Data Centre Contract Job Trends

Data Center
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Data Centre in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Data Centre over the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 121 130 114
Rank change year-on-year +9 -16 -24
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,197 720 794
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.19% 2.19% 2.08%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.44% 6.15% 6.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 722 453 492
10th Percentile £318 £295 £363
25th Percentile £411 £388 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £515 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% -4.19% -0.46%
75th Percentile £650 £600 £619
90th Percentile £738 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £487 £538
% change year-on-year +2.62% -9.35% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 42 40
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £17.69 £25.07 £12.08
Median hourly rate £29.00 £25.15 £20.80
Median % change year-on-year +15.31% +20.94% -9.59%
75th Percentile £45.06 £34.00 £25.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £43.75 £28.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £25.08 £18.00
% change year-on-year -22.87% +39.31% -16.28%

All Generic Skills
UK

Data Centre falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 18,579 11,706 11,640
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.99% 35.54% 30.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,149 7,155 7,137
10th Percentile £325 £299 £294
25th Percentile £425 £406 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £540
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -4.63% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £749 £756 £802
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,179 586 477
10th Percentile £14.07 £15.13 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.99 £18.87 £21.25
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -40.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £68.75 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £30.05 £57.35
% change year-on-year +28.84% -47.60% +17.04%

Data Centre
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Centre relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Data Centre job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Centre
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Centre.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Centre

Data Centre
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Centre over the 6 months to 17 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Centre in the UK

Data Centre
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Centre.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Centre

Data Centre
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Centre over the 6 months to 17 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Centre in the UK

Data Centre
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Centre within the UK 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
England +3 1,005 £525 - 2,302
UK excluding London -28 628 £500 +2.62% 904
London +16 418 £550 +2.09% 1,428
Work from Home -6 280 £522 +2.35% 603
North of England -1 221 £500 +5.26% 179
South East -16 169 £545 +21.11% 265
Yorkshire 0 132 £480 +6.67% 54
North West -12 72 £525 -2.78% 86
South West -24 65 £600 +9.09% 82
Midlands -67 56 £450 -10.00% 112
Scotland -15 50 £375 -11.76% 73
West Midlands -67 44 £475 -4.33% 80
East of England -16 38 £474 -21.08% 146
Wales +7 36 £468 +55.83% 29
North East -19 23 £625 - 40
East Midlands -13 11 £413 -21.43% 32
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 26
Channel Islands - 1 £575 - 2

Data Centre
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 32 (2.67%) Confluence
2 19 (1.59%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (0.58%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.42%) Apache
5 5 (0.42%) CloudStack
6 4 (0.33%) IIS
7 3 (0.25%) CICS
8 1 (0.084%) nginx
8 1 (0.084%) SAS
8 1 (0.084%) Tomcat
Applications
1 25 (2.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
7 2 (0.17%) Navisworks
7 2 (0.17%) Revit
Business Applications
1 13 (1.09%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.084%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.084%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 250 (20.89%) Azure
2 212 (17.71%) AWS
3 58 (4.85%) GitHub
4 54 (4.51%) GCP
5 45 (3.76%) IaaS
6 44 (3.68%) Microsoft 365
7 37 (3.09%) SaaS
8 30 (2.51%) Entra ID
9 29 (2.42%) OCI
10 18 (1.50%) Azure DevOps
10 18 (1.50%) PaaS
11 16 (1.34%) Power Platform
12 15 (1.25%) OneDrive
13 14 (1.17%) OpenShift
14 13 (1.09%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 11 (0.92%) Nutanix
16 10 (0.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 7 (0.58%) AWS Direct Connect
17 7 (0.58%) Azure Sentinel
17 7 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 292 (24.39%) Firewall
2 184 (15.37%) WAN
3 177 (14.79%) BGP
4 124 (10.36%) DNS
4 124 (10.36%) VPN
5 118 (9.86%) VXLAN
6 114 (9.52%) Network Security
7 112 (9.36%) OSPF
8 108 (9.02%) VLAN
9 107 (8.94%) LAN
10 97 (8.10%) SAN
11 85 (7.10%) Ethernet VPN
12 84 (7.02%) DHCP
12 84 (7.02%) TCP/IP
13 78 (6.52%) SD-WAN
14 74 (6.18%) Structured Cabling
15 63 (5.26%) Wireless
16 59 (4.93%) Wi-Fi
17 54 (4.51%) Cisco Nexus
18 53 (4.43%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (3.09%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.25%) Power BI
3 11 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (0.84%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 10 (0.84%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 7 (0.58%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.50%) Db2
6 6 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (0.33%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
8 3 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.25%) Big Data
8 3 (0.25%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (0.25%) PostgreSQL
9 2 (0.17%) DataStage
9 2 (0.17%) Metadata
9 2 (0.17%) Sybase ASE
9 2 (0.17%) Sybase IQ
Development Applications
1 80 (6.68%) JIRA
2 38 (3.17%) GitLab
3 36 (3.01%) Jenkins
4 28 (2.34%) Git
5 7 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
6 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
7 2 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.17%) MSI
7 2 (0.17%) Toad
8 1 (0.084%) Claude Code
General
1 289 (24.14%) Social Skills
2 163 (13.62%) Finance
3 103 (8.60%) Analytical Skills
4 61 (5.10%) Banking
5 56 (4.68%) Public Sector
6 52 (4.34%) Telecoms
7 49 (4.09%) Documentation Skills
8 26 (2.17%) Retail
9 25 (2.09%) Legal
10 18 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
10 18 (1.50%) Manufacturing
11 14 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 14 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
12 8 (0.67%) Police
13 6 (0.50%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.50%) Investment Banking
13 6 (0.50%) Law
14 5 (0.42%) Cyber-Physical System
14 5 (0.42%) Marketing
15 3 (0.25%) Military
Job Titles
1 205 (17.13%) Network Engineer
2 195 (16.29%) Architect
3 160 (13.37%) Senior
4 113 (9.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 89 (7.44%) Data Centre Engineer
6 75 (6.27%) Project Manager
7 67 (5.60%) Network Architect
8 65 (5.43%) Lead
9 51 (4.26%) IT Engineer
10 48 (4.01%) Consultant
11 45 (3.76%) Senior Network Engineer
12 40 (3.34%) Data Centre Manager
13 38 (3.17%) Technical Architect
14 36 (3.01%) Field Engineer
15 34 (2.84%) Infrastructure Manager
15 34 (2.84%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 33 (2.76%) Support Engineer
17 31 (2.59%) Solutions Architect
18 30 (2.51%) Field Service Engineer
19 29 (2.42%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (9.36%) Terraform
2 39 (3.26%) Middleware
3 29 (2.42%) REST
4 16 (1.34%) 802.1X
4 16 (1.34%) YAML
5 14 (1.17%) JSON
6 9 (0.75%) .NET
7 8 (0.67%) LDAP
8 7 (0.58%) NETCONF
9 6 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
9 6 (0.50%) Redfish
9 6 (0.50%) SAML
10 5 (0.42%) Kafka
10 5 (0.42%) OpenConfig
10 5 (0.42%) RESTCONF
10 5 (0.42%) YANG
11 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
11 4 (0.33%) RESTful
12 3 (0.25%) .NET Framework
12 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 79 (6.60%) Hybrid Cloud
2 38 (3.17%) Public Cloud
3 37 (3.09%) Analytical Mindset
4 36 (3.01%) Private Cloud
5 33 (2.76%) Cloud Native
6 32 (2.67%) PKI
7 31 (2.59%) Management Information System
8 30 (2.51%) Fibre Optics
8 30 (2.51%) Replication
9 28 (2.34%) Enterprise Storage
10 26 (2.17%) Clustering
10 26 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
10 26 (2.17%) Onboarding
11 24 (2.01%) Operational Technology
12 19 (1.59%) SCADA
13 17 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
14 16 (1.34%) CMDB
14 16 (1.34%) Driving Licence
15 15 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
16 13 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 193 (16.12%) Windows
2 133 (11.11%) Linux
3 63 (5.26%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.76%) Unix
5 21 (1.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (1.34%) AIX
7 13 (1.09%) Mac OS
8 10 (0.84%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.84%) Solaris
8 10 (0.84%) VMS
9 8 (0.67%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.50%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.42%) HPUX
12 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.42%) SUSE
12 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.33%) CentOS
13 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 252 (21.05%) Migration
2 186 (15.54%) Problem-Solving
3 153 (12.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 153 (12.78%) Stakeholder Management
4 123 (10.28%) Infrastructure as Code
5 113 (9.44%) ITIL
6 104 (8.69%) CI/CD
7 103 (8.60%) Agile
8 102 (8.52%) High Availability
9 92 (7.69%) Validation
10 90 (7.52%) Project Delivery
11 87 (7.27%) Roadmaps
12 79 (6.60%) Continuous Improvement
12 79 (6.60%) Disaster Recovery
12 79 (6.60%) Zero Trust
13 72 (6.02%) Change Management
14 71 (5.93%) DevOps
14 71 (5.93%) ITSM
14 71 (5.93%) Technical Leadership
15 68 (5.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 166 (13.87%) Python
2 69 (5.76%) PowerShell
3 46 (3.84%) SQL
4 33 (2.76%) Bash
5 16 (1.34%) ActionScript
6 10 (0.84%) Bicep
7 9 (0.75%) C#
7 9 (0.75%) Shell Script
8 8 (0.67%) Perl
9 7 (0.58%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.42%) T-SQL
11 4 (0.33%) Go
11 4 (0.33%) Java
11 4 (0.33%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.33%) MATLAB
12 3 (0.25%) COBOL
12 3 (0.25%) JCL
12 3 (0.25%) Lisp
12 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.17%) Korn
Qualifications
1 307 (25.65%) Security Cleared
2 208 (17.38%) SC Cleared
3 176 (14.70%) Cisco Certification
4 106 (8.86%) CCNP
5 98 (8.19%) DV Cleared
6 68 (5.68%) CCNA
7 60 (5.01%) Degree
8 40 (3.34%) Network+ Certification
9 38 (3.17%) Microsoft Certification
10 36 (3.01%) A+ Certification
11 31 (2.59%) AWS Certification
12 30 (2.51%) MCSE
13 28 (2.34%) CCIE
14 26 (2.17%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 25 (2.09%) Azure Certification
15 25 (2.09%) CISSP
15 25 (2.09%) City & Guilds
16 22 (1.84%) PMP
17 21 (1.75%) PMI Certification
18 20 (1.67%) BICSI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (2.92%) QA
2 28 (2.34%) SLA
3 26 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 22 (1.84%) NIST
5 16 (1.34%) PMO
6 11 (0.92%) GDPR
7 10 (0.84%) GRC
8 9 (0.75%) JSP 440
8 9 (0.75%) NCSC
9 6 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
10 5 (0.42%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.33%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.33%) RMADS
12 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
12 3 (0.25%) ISO 31000
12 3 (0.25%) ISO 9001
12 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 2 (0.17%) HIPAA
13 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 146 (12.20%) VMware Infrastructure
2 92 (7.69%) Active Directory
3 51 (4.26%) vSphere
4 48 (4.01%) VMware NSX
5 38 (3.17%) Hyper-V
6 37 (3.09%) VMware ESXi
7 33 (2.76%) Docker
8 25 (2.09%) Firmware
9 14 (1.17%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (1.00%) NFS
11 6 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.42%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.33%) PowerHA
13 4 (0.33%) SRDF
13 4 (0.33%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.25%) KVM
14 3 (0.25%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 150 (12.53%) Ansible
2 52 (4.34%) Kubernetes
3 34 (2.84%) FortiGate
4 19 (1.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 19 (1.59%) Prometheus
5 17 (1.42%) vCenter Server
6 16 (1.34%) Grafana
7 15 (1.25%) VxRail
8 14 (1.17%) SCCM
9 12 (1.00%) Microsoft Clustering
9 12 (1.00%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.92%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.92%) SCOM
10 11 (0.92%) vMotion
11 10 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.75%) Dell DRAC
12 9 (0.75%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 8 (0.67%) Nagios
14 7 (0.58%) Check_MK
15 5 (0.42%) Cisco Prime
Vendors
1 302 (25.23%) Cisco
2 199 (16.62%) VMware
3 146 (12.20%) Microsoft
4 129 (10.78%) Palo Alto
5 112 (9.36%) F5
6 70 (5.85%) Arista
6 70 (5.85%) Fortinet
6 70 (5.85%) ServiceNow
7 69 (5.76%) Dell
8 63 (5.26%) Juniper
9 41 (3.43%) Aruba
10 38 (3.17%) CheckPoint
11 35 (2.92%) Red Hat
12 30 (2.51%) Veeam
13 28 (2.34%) Oracle
14 26 (2.17%) Google
15 25 (2.09%) IBM
16 24 (2.01%) Zscaler
17 22 (1.84%) Commvault
17 22 (1.84%) SolarWinds