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 16 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 135 105
Rank change year-on-year +34 -30 -20
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,182 635 937
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.35% 2.14% 2.15%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.24% 6.24% 7.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 707 408 623
10th Percentile £318 £302 £300
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £475 £538
% change year-on-year -0.21% -11.71% +7.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 22 52
10th Percentile £16.00 - £12.08
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £16.25
Median hourly rate £19.85 £26.57 £23.90
Median % change year-on-year -25.29% +11.17% +12.42%
75th Percentile £35.22 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.68 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £25.08 £22.50
% change year-on-year -22.87% +11.44% +7.23%

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 16,316 10,181 13,027
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.50% 34.37% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,004 6,390 8,269
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.24% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £660
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 831 442 940
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £20.09 £15.24
Median hourly rate £42.50 £33.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.79% -7.04% +57.88%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.40 £82.03 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £32.05 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.16% -8.43% +59.09%

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 16 June 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 16 June 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 16 June 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 +24 973 £500 -3.85% 492
UK excluding London +6 675 £474 -0.21% 314
London +12 343 £550 +4.76% 230
Work from Home +36 312 £480 -4.00% 150
North of England +21 242 £474 +11.53% 57
South East +8 207 £463 +2.78% 110
Yorkshire +3 122 £365 -9.32% 22
North West +11 96 £481 -4.47% 27
Midlands -51 58 £465 -13.49% 30
Scotland +4 57 £466 +6.46% 18
West Midlands -46 53 £467 -13.15% 25
South West -20 50 £495 -13.91% 38
East of England -14 38 £492 +31.20% 45
Wales +4 34 £468 +16.88% 15
North East -4 30 £625 +468.18% 8
East Midlands -29 4 £325 -36.97% 5
Northern Ireland - 2 £425 - 7
Channel Islands - 1 £575 -

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 25 (2.12%) Confluence
2 18 (1.52%) SharePoint
3 12 (1.02%) Microsoft Exchange
4 11 (0.93%) CICS
5 4 (0.34%) Apache
5 4 (0.34%) CloudStack
5 4 (0.34%) nginx
5 4 (0.34%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.34%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.085%) IIS
7 1 (0.085%) Mendix
Applications
1 15 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.02%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
5 9 (0.76%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
7 3 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Primavera
1 3 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.17%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.085%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 250 (21.15%) Azure
2 210 (17.77%) AWS
3 74 (6.26%) GCP
4 40 (3.38%) GitHub
5 39 (3.30%) Microsoft 365
6 38 (3.21%) IaaS
7 33 (2.79%) SaaS
8 30 (2.54%) OCI
9 25 (2.12%) Entra ID
10 19 (1.61%) PaaS
11 18 (1.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 15 (1.27%) Azure DevOps
12 15 (1.27%) OneDrive
12 15 (1.27%) OpenShift
13 13 (1.10%) Power Platform
14 11 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
15 10 (0.85%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 10 (0.85%) Nutanix
16 9 (0.76%) Amazon EKS
16 9 (0.76%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 329 (27.83%) Firewall
2 196 (16.58%) WAN
3 184 (15.57%) BGP
4 143 (12.10%) OSPF
5 123 (10.41%) VXLAN
6 122 (10.32%) VPN
7 119 (10.07%) SAN
8 118 (9.98%) Network Security
9 116 (9.81%) LAN
10 107 (9.05%) DNS
11 99 (8.38%) VLAN
12 93 (7.87%) Structured Cabling
13 85 (7.19%) Ethernet VPN
13 85 (7.19%) SD-WAN
14 82 (6.94%) DHCP
15 57 (4.82%) BIG-IP
16 50 (4.23%) Cisco Nexus
17 49 (4.15%) TCP/IP
18 48 (4.06%) Wi-Fi
18 48 (4.06%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (1.35%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.85%) DataStage
3 8 (0.68%) Power BI
4 7 (0.59%) Big Data
5 6 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.34%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.34%) Oracle Database
6 4 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
6 4 (0.34%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.34%) SAP Data Services
7 3 (0.25%) GIS
8 2 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.17%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.17%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
8 2 (0.17%) Power Query
8 2 (0.17%) PowerPivot
Development Applications
1 62 (5.25%) JIRA
2 39 (3.30%) GitLab
3 37 (3.13%) Jenkins
4 32 (2.71%) Git
5 6 (0.51%) ScriptRunner
5 6 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.42%) JMeter
6 5 (0.42%) Maven
7 4 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.34%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.34%) Subversion
8 3 (0.25%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
9 1 (0.085%) AppScan
9 1 (0.085%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.085%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.085%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.085%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.085%) MSI
9 1 (0.085%) Postman
General
1 296 (25.04%) Social Skills
2 158 (13.37%) Finance
3 131 (11.08%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (6.77%) Public Sector
5 62 (5.25%) Documentation Skills
6 45 (3.81%) Banking
7 36 (3.05%) Legal
8 35 (2.96%) Telecoms
9 24 (2.03%) Manufacturing
10 21 (1.78%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (1.69%) Retail
12 16 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (0.93%) Law
13 11 (0.93%) Military
14 8 (0.68%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.68%) Financial Institution
14 8 (0.68%) Marketing
14 8 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
15 6 (0.51%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 204 (17.26%) Network Engineer
2 183 (15.48%) Architect
3 133 (11.25%) Senior
4 95 (8.04%) Data Centre Engineer
5 91 (7.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 67 (5.67%) Project Manager
7 61 (5.16%) Lead
8 59 (4.99%) IT Engineer
9 55 (4.65%) Field Engineer
10 52 (4.40%) Field Service Engineer
11 49 (4.15%) Network Architect
12 43 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
13 39 (3.30%) Analyst
14 36 (3.05%) Data Centre Manager
14 36 (3.05%) Support Engineer
15 35 (2.96%) Infrastructure Manager
15 35 (2.96%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 35 (2.96%) Technical Architect
16 33 (2.79%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 33 (2.79%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (4.15%) Middleware
2 32 (2.71%) 802.1X
3 11 (0.93%) LDAP
4 10 (0.85%) Redfish
5 9 (0.76%) REST
6 7 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.59%) Spring
7 5 (0.42%) Jinja
7 5 (0.42%) Kafka
7 5 (0.42%) XML
8 4 (0.34%) ADO
8 4 (0.34%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.34%) YAML
9 3 (0.25%) .NET
9 3 (0.25%) EJB
9 3 (0.25%) Java EE
9 3 (0.25%) JSON
9 3 (0.25%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.25%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 64 (5.41%) Hybrid Cloud
2 58 (4.91%) Analytical Mindset
3 37 (3.13%) Management Information System
4 31 (2.62%) Clustering
5 30 (2.54%) Cloud Native
6 29 (2.45%) PKI
7 28 (2.37%) Enterprise Storage
7 28 (2.37%) Onboarding
8 25 (2.12%) Fibre Optics
9 22 (1.86%) Private Cloud
10 21 (1.78%) CMDB
11 20 (1.69%) Driving Licence
12 19 (1.61%) Public Cloud
12 19 (1.61%) Replication
13 16 (1.35%) SCADA
13 16 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
14 15 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
15 14 (1.18%) NHS
15 14 (1.18%) Operational Technology
16 12 (1.02%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 160 (13.54%) Windows
2 151 (12.77%) Linux
3 39 (3.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 38 (3.21%) Windows Server
5 24 (2.03%) Unix
6 23 (1.95%) AIX
7 18 (1.52%) Solaris
8 11 (0.93%) CentOS
9 10 (0.85%) Apple iOS
9 10 (0.85%) Mac OS
10 9 (0.76%) Ubuntu
11 8 (0.68%) VMS
11 8 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (0.42%) HPUX
12 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.42%) SUSE
13 4 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
14 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
15 2 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
15 2 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 208 (17.60%) Problem-Solving
2 203 (17.17%) Migration
3 118 (9.98%) High Availability
3 118 (9.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 114 (9.64%) Infrastructure as Code
4 114 (9.64%) Stakeholder Management
5 104 (8.80%) CI/CD
5 104 (8.80%) ITIL
6 94 (7.95%) Roadmaps
7 91 (7.70%) Continuous Improvement
8 84 (7.11%) Agile
8 84 (7.11%) DevOps
8 84 (7.11%) Load Balancing
9 80 (6.77%) Validation
10 74 (6.26%) Change Management
10 74 (6.26%) Project Delivery
11 72 (6.09%) Customer Service
12 70 (5.92%) Project Management
13 67 (5.67%) ITSM
14 64 (5.41%) Break/Fix
Programming Languages
1 146 (12.35%) Python
2 45 (3.81%) PowerShell
3 37 (3.13%) SQL
4 27 (2.28%) Bash
5 21 (1.78%) Java
6 16 (1.35%) Shell Script
7 14 (1.18%) Bicep
8 12 (1.02%) COBOL
9 11 (0.93%) MATLAB
10 10 (0.85%) Perl
11 9 (0.76%) ActionScript
12 8 (0.68%) PL/SQL
13 6 (0.51%) JavaScript
14 4 (0.34%) C
14 4 (0.34%) C++
14 4 (0.34%) Lisp
15 3 (0.25%) VBA
16 2 (0.17%) C#
16 2 (0.17%) JCL
16 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 313 (26.48%) Security Cleared
2 237 (20.05%) Cisco Certification
3 231 (19.54%) SC Cleared
4 141 (11.93%) CCNP
5 109 (9.22%) CCNA
6 75 (6.35%) DV Cleared
7 72 (6.09%) Degree
8 67 (5.67%) Network+ Certification
9 57 (4.82%) Microsoft Certification
10 50 (4.23%) A+ Certification
10 50 (4.23%) MCSE
11 31 (2.62%) Azure Certification
12 27 (2.28%) AWS Certification
13 25 (2.12%) City & Guilds
14 24 (2.03%) CCIE
14 24 (2.03%) PMP
15 23 (1.95%) PMI Certification
16 20 (1.69%) BICSI Certification
17 18 (1.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 17 (1.44%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (2.71%) SLA
2 27 (2.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 27 (2.28%) NIST
3 23 (1.95%) QA
4 22 (1.86%) PMO
5 19 (1.61%) GDPR
6 11 (0.93%) NCSC
7 10 (0.85%) GRC
8 9 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
8 9 (0.76%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.59%) RMADS
10 6 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.34%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.17%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 1 (0.085%) NEBOSH
14 1 (0.085%) WCAG
System Software
1 100 (8.46%) VMware Infrastructure
2 65 (5.50%) Active Directory
3 32 (2.71%) VMware ESXi
3 32 (2.71%) vSphere
4 30 (2.54%) Firmware
5 28 (2.37%) VMware NSX
6 27 (2.28%) Hyper-V
7 25 (2.12%) Virtual Machines
8 14 (1.18%) Docker
9 11 (0.93%) KVM
10 7 (0.59%) NFS
11 6 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
11 6 (0.51%) SRDF
11 6 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.34%) BitLocker
12 4 (0.34%) Terminal Services
12 4 (0.34%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (0.25%) PowerHA
13 3 (0.25%) UAG
Systems Management
1 139 (11.76%) Ansible
2 108 (9.14%) Terraform
3 56 (4.74%) FortiGate
4 48 (4.06%) Kubernetes
5 36 (3.05%) Grafana
6 30 (2.54%) Prometheus
7 26 (2.20%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (1.27%) vCenter Server
9 13 (1.10%) Check_MK
9 13 (1.10%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.93%) Podman
10 11 (0.93%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.93%) Red Hat Satellite
10 11 (0.93%) vMotion
11 10 (0.85%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.85%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.76%) SCCM
13 7 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.59%) EMC NetWorker
13 7 (0.59%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 306 (25.89%) Cisco
2 152 (12.86%) VMware
3 151 (12.77%) Palo Alto
4 113 (9.56%) F5
4 113 (9.56%) Microsoft
5 94 (7.95%) Dell
6 91 (7.70%) Juniper
7 73 (6.18%) Arista
8 64 (5.41%) Fortinet
9 57 (4.82%) ServiceNow
10 52 (4.40%) Aruba
11 44 (3.72%) Google
12 42 (3.55%) Red Hat
13 41 (3.47%) SolarWinds
14 37 (3.13%) CheckPoint
15 35 (2.96%) IBM
16 28 (2.37%) Oracle
16 28 (2.37%) Splunk
17 24 (2.03%) HP
17 24 (2.03%) NVIDIA