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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 107 125 102
Rank change year-on-year +18 -23 -12
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,224 741 873
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.32% 2.26% 2.17%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.95% 6.53% 7.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 724 472 583
10th Percentile £320 £300 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £509 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.72% -5.44% +0.09%
75th Percentile £638 £600 £625
90th Percentile £750 £675 £711
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £479 £545
% change year-on-year +0.78% -12.24% +9.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 29 42
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £12.00
25th Percentile £16.38 £24.66 £12.37
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 £37.11
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £18.14
% change year-on-year -21.57% +35.98% +2.34%

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 17,606 11,349 12,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.31% 34.65% 30.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,771 7,000 7,905
10th Percentile £318 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £406 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £542
Median % change year-on-year - -3.13% -1.46%
75th Percentile £634 £644 £675
90th Percentile £750 £775 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 912 549 692
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.13 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.87 £16.70
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.53% -25.00% +11.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.49 £77.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year +46.53% -27.71% -9.49%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +19 1,032 £513 -2.24% 539
UK excluding London -7 677 £482 +0.78% 263
London +13 392 £550 +2.61% 316
Work from Home +2 304 £519 +1.76% 142
North of England +6 242 £480 +6.56% 65
South East -1 211 £520 +10.64% 102
Yorkshire +2 136 £365 -9.88% 18
North West -4 87 £516 -1.81% 26
Midlands -51 60 £456 -15.65% 16
South West -27 59 £495 -10.00% 29
West Midlands -43 55 £465 -11.43% 11
Scotland -18 45 £450 +1.41% 9
Wales +4 39 £468 +24.67% 9
East of England -15 32 £500 -3.85% 39
North East -18 25 £625 +468.18% 21
East Midlands -22 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 (1.23%) 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 (0.25%) nginx
8 3 (0.25%) 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 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
8 2 (0.16%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 7 (0.57%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.25%) 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
1 267 (21.81%) Azure
2 226 (18.46%) AWS
3 74 (6.05%) GCP
4 43 (3.51%) GitHub
5 40 (3.27%) IaaS
6 37 (3.02%) Microsoft 365
7 33 (2.70%) SaaS
8 29 (2.37%) OCI
9 25 (2.04%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.47%) OpenShift
10 18 (1.47%) PaaS
11 16 (1.31%) Azure DevOps
11 16 (1.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 14 (1.14%) Power Platform
13 12 (0.98%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 12 (0.98%) OneDrive
14 10 (0.82%) Azure Sentinel
15 8 (0.65%) GitHub Actions
15 8 (0.65%) Nutanix
16 6 (0.49%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 331 (27.04%) Firewall
2 194 (15.85%) WAN
3 184 (15.03%) BGP
4 138 (11.27%) OSPF
5 134 (10.95%) VPN
6 128 (10.46%) DNS
7 122 (9.97%) VXLAN
8 119 (9.72%) SAN
9 115 (9.40%) LAN
10 110 (8.99%) Network Security
11 102 (8.33%) VLAN
12 96 (7.84%) DHCP
13 89 (7.27%) Structured Cabling
14 85 (6.94%) Ethernet VPN
14 85 (6.94%) SD-WAN
15 71 (5.80%) TCP/IP
16 60 (4.90%) BIG-IP
17 58 (4.74%) Wireless
18 55 (4.49%) Wi-Fi
19 49 (4.00%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (1.88%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.82%) DataStage
2 10 (0.82%) Power BI
3 7 (0.57%) Big Data
3 7 (0.57%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (0.49%) Db2
4 6 (0.49%) Oracle Database
5 5 (0.41%) SQL Server Analysis Services
5 5 (0.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 5 (0.41%) SQL Server Reporting Services
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
7 3 (0.25%) GIS
8 2 (0.16%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.16%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 76 (6.21%) 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 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
8 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.16%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.16%) MSI
9 2 (0.16%) Toad
10 1 (0.082%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.082%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.082%) Postman
General
1 306 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 168 (13.73%) Finance
3 123 (10.05%) Analytical Skills
4 74 (6.05%) 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 (2.21%) 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 9 (0.74%) Law
13 9 (0.74%) Military
14 8 (0.65%) Financial Institution
14 8 (0.65%) Police
15 6 (0.49%) Investment Banking
16 5 (0.41%) Marketing
17 3 (0.25%) Billing
Job Titles
1 201 (16.42%) Architect
2 189 (15.44%) Network Engineer
3 150 (12.25%) Senior
4 115 (9.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 109 (8.91%) Data Centre Engineer
6 80 (6.54%) Project Manager
7 63 (5.15%) Network Architect
8 58 (4.74%) Lead
9 51 (4.17%) IT Engineer
10 47 (3.84%) Field Engineer
11 44 (3.59%) Field Service Engineer
11 44 (3.59%) Infrastructure Manager
12 43 (3.51%) Data Centre Manager
12 43 (3.51%) Technical Architect
13 42 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
14 37 (3.02%) Senior Network Engineer
15 35 (2.86%) Support Engineer
16 33 (2.70%) Consultant
17 32 (2.61%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 31 (2.53%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (4.41%) 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 74 (6.05%) Hybrid Cloud
2 52 (4.25%) Analytical Mindset
3 45 (3.68%) PKI
4 42 (3.43%) Clustering
5 36 (2.94%) Management Information System
6 35 (2.86%) Cloud Native
7 31 (2.53%) Enterprise Storage
8 29 (2.37%) Private Cloud
9 28 (2.29%) Fibre Optics
10 27 (2.21%) Onboarding
11 25 (2.04%) Replication
12 22 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
12 22 (1.80%) Public Cloud
13 19 (1.55%) Driving Licence
14 17 (1.39%) CMDB
14 17 (1.39%) Mainframe
15 15 (1.23%) Operational Technology
15 15 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
16 14 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
16 14 (1.14%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 164 (13.40%) Windows
2 139 (11.36%) Linux
3 43 (3.51%) Windows Server
4 39 (3.19%) Unix
5 27 (2.21%) AIX
6 26 (2.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 18 (1.47%) Solaris
8 10 (0.82%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.82%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.49%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.49%) VMS
10 5 (0.41%) HPUX
10 5 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
10 5 (0.41%) SUSE
10 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (0.33%) CentOS
11 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.16%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 247 (20.18%) Migration
2 204 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
3 143 (11.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 137 (11.19%) Stakeholder Management
5 119 (9.72%) High Availability
6 114 (9.31%) ITIL
7 107 (8.74%) Infrastructure as Code
8 105 (8.58%) CI/CD
9 98 (8.01%) Roadmaps
10 96 (7.84%) Agile
11 88 (7.19%) Continuous Improvement
12 86 (7.03%) Load Balancing
13 84 (6.86%) Change Management
13 84 (6.86%) Project Delivery
14 80 (6.54%) Validation
15 77 (6.29%) DevOps
16 75 (6.13%) Zero Trust
17 69 (5.64%) Project Management
18 66 (5.39%) ITSM
18 66 (5.39%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 160 (13.07%) Python
2 52 (4.25%) PowerShell
3 42 (3.43%) SQL
4 29 (2.37%) Bash
5 19 (1.55%) Java
6 14 (1.14%) Bicep
6 14 (1.14%) Perl
7 12 (0.98%) COBOL
7 12 (0.98%) Shell Script
8 10 (0.82%) ActionScript
9 8 (0.65%) PL/SQL
10 6 (0.49%) JavaScript
11 4 (0.33%) C#
11 4 (0.33%) MATLAB
12 3 (0.25%) JCL
12 3 (0.25%) Korn
12 3 (0.25%) Lisp
12 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.16%) C++
13 2 (0.16%) REXX
Qualifications
1 322 (26.31%) Security Cleared
2 212 (17.32%) Cisco Certification
2 212 (17.32%) SC Cleared
3 121 (9.89%) CCNP
4 102 (8.33%) DV Cleared
5 87 (7.11%) CCNA
6 66 (5.39%) Degree
7 59 (4.82%) Network+ Certification
8 49 (4.00%) Microsoft Certification
9 42 (3.43%) A+ Certification
9 42 (3.43%) MCSE
10 28 (2.29%) Azure Certification
11 27 (2.21%) CCIE
12 26 (2.12%) City & Guilds
13 25 (2.04%) AWS Certification
14 22 (1.80%) PMI Certification
14 22 (1.80%) PMP
14 22 (1.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 20 (1.63%) BICSI Certification
15 20 (1.63%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (2.61%) QA
1 32 (2.61%) SLA
2 29 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 25 (2.04%) NIST
4 20 (1.63%) PMO
5 17 (1.39%) GDPR
6 16 (1.31%) NCSC
7 9 (0.74%) Disclosure Scotland
8 8 (0.65%) GRC
9 7 (0.57%) JSP 440
9 7 (0.57%) PCI DSS
10 6 (0.49%) RMADS
11 4 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.25%) 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%) SEPA
System Software
1 115 (9.40%) VMware Infrastructure
2 70 (5.72%) Active Directory
3 40 (3.27%) vSphere
4 37 (3.02%) VMware ESXi
4 37 (3.02%) VMware NSX
5 33 (2.70%) Firmware
5 33 (2.70%) Hyper-V
6 24 (1.96%) Docker
7 21 (1.72%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (0.90%) NFS
9 8 (0.65%) KVM
10 7 (0.57%) PowerHA
11 6 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
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 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 133 (10.87%) Ansible
2 109 (8.91%) Terraform
3 56 (4.58%) Kubernetes
4 50 (4.08%) FortiGate
5 28 (2.29%) Grafana
6 26 (2.12%) Microsoft Intune
6 26 (2.12%) Prometheus
7 17 (1.39%) vCenter Server
8 13 (1.06%) NetBackup
9 11 (0.90%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 10 (0.82%) Dell DRAC
10 10 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (0.82%) PowerCLI
10 10 (0.82%) VxRail
11 8 (0.65%) SCCM
11 8 (0.65%) vMotion
12 7 (0.57%) Check_MK
12 7 (0.57%) EMC NetWorker
12 7 (0.57%) Microsoft Clustering
13 6 (0.49%) Nagios
Vendors
1 287 (23.45%) Cisco
2 168 (13.73%) VMware
3 133 (10.87%) Palo Alto
4 123 (10.05%) Microsoft
5 122 (9.97%) F5
6 86 (7.03%) Juniper
7 78 (6.37%) Dell
8 75 (6.13%) Fortinet
9 71 (5.80%) Arista
10 56 (4.58%) ServiceNow
11 43 (3.51%) Google
11 43 (3.51%) IBM
12 40 (3.27%) SolarWinds
13 38 (3.10%) Aruba
14 35 (2.86%) CheckPoint
15 33 (2.70%) Red Hat
16 30 (2.45%) Splunk
17 27 (2.21%) Oracle
18 22 (1.80%) Extreme Networks
18 22 (1.80%) HP