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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 129 113
Rank change year-on-year +10 -16 -25
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,184 710 792
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.19% 2.17% 2.06%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.48% 6.11% 6.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 713 446 496
10th Percentile £318 £296 £363
25th Percentile £408 £388 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £517 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.82% -3.86% -0.46%
75th Percentile £644 £605 £619
90th Percentile £747 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £538
% change year-on-year +2.15% -8.93% +7.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 42 40
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £17.88 £25.07 £12.08
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £20.80
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% +20.94% -9.59%
75th Percentile £49.38 £34.00 £25.50
90th Percentile £79.00 £43.75 £28.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £25.08 £18.00
% change year-on-year -22.87% +39.31% -10.00%

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 18,270 11,618 11,671
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.75% 35.54% 30.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,964 7,104 7,195
10th Percentile £320 £300 £300
25th Percentile £423 £406 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £543
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -5.07% -1.36%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £749 £763 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,144 579 488
10th Percentile £14.07 £15.13 £14.30
25th Percentile £17.99 £18.87 £21.25
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -40.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £67.55 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £30.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +29.07% -47.69% +20.16%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +3 995 £525 - 1,863
UK excluding London -18 620 £500 +2.15% 686
London +21 415 £550 +2.09% 1,226
Work from Home -15 279 £525 +2.44% 622
North of England 0 219 £500 +5.26% 142
South East -6 169 £550 +17.02% 197
Yorkshire +7 130 £480 +6.67% 46
North West -19 72 £506 -5.86% 65
South West -30 64 £600 +9.09% 74
Midlands -67 52 £438 -12.50% 84
Scotland -12 49 £375 -11.24% 51
West Midlands -63 41 £474 -4.44% 59
East of England -17 38 £474 -21.08% 113
Wales +8 36 £468 +55.83% 20
North East -17 23 £625 - 31
East Midlands -23 10 £413 -21.43% 25
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 13
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 (2.70%) Confluence
2 19 (1.60%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (0.59%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.42%) Apache
5 5 (0.42%) CloudStack
6 4 (0.34%) IIS
7 3 (0.25%) CICS
8 1 (0.084%) nginx
8 1 (0.084%) SAS
8 1 (0.084%) Tomcat
Applications
1 25 (2.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (1.60%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.59%) 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 (1.10%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.084%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.084%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 245 (20.69%) Azure
2 211 (17.82%) AWS
3 53 (4.48%) GCP
4 51 (4.31%) GitHub
5 44 (3.72%) Microsoft 365
6 41 (3.46%) IaaS
7 37 (3.13%) SaaS
8 30 (2.53%) Entra ID
9 29 (2.45%) OCI
10 18 (1.52%) PaaS
11 16 (1.35%) Azure DevOps
11 16 (1.35%) Power Platform
12 15 (1.27%) OneDrive
13 14 (1.18%) OpenShift
14 13 (1.10%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 11 (0.93%) Nutanix
16 10 (0.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 7 (0.59%) Azure Sentinel
18 6 (0.51%) AWS Direct Connect
18 6 (0.51%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 287 (24.24%) Firewall
2 181 (15.29%) WAN
3 173 (14.61%) BGP
4 123 (10.39%) VPN
5 122 (10.30%) DNS
6 114 (9.63%) Network Security
6 114 (9.63%) VXLAN
7 112 (9.46%) OSPF
8 109 (9.21%) VLAN
9 106 (8.95%) LAN
10 98 (8.28%) SAN
11 84 (7.09%) DHCP
11 84 (7.09%) TCP/IP
12 81 (6.84%) Ethernet VPN
13 78 (6.59%) SD-WAN
14 74 (6.25%) Structured Cabling
15 64 (5.41%) Wireless
16 59 (4.98%) Wi-Fi
17 54 (4.56%) Cisco Nexus
18 49 (4.14%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (3.13%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.27%) Power BI
3 11 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (0.84%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 10 (0.84%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 7 (0.59%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.51%) Db2
6 6 (0.51%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (0.34%) Azure SQL Database
7 4 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.34%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
8 3 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.25%) Big Data
8 3 (0.25%) PostgreSQL
9 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.17%) DataStage
9 2 (0.17%) Flink
9 2 (0.17%) Metadata
10 1 (0.084%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 78 (6.59%) JIRA
2 36 (3.04%) GitLab
3 32 (2.70%) Jenkins
4 24 (2.03%) Git
5 7 (0.59%) 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 (0.084%) Claude Code
General
1 287 (24.24%) Social Skills
2 160 (13.51%) Finance
3 102 (8.61%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (4.98%) Banking
5 56 (4.73%) Public Sector
6 49 (4.14%) Telecoms
7 48 (4.05%) Documentation Skills
8 26 (2.20%) Retail
9 24 (2.03%) Legal
10 18 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
11 17 (1.44%) Manufacturing
12 14 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.76%) Police
15 7 (0.59%) Financial Institution
16 6 (0.51%) Law
17 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
17 5 (0.42%) Marketing
18 4 (0.34%) Cyber-Physical System
19 3 (0.25%) Military
Job Titles
1 199 (16.81%) Network Engineer
2 189 (15.96%) Architect
3 160 (13.51%) Senior
4 114 (9.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 88 (7.43%) Data Centre Engineer
6 74 (6.25%) Project Manager
7 65 (5.49%) Lead
8 64 (5.41%) Network Architect
9 50 (4.22%) IT Engineer
10 48 (4.05%) Consultant
11 44 (3.72%) Senior Network Engineer
12 40 (3.38%) Data Centre Manager
13 37 (3.13%) Technical Architect
14 36 (3.04%) Field Engineer
15 34 (2.87%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 33 (2.79%) Infrastructure Manager
17 32 (2.70%) Support Engineer
18 30 (2.53%) Field Service Engineer
18 30 (2.53%) Solutions Architect
19 28 (2.36%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 112 (9.46%) Terraform
2 39 (3.29%) Middleware
3 27 (2.28%) REST
4 16 (1.35%) 802.1X
5 14 (1.18%) YAML
6 12 (1.01%) JSON
7 9 (0.76%) .NET
8 8 (0.68%) LDAP
9 7 (0.59%) NETCONF
10 6 (0.51%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (0.51%) Redfish
10 6 (0.51%) SAML
11 5 (0.42%) Kafka
11 5 (0.42%) OpenConfig
11 5 (0.42%) RESTCONF
11 5 (0.42%) YANG
12 4 (0.34%) GeoJSON
12 4 (0.34%) RESTful
13 3 (0.25%) .NET Framework
13 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 77 (6.50%) Hybrid Cloud
2 37 (3.13%) Analytical Mindset
2 37 (3.13%) Public Cloud
3 36 (3.04%) Private Cloud
4 32 (2.70%) Cloud Native
4 32 (2.70%) Management Information System
4 32 (2.70%) PKI
5 30 (2.53%) Fibre Optics
6 29 (2.45%) Replication
7 28 (2.36%) Enterprise Storage
8 26 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
9 25 (2.11%) Clustering
9 25 (2.11%) Onboarding
10 23 (1.94%) Operational Technology
11 19 (1.60%) SCADA
12 16 (1.35%) CMDB
12 16 (1.35%) Driving Licence
12 16 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
13 15 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
14 13 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 188 (15.88%) Windows
2 130 (10.98%) Linux
3 62 (5.24%) Windows Server
4 32 (2.70%) Unix
5 21 (1.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (1.35%) AIX
7 13 (1.10%) Mac OS
8 10 (0.84%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.84%) Solaris
8 10 (0.84%) VMS
9 8 (0.68%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.51%) 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 (0.34%) CentOS
13 4 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 246 (20.78%) Migration
2 179 (15.12%) Problem-Solving
3 149 (12.58%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 148 (12.50%) Stakeholder Management
5 116 (9.80%) Infrastructure as Code
6 111 (9.38%) ITIL
7 102 (8.61%) High Availability
8 96 (8.11%) Agile
8 96 (8.11%) CI/CD
9 88 (7.43%) Project Delivery
10 86 (7.26%) Validation
11 84 (7.09%) Roadmaps
12 78 (6.59%) Disaster Recovery
13 76 (6.42%) Zero Trust
14 75 (6.33%) Continuous Improvement
15 71 (6.00%) ITSM
16 70 (5.91%) Change Management
16 70 (5.91%) Technical Leadership
17 69 (5.83%) DevOps
18 68 (5.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 156 (13.18%) Python
2 68 (5.74%) PowerShell
3 46 (3.89%) SQL
4 32 (2.70%) Bash
5 13 (1.10%) ActionScript
6 10 (0.84%) Bicep
7 9 (0.76%) C#
7 9 (0.76%) Shell Script
8 7 (0.59%) Perl
8 7 (0.59%) PL/SQL
9 5 (0.42%) T-SQL
10 4 (0.34%) Go
10 4 (0.34%) Java
10 4 (0.34%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.34%) MATLAB
11 3 (0.25%) COBOL
11 3 (0.25%) JCL
11 3 (0.25%) Lisp
11 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 303 (25.59%) Security Cleared
2 207 (17.48%) SC Cleared
3 175 (14.78%) Cisco Certification
4 106 (8.95%) CCNP
5 95 (8.02%) DV Cleared
6 68 (5.74%) CCNA
7 57 (4.81%) Degree
8 40 (3.38%) Network+ Certification
9 38 (3.21%) Microsoft Certification
10 36 (3.04%) A+ Certification
11 30 (2.53%) MCSE
12 29 (2.45%) AWS Certification
13 28 (2.36%) CCIE
14 25 (2.11%) CISSP
15 24 (2.03%) City & Guilds
16 23 (1.94%) Azure Certification
16 23 (1.94%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 20 (1.69%) BICSI Certification
17 20 (1.69%) PMP
18 19 (1.60%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (2.96%) QA
2 26 (2.20%) SLA
3 25 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 20 (1.69%) NIST
5 16 (1.35%) PMO
6 11 (0.93%) GDPR
7 9 (0.76%) GRC
7 9 (0.76%) JSP 440
7 9 (0.76%) NCSC
8 6 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.42%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.34%) RMADS
11 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
11 3 (0.25%) ISO 31000
11 3 (0.25%) ISO 9001
11 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 142 (11.99%) VMware Infrastructure
2 92 (7.77%) Active Directory
3 49 (4.14%) vSphere
4 43 (3.63%) VMware NSX
5 37 (3.13%) VMware ESXi
6 36 (3.04%) Hyper-V
7 29 (2.45%) Docker
8 25 (2.11%) Firmware
9 15 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (1.01%) NFS
11 6 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.42%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.34%) PowerHA
13 4 (0.34%) SRDF
13 4 (0.34%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 3 (0.25%) BitLocker
14 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.25%) KVM
Systems Management
1 144 (12.16%) Ansible
2 51 (4.31%) Kubernetes
3 32 (2.70%) FortiGate
4 19 (1.60%) Microsoft Intune
4 19 (1.60%) Prometheus
5 17 (1.44%) vCenter Server
6 16 (1.35%) Grafana
7 15 (1.27%) SCCM
7 15 (1.27%) VxRail
8 12 (1.01%) Microsoft Clustering
8 12 (1.01%) PowerCLI
9 11 (0.93%) SCOM
9 11 (0.93%) vMotion
10 10 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (0.84%) NetBackup
11 9 (0.76%) Dell DRAC
11 9 (0.76%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 8 (0.68%) Nagios
13 7 (0.59%) Check_MK
14 5 (0.42%) Cisco Prime
Vendors
1 295 (24.92%) Cisco
2 195 (16.47%) VMware
3 146 (12.33%) Microsoft
4 126 (10.64%) Palo Alto
5 108 (9.12%) F5
6 69 (5.83%) Dell
6 69 (5.83%) Fortinet
7 68 (5.74%) Arista
8 67 (5.66%) ServiceNow
9 65 (5.49%) Juniper
10 41 (3.46%) Aruba
11 38 (3.21%) CheckPoint
12 33 (2.79%) Red Hat
13 29 (2.45%) Veeam
14 27 (2.28%) Google
14 27 (2.28%) Oracle
15 24 (2.03%) IBM
16 23 (1.94%) Zscaler
17 22 (1.86%) SolarWinds
18 21 (1.77%) Commvault