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

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 124 102
Rank change year-on-year +21 -22 -13
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,218 707 965
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.36% 2.24% 2.22%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.16% 6.47% 7.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 705 455 642
10th Percentile £318 £301 £313
25th Percentile £406 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £506 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.19% -5.86% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £600 £625
90th Percentile £738 £683 £712
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £538
% change year-on-year - -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 69 24 55
10th Percentile £16.01 £21.42 £12.08
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £16.25
Median hourly rate £19.85 £25.15 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -21.07% +5.67% +14.95%
75th Percentile £33.75 £39.06 £40.00
90th Percentile £72.45 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £20.00
% change year-on-year -21.57% +23.30% -3.40%

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 17,004 10,923 13,157
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.95% 34.62% 30.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,378 6,804 8,348
10th Percentile £313 £300 £281
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £539
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.51% -2.09%
75th Percentile £627 £650 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 869 502 918
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.50 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.92 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.96 £30.90 £36.27
Median % change year-on-year +42.25% -14.80% +53.40%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £87.16 £78.58 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £35.83
% change year-on-year +46.53% -16.26% +49.93%

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 July 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 July 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 4 July 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 +14 1,006 £500 -4.76% 548
UK excluding London -4 685 £475 - 313
London +19 372 £550 +3.29% 293
Work from Home +15 317 £500 -1.96% 187
North of England +12 243 £476 +2.26% 54
South East +5 215 £500 +11.11% 121
Yorkshire -5 129 £365 -18.89% 21
North West +5 90 £500 -4.76% 30
Scotland -1 56 £466 +4.96% 12
Midlands -54 56 £460 -14.81% 30
West Midlands -54 51 £467 -13.15% 19
South West -29 49 £495 -10.00% 32
Wales +7 42 £468 +20.65% 25
East of England -17 35 £513 +36.67% 39
North East -7 30 £625 +468.18% 3
East Midlands -24 4 £363 -32.87% 11
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 25 (2.05%) Confluence
2 16 (1.31%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.90%) CICS
3 11 (0.90%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.41%) Apache
4 5 (0.41%) CloudStack
4 5 (0.41%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.33%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.25%) nginx
6 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.082%) IIS
7 1 (0.082%) Mendix
7 1 (0.082%) SAS
Applications
1 15 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.82%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.41%) AutoCAD
7 3 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.16%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Primavera
1 3 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.082%) OpenText MBPM
3 1 (0.082%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 257 (21.10%) Azure
2 224 (18.39%) AWS
3 76 (6.24%) GCP
4 42 (3.45%) IaaS
5 40 (3.28%) GitHub
5 40 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (2.96%) SaaS
7 30 (2.46%) OCI
8 26 (2.13%) Entra ID
9 21 (1.72%) PaaS
9 21 (1.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 16 (1.31%) OpenShift
11 15 (1.23%) OneDrive
12 13 (1.07%) Azure DevOps
13 12 (0.99%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 12 (0.99%) Power Platform
14 11 (0.90%) Azure Sentinel
14 11 (0.90%) Nutanix
15 9 (0.74%) Amazon EKS
16 8 (0.66%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 335 (27.50%) Firewall
2 200 (16.42%) WAN
3 191 (15.68%) BGP
4 146 (11.99%) OSPF
5 133 (10.92%) VPN
6 126 (10.34%) VXLAN
7 121 (9.93%) SAN
8 118 (9.69%) LAN
9 117 (9.61%) DNS
10 114 (9.36%) Network Security
11 98 (8.05%) VLAN
12 92 (7.55%) Structured Cabling
13 90 (7.39%) SD-WAN
14 88 (7.22%) Ethernet VPN
15 83 (6.81%) DHCP
16 61 (5.01%) BIG-IP
17 59 (4.84%) TCP/IP
18 56 (4.60%) Cisco Nexus
19 53 (4.35%) Wireless
20 51 (4.19%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.23%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.82%) DataStage
3 7 (0.57%) Big Data
3 7 (0.57%) Power BI
4 6 (0.49%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (0.33%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
5 4 (0.33%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database
5 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.33%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.33%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.25%) Db2
6 3 (0.25%) GIS
7 2 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.16%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.16%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.16%) Oracle Database 12c
8 1 (0.082%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 68 (5.58%) JIRA
2 33 (2.71%) GitLab
2 33 (2.71%) Jenkins
3 26 (2.13%) Git
4 8 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (0.41%) JMeter
6 4 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.33%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.33%) Maven
6 4 (0.33%) Subversion
7 3 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
7 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
8 2 (0.16%) MSI
9 1 (0.082%) AppScan
9 1 (0.082%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.082%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.082%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.082%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.082%) Postman
General
1 300 (24.63%) Social Skills
2 165 (13.55%) Finance
3 132 (10.84%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (6.65%) Public Sector
5 54 (4.43%) Documentation Skills
6 48 (3.94%) Banking
7 45 (3.69%) Telecoms
8 37 (3.04%) Legal
9 26 (2.13%) Influencing Skills
10 25 (2.05%) Retail
11 18 (1.48%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (0.90%) Military
13 11 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.74%) Financial Institution
15 8 (0.66%) Law
15 8 (0.66%) Marketing
16 7 (0.57%) Police
17 6 (0.49%) Investment Banking
17 6 (0.49%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 207 (17.00%) Architect
2 199 (16.34%) Network Engineer
3 144 (11.82%) Senior
4 105 (8.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 102 (8.37%) Data Centre Engineer
6 72 (5.91%) Project Manager
7 62 (5.09%) Lead
7 62 (5.09%) Network Architect
8 56 (4.60%) IT Engineer
9 53 (4.35%) Field Engineer
10 49 (4.02%) Field Service Engineer
11 44 (3.61%) Solutions Architect
12 43 (3.53%) Infrastructure Manager
12 43 (3.53%) Technical Architect
13 38 (3.12%) Data Centre Manager
14 37 (3.04%) Senior Network Engineer
15 36 (2.96%) Analyst
16 35 (2.87%) Support Engineer
17 32 (2.63%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 28 (2.30%) Infrastructure Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (4.35%) Middleware
2 32 (2.63%) 802.1X
3 10 (0.82%) Redfish
3 10 (0.82%) REST
4 8 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
4 8 (0.66%) LDAP
5 7 (0.57%) Spring
6 5 (0.41%) Jinja
6 5 (0.41%) Kafka
6 5 (0.41%) NETCONF
6 5 (0.41%) XML
7 4 (0.33%) .NET
7 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
7 4 (0.33%) OpenConfig
7 4 (0.33%) RESTCONF
7 4 (0.33%) RESTful
7 4 (0.33%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.33%) YAML
7 4 (0.33%) YANG
8 3 (0.25%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 75 (6.16%) Hybrid Cloud
2 55 (4.52%) Analytical Mindset
3 37 (3.04%) Cloud Native
4 36 (2.96%) Management Information System
5 33 (2.71%) PKI
6 31 (2.55%) Clustering
6 31 (2.55%) Enterprise Storage
6 31 (2.55%) Onboarding
7 30 (2.46%) Private Cloud
8 29 (2.38%) Fibre Optics
9 21 (1.72%) CMDB
10 20 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
10 20 (1.64%) Driving Licence
10 20 (1.64%) Replication
11 19 (1.56%) Public Cloud
12 16 (1.31%) SCADA
13 15 (1.23%) Operational Technology
14 14 (1.15%) Mainframe
14 14 (1.15%) NHS
14 14 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 160 (13.14%) Windows
2 136 (11.17%) Linux
3 43 (3.53%) Windows Server
4 30 (2.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 30 (2.46%) Unix
5 23 (1.89%) AIX
6 18 (1.48%) Solaris
7 10 (0.82%) Apple iOS
7 10 (0.82%) Mac OS
8 7 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.49%) CentOS
9 6 (0.49%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.49%) VMS
10 5 (0.41%) HPUX
10 5 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
10 5 (0.41%) SUSE
11 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.16%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 218 (17.90%) Migration
2 208 (17.08%) Problem-Solving
3 134 (11.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 125 (10.26%) Stakeholder Management
5 115 (9.44%) Infrastructure as Code
6 114 (9.36%) ITIL
7 110 (9.03%) High Availability
8 105 (8.62%) CI/CD
9 101 (8.29%) Roadmaps
10 89 (7.31%) Agile
10 89 (7.31%) Continuous Improvement
11 85 (6.98%) Load Balancing
12 83 (6.81%) Validation
13 80 (6.57%) DevOps
14 78 (6.40%) Change Management
15 77 (6.32%) Project Delivery
16 73 (5.99%) Zero Trust
17 68 (5.58%) Customer Service
17 68 (5.58%) ITSM
17 68 (5.58%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 151 (12.40%) Python
2 40 (3.28%) PowerShell
3 35 (2.87%) SQL
4 25 (2.05%) Bash
5 19 (1.56%) Java
6 16 (1.31%) Bicep
7 13 (1.07%) Shell Script
8 12 (0.99%) COBOL
9 10 (0.82%) ActionScript
9 10 (0.82%) Perl
10 8 (0.66%) PL/SQL
11 7 (0.57%) JavaScript
12 6 (0.49%) MATLAB
13 4 (0.33%) C#
13 4 (0.33%) Lisp
14 3 (0.25%) JCL
14 3 (0.25%) Korn
14 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.16%) C++
15 2 (0.16%) REXX
Qualifications
1 316 (25.94%) Security Cleared
2 227 (18.64%) Cisco Certification
3 218 (17.90%) SC Cleared
4 134 (11.00%) CCNP
5 95 (7.80%) CCNA
6 90 (7.39%) DV Cleared
7 68 (5.58%) Degree
8 64 (5.25%) Network+ Certification
9 54 (4.43%) Microsoft Certification
10 47 (3.86%) A+ Certification
10 47 (3.86%) MCSE
11 29 (2.38%) Azure Certification
12 28 (2.30%) CCIE
13 26 (2.13%) City & Guilds
14 24 (1.97%) AWS Certification
15 22 (1.81%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 20 (1.64%) BICSI Certification
16 20 (1.64%) PMI Certification
16 20 (1.64%) PMP
17 18 (1.48%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (2.63%) SLA
2 27 (2.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (2.13%) NIST
3 26 (2.13%) QA
4 21 (1.72%) PMO
5 19 (1.56%) GDPR
6 17 (1.40%) NCSC
7 10 (0.82%) GRC
8 9 (0.74%) Disclosure Scotland
8 9 (0.74%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.57%) RMADS
10 6 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.33%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
13 2 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.16%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 107 (8.78%) VMware Infrastructure
2 63 (5.17%) Active Directory
3 36 (2.96%) VMware NSX
4 35 (2.87%) VMware ESXi
4 35 (2.87%) vSphere
5 30 (2.46%) Firmware
6 24 (1.97%) Hyper-V
7 22 (1.81%) Virtual Machines
8 17 (1.40%) Docker
9 9 (0.74%) NFS
10 8 (0.66%) KVM
11 7 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
12 6 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.49%) SRDF
13 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.33%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
14 3 (0.25%) UAG
14 3 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 134 (11.00%) Ansible
2 109 (8.95%) Terraform
3 54 (4.43%) FortiGate
4 51 (4.19%) Kubernetes
5 34 (2.79%) Grafana
6 29 (2.38%) Prometheus
7 28 (2.30%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (1.23%) vCenter Server
9 13 (1.07%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.90%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.90%) vMotion
11 10 (0.82%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.82%) SCCM
12 9 (0.74%) Check_MK
13 7 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.57%) EMC NetWorker
13 7 (0.57%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 6 (0.49%) Podman
14 6 (0.49%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 301 (24.71%) Cisco
2 161 (13.22%) VMware
3 137 (11.25%) Palo Alto
4 123 (10.10%) Microsoft
5 116 (9.52%) F5
6 96 (7.88%) Juniper
7 87 (7.14%) Dell
8 76 (6.24%) Arista
9 72 (5.91%) Fortinet
10 60 (4.93%) ServiceNow
11 47 (3.86%) Google
12 43 (3.53%) SolarWinds
13 42 (3.45%) Aruba
14 36 (2.96%) IBM
15 33 (2.71%) CheckPoint
15 33 (2.71%) Red Hat
16 30 (2.46%) Splunk
17 26 (2.13%) Oracle
18 25 (2.05%) Citrix
18 25 (2.05%) HP