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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 124 103
Rank change year-on-year +20 -21 -16
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,188 661 942
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.35% 2.21% 2.15%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.20% 6.41% 7.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 705 426 624
10th Percentile £318 £301 £300
25th Percentile £406 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £681 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £538
% change year-on-year - -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 22 54
10th Percentile £16.00 - £12.08
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £16.25
Median hourly rate £21.00 £25.15 £23.90
Median % change year-on-year -16.50% +5.23% +12.42%
75th Percentile £35.22 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.53 £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 16,503 10,314 13,130
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.59% 34.54% 29.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,114 6,459 8,316
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £631 £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 853 453 949
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £19.97 £15.39
Median hourly rate £42.71 £32.81 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.16% -7.58% +57.88%
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.00 £62.00
90th Percentile £85.90 £81.35 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year +38.41% -9.26% +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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +16 979 £500 -3.85% 350
UK excluding London -2 674 £475 - 258
London +11 348 £550 +2.80% 148
Work from Home +32 317 £483 -3.50% 122
North of England +8 241 £474 +5.33% 47
South East +5 209 £475 +5.56% 98
Yorkshire -6 124 £365 -16.57% 21
North West +4 93 £497 -2.07% 18
Midlands -53 57 £467 -13.15% 29
Scotland +3 55 £463 +5.71% 12
West Midlands -48 53 £474 -11.81% 21
South West -22 50 £495 -13.91% 36
East of England -17 39 £492 +31.20% 22
Wales +4 34 £468 +16.88% 16
North East -6 30 £625 +468.18% 8
East Midlands -24 3 £325 -36.97% 8
Northern Ireland - 2 £425 - 5
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 27 (2.27%) Confluence
2 18 (1.52%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.93%) CICS
3 11 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (0.34%) Apache
4 4 (0.34%) CloudStack
4 4 (0.34%) OpenStack
4 4 (0.34%) WebLogic
5 3 (0.25%) nginx
5 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.084%) IIS
6 1 (0.084%) Mendix
Applications
1 15 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.01%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.84%) 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
Cloud Services
1 251 (21.13%) Azure
2 215 (18.10%) AWS
3 73 (6.14%) GCP
4 43 (3.62%) GitHub
5 39 (3.28%) IaaS
6 38 (3.20%) Microsoft 365
7 33 (2.78%) SaaS
8 30 (2.53%) OCI
9 25 (2.10%) Entra ID
10 19 (1.60%) PaaS
10 19 (1.60%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 16 (1.35%) Azure DevOps
12 15 (1.26%) OneDrive
12 15 (1.26%) OpenShift
13 13 (1.09%) Power Platform
14 11 (0.93%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 11 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
14 11 (0.93%) Nutanix
15 9 (0.76%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (0.76%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 332 (27.95%) Firewall
2 198 (16.67%) WAN
3 187 (15.74%) BGP
4 145 (12.21%) OSPF
5 125 (10.52%) VPN
6 123 (10.35%) VXLAN
7 117 (9.85%) SAN
8 115 (9.68%) LAN
8 115 (9.68%) Network Security
9 109 (9.18%) DNS
10 100 (8.42%) VLAN
11 94 (7.91%) Structured Cabling
12 89 (7.49%) SD-WAN
13 85 (7.15%) Ethernet VPN
14 79 (6.65%) DHCP
15 59 (4.97%) BIG-IP
16 52 (4.38%) Cisco Nexus
16 52 (4.38%) TCP/IP
17 48 (4.04%) Wi-Fi
17 48 (4.04%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (1.18%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.84%) DataStage
3 8 (0.67%) 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%) Geospatial Data
6 4 (0.34%) MongoDB
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%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
8 2 (0.17%) Power Query
8 2 (0.17%) PowerPivot
Development Applications
1 66 (5.56%) JIRA
2 39 (3.28%) GitLab
3 38 (3.20%) Jenkins
4 32 (2.69%) Git
5 6 (0.51%) ScriptRunner
5 6 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.42%) JMeter
7 4 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.34%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.34%) Maven
7 4 (0.34%) Subversion
8 3 (0.25%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.17%) MSI
10 1 (0.084%) AppScan
10 1 (0.084%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.084%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.084%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.084%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.084%) Postman
General
1 298 (25.08%) Social Skills
2 160 (13.47%) Finance
3 129 (10.86%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (6.73%) Public Sector
5 65 (5.47%) Documentation Skills
6 45 (3.79%) Banking
7 37 (3.11%) Legal
7 37 (3.11%) Telecoms
8 24 (2.02%) Manufacturing
9 21 (1.77%) Influencing Skills
9 21 (1.77%) Retail
10 17 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 11 (0.93%) Law
11 11 (0.93%) Military
12 8 (0.67%) Aerospace
12 8 (0.67%) Financial Institution
12 8 (0.67%) Marketing
12 8 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
13 7 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 204 (17.17%) Network Engineer
2 191 (16.08%) Architect
3 135 (11.36%) Senior
4 96 (8.08%) Data Centre Engineer
5 92 (7.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 68 (5.72%) Project Manager
7 60 (5.05%) Lead
8 56 (4.71%) IT Engineer
9 53 (4.46%) Field Engineer
10 52 (4.38%) Network Architect
11 49 (4.12%) Field Service Engineer
12 45 (3.79%) Solutions Architect
13 38 (3.20%) Technical Architect
14 37 (3.11%) Analyst
14 37 (3.11%) Data Centre Manager
15 36 (3.03%) Infrastructure Manager
16 35 (2.95%) Support Engineer
17 34 (2.86%) Senior Network Engineer
18 31 (2.61%) Administrator
18 31 (2.61%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (4.29%) Middleware
2 32 (2.69%) 802.1X
3 11 (0.93%) LDAP
4 10 (0.84%) Redfish
4 10 (0.84%) REST
5 7 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
5 7 (0.59%) Spring
6 5 (0.42%) Jinja
6 5 (0.42%) Kafka
6 5 (0.42%) XML
7 4 (0.34%) ADO
7 4 (0.34%) GeoJSON
7 4 (0.34%) RESTful
7 4 (0.34%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.34%) YAML
8 3 (0.25%) .NET
8 3 (0.25%) CSS
8 3 (0.25%) EJB
8 3 (0.25%) HTML
8 3 (0.25%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 67 (5.64%) Hybrid Cloud
2 55 (4.63%) Analytical Mindset
3 39 (3.28%) Management Information System
4 34 (2.86%) Cloud Native
5 31 (2.61%) Clustering
6 30 (2.53%) Onboarding
7 29 (2.44%) Enterprise Storage
7 29 (2.44%) PKI
8 26 (2.19%) Fibre Optics
9 24 (2.02%) Private Cloud
10 21 (1.77%) CMDB
10 21 (1.77%) Driving Licence
11 19 (1.60%) Replication
12 18 (1.52%) Public Cloud
13 17 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
14 16 (1.35%) SCADA
15 15 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
16 14 (1.18%) NHS
17 13 (1.09%) Operational Technology
18 12 (1.01%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 159 (13.38%) Windows
2 149 (12.54%) Linux
3 39 (3.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 37 (3.11%) Windows Server
5 24 (2.02%) Unix
6 23 (1.94%) AIX
7 18 (1.52%) Solaris
8 11 (0.93%) CentOS
9 10 (0.84%) Apple iOS
9 10 (0.84%) Mac OS
10 9 (0.76%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.59%) VMS
11 7 (0.59%) 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%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 206 (17.34%) Migration
2 203 (17.09%) Problem-Solving
3 119 (10.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 117 (9.85%) Stakeholder Management
5 116 (9.76%) High Availability
5 116 (9.76%) Infrastructure as Code
6 106 (8.92%) CI/CD
6 106 (8.92%) ITIL
7 94 (7.91%) Roadmaps
8 93 (7.83%) Continuous Improvement
9 88 (7.41%) Agile
10 86 (7.24%) DevOps
11 83 (6.99%) Load Balancing
11 83 (6.99%) Validation
12 75 (6.31%) Change Management
13 72 (6.06%) Project Delivery
14 70 (5.89%) Project Management
15 68 (5.72%) Customer Service
15 68 (5.72%) Zero Trust
16 67 (5.64%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 150 (12.63%) Python
2 43 (3.62%) PowerShell
3 37 (3.11%) SQL
4 27 (2.27%) Bash
5 19 (1.60%) Java
6 16 (1.35%) Bicep
6 16 (1.35%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.01%) COBOL
8 11 (0.93%) MATLAB
9 10 (0.84%) ActionScript
9 10 (0.84%) Perl
10 7 (0.59%) JavaScript
10 7 (0.59%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.34%) C
11 4 (0.34%) C++
11 4 (0.34%) Lisp
12 3 (0.25%) C#
12 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.25%) VBA
13 2 (0.17%) Korn
Qualifications
1 312 (26.26%) Security Cleared
2 234 (19.70%) Cisco Certification
3 227 (19.11%) SC Cleared
4 141 (11.87%) CCNP
5 106 (8.92%) CCNA
6 76 (6.40%) DV Cleared
7 72 (6.06%) Degree
8 64 (5.39%) Network+ Certification
9 54 (4.55%) Microsoft Certification
10 47 (3.96%) A+ Certification
10 47 (3.96%) MCSE
11 30 (2.53%) Azure Certification
12 25 (2.10%) AWS Certification
12 25 (2.10%) City & Guilds
12 25 (2.10%) PMI Certification
12 25 (2.10%) PMP
13 24 (2.02%) CCIE
14 20 (1.68%) BICSI Certification
15 19 (1.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 17 (1.43%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (2.78%) SLA
2 27 (2.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (2.19%) NIST
4 25 (2.10%) QA
5 22 (1.85%) PMO
6 19 (1.60%) GDPR
7 15 (1.26%) NCSC
8 10 (0.84%) GRC
9 9 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
9 9 (0.76%) PCI DSS
10 7 (0.59%) RMADS
11 6 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.34%) JSP 440
13 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
14 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
14 2 (0.17%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
14 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 2 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 103 (8.67%) VMware Infrastructure
2 63 (5.30%) Active Directory
3 33 (2.78%) VMware ESXi
4 32 (2.69%) VMware NSX
4 32 (2.69%) vSphere
5 30 (2.53%) Firmware
6 27 (2.27%) Hyper-V
7 24 (2.02%) Virtual Machines
8 15 (1.26%) 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%) UAG
13 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 138 (11.62%) Ansible
2 109 (9.18%) Terraform
3 57 (4.80%) FortiGate
4 49 (4.12%) Kubernetes
5 35 (2.95%) Grafana
6 30 (2.53%) Prometheus
7 27 (2.27%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (1.26%) vCenter Server
9 13 (1.09%) Check_MK
9 13 (1.09%) 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 (0.84%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
12 8 (0.67%) 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 (25.76%) Cisco
2 158 (13.30%) VMware
3 148 (12.46%) Palo Alto
4 114 (9.60%) Microsoft
5 113 (9.51%) F5
6 91 (7.66%) Dell
6 91 (7.66%) Juniper
7 73 (6.14%) Arista
8 67 (5.64%) Fortinet
9 58 (4.88%) ServiceNow
10 51 (4.29%) Aruba
11 44 (3.70%) Google
12 42 (3.54%) Red Hat
12 42 (3.54%) SolarWinds
13 36 (3.03%) CheckPoint
13 36 (3.03%) IBM
14 28 (2.36%) Splunk
15 25 (2.10%) Oracle
16 24 (2.02%) Citrix
16 24 (2.02%) HP