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 24 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 130 97
Rank change year-on-year -1 -33 +3
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 862 619 990
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.10% 2.05% 2.23%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.27% 6.16% 7.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 548 375 652
10th Percentile £278 £350 £295
25th Percentile £400 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.07% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £627 £638
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -6.20% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 24 43
10th Percentile £20.89 £21.54 £17.10
25th Percentile £25.15 - £22.00
Median hourly rate £26.14 £24.18 £25.12
Median % change year-on-year +8.09% -3.72% -35.69%
75th Percentile £72.34 £28.88 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £41.25 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.33 £24.18 £24.00
% change year-on-year +195.00% +0.75% +10.75%

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 13,739 10,049 13,511
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.53% 33.26% 30.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,675 6,101 8,694
10th Percentile £278 £270 £258
25th Percentile £406 £408 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £765 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.23% -0.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 648 318 824
10th Percentile £15.31 £18.51 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £23.37 £16.25
Median hourly rate £30.50 £33.77 £30.58
Median % change year-on-year -9.68% +10.43% +36.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £76.90 £82.71 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -7.69% - +47.73%

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 24 February 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 24 February 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 24 February 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 -9 709 £479 -8.33% 382
UK excluding London +8 491 £469 -6.20% 265
London -24 253 £515 -0.96% 157
Work from Home +41 246 £475 -11.38% 115
North of England +3 168 £474 -5.20% 63
South East +5 128 £445 -1.11% 106
North West +11 98 £500 - 31
Midlands -28 72 £460 -22.03% 33
West Midlands -32 57 £472 -20.00% 20
Yorkshire -27 56 £438 +4.29% 30
Scotland +34 55 £456 +1.39% 16
South West -34 32 £550 -1.79% 24
East of England -14 29 £478 +13.14% 29
Wales +2 21 £350 -12.50% 4
North East -1 17 £175 - 2
East Midlands -22 15 £158 -70.70% 13
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 2

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 (3.13%) SharePoint
2 18 (2.09%) Confluence
3 17 (1.97%) Microsoft Exchange
4 6 (0.70%) CICS
4 6 (0.70%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.46%) nginx
5 4 (0.46%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.35%) GeoServer
6 3 (0.35%) HCL Notes
6 3 (0.35%) Smallworld
7 2 (0.23%) Oracle Coherence
7 2 (0.23%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.12%) Apache
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.12%) Mendix
Applications
1 49 (5.68%) Microsoft Office
2 25 (2.90%) MS Visio
3 24 (2.78%) Microsoft Excel
4 19 (2.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (1.62%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.35%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
1 4 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.23%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.12%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.12%) Maximo
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.12%) Primavera
4 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 156 (18.10%) Azure
2 124 (14.39%) AWS
3 64 (7.42%) Microsoft 365
4 50 (5.80%) GCP
5 19 (2.20%) SaaS
5 19 (2.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 17 (1.97%) Power Platform
7 16 (1.86%) IaaS
8 15 (1.74%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 14 (1.62%) Entra ID
9 14 (1.62%) PaaS
10 13 (1.51%) OpenShift
11 12 (1.39%) GitHub
12 11 (1.28%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 11 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
12 11 (1.28%) AWS Direct Connect
12 11 (1.28%) Azure DevOps
13 10 (1.16%) Nutanix
14 9 (1.04%) Amazon S3
15 7 (0.81%) AWS CloudTrail
Communications & Networking
1 251 (29.12%) Firewall
2 155 (17.98%) WAN
3 114 (13.23%) BGP
4 98 (11.37%) LAN
5 89 (10.32%) Network Security
6 86 (9.98%) VPN
7 83 (9.63%) OSPF
8 78 (9.05%) Wireless
9 60 (6.96%) DNS
10 53 (6.15%) VLAN
11 51 (5.92%) Structured Cabling
12 48 (5.57%) VXLAN
13 47 (5.45%) SAN
14 46 (5.34%) Wi-Fi
15 45 (5.22%) DHCP
16 41 (4.76%) Cisco ISE
17 38 (4.41%) SD-WAN
18 35 (4.06%) Cisco Nexus
19 34 (3.94%) IPsec
20 31 (3.60%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.74%) Power BI
2 13 (1.51%) Relational Database
3 8 (0.93%) DataStage
3 8 (0.93%) SQL Server
4 7 (0.81%) RDBMS
5 5 (0.58%) GIS
6 4 (0.46%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.46%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.46%) Power Query
6 4 (0.46%) PowerPivot
7 3 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (0.35%) InfluxDB
7 3 (0.35%) QGIS
8 2 (0.23%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.23%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.23%) Big Data
8 2 (0.23%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.23%) Data Vault
8 2 (0.23%) Metadata
8 2 (0.23%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 27 (3.13%) Git
2 24 (2.78%) JIRA
3 20 (2.32%) Jenkins
4 16 (1.86%) GitLab
5 10 (1.16%) Maven
6 6 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (0.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 3 (0.35%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.35%) Eclipse
8 3 (0.35%) JMeter
8 3 (0.35%) ScriptRunner
8 3 (0.35%) Subversion
9 2 (0.23%) ER Studio
9 2 (0.23%) ERwin
9 2 (0.23%) Rational DOORS
10 1 (0.12%) AppScan
10 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.12%) Metasploit
General
1 222 (25.75%) Social Skills
2 142 (16.47%) Finance
3 99 (11.48%) Public Sector
4 94 (10.90%) Analytical Skills
5 58 (6.73%) Documentation Skills
6 53 (6.15%) Telecoms
7 44 (5.10%) Banking
8 43 (4.99%) Manufacturing
9 31 (3.60%) Marketing
10 24 (2.78%) Electronics
11 23 (2.67%) Legal
12 21 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
13 19 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
14 16 (1.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (1.51%) Retail
16 12 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
17 11 (1.28%) Investment Banking
18 9 (1.04%) Military
19 8 (0.93%) Law
20 6 (0.70%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 152 (17.63%) Network Engineer
2 132 (15.31%) Architect
3 75 (8.70%) Project Manager
4 67 (7.77%) Analyst
4 67 (7.77%) Senior
5 46 (5.34%) Data Centre Engineer
6 44 (5.10%) Network Architect
6 44 (5.10%) Solutions Architect
7 40 (4.64%) Lead
8 35 (4.06%) Data Centre Manager
9 34 (3.94%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 33 (3.83%) IT Support
11 30 (3.48%) Consultant
12 29 (3.36%) Infrastructure Manager
13 27 (3.13%) Cisco Engineer
14 26 (3.02%) Security Engineer
15 25 (2.90%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 25 (2.90%) Desktop Support
16 24 (2.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 24 (2.78%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (3.36%) 802.1X
2 25 (2.90%) Middleware
3 9 (1.04%) LDAP
4 6 (0.70%) RFC 2544
4 6 (0.70%) Spring
5 4 (0.46%) ADO
5 4 (0.46%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.46%) Spring Boot
5 4 (0.46%) VML
6 3 (0.35%) REST
6 3 (0.35%) XML
6 3 (0.35%) Yocto
7 2 (0.23%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.23%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (0.23%) Java EE
7 2 (0.23%) Kafka
7 2 (0.23%) NETCONF
7 2 (0.23%) OpenLayers
7 2 (0.23%) RESTCONF
7 2 (0.23%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 44 (5.10%) Hybrid Cloud
2 22 (2.55%) Self-Motivation
3 21 (2.44%) Analytical Mindset
4 20 (2.32%) Driving Licence
4 20 (2.32%) Public Cloud
5 19 (2.20%) Cloud Native
6 18 (2.09%) PKI
7 17 (1.97%) CMDB
7 17 (1.97%) Onboarding
8 15 (1.74%) Clustering
9 14 (1.62%) Management Information System
9 14 (1.62%) Replication
10 13 (1.51%) Fibre Optics
10 13 (1.51%) NHS
11 12 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.39%) SCADA
12 10 (1.16%) Mainframe
13 9 (1.04%) Private Cloud
14 8 (0.93%) Virtual Team
15 7 (0.81%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 111 (12.88%) Windows
2 105 (12.18%) Linux
3 38 (4.41%) Windows Server
4 35 (4.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (3.71%) Android
5 32 (3.71%) Mac OS
6 16 (1.86%) Unix
7 11 (1.28%) CentOS
8 8 (0.93%) Solaris
9 7 (0.81%) AIX
9 7 (0.81%) VMS
9 7 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (0.58%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.35%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.35%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 149 (17.29%) Migration
2 141 (16.36%) Problem-Solving
3 102 (11.83%) Stakeholder Management
4 73 (8.47%) ITIL
5 69 (8.00%) Project Management
6 68 (7.89%) Agile
7 60 (6.96%) High Availability
7 60 (6.96%) Project Delivery
8 59 (6.84%) Infrastructure as Code
9 58 (6.73%) Roadmaps
10 57 (6.61%) CI/CD
11 56 (6.50%) Continuous Improvement
12 53 (6.15%) Load Balancing
13 50 (5.80%) Change Management
14 49 (5.68%) DevOps
14 49 (5.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 44 (5.10%) Change Control
15 44 (5.10%) Customer Service
16 42 (4.87%) Network Design
16 42 (4.87%) Programme Management
Programming Languages
1 75 (8.70%) Python
2 55 (6.38%) PowerShell
3 36 (4.18%) SQL
4 28 (3.25%) Bash
5 21 (2.44%) Java
6 16 (1.86%) Perl
7 13 (1.51%) Shell Script
8 9 (1.04%) Lisp
9 7 (0.81%) Bicep
9 7 (0.81%) MATLAB
10 6 (0.70%) COBOL
11 5 (0.58%) VBA
12 4 (0.46%) C++
12 4 (0.46%) JavaScript
13 3 (0.35%) C
13 3 (0.35%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.23%) Go
14 2 (0.23%) Korn
14 2 (0.23%) Ruby
15 1 (0.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 294 (34.11%) Security Cleared
2 232 (26.91%) SC Cleared
3 152 (17.63%) Cisco Certification
4 116 (13.46%) CCNP
5 64 (7.42%) Degree
6 58 (6.73%) CCNA
7 57 (6.61%) DV Cleared
8 24 (2.78%) CCIE
9 22 (2.55%) PMP
10 21 (2.44%) AWS Certification
10 21 (2.44%) PMI Certification
11 17 (1.97%) Network+ Certification
12 16 (1.86%) Microsoft Certification
13 15 (1.74%) A+ Certification
13 15 (1.74%) JNCIS
13 15 (1.74%) MCSE
14 12 (1.39%) Azure Certification
14 12 (1.39%) CISSP
14 12 (1.39%) JNCIP
15 10 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (3.13%) PMO
2 20 (2.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 20 (2.32%) NIST
2 20 (2.32%) SLA
3 18 (2.09%) PCI DSS
4 15 (1.74%) GDPR
5 14 (1.62%) QA
6 9 (1.04%) Data Quality
7 8 (0.93%) NCSC
8 5 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
9 4 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
9 4 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
9 4 (0.46%) GRC
10 2 (0.23%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.23%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.23%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.12%) COBIT
11 1 (0.12%) RMADS
System Software
1 75 (8.70%) VMware Infrastructure
2 56 (6.50%) Active Directory
3 46 (5.34%) VMware NSX
4 24 (2.78%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (2.20%) vSphere
6 17 (1.97%) Hyper-V
7 15 (1.74%) Docker
8 12 (1.39%) Firmware
9 10 (1.16%) KVM
9 10 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
10 3 (0.35%) SRDF
11 2 (0.23%) Ceph
11 2 (0.23%) Lustre
11 2 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.23%) vCloud
11 2 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
12 1 (0.12%) HDFS
12 1 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.12%) RHEV
12 1 (0.12%) UAG
Systems Management
1 82 (9.51%) Ansible
2 75 (8.70%) Terraform
3 51 (5.92%) FortiGate
4 28 (3.25%) Kubernetes
5 24 (2.78%) Grafana
6 21 (2.44%) SCCM
7 13 (1.51%) Prometheus
8 10 (1.16%) Microsoft Intune
9 8 (0.93%) Check_MK
10 7 (0.81%) CASB
10 7 (0.81%) Podman
10 7 (0.81%) Red Hat Satellite
10 7 (0.81%) SCOM
10 7 (0.81%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.70%) PowerCLI
11 6 (0.70%) SCOrch
12 5 (0.58%) Puppet
12 5 (0.58%) vMotion
13 4 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 275 (31.90%) Cisco
2 117 (13.57%) Palo Alto
3 105 (12.18%) VMware
4 83 (9.63%) Microsoft
5 77 (8.93%) Dell
5 77 (8.93%) Juniper
6 63 (7.31%) F5
7 48 (5.57%) ServiceNow
8 46 (5.34%) CheckPoint
9 45 (5.22%) HP
10 43 (4.99%) Aruba
11 37 (4.29%) Meraki
12 35 (4.06%) Fortinet
13 32 (3.71%) Apple
14 31 (3.60%) Oracle
15 28 (3.25%) SAP
16 27 (3.13%) SolarWinds
17 25 (2.90%) Arista
17 25 (2.90%) Red Hat
18 22 (2.55%) Citrix