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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 130 103
Rank change year-on-year +34 -27 -12
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,152 633 919
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.38% 2.20% 2.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.44% 6.45% 7.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 717 412 627
10th Percentile £318 £325 £300
25th Percentile £406 £413 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £506 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.06% -3.71% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £686 £704
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £538
% change year-on-year -1.26% -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 21 44
10th Percentile £16.00 £24.18 £13.33
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £18.27
Median hourly rate £19.34 £27.50 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.67% +14.58% +11.81%
75th Percentile £33.75 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £73.68 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £23.25
% change year-on-year -21.57% +6.06% +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 15,494 9,808 12,933
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.00% 34.06% 30.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,589 6,250 8,336
10th Percentile £313 £295 £270
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 745 384 910
10th Percentile £16.00 £16.67 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.64 £19.99 £15.17
Median hourly rate £39.50 £31.91 £33.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.81% -4.76% +52.27%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.40 £82.21 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £31.49 £31.50
% change year-on-year +42.90% -0.03% +48.17%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +33 937 £488 -6.70% 401
UK excluding London +9 661 £469 -1.26% 228
London +14 323 £550 +4.76% 197
Work from Home +33 305 £480 -6.34% 143
North of England +25 224 £474 +1.83% 55
South East +8 206 £463 +2.78% 81
Yorkshire -10 104 £365 -14.12% 23
North West +12 97 £481 -4.47% 24
Scotland +12 59 £469 +7.20% 14
Midlands -52 54 £465 -15.45% 27
South West -27 50 £495 -10.00% 27
West Midlands -53 48 £466 -15.29% 23
East of England -11 40 £492 +64.00% 21
Wales +3 34 £468 +16.88% 3
North East -1 25 £513 +365.91% 8
East Midlands -24 5 £400 -27.27% 4
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 5

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 (1.91%) Confluence
2 13 (1.13%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (0.87%) CICS
5 5 (0.43%) nginx
6 4 (0.35%) Apache
6 4 (0.35%) CloudStack
6 4 (0.35%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.26%) OpenStack
7 3 (0.26%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.087%) IIS
9 1 (0.087%) Mendix
Applications
1 16 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.13%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (1.04%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (0.95%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.26%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.26%) AutoCAD
5 3 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
1 3 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.17%) DELMIA
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.17%) Primavera
3 1 (0.087%) Maximo
3 1 (0.087%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 228 (19.79%) Azure
2 185 (16.06%) AWS
3 70 (6.08%) GCP
4 36 (3.13%) Microsoft 365
5 26 (2.26%) GitHub
5 26 (2.26%) IaaS
6 25 (2.17%) SaaS
7 24 (2.08%) OCI
8 22 (1.91%) Entra ID
9 17 (1.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 15 (1.30%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 13 (1.13%) PaaS
12 12 (1.04%) OpenShift
13 11 (0.95%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (0.95%) Power Platform
14 10 (0.87%) Azure Sentinel
14 10 (0.87%) OneDrive
15 9 (0.78%) AWS Direct Connect
15 9 (0.78%) Nutanix
16 8 (0.69%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 329 (28.56%) Firewall
2 201 (17.45%) WAN
3 180 (15.63%) BGP
4 146 (12.67%) OSPF
5 126 (10.94%) Network Security
6 123 (10.68%) LAN
7 121 (10.50%) VPN
8 114 (9.90%) VXLAN
9 112 (9.72%) SAN
10 94 (8.16%) Structured Cabling
11 91 (7.90%) VLAN
12 90 (7.81%) DNS
13 81 (7.03%) Ethernet VPN
14 72 (6.25%) SD-WAN
15 68 (5.90%) DHCP
16 52 (4.51%) Cisco Nexus
17 50 (4.34%) Wi-Fi
18 48 (4.17%) BIG-IP
19 43 (3.73%) NX-OS
20 40 (3.47%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (1.04%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.87%) DataStage
3 6 (0.52%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (0.52%) Power BI
4 5 (0.43%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.35%) Big Data
5 4 (0.35%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.35%) Oracle Database
5 4 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.35%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.26%) GIS
7 2 (0.17%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.17%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.17%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
7 2 (0.17%) Power Query
7 2 (0.17%) PowerPivot
8 1 (0.087%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.087%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 49 (4.25%) JIRA
2 36 (3.13%) GitLab
3 35 (3.04%) Git
4 31 (2.69%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (0.52%) Maven
6 6 (0.52%) ScriptRunner
7 5 (0.43%) JMeter
8 4 (0.35%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 4 (0.35%) Eclipse
8 4 (0.35%) Subversion
9 3 (0.26%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.26%) Zephyr
10 1 (0.087%) AppScan
10 1 (0.087%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.087%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.087%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.087%) Postman
General
1 282 (24.48%) Social Skills
2 155 (13.45%) Finance
3 132 (11.46%) Analytical Skills
4 83 (7.20%) Public Sector
5 61 (5.30%) Documentation Skills
6 47 (4.08%) Banking
7 32 (2.78%) Legal
8 29 (2.52%) Telecoms
9 26 (2.26%) Manufacturing
10 23 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
11 22 (1.91%) Retail
12 12 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (0.87%) Military
14 9 (0.78%) Law
14 9 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (0.69%) Aerospace
15 8 (0.69%) Financial Institution
15 8 (0.69%) Marketing
16 7 (0.61%) Organisational Skills
17 5 (0.43%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 207 (17.97%) Network Engineer
2 183 (15.89%) Architect
3 129 (11.20%) Senior
4 85 (7.38%) Data Centre Engineer
5 75 (6.51%) Project Manager
6 71 (6.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 58 (5.03%) IT Engineer
8 57 (4.95%) Lead
9 56 (4.86%) Field Engineer
10 53 (4.60%) Field Service Engineer
10 53 (4.60%) Network Architect
11 47 (4.08%) Data Centre Manager
12 43 (3.73%) Solutions Architect
13 38 (3.30%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 36 (3.13%) Analyst
14 36 (3.13%) Infrastructure Manager
14 36 (3.13%) Senior Network Engineer
15 34 (2.95%) Technical Architect
16 32 (2.78%) Administrator
17 31 (2.69%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (4.17%) Middleware
2 34 (2.95%) 802.1X
3 12 (1.04%) LDAP
4 9 (0.78%) Redfish
5 8 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
6 7 (0.61%) Spring
7 5 (0.43%) Jinja
7 5 (0.43%) Kafka
7 5 (0.43%) REST
7 5 (0.43%) XML
8 4 (0.35%) ADO
8 4 (0.35%) NETCONF
8 4 (0.35%) Spring Boot
9 3 (0.26%) OpenConfig
9 3 (0.26%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.26%) RESTCONF
9 3 (0.26%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.26%) YAML
9 3 (0.26%) YANG
9 3 (0.26%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 60 (5.21%) Analytical Mindset
1 60 (5.21%) Hybrid Cloud
2 34 (2.95%) Management Information System
3 28 (2.43%) Clustering
3 28 (2.43%) PKI
4 25 (2.17%) Fibre Optics
5 24 (2.08%) Cloud Native
6 22 (1.91%) Onboarding
7 21 (1.82%) CMDB
8 20 (1.74%) Enterprise Storage
8 20 (1.74%) Private Cloud
8 20 (1.74%) Public Cloud
9 19 (1.65%) Driving Licence
9 19 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
10 18 (1.56%) Replication
10 18 (1.56%) SCADA
11 16 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
12 14 (1.22%) NHS
13 12 (1.04%) Mainframe
13 12 (1.04%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 150 (13.02%) Linux
2 142 (12.33%) Windows
3 39 (3.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 36 (3.13%) Windows Server
5 23 (2.00%) Unix
6 21 (1.82%) AIX
7 17 (1.48%) Solaris
8 12 (1.04%) CentOS
9 9 (0.78%) Ubuntu
9 9 (0.78%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.52%) VMS
11 5 (0.43%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.43%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.35%) HPUX
12 4 (0.35%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.35%) SUSE
13 3 (0.26%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 208 (18.06%) Problem-Solving
2 194 (16.84%) Migration
3 108 (9.38%) High Availability
4 104 (9.03%) Stakeholder Management
5 102 (8.85%) Infrastructure as Code
6 100 (8.68%) ITIL
7 96 (8.33%) Roadmaps
8 92 (7.99%) Continuous Improvement
9 91 (7.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 90 (7.81%) CI/CD
11 84 (7.29%) Load Balancing
12 77 (6.68%) Validation
13 73 (6.34%) Project Delivery
14 71 (6.16%) Agile
14 71 (6.16%) Change Management
14 71 (6.16%) DevOps
14 71 (6.16%) Project Management
15 67 (5.82%) Customer Service
16 64 (5.56%) Break/Fix
17 63 (5.47%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 129 (11.20%) Python
2 39 (3.39%) PowerShell
3 36 (3.13%) SQL
4 25 (2.17%) Bash
5 22 (1.91%) Java
6 16 (1.39%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.04%) COBOL
8 11 (0.95%) MATLAB
9 10 (0.87%) Perl
10 9 (0.78%) Bicep
11 8 (0.69%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.43%) C
12 5 (0.43%) C++
12 5 (0.43%) JavaScript
13 4 (0.35%) ActionScript
14 3 (0.26%) VBA
15 2 (0.17%) Groovy
15 2 (0.17%) Korn
15 2 (0.17%) Lisp
16 1 (0.087%) Scala
Qualifications
1 319 (27.69%) Security Cleared
2 242 (21.01%) Cisco Certification
3 240 (20.83%) SC Cleared
4 148 (12.85%) CCNP
5 111 (9.64%) CCNA
6 69 (5.99%) Degree
7 68 (5.90%) DV Cleared
8 66 (5.73%) Network+ Certification
9 54 (4.69%) Microsoft Certification
10 51 (4.43%) A+ Certification
10 51 (4.43%) MCSE
11 25 (2.17%) CCIE
12 24 (2.08%) Azure Certification
13 23 (2.00%) City & Guilds
14 20 (1.74%) BICSI Certification
14 20 (1.74%) PMI Certification
14 20 (1.74%) PMP
15 19 (1.65%) AWS Certification
16 16 (1.39%) JNCIS
16 16 (1.39%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (2.78%) SLA
2 25 (2.17%) NIST
3 23 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (2.00%) PMO
4 22 (1.91%) QA
5 18 (1.56%) GDPR
6 11 (0.95%) NCSC
7 9 (0.78%) Disclosure Scotland
8 8 (0.69%) GRC
8 8 (0.69%) PCI DSS
9 6 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (0.43%) RMADS
11 3 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.26%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.17%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.17%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.087%) COBIT
13 1 (0.087%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 97 (8.42%) VMware Infrastructure
2 59 (5.12%) Active Directory
3 39 (3.39%) VMware NSX
4 32 (2.78%) Firmware
4 32 (2.78%) vSphere
5 24 (2.08%) VMware ESXi
6 23 (2.00%) Virtual Machines
7 22 (1.91%) Hyper-V
8 14 (1.22%) Docker
9 12 (1.04%) KVM
10 6 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.43%) NFS
12 4 (0.35%) Ceph
12 4 (0.35%) SRDF
12 4 (0.35%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.26%) Microsoft App-V
13 3 (0.26%) PowerHA
13 3 (0.26%) UAG
13 3 (0.26%) Veritas Cluster Server
13 3 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 131 (11.37%) Ansible
2 99 (8.59%) Terraform
3 59 (5.12%) FortiGate
4 44 (3.82%) Kubernetes
5 35 (3.04%) Grafana
6 28 (2.43%) Prometheus
7 19 (1.65%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (1.13%) Check_MK
9 12 (1.04%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.95%) Podman
10 11 (0.95%) Red Hat Satellite
11 10 (0.87%) SCCM
11 10 (0.87%) vCenter Server
12 9 (0.78%) Dell DRAC
12 9 (0.78%) PowerCLI
13 8 (0.69%) vMotion
14 7 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 6 (0.52%) EMC NetWorker
15 6 (0.52%) Tivoli Storage Manager
16 5 (0.43%) Nagios
Vendors
1 310 (26.91%) Cisco
2 151 (13.11%) Palo Alto
3 148 (12.85%) VMware
4 108 (9.38%) F5
5 103 (8.94%) Microsoft
6 93 (8.07%) Dell
7 87 (7.55%) Juniper
8 66 (5.73%) Arista
9 57 (4.95%) Aruba
10 55 (4.77%) Fortinet
11 49 (4.25%) CheckPoint
11 49 (4.25%) ServiceNow
12 41 (3.56%) SolarWinds
13 39 (3.39%) Google
14 37 (3.21%) Red Hat
15 34 (2.95%) IBM
16 29 (2.52%) Splunk
17 28 (2.43%) Oracle
18 26 (2.26%) Meraki
18 26 (2.26%) NVIDIA