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 27 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 120 124 106
Rank change year-on-year +4 -18 -21
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,196 735 838
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.23% 2.24% 2.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.63% 6.35% 7.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 730 465 552
10th Percentile £318 £300 £350
25th Percentile £413 £400 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -
75th Percentile £650 £606 £625
90th Percentile £769 £716 £712
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £492 £538
% change year-on-year +0.20% -8.47% +6.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 69 39 39
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £25.04 £12.08
Median hourly rate £21.00 £25.15 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.50% +25.75% -
75th Percentile £38.75 £34.50 £25.83
90th Percentile £81.95 £48.45 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.87 £16.50
% change year-on-year -22.23% +50.71% -6.88%

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 18,031 11,571 11,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.58% 35.33% 30.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,896 7,111 7,439
10th Percentile £322 £300 £300
25th Percentile £423 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £750 £763 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,062 576 568
10th Percentile £14.68 £15.13 £12.30
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.87 £18.46
Median hourly rate £40.98 £30.00 £44.52
Median % change year-on-year +36.60% -32.61% +1.66%
75th Percentile £68.75 £57.50 £68.98
90th Percentile £83.98 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £48.75
% change year-on-year +46.53% -38.46% +6.39%

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 27 August 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 27 August 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 27 August 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 1,007 £525 - 899
UK excluding London -13 633 £493 +0.20% 414
London +16 417 £550 - 550
Work from Home -11 282 £540 +1.41% 291
North of England -1 220 £485 +7.78% 88
South East -6 181 £531 +7.82% 101
Yorkshire -2 136 £465 +12.05% 30
North West -18 69 £503 -5.98% 37
South West -24 67 £588 +6.82% 70
Midlands -71 51 £453 -9.40% 49
Scotland -6 46 £388 -2.88% 37
West Midlands -62 44 £474 -5.20% 40
Wales +3 42 £468 +55.83% 4
East of England -16 34 £483 -19.58% 68
North East -22 21 £625 +468.18% 22
East Midlands -23 6 £400 -26.61% 9
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 29 (2.42%) Confluence
2 19 (1.59%) SharePoint
3 10 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (0.59%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.42%) Apache
5 5 (0.42%) CloudStack
6 3 (0.25%) CICS
7 1 (0.084%) IIS
7 1 (0.084%) nginx
7 1 (0.084%) SAS
7 1 (0.084%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
4 9 (0.75%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 13 (1.09%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.25%) Primavera
3 2 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
3 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
4 1 (0.084%) Cloudability
4 1 (0.084%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 255 (21.32%) Azure
2 221 (18.48%) AWS
3 59 (4.93%) GCP
4 48 (4.01%) GitHub
5 39 (3.26%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (3.01%) SaaS
7 35 (2.93%) IaaS
8 30 (2.51%) OCI
9 27 (2.26%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.51%) Power Platform
11 15 (1.25%) Azure DevOps
11 15 (1.25%) OneDrive
12 14 (1.17%) OpenShift
12 14 (1.17%) PaaS
13 13 (1.09%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 12 (1.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 9 (0.75%) Nutanix
16 8 (0.67%) Azure Sentinel
17 7 (0.59%) GitHub Actions
18 6 (0.50%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 299 (25.00%) Firewall
2 187 (15.64%) WAN
3 182 (15.22%) BGP
4 130 (10.87%) VPN
5 125 (10.45%) VXLAN
6 121 (10.12%) DNS
7 120 (10.03%) OSPF
8 109 (9.11%) SAN
9 107 (8.95%) LAN
10 106 (8.86%) Network Security
11 105 (8.78%) VLAN
12 90 (7.53%) DHCP
13 87 (7.27%) Ethernet VPN
13 87 (7.27%) SD-WAN
14 83 (6.94%) TCP/IP
15 79 (6.61%) Structured Cabling
16 61 (5.10%) Wi-Fi
17 56 (4.68%) Wireless
18 54 (4.52%) Cisco Nexus
19 48 (4.01%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (2.42%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.25%) Power BI
3 10 (0.84%) SQL Server Analysis Services
3 10 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 10 (0.84%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 7 (0.59%) Big Data
4 7 (0.59%) Oracle Database
5 6 (0.50%) Db2
6 5 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
7 4 (0.33%) PostgreSQL
8 2 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.17%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.17%) DataStage
8 2 (0.17%) SAP Data Services
9 1 (0.084%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 73 (6.10%) JIRA
2 36 (3.01%) GitLab
3 28 (2.34%) Jenkins
4 27 (2.26%) Git
5 8 (0.67%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
6 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
7 2 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.17%) JMeter
7 2 (0.17%) MSI
7 2 (0.17%) Toad
8 1 (0.084%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.084%) Eclipse
8 1 (0.084%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.084%) Maven
8 1 (0.084%) Postman
8 1 (0.084%) Subversion
General
1 285 (23.83%) Social Skills
2 164 (13.71%) Finance
3 118 (9.87%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (4.85%) Public Sector
5 54 (4.52%) Telecoms
6 51 (4.26%) Banking
7 43 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
8 31 (2.59%) Retail
9 23 (1.92%) Legal
10 18 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
11 17 (1.42%) Manufacturing
12 15 (1.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.75%) Police
15 8 (0.67%) Law
16 7 (0.59%) Financial Institution
17 6 (0.50%) Marketing
18 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
19 3 (0.25%) Billing
19 3 (0.25%) Cyber-Physical System
Job Titles
1 200 (16.72%) Architect
2 192 (16.05%) Network Engineer
3 156 (13.04%) Senior
4 120 (10.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 96 (8.03%) Data Centre Engineer
6 78 (6.52%) Project Manager
7 64 (5.35%) Lead
8 61 (5.10%) Network Architect
9 52 (4.35%) IT Engineer
10 45 (3.76%) Senior Network Engineer
11 44 (3.68%) Field Engineer
12 43 (3.60%) Consultant
13 42 (3.51%) Data Centre Manager
14 39 (3.26%) Technical Architect
15 38 (3.18%) Field Service Engineer
15 38 (3.18%) Infrastructure Manager
16 36 (3.01%) Solutions Architect
17 32 (2.68%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 31 (2.59%) Support Engineer
19 28 (2.34%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (9.11%) Terraform
2 45 (3.76%) Middleware
3 21 (1.76%) REST
4 16 (1.34%) 802.1X
5 13 (1.09%) YAML
6 12 (1.00%) JSON
7 9 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
7 9 (0.75%) Redfish
8 8 (0.67%) LDAP
9 7 (0.59%) NETCONF
10 6 (0.50%) OpenConfig
10 6 (0.50%) SAML
10 6 (0.50%) YANG
11 5 (0.42%) .NET
11 5 (0.42%) RESTCONF
12 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
12 4 (0.33%) Jinja
12 4 (0.33%) Kafka
12 4 (0.33%) RESTful
13 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 76 (6.35%) Hybrid Cloud
2 46 (3.85%) Analytical Mindset
3 38 (3.18%) PKI
4 34 (2.84%) Enterprise Storage
4 34 (2.84%) Private Cloud
5 33 (2.76%) Cloud Native
6 32 (2.68%) Clustering
7 31 (2.59%) Management Information System
8 30 (2.51%) Fibre Optics
9 28 (2.34%) Onboarding
9 28 (2.34%) Public Cloud
9 28 (2.34%) Replication
10 26 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
11 19 (1.59%) Operational Technology
12 18 (1.51%) Driving Licence
13 16 (1.34%) CMDB
14 15 (1.25%) SCADA
14 15 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
15 14 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
16 13 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 182 (15.22%) Windows
2 133 (11.12%) Linux
3 53 (4.43%) Windows Server
4 32 (2.68%) Unix
5 20 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 19 (1.59%) AIX
7 10 (0.84%) Apple iOS
7 10 (0.84%) Mac OS
8 9 (0.75%) Solaris
8 9 (0.75%) VMS
9 6 (0.50%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.50%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.42%) HPUX
10 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
10 5 (0.42%) SUSE
10 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.33%) CentOS
11 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 255 (21.32%) Migration
2 188 (15.72%) Problem-Solving
3 147 (12.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 144 (12.04%) Stakeholder Management
5 117 (9.78%) Infrastructure as Code
6 110 (9.20%) ITIL
7 105 (8.78%) High Availability
8 99 (8.28%) CI/CD
9 97 (8.11%) Agile
9 97 (8.11%) Roadmaps
10 90 (7.53%) Project Delivery
10 90 (7.53%) Validation
11 81 (6.77%) Continuous Improvement
12 77 (6.44%) Change Management
13 76 (6.35%) Zero Trust
14 74 (6.19%) Disaster Recovery
14 74 (6.19%) Technical Leadership
15 71 (5.94%) DevOps
16 69 (5.77%) Load Balancing
17 68 (5.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 163 (13.63%) Python
2 57 (4.77%) PowerShell
3 37 (3.09%) SQL
4 32 (2.68%) Bash
5 10 (0.84%) ActionScript
5 10 (0.84%) Bicep
6 9 (0.75%) Perl
7 8 (0.67%) Shell Script
8 7 (0.59%) Java
8 7 (0.59%) PL/SQL
9 5 (0.42%) C#
10 4 (0.33%) COBOL
10 4 (0.33%) Go
10 4 (0.33%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.33%) MATLAB
11 3 (0.25%) JCL
11 3 (0.25%) Lisp
11 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.17%) Korn
12 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 299 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 202 (16.89%) SC Cleared
3 188 (15.72%) Cisco Certification
4 110 (9.20%) CCNP
5 95 (7.94%) DV Cleared
6 75 (6.27%) CCNA
7 63 (5.27%) Degree
8 47 (3.93%) Network+ Certification
9 43 (3.60%) Microsoft Certification
10 41 (3.43%) A+ Certification
11 37 (3.09%) MCSE
12 31 (2.59%) CCIE
13 29 (2.42%) AWS Certification
14 27 (2.26%) Azure Certification
15 26 (2.17%) City & Guilds
16 23 (1.92%) PMP
17 22 (1.84%) PMI Certification
17 22 (1.84%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 21 (1.76%) CISSP
19 20 (1.67%) BICSI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (3.18%) QA
2 29 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (2.17%) SLA
4 22 (1.84%) NIST
5 15 (1.25%) GDPR
6 14 (1.17%) PMO
7 11 (0.92%) NCSC
8 9 (0.75%) JSP 440
9 7 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
10 6 (0.50%) GRC
10 6 (0.50%) RMADS
11 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
11 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.25%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 134 (11.20%) VMware Infrastructure
2 84 (7.02%) Active Directory
3 46 (3.85%) vSphere
4 43 (3.60%) VMware NSX
5 37 (3.09%) VMware ESXi
6 33 (2.76%) Hyper-V
7 31 (2.59%) Docker
8 30 (2.51%) Firmware
9 15 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.92%) NFS
11 7 (0.59%) PowerHA
12 6 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.33%) SRDF
14 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
15 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
15 3 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 146 (12.21%) Ansible
2 60 (5.02%) Kubernetes
3 36 (3.01%) FortiGate
4 27 (2.26%) Prometheus
5 25 (2.09%) Grafana
6 23 (1.92%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (1.42%) vCenter Server
8 15 (1.25%) VxRail
9 13 (1.09%) SCCM
10 12 (1.00%) Microsoft Clustering
10 12 (1.00%) NetBackup
11 11 (0.92%) vMotion
12 10 (0.84%) Dell DRAC
12 10 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.84%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 8 (0.67%) Nagios
14 7 (0.59%) Check_MK
14 7 (0.59%) EMC NetWorker
14 7 (0.59%) PowerCLI
15 6 (0.50%) Avamar
Vendors
1 286 (23.91%) Cisco
2 189 (15.80%) VMware
3 139 (11.62%) Microsoft
4 124 (10.37%) Palo Alto
5 103 (8.61%) F5
6 72 (6.02%) Arista
7 71 (5.94%) Dell
8 69 (5.77%) Fortinet
8 69 (5.77%) Juniper
9 57 (4.77%) ServiceNow
10 42 (3.51%) Aruba
11 36 (3.01%) CheckPoint
12 34 (2.84%) Red Hat
13 31 (2.59%) Google
14 29 (2.42%) IBM
15 25 (2.09%) SolarWinds
15 25 (2.09%) Veeam
16 23 (1.92%) Oracle
17 22 (1.84%) NetApp
18 21 (1.76%) Zscaler