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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 125 105
Rank change year-on-year +24 -20 -20
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,183 618 914
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.42% 2.15% 2.12%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.49% 6.29% 7.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 723 401 621
10th Percentile £318 £313 £300
25th Percentile £408 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £505 £528
Median % change year-on-year -2.57% -4.27% -4.09%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £475 £538
% change year-on-year -0.21% -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 19 45
10th Percentile £16.00 - £13.35
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £18.27
Median hourly rate £19.85 £37.50 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.07% +56.25% +12.89%
75th Percentile £38.75 £42.50 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.71 £55.00 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £27.75 £23.25
% change year-on-year -30.29% +19.33% +10.81%

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 15,804 9,824 12,980
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.35% 34.15% 30.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,745 6,228 8,331
10th Percentile £313 £292 £270
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.79% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 781 404 926
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.92 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.31 £20.33 £15.23
Median hourly rate £41.94 £33.03 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.99% -5.64% +59.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £86.00 £82.43 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £32.43 £34.21
% change year-on-year +35.55% -5.20% +56.39%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +33 967 £495 -5.71% 571
UK excluding London +17 679 £474 -0.21% 331
London +10 335 £550 +2.61% 272
Work from Home +37 320 £480 -5.88% 186
North of England +22 238 £474 +6.46% 71
South East +15 212 £463 +2.78% 121
Yorkshire +1 118 £365 -14.12% 29
North West +19 97 £494 -1.94% 30
Midlands -41 58 £467 -15.12% 29
Scotland +12 57 £466 +6.46% 20
West Midlands -44 52 £468 -14.83% 25
South West -21 50 £495 -13.91% 39
East of England -13 37 £492 +64.00% 42
Wales +2 34 £468 +16.88% 6
North East -2 29 £625 +468.18% 12
East Midlands -27 5 £400 -27.27% 4
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 9
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 22 (1.86%) Confluence
2 15 (1.27%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.93%) CICS
4 10 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 5 (0.42%) nginx
6 4 (0.34%) Apache
6 4 (0.34%) CloudStack
6 4 (0.34%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.25%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.085%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.085%) IIS
8 1 (0.085%) Mendix
Applications
1 15 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 11 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
2 11 (0.93%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.34%) AutoCAD
4 3 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
4 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.17%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.17%) Primavera
2 2 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.085%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 245 (20.71%) Azure
2 201 (16.99%) AWS
3 71 (6.00%) GCP
4 37 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
5 33 (2.79%) GitHub
6 32 (2.70%) IaaS
7 31 (2.62%) SaaS
8 29 (2.45%) OCI
9 22 (1.86%) Entra ID
10 17 (1.44%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 15 (1.27%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 15 (1.27%) PaaS
12 13 (1.10%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (1.10%) OpenShift
13 12 (1.01%) OneDrive
14 11 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
14 11 (0.93%) Power Platform
15 10 (0.85%) Nutanix
16 9 (0.76%) AWS Direct Connect
16 9 (0.76%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 340 (28.74%) Firewall
2 206 (17.41%) WAN
3 186 (15.72%) BGP
4 149 (12.60%) OSPF
5 127 (10.74%) Network Security
6 125 (10.57%) LAN
7 123 (10.40%) VPN
7 123 (10.40%) VXLAN
8 117 (9.89%) SAN
9 98 (8.28%) DNS
10 97 (8.20%) VLAN
11 94 (7.95%) Structured Cabling
12 85 (7.19%) Ethernet VPN
13 79 (6.68%) SD-WAN
14 75 (6.34%) DHCP
15 54 (4.56%) BIG-IP
16 52 (4.40%) Cisco Nexus
17 50 (4.23%) Wi-Fi
18 48 (4.06%) NX-OS
19 45 (3.80%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.27%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.85%) DataStage
3 6 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (0.51%) Power BI
4 5 (0.42%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.34%) Big Data
5 4 (0.34%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.34%) Oracle Database
5 4 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.34%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.25%) GIS
7 2 (0.17%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.17%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
7 2 (0.17%) Power Query
7 2 (0.17%) PowerPivot
8 1 (0.085%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.085%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.085%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 54 (4.56%) JIRA
2 38 (3.21%) GitLab
3 35 (2.96%) Jenkins
4 32 (2.70%) Git
5 7 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.51%) Maven
6 6 (0.51%) ScriptRunner
7 5 (0.42%) JMeter
8 4 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 4 (0.34%) Eclipse
8 4 (0.34%) Subversion
9 3 (0.25%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
10 1 (0.085%) AppScan
10 1 (0.085%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.085%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.085%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.085%) Postman
General
1 291 (24.60%) Social Skills
2 159 (13.44%) Finance
3 130 (10.99%) Analytical Skills
4 83 (7.02%) Public Sector
5 63 (5.33%) Documentation Skills
6 47 (3.97%) Banking
7 34 (2.87%) Legal
8 31 (2.62%) Telecoms
9 26 (2.20%) Manufacturing
10 22 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
11 21 (1.78%) Retail
12 13 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (1.01%) Law
14 10 (0.85%) Military
15 9 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
16 8 (0.68%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.68%) Financial Institution
16 8 (0.68%) Marketing
17 6 (0.51%) Organisational Skills
18 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 209 (17.67%) Network Engineer
2 189 (15.98%) Architect
3 134 (11.33%) Senior
4 90 (7.61%) Data Centre Engineer
5 83 (7.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 74 (6.26%) Project Manager
7 59 (4.99%) Lead
8 58 (4.90%) IT Engineer
9 57 (4.82%) Network Architect
10 55 (4.65%) Field Engineer
11 52 (4.40%) Field Service Engineer
12 42 (3.55%) Solutions Architect
13 41 (3.47%) Data Centre Manager
14 37 (3.13%) Analyst
15 36 (3.04%) Infrastructure Manager
15 36 (3.04%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 36 (3.04%) Technical Architect
16 34 (2.87%) Senior Network Engineer
17 32 (2.70%) Administrator
17 32 (2.70%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (4.14%) Middleware
2 32 (2.70%) 802.1X
3 12 (1.01%) LDAP
4 9 (0.76%) Redfish
5 8 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.59%) REST
6 7 (0.59%) Spring
7 5 (0.42%) Jinja
7 5 (0.42%) Kafka
7 5 (0.42%) XML
8 4 (0.34%) ADO
8 4 (0.34%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.34%) YAML
9 3 (0.25%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.25%) EJB
9 3 (0.25%) Java EE
9 3 (0.25%) JSON
9 3 (0.25%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.25%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 65 (5.49%) Hybrid Cloud
2 58 (4.90%) Analytical Mindset
3 36 (3.04%) Management Information System
4 30 (2.54%) Cloud Native
5 28 (2.37%) PKI
6 27 (2.28%) Clustering
7 26 (2.20%) Enterprise Storage
8 25 (2.11%) Fibre Optics
8 25 (2.11%) Onboarding
9 21 (1.78%) CMDB
9 21 (1.78%) Driving Licence
9 21 (1.78%) Private Cloud
9 21 (1.78%) Public Cloud
9 21 (1.78%) Replication
10 18 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
11 17 (1.44%) SCADA
12 16 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
13 14 (1.18%) NHS
14 12 (1.01%) Mainframe
14 12 (1.01%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 150 (12.68%) Linux
1 150 (12.68%) Windows
2 40 (3.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 36 (3.04%) Windows Server
4 23 (1.94%) Unix
5 22 (1.86%) AIX
6 17 (1.44%) Solaris
7 12 (1.01%) CentOS
8 9 (0.76%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
9 7 (0.59%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.59%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.59%) VMS
10 4 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.34%) HPUX
10 4 (0.34%) Oracle Linux
10 4 (0.34%) SUSE
11 3 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 207 (17.50%) Problem-Solving
2 192 (16.23%) Migration
3 116 (9.81%) High Availability
4 112 (9.47%) Infrastructure as Code
5 110 (9.30%) Stakeholder Management
6 106 (8.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 104 (8.79%) ITIL
8 97 (8.20%) CI/CD
9 96 (8.11%) Roadmaps
10 93 (7.86%) Continuous Improvement
11 86 (7.27%) Load Balancing
12 79 (6.68%) Agile
13 78 (6.59%) DevOps
14 77 (6.51%) Project Delivery
14 77 (6.51%) Validation
15 76 (6.42%) Project Management
16 72 (6.09%) Change Management
17 69 (5.83%) Customer Service
18 64 (5.41%) Break/Fix
19 63 (5.33%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 139 (11.75%) Python
2 40 (3.38%) PowerShell
3 36 (3.04%) SQL
4 26 (2.20%) Bash
5 22 (1.86%) Java
6 16 (1.35%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.01%) COBOL
8 11 (0.93%) Bicep
8 11 (0.93%) MATLAB
9 10 (0.85%) Perl
10 8 (0.68%) PL/SQL
11 7 (0.59%) ActionScript
12 5 (0.42%) C
12 5 (0.42%) C++
12 5 (0.42%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.34%) Lisp
14 3 (0.25%) VBA
15 2 (0.17%) JCL
15 2 (0.17%) Korn
15 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 326 (27.56%) Security Cleared
2 246 (20.79%) Cisco Certification
3 243 (20.54%) SC Cleared
4 154 (13.02%) CCNP
5 110 (9.30%) CCNA
6 71 (6.00%) DV Cleared
7 69 (5.83%) Degree
8 67 (5.66%) Network+ Certification
9 56 (4.73%) Microsoft Certification
10 50 (4.23%) A+ Certification
10 50 (4.23%) MCSE
11 28 (2.37%) Azure Certification
12 26 (2.20%) CCIE
13 25 (2.11%) City & Guilds
14 23 (1.94%) PMP
15 22 (1.86%) AWS Certification
15 22 (1.86%) PMI Certification
16 20 (1.69%) BICSI Certification
17 19 (1.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 17 (1.44%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (2.79%) SLA
2 26 (2.20%) NIST
3 23 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (1.94%) QA
4 21 (1.78%) PMO
5 18 (1.52%) GDPR
6 10 (0.85%) NCSC
7 9 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
7 9 (0.76%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.68%) GRC
9 6 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
9 6 (0.51%) RMADS
10 3 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.25%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.17%) Data Quality
11 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.085%) COBIT
12 1 (0.085%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 103 (8.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 61 (5.16%) Active Directory
3 36 (3.04%) VMware NSX
4 33 (2.79%) vSphere
5 30 (2.54%) Firmware
6 28 (2.37%) VMware ESXi
7 25 (2.11%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (2.03%) Hyper-V
9 12 (1.01%) Docker
9 12 (1.01%) KVM
10 7 (0.59%) NFS
10 7 (0.59%) SRDF
11 6 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.34%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.25%) Ceph
13 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
13 3 (0.25%) PowerHA
13 3 (0.25%) UAG
13 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 137 (11.58%) Ansible
2 105 (8.88%) Terraform
3 60 (5.07%) FortiGate
4 43 (3.63%) Kubernetes
5 35 (2.96%) Grafana
6 28 (2.37%) Prometheus
7 21 (1.78%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (1.10%) Check_MK
8 13 (1.10%) NetBackup
9 12 (1.01%) vCenter Server
10 11 (0.93%) Podman
10 11 (0.93%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.93%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (0.85%) SCCM
12 9 (0.76%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.68%) vMotion
14 7 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (0.59%) EMC NetWorker
14 7 (0.59%) Jamf Pro
14 7 (0.59%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 318 (26.88%) Cisco
2 155 (13.10%) Palo Alto
2 155 (13.10%) VMware
3 113 (9.55%) F5
4 105 (8.88%) Microsoft
5 96 (8.11%) Dell
6 89 (7.52%) Juniper
7 71 (6.00%) Arista
8 63 (5.33%) Fortinet
9 60 (5.07%) Aruba
10 55 (4.65%) ServiceNow
11 48 (4.06%) CheckPoint
12 42 (3.55%) SolarWinds
13 39 (3.30%) Google
13 39 (3.30%) Red Hat
14 35 (2.96%) IBM
15 29 (2.45%) Oracle
16 28 (2.37%) Splunk
17 25 (2.11%) NVIDIA
18 23 (1.94%) Meraki