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

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 138 139 92
Rank change year-on-year +1 -47 +11
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 806 598 1,034
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.06% 1.92% 2.32%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.06% 5.88% 7.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 526 350 689
10th Percentile £278 £349 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.93% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £585 £629 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.20% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 24 44
10th Percentile £21.46 £20.58 £20.73
25th Percentile £25.15 £24.17 £22.06
Median hourly rate £25.77 £24.18 £31.31
Median % change year-on-year +6.58% -22.77% -46.07%
75th Percentile £67.25 £28.88 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £41.25 £75.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £24.18 £24.00
% change year-on-year +175.02% +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 13,304 10,176 13,647
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.98% 32.68% 30.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,414 6,043 8,877
10th Percentile £275 £263 £253
25th Percentile £403 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £656 £650
90th Percentile £738 £772 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 640 312 806
10th Percentile £15.20 £19.97 £13.17
25th Percentile £18.50 £24.17 £16.75
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £32.22
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% +8.64% +44.02%
75th Percentile £63.16 £65.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £32.50 £33.36
% change year-on-year -10.77% -2.56% +58.76%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 -9 669 £488 -6.70% 443
UK excluding London +7 458 £474 -5.20% 307
London -24 238 £525 - 189
Work from Home +53 231 £480 -11.11% 151
North of England +5 156 £475 -4.52% 73
South East -4 106 £445 +1.14% 130
North West +24 93 £517 +3.35% 36
Midlands -26 73 £445 -24.58% 28
West Midlands -17 58 £474 -19.66% 21
Scotland +38 54 £456 +4.29% 27
Yorkshire -38 49 £454 +8.10% 26
South West -21 36 £550 - 25
East of England -18 29 £485 +14.79% 37
Wales +4 17 £295 -26.25% 6
North East +1 17 £175 - 11
East Midlands -16 15 £158 -70.70% 7
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 2

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 (3.47%) SharePoint
2 24 (2.98%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (1.49%) Confluence
4 9 (1.12%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.62%) Apache
6 5 (0.62%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.50%) HCL Notes
8 3 (0.37%) CICS
8 3 (0.37%) GeoServer
8 3 (0.37%) Smallworld
9 2 (0.25%) nginx
9 2 (0.25%) Oracle Coherence
9 2 (0.25%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 50 (6.20%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (3.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (3.23%) MS Visio
3 18 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (1.74%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.12%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 6 (0.74%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.50%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.25%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.12%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.12%) Maximo
4 1 (0.12%) Primavera
4 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 144 (17.87%) Azure
2 112 (13.90%) AWS
3 65 (8.06%) Microsoft 365
4 44 (5.46%) GCP
5 19 (2.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 17 (2.11%) Power Platform
7 16 (1.99%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 16 (1.99%) SaaS
8 14 (1.74%) Entra ID
8 14 (1.74%) OpenShift
9 13 (1.61%) AWS Direct Connect
10 12 (1.49%) IaaS
11 11 (1.36%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 11 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (1.36%) PaaS
12 10 (1.24%) GitHub
12 10 (1.24%) Nutanix
13 9 (1.12%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (0.99%) OneDrive
15 7 (0.87%) AWS CloudTrail
Communications & Networking
1 233 (28.91%) Firewall
2 149 (18.49%) WAN
3 98 (12.16%) BGP
4 86 (10.67%) LAN
5 85 (10.55%) VPN
6 84 (10.42%) Network Security
7 81 (10.05%) Wireless
8 70 (8.68%) OSPF
9 52 (6.45%) DNS
10 51 (6.33%) VLAN
10 51 (6.33%) Wi-Fi
11 42 (5.21%) SD-WAN
12 40 (4.96%) Structured Cabling
13 39 (4.84%) SAN
14 36 (4.47%) Cisco Nexus
15 35 (4.34%) Cisco ISE
16 34 (4.22%) DHCP
17 33 (4.09%) VXLAN
18 31 (3.85%) IPsec
19 29 (3.60%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (1.99%) Power BI
2 15 (1.86%) Relational Database
3 9 (1.12%) SQL Server
4 8 (0.99%) RDBMS
5 6 (0.74%) DataStage
6 5 (0.62%) Apache Hive
6 5 (0.62%) Hadoop
6 5 (0.62%) HBase
7 4 (0.50%) Power Query
7 4 (0.50%) PowerPivot
8 3 (0.37%) Big Data
8 3 (0.37%) Data Lake
8 3 (0.37%) Data Vault
8 3 (0.37%) Geospatial Data
8 3 (0.37%) GIS
8 3 (0.37%) InfluxDB
8 3 (0.37%) Metadata
8 3 (0.37%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.37%) QGIS
8 3 (0.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 22 (2.73%) Git
2 19 (2.36%) Jenkins
3 15 (1.86%) GitLab
4 14 (1.74%) JIRA
5 9 (1.12%) Sonatype Nexus
6 8 (0.99%) Maven
7 3 (0.37%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.37%) ER Studio
7 3 (0.37%) ERwin
7 3 (0.37%) ScriptRunner
7 3 (0.37%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
9 1 (0.12%) AppScan
9 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.12%) Gradle
9 1 (0.12%) JMeter
9 1 (0.12%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.12%) Selenium
General
1 207 (25.68%) Social Skills
2 136 (16.87%) Finance
3 99 (12.28%) Analytical Skills
3 99 (12.28%) Public Sector
4 56 (6.95%) Documentation Skills
5 53 (6.58%) Telecoms
6 46 (5.71%) Banking
7 45 (5.58%) Manufacturing
8 31 (3.85%) Marketing
9 25 (3.10%) Electronics
10 20 (2.48%) Presentation Skills
11 18 (2.23%) Legal
12 17 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 14 (1.74%) Influencing Skills
14 13 (1.61%) Retail
15 11 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
16 8 (0.99%) Investment Banking
17 7 (0.87%) Law
17 7 (0.87%) Local Government
18 6 (0.74%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 144 (17.87%) Network Engineer
2 124 (15.38%) Architect
3 72 (8.93%) Project Manager
4 60 (7.44%) Analyst
5 55 (6.82%) Senior
6 44 (5.46%) Network Architect
7 39 (4.84%) Solutions Architect
8 38 (4.71%) Lead
9 37 (4.59%) Data Centre Engineer
10 35 (4.34%) Consultant
11 34 (4.22%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 31 (3.85%) Data Centre Manager
13 30 (3.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 29 (3.60%) Cisco Engineer
14 29 (3.60%) IT Support
15 28 (3.47%) Security Engineer
16 27 (3.35%) Cisco Network Engineer
17 25 (3.10%) Desktop Support
18 23 (2.85%) 2nd Line Support
18 23 (2.85%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (2.85%) Middleware
2 19 (2.36%) 802.1X
3 9 (1.12%) LDAP
4 7 (0.87%) RFC 2544
5 5 (0.62%) Spark Streaming
6 4 (0.50%) ADO
6 4 (0.50%) VML
7 3 (0.37%) ARM Templates
7 3 (0.37%) Yocto
8 2 (0.25%) .NET
8 2 (0.25%) AWS CDK
8 2 (0.25%) CSS
8 2 (0.25%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.25%) HTML
8 2 (0.25%) ModSecurity
8 2 (0.25%) NETCONF
8 2 (0.25%) OpenConfig
8 2 (0.25%) REST
8 2 (0.25%) RESTCONF
8 2 (0.25%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 45 (5.58%) Hybrid Cloud
2 24 (2.98%) Public Cloud
2 24 (2.98%) Self-Motivation
3 20 (2.48%) Cloud Native
4 19 (2.36%) Onboarding
5 17 (2.11%) Analytical Mindset
5 17 (2.11%) Driving Licence
5 17 (2.11%) Private Cloud
6 16 (1.99%) SCADA
7 15 (1.86%) CMDB
8 14 (1.74%) Fibre Optics
8 14 (1.74%) Replication
9 12 (1.49%) Management Information System
10 10 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
10 10 (1.24%) NHS
11 9 (1.12%) Mainframe
11 9 (1.12%) PKI
12 8 (0.99%) Operational Technology
13 7 (0.87%) Legacy Systems
13 7 (0.87%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 103 (12.78%) Windows
2 96 (11.91%) Linux
3 42 (5.21%) Windows Server
4 34 (4.22%) Android
4 34 (4.22%) Mac OS
5 28 (3.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 12 (1.49%) Unix
7 11 (1.36%) CentOS
8 9 (1.12%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.74%) VMS
9 6 (0.74%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.62%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.37%) AIX
12 3 (0.37%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.37%) Solaris
12 3 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (16.75%) Migration
2 123 (15.26%) Problem-Solving
3 93 (11.54%) Stakeholder Management
4 66 (8.19%) Agile
5 64 (7.94%) ITIL
6 62 (7.69%) Project Management
7 59 (7.32%) Infrastructure as Code
7 59 (7.32%) Project Delivery
8 53 (6.58%) CI/CD
9 51 (6.33%) DevOps
10 49 (6.08%) Roadmaps
10 49 (6.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 47 (5.83%) Continuous Improvement
12 44 (5.46%) High Availability
12 44 (5.46%) Network Design
13 41 (5.09%) Change Control
13 41 (5.09%) Change Management
13 41 (5.09%) Customer Service
13 41 (5.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 41 (5.09%) Programme Management
Programming Languages
1 78 (9.68%) Python
2 54 (6.70%) PowerShell
3 32 (3.97%) SQL
4 23 (2.85%) Bash
5 13 (1.61%) Shell Script
6 12 (1.49%) Perl
7 11 (1.36%) Java
8 9 (1.12%) Lisp
9 7 (0.87%) MATLAB
10 5 (0.62%) VBA
11 4 (0.50%) Bicep
11 4 (0.50%) C++
12 3 (0.37%) C
12 3 (0.37%) COBOL
13 2 (0.25%) Go
13 2 (0.25%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.25%) Korn
13 2 (0.25%) Ruby
14 1 (0.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.12%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 261 (32.38%) Security Cleared
2 217 (26.92%) SC Cleared
3 130 (16.13%) Cisco Certification
4 104 (12.90%) CCNP
5 62 (7.69%) Degree
6 49 (6.08%) CCNA
7 46 (5.71%) DV Cleared
8 27 (3.35%) CCIE
9 22 (2.73%) AWS Certification
10 19 (2.36%) PMP
11 17 (2.11%) PMI Certification
12 11 (1.36%) A+ Certification
12 11 (1.36%) CISSP
12 11 (1.36%) JNCIE
12 11 (1.36%) MCSE
12 11 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
12 11 (1.36%) Network+ Certification
12 11 (1.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 9 (1.12%) Azure Certification
13 9 (1.12%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (2.98%) PMO
2 19 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 19 (2.36%) SLA
3 18 (2.23%) NIST
4 17 (2.11%) PCI DSS
5 15 (1.86%) GDPR
6 14 (1.74%) QA
7 11 (1.36%) Data Quality
8 7 (0.87%) NCSC
9 5 (0.62%) GRC
10 4 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
11 2 (0.25%) ISO 22301
11 2 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 2 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.25%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.12%) COBIT
12 1 (0.12%) RMADS
System Software
1 88 (10.92%) VMware Infrastructure
2 59 (7.32%) Active Directory
3 50 (6.20%) VMware NSX
4 24 (2.98%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (2.36%) vSphere
6 18 (2.23%) Hyper-V
7 17 (2.11%) Docker
8 11 (1.36%) Firmware
8 11 (1.36%) VMware ESXi
9 10 (1.24%) KVM
10 5 (0.62%) HDFS
11 4 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
12 3 (0.37%) Lustre
13 2 (0.25%) Ceph
13 2 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
13 2 (0.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.25%) vCloud
14 1 (0.12%) SRDF
14 1 (0.12%) UAG
14 1 (0.12%) Xen
Systems Management
1 83 (10.30%) Ansible
2 71 (8.81%) Terraform
3 40 (4.96%) FortiGate
4 24 (2.98%) SCCM
5 21 (2.61%) Grafana
5 21 (2.61%) Kubernetes
6 12 (1.49%) vCenter Server
7 11 (1.36%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (1.36%) Prometheus
8 9 (1.12%) SCOM
9 8 (0.99%) Check_MK
9 8 (0.99%) Puppet
10 7 (0.87%) Podman
10 7 (0.87%) Red Hat Satellite
11 6 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (0.74%) CASB
11 6 (0.74%) SCOrch
12 5 (0.62%) Hadoop YARN
12 5 (0.62%) vMotion
12 5 (0.62%) vRealize
Vendors
1 264 (32.75%) Cisco
2 115 (14.27%) VMware
3 114 (14.14%) Palo Alto
4 91 (11.29%) Microsoft
5 73 (9.06%) Dell
6 64 (7.94%) Juniper
7 49 (6.08%) F5
8 45 (5.58%) HP
9 43 (5.33%) CheckPoint
10 40 (4.96%) ServiceNow
11 39 (4.84%) Aruba
12 38 (4.71%) Meraki
13 34 (4.22%) Apple
13 34 (4.22%) Fortinet
14 32 (3.97%) SAP
15 26 (3.23%) Oracle
16 22 (2.73%) Citrix
17 18 (2.23%) Arista
17 18 (2.23%) Google
18 17 (2.11%) NVIDIA