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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 98 131 101
Rank change year-on-year +33 -30 -14
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,189 632 931
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.40% 2.15% 2.13%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.42% 6.28% 7.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 716 409 629
10th Percentile £318 £303 £300
25th Percentile £405 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -6.54% -2.73%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £472 £475 £538
% change year-on-year -0.63% -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 20 49
10th Percentile £16.00 - £12.08
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £18.00
Median hourly rate £19.85 £32.75 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.38% +36.44% +11.81%
75th Percentile £35.22 £41.88 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £49.38 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £25.08 £23.25
% change year-on-year -22.87% +7.85% +9.36%

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 16,033 10,071 13,093
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.40% 34.29% 30.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,853 6,340 8,370
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.56% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £660
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 799 430 937
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.55 £20.09 £15.39
Median hourly rate £41.94 £33.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.09% -5.71% +56.70%
75th Percentile £70.00 £61.68 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.42 £82.25 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year +38.41% -9.26% +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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 +28 975 £495 -4.81% 373
UK excluding London +13 679 £472 -0.63% 237
London +9 341 £550 +4.76% 169
Work from Home +35 325 £480 -5.88% 138
North of England +18 239 £474 +11.53% 49
South East +8 212 £463 +2.78% 97
Yorkshire -2 120 £365 -12.05% 20
North West +11 95 £481 -4.47% 22
Midlands -56 58 £465 -15.45% 24
Scotland +2 57 £466 +6.46% 13
West Midlands -41 53 £467 -15.12% 21
South West -13 52 £495 -13.91% 27
East of England -8 38 £492 +31.20% 26
Wales +3 34 £468 +16.88% 4
North East +5 30 £625 +468.18% 7
East Midlands -33 4 £325 -36.97% 3
Northern Ireland - 2 £425 - 3
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 24 (2.02%) Confluence
2 16 (1.35%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.93%) CICS
3 11 (0.93%) Microsoft Exchange
4 4 (0.34%) Apache
4 4 (0.34%) CloudStack
4 4 (0.34%) nginx
4 4 (0.34%) OpenStack
4 4 (0.34%) WebLogic
5 3 (0.25%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.084%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.084%) IIS
6 1 (0.084%) Mendix
Applications
1 15 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 11 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
3 10 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
4 9 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.25%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.25%) Primavera
1 3 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.17%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.084%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 250 (21.03%) Azure
2 212 (17.83%) AWS
3 77 (6.48%) GCP
4 39 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
5 35 (2.94%) GitHub
5 35 (2.94%) IaaS
6 32 (2.69%) SaaS
7 30 (2.52%) OCI
8 22 (1.85%) Entra ID
9 17 (1.43%) PaaS
9 17 (1.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 14 (1.18%) Azure DevOps
10 14 (1.18%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 14 (1.18%) OneDrive
10 14 (1.18%) OpenShift
11 12 (1.01%) Power Platform
12 11 (0.93%) Azure Sentinel
12 11 (0.93%) Nutanix
13 9 (0.76%) AWS Direct Connect
13 9 (0.76%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 334 (28.09%) Firewall
2 200 (16.82%) WAN
3 186 (15.64%) BGP
4 147 (12.36%) OSPF
5 124 (10.43%) Network Security
5 124 (10.43%) VXLAN
6 123 (10.34%) VPN
7 118 (9.92%) LAN
7 118 (9.92%) SAN
8 102 (8.58%) DNS
9 97 (8.16%) VLAN
10 93 (7.82%) Structured Cabling
11 87 (7.32%) Ethernet VPN
12 85 (7.15%) SD-WAN
13 79 (6.64%) DHCP
14 56 (4.71%) BIG-IP
15 52 (4.37%) Cisco Nexus
16 50 (4.21%) Wi-Fi
17 47 (3.95%) NX-OS
18 45 (3.78%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (1.35%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.84%) DataStage
3 7 (0.59%) Power BI
4 6 (0.50%) Big Data
4 6 (0.50%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.34%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.34%) Oracle Database
5 4 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.34%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.34%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
6 3 (0.25%) GIS
7 2 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (0.17%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.17%) Geospatial Data
7 2 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
7 2 (0.17%) Power Query
7 2 (0.17%) PowerPivot
Development Applications
1 59 (4.96%) JIRA
2 39 (3.28%) GitLab
3 36 (3.03%) Jenkins
4 31 (2.61%) Git
5 7 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.50%) ScriptRunner
7 5 (0.42%) JMeter
7 5 (0.42%) Maven
8 4 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 4 (0.34%) Eclipse
8 4 (0.34%) Subversion
9 3 (0.25%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.25%) Zephyr
10 1 (0.084%) AppScan
10 1 (0.084%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.084%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.084%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.084%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.084%) MSI
10 1 (0.084%) Postman
General
1 292 (24.56%) Social Skills
2 158 (13.29%) Finance
3 131 (11.02%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (6.81%) Public Sector
5 61 (5.13%) Documentation Skills
6 45 (3.78%) Banking
7 34 (2.86%) Legal
7 34 (2.86%) Telecoms
8 25 (2.10%) Manufacturing
9 21 (1.77%) Influencing Skills
10 19 (1.60%) Retail
11 15 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 12 (1.01%) Law
13 10 (0.84%) Military
14 9 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (0.67%) Aerospace
15 8 (0.67%) Financial Institution
15 8 (0.67%) Marketing
16 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
16 5 (0.42%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 205 (17.24%) Network Engineer
2 190 (15.98%) Architect
3 133 (11.19%) Senior
4 96 (8.07%) Data Centre Engineer
5 88 (7.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 70 (5.89%) Project Manager
7 63 (5.30%) Lead
8 58 (4.88%) IT Engineer
9 55 (4.63%) Field Engineer
10 53 (4.46%) Network Architect
11 52 (4.37%) Field Service Engineer
12 44 (3.70%) Solutions Architect
13 41 (3.45%) Analyst
14 40 (3.36%) Data Centre Manager
15 37 (3.11%) Technical Architect
16 36 (3.03%) Infrastructure Manager
17 34 (2.86%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
18 33 (2.78%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 33 (2.78%) Senior Network Engineer
18 33 (2.78%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (4.21%) Middleware
2 31 (2.61%) 802.1X
3 11 (0.93%) LDAP
4 10 (0.84%) Redfish
5 9 (0.76%) REST
6 7 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.59%) Spring
7 5 (0.42%) Jinja
7 5 (0.42%) Kafka
7 5 (0.42%) XML
8 4 (0.34%) ADO
8 4 (0.34%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.34%) YAML
9 3 (0.25%) ARM Templates
9 3 (0.25%) HTML
9 3 (0.25%) Java EE
9 3 (0.25%) JSON
9 3 (0.25%) NETCONF
9 3 (0.25%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 64 (5.38%) Hybrid Cloud
2 58 (4.88%) Analytical Mindset
3 37 (3.11%) Management Information System
4 32 (2.69%) Cloud Native
5 30 (2.52%) Clustering
6 29 (2.44%) PKI
7 27 (2.27%) Enterprise Storage
7 27 (2.27%) Onboarding
8 24 (2.02%) Fibre Optics
9 22 (1.85%) Private Cloud
10 21 (1.77%) Driving Licence
11 20 (1.68%) CMDB
12 19 (1.60%) Public Cloud
12 19 (1.60%) Replication
13 18 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
14 17 (1.43%) SCADA
15 16 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
16 14 (1.18%) NHS
17 13 (1.09%) Operational Technology
18 12 (1.01%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 157 (13.20%) Windows
2 151 (12.70%) Linux
3 39 (3.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 37 (3.11%) Windows Server
5 23 (1.93%) Unix
6 22 (1.85%) AIX
7 17 (1.43%) Solaris
8 11 (0.93%) CentOS
9 9 (0.76%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.76%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.76%) Ubuntu
9 9 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
10 8 (0.67%) VMS
11 4 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
11 4 (0.34%) HPUX
11 4 (0.34%) Oracle Linux
11 4 (0.34%) SUSE
12 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 208 (17.49%) Problem-Solving
2 196 (16.48%) Migration
3 117 (9.84%) High Availability
4 115 (9.67%) Infrastructure as Code
5 113 (9.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 109 (9.17%) Stakeholder Management
7 107 (9.00%) ITIL
8 100 (8.41%) CI/CD
9 96 (8.07%) Roadmaps
10 91 (7.65%) Continuous Improvement
11 85 (7.15%) Load Balancing
12 83 (6.98%) DevOps
13 82 (6.90%) Agile
14 79 (6.64%) Validation
15 73 (6.14%) Change Management
15 73 (6.14%) Project Delivery
15 73 (6.14%) Project Management
16 71 (5.97%) Customer Service
17 65 (5.47%) ITSM
18 64 (5.38%) Break/Fix
Programming Languages
1 144 (12.11%) Python
2 43 (3.62%) PowerShell
3 37 (3.11%) SQL
4 27 (2.27%) Bash
5 21 (1.77%) Java
6 16 (1.35%) Shell Script
7 13 (1.09%) Bicep
8 12 (1.01%) COBOL
9 11 (0.93%) MATLAB
10 10 (0.84%) Perl
11 8 (0.67%) ActionScript
11 8 (0.67%) PL/SQL
12 6 (0.50%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.34%) C
13 4 (0.34%) C++
13 4 (0.34%) Lisp
14 3 (0.25%) VBA
15 2 (0.17%) C#
15 2 (0.17%) JCL
15 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 324 (27.25%) Security Cleared
2 242 (20.35%) SC Cleared
3 238 (20.02%) Cisco Certification
4 145 (12.20%) CCNP
5 108 (9.08%) CCNA
6 73 (6.14%) DV Cleared
7 70 (5.89%) Degree
8 67 (5.63%) Network+ Certification
9 56 (4.71%) Microsoft Certification
10 50 (4.21%) A+ Certification
10 50 (4.21%) MCSE
11 30 (2.52%) Azure Certification
12 25 (2.10%) AWS Certification
12 25 (2.10%) City & Guilds
13 24 (2.02%) CCIE
13 24 (2.02%) PMP
14 23 (1.93%) PMI Certification
15 20 (1.68%) BICSI Certification
16 18 (1.51%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 17 (1.43%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (2.69%) SLA
2 27 (2.27%) NIST
3 25 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 23 (1.93%) QA
5 22 (1.85%) PMO
6 18 (1.51%) GDPR
7 12 (1.01%) NCSC
8 10 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 9 (0.76%) Disclosure Scotland
9 9 (0.76%) GRC
10 7 (0.59%) RMADS
11 6 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.34%) JSP 440
13 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
14 2 (0.17%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
14 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 1 (0.084%) NEBOSH
15 1 (0.084%) WCAG
System Software
1 102 (8.58%) VMware Infrastructure
2 63 (5.30%) Active Directory
3 32 (2.69%) vSphere
4 31 (2.61%) Firmware
4 31 (2.61%) VMware NSX
5 30 (2.52%) VMware ESXi
6 26 (2.19%) Hyper-V
6 26 (2.19%) Virtual Machines
7 14 (1.18%) Docker
8 11 (0.93%) KVM
9 7 (0.59%) NFS
10 6 (0.50%) SRDF
10 6 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.42%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.34%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.25%) Ceph
13 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (0.25%) PowerHA
13 3 (0.25%) Terminal Services
13 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 140 (11.77%) Ansible
2 111 (9.34%) Terraform
3 58 (4.88%) FortiGate
4 48 (4.04%) Kubernetes
5 35 (2.94%) Grafana
6 29 (2.44%) Prometheus
7 24 (2.02%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (1.18%) vCenter Server
9 13 (1.09%) Check_MK
9 13 (1.09%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.93%) Podman
10 11 (0.93%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.93%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (0.84%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.84%) SCCM
11 10 (0.84%) vMotion
12 9 (0.76%) Jamf Pro
13 7 (0.59%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.59%) EMC NetWorker
13 7 (0.59%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 310 (26.07%) Cisco
2 154 (12.95%) VMware
3 150 (12.62%) Palo Alto
4 113 (9.50%) F5
5 111 (9.34%) Microsoft
6 95 (7.99%) Dell
7 88 (7.40%) Juniper
8 72 (6.06%) Arista
9 63 (5.30%) Fortinet
10 55 (4.63%) ServiceNow
11 54 (4.54%) Aruba
12 42 (3.53%) CheckPoint
12 42 (3.53%) Google
13 41 (3.45%) Red Hat
14 40 (3.36%) SolarWinds
15 35 (2.94%) IBM
16 28 (2.35%) Oracle
16 28 (2.35%) Splunk
17 25 (2.10%) NVIDIA
18 23 (1.93%) Atlassian