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 5 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 129 99
Rank change year-on-year +6 -30 +2
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 935 619 985
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.20% 2.05% 2.24%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.58% 6.13% 7.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 589 385 647
10th Percentile £292 £349 £281
25th Percentile £400 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.27% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £580 £625 £638
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £479 £513
% change year-on-year -2.09% -6.54% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 25 44
10th Percentile £20.82 £21.64 £17.53
25th Percentile £25.15 - £22.00
Median hourly rate £26.50 £24.18 £24.99
Median % change year-on-year +9.59% -3.25% +11.08%
75th Percentile £72.69 £29.25 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £52.50 £71.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.80 £24.18 £24.00
% change year-on-year +201.05% +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 14,219 10,106 13,329
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.41% 33.39% 30.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,946 6,224 8,554
10th Percentile £285 £275 £256
25th Percentile £406 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £767 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 664 341 835
10th Percentile £15.38 £18.13 £12.86
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £32.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% +8.33% +33.42%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £83.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £31.76 £30.00
% change year-on-year +5.48% +5.87% +36.36%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 5 March 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 +3 774 £480 -7.69% 450
UK excluding London +8 540 £469 -2.09% 311
London -17 271 £525 +0.96% 187
Work from Home +39 266 £475 -11.21% 164
North of England +19 188 £472 -0.63% 63
South East +6 144 £450 - 117
North West +15 102 £500 - 28
Midlands -23 77 £466 -23.24% 40
Yorkshire -21 71 £365 -8.75% 30
West Midlands -23 63 £474 -21.91% 20
Scotland +28 54 £469 +4.22% 21
South West -41 35 £550 -3.08% 35
East of England -16 32 £478 +13.14% 36
Wales +4 24 £350 -12.50% 9
North East +2 17 £175 +59.09% 5
East Midlands -22 14 £158 -65.00% 20
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 7

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 28 (2.99%) SharePoint
2 19 (2.03%) Microsoft Exchange
3 18 (1.93%) Confluence
4 8 (0.86%) CICS
5 5 (0.53%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.43%) nginx
6 4 (0.43%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.32%) GeoServer
7 3 (0.32%) HCL Notes
7 3 (0.32%) Smallworld
8 2 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle Coherence
8 2 (0.21%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.11%) Mendix
Applications
1 52 (5.56%) Microsoft Office
2 27 (2.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (2.89%) MS Visio
3 23 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.71%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.32%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.43%) Oracle Financials
1 4 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.32%) Primavera
2 3 (0.32%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.21%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.11%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.11%) Maximo
4 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 175 (18.72%) Azure
2 130 (13.90%) AWS
3 67 (7.17%) Microsoft 365
4 58 (6.20%) GCP
5 22 (2.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 19 (2.03%) SaaS
7 18 (1.93%) IaaS
8 17 (1.82%) Power Platform
9 16 (1.71%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 16 (1.71%) Entra ID
10 14 (1.50%) PaaS
11 12 (1.28%) AWS Direct Connect
11 12 (1.28%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (1.28%) GitHub
11 12 (1.28%) OpenShift
12 11 (1.18%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 11 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
13 10 (1.07%) Nutanix
14 9 (0.96%) Amazon S3
15 8 (0.86%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 276 (29.52%) Firewall
2 163 (17.43%) WAN
3 127 (13.58%) BGP
4 100 (10.70%) LAN
5 94 (10.05%) Network Security
6 93 (9.95%) VPN
7 91 (9.73%) OSPF
8 81 (8.66%) Wireless
9 68 (7.27%) DNS
10 59 (6.31%) Structured Cabling
11 58 (6.20%) VLAN
12 57 (6.10%) SAN
12 57 (6.10%) VXLAN
13 52 (5.56%) DHCP
14 49 (5.24%) Wi-Fi
15 43 (4.60%) Cisco ISE
15 43 (4.60%) SD-WAN
16 39 (4.17%) Ethernet VPN
17 37 (3.96%) Cisco Nexus
18 33 (3.53%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.60%) Power BI
2 10 (1.07%) Relational Database
3 8 (0.86%) DataStage
3 8 (0.86%) SQL Server
4 5 (0.53%) GIS
5 4 (0.43%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.43%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.43%) Power Query
5 4 (0.43%) PowerPivot
5 4 (0.43%) RDBMS
6 3 (0.32%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (0.32%) InfluxDB
6 3 (0.32%) QGIS
6 3 (0.32%) SAP Data Services
7 2 (0.21%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.21%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
8 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.11%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 31 (3.32%) Git
2 28 (2.99%) JIRA
3 20 (2.14%) Jenkins
4 16 (1.71%) GitLab
5 11 (1.18%) Maven
6 7 (0.75%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (0.53%) JMeter
8 4 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 4 (0.43%) Eclipse
8 4 (0.43%) Subversion
9 3 (0.32%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.32%) ScriptRunner
10 2 (0.21%) Rational DOORS
11 1 (0.11%) AppScan
11 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.11%) LoadRunner
11 1 (0.11%) Metasploit
11 1 (0.11%) Postman
General
1 234 (25.03%) Social Skills
2 163 (17.43%) Finance
3 105 (11.23%) Analytical Skills
4 100 (10.70%) Public Sector
5 57 (6.10%) Documentation Skills
6 52 (5.56%) Telecoms
7 45 (4.81%) Banking
8 43 (4.60%) Manufacturing
9 31 (3.32%) Marketing
10 24 (2.57%) Electronics
11 23 (2.46%) Legal
12 22 (2.35%) Influencing Skills
13 21 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 20 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
15 15 (1.60%) Retail
16 12 (1.28%) Investment Banking
16 12 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
17 9 (0.96%) Military
18 8 (0.86%) Law
19 6 (0.64%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 163 (17.43%) Network Engineer
2 142 (15.19%) Architect
3 82 (8.77%) Project Manager
4 75 (8.02%) Senior
5 64 (6.84%) Analyst
6 56 (5.99%) Data Centre Engineer
7 46 (4.92%) Network Architect
7 46 (4.92%) Solutions Architect
8 44 (4.71%) Lead
9 43 (4.60%) Data Centre Manager
10 37 (3.96%) IT Support
11 36 (3.85%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 34 (3.64%) Infrastructure Manager
13 31 (3.32%) Consultant
14 30 (3.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 28 (2.99%) Cisco Engineer
15 28 (2.99%) Support Engineer
16 27 (2.89%) Infrastructure Project Manager
17 26 (2.78%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 26 (2.78%) Data Centre Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.32%) 802.1X
2 27 (2.89%) Middleware
3 9 (0.96%) LDAP
4 6 (0.64%) RFC 2544
4 6 (0.64%) Spring
5 4 (0.43%) ADO
5 4 (0.43%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.43%) NETCONF
5 4 (0.43%) OpenConfig
5 4 (0.43%) RESTCONF
5 4 (0.43%) Spring Boot
5 4 (0.43%) VML
5 4 (0.43%) XML
5 4 (0.43%) YANG
6 3 (0.32%) Jinja
6 3 (0.32%) Redfish
6 3 (0.32%) REST
6 3 (0.32%) Yocto
7 2 (0.21%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.21%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 46 (4.92%) Hybrid Cloud
2 26 (2.78%) Analytical Mindset
3 23 (2.46%) PKI
3 23 (2.46%) Self-Motivation
4 21 (2.25%) Driving Licence
4 21 (2.25%) Onboarding
5 20 (2.14%) Cloud Native
5 20 (2.14%) Clustering
5 20 (2.14%) Public Cloud
6 18 (1.93%) Management Information System
7 17 (1.82%) Replication
8 15 (1.60%) CMDB
9 14 (1.50%) NHS
10 13 (1.39%) Fibre Optics
11 12 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.28%) Enterprise Storage
11 12 (1.28%) Mainframe
11 12 (1.28%) SCADA
12 10 (1.07%) Private Cloud
13 8 (0.86%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 125 (13.37%) Windows
2 115 (12.30%) Linux
3 44 (4.71%) Windows Server
4 35 (3.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (3.42%) Android
5 32 (3.42%) Mac OS
6 17 (1.82%) Unix
7 12 (1.28%) AIX
8 11 (1.18%) CentOS
9 10 (1.07%) Solaris
10 7 (0.75%) VMS
10 7 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.53%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.32%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.32%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.11%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 164 (17.54%) Migration
2 151 (16.15%) Problem-Solving
3 107 (11.44%) Stakeholder Management
4 81 (8.66%) ITIL
5 76 (8.13%) Project Management
6 72 (7.70%) Agile
7 70 (7.49%) Roadmaps
8 66 (7.06%) Project Delivery
9 65 (6.95%) High Availability
9 65 (6.95%) Infrastructure as Code
10 63 (6.74%) Continuous Improvement
11 62 (6.63%) CI/CD
12 61 (6.52%) Change Management
13 59 (6.31%) Load Balancing
14 53 (5.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 52 (5.56%) DevOps
16 48 (5.13%) Data Centre Operations
17 46 (4.92%) Change Control
17 46 (4.92%) Cybersecurity
18 45 (4.81%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 85 (9.09%) Python
2 55 (5.88%) PowerShell
3 35 (3.74%) SQL
4 29 (3.10%) Bash
5 23 (2.46%) Java
6 18 (1.93%) Perl
7 12 (1.28%) Shell Script
8 9 (0.96%) Lisp
9 8 (0.86%) COBOL
10 7 (0.75%) Bicep
10 7 (0.75%) MATLAB
11 5 (0.53%) VBA
12 4 (0.43%) C
12 4 (0.43%) C++
12 4 (0.43%) JavaScript
13 3 (0.32%) Korn
13 3 (0.32%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.11%) Groovy
14 1 (0.11%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 302 (32.30%) Security Cleared
2 236 (25.24%) SC Cleared
3 169 (18.07%) Cisco Certification
4 126 (13.48%) CCNP
5 68 (7.27%) Degree
6 66 (7.06%) CCNA
7 59 (6.31%) DV Cleared
8 27 (2.89%) CCIE
9 24 (2.57%) Network+ Certification
9 24 (2.57%) PMI Certification
10 23 (2.46%) PMP
11 20 (2.14%) AWS Certification
12 19 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (1.93%) A+ Certification
13 18 (1.93%) MCSE
14 16 (1.71%) JNCIS
15 13 (1.39%) Azure Certification
15 13 (1.39%) JNCIP
16 12 (1.28%) CISSP
16 12 (1.28%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (3.21%) PMO
2 23 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 21 (2.25%) NIST
3 21 (2.25%) SLA
4 19 (2.03%) PCI DSS
5 17 (1.82%) GDPR
5 17 (1.82%) QA
6 9 (0.96%) NCSC
7 7 (0.75%) Data Quality
8 5 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
9 4 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
9 4 (0.43%) GRC
10 3 (0.32%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.21%) ISO 22301
11 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.11%) COBIT
12 1 (0.11%) RMADS
12 1 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 77 (8.24%) VMware Infrastructure
2 62 (6.63%) Active Directory
3 46 (4.92%) VMware NSX
4 24 (2.57%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (2.14%) Firmware
6 19 (2.03%) vSphere
7 17 (1.82%) Hyper-V
8 16 (1.71%) Docker
9 10 (1.07%) KVM
9 10 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
10 3 (0.32%) SRDF
11 2 (0.21%) Ceph
11 2 (0.21%) Lustre
11 2 (0.21%) PowerHA
11 2 (0.21%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.21%) vCloud
11 2 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.21%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.11%) Xen
Systems Management
1 89 (9.52%) Ansible
2 77 (8.24%) Terraform
3 55 (5.88%) FortiGate
4 32 (3.42%) Kubernetes
5 26 (2.78%) Grafana
6 21 (2.25%) SCCM
7 16 (1.71%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (1.50%) Prometheus
9 8 (0.86%) Check_MK
10 7 (0.75%) CASB
10 7 (0.75%) Podman
10 7 (0.75%) Red Hat Satellite
10 7 (0.75%) SCOM
10 7 (0.75%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.64%) PowerCLI
11 6 (0.64%) SCOrch
12 5 (0.53%) vMotion
13 4 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (0.43%) NetBackup
13 4 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 290 (31.02%) Cisco
2 119 (12.73%) Palo Alto
3 114 (12.19%) VMware
4 96 (10.27%) Microsoft
5 85 (9.09%) Dell
6 82 (8.77%) Juniper
7 68 (7.27%) F5
8 50 (5.35%) ServiceNow
9 45 (4.81%) HP
10 44 (4.71%) Aruba
10 44 (4.71%) CheckPoint
11 38 (4.06%) Meraki
12 36 (3.85%) Fortinet
13 32 (3.42%) Apple
13 32 (3.42%) Oracle
14 31 (3.32%) SolarWinds
15 29 (3.10%) Arista
15 29 (3.10%) SAP
16 27 (2.89%) Google
17 26 (2.78%) Citrix