Data Centre Contract Job Trends in the South West

Data Center
England > South West

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Data Centre in contract job vacancies in the South West. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Data Centre over the 6 months leading up to 24 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 61 42
Rank change year-on-year -35 -19 +44
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 57 51 129
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 1.61% 2.69% 4.26%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.24% 8.63% 13.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 37 36 93
10th Percentile £121 £444 £445
25th Percentile £419 £508 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +2.23% +6.53%
75th Percentile £668 £647 £675
90th Percentile £726 £738 -
England median daily rate £513 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 5
10th Percentile £40.15 - -
25th Percentile £77.87 - £11.75
Median hourly rate £98.82 - £13.50
75th Percentile £99.12 - £40.00
90th Percentile £99.65 - -
England median hourly rate £20.43 £25.15 £23.80
% change year-on-year -18.79% +5.67% +7.77%

All Generic Skills
South West

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 West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 914 591 949
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 25.80% 31.22% 31.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 527 367 579
10th Percentile £309 £244 £313
25th Percentile £406 £386 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £606 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £688 £698
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 102 46 149
10th Percentile £14.11 £6.00 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.33 £15.48 £40.00
Median hourly rate £46.98 £18.87 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +148.97% -73.04% -6.67%
75th Percentile £68.75 £52.13 -
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £72.75
England median hourly rate £43.96 £32.89 £42.50
% change year-on-year +33.66% -22.61% +2.98%

Data Centre
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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

Data Centre job vacancy trend in the South West

Data Centre
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

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

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

Data Centre
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Centre in the South West over the 6 months to 24 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Centre in the South West

Data Centre
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

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

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

Data Centre
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Centre in the South West over the 6 months to 24 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Centre in the South West

Data Centre
Contract Job Locations in the South West

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 West region over the 6 months to 24 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
Devon - 17 £495 - 2
Somerset -22 13 £683 +24.23% 9
Bristol -18 9 £123 -78.70% 5
Wiltshire -20 7 £673 +17.00% 1
Gloucestershire -17 5 £375 -31.82% 5
Dorset - 5 £547 - 1
Data Centre
England

Data Centre
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South 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 (3.51%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 9 (15.79%) AWS
1 9 (15.79%) Azure
2 3 (5.26%) GitHub
3 2 (3.51%) Azure DevOps
3 2 (3.51%) Azure Key Vault
3 2 (3.51%) Azure Logic Apps
3 2 (3.51%) Azure Monitor
4 1 (1.75%) Entra ID
4 1 (1.75%) GCP
4 1 (1.75%) GitHub Actions
4 1 (1.75%) Google Ads
4 1 (1.75%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 15 (26.32%) Firewall
2 13 (22.81%) SAN
3 12 (21.05%) VLAN
4 11 (19.30%) BGP
4 11 (19.30%) Cisco Nexus
4 11 (19.30%) DHCP
4 11 (19.30%) DNS
4 11 (19.30%) OSPF
4 11 (19.30%) VXLAN
5 9 (15.79%) NX-OS
5 9 (15.79%) TCP/IP
6 8 (14.04%) VSAN
7 3 (5.26%) LAN
8 2 (3.51%) Network Security
8 2 (3.51%) Structured Cabling
8 2 (3.51%) WAN
9 1 (1.75%) Fibre Channel
9 1 (1.75%) iSCSI
9 1 (1.75%) NGFW
9 1 (1.75%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (7.02%) Geospatial Data
2 2 (3.51%) Azure SQL Database
2 2 (3.51%) SQL Server
3 1 (1.75%) MS Access
3 1 (1.75%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 3 (5.26%) Git
2 2 (3.51%) JIRA
2 2 (3.51%) MSI
3 1 (1.75%) GitLab
General
1 15 (26.32%) Analytical Skills
2 7 (12.28%) Social Skills
3 6 (10.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 5 (8.77%) Public Sector
5 1 (1.75%) Finance
5 1 (1.75%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 14 (24.56%) IT Engineer
2 13 (22.81%) Field Engineer
2 13 (22.81%) Field Service Engineer
3 9 (15.79%) Architect
4 8 (14.04%) Field Support Engineer
4 8 (14.04%) IT Support
4 8 (14.04%) IT Support Engineer
4 8 (14.04%) Support Engineer
5 6 (10.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 5 (8.77%) Platform Engineer
6 5 (8.77%) Principal Engineer
7 4 (7.02%) Network Engineer
8 3 (5.26%) Cabling Engineer
8 3 (5.26%) Developer
8 3 (5.26%) Network Architect
8 3 (5.26%) Technical Architect
9 2 (3.51%) Infrastructure Architect
9 2 (3.51%) Installations Engineer
9 2 (3.51%) Network Specialist
9 2 (3.51%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (7.02%) GeoJSON
1 4 (7.02%) RESTful
2 3 (5.26%) REST
3 2 (3.51%) .NET
3 2 (3.51%) .NET Core
3 2 (3.51%) .NET Framework
3 2 (3.51%) ATL
3 2 (3.51%) COM
3 2 (3.51%) CSS
3 2 (3.51%) CSS3
3 2 (3.51%) HTML
3 2 (3.51%) HTML5
3 2 (3.51%) MFC
3 2 (3.51%) OpenAPI
3 2 (3.51%) Swagger
3 2 (3.51%) WPF
4 1 (1.75%) Jinja
4 1 (1.75%) NETCONF
4 1 (1.75%) ODBC
Miscellaneous
1 13 (22.81%) Analytical Mindset
2 8 (14.04%) PKI
3 4 (7.02%) Cloud Native
4 2 (3.51%) Onboarding
4 2 (3.51%) Product Ownership
4 2 (3.51%) Public Cloud
5 1 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.75%) Fibre Optics
5 1 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (1.75%) Legacy Applications
5 1 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.75%) PMI
5 1 (1.75%) Private Cloud
5 1 (1.75%) Security Posture
5 1 (1.75%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 15 (26.32%) Windows
2 12 (21.05%) Linux
3 3 (5.26%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (40.35%) Problem-Solving
2 16 (28.07%) Mentoring
3 15 (26.32%) Infrastructure as Code
3 15 (26.32%) Technical Leadership
4 13 (22.81%) Break/Fix
4 13 (22.81%) Customer Service
5 12 (21.05%) Continuous Improvement
5 12 (21.05%) DevSecOps
6 9 (15.79%) CI/CD
6 9 (15.79%) Network Virtualisation
7 8 (14.04%) Converged Infrastructure
7 8 (14.04%) Customer Requirements
7 8 (14.04%) Platform Engineering
7 8 (14.04%) SIEM
7 8 (14.04%) Systems Engineering
8 7 (12.28%) Commercial Awareness
8 7 (12.28%) Cybersecurity
8 7 (12.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 6 (10.53%) Agile
10 5 (8.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 14 (24.56%) Python
2 10 (17.54%) PowerShell
3 9 (15.79%) Bash
4 4 (7.02%) Bicep
5 3 (5.26%) SQL
6 2 (3.51%) C#
6 2 (3.51%) JavaScript
6 2 (3.51%) TypeScript
7 1 (1.75%) C
7 1 (1.75%) VB
7 1 (1.75%) VBA
Qualifications
1 21 (36.84%) Security Cleared
2 16 (28.07%) Cisco Certification
3 14 (24.56%) CCNA
4 13 (22.81%) A+ Certification
4 13 (22.81%) MCSE
4 13 (22.81%) Microsoft Certification
4 13 (22.81%) Network+ Certification
5 11 (19.30%) DV Cleared
5 11 (19.30%) SC Cleared
6 7 (12.28%) VCAP
7 3 (5.26%) AWS Certification
8 1 (1.75%) APMP
8 1 (1.75%) BICSI Certification
8 1 (1.75%) CCIE
8 1 (1.75%) City & Guilds
8 1 (1.75%) Degree
8 1 (1.75%) MAPM
8 1 (1.75%) PMI Certification
8 1 (1.75%) PMP
8 1 (1.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (7.02%) NCSC
2 2 (3.51%) Accessibility
2 2 (3.51%) QA
2 2 (3.51%) WCAG
3 1 (1.75%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (1.75%) GDPR
3 1 (1.75%) GRC
3 1 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.75%) NIST
3 1 (1.75%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.75%) PMO
3 1 (1.75%) SLA
System Software
1 13 (22.81%) VMware Infrastructure
2 11 (19.30%) Active Directory
2 11 (19.30%) VMware NSX
3 8 (14.04%) Docker
3 8 (14.04%) vSphere
4 7 (12.28%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 14 (24.56%) Terraform
2 12 (21.05%) Kubernetes
3 10 (17.54%) Ansible
4 8 (14.04%) VxRail
5 2 (3.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 1 (1.75%) EMC VPLEX
6 1 (1.75%) FortiGate
6 1 (1.75%) Nagios
Vendors
1 15 (26.32%) Cisco
2 14 (24.56%) Dell
3 13 (22.81%) VMware
4 11 (19.30%) F5
5 5 (8.77%) Microsoft
6 3 (5.26%) CyberArk
7 2 (3.51%) Fortinet
7 2 (3.51%) Infoblox
7 2 (3.51%) Palo Alto
7 2 (3.51%) Thales
8 1 (1.75%) Citrix
8 1 (1.75%) FireEye
8 1 (1.75%) Juniper
8 1 (1.75%) NetScout
8 1 (1.75%) Oracle