SAN Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Storage Area Network (SAN)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the UK excluding London requiring SAN skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 305 228 225
Rank change year-on-year -77 -3 +5
Contract jobs citing SAN 168 143 155
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.61% 0.93% 0.85%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 5.72% 6.78% 5.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 105 104 107
10th Percentile £126 £357 £300
25th Percentile £358 £445 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% +34.38%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £609 £603 £619
UK median daily rate £477 £525 £519
% change year-on-year -9.14% +1.20% +15.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 17
10th Percentile - £29.09 -
25th Percentile - £33.73 £11.75
Median hourly rate £15.00 £41.45 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -63.81% +38.17% -38.46%
75th Percentile - £54.35 £48.75
90th Percentile - £62.09 £51.50
UK median hourly rate £15.00 £35.73 £23.80
% change year-on-year -58.01% +50.11% -52.40%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK excluding London

SAN falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 2,939 2,109 2,766
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.66% 13.78% 15.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,649 1,275 1,609
10th Percentile £213 £204 £213
25th Percentile £363 £325 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £473 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.22% -5.50% +9.89%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £601
90th Percentile £650 £640 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.52% -3.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 139 268
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.38 £21.34
Median hourly rate £26.14 £45.00 £54.88
Median % change year-on-year -41.91% -18.00% -4.28%
75th Percentile £65.06 £66.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £87.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £49.00
% change year-on-year -43.48% -5.61% -12.35%

SAN
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SAN relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

SAN job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

SAN
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing SAN.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing SAN

SAN
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SAN in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 21 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SAN in the UK excluding London

SAN
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing SAN.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing SAN

SAN
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SAN within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 21 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
North of England -33 73 £519 +16.11% 7
Yorkshire -16 39 £500 +21.21% 1
North West -25 33 £575 +21.05% 4
South East -103 25 £375 -26.11% 12
South West -26 24 £123 -73.51% 7
Midlands -39 15 £425 -15.00% 6
West Midlands -42 13 £425 -19.05% 5
East of England -33 11 £600 +9.09% 7
Wales - 11 £525 -
Scotland -16 9 £127 -73.12% 1
East Midlands -17 2 £388 -11.33% 1
North East - 1 £200 - 2
SAN
UK

SAN
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 9 (5.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (2.38%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.79%) Apache
4 2 (1.19%) CloudStack
4 2 (1.19%) IIS
5 1 (0.60%) Exchange Server 2010
5 1 (0.60%) nginx
5 1 (0.60%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (2.38%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.60%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 36 (21.43%) Azure
2 21 (12.50%) AWS
3 19 (11.31%) OpenShift
4 15 (8.93%) Microsoft 365
5 11 (6.55%) Entra ID
6 6 (3.57%) GCP
7 5 (2.98%) IaaS
8 3 (1.79%) GitHub
8 3 (1.79%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (1.19%) Azure Sentinel
9 2 (1.19%) Azure Storage
9 2 (1.19%) Datadog
10 1 (0.60%) Azure Stack
10 1 (0.60%) Cloudflare
10 1 (0.60%) OneDrive
10 1 (0.60%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 60 (35.71%) NAS
2 44 (26.19%) Firewall
3 43 (25.60%) DNS
4 36 (21.43%) VLAN
5 31 (18.45%) DHCP
6 18 (10.71%) Structured Cabling
7 16 (9.52%) Wireless
8 15 (8.93%) Cisco IOS
8 15 (8.93%) NX-OS
9 12 (7.14%) iSCSI
10 10 (5.95%) Fibre Channel
11 7 (4.17%) LAN
11 7 (4.17%) VPN
12 5 (2.98%) VoIP
12 5 (2.98%) WAN
13 4 (2.38%) TCP/IP
13 4 (2.38%) VSAN
14 2 (1.19%) SD-WAN
14 2 (1.19%) SSL
14 2 (1.19%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.76%) SQL Server
2 1 (0.60%) MySQL
2 1 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 19 (11.31%) JIRA
2 5 (2.98%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.60%) Git
General
1 50 (29.76%) Analytical Skills
2 43 (25.60%) Social Skills
3 20 (11.90%) Documentation Skills
4 9 (5.36%) Banking
5 5 (2.98%) Finance
5 5 (2.98%) Public Sector
6 4 (2.38%) Games
7 3 (1.79%) Legal
7 3 (1.79%) Military
8 1 (0.60%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.60%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (0.60%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 45 (26.79%) IT Engineer
2 38 (22.62%) Field Engineer
2 38 (22.62%) Field Service Engineer
2 38 (22.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 25 (14.88%) Architect
4 21 (12.50%) Senior
5 15 (8.93%) Data Centre Engineer
5 15 (8.93%) Support Engineer
6 14 (8.33%) IT Support
6 14 (8.33%) IT Support Engineer
7 12 (7.14%) Field Support Engineer
7 12 (7.14%) Storage Engineer
8 10 (5.95%) Administrator
9 9 (5.36%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
9 9 (5.36%) Storage Architect
10 7 (4.17%) Data Centre Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (4.17%) Technical Architect
11 6 (3.57%) Consultant
11 6 (3.57%) NetApp Engineer
11 6 (3.57%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.74%) Terraform
2 8 (4.76%) Redfish
3 4 (2.38%) Celery
3 4 (2.38%) Kafka
3 4 (2.38%) RabbitMQ
4 3 (1.79%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.79%) REST
5 1 (0.60%) JSON
5 1 (0.60%) LAMP
5 1 (0.60%) LDAP
5 1 (0.60%) LEMP Stack
5 1 (0.60%) RESTful
5 1 (0.60%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 96 (57.14%) Data Centre
2 40 (23.81%) Analytical Mindset
3 33 (19.64%) Replication
4 31 (18.45%) Enterprise Storage
5 11 (6.55%) Clustering
6 9 (5.36%) EMC VMAX
6 9 (5.36%) Hybrid Cloud
7 6 (3.57%) PKI
8 5 (2.98%) Fat Client
8 5 (2.98%) Thin Client
9 4 (2.38%) Animation
9 4 (2.38%) EMC VNX
9 4 (2.38%) Public Cloud
10 3 (1.79%) Cloud Native
10 3 (1.79%) FlexPod
10 3 (1.79%) Smartcard
11 2 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
12 1 (0.60%) Onboarding
12 1 (0.60%) Product Ownership
12 1 (0.60%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 69 (41.07%) Windows
2 52 (30.95%) Linux
3 47 (27.98%) Windows Server
4 26 (15.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (8.93%) Unix
6 12 (7.14%) AIX
7 11 (6.55%) CentOS
8 10 (5.95%) Rocky
9 8 (4.76%) Data ONTAP
10 6 (3.57%) Ubuntu
10 6 (3.57%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (2.98%) VMS
12 3 (1.79%) CoreOS
12 3 (1.79%) Solaris
12 3 (1.79%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (1.19%) HPUX
13 2 (1.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.60%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.60%) SUSE
14 1 (0.60%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (34.52%) Problem-Solving
2 53 (31.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 42 (25.00%) Disaster Recovery
4 38 (22.62%) Break/Fix
4 38 (22.62%) Customer Service
5 34 (20.24%) Migration
6 32 (19.05%) Capacity Planning
7 24 (14.29%) ITIL
8 23 (13.69%) Data Centre Operations
9 21 (12.50%) ITSM
10 18 (10.71%) Infrastructure as Code
11 17 (10.12%) Performance Tuning
12 16 (9.52%) Data Protection
12 16 (9.52%) High Availability
13 15 (8.93%) Runbook
13 15 (8.93%) Validation
14 14 (8.33%) Network Segmentation
14 14 (8.33%) Storage Management
15 13 (7.74%) Server Management
16 12 (7.14%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 29 (17.26%) PowerShell
2 28 (16.67%) Python
3 12 (7.14%) Bash
4 10 (5.95%) Perl
5 4 (2.38%) Shell Script
6 2 (1.19%) SQL
7 1 (0.60%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 55 (32.74%) Cisco Certification
2 52 (30.95%) CCNA
2 52 (30.95%) Network+ Certification
3 51 (30.36%) Security Cleared
4 43 (25.60%) Microsoft Certification
5 40 (23.81%) MCSE
6 38 (22.62%) A+ Certification
7 37 (22.02%) SC Cleared
8 17 (10.12%) CCNP
9 14 (8.33%) Server+ Certification
10 9 (5.36%) DV Cleared
10 9 (5.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 5 (2.98%) Azure Certification
12 4 (2.38%) Degree
13 3 (1.79%) NCDA
13 3 (1.79%) NCIE
13 3 (1.79%) OCP
13 3 (1.79%) Oracle Certification
14 2 (1.19%) ITIL Certification
14 2 (1.19%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (2.98%) SLA
2 4 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 2 (1.19%) Disclosure Scotland
3 2 (1.19%) NIST
4 1 (0.60%) GDPR
4 1 (0.60%) GRC
4 1 (0.60%) QA
System Software
1 52 (30.95%) VMware Infrastructure
2 35 (20.83%) Active Directory
3 21 (12.50%) VMware ESXi
4 20 (11.90%) Firmware
4 20 (11.90%) vSphere
5 19 (11.31%) Hyper-V
6 12 (7.14%) NFS
7 7 (4.17%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (3.57%) PowerHA
9 5 (2.98%) SRDF
10 4 (2.38%) VMware NSX
11 3 (1.79%) EMC RecoverPoint
11 3 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
12 1 (0.60%) Docker
12 1 (0.60%) Dovecot
12 1 (0.60%) KVM
12 1 (0.60%) Postfix
12 1 (0.60%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.60%) VMFS
Systems Management
1 31 (18.45%) Ansible
2 19 (11.31%) Kubernetes
2 19 (11.31%) NetBackup
3 14 (8.33%) vCenter Server
4 11 (6.55%) Dell DRAC
5 8 (4.76%) SnapMirror
5 8 (4.76%) Tivoli Storage Manager
5 8 (4.76%) WSUS
6 7 (4.17%) Microsoft Intune
7 5 (2.98%) Failover Clustering
7 5 (2.98%) Grafana
7 5 (2.98%) Prometheus
7 5 (2.98%) SCCM
7 5 (2.98%) vMotion
8 4 (2.38%) EMC VPLEX
8 4 (2.38%) SnapVault
9 3 (1.79%) EMC NetWorker
9 3 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
10 2 (1.19%) Puppet
10 2 (1.19%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 61 (36.31%) VMware
2 58 (34.52%) Dell
3 46 (27.38%) Cisco
4 31 (18.45%) Microsoft
5 26 (15.48%) NetApp
5 26 (15.48%) Veeam
6 19 (11.31%) ServiceNow
7 14 (8.33%) Red Hat
8 13 (7.74%) Juniper
9 11 (6.55%) Brocade
9 11 (6.55%) IBM
10 10 (5.95%) HP
11 9 (5.36%) Pure Storage
12 8 (4.76%) Commvault
13 7 (4.17%) EMC
14 6 (3.57%) Broadcom
14 6 (3.57%) Veritas
15 5 (2.98%) 3PAR
15 5 (2.98%) Fortinet
16 4 (2.38%) Perforce