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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 130 101
Rank change year-on-year +27 -29 -10
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,099 651 935
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.31% 2.23% 2.17%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.21% 6.58% 7.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 680 425 630
10th Percentile £318 £343 £300
25th Percentile £405 £413 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £470 £531
% change year-on-year -1.12% -11.48% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 23 45
10th Percentile £16.00 £24.18 £14.60
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £21.25
Median hourly rate £19.34 £27.50 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.67% +14.58% +10.75%
75th Percentile £31.50 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £75.31 £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 15,238 9,901 13,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.08% 33.91% 30.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,482 6,317 8,409
10th Percentile £308 £300 £269
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.54% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 726 401 904
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.78 £21.01 £15.17
Median hourly rate £43.60 £32.50 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +34.16% +4.00% +38.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.75 £83.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.77 £31.76 £29.25
% change year-on-year +53.56% +8.58% +32.95%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +21 893 £481 -7.45% 470
UK excluding London +5 620 £465 -1.12% 303
London +14 316 £550 +4.76% 204
Work from Home +15 288 £480 -7.25% 132
North of England +18 204 £459 +8.00% 76
South East +6 189 £463 +2.78% 102
Yorkshire -7 97 £365 -10.43% 22
North West +10 87 £481 -3.75% 38
Scotland +9 56 £469 +10.35% 18
Midlands -42 54 £465 -15.45% 35
South West -33 49 £498 -9.22% 35
West Midlands -51 48 £466 -15.29% 27
East of England -11 41 £492 +36.19% 34
Wales +2 33 £455 +13.75% 5
North East +3 22 £400 +263.64% 16
East Midlands -33 5 £400 -27.27% 8
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 5

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 (2.00%) Confluence
2 12 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (0.91%) CICS
3 10 (0.91%) SharePoint
4 5 (0.45%) nginx
5 4 (0.36%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.36%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.27%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.091%) Apache
8 1 (0.091%) CloudStack
8 1 (0.091%) Mendix
Applications
1 20 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 16 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (1.09%) MS Visio
5 11 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.27%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.18%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 4 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.18%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.18%) Primavera
4 1 (0.091%) Maximo
4 1 (0.091%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.091%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 210 (19.11%) Azure
2 172 (15.65%) AWS
3 65 (5.91%) GCP
4 31 (2.82%) Microsoft 365
5 23 (2.09%) SaaS
6 22 (2.00%) OCI
7 21 (1.91%) Entra ID
8 20 (1.82%) GitHub
8 20 (1.82%) IaaS
9 17 (1.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 15 (1.36%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 14 (1.27%) PaaS
12 13 (1.18%) Power Platform
13 12 (1.09%) OpenShift
14 11 (1.00%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 11 (1.00%) Azure DevOps
15 10 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
16 9 (0.82%) AWS Direct Connect
16 9 (0.82%) Azure Sentinel
16 9 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 306 (27.84%) Firewall
2 187 (17.02%) WAN
3 171 (15.56%) BGP
4 137 (12.47%) OSPF
5 121 (11.01%) Network Security
6 113 (10.28%) VPN
7 111 (10.10%) LAN
8 102 (9.28%) VXLAN
9 101 (9.19%) SAN
10 85 (7.73%) Structured Cabling
11 74 (6.73%) Ethernet VPN
11 74 (6.73%) VLAN
12 73 (6.64%) DNS
13 62 (5.64%) SD-WAN
14 55 (5.00%) DHCP
15 51 (4.64%) Cisco Nexus
16 49 (4.46%) Wi-Fi
17 41 (3.73%) BIG-IP
18 39 (3.55%) NX-OS
19 33 (3.00%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (0.91%) DataStage
1 10 (0.91%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.73%) Power BI
3 6 (0.55%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (0.45%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.36%) Big Data
5 4 (0.36%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.36%) Power Query
5 4 (0.36%) PowerPivot
5 4 (0.36%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.27%) GIS
6 3 (0.27%) Oracle Database
6 3 (0.27%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.18%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.18%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.18%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.18%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.091%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.091%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 45 (4.09%) JIRA
2 35 (3.18%) Git
3 31 (2.82%) GitLab
4 25 (2.27%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.73%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (0.64%) Maven
7 6 (0.55%) ScriptRunner
8 5 (0.45%) JMeter
9 4 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 4 (0.36%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.36%) Subversion
10 3 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.27%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.091%) AppScan
11 1 (0.091%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.091%) LoadRunner
11 1 (0.091%) Metasploit
11 1 (0.091%) Postman
General
1 273 (24.84%) Social Skills
2 150 (13.65%) Finance
3 136 (12.37%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (7.37%) Public Sector
5 58 (5.28%) Documentation Skills
6 45 (4.09%) Banking
7 31 (2.82%) Legal
8 29 (2.64%) Telecoms
9 24 (2.18%) Manufacturing
9 24 (2.18%) Retail
10 21 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
11 12 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
12 10 (0.91%) Military
13 9 (0.82%) Law
14 8 (0.73%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.73%) Marketing
15 6 (0.55%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.55%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.45%) Portuguese Language
Job Titles
1 196 (17.83%) Network Engineer
2 177 (16.11%) Architect
3 124 (11.28%) Senior
4 81 (7.37%) Data Centre Engineer
5 72 (6.55%) Project Manager
6 62 (5.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 58 (5.28%) IT Engineer
8 56 (5.10%) Field Engineer
8 56 (5.10%) Lead
9 53 (4.82%) Field Service Engineer
10 48 (4.37%) Network Architect
11 45 (4.09%) Data Centre Manager
12 42 (3.82%) Solutions Architect
13 40 (3.64%) Analyst
14 36 (3.28%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 34 (3.09%) Senior Network Engineer
16 32 (2.91%) Infrastructure Manager
17 30 (2.73%) Support Engineer
17 30 (2.73%) Technical Architect
18 28 (2.55%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (4.00%) Middleware
2 32 (2.91%) 802.1X
3 12 (1.09%) LDAP
4 8 (0.73%) Redfish
5 7 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
5 7 (0.64%) Spring
6 5 (0.45%) Jinja
6 5 (0.45%) NETCONF
6 5 (0.45%) REST
6 5 (0.45%) XML
7 4 (0.36%) ADO
7 4 (0.36%) Kafka
7 4 (0.36%) OpenConfig
7 4 (0.36%) RESTCONF
7 4 (0.36%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.36%) VML
7 4 (0.36%) YANG
8 3 (0.27%) Java EE
8 3 (0.27%) OpenLayers
8 3 (0.27%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 62 (5.64%) Hybrid Cloud
2 61 (5.55%) Analytical Mindset
3 32 (2.91%) Management Information System
4 29 (2.64%) Clustering
5 28 (2.55%) Cloud Native
5 28 (2.55%) PKI
6 25 (2.27%) Fibre Optics
7 22 (2.00%) Public Cloud
8 20 (1.82%) CMDB
8 20 (1.82%) Onboarding
8 20 (1.82%) SCADA
9 19 (1.73%) Driving Licence
9 19 (1.73%) Replication
9 19 (1.73%) Self-Motivation
10 18 (1.64%) Enterprise Storage
11 16 (1.46%) Private Cloud
12 15 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
13 14 (1.27%) NHS
14 12 (1.09%) Mainframe
15 11 (1.00%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 135 (12.28%) Linux
2 134 (12.19%) Windows
3 40 (3.64%) Windows Server
4 37 (3.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (2.09%) Unix
6 20 (1.82%) AIX
7 17 (1.55%) Solaris
8 11 (1.00%) CentOS
9 9 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
10 7 (0.64%) VMS
11 6 (0.55%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.36%) HPUX
12 4 (0.36%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.36%) SUSE
13 3 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.091%) Kali Linux
15 1 (0.091%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 204 (18.56%) Problem-Solving
2 191 (17.38%) Migration
3 102 (9.28%) High Availability
4 99 (9.01%) Stakeholder Management
5 95 (8.64%) Infrastructure as Code
6 92 (8.37%) ITIL
7 87 (7.92%) Roadmaps
8 85 (7.73%) Continuous Improvement
9 81 (7.37%) CI/CD
10 79 (7.19%) Load Balancing
11 76 (6.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 74 (6.73%) Validation
13 73 (6.64%) Project Management
14 72 (6.55%) Change Management
15 67 (6.10%) Project Delivery
16 66 (6.01%) Break/Fix
17 63 (5.73%) Customer Service
18 61 (5.55%) Agile
18 61 (5.55%) DevOps
19 58 (5.28%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 118 (10.74%) Python
2 40 (3.64%) PowerShell
3 36 (3.28%) SQL
4 23 (2.09%) Bash
4 23 (2.09%) Java
5 16 (1.46%) Shell Script
6 12 (1.09%) COBOL
7 10 (0.91%) MATLAB
7 10 (0.91%) Perl
8 9 (0.82%) Bicep
9 7 (0.64%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.45%) C
10 5 (0.45%) C++
10 5 (0.45%) JavaScript
10 5 (0.45%) VBA
11 3 (0.27%) Korn
12 2 (0.18%) Groovy
12 2 (0.18%) JCL
12 2 (0.18%) Lisp
13 1 (0.091%) R
Qualifications
1 310 (28.21%) Security Cleared
2 230 (20.93%) SC Cleared
3 229 (20.84%) Cisco Certification
4 135 (12.28%) CCNP
5 104 (9.46%) CCNA
6 63 (5.73%) Degree
7 62 (5.64%) DV Cleared
8 60 (5.46%) Network+ Certification
9 54 (4.91%) Microsoft Certification
10 51 (4.64%) A+ Certification
10 51 (4.64%) MCSE
11 25 (2.27%) CCIE
12 23 (2.09%) Azure Certification
12 23 (2.09%) PMP
13 22 (2.00%) City & Guilds
13 22 (2.00%) PMI Certification
14 20 (1.82%) AWS Certification
15 19 (1.73%) BICSI Certification
16 16 (1.46%) JNCIS
17 15 (1.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (2.73%) SLA
2 26 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 25 (2.27%) PMO
4 24 (2.18%) QA
5 22 (2.00%) NIST
6 20 (1.82%) GDPR
7 11 (1.00%) NCSC
7 11 (1.00%) PCI DSS
8 9 (0.82%) Disclosure Scotland
9 8 (0.73%) GRC
10 6 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
12 3 (0.27%) NIST 800
12 3 (0.27%) RMADS
13 2 (0.18%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 1 (0.091%) COBIT
14 1 (0.091%) NEBOSH
14 1 (0.091%) SOC 1
System Software
1 93 (8.46%) VMware Infrastructure
2 58 (5.28%) Active Directory
3 46 (4.19%) VMware NSX
4 30 (2.73%) Firmware
5 28 (2.55%) vSphere
6 24 (2.18%) VMware ESXi
7 22 (2.00%) Virtual Machines
8 20 (1.82%) Hyper-V
9 14 (1.27%) Docker
10 10 (0.91%) KVM
11 6 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.36%) SRDF
12 4 (0.36%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
13 3 (0.27%) NFS
13 3 (0.27%) PowerHA
13 3 (0.27%) UAG
13 3 (0.27%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 2 (0.18%) vCloud
14 2 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 121 (11.01%) Ansible
2 92 (8.37%) Terraform
3 60 (5.46%) FortiGate
4 41 (3.73%) Kubernetes
5 34 (3.09%) Grafana
6 26 (2.37%) Prometheus
7 13 (1.18%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (1.18%) SCCM
8 12 (1.09%) Check_MK
8 12 (1.09%) NetBackup
9 11 (1.00%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.91%) Podman
10 10 (0.91%) Red Hat Satellite
11 9 (0.82%) PowerCLI
12 8 (0.73%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.73%) vMotion
13 7 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 6 (0.55%) EMC NetWorker
15 5 (0.45%) Nagios
15 5 (0.45%) SCOM
Vendors
1 291 (26.48%) Cisco
2 143 (13.01%) Palo Alto
3 141 (12.83%) VMware
4 98 (8.92%) Microsoft
5 97 (8.83%) F5
6 95 (8.64%) Dell
7 88 (8.01%) Juniper
8 61 (5.55%) Arista
9 53 (4.82%) Aruba
10 51 (4.64%) Fortinet
11 45 (4.09%) CheckPoint
12 38 (3.46%) ServiceNow
13 36 (3.28%) Google
13 36 (3.28%) Red Hat
13 36 (3.28%) SolarWinds
14 32 (2.91%) IBM
15 31 (2.82%) Splunk
16 28 (2.55%) Oracle
17 27 (2.46%) Meraki
18 25 (2.27%) NVIDIA