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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 127 134 118
Rank change year-on-year +7 -16 -27
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,207 713 750
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.18% 2.15% 2.00%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.28% 5.97% 6.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 736 447 449
10th Percentile £325 £267 £358
25th Percentile £413 £375 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £650 £600 £614
90th Percentile £750 £715 £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 77 41 35
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.83
25th Percentile £19.33 - £12.08
Median hourly rate £35.22 £25.15 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +40.04% +11.78% -2.17%
75th Percentile £54.25 £31.00 £26.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £40.00 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £25.11 £15.00
% change year-on-year -6.42% +67.42% -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 19,207 11,950 11,468
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.75% 36.02% 30.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,472 7,334 6,832
10th Percentile £322 £293 £280
25th Percentile £425 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £519 £529
Median % change year-on-year +1.25% -1.94% -3.86%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £668
90th Percentile £750 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.75% -1.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,350 623 401
10th Percentile £13.94 £14.33 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.57 £18.50 £23.30
Median hourly rate £35.91 £27.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +30.58% -40.45% +2.62%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.06 £72.50 £75.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £26.75 £52.50
% change year-on-year +30.84% -49.05% +2.46%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 1,033 £534 +6.70% 1,215
UK excluding London -10 650 £500 +5.26% 496
London +2 418 £550 +3.77% 719
Work from Home -19 282 £533 +4.41% 354
North of England +3 227 £500 +7.41% 118
South East 0 167 £525 +29.23% 142
Yorkshire +14 134 £500 +11.11% 33
Midlands -66 74 £475 +0.40% 60
North West -26 73 £550 +2.80% 70
West Midlands -53 61 £500 - 43
South West -21 57 £650 +18.18% 42
East of England -3 52 £500 -16.67% 82
Scotland -4 47 £375 -16.67% 29
Wales +7 33 £468 +61.90% 17
North East -19 26 £625 +257.14% 15
East Midlands -25 13 £425 -2.75% 17
Channel Islands - 1 £575 -
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 10

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 37 (3.07%) Confluence
2 19 (1.57%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.75%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.58%) IIS
6 5 (0.41%) Apache
6 5 (0.41%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.083%) CICS
7 1 (0.083%) nginx
7 1 (0.083%) SAS
7 1 (0.083%) Tomcat
Applications
1 23 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
1 23 (1.91%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
3 10 (0.83%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.58%) Revit
5 6 (0.50%) Navisworks
6 5 (0.41%) AutoCAD
7 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%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.083%) Primavera
3 1 (0.083%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 260 (21.54%) Azure
2 212 (17.56%) AWS
3 70 (5.80%) GCP
4 61 (5.05%) GitHub
5 49 (4.06%) Microsoft 365
6 48 (3.98%) IaaS
7 40 (3.31%) SaaS
8 39 (3.23%) Entra ID
9 32 (2.65%) OCI
10 23 (1.91%) Azure DevOps
11 21 (1.74%) PaaS
12 19 (1.57%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 17 (1.41%) AWS Direct Connect
13 17 (1.41%) OpenShift
14 15 (1.24%) OneDrive
14 15 (1.24%) Power Platform
15 13 (1.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 12 (0.99%) Nutanix
17 8 (0.66%) Azure Monitor
18 7 (0.58%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 282 (23.36%) Firewall
2 184 (15.24%) WAN
3 167 (13.84%) BGP
4 131 (10.85%) DNS
5 121 (10.02%) Network Security
6 120 (9.94%) VPN
7 108 (8.95%) LAN
8 105 (8.70%) VLAN
9 101 (8.37%) VXLAN
10 100 (8.29%) OSPF
11 89 (7.37%) TCP/IP
12 88 (7.29%) SAN
12 88 (7.29%) SD-WAN
13 84 (6.96%) DHCP
14 75 (6.21%) Ethernet VPN
15 62 (5.14%) Wireless
16 59 (4.89%) Structured Cabling
16 59 (4.89%) Wi-Fi
17 52 (4.31%) BIG-IP
18 51 (4.23%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (3.81%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.24%) 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
7 5 (0.41%) Db2
7 5 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database 12c
8 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
9 3 (0.25%) Big Data
9 3 (0.25%) PostgreSQL
10 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.17%) Flink
10 2 (0.17%) Metadata
10 2 (0.17%) Sybase ASE
10 2 (0.17%) Sybase IQ
Development Applications
1 82 (6.79%) JIRA
2 40 (3.31%) Jenkins
3 37 (3.07%) GitLab
4 29 (2.40%) Git
5 7 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.25%) Cucumber
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%) Appium
8 1 (0.083%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.083%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.083%) Postman
8 1 (0.083%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.083%) Selenium
8 1 (0.083%) SpecFlow
General
1 293 (24.28%) Social Skills
2 182 (15.08%) Finance
3 92 (7.62%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (5.22%) Banking
5 59 (4.89%) Public Sector
6 58 (4.81%) Telecoms
7 46 (3.81%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (2.07%) Legal
9 24 (1.99%) Retail
10 19 (1.57%) Manufacturing
11 17 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
12 16 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
13 13 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 8 (0.66%) Police
15 6 (0.50%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.50%) Investment Banking
16 5 (0.41%) Cyber-Physical System
16 5 (0.41%) Law
16 5 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
17 4 (0.33%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 193 (15.99%) Architect
2 189 (15.66%) Network Engineer
3 144 (11.93%) Senior
4 121 (10.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 87 (7.21%) Data Centre Engineer
6 81 (6.71%) Project Manager
7 74 (6.13%) Lead
8 72 (5.97%) Network Architect
9 49 (4.06%) Consultant
10 44 (3.65%) Data Centre Manager
11 37 (3.07%) IT Engineer
12 36 (2.98%) Technical Architect
13 35 (2.90%) Senior Network Engineer
13 35 (2.90%) Solutions Architect
14 34 (2.82%) Analyst
14 34 (2.82%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 33 (2.73%) Support Engineer
16 31 (2.57%) Infrastructure Manager
17 29 (2.40%) Technical Manager
18 28 (2.32%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 118 (9.78%) Terraform
2 34 (2.82%) REST
3 29 (2.40%) Middleware
4 18 (1.49%) YAML
5 16 (1.33%) .NET
5 16 (1.33%) JSON
6 13 (1.08%) 802.1X
7 6 (0.50%) LDAP
7 6 (0.50%) NETCONF
7 6 (0.50%) OpenAPI
7 6 (0.50%) SAML
7 6 (0.50%) Swagger
8 5 (0.41%) Elastic Stack
8 5 (0.41%) OpenConfig
8 5 (0.41%) RESTCONF
8 5 (0.41%) SOAP
8 5 (0.41%) YANG
9 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
9 4 (0.33%) Kafka
9 4 (0.33%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 84 (6.96%) Hybrid Cloud
2 48 (3.98%) Public Cloud
3 35 (2.90%) Enterprise Storage
4 34 (2.82%) Cloud Native
5 32 (2.65%) Private Cloud
6 30 (2.49%) PKI
7 29 (2.40%) Management Information System
7 29 (2.40%) Onboarding
8 28 (2.32%) Replication
9 26 (2.15%) Operational Technology
10 25 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
11 24 (1.99%) Clustering
12 22 (1.82%) SCADA
13 21 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
13 21 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
14 20 (1.66%) CMDB
15 17 (1.41%) Fibre Optics
16 15 (1.24%) Driving Licence
17 13 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
18 11 (0.91%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 204 (16.90%) Windows
2 127 (10.52%) Linux
3 78 (6.46%) Windows Server
4 29 (2.40%) Unix
5 17 (1.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (1.08%) macOS
7 12 (0.99%) AIX
8 10 (0.83%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.75%) VMS
9 9 (0.75%) Windows 10
10 8 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.50%) Solaris
12 5 (0.41%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.25%) HPUX
13 3 (0.25%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.25%) SUSE
13 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.25%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 264 (21.87%) Migration
2 179 (14.83%) Problem-Solving
3 175 (14.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 171 (14.17%) Stakeholder Management
5 134 (11.10%) Infrastructure as Code
6 113 (9.36%) Agile
6 113 (9.36%) ITIL
7 112 (9.28%) CI/CD
8 103 (8.53%) Project Delivery
9 100 (8.29%) High Availability
10 97 (8.04%) Validation
11 95 (7.87%) Continuous Improvement
12 90 (7.46%) Roadmaps
13 89 (7.37%) Disaster Recovery
14 83 (6.88%) Zero Trust
15 82 (6.79%) Change Management
16 79 (6.55%) Cybersecurity
17 77 (6.38%) DevOps
18 71 (5.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 69 (5.72%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 166 (13.75%) Python
2 76 (6.30%) PowerShell
3 55 (4.56%) SQL
4 35 (2.90%) Bash
5 19 (1.57%) ActionScript
6 17 (1.41%) C#
7 12 (0.99%) T-SQL
8 11 (0.91%) Bicep
9 8 (0.66%) Perl
10 7 (0.58%) PL/SQL
10 7 (0.58%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.41%) Go
11 5 (0.41%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.33%) Java
12 4 (0.33%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.25%) JCL
13 3 (0.25%) Lisp
14 2 (0.17%) Korn
14 2 (0.17%) MATLAB
14 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 307 (25.43%) Security Cleared
2 212 (17.56%) SC Cleared
3 140 (11.60%) Cisco Certification
4 100 (8.29%) DV Cleared
5 89 (7.37%) CCNP
6 60 (4.97%) Degree
7 49 (4.06%) CCNA
8 34 (2.82%) AWS Certification
9 27 (2.24%) CCIE
10 26 (2.15%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 25 (2.07%) CISSP
11 25 (2.07%) Microsoft Certification
11 25 (2.07%) Network+ Certification
12 23 (1.91%) A+ Certification
12 23 (1.91%) Azure Certification
13 22 (1.82%) PMI Certification
14 21 (1.74%) PMP
15 19 (1.57%) VCAP
16 17 (1.41%) MCSE
17 15 (1.24%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (2.98%) QA
2 28 (2.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 27 (2.24%) SLA
4 25 (2.07%) NIST
5 14 (1.16%) PMO
6 12 (0.99%) GDPR
6 12 (0.99%) GRC
7 9 (0.75%) JSP 440
7 9 (0.75%) NCSC
8 8 (0.66%) PCI DSS
9 6 (0.50%) ISO 31000
9 6 (0.50%) ISO 9001
9 6 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 5 (0.41%) Disclosure Scotland
10 5 (0.41%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.33%) RMADS
12 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 2 (0.17%) HIPAA
System Software
1 155 (12.84%) VMware Infrastructure
2 100 (8.29%) Active Directory
3 55 (4.56%) vSphere
4 48 (3.98%) VMware NSX
5 41 (3.40%) Hyper-V
6 37 (3.07%) Docker
7 34 (2.82%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (2.15%) Firmware
9 14 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.91%) NFS
11 6 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.41%) ISA Server
12 5 (0.41%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.33%) PowerHA
14 3 (0.25%) BitLocker
14 3 (0.25%) KVM
14 3 (0.25%) SRDF
14 3 (0.25%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 146 (12.10%) Ansible
2 60 (4.97%) Kubernetes
3 32 (2.65%) FortiGate
4 20 (1.66%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (1.41%) Prometheus
6 16 (1.33%) SCCM
6 16 (1.33%) vCenter Server
6 16 (1.33%) VxRail
7 14 (1.16%) Grafana
8 12 (0.99%) Microsoft Clustering
8 12 (0.99%) PowerCLI
9 11 (0.91%) SCOM
9 11 (0.91%) vMotion
10 10 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.75%) Dell DRAC
11 9 (0.75%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 7 (0.58%) Nagios
13 6 (0.50%) CASB
13 6 (0.50%) Cisco Prime
13 6 (0.50%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 282 (23.36%) Cisco
2 204 (16.90%) VMware
3 160 (13.26%) Microsoft
4 134 (11.10%) Palo Alto
5 109 (9.03%) F5
6 68 (5.63%) ServiceNow
7 66 (5.47%) Fortinet
8 60 (4.97%) Arista
9 59 (4.89%) Juniper
10 50 (4.14%) Dell
11 44 (3.65%) Aruba
12 37 (3.07%) CheckPoint
13 36 (2.98%) Google
13 36 (2.98%) Oracle
14 32 (2.65%) Veeam
15 31 (2.57%) Red Hat
16 26 (2.15%) Commvault
17 25 (2.07%) Zscaler
18 22 (1.82%) IBM
18 22 (1.82%) NetApp