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 1 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 122 102
Rank change year-on-year +19 -20 -12
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,220 690 946
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.37% 2.24% 2.19%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.23% 6.49% 7.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 713 447 629
10th Percentile £318 £302 £310
25th Percentile £406 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £680 £715
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 £19.85 £25.15 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -21.07% +5.67% +14.95%
75th Percentile £34.12 £40.31 £40.00
90th Percentile £72.67 £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 16,874 10,638 13,036
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.83% 34.59% 30.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,321 6,631 8,276
10th Percentile £313 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £539
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.64% -1.95%
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 863 492 927
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.59 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.97 £15.32
Median hourly rate £42.30 £31.29 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +35.21% -12.24% +58.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.52 £62.25
90th Percentile £86.98 £78.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.50 £35.58
% change year-on-year +44.13% -14.27% +58.11%

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 +21 1,006 £500 -4.76% 566
UK excluding London +2 691 £475 - 332
London +7 367 £550 +3.29% 300
Work from Home +20 319 £490 -3.97% 175
North of England +13 245 £475 +5.56% 57
South East +4 215 £475 +5.56% 116
Yorkshire -2 130 £365 -16.57% 21
North West +7 91 £500 -4.76% 33
Midlands -54 58 £466 -13.72% 33
Scotland +5 56 £466 +4.96% 12
West Midlands -40 53 £474 -11.81% 21
South West -27 49 £495 -10.00% 34
Wales +6 42 £468 +20.65% 33
East of England -6 37 £496 +65.33% 45
North East -3 30 £625 +468.18% 3
East Midlands -21 4 £363 -32.87% 12
Channel Islands - 1 £575 -
Northern Ireland - 1 £425 - 8

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 25 (2.05%) Confluence
2 17 (1.39%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.90%) CICS
3 11 (0.90%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.41%) Apache
4 5 (0.41%) CloudStack
4 5 (0.41%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.33%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.25%) nginx
6 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.082%) IIS
7 1 (0.082%) Mendix
Applications
1 15 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.82%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.41%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.16%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Primavera
1 3 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.082%) DELMIA
Cloud Services
1 258 (21.15%) Azure
2 223 (18.28%) AWS
3 76 (6.23%) GCP
4 42 (3.44%) IaaS
5 40 (3.28%) GitHub
6 39 (3.20%) Microsoft 365
7 35 (2.87%) SaaS
8 30 (2.46%) OCI
9 25 (2.05%) Entra ID
10 21 (1.72%) PaaS
10 21 (1.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 16 (1.31%) OpenShift
12 15 (1.23%) Azure DevOps
12 15 (1.23%) OneDrive
13 13 (1.07%) Power Platform
14 12 (0.98%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 11 (0.90%) Azure Sentinel
15 11 (0.90%) Nutanix
16 9 (0.74%) Amazon EKS
17 8 (0.66%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 337 (27.62%) Firewall
2 203 (16.64%) WAN
3 192 (15.74%) BGP
4 147 (12.05%) OSPF
5 130 (10.66%) VPN
6 125 (10.25%) VXLAN
7 122 (10.00%) SAN
8 120 (9.84%) LAN
9 116 (9.51%) DNS
9 116 (9.51%) Network Security
10 99 (8.11%) VLAN
11 94 (7.70%) Structured Cabling
12 90 (7.38%) SD-WAN
13 87 (7.13%) Ethernet VPN
14 82 (6.72%) DHCP
15 61 (5.00%) BIG-IP
16 58 (4.75%) TCP/IP
17 55 (4.51%) Cisco Nexus
18 51 (4.18%) Wi-Fi
18 51 (4.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (1.15%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.82%) DataStage
3 8 (0.66%) Power BI
4 7 (0.57%) Big Data
5 6 (0.49%) 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%) Db2
7 3 (0.25%) GIS
7 3 (0.25%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.16%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.16%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.16%) Oracle Database 12c
9 1 (0.082%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 67 (5.49%) JIRA
2 35 (2.87%) GitLab
2 35 (2.87%) Jenkins
3 28 (2.30%) 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%) Subversion
7 3 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
7 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
8 2 (0.16%) MSI
9 1 (0.082%) AppScan
9 1 (0.082%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.082%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.082%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.082%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.082%) Postman
General
1 303 (24.84%) Social Skills
2 164 (13.44%) Finance
3 132 (10.82%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (6.64%) Public Sector
5 60 (4.92%) Documentation Skills
6 49 (4.02%) Banking
7 44 (3.61%) Telecoms
8 37 (3.03%) Legal
9 26 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
10 23 (1.89%) Retail
11 20 (1.64%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (0.90%) Military
13 11 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.74%) Financial Institution
14 9 (0.74%) Law
15 8 (0.66%) Marketing
16 7 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
17 6 (0.49%) Investment Banking
17 6 (0.49%) Police
Job Titles
1 203 (16.64%) Architect
2 200 (16.39%) Network Engineer
3 141 (11.56%) Senior
4 103 (8.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 102 (8.36%) Data Centre Engineer
6 73 (5.98%) Project Manager
7 64 (5.25%) Lead
8 61 (5.00%) Network Architect
9 56 (4.59%) IT Engineer
10 53 (4.34%) Field Engineer
11 49 (4.02%) Field Service Engineer
12 45 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
13 41 (3.36%) Technical Architect
14 40 (3.28%) Infrastructure Manager
15 38 (3.11%) Data Centre Manager
16 37 (3.03%) Analyst
17 36 (2.95%) Senior Network Engineer
18 35 (2.87%) Support Engineer
19 32 (2.62%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
20 29 (2.38%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (4.34%) Middleware
2 32 (2.62%) 802.1X
3 10 (0.82%) LDAP
3 10 (0.82%) Redfish
3 10 (0.82%) REST
4 8 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
5 7 (0.57%) Spring
6 5 (0.41%) Jinja
6 5 (0.41%) Kafka
6 5 (0.41%) NETCONF
6 5 (0.41%) XML
7 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
7 4 (0.33%) OpenConfig
7 4 (0.33%) RESTCONF
7 4 (0.33%) RESTful
7 4 (0.33%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.33%) YAML
7 4 (0.33%) YANG
8 3 (0.25%) .NET Framework
8 3 (0.25%) Java EE
Miscellaneous
1 75 (6.15%) Hybrid Cloud
2 56 (4.59%) Analytical Mindset
3 37 (3.03%) Cloud Native
3 37 (3.03%) Management Information System
4 32 (2.62%) Enterprise Storage
4 32 (2.62%) PKI
5 31 (2.54%) Clustering
6 30 (2.46%) Onboarding
7 29 (2.38%) Private Cloud
8 28 (2.30%) Fibre Optics
9 21 (1.72%) CMDB
10 20 (1.64%) Driving Licence
10 20 (1.64%) Public Cloud
10 20 (1.64%) Replication
11 18 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
12 16 (1.31%) SCADA
13 14 (1.15%) Mainframe
13 14 (1.15%) NHS
13 14 (1.15%) Operational Technology
14 13 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 163 (13.36%) Windows
2 144 (11.80%) Linux
3 42 (3.44%) Windows Server
4 34 (2.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (2.46%) Unix
6 23 (1.89%) AIX
7 18 (1.48%) Solaris
8 10 (0.82%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.82%) Mac OS
9 8 (0.66%) CentOS
9 8 (0.66%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.49%) VMS
12 5 (0.41%) HPUX
12 5 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.41%) SUSE
13 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
14 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
15 2 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.16%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 214 (17.54%) Migration
2 206 (16.89%) Problem-Solving
3 132 (10.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 129 (10.57%) Stakeholder Management
5 115 (9.43%) Infrastructure as Code
5 115 (9.43%) ITIL
6 113 (9.26%) High Availability
7 105 (8.61%) CI/CD
8 99 (8.11%) Roadmaps
9 91 (7.46%) Continuous Improvement
10 88 (7.21%) Agile
11 85 (6.97%) Load Balancing
11 85 (6.97%) Validation
12 82 (6.72%) DevOps
13 79 (6.48%) Project Delivery
14 78 (6.39%) Change Management
15 72 (5.90%) Zero Trust
16 68 (5.57%) Customer Service
16 68 (5.57%) ITSM
16 68 (5.57%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 152 (12.46%) Python
2 40 (3.28%) PowerShell
3 36 (2.95%) SQL
4 25 (2.05%) Bash
5 19 (1.56%) Java
6 16 (1.31%) Bicep
7 15 (1.23%) Shell Script
8 12 (0.98%) COBOL
9 10 (0.82%) ActionScript
9 10 (0.82%) Perl
10 8 (0.66%) MATLAB
11 7 (0.57%) JavaScript
11 7 (0.57%) PL/SQL
12 4 (0.33%) Lisp
13 3 (0.25%) C
13 3 (0.25%) C#
13 3 (0.25%) C++
13 3 (0.25%) JCL
13 3 (0.25%) Korn
13 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 317 (25.98%) Security Cleared
2 232 (19.02%) Cisco Certification
3 222 (18.20%) SC Cleared
4 138 (11.31%) CCNP
5 99 (8.11%) CCNA
6 87 (7.13%) DV Cleared
7 71 (5.82%) Degree
8 64 (5.25%) Network+ Certification
9 54 (4.43%) Microsoft Certification
10 47 (3.85%) A+ Certification
10 47 (3.85%) MCSE
11 30 (2.46%) Azure Certification
12 28 (2.30%) CCIE
13 26 (2.13%) City & Guilds
14 25 (2.05%) AWS Certification
15 22 (1.80%) PMI Certification
15 22 (1.80%) PMP
15 22 (1.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 20 (1.64%) BICSI Certification
17 18 (1.48%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (2.70%) SLA
2 27 (2.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (2.13%) NIST
3 26 (2.13%) QA
4 22 (1.80%) PMO
5 19 (1.56%) GDPR
6 17 (1.39%) NCSC
7 10 (0.82%) GRC
8 9 (0.74%) Disclosure Scotland
8 9 (0.74%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.57%) RMADS
10 6 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.33%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
13 2 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.16%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 108 (8.85%) VMware Infrastructure
2 65 (5.33%) Active Directory
3 36 (2.95%) VMware ESXi
4 35 (2.87%) VMware NSX
4 35 (2.87%) vSphere
5 29 (2.38%) Firmware
6 25 (2.05%) Hyper-V
7 22 (1.80%) Virtual Machines
8 16 (1.31%) Docker
9 9 (0.74%) KVM
9 9 (0.74%) NFS
10 7 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
11 6 (0.49%) SRDF
12 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
12 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
12 4 (0.33%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (0.25%) UAG
13 3 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 137 (11.23%) Ansible
2 110 (9.02%) Terraform
3 54 (4.43%) FortiGate
4 50 (4.10%) Kubernetes
5 35 (2.87%) Grafana
6 30 (2.46%) Prometheus
7 28 (2.30%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (1.23%) vCenter Server
9 13 (1.07%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.90%) Check_MK
10 11 (0.90%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.90%) vMotion
11 10 (0.82%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.74%) SCCM
13 8 (0.66%) Podman
13 8 (0.66%) Red Hat Satellite
14 7 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (0.57%) EMC NetWorker
14 7 (0.57%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 303 (24.84%) Cisco
2 163 (13.36%) VMware
3 142 (11.64%) Palo Alto
4 122 (10.00%) Microsoft
5 116 (9.51%) F5
6 96 (7.87%) Juniper
7 89 (7.30%) Dell
8 74 (6.07%) Arista
9 71 (5.82%) Fortinet
10 60 (4.92%) ServiceNow
11 47 (3.85%) Google
12 46 (3.77%) Aruba
13 43 (3.52%) SolarWinds
14 37 (3.03%) Red Hat
15 36 (2.95%) IBM
16 35 (2.87%) CheckPoint
17 30 (2.46%) Splunk
18 26 (2.13%) Oracle
19 25 (2.05%) Citrix
19 25 (2.05%) HP