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 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 240 252
Rank change year-on-year -112 +12 -18
Contract jobs citing SAN 137 133 121
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.48% 0.85% 0.69%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.64% 6.32% 4.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 83 103 79
10th Percentile £128 £329 £295
25th Percentile £358 £409 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% +17.65%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £590
90th Percentile £608 £611 £608
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 17
10th Percentile - £29.09 £11.75
25th Percentile - £33.73 £12.00
Median hourly rate £15.00 £41.45 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -63.81% +38.17% -49.15%
75th Percentile - £54.35 £48.75
90th Percentile - £62.09 £51.50
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £34.00 £23.80
% change year-on-year +54.41% +42.86% -40.50%

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 2,950 2,104 2,533
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.43% 13.41% 14.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,622 1,334 1,390
10th Percentile £213 £200 £200
25th Percentile £353 £313 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £453 £485
Median % change year-on-year +4.86% -6.60% +6.49%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £645 £663
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 138 169
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.45 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.97 £22.40
Median hourly rate £27.36 £42.22 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -35.20% -26.38% -0.26%
75th Percentile £65.88 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.41 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £41.72 £50.00
% change year-on-year -20.90% -16.56% -11.49%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 -42 53 £525 -3.67% 25
Yorkshire -17 26 £525 +17.45% 7
North West -39 26 £550 +0.46% 11
East of England -33 21 £550 - 14
South West -21 18 £123 -73.51% 11
Midlands -41 15 £425 -2.75% 13
South East -109 15 £165 -67.00% 23
West Midlands -33 10 £425 -19.05% 9
Scotland -19 9 £127 -70.89% 9
Wales - 6 £525 - 2
East Midlands -16 5 £425 +235.44% 4
North East - 1 £200 - 7
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 10 (7.30%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (4.38%) SharePoint
3 3 (2.19%) Apache
4 2 (1.46%) CloudStack
4 2 (1.46%) IIS
4 2 (1.46%) Skype for Business
5 1 (0.73%) Exchange Server 2010
5 1 (0.73%) nginx
5 1 (0.73%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.73%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.73%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 33 (24.09%) Azure
2 17 (12.41%) Microsoft 365
3 15 (10.95%) AWS
4 13 (9.49%) OpenShift
5 9 (6.57%) Entra ID
6 5 (3.65%) GCP
7 3 (2.19%) Cohesity
7 3 (2.19%) IaaS
8 2 (1.46%) Azure Sentinel
8 2 (1.46%) Azure Storage
8 2 (1.46%) Datadog
8 2 (1.46%) GitHub
8 2 (1.46%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (0.73%) Azure Stack
9 1 (0.73%) Cloudflare
9 1 (0.73%) OneDrive
9 1 (0.73%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 46 (33.58%) NAS
2 38 (27.74%) DNS
3 37 (27.01%) Firewall
4 29 (21.17%) VLAN
5 26 (18.98%) DHCP
6 13 (9.49%) Structured Cabling
7 11 (8.03%) Wireless
8 10 (7.30%) Cisco IOS
8 10 (7.30%) Fibre Channel
8 10 (7.30%) NX-OS
9 8 (5.84%) TCP/IP
10 7 (5.11%) iSCSI
10 7 (5.11%) VPN
11 5 (3.65%) Ethernet
11 5 (3.65%) VoIP
12 4 (2.92%) LAN
13 3 (2.19%) WAN
14 2 (1.46%) Connectrix
14 2 (1.46%) SSL
14 2 (1.46%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (6.57%) SQL Server
2 1 (0.73%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 16 (11.68%) JIRA
2 2 (1.46%) Git
2 2 (1.46%) Jenkins
General
1 43 (31.39%) Social Skills
2 29 (21.17%) Analytical Skills
3 24 (17.52%) Documentation Skills
4 6 (4.38%) Finance
5 4 (2.92%) Games
5 4 (2.92%) Public Sector
6 3 (2.19%) Military
7 2 (1.46%) Back Office
7 2 (1.46%) Banking
7 2 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.73%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.73%) Legal
8 1 (0.73%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.73%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 40 (29.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 25 (18.25%) IT Engineer
3 20 (14.60%) Field Engineer
3 20 (14.60%) Field Service Engineer
4 18 (13.14%) Architect
5 17 (12.41%) Data Centre Engineer
5 17 (12.41%) Senior
5 17 (12.41%) Storage Engineer
6 9 (6.57%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 9 (6.57%) Storage Architect
7 7 (5.11%) Administrator
7 7 (5.11%) Backup Engineer
7 7 (5.11%) Data Centre Infrastructure Engineer
7 7 (5.11%) Storage and Backup Engineer
8 6 (4.38%) NetApp Engineer
8 6 (4.38%) Support Engineer
9 5 (3.65%) Consultant
9 5 (3.65%) IT Support Engineer
9 5 (3.65%) Technical Architect
9 5 (3.65%) Technical Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (7.30%) Terraform
2 5 (3.65%) Redfish
2 5 (3.65%) REST
3 4 (2.92%) Celery
3 4 (2.92%) Kafka
3 4 (2.92%) RabbitMQ
4 3 (2.19%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.73%) JSON
5 1 (0.73%) LAMP
5 1 (0.73%) LDAP
5 1 (0.73%) LEMP Stack
5 1 (0.73%) RESTful
5 1 (0.73%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 74 (54.01%) Data Centre
2 32 (23.36%) Enterprise Storage
3 20 (14.60%) Analytical Mindset
3 20 (14.60%) Replication
4 8 (5.84%) Clustering
5 6 (4.38%) PKI
6 5 (3.65%) CMDB
6 5 (3.65%) Fat Client
6 5 (3.65%) Thin Client
7 4 (2.92%) Animation
7 4 (2.92%) EMC VMAX
7 4 (2.92%) EMC VNX
7 4 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
7 4 (2.92%) Public Cloud
8 3 (2.19%) Cloud Native
8 3 (2.19%) Driving Licence
8 3 (2.19%) Smartcard
9 2 (1.46%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (1.46%) Linux Command Line
10 1 (0.73%) NVMe
Operating Systems
1 64 (46.72%) Windows
2 50 (36.50%) Windows Server
3 43 (31.39%) Linux
4 22 (16.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (10.95%) CentOS
6 12 (8.76%) Rocky
7 10 (7.30%) Unix
8 8 (5.84%) AIX
9 7 (5.11%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (4.38%) Ubuntu
11 5 (3.65%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (2.19%) Mac OS
12 3 (2.19%) Solaris
13 2 (1.46%) HPUX
13 2 (1.46%) Windows Server 2003
13 2 (1.46%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (1.46%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.73%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (40.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 41 (29.93%) Problem-Solving
3 29 (21.17%) Disaster Recovery
4 22 (16.06%) Capacity Planning
5 21 (15.33%) ITIL
6 20 (14.60%) Break/Fix
6 20 (14.60%) Customer Service
7 16 (11.68%) Data Centre Operations
7 16 (11.68%) Validation
8 15 (10.95%) Migration
9 14 (10.22%) ITSM
9 14 (10.22%) Server Management
10 13 (9.49%) Change Management
10 13 (9.49%) High Availability
10 13 (9.49%) Patch Management
10 13 (9.49%) Storage Management
11 12 (8.76%) Asset Management
11 12 (8.76%) Infrastructure as Code
12 10 (7.30%) Network Segmentation
13 9 (6.57%) Infrastructure Management
Programming Languages
1 29 (21.17%) PowerShell
2 18 (13.14%) Python
3 8 (5.84%) Bash
4 7 (5.11%) Perl
5 6 (4.38%) SQL
6 3 (2.19%) Shell Script
7 1 (0.73%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 55 (40.15%) Security Cleared
2 37 (27.01%) SC Cleared
3 32 (23.36%) Cisco Certification
4 29 (21.17%) CCNA
4 29 (21.17%) Network+ Certification
5 24 (17.52%) Microsoft Certification
6 22 (16.06%) MCSE
7 20 (14.60%) A+ Certification
8 14 (10.22%) DV Cleared
9 12 (8.76%) CCNP
10 9 (6.57%) Server+ Certification
11 6 (4.38%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 5 (3.65%) Azure Certification
13 4 (2.92%) Degree
14 3 (2.19%) ITIL Certification
14 3 (2.19%) NCDA
14 3 (2.19%) NCIE
15 2 (1.46%) AWS Certification
15 2 (1.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 1 (0.73%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (2.92%) SLA
2 2 (1.46%) Cyber Essentials
2 2 (1.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
2 2 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.73%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (0.73%) QA
System Software
1 49 (35.77%) VMware Infrastructure
2 31 (22.63%) Active Directory
3 21 (15.33%) Hyper-V
4 18 (13.14%) VMware ESXi
5 16 (11.68%) Firmware
6 13 (9.49%) vSphere
7 9 (6.57%) NFS
8 4 (2.92%) Docker
9 3 (2.19%) EMC RecoverPoint
9 3 (2.19%) PowerHA
9 3 (2.19%) SRDF
9 3 (2.19%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (1.46%) GPFS
10 2 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
10 2 (1.46%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.73%) Dovecot
11 1 (0.73%) KVM
11 1 (0.73%) Postfix
11 1 (0.73%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.73%) VMFS
Systems Management
1 24 (17.52%) Ansible
2 20 (14.60%) NetBackup
3 14 (10.22%) Kubernetes
4 13 (9.49%) vCenter Server
5 10 (7.30%) Dell DRAC
6 8 (5.84%) WSUS
7 7 (5.11%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (4.38%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 5 (3.65%) Failover Clustering
9 5 (3.65%) Grafana
9 5 (3.65%) Prometheus
9 5 (3.65%) SCCM
9 5 (3.65%) SnapMirror
9 5 (3.65%) SnapVault
10 4 (2.92%) EMC NetWorker
10 4 (2.92%) EMC VPLEX
10 4 (2.92%) vMotion
11 3 (2.19%) Single Sign-On
12 2 (1.46%) Argo
12 2 (1.46%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 56 (40.88%) VMware
2 36 (26.28%) Dell
3 33 (24.09%) Cisco
3 33 (24.09%) Microsoft
4 28 (20.44%) NetApp
5 26 (18.98%) Veeam
6 13 (9.49%) Juniper
7 12 (8.76%) Red Hat
8 11 (8.03%) ServiceNow
9 8 (5.84%) IBM
10 7 (5.11%) Brocade
11 6 (4.38%) Veritas
12 5 (3.65%) Commvault
12 5 (3.65%) EMC
12 5 (3.65%) HP
13 4 (2.92%) 3PAR
13 4 (2.92%) Perforce
14 3 (2.19%) Citrix
14 3 (2.19%) Fortinet
14 3 (2.19%) SolarWinds