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 2 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 101 124 102
Rank change year-on-year +23 -22 -12
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,225 693 952
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.38% 2.24% 2.19%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.24% 6.46% 7.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 714 448 633
10th Percentile £318 £302 £311
25th Percentile £406 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £679 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £538
% change year-on-year - -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 23 55
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.26 £12.08
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £16.25
Median hourly rate £19.85 £25.15 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -21.07% +5.67% +14.95%
75th Percentile £34.12 £39.38 £40.00
90th Percentile £72.67 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £20.00
% change year-on-year -21.57% +23.30% -3.40%

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 16,922 10,721 13,121
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.88% 34.62% 30.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,336 6,685 8,332
10th Percentile £313 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £627 £650 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 863 495 926
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.53 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.94 £18.95 £15.39
Median hourly rate £42.30 £31.08 £35.65
Median % change year-on-year +36.10% -12.82% +58.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £58.17 £62.00
90th Percentile £86.98 £78.73 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year +46.53% -15.49% +57.78%

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 2 July 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 2 July 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 2 July 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 +20 1,010 £500 -4.76% 551
UK excluding London -3 691 £475 - 313
London +10 371 £550 +3.29% 296
Work from Home +20 321 £490 -3.97% 195
North of England +15 244 £475 +5.56% 56
South East +3 216 £475 +5.56% 117
Yorkshire +1 131 £365 -16.57% 21
North West -1 89 £500 -4.76% 32
Midlands -45 58 £466 -13.72% 30
Scotland +2 56 £466 +4.96% 12
West Midlands -46 53 £474 -11.81% 19
South West -30 49 £495 -10.00% 33
Wales +7 42 £468 +20.65% 23
East of England -6 37 £496 +32.27% 40
North East -1 30 £625 +468.18% 3
East Midlands -27 4 £363 -32.87% 11
Northern Ireland - 1 £425 - 8
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 25 (2.04%) Confluence
2 17 (1.39%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.90%) CICS
3 11 (0.90%) Microsoft Exchange
4 5 (0.41%) Apache
4 5 (0.41%) CloudStack
4 5 (0.41%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.33%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.24%) nginx
6 3 (0.24%) Tomcat
7 1 (0.082%) IIS
7 1 (0.082%) Mendix
Applications
1 15 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
4 10 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.82%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.41%) AutoCAD
6 3 (0.24%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.16%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 3 (0.24%) Primavera
1 3 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 2 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.082%) DELMIA
3 1 (0.082%) OpenText MBPM
3 1 (0.082%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 259 (21.14%) Azure
2 225 (18.37%) AWS
3 76 (6.20%) GCP
4 42 (3.43%) IaaS
5 40 (3.27%) GitHub
5 40 (3.27%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (2.94%) SaaS
7 30 (2.45%) OCI
8 26 (2.12%) Entra ID
9 21 (1.71%) PaaS
9 21 (1.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 16 (1.31%) OpenShift
11 15 (1.22%) Azure DevOps
11 15 (1.22%) OneDrive
12 13 (1.06%) Power Platform
13 12 (0.98%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 11 (0.90%) Azure Sentinel
14 11 (0.90%) Nutanix
15 9 (0.73%) Amazon EKS
16 8 (0.65%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 338 (27.59%) Firewall
2 203 (16.57%) WAN
3 193 (15.76%) BGP
4 148 (12.08%) OSPF
5 133 (10.86%) VPN
6 125 (10.20%) VXLAN
7 122 (9.96%) LAN
7 122 (9.96%) SAN
8 117 (9.55%) DNS
9 114 (9.31%) Network Security
10 98 (8.00%) VLAN
11 94 (7.67%) Structured Cabling
12 89 (7.27%) SD-WAN
13 87 (7.10%) Ethernet VPN
14 83 (6.78%) DHCP
15 61 (4.98%) BIG-IP
16 59 (4.82%) TCP/IP
17 56 (4.57%) Cisco Nexus
18 53 (4.33%) Wireless
19 52 (4.24%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (1.22%) SQL Server
2 10 (0.82%) DataStage
3 8 (0.65%) Power BI
4 7 (0.57%) Big Data
5 6 (0.49%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (0.33%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
6 4 (0.33%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database
6 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
6 4 (0.33%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.33%) SAP Data Services
7 3 (0.24%) Db2
7 3 (0.24%) GIS
8 2 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.16%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.16%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.16%) Oracle Database 12c
9 1 (0.082%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 67 (5.47%) JIRA
2 35 (2.86%) GitLab
2 35 (2.86%) Jenkins
3 28 (2.29%) Git
4 8 (0.65%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (0.41%) JMeter
6 4 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 4 (0.33%) Eclipse
6 4 (0.33%) Maven
6 4 (0.33%) Subversion
7 3 (0.24%) ScriptRunner
7 3 (0.24%) Zephyr
8 2 (0.16%) MSI
9 1 (0.082%) AppScan
9 1 (0.082%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.082%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.082%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.082%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.082%) Postman
General
1 306 (24.98%) Social Skills
2 166 (13.55%) Finance
3 134 (10.94%) Analytical Skills
4 82 (6.69%) Public Sector
5 60 (4.90%) Documentation Skills
6 50 (4.08%) Banking
7 45 (3.67%) Telecoms
8 37 (3.02%) Legal
9 26 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
10 24 (1.96%) Retail
11 21 (1.71%) Manufacturing
12 17 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (0.90%) Military
13 11 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.73%) Financial Institution
15 8 (0.65%) Law
15 8 (0.65%) Marketing
16 7 (0.57%) Police
16 7 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
17 6 (0.49%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 205 (16.73%) Architect
2 199 (16.24%) Network Engineer
3 143 (11.67%) Senior
4 105 (8.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 102 (8.33%) Data Centre Engineer
6 75 (6.12%) Project Manager
7 63 (5.14%) Lead
8 61 (4.98%) Network Architect
9 56 (4.57%) IT Engineer
10 53 (4.33%) Field Engineer
11 49 (4.00%) Field Service Engineer
12 44 (3.59%) Solutions Architect
13 43 (3.51%) Technical Architect
14 42 (3.43%) Infrastructure Manager
15 38 (3.10%) Data Centre Manager
16 37 (3.02%) Analyst
16 37 (3.02%) Senior Network Engineer
17 35 (2.86%) Support Engineer
18 32 (2.61%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
19 28 (2.29%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (4.49%) Middleware
2 32 (2.61%) 802.1X
3 10 (0.82%) LDAP
3 10 (0.82%) Redfish
3 10 (0.82%) REST
4 8 (0.65%) Elastic Stack
5 7 (0.57%) Spring
6 5 (0.41%) Jinja
6 5 (0.41%) Kafka
6 5 (0.41%) NETCONF
6 5 (0.41%) XML
7 4 (0.33%) .NET
7 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
7 4 (0.33%) OpenConfig
7 4 (0.33%) RESTCONF
7 4 (0.33%) RESTful
7 4 (0.33%) Spring Boot
7 4 (0.33%) YAML
7 4 (0.33%) YANG
8 3 (0.24%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 75 (6.12%) Hybrid Cloud
2 56 (4.57%) Analytical Mindset
3 38 (3.10%) Management Information System
4 37 (3.02%) Cloud Native
5 33 (2.69%) PKI
6 32 (2.61%) Enterprise Storage
7 31 (2.53%) Clustering
8 30 (2.45%) Onboarding
8 30 (2.45%) Private Cloud
9 28 (2.29%) Fibre Optics
10 21 (1.71%) CMDB
11 20 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
11 20 (1.63%) Driving Licence
11 20 (1.63%) Public Cloud
11 20 (1.63%) Replication
12 16 (1.31%) SCADA
13 15 (1.22%) Operational Technology
13 15 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
14 14 (1.14%) Mainframe
14 14 (1.14%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 163 (13.31%) Windows
2 142 (11.59%) Linux
3 43 (3.51%) Windows Server
4 32 (2.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 30 (2.45%) Unix
6 23 (1.88%) AIX
7 18 (1.47%) Solaris
8 10 (0.82%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.82%) Mac OS
9 8 (0.65%) CentOS
10 7 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.49%) Ubuntu
11 6 (0.49%) VMS
12 5 (0.41%) HPUX
12 5 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.41%) SUSE
13 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
14 3 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
15 2 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.16%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 217 (17.71%) Migration
2 207 (16.90%) Problem-Solving
3 134 (10.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 129 (10.53%) Stakeholder Management
5 115 (9.39%) Infrastructure as Code
5 115 (9.39%) ITIL
6 112 (9.14%) High Availability
7 105 (8.57%) CI/CD
8 100 (8.16%) Roadmaps
9 90 (7.35%) Continuous Improvement
10 89 (7.27%) Agile
11 85 (6.94%) Load Balancing
11 85 (6.94%) Validation
12 82 (6.69%) DevOps
13 79 (6.45%) Change Management
14 78 (6.37%) Project Delivery
15 73 (5.96%) Zero Trust
16 70 (5.71%) Project Management
17 68 (5.55%) Customer Service
17 68 (5.55%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 152 (12.41%) Python
2 41 (3.35%) PowerShell
3 37 (3.02%) SQL
4 25 (2.04%) Bash
5 19 (1.55%) Java
6 16 (1.31%) Bicep
7 15 (1.22%) Shell Script
8 12 (0.98%) COBOL
9 10 (0.82%) ActionScript
9 10 (0.82%) Perl
10 8 (0.65%) MATLAB
10 8 (0.65%) PL/SQL
11 7 (0.57%) JavaScript
12 4 (0.33%) C#
12 4 (0.33%) Lisp
13 3 (0.24%) C
13 3 (0.24%) C++
13 3 (0.24%) JCL
13 3 (0.24%) Korn
13 3 (0.24%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 320 (26.12%) Security Cleared
2 231 (18.86%) Cisco Certification
3 223 (18.20%) SC Cleared
4 137 (11.18%) CCNP
5 97 (7.92%) CCNA
6 89 (7.27%) DV Cleared
7 71 (5.80%) Degree
8 64 (5.22%) Network+ Certification
9 54 (4.41%) Microsoft Certification
10 47 (3.84%) A+ Certification
10 47 (3.84%) MCSE
11 30 (2.45%) Azure Certification
12 28 (2.29%) CCIE
13 26 (2.12%) City & Guilds
14 25 (2.04%) AWS Certification
15 22 (1.80%) PMI Certification
15 22 (1.80%) PMP
15 22 (1.80%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 20 (1.63%) BICSI Certification
17 18 (1.47%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (2.69%) SLA
2 27 (2.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (2.12%) NIST
3 26 (2.12%) QA
4 22 (1.80%) PMO
5 19 (1.55%) GDPR
6 17 (1.39%) NCSC
7 10 (0.82%) GRC
8 9 (0.73%) Disclosure Scotland
8 9 (0.73%) PCI DSS
9 7 (0.57%) RMADS
10 6 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.33%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.24%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.16%) Accessibility
13 2 (0.16%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.16%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 108 (8.82%) VMware Infrastructure
2 65 (5.31%) Active Directory
3 36 (2.94%) VMware ESXi
4 35 (2.86%) VMware NSX
4 35 (2.86%) vSphere
5 29 (2.37%) Firmware
6 25 (2.04%) Hyper-V
7 22 (1.80%) Virtual Machines
8 16 (1.31%) Docker
9 9 (0.73%) KVM
9 9 (0.73%) NFS
10 7 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
11 6 (0.49%) SRDF
12 4 (0.33%) BitLocker
12 4 (0.33%) Terminal Services
12 4 (0.33%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.24%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (0.24%) PowerHA
13 3 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 137 (11.18%) Ansible
2 110 (8.98%) Terraform
3 53 (4.33%) FortiGate
4 50 (4.08%) Kubernetes
5 34 (2.78%) Grafana
6 29 (2.37%) Prometheus
7 28 (2.29%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (1.22%) vCenter Server
9 13 (1.06%) NetBackup
10 11 (0.90%) Check_MK
10 11 (0.90%) PowerCLI
10 11 (0.90%) vMotion
11 10 (0.82%) Dell DRAC
11 10 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
11 10 (0.82%) SCCM
12 8 (0.65%) Podman
12 8 (0.65%) Red Hat Satellite
13 7 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 7 (0.57%) EMC NetWorker
13 7 (0.57%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 301 (24.57%) Cisco
2 163 (13.31%) VMware
3 139 (11.35%) Palo Alto
4 123 (10.04%) Microsoft
5 116 (9.47%) F5
6 96 (7.84%) Juniper
7 87 (7.10%) Dell
8 74 (6.04%) Arista
9 71 (5.80%) Fortinet
10 60 (4.90%) ServiceNow
11 47 (3.84%) Google
12 45 (3.67%) Aruba
13 43 (3.51%) SolarWinds
14 36 (2.94%) CheckPoint
14 36 (2.94%) IBM
15 35 (2.86%) Red Hat
16 30 (2.45%) Splunk
17 27 (2.20%) Oracle
18 25 (2.04%) Citrix
18 25 (2.04%) HP