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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 133 115
Rank change year-on-year +10 -18 -24
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,204 725 775
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.19% 2.19% 2.05%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.38% 6.10% 6.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 736 456 472
10th Percentile £318 £290 £363
25th Percentile £413 £381 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.37% -4.19% -2.33%
75th Percentile £650 £600 £615
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 71 41 35
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.83
25th Percentile £19.04 - £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 £31.00 £26.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £40.00 £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 18,873 11,876 11,546
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.37% 35.92% 30.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,278 7,270 6,942
10th Percentile £322 £294 £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 1,272 602 427
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.80 £15.29
25th Percentile £17.85 £18.87 £22.50
Median hourly rate £36.00 £29.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.14% -42.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £75.06
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £29.27 £57.35
% change year-on-year +28.12% -48.96% +13.09%

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 +6 1,022 £534 +2.74% 1,998
UK excluding London -13 649 £500 +5.26% 911
London +21 411 £550 +2.80% 1,099
Work from Home -16 276 £545 +7.92% 494
North of England +4 226 £500 +5.26% 217
South East -3 175 £525 +25.37% 277
Yorkshire +11 135 £496 +10.22% 44
North West -20 73 £525 -2.33% 101
South West -16 65 £623 +13.18% 84
Midlands -64 65 £475 -4.23% 109
West Midlands -47 54 £500 - 83
Scotland -13 46 £375 -11.76% 46
East of England -8 43 £500 -16.67% 124
Wales +4 36 £468 +55.83% 43
North East -15 24 £625 +257.14% 73
East Midlands -23 11 £413 -14.29% 26
Channel Islands - 1 £575 - 2
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 22

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 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.75%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.58%) IIS
6 5 (0.42%) Apache
6 5 (0.42%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.25%) CICS
8 1 (0.083%) nginx
8 1 (0.083%) SAS
8 1 (0.083%) Tomcat
Applications
1 25 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 21 (1.74%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.83%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.42%) 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
1 254 (21.10%) Azure
2 210 (17.44%) AWS
3 63 (5.23%) GCP
4 60 (4.98%) GitHub
5 47 (3.90%) IaaS
6 46 (3.82%) Microsoft 365
7 39 (3.24%) Entra ID
8 37 (3.07%) SaaS
9 29 (2.41%) OCI
10 20 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
10 20 (1.66%) PaaS
11 16 (1.33%) OpenShift
12 15 (1.25%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 15 (1.25%) OneDrive
12 15 (1.25%) 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
1 290 (24.09%) Firewall
2 186 (15.45%) WAN
3 170 (14.12%) BGP
4 129 (10.71%) DNS
5 123 (10.22%) VPN
6 119 (9.88%) Network Security
7 112 (9.30%) LAN
7 112 (9.30%) VXLAN
8 105 (8.72%) VLAN
9 104 (8.64%) OSPF
10 94 (7.81%) SAN
11 88 (7.31%) DHCP
12 86 (7.14%) TCP/IP
13 83 (6.89%) SD-WAN
14 82 (6.81%) Ethernet VPN
15 63 (5.23%) Wireless
16 62 (5.15%) Structured Cabling
17 60 (4.98%) Wi-Fi
18 54 (4.49%) BIG-IP
19 52 (4.32%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (3.74%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.25%) 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 (0.42%) 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 (6.64%) JIRA
2 37 (3.07%) GitLab
3 36 (2.99%) Jenkins
4 27 (2.24%) 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
1 288 (23.92%) Social Skills
2 174 (14.45%) Finance
3 99 (8.22%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (5.32%) Banking
5 55 (4.57%) Public Sector
5 55 (4.57%) Telecoms
6 45 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
7 26 (2.16%) Retail
8 25 (2.08%) Legal
9 18 (1.50%) 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
15 5 (0.42%) Cyber-Physical System
15 5 (0.42%) Law
16 4 (0.33%) Marketing
16 4 (0.33%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 199 (16.53%) Architect
1 199 (16.53%) Network Engineer
2 149 (12.38%) Senior
3 121 (10.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 83 (6.89%) Data Centre Engineer
5 78 (6.48%) Project Manager
6 75 (6.23%) Lead
7 70 (5.81%) Network Architect
8 46 (3.82%) Consultant
8 46 (3.82%) IT Engineer
9 43 (3.57%) Data Centre Manager
10 42 (3.49%) Senior Network Engineer
11 40 (3.32%) Technical Architect
12 34 (2.82%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 34 (2.82%) Support Engineer
13 33 (2.74%) Infrastructure Manager
13 33 (2.74%) Solutions Architect
14 31 (2.57%) Analyst
14 31 (2.57%) Field Engineer
15 29 (2.41%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 118 (9.80%) Terraform
2 34 (2.82%) Middleware
3 32 (2.66%) REST
4 18 (1.50%) YAML
5 17 (1.41%) 802.1X
6 15 (1.25%) .NET
6 15 (1.25%) JSON
7 7 (0.58%) NETCONF
8 6 (0.50%) Elastic Stack
8 6 (0.50%) LDAP
8 6 (0.50%) SAML
9 5 (0.42%) Kafka
9 5 (0.42%) OpenConfig
9 5 (0.42%) Redfish
9 5 (0.42%) RESTCONF
9 5 (0.42%) YANG
10 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
10 4 (0.33%) RESTful
11 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
11 3 (0.25%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 83 (6.89%) Hybrid Cloud
2 48 (3.99%) Public Cloud
3 37 (3.07%) Private Cloud
4 34 (2.82%) Cloud Native
5 32 (2.66%) Analytical Mindset
5 32 (2.66%) Enterprise Storage
6 31 (2.57%) Management Information System
6 31 (2.57%) PKI
7 29 (2.41%) Replication
8 27 (2.24%) Onboarding
9 26 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
10 25 (2.08%) Clustering
10 25 (2.08%) Operational Technology
11 20 (1.66%) Fibre Optics
11 20 (1.66%) SCADA
12 19 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
13 16 (1.33%) CMDB
13 16 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
14 15 (1.25%) Driving Licence
15 13 (1.08%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 206 (17.11%) Windows
2 136 (11.30%) Linux
3 76 (6.31%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.74%) Unix
5 19 (1.58%) 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 (0.42%) HPUX
12 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.42%) SUSE
12 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
14 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 262 (21.76%) Migration
2 185 (15.37%) Problem-Solving
3 170 (14.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 159 (13.21%) Stakeholder Management
5 133 (11.05%) Infrastructure as Code
6 114 (9.47%) ITIL
7 108 (8.97%) CI/CD
8 106 (8.80%) Agile
9 98 (8.14%) High Availability
9 98 (8.14%) Project Delivery
10 96 (7.97%) Validation
11 93 (7.72%) Continuous Improvement
11 93 (7.72%) Roadmaps
12 90 (7.48%) Disaster Recovery
13 83 (6.89%) Zero Trust
14 80 (6.64%) Change Management
15 79 (6.56%) Cybersecurity
16 74 (6.15%) Technical Leadership
17 73 (6.06%) DevOps
18 69 (5.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 162 (13.46%) Python
2 73 (6.06%) PowerShell
3 55 (4.57%) SQL
4 33 (2.74%) Bash
5 18 (1.50%) ActionScript
6 15 (1.25%) C#
7 11 (0.91%) Bicep
7 11 (0.91%) T-SQL
8 8 (0.66%) Perl
9 7 (0.58%) PL/SQL
9 7 (0.58%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.33%) Go
10 4 (0.33%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.25%) Java
11 3 (0.25%) JCL
11 3 (0.25%) Lisp
11 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.17%) COBOL
12 2 (0.17%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 309 (25.66%) Security Cleared
2 209 (17.36%) SC Cleared
3 163 (13.54%) Cisco Certification
4 102 (8.47%) DV Cleared
5 98 (8.14%) CCNP
6 63 (5.23%) Degree
7 60 (4.98%) CCNA
8 35 (2.91%) Network+ Certification
9 34 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
10 33 (2.74%) AWS Certification
11 32 (2.66%) A+ Certification
12 29 (2.41%) CCIE
12 29 (2.41%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 28 (2.33%) CISSP
14 26 (2.16%) Azure Certification
14 26 (2.16%) MCSE
15 22 (1.83%) PMI Certification
16 21 (1.74%) PMP
17 19 (1.58%) VCAP
18 18 (1.50%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (2.91%) QA
2 30 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (2.33%) NIST
4 26 (2.16%) SLA
5 14 (1.16%) GDPR
5 14 (1.16%) GRC
5 14 (1.16%) PMO
6 9 (0.75%) JSP 440
6 9 (0.75%) NCSC
7 8 (0.66%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.50%) ISO 31000
8 6 (0.50%) ISO 9001
8 6 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27005
9 5 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.42%) NIST 800
10 4 (0.33%) RMADS
11 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.17%) HIPAA
12 2 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 157 (13.04%) VMware Infrastructure
2 100 (8.31%) Active Directory
3 54 (4.49%) vSphere
4 52 (4.32%) VMware NSX
5 41 (3.41%) Hyper-V
6 37 (3.07%) VMware ESXi
7 35 (2.91%) Docker
8 26 (2.16%) Firmware
9 14 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.91%) NFS
11 8 (0.66%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.42%) ISA Server
13 5 (0.42%) 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%) KVM
15 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 148 (12.29%) 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 6 (0.50%) CASB
14 5 (0.42%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 292 (24.25%) Cisco
2 208 (17.28%) VMware
3 159 (13.21%) Microsoft
4 132 (10.96%) Palo Alto
5 112 (9.30%) F5
6 70 (5.81%) ServiceNow
7 68 (5.65%) Fortinet
8 65 (5.40%) Arista
9 61 (5.07%) Dell
9 61 (5.07%) Juniper
10 43 (3.57%) Aruba
11 38 (3.16%) CheckPoint
12 35 (2.91%) Oracle
13 34 (2.82%) Veeam
14 33 (2.74%) Red Hat
15 32 (2.66%) Google
16 26 (2.16%) Commvault
17 25 (2.08%) Zscaler
18 24 (1.99%) IBM
18 24 (1.99%) SolarWinds