) Time Management
14 14 (6.54%) AI
Programming Languages
1 6 (2.80%) Python
2 4 (1.87%) Java
2 4 (1.87%) SQL
3 2 (0.93%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 108 (50.47%) Security Cleared
2 60 (28.04%) Cisco Certification
3 57 (26.64%) SC Cleared
4 50 (23.36%) DV Cleared
5 28 (13.08%) Degree
6 25 (11.68%) CCNP
7 16 (7.48%) CCNA
8 12 (5.61%) Microsoft Certification
9 11 (5.14%) A+ Certification
9 11 (5.14%) JNCIP
9 11 (5.14%) JNCIS
9 11 (5.14%) MCSE
9 11 (5.14%) Network+ Certification
10 10 (4.67%) JNCIA
11 9 (4.21%) CCIE
12 6 (2.80%) AWS Certification
12 6 (2.80%) CCSE
12 6 (2.80%) PMP
12 6 (2.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 5 (2.34%) BICSI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (6.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (4.21%) SLA
3 7 (3.27%) NCSC
3 7 (3.27%) NIST
4 5 (2.34%) GDPR
5 4 (1.87%) JSP 440
5 4 (1.87%) QA
5 4 (1.87%) RMADS
6 2 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
6 2 (0.93%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.47%) GRC
System Software
1 25 (11.68%) VMware Infrastructure
2 13 (6.07%) VMware ESXi
3 12 (5.61%) Active Directory
4 11 (5.14%) VMware NSX
5 8 (3.74%) vSphere
6 5 (2.34%) Hyper-V
6 5 (2.34%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (1.40%) UAG
8 2 (0.93%) vCloud
9 1 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.47%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 26 (12.15%) FortiGate
2 17 (7.94%) Microsoft Intune
3 11 (5.14%) Ansible
4 10 (4.67%) Jamf Pro
5 9 (4.21%) Terraform
6 4 (1.87%) vCenter Server
7 3 (1.40%) Endace
8 2 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 2 (0.93%) Avamar
8 2 (0.93%) CASB
8 2 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.47%) Cisco CUCM
9 1 (0.47%) Grafana
9 1 (0.47%) Nagios
9 1 (0.47%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.47%) SCCM
Vendors
1 77 (35.98%) Cisco
2 38 (17.76%) VMware
3 36 (16.82%) F5
4 35 (16.36%) Juniper
5 31 (14.49%) Microsoft
5 31 (14.49%) SolarWinds
6 22 (10.28%) Extreme Networks
6 22 (10.28%) Splunk
7 21 (9.81%) Palo Alto
8 16 (7.48%) CheckPoint
9 14 (6.54%) ServiceNow
10 12 (5.61%) Dell
10 12 (5.61%) Fortinet
11 7 (3.27%) Aruba
11 7 (3.27%) Meraki
12 4 (1.87%) Atlassian
12 4 (1.87%) BT
12 4 (1.87%) Veeam
12 4 (1.87%) Xerox
12 4 (1.87%) Zerto