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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 118 122 108
Rank change year-on-year +4 -14 -20
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,197 735 828
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.23% 2.25% 2.14%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.62% 6.35% 7.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 726 467 542
10th Percentile £318 £300 £350
25th Percentile £411 £400 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.05% -2.33% -
75th Percentile £650 £606 £625
90th Percentile £750 £715 £724
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £491 £538
% change year-on-year +0.41% -8.65% +7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 69 38 39
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £25.04 £12.08
Median hourly rate £21.00 £25.15 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.50% +25.75% -
75th Percentile £38.75 £31.00 £25.83
90th Percentile £81.95 £43.75 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £16.50
% change year-on-year -21.57% +49.45% -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 18,086 11,583 11,762
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.65% 35.41% 30.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,921 7,122 7,431
10th Percentile £323 £300 £300
25th Percentile £423 £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 1,071 573 565
10th Percentile £14.68 £15.13 £12.30
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.87 £18.35
Median hourly rate £40.96 £30.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +36.53% -29.41% -2.95%
75th Percentile £68.75 £57.50 £68.75
90th Percentile £83.75 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +46.53% -36.84% +3.60%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +5 1,008 £525 - 1,299
UK excluding London -18 630 £493 +0.41% 558
London +4 418 £550 - 839
Work from Home -7 281 £525 -1.41% 381
North of England -11 216 £485 +7.78% 117
South East -2 182 £539 +9.34% 166
Yorkshire -3 132 £465 +12.05% 42
North West -17 69 £500 -6.54% 44
South West -8 68 £588 +6.82% 80
Midlands -70 50 £425 -15.00% 52
Scotland -2 46 £388 -2.88% 43
West Midlands -69 42 £456 -8.80% 42
Wales +2 40 £468 +55.83% 15
East of England -11 36 £479 -20.21% 88
North East -20 21 £625 +468.18% 32
East Midlands -25 7 £400 -25.93% 10
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 29 (2.42%) Confluence
2 19 (1.59%) SharePoint
3 13 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (0.58%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.42%) Apache
5 5 (0.42%) CloudStack
6 3 (0.25%) CICS
7 1 (0.084%) IIS
7 1 (0.084%) nginx
7 1 (0.084%) SAS
7 1 (0.084%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
4 9 (0.75%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 13 (1.09%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.25%) Primavera
3 2 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
3 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
4 1 (0.084%) Cloudability
4 1 (0.084%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 253 (21.14%) Azure
2 223 (18.63%) AWS
3 58 (4.85%) GCP
4 48 (4.01%) GitHub
5 39 (3.26%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (3.01%) SaaS
7 35 (2.92%) IaaS
8 30 (2.51%) OCI
9 29 (2.42%) Entra ID
10 17 (1.42%) Power Platform
11 15 (1.25%) OneDrive
12 14 (1.17%) Azure DevOps
12 14 (1.17%) OpenShift
12 14 (1.17%) PaaS
13 13 (1.09%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 12 (1.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 11 (0.92%) Nutanix
16 8 (0.67%) Azure Sentinel
17 7 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
18 6 (0.50%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 297 (24.81%) Firewall
2 186 (15.54%) WAN
3 182 (15.20%) BGP
4 130 (10.86%) VPN
5 125 (10.44%) VXLAN
6 121 (10.11%) DNS
7 119 (9.94%) OSPF
8 111 (9.27%) SAN
9 107 (8.94%) LAN
9 107 (8.94%) Network Security
10 106 (8.86%) VLAN
11 90 (7.52%) DHCP
12 87 (7.27%) Ethernet VPN
13 85 (7.10%) SD-WAN
14 84 (7.02%) TCP/IP
15 79 (6.60%) Structured Cabling
16 60 (5.01%) Wi-Fi
17 56 (4.68%) Wireless
18 54 (4.51%) Cisco Nexus
19 48 (4.01%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (2.59%) SQL Server
2 14 (1.17%) Power BI
3 11 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (0.84%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 10 (0.84%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 7 (0.58%) Big Data
5 7 (0.58%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.50%) Db2
7 5 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database 12c
8 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
8 4 (0.33%) PostgreSQL
9 2 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.17%) DataStage
10 1 (0.084%) Flink
10 1 (0.084%) GIS
10 1 (0.084%) Oracle Exadata
10 1 (0.084%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 74 (6.18%) JIRA
2 36 (3.01%) GitLab
3 28 (2.34%) Jenkins
4 27 (2.26%) Git
5 8 (0.67%) 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 (0.084%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.084%) Eclipse
8 1 (0.084%) Maven
8 1 (0.084%) Subversion
General
1 285 (23.81%) Social Skills
2 162 (13.53%) Finance
3 118 (9.86%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (4.85%) Public Sector
5 54 (4.51%) Telecoms
6 51 (4.26%) Banking
7 44 (3.68%) Documentation Skills
8 31 (2.59%) Retail
9 23 (1.92%) Legal
10 18 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
11 17 (1.42%) Manufacturing
12 15 (1.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.75%) Police
15 8 (0.67%) Law
16 7 (0.58%) Financial Institution
17 6 (0.50%) Marketing
18 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
19 3 (0.25%) Cyber-Physical System
19 3 (0.25%) Military
Job Titles
1 199 (16.62%) Architect
2 192 (16.04%) Network Engineer
3 158 (13.20%) Senior
4 123 (10.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 94 (7.85%) Data Centre Engineer
6 77 (6.43%) Project Manager
7 62 (5.18%) Lead
8 61 (5.10%) Network Architect
9 52 (4.34%) IT Engineer
10 45 (3.76%) Senior Network Engineer
11 44 (3.68%) Consultant
11 44 (3.68%) Field Engineer
12 42 (3.51%) Data Centre Manager
13 39 (3.26%) Technical Architect
14 38 (3.17%) Field Service Engineer
15 37 (3.09%) Infrastructure Manager
16 36 (3.01%) Solutions Architect
17 35 (2.92%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 31 (2.59%) Support Engineer
19 29 (2.42%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (9.11%) Terraform
2 45 (3.76%) Middleware
3 24 (2.01%) REST
4 16 (1.34%) 802.1X
5 13 (1.09%) YAML
6 12 (1.00%) JSON
7 9 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (0.67%) LDAP
8 8 (0.67%) Redfish
9 7 (0.58%) NETCONF
10 6 (0.50%) .NET
10 6 (0.50%) OpenConfig
10 6 (0.50%) SAML
10 6 (0.50%) YANG
11 5 (0.42%) RESTCONF
12 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
12 4 (0.33%) Kafka
12 4 (0.33%) RESTful
13 3 (0.25%) Jinja
13 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 76 (6.35%) Hybrid Cloud
2 46 (3.84%) Analytical Mindset
3 37 (3.09%) PKI
4 36 (3.01%) Private Cloud
5 34 (2.84%) Cloud Native
5 34 (2.84%) Enterprise Storage
6 33 (2.76%) Clustering
7 31 (2.59%) Management Information System
8 30 (2.51%) Fibre Optics
8 30 (2.51%) Public Cloud
9 28 (2.34%) Onboarding
9 28 (2.34%) Replication
10 26 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
11 19 (1.59%) Operational Technology
12 18 (1.50%) Driving Licence
13 16 (1.34%) CMDB
13 16 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
14 15 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
14 15 (1.25%) SCADA
15 13 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 185 (15.46%) Windows
2 131 (10.94%) Linux
3 55 (4.59%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.76%) Unix
5 21 (1.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (1.67%) AIX
7 11 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 10 (0.84%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.84%) Solaris
9 9 (0.75%) VMS
10 6 (0.50%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.50%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.50%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.42%) HPUX
11 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.42%) SUSE
11 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.33%) CentOS
12 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 255 (21.30%) Migration
2 191 (15.96%) Problem-Solving
3 152 (12.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 146 (12.20%) Stakeholder Management
5 115 (9.61%) Infrastructure as Code
6 114 (9.52%) ITIL
7 104 (8.69%) High Availability
8 98 (8.19%) CI/CD
9 97 (8.10%) Agile
9 97 (8.10%) Roadmaps
10 89 (7.44%) Project Delivery
10 89 (7.44%) Validation
11 80 (6.68%) Continuous Improvement
12 79 (6.60%) Change Management
13 77 (6.43%) Disaster Recovery
14 76 (6.35%) Zero Trust
15 75 (6.27%) Technical Leadership
16 69 (5.76%) DevOps
16 69 (5.76%) Load Balancing
17 67 (5.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 163 (13.62%) Python
2 62 (5.18%) PowerShell
3 40 (3.34%) SQL
4 32 (2.67%) Bash
5 10 (0.84%) ActionScript
5 10 (0.84%) Bicep
6 9 (0.75%) Perl
6 9 (0.75%) Shell Script
7 7 (0.58%) PL/SQL
8 6 (0.50%) C#
8 6 (0.50%) Java
9 4 (0.33%) COBOL
9 4 (0.33%) Go
9 4 (0.33%) JavaScript
9 4 (0.33%) MATLAB
10 3 (0.25%) JCL
10 3 (0.25%) Lisp
10 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.17%) C++
11 2 (0.17%) Korn
Qualifications
1 307 (25.65%) Security Cleared
2 207 (17.29%) SC Cleared
3 187 (15.62%) Cisco Certification
4 110 (9.19%) CCNP
5 98 (8.19%) DV Cleared
6 74 (6.18%) CCNA
7 65 (5.43%) Degree
8 47 (3.93%) Network+ Certification
9 45 (3.76%) Microsoft Certification
10 41 (3.43%) A+ Certification
11 37 (3.09%) MCSE
12 31 (2.59%) AWS Certification
13 30 (2.51%) CCIE
14 27 (2.26%) Azure Certification
15 26 (2.17%) City & Guilds
16 23 (1.92%) PMP
16 23 (1.92%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 22 (1.84%) CISSP
17 22 (1.84%) PMI Certification
18 20 (1.67%) BICSI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (3.09%) QA
2 29 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (2.34%) SLA
4 22 (1.84%) NIST
5 15 (1.25%) GDPR
6 14 (1.17%) PMO
7 11 (0.92%) NCSC
8 9 (0.75%) JSP 440
9 6 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
9 6 (0.50%) GRC
9 6 (0.50%) RMADS
10 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
10 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.17%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 144 (12.03%) VMware Infrastructure
2 88 (7.35%) Active Directory
3 48 (4.01%) vSphere
4 44 (3.68%) VMware NSX
5 38 (3.17%) VMware ESXi
6 37 (3.09%) Hyper-V
7 32 (2.67%) Docker
8 30 (2.51%) Firmware
9 15 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (1.00%) 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%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.33%) SRDF
14 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
14 4 (0.33%) Veritas Cluster Server
15 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 147 (12.28%) Ansible
2 60 (5.01%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.92%) FortiGate
4 27 (2.26%) Prometheus
5 25 (2.09%) Grafana
6 22 (1.84%) Microsoft Intune
7 17 (1.42%) vCenter Server
8 15 (1.25%) SCCM
8 15 (1.25%) VxRail
9 13 (1.09%) NetBackup
10 12 (1.00%) Microsoft Clustering
11 11 (0.92%) vMotion
12 10 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.84%) PowerCLI
12 10 (0.84%) SCOM
12 10 (0.84%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 9 (0.75%) Dell DRAC
14 8 (0.67%) EMC NetWorker
14 8 (0.67%) Nagios
15 7 (0.58%) Check_MK
Vendors
1 288 (24.06%) Cisco
2 199 (16.62%) VMware
3 140 (11.70%) Microsoft
4 124 (10.36%) Palo Alto
5 102 (8.52%) F5
6 74 (6.18%) Dell
7 72 (6.02%) Arista
8 69 (5.76%) Juniper
9 68 (5.68%) Fortinet
10 61 (5.10%) ServiceNow
11 41 (3.43%) Aruba
12 36 (3.01%) CheckPoint
13 35 (2.92%) Red Hat
14 30 (2.51%) Google
15 28 (2.34%) IBM
16 25 (2.09%) SolarWinds
16 25 (2.09%) Veeam
17 24 (2.01%) Oracle
18 23 (1.92%) NetApp
19 20 (1.67%) Zscaler