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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 132 114
Rank change year-on-year +10 -18 -23
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,206 717 770
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.20% 2.18% 2.05%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.40% 6.09% 6.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 739 452 470
10th Percentile £318 £290 £363
25th Percentile £413 £381 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £650 £600 £618
90th Percentile £750 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £525
% change year-on-year +5.26% -9.52% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 40 35
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.83
25th Percentile £18.90 - £12.08
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% +11.78% -2.17%
75th Percentile £52.50 £32.00 £26.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £40.38 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £25.08 £15.00
% change year-on-year -16.25% +67.17% -34.78%

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 18,836 11,776 11,465
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.32% 35.86% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,271 7,212 6,891
10th Percentile £320 £293 £281
25th Percentile £425 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £535
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -2.80% -2.73%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £672
90th Percentile £750 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,259 599 426
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.78 £15.28
25th Percentile £17.85 £18.87 £22.50
Median hourly rate £36.00 £29.27 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.99% -41.46% +11.73%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.45 £72.50 £75.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £29.30 £57.35
% change year-on-year +27.99% -48.91% +14.70%

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 30 September 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 30 September 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 30 September 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 +5 1,020 £534 +3.24% 1,870
UK excluding London -17 650 £500 +5.26% 829
London +14 409 £550 +3.77% 1,034
Work from Home -17 279 £533 +6.50% 453
North of England -4 227 £500 +5.26% 206
South East -2 176 £525 +25.37% 245
Yorkshire +8 135 £496 +10.22% 41
North West -23 74 £538 - 95
South West -20 65 £623 +13.18% 78
Midlands -58 64 £475 -4.23% 103
West Midlands -56 53 £500 - 78
Scotland -8 47 £388 -8.82% 43
East of England -9 42 £479 -20.21% 107
Wales +6 36 £468 +55.83% 35
North East -17 24 £625 +257.14% 71
East Midlands -25 11 £413 -14.29% 25
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 23
Channel Islands - 1 £575 - 2

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 34 (2.82%) Confluence
2 19 (1.58%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.75%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.58%) IIS
6 5 (0.41%) Apache
6 5 (0.41%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.25%) CICS
8 1 (0.083%) nginx
8 1 (0.083%) SAS
8 1 (0.083%) Tomcat
Applications
1 25 (2.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 20 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.83%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.41%) AutoCAD
7 4 (0.33%) Navisworks
7 4 (0.33%) Revit
8 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 11 (0.91%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.083%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.083%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 255 (21.14%) Azure
2 212 (17.58%) AWS
3 63 (5.22%) GCP
4 60 (4.98%) GitHub
5 48 (3.98%) IaaS
6 46 (3.81%) Microsoft 365
7 39 (3.23%) Entra ID
8 37 (3.07%) SaaS
9 29 (2.40%) OCI
10 20 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
10 20 (1.66%) PaaS
11 16 (1.33%) OpenShift
12 15 (1.24%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 15 (1.24%) OneDrive
12 15 (1.24%) Power Platform
13 12 (1.00%) Nutanix
14 11 (0.91%) AWS Direct Connect
15 10 (0.83%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 8 (0.66%) Azure Monitor
17 7 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 293 (24.30%) Firewall
2 186 (15.42%) WAN
3 171 (14.18%) BGP
4 130 (10.78%) DNS
5 124 (10.28%) VPN
6 120 (9.95%) Network Security
7 114 (9.45%) VXLAN
8 112 (9.29%) LAN
9 106 (8.79%) VLAN
10 105 (8.71%) OSPF
11 92 (7.63%) SAN
12 89 (7.38%) DHCP
13 86 (7.13%) TCP/IP
14 84 (6.97%) Ethernet VPN
15 83 (6.88%) SD-WAN
16 64 (5.31%) Wireless
17 63 (5.22%) Structured Cabling
18 60 (4.98%) Wi-Fi
19 54 (4.48%) BIG-IP
20 53 (4.39%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (3.65%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.24%) Power BI
3 11 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (0.83%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 10 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 7 (0.58%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (0.41%) Db2
8 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database 12c
8 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
9 3 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.25%) Big Data
9 3 (0.25%) PostgreSQL
10 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.17%) DataStage
10 2 (0.17%) Flink
10 2 (0.17%) Sybase ASE
10 2 (0.17%) Sybase IQ
Development Applications
1 80 (6.63%) JIRA
2 39 (3.23%) GitLab
3 38 (3.15%) Jenkins
4 29 (2.40%) Git
5 7 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.25%) ScriptRunner
6 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
7 2 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 2 (0.17%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.17%) MSI
7 2 (0.17%) Toad
8 1 (0.083%) Claude Code
General
1 287 (23.80%) Social Skills
2 174 (14.43%) Finance
3 99 (8.21%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (5.31%) Banking
5 55 (4.56%) Public Sector
5 55 (4.56%) Telecoms
6 47 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
7 26 (2.16%) Retail
8 25 (2.07%) Legal
9 18 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
10 17 (1.41%) Manufacturing
11 16 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
12 13 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.58%) Police
14 6 (0.50%) Financial Institution
14 6 (0.50%) Investment Banking
14 6 (0.50%) Law
15 5 (0.41%) Cyber-Physical System
16 4 (0.33%) Marketing
16 4 (0.33%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 202 (16.75%) Architect
2 201 (16.67%) Network Engineer
3 152 (12.60%) Senior
4 122 (10.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 81 (6.72%) Data Centre Engineer
6 79 (6.55%) Project Manager
7 75 (6.22%) Lead
8 70 (5.80%) Network Architect
9 46 (3.81%) Consultant
9 46 (3.81%) IT Engineer
10 44 (3.65%) Data Centre Manager
10 44 (3.65%) Senior Network Engineer
11 42 (3.48%) Technical Architect
12 35 (2.90%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 34 (2.82%) Support Engineer
14 33 (2.74%) Infrastructure Manager
14 33 (2.74%) Solutions Architect
15 31 (2.57%) Analyst
15 31 (2.57%) Field Engineer
16 29 (2.40%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (9.87%) Terraform
2 37 (3.07%) Middleware
3 32 (2.65%) REST
4 18 (1.49%) YAML
5 17 (1.41%) 802.1X
6 15 (1.24%) JSON
7 14 (1.16%) .NET
8 8 (0.66%) LDAP
9 7 (0.58%) NETCONF
10 6 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (0.50%) SAML
11 5 (0.41%) Kafka
11 5 (0.41%) OpenConfig
11 5 (0.41%) Redfish
11 5 (0.41%) RESTCONF
11 5 (0.41%) YANG
12 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
12 4 (0.33%) RESTful
13 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
13 3 (0.25%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 84 (6.97%) Hybrid Cloud
2 48 (3.98%) Public Cloud
3 37 (3.07%) Private Cloud
4 34 (2.82%) Cloud Native
4 34 (2.82%) Management Information System
5 32 (2.65%) Analytical Mindset
6 31 (2.57%) PKI
7 29 (2.40%) Enterprise Storage
7 29 (2.40%) Replication
8 27 (2.24%) Onboarding
9 26 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
10 25 (2.07%) Clustering
10 25 (2.07%) Operational Technology
11 20 (1.66%) Fibre Optics
11 20 (1.66%) SCADA
12 19 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
13 16 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
14 15 (1.24%) Driving Licence
15 14 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
16 13 (1.08%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 205 (17.00%) Windows
2 138 (11.44%) Linux
3 75 (6.22%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.74%) Unix
5 21 (1.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (1.33%) AIX
7 13 (1.08%) Mac OS
8 10 (0.83%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.83%) Solaris
8 10 (0.83%) VMS
9 8 (0.66%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.50%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.41%) HPUX
12 5 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.41%) SUSE
12 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.33%) CentOS
13 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 263 (21.81%) Migration
2 185 (15.34%) Problem-Solving
3 171 (14.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 159 (13.18%) Stakeholder Management
5 134 (11.11%) Infrastructure as Code
6 114 (9.45%) ITIL
7 108 (8.96%) CI/CD
8 107 (8.87%) Agile
9 99 (8.21%) High Availability
10 98 (8.13%) Project Delivery
11 96 (7.96%) Validation
12 93 (7.71%) Roadmaps
13 91 (7.55%) Continuous Improvement
14 89 (7.38%) Disaster Recovery
15 83 (6.88%) Zero Trust
16 79 (6.55%) Cybersecurity
17 77 (6.38%) Change Management
18 75 (6.22%) Technical Leadership
19 73 (6.05%) DevOps
20 69 (5.72%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 163 (13.52%) Python
2 73 (6.05%) PowerShell
3 54 (4.48%) SQL
4 33 (2.74%) Bash
5 18 (1.49%) ActionScript
6 14 (1.16%) C#
7 11 (0.91%) Bicep
8 10 (0.83%) T-SQL
9 9 (0.75%) Shell Script
10 8 (0.66%) Perl
11 7 (0.58%) PL/SQL
12 4 (0.33%) Go
12 4 (0.33%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.33%) MATLAB
13 3 (0.25%) Java
13 3 (0.25%) JCL
13 3 (0.25%) Lisp
13 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.17%) COBOL
14 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 310 (25.70%) Security Cleared
2 211 (17.50%) SC Cleared
3 164 (13.60%) Cisco Certification
4 102 (8.46%) DV Cleared
5 99 (8.21%) CCNP
6 63 (5.22%) Degree
7 61 (5.06%) CCNA
8 36 (2.99%) Network+ Certification
9 34 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
10 33 (2.74%) AWS Certification
11 32 (2.65%) A+ Certification
12 29 (2.40%) CCIE
12 29 (2.40%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 28 (2.32%) CISSP
14 26 (2.16%) Azure Certification
14 26 (2.16%) MCSE
15 23 (1.91%) PMI Certification
16 22 (1.82%) PMP
17 19 (1.58%) VCAP
18 18 (1.49%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (2.90%) QA
2 30 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (2.32%) NIST
3 28 (2.32%) SLA
4 14 (1.16%) GDPR
4 14 (1.16%) GRC
4 14 (1.16%) PMO
5 9 (0.75%) JSP 440
5 9 (0.75%) NCSC
6 8 (0.66%) PCI DSS
7 6 (0.50%) ISO 31000
7 6 (0.50%) ISO 9001
7 6 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27005
8 5 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
8 5 (0.41%) NIST 800
9 4 (0.33%) RMADS
10 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
11 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.17%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 158 (13.10%) VMware Infrastructure
2 102 (8.46%) Active Directory
3 54 (4.48%) vSphere
4 52 (4.31%) VMware NSX
5 41 (3.40%) Hyper-V
6 37 (3.07%) VMware ESXi
7 35 (2.90%) Docker
8 26 (2.16%) Firmware
9 15 (1.24%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.91%) NFS
11 8 (0.66%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.41%) ISA Server
13 5 (0.41%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.33%) PowerHA
14 4 (0.33%) SRDF
15 3 (0.25%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.25%) KVM
Systems Management
1 151 (12.52%) Ansible
2 57 (4.73%) Kubernetes
3 36 (2.99%) FortiGate
4 21 (1.74%) Microsoft Intune
5 19 (1.58%) Prometheus
5 19 (1.58%) vCenter Server
6 16 (1.33%) Grafana
6 16 (1.33%) VxRail
7 14 (1.16%) SCCM
8 12 (1.00%) Microsoft Clustering
8 12 (1.00%) PowerCLI
9 11 (0.91%) SCOM
9 11 (0.91%) vMotion
10 10 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (0.83%) NetBackup
11 9 (0.75%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 8 (0.66%) Dell DRAC
12 8 (0.66%) Nagios
13 7 (0.58%) Check_MK
14 6 (0.50%) CASB
Vendors
1 294 (24.38%) Cisco
2 210 (17.41%) VMware
3 158 (13.10%) Microsoft
4 132 (10.95%) Palo Alto
5 112 (9.29%) F5
6 71 (5.89%) ServiceNow
7 68 (5.64%) Fortinet
8 65 (5.39%) Arista
9 61 (5.06%) Dell
9 61 (5.06%) Juniper
10 43 (3.57%) Aruba
11 38 (3.15%) CheckPoint
12 35 (2.90%) Red Hat
13 34 (2.82%) Oracle
13 34 (2.82%) Veeam
14 32 (2.65%) Google
15 26 (2.16%) Commvault
16 25 (2.07%) Zscaler
17 24 (1.99%) IBM
17 24 (1.99%) SolarWinds