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

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 108 129 101
Rank change year-on-year +21 -28 -10
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,071 639 955
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.25% 2.18% 2.21%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.02% 6.41% 7.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 659 415 638
10th Percentile £318 £330 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.34% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £535
% change year-on-year -2.50% -11.21% +7.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 24 46
10th Percentile - £24.18 £14.88
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £21.25
Median hourly rate £19.34 £27.50 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.67% +14.58% +10.75%
75th Percentile £31.50 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £75.31 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £24.00
% change year-on-year -21.57% +2.75% +12.89%

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 15,251 9,965 13,119
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.08% 34.02% 30.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,494 6,364 8,440
10th Percentile £306 £300 £263
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £656
90th Percentile £738 £775 £798
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 719 400 905
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.31 £21.01 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +7.76% +34.13%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.50 £82.57 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £31.08 £28.25
% change year-on-year +60.88% +10.02% +28.41%

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 5 May 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 5 May 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 5 May 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 +14 871 £478 -8.95% 489
UK excluding London +6 606 £463 -2.50% 300
London +10 307 £550 +4.76% 222
Work from Home +13 273 £475 -9.09% 160
North of England +32 193 £453 +16.52% 65
South East -1 189 £458 +1.67% 99
Yorkshire +6 93 £365 -2.67% 21
North West +9 84 £478 -4.50% 33
Midlands -55 55 £467 -15.12% 35
Scotland -3 53 £469 +10.35% 19
South West -36 52 £513 -6.48% 45
West Midlands -42 49 £468 -15.98% 25
East of England -27 38 £478 +13.14% 39
Wales +1 33 £455 +13.75% 6
North East -1 18 £400 +263.64% 11
East Midlands -34 5 £400 -27.27% 10
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 3

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 22 (2.05%) Confluence
2 13 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (1.03%) SharePoint
4 10 (0.93%) CICS
5 4 (0.37%) nginx
5 4 (0.37%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.37%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.19%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.19%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.093%) Mendix
Applications
1 19 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
1 19 (1.77%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (1.21%) MS Visio
4 11 (1.03%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.28%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.19%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.19%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 4 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.19%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.19%) Primavera
4 1 (0.093%) Maximo
4 1 (0.093%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.093%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 199 (18.58%) Azure
2 162 (15.13%) AWS
3 62 (5.79%) GCP
4 35 (3.27%) Microsoft 365
5 23 (2.15%) SaaS
6 19 (1.77%) Entra ID
6 19 (1.77%) IaaS
7 18 (1.68%) GitHub
8 17 (1.59%) OCI
8 17 (1.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (1.40%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 14 (1.31%) PaaS
11 13 (1.21%) OpenShift
11 13 (1.21%) Power Platform
12 12 (1.12%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (1.03%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 10 (0.93%) AWS CloudFormation
14 10 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
15 9 (0.84%) AWS Direct Connect
16 8 (0.75%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 297 (27.73%) Firewall
2 181 (16.90%) WAN
3 167 (15.59%) BGP
4 133 (12.42%) OSPF
5 116 (10.83%) Network Security
6 110 (10.27%) VPN
7 109 (10.18%) LAN
8 100 (9.34%) VXLAN
9 98 (9.15%) SAN
10 81 (7.56%) Structured Cabling
11 71 (6.63%) DNS
11 71 (6.63%) Ethernet VPN
11 71 (6.63%) VLAN
12 56 (5.23%) SD-WAN
13 53 (4.95%) DHCP
14 50 (4.67%) Cisco Nexus
15 47 (4.39%) Wi-Fi
16 39 (3.64%) NX-OS
17 38 (3.55%) BIG-IP
18 37 (3.45%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (0.93%) DataStage
1 10 (0.93%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.75%) Power BI
3 6 (0.56%) Relational Database
4 5 (0.47%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.37%) Big Data
5 4 (0.37%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.37%) Power Query
5 4 (0.37%) PowerPivot
5 4 (0.37%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.28%) InfluxDB
7 2 (0.19%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.19%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.19%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.19%) GIS
7 2 (0.19%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.19%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.19%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.093%) MS Access
Development Applications
1 45 (4.20%) JIRA
2 36 (3.36%) Git
3 26 (2.43%) GitLab
4 24 (2.24%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.84%) Maven
6 8 (0.75%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.56%) ScriptRunner
8 5 (0.47%) JMeter
9 4 (0.37%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 4 (0.37%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.37%) Subversion
10 3 (0.28%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.28%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.093%) AppScan
11 1 (0.093%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.093%) LoadRunner
11 1 (0.093%) Metasploit
11 1 (0.093%) Postman
General
1 272 (25.40%) Social Skills
2 147 (13.73%) Finance
3 137 (12.79%) Analytical Skills
4 79 (7.38%) Public Sector
5 56 (5.23%) Documentation Skills
6 48 (4.48%) Banking
7 31 (2.89%) Legal
8 30 (2.80%) Telecoms
9 23 (2.15%) Retail
10 22 (2.05%) Manufacturing
11 20 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
12 12 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
13 10 (0.93%) Military
14 9 (0.84%) Law
15 8 (0.75%) Marketing
16 7 (0.65%) Aerospace
17 6 (0.56%) Financial Institution
17 6 (0.56%) Investment Banking
17 6 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 192 (17.93%) Network Engineer
2 169 (15.78%) Architect
3 115 (10.74%) Senior
4 80 (7.47%) Data Centre Engineer
5 76 (7.10%) Project Manager
6 59 (5.51%) IT Engineer
7 56 (5.23%) Field Engineer
7 56 (5.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 54 (5.04%) Lead
9 53 (4.95%) Field Service Engineer
10 47 (4.39%) Network Architect
11 46 (4.30%) Data Centre Manager
12 39 (3.64%) Analyst
12 39 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
13 35 (3.27%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 33 (3.08%) Infrastructure Manager
14 33 (3.08%) Senior Network Engineer
15 29 (2.71%) Support Engineer
15 29 (2.71%) Technical Architect
16 27 (2.52%) Cisco Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (3.92%) Middleware
2 32 (2.99%) 802.1X
3 11 (1.03%) LDAP
4 8 (0.75%) Redfish
5 6 (0.56%) Elastic Stack
5 6 (0.56%) Spring
6 5 (0.47%) Jinja
6 5 (0.47%) NETCONF
6 5 (0.47%) REST
6 5 (0.47%) XML
7 4 (0.37%) ADO
7 4 (0.37%) ARM Templates
7 4 (0.37%) OpenConfig
7 4 (0.37%) RESTCONF
7 4 (0.37%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.37%) VML
7 4 (0.37%) YANG
8 3 (0.28%) Kafka
8 3 (0.28%) RFC 2544
8 3 (0.28%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 61 (5.70%) Analytical Mindset
2 58 (5.42%) Hybrid Cloud
3 30 (2.80%) Management Information System
4 29 (2.71%) Clustering
5 28 (2.61%) PKI
6 26 (2.43%) Cloud Native
7 24 (2.24%) Fibre Optics
8 22 (2.05%) Public Cloud
9 21 (1.96%) Driving Licence
10 20 (1.87%) Onboarding
11 19 (1.77%) CMDB
11 19 (1.77%) Replication
11 19 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
12 18 (1.68%) Enterprise Storage
13 17 (1.59%) Private Cloud
13 17 (1.59%) SCADA
14 15 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
15 14 (1.31%) NHS
16 13 (1.21%) Mainframe
17 11 (1.03%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 134 (12.51%) Windows
2 129 (12.04%) Linux
3 42 (3.92%) Windows Server
4 36 (3.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (2.15%) Unix
6 19 (1.77%) AIX
7 16 (1.49%) Solaris
8 11 (1.03%) CentOS
9 8 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
10 7 (0.65%) VMS
11 5 (0.47%) Android
11 5 (0.47%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.47%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.37%) HPUX
12 4 (0.37%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.37%) SUSE
13 3 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.28%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 200 (18.67%) Problem-Solving
2 187 (17.46%) Migration
3 101 (9.43%) Stakeholder Management
4 95 (8.87%) High Availability
5 92 (8.59%) ITIL
6 89 (8.31%) Infrastructure as Code
7 86 (8.03%) Continuous Improvement
8 84 (7.84%) Roadmaps
9 76 (7.10%) CI/CD
10 75 (7.00%) Load Balancing
10 75 (7.00%) Project Management
11 71 (6.63%) Change Management
12 70 (6.54%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 69 (6.44%) Break/Fix
14 68 (6.35%) Validation
15 65 (6.07%) Customer Service
15 65 (6.07%) Project Delivery
16 59 (5.51%) DevOps
17 58 (5.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 58 (5.42%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 107 (9.99%) Python
2 40 (3.73%) PowerShell
3 33 (3.08%) SQL
4 24 (2.24%) Java
5 20 (1.87%) Bash
6 15 (1.40%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.12%) COBOL
8 10 (0.93%) Perl
9 9 (0.84%) Bicep
9 9 (0.84%) MATLAB
10 5 (0.47%) C
10 5 (0.47%) C++
10 5 (0.47%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.47%) VBA
11 4 (0.37%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.28%) Korn
12 3 (0.28%) Lisp
13 2 (0.19%) Groovy
13 2 (0.19%) JCL
14 1 (0.093%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 311 (29.04%) Security Cleared
2 229 (21.38%) SC Cleared
3 227 (21.20%) Cisco Certification
4 133 (12.42%) CCNP
5 103 (9.62%) CCNA
6 68 (6.35%) DV Cleared
7 63 (5.88%) Degree
8 59 (5.51%) Network+ Certification
9 52 (4.86%) Microsoft Certification
10 51 (4.76%) A+ Certification
10 51 (4.76%) MCSE
11 26 (2.43%) CCIE
12 24 (2.24%) PMP
13 23 (2.15%) PMI Certification
14 20 (1.87%) Azure Certification
14 20 (1.87%) City & Guilds
15 17 (1.59%) AWS Certification
15 17 (1.59%) BICSI Certification
16 16 (1.49%) JNCIS
17 14 (1.31%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (2.71%) SLA
2 26 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 25 (2.33%) PMO
4 24 (2.24%) QA
5 22 (2.05%) NIST
6 20 (1.87%) GDPR
7 11 (1.03%) NCSC
7 11 (1.03%) PCI DSS
8 8 (0.75%) Disclosure Scotland
8 8 (0.75%) GRC
9 5 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.28%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.28%) RMADS
12 2 (0.19%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.093%) COBIT
13 1 (0.093%) NEBOSH
13 1 (0.093%) SOC 1
System Software
1 90 (8.40%) VMware Infrastructure
2 58 (5.42%) Active Directory
3 48 (4.48%) VMware NSX
4 28 (2.61%) Firmware
5 27 (2.52%) vSphere
6 24 (2.24%) VMware ESXi
7 22 (2.05%) Virtual Machines
8 20 (1.87%) Hyper-V
9 13 (1.21%) Docker
10 10 (0.93%) KVM
11 4 (0.37%) SRDF
11 4 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
12 3 (0.28%) NFS
12 3 (0.28%) PowerHA
12 3 (0.28%) UAG
12 3 (0.28%) Veritas Cluster Server
13 2 (0.19%) Ceph
13 2 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.19%) vCloud
13 2 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 116 (10.83%) Ansible
2 91 (8.50%) Terraform
3 60 (5.60%) FortiGate
4 41 (3.83%) Kubernetes
5 34 (3.17%) Grafana
6 24 (2.24%) Prometheus
7 13 (1.21%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (1.21%) SCCM
8 11 (1.03%) NetBackup
8 11 (1.03%) vCenter Server
9 10 (0.93%) Check_MK
10 9 (0.84%) Podman
10 9 (0.84%) PowerCLI
10 9 (0.84%) Red Hat Satellite
11 8 (0.75%) Dell DRAC
11 8 (0.75%) vMotion
12 7 (0.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (0.56%) EMC NetWorker
13 6 (0.56%) SCOM
14 5 (0.47%) Nagios
Vendors
1 288 (26.89%) Cisco
2 137 (12.79%) VMware
3 136 (12.70%) Palo Alto
4 99 (9.24%) Dell
5 96 (8.96%) Microsoft
6 93 (8.68%) F5
7 88 (8.22%) Juniper
8 56 (5.23%) Arista
9 50 (4.67%) Aruba
10 47 (4.39%) Fortinet
11 44 (4.11%) CheckPoint
12 37 (3.45%) ServiceNow
13 35 (3.27%) Google
13 35 (3.27%) SolarWinds
14 34 (3.17%) Red Hat
15 31 (2.89%) Splunk
16 30 (2.80%) IBM
17 27 (2.52%) Oracle
18 26 (2.43%) Meraki
19 23 (2.15%) Atlassian