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

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 134 132 100
Rank change year-on-year -2 -32 -4
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 865 623 993
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.11% 2.03% 2.22%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.30% 6.10% 7.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 550 377 658
10th Percentile £278 £350 £295
25th Percentile £400 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -7.32% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £575 £627 £636
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -6.20% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 24 45
10th Percentile £20.89 £21.54 £17.95
25th Percentile £25.15 - £22.00
Median hourly rate £26.14 £24.18 £25.12
Median % change year-on-year +8.09% -3.72% -54.83%
75th Percentile £72.34 £28.88 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £41.25 £74.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.33 £24.18 £23.50
% change year-on-year +195.00% +2.89% +8.44%

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 13,739 10,208 13,597
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.54% 33.21% 30.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,655 6,183 8,754
10th Percentile £275 £265 £258
25th Percentile £405 £406 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £765 £752
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 654 324 830
10th Percentile £15.38 £18.51 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £23.30 £16.57
Median hourly rate £30.75 £32.91 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.55% +1.25% +44.54%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £58.70
90th Percentile £76.60 £82.43 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.30 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -6.76% -7.14% +59.09%

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 21 February 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 21 February 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 21 February 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 -13 710 £478 -8.08% 369
UK excluding London +3 491 £469 -6.20% 260
London -24 255 £515 -0.96% 145
Work from Home +35 246 £475 -11.21% 108
North of England +6 167 £474 -4.72% 60
South East +8 126 £445 - 106
North West +12 100 £500 - 31
Midlands -22 73 £455 -22.88% 35
West Midlands -28 58 £470 -20.34% 21
Scotland +29 56 £456 +1.39% 15
Yorkshire -37 53 £438 +4.29% 26
South West -36 33 £550 -3.08% 22
East of England -15 29 £478 +13.14% 28
Wales +3 21 £350 -12.50% 4
North East -6 17 £175 - 3
East Midlands -17 15 £158 -70.70% 14
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 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 27 (3.12%) SharePoint
2 20 (2.31%) Microsoft Exchange
3 19 (2.20%) Confluence
4 7 (0.81%) OpenStack
5 6 (0.69%) CICS
6 4 (0.46%) nginx
6 4 (0.46%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.35%) GeoServer
7 3 (0.35%) HCL Notes
7 3 (0.35%) Smallworld
8 2 (0.23%) Oracle Coherence
8 2 (0.23%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.12%) Apache
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.12%) Mendix
Applications
1 49 (5.66%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (3.01%) MS Visio
3 24 (2.77%) Microsoft Excel
4 19 (2.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (1.62%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.35%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.12%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 5 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
3 3 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.23%) DELMIA
4 2 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.12%) Epicor iScala
5 1 (0.12%) Maximo
5 1 (0.12%) Primavera
5 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 157 (18.15%) Azure
2 127 (14.68%) AWS
3 65 (7.51%) Microsoft 365
4 50 (5.78%) GCP
5 19 (2.20%) SaaS
5 19 (2.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 17 (1.97%) Power Platform
7 16 (1.85%) IaaS
8 15 (1.73%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 14 (1.62%) Entra ID
9 14 (1.62%) OpenShift
9 14 (1.62%) PaaS
10 12 (1.39%) GitHub
11 11 (1.27%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 11 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (1.27%) AWS Direct Connect
11 11 (1.27%) Azure DevOps
12 10 (1.16%) Nutanix
13 9 (1.04%) Amazon S3
14 7 (0.81%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 249 (28.79%) Firewall
2 155 (17.92%) WAN
3 116 (13.41%) BGP
4 98 (11.33%) LAN
5 89 (10.29%) Network Security
5 89 (10.29%) VPN
6 85 (9.83%) OSPF
7 80 (9.25%) Wireless
8 59 (6.82%) DNS
9 53 (6.13%) VLAN
10 50 (5.78%) Structured Cabling
11 49 (5.66%) VXLAN
12 46 (5.32%) SAN
12 46 (5.32%) Wi-Fi
13 45 (5.20%) DHCP
14 41 (4.74%) Cisco ISE
15 38 (4.39%) SD-WAN
16 37 (4.28%) Cisco Nexus
17 34 (3.93%) IPsec
18 32 (3.70%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.73%) Power BI
2 14 (1.62%) Relational Database
3 8 (0.92%) DataStage
3 8 (0.92%) SQL Server
4 7 (0.81%) RDBMS
5 5 (0.58%) GIS
6 4 (0.46%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.46%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.46%) Power Query
6 4 (0.46%) PowerPivot
7 3 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (0.35%) InfluxDB
7 3 (0.35%) QGIS
8 2 (0.23%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.23%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.23%) Big Data
8 2 (0.23%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.23%) Data Vault
8 2 (0.23%) Metadata
8 2 (0.23%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 27 (3.12%) Git
2 24 (2.77%) JIRA
3 20 (2.31%) Jenkins
4 16 (1.85%) GitLab
5 9 (1.04%) Maven
6 8 (0.92%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (0.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 3 (0.35%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.35%) JMeter
8 3 (0.35%) ScriptRunner
9 2 (0.23%) Eclipse
9 2 (0.23%) ER Studio
9 2 (0.23%) ERwin
9 2 (0.23%) Rational DOORS
9 2 (0.23%) Subversion
10 1 (0.12%) AppScan
10 1 (0.12%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.12%) Metasploit
General
1 224 (25.90%) Social Skills
2 143 (16.53%) Finance
3 99 (11.45%) Public Sector
4 96 (11.10%) Analytical Skills
5 59 (6.82%) Documentation Skills
6 52 (6.01%) Telecoms
7 44 (5.09%) Banking
8 43 (4.97%) Manufacturing
9 31 (3.58%) Marketing
10 24 (2.77%) Electronics
11 23 (2.66%) Legal
12 21 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
13 19 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
14 16 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (1.50%) Retail
16 12 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
17 11 (1.27%) Investment Banking
18 9 (1.04%) Military
19 8 (0.92%) Law
20 6 (0.69%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 153 (17.69%) Network Engineer
2 131 (15.14%) Architect
3 75 (8.67%) Project Manager
4 67 (7.75%) Analyst
4 67 (7.75%) Senior
5 47 (5.43%) Data Centre Engineer
6 44 (5.09%) Network Architect
7 43 (4.97%) Solutions Architect
8 42 (4.86%) Lead
9 35 (4.05%) Data Centre Manager
10 34 (3.93%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 33 (3.82%) IT Support
12 30 (3.47%) Consultant
13 29 (3.35%) Cisco Engineer
13 29 (3.35%) Infrastructure Manager
14 27 (3.12%) Cisco Network Engineer
15 26 (3.01%) Security Engineer
16 25 (2.89%) Desktop Support
16 25 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 25 (2.89%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (3.24%) 802.1X
2 26 (3.01%) Middleware
3 9 (1.04%) LDAP
4 6 (0.69%) RFC 2544
4 6 (0.69%) Spring
5 4 (0.46%) ADO
5 4 (0.46%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.46%) Spring Boot
5 4 (0.46%) VML
6 3 (0.35%) REST
6 3 (0.35%) Yocto
7 2 (0.23%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.23%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (0.23%) Java EE
7 2 (0.23%) Kafka
7 2 (0.23%) NETCONF
7 2 (0.23%) OpenConfig
7 2 (0.23%) OpenLayers
7 2 (0.23%) RESTCONF
7 2 (0.23%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 45 (5.20%) Hybrid Cloud
2 22 (2.54%) Self-Motivation
3 21 (2.43%) Analytical Mindset
4 20 (2.31%) Public Cloud
5 19 (2.20%) Cloud Native
5 19 (2.20%) Driving Licence
5 19 (2.20%) Onboarding
6 18 (2.08%) CMDB
7 17 (1.97%) PKI
8 15 (1.73%) Clustering
8 15 (1.73%) Management Information System
9 13 (1.50%) Fibre Optics
9 13 (1.50%) NHS
9 13 (1.50%) Replication
10 12 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (1.39%) SCADA
11 10 (1.16%) Mainframe
12 9 (1.04%) Private Cloud
13 8 (0.92%) Virtual Team
14 7 (0.81%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 113 (13.06%) Windows
2 106 (12.25%) Linux
3 40 (4.62%) Windows Server
4 35 (4.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (3.70%) Android
5 32 (3.70%) Mac OS
6 17 (1.97%) Unix
7 11 (1.27%) CentOS
8 8 (0.92%) Solaris
9 7 (0.81%) VMS
9 7 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.69%) AIX
11 5 (0.58%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.35%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.35%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
13 2 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.12%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 151 (17.46%) Migration
2 142 (16.42%) Problem-Solving
3 103 (11.91%) Stakeholder Management
4 72 (8.32%) ITIL
5 69 (7.98%) Project Management
6 68 (7.86%) Agile
7 61 (7.05%) Project Delivery
8 60 (6.94%) Infrastructure as Code
9 59 (6.82%) High Availability
10 58 (6.71%) Roadmaps
11 57 (6.59%) CI/CD
12 56 (6.47%) Continuous Improvement
13 52 (6.01%) Load Balancing
14 51 (5.90%) DevOps
15 50 (5.78%) Change Management
16 49 (5.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 45 (5.20%) Change Control
18 44 (5.09%) Customer Service
19 42 (4.86%) Cybersecurity
19 42 (4.86%) Programme Management
Programming Languages
1 77 (8.90%) Python
2 55 (6.36%) PowerShell
3 36 (4.16%) SQL
4 27 (3.12%) Bash
5 20 (2.31%) Java
6 16 (1.85%) Perl
7 13 (1.50%) Shell Script
8 9 (1.04%) Lisp
9 7 (0.81%) Bicep
9 7 (0.81%) MATLAB
10 6 (0.69%) COBOL
11 5 (0.58%) VBA
12 4 (0.46%) C++
12 4 (0.46%) JavaScript
13 3 (0.35%) C
13 3 (0.35%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.23%) Go
14 2 (0.23%) Korn
14 2 (0.23%) Ruby
15 1 (0.12%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 290 (33.53%) Security Cleared
2 231 (26.71%) SC Cleared
3 153 (17.69%) Cisco Certification
4 117 (13.53%) CCNP
5 65 (7.51%) Degree
6 58 (6.71%) CCNA
7 54 (6.24%) DV Cleared
8 26 (3.01%) CCIE
9 22 (2.54%) AWS Certification
9 22 (2.54%) PMP
10 21 (2.43%) PMI Certification
11 17 (1.97%) Network+ Certification
12 16 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
13 15 (1.73%) A+ Certification
13 15 (1.73%) MCSE
14 14 (1.62%) JNCIS
15 12 (1.39%) Azure Certification
15 12 (1.39%) CISSP
16 11 (1.27%) JNCIP
17 10 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (3.12%) PMO
2 21 (2.43%) SLA
3 20 (2.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 20 (2.31%) NIST
4 18 (2.08%) PCI DSS
5 15 (1.73%) GDPR
6 14 (1.62%) QA
7 9 (1.04%) Data Quality
8 8 (0.92%) NCSC
9 5 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
10 4 (0.46%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.46%) GRC
11 2 (0.23%) ISO 22301
11 2 (0.23%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.23%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.12%) COBIT
12 1 (0.12%) RMADS
System Software
1 79 (9.13%) VMware Infrastructure
2 58 (6.71%) Active Directory
3 49 (5.66%) VMware NSX
4 25 (2.89%) Virtual Machines
5 20 (2.31%) vSphere
6 19 (2.20%) Hyper-V
7 15 (1.73%) Docker
8 12 (1.39%) Firmware
8 12 (1.39%) KVM
9 10 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
10 3 (0.35%) SRDF
11 2 (0.23%) Ceph
11 2 (0.23%) Lustre
11 2 (0.23%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.23%) vCloud
11 2 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
12 1 (0.12%) HDFS
12 1 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.12%) RHEV
12 1 (0.12%) UAG
Systems Management
1 85 (9.83%) Ansible
2 78 (9.02%) Terraform
3 50 (5.78%) FortiGate
4 30 (3.47%) Kubernetes
5 24 (2.77%) Grafana
6 21 (2.43%) SCCM
7 13 (1.50%) Prometheus
8 10 (1.16%) Microsoft Intune
9 8 (0.92%) Check_MK
9 8 (0.92%) SCOM
10 7 (0.81%) CASB
10 7 (0.81%) Podman
10 7 (0.81%) Red Hat Satellite
10 7 (0.81%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.69%) PowerCLI
11 6 (0.69%) SCOrch
12 5 (0.58%) Puppet
12 5 (0.58%) vMotion
13 4 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (0.46%) Nagios
Vendors
1 276 (31.91%) Cisco
2 117 (13.53%) Palo Alto
3 108 (12.49%) VMware
4 86 (9.94%) Microsoft
5 78 (9.02%) Dell
6 76 (8.79%) Juniper
7 63 (7.28%) F5
8 49 (5.66%) ServiceNow
9 46 (5.32%) CheckPoint
10 45 (5.20%) HP
11 43 (4.97%) Aruba
12 37 (4.28%) Meraki
13 36 (4.16%) Fortinet
14 32 (3.70%) Apple
15 30 (3.47%) Oracle
16 29 (3.35%) SAP
17 27 (3.12%) Arista
18 26 (3.01%) SolarWinds
19 25 (2.89%) Red Hat
20 24 (2.77%) Citrix