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 2 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 118 128 103
Rank change year-on-year +10 -25 -10
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 986 617 962
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.20% 2.12% 2.18%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.73% 6.28% 7.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 611 407 632
10th Percentile £313 £325 £283
25th Percentile £408 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £517 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.77% -1.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £589 £606 £638
90th Percentile £700 £675 £706
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £475 £528
% change year-on-year -1.05% -9.95% +5.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 26 47
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.17 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.71 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £24.66 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year +1.99% -0.84% +14.77%
75th Percentile £72.69 £38.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £80.60 £43.75 £52.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £23.50
% change year-on-year -21.57% +4.94% +9.48%

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 14,657 9,826 13,384
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.74% 33.81% 30.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,210 6,297 8,584
10th Percentile £300 £295 £263
25th Percentile £409 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.23% -2.36%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £774 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £497 £500
% change year-on-year -4.43% -0.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 685 377 885
10th Percentile £15.77 £16.95 £12.26
25th Percentile £19.34 £22.27 £15.39
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +18.18% +22.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £83.20 £66.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £31.76 £25.75
% change year-on-year +43.14% +23.34% +17.05%

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 2 April 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 2 April 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 2 April 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 +6 814 £485 -7.62% 436
UK excluding London -1 553 £470 -1.05% 306
London +5 301 £530 +0.95% 184
Work from Home +23 260 £475 -11.21% 123
North of England +23 186 £460 +8.24% 53
South East 0 162 £475 -5.00% 115
North West +24 97 £500 - 28
Yorkshire -9 74 £365 -5.93% 17
Midlands -28 67 £474 -24.16% 32
West Midlands -36 54 £474 -24.16% 14
Scotland +7 49 £475 +8.57% 29
South West -41 36 £525 -4.37% 31
East of England -22 34 £478 +13.14% 45
Wales 0 29 £350 -12.50% 11
North East +2 17 £175 +59.09% 8
East Midlands -26 12 £200 -60.00% 18
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 20 (2.03%) SharePoint
2 18 (1.83%) Confluence
3 16 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (0.81%) CICS
5 4 (0.41%) nginx
5 4 (0.41%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.41%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.20%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.20%) HCL Notes
6 2 (0.20%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.10%) Mendix
Applications
1 34 (3.45%) Microsoft Office
2 23 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (2.03%) MS Visio
4 17 (1.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.30%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.30%) Primavera
2 3 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.20%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.10%) Maximo
4 1 (0.10%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 185 (18.76%) Azure
2 148 (15.01%) AWS
3 65 (6.59%) GCP
4 53 (5.38%) Microsoft 365
5 22 (2.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 18 (1.83%) SaaS
7 17 (1.72%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 17 (1.72%) IaaS
8 16 (1.62%) Entra ID
9 14 (1.42%) Power Platform
10 13 (1.32%) GitHub
11 12 (1.22%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (1.22%) OpenShift
11 12 (1.22%) PaaS
12 11 (1.12%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 11 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
12 11 (1.12%) AWS Direct Connect
13 9 (0.91%) Amazon S3
14 8 (0.81%) Nutanix
15 7 (0.71%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 290 (29.41%) Firewall
2 174 (17.65%) WAN
3 152 (15.42%) BGP
4 113 (11.46%) OSPF
5 105 (10.65%) LAN
5 105 (10.65%) VPN
6 103 (10.45%) Network Security
7 77 (7.81%) SAN
8 76 (7.71%) Structured Cabling
9 75 (7.61%) VXLAN
10 72 (7.30%) DNS
11 68 (6.90%) VLAN
12 60 (6.09%) Wireless
13 58 (5.88%) DHCP
14 51 (5.17%) Ethernet VPN
15 49 (4.97%) SD-WAN
16 42 (4.26%) Cisco ISE
16 42 (4.26%) Wi-Fi
17 37 (3.75%) NX-OS
18 36 (3.65%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (0.91%) Power BI
2 8 (0.81%) DataStage
3 6 (0.61%) Relational Database
4 5 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (0.51%) SQL Server
5 4 (0.41%) Big Data
5 4 (0.41%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.41%) Power Query
5 4 (0.41%) PowerPivot
5 4 (0.41%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.30%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.30%) InfluxDB
7 2 (0.20%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.20%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.20%) GIS
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.20%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.10%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.10%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 34 (3.45%) Git
1 34 (3.45%) JIRA
2 21 (2.13%) Jenkins
3 18 (1.83%) GitLab
4 9 (0.91%) Maven
5 7 (0.71%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.51%) JMeter
7 4 (0.41%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.41%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.41%) Subversion
8 3 (0.30%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.30%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.10%) AppScan
9 1 (0.10%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.10%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.10%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.10%) Postman
9 1 (0.10%) Rational DOORS
General
1 254 (25.76%) Social Skills
2 152 (15.42%) Finance
3 117 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
4 87 (8.82%) Public Sector
5 56 (5.68%) Documentation Skills
6 45 (4.56%) Banking
7 44 (4.46%) Telecoms
8 35 (3.55%) Manufacturing
9 31 (3.14%) Legal
10 23 (2.33%) Marketing
11 20 (2.03%) Retail
12 19 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
13 16 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
14 15 (1.52%) Electronics
14 15 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 11 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
16 10 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 10 (1.01%) Law
17 9 (0.91%) Military
18 8 (0.81%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 175 (17.75%) Network Engineer
2 163 (16.53%) Architect
3 94 (9.53%) Senior
4 81 (8.22%) Project Manager
5 67 (6.80%) Data Centre Engineer
6 51 (5.17%) Network Architect
7 48 (4.87%) Analyst
8 47 (4.77%) Solutions Architect
9 46 (4.67%) Data Centre Manager
10 40 (4.06%) Lead
11 38 (3.85%) IT Engineer
12 36 (3.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 36 (3.65%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
13 35 (3.55%) Infrastructure Manager
14 34 (3.45%) Field Engineer
15 33 (3.35%) Field Service Engineer
16 31 (3.14%) IT Support
17 28 (2.84%) Cisco Engineer
17 28 (2.84%) Senior Network Engineer
18 27 (2.74%) Cisco Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (3.75%) Middleware
2 33 (3.35%) 802.1X
3 11 (1.12%) LDAP
4 6 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
4 6 (0.61%) Spring
5 5 (0.51%) Jinja
5 5 (0.51%) NETCONF
5 5 (0.51%) Redfish
6 4 (0.41%) ADO
6 4 (0.41%) ARM Templates
6 4 (0.41%) OpenConfig
6 4 (0.41%) REST
6 4 (0.41%) RESTCONF
6 4 (0.41%) Spring Boot
6 4 (0.41%) VML
6 4 (0.41%) XML
6 4 (0.41%) YANG
7 3 (0.30%) Kafka
7 3 (0.30%) RFC 2544
7 3 (0.30%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 44 (4.46%) Hybrid Cloud
2 39 (3.96%) Analytical Mindset
3 27 (2.74%) Clustering
3 27 (2.74%) PKI
4 24 (2.43%) Driving Licence
5 23 (2.33%) Management Information System
6 22 (2.23%) Onboarding
7 21 (2.13%) Fibre Optics
8 19 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
9 18 (1.83%) Cloud Native
10 17 (1.72%) CMDB
10 17 (1.72%) Replication
11 16 (1.62%) Public Cloud
12 14 (1.42%) NHS
13 13 (1.32%) Enterprise Storage
14 12 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
14 12 (1.22%) Private Cloud
14 12 (1.22%) SCADA
15 11 (1.12%) Mainframe
16 8 (0.81%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 126 (12.78%) Windows
2 114 (11.56%) Linux
3 42 (4.26%) Windows Server
4 35 (3.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (2.03%) Android
5 20 (2.03%) Mac OS
6 15 (1.52%) Unix
7 13 (1.32%) AIX
8 11 (1.12%) CentOS
9 10 (1.01%) Solaris
10 8 (0.81%) VMS
11 7 (0.71%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (0.51%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.30%) Windows 10
14 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 1 (0.10%) Debian
15 1 (0.10%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 165 (16.73%) Migration
1 165 (16.73%) Problem-Solving
2 106 (10.75%) Stakeholder Management
3 86 (8.72%) ITIL
4 80 (8.11%) High Availability
5 75 (7.61%) Roadmaps
6 72 (7.30%) Project Management
7 70 (7.10%) Continuous Improvement
8 69 (7.00%) Load Balancing
9 67 (6.80%) Infrastructure as Code
10 65 (6.59%) Project Delivery
11 64 (6.49%) Change Management
12 62 (6.29%) Agile
13 61 (6.19%) CI/CD
14 53 (5.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 51 (5.17%) Customer Service
15 51 (5.17%) DevOps
16 50 (5.07%) Data Centre Operations
16 50 (5.07%) Validation
17 49 (4.97%) Break/Fix
Programming Languages
1 96 (9.74%) Python
2 50 (5.07%) PowerShell
3 28 (2.84%) Bash
4 27 (2.74%) SQL
5 23 (2.33%) Java
6 18 (1.83%) Perl
7 14 (1.42%) Shell Script
8 10 (1.01%) COBOL
9 9 (0.91%) MATLAB
10 7 (0.71%) Bicep
11 6 (0.61%) Lisp
12 5 (0.51%) C++
12 5 (0.51%) VBA
13 4 (0.41%) C
13 4 (0.41%) JavaScript
14 3 (0.30%) Korn
14 3 (0.30%) PL/SQL
15 1 (0.10%) Go
15 1 (0.10%) Groovy
15 1 (0.10%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 308 (31.24%) Security Cleared
2 233 (23.63%) SC Cleared
3 196 (19.88%) Cisco Certification
4 133 (13.49%) CCNP
5 82 (8.32%) CCNA
6 68 (6.90%) Degree
7 64 (6.49%) DV Cleared
8 39 (3.96%) Network+ Certification
9 32 (3.25%) Microsoft Certification
10 31 (3.14%) A+ Certification
10 31 (3.14%) MCSE
11 28 (2.84%) CCIE
12 24 (2.43%) PMP
13 22 (2.23%) PMI Certification
14 20 (2.03%) AWS Certification
15 17 (1.72%) Azure Certification
16 16 (1.62%) JNCIS
17 14 (1.42%) JNCIP
18 12 (1.22%) JNCIA
18 12 (1.22%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 27 (2.74%) PMO
2 27 (2.74%) SLA
3 23 (2.33%) GDPR
3 23 (2.33%) NIST
4 17 (1.72%) PCI DSS
4 17 (1.72%) QA
5 10 (1.01%) NCSC
6 5 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
6 5 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
7 4 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
7 4 (0.41%) GRC
8 3 (0.30%) RMADS
9 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
9 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.20%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.10%) COBIT
10 1 (0.10%) NEBOSH
10 1 (0.10%) SOC 1
System Software
1 85 (8.62%) VMware Infrastructure
2 63 (6.39%) Active Directory
3 46 (4.67%) VMware NSX
4 22 (2.23%) Firmware
4 22 (2.23%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (1.93%) vSphere
6 17 (1.72%) Docker
7 16 (1.62%) Hyper-V
8 15 (1.52%) VMware ESXi
9 10 (1.01%) KVM
10 3 (0.30%) PowerHA
10 3 (0.30%) SRDF
11 2 (0.20%) Ceph
11 2 (0.20%) Lustre
11 2 (0.20%) NFS
11 2 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.20%) vCloud
11 2 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.10%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 98 (9.94%) Ansible
2 77 (7.81%) Terraform
3 57 (5.78%) FortiGate
4 40 (4.06%) Kubernetes
5 33 (3.35%) Grafana
6 23 (2.33%) Prometheus
7 17 (1.72%) SCCM
8 15 (1.52%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (1.01%) Check_MK
10 9 (0.91%) Podman
10 9 (0.91%) Red Hat Satellite
11 7 (0.71%) SCOM
12 6 (0.61%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.51%) Dell DRAC
13 5 (0.51%) Endace
13 5 (0.51%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.51%) PowerCLI
14 4 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 4 (0.41%) EMC NetWorker
14 4 (0.41%) Nagios
Vendors
1 292 (29.61%) Cisco
2 122 (12.37%) Palo Alto
3 121 (12.27%) VMware
4 93 (9.43%) Microsoft
5 92 (9.33%) Dell
6 88 (8.92%) Juniper
7 69 (7.00%) F5
8 47 (4.77%) Arista
9 45 (4.56%) Fortinet
10 44 (4.46%) Aruba
10 44 (4.46%) ServiceNow
11 43 (4.36%) CheckPoint
12 35 (3.55%) Meraki
12 35 (3.55%) SolarWinds
13 34 (3.45%) Google
14 33 (3.35%) HP
15 32 (3.25%) Red Hat
16 29 (2.94%) Splunk
17 28 (2.84%) IBM
18 26 (2.64%) Citrix