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 18 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 97 126 104
Rank change year-on-year +29 -22 -11
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,123 648 915
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.34% 2.21% 2.15%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.34% 6.50% 7.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 699 424 619
10th Percentile £318 £350 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.13% -2.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £531
% change year-on-year -1.26% -10.59% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 22 45
10th Percentile £16.00 £24.18 £13.35
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £18.27
Median hourly rate £19.34 £27.50 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.67% +14.58% +10.75%
75th Percentile £33.75 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.16 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £22.50
% change year-on-year -21.57% +9.60% +5.83%

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 15,307 9,975 12,915
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.92% 33.94% 30.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,494 6,359 8,316
10th Percentile £313 £300 £267
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.43% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £739 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +0.26% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 732 397 899
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.87 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.96 £20.75 £15.17
Median hourly rate £42.50 £31.76 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.82% +0.83% +40.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.35 £83.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £30.39 £30.00
% change year-on-year +56.43% +1.30% +36.36%

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 18 May 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 18 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Centre in the UK

Data Centre
Top 17 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 18 May 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 +23 912 £485 -7.62% 446
UK excluding London +10 638 £469 -1.26% 272
London +14 317 £550 +4.27% 205
Work from Home +33 295 £480 -7.25% 143
North of England +23 210 £469 +5.33% 74
South East +2 197 £463 +2.78% 94
Yorkshire -10 96 £365 -14.12% 28
North West +14 93 £481 -4.47% 37
Scotland +9 56 £469 +10.35% 19
Midlands -53 53 £460 -16.36% 33
South West -22 51 £495 -10.00% 27
West Midlands -48 47 £465 -15.45% 31
East of England -7 42 £487 +77.18% 23
Wales +3 35 £468 +16.88% 4
North East +2 23 £400 +263.64% 9
East Midlands -27 5 £400 -27.27% 2
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 4

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 (1.96%) Confluence
2 12 (1.07%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.98%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (0.89%) CICS
5 5 (0.45%) nginx
6 4 (0.36%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.36%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.27%) Apache
7 3 (0.27%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.27%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.089%) Mendix
Applications
1 17 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.98%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.27%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.18%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.18%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
1 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.18%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.18%) Primavera
3 1 (0.089%) Maximo
3 1 (0.089%) Oracle Financials
3 1 (0.089%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 220 (19.59%) Azure
2 182 (16.21%) AWS
3 68 (6.06%) GCP
4 33 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
5 23 (2.05%) SaaS
6 22 (1.96%) OCI
7 21 (1.87%) Entra ID
7 21 (1.87%) GitHub
8 20 (1.78%) IaaS
9 17 (1.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 15 (1.34%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 13 (1.16%) OpenShift
11 13 (1.16%) PaaS
12 11 (0.98%) Azure DevOps
12 11 (0.98%) Power Platform
13 10 (0.89%) Azure Sentinel
14 9 (0.80%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 9 (0.80%) AWS CloudFormation
14 9 (0.80%) AWS Direct Connect
14 9 (0.80%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 313 (27.87%) Firewall
2 195 (17.36%) WAN
3 174 (15.49%) BGP
4 141 (12.56%) OSPF
5 121 (10.77%) Network Security
6 117 (10.42%) LAN
6 117 (10.42%) VPN
7 108 (9.62%) SAN
8 107 (9.53%) VXLAN
9 91 (8.10%) Structured Cabling
10 84 (7.48%) VLAN
11 81 (7.21%) DNS
12 75 (6.68%) Ethernet VPN
13 66 (5.88%) SD-WAN
14 63 (5.61%) DHCP
15 53 (4.72%) Cisco Nexus
16 52 (4.63%) Wi-Fi
17 42 (3.74%) BIG-IP
18 41 (3.65%) NX-OS
19 37 (3.29%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.07%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.89%) DataStage
3 6 (0.53%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (0.53%) Power BI
4 5 (0.45%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.36%) Big Data
5 4 (0.36%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.36%) Oracle Database
5 4 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.36%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.27%) GIS
7 2 (0.18%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.18%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.18%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.18%) InfluxDB
7 2 (0.18%) Oracle Database 12c
7 2 (0.18%) Power Query
7 2 (0.18%) PowerPivot
8 1 (0.089%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 45 (4.01%) JIRA
2 36 (3.21%) Git
3 34 (3.03%) GitLab
4 27 (2.40%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.71%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (0.62%) Maven
7 6 (0.53%) ScriptRunner
8 5 (0.45%) JMeter
9 4 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 4 (0.36%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.36%) Subversion
10 3 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.27%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.089%) AppScan
11 1 (0.089%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.089%) LoadRunner
11 1 (0.089%) Metasploit
11 1 (0.089%) Postman
General
1 273 (24.31%) Social Skills
2 150 (13.36%) Finance
3 131 (11.67%) Analytical Skills
4 83 (7.39%) Public Sector
5 62 (5.52%) Documentation Skills
6 44 (3.92%) Banking
7 32 (2.85%) Legal
8 28 (2.49%) Telecoms
9 25 (2.23%) Manufacturing
10 23 (2.05%) Retail
11 22 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
12 12 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (0.89%) Military
13 10 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
14 9 (0.80%) Law
15 8 (0.71%) Aerospace
15 8 (0.71%) Financial Institution
15 8 (0.71%) Marketing
16 6 (0.53%) Organisational Skills
17 5 (0.45%) Portuguese Language
Job Titles
1 201 (17.90%) Network Engineer
2 181 (16.12%) Architect
3 125 (11.13%) Senior
4 83 (7.39%) Data Centre Engineer
5 73 (6.50%) Project Manager
6 67 (5.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 59 (5.25%) IT Engineer
8 56 (4.99%) Field Engineer
9 54 (4.81%) Lead
10 53 (4.72%) Field Service Engineer
11 52 (4.63%) Network Architect
12 45 (4.01%) Data Centre Manager
13 42 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
14 38 (3.38%) Analyst
14 38 (3.38%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 35 (3.12%) Senior Network Engineer
16 33 (2.94%) Infrastructure Manager
16 33 (2.94%) Technical Architect
17 32 (2.85%) Administrator
18 31 (2.76%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (4.10%) Middleware
2 32 (2.85%) 802.1X
3 13 (1.16%) LDAP
4 8 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
4 8 (0.71%) Redfish
5 7 (0.62%) Spring
6 5 (0.45%) Jinja
6 5 (0.45%) REST
6 5 (0.45%) XML
7 4 (0.36%) ADO
7 4 (0.36%) Kafka
7 4 (0.36%) NETCONF
7 4 (0.36%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.36%) VML
8 3 (0.27%) OpenConfig
8 3 (0.27%) OpenLayers
8 3 (0.27%) RESTCONF
8 3 (0.27%) RFC 2544
8 3 (0.27%) YANG
8 3 (0.27%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 60 (5.34%) Analytical Mindset
1 60 (5.34%) Hybrid Cloud
2 33 (2.94%) Management Information System
3 28 (2.49%) Clustering
3 28 (2.49%) PKI
4 25 (2.23%) Cloud Native
4 25 (2.23%) Fibre Optics
5 21 (1.87%) SCADA
6 20 (1.78%) CMDB
6 20 (1.78%) Onboarding
6 20 (1.78%) Public Cloud
7 19 (1.69%) Driving Licence
7 19 (1.69%) Enterprise Storage
8 18 (1.60%) Replication
9 17 (1.51%) Private Cloud
9 17 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (1.25%) NHS
11 13 (1.16%) Operational Technology
12 12 (1.07%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 145 (12.91%) Linux
2 140 (12.47%) Windows
3 38 (3.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 38 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 23 (2.05%) Unix
5 21 (1.87%) AIX
6 17 (1.51%) Solaris
7 12 (1.07%) CentOS
8 9 (0.80%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.71%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.62%) VMS
11 4 (0.36%) Apple iOS
11 4 (0.36%) HPUX
11 4 (0.36%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.36%) Oracle Linux
11 4 (0.36%) SUSE
12 3 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 206 (18.34%) Problem-Solving
2 190 (16.92%) Migration
3 107 (9.53%) High Availability
4 100 (8.90%) Stakeholder Management
5 99 (8.82%) Infrastructure as Code
6 97 (8.64%) ITIL
7 93 (8.28%) Roadmaps
8 90 (8.01%) Continuous Improvement
9 84 (7.48%) CI/CD
10 83 (7.39%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 79 (7.03%) Load Balancing
12 75 (6.68%) Validation
13 73 (6.50%) Change Management
14 71 (6.32%) Project Management
15 68 (6.06%) Project Delivery
16 66 (5.88%) Customer Service
16 66 (5.88%) DevOps
17 64 (5.70%) Break/Fix
18 62 (5.52%) Agile
18 62 (5.52%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 120 (10.69%) Python
2 38 (3.38%) PowerShell
3 37 (3.29%) SQL
4 25 (2.23%) Bash
5 23 (2.05%) Java
6 16 (1.42%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.07%) COBOL
8 11 (0.98%) MATLAB
9 10 (0.89%) Perl
10 9 (0.80%) Bicep
11 8 (0.71%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.45%) C
12 5 (0.45%) C++
12 5 (0.45%) JavaScript
13 3 (0.27%) VBA
14 2 (0.18%) Groovy
14 2 (0.18%) Korn
14 2 (0.18%) Lisp
15 1 (0.089%) R
15 1 (0.089%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 314 (27.96%) Security Cleared
2 237 (21.10%) Cisco Certification
2 237 (21.10%) SC Cleared
3 144 (12.82%) CCNP
4 108 (9.62%) CCNA
5 65 (5.79%) Degree
6 64 (5.70%) DV Cleared
6 64 (5.70%) Network+ Certification
7 54 (4.81%) Microsoft Certification
8 51 (4.54%) A+ Certification
8 51 (4.54%) MCSE
9 26 (2.32%) CCIE
10 24 (2.14%) Azure Certification
11 23 (2.05%) City & Guilds
11 23 (2.05%) PMP
12 22 (1.96%) PMI Certification
13 20 (1.78%) AWS Certification
13 20 (1.78%) BICSI Certification
14 16 (1.42%) JNCIS
14 16 (1.42%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (2.76%) SLA
2 24 (2.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 24 (2.14%) QA
3 23 (2.05%) PMO
4 22 (1.96%) NIST
5 18 (1.60%) GDPR
6 11 (0.98%) NCSC
7 9 (0.80%) Disclosure Scotland
7 9 (0.80%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.71%) GRC
9 6 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
10 4 (0.36%) RMADS
11 3 (0.27%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.18%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.089%) COBIT
13 1 (0.089%) JSP 440
13 1 (0.089%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 95 (8.46%) VMware Infrastructure
2 59 (5.25%) Active Directory
3 41 (3.65%) VMware NSX
4 31 (2.76%) Firmware
4 31 (2.76%) vSphere
5 25 (2.23%) VMware ESXi
6 24 (2.14%) Virtual Machines
7 20 (1.78%) Hyper-V
8 14 (1.25%) Docker
9 11 (0.98%) KVM
10 6 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.36%) NFS
11 4 (0.36%) SRDF
11 4 (0.36%) VMware Workstation
12 3 (0.27%) Ceph
12 3 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
12 3 (0.27%) PowerHA
12 3 (0.27%) UAG
12 3 (0.27%) Veritas Cluster Server
12 3 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 126 (11.22%) Ansible
2 96 (8.55%) Terraform
3 60 (5.34%) FortiGate
4 44 (3.92%) Kubernetes
5 35 (3.12%) Grafana
6 27 (2.40%) Prometheus
7 17 (1.51%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (1.25%) Check_MK
9 12 (1.07%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.98%) Podman
10 11 (0.98%) Red Hat Satellite
10 11 (0.98%) SCCM
10 11 (0.98%) vCenter Server
11 9 (0.80%) PowerCLI
12 8 (0.71%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.71%) vMotion
13 7 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 6 (0.53%) EMC NetWorker
15 5 (0.45%) Nagios
15 5 (0.45%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 303 (26.98%) Cisco
2 144 (12.82%) VMware
3 143 (12.73%) Palo Alto
4 100 (8.90%) F5
4 100 (8.90%) Microsoft
5 94 (8.37%) Dell
6 86 (7.66%) Juniper
7 62 (5.52%) Arista
8 54 (4.81%) Aruba
8 54 (4.81%) Fortinet
9 48 (4.27%) CheckPoint
10 47 (4.19%) ServiceNow
11 40 (3.56%) SolarWinds
12 38 (3.38%) Google
13 37 (3.29%) Red Hat
14 33 (2.94%) IBM
15 30 (2.67%) Oracle
15 30 (2.67%) Splunk
16 29 (2.58%) Meraki
17 26 (2.32%) NVIDIA