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 31 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 144 132 97
Rank change year-on-year -12 -35 +6
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 747 664 1,015
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.02% 1.99% 2.36%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.81% 6.20% 7.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 482 398 685
10th Percentile £278 £350 £313
25th Percentile £407 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% +2.38%
75th Percentile £598 £600 £650
90th Percentile £700 £675 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% +7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 28 23
10th Percentile £20.71 £11.75 £18.96
25th Percentile - £21.98 £21.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £24.18 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.01% +5.13% -64.06%
75th Percentile £36.50 £28.88 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.85 £41.25 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.00 £24.18 £23.00
% change year-on-year +90.23% +5.13% -65.15%

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 12,851 10,709 13,450
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.70% 32.08% 31.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,056 6,384 8,932
10th Percentile £280 £265 £263
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.82% -3.86% -
75th Percentile £630 £656 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 623 328 513
10th Percentile £13.96 £18.02 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.23 £23.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £27.33 £33.65 £42.19
Median % change year-on-year -18.77% -20.25% +27.85%
75th Percentile £61.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.75 £77.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.21 £32.50 £45.11
% change year-on-year -16.28% -27.95% +73.48%

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 31 December 2025.

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 31 December 2025.

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 31 December 2025. 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 -18 648 £500 -4.76% 336
UK excluding London -3 418 £475 -5.00% 203
London -13 241 £525 - 175
Work from Home +23 206 £525 -1.87% 105
North of England -2 139 £480 -3.52% 47
South East -18 92 £453 -9.50% 77
North West +18 88 £529 +5.80% 22
Midlands +7 86 £431 -25.69% 15
West Midlands 0 69 £472 -18.62% 11
Yorkshire -38 46 £398 -5.36% 20
Scotland +15 37 £450 - 20
South West -20 36 £550 +0.18% 25
East of England -15 30 £500 +18.34% 22
East Midlands -5 17 £179 -71.40% 4
Wales -6 11 £265 -33.75%
North East -4 8 £175 - 6
Northern Ireland - 2 £425 - 3

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 29 (3.88%) SharePoint
2 22 (2.95%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (1.74%) Confluence
4 11 (1.47%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.80%) Apache
7 5 (0.67%) Apache Spark
8 4 (0.54%) HCL Notes
8 4 (0.54%) nginx
9 3 (0.40%) CICS
9 3 (0.40%) GeoServer
9 3 (0.40%) Smallworld
9 3 (0.40%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.27%) FileNet
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle Coherence
10 2 (0.27%) ThingWorx
10 2 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.13%) IIS
11 1 (0.13%) OpenEdge
11 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 54 (7.23%) Microsoft Office
2 33 (4.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 26 (3.48%) MS Visio
4 18 (2.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (1.87%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.13%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 6 (0.80%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.13%) DELMIA
4 1 (0.13%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.13%) Primavera
4 1 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.13%) StreamServe
Cloud Services
1 138 (18.47%) Azure
2 108 (14.46%) AWS
3 68 (9.10%) Microsoft 365
4 44 (5.89%) GCP
5 24 (3.21%) Power Platform
6 17 (2.28%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 16 (2.14%) OpenShift
8 13 (1.74%) Entra ID
8 13 (1.74%) SaaS
8 13 (1.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 11 (1.47%) AWS Direct Connect
9 11 (1.47%) IaaS
9 11 (1.47%) PaaS
10 10 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (1.34%) GitHub
10 10 (1.34%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 8 (1.07%) npm
12 7 (0.94%) OCI
13 5 (0.67%) GitHub Actions
13 5 (0.67%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 219 (29.32%) Firewall
2 137 (18.34%) WAN
3 88 (11.78%) Wireless
4 84 (11.24%) VPN
5 78 (10.44%) BGP
6 73 (9.77%) LAN
7 63 (8.43%) Network Security
8 56 (7.50%) OSPF
9 54 (7.23%) DNS
10 53 (7.10%) Wi-Fi
11 44 (5.89%) SD-WAN
12 43 (5.76%) VLAN
13 38 (5.09%) SAN
14 36 (4.82%) Cisco Nexus
15 34 (4.55%) Cisco ISE
16 33 (4.42%) VXLAN
17 32 (4.28%) DHCP
18 31 (4.15%) MPLS
19 30 (4.02%) IPsec
20 27 (3.61%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (2.81%) Power BI
2 17 (2.28%) Relational Database
3 10 (1.34%) RDBMS
3 10 (1.34%) SQL Server
4 8 (1.07%) GIS
5 6 (0.80%) NoSQL
6 5 (0.67%) Apache Hive
6 5 (0.67%) Hadoop
6 5 (0.67%) HBase
6 5 (0.67%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.54%) Data Mining
7 4 (0.54%) InfluxDB
7 4 (0.54%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (0.40%) Big Data
8 3 (0.40%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (0.40%) DataStage
8 3 (0.40%) PowerPivot
8 3 (0.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 25 (3.35%) Git
2 18 (2.41%) Jenkins
3 15 (2.01%) Sonatype Nexus
4 13 (1.74%) JIRA
5 12 (1.61%) GitLab
6 11 (1.47%) Maven
7 8 (1.07%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.40%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.40%) ER Studio
8 3 (0.40%) ERwin
8 3 (0.40%) Gradle
8 3 (0.40%) ScriptRunner
8 3 (0.40%) Selenium
9 2 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
General
1 192 (25.70%) Social Skills
2 130 (17.40%) Finance
3 87 (11.65%) Public Sector
4 85 (11.38%) Analytical Skills
5 65 (8.70%) Telecoms
6 58 (7.76%) Banking
7 43 (5.76%) Documentation Skills
8 41 (5.49%) Manufacturing
9 27 (3.61%) Marketing
10 25 (3.35%) Electronics
11 23 (3.08%) Presentation Skills
12 18 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 15 (2.01%) Organisational Skills
14 12 (1.61%) Retail
15 11 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
16 7 (0.94%) Front Office
16 7 (0.94%) Investment Banking
16 7 (0.94%) Law
16 7 (0.94%) Legal
16 7 (0.94%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 120 (16.06%) Network Engineer
2 117 (15.66%) Architect
3 68 (9.10%) Project Manager
4 66 (8.84%) Analyst
5 52 (6.96%) Senior
6 45 (6.02%) Network Architect
7 35 (4.69%) Data Centre Manager
8 33 (4.42%) Consultant
8 33 (4.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 31 (4.15%) IT Support
10 30 (4.02%) Solutions Architect
11 28 (3.75%) Data Centre Engineer
12 27 (3.61%) Security Engineer
13 26 (3.48%) Lead
14 25 (3.35%) Desktop Support
15 24 (3.21%) Cisco Engineer
15 24 (3.21%) Infrastructure Manager
15 24 (3.21%) Support Engineer
16 23 (3.08%) 2nd Line Support
16 23 (3.08%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.08%) 802.1X
2 20 (2.68%) Middleware
3 11 (1.47%) RFC 2544
4 7 (0.94%) LDAP
5 5 (0.67%) Spark Streaming
6 4 (0.54%) Jinja
6 4 (0.54%) VML
7 3 (0.40%) REST
8 2 (0.27%) .NET
8 2 (0.27%) ADO
8 2 (0.27%) ARM Templates
8 2 (0.27%) eBPF
8 2 (0.27%) EJB
8 2 (0.27%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.27%) Java SE
8 2 (0.27%) ModSecurity
8 2 (0.27%) NETCONF
8 2 (0.27%) OpenLayers
8 2 (0.27%) Spring
8 2 (0.27%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 44 (5.89%) Hybrid Cloud
2 32 (4.28%) Cloud Native
3 25 (3.35%) Public Cloud
4 20 (2.68%) Self-Motivation
5 18 (2.41%) Replication
6 17 (2.28%) Driving Licence
7 16 (2.14%) Fibre Optics
8 15 (2.01%) Mainframe
8 15 (2.01%) Onboarding
9 13 (1.74%) Private Cloud
9 13 (1.74%) SCADA
10 12 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
11 11 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (1.47%) Management Information System
12 10 (1.34%) PKI
13 9 (1.20%) CMDB
13 9 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
14 8 (1.07%) Clustering
15 7 (0.94%) Product Ownership
15 7 (0.94%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 95 (12.72%) Windows
2 76 (10.17%) Linux
3 40 (5.35%) Windows Server
4 39 (5.22%) Android
4 39 (5.22%) Mac OS
5 21 (2.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (1.87%) Unix
7 9 (1.20%) CentOS
8 7 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.80%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.67%) VMS
11 4 (0.54%) Solaris
11 4 (0.54%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.54%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.54%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.27%) AIX
12 2 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.27%) zOS
13 1 (0.13%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (16.73%) Migration
2 109 (14.59%) Problem-Solving
3 89 (11.91%) Stakeholder Management
4 66 (8.84%) ITIL
5 63 (8.43%) Agile
6 58 (7.76%) Project Management
7 55 (7.36%) Infrastructure as Code
8 53 (7.10%) Project Delivery
9 49 (6.56%) CI/CD
9 49 (6.56%) DevOps
10 47 (6.29%) Network Design
10 47 (6.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 45 (6.02%) Change Management
12 44 (5.89%) Load Balancing
12 44 (5.89%) Service Management
13 43 (5.76%) Business Intelligence
13 43 (5.76%) Customer Service
14 40 (5.35%) Data Centre Operations
14 40 (5.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 40 (5.35%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 78 (10.44%) Python
2 47 (6.29%) PowerShell
3 38 (5.09%) SQL
4 21 (2.81%) Bash
5 20 (2.68%) Java
6 10 (1.34%) Perl
7 9 (1.20%) Shell Script
8 8 (1.07%) Lisp
9 6 (0.80%) Go
10 5 (0.67%) C
11 4 (0.54%) VBA
12 3 (0.40%) C++
12 3 (0.40%) MATLAB
12 3 (0.40%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.27%) Bicep
13 2 (0.27%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.27%) Ruby
14 1 (0.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.13%) JCL
14 1 (0.13%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 238 (31.86%) Security Cleared
2 198 (26.51%) SC Cleared
3 106 (14.19%) Cisco Certification
4 80 (10.71%) CCNP
5 60 (8.03%) Degree
6 43 (5.76%) DV Cleared
7 36 (4.82%) CCNA
8 28 (3.75%) CCIE
9 22 (2.95%) AWS Certification
10 15 (2.01%) PMP
11 14 (1.87%) CISSP
11 14 (1.87%) JNCIE
11 14 (1.87%) PMI Certification
12 9 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
13 8 (1.07%) BPSS Clearance
13 8 (1.07%) Network+ Certification
13 8 (1.07%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 7 (0.94%) A+ Certification
14 7 (0.94%) MCSE
14 7 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (2.81%) NIST
2 20 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (2.41%) PCI DSS
3 18 (2.41%) PMO
3 18 (2.41%) SLA
4 14 (1.87%) QA
5 13 (1.74%) GDPR
6 11 (1.47%) Data Quality
7 6 (0.80%) NCSC
8 4 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.27%) ISO 22301
9 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 2 (0.27%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.13%) GRC
10 1 (0.13%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 78 (10.44%) VMware Infrastructure
2 52 (6.96%) Active Directory
3 43 (5.76%) VMware NSX
4 28 (3.75%) Docker
5 19 (2.54%) Virtual Machines
6 16 (2.14%) Hyper-V
7 14 (1.87%) vSphere
8 9 (1.20%) Firmware
9 7 (0.94%) KVM
9 7 (0.94%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.67%) HDFS
11 3 (0.40%) Lustre
12 2 (0.27%) Ceph
12 2 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
12 2 (0.27%) NFS
12 2 (0.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.27%) SRDF
12 2 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.27%) Xen
13 1 (0.13%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 82 (10.98%) Ansible
2 74 (9.91%) Terraform
3 34 (4.55%) FortiGate
4 24 (3.21%) Kubernetes
5 23 (3.08%) SCCM
6 16 (2.14%) Grafana
7 11 (1.47%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (1.34%) SCOM
8 10 (1.34%) vCenter Server
9 9 (1.20%) Puppet
10 8 (1.07%) Prometheus
11 7 (0.94%) CASB
12 6 (0.80%) SCOrch
12 6 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
13 5 (0.67%) Hadoop YARN
14 4 (0.54%) Check_MK
14 4 (0.54%) Control-M
14 4 (0.54%) Podman
15 3 (0.40%) Nagios
15 3 (0.40%) OPNET
Vendors
1 250 (33.47%) Cisco
2 98 (13.12%) VMware
3 89 (11.91%) Microsoft
3 89 (11.91%) Palo Alto
4 66 (8.84%) Dell
5 55 (7.36%) Juniper
6 54 (7.23%) F5
7 47 (6.29%) HP
8 39 (5.22%) Apple
9 38 (5.09%) CheckPoint
10 37 (4.95%) SAP
10 37 (4.95%) ServiceNow
11 34 (4.55%) Oracle
12 33 (4.42%) Fortinet
13 32 (4.28%) Meraki
14 29 (3.88%) Aruba
15 19 (2.54%) Arista
16 16 (2.14%) Citrix
17 14 (1.87%) NetApp
17 14 (1.87%) Remedy