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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 113 121 104
Rank change year-on-year +8 -17 -16
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,212 757 847
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.26% 2.30% 2.17%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.76% 6.58% 7.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 716 483 565
10th Percentile £325 £300 £350
25th Percentile £413 £400 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £515 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.19% -4.19% -0.46%
75th Percentile £638 £600 £625
90th Percentile £769 £688 £702
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £487 £538
% change year-on-year +1.18% -9.43% +7.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 32 38
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.89
25th Percentile £17.50 £24.66 £12.08
Median hourly rate £25.00 £25.15 £21.90
Median % change year-on-year -0.60% +14.84% +9.50%
75th Percentile £38.75 £32.75 £25.83
90th Percentile £79.90 £43.75 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £18.00
% change year-on-year -21.57% +37.00% +1.58%

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 17,936 11,508 11,860
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.46% 34.99% 30.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,900 7,093 7,602
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £640 £675
90th Percentile £750 £775 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 986 552 611
10th Percentile £15.24 £15.13 £12.30
25th Percentile £19.46 £18.87 £18.23
Median hourly rate £43.10 £29.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.88% -33.89% +12.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £67.01
90th Percentile £85.00 £77.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +46.53% -33.33% +4.05%

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 8 August 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 8 August 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 8 August 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 +8 1,021 £525 - 824
UK excluding London -10 662 £493 +1.18% 399
London +6 398 £555 +3.54% 467
Work from Home +3 301 £525 +1.55% 233
North of England -6 226 £486 +8.06% 116
South East -3 210 £525 +6.60% 104
Yorkshire +1 131 £365 -9.88% 31
North West -10 80 £525 +1.11% 42
South West -31 65 £513 -6.82% 42
Midlands -59 57 £456 -13.14% 35
West Midlands -52 52 £466 -6.82% 23
Scotland -9 43 £425 -5.56% 24
Wales +6 41 £468 +24.67% 15
East of England -15 30 £483 -19.58% 63
North East -24 21 £625 +468.18% 43
East Midlands -20 4 £363 -33.49% 12
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 32 (2.64%) Confluence
2 16 (1.32%) SharePoint
3 10 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (0.58%) CICS
4 7 (0.58%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.41%) Apache
5 5 (0.41%) CloudStack
6 3 (0.25%) nginx
6 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.25%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.083%) IIS
7 1 (0.083%) Mendix
7 1 (0.083%) SAS
Applications
1 20 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (0.83%) MS Visio
4 9 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.41%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 11 (0.91%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.25%) Primavera
3 2 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
3 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
3 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 259 (21.37%) Azure
2 228 (18.81%) AWS
3 64 (5.28%) GCP
4 44 (3.63%) GitHub
5 40 (3.30%) IaaS
6 35 (2.89%) Microsoft 365
7 34 (2.81%) SaaS
8 29 (2.39%) OCI
9 26 (2.15%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.49%) Power Platform
11 17 (1.40%) PaaS
12 16 (1.32%) OpenShift
13 14 (1.16%) Azure DevOps
13 14 (1.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 13 (1.07%) OneDrive
15 11 (0.91%) Azure ExpressRoute
16 10 (0.83%) Azure Sentinel
17 8 (0.66%) GitHub Actions
17 8 (0.66%) Nutanix
18 6 (0.50%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 323 (26.65%) Firewall
2 189 (15.59%) WAN
3 183 (15.10%) BGP
4 135 (11.14%) DNS
4 135 (11.14%) OSPF
5 132 (10.89%) VPN
6 129 (10.64%) VXLAN
7 120 (9.90%) SAN
8 111 (9.16%) LAN
9 102 (8.42%) DHCP
9 102 (8.42%) Network Security
10 100 (8.25%) VLAN
11 88 (7.26%) Ethernet VPN
12 86 (7.10%) Structured Cabling
13 85 (7.01%) SD-WAN
14 79 (6.52%) TCP/IP
15 60 (4.95%) BIG-IP
16 57 (4.70%) Wireless
17 54 (4.46%) Wi-Fi
18 50 (4.13%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (2.31%) SQL Server
2 14 (1.16%) Power BI
3 9 (0.74%) SQL Server Analysis Services
3 9 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 9 (0.74%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 7 (0.58%) Big Data
4 7 (0.58%) Oracle Database
5 6 (0.50%) DataStage
5 6 (0.50%) Db2
5 6 (0.50%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.33%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
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
7 3 (0.25%) MongoDB
8 2 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 78 (6.44%) JIRA
2 30 (2.48%) GitLab
3 28 (2.31%) Jenkins
4 26 (2.15%) Git
5 8 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.41%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.33%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.33%) JMeter
7 4 (0.33%) Maven
7 4 (0.33%) Subversion
8 3 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
8 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.17%) MSI
9 2 (0.17%) Toad
10 1 (0.083%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.083%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.083%) Postman
General
1 292 (24.09%) Social Skills
2 158 (13.04%) Finance
3 122 (10.07%) Analytical Skills
4 68 (5.61%) Public Sector
5 51 (4.21%) Banking
6 47 (3.88%) Telecoms
7 43 (3.55%) Documentation Skills
8 29 (2.39%) Retail
9 24 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
10 22 (1.82%) Legal
11 17 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 16 (1.32%) Manufacturing
13 12 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.74%) Law
15 8 (0.66%) Police
16 7 (0.58%) Financial Institution
16 7 (0.58%) Military
17 5 (0.41%) Investment Banking
18 4 (0.33%) Marketing
19 3 (0.25%) Billing
Job Titles
1 202 (16.67%) Architect
2 185 (15.26%) Network Engineer
3 149 (12.29%) Senior
4 118 (9.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 105 (8.66%) Data Centre Engineer
6 81 (6.68%) Project Manager
7 64 (5.28%) Network Architect
8 59 (4.87%) Lead
9 52 (4.29%) IT Engineer
10 47 (3.88%) Field Engineer
11 45 (3.71%) Technical Architect
12 44 (3.63%) Field Service Engineer
13 43 (3.55%) Data Centre Manager
13 43 (3.55%) Infrastructure Manager
14 39 (3.22%) Senior Network Engineer
14 39 (3.22%) Solutions Architect
15 35 (2.89%) Support Engineer
16 32 (2.64%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 31 (2.56%) Consultant
18 30 (2.48%) Infrastructure Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (4.21%) Middleware
2 32 (2.64%) 802.1X
3 15 (1.24%) REST
4 10 (0.83%) Redfish
5 8 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (0.66%) LDAP
5 8 (0.66%) NETCONF
6 7 (0.58%) OpenConfig
6 7 (0.58%) YAML
6 7 (0.58%) YANG
7 6 (0.50%) JSON
7 6 (0.50%) RESTCONF
7 6 (0.50%) SAML
7 6 (0.50%) Spring
8 5 (0.41%) .NET
8 5 (0.41%) Jinja
8 5 (0.41%) XML
9 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
9 4 (0.33%) RESTful
10 3 (0.25%) EJB
Miscellaneous
1 75 (6.19%) Hybrid Cloud
2 52 (4.29%) Analytical Mindset
3 50 (4.13%) PKI
4 45 (3.71%) Clustering
5 37 (3.05%) Management Information System
6 35 (2.89%) Cloud Native
7 33 (2.72%) Enterprise Storage
8 29 (2.39%) Private Cloud
9 27 (2.23%) Onboarding
10 26 (2.15%) Fibre Optics
11 25 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
12 24 (1.98%) Replication
13 22 (1.82%) Public Cloud
14 18 (1.49%) Driving Licence
15 17 (1.40%) Operational Technology
16 15 (1.24%) CMDB
16 15 (1.24%) SCADA
17 14 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
17 14 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
18 13 (1.07%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 174 (14.36%) Windows
2 131 (10.81%) Linux
3 48 (3.96%) Windows Server
4 37 (3.05%) Unix
5 24 (1.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (1.90%) AIX
7 14 (1.16%) Solaris
8 10 (0.83%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.83%) Mac OS
9 6 (0.50%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.50%) VMS
9 6 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (0.41%) HPUX
10 5 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
10 5 (0.41%) SUSE
10 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.33%) CentOS
11 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 254 (20.96%) Migration
2 205 (16.91%) Problem-Solving
3 147 (12.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 140 (11.55%) Stakeholder Management
5 114 (9.41%) High Availability
6 112 (9.24%) ITIL
7 109 (8.99%) Infrastructure as Code
8 102 (8.42%) CI/CD
9 100 (8.25%) Agile
10 95 (7.84%) Roadmaps
11 88 (7.26%) Project Delivery
12 87 (7.18%) Continuous Improvement
13 84 (6.93%) Change Management
14 83 (6.85%) Validation
15 82 (6.77%) Load Balancing
16 74 (6.11%) Zero Trust
17 72 (5.94%) DevOps
17 72 (5.94%) Technical Leadership
18 70 (5.78%) Project Management
19 68 (5.61%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 160 (13.20%) Python
2 56 (4.62%) PowerShell
3 45 (3.71%) SQL
4 30 (2.48%) Bash
5 18 (1.49%) Java
6 12 (0.99%) Bicep
6 12 (0.99%) Perl
7 11 (0.91%) Shell Script
8 10 (0.83%) ActionScript
9 9 (0.74%) PL/SQL
10 8 (0.66%) COBOL
11 6 (0.50%) JavaScript
12 5 (0.41%) C#
13 4 (0.33%) MATLAB
14 3 (0.25%) JCL
14 3 (0.25%) Korn
14 3 (0.25%) Lisp
14 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.17%) REXX
15 2 (0.17%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 323 (26.65%) Security Cleared
2 210 (17.33%) SC Cleared
3 208 (17.16%) Cisco Certification
4 114 (9.41%) CCNP
5 107 (8.83%) DV Cleared
6 86 (7.10%) CCNA
7 66 (5.45%) Degree
8 59 (4.87%) Network+ Certification
9 49 (4.04%) Microsoft Certification
10 42 (3.47%) A+ Certification
10 42 (3.47%) MCSE
11 29 (2.39%) Azure Certification
11 29 (2.39%) CCIE
12 28 (2.31%) AWS Certification
13 26 (2.15%) City & Guilds
14 22 (1.82%) PMI Certification
14 22 (1.82%) PMP
14 22 (1.82%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 21 (1.73%) CISSP
16 20 (1.65%) BICSI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (2.97%) QA
2 32 (2.64%) SLA
3 31 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 24 (1.98%) NIST
5 18 (1.49%) PMO
6 15 (1.24%) NCSC
7 14 (1.16%) GDPR
8 9 (0.74%) Disclosure Scotland
8 9 (0.74%) JSP 440
9 6 (0.50%) GRC
9 6 (0.50%) RMADS
10 4 (0.33%) NIST 800
10 4 (0.33%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.17%) WCAG
12 1 (0.083%) PSD2
12 1 (0.083%) SOC 1
System Software
1 123 (10.15%) VMware Infrastructure
2 77 (6.35%) Active Directory
3 43 (3.55%) vSphere
4 42 (3.47%) VMware NSX
5 35 (2.89%) Hyper-V
6 34 (2.81%) VMware ESXi
7 31 (2.56%) Firmware
8 28 (2.31%) Docker
9 16 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.91%) NFS
11 7 (0.58%) PowerHA
12 6 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.50%) SRDF
13 5 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.33%) KVM
14 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.33%) VMware Workstation
15 3 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 139 (11.47%) Ansible
2 110 (9.08%) Terraform
3 58 (4.79%) Kubernetes
4 50 (4.13%) FortiGate
5 27 (2.23%) Grafana
6 26 (2.15%) Microsoft Intune
7 25 (2.06%) Prometheus
8 15 (1.24%) vCenter Server
8 15 (1.24%) VxRail
9 13 (1.07%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.91%) Dell DRAC
10 11 (0.91%) Microsoft Clustering
10 11 (0.91%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 10 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
12 9 (0.74%) SCCM
12 9 (0.74%) vMotion
13 8 (0.66%) PowerCLI
14 7 (0.58%) Check_MK
14 7 (0.58%) EMC NetWorker
15 6 (0.50%) Nagios
Vendors
1 283 (23.35%) Cisco
2 177 (14.60%) VMware
3 128 (10.56%) Palo Alto
4 122 (10.07%) Microsoft
5 120 (9.90%) F5
6 85 (7.01%) Juniper
7 79 (6.52%) Dell
8 72 (5.94%) Fortinet
9 70 (5.78%) Arista
10 57 (4.70%) ServiceNow
11 40 (3.30%) IBM
11 40 (3.30%) SolarWinds
12 37 (3.05%) Aruba
13 36 (2.97%) Google
14 35 (2.89%) CheckPoint
15 34 (2.81%) Red Hat
16 32 (2.64%) Splunk
17 27 (2.23%) Oracle
18 23 (1.90%) HP
19 22 (1.82%) Extreme Networks