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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 99 130 106
Rank change year-on-year +31 -24 -20
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,178 618 911
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.41% 2.14% 2.13%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.45% 6.27% 7.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 717 400 618
10th Percentile £318 £313 £300
25th Percentile £406 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £528
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% -5.21% -4.09%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £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 60 19 45
10th Percentile £16.00 - £13.35
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £18.27
Median hourly rate £19.85 £37.50 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.07% +56.25% +12.89%
75th Percentile £38.75 £42.50 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.71 £55.00 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £27.75 £23.25
% change year-on-year -30.29% +19.33% +10.81%

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 15,819 9,863 12,909
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.33% 34.21% 30.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,755 6,238 8,277
10th Percentile £313 £290 £270
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 781 408 924
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.31 £19.97 £15.21
Median hourly rate £41.94 £33.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.09% -5.71% +59.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.63 £61.30
90th Percentile £86.00 £82.33 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £32.05 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.16% -8.43% +60.00%

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 4 June 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 4 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Centre in the UK

Data Centre
Top 18 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 4 June 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 +33 963 £495 -5.71% 548
UK excluding London +18 675 £474 -0.21% 316
London +18 333 £550 +3.77% 269
Work from Home +31 317 £480 -5.88% 178
North of England +27 239 £474 +1.83% 58
South East +14 210 £463 +3.93% 119
Yorkshire -2 120 £365 -14.12% 23
North West +21 96 £488 -3.92% 26
Scotland +5 57 £466 +6.46% 20
Midlands -48 57 £466 -15.29% 27
West Midlands -46 52 £468 -14.83% 24
South West -27 50 £495 -13.91% 39
East of England -17 35 £496 +65.33% 42
Wales +1 34 £468 +16.88% 8
North East 0 29 £625 +468.18% 9
East Midlands -26 4 £325 -40.91% 3
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 9
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 22 (1.87%) Confluence
2 15 (1.27%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.93%) CICS
4 10 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
5 5 (0.42%) nginx
6 4 (0.34%) Apache
6 4 (0.34%) CloudStack
6 4 (0.34%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.34%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.085%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.085%) IIS
8 1 (0.085%) Mendix
Applications
1 15 (1.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 11 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
2 11 (0.93%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.34%) AutoCAD
4 3 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
4 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.17%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.17%) Primavera
2 2 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.085%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 246 (20.88%) Azure
2 201 (17.06%) AWS
3 71 (6.03%) GCP
4 38 (3.23%) Microsoft 365
5 34 (2.89%) GitHub
6 33 (2.80%) IaaS
7 31 (2.63%) SaaS
8 29 (2.46%) OCI
9 22 (1.87%) Entra ID
10 17 (1.44%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 15 (1.27%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 15 (1.27%) PaaS
12 13 (1.10%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (1.10%) OpenShift
13 12 (1.02%) OneDrive
14 11 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
14 11 (0.93%) Power Platform
15 10 (0.85%) Nutanix
16 9 (0.76%) AWS Direct Connect
16 9 (0.76%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 337 (28.61%) Firewall
2 202 (17.15%) WAN
3 183 (15.53%) BGP
4 145 (12.31%) OSPF
5 127 (10.78%) Network Security
6 124 (10.53%) VXLAN
7 123 (10.44%) VPN
8 122 (10.36%) LAN
9 118 (10.02%) SAN
10 99 (8.40%) DNS
10 99 (8.40%) VLAN
11 90 (7.64%) Structured Cabling
12 85 (7.22%) Ethernet VPN
13 80 (6.79%) SD-WAN
14 75 (6.37%) DHCP
15 55 (4.67%) BIG-IP
16 52 (4.41%) Cisco Nexus
17 48 (4.07%) NX-OS
18 46 (3.90%) Wi-Fi
19 45 (3.82%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.27%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.85%) DataStage
3 6 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (0.51%) Power BI
4 5 (0.42%) 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 (0.25%) 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%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.085%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.085%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 56 (4.75%) JIRA
2 38 (3.23%) GitLab
3 36 (3.06%) Jenkins
4 32 (2.72%) Git
5 7 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.51%) Maven
6 6 (0.51%) ScriptRunner
7 5 (0.42%) JMeter
8 4 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 4 (0.34%) Eclipse
8 4 (0.34%) Subversion
9 3 (0.25%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.25%) 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
1 290 (24.62%) Social Skills
2 158 (13.41%) Finance
3 130 (11.04%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (6.88%) Public Sector
5 61 (5.18%) Documentation Skills
6 47 (3.99%) Banking
7 34 (2.89%) Legal
8 31 (2.63%) Telecoms
9 25 (2.12%) Manufacturing
10 22 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (1.70%) Retail
12 13 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (1.02%) Law
14 10 (0.85%) Military
15 9 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
16 8 (0.68%) Aerospace
16 8 (0.68%) Financial Institution
16 8 (0.68%) Marketing
17 6 (0.51%) Organisational Skills
18 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 206 (17.49%) Network Engineer
2 189 (16.04%) Architect
3 135 (11.46%) Senior
4 91 (7.72%) Data Centre Engineer
5 85 (7.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 71 (6.03%) Project Manager
7 59 (5.01%) Lead
8 58 (4.92%) IT Engineer
9 57 (4.84%) Network Architect
10 55 (4.67%) Field Engineer
11 52 (4.41%) Field Service Engineer
12 42 (3.57%) Solutions Architect
13 40 (3.40%) Data Centre Manager
14 37 (3.14%) Analyst
15 36 (3.06%) Technical Architect
16 34 (2.89%) Infrastructure Manager
16 34 (2.89%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 34 (2.89%) Senior Network Engineer
17 33 (2.80%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 32 (2.72%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (4.16%) Middleware
2 31 (2.63%) 802.1X
3 12 (1.02%) LDAP
4 10 (0.85%) Redfish
5 8 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
5 8 (0.68%) REST
6 7 (0.59%) Spring
7 5 (0.42%) Jinja
7 5 (0.42%) Kafka
7 5 (0.42%) XML
8 4 (0.34%) ADO
8 4 (0.34%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.34%) YAML
9 3 (0.25%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.25%) EJB
9 3 (0.25%) Java EE
9 3 (0.25%) JSON
9 3 (0.25%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.25%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 65 (5.52%) Hybrid Cloud
2 58 (4.92%) Analytical Mindset
3 36 (3.06%) Management Information System
4 31 (2.63%) Cloud Native
5 28 (2.38%) PKI
6 27 (2.29%) Clustering
6 27 (2.29%) Enterprise Storage
7 26 (2.21%) Onboarding
8 25 (2.12%) Fibre Optics
9 21 (1.78%) CMDB
9 21 (1.78%) Driving Licence
9 21 (1.78%) Private Cloud
9 21 (1.78%) Public Cloud
9 21 (1.78%) Replication
10 18 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
11 17 (1.44%) SCADA
12 16 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
13 14 (1.19%) NHS
14 12 (1.02%) Mainframe
14 12 (1.02%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 151 (12.82%) Linux
1 151 (12.82%) Windows
2 40 (3.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 36 (3.06%) Windows Server
4 23 (1.95%) Unix
5 22 (1.87%) AIX
6 17 (1.44%) Solaris
7 12 (1.02%) CentOS
8 9 (0.76%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
9 7 (0.59%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.59%) Mac OS
9 7 (0.59%) VMS
10 4 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
10 4 (0.34%) HPUX
10 4 (0.34%) Oracle Linux
10 4 (0.34%) SUSE
11 3 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
11 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 206 (17.49%) Problem-Solving
2 193 (16.38%) Migration
3 116 (9.85%) High Availability
4 112 (9.51%) Infrastructure as Code
5 109 (9.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 109 (9.25%) Stakeholder Management
6 104 (8.83%) ITIL
7 98 (8.32%) CI/CD
8 96 (8.15%) Roadmaps
9 93 (7.89%) Continuous Improvement
10 84 (7.13%) Load Balancing
11 80 (6.79%) Agile
12 79 (6.71%) DevOps
13 77 (6.54%) Validation
14 74 (6.28%) Project Delivery
14 74 (6.28%) Project Management
15 71 (6.03%) Change Management
16 69 (5.86%) Customer Service
17 64 (5.43%) Break/Fix
18 63 (5.35%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 141 (11.97%) Python
2 41 (3.48%) PowerShell
3 37 (3.14%) SQL
4 27 (2.29%) Bash
5 22 (1.87%) Java
6 16 (1.36%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.02%) COBOL
8 11 (0.93%) Bicep
8 11 (0.93%) MATLAB
9 10 (0.85%) Perl
10 8 (0.68%) ActionScript
10 8 (0.68%) PL/SQL
11 5 (0.42%) C
11 5 (0.42%) C++
11 5 (0.42%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.34%) Lisp
13 3 (0.25%) VBA
14 2 (0.17%) JCL
14 2 (0.17%) Korn
14 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 320 (27.16%) Security Cleared
2 243 (20.63%) Cisco Certification
3 237 (20.12%) SC Cleared
4 150 (12.73%) CCNP
5 110 (9.34%) CCNA
6 71 (6.03%) DV Cleared
7 68 (5.77%) Degree
8 67 (5.69%) Network+ Certification
9 56 (4.75%) Microsoft Certification
10 50 (4.24%) A+ Certification
10 50 (4.24%) MCSE
11 28 (2.38%) Azure Certification
12 25 (2.12%) CCIE
12 25 (2.12%) City & Guilds
13 23 (1.95%) PMP
14 22 (1.87%) AWS Certification
14 22 (1.87%) PMI Certification
15 20 (1.70%) BICSI Certification
16 19 (1.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 17 (1.44%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (2.80%) SLA
2 27 (2.29%) NIST
3 23 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (1.95%) QA
4 21 (1.78%) PMO
5 18 (1.53%) GDPR
6 10 (0.85%) NCSC
6 10 (0.85%) PCI DSS
7 9 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
8 8 (0.68%) GRC
9 6 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
9 6 (0.51%) RMADS
10 3 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.25%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.17%) Data Quality
11 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.085%) COBIT
12 1 (0.085%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 104 (8.83%) VMware Infrastructure
2 62 (5.26%) Active Directory
3 36 (3.06%) VMware NSX
4 33 (2.80%) vSphere
5 31 (2.63%) Firmware
6 28 (2.38%) VMware ESXi
7 25 (2.12%) Hyper-V
7 25 (2.12%) Virtual Machines
8 12 (1.02%) Docker
8 12 (1.02%) KVM
9 7 (0.59%) NFS
9 7 (0.59%) SRDF
10 6 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.34%) VMware Workstation
12 3 (0.25%) Ceph
12 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
12 3 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
12 3 (0.25%) PowerHA
12 3 (0.25%) UAG
12 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 137 (11.63%) Ansible
2 105 (8.91%) Terraform
3 60 (5.09%) FortiGate
4 44 (3.74%) Kubernetes
5 35 (2.97%) Grafana
6 28 (2.38%) Prometheus
7 22 (1.87%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (1.10%) Check_MK
8 13 (1.10%) NetBackup
9 12 (1.02%) vCenter Server
10 11 (0.93%) Podman
10 11 (0.93%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.93%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (0.85%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.85%) SCCM
12 8 (0.68%) vMotion
13 7 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.59%) EMC NetWorker
13 7 (0.59%) Jamf Pro
13 7 (0.59%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 314 (26.66%) Cisco
2 156 (13.24%) VMware
3 151 (12.82%) Palo Alto
4 113 (9.59%) F5
5 106 (9.00%) Microsoft
6 96 (8.15%) Dell
7 90 (7.64%) Juniper
8 71 (6.03%) Arista
9 63 (5.35%) Fortinet
10 56 (4.75%) Aruba
11 55 (4.67%) ServiceNow
12 44 (3.74%) CheckPoint
13 42 (3.57%) SolarWinds
14 39 (3.31%) Google
14 39 (3.31%) Red Hat
15 35 (2.97%) IBM
16 29 (2.46%) Oracle
17 28 (2.38%) Splunk
18 25 (2.12%) NVIDIA
19 23 (1.95%) Atlassian