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 25 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 136 139 95
Rank change year-on-year +3 -44 +5
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 773 618 1,023
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.04% 1.96% 2.31%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.98% 6.04% 7.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 500 368 681
10th Percentile £278 £350 £300
25th Percentile £397 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.09% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £691 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -6.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 25 37
10th Percentile £22.20 £20.30 £18.80
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.15 £22.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £24.18 £25.12
Median % change year-on-year +6.58% -3.72% -58.49%
75th Percentile £67.25 £28.75 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.16 £41.25 £76.36
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £24.18 £23.00
% change year-on-year +175.02% +5.13% +6.14%

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 12,933 10,226 13,612
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.14% 32.42% 30.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,176 6,066 8,877
10th Percentile £278 £263 £255
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £538
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -1.40% -3.59%
75th Percentile £625 £662 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 618 308 721
10th Percentile £14.86 £19.03 £14.14
25th Percentile £18.34 £23.60 £17.64
Median hourly rate £28.05 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.87% - +58.51%
75th Percentile £61.50 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.20 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £35.50
% change year-on-year -15.38% -8.45% +76.27%

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 25 January 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 25 January 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 25 January 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 -10 648 £492 -6.29% 553
UK excluding London +2 440 £470 -6.00% 488
London -29 232 £528 +0.48% 148
Work from Home +44 219 £496 -7.29% 242
North of England -1 148 £475 -4.52% 98
South East -3 101 £445 -1.11% 174
North West +14 89 £519 +3.70% 37
Midlands -12 77 £411 -29.09% 43
West Midlands -18 62 £472 -18.62% 20
Yorkshire -31 50 £438 +4.29% 37
Scotland +31 49 £450 - 35
South West -26 34 £550 - 50
East of England -13 30 £485 +14.79% 74
East Midlands -19 15 £158 -70.70% 23
Wales -6 13 £203 -49.38% 25
North East -4 12 £175 - 25
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 9

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 (3.88%) SharePoint
2 23 (2.98%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (1.42%) Confluence
4 9 (1.16%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.78%) Apache
7 5 (0.65%) Apache Spark
8 4 (0.52%) HCL Notes
8 4 (0.52%) nginx
9 3 (0.39%) GeoServer
9 3 (0.39%) Smallworld
9 3 (0.39%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.26%) CICS
10 2 (0.26%) Oracle Coherence
10 2 (0.26%) ThingWorx
10 2 (0.26%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.13%) IIS
11 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 51 (6.60%) Microsoft Office
2 33 (4.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 26 (3.36%) MS Visio
4 21 (2.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (1.81%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.13%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 6 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.52%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.26%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.13%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.13%) Primavera
4 1 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 132 (17.08%) Azure
2 110 (14.23%) AWS
3 62 (8.02%) Microsoft 365
4 41 (5.30%) GCP
5 23 (2.98%) Power Platform
6 17 (2.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 16 (2.07%) SaaS
8 14 (1.81%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 13 (1.68%) AWS Direct Connect
9 13 (1.68%) OpenShift
10 12 (1.55%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (1.42%) GitHub
11 11 (1.42%) IaaS
12 10 (1.29%) Entra ID
12 10 (1.29%) PaaS
13 9 (1.16%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 8 (1.03%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 8 (1.03%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (1.03%) Nutanix
14 8 (1.03%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 228 (29.50%) Firewall
2 145 (18.76%) WAN
3 92 (11.90%) BGP
4 86 (11.13%) Wireless
5 81 (10.48%) VPN
6 79 (10.22%) LAN
7 78 (10.09%) Network Security
8 65 (8.41%) OSPF
9 53 (6.86%) DNS
10 51 (6.60%) Wi-Fi
11 49 (6.34%) VLAN
12 41 (5.30%) SD-WAN
13 40 (5.17%) SAN
14 37 (4.79%) Cisco Nexus
15 35 (4.53%) Cisco ISE
15 35 (4.53%) Structured Cabling
16 34 (4.40%) VXLAN
17 32 (4.14%) DHCP
17 32 (4.14%) IPsec
18 28 (3.62%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (2.85%) Power BI
2 17 (2.20%) Relational Database
3 9 (1.16%) RDBMS
3 9 (1.16%) SQL Server
4 6 (0.78%) NoSQL
5 5 (0.65%) Apache Hive
5 5 (0.65%) GIS
5 5 (0.65%) Hadoop
5 5 (0.65%) HBase
5 5 (0.65%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.52%) Data Mining
6 4 (0.52%) Oracle Database
6 4 (0.52%) Power Query
6 4 (0.52%) PowerPivot
7 3 (0.39%) Big Data
7 3 (0.39%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.39%) Data Vault
7 3 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (0.39%) InfluxDB
7 3 (0.39%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 25 (3.23%) Git
2 24 (3.10%) Jenkins
3 17 (2.20%) GitLab
4 13 (1.68%) JIRA
5 12 (1.55%) Sonatype Nexus
6 9 (1.16%) Maven
7 6 (0.78%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.39%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.39%) ER Studio
8 3 (0.39%) ERwin
8 3 (0.39%) ScriptRunner
9 2 (0.26%) Gradle
9 2 (0.26%) Rational DOORS
9 2 (0.26%) Selenium
General
1 195 (25.23%) Social Skills
2 131 (16.95%) Finance
3 99 (12.81%) Analytical Skills
4 92 (11.90%) Public Sector
5 55 (7.12%) Telecoms
6 51 (6.60%) Documentation Skills
7 50 (6.47%) Banking
8 42 (5.43%) Manufacturing
9 30 (3.88%) Marketing
10 25 (3.23%) Electronics
10 25 (3.23%) Presentation Skills
11 17 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 15 (1.94%) Legal
13 13 (1.68%) Retail
14 12 (1.55%) Organisational Skills
15 10 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
16 8 (1.03%) Law
17 7 (0.91%) Investment Banking
17 7 (0.91%) Local Government
18 6 (0.78%) Billing
Job Titles
1 142 (18.37%) Network Engineer
2 117 (15.14%) Architect
3 70 (9.06%) Project Manager
4 67 (8.67%) Analyst
5 56 (7.24%) Senior
6 41 (5.30%) Network Architect
7 36 (4.66%) Solutions Architect
8 34 (4.40%) Lead
9 32 (4.14%) Consultant
9 32 (4.14%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 31 (4.01%) Data Centre Manager
11 29 (3.75%) Data Centre Engineer
11 29 (3.75%) Security Engineer
12 28 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 27 (3.49%) Cisco Engineer
13 27 (3.49%) IT Support
14 25 (3.23%) Cisco Network Engineer
14 25 (3.23%) Desktop Support
15 23 (2.98%) 2nd Line Support
15 23 (2.98%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (2.98%) 802.1X
1 23 (2.98%) Middleware
2 11 (1.42%) LDAP
3 7 (0.91%) RFC 2544
4 5 (0.65%) Spark Streaming
5 4 (0.52%) ADO
5 4 (0.52%) VML
6 3 (0.39%) ARM Templates
6 3 (0.39%) Yocto
7 2 (0.26%) .NET
7 2 (0.26%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.26%) CSS
7 2 (0.26%) EJB
7 2 (0.26%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (0.26%) HTML
7 2 (0.26%) Java SE
7 2 (0.26%) ModSecurity
7 2 (0.26%) OpenLayers
7 2 (0.26%) REST
7 2 (0.26%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 44 (5.69%) Hybrid Cloud
2 26 (3.36%) Public Cloud
3 23 (2.98%) Cloud Native
4 22 (2.85%) Self-Motivation
5 20 (2.59%) Onboarding
6 16 (2.07%) Analytical Mindset
6 16 (2.07%) Driving Licence
7 15 (1.94%) Fibre Optics
7 15 (1.94%) Private Cloud
7 15 (1.94%) Replication
7 15 (1.94%) SCADA
8 14 (1.81%) Mainframe
9 13 (1.68%) CMDB
10 12 (1.55%) Management Information System
11 11 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
12 10 (1.29%) PKI
13 8 (1.03%) Legacy Systems
13 8 (1.03%) NHS
14 7 (0.91%) Operational Technology
14 7 (0.91%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 100 (12.94%) Windows
2 90 (11.64%) Linux
3 42 (5.43%) Windows Server
4 35 (4.53%) Android
4 35 (4.53%) Mac OS
5 30 (3.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.42%) CentOS
7 9 (1.16%) Unix
8 7 (0.91%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.78%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.65%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.65%) VMS
11 4 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.52%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.39%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.39%) Solaris
13 2 (0.26%) zOS
14 1 (0.13%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (15.78%) Migration
2 116 (15.01%) Problem-Solving
3 86 (11.13%) Stakeholder Management
4 69 (8.93%) ITIL
5 66 (8.54%) Agile
6 60 (7.76%) Infrastructure as Code
7 59 (7.63%) Project Management
8 56 (7.24%) Project Delivery
9 54 (6.99%) CI/CD
10 53 (6.86%) DevOps
11 46 (5.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 45 (5.82%) Continuous Improvement
13 44 (5.69%) Business Intelligence
14 43 (5.56%) Network Design
15 42 (5.43%) Roadmaps
16 41 (5.30%) Change Management
16 41 (5.30%) Programme Management
17 40 (5.17%) Customer Service
17 40 (5.17%) Cybersecurity
18 39 (5.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 79 (10.22%) Python
2 51 (6.60%) PowerShell
3 39 (5.05%) SQL
4 24 (3.10%) Bash
5 16 (2.07%) Java
6 13 (1.68%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.55%) Perl
8 8 (1.03%) Lisp
9 7 (0.91%) MATLAB
10 5 (0.65%) VBA
11 4 (0.52%) C++
12 3 (0.39%) Bicep
12 3 (0.39%) C
12 3 (0.39%) Go
12 3 (0.39%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.39%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.26%) Korn
13 2 (0.26%) Ruby
14 1 (0.13%) Groovy
14 1 (0.13%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 256 (33.12%) Security Cleared
2 213 (27.55%) SC Cleared
3 123 (15.91%) Cisco Certification
4 97 (12.55%) CCNP
5 62 (8.02%) Degree
6 47 (6.08%) CCNA
7 46 (5.95%) DV Cleared
8 28 (3.62%) CCIE
9 24 (3.10%) AWS Certification
10 17 (2.20%) PMP
11 16 (2.07%) PMI Certification
12 12 (1.55%) CISSP
12 12 (1.55%) JNCIE
13 10 (1.29%) A+ Certification
13 10 (1.29%) MCSE
13 10 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
13 10 (1.29%) Network+ Certification
13 10 (1.29%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 9 (1.16%) Azure Certification
14 9 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (2.72%) PMO
2 20 (2.59%) SLA
3 17 (2.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 15 (1.94%) NIST
5 14 (1.81%) PCI DSS
5 14 (1.81%) QA
6 13 (1.68%) Data Quality
7 11 (1.42%) GDPR
8 7 (0.91%) NCSC
9 3 (0.39%) GRC
10 2 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.26%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.26%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.13%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.13%) RMADS
11 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 82 (10.61%) VMware Infrastructure
2 58 (7.50%) Active Directory
3 51 (6.60%) VMware NSX
4 23 (2.98%) Docker
5 20 (2.59%) Virtual Machines
6 16 (2.07%) Hyper-V
7 15 (1.94%) vSphere
8 10 (1.29%) Firmware
9 8 (1.03%) KVM
9 8 (1.03%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.65%) HDFS
11 4 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
12 3 (0.39%) Lustre
13 2 (0.26%) Ceph
13 2 (0.26%) Microsoft App-V
13 2 (0.26%) NFS
13 2 (0.26%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.26%) SRDF
13 2 (0.26%) vCloud
13 2 (0.26%) Xen
Systems Management
1 84 (10.87%) Ansible
2 74 (9.57%) Terraform
3 40 (5.17%) FortiGate
4 24 (3.10%) Kubernetes
4 24 (3.10%) SCCM
5 19 (2.46%) Grafana
6 10 (1.29%) Microsoft Intune
6 10 (1.29%) vCenter Server
7 9 (1.16%) Prometheus
7 9 (1.16%) Puppet
8 8 (1.03%) Check_MK
8 8 (1.03%) SCOM
9 7 (0.91%) Podman
9 7 (0.91%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (0.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 6 (0.78%) CASB
10 6 (0.78%) SCOrch
11 5 (0.65%) Hadoop YARN
11 5 (0.65%) vMotion
11 5 (0.65%) vRealize
Vendors
1 262 (33.89%) Cisco
2 109 (14.10%) VMware
3 106 (13.71%) Palo Alto
4 89 (11.51%) Microsoft
5 68 (8.80%) Dell
5 68 (8.80%) Juniper
6 54 (6.99%) F5
7 46 (5.95%) HP
8 45 (5.82%) CheckPoint
9 38 (4.92%) ServiceNow
10 37 (4.79%) Aruba
11 36 (4.66%) Meraki
12 35 (4.53%) Apple
13 33 (4.27%) SAP
14 32 (4.14%) Fortinet
15 31 (4.01%) Oracle
16 19 (2.46%) Citrix
17 18 (2.33%) Red Hat
18 17 (2.20%) Arista
19 15 (1.94%) NVIDIA