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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 108 125 103
Rank change year-on-year +17 -22 -14
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,217 747 861
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.32% 2.28% 2.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.96% 6.55% 7.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 718 473 573
10th Percentile £325 £300 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -5.20% +0.09%
75th Percentile £638 £600 £625
90th Percentile £750 £675 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £479 £550
% change year-on-year +1.36% -13.00% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 30 40
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.13 £24.66 £12.08
Median hourly rate £20.43 £25.15 £22.98
Median % change year-on-year -18.79% +9.47% +14.88%
75th Percentile £38.75 £35.50 £26.12
90th Percentile £79.43 £43.75 £28.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £18.14
% change year-on-year -21.57% +35.98% +2.34%

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 17,488 11,396 12,196
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.28% 34.73% 30.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,688 7,041 7,841
10th Percentile £322 £300 £300
25th Percentile £420 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £640 £675
90th Percentile £750 £775 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 918 544 662
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.13 £12.28
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.87 £16.85
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.75 £41.13
Median % change year-on-year +47.76% -27.66% +15.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.43 £77.13 £73.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +46.53% -29.41% -5.56%

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 29 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 29 July 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 29 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 +16 1,027 £514 -2.10% 545
UK excluding London -12 667 £485 +1.36% 260
London +15 396 £550 +2.61% 325
Work from Home -1 304 £525 +3.96% 147
North of England +2 234 £484 +10.51% 59
South East +2 209 £520 +10.64% 103
Yorkshire -1 132 £365 -9.88% 17
North West -5 86 £506 -3.62% 23
South West -29 61 £495 -10.00% 28
Midlands -60 60 £456 -16.42% 14
West Midlands -51 55 £465 -13.49% 9
Scotland -23 42 £438 -1.41% 9
Wales +5 40 £468 +24.67% 9
East of England -13 32 £500 -3.85% 43
North East -26 22 £625 +468.18% 19
East Midlands -22 4 £363 -33.49% 5
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 30 (2.47%) Confluence
2 15 (1.23%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.90%) CICS
4 9 (0.74%) Microsoft Exchange
5 6 (0.49%) OpenStack
6 5 (0.41%) Apache
6 5 (0.41%) CloudStack
7 4 (0.33%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.25%) nginx
8 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.082%) IIS
9 1 (0.082%) Mendix
9 1 (0.082%) SAS
Applications
1 19 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.82%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.41%) AutoCAD
7 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.16%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 8 (0.66%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.25%) Primavera
3 2 (0.16%) OpenText MBPM
3 2 (0.16%) Oracle BPM
3 2 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 267 (21.94%) Azure
2 228 (18.73%) AWS
3 73 (6.00%) GCP
4 43 (3.53%) GitHub
5 40 (3.29%) IaaS
6 36 (2.96%) Microsoft 365
7 34 (2.79%) SaaS
8 29 (2.38%) OCI
9 25 (2.05%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.48%) OpenShift
10 18 (1.48%) PaaS
11 16 (1.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 15 (1.23%) Azure DevOps
12 15 (1.23%) Power Platform
13 12 (0.99%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 12 (0.99%) OneDrive
14 10 (0.82%) Azure Sentinel
15 8 (0.66%) GitHub Actions
15 8 (0.66%) Nutanix
16 6 (0.49%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 331 (27.20%) Firewall
2 193 (15.86%) WAN
3 182 (14.95%) BGP
4 136 (11.18%) OSPF
5 134 (11.01%) VPN
6 131 (10.76%) DNS
7 123 (10.11%) VXLAN
8 118 (9.70%) SAN
9 114 (9.37%) LAN
10 110 (9.04%) Network Security
11 101 (8.30%) VLAN
12 98 (8.05%) DHCP
13 87 (7.15%) Structured Cabling
14 85 (6.98%) Ethernet VPN
14 85 (6.98%) SD-WAN
15 73 (6.00%) TCP/IP
16 60 (4.93%) BIG-IP
17 58 (4.77%) Wireless
18 54 (4.44%) Wi-Fi
19 49 (4.03%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (2.05%) SQL Server
2 11 (0.90%) Power BI
3 10 (0.82%) DataStage
4 7 (0.58%) Big Data
4 7 (0.58%) Oracle Database
4 7 (0.58%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (0.49%) Db2
5 6 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
5 6 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 6 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
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 Database 12c
6 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
6 4 (0.33%) SAP Data Services
7 3 (0.25%) GIS
8 2 (0.16%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.16%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 77 (6.33%) JIRA
2 30 (2.47%) Jenkins
3 29 (2.38%) GitLab
4 26 (2.14%) Git
5 6 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 6 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.41%) JMeter
7 4 (0.33%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.33%) Maven
7 4 (0.33%) Subversion
8 3 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
8 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.16%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.16%) MSI
9 2 (0.16%) Toad
10 1 (0.082%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.082%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.082%) Postman
General
1 301 (24.73%) Social Skills
2 166 (13.64%) Finance
3 123 (10.11%) Analytical Skills
4 74 (6.08%) Public Sector
5 50 (4.11%) Banking
6 48 (3.94%) Documentation Skills
6 48 (3.94%) Telecoms
7 28 (2.30%) Retail
8 27 (2.22%) Influencing Skills
9 26 (2.14%) Legal
10 17 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 14 (1.15%) Manufacturing
12 12 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (0.74%) Law
14 8 (0.66%) Military
14 8 (0.66%) Police
15 7 (0.58%) Financial Institution
16 6 (0.49%) Investment Banking
16 6 (0.49%) Marketing
17 3 (0.25%) Billing
Job Titles
1 199 (16.35%) Architect
2 187 (15.37%) Network Engineer
3 151 (12.41%) Senior
4 116 (9.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 109 (8.96%) Data Centre Engineer
6 79 (6.49%) Project Manager
7 64 (5.26%) Network Architect
8 57 (4.68%) Lead
9 51 (4.19%) IT Engineer
10 47 (3.86%) Field Engineer
11 44 (3.62%) Field Service Engineer
11 44 (3.62%) Infrastructure Manager
12 43 (3.53%) Technical Architect
13 42 (3.45%) Data Centre Manager
14 39 (3.20%) Solutions Architect
15 37 (3.04%) Senior Network Engineer
16 35 (2.88%) Support Engineer
17 32 (2.63%) Consultant
17 32 (2.63%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 31 (2.55%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (4.44%) Middleware
2 32 (2.63%) 802.1X
3 12 (0.99%) REST
4 10 (0.82%) Redfish
5 8 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (0.66%) LDAP
6 7 (0.58%) NETCONF
6 7 (0.58%) Spring
7 6 (0.49%) OpenConfig
7 6 (0.49%) RESTCONF
7 6 (0.49%) SAML
7 6 (0.49%) YANG
8 5 (0.41%) .NET
8 5 (0.41%) Jinja
8 5 (0.41%) Kafka
8 5 (0.41%) XML
9 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
9 4 (0.33%) RESTful
9 4 (0.33%) Spring Boot
9 4 (0.33%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 75 (6.16%) Hybrid Cloud
2 52 (4.27%) Analytical Mindset
3 47 (3.86%) PKI
4 42 (3.45%) Clustering
5 36 (2.96%) Management Information System
6 35 (2.88%) Cloud Native
7 31 (2.55%) Enterprise Storage
8 28 (2.30%) Fibre Optics
8 28 (2.30%) Private Cloud
9 27 (2.22%) Onboarding
10 24 (1.97%) Replication
11 22 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
12 21 (1.73%) Public Cloud
13 18 (1.48%) Driving Licence
14 17 (1.40%) CMDB
14 17 (1.40%) Mainframe
15 16 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
16 15 (1.23%) Operational Technology
17 14 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
17 14 (1.15%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 166 (13.64%) Windows
2 137 (11.26%) Linux
3 44 (3.62%) Windows Server
4 39 (3.20%) Unix
5 27 (2.22%) AIX
6 26 (2.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (1.48%) Solaris
8 10 (0.82%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.82%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.49%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.49%) VMS
10 5 (0.41%) HPUX
10 5 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
10 5 (0.41%) SUSE
10 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
10 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.33%) CentOS
11 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.16%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 246 (20.21%) Migration
2 204 (16.76%) Problem-Solving
3 145 (11.91%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 134 (11.01%) Stakeholder Management
5 116 (9.53%) High Availability
6 113 (9.29%) ITIL
7 107 (8.79%) Infrastructure as Code
8 106 (8.71%) CI/CD
9 97 (7.97%) Roadmaps
10 96 (7.89%) Agile
11 91 (7.48%) Continuous Improvement
12 86 (7.07%) Load Balancing
13 84 (6.90%) Change Management
14 83 (6.82%) Project Delivery
15 81 (6.66%) Validation
16 76 (6.24%) DevOps
17 75 (6.16%) Zero Trust
18 68 (5.59%) Project Management
19 67 (5.51%) Technical Leadership
20 66 (5.42%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 160 (13.15%) Python
2 52 (4.27%) PowerShell
3 44 (3.62%) SQL
4 29 (2.38%) Bash
5 19 (1.56%) Java
6 14 (1.15%) Perl
7 13 (1.07%) Bicep
8 12 (0.99%) COBOL
8 12 (0.99%) Shell Script
9 10 (0.82%) ActionScript
10 9 (0.74%) PL/SQL
11 6 (0.49%) JavaScript
12 5 (0.41%) C#
13 4 (0.33%) MATLAB
14 3 (0.25%) JCL
14 3 (0.25%) Korn
14 3 (0.25%) Lisp
14 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.16%) REXX
15 2 (0.16%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 322 (26.46%) Security Cleared
2 211 (17.34%) Cisco Certification
2 211 (17.34%) SC Cleared
3 120 (9.86%) CCNP
4 104 (8.55%) DV Cleared
5 86 (7.07%) CCNA
6 65 (5.34%) Degree
7 59 (4.85%) Network+ Certification
8 49 (4.03%) Microsoft Certification
9 42 (3.45%) A+ Certification
9 42 (3.45%) MCSE
10 28 (2.30%) Azure Certification
11 27 (2.22%) CCIE
12 26 (2.14%) AWS Certification
12 26 (2.14%) City & Guilds
13 23 (1.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 22 (1.81%) PMI Certification
14 22 (1.81%) PMP
15 20 (1.64%) BICSI Certification
15 20 (1.64%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (2.71%) QA
2 32 (2.63%) SLA
3 29 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 25 (2.05%) NIST
5 18 (1.48%) PMO
6 17 (1.40%) GDPR
7 16 (1.31%) NCSC
8 9 (0.74%) Disclosure Scotland
9 8 (0.66%) GRC
10 7 (0.58%) JSP 440
10 7 (0.58%) PCI DSS
11 6 (0.49%) RMADS
12 4 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
14 2 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials
14 2 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
14 2 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 2 (0.16%) WCAG
15 1 (0.082%) SEPA
System Software
1 116 (9.53%) VMware Infrastructure
2 73 (6.00%) Active Directory
3 41 (3.37%) vSphere
4 39 (3.20%) VMware NSX
5 36 (2.96%) VMware ESXi
6 33 (2.71%) Hyper-V
7 31 (2.55%) Firmware
8 26 (2.14%) Docker
9 19 (1.56%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.90%) NFS
11 7 (0.58%) PowerHA
12 6 (0.49%) KVM
12 6 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.49%) SRDF
13 5 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
14 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.33%) VMware Workstation
15 3 (0.25%) UAG
Systems Management
1 136 (11.18%) Ansible
2 111 (9.12%) Terraform
3 58 (4.77%) Kubernetes
4 50 (4.11%) FortiGate
5 28 (2.30%) Grafana
6 26 (2.14%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (2.14%) Prometheus
7 17 (1.40%) vCenter Server
8 13 (1.07%) NetBackup
9 12 (0.99%) VxRail
10 11 (0.90%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 10 (0.82%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.82%) PowerCLI
12 8 (0.66%) Microsoft Clustering
12 8 (0.66%) SCCM
12 8 (0.66%) vMotion
13 7 (0.58%) Check_MK
13 7 (0.58%) EMC NetWorker
14 6 (0.49%) Avamar
Vendors
1 284 (23.34%) Cisco
2 169 (13.89%) VMware
3 131 (10.76%) Palo Alto
4 122 (10.02%) F5
5 121 (9.94%) Microsoft
6 87 (7.15%) Juniper
7 76 (6.24%) Dell
7 76 (6.24%) Fortinet
8 71 (5.83%) Arista
9 56 (4.60%) ServiceNow
10 43 (3.53%) IBM
11 41 (3.37%) Google
12 40 (3.29%) SolarWinds
13 37 (3.04%) Aruba
14 34 (2.79%) CheckPoint
15 33 (2.71%) Red Hat
16 30 (2.47%) Splunk
17 28 (2.30%) Oracle
18 22 (1.81%) Extreme Networks
18 22 (1.81%) HP