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 11 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 120 130 112
Rank change year-on-year +10 -18 -23
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,204 721 797
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.21% 2.18% 2.07%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.51% 6.13% 6.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 722 449 501
10th Percentile £318 £300 £363
25th Percentile £406 £400 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -1.87% -1.74%
75th Percentile £648 £613 £619
90th Percentile £748 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £491 £538
% change year-on-year +1.83% -8.65% +7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 42 39
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £18.32 £25.07 £12.08
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% +25.75% -6.98%
75th Percentile £50.94 £34.00 £24.59
90th Percentile £79.13 £43.75 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £25.08 £16.50
% change year-on-year -22.87% +51.97% -12.51%

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 18,506 11,756 11,701
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.89% 35.61% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,109 7,209 7,234
10th Percentile £319 £300 £300
25th Percentile £423 £406 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £546
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -5.68% -0.73%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £745 £763 £818
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,154 582 502
10th Percentile £14.18 £15.13 £14.06
25th Percentile £18.00 £18.87 £21.25
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -36.84% +8.57%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.81 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £30.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +29.07% -47.69% +25.00%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 11 September 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 +6 1,008 £525 - 840
UK excluding London -18 629 £500 +1.83% 375
London +20 424 £550 - 510
Work from Home -9 282 £525 +1.11% 241
North of England -4 217 £500 +7.41% 91
South East -3 174 £545 +10.66% 111
Yorkshire -1 129 £475 +8.57% 32
North West -9 72 £503 -6.42% 35
South West -29 65 £600 +9.09% 45
Midlands -67 53 £438 -12.50% 46
Scotland -6 52 £375 -11.24% 24
West Midlands -63 42 £474 -5.20% 31
Wales +5 38 £468 +55.83% 13
East of England -20 37 £474 -21.08% 50
North East -25 22 £625 - 25
East Midlands -20 10 £413 -21.43% 15
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 5
Channel Islands - 1 £575 - 2

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 (2.66%) Confluence
2 19 (1.58%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (0.58%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.42%) Apache
5 5 (0.42%) CloudStack
6 3 (0.25%) CICS
6 3 (0.25%) IIS
7 1 (0.083%) nginx
7 1 (0.083%) SAS
7 1 (0.083%) Tomcat
Applications
1 25 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (1.58%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.58%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
7 2 (0.17%) Navisworks
7 2 (0.17%) Revit
Business Applications
1 13 (1.08%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.083%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.083%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 247 (20.51%) Azure
2 214 (17.77%) AWS
3 53 (4.40%) GCP
4 52 (4.32%) GitHub
5 44 (3.65%) Microsoft 365
6 40 (3.32%) IaaS
7 37 (3.07%) SaaS
8 31 (2.57%) Entra ID
9 29 (2.41%) OCI
10 16 (1.33%) Azure DevOps
10 16 (1.33%) PaaS
10 16 (1.33%) Power Platform
11 15 (1.25%) OneDrive
12 14 (1.16%) OpenShift
13 13 (1.08%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 11 (0.91%) Nutanix
15 10 (0.83%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 7 (0.58%) Azure Sentinel
16 7 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
17 6 (0.50%) AWS Direct Connect
Communications & Networking
1 296 (24.58%) Firewall
2 188 (15.61%) WAN
3 177 (14.70%) BGP
4 127 (10.55%) VPN
5 126 (10.47%) DNS
6 117 (9.72%) VXLAN
7 115 (9.55%) OSPF
8 114 (9.47%) Network Security
9 112 (9.30%) LAN
10 110 (9.14%) VLAN
11 103 (8.55%) SAN
12 88 (7.31%) DHCP
13 85 (7.06%) TCP/IP
14 82 (6.81%) Ethernet VPN
14 82 (6.81%) SD-WAN
15 76 (6.31%) Structured Cabling
16 64 (5.32%) Wireless
17 59 (4.90%) Wi-Fi
18 55 (4.57%) Cisco Nexus
19 50 (4.15%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (2.99%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.25%) Power BI
3 11 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (0.83%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 10 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 7 (0.58%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.50%) Db2
6 6 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
7 4 (0.33%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.25%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (0.25%) Big Data
9 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.17%) DataStage
9 2 (0.17%) Flink
9 2 (0.17%) Metadata
10 1 (0.083%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 79 (6.56%) JIRA
2 36 (2.99%) GitLab
3 32 (2.66%) Jenkins
4 25 (2.08%) Git
5 7 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
6 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
7 2 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.17%) MSI
7 2 (0.17%) Toad
8 1 (0.083%) Claude Code
General
1 293 (24.34%) Social Skills
2 161 (13.37%) Finance
3 106 (8.80%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (4.82%) Banking
5 57 (4.73%) Public Sector
6 51 (4.24%) Telecoms
7 48 (3.99%) Documentation Skills
8 27 (2.24%) Retail
9 24 (1.99%) Legal
10 18 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
11 17 (1.41%) Manufacturing
12 14 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.75%) Police
15 7 (0.58%) Financial Institution
16 6 (0.50%) Law
16 6 (0.50%) Marketing
17 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
18 4 (0.33%) Cyber-Physical System
19 3 (0.25%) Military
Job Titles
1 199 (16.53%) Network Engineer
2 196 (16.28%) Architect
3 163 (13.54%) Senior
4 119 (9.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 88 (7.31%) Data Centre Engineer
6 77 (6.40%) Project Manager
7 65 (5.40%) Network Architect
8 64 (5.32%) Lead
9 51 (4.24%) IT Engineer
10 48 (3.99%) Consultant
11 45 (3.74%) Senior Network Engineer
12 41 (3.41%) Data Centre Manager
13 38 (3.16%) Field Engineer
13 38 (3.16%) Technical Architect
14 35 (2.91%) Infrastructure Manager
14 35 (2.91%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 32 (2.66%) Field Service Engineer
15 32 (2.66%) Support Engineer
16 31 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
17 28 (2.33%) Cabling Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (9.22%) Terraform
2 40 (3.32%) Middleware
3 27 (2.24%) REST
4 17 (1.41%) 802.1X
5 13 (1.08%) YAML
6 12 (1.00%) JSON
7 9 (0.75%) .NET
8 8 (0.66%) LDAP
9 7 (0.58%) NETCONF
10 6 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (0.50%) Redfish
10 6 (0.50%) SAML
11 5 (0.42%) Kafka
11 5 (0.42%) OpenConfig
11 5 (0.42%) RESTCONF
11 5 (0.42%) YANG
12 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
12 4 (0.33%) RESTful
13 3 (0.25%) .NET Framework
13 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 77 (6.40%) Hybrid Cloud
2 39 (3.24%) Analytical Mindset
3 36 (2.99%) Private Cloud
4 35 (2.91%) Public Cloud
5 34 (2.82%) PKI
6 32 (2.66%) Cloud Native
6 32 (2.66%) Management Information System
7 30 (2.49%) Fibre Optics
8 29 (2.41%) Replication
9 28 (2.33%) Clustering
9 28 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
9 28 (2.33%) Enterprise Storage
10 26 (2.16%) Onboarding
11 23 (1.91%) Operational Technology
12 19 (1.58%) SCADA
13 17 (1.41%) Driving Licence
14 16 (1.33%) CMDB
14 16 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
15 15 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
16 13 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 190 (15.78%) Windows
2 133 (11.05%) Linux
3 63 (5.23%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.74%) Unix
5 21 (1.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (1.41%) AIX
7 13 (1.08%) Mac OS
8 10 (0.83%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.83%) Solaris
8 10 (0.83%) VMS
9 8 (0.66%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.50%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.42%) HPUX
12 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.42%) SUSE
12 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.33%) CentOS
13 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 249 (20.68%) Migration
2 185 (15.37%) Problem-Solving
3 153 (12.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 153 (12.71%) Stakeholder Management
4 115 (9.55%) Infrastructure as Code
5 114 (9.47%) ITIL
6 107 (8.89%) High Availability
7 98 (8.14%) Agile
8 96 (7.97%) CI/CD
9 91 (7.56%) Project Delivery
10 89 (7.39%) Roadmaps
11 87 (7.23%) Validation
12 81 (6.73%) Disaster Recovery
13 77 (6.40%) Continuous Improvement
13 77 (6.40%) Zero Trust
14 73 (6.06%) Change Management
14 73 (6.06%) Technical Leadership
15 72 (5.98%) ITSM
16 69 (5.73%) DevOps
16 69 (5.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 158 (13.12%) Python
2 67 (5.56%) PowerShell
3 45 (3.74%) SQL
4 33 (2.74%) Bash
5 13 (1.08%) ActionScript
6 11 (0.91%) Bicep
7 9 (0.75%) C#
7 9 (0.75%) Shell Script
8 8 (0.66%) Perl
9 7 (0.58%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.42%) Java
10 5 (0.42%) T-SQL
11 4 (0.33%) COBOL
11 4 (0.33%) Go
11 4 (0.33%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.33%) MATLAB
12 3 (0.25%) JCL
12 3 (0.25%) Lisp
12 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 312 (25.91%) Security Cleared
2 211 (17.52%) SC Cleared
3 178 (14.78%) Cisco Certification
4 107 (8.89%) CCNP
5 100 (8.31%) DV Cleared
6 69 (5.73%) CCNA
7 59 (4.90%) Degree
8 41 (3.41%) Network+ Certification
9 39 (3.24%) Microsoft Certification
10 37 (3.07%) A+ Certification
11 31 (2.57%) MCSE
12 29 (2.41%) AWS Certification
12 29 (2.41%) CCIE
13 24 (1.99%) CISSP
13 24 (1.99%) City & Guilds
14 23 (1.91%) Azure Certification
14 23 (1.91%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 22 (1.83%) PMP
16 20 (1.66%) BICSI Certification
16 20 (1.66%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (2.99%) QA
2 28 (2.33%) SLA
3 26 (2.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 21 (1.74%) NIST
5 16 (1.33%) PMO
6 11 (0.91%) GDPR
6 11 (0.91%) NCSC
7 9 (0.75%) JSP 440
8 8 (0.66%) GRC
9 6 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
9 6 (0.50%) RMADS
10 4 (0.33%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
11 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.17%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 147 (12.21%) VMware Infrastructure
2 96 (7.97%) Active Directory
3 51 (4.24%) vSphere
4 44 (3.65%) VMware NSX
5 39 (3.24%) Hyper-V
6 38 (3.16%) VMware ESXi
7 30 (2.49%) Docker
8 26 (2.16%) Firmware
9 16 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (1.00%) NFS
11 6 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
11 6 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.42%) PowerHA
13 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.33%) SRDF
13 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.33%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 3 (0.25%) KVM
Systems Management
1 143 (11.88%) Ansible
2 52 (4.32%) Kubernetes
3 33 (2.74%) FortiGate
4 21 (1.74%) Prometheus
5 19 (1.58%) Microsoft Intune
6 18 (1.50%) Grafana
6 18 (1.50%) vCenter Server
7 15 (1.25%) SCCM
7 15 (1.25%) VxRail
8 12 (1.00%) Microsoft Clustering
8 12 (1.00%) PowerCLI
8 12 (1.00%) vMotion
9 11 (0.91%) SCOM
10 10 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (0.83%) NetBackup
11 9 (0.75%) Dell DRAC
11 9 (0.75%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 8 (0.66%) Nagios
13 7 (0.58%) Check_MK
14 5 (0.42%) EMC NetWorker
Vendors
1 298 (24.75%) Cisco
2 201 (16.69%) VMware
3 147 (12.21%) Microsoft
4 126 (10.47%) Palo Alto
5 109 (9.05%) F5
6 71 (5.90%) Dell
7 69 (5.73%) Arista
7 69 (5.73%) Fortinet
8 67 (5.56%) Juniper
8 67 (5.56%) ServiceNow
9 41 (3.41%) Aruba
10 39 (3.24%) CheckPoint
11 35 (2.91%) Red Hat
12 28 (2.33%) Veeam
13 27 (2.24%) Oracle
14 26 (2.16%) Google
15 25 (2.08%) IBM
16 23 (1.91%) Zscaler
17 22 (1.83%) SolarWinds
18 21 (1.74%) NetApp