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

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 127 103
Rank change year-on-year +23 -24 -15
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,209 671 952
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.38% 2.22% 2.19%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.24% 6.41% 7.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 713 433 632
10th Percentile £318 £301 £310
25th Percentile £406 £405 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £536
Median % change year-on-year - -6.76% -2.50%
75th Percentile £612 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £685 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £538
% change year-on-year - -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 24 55
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.31 £12.08
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £16.25
Median hourly rate £23.00 £25.15 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -8.55% +5.67% +13.43%
75th Percentile £36.10 £40.31 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.90 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £20.00
% change year-on-year -21.57% +23.30% -3.40%

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 16,701 10,472 13,074
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.82% 34.62% 30.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,235 6,540 8,286
10th Percentile £313 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £663
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 859 477 934
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £19.00 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.50 £31.00 £36.27
Median % change year-on-year +40.32% -14.54% +61.59%
75th Percentile £70.00 £58.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £86.43 £80.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £36.02
% change year-on-year +46.53% -16.72% +63.74%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 +23 994 £500 -3.85% 365
UK excluding London +6 683 £475 - 237
London +20 362 £550 +2.37% 190
Work from Home +20 320 £492 -2.57% 130
North of England +15 241 £474 +5.33% 36
South East +9 208 £475 +5.56% 86
Yorkshire +1 127 £365 -16.57% 18
North West +3 90 £500 -3.15% 15
Midlands -56 58 £466 -13.32% 26
Scotland +3 57 £469 +7.20% 11
West Midlands -46 53 £474 -11.81% 17
South West -31 49 £495 -10.00% 33
Wales +6 40 £468 +16.88% 15
East of England -13 40 £492 +64.00% 28
North East -2 30 £625 +468.18% 3
East Midlands -15 4 £363 -29.70% 9
Northern Ireland - 2 £425 - 7
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 26 (2.15%) Confluence
2 17 (1.41%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.91%) CICS
3 11 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.41%) Apache
4 5 (0.41%) CloudStack
5 4 (0.33%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.33%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.25%) nginx
6 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.083%) IIS
7 1 (0.083%) Mendix
Applications
1 14 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 12 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 10 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.41%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Primavera
1 3 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.083%) DELMIA
Cloud Services
1 258 (21.34%) Azure
2 223 (18.44%) AWS
3 76 (6.29%) GCP
4 41 (3.39%) GitHub
4 41 (3.39%) IaaS
5 39 (3.23%) Microsoft 365
6 34 (2.81%) SaaS
7 30 (2.48%) OCI
8 25 (2.07%) Entra ID
9 21 (1.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 20 (1.65%) PaaS
11 17 (1.41%) Azure DevOps
12 15 (1.24%) OneDrive
12 15 (1.24%) OpenShift
13 13 (1.08%) Power Platform
14 11 (0.91%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 11 (0.91%) Azure Sentinel
14 11 (0.91%) Nutanix
15 9 (0.74%) Amazon EKS
16 8 (0.66%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 332 (27.46%) Firewall
2 198 (16.38%) WAN
3 188 (15.55%) BGP
4 145 (11.99%) OSPF
5 128 (10.59%) VPN
6 124 (10.26%) VXLAN
7 122 (10.09%) SAN
8 117 (9.68%) LAN
9 114 (9.43%) DNS
10 113 (9.35%) Network Security
11 98 (8.11%) VLAN
12 93 (7.69%) Structured Cabling
13 89 (7.36%) SD-WAN
14 86 (7.11%) Ethernet VPN
15 80 (6.62%) DHCP
16 61 (5.05%) BIG-IP
17 56 (4.63%) TCP/IP
18 54 (4.47%) Cisco Nexus
19 48 (3.97%) Wi-Fi
19 48 (3.97%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (1.16%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.83%) DataStage
3 8 (0.66%) Power BI
4 7 (0.58%) Big Data
5 6 (0.50%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.33%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
6 4 (0.33%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
6 4 (0.33%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.33%) SAP Data Services
7 3 (0.25%) GIS
7 3 (0.25%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.17%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.17%) Db2
8 2 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
9 1 (0.083%) MS Access
Development Applications
1 67 (5.54%) JIRA
2 38 (3.14%) GitLab
2 38 (3.14%) Jenkins
3 31 (2.56%) Git
4 8 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (0.41%) JMeter
6 4 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.33%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.33%) Maven
6 4 (0.33%) ScriptRunner
6 4 (0.33%) Subversion
7 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
8 2 (0.17%) MSI
9 1 (0.083%) AppScan
9 1 (0.083%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.083%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.083%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.083%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.083%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.083%) Postman
General
1 301 (24.90%) Social Skills
2 164 (13.56%) Finance
3 132 (10.92%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (6.70%) Public Sector
5 63 (5.21%) Documentation Skills
6 49 (4.05%) Banking
7 42 (3.47%) Telecoms
8 38 (3.14%) Legal
9 25 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
10 22 (1.82%) Retail
11 20 (1.65%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (0.91%) Military
13 11 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.74%) Financial Institution
14 9 (0.74%) Law
15 8 (0.66%) Aerospace
15 8 (0.66%) Marketing
15 8 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
16 6 (0.50%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 198 (16.38%) Network Engineer
2 197 (16.29%) Architect
3 137 (11.33%) Senior
4 99 (8.19%) Data Centre Engineer
4 99 (8.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 72 (5.96%) Project Manager
6 64 (5.29%) Lead
7 56 (4.63%) IT Engineer
7 56 (4.63%) Network Architect
8 53 (4.38%) Field Engineer
9 49 (4.05%) Field Service Engineer
10 46 (3.80%) Solutions Architect
11 41 (3.39%) Technical Architect
12 40 (3.31%) Infrastructure Manager
13 38 (3.14%) Data Centre Manager
14 37 (3.06%) Analyst
15 35 (2.89%) Support Engineer
16 34 (2.81%) Senior Network Engineer
17 32 (2.65%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 31 (2.56%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (4.47%) Middleware
2 32 (2.65%) 802.1X
3 12 (0.99%) LDAP
4 10 (0.83%) Redfish
4 10 (0.83%) REST
5 8 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.58%) Spring
7 5 (0.41%) Jinja
7 5 (0.41%) Kafka
7 5 (0.41%) XML
8 4 (0.33%) ADO
8 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
8 4 (0.33%) NETCONF
8 4 (0.33%) RESTful
8 4 (0.33%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.33%) YAML
9 3 (0.25%) OpenConfig
9 3 (0.25%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.25%) RESTCONF
9 3 (0.25%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 74 (6.12%) Hybrid Cloud
2 56 (4.63%) Analytical Mindset
3 40 (3.31%) Management Information System
4 37 (3.06%) Cloud Native
5 32 (2.65%) Enterprise Storage
6 31 (2.56%) Clustering
7 30 (2.48%) Onboarding
7 30 (2.48%) PKI
8 28 (2.32%) Private Cloud
9 26 (2.15%) Fibre Optics
10 21 (1.74%) CMDB
11 20 (1.65%) Driving Licence
11 20 (1.65%) Public Cloud
12 19 (1.57%) Replication
13 18 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
14 16 (1.32%) SCADA
15 14 (1.16%) NHS
15 14 (1.16%) Operational Technology
16 13 (1.08%) Mainframe
17 12 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 164 (13.56%) Windows
2 149 (12.32%) Linux
3 42 (3.47%) Windows Server
4 37 (3.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 28 (2.32%) Unix
6 23 (1.90%) AIX
7 18 (1.49%) Solaris
8 11 (0.91%) CentOS
9 10 (0.83%) Apple iOS
9 10 (0.83%) Mac OS
10 8 (0.66%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.50%) VMS
13 5 (0.41%) HPUX
13 5 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
13 5 (0.41%) SUSE
14 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
15 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
16 2 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
16 2 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 215 (17.78%) Migration
2 204 (16.87%) Problem-Solving
3 128 (10.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 128 (10.59%) Stakeholder Management
4 115 (9.51%) Infrastructure as Code
5 114 (9.43%) High Availability
6 113 (9.35%) ITIL
7 106 (8.77%) CI/CD
8 98 (8.11%) Roadmaps
9 93 (7.69%) Continuous Improvement
10 90 (7.44%) Agile
11 86 (7.11%) Validation
12 85 (7.03%) DevOps
12 85 (7.03%) Load Balancing
13 79 (6.53%) Change Management
14 77 (6.37%) Project Delivery
15 71 (5.87%) Zero Trust
16 70 (5.79%) Project Management
17 68 (5.62%) Customer Service
17 68 (5.62%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 151 (12.49%) Python
2 42 (3.47%) PowerShell
3 35 (2.89%) SQL
4 26 (2.15%) Bash
5 19 (1.57%) Java
6 17 (1.41%) Shell Script
7 16 (1.32%) Bicep
8 12 (0.99%) COBOL
9 11 (0.91%) MATLAB
10 10 (0.83%) ActionScript
10 10 (0.83%) Perl
11 7 (0.58%) JavaScript
11 7 (0.58%) PL/SQL
12 4 (0.33%) C
12 4 (0.33%) C++
12 4 (0.33%) Lisp
13 3 (0.25%) C#
13 3 (0.25%) JCL
13 3 (0.25%) Korn
13 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 317 (26.22%) Security Cleared
2 230 (19.02%) Cisco Certification
3 227 (18.78%) SC Cleared
4 137 (11.33%) CCNP
5 100 (8.27%) CCNA
6 81 (6.70%) DV Cleared
7 73 (6.04%) Degree
8 64 (5.29%) Network+ Certification
9 54 (4.47%) Microsoft Certification
10 47 (3.89%) A+ Certification
10 47 (3.89%) MCSE
11 30 (2.48%) Azure Certification
12 27 (2.23%) CCIE
13 25 (2.07%) AWS Certification
13 25 (2.07%) City & Guilds
13 25 (2.07%) PMI Certification
13 25 (2.07%) PMP
14 22 (1.82%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 20 (1.65%) BICSI Certification
16 18 (1.49%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (2.81%) SLA
2 27 (2.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (2.15%) NIST
3 26 (2.15%) QA
4 22 (1.82%) PMO
5 19 (1.57%) GDPR
6 17 (1.41%) NCSC
7 10 (0.83%) GRC
8 9 (0.74%) Disclosure Scotland
8 9 (0.74%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.58%) RMADS
10 6 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.33%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
13 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.17%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 109 (9.02%) VMware Infrastructure
2 67 (5.54%) Active Directory
3 36 (2.98%) VMware ESXi
4 35 (2.89%) VMware NSX
4 35 (2.89%) vSphere
5 30 (2.48%) Firmware
6 27 (2.23%) Hyper-V
7 23 (1.90%) Virtual Machines
8 16 (1.32%) Docker
9 11 (0.91%) KVM
10 8 (0.66%) NFS
11 7 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
12 6 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.50%) SRDF
13 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.33%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 3 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 140 (11.58%) Ansible
2 111 (9.18%) Terraform
3 55 (4.55%) FortiGate
4 50 (4.14%) Kubernetes
5 35 (2.89%) Grafana
6 30 (2.48%) Prometheus
7 28 (2.32%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (1.24%) vCenter Server
9 14 (1.16%) Check_MK
10 13 (1.08%) NetBackup
11 11 (0.91%) Podman
11 11 (0.91%) PowerCLI
11 11 (0.91%) Red Hat Satellite
11 11 (0.91%) vMotion
12 10 (0.83%) Dell DRAC
12 10 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
13 9 (0.74%) SCCM
14 7 (0.58%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (0.58%) EMC NetWorker
14 7 (0.58%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 300 (24.81%) Cisco
2 167 (13.81%) VMware
3 141 (11.66%) Palo Alto
4 122 (10.09%) Microsoft
5 115 (9.51%) F5
6 92 (7.61%) Juniper
7 89 (7.36%) Dell
8 74 (6.12%) Arista
9 69 (5.71%) Fortinet
10 60 (4.96%) ServiceNow
11 47 (3.89%) Google
12 46 (3.80%) Aruba
13 43 (3.56%) SolarWinds
14 40 (3.31%) Red Hat
15 36 (2.98%) IBM
16 33 (2.73%) CheckPoint
17 30 (2.48%) Splunk
18 27 (2.23%) Oracle
19 25 (2.07%) Citrix
19 25 (2.07%) HP