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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 333 238 249
Rank change year-on-year -95 +11 -25
Contract jobs citing SAN 145 142 126
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.51% 0.92% 0.71%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.89% 6.84% 4.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 88 106 83
10th Percentile £126 £329 £298
25th Percentile £358 £416 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £532 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.97% +6.35% +17.65%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £609 £608 £608
UK median daily rate £495 £532 £500
% change year-on-year -6.91% +6.35% +11.11%
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% -55.51%
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 2,963 2,077 2,550
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.46% 13.42% 14.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,627 1,304 1,390
10th Percentile £213 £200 £205
25th Percentile £353 £315 £351
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £495
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -9.09% +7.03%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £640 £668
UK median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.71% -4.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 350 136 195
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.23 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.50 £22.58
Median hourly rate £29.50 £42.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year -30.59% -25.89% -0.26%
75th Percentile £65.88 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £80.68 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £33.00 £42.50 £51.00
% change year-on-year -22.35% -16.67% -9.72%

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 24 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 24 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 -31 60 £525 -3.67% 23
North West -37 30 £558 +1.83% 13
Yorkshire -15 29 £522 +16.78% 4
South West -19 21 £123 -73.51% 10
Midlands -37 16 £425 -2.75% 13
East of England -44 16 £600 +9.09% 13
South East -114 16 £165 -67.00% 28
West Midlands -36 11 £425 -19.05% 8
Scotland -18 9 £127 -70.89% 5
Wales - 7 £525 - 2
East Midlands -17 5 £425 +235.44% 5
North East - 1 £200 - 6
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 (7.59%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (4.14%) SharePoint
3 3 (2.07%) Apache
4 2 (1.38%) CloudStack
4 2 (1.38%) IIS
4 2 (1.38%) Skype for Business
5 1 (0.69%) Exchange Server 2010
5 1 (0.69%) nginx
5 1 (0.69%) Tomcat
Applications
1 2 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.69%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.69%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 35 (24.14%) Azure
2 17 (11.72%) AWS
2 17 (11.72%) Microsoft 365
3 15 (10.34%) OpenShift
4 9 (6.21%) Entra ID
5 4 (2.76%) GCP
6 3 (2.07%) Cohesity
6 3 (2.07%) GitHub
6 3 (2.07%) GitHub Actions
6 3 (2.07%) IaaS
7 2 (1.38%) Azure Sentinel
7 2 (1.38%) Azure Storage
7 2 (1.38%) Datadog
8 1 (0.69%) Azure Stack
8 1 (0.69%) Cloudflare
8 1 (0.69%) OneDrive
8 1 (0.69%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 53 (36.55%) NAS
2 41 (28.28%) DNS
2 41 (28.28%) Firewall
3 32 (22.07%) VLAN
4 28 (19.31%) DHCP
5 15 (10.34%) Structured Cabling
6 13 (8.97%) Wireless
7 12 (8.28%) Cisco IOS
7 12 (8.28%) NX-OS
8 8 (5.52%) iSCSI
9 7 (4.83%) Fibre Channel
9 7 (4.83%) TCP/IP
9 7 (4.83%) VPN
10 5 (3.45%) LAN
10 5 (3.45%) VoIP
11 4 (2.76%) VSAN
12 3 (2.07%) WAN
13 2 (1.38%) Connectrix
13 2 (1.38%) SSL
13 2 (1.38%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (5.52%) SQL Server
2 1 (0.69%) MySQL
2 1 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 16 (11.03%) JIRA
2 3 (2.07%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.38%) Git
General
1 45 (31.03%) Social Skills
2 35 (24.14%) Analytical Skills
3 24 (16.55%) Documentation Skills
4 6 (4.14%) Finance
5 4 (2.76%) Games
5 4 (2.76%) Public Sector
6 3 (2.07%) Banking
6 3 (2.07%) Military
7 2 (1.38%) Legal
8 1 (0.69%) Back Office
8 1 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.69%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (0.69%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 39 (26.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 31 (21.38%) IT Engineer
3 25 (17.24%) Field Engineer
3 25 (17.24%) Field Service Engineer
4 21 (14.48%) Architect
5 20 (13.79%) Senior
6 17 (11.72%) Storage Engineer
7 13 (8.97%) Data Centre Engineer
8 9 (6.21%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 9 (6.21%) Storage Architect
9 8 (5.52%) Support Engineer
10 7 (4.83%) Administrator
10 7 (4.83%) Backup Engineer
10 7 (4.83%) Data Centre Infrastructure Engineer
10 7 (4.83%) IT Support
10 7 (4.83%) IT Support Engineer
10 7 (4.83%) Storage and Backup Engineer
10 7 (4.83%) Technical Architect
11 6 (4.14%) Field Support Engineer
11 6 (4.14%) NetApp Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (7.59%) Terraform
2 6 (4.14%) Redfish
3 4 (2.76%) Celery
3 4 (2.76%) Kafka
3 4 (2.76%) RabbitMQ
3 4 (2.76%) REST
4 3 (2.07%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.69%) JSON
5 1 (0.69%) LAMP
5 1 (0.69%) LDAP
5 1 (0.69%) LEMP Stack
5 1 (0.69%) RESTful
5 1 (0.69%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 78 (53.79%) Data Centre
2 28 (19.31%) Enterprise Storage
3 26 (17.93%) Replication
4 25 (17.24%) Analytical Mindset
5 8 (5.52%) Clustering
6 7 (4.83%) Hybrid Cloud
7 6 (4.14%) PKI
8 5 (3.45%) Fat Client
8 5 (3.45%) Thin Client
9 4 (2.76%) Animation
9 4 (2.76%) EMC VMAX
9 4 (2.76%) EMC VNX
9 4 (2.76%) Public Cloud
10 3 (2.07%) Cloud Native
10 3 (2.07%) Driving Licence
10 3 (2.07%) Smartcard
11 2 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
11 2 (1.38%) Linux Command Line
12 1 (0.69%) Management Information System
12 1 (0.69%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 68 (46.90%) Windows
2 54 (37.24%) Windows Server
3 46 (31.72%) Linux
4 23 (15.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (10.34%) CentOS
6 12 (8.28%) Rocky
7 11 (7.59%) Unix
8 8 (5.52%) AIX
8 8 (5.52%) Ubuntu
9 7 (4.83%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (3.45%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (2.76%) Solaris
12 2 (1.38%) HPUX
12 2 (1.38%) Mac OS
12 2 (1.38%) VMS
12 2 (1.38%) Windows Server 2003
12 2 (1.38%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.69%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (38.62%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 46 (31.72%) Problem-Solving
3 34 (23.45%) Disaster Recovery
4 27 (18.62%) Capacity Planning
5 25 (17.24%) Break/Fix
5 25 (17.24%) Customer Service
5 25 (17.24%) ITIL
6 21 (14.48%) Migration
7 18 (12.41%) ITSM
8 17 (11.72%) Data Centre Operations
9 16 (11.03%) Validation
10 15 (10.34%) High Availability
10 15 (10.34%) Server Management
11 14 (9.66%) Infrastructure as Code
12 13 (8.97%) Patch Management
12 13 (8.97%) Storage Management
13 12 (8.28%) Network Segmentation
14 11 (7.59%) Data Protection
14 11 (7.59%) Performance Tuning
14 11 (7.59%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 31 (21.38%) PowerShell
2 20 (13.79%) Python
3 10 (6.90%) Bash
4 7 (4.83%) Perl
5 4 (2.76%) SQL
6 3 (2.07%) Shell Script
7 1 (0.69%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 52 (35.86%) Security Cleared
2 39 (26.90%) Cisco Certification
3 36 (24.83%) CCNA
3 36 (24.83%) Network+ Certification
4 35 (24.14%) SC Cleared
5 30 (20.69%) Microsoft Certification
6 27 (18.62%) MCSE
7 25 (17.24%) A+ Certification
8 14 (9.66%) CCNP
8 14 (9.66%) DV Cleared
9 11 (7.59%) Server+ Certification
10 9 (6.21%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 5 (3.45%) Azure Certification
12 3 (2.07%) Degree
12 3 (2.07%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (2.07%) NCDA
12 3 (2.07%) NCIE
13 2 (1.38%) AWS Certification
13 2 (1.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (1.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.45%) SLA
2 2 (1.38%) Cyber Essentials
2 2 (1.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
2 2 (1.38%) Disclosure Scotland
2 2 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.69%) QA
System Software
1 52 (35.86%) VMware Infrastructure
2 32 (22.07%) Active Directory
3 21 (14.48%) VMware ESXi
4 20 (13.79%) Hyper-V
5 17 (11.72%) Firmware
6 16 (11.03%) vSphere
7 10 (6.90%) NFS
8 4 (2.76%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (2.76%) VMware NSX
9 3 (2.07%) Docker
9 3 (2.07%) EMC RecoverPoint
9 3 (2.07%) PowerHA
9 3 (2.07%) SRDF
9 3 (2.07%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.69%) Dovecot
10 1 (0.69%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.69%) Postfix
10 1 (0.69%) Veritas Cluster Server
10 1 (0.69%) Veritas Volume Manager
10 1 (0.69%) VMFS
Systems Management
1 28 (19.31%) Ansible
2 20 (13.79%) NetBackup
3 16 (11.03%) Kubernetes
4 15 (10.34%) vCenter Server
5 11 (7.59%) Dell DRAC
6 8 (5.52%) WSUS
7 7 (4.83%) Microsoft Intune
8 6 (4.14%) Tivoli Storage Manager
8 6 (4.14%) vMotion
9 5 (3.45%) Failover Clustering
9 5 (3.45%) Grafana
9 5 (3.45%) Prometheus
9 5 (3.45%) SCCM
9 5 (3.45%) SnapMirror
10 4 (2.76%) EMC NetWorker
10 4 (2.76%) EMC VPLEX
10 4 (2.76%) SnapVault
11 3 (2.07%) Single Sign-On
12 2 (1.38%) Microsoft Clustering
12 2 (1.38%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 58 (40.00%) VMware
2 43 (29.66%) Dell
3 38 (26.21%) Cisco
4 36 (24.83%) Microsoft
5 28 (19.31%) NetApp
6 25 (17.24%) Veeam
7 13 (8.97%) Juniper
7 13 (8.97%) ServiceNow
8 12 (8.28%) Red Hat
9 10 (6.90%) Brocade
10 7 (4.83%) IBM
11 6 (4.14%) EMC
11 6 (4.14%) Veritas
12 5 (3.45%) Commvault
12 5 (3.45%) HP
12 5 (3.45%) Pure Storage
13 4 (2.76%) 3PAR
13 4 (2.76%) Fortinet
13 4 (2.76%) Perforce
14 3 (2.07%) SolarWinds