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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 99 133 100
Rank change year-on-year +34 -33 -11
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,175 620 925
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.41% 2.16% 2.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.46% 6.33% 7.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 722 406 633
10th Percentile £318 £324 £300
25th Percentile £409 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £475 £538
% change year-on-year -0.21% -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 21 44
10th Percentile £16.00 £24.18 £13.33
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £18.27
Median hourly rate £19.34 £27.50 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.67% +14.58% +11.81%
75th Percentile £38.75 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £76.06 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £23.25
% change year-on-year -21.57% +6.06% +9.36%

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 15,759 9,797 12,968
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.27% 34.20% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,727 6,226 8,360
10th Percentile £313 £289 £270
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 770 393 917
10th Percentile £16.00 £16.19 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.89 £20.00 £15.17
Median hourly rate £41.46 £32.05 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.36% -5.74% +54.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.55 £82.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £31.76 £32.12
% change year-on-year +41.69% -1.11% +51.06%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 +35 962 £495 -4.81% 485
UK excluding London +18 674 £474 -0.21% 261
London +14 335 £550 +4.76% 245
Work from Home +30 317 £480 -4.95% 168
North of England +25 234 £474 +1.83% 62
South East +9 208 £463 +2.78% 95
Yorkshire -3 113 £365 -14.12% 27
North West +20 97 £481 -4.47% 28
Scotland +10 58 £463 +4.23% 15
Midlands -47 58 £467 -15.12% 27
West Midlands -46 52 £468 -14.83% 22
South West -19 50 £495 -10.00% 28
East of England -9 39 £492 +64.00% 28
Wales 0 34 £468 +16.88% 5
North East -1 28 £625 +468.18% 7
East Midlands -26 5 £400 -27.27% 5
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 6

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 22 (1.87%) Confluence
2 13 (1.11%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.94%) CICS
3 11 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.43%) nginx
5 4 (0.34%) Apache
5 4 (0.34%) CloudStack
5 4 (0.34%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.34%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.26%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.085%) IIS
8 1 (0.085%) Mendix
Applications
1 15 (1.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 11 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
2 11 (0.94%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.26%) Adobe Illustrator
3 3 (0.26%) AutoCAD
3 3 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
1 3 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.17%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.17%) Primavera
3 1 (0.085%) Maximo
3 1 (0.085%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 238 (20.26%) Azure
2 194 (16.51%) AWS
3 69 (5.87%) GCP
4 36 (3.06%) Microsoft 365
5 32 (2.72%) GitHub
6 30 (2.55%) IaaS
7 28 (2.38%) OCI
7 28 (2.38%) SaaS
8 22 (1.87%) Entra ID
9 17 (1.45%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 15 (1.28%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 14 (1.19%) OpenShift
12 13 (1.11%) PaaS
13 11 (0.94%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (0.94%) Azure Sentinel
13 11 (0.94%) Power Platform
14 10 (0.85%) GitHub Actions
14 10 (0.85%) Nutanix
14 10 (0.85%) OneDrive
15 9 (0.77%) AWS Direct Connect
Communications & Networking
1 336 (28.60%) Firewall
2 200 (17.02%) WAN
3 180 (15.32%) BGP
4 146 (12.43%) OSPF
5 126 (10.72%) Network Security
6 123 (10.47%) LAN
7 121 (10.30%) VXLAN
8 120 (10.21%) VPN
9 118 (10.04%) SAN
10 98 (8.34%) VLAN
11 96 (8.17%) DNS
12 93 (7.91%) Structured Cabling
13 83 (7.06%) Ethernet VPN
14 76 (6.47%) SD-WAN
15 73 (6.21%) DHCP
16 53 (4.51%) BIG-IP
17 52 (4.43%) Cisco Nexus
18 49 (4.17%) Wi-Fi
19 46 (3.91%) NX-OS
20 44 (3.74%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.28%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.85%) DataStage
3 6 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (0.51%) Power BI
4 5 (0.43%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.34%) Big Data
5 4 (0.34%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.34%) Oracle Database
5 4 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.34%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.26%) GIS
7 2 (0.17%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.17%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
7 2 (0.17%) Power Query
7 2 (0.17%) PowerPivot
8 1 (0.085%) MS Access
8 1 (0.085%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.085%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 55 (4.68%) JIRA
2 38 (3.23%) GitLab
3 36 (3.06%) Jenkins
4 35 (2.98%) Git
5 7 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.51%) Maven
6 6 (0.51%) ScriptRunner
7 5 (0.43%) JMeter
8 4 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 4 (0.34%) Eclipse
8 4 (0.34%) Subversion
9 3 (0.26%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.26%) Zephyr
10 1 (0.085%) AppScan
10 1 (0.085%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.085%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.085%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.085%) Postman
General
1 288 (24.51%) Social Skills
2 160 (13.62%) Finance
3 132 (11.23%) Analytical Skills
4 82 (6.98%) Public Sector
5 61 (5.19%) Documentation Skills
6 48 (4.09%) Banking
7 34 (2.89%) Legal
8 30 (2.55%) Telecoms
9 26 (2.21%) Manufacturing
10 22 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
10 22 (1.87%) Retail
11 12 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.02%) Law
12 10 (0.85%) Military
13 9 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (0.68%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.68%) Financial Institution
14 8 (0.68%) Marketing
15 7 (0.60%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.43%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 209 (17.79%) Network Engineer
2 188 (16.00%) Architect
3 136 (11.57%) Senior
4 90 (7.66%) Data Centre Engineer
5 78 (6.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 77 (6.55%) Project Manager
7 59 (5.02%) Lead
8 58 (4.94%) IT Engineer
9 56 (4.77%) Field Engineer
10 55 (4.68%) Network Architect
11 53 (4.51%) Field Service Engineer
12 46 (3.91%) Data Centre Manager
13 44 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
14 37 (3.15%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 36 (3.06%) Infrastructure Manager
15 36 (3.06%) Senior Network Engineer
16 35 (2.98%) Analyst
16 35 (2.98%) Technical Architect
17 32 (2.72%) Administrator
18 30 (2.55%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (4.09%) Middleware
2 32 (2.72%) 802.1X
3 12 (1.02%) LDAP
4 9 (0.77%) Redfish
5 8 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.60%) Spring
7 5 (0.43%) Jinja
7 5 (0.43%) Kafka
7 5 (0.43%) REST
7 5 (0.43%) XML
8 4 (0.34%) ADO
8 4 (0.34%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.34%) YAML
9 3 (0.26%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.26%) EJB
9 3 (0.26%) Java EE
9 3 (0.26%) JSON
9 3 (0.26%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.26%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.26%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 64 (5.45%) Hybrid Cloud
2 59 (5.02%) Analytical Mindset
3 35 (2.98%) Management Information System
4 29 (2.47%) Cloud Native
5 28 (2.38%) Clustering
5 28 (2.38%) PKI
6 26 (2.21%) Enterprise Storage
7 25 (2.13%) Fibre Optics
8 23 (1.96%) Onboarding
9 22 (1.87%) CMDB
10 21 (1.79%) Driving Licence
10 21 (1.79%) Private Cloud
10 21 (1.79%) Replication
11 20 (1.70%) Public Cloud
12 18 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
13 17 (1.45%) SCADA
14 16 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
15 14 (1.19%) NHS
16 13 (1.11%) Mainframe
17 12 (1.02%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 154 (13.11%) Linux
2 148 (12.60%) Windows
3 40 (3.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 36 (3.06%) Windows Server
5 23 (1.96%) Unix
6 22 (1.87%) AIX
7 17 (1.45%) Solaris
8 12 (1.02%) CentOS
9 9 (0.77%) Ubuntu
9 9 (0.77%) Windows Server 2019
10 8 (0.68%) VMS
11 5 (0.43%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.43%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
12 4 (0.34%) HPUX
12 4 (0.34%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.34%) SUSE
13 3 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 208 (17.70%) Problem-Solving
2 194 (16.51%) Migration
3 114 (9.70%) High Availability
4 111 (9.45%) Stakeholder Management
5 108 (9.19%) Infrastructure as Code
6 101 (8.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 101 (8.60%) ITIL
7 98 (8.34%) Roadmaps
8 95 (8.09%) CI/CD
9 92 (7.83%) Continuous Improvement
10 85 (7.23%) Load Balancing
11 79 (6.72%) Agile
12 78 (6.64%) DevOps
13 77 (6.55%) Validation
14 75 (6.38%) Project Delivery
14 75 (6.38%) Project Management
15 73 (6.21%) Change Management
16 67 (5.70%) Customer Service
17 65 (5.53%) Break/Fix
17 65 (5.53%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 138 (11.74%) Python
2 42 (3.57%) PowerShell
3 36 (3.06%) SQL
4 28 (2.38%) Bash
5 22 (1.87%) Java
6 16 (1.36%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.02%) COBOL
8 11 (0.94%) MATLAB
9 10 (0.85%) Perl
10 9 (0.77%) Bicep
11 8 (0.68%) PL/SQL
12 7 (0.60%) ActionScript
13 5 (0.43%) C
13 5 (0.43%) C++
13 5 (0.43%) JavaScript
14 4 (0.34%) Lisp
15 3 (0.26%) VBA
16 2 (0.17%) JCL
16 2 (0.17%) Korn
16 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 322 (27.40%) Security Cleared
2 245 (20.85%) Cisco Certification
3 240 (20.43%) SC Cleared
4 151 (12.85%) CCNP
5 112 (9.53%) CCNA
6 70 (5.96%) DV Cleared
7 68 (5.79%) Degree
7 68 (5.79%) Network+ Certification
8 55 (4.68%) Microsoft Certification
9 51 (4.34%) A+ Certification
9 51 (4.34%) MCSE
10 26 (2.21%) Azure Certification
11 25 (2.13%) CCIE
12 24 (2.04%) City & Guilds
13 23 (1.96%) PMP
14 22 (1.87%) PMI Certification
15 20 (1.70%) AWS Certification
15 20 (1.70%) BICSI Certification
16 18 (1.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 17 (1.45%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (2.89%) SLA
2 26 (2.21%) NIST
3 23 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (1.96%) QA
4 21 (1.79%) PMO
5 18 (1.53%) GDPR
6 10 (0.85%) NCSC
7 9 (0.77%) Disclosure Scotland
7 9 (0.77%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.68%) GRC
9 6 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (0.43%) RMADS
11 3 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.26%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.17%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.17%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.085%) COBIT
13 1 (0.085%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 103 (8.77%) VMware Infrastructure
2 61 (5.19%) Active Directory
3 37 (3.15%) VMware NSX
4 33 (2.81%) vSphere
5 32 (2.72%) Firmware
6 27 (2.30%) VMware ESXi
7 26 (2.21%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (2.04%) Hyper-V
9 13 (1.11%) Docker
10 12 (1.02%) KVM
11 7 (0.60%) NFS
11 7 (0.60%) SRDF
12 6 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.34%) Ceph
13 4 (0.34%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.26%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.26%) Microsoft App-V
14 3 (0.26%) PowerHA
14 3 (0.26%) UAG
14 3 (0.26%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 135 (11.49%) Ansible
2 101 (8.60%) Terraform
3 59 (5.02%) FortiGate
4 45 (3.83%) Kubernetes
5 36 (3.06%) Grafana
6 29 (2.47%) Prometheus
7 19 (1.62%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (1.11%) Check_MK
8 13 (1.11%) NetBackup
9 11 (0.94%) Podman
9 11 (0.94%) PowerCLI
9 11 (0.94%) Red Hat Satellite
9 11 (0.94%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.85%) SCCM
11 9 (0.77%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.68%) vMotion
13 7 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.60%) EMC NetWorker
13 7 (0.60%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.43%) Avamar
Vendors
1 316 (26.89%) Cisco
2 156 (13.28%) VMware
3 154 (13.11%) Palo Alto
4 112 (9.53%) F5
5 103 (8.77%) Microsoft
6 99 (8.43%) Dell
7 88 (7.49%) Juniper
8 70 (5.96%) Arista
9 60 (5.11%) Fortinet
10 59 (5.02%) Aruba
11 52 (4.43%) ServiceNow
12 48 (4.09%) CheckPoint
13 42 (3.57%) SolarWinds
14 39 (3.32%) Google
14 39 (3.32%) Red Hat
15 36 (3.06%) IBM
16 29 (2.47%) Oracle
16 29 (2.47%) Splunk
17 26 (2.21%) NVIDIA
18 23 (1.96%) Atlassian