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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 107 127 102
Rank change year-on-year +20 -25 -13
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,225 738 889
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.31% 2.26% 2.19%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.93% 6.51% 7.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 726 468 594
10th Percentile £325 £302 £346
25th Percentile £413 £406 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -5.12% -0.46%
75th Percentile £638 £600 £625
90th Percentile £744 £679 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £483 £540
% change year-on-year +0.39% -10.57% +8.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 29 45
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £12.00
25th Percentile £16.38 £24.66 £13.25
Median hourly rate £19.85 £25.15 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -21.07% +5.67% +19.00%
75th Percentile £37.87 £38.00 £27.00
90th Percentile £79.55 £43.75 £39.11
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £18.27
% change year-on-year -21.57% +34.98% -3.13%

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 17,666 11,332 12,451
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.35% 34.63% 30.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,816 6,988 7,995
10th Percentile £316 £300 £300
25th Percentile £416 £406 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £630 £643 £675
90th Percentile £749 £775 £802
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 905 547 720
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.13 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.60 £18.87 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.53% -25.00% +6.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £86.80 £77.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year +46.53% -27.71% -9.77%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +22 1,033 £513 -2.38% 586
UK excluding London -7 678 £485 +0.39% 284
London +15 392 £550 +3.77% 351
Work from Home -1 304 £517 +1.27% 158
North of England +9 243 £480 +3.01% 68
South East 0 213 £510 +8.51% 103
Yorkshire +2 136 £365 -18.89% 19
North West -11 87 £516 -1.81% 25
Midlands -53 59 £461 -14.72% 21
South West -25 57 £495 -10.00% 33
West Midlands -46 54 £467 -11.08% 16
Scotland -19 46 £475 +7.04% 11
Wales +3 39 £468 +24.67% 12
East of England -10 32 £500 +11.11% 38
North East -18 26 £625 +468.18% 24
East Midlands -24 4 £363 -33.49% 5
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 (2.37%) Confluence
2 15 (1.22%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.90%) CICS
4 10 (0.82%) Microsoft Exchange
5 7 (0.57%) OpenStack
6 5 (0.41%) Apache
6 5 (0.41%) CloudStack
7 4 (0.33%) WebLogic
8 3 (0.24%) nginx
8 3 (0.24%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.082%) IIS
9 1 (0.082%) Mendix
9 1 (0.082%) SAS
Applications
1 18 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.82%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.41%) AutoCAD
7 3 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.16%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 6 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.24%) Primavera
3 2 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.16%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.082%) OpenText MBPM
4 1 (0.082%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 268 (21.88%) Azure
2 227 (18.53%) AWS
3 75 (6.12%) GCP
4 43 (3.51%) GitHub
5 40 (3.27%) IaaS
6 39 (3.18%) Microsoft 365
7 33 (2.69%) SaaS
8 30 (2.45%) OCI
9 27 (2.20%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.47%) OpenShift
10 18 (1.47%) PaaS
11 17 (1.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 16 (1.31%) Azure DevOps
13 13 (1.06%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 13 (1.06%) Power Platform
14 12 (0.98%) OneDrive
15 11 (0.90%) Azure Sentinel
16 8 (0.65%) GitHub Actions
16 8 (0.65%) Nutanix
17 6 (0.49%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 330 (26.94%) Firewall
2 197 (16.08%) WAN
3 187 (15.27%) BGP
4 141 (11.51%) OSPF
5 135 (11.02%) VPN
6 130 (10.61%) DNS
7 122 (9.96%) VXLAN
8 119 (9.71%) LAN
8 119 (9.71%) SAN
9 110 (8.98%) Network Security
10 102 (8.33%) VLAN
11 98 (8.00%) DHCP
12 89 (7.27%) Structured Cabling
13 85 (6.94%) Ethernet VPN
13 85 (6.94%) SD-WAN
14 72 (5.88%) TCP/IP
15 60 (4.90%) BIG-IP
16 58 (4.73%) Wireless
17 55 (4.49%) Wi-Fi
18 49 (4.00%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (1.80%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.82%) DataStage
3 9 (0.73%) Power BI
4 7 (0.57%) Big Data
4 7 (0.57%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (0.49%) Db2
5 6 (0.49%) Oracle Database
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 Database 12c
6 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
6 4 (0.33%) SAP Data Services
6 4 (0.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
6 4 (0.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 4 (0.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 3 (0.24%) GIS
8 2 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.16%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 75 (6.12%) JIRA
2 30 (2.45%) Jenkins
3 29 (2.37%) GitLab
4 26 (2.12%) Git
5 6 (0.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
5 6 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.41%) JMeter
7 4 (0.33%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.33%) Maven
7 4 (0.33%) Subversion
8 3 (0.24%) ScriptRunner
8 3 (0.24%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.16%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.16%) MSI
9 2 (0.16%) Toad
10 1 (0.082%) AppScan
10 1 (0.082%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.082%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.082%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.082%) Postman
General
1 307 (25.06%) Social Skills
2 169 (13.80%) Finance
3 122 (9.96%) Analytical Skills
4 77 (6.29%) Public Sector
5 50 (4.08%) Documentation Skills
6 49 (4.00%) Banking
7 48 (3.92%) Telecoms
8 28 (2.29%) Influencing Skills
9 27 (2.20%) Retail
10 26 (2.12%) Legal
11 17 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 17 (1.39%) Manufacturing
12 12 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
13 10 (0.82%) Military
14 9 (0.73%) Law
15 8 (0.65%) Financial Institution
15 8 (0.65%) Police
16 6 (0.49%) Investment Banking
17 5 (0.41%) Marketing
18 3 (0.24%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 201 (16.41%) Architect
2 191 (15.59%) Network Engineer
3 151 (12.33%) Senior
4 117 (9.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 109 (8.90%) Data Centre Engineer
6 80 (6.53%) Project Manager
7 63 (5.14%) Network Architect
8 58 (4.73%) Lead
9 52 (4.24%) IT Engineer
10 48 (3.92%) Field Engineer
11 45 (3.67%) Field Service Engineer
12 44 (3.59%) Infrastructure Manager
13 43 (3.51%) Technical Architect
14 42 (3.43%) Data Centre Manager
15 41 (3.35%) Solutions Architect
16 37 (3.02%) Senior Network Engineer
17 35 (2.86%) Support Engineer
18 32 (2.61%) Consultant
18 32 (2.61%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
19 30 (2.45%) Infrastructure Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (4.24%) Middleware
2 32 (2.61%) 802.1X
3 12 (0.98%) REST
4 10 (0.82%) Redfish
5 8 (0.65%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (0.65%) LDAP
6 7 (0.57%) NETCONF
6 7 (0.57%) Spring
7 6 (0.49%) OpenConfig
7 6 (0.49%) RESTCONF
7 6 (0.49%) SAML
7 6 (0.49%) YANG
8 5 (0.41%) Jinja
8 5 (0.41%) Kafka
8 5 (0.41%) XML
9 4 (0.33%) .NET
9 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
9 4 (0.33%) RESTful
9 4 (0.33%) Spring Boot
9 4 (0.33%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 75 (6.12%) Hybrid Cloud
2 53 (4.33%) Analytical Mindset
3 45 (3.67%) PKI
4 40 (3.27%) Clustering
5 35 (2.86%) Cloud Native
5 35 (2.86%) Management Information System
6 31 (2.53%) Enterprise Storage
7 30 (2.45%) Private Cloud
8 28 (2.29%) Fibre Optics
9 27 (2.20%) Onboarding
10 25 (2.04%) Replication
11 22 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
11 22 (1.80%) Public Cloud
12 19 (1.55%) Driving Licence
13 17 (1.39%) CMDB
13 17 (1.39%) Mainframe
14 16 (1.31%) Operational Technology
15 15 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
16 14 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
16 14 (1.14%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 164 (13.39%) Windows
2 139 (11.35%) Linux
3 43 (3.51%) Windows Server
4 37 (3.02%) Unix
5 26 (2.12%) AIX
6 25 (2.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (1.47%) Solaris
8 10 (0.82%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.82%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.49%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.49%) VMS
11 5 (0.41%) HPUX
11 5 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.41%) SUSE
12 4 (0.33%) CentOS
12 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
13 3 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.16%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 245 (20.00%) Migration
2 206 (16.82%) Problem-Solving
3 145 (11.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 136 (11.10%) Stakeholder Management
5 117 (9.55%) High Availability
6 113 (9.22%) ITIL
7 107 (8.73%) Infrastructure as Code
8 105 (8.57%) CI/CD
9 98 (8.00%) Roadmaps
10 95 (7.76%) Agile
11 88 (7.18%) Continuous Improvement
12 86 (7.02%) Load Balancing
13 83 (6.78%) Project Delivery
14 82 (6.69%) Change Management
15 81 (6.61%) Validation
16 77 (6.29%) DevOps
17 75 (6.12%) Zero Trust
18 70 (5.71%) Project Management
19 66 (5.39%) ITSM
19 66 (5.39%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 159 (12.98%) Python
2 49 (4.00%) PowerShell
3 41 (3.35%) SQL
4 29 (2.37%) Bash
5 19 (1.55%) Java
6 14 (1.14%) Bicep
7 13 (1.06%) Perl
8 12 (0.98%) COBOL
8 12 (0.98%) Shell Script
9 10 (0.82%) ActionScript
10 8 (0.65%) PL/SQL
11 6 (0.49%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.33%) C#
12 4 (0.33%) Lisp
12 4 (0.33%) MATLAB
13 3 (0.24%) JCL
13 3 (0.24%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.16%) C++
14 2 (0.16%) Korn
14 2 (0.16%) REXX
Qualifications
1 321 (26.20%) Security Cleared
2 215 (17.55%) Cisco Certification
3 212 (17.31%) SC Cleared
4 123 (10.04%) CCNP
5 102 (8.33%) DV Cleared
6 88 (7.18%) CCNA
7 65 (5.31%) Degree
8 60 (4.90%) Network+ Certification
9 50 (4.08%) Microsoft Certification
10 43 (3.51%) A+ Certification
10 43 (3.51%) MCSE
11 28 (2.29%) Azure Certification
12 27 (2.20%) CCIE
13 26 (2.12%) City & Guilds
14 25 (2.04%) AWS Certification
15 23 (1.88%) PMP
16 22 (1.80%) PMI Certification
16 22 (1.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 20 (1.63%) BICSI Certification
17 20 (1.63%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (2.53%) QA
2 30 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 30 (2.45%) SLA
3 26 (2.12%) NIST
4 20 (1.63%) PMO
5 18 (1.47%) GDPR
6 16 (1.31%) NCSC
7 9 (0.73%) Disclosure Scotland
8 8 (0.65%) GRC
8 8 (0.65%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.57%) JSP 440
10 6 (0.49%) RMADS
11 4 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.24%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
13 2 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.16%) WCAG
14 1 (0.082%) COBIT
System Software
1 116 (9.47%) VMware Infrastructure
2 71 (5.80%) Active Directory
3 42 (3.43%) vSphere
4 37 (3.02%) VMware ESXi
4 37 (3.02%) VMware NSX
5 33 (2.69%) Hyper-V
6 32 (2.61%) Firmware
7 24 (1.96%) Docker
8 21 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.90%) NFS
10 8 (0.65%) KVM
11 6 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
11 6 (0.49%) PowerHA
11 6 (0.49%) SRDF
12 5 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.33%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.24%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 134 (10.94%) Ansible
2 109 (8.90%) Terraform
3 56 (4.57%) Kubernetes
4 50 (4.08%) FortiGate
5 29 (2.37%) Grafana
6 27 (2.20%) Microsoft Intune
6 27 (2.20%) Prometheus
7 17 (1.39%) vCenter Server
8 13 (1.06%) NetBackup
9 10 (0.82%) Dell DRAC
9 10 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
9 10 (0.82%) PowerCLI
9 10 (0.82%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 10 (0.82%) VxRail
10 8 (0.65%) SCCM
10 8 (0.65%) vMotion
11 7 (0.57%) Check_MK
11 7 (0.57%) EMC NetWorker
12 6 (0.49%) Microsoft Clustering
12 6 (0.49%) Nagios
Vendors
1 288 (23.51%) Cisco
2 169 (13.80%) VMware
3 131 (10.69%) Palo Alto
4 124 (10.12%) Microsoft
5 122 (9.96%) F5
6 86 (7.02%) Juniper
7 81 (6.61%) Dell
8 75 (6.12%) Fortinet
9 71 (5.80%) Arista
10 57 (4.65%) ServiceNow
11 44 (3.59%) Google
12 42 (3.43%) IBM
12 42 (3.43%) SolarWinds
13 38 (3.10%) Aruba
14 35 (2.86%) CheckPoint
15 33 (2.69%) Red Hat
16 31 (2.53%) Splunk
17 27 (2.20%) Oracle
18 22 (1.80%) Citrix
18 22 (1.80%) HP