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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 133 104
Rank change year-on-year +29 -29 -17
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,195 663 939
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.35% 2.21% 2.15%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.21% 6.40% 7.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 706 429 622
10th Percentile £318 £300 £300
25th Percentile £406 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £536
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% -6.76% -2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £678 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £538
% change year-on-year - -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 23 54
10th Percentile £16.00 - £12.08
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £16.25
Median hourly rate £21.00 £25.15 £23.90
Median % change year-on-year -16.50% +5.23% +12.42%
75th Percentile £35.22 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.53 £43.75 £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 16,578 10,358 13,062
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.65% 34.57% 29.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,168 6,475 8,281
10th Percentile £313 £300 £278
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £663
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 855 461 944
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £19.97 £15.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £32.05 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +32.61% -10.10% +58.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £58.75 £61.63
90th Percentile £85.80 £81.01 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £31.63 £35.25
% change year-on-year +39.00% -10.28% +60.23%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +20 982 £500 -3.85% 333
UK excluding London +4 676 £475 - 230
London +11 353 £550 +2.61% 162
Work from Home +35 320 £480 -4.00% 107
North of England +15 242 £474 +5.33% 44
South East +6 206 £475 +5.56% 86
Yorkshire -1 126 £365 -16.57% 21
North West +8 92 £500 -1.48% 17
Midlands -43 58 £470 -12.48% 25
Scotland -3 55 £463 +5.71% 11
West Midlands -44 54 £474 -11.81% 17
South West -28 49 £495 -13.91% 26
East of England -11 40 £492 +64.00% 21
Wales +4 37 £468 +16.88% 15
North East -6 30 £625 +468.18% 6
East Midlands -24 3 £325 -36.97% 8
Northern Ireland - 2 £425 - 8
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 27 (2.26%) Confluence
2 18 (1.51%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.92%) CICS
3 11 (0.92%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (0.33%) Apache
4 4 (0.33%) CloudStack
4 4 (0.33%) OpenStack
4 4 (0.33%) WebLogic
5 3 (0.25%) nginx
5 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.084%) IIS
6 1 (0.084%) Mendix
Applications
1 15 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 12 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
3 10 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.75%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 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
Cloud Services
1 254 (21.26%) Azure
2 218 (18.24%) AWS
3 74 (6.19%) GCP
4 42 (3.51%) GitHub
5 40 (3.35%) IaaS
6 38 (3.18%) Microsoft 365
7 34 (2.85%) SaaS
8 30 (2.51%) OCI
9 25 (2.09%) Entra ID
10 20 (1.67%) PaaS
11 19 (1.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 16 (1.34%) Azure DevOps
13 15 (1.26%) OneDrive
13 15 (1.26%) OpenShift
14 13 (1.09%) Power Platform
15 11 (0.92%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 11 (0.92%) Azure Sentinel
15 11 (0.92%) Nutanix
16 9 (0.75%) Amazon EKS
17 8 (0.67%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 331 (27.70%) Firewall
2 198 (16.57%) WAN
3 188 (15.73%) BGP
4 145 (12.13%) OSPF
5 123 (10.29%) VPN
5 123 (10.29%) VXLAN
6 120 (10.04%) SAN
7 116 (9.71%) LAN
8 113 (9.46%) Network Security
9 110 (9.21%) DNS
10 98 (8.20%) VLAN
11 94 (7.87%) Structured Cabling
12 88 (7.36%) SD-WAN
13 85 (7.11%) Ethernet VPN
14 80 (6.69%) DHCP
15 59 (4.94%) BIG-IP
16 53 (4.44%) TCP/IP
17 52 (4.35%) Cisco Nexus
18 49 (4.10%) Wi-Fi
19 48 (4.02%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (1.17%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.84%) DataStage
3 8 (0.67%) Power BI
4 7 (0.59%) Big Data
5 6 (0.50%) PostgreSQL
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 Reports
6 4 (0.33%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.33%) SAP Data Services
7 3 (0.25%) GIS
8 2 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.17%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.17%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
8 2 (0.17%) Power Query
8 2 (0.17%) PowerPivot
Development Applications
1 68 (5.69%) JIRA
2 38 (3.18%) GitLab
3 37 (3.10%) Jenkins
4 31 (2.59%) Git
5 6 (0.50%) ScriptRunner
5 6 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.42%) JMeter
7 4 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.33%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.33%) Maven
7 4 (0.33%) Subversion
8 3 (0.25%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.17%) MSI
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%) Postman
General
1 296 (24.77%) Social Skills
2 161 (13.47%) Finance
3 129 (10.79%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (6.69%) Public Sector
5 65 (5.44%) Documentation Skills
6 47 (3.93%) Banking
7 38 (3.18%) Legal
7 38 (3.18%) Telecoms
8 24 (2.01%) Manufacturing
9 22 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
10 20 (1.67%) Retail
11 17 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 11 (0.92%) Military
13 10 (0.84%) Law
14 9 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
15 8 (0.67%) Aerospace
15 8 (0.67%) Financial Institution
15 8 (0.67%) Marketing
15 8 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
16 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 203 (16.99%) Network Engineer
2 190 (15.90%) Architect
3 136 (11.38%) Senior
4 96 (8.03%) Data Centre Engineer
5 95 (7.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 70 (5.86%) Project Manager
7 62 (5.19%) Lead
8 56 (4.69%) IT Engineer
9 53 (4.44%) Field Engineer
10 52 (4.35%) Network Architect
11 49 (4.10%) Field Service Engineer
12 44 (3.68%) Solutions Architect
13 38 (3.18%) Technical Architect
14 37 (3.10%) Analyst
14 37 (3.10%) Data Centre Manager
15 36 (3.01%) Infrastructure Manager
16 35 (2.93%) Support Engineer
17 34 (2.85%) Senior Network Engineer
18 31 (2.59%) Administrator
18 31 (2.59%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (4.44%) Middleware
2 32 (2.68%) 802.1X
3 12 (1.00%) LDAP
4 10 (0.84%) Redfish
4 10 (0.84%) REST
5 7 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
5 7 (0.59%) Spring
6 5 (0.42%) Jinja
6 5 (0.42%) Kafka
6 5 (0.42%) XML
7 4 (0.33%) ADO
7 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
7 4 (0.33%) NETCONF
7 4 (0.33%) RESTful
7 4 (0.33%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.33%) YAML
8 3 (0.25%) OpenConfig
8 3 (0.25%) RESTCONF
8 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
8 3 (0.25%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 69 (5.77%) Hybrid Cloud
2 56 (4.69%) Analytical Mindset
3 39 (3.26%) Management Information System
4 34 (2.85%) Cloud Native
5 31 (2.59%) Clustering
5 31 (2.59%) Enterprise Storage
6 30 (2.51%) Onboarding
6 30 (2.51%) PKI
7 26 (2.18%) Fibre Optics
8 25 (2.09%) Private Cloud
9 21 (1.76%) CMDB
10 19 (1.59%) Driving Licence
10 19 (1.59%) Public Cloud
10 19 (1.59%) Replication
11 17 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
12 16 (1.34%) SCADA
13 14 (1.17%) NHS
14 13 (1.09%) Mainframe
14 13 (1.09%) Operational Technology
14 13 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 161 (13.47%) Windows
2 150 (12.55%) Linux
3 39 (3.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 39 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 27 (2.26%) Unix
5 23 (1.92%) AIX
6 18 (1.51%) Solaris
7 11 (0.92%) CentOS
8 10 (0.84%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.84%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.75%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.50%) VMS
12 5 (0.42%) HPUX
12 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.42%) SUSE
13 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
14 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
15 2 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
15 2 (0.17%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 208 (17.41%) Migration
2 203 (16.99%) Problem-Solving
3 122 (10.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 122 (10.21%) Stakeholder Management
4 115 (9.62%) High Availability
4 115 (9.62%) Infrastructure as Code
5 108 (9.04%) ITIL
6 105 (8.79%) CI/CD
7 96 (8.03%) Roadmaps
8 93 (7.78%) Continuous Improvement
9 89 (7.45%) Agile
10 85 (7.11%) DevOps
10 85 (7.11%) Validation
11 83 (6.95%) Load Balancing
12 76 (6.36%) Change Management
13 75 (6.28%) Project Delivery
14 71 (5.94%) Project Management
15 68 (5.69%) Customer Service
15 68 (5.69%) Zero Trust
16 67 (5.61%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 150 (12.55%) Python
2 42 (3.51%) PowerShell
3 37 (3.10%) SQL
4 26 (2.18%) Bash
5 19 (1.59%) Java
6 17 (1.42%) Shell Script
7 16 (1.34%) Bicep
8 12 (1.00%) COBOL
9 11 (0.92%) MATLAB
10 10 (0.84%) ActionScript
10 10 (0.84%) Perl
11 7 (0.59%) JavaScript
11 7 (0.59%) PL/SQL
12 4 (0.33%) C
12 4 (0.33%) C++
12 4 (0.33%) Lisp
13 3 (0.25%) C#
13 3 (0.25%) JCL
13 3 (0.25%) Korn
13 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 309 (25.86%) Security Cleared
2 233 (19.50%) Cisco Certification
3 224 (18.74%) SC Cleared
4 139 (11.63%) CCNP
5 104 (8.70%) CCNA
6 76 (6.36%) DV Cleared
7 72 (6.03%) Degree
8 64 (5.36%) Network+ Certification
9 54 (4.52%) Microsoft Certification
10 47 (3.93%) A+ Certification
10 47 (3.93%) MCSE
11 30 (2.51%) Azure Certification
12 26 (2.18%) PMI Certification
12 26 (2.18%) PMP
13 25 (2.09%) AWS Certification
13 25 (2.09%) CCIE
13 25 (2.09%) City & Guilds
14 20 (1.67%) BICSI Certification
15 19 (1.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 18 (1.51%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (2.76%) SLA
2 27 (2.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (2.18%) NIST
4 24 (2.01%) QA
5 22 (1.84%) PMO
6 19 (1.59%) GDPR
7 15 (1.26%) NCSC
8 10 (0.84%) GRC
9 9 (0.75%) Disclosure Scotland
9 9 (0.75%) PCI DSS
10 7 (0.59%) RMADS
11 6 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.33%) JSP 440
13 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
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
14 2 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 106 (8.87%) VMware Infrastructure
2 65 (5.44%) Active Directory
3 36 (3.01%) VMware ESXi
4 33 (2.76%) VMware NSX
4 33 (2.76%) vSphere
5 30 (2.51%) Firmware
6 27 (2.26%) Hyper-V
7 23 (1.92%) Virtual Machines
8 15 (1.26%) Docker
9 11 (0.92%) KVM
10 8 (0.67%) NFS
11 6 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
11 6 (0.50%) SRDF
11 6 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
12 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
12 4 (0.33%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.25%) PowerHA
13 3 (0.25%) UAG
13 3 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 138 (11.55%) Ansible
2 108 (9.04%) Terraform
3 56 (4.69%) FortiGate
4 48 (4.02%) Kubernetes
5 35 (2.93%) Grafana
6 30 (2.51%) Prometheus
7 27 (2.26%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (1.26%) vCenter Server
9 13 (1.09%) Check_MK
9 13 (1.09%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.92%) Podman
10 11 (0.92%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.92%) Red Hat Satellite
10 11 (0.92%) vMotion
11 10 (0.84%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
12 8 (0.67%) SCCM
13 7 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.59%) EMC NetWorker
13 7 (0.59%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 303 (25.36%) Cisco
2 162 (13.56%) VMware
3 146 (12.22%) Palo Alto
4 116 (9.71%) Microsoft
5 113 (9.46%) F5
6 92 (7.70%) Juniper
7 91 (7.62%) Dell
8 73 (6.11%) Arista
9 68 (5.69%) Fortinet
10 58 (4.85%) ServiceNow
11 50 (4.18%) Aruba
12 45 (3.77%) Google
13 42 (3.51%) Red Hat
14 41 (3.43%) SolarWinds
15 36 (3.01%) CheckPoint
15 36 (3.01%) IBM
16 29 (2.43%) Splunk
17 26 (2.18%) Oracle
18 25 (2.09%) HP
19 24 (2.01%) Citrix