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 15 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 135 93
Rank change year-on-year -7 -42 +9
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 742 617 997
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.00% 1.94% 2.36%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.84% 6.01% 7.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 483 370 666
10th Percentile £278 £350 £308
25th Percentile £401 £425 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £602 £638
90th Percentile £688 £678 £703
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.20% -0.04% +0.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 27 27
10th Percentile £21.46 £16.88 £16.25
25th Percentile £25.15 £23.01 £21.25
Median hourly rate £25.77 £24.18 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.58% +5.13% -64.06%
75th Percentile £45.31 £29.00 £54.38
90th Percentile £74.01 £41.25 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.75 £24.18 £23.00
% change year-on-year +171.91% +5.13% -65.15%

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 12,709 10,260 13,073
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.26% 32.22% 30.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,011 6,098 8,616
10th Percentile £276 £263 £263
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £533 £545
Median % change year-on-year -6.15% -2.25% -1.80%
75th Percentile £625 £661 £660
90th Percentile £738 £775 £761
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 611 320 558
10th Percentile £14.25 £18.14 £15.42
25th Percentile £18.22 £23.52 £18.93
Median hourly rate £27.21 £34.25 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.55% -8.67% +56.25%
75th Percentile £60.75 £64.81 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.90 £75.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.21 £32.50 £41.37
% change year-on-year -16.28% -21.43% +95.12%

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 15 January 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 15 January 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 15 January 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 -5 640 £499 -4.95% 464
UK excluding London -4 417 £474 -5.20% 406
London -18 232 £530 +0.95% 130
Work from Home +53 214 £515 -3.74% 184
North of England +4 144 £475 -4.76% 78
South East -3 98 £445 -1.11% 145
North West +19 89 £519 +3.85% 34
Midlands -3 79 £437 -24.85% 36
West Midlands -6 63 £474 -18.28% 14
Yorkshire -31 48 £414 -1.43% 32
Scotland +12 37 £450 - 31
South West -36 34 £550 - 44
East of England -14 29 £485 +14.79% 58
East Midlands -18 16 £158 -74.80% 20
North East -4 10 £175 - 13
Wales -8 8 £234 -41.56% 22
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 8

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 29 (3.91%) SharePoint
2 22 (2.96%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.35%) Confluence
4 9 (1.21%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.81%) Apache
7 5 (0.67%) Apache Spark
8 4 (0.54%) HCL Notes
8 4 (0.54%) nginx
9 3 (0.40%) GeoServer
9 3 (0.40%) Smallworld
9 3 (0.40%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.27%) CICS
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle Coherence
10 2 (0.27%) ThingWorx
10 2 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.13%) FileNet
11 1 (0.13%) IIS
11 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 51 (6.87%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (4.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 26 (3.50%) MS Visio
4 19 (2.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (1.89%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.13%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 6 (0.81%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.54%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.27%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.13%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.13%) Primavera
4 1 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 140 (18.87%) Azure
2 109 (14.69%) AWS
3 63 (8.49%) Microsoft 365
4 42 (5.66%) GCP
5 24 (3.23%) Power Platform
6 14 (1.89%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 14 (1.89%) SaaS
6 14 (1.89%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 13 (1.75%) OpenShift
8 11 (1.48%) AWS Direct Connect
8 11 (1.48%) Entra ID
8 11 (1.48%) GitHub
8 11 (1.48%) PaaS
9 10 (1.35%) AWS CloudFormation
9 10 (1.35%) IaaS
10 8 (1.08%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 7 (0.94%) Azure DevOps
11 7 (0.94%) npm
11 7 (0.94%) OCI
12 5 (0.67%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 217 (29.25%) Firewall
2 145 (19.54%) WAN
3 87 (11.73%) Wireless
4 81 (10.92%) BGP
5 80 (10.78%) LAN
5 80 (10.78%) VPN
6 70 (9.43%) Network Security
7 59 (7.95%) OSPF
8 51 (6.87%) Wi-Fi
9 50 (6.74%) DNS
10 46 (6.20%) VLAN
11 45 (6.06%) SD-WAN
12 40 (5.39%) SAN
13 35 (4.72%) Cisco ISE
13 35 (4.72%) Cisco Nexus
14 34 (4.58%) VXLAN
15 31 (4.18%) DHCP
15 31 (4.18%) IPsec
16 29 (3.91%) NX-OS
16 29 (3.91%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (2.96%) Power BI
2 15 (2.02%) Relational Database
3 9 (1.21%) RDBMS
3 9 (1.21%) SQL Server
4 6 (0.81%) GIS
4 6 (0.81%) NoSQL
5 5 (0.67%) Apache Hive
5 5 (0.67%) Hadoop
5 5 (0.67%) HBase
6 4 (0.54%) Data Mining
6 4 (0.54%) Oracle Database
6 4 (0.54%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.54%) Power Query
6 4 (0.54%) PowerPivot
7 3 (0.40%) Data Lake
7 3 (0.40%) Data Vault
7 3 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
7 3 (0.40%) InfluxDB
7 3 (0.40%) Metadata
7 3 (0.40%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 27 (3.64%) Git
2 23 (3.10%) Jenkins
3 15 (2.02%) GitLab
4 12 (1.62%) JIRA
4 12 (1.62%) Sonatype Nexus
5 9 (1.21%) Maven
6 7 (0.94%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.40%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.40%) ER Studio
7 3 (0.40%) ERwin
7 3 (0.40%) ScriptRunner
8 2 (0.27%) Gradle
8 2 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
8 2 (0.27%) Selenium
General
1 189 (25.47%) Social Skills
2 132 (17.79%) Finance
3 91 (12.26%) Analytical Skills
4 87 (11.73%) Public Sector
5 61 (8.22%) Telecoms
6 55 (7.41%) Banking
7 48 (6.47%) Documentation Skills
8 43 (5.80%) Manufacturing
9 28 (3.77%) Marketing
10 25 (3.37%) Electronics
11 23 (3.10%) Presentation Skills
12 17 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 13 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
13 13 (1.75%) Retail
14 10 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
15 9 (1.21%) Legal
16 8 (1.08%) Law
17 7 (0.94%) Front Office
17 7 (0.94%) Investment Banking
17 7 (0.94%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 133 (17.92%) Network Engineer
2 116 (15.63%) Architect
3 69 (9.30%) Project Manager
4 64 (8.63%) Analyst
5 52 (7.01%) Senior
6 42 (5.66%) Network Architect
7 34 (4.58%) Solutions Architect
8 32 (4.31%) Data Centre Manager
9 31 (4.18%) Cisco Engineer
9 31 (4.18%) Consultant
10 30 (4.04%) Lead
10 30 (4.04%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 29 (3.91%) Cisco Network Engineer
11 29 (3.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 28 (3.77%) IT Support
13 27 (3.64%) Security Engineer
14 26 (3.50%) Data Centre Engineer
15 25 (3.37%) Desktop Support
16 23 (3.10%) 2nd Line Support
16 23 (3.10%) SC Cleared Desktop Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.10%) 802.1X
1 23 (3.10%) Middleware
2 10 (1.35%) LDAP
3 9 (1.21%) RFC 2544
4 5 (0.67%) Spark Streaming
5 4 (0.54%) ADO
5 4 (0.54%) Jinja
5 4 (0.54%) VML
6 3 (0.40%) ARM Templates
6 3 (0.40%) REST
6 3 (0.40%) Yocto
7 2 (0.27%) CSS
7 2 (0.27%) EJB
7 2 (0.27%) Elastic Stack
7 2 (0.27%) ModSecurity
7 2 (0.27%) NETCONF
7 2 (0.27%) OpenConfig
7 2 (0.27%) OpenLayers
7 2 (0.27%) RESTCONF
7 2 (0.27%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 43 (5.80%) Hybrid Cloud
2 25 (3.37%) Cloud Native
2 25 (3.37%) Public Cloud
3 20 (2.70%) Self-Motivation
4 18 (2.43%) Onboarding
5 16 (2.16%) Fibre Optics
6 15 (2.02%) Analytical Mindset
6 15 (2.02%) Driving Licence
6 15 (2.02%) Replication
7 14 (1.89%) Mainframe
7 14 (1.89%) Management Information System
7 14 (1.89%) Private Cloud
8 13 (1.75%) SCADA
9 11 (1.48%) CMDB
9 11 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
9 11 (1.48%) PKI
10 8 (1.08%) Clustering
10 8 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
11 7 (0.94%) Operational Technology
11 7 (0.94%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 97 (13.07%) Windows
2 81 (10.92%) Linux
3 40 (5.39%) Windows Server
4 36 (4.85%) Android
4 36 (4.85%) Mac OS
5 25 (3.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (1.75%) Unix
7 10 (1.35%) CentOS
8 7 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.81%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.67%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.67%) VMS
11 4 (0.54%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.54%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.40%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.40%) Solaris
13 2 (0.27%) zOS
14 1 (0.13%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (15.77%) Migration
2 113 (15.23%) Problem-Solving
3 90 (12.13%) Stakeholder Management
4 69 (9.30%) ITIL
5 63 (8.49%) Agile
6 60 (8.09%) Project Management
7 57 (7.68%) Project Delivery
8 52 (7.01%) DevOps
9 48 (6.47%) CI/CD
9 48 (6.47%) Infrastructure as Code
10 46 (6.20%) Network Design
11 45 (6.06%) Customer Service
12 44 (5.93%) Business Intelligence
13 43 (5.80%) Service Management
13 43 (5.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 42 (5.66%) Continuous Improvement
15 41 (5.53%) Change Management
15 41 (5.53%) Programme Management
15 41 (5.53%) Roadmaps
16 40 (5.39%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 75 (10.11%) Python
2 48 (6.47%) PowerShell
3 38 (5.12%) SQL
4 20 (2.70%) Bash
5 17 (2.29%) Java
6 12 (1.62%) Shell Script
7 10 (1.35%) Perl
8 8 (1.08%) Lisp
9 6 (0.81%) MATLAB
10 5 (0.67%) VBA
11 4 (0.54%) C++
12 3 (0.40%) Bicep
12 3 (0.40%) C
12 3 (0.40%) Go
12 3 (0.40%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.40%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.27%) Ruby
14 1 (0.13%) Groovy
14 1 (0.13%) JCL
14 1 (0.13%) Korn
Qualifications
1 252 (33.96%) Security Cleared
2 211 (28.44%) SC Cleared
3 114 (15.36%) Cisco Certification
4 88 (11.86%) CCNP
5 63 (8.49%) Degree
6 45 (6.06%) CCNA
7 43 (5.80%) DV Cleared
8 25 (3.37%) CCIE
9 22 (2.96%) AWS Certification
10 17 (2.29%) PMP
11 16 (2.16%) PMI Certification
12 12 (1.62%) CISSP
12 12 (1.62%) JNCIE
13 9 (1.21%) A+ Certification
13 9 (1.21%) MCSE
13 9 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
13 9 (1.21%) Network+ Certification
14 8 (1.08%) Azure Certification
14 8 (1.08%) BPSS Clearance
14 8 (1.08%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (2.70%) PMO
1 20 (2.70%) SLA
2 19 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (2.43%) NIST
4 15 (2.02%) PCI DSS
5 14 (1.89%) QA
6 13 (1.75%) Data Quality
7 12 (1.62%) GDPR
8 6 (0.81%) NCSC
9 2 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.27%) GRC
9 2 (0.27%) ISO 22301
9 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 2 (0.27%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.13%) NIST 800
10 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 76 (10.24%) VMware Infrastructure
2 53 (7.14%) Active Directory
3 42 (5.66%) VMware NSX
4 24 (3.23%) Docker
5 20 (2.70%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (2.29%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.48%) vSphere
8 9 (1.21%) Firmware
9 8 (1.08%) KVM
9 8 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.67%) HDFS
11 3 (0.40%) Lustre
12 2 (0.27%) Ceph
12 2 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
12 2 (0.27%) NFS
12 2 (0.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.27%) SRDF
12 2 (0.27%) vCloud
12 2 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.27%) Xen
Systems Management
1 79 (10.65%) Ansible
2 69 (9.30%) Terraform
3 39 (5.26%) FortiGate
4 25 (3.37%) SCCM
5 21 (2.83%) Kubernetes
6 14 (1.89%) Grafana
7 10 (1.35%) vCenter Server
8 9 (1.21%) Microsoft Intune
8 9 (1.21%) Puppet
8 9 (1.21%) SCOM
9 7 (0.94%) CASB
9 7 (0.94%) Check_MK
9 7 (0.94%) Prometheus
10 6 (0.81%) Podman
10 6 (0.81%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (0.81%) SCOrch
11 5 (0.67%) Hadoop YARN
12 4 (0.54%) Nagios
12 4 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
13 3 (0.40%) OPNET
Vendors
1 254 (34.23%) Cisco
2 100 (13.48%) Palo Alto
2 100 (13.48%) VMware
3 87 (11.73%) Microsoft
4 68 (9.16%) Dell
5 55 (7.41%) Juniper
6 54 (7.28%) F5
7 46 (6.20%) HP
8 43 (5.80%) CheckPoint
9 37 (4.99%) ServiceNow
10 36 (4.85%) Apple
11 35 (4.72%) Aruba
12 34 (4.58%) Fortinet
13 33 (4.45%) Meraki
13 33 (4.45%) SAP
14 32 (4.31%) Oracle
15 17 (2.29%) Arista
15 17 (2.29%) Red Hat
16 16 (2.16%) Citrix
17 14 (1.89%) IBM