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 22 October 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 129 124 92
Rank change year-on-year -5 -32 +15
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 720 742 1,212
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.15% 1.99% 2.55%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.99% 6.47% 7.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 455 447 826
10th Percentile £253 £361 £340
25th Percentile £375 £450 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £650
90th Percentile £719 £709 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -9.52% +4.91% +2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 33 18
10th Percentile £20.25 £11.79 £17.72
25th Percentile - £12.08 £19.43
Median hourly rate £25.15 £21.59 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.49% -6.13% -61.67%
75th Percentile £31.00 £24.18 £60.94
90th Percentile £40.00 £28.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.11 £15.00 £23.00
% change year-on-year +67.42% -34.78% +4.55%

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 12,014 11,464 15,222
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.87% 30.76% 32.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,384 6,815 10,382
10th Percentile £289 £280 £299
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £531 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.39% -3.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £668 £675
90th Percentile £750 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.65% -1.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 645 384 472
10th Percentile £13.99 £16.92 £17.00
25th Percentile £18.22 £23.10 £21.05
Median hourly rate £26.50 £45.59 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.87% +2.45% +71.15%
75th Percentile £50.00 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £75.16 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.04 £50.00 £47.59
% change year-on-year -49.93% +5.06% +111.51%

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 22 October 2025.

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 22 October 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Centre in the UK

Data Centre
Top 16 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 22 October 2025. 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 -17 626 £500 -4.76% 720
UK excluding London -8 397 £475 -9.52% 517
London -3 245 £525 -0.94% 365
Work from Home +24 201 £525 -4.55% 254
North of England -8 131 £488 -2.26% 95
Midlands -9 92 £465 -19.83% 37
South East -13 79 £400 -20.00% 274
West Midlands -8 69 £496 -17.33% 27
North West +1 64 £532 +6.40% 71
Yorkshire -3 63 £466 -15.36% 16
South West -7 43 £550 - 49
Scotland -2 27 £450 -5.26% 26
East of England -6 26 £600 +50.00% 37
East Midlands -6 23 £395 -8.19% 10
Wales +7 14 £288 -11.54% 12
North East -9 5 £175 -58.82% 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 23 (3.19%) Confluence
1 23 (3.19%) SharePoint
2 16 (2.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 12 (1.67%) OpenStack
4 6 (0.83%) Apache
5 5 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
5 5 (0.69%) Apache Spark
6 4 (0.56%) nginx
6 4 (0.56%) ThingWorx
7 3 (0.42%) CICS
7 3 (0.42%) GeoServer
7 3 (0.42%) HCL Notes
7 3 (0.42%) Smallworld
7 3 (0.42%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.28%) FileNet
8 2 (0.28%) Oracle Coherence
8 2 (0.28%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.14%) IIS
9 1 (0.14%) OpenEdge
9 1 (0.14%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 50 (6.94%) Microsoft Office
2 31 (4.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (3.06%) MS Visio
4 15 (2.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (1.81%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.14%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 6 (0.83%) Payment Gateway
2 3 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
4 1 (0.14%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.14%) StreamServe
Cloud Services
1 131 (18.19%) Azure
2 110 (15.28%) AWS
3 59 (8.19%) Microsoft 365
4 36 (5.00%) GCP
5 20 (2.78%) Power Platform
6 17 (2.36%) Entra ID
7 14 (1.94%) OpenShift
8 12 (1.67%) IaaS
8 12 (1.67%) PaaS
8 12 (1.67%) SaaS
9 11 (1.53%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 10 (1.39%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 7 (0.97%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 6 (0.83%) Akamai
12 6 (0.83%) AWS Direct Connect
12 6 (0.83%) Cloud Computing
12 6 (0.83%) GitHub
12 6 (0.83%) Nutanix
13 5 (0.69%) Amazon S3
14 4 (0.56%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 184 (25.56%) Firewall
2 122 (16.94%) WAN
3 87 (12.08%) Wireless
4 68 (9.44%) BGP
5 59 (8.19%) LAN
5 59 (8.19%) VPN
6 57 (7.92%) DNS
7 53 (7.36%) Cisco Nexus
8 49 (6.81%) SD-WAN
9 46 (6.39%) OSPF
10 41 (5.69%) Network Security
10 41 (5.69%) SAN
11 40 (5.56%) Wi-Fi
12 34 (4.72%) MPLS
13 33 (4.58%) VXLAN
14 31 (4.31%) TCP/IP
15 30 (4.17%) Ethernet VPN
16 29 (4.03%) Cisco ISE
16 29 (4.03%) DHCP
17 25 (3.47%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (2.50%) Relational Database
2 17 (2.36%) Power BI
3 11 (1.53%) RDBMS
4 9 (1.25%) GIS
4 9 (1.25%) SQL Server
5 7 (0.97%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.83%) NoSQL
6 6 (0.83%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (0.69%) Apache Hive
7 5 (0.69%) Hadoop
7 5 (0.69%) HBase
8 4 (0.56%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.42%) Big Data
9 3 (0.42%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.42%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (0.42%) DataStage
9 3 (0.42%) Geospatial Data
9 3 (0.42%) QGIS
9 3 (0.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 28 (3.89%) JIRA
2 17 (2.36%) Sonatype Nexus
3 16 (2.22%) Git
4 13 (1.81%) GitLab
4 13 (1.81%) Jenkins
5 9 (1.25%) SonarQube
6 8 (1.11%) Maven
7 4 (0.56%) Gradle
7 4 (0.56%) Selenium
7 4 (0.56%) TeamCity
8 3 (0.42%) ER Studio
8 3 (0.42%) ERwin
9 2 (0.28%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
10 1 (0.14%) Fiddler
10 1 (0.14%) Postman
General
1 160 (22.22%) Social Skills
2 132 (18.33%) Finance
3 75 (10.42%) Public Sector
4 66 (9.17%) Telecoms
5 64 (8.89%) Banking
6 57 (7.92%) Analytical Skills
7 30 (4.17%) Manufacturing
8 27 (3.75%) Documentation Skills
9 24 (3.33%) Marketing
10 22 (3.06%) Electronics
11 17 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 17 (2.36%) Presentation Skills
12 12 (1.67%) Organisational Skills
13 11 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
14 9 (1.25%) Legal
15 7 (0.97%) Front Office
15 7 (0.97%) Local Government
16 5 (0.69%) Billing
16 5 (0.69%) Law
16 5 (0.69%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 115 (15.97%) Architect
2 114 (15.83%) Network Engineer
3 83 (11.53%) Analyst
4 46 (6.39%) Project Manager
5 45 (6.25%) Senior
6 32 (4.44%) Network Architect
7 30 (4.17%) Infrastructure Manager
8 29 (4.03%) Consultant
8 29 (4.03%) IT Support
8 29 (4.03%) Security Engineer
9 28 (3.89%) Data Centre Engineer
10 26 (3.61%) Data Centre Manager
10 26 (3.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 24 (3.33%) Support Engineer
12 23 (3.19%) Lead
13 22 (3.06%) Cisco Engineer
14 21 (2.92%) Business Analyst
14 21 (2.92%) Infrastructure Architect
14 21 (2.92%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 21 (2.92%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (3.89%) RFC 2544
2 22 (3.06%) Middleware
3 18 (2.50%) 802.1X
4 5 (0.69%) Spark Streaming
5 4 (0.56%) Jinja
6 3 (0.42%) REST
7 2 (0.28%) eBPF
7 2 (0.28%) EJB
7 2 (0.28%) Java SE
7 2 (0.28%) LDAP
7 2 (0.28%) ModSecurity
7 2 (0.28%) OpenLayers
7 2 (0.28%) Spring
8 1 (0.14%) gRPC
8 1 (0.14%) Java EE
8 1 (0.14%) JSP
8 1 (0.14%) ONNX
8 1 (0.14%) RabbitMQ
8 1 (0.14%) RESTful
8 1 (0.14%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 34 (4.72%) Hybrid Cloud
2 29 (4.03%) Cloud Native
3 25 (3.47%) Fibre Optics
4 20 (2.78%) Driving Licence
4 20 (2.78%) Public Cloud
5 19 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 19 (2.64%) Replication
6 18 (2.50%) Private Cloud
7 15 (2.08%) SCADA
8 13 (1.81%) Mainframe
9 12 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
9 12 (1.67%) Management Information System
10 11 (1.53%) CMDB
10 11 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
11 10 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
11 10 (1.39%) PKI
12 9 (1.25%) Enterprise Storage
13 8 (1.11%) Clustering
13 8 (1.11%) Operational Technology
14 7 (0.97%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 87 (12.08%) Windows
2 72 (10.00%) Linux
3 39 (5.42%) Android
4 37 (5.14%) Mac OS
5 25 (3.47%) Windows Server
6 24 (3.33%) Unix
7 16 (2.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (1.81%) CentOS
9 10 (1.39%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.56%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.56%) Solaris
10 4 (0.56%) Windows 10
10 4 (0.56%) Windows Server 2008
10 4 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.28%) AIX
11 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.28%) zOS
12 1 (0.14%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (19.58%) Migration
2 82 (11.39%) Problem-Solving
3 67 (9.31%) Stakeholder Management
4 62 (8.61%) Agile
5 55 (7.64%) Disaster Recovery
5 55 (7.64%) Service Management
6 52 (7.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 48 (6.67%) Change Management
7 48 (6.67%) ITIL
8 47 (6.53%) DevOps
9 45 (6.25%) Infrastructure as Code
10 43 (5.97%) Customer Service
11 42 (5.83%) CI/CD
11 42 (5.83%) Roadmaps
12 41 (5.69%) High Availability
13 40 (5.56%) Data Centre Operations
13 40 (5.56%) Project Management
14 38 (5.28%) Network Design
15 37 (5.14%) Risk Management
16 36 (5.00%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 77 (10.69%) Python
2 35 (4.86%) PowerShell
3 34 (4.72%) SQL
4 17 (2.36%) Java
5 15 (2.08%) Bash
6 12 (1.67%) Shell Script
7 7 (0.97%) Go
8 6 (0.83%) Lisp
9 5 (0.69%) C
9 5 (0.69%) Perl
10 3 (0.42%) Bicep
10 3 (0.42%) C#
11 2 (0.28%) AWK
11 2 (0.28%) JavaScript
11 2 (0.28%) JCL
11 2 (0.28%) Korn
11 2 (0.28%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.28%) Ruby
11 2 (0.28%) sed
12 1 (0.14%) C++
Qualifications
1 219 (30.42%) Security Cleared
2 187 (25.97%) SC Cleared
3 79 (10.97%) Cisco Certification
4 50 (6.94%) Degree
5 43 (5.97%) CCNP
6 39 (5.42%) DV Cleared
7 25 (3.47%) CCIE
8 20 (2.78%) CCNA
9 14 (1.94%) AWS Certification
10 11 (1.53%) CISSP
10 11 (1.53%) Computer Science Degree
11 10 (1.39%) JNCIE
12 9 (1.25%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 8 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
14 6 (0.83%) PMI Certification
14 6 (0.83%) PMP
14 6 (0.83%) VCAP
15 5 (0.69%) JNCIA
15 5 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
15 5 (0.69%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (2.64%) SLA
2 17 (2.36%) NIST
3 16 (2.22%) PCI DSS
4 15 (2.08%) PMO
5 12 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 11 (1.53%) Data Quality
7 8 (1.11%) QA
8 6 (0.83%) GDPR
9 4 (0.56%) NCSC
10 2 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.28%) GRC
10 2 (0.28%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.28%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.28%) RMADS
10 2 (0.28%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.14%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 58 (8.06%) VMware Infrastructure
2 51 (7.08%) Active Directory
3 25 (3.47%) Docker
4 21 (2.92%) VMware NSX
5 19 (2.64%) Hyper-V
6 17 (2.36%) vSphere
7 12 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
8 9 (1.25%) Firmware
9 7 (0.97%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.69%) HDFS
11 4 (0.56%) KVM
12 3 (0.42%) GPFS
12 3 (0.42%) NFS
13 2 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
13 2 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.14%) Lustre
14 1 (0.14%) SRDF
14 1 (0.14%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 1 (0.14%) Xen
Systems Management
1 69 (9.58%) Ansible
2 48 (6.67%) Terraform
3 24 (3.33%) Kubernetes
4 21 (2.92%) FortiGate
5 18 (2.50%) SCCM
6 11 (1.53%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (1.25%) Grafana
7 9 (1.25%) Puppet
7 9 (1.25%) vCenter Server
8 7 (0.97%) Control-M
9 5 (0.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 5 (0.69%) CASB
9 5 (0.69%) Hadoop YARN
9 5 (0.69%) Prometheus
9 5 (0.69%) SCOM
9 5 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (0.56%) Argo
10 4 (0.56%) Cisco CUCM
10 4 (0.56%) OpenView
10 4 (0.56%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 225 (31.25%) Cisco
2 97 (13.47%) Microsoft
3 80 (11.11%) VMware
4 60 (8.33%) F5
5 52 (7.22%) Dell
6 49 (6.81%) Palo Alto
7 48 (6.67%) HP
8 46 (6.39%) Juniper
9 38 (5.28%) ServiceNow
10 36 (5.00%) Apple
11 34 (4.72%) SAP
12 31 (4.31%) Oracle
13 30 (4.17%) Fortinet
14 28 (3.89%) Arista
15 27 (3.75%) SolarWinds
16 24 (3.33%) Meraki
17 19 (2.64%) CheckPoint
18 14 (1.94%) Citrix
18 14 (1.94%) IBM
18 14 (1.94%) NetApp