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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 116 126 106
Rank change year-on-year +10 -20 -19
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,203 735 850
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.25% 2.24% 2.19%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.69% 6.37% 7.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 724 463 567
10th Percentile £318 £301 £350
25th Percentile £413 £400 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -
75th Percentile £650 £603 £625
90th Percentile £775 £707 £701
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £490 £538
% change year-on-year +1.02% -8.92% +7.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 39 39
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £17.13 £25.04 £12.08
Median hourly rate £19.85 £25.15 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.07% +25.75% +1.57%
75th Percentile £38.75 £34.50 £25.83
90th Percentile £82.93 £48.45 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.87 £16.50
% change year-on-year -22.23% +50.71% -6.88%

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 17,986 11,532 11,788
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.61% 35.12% 30.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,908 7,096 7,535
10th Percentile £322 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £750 £763 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,025 568 588
10th Percentile £14.85 £15.13 £12.30
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.87 £18.33
Median hourly rate £41.00 £29.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.82% -33.89% +10.31%
75th Percentile £68.75 £57.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +46.53% -36.84% +13.77%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +7 1,014 £529 +0.76% 472
UK excluding London -10 642 £495 +1.02% 294
London +18 414 £568 +3.18% 214
Work from Home -8 280 £545 +5.11% 144
North of England +9 227 £492 +9.33% 78
South East -6 185 £525 +4.22% 88
Yorkshire 0 138 £406 +0.31% 20
North West +4 74 £525 +0.48% 26
South West -20 68 £575 +4.55% 33
Midlands -70 52 £474 -9.71% 44
West Midlands -61 46 £475 -5.00% 31
Scotland -10 45 £400 +0.25% 19
Wales +6 42 £468 +55.83% 3
East of England -17 31 £475 -20.83% 35
North East -19 21 £625 +468.18% 32
East Midlands -26 5 £400 -26.61% 13
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 28 (2.33%) Confluence
2 20 (1.66%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (0.58%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.42%) Apache
5 5 (0.42%) CICS
5 5 (0.42%) CloudStack
6 2 (0.17%) nginx
6 2 (0.17%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.083%) IIS
7 1 (0.083%) SAS
Applications
1 26 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (1.58%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.83%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 12 (1.00%) 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
4 1 (0.083%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 256 (21.28%) Azure
2 221 (18.37%) AWS
3 63 (5.24%) GCP
4 47 (3.91%) GitHub
5 39 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (2.99%) IaaS
7 33 (2.74%) SaaS
8 29 (2.41%) OCI
9 26 (2.16%) Entra ID
10 18 (1.50%) Power Platform
11 15 (1.25%) OneDrive
12 14 (1.16%) Azure DevOps
12 14 (1.16%) OpenShift
12 14 (1.16%) PaaS
12 14 (1.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 12 (1.00%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 8 (0.67%) Azure Sentinel
14 8 (0.67%) Nutanix
15 7 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
16 6 (0.50%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 306 (25.44%) Firewall
2 187 (15.54%) WAN
3 180 (14.96%) BGP
4 131 (10.89%) VPN
5 128 (10.64%) DNS
6 126 (10.47%) VXLAN
7 124 (10.31%) OSPF
8 115 (9.56%) SAN
9 109 (9.06%) LAN
10 106 (8.81%) VLAN
11 102 (8.48%) Network Security
12 96 (7.98%) DHCP
13 89 (7.40%) Ethernet VPN
14 86 (7.15%) SD-WAN
14 86 (7.15%) Structured Cabling
15 85 (7.07%) TCP/IP
16 60 (4.99%) Wi-Fi
17 59 (4.90%) Wireless
18 53 (4.41%) Cisco Nexus
19 52 (4.32%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (2.41%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.25%) Power BI
3 10 (0.83%) SQL Server Analysis Services
3 10 (0.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 10 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 7 (0.58%) Big Data
4 7 (0.58%) Oracle Database
5 6 (0.50%) Db2
6 5 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
6 5 (0.42%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.33%) DataStage
7 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
7 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
7 4 (0.33%) SAP Data Services
8 2 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.17%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.17%) GIS
Development Applications
1 76 (6.32%) JIRA
2 35 (2.91%) GitLab
3 27 (2.24%) Git
3 27 (2.24%) Jenkins
4 7 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
5 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
6 2 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.17%) Eclipse
6 2 (0.17%) JMeter
6 2 (0.17%) Maven
6 2 (0.17%) MSI
6 2 (0.17%) Subversion
6 2 (0.17%) Toad
7 1 (0.083%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.083%) LoadRunner
7 1 (0.083%) Postman
General
1 285 (23.69%) Social Skills
2 161 (13.38%) Finance
3 123 (10.22%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (4.99%) Public Sector
5 53 (4.41%) Telecoms
6 48 (3.99%) Banking
7 42 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
8 30 (2.49%) Retail
9 22 (1.83%) Legal
10 20 (1.66%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 15 (1.25%) Manufacturing
13 10 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.75%) Police
15 8 (0.67%) Law
16 7 (0.58%) Financial Institution
17 5 (0.42%) Marketing
18 4 (0.33%) Billing
19 3 (0.25%) Investment Banking
19 3 (0.25%) Military
Job Titles
1 204 (16.96%) Architect
2 194 (16.13%) Network Engineer
3 153 (12.72%) Senior
4 121 (10.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 98 (8.15%) Data Centre Engineer
6 79 (6.57%) Project Manager
7 62 (5.15%) Lead
8 61 (5.07%) Network Architect
9 53 (4.41%) IT Engineer
10 47 (3.91%) Field Engineer
11 46 (3.82%) Senior Network Engineer
12 45 (3.74%) Data Centre Manager
13 43 (3.57%) Infrastructure Manager
14 42 (3.49%) Technical Architect
15 41 (3.41%) Field Service Engineer
16 38 (3.16%) Consultant
17 36 (2.99%) Solutions Architect
18 33 (2.74%) Support Engineer
19 32 (2.66%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
20 29 (2.41%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (9.06%) Terraform
2 48 (3.99%) Middleware
3 21 (1.75%) REST
4 19 (1.58%) 802.1X
5 12 (1.00%) JSON
5 12 (1.00%) YAML
6 10 (0.83%) Redfish
7 9 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (0.67%) LDAP
8 8 (0.67%) NETCONF
9 7 (0.58%) OpenConfig
9 7 (0.58%) YANG
10 6 (0.50%) RESTCONF
10 6 (0.50%) SAML
11 5 (0.42%) .NET
11 5 (0.42%) Jinja
12 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
12 4 (0.33%) Kafka
12 4 (0.33%) RESTful
13 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 75 (6.23%) Hybrid Cloud
2 49 (4.07%) Analytical Mindset
3 42 (3.49%) PKI
4 35 (2.91%) Clustering
5 34 (2.83%) Cloud Native
5 34 (2.83%) Management Information System
5 34 (2.83%) Private Cloud
6 33 (2.74%) Enterprise Storage
7 30 (2.49%) Fibre Optics
8 29 (2.41%) Onboarding
9 27 (2.24%) Public Cloud
10 26 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
10 26 (2.16%) Replication
11 19 (1.58%) Driving Licence
12 17 (1.41%) CMDB
12 17 (1.41%) Operational Technology
13 15 (1.25%) SCADA
13 15 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
14 14 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
15 13 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 182 (15.13%) Windows
2 133 (11.06%) Linux
3 52 (4.32%) Windows Server
4 34 (2.83%) Unix
5 22 (1.83%) AIX
6 20 (1.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (1.00%) Solaris
8 10 (0.83%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.83%) Mac OS
9 8 (0.67%) VMS
10 6 (0.50%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.42%) HPUX
11 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.42%) SUSE
12 4 (0.33%) CentOS
12 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
12 4 (0.33%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
12 4 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 247 (20.53%) Migration
2 195 (16.21%) Problem-Solving
3 148 (12.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 141 (11.72%) Stakeholder Management
5 117 (9.73%) Infrastructure as Code
6 110 (9.14%) ITIL
7 102 (8.48%) High Availability
8 98 (8.15%) Agile
9 97 (8.06%) CI/CD
10 92 (7.65%) Roadmaps
11 89 (7.40%) Validation
12 88 (7.32%) Project Delivery
13 81 (6.73%) Continuous Improvement
14 78 (6.48%) Change Management
15 72 (5.99%) Technical Leadership
15 72 (5.99%) Zero Trust
16 70 (5.82%) Load Balancing
17 69 (5.74%) DevOps
17 69 (5.74%) Disaster Recovery
18 66 (5.49%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 161 (13.38%) Python
2 58 (4.82%) PowerShell
3 40 (3.33%) SQL
4 32 (2.66%) Bash
5 10 (0.83%) ActionScript
5 10 (0.83%) Bicep
6 9 (0.75%) Java
6 9 (0.75%) Perl
7 8 (0.67%) PL/SQL
7 8 (0.67%) Shell Script
8 6 (0.50%) COBOL
9 5 (0.42%) C#
9 5 (0.42%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.33%) MATLAB
11 3 (0.25%) Go
11 3 (0.25%) JCL
11 3 (0.25%) Korn
11 3 (0.25%) Lisp
11 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.17%) C++
Qualifications
1 304 (25.27%) Security Cleared
2 204 (16.96%) SC Cleared
3 197 (16.38%) Cisco Certification
4 114 (9.48%) CCNP
5 97 (8.06%) DV Cleared
6 82 (6.82%) CCNA
7 62 (5.15%) Degree
8 54 (4.49%) Network+ Certification
9 46 (3.82%) Microsoft Certification
10 43 (3.57%) A+ Certification
11 40 (3.33%) MCSE
12 31 (2.58%) CCIE
13 28 (2.33%) AWS Certification
14 27 (2.24%) Azure Certification
15 26 (2.16%) City & Guilds
16 22 (1.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 21 (1.75%) CISSP
17 21 (1.75%) PMI Certification
17 21 (1.75%) PMP
18 20 (1.66%) BICSI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (3.16%) QA
2 28 (2.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 28 (2.33%) SLA
3 23 (1.91%) NIST
4 17 (1.41%) PMO
5 15 (1.25%) GDPR
6 13 (1.08%) NCSC
7 9 (0.75%) JSP 440
8 7 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
9 6 (0.50%) GRC
9 6 (0.50%) RMADS
10 4 (0.33%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
11 3 (0.25%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
12 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.17%) WCAG
13 1 (0.083%) PSD2
13 1 (0.083%) SOC 1
System Software
1 131 (10.89%) VMware Infrastructure
2 83 (6.90%) Active Directory
3 46 (3.82%) vSphere
4 44 (3.66%) VMware NSX
5 36 (2.99%) VMware ESXi
6 33 (2.74%) Hyper-V
7 32 (2.66%) Firmware
8 31 (2.58%) Docker
9 14 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.91%) NFS
11 7 (0.58%) PowerHA
12 6 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.33%) SRDF
14 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.33%) VMware Workstation
15 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 144 (11.97%) Ansible
2 58 (4.82%) Kubernetes
3 40 (3.33%) FortiGate
4 26 (2.16%) Prometheus
5 25 (2.08%) Grafana
5 25 (2.08%) Microsoft Intune
6 16 (1.33%) vCenter Server
6 16 (1.33%) VxRail
7 12 (1.00%) Microsoft Clustering
7 12 (1.00%) NetBackup
8 11 (0.91%) Dell DRAC
8 11 (0.91%) Tivoli Storage Manager
8 11 (0.91%) vMotion
9 10 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
9 10 (0.83%) SCCM
10 7 (0.58%) Check_MK
10 7 (0.58%) EMC NetWorker
10 7 (0.58%) Nagios
10 7 (0.58%) PowerCLI
11 6 (0.50%) Avamar
Vendors
1 285 (23.69%) Cisco
2 189 (15.71%) VMware
3 139 (11.55%) Microsoft
4 121 (10.06%) Palo Alto
5 105 (8.73%) F5
6 76 (6.32%) Dell
7 73 (6.07%) Juniper
8 70 (5.82%) Arista
9 68 (5.65%) Fortinet
10 63 (5.24%) ServiceNow
11 40 (3.33%) Aruba
12 35 (2.91%) CheckPoint
12 35 (2.91%) Google
13 34 (2.83%) IBM
13 34 (2.83%) Red Hat
14 28 (2.33%) SolarWinds
15 24 (2.00%) Oracle
16 23 (1.91%) Veeam
17 21 (1.75%) Zscaler
18 20 (1.66%) Splunk