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 30 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 99 126 102
Rank change year-on-year +27 -24 -16
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,186 625 918
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.41% 2.16% 2.14%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.46% 6.34% 7.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 728 412 627
10th Percentile £318 £313 £300
25th Percentile £409 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £500 £528
Median % change year-on-year -1.40% -5.21% -4.09%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £628
90th Percentile £725 £686 £701
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £475 £538
% change year-on-year -0.21% -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 18 44
10th Percentile £16.00 - £13.33
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £18.20
Median hourly rate £19.34 £32.75 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.94% +36.44% +11.81%
75th Percentile £38.75 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £76.06 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £27.50 £23.25
% change year-on-year -29.67% +18.28% +9.36%

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 15,890 9,851 12,973
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.33% 34.12% 30.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,818 6,250 8,341
10th Percentile £313 £295 £270
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 768 394 925
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.92 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.96 £20.09 £15.22
Median hourly rate £41.46 £32.43 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year +27.84% -5.20% +55.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.65 £82.21 £70.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £31.76 £32.12
% change year-on-year +41.69% -1.11% +48.20%

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 30 May 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 30 May 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 30 May 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 +40 971 £495 -5.26% 391
UK excluding London +13 678 £474 -0.21% 232
London +21 340 £550 +4.76% 180
Work from Home +25 322 £483 -3.50% 119
North of England +23 234 £474 +6.46% 56
South East +8 211 £463 +2.78% 81
Yorkshire -7 114 £365 -14.12% 21
North West +9 96 £488 -3.20% 28
Scotland +9 58 £463 +4.23% 11
Midlands -45 58 £467 -15.12% 23
West Midlands -54 52 £468 -14.83% 20
South West -29 50 £495 -13.91% 29
East of England -11 39 £492 +64.00% 30
Wales +2 34 £468 +16.88% 3
North East +2 28 £625 +468.18% 7
East Midlands -23 5 £400 -27.27% 3
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 6
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 22 (1.85%) Confluence
2 13 (1.10%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.93%) CICS
3 11 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.42%) nginx
5 4 (0.34%) Apache
5 4 (0.34%) CloudStack
5 4 (0.34%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.34%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.084%) IIS
8 1 (0.084%) Mendix
Applications
1 15 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 11 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
2 11 (0.93%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.34%) AutoCAD
4 3 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
4 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
1 3 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.17%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.17%) Primavera
3 1 (0.084%) Maximo
3 1 (0.084%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 241 (20.32%) Azure
2 197 (16.61%) AWS
3 71 (5.99%) GCP
4 36 (3.04%) Microsoft 365
5 33 (2.78%) GitHub
6 31 (2.61%) IaaS
7 29 (2.45%) SaaS
8 28 (2.36%) OCI
9 22 (1.85%) Entra ID
10 17 (1.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 15 (1.26%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 14 (1.18%) OpenShift
12 14 (1.18%) PaaS
13 12 (1.01%) Azure DevOps
14 11 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
14 11 (0.93%) Power Platform
15 10 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
15 10 (0.84%) Nutanix
15 10 (0.84%) OneDrive
16 9 (0.76%) AWS Direct Connect
Communications & Networking
1 338 (28.50%) Firewall
2 203 (17.12%) WAN
3 183 (15.43%) BGP
4 147 (12.39%) OSPF
5 126 (10.62%) Network Security
6 124 (10.46%) LAN
7 123 (10.37%) VPN
8 122 (10.29%) VXLAN
9 118 (9.95%) SAN
10 98 (8.26%) VLAN
11 96 (8.09%) DNS
12 95 (8.01%) Structured Cabling
13 84 (7.08%) Ethernet VPN
14 77 (6.49%) SD-WAN
15 73 (6.16%) DHCP
16 53 (4.47%) BIG-IP
17 52 (4.38%) Cisco Nexus
18 50 (4.22%) Wi-Fi
19 47 (3.96%) NX-OS
20 44 (3.71%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.26%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.84%) DataStage
3 6 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (0.51%) Power BI
4 5 (0.42%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.34%) Big Data
5 4 (0.34%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.34%) Oracle Database
5 4 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.34%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.25%) GIS
7 2 (0.17%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.17%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
7 2 (0.17%) Power Query
7 2 (0.17%) PowerPivot
8 1 (0.084%) MS Access
8 1 (0.084%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.084%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 55 (4.64%) JIRA
2 38 (3.20%) GitLab
3 36 (3.04%) Jenkins
4 35 (2.95%) Git
5 7 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.51%) Maven
6 6 (0.51%) ScriptRunner
7 5 (0.42%) JMeter
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%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.084%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.084%) Postman
General
1 293 (24.70%) Social Skills
2 160 (13.49%) Finance
3 134 (11.30%) Analytical Skills
4 83 (7.00%) Public Sector
5 62 (5.23%) Documentation Skills
6 47 (3.96%) Banking
7 34 (2.87%) Legal
8 31 (2.61%) Telecoms
9 26 (2.19%) Manufacturing
10 22 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
10 22 (1.85%) Retail
11 13 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.01%) Law
13 10 (0.84%) Military
14 9 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (0.67%) Aerospace
15 8 (0.67%) Financial Institution
15 8 (0.67%) Marketing
16 7 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
17 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 210 (17.71%) Network Engineer
2 190 (16.02%) Architect
3 137 (11.55%) Senior
4 90 (7.59%) Data Centre Engineer
5 80 (6.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 78 (6.58%) Project Manager
7 59 (4.97%) Lead
8 58 (4.89%) IT Engineer
9 56 (4.72%) Field Engineer
9 56 (4.72%) Network Architect
10 53 (4.47%) Field Service Engineer
11 45 (3.79%) Data Centre Manager
12 44 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
13 37 (3.12%) Analyst
13 37 (3.12%) Infrastructure Manager
13 37 (3.12%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 36 (3.04%) Senior Network Engineer
14 36 (3.04%) Technical Architect
15 32 (2.70%) Administrator
16 31 (2.61%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (4.13%) Middleware
2 32 (2.70%) 802.1X
3 12 (1.01%) LDAP
4 9 (0.76%) Redfish
5 8 (0.67%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.59%) Spring
7 5 (0.42%) Jinja
7 5 (0.42%) Kafka
7 5 (0.42%) REST
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%) EJB
9 3 (0.25%) Java EE
9 3 (0.25%) JSON
9 3 (0.25%) NETCONF
9 3 (0.25%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.25%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 65 (5.48%) Hybrid Cloud
2 59 (4.97%) Analytical Mindset
3 36 (3.04%) Management Information System
4 29 (2.45%) Cloud Native
5 28 (2.36%) Clustering
5 28 (2.36%) PKI
6 26 (2.19%) Enterprise Storage
7 25 (2.11%) Fibre Optics
8 24 (2.02%) Onboarding
9 22 (1.85%) CMDB
9 22 (1.85%) Private Cloud
10 21 (1.77%) Driving Licence
10 21 (1.77%) Public Cloud
10 21 (1.77%) Replication
11 18 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
12 17 (1.43%) SCADA
13 16 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
14 14 (1.18%) NHS
15 13 (1.10%) Mainframe
16 12 (1.01%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 154 (12.98%) Linux
2 148 (12.48%) Windows
3 40 (3.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 36 (3.04%) Windows Server
5 23 (1.94%) Unix
6 22 (1.85%) AIX
7 17 (1.43%) Solaris
8 12 (1.01%) CentOS
9 9 (0.76%) Ubuntu
9 9 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
10 8 (0.67%) VMS
11 5 (0.42%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.42%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
12 4 (0.34%) HPUX
12 4 (0.34%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.34%) SUSE
13 3 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 209 (17.62%) Problem-Solving
2 195 (16.44%) Migration
3 115 (9.70%) High Availability
4 112 (9.44%) Stakeholder Management
5 110 (9.27%) Infrastructure as Code
6 104 (8.77%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 102 (8.60%) ITIL
8 98 (8.26%) Roadmaps
9 96 (8.09%) CI/CD
10 93 (7.84%) Continuous Improvement
11 85 (7.17%) Load Balancing
12 79 (6.66%) Agile
12 79 (6.66%) DevOps
13 78 (6.58%) Validation
14 77 (6.49%) Project Delivery
15 76 (6.41%) Project Management
16 73 (6.16%) Change Management
17 67 (5.65%) Customer Service
18 65 (5.48%) Break/Fix
18 65 (5.48%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 139 (11.72%) Python
2 42 (3.54%) PowerShell
3 36 (3.04%) SQL
4 28 (2.36%) Bash
5 22 (1.85%) Java
6 16 (1.35%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.01%) COBOL
8 11 (0.93%) MATLAB
9 10 (0.84%) Bicep
9 10 (0.84%) Perl
10 8 (0.67%) PL/SQL
11 7 (0.59%) ActionScript
12 5 (0.42%) C
12 5 (0.42%) C++
12 5 (0.42%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.34%) Lisp
14 3 (0.25%) VBA
15 2 (0.17%) JCL
15 2 (0.17%) Korn
15 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 327 (27.57%) Security Cleared
2 246 (20.74%) Cisco Certification
3 244 (20.57%) SC Cleared
4 152 (12.82%) CCNP
5 112 (9.44%) CCNA
6 72 (6.07%) DV Cleared
7 68 (5.73%) Degree
7 68 (5.73%) Network+ Certification
8 56 (4.72%) Microsoft Certification
9 51 (4.30%) A+ Certification
9 51 (4.30%) MCSE
10 27 (2.28%) Azure Certification
11 25 (2.11%) CCIE
12 24 (2.02%) City & Guilds
13 23 (1.94%) PMP
14 22 (1.85%) PMI Certification
15 21 (1.77%) AWS Certification
16 20 (1.69%) BICSI Certification
17 19 (1.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 17 (1.43%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (2.87%) SLA
2 26 (2.19%) NIST
3 23 (1.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (1.94%) QA
4 21 (1.77%) PMO
5 18 (1.52%) GDPR
6 10 (0.84%) NCSC
7 9 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
7 9 (0.76%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.67%) GRC
9 6 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
9 6 (0.51%) RMADS
10 3 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.25%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.17%) Data Quality
11 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.084%) COBIT
12 1 (0.084%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 104 (8.77%) VMware Infrastructure
2 61 (5.14%) Active Directory
3 38 (3.20%) VMware NSX
4 33 (2.78%) vSphere
5 32 (2.70%) Firmware
6 28 (2.36%) VMware ESXi
7 26 (2.19%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (2.02%) Hyper-V
9 13 (1.10%) Docker
10 12 (1.01%) KVM
11 7 (0.59%) NFS
11 7 (0.59%) SRDF
12 6 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.34%) Ceph
13 4 (0.34%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.25%) PowerHA
14 3 (0.25%) UAG
14 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 3 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 136 (11.47%) Ansible
2 103 (8.68%) Terraform
3 59 (4.97%) FortiGate
4 45 (3.79%) Kubernetes
5 37 (3.12%) Grafana
6 30 (2.53%) Prometheus
7 19 (1.60%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (1.10%) Check_MK
8 13 (1.10%) NetBackup
9 12 (1.01%) vCenter Server
10 11 (0.93%) Podman
10 11 (0.93%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.93%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (0.84%) SCCM
12 9 (0.76%) Dell DRAC
13 8 (0.67%) vMotion
14 7 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (0.59%) EMC NetWorker
14 7 (0.59%) Tivoli Storage Manager
15 5 (0.42%) Avamar
Vendors
1 317 (26.73%) Cisco
2 157 (13.24%) VMware
3 154 (12.98%) Palo Alto
4 112 (9.44%) F5
5 103 (8.68%) Microsoft
6 99 (8.35%) Dell
7 89 (7.50%) Juniper
8 70 (5.90%) Arista
9 61 (5.14%) Fortinet
10 59 (4.97%) Aruba
11 52 (4.38%) ServiceNow
12 48 (4.05%) CheckPoint
13 42 (3.54%) SolarWinds
14 39 (3.29%) Google
14 39 (3.29%) Red Hat
15 36 (3.04%) IBM
16 29 (2.45%) Oracle
16 29 (2.45%) Splunk
17 26 (2.19%) NVIDIA
18 23 (1.94%) Atlassian