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 17 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 335 224 234
Rank change year-on-year -111 +10 0
Contract jobs citing SAN 146 146 135
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.52% 0.94% 0.76%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.95% 6.99% 5.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 89 108 93
10th Percentile £126 £329 £298
25th Percentile £358 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £527 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.08% +5.35% +21.21%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £608 £606 £617
UK median daily rate £478 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -9.05% +5.00% +6.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 18
10th Percentile - £29.09 £11.75
25th Percentile - £33.73 £11.81
Median hourly rate £15.00 £41.45 £26.25
Median % change year-on-year -63.81% +57.90% -54.35%
75th Percentile - £54.35 £48.75
90th Percentile - £62.09 £51.13
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 2,951 2,089 2,561
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.47% 13.50% 14.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,625 1,302 1,423
10th Percentile £210 £200 £205
25th Percentile £350 £325 £357
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £452 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.20% -9.70% +11.11%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £599
90th Percentile £650 £640 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £476 £500
% change year-on-year +5.04% -4.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 348 133 221
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.02 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.50 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.69 £42.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -37.20% -25.89% -0.26%
75th Percentile £67.47 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.32 £84.60 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £43.00 £50.50
% change year-on-year -24.42% -14.85% -10.60%

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 17 September 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 17 September 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 -46 61 £525 +2.94% 22
Yorkshire -26 31 £523 +21.58% 5
North West -29 29 £565 +3.20% 12
South West -23 22 £123 -73.51% 12
South East -121 17 £252 -49.65% 24
East of England -44 15 £600 +9.09% 11
Midlands -41 14 £425 -2.75% 20
West Midlands -44 11 £425 -19.05% 15
Scotland -17 10 £127 -73.09% 4
Wales - 7 £525 - 5
East Midlands -8 3 £325 +156.51% 5
North East - 1 £200 - 5
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 11 (7.53%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (4.11%) SharePoint
3 3 (2.05%) Apache
4 2 (1.37%) CloudStack
4 2 (1.37%) IIS
4 2 (1.37%) Skype for Business
5 1 (0.68%) Exchange Server 2010
5 1 (0.68%) nginx
5 1 (0.68%) Tomcat
Applications
1 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
1 1 (0.68%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 33 (22.60%) Azure
2 17 (11.64%) AWS
2 17 (11.64%) Microsoft 365
3 16 (10.96%) OpenShift
4 9 (6.16%) Entra ID
5 4 (2.74%) GCP
5 4 (2.74%) IaaS
6 3 (2.05%) GitHub
6 3 (2.05%) GitHub Actions
7 2 (1.37%) Azure Sentinel
7 2 (1.37%) Azure Storage
7 2 (1.37%) Cohesity
7 2 (1.37%) Datadog
8 1 (0.68%) Azure Stack
8 1 (0.68%) Cloudflare
8 1 (0.68%) OneDrive
8 1 (0.68%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 52 (35.62%) NAS
2 41 (28.08%) DNS
2 41 (28.08%) Firewall
3 32 (21.92%) VLAN
4 28 (19.18%) DHCP
5 15 (10.27%) Structured Cabling
6 13 (8.90%) Wireless
7 12 (8.22%) Cisco IOS
7 12 (8.22%) NX-OS
8 10 (6.85%) iSCSI
9 8 (5.48%) Fibre Channel
10 7 (4.79%) VPN
11 6 (4.11%) TCP/IP
12 5 (3.42%) LAN
12 5 (3.42%) VoIP
13 4 (2.74%) VSAN
14 3 (2.05%) WAN
15 2 (1.37%) Skype
15 2 (1.37%) SSL
15 2 (1.37%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (6.16%) SQL Server
2 1 (0.68%) MySQL
2 1 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 17 (11.64%) JIRA
2 3 (2.05%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.37%) Git
General
1 42 (28.77%) Social Skills
2 38 (26.03%) Analytical Skills
3 23 (15.75%) Documentation Skills
4 6 (4.11%) Finance
5 4 (2.74%) Banking
5 4 (2.74%) Games
6 3 (2.05%) Military
6 3 (2.05%) Public Sector
7 2 (1.37%) Legal
8 1 (0.68%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.68%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 38 (26.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 34 (23.29%) IT Engineer
3 28 (19.18%) Field Engineer
3 28 (19.18%) Field Service Engineer
4 21 (14.38%) Architect
5 20 (13.70%) Senior
6 16 (10.96%) Storage Engineer
7 13 (8.90%) Data Centre Engineer
8 9 (6.16%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 9 (6.16%) Storage Architect
9 8 (5.48%) Support Engineer
10 7 (4.79%) Data Centre Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (4.79%) IT Support
10 7 (4.79%) IT Support Engineer
10 7 (4.79%) Technical Architect
11 6 (4.11%) Administrator
11 6 (4.11%) Backup Engineer
11 6 (4.11%) Field Support Engineer
11 6 (4.11%) NetApp Engineer
11 6 (4.11%) Storage and Backup Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (7.53%) Terraform
2 6 (4.11%) Redfish
3 4 (2.74%) Celery
3 4 (2.74%) Kafka
3 4 (2.74%) RabbitMQ
3 4 (2.74%) REST
4 3 (2.05%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.68%) JSON
5 1 (0.68%) LAMP
5 1 (0.68%) LDAP
5 1 (0.68%) LEMP Stack
5 1 (0.68%) RESTful
5 1 (0.68%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 79 (54.11%) Data Centre
2 29 (19.86%) Enterprise Storage
3 28 (19.18%) Analytical Mindset
3 28 (19.18%) Replication
4 8 (5.48%) Clustering
5 6 (4.11%) Hybrid Cloud
5 6 (4.11%) PKI
6 5 (3.42%) EMC VMAX
6 5 (3.42%) Fat Client
6 5 (3.42%) Thin Client
7 4 (2.74%) Animation
7 4 (2.74%) EMC VNX
7 4 (2.74%) Public Cloud
8 3 (2.05%) Cloud Native
8 3 (2.05%) Smartcard
9 2 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (1.37%) Linux Command Line
10 1 (0.68%) CMDB
10 1 (0.68%) Driving Licence
10 1 (0.68%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 67 (45.89%) Windows
2 52 (35.62%) Windows Server
3 48 (32.88%) Linux
4 24 (16.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (10.27%) CentOS
6 12 (8.22%) Rocky
7 11 (7.53%) Unix
8 8 (5.48%) AIX
8 8 (5.48%) Ubuntu
9 7 (4.79%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (3.42%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (2.74%) Solaris
12 2 (1.37%) HPUX
12 2 (1.37%) VMS
12 2 (1.37%) Windows Server 2003
12 2 (1.37%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.68%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.68%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (37.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 47 (32.19%) Problem-Solving
3 33 (22.60%) Disaster Recovery
4 28 (19.18%) Break/Fix
4 28 (19.18%) Customer Service
5 26 (17.81%) Capacity Planning
6 22 (15.07%) ITIL
6 22 (15.07%) Migration
7 18 (12.33%) ITSM
8 17 (11.64%) Data Centre Operations
9 16 (10.96%) Validation
10 15 (10.27%) High Availability
10 15 (10.27%) Infrastructure as Code
10 15 (10.27%) Server Management
11 13 (8.90%) Patch Management
12 12 (8.22%) Network Segmentation
12 12 (8.22%) Performance Tuning
12 12 (8.22%) Storage Management
13 11 (7.53%) Data Protection
13 11 (7.53%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 31 (21.23%) PowerShell
2 21 (14.38%) Python
3 10 (6.85%) Bash
4 7 (4.79%) Perl
5 4 (2.74%) SQL
6 3 (2.05%) Shell Script
7 1 (0.68%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 51 (34.93%) Security Cleared
2 42 (28.77%) Cisco Certification
3 39 (26.71%) CCNA
3 39 (26.71%) Network+ Certification
4 35 (23.97%) SC Cleared
5 33 (22.60%) Microsoft Certification
6 30 (20.55%) MCSE
7 28 (19.18%) A+ Certification
8 14 (9.59%) CCNP
9 13 (8.90%) DV Cleared
10 11 (7.53%) Server+ Certification
11 9 (6.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 5 (3.42%) Azure Certification
13 3 (2.05%) ITIL Certification
13 3 (2.05%) NCDA
13 3 (2.05%) NCIE
14 2 (1.37%) AWS Certification
14 2 (1.37%) Degree
14 2 (1.37%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 2 (1.37%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.42%) SLA
2 2 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
2 2 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
2 2 (1.37%) Disclosure Scotland
2 2 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.68%) QA
System Software
1 51 (34.93%) VMware Infrastructure
2 33 (22.60%) Active Directory
3 21 (14.38%) VMware ESXi
4 19 (13.01%) Hyper-V
5 16 (10.96%) Firmware
5 16 (10.96%) vSphere
6 11 (7.53%) NFS
7 4 (2.74%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (2.74%) VMware NSX
8 3 (2.05%) Docker
8 3 (2.05%) EMC RecoverPoint
8 3 (2.05%) PowerHA
8 3 (2.05%) SRDF
8 3 (2.05%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.68%) Dovecot
9 1 (0.68%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.68%) Postfix
9 1 (0.68%) Veritas Cluster Server
9 1 (0.68%) Veritas Volume Manager
9 1 (0.68%) VMFS
Systems Management
1 29 (19.86%) Ansible
2 20 (13.70%) NetBackup
3 17 (11.64%) Kubernetes
4 15 (10.27%) vCenter Server
5 11 (7.53%) Dell DRAC
6 8 (5.48%) WSUS
7 7 (4.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (4.11%) Tivoli Storage Manager
8 6 (4.11%) vMotion
9 5 (3.42%) Failover Clustering
9 5 (3.42%) Grafana
9 5 (3.42%) Prometheus
9 5 (3.42%) SCCM
9 5 (3.42%) SnapMirror
10 4 (2.74%) EMC NetWorker
10 4 (2.74%) EMC VPLEX
10 4 (2.74%) SnapVault
11 3 (2.05%) Single Sign-On
12 2 (1.37%) Argo
12 2 (1.37%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 57 (39.04%) VMware
2 47 (32.19%) Dell
3 39 (26.71%) Cisco
4 34 (23.29%) Microsoft
5 27 (18.49%) NetApp
6 25 (17.12%) Veeam
7 14 (9.59%) ServiceNow
8 13 (8.90%) Juniper
9 12 (8.22%) Red Hat
10 10 (6.85%) Brocade
11 7 (4.79%) IBM
11 7 (4.79%) Pure Storage
12 6 (4.11%) EMC
12 6 (4.11%) HP
12 6 (4.11%) Veritas
13 5 (3.42%) Commvault
14 4 (2.74%) 3PAR
14 4 (2.74%) Fortinet
14 4 (2.74%) Perforce
15 3 (2.05%) Broadcom