Data Centre Contracts

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 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 124 102 89
Rank change year-on-year -22 -13 +18
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 708 965 1,482
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.24% 2.22% 2.64%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.46% 7.34% 8.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 456 642 1,038
10th Percentile £301 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.95% -2.27% +4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £644
90th Percentile £681 £712 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £538 £500
% change year-on-year -11.63% +7.50% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 55 23
10th Percentile £21.42 £12.08 £17.72
25th Percentile £24.66 £16.25 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £23.80 £20.71
Median % change year-on-year +5.67% +14.95% -18.00%
75th Percentile £39.06 £40.00 £24.00
90th Percentile £43.75 £41.25 £57.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.66 £20.00 £20.71
% change year-on-year +23.30% -3.40% -3.70%

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 10,952 13,139 18,444
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.66% 30.25% 32.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,792 8,337 12,690
10th Percentile £300 £281 £313
25th Percentile £406 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -
75th Percentile £650 £663 £678
90th Percentile £775 £800 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 506 918 570
10th Percentile £15.49 £12.25 £10.63
25th Percentile £18.87 £15.39 £11.87
Median hourly rate £30.25 £36.27 £23.33
Median % change year-on-year -16.60% +55.51% -13.55%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £62.44
90th Percentile £78.10 £72.50 £75.58
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £35.83 £23.90
% change year-on-year -16.26% +49.93% +11.14%

Data Centre
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Data Centre as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Data Centre in the UK

Data Centre
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Data Centre.

Daily rate trend for Data Centre in the UK

Data Centre
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Centre over the 6 months to 4 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Data Centre in the UK

Data Centre
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Data Centre.

Hourly rate trend for Data Centre in the UK

Data Centre
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Centre over the 6 months to 4 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Centre in the UK

Data Centre
Top 16 Contract 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 July 2025. 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 -22 585 £525 -2.33% 3,701
UK excluding London -15 385 £475 -11.63% 2,005
London -12 239 £530 -0.93% 1,896
Work from Home +1 210 £510 -7.27% 1,143
North of England +19 106 £466 +7.33% 410
South East +2 98 £450 -16.67% 621
Yorkshire +21 64 £450 -18.18% 166
Midlands -28 55 £540 -10.00% 259
Scotland -8 46 £444 -24.47% 165
South West -28 46 £550 +2.23% 213
West Midlands -23 42 £538 -10.42% 160
North West +5 40 £525 +21.39% 211
East of England +18 23 £375 +9.09% 268
Wales +2 18 £388 +325.82% 66
East Midlands -1 13 £540 +20.00% 98
North East -2 2 £110 -74.12% 34

Data Centre
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 40 (5.65%) Confluence
2 22 (3.11%) Microsoft Exchange
3 15 (2.12%) SharePoint
4 8 (1.13%) OpenStack
5 3 (0.42%) IBM Notes
6 2 (0.28%) nginx
6 2 (0.28%) ThingWorx
7 1 (0.14%) Apache
7 1 (0.14%) BizTalk Server
7 1 (0.14%) IIS
7 1 (0.14%) Mattermost
7 1 (0.14%) OpenEdge
7 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
Applications
1 26 (3.67%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (2.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (1.98%) MS Visio
4 12 (1.69%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 4 (0.56%) AutoCAD
6 4 (0.56%) Revit
Business Applications
1 6 (0.85%) Payment Gateway
2 4 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.14%) Maximo
3 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.14%) StreamServe
Cloud Services
1 132 (18.64%) Azure
2 97 (13.70%) AWS
3 32 (4.52%) Microsoft 365
4 29 (4.10%) Entra ID
4 29 (4.10%) GCP
5 19 (2.68%) IaaS
5 19 (2.68%) SaaS
6 17 (2.40%) PaaS
7 15 (2.12%) OpenShift
8 12 (1.69%) OneDrive
9 8 (1.13%) Azure AKS
10 7 (0.99%) Azure DevOps
11 6 (0.85%) Cloud Computing
11 6 (0.85%) GitHub
12 5 (0.71%) Akamai
12 5 (0.71%) Mimecast
13 4 (0.56%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 4 (0.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 3 (0.42%) Nutanix
14 3 (0.42%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 183 (25.85%) Firewall
2 108 (15.25%) WAN
3 67 (9.46%) VPN
4 65 (9.18%) BGP
5 61 (8.62%) Network Security
6 60 (8.47%) LAN
7 57 (8.05%) Cisco Nexus
8 55 (7.77%) DNS
9 54 (7.63%) Wireless
10 48 (6.78%) OSPF
11 45 (6.36%) SD-WAN
12 36 (5.08%) DHCP
13 34 (4.80%) Ethernet VPN
14 33 (4.66%) Wi-Fi
15 31 (4.38%) TCP/IP
15 31 (4.38%) VXLAN
16 26 (3.67%) Cisco ISE
17 24 (3.39%) SAN
18 20 (2.82%) Ethernet
18 20 (2.82%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (2.82%) Oracle Database
2 17 (2.40%) SQL Server
3 12 (1.69%) Oracle Reports
4 11 (1.55%) Amazon RDS
5 10 (1.41%) Big Data
6 9 (1.27%) Elasticsearch
6 9 (1.27%) Relational Database
7 7 (0.99%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 6 (0.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 4 (0.56%) MongoDB
9 4 (0.56%) MySQL
10 3 (0.42%) RDBMS
11 2 (0.28%) Oracle Exadata
11 2 (0.28%) Power BI
12 1 (0.14%) Data Warehouse
12 1 (0.14%) GIS
12 1 (0.14%) IBM InfoSphere
12 1 (0.14%) InfluxDB
12 1 (0.14%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 38 (5.37%) JIRA
2 18 (2.54%) GitLab
3 11 (1.55%) Jenkins
3 11 (1.55%) Sonatype Nexus
4 8 (1.13%) Git
5 4 (0.56%) TeamCity
6 3 (0.42%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.28%) Maven
7 2 (0.28%) Selenium
8 1 (0.14%) Fiddler
8 1 (0.14%) Gradle
8 1 (0.14%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.14%) Postman
8 1 (0.14%) ScriptRunner
8 1 (0.14%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.14%) WebDriver
General
1 157 (22.18%) Social Skills
2 152 (21.47%) Finance
3 74 (10.45%) Analytical Skills
4 56 (7.91%) Banking
5 42 (5.93%) Public Sector
6 34 (4.80%) Telecoms
7 20 (2.82%) Retail
8 19 (2.68%) Legal
9 12 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 10 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
10 10 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
11 9 (1.27%) Manufacturing
12 8 (1.13%) Law
13 7 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.71%) Investment Banking
15 4 (0.56%) Aerospace
15 4 (0.56%) Retail Banking
16 3 (0.42%) Electronics
16 3 (0.42%) Local Government
16 3 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 132 (18.64%) Network Engineer
2 119 (16.81%) Architect
3 55 (7.77%) Analyst
4 50 (7.06%) Project Manager
4 50 (7.06%) Senior
5 44 (6.21%) Consultant
6 39 (5.51%) Lead
7 35 (4.94%) Infrastructure Manager
8 34 (4.80%) Data Centre Engineer
9 31 (4.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 29 (4.10%) Solutions Architect
11 28 (3.95%) Data Centre Manager
12 26 (3.67%) Infrastructure Project Manager
13 25 (3.53%) Infrastructure Architect
13 25 (3.53%) Support Engineer
14 23 (3.25%) Network Architect
14 23 (3.25%) Senior Network Engineer
15 22 (3.11%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 17 (2.40%) Test Manager
17 16 (2.26%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (2.82%) RFC 2544
2 14 (1.98%) 802.1X
3 8 (1.13%) Kafka
3 8 (1.13%) Middleware
4 5 (0.71%) .NET
5 4 (0.56%) JSON
6 3 (0.42%) ADO
6 3 (0.42%) LDAP
6 3 (0.42%) REST
6 3 (0.42%) YAML
7 2 (0.28%) eBPF
7 2 (0.28%) OpenTelemetry
7 2 (0.28%) RESTful
7 2 (0.28%) SAML
7 2 (0.28%) Web Services
7 2 (0.28%) XML
8 1 (0.14%) LAMP
8 1 (0.14%) OAuth
8 1 (0.14%) React
8 1 (0.14%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 22 (3.11%) PKI
1 22 (3.11%) Replication
2 20 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
3 19 (2.68%) Hybrid Cloud
4 17 (2.40%) CMDB
4 17 (2.40%) Driving Licence
4 17 (2.40%) Fibre Optics
5 16 (2.26%) Management Information System
5 16 (2.26%) SCADA
6 15 (2.12%) Cloud Native
7 14 (1.98%) Private Cloud
8 13 (1.84%) Public Cloud
9 12 (1.69%) Enterprise Storage
9 12 (1.69%) Onboarding
10 11 (1.55%) Clustering
11 8 (1.13%) Legacy Systems
12 7 (0.99%) Linux Command Line
12 7 (0.99%) Mainframe
13 6 (0.85%) Cyber Threat
14 5 (0.71%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 110 (15.54%) Windows
2 108 (15.25%) Linux
3 42 (5.93%) Windows Server
4 30 (4.24%) Unix
5 29 (4.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 12 (1.69%) Android
6 12 (1.69%) CentOS
7 11 (1.55%) Mac OS
8 9 (1.27%) Ubuntu
8 9 (1.27%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (1.13%) HPUX
9 8 (1.13%) Solaris
10 7 (0.99%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.85%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.56%) Apple iOS
12 4 (0.56%) Windows Server 2003
12 4 (0.56%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.28%) zOS
14 1 (0.14%) AIX
14 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 163 (23.02%) Migration
2 91 (12.85%) Problem-Solving
3 68 (9.60%) Agile
4 63 (8.90%) Disaster Recovery
5 59 (8.33%) Project Management
6 57 (8.05%) High Availability
7 55 (7.77%) DevOps
8 52 (7.34%) Roadmaps
9 51 (7.20%) Stakeholder Management
10 50 (7.06%) Change Management
10 50 (7.06%) Network Design
11 49 (6.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 48 (6.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 38 (5.37%) Network Architecture
14 37 (5.23%) Risk Management
15 35 (4.94%) Data Centre Operations
15 35 (4.94%) Service Management
16 34 (4.80%) ITIL
16 34 (4.80%) Load Balancing
17 33 (4.66%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 59 (8.33%) Python
2 33 (4.66%) PowerShell
3 20 (2.82%) SQL
4 14 (1.98%) Bash
5 9 (1.27%) Shell Script
6 8 (1.13%) Java
7 7 (0.99%) Go
8 4 (0.56%) C
8 4 (0.56%) JCL
8 4 (0.56%) Tcl
9 3 (0.42%) SystemVerilog
10 2 (0.28%) AWK
10 2 (0.28%) Bicep
10 2 (0.28%) C#
10 2 (0.28%) Korn
10 2 (0.28%) Perl
10 2 (0.28%) REXX
10 2 (0.28%) sed
11 1 (0.14%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.14%) PHP
Qualifications
1 209 (29.52%) Security Cleared
2 155 (21.89%) SC Cleared
3 82 (11.58%) Cisco Certification
4 53 (7.49%) Degree
5 52 (7.34%) DV Cleared
6 46 (6.50%) CCNP
7 22 (3.11%) CCIE
8 17 (2.40%) CCNA
9 13 (1.84%) Azure Certification
9 13 (1.84%) CISSP
10 12 (1.69%) AWS Certification
11 11 (1.55%) Microsoft Certification
11 11 (1.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 10 (1.41%) BPSS Clearance
13 8 (1.13%) Computer Science Degree
13 8 (1.13%) PMI Certification
14 7 (0.99%) CISA
14 7 (0.99%) PMP
14 7 (0.99%) TOGAF Certification
15 5 (0.71%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (2.82%) QA
1 20 (2.82%) SLA
2 12 (1.69%) NIST
2 12 (1.69%) PCI DSS
3 11 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (1.41%) PMO
5 8 (1.13%) JSP 440
5 8 (1.13%) RMADS
6 6 (0.85%) GDPR
7 3 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.28%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.28%) GRC
9 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.14%) COBIT
9 1 (0.14%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.14%) GxP
9 1 (0.14%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.14%) ISO 14001
9 1 (0.14%) NIST 800
System Software
1 70 (9.89%) VMware Infrastructure
2 64 (9.04%) Active Directory
3 28 (3.95%) Docker
4 23 (3.25%) Hyper-V
5 22 (3.11%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (2.12%) VMware NSX
7 12 (1.69%) Microsoft App-V
8 11 (1.55%) Virtual Machines
8 11 (1.55%) vSphere
9 9 (1.27%) BitLocker
9 9 (1.27%) Terminal Services
10 7 (0.99%) Virtual Servers
11 6 (0.85%) NFS
12 4 (0.56%) Firmware
13 3 (0.42%) KVM
14 2 (0.28%) GPFS
14 2 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
14 2 (0.28%) Time Sharing Option
14 2 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
15 1 (0.14%) Microcode
Systems Management
1 61 (8.62%) Ansible
2 42 (5.93%) Kubernetes
3 39 (5.51%) Terraform
4 19 (2.68%) vCenter Server
5 16 (2.26%) FortiGate
6 15 (2.12%) Puppet
7 14 (1.98%) Oracle RMAN
8 12 (1.69%) SCCM
9 11 (1.55%) Microsoft Intune
10 9 (1.27%) Nagios
10 9 (1.27%) vMotion
11 8 (1.13%) Grafana
12 7 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
13 5 (0.71%) Cisco Prime
13 5 (0.71%) Control-M
13 5 (0.71%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.71%) VxRail
13 5 (0.71%) WSUS
14 4 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
14 4 (0.56%) Podman
Vendors
1 186 (26.27%) Cisco
2 100 (14.12%) VMware
3 88 (12.43%) Microsoft
4 58 (8.19%) Palo Alto
5 48 (6.78%) HP
6 46 (6.50%) Dell
7 44 (6.21%) F5
8 39 (5.51%) ServiceNow
9 34 (4.80%) Oracle
10 33 (4.66%) SolarWinds
11 32 (4.52%) Fortinet
12 30 (4.24%) Arista
13 27 (3.81%) Juniper
14 26 (3.67%) Red Hat
15 25 (3.53%) Meraki
16 23 (3.25%) IBM
17 22 (3.11%) Citrix
18 21 (2.97%) CheckPoint
19 15 (2.12%) Commvault
19 15 (2.12%) Google