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

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 102 133 103
Rank change year-on-year +31 -30 -16
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,185 634 938
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.37% 2.15% 2.15%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.29% 6.26% 7.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 713 411 627
10th Percentile £318 £300 £300
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £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 63 20 50
10th Percentile £16.00 - £12.07
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £16.69
Median hourly rate £19.85 £32.75 £23.90
Median % change year-on-year -39.38% +37.01% +12.42%
75th Percentile £35.22 £41.88 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.68 £49.38 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £25.08 £22.50
% change year-on-year -22.87% +11.44% +7.23%

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 16,252 10,120 13,071
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.49% 34.29% 29.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,979 6,363 8,322
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £660
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 821 435 942
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.82 £20.21 £15.39
Median hourly rate £41.00 £33.05 £35.58
Median % change year-on-year +24.05% -7.10% +58.75%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.24 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.40 £82.40 £71.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £32.43 £35.00
% change year-on-year +35.55% -7.34% +59.09%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 +24 976 £500 -3.85% 375
UK excluding London +12 678 £474 -0.21% 256
London +22 344 £550 +4.76% 164
Work from Home +19 317 £480 -4.95% 119
North of England +20 241 £474 +11.53% 51
South East +7 209 £469 +4.17% 100
Yorkshire -1 122 £365 -9.32% 21
North West +12 95 £481 -4.47% 24
Midlands -50 58 £465 -13.49% 23
Scotland 0 57 £466 +6.46% 11
West Midlands -42 53 £467 -13.15% 19
South West -12 52 £495 -13.91% 39
East of England -11 38 £492 +31.20% 27
Wales +4 34 £468 +16.88% 8
North East -5 30 £625 +468.18% 6
East Midlands -25 4 £325 -36.97% 4
Northern Ireland - 2 £425 - 3
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 25 (2.11%) Confluence
2 18 (1.52%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.93%) CICS
3 11 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (0.34%) Apache
4 4 (0.34%) CloudStack
4 4 (0.34%) nginx
4 4 (0.34%) OpenStack
4 4 (0.34%) WebLogic
5 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.084%) IIS
6 1 (0.084%) Mendix
Applications
1 15 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.01%) Microsoft Project
3 11 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
5 9 (0.76%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
7 3 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Primavera
1 3 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.17%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.084%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 251 (21.18%) Azure
2 209 (17.64%) AWS
3 72 (6.08%) GCP
4 39 (3.29%) GitHub
4 39 (3.29%) Microsoft 365
5 36 (3.04%) IaaS
6 32 (2.70%) SaaS
7 30 (2.53%) OCI
8 25 (2.11%) Entra ID
9 19 (1.60%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 17 (1.43%) PaaS
11 15 (1.27%) OneDrive
12 14 (1.18%) Azure DevOps
12 14 (1.18%) OpenShift
13 13 (1.10%) Power Platform
14 11 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
14 11 (0.93%) Nutanix
15 10 (0.84%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 9 (0.76%) Amazon EKS
16 9 (0.76%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 330 (27.85%) Firewall
2 199 (16.79%) WAN
3 186 (15.70%) BGP
4 146 (12.32%) OSPF
5 124 (10.46%) VXLAN
6 120 (10.13%) VPN
7 119 (10.04%) Network Security
7 119 (10.04%) SAN
8 117 (9.87%) LAN
9 105 (8.86%) DNS
10 99 (8.35%) VLAN
11 92 (7.76%) Structured Cabling
12 86 (7.26%) Ethernet VPN
12 86 (7.26%) SD-WAN
13 81 (6.84%) DHCP
14 57 (4.81%) BIG-IP
15 51 (4.30%) Cisco Nexus
16 49 (4.14%) TCP/IP
17 48 (4.05%) Wi-Fi
17 48 (4.05%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (1.43%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.84%) DataStage
3 8 (0.68%) Power BI
4 6 (0.51%) Big Data
4 6 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.34%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.34%) Oracle Database
5 4 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.34%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.34%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
6 3 (0.25%) GIS
7 2 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.17%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.17%) Geospatial Data
7 2 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
7 2 (0.17%) Power Query
7 2 (0.17%) PowerPivot
Development Applications
1 62 (5.23%) JIRA
2 39 (3.29%) GitLab
3 37 (3.12%) Jenkins
4 31 (2.62%) Git
5 7 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.51%) ScriptRunner
7 5 (0.42%) JMeter
7 5 (0.42%) Maven
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 (0.084%) AppScan
10 1 (0.084%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.084%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.084%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.084%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.084%) MSI
10 1 (0.084%) Postman
General
1 293 (24.73%) Social Skills
2 157 (13.25%) Finance
3 131 (11.05%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (6.84%) Public Sector
5 61 (5.15%) Documentation Skills
6 46 (3.88%) Banking
7 36 (3.04%) Legal
8 35 (2.95%) Telecoms
9 24 (2.03%) Manufacturing
10 21 (1.77%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (1.69%) Retail
12 16 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (1.01%) Law
14 11 (0.93%) 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
1 205 (17.30%) Network Engineer
2 186 (15.70%) Architect
3 133 (11.22%) Senior
4 95 (8.02%) Data Centre Engineer
5 89 (7.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 68 (5.74%) Project Manager
7 63 (5.32%) Lead
8 59 (4.98%) IT Engineer
9 55 (4.64%) Field Engineer
10 52 (4.39%) Field Service Engineer
11 51 (4.30%) Network Architect
12 43 (3.63%) Solutions Architect
13 39 (3.29%) Analyst
14 37 (3.12%) Data Centre Manager
15 35 (2.95%) Infrastructure Manager
15 35 (2.95%) Support Engineer
15 35 (2.95%) Technical Architect
16 34 (2.87%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
17 33 (2.78%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 33 (2.78%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (4.22%) Middleware
2 31 (2.62%) 802.1X
3 11 (0.93%) LDAP
4 10 (0.84%) Redfish
5 9 (0.76%) REST
6 7 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
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%) .NET
9 3 (0.25%) CSS
9 3 (0.25%) EJB
9 3 (0.25%) HTML
9 3 (0.25%) Java EE
9 3 (0.25%) JSON
9 3 (0.25%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 64 (5.40%) Hybrid Cloud
2 58 (4.89%) Analytical Mindset
3 37 (3.12%) Management Information System
4 30 (2.53%) Cloud Native
4 30 (2.53%) Clustering
5 29 (2.45%) PKI
6 28 (2.36%) Enterprise Storage
6 28 (2.36%) Onboarding
7 25 (2.11%) Fibre Optics
8 22 (1.86%) Private Cloud
9 21 (1.77%) CMDB
10 20 (1.69%) Driving Licence
11 19 (1.60%) Public Cloud
11 19 (1.60%) Replication
12 16 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
12 16 (1.35%) SCADA
12 16 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
13 14 (1.18%) NHS
13 14 (1.18%) Operational Technology
14 12 (1.01%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 160 (13.50%) Windows
2 152 (12.83%) Linux
3 40 (3.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 38 (3.21%) Windows Server
5 24 (2.03%) Unix
6 23 (1.94%) AIX
7 18 (1.52%) Solaris
8 11 (0.93%) CentOS
9 10 (0.84%) Apple iOS
9 10 (0.84%) Mac OS
10 9 (0.76%) Ubuntu
10 9 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
11 8 (0.68%) VMS
12 5 (0.42%) HPUX
12 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.42%) SUSE
13 4 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
14 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 207 (17.47%) Problem-Solving
2 204 (17.22%) Migration
3 118 (9.96%) High Availability
4 115 (9.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 112 (9.45%) Infrastructure as Code
5 112 (9.45%) Stakeholder Management
6 104 (8.78%) ITIL
7 103 (8.69%) CI/CD
8 95 (8.02%) Roadmaps
9 91 (7.68%) Continuous Improvement
10 85 (7.17%) Agile
11 84 (7.09%) Load Balancing
12 83 (7.00%) DevOps
13 80 (6.75%) Validation
14 75 (6.33%) Project Delivery
15 74 (6.24%) Change Management
16 72 (6.08%) Customer Service
17 71 (5.99%) Project Management
18 67 (5.65%) ITSM
19 64 (5.40%) Break/Fix
Programming Languages
1 147 (12.41%) Python
2 44 (3.71%) PowerShell
3 37 (3.12%) SQL
4 27 (2.28%) Bash
5 22 (1.86%) Java
6 16 (1.35%) Shell Script
7 13 (1.10%) Bicep
8 12 (1.01%) COBOL
9 11 (0.93%) MATLAB
10 10 (0.84%) Perl
11 9 (0.76%) ActionScript
12 8 (0.68%) PL/SQL
13 7 (0.59%) JavaScript
14 4 (0.34%) C
14 4 (0.34%) C++
14 4 (0.34%) Lisp
15 3 (0.25%) VBA
16 2 (0.17%) C#
16 2 (0.17%) JCL
16 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 314 (26.50%) Security Cleared
2 237 (20.00%) Cisco Certification
3 233 (19.66%) SC Cleared
4 143 (12.07%) CCNP
5 108 (9.11%) CCNA
6 73 (6.16%) Degree
6 73 (6.16%) DV Cleared
7 67 (5.65%) Network+ Certification
8 56 (4.73%) Microsoft Certification
9 50 (4.22%) A+ Certification
9 50 (4.22%) MCSE
10 30 (2.53%) Azure Certification
11 25 (2.11%) AWS Certification
11 25 (2.11%) City & Guilds
12 24 (2.03%) CCIE
12 24 (2.03%) PMP
13 23 (1.94%) PMI Certification
14 20 (1.69%) BICSI Certification
15 18 (1.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 17 (1.43%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (2.70%) SLA
2 27 (2.28%) NIST
3 26 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 23 (1.94%) QA
5 22 (1.86%) PMO
6 19 (1.60%) GDPR
7 12 (1.01%) NCSC
8 10 (0.84%) GRC
8 10 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 9 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
10 7 (0.59%) RMADS
11 6 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.34%) JSP 440
13 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
14 2 (0.17%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
14 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 1 (0.084%) NEBOSH
15 1 (0.084%) WCAG
System Software
1 100 (8.44%) VMware Infrastructure
2 65 (5.49%) Active Directory
3 32 (2.70%) vSphere
4 31 (2.62%) VMware ESXi
5 30 (2.53%) Firmware
6 28 (2.36%) VMware NSX
7 26 (2.19%) Hyper-V
7 26 (2.19%) Virtual Machines
8 13 (1.10%) Docker
9 11 (0.93%) KVM
10 7 (0.59%) NFS
11 6 (0.51%) SRDF
11 6 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
12 5 (0.42%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.34%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.25%) PowerHA
14 3 (0.25%) Terminal Services
14 3 (0.25%) UAG
14 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 138 (11.65%) Ansible
2 107 (9.03%) Terraform
3 56 (4.73%) FortiGate
4 47 (3.97%) Kubernetes
5 35 (2.95%) Grafana
6 29 (2.45%) Prometheus
7 26 (2.19%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (1.18%) vCenter Server
9 13 (1.10%) Check_MK
9 13 (1.10%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.93%) Podman
10 11 (0.93%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.93%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (0.84%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.84%) SCCM
11 10 (0.84%) vMotion
12 7 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.59%) EMC NetWorker
12 7 (0.59%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 309 (26.08%) Cisco
2 152 (12.83%) Palo Alto
2 152 (12.83%) VMware
3 114 (9.62%) F5
4 112 (9.45%) Microsoft
5 94 (7.93%) Dell
6 92 (7.76%) Juniper
7 72 (6.08%) Arista
8 65 (5.49%) Fortinet
9 57 (4.81%) ServiceNow
10 54 (4.56%) Aruba
11 42 (3.54%) Google
11 42 (3.54%) Red Hat
12 41 (3.46%) SolarWinds
13 40 (3.38%) CheckPoint
14 35 (2.95%) IBM
15 29 (2.45%) Oracle
16 28 (2.36%) Splunk
17 25 (2.11%) NVIDIA
18 23 (1.94%) Atlassian