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 14 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 69 66
Rank change year-on-year -6 -3 -2
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 199 101 143
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 2.96% 2.87% 2.91%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 9.89% 8.99% 9.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 118 71 96
10th Percentile £300 £290 £338
25th Percentile £400 £365 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £493 £540
Median % change year-on-year +6.09% -8.84% +8.05%
75th Percentile £625 £594 £608
90th Percentile £777 £650 £653
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 1 9
10th Percentile £16.16 - £12.05
25th Percentile £19.33 £181.24 -
Median hourly rate £23.00 £182.48 £12.08
Median % change year-on-year -87.40% +1410.55% -
75th Percentile £33.75 £183.71 £18.75
90th Percentile £35.22 - £22.20
England median hourly rate £25.00 £25.15 £23.80
% change year-on-year -0.60% +5.67% +1.28%

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 2,012 1,123 1,434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 29.90% 31.90% 29.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,255 692 848
10th Percentile £281 £204 £213
25th Percentile £412 £363 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% - -
75th Percentile £610 £600 £638
90th Percentile £700 £669 £700
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 202 101 145
10th Percentile £15.72 £15.13 £11.99
25th Percentile £22.68 £16.95 £22.40
Median hourly rate £55.00 £33.05 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +66.41% -42.37% +14.70%
75th Percentile £83.94 £58.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £80.00 £75.16
England median hourly rate £43.53 £31.50 £48.00
% change year-on-year +38.21% -34.39% +12.28%

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 14 August 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 14 August 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 14 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
Thames Valley +6 129 £456 +1.73% 45
Berkshire +25 108 £400 +3.23% 29
Hampshire -8 61 £600 +6.67% 19
Buckinghamshire -28 20 £605 +11.01% 4
Surrey -22 6 £475 +11.76% 5
West Sussex -25 2 £550 -24.14% 4
Middlesex - 2 - - 1
Oxfordshire -28 1 £500 -16.67% 13
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 (6.03%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.51%) OpenStack
3 1 (0.50%) Confluence
3 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 5 (2.51%) MS Visio
2 4 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.01%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (2.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.50%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 44 (22.11%) Azure
2 34 (17.09%) AWS
3 13 (6.53%) Microsoft 365
4 10 (5.03%) OneDrive
5 6 (3.02%) GCP
6 5 (2.51%) Azure Sentinel
6 5 (2.51%) Entra ID
7 3 (1.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 2 (1.01%) AWS Direct Connect
8 2 (1.01%) IaaS
8 2 (1.01%) OpenShift
8 2 (1.01%) Power Platform
9 1 (0.50%) AWS CloudFormation
9 1 (0.50%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 54 (27.14%) WAN
2 52 (26.13%) Firewall
3 49 (24.62%) LAN
4 43 (21.61%) DNS
5 42 (21.11%) BGP
6 39 (19.60%) DHCP
7 30 (15.08%) OSPF
7 30 (15.08%) VXLAN
8 27 (13.57%) Ethernet VPN
9 24 (12.06%) BIG-IP
9 24 (12.06%) VPN
10 21 (10.55%) TCP/IP
11 20 (10.05%) Junos
12 19 (9.55%) SD-WAN
13 16 (8.04%) SAN
14 15 (7.54%) Cisco ISE
14 15 (7.54%) MPLS
15 14 (7.04%) Cisco Nexus
15 14 (7.04%) VLAN
16 13 (6.53%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (1.01%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 2 (1.01%) Eclipse
1 2 (1.01%) JIRA
1 2 (1.01%) Maven
1 2 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
1 2 (1.01%) Subversion
2 1 (0.50%) Git
General
1 59 (29.65%) Social Skills
2 23 (11.56%) Analytical Skills
3 16 (8.04%) Finance
4 13 (6.53%) Telecoms
5 10 (5.03%) Retail
6 8 (4.02%) Influencing Skills
7 7 (3.52%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (3.52%) Public Sector
8 6 (3.02%) Legal
8 6 (3.02%) Manufacturing
9 5 (2.51%) Marketing
10 4 (2.01%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (1.01%) Military
Job Titles
1 28 (14.07%) Architect
2 24 (12.06%) Network Engineer
3 23 (11.56%) Network Architect
4 18 (9.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 16 (8.04%) Senior
6 14 (7.04%) IT Engineer
7 13 (6.53%) Firewall Specialist
7 13 (6.53%) IT Support
7 13 (6.53%) Network Specialist
8 11 (5.53%) Field Engineer
8 11 (5.53%) Field Service Engineer
9 10 (5.03%) Analyst
10 9 (4.52%) Data Centre Engineer
10 9 (4.52%) Data Centre Manager
10 9 (4.52%) Lead
10 9 (4.52%) Senior Network Engineer
11 8 (4.02%) Data Analyst
11 8 (4.02%) Data Centre Analyst
11 8 (4.02%) Data Manager
11 8 (4.02%) Site Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (11.56%) 802.1X
2 5 (2.51%) NETCONF
2 5 (2.51%) OpenConfig
2 5 (2.51%) YANG
3 4 (2.01%) RESTCONF
4 2 (1.01%) XML
5 1 (0.50%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 20 (10.05%) Clustering
1 20 (10.05%) PKI
2 16 (8.04%) Analytical Mindset
2 16 (8.04%) Hybrid Cloud
3 10 (5.03%) Fibre Optics
4 8 (4.02%) Private Cloud
5 5 (2.51%) Driving Licence
5 5 (2.51%) Public Cloud
6 4 (2.01%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 3 (1.51%) Cloud Native
7 3 (1.51%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.51%) Replication
7 3 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (1.01%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.01%) Management Information System
8 2 (1.01%) Social Media
9 1 (0.50%) Operational Technology
9 1 (0.50%) PMI
9 1 (0.50%) Security Posture
9 1 (0.50%) TM Forum
Operating Systems
1 46 (23.12%) Windows
2 10 (5.03%) Apple iOS
2 10 (5.03%) Mac OS
3 9 (4.52%) Linux
4 8 (4.02%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (26.13%) Problem-Solving
2 43 (21.61%) ITIL
3 27 (13.57%) High Availability
3 27 (13.57%) Load Balancing
3 27 (13.57%) Migration
4 26 (13.07%) ITSM
4 26 (13.07%) Roadmaps
5 22 (11.06%) Customer Service
5 22 (11.06%) Identity Access Management
6 21 (10.55%) Observability
7 20 (10.05%) Change Management
7 20 (10.05%) Disaster Recovery
7 20 (10.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 18 (9.05%) Project Delivery
8 18 (9.05%) Stakeholder Management
9 16 (8.04%) AI
10 15 (7.54%) Agile
10 15 (7.54%) Continuous Improvement
10 15 (7.54%) Time Management
11 13 (6.53%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 7 (3.52%) Python
2 2 (1.01%) Java
2 2 (1.01%) PowerShell
2 2 (1.01%) SQL
Qualifications
1 90 (45.23%) Security Cleared
2 52 (26.13%) Cisco Certification
3 49 (24.62%) DV Cleared
4 38 (19.10%) SC Cleared
5 22 (11.06%) Degree
6 15 (7.54%) CCNP
7 11 (5.53%) A+ Certification
7 11 (5.53%) CCNA
7 11 (5.53%) MCSE
7 11 (5.53%) Microsoft Certification
7 11 (5.53%) Network+ Certification
8 10 (5.03%) CCIE
8 10 (5.03%) JNCIP
9 9 (4.52%) JNCIA
9 9 (4.52%) JNCIS
10 7 (3.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 6 (3.02%) JNCIE
12 5 (2.51%) AWS Certification
12 5 (2.51%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (2.51%) CCSM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (8.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (4.52%) JSP 440
2 9 (4.52%) SLA
3 6 (3.02%) NCSC
3 6 (3.02%) NIST
4 5 (2.51%) GDPR
5 4 (2.01%) QA
5 4 (2.01%) RMADS
6 1 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.50%) GRC
6 1 (0.50%) NIST 800
System Software
1 23 (11.56%) VMware Infrastructure
2 13 (6.53%) VMware ESXi
3 11 (5.53%) Active Directory
4 9 (4.52%) VMware NSX
5 8 (4.02%) vSphere
6 6 (3.02%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (2.01%) Hyper-V
8 2 (1.01%) UAG
9 1 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 24 (12.06%) FortiGate
2 17 (8.54%) Microsoft Intune
3 10 (5.03%) Ansible
3 10 (5.03%) Jamf Pro
4 6 (3.02%) Terraform
5 5 (2.51%) vCenter Server
6 3 (1.51%) Avamar
7 2 (1.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (1.01%) Endace
7 2 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.50%) CASB
8 1 (0.50%) Grafana
8 1 (0.50%) Kubernetes
8 1 (0.50%) PowerCLI
8 1 (0.50%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.50%) SCCM
Vendors
1 57 (28.64%) Cisco
2 35 (17.59%) VMware
3 33 (16.58%) F5
4 31 (15.58%) Microsoft
5 29 (14.57%) Juniper
6 27 (13.57%) SolarWinds
7 20 (10.05%) Extreme Networks
7 20 (10.05%) Splunk
8 15 (7.54%) Palo Alto
9 13 (6.53%) ServiceNow
10 12 (6.03%) Dell
11 11 (5.53%) Fortinet
12 10 (5.03%) CheckPoint
13 5 (2.51%) Meraki
13 5 (2.51%) Veeam
14 4 (2.01%) BT
14 4 (2.01%) Commvault
14 4 (2.01%) NetApp
14 4 (2.01%) Xerox
14 4 (2.01%) Zerto