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

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 121 128 98
Rank change year-on-year +7 -30 +2
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 922 609 997
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.19% 2.03% 2.25%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.55% 6.08% 7.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 583 378 656
10th Percentile £293 £350 £281
25th Percentile £400 £414 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.14% -3.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £580 £625 £638
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £490 £510
% change year-on-year -4.19% -3.93% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 25 44
10th Percentile £20.82 £21.64 £17.53
25th Percentile £25.15 - £22.00
Median hourly rate £26.50 £24.18 £24.99
Median % change year-on-year +9.59% -3.25% +11.08%
75th Percentile £72.69 £29.25 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £52.50 £71.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.80 £24.18 £24.00
% change year-on-year +201.05% +0.75% +10.75%

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 14,086 10,024 13,414
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.43% 33.37% 30.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,877 6,167 8,607
10th Percentile £285 £275 £256
25th Percentile £406 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £764 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 661 336 835
10th Percentile £15.34 £18.13 £12.86
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £32.50 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% +8.33% +33.42%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.25 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £83.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £31.76 £30.00
% change year-on-year +5.48% +5.87% +36.36%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 0 760 £479 -7.88% 476
UK excluding London +15 531 £469 -4.19% 340
London -19 268 £525 +0.48% 183
Work from Home +45 263 £475 -11.21% 166
North of England +20 185 £470 -1.16% 70
South East +8 138 £450 - 124
North West +12 101 £500 - 35
Midlands -22 77 £466 -22.80% 43
Yorkshire -19 69 £365 -8.75% 30
West Midlands -22 63 £474 -21.91% 18
Scotland +23 55 £466 +3.50% 22
South West -41 34 £550 -3.08% 40
East of England -14 32 £478 +13.14% 44
Wales +4 24 £350 -12.50% 9
North East 0 17 £175 - 5
East Midlands -23 14 £158 -65.00% 24
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 6

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 (3.04%) SharePoint
2 19 (2.06%) Microsoft Exchange
3 18 (1.95%) Confluence
4 8 (0.87%) CICS
5 5 (0.54%) OpenStack
6 4 (0.43%) nginx
6 4 (0.43%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.33%) GeoServer
7 3 (0.33%) HCL Notes
7 3 (0.33%) Smallworld
8 2 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.22%) Oracle Coherence
8 2 (0.22%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.11%) Mendix
Applications
1 51 (5.53%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (2.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (2.82%) MS Visio
3 22 (2.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (1.74%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.33%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.43%) Oracle Financials
1 4 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.33%) Primavera
2 3 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.22%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.11%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.11%) Maximo
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 172 (18.66%) Azure
2 130 (14.10%) AWS
3 67 (7.27%) Microsoft 365
4 57 (6.18%) GCP
5 21 (2.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 19 (2.06%) SaaS
7 18 (1.95%) IaaS
8 17 (1.84%) Power Platform
9 16 (1.74%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 16 (1.74%) Entra ID
10 14 (1.52%) PaaS
11 12 (1.30%) AWS Direct Connect
11 12 (1.30%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (1.30%) GitHub
11 12 (1.30%) OpenShift
12 11 (1.19%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 11 (1.19%) AWS CloudFormation
13 10 (1.08%) Nutanix
14 9 (0.98%) Amazon S3
15 8 (0.87%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 271 (29.39%) Firewall
2 161 (17.46%) WAN
3 124 (13.45%) BGP
4 100 (10.85%) LAN
5 93 (10.09%) Network Security
6 89 (9.65%) OSPF
6 89 (9.65%) VPN
7 81 (8.79%) Wireless
8 68 (7.38%) DNS
9 59 (6.40%) Structured Cabling
10 58 (6.29%) VLAN
11 57 (6.18%) SAN
12 56 (6.07%) VXLAN
13 52 (5.64%) DHCP
14 49 (5.31%) Wi-Fi
15 43 (4.66%) Cisco ISE
16 42 (4.56%) SD-WAN
17 38 (4.12%) Ethernet VPN
18 37 (4.01%) Cisco Nexus
19 33 (3.58%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.63%) Power BI
2 11 (1.19%) Relational Database
3 8 (0.87%) DataStage
3 8 (0.87%) SQL Server
4 5 (0.54%) GIS
4 5 (0.54%) RDBMS
5 4 (0.43%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.43%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.43%) Power Query
5 4 (0.43%) PowerPivot
6 3 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
6 3 (0.33%) InfluxDB
6 3 (0.33%) QGIS
6 3 (0.33%) SAP Data Services
7 2 (0.22%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.22%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database
8 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
8 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.11%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 30 (3.25%) Git
2 28 (3.04%) JIRA
3 20 (2.17%) Jenkins
4 16 (1.74%) GitLab
5 11 (1.19%) Maven
6 7 (0.76%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (0.54%) JMeter
8 4 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 4 (0.43%) Eclipse
8 4 (0.43%) Subversion
9 3 (0.33%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.33%) ScriptRunner
10 2 (0.22%) Rational DOORS
11 1 (0.11%) AppScan
11 1 (0.11%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.11%) LoadRunner
11 1 (0.11%) Metasploit
11 1 (0.11%) Postman
General
1 233 (25.27%) Social Skills
2 155 (16.81%) Finance
3 102 (11.06%) Analytical Skills
4 97 (10.52%) Public Sector
5 57 (6.18%) Documentation Skills
6 52 (5.64%) Telecoms
7 44 (4.77%) Banking
8 43 (4.66%) Manufacturing
9 31 (3.36%) Marketing
10 24 (2.60%) Electronics
11 23 (2.49%) Legal
12 22 (2.39%) Influencing Skills
13 20 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 20 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
14 12 (1.30%) Investment Banking
14 12 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
14 12 (1.30%) Retail
15 9 (0.98%) Military
16 8 (0.87%) Law
17 6 (0.65%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 162 (17.57%) Network Engineer
2 141 (15.29%) Architect
3 81 (8.79%) Project Manager
4 75 (8.13%) Senior
5 65 (7.05%) Analyst
6 56 (6.07%) Data Centre Engineer
7 46 (4.99%) Network Architect
7 46 (4.99%) Solutions Architect
8 42 (4.56%) Data Centre Manager
8 42 (4.56%) Lead
9 37 (4.01%) IT Support
10 36 (3.90%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 33 (3.58%) Infrastructure Manager
12 31 (3.36%) Consultant
13 28 (3.04%) Cisco Engineer
13 28 (3.04%) Support Engineer
14 27 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 26 (2.82%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 26 (2.82%) Data Centre Project Manager
15 26 (2.82%) Infrastructure Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.36%) 802.1X
2 27 (2.93%) Middleware
3 9 (0.98%) LDAP
4 6 (0.65%) RFC 2544
4 6 (0.65%) Spring
5 4 (0.43%) ADO
5 4 (0.43%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.43%) Spring Boot
5 4 (0.43%) VML
5 4 (0.43%) XML
6 3 (0.33%) NETCONF
6 3 (0.33%) OpenConfig
6 3 (0.33%) Redfish
6 3 (0.33%) REST
6 3 (0.33%) RESTCONF
6 3 (0.33%) YANG
6 3 (0.33%) Yocto
7 2 (0.22%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.22%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (0.22%) OpenLayers
Miscellaneous
1 45 (4.88%) Hybrid Cloud
2 25 (2.71%) Analytical Mindset
3 23 (2.49%) PKI
3 23 (2.49%) Self-Motivation
4 21 (2.28%) Driving Licence
5 20 (2.17%) Clustering
5 20 (2.17%) Onboarding
5 20 (2.17%) Public Cloud
6 19 (2.06%) Cloud Native
7 18 (1.95%) Management Information System
8 17 (1.84%) Replication
9 16 (1.74%) CMDB
10 14 (1.52%) NHS
11 13 (1.41%) Fibre Optics
12 12 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
12 12 (1.30%) Enterprise Storage
12 12 (1.30%) Mainframe
12 12 (1.30%) SCADA
13 10 (1.08%) Private Cloud
14 8 (0.87%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 123 (13.34%) Windows
2 115 (12.47%) Linux
3 41 (4.45%) Windows Server
4 35 (3.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (3.47%) Android
5 32 (3.47%) Mac OS
6 18 (1.95%) Unix
7 12 (1.30%) AIX
8 11 (1.19%) CentOS
9 10 (1.08%) Solaris
10 7 (0.76%) VMS
10 7 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
11 5 (0.54%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.33%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.33%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.11%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 164 (17.79%) Migration
2 150 (16.27%) Problem-Solving
3 106 (11.50%) Stakeholder Management
4 82 (8.89%) ITIL
5 75 (8.13%) Project Management
6 71 (7.70%) Agile
7 65 (7.05%) High Availability
7 65 (7.05%) Roadmaps
8 64 (6.94%) Infrastructure as Code
9 62 (6.72%) Continuous Improvement
9 62 (6.72%) Project Delivery
10 61 (6.62%) CI/CD
11 59 (6.40%) Load Balancing
12 57 (6.18%) Change Management
13 53 (5.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 50 (5.42%) DevOps
15 48 (5.21%) Data Centre Operations
16 46 (4.99%) Change Control
16 46 (4.99%) ITSM
17 43 (4.66%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 80 (8.68%) Python
2 55 (5.97%) PowerShell
3 36 (3.90%) SQL
4 29 (3.15%) Bash
5 23 (2.49%) Java
6 18 (1.95%) Perl
7 12 (1.30%) Shell Script
8 9 (0.98%) Lisp
9 8 (0.87%) COBOL
10 7 (0.76%) Bicep
10 7 (0.76%) MATLAB
11 5 (0.54%) VBA
12 4 (0.43%) C
12 4 (0.43%) C++
12 4 (0.43%) JavaScript
13 3 (0.33%) Korn
13 3 (0.33%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 1 (0.11%) Groovy
14 1 (0.11%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 301 (32.65%) Security Cleared
2 235 (25.49%) SC Cleared
3 166 (18.00%) Cisco Certification
4 124 (13.45%) CCNP
5 69 (7.48%) Degree
6 66 (7.16%) CCNA
7 59 (6.40%) DV Cleared
8 25 (2.71%) CCIE
9 24 (2.60%) Network+ Certification
9 24 (2.60%) PMI Certification
10 23 (2.49%) PMP
11 20 (2.17%) AWS Certification
12 19 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (1.95%) A+ Certification
13 18 (1.95%) MCSE
14 16 (1.74%) JNCIS
15 13 (1.41%) Azure Certification
15 13 (1.41%) JNCIP
16 12 (1.30%) CISSP
16 12 (1.30%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (3.04%) PMO
2 21 (2.28%) NIST
2 21 (2.28%) SLA
3 20 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 19 (2.06%) PCI DSS
5 15 (1.63%) QA
6 14 (1.52%) GDPR
7 9 (0.98%) NCSC
8 7 (0.76%) Data Quality
9 5 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
9 5 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
10 4 (0.43%) GRC
11 3 (0.33%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.22%) ISO 22301
12 2 (0.22%) SOC 2
13 1 (0.11%) COBIT
13 1 (0.11%) RMADS
13 1 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 77 (8.35%) VMware Infrastructure
2 59 (6.40%) Active Directory
3 46 (4.99%) VMware NSX
4 24 (2.60%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (2.17%) Firmware
6 19 (2.06%) vSphere
7 17 (1.84%) Hyper-V
8 16 (1.74%) Docker
9 10 (1.08%) KVM
9 10 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
10 3 (0.33%) SRDF
11 2 (0.22%) Ceph
11 2 (0.22%) Lustre
11 2 (0.22%) PowerHA
11 2 (0.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.22%) vCloud
11 2 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.22%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.11%) RHEV
12 1 (0.11%) UAG
Systems Management
1 86 (9.33%) Ansible
2 77 (8.35%) Terraform
3 55 (5.97%) FortiGate
4 29 (3.15%) Kubernetes
5 26 (2.82%) Grafana
6 21 (2.28%) SCCM
7 14 (1.52%) Prometheus
8 13 (1.41%) Microsoft Intune
9 8 (0.87%) Check_MK
10 7 (0.76%) CASB
10 7 (0.76%) Podman
10 7 (0.76%) Red Hat Satellite
10 7 (0.76%) SCOM
10 7 (0.76%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.65%) PowerCLI
11 6 (0.65%) SCOrch
12 5 (0.54%) vMotion
13 4 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (0.43%) NetBackup
13 4 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 288 (31.24%) Cisco
2 119 (12.91%) Palo Alto
3 114 (12.36%) VMware
4 94 (10.20%) Microsoft
5 83 (9.00%) Dell
6 81 (8.79%) Juniper
7 67 (7.27%) F5
8 51 (5.53%) ServiceNow
9 45 (4.88%) HP
10 44 (4.77%) Aruba
10 44 (4.77%) CheckPoint
11 38 (4.12%) Meraki
12 35 (3.80%) Fortinet
13 32 (3.47%) Apple
14 31 (3.36%) Oracle
14 31 (3.36%) SolarWinds
15 28 (3.04%) Arista
15 28 (3.04%) SAP
16 26 (2.82%) Citrix
16 26 (2.82%) Google