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 10 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 115 117 105
Rank change year-on-year +2 -12 -17
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,198 760 840
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.25% 2.29% 2.17%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.72% 6.55% 7.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 705 484 569
10th Percentile £325 £300 £350
25th Percentile £413 £400 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £515 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.78% -4.19% -0.34%
75th Percentile £638 £600 £625
90th Percentile £769 £688 £701
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £487 £538
% change year-on-year +1.59% -9.43% +7.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 33 39
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £24.66 £12.08
Median hourly rate £25.00 £25.15 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.60% +25.75% -
75th Percentile £38.75 £31.00 £25.83
90th Percentile £79.90 £43.75 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £16.50
% change year-on-year -21.57% +49.45% -6.88%

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 17,836 11,606 11,781
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.44% 35.01% 30.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,817 7,151 7,573
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £640 £675
90th Percentile £750 £770 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 998 557 606
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.13 £12.44
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.87 £18.27
Median hourly rate £43.50 £29.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +47.46% -34.44% +18.42%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £66.88
90th Percentile £85.00 £77.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +46.53% -33.33% +10.86%

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 10 August 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 10 August 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 10 August 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 +8 1,010 £525 - 1,337
UK excluding London -12 652 £495 +1.59% 554
London +7 395 £561 +4.71% 843
Work from Home +11 296 £525 +1.74% 395
North of England -1 220 £492 +9.33% 141
South East -12 208 £525 +6.60% 142
Yorkshire -1 128 £365 -9.88% 38
North West -10 77 £550 +5.92% 60
South West -26 66 £525 -4.55% 58
Midlands -59 57 £456 -13.14% 53
West Midlands -52 52 £466 -6.82% 36
Wales +2 41 £468 +24.67% 15
Scotland -12 41 £425 -5.56% 41
East of England -17 29 £479 -20.21% 104
North East -23 21 £625 +468.18% 43
East Midlands -18 4 £363 -33.49% 17
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 32 (2.67%) Confluence
2 16 (1.34%) SharePoint
3 10 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (0.58%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.42%) Apache
5 5 (0.42%) CICS
5 5 (0.42%) CloudStack
6 3 (0.25%) nginx
6 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.25%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.083%) IIS
7 1 (0.083%) Mendix
7 1 (0.083%) SAS
Applications
1 20 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.83%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 11 (0.92%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.25%) Primavera
3 2 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
3 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
3 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 254 (21.20%) Azure
2 226 (18.86%) AWS
3 64 (5.34%) GCP
4 44 (3.67%) GitHub
5 39 (3.26%) IaaS
6 35 (2.92%) Microsoft 365
7 34 (2.84%) SaaS
8 29 (2.42%) OCI
9 26 (2.17%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.50%) Power Platform
11 16 (1.34%) OpenShift
11 16 (1.34%) PaaS
12 14 (1.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 13 (1.09%) Azure DevOps
13 13 (1.09%) OneDrive
14 10 (0.83%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 10 (0.83%) Azure Sentinel
15 8 (0.67%) GitHub Actions
15 8 (0.67%) Nutanix
16 6 (0.50%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 319 (26.63%) Firewall
2 185 (15.44%) WAN
3 181 (15.11%) BGP
4 134 (11.19%) DNS
4 134 (11.19%) OSPF
5 131 (10.93%) VPN
6 127 (10.60%) VXLAN
7 120 (10.02%) SAN
8 108 (9.02%) LAN
9 102 (8.51%) DHCP
10 101 (8.43%) Network Security
11 100 (8.35%) VLAN
12 88 (7.35%) Ethernet VPN
13 84 (7.01%) SD-WAN
14 82 (6.84%) Structured Cabling
15 79 (6.59%) TCP/IP
16 60 (5.01%) BIG-IP
17 57 (4.76%) Wireless
18 53 (4.42%) Wi-Fi
19 50 (4.17%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (2.34%) SQL Server
2 14 (1.17%) Power BI
3 9 (0.75%) SQL Server Analysis Services
3 9 (0.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 9 (0.75%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 7 (0.58%) Big Data
4 7 (0.58%) Oracle Database
5 6 (0.50%) Db2
5 6 (0.50%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.33%) DataStage
6 4 (0.33%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
6 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database 12c
6 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
6 4 (0.33%) SAP Data Services
7 3 (0.25%) GIS
7 3 (0.25%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 78 (6.51%) JIRA
2 30 (2.50%) GitLab
3 28 (2.34%) Jenkins
4 26 (2.17%) Git
5 8 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.42%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.33%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.33%) JMeter
7 4 (0.33%) Maven
7 4 (0.33%) Subversion
8 3 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
8 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.17%) MSI
9 2 (0.17%) Toad
10 1 (0.083%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.083%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.083%) Postman
General
1 290 (24.21%) Social Skills
2 156 (13.02%) Finance
3 122 (10.18%) Analytical Skills
4 67 (5.59%) Public Sector
5 51 (4.26%) Banking
6 46 (3.84%) Telecoms
7 42 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
8 29 (2.42%) Retail
9 23 (1.92%) Legal
10 22 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
11 17 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 16 (1.34%) Manufacturing
13 12 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.75%) Law
15 8 (0.67%) Police
16 7 (0.58%) Financial Institution
16 7 (0.58%) Military
17 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
17 5 (0.42%) Marketing
18 3 (0.25%) Billing
Job Titles
1 201 (16.78%) Architect
2 184 (15.36%) Network Engineer
3 146 (12.19%) Senior
4 118 (9.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 102 (8.51%) Data Centre Engineer
6 80 (6.68%) Project Manager
7 63 (5.26%) Network Architect
8 58 (4.84%) Lead
9 52 (4.34%) IT Engineer
10 47 (3.92%) Field Engineer
11 45 (3.76%) Technical Architect
12 44 (3.67%) Field Service Engineer
13 43 (3.59%) Infrastructure Manager
14 42 (3.51%) Data Centre Manager
15 40 (3.34%) Solutions Architect
16 39 (3.26%) Senior Network Engineer
17 35 (2.92%) Support Engineer
18 32 (2.67%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
19 31 (2.59%) Consultant
20 30 (2.50%) Infrastructure Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (4.09%) Middleware
2 32 (2.67%) 802.1X
3 15 (1.25%) REST
4 10 (0.83%) Redfish
5 8 (0.67%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (0.67%) LDAP
5 8 (0.67%) NETCONF
6 7 (0.58%) OpenConfig
6 7 (0.58%) YAML
6 7 (0.58%) YANG
7 6 (0.50%) JSON
7 6 (0.50%) RESTCONF
7 6 (0.50%) SAML
7 6 (0.50%) Spring
8 5 (0.42%) .NET
8 5 (0.42%) Jinja
8 5 (0.42%) XML
9 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
9 4 (0.33%) RESTful
10 3 (0.25%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 72 (6.01%) Hybrid Cloud
2 52 (4.34%) Analytical Mindset
3 50 (4.17%) PKI
4 45 (3.76%) Clustering
5 37 (3.09%) Management Information System
6 34 (2.84%) Cloud Native
7 33 (2.75%) Enterprise Storage
8 29 (2.42%) Private Cloud
9 27 (2.25%) Onboarding
10 26 (2.17%) Fibre Optics
11 24 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
11 24 (2.00%) Replication
12 22 (1.84%) Public Cloud
13 17 (1.42%) Operational Technology
14 16 (1.34%) Driving Licence
15 15 (1.25%) CMDB
15 15 (1.25%) SCADA
16 14 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
16 14 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
17 13 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 173 (14.44%) Windows
2 128 (10.68%) Linux
3 48 (4.01%) Windows Server
4 35 (2.92%) Unix
5 24 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (1.75%) AIX
7 12 (1.00%) Solaris
8 10 (0.83%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.83%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.50%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.50%) VMS
9 6 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (0.42%) HPUX
10 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
10 5 (0.42%) SUSE
10 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.33%) CentOS
11 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 251 (20.95%) Migration
2 204 (17.03%) Problem-Solving
3 147 (12.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 137 (11.44%) Stakeholder Management
5 113 (9.43%) High Availability
6 112 (9.35%) ITIL
7 108 (9.02%) Infrastructure as Code
8 100 (8.35%) Agile
8 100 (8.35%) CI/CD
9 93 (7.76%) Roadmaps
10 87 (7.26%) Continuous Improvement
11 86 (7.18%) Project Delivery
12 83 (6.93%) Change Management
12 83 (6.93%) Validation
13 82 (6.84%) Load Balancing
14 74 (6.18%) Zero Trust
15 72 (6.01%) Technical Leadership
16 71 (5.93%) DevOps
17 69 (5.76%) Project Management
18 67 (5.59%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 159 (13.27%) Python
2 55 (4.59%) PowerShell
3 45 (3.76%) SQL
4 29 (2.42%) Bash
5 18 (1.50%) Java
6 12 (1.00%) Perl
7 11 (0.92%) Shell Script
8 10 (0.83%) ActionScript
8 10 (0.83%) Bicep
9 9 (0.75%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.50%) COBOL
10 6 (0.50%) JavaScript
11 5 (0.42%) C#
12 4 (0.33%) MATLAB
13 3 (0.25%) JCL
13 3 (0.25%) Korn
13 3 (0.25%) Lisp
13 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.17%) REXX
14 2 (0.17%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 319 (26.63%) Security Cleared
2 207 (17.28%) SC Cleared
3 205 (17.11%) Cisco Certification
4 111 (9.27%) CCNP
5 106 (8.85%) DV Cleared
6 85 (7.10%) CCNA
7 64 (5.34%) Degree
8 59 (4.92%) Network+ Certification
9 49 (4.09%) Microsoft Certification
10 42 (3.51%) A+ Certification
10 42 (3.51%) MCSE
11 29 (2.42%) CCIE
12 28 (2.34%) Azure Certification
13 27 (2.25%) AWS Certification
14 26 (2.17%) City & Guilds
15 22 (1.84%) PMI Certification
15 22 (1.84%) PMP
15 22 (1.84%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 21 (1.75%) CISSP
17 20 (1.67%) BICSI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (3.01%) QA
2 32 (2.67%) SLA
3 31 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 24 (2.00%) NIST
5 17 (1.42%) PMO
6 15 (1.25%) NCSC
7 14 (1.17%) GDPR
8 9 (0.75%) JSP 440
9 8 (0.67%) Disclosure Scotland
10 6 (0.50%) GRC
10 6 (0.50%) RMADS
11 4 (0.33%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.33%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.17%) WCAG
13 1 (0.083%) PSD2
13 1 (0.083%) SOC 1
System Software
1 122 (10.18%) VMware Infrastructure
2 77 (6.43%) Active Directory
3 43 (3.59%) vSphere
4 42 (3.51%) VMware NSX
5 34 (2.84%) Hyper-V
5 34 (2.84%) VMware ESXi
6 30 (2.50%) Firmware
7 28 (2.34%) Docker
8 15 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.92%) NFS
10 7 (0.58%) PowerHA
11 6 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
11 6 (0.50%) SRDF
12 5 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
12 5 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.33%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 139 (11.60%) Ansible
2 108 (9.02%) Terraform
3 58 (4.84%) Kubernetes
4 50 (4.17%) FortiGate
5 26 (2.17%) Grafana
5 26 (2.17%) Microsoft Intune
6 24 (2.00%) Prometheus
7 15 (1.25%) vCenter Server
7 15 (1.25%) VxRail
8 13 (1.09%) NetBackup
9 11 (0.92%) Dell DRAC
9 11 (0.92%) Microsoft Clustering
9 11 (0.92%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 10 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.75%) SCCM
11 9 (0.75%) vMotion
12 8 (0.67%) PowerCLI
13 7 (0.58%) Check_MK
13 7 (0.58%) EMC NetWorker
14 6 (0.50%) SCOM
Vendors
1 280 (23.37%) Cisco
2 175 (14.61%) VMware
3 126 (10.52%) Palo Alto
4 122 (10.18%) Microsoft
5 120 (10.02%) F5
6 84 (7.01%) Juniper
7 78 (6.51%) Dell
8 71 (5.93%) Fortinet
9 69 (5.76%) Arista
10 57 (4.76%) ServiceNow
11 40 (3.34%) SolarWinds
12 38 (3.17%) IBM
13 36 (3.01%) Google
14 35 (2.92%) Aruba
15 34 (2.84%) Red Hat
16 33 (2.75%) CheckPoint
17 32 (2.67%) Splunk
18 27 (2.25%) Oracle
19 23 (1.92%) HP
20 22 (1.84%) Extreme Networks