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 14 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 102 126 103
Rank change year-on-year +24 -23 -11
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,111 642 925
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.34% 2.22% 2.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.29% 6.54% 7.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 689 420 622
10th Percentile £318 £349 £298
25th Percentile £406 £413 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £720 £675 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £475 £535
% change year-on-year -1.58% -11.21% +7.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 22 45
10th Percentile £16.00 £24.18 £14.60
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £21.25
Median hourly rate £19.34 £27.50 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.67% +14.58% +10.75%
75th Percentile £34.12 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.21 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £23.25
% change year-on-year -21.57% +6.06% +9.36%

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 15,247 9,813 12,980
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.05% 33.86% 30.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,479 6,263 8,356
10th Percentile £313 £300 £269
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.24% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -0.62% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 724 386 900
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.85 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.00 £20.81 £15.17
Median hourly rate £42.50 £31.91 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +33.21% +2.10% +38.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.50 £83.31 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £30.00 £29.25
% change year-on-year +58.47% +2.56% +33.71%

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 14 May 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 14 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Centre in the UK

Data Centre
Top 17 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 14 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
England +20 902 £483 -8.10% 463
UK excluding London +6 630 £468 -1.58% 305
London +6 315 £550 +4.76% 196
Work from Home +29 292 £475 -8.21% 141
North of England +25 208 £460 +8.24% 78
South East +6 194 £463 +2.78% 100
Yorkshire -5 98 £365 -14.12% 25
North West +12 90 £481 -3.75% 38
Scotland +13 55 £466 +9.59% 23
Midlands -49 54 £467 -15.12% 34
South West -33 49 £498 -9.22% 35
West Midlands -46 48 £468 -14.83% 25
East of England -13 42 £487 +77.18% 31
Wales +3 34 £464 +15.94% 5
North East +4 22 £400 +263.64% 15
East Midlands -30 5 £400 -27.27% 9
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 6

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 22 (1.98%) Confluence
2 13 (1.17%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (0.90%) CICS
5 5 (0.45%) nginx
6 4 (0.36%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.36%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.27%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.090%) Apache
9 1 (0.090%) CloudStack
9 1 (0.090%) Mendix
Applications
1 19 (1.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 15 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (1.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.99%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.27%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.18%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.18%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
1 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.18%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.18%) Primavera
3 1 (0.090%) Maximo
3 1 (0.090%) Oracle Financials
3 1 (0.090%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 214 (19.26%) Azure
2 175 (15.75%) AWS
3 67 (6.03%) GCP
4 33 (2.97%) Microsoft 365
5 22 (1.98%) OCI
5 22 (1.98%) SaaS
6 21 (1.89%) Entra ID
6 21 (1.89%) GitHub
7 19 (1.71%) IaaS
8 15 (1.35%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 15 (1.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 13 (1.17%) PaaS
9 13 (1.17%) Power Platform
10 12 (1.08%) OpenShift
11 11 (0.99%) Azure DevOps
12 10 (0.90%) Azure Sentinel
13 9 (0.81%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 9 (0.81%) AWS Direct Connect
13 9 (0.81%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (0.72%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 313 (28.17%) Firewall
2 189 (17.01%) WAN
3 170 (15.30%) BGP
4 137 (12.33%) OSPF
5 121 (10.89%) Network Security
6 117 (10.53%) VPN
7 113 (10.17%) LAN
8 104 (9.36%) SAN
9 102 (9.18%) VXLAN
10 87 (7.83%) Structured Cabling
11 79 (7.11%) DNS
12 78 (7.02%) VLAN
13 74 (6.66%) Ethernet VPN
14 63 (5.67%) SD-WAN
15 61 (5.49%) DHCP
16 53 (4.77%) Cisco Nexus
17 50 (4.50%) Wi-Fi
18 42 (3.78%) NX-OS
19 41 (3.69%) BIG-IP
20 35 (3.15%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (0.99%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.90%) DataStage
3 8 (0.72%) Power BI
4 6 (0.54%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (0.45%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.36%) Big Data
6 4 (0.36%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.36%) Power Query
6 4 (0.36%) PowerPivot
6 4 (0.36%) SAP Data Services
7 3 (0.27%) GIS
7 3 (0.27%) Oracle Database
7 3 (0.27%) Oracle Reports
8 2 (0.18%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.18%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.18%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.18%) InfluxDB
9 1 (0.090%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.090%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 45 (4.05%) JIRA
2 36 (3.24%) Git
3 32 (2.88%) GitLab
4 27 (2.43%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.72%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (0.63%) Maven
7 6 (0.54%) ScriptRunner
8 5 (0.45%) JMeter
9 4 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 4 (0.36%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.36%) Subversion
10 3 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.27%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.090%) AppScan
11 1 (0.090%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.090%) LoadRunner
11 1 (0.090%) Metasploit
11 1 (0.090%) Postman
General
1 277 (24.93%) Social Skills
2 152 (13.68%) Finance
3 134 (12.06%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (7.29%) Public Sector
5 61 (5.49%) Documentation Skills
6 46 (4.14%) Banking
7 32 (2.88%) Legal
8 28 (2.52%) Telecoms
9 25 (2.25%) Manufacturing
9 25 (2.25%) Retail
10 21 (1.89%) Influencing Skills
11 12 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
12 10 (0.90%) Military
13 9 (0.81%) Law
14 8 (0.72%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.72%) Financial Institution
14 8 (0.72%) Marketing
15 6 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.45%) Portuguese Language
Job Titles
1 202 (18.18%) Network Engineer
2 176 (15.84%) Architect
3 123 (11.07%) Senior
4 82 (7.38%) Data Centre Engineer
5 74 (6.66%) Project Manager
6 63 (5.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 59 (5.31%) IT Engineer
8 56 (5.04%) Field Engineer
8 56 (5.04%) Lead
9 53 (4.77%) Field Service Engineer
10 49 (4.41%) Network Architect
11 46 (4.14%) Data Centre Manager
12 41 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
13 40 (3.60%) Analyst
14 37 (3.33%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 35 (3.15%) Senior Network Engineer
16 32 (2.88%) Infrastructure Manager
16 32 (2.88%) Support Engineer
16 32 (2.88%) Technical Architect
17 31 (2.79%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (4.14%) Middleware
2 32 (2.88%) 802.1X
3 13 (1.17%) LDAP
4 8 (0.72%) Redfish
5 7 (0.63%) Elastic Stack
5 7 (0.63%) Spring
6 5 (0.45%) Jinja
6 5 (0.45%) REST
6 5 (0.45%) XML
7 4 (0.36%) ADO
7 4 (0.36%) Kafka
7 4 (0.36%) NETCONF
7 4 (0.36%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.36%) VML
8 3 (0.27%) ARM Templates
8 3 (0.27%) EJB
8 3 (0.27%) Java EE
8 3 (0.27%) OpenConfig
8 3 (0.27%) RESTCONF
8 3 (0.27%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 60 (5.40%) Analytical Mindset
1 60 (5.40%) Hybrid Cloud
2 33 (2.97%) Management Information System
3 28 (2.52%) Clustering
3 28 (2.52%) PKI
4 27 (2.43%) Cloud Native
5 25 (2.25%) Fibre Optics
6 22 (1.98%) SCADA
7 21 (1.89%) Public Cloud
8 20 (1.80%) CMDB
8 20 (1.80%) Onboarding
8 20 (1.80%) Replication
9 19 (1.71%) Driving Licence
10 18 (1.62%) Enterprise Storage
10 18 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (1.44%) Private Cloud
12 14 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
12 14 (1.26%) NHS
13 12 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
13 12 (1.08%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 139 (12.51%) Windows
2 138 (12.42%) Linux
3 39 (3.51%) Windows Server
4 38 (3.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (1.98%) Unix
6 21 (1.89%) AIX
7 17 (1.53%) Solaris
8 12 (1.08%) CentOS
9 9 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
10 7 (0.63%) VMS
11 6 (0.54%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.36%) HPUX
12 4 (0.36%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.36%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.36%) SUSE
13 3 (0.27%) Apple iOS
13 3 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 207 (18.63%) Problem-Solving
2 188 (16.92%) Migration
3 102 (9.18%) High Availability
4 100 (9.00%) Stakeholder Management
5 96 (8.64%) ITIL
6 94 (8.46%) Infrastructure as Code
7 88 (7.92%) Roadmaps
8 86 (7.74%) Continuous Improvement
9 81 (7.29%) CI/CD
10 80 (7.20%) Load Balancing
11 77 (6.93%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 75 (6.75%) Validation
13 73 (6.57%) Change Management
13 73 (6.57%) Project Management
14 67 (6.03%) Project Delivery
15 66 (5.94%) Customer Service
16 65 (5.85%) Break/Fix
17 62 (5.58%) DevOps
18 61 (5.49%) Agile
19 59 (5.31%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 119 (10.71%) Python
2 40 (3.60%) PowerShell
3 37 (3.33%) SQL
4 25 (2.25%) Bash
5 23 (2.07%) Java
6 16 (1.44%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.08%) COBOL
8 11 (0.99%) MATLAB
9 10 (0.90%) Perl
10 9 (0.81%) Bicep
11 7 (0.63%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.45%) C
12 5 (0.45%) C++
12 5 (0.45%) JavaScript
12 5 (0.45%) VBA
13 2 (0.18%) Groovy
13 2 (0.18%) Korn
13 2 (0.18%) Lisp
14 1 (0.090%) R
14 1 (0.090%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 313 (28.17%) Security Cleared
2 234 (21.06%) SC Cleared
3 233 (20.97%) Cisco Certification
4 140 (12.60%) CCNP
5 106 (9.54%) CCNA
6 66 (5.94%) Degree
7 62 (5.58%) DV Cleared
7 62 (5.58%) Network+ Certification
8 54 (4.86%) Microsoft Certification
9 51 (4.59%) A+ Certification
9 51 (4.59%) MCSE
10 25 (2.25%) CCIE
11 23 (2.07%) Azure Certification
11 23 (2.07%) PMP
12 22 (1.98%) City & Guilds
12 22 (1.98%) PMI Certification
13 19 (1.71%) BICSI Certification
14 18 (1.62%) AWS Certification
15 16 (1.44%) JNCIS
16 15 (1.35%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (2.79%) SLA
2 25 (2.25%) PMO
3 24 (2.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 24 (2.16%) QA
4 22 (1.98%) NIST
5 18 (1.62%) GDPR
6 11 (0.99%) NCSC
7 9 (0.81%) Disclosure Scotland
7 9 (0.81%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.72%) GRC
9 6 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.27%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.27%) RMADS
12 2 (0.18%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.090%) COBIT
13 1 (0.090%) NEBOSH
13 1 (0.090%) SOC 1
System Software
1 95 (8.55%) VMware Infrastructure
2 60 (5.40%) Active Directory
3 46 (4.14%) VMware NSX
4 31 (2.79%) Firmware
5 29 (2.61%) vSphere
6 25 (2.25%) VMware ESXi
7 23 (2.07%) Virtual Machines
8 20 (1.80%) Hyper-V
9 14 (1.26%) Docker
10 10 (0.90%) KVM
11 6 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.36%) SRDF
12 4 (0.36%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
13 3 (0.27%) NFS
13 3 (0.27%) PowerHA
13 3 (0.27%) UAG
13 3 (0.27%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 2 (0.18%) Lustre
14 2 (0.18%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 121 (10.89%) Ansible
2 91 (8.19%) Terraform
3 62 (5.58%) FortiGate
4 42 (3.78%) Kubernetes
5 34 (3.06%) Grafana
6 26 (2.34%) Prometheus
7 16 (1.44%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (1.17%) Check_MK
8 13 (1.17%) SCCM
9 12 (1.08%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.99%) Podman
10 11 (0.99%) Red Hat Satellite
10 11 (0.99%) vCenter Server
11 9 (0.81%) PowerCLI
12 8 (0.72%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.72%) vMotion
13 7 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 6 (0.54%) EMC NetWorker
15 5 (0.45%) Avamar
15 5 (0.45%) Endace
Vendors
1 298 (26.82%) Cisco
2 146 (13.14%) VMware
3 145 (13.05%) Palo Alto
4 101 (9.09%) Microsoft
5 96 (8.64%) F5
6 95 (8.55%) Dell
7 88 (7.92%) Juniper
8 61 (5.49%) Arista
9 53 (4.77%) Aruba
9 53 (4.77%) Fortinet
10 47 (4.23%) CheckPoint
11 43 (3.87%) ServiceNow
12 37 (3.33%) Google
12 37 (3.33%) Red Hat
12 37 (3.33%) SolarWinds
13 33 (2.97%) IBM
14 30 (2.70%) Splunk
15 28 (2.52%) Meraki
16 27 (2.43%) Oracle
17 26 (2.34%) NVIDIA