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 9 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 128 105
Rank change year-on-year +27 -23 -16
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,236 719 961
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.35% 2.23% 2.22%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.11% 6.45% 7.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 720 458 639
10th Percentile £318 £303 £318
25th Percentile £406 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £507 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.33% -5.72% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £600 £625
90th Percentile £738 £688 £715
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £538
% change year-on-year -0.63% -11.07% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 26 54
10th Percentile £16.01 £22.21 £12.08
25th Percentile £16.38 £24.66 £16.69
Median hourly rate £19.85 £25.15 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.07% +4.79% +15.91%
75th Percentile £34.85 £36.06 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.71 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £22.00
% change year-on-year -21.57% +12.09% +6.25%

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 17,394 11,140 13,187
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.14% 34.49% 30.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,642 6,925 8,369
10th Percentile £313 £300 £281
25th Percentile £414 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.62% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £626 £650 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 882 515 902
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.87 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £31.00 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +41.81% -13.94% +30.99%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.55 £62.00
90th Percentile £87.47 £77.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £31.49 £36.00
% change year-on-year +39.60% -12.53% +2.86%

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 9 July 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 9 July 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 9 July 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 +17 1,022 £500 -4.76% 482
UK excluding London +1 697 £475 -0.63% 280
London +4 376 £550 +2.80% 264
Work from Home +21 322 £500 -1.96% 143
North of England +10 247 £475 +2.04% 51
South East +8 216 £488 -0.51% 112
Yorkshire +3 133 £365 -18.89% 20
North West +8 91 £500 -4.76% 24
Scotland +2 56 £466 +4.96% 9
Midlands -60 56 £460 -15.60% 18
South West -29 53 £495 -10.00% 35
West Midlands -56 51 £467 -15.12% 9
Wales +6 44 £468 +20.65% 20
East of England -12 36 £500 +33.33% 32
North East -5 29 £625 +468.18% 7
East Midlands -22 4 £363 -32.87% 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 25 (2.02%) Confluence
2 16 (1.29%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.89%) CICS
3 11 (0.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 6 (0.49%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.40%) Apache
5 5 (0.40%) CloudStack
6 4 (0.32%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.24%) nginx
7 3 (0.24%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.081%) IIS
8 1 (0.081%) Mendix
8 1 (0.081%) SAS
Applications
1 17 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.13%) Microsoft Office
3 13 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.89%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.40%) AutoCAD
7 3 (0.24%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.16%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.24%) Primavera
1 3 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.081%) OpenText MBPM
3 1 (0.081%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 261 (21.12%) Azure
2 231 (18.69%) AWS
3 78 (6.31%) GCP
4 43 (3.48%) IaaS
5 42 (3.40%) GitHub
6 40 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
7 37 (2.99%) SaaS
8 30 (2.43%) OCI
9 26 (2.10%) Entra ID
10 22 (1.78%) PaaS
11 21 (1.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 17 (1.38%) OpenShift
13 15 (1.21%) OneDrive
14 13 (1.05%) Azure DevOps
15 12 (0.97%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 12 (0.97%) Power Platform
16 11 (0.89%) Azure Sentinel
16 11 (0.89%) Nutanix
17 9 (0.73%) Amazon EKS
18 8 (0.65%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 344 (27.83%) Firewall
2 200 (16.18%) WAN
3 192 (15.53%) BGP
4 146 (11.81%) OSPF
5 135 (10.92%) VPN
6 127 (10.28%) VXLAN
7 122 (9.87%) DNS
7 122 (9.87%) SAN
8 119 (9.63%) LAN
9 117 (9.47%) Network Security
10 100 (8.09%) VLAN
11 92 (7.44%) Structured Cabling
12 89 (7.20%) Ethernet VPN
13 88 (7.12%) DHCP
13 88 (7.12%) SD-WAN
14 64 (5.18%) TCP/IP
15 61 (4.94%) BIG-IP
16 57 (4.61%) Cisco Nexus
17 54 (4.37%) Wireless
18 52 (4.21%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.21%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.81%) DataStage
3 7 (0.57%) Big Data
3 7 (0.57%) Power BI
4 6 (0.49%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.32%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.32%) Db2
5 4 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.32%) Geospatial Data
5 4 (0.32%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.32%) Oracle Database
5 4 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.32%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.32%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.24%) GIS
7 2 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.16%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.16%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.16%) Oracle Database 12c
8 1 (0.081%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 69 (5.58%) JIRA
2 33 (2.67%) GitLab
2 33 (2.67%) Jenkins
3 26 (2.10%) Git
4 9 (0.73%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (0.40%) JMeter
6 4 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.32%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.32%) Maven
6 4 (0.32%) Subversion
7 3 (0.24%) ScriptRunner
7 3 (0.24%) Zephyr
8 2 (0.16%) MSI
9 1 (0.081%) AppScan
9 1 (0.081%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.081%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.081%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.081%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.081%) Postman
General
1 304 (24.60%) Social Skills
2 166 (13.43%) Finance
3 132 (10.68%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (6.55%) Public Sector
5 54 (4.37%) Documentation Skills
6 48 (3.88%) Banking
7 46 (3.72%) Telecoms
8 35 (2.83%) Legal
9 27 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
10 26 (2.10%) Retail
11 18 (1.46%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
14 10 (0.81%) Military
15 9 (0.73%) Financial Institution
16 8 (0.65%) Law
17 7 (0.57%) Marketing
18 6 (0.49%) Investment Banking
18 6 (0.49%) Police
18 6 (0.49%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 206 (16.67%) Architect
2 203 (16.42%) Network Engineer
3 146 (11.81%) Senior
4 109 (8.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 106 (8.58%) Data Centre Engineer
6 74 (5.99%) Project Manager
7 62 (5.02%) Network Architect
8 61 (4.94%) Lead
9 56 (4.53%) IT Engineer
10 53 (4.29%) Field Engineer
11 49 (3.96%) Field Service Engineer
12 43 (3.48%) Infrastructure Manager
12 43 (3.48%) Solutions Architect
12 43 (3.48%) Technical Architect
13 38 (3.07%) Data Centre Manager
13 38 (3.07%) Senior Network Engineer
14 36 (2.91%) Analyst
15 35 (2.83%) Support Engineer
16 32 (2.59%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 29 (2.35%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (4.37%) Middleware
2 32 (2.59%) 802.1X
3 10 (0.81%) Redfish
3 10 (0.81%) REST
4 9 (0.73%) LDAP
5 8 (0.65%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.57%) Spring
7 6 (0.49%) NETCONF
8 5 (0.40%) Jinja
8 5 (0.40%) Kafka
8 5 (0.40%) OpenConfig
8 5 (0.40%) RESTCONF
8 5 (0.40%) SAML
8 5 (0.40%) XML
8 5 (0.40%) YANG
9 4 (0.32%) .NET
9 4 (0.32%) GeoJSON
9 4 (0.32%) RESTful
9 4 (0.32%) Spring Boot
9 4 (0.32%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 76 (6.15%) Hybrid Cloud
2 56 (4.53%) Analytical Mindset
3 37 (2.99%) Cloud Native
3 37 (2.99%) PKI
4 36 (2.91%) Management Information System
5 31 (2.51%) Clustering
5 31 (2.51%) Enterprise Storage
5 31 (2.51%) Onboarding
5 31 (2.51%) Private Cloud
6 29 (2.35%) Fibre Optics
7 21 (1.70%) CMDB
8 20 (1.62%) Driving Licence
8 20 (1.62%) Public Cloud
8 20 (1.62%) Replication
9 19 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
10 16 (1.29%) SCADA
11 15 (1.21%) Mainframe
11 15 (1.21%) Operational Technology
12 14 (1.13%) NHS
12 14 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 164 (13.27%) Windows
2 141 (11.41%) Linux
3 43 (3.48%) Windows Server
4 31 (2.51%) Unix
5 30 (2.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (1.86%) AIX
7 18 (1.46%) Solaris
8 10 (0.81%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.81%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.49%) CentOS
10 6 (0.49%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.49%) VMS
11 5 (0.40%) HPUX
11 5 (0.40%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.40%) SUSE
12 4 (0.32%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.16%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 224 (18.12%) Migration
2 211 (17.07%) Problem-Solving
3 138 (11.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 127 (10.28%) Stakeholder Management
5 119 (9.63%) Infrastructure as Code
6 114 (9.22%) ITIL
7 110 (8.90%) CI/CD
7 110 (8.90%) High Availability
8 101 (8.17%) Roadmaps
9 92 (7.44%) Agile
10 90 (7.28%) Continuous Improvement
11 85 (6.88%) Load Balancing
12 83 (6.72%) Validation
13 80 (6.47%) DevOps
14 79 (6.39%) Project Delivery
15 78 (6.31%) Change Management
16 74 (5.99%) Zero Trust
17 69 (5.58%) Project Management
18 68 (5.50%) ITSM
19 67 (5.42%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 157 (12.70%) Python
2 44 (3.56%) PowerShell
3 35 (2.83%) SQL
4 29 (2.35%) Bash
5 19 (1.54%) Java
6 16 (1.29%) Bicep
7 13 (1.05%) Shell Script
8 12 (0.97%) COBOL
9 10 (0.81%) ActionScript
9 10 (0.81%) Perl
10 8 (0.65%) PL/SQL
11 7 (0.57%) JavaScript
12 6 (0.49%) MATLAB
13 4 (0.32%) C#
13 4 (0.32%) Lisp
14 3 (0.24%) JCL
14 3 (0.24%) Korn
14 3 (0.24%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.16%) C++
15 2 (0.16%) REXX
Qualifications
1 321 (25.97%) Security Cleared
2 229 (18.53%) Cisco Certification
3 218 (17.64%) SC Cleared
4 134 (10.84%) CCNP
5 96 (7.77%) CCNA
6 94 (7.61%) DV Cleared
7 68 (5.50%) Degree
8 64 (5.18%) Network+ Certification
9 54 (4.37%) Microsoft Certification
10 47 (3.80%) A+ Certification
10 47 (3.80%) MCSE
11 29 (2.35%) Azure Certification
11 29 (2.35%) CCIE
12 26 (2.10%) City & Guilds
13 25 (2.02%) AWS Certification
14 23 (1.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 22 (1.78%) PMI Certification
15 22 (1.78%) PMP
16 20 (1.62%) BICSI Certification
17 19 (1.54%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (2.59%) SLA
2 27 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (2.10%) NIST
3 26 (2.10%) QA
4 21 (1.70%) PMO
5 19 (1.54%) GDPR
6 17 (1.38%) NCSC
7 10 (0.81%) GRC
8 9 (0.73%) Disclosure Scotland
8 9 (0.73%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.57%) RMADS
10 6 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.32%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.24%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
13 2 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.16%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 111 (8.98%) VMware Infrastructure
2 67 (5.42%) Active Directory
3 41 (3.32%) VMware NSX
4 38 (3.07%) vSphere
5 35 (2.83%) VMware ESXi
6 30 (2.43%) Firmware
7 28 (2.27%) Hyper-V
8 22 (1.78%) Virtual Machines
9 20 (1.62%) Docker
10 10 (0.81%) NFS
11 8 (0.65%) KVM
12 7 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
13 6 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.49%) SRDF
14 4 (0.32%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.32%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.32%) VMware Workstation
15 3 (0.24%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.24%) UAG
15 3 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 140 (11.33%) Ansible
2 113 (9.14%) Terraform
3 54 (4.37%) Kubernetes
4 52 (4.21%) FortiGate
5 34 (2.75%) Grafana
6 29 (2.35%) Prometheus
7 28 (2.27%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (1.21%) vCenter Server
9 13 (1.05%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.89%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.89%) vMotion
11 10 (0.81%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.81%) SCCM
12 9 (0.73%) Check_MK
13 7 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.57%) EMC NetWorker
13 7 (0.57%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 6 (0.49%) Podman
14 6 (0.49%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 304 (24.60%) Cisco
2 167 (13.51%) VMware
3 139 (11.25%) Palo Alto
4 124 (10.03%) Microsoft
5 120 (9.71%) F5
6 98 (7.93%) Juniper
7 87 (7.04%) Dell
8 76 (6.15%) Arista
9 73 (5.91%) Fortinet
10 60 (4.85%) ServiceNow
11 49 (3.96%) Google
12 44 (3.56%) SolarWinds
13 42 (3.40%) Aruba
14 36 (2.91%) IBM
15 33 (2.67%) CheckPoint
15 33 (2.67%) Red Hat
16 30 (2.43%) Splunk
17 26 (2.10%) Oracle
18 25 (2.02%) Citrix
18 25 (2.02%) HP