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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 128 115
Rank change year-on-year +5 -13 -26
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,191 720 789
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.19% 2.19% 2.07%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.41% 6.13% 6.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 726 455 487
10th Percentile £318 £290 £363
25th Percentile £413 £386 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £650 £600 £619
90th Percentile £750 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £538
% change year-on-year +5.26% -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 40 35
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.83
25th Percentile £18.90 - £12.08
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% +11.78% -2.17%
75th Percentile £52.50 £32.00 £26.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £40.38 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £25.08 £15.00
% change year-on-year -16.25% +67.17% -34.78%

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 18,572 11,753 11,660
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.15% 35.82% 30.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,116 7,198 7,033
10th Percentile £320 £293 £285
25th Percentile £425 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £519 £538
Median % change year-on-year +1.25% -3.53% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £672
90th Percentile £750 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,231 599 437
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.96 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.85 £18.87 £22.50
Median hourly rate £36.00 £29.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.14% -42.00% +12.36%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £29.30 £57.35
% change year-on-year +30.55% -48.91% +14.70%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +6 1,004 £537 +3.42% 1,762
UK excluding London -17 641 £500 +5.26% 770
London +17 402 £550 +2.09% 986
Work from Home -9 277 £540 +8.00% 430
North of England +4 223 £500 +4.93% 192
South East -3 174 £531 +24.94% 226
Yorkshire +8 135 £496 +10.22% 39
North West -30 72 £538 -0.46% 89
South West -18 65 £623 +13.18% 66
Midlands -61 62 £475 -4.23% 95
West Midlands -57 51 £500 - 74
Scotland -13 47 £388 -8.82% 46
East of England -5 41 £483 -19.58% 99
Wales +6 36 £468 +55.83% 31
North East -18 22 £625 +257.14% 65
East Midlands -23 11 £413 -14.29% 21
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 22
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 34 (2.85%) Confluence
2 19 (1.60%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.76%) OpenStack
5 6 (0.50%) IIS
6 5 (0.42%) Apache
6 5 (0.42%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.25%) CICS
8 1 (0.084%) nginx
8 1 (0.084%) SAS
8 1 (0.084%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 20 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.84%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
7 4 (0.34%) Navisworks
7 4 (0.34%) Revit
8 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 11 (0.92%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.084%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.084%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.084%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 251 (21.07%) Azure
2 210 (17.63%) AWS
3 61 (5.12%) GCP
4 59 (4.95%) GitHub
5 46 (3.86%) Microsoft 365
6 45 (3.78%) IaaS
7 37 (3.11%) Entra ID
7 37 (3.11%) SaaS
8 29 (2.43%) OCI
9 20 (1.68%) Azure DevOps
10 18 (1.51%) PaaS
11 15 (1.26%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 15 (1.26%) OneDrive
11 15 (1.26%) OpenShift
12 14 (1.18%) Power Platform
13 12 (1.01%) Nutanix
14 10 (0.84%) AWS Direct Connect
14 10 (0.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 7 (0.59%) Azure Sentinel
15 7 (0.59%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 290 (24.35%) Firewall
2 184 (15.45%) WAN
3 170 (14.27%) BGP
4 128 (10.75%) DNS
5 122 (10.24%) VPN
6 115 (9.66%) Network Security
7 114 (9.57%) VXLAN
8 111 (9.32%) LAN
9 105 (8.82%) OSPF
9 105 (8.82%) VLAN
10 92 (7.72%) SAN
11 88 (7.39%) DHCP
12 86 (7.22%) TCP/IP
13 84 (7.05%) Ethernet VPN
14 82 (6.88%) SD-WAN
15 64 (5.37%) Wireless
16 62 (5.21%) Structured Cabling
17 60 (5.04%) Wi-Fi
18 53 (4.45%) BIG-IP
18 53 (4.45%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (3.44%) SQL Server
2 14 (1.18%) Power BI
3 11 (0.92%) 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 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (0.42%) Db2
8 4 (0.34%) Azure SQL Database
8 4 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.34%) Oracle Database 12c
8 4 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
9 3 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.25%) Big Data
9 3 (0.25%) PostgreSQL
10 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.17%) DataStage
10 2 (0.17%) Flink
10 2 (0.17%) Sybase ASE
10 2 (0.17%) Sybase IQ
Development Applications
1 80 (6.72%) JIRA
2 39 (3.27%) GitLab
3 37 (3.11%) Jenkins
4 29 (2.43%) 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
1 283 (23.76%) Social Skills
2 170 (14.27%) Finance
3 98 (8.23%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (5.21%) Banking
5 54 (4.53%) Public Sector
5 54 (4.53%) Telecoms
6 47 (3.95%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (2.10%) Retail
8 24 (2.02%) Legal
9 18 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
10 17 (1.43%) Manufacturing
11 15 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
12 13 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.59%) Police
14 6 (0.50%) Financial Institution
14 6 (0.50%) Investment Banking
14 6 (0.50%) Law
15 5 (0.42%) Cyber-Physical System
16 4 (0.34%) Marketing
16 4 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 199 (16.71%) Architect
2 198 (16.62%) Network Engineer
3 151 (12.68%) Senior
4 119 (9.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 79 (6.63%) Data Centre Engineer
6 76 (6.38%) Project Manager
7 74 (6.21%) Lead
8 68 (5.71%) Network Architect
9 47 (3.95%) Consultant
10 46 (3.86%) IT Engineer
11 44 (3.69%) Senior Network Engineer
12 43 (3.61%) Data Centre Manager
13 41 (3.44%) Technical Architect
14 35 (2.94%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 33 (2.77%) Infrastructure Manager
15 33 (2.77%) Solutions Architect
15 33 (2.77%) Support Engineer
16 31 (2.60%) Field Engineer
17 29 (2.43%) Administrator
17 29 (2.43%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 116 (9.74%) Terraform
2 37 (3.11%) Middleware
3 32 (2.69%) REST
4 18 (1.51%) YAML
5 16 (1.34%) 802.1X
6 15 (1.26%) JSON
7 13 (1.09%) .NET
8 8 (0.67%) LDAP
9 7 (0.59%) NETCONF
10 6 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (0.50%) SAML
11 5 (0.42%) Kafka
11 5 (0.42%) OpenConfig
11 5 (0.42%) Redfish
11 5 (0.42%) RESTCONF
11 5 (0.42%) YANG
12 4 (0.34%) GeoJSON
12 4 (0.34%) RESTful
13 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
13 3 (0.25%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 84 (7.05%) Hybrid Cloud
2 46 (3.86%) Public Cloud
3 37 (3.11%) Private Cloud
4 33 (2.77%) Cloud Native
4 33 (2.77%) Management Information System
5 32 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
6 31 (2.60%) PKI
7 29 (2.43%) Enterprise Storage
7 29 (2.43%) Replication
8 26 (2.18%) Data Protection Act
8 26 (2.18%) Onboarding
9 25 (2.10%) Clustering
9 25 (2.10%) Operational Technology
10 20 (1.68%) SCADA
11 19 (1.60%) Fibre Optics
12 18 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
13 16 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
14 15 (1.26%) Driving Licence
15 14 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
16 13 (1.09%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 200 (16.79%) Windows
2 136 (11.42%) Linux
3 71 (5.96%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.77%) Unix
5 21 (1.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (1.34%) AIX
7 13 (1.09%) Mac OS
8 10 (0.84%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.84%) Solaris
8 10 (0.84%) VMS
9 8 (0.67%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.50%) 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
1 257 (21.58%) Migration
2 182 (15.28%) Problem-Solving
3 167 (14.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 154 (12.93%) Stakeholder Management
5 132 (11.08%) Infrastructure as Code
6 113 (9.49%) ITIL
7 107 (8.98%) CI/CD
8 105 (8.82%) Agile
9 98 (8.23%) High Availability
10 96 (8.06%) Project Delivery
11 93 (7.81%) Roadmaps
11 93 (7.81%) Validation
12 89 (7.47%) Continuous Improvement
13 88 (7.39%) Disaster Recovery
14 81 (6.80%) Zero Trust
15 78 (6.55%) Cybersecurity
16 76 (6.38%) Change Management
17 75 (6.30%) Technical Leadership
18 73 (6.13%) DevOps
19 69 (5.79%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 162 (13.60%) Python
2 71 (5.96%) PowerShell
3 50 (4.20%) SQL
4 33 (2.77%) Bash
5 17 (1.43%) ActionScript
6 13 (1.09%) C#
7 11 (0.92%) Bicep
8 9 (0.76%) Shell Script
8 9 (0.76%) T-SQL
9 8 (0.67%) Perl
10 7 (0.59%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.34%) Go
11 4 (0.34%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.34%) MATLAB
12 3 (0.25%) Java
12 3 (0.25%) JCL
12 3 (0.25%) Lisp
12 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.17%) COBOL
13 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 309 (25.94%) Security Cleared
2 210 (17.63%) SC Cleared
3 162 (13.60%) Cisco Certification
4 102 (8.56%) DV Cleared
5 98 (8.23%) CCNP
6 61 (5.12%) CCNA
7 60 (5.04%) Degree
8 36 (3.02%) Network+ Certification
9 34 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
10 33 (2.77%) AWS Certification
11 32 (2.69%) A+ Certification
12 29 (2.43%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 28 (2.35%) CCIE
14 27 (2.27%) CISSP
15 26 (2.18%) Azure Certification
15 26 (2.18%) MCSE
16 21 (1.76%) PMI Certification
16 21 (1.76%) PMP
17 19 (1.60%) VCAP
18 18 (1.51%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (2.94%) QA
2 29 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (2.35%) SLA
4 27 (2.27%) NIST
5 14 (1.18%) PMO
6 13 (1.09%) GDPR
6 13 (1.09%) GRC
7 9 (0.76%) JSP 440
7 9 (0.76%) NCSC
8 7 (0.59%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.42%) ISO 31000
9 5 (0.42%) ISO 9001
9 5 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27005
9 5 (0.42%) NIST 800
10 4 (0.34%) RMADS
11 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 2 (0.17%) HIPAA
System Software
1 157 (13.18%) VMware Infrastructure
2 100 (8.40%) Active Directory
3 54 (4.53%) vSphere
4 52 (4.37%) VMware NSX
5 41 (3.44%) Hyper-V
6 37 (3.11%) VMware ESXi
7 35 (2.94%) Docker
8 25 (2.10%) Firmware
9 15 (1.26%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.92%) NFS
11 8 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.42%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.34%) ISA Server
14 4 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.34%) PowerHA
14 4 (0.34%) SRDF
15 3 (0.25%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.25%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 150 (12.59%) Ansible
2 56 (4.70%) Kubernetes
3 34 (2.85%) FortiGate
4 21 (1.76%) Microsoft Intune
5 19 (1.60%) vCenter Server
6 18 (1.51%) Prometheus
7 16 (1.34%) VxRail
8 15 (1.26%) Grafana
9 14 (1.18%) SCCM
10 12 (1.01%) Microsoft Clustering
10 12 (1.01%) PowerCLI
11 11 (0.92%) SCOM
11 11 (0.92%) vMotion
12 10 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.84%) NetBackup
13 9 (0.76%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 8 (0.67%) Dell DRAC
14 8 (0.67%) Nagios
15 7 (0.59%) Check_MK
16 5 (0.42%) EMC NetWorker
Vendors
1 289 (24.27%) Cisco
2 209 (17.55%) VMware
3 156 (13.10%) Microsoft
4 128 (10.75%) Palo Alto
5 110 (9.24%) F5
6 71 (5.96%) ServiceNow
7 66 (5.54%) Fortinet
8 63 (5.29%) Arista
9 61 (5.12%) Dell
10 60 (5.04%) Juniper
11 43 (3.61%) Aruba
12 38 (3.19%) CheckPoint
13 35 (2.94%) Red Hat
14 33 (2.77%) Oracle
15 32 (2.69%) Veeam
16 31 (2.60%) Google
17 24 (2.02%) Commvault
17 24 (2.02%) Zscaler
18 23 (1.93%) IBM
18 23 (1.93%) NetApp