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 16 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 269 217 194
Rank change year-on-year -52 -23 +47
Contract jobs citing SAN 183 126 215
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.75% 0.98% 1.06%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 6.92% 6.41% 6.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 118 88 156
10th Percentile £126 £357 £280
25th Percentile £358 £423 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £430 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year -14.00% -0.10% +17.76%
75th Percentile £540 £575 £600
90th Percentile £588 £600 £625
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +2.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 16
10th Percentile - - £12.63
25th Percentile - - £15.56
Median hourly rate £15.00 - £29.98
75th Percentile - - £40.00
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £61.00 - £23.80
% change year-on-year - - -55.72%

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 2,644 1,966 3,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.81% 15.34% 16.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,568 1,213 1,857
10th Percentile £229 £200 £203
25th Percentile £365 £300 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £458 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.83% -3.68% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £653 £630 £675
UK median daily rate £495 £488 £490
% change year-on-year +1.54% -0.51% -5.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 211 127 358
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.20 £13.43
25th Percentile £21.25 £16.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.25 £24.66 £46.14
Median % change year-on-year +71.33% -46.55% +156.31%
75th Percentile £65.88 £62.38 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.01 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £31.79 £40.00
% change year-on-year +17.96% -20.53% +116.22%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 -15 77 £500 +23.46% 20
Yorkshire -25 44 £477 +22.18% 5
South East -67 36 £408 -25.91% 12
North West -18 30 £575 +17.95% 11
South West -24 19 £123 -71.18% 8
Midlands -63 18 £425 -10.53% 3
Scotland -1 17 £425 -12.60% 3
West Midlands -61 13 £413 -13.16% 2
Wales -1 12 £418 +14.38% 3
East Midlands -22 5 £450 -18.18% 1
East of England -53 4 £500 -9.09%
North East - 3 - - 4
Northern Ireland +2 2 £375 +7.14% 1
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 4 (2.19%) Apache
1 4 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (1.09%) CloudStack
3 1 (0.55%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (3.28%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.55%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 39 (21.31%) OpenShift
2 31 (16.94%) Azure
3 24 (13.11%) AWS
4 7 (3.83%) IaaS
4 7 (3.83%) Microsoft 365
5 5 (2.73%) GCP
6 4 (2.19%) Entra ID
7 3 (1.64%) GitHub
7 3 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
7 3 (1.64%) Nutanix
8 2 (1.09%) PaaS
9 1 (0.55%) Azure Stack
9 1 (0.55%) Azure Storage
9 1 (0.55%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 72 (39.34%) NAS
2 29 (15.85%) DNS
3 28 (15.30%) Firewall
4 25 (13.66%) DHCP
5 21 (11.48%) Fibre Channel
6 20 (10.93%) iSCSI
6 20 (10.93%) VLAN
7 14 (7.65%) Structured Cabling
8 12 (6.56%) Cisco IOS
8 12 (6.56%) NX-OS
8 12 (6.56%) Wireless
9 8 (4.37%) LAN
9 8 (4.37%) TCP/IP
10 6 (3.28%) VPN
10 6 (3.28%) WAN
11 3 (1.64%) VSAN
11 3 (1.64%) WLAN
12 2 (1.09%) MPLS
12 2 (1.09%) Remote Desktop
12 2 (1.09%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (2.19%) SQL Server
2 2 (1.09%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (0.55%) MySQL
3 1 (0.55%) NoSQL
3 1 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
3 1 (0.55%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 13 (7.10%) Jenkins
2 12 (6.56%) JIRA
3 8 (4.37%) Git
4 2 (1.09%) GitLab
5 1 (0.55%) Bitbucket
General
1 64 (34.97%) Analytical Skills
2 48 (26.23%) Social Skills
3 14 (7.65%) Banking
4 13 (7.10%) Documentation Skills
5 6 (3.28%) Public Sector
6 4 (2.19%) Legal
7 3 (1.64%) Finance
7 3 (1.64%) Investment Banking
8 2 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.55%) Advertising
9 1 (0.55%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.55%) Military
9 1 (0.55%) Retail
9 1 (0.55%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 54 (29.51%) IT Engineer
2 50 (27.32%) Field Engineer
2 50 (27.32%) Field Service Engineer
3 22 (12.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 20 (10.93%) Support Engineer
5 19 (10.38%) Architect
5 19 (10.38%) IT Support
5 19 (10.38%) IT Support Engineer
6 16 (8.74%) Field Support Engineer
7 13 (7.10%) Administrator
8 11 (6.01%) Storage Engineer
9 10 (5.46%) Senior
10 8 (4.37%) Data Centre Engineer
11 6 (3.28%) Automation Engineer
11 6 (3.28%) Network Architect
11 6 (3.28%) Project Manager
12 5 (2.73%) NetApp Engineer
12 5 (2.73%) Network Engineer
12 5 (2.73%) Storage Architect
12 5 (2.73%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (3.83%) REST
2 6 (3.28%) Loki
2 6 (3.28%) Redfish
3 4 (2.19%) LDAP
4 3 (1.64%) Elastic Stack
4 3 (1.64%) Kafka
5 2 (1.09%) Celery
5 2 (1.09%) Middleware
5 2 (1.09%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (0.55%) .NET
6 1 (0.55%) Apache NiFi
6 1 (0.55%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 94 (51.37%) Data Centre
2 52 (28.42%) Analytical Mindset
3 35 (19.13%) Replication
4 26 (14.21%) Enterprise Storage
5 12 (6.56%) Hybrid Cloud
6 7 (3.83%) EMC VMAX
7 6 (3.28%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (2.73%) FlexPod
8 5 (2.73%) Management Information System
9 4 (2.19%) Cloud Native
9 4 (2.19%) Clustering
10 3 (1.64%) NVMe
11 2 (1.09%) CMDB
11 2 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
11 2 (1.09%) EMC VNX
11 2 (1.09%) Onboarding
11 2 (1.09%) Product Ownership
11 2 (1.09%) Public Cloud
12 1 (0.55%) Cyber Defence
12 1 (0.55%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 57 (31.15%) Windows
2 47 (25.68%) Linux
3 27 (14.75%) Windows Server
4 23 (12.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (9.29%) Unix
6 9 (4.92%) Data ONTAP
7 8 (4.37%) Ubuntu
7 8 (4.37%) VMS
8 7 (3.83%) AIX
9 6 (3.28%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (2.73%) CoreOS
11 3 (1.64%) Debian
12 2 (1.09%) CentOS
12 2 (1.09%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.55%) Rocky
13 1 (0.55%) Solaris
13 1 (0.55%) SUSE
13 1 (0.55%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.55%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (39.89%) Problem-Solving
2 54 (29.51%) Customer Service
3 50 (27.32%) Break/Fix
4 46 (25.14%) Disaster Recovery
4 46 (25.14%) Migration
5 42 (22.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 32 (17.49%) ITIL
7 31 (16.94%) Capacity Planning
8 30 (16.39%) Data Protection
9 26 (14.21%) High Availability
10 23 (12.57%) Performance Tuning
11 21 (11.48%) ITSM
12 19 (10.38%) DevOps
13 18 (9.84%) Infrastructure as Code
14 16 (8.74%) CI/CD
14 16 (8.74%) Containerisation
14 16 (8.74%) Runbook
15 15 (8.20%) Change Management
15 15 (8.20%) Data Centre Operations
15 15 (8.20%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 33 (18.03%) Python
2 22 (12.02%) PowerShell
3 14 (7.65%) Bash
4 13 (7.10%) Perl
5 7 (3.83%) Shell Script
6 3 (1.64%) SQL
7 1 (0.55%) C++
7 1 (0.55%) Java
7 1 (0.55%) Korn
7 1 (0.55%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 65 (35.52%) Cisco Certification
2 62 (33.88%) CCNA
3 61 (33.33%) Network+ Certification
4 55 (30.05%) Microsoft Certification
5 50 (27.32%) A+ Certification
5 50 (27.32%) MCSE
6 39 (21.31%) Security Cleared
7 26 (14.21%) SC Cleared
8 15 (8.20%) CCNP
9 14 (7.65%) DV Cleared
10 11 (6.01%) Server+ Certification
11 10 (5.46%) Degree
12 9 (4.92%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 5 (2.73%) OCP
13 5 (2.73%) Oracle Certification
14 3 (1.64%) Azure Certification
14 3 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
14 3 (1.64%) NCDA
14 3 (1.64%) VCAP
15 2 (1.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.28%) SLA
2 2 (1.09%) Disclosure Scotland
2 2 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (1.09%) NIST
2 2 (1.09%) QA
3 1 (0.55%) GDPR
3 1 (0.55%) GRC
3 1 (0.55%) GxP
System Software
1 44 (24.04%) VMware Infrastructure
2 25 (13.66%) Active Directory
3 24 (13.11%) vSphere
4 22 (12.02%) NFS
5 17 (9.29%) Firmware
6 14 (7.65%) VMware ESXi
7 7 (3.83%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (3.28%) Hyper-V
9 5 (2.73%) VMware NSX
10 3 (1.64%) DFS Replication
10 3 (1.64%) Docker
10 3 (1.64%) PowerHA
10 3 (1.64%) SRDF
11 2 (1.09%) Virtual Desktop
12 1 (0.55%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.55%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 1 (0.55%) KVM
12 1 (0.55%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.55%) VMFS
Systems Management
1 35 (19.13%) Kubernetes
2 30 (16.39%) Ansible
3 14 (7.65%) Grafana
3 14 (7.65%) NetBackup
4 11 (6.01%) Terraform
5 10 (5.46%) Prometheus
6 9 (4.92%) SnapMirror
7 8 (4.37%) Dell DRAC
7 8 (4.37%) vCenter Server
8 5 (2.73%) vMotion
8 5 (2.73%) vRealize
9 4 (2.19%) EMC NetWorker
9 4 (2.19%) EMC VPLEX
9 4 (2.19%) PowerCLI
9 4 (2.19%) SnapVault
9 4 (2.19%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 3 (1.64%) Check_MK
10 3 (1.64%) Red Hat Satellite
10 3 (1.64%) SCCM
10 3 (1.64%) WSUS
Vendors
1 69 (37.70%) Dell
2 60 (32.79%) VMware
3 38 (20.77%) Cisco
4 28 (15.30%) NetApp
5 22 (12.02%) Microsoft
6 18 (9.84%) EMC
7 17 (9.29%) Red Hat
8 16 (8.74%) ServiceNow
9 15 (8.20%) Brocade
9 15 (8.20%) Veeam
9 15 (8.20%) Veritas
10 14 (7.65%) Pure Storage
11 12 (6.56%) IBM
12 10 (5.46%) Commvault
13 8 (4.37%) HP
14 6 (3.28%) Fortinet
15 5 (2.73%) 3PAR
15 5 (2.73%) Google
15 5 (2.73%) Oracle
16 4 (2.19%) Broadcom