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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 123 124 110
Rank change year-on-year +1 -14 -22
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,181 724 811
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.20% 2.23% 2.10%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.53% 6.29% 6.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 719 456 527
10th Percentile £318 £300 £363
25th Percentile £411 £397 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.14% -2.33% -0.46%
75th Percentile £650 £610 £622
90th Percentile £750 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £491 £538
% change year-on-year +0.81% -8.65% +7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 39 38
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.75
25th Percentile £17.50 £25.04 £12.08
Median hourly rate £21.00 £25.15 £19.38
Median % change year-on-year -16.50% +29.81% -3.13%
75th Percentile £40.13 £31.00 £25.83
90th Percentile £80.00 £43.75 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year -22.23% +65.78% -15.35%

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 18,083 11,515 11,709
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.74% 35.40% 30.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,920 7,085 7,339
10th Percentile £320 £300 £300
25th Percentile £422 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% -5.91% -
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £750 £763 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,089 565 544
10th Percentile £14.57 £15.13 £13.23
25th Percentile £18.75 £18.87 £19.28
Median hourly rate £38.72 £29.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.25% -34.44% +4.65%
75th Percentile £67.89 £57.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year +46.53% -42.86% +15.61%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 +2 986 £525 - 1,459
UK excluding London -20 615 £495 +0.81% 616
London +19 415 £550 - 956
Work from Home -6 276 £533 +1.43% 431
North of England -10 211 £494 +7.92% 125
South East -8 174 £531 +7.82% 173
Yorkshire -4 127 £465 +12.05% 47
North West -20 69 £500 -6.54% 49
South West -24 65 £600 +6.67% 84
Midlands -74 49 £453 -9.40% 59
Scotland -14 48 £375 -10.71% 55
Wales +4 40 £468 +38.52% 18
West Midlands -64 39 £475 -5.10% 43
East of England -16 35 £479 -20.21% 101
North East -25 21 £625 - 29
East Midlands -21 9 £400 -25.93% 16
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 12
Channel Islands - 1 £575 - 2

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 (2.46%) Confluence
2 19 (1.61%) SharePoint
3 14 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
4 7 (0.59%) OpenStack
5 5 (0.42%) Apache
5 5 (0.42%) CloudStack
6 3 (0.25%) CICS
7 2 (0.17%) IIS
8 1 (0.085%) nginx
8 1 (0.085%) SAS
8 1 (0.085%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (1.61%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
6 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 13 (1.10%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.085%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.085%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 247 (20.91%) Azure
2 218 (18.46%) AWS
3 57 (4.83%) GCP
4 48 (4.06%) GitHub
5 41 (3.47%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (3.05%) SaaS
7 35 (2.96%) IaaS
8 29 (2.46%) Entra ID
8 29 (2.46%) OCI
9 17 (1.44%) Power Platform
10 15 (1.27%) OneDrive
11 14 (1.19%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (1.19%) OpenShift
11 14 (1.19%) PaaS
12 13 (1.10%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 11 (0.93%) Nutanix
14 10 (0.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 8 (0.68%) Azure Sentinel
16 7 (0.59%) GitHub Actions
17 6 (0.51%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 293 (24.81%) Firewall
2 190 (16.09%) WAN
3 181 (15.33%) BGP
4 129 (10.92%) VPN
5 123 (10.41%) DNS
5 123 (10.41%) VXLAN
6 119 (10.08%) OSPF
7 111 (9.40%) LAN
8 109 (9.23%) VLAN
9 108 (9.14%) Network Security
10 106 (8.98%) SAN
11 90 (7.62%) DHCP
12 85 (7.20%) Ethernet VPN
12 85 (7.20%) SD-WAN
13 84 (7.11%) TCP/IP
14 76 (6.44%) Structured Cabling
15 58 (4.91%) Wi-Fi
15 58 (4.91%) Wireless
16 53 (4.49%) Cisco Nexus
17 49 (4.15%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (2.79%) SQL Server
2 14 (1.19%) Power BI
3 11 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (0.85%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 10 (0.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 7 (0.59%) Big Data
5 7 (0.59%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.51%) Db2
7 5 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.34%) Oracle Database 12c
8 4 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
8 4 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
9 2 (0.17%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.17%) DataStage
10 1 (0.085%) Flink
10 1 (0.085%) GIS
10 1 (0.085%) Oracle Exadata
10 1 (0.085%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 72 (6.10%) JIRA
2 36 (3.05%) GitLab
3 28 (2.37%) Jenkins
4 25 (2.12%) Git
5 7 (0.59%) Sonatype Nexus
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 (0.085%) Claude Code
General
1 284 (24.05%) Social Skills
2 152 (12.87%) Finance
3 113 (9.57%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (4.66%) Public Sector
5 54 (4.57%) Telecoms
6 51 (4.32%) Banking
7 48 (4.06%) Documentation Skills
8 28 (2.37%) Retail
9 23 (1.95%) Legal
10 18 (1.52%) Manufacturing
11 17 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
12 14 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 10 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
14 9 (0.76%) Police
15 7 (0.59%) Financial Institution
15 7 (0.59%) Law
16 5 (0.42%) Investment Banking
16 5 (0.42%) Marketing
17 4 (0.34%) Cyber-Physical System
18 3 (0.25%) Military
Job Titles
1 201 (17.02%) Architect
2 194 (16.43%) Network Engineer
3 159 (13.46%) Senior
4 118 (9.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 89 (7.54%) Data Centre Engineer
6 75 (6.35%) Project Manager
7 65 (5.50%) Network Architect
8 62 (5.25%) Lead
9 54 (4.57%) IT Engineer
10 46 (3.90%) Consultant
11 45 (3.81%) Senior Network Engineer
12 43 (3.64%) Field Engineer
13 39 (3.30%) Data Centre Manager
13 39 (3.30%) Technical Architect
14 37 (3.13%) Field Service Engineer
15 36 (3.05%) Infrastructure Manager
16 35 (2.96%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
16 35 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
17 33 (2.79%) Support Engineer
18 29 (2.46%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 108 (9.14%) Terraform
2 45 (3.81%) Middleware
3 25 (2.12%) REST
4 17 (1.44%) 802.1X
5 13 (1.10%) YAML
6 12 (1.02%) JSON
7 9 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (0.68%) .NET
8 8 (0.68%) LDAP
9 7 (0.59%) NETCONF
9 7 (0.59%) Redfish
10 6 (0.51%) SAML
11 5 (0.42%) OpenConfig
11 5 (0.42%) RESTCONF
11 5 (0.42%) YANG
12 4 (0.34%) GeoJSON
12 4 (0.34%) Kafka
12 4 (0.34%) RESTful
13 3 (0.25%) .NET Framework
13 3 (0.25%) RFC 2544
Miscellaneous
1 74 (6.27%) Hybrid Cloud
2 44 (3.73%) Analytical Mindset
3 36 (3.05%) PKI
3 36 (3.05%) Private Cloud
4 33 (2.79%) Cloud Native
5 32 (2.71%) Management Information System
6 31 (2.62%) Public Cloud
7 30 (2.54%) Clustering
7 30 (2.54%) Fibre Optics
8 28 (2.37%) Enterprise Storage
9 26 (2.20%) Data Protection Act
9 26 (2.20%) Onboarding
9 26 (2.20%) Replication
10 23 (1.95%) Operational Technology
11 17 (1.44%) Driving Licence
11 17 (1.44%) SCADA
12 16 (1.35%) CMDB
13 15 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
13 15 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
14 13 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 184 (15.58%) Windows
2 130 (11.01%) Linux
3 56 (4.74%) Windows Server
4 31 (2.62%) Unix
5 21 (1.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (1.44%) AIX
7 12 (1.02%) Mac OS
8 10 (0.85%) Apple iOS
8 10 (0.85%) Solaris
8 10 (0.85%) VMS
9 7 (0.59%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.51%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.42%) HPUX
11 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (0.42%) SUSE
11 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.34%) CentOS
12 4 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 247 (20.91%) Migration
2 184 (15.58%) Problem-Solving
3 147 (12.45%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 147 (12.45%) Stakeholder Management
4 114 (9.65%) Infrastructure as Code
5 111 (9.40%) ITIL
6 106 (8.98%) High Availability
7 96 (8.13%) CI/CD
8 93 (7.87%) Agile
9 89 (7.54%) Roadmaps
10 87 (7.37%) Validation
11 85 (7.20%) Project Delivery
12 81 (6.86%) Continuous Improvement
13 76 (6.44%) Disaster Recovery
13 76 (6.44%) Zero Trust
14 74 (6.27%) Technical Leadership
15 71 (6.01%) Change Management
16 68 (5.76%) Load Balancing
17 67 (5.67%) DevOps
18 66 (5.59%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 156 (13.21%) Python
2 62 (5.25%) PowerShell
3 41 (3.47%) SQL
4 31 (2.62%) Bash
5 10 (0.85%) ActionScript
5 10 (0.85%) Bicep
6 9 (0.76%) Shell Script
7 8 (0.68%) C#
8 7 (0.59%) Perl
8 7 (0.59%) PL/SQL
9 5 (0.42%) Java
10 4 (0.34%) COBOL
10 4 (0.34%) Go
10 4 (0.34%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.34%) MATLAB
10 4 (0.34%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.25%) JCL
11 3 (0.25%) Lisp
11 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 305 (25.83%) Security Cleared
2 207 (17.53%) SC Cleared
3 184 (15.58%) Cisco Certification
4 108 (9.14%) CCNP
5 96 (8.13%) DV Cleared
6 74 (6.27%) CCNA
7 61 (5.17%) Degree
8 46 (3.90%) Network+ Certification
9 44 (3.73%) Microsoft Certification
10 41 (3.47%) A+ Certification
11 36 (3.05%) MCSE
12 31 (2.62%) AWS Certification
13 29 (2.46%) CCIE
14 26 (2.20%) Azure Certification
15 24 (2.03%) City & Guilds
16 23 (1.95%) CISSP
16 23 (1.95%) PMP
16 23 (1.95%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 20 (1.69%) BICSI Certification
17 20 (1.69%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (2.96%) QA
2 28 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 27 (2.29%) SLA
4 24 (2.03%) NIST
5 13 (1.10%) GDPR
5 13 (1.10%) PMO
6 11 (0.93%) NCSC
7 9 (0.76%) JSP 440
8 7 (0.59%) GRC
9 6 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
9 6 (0.51%) RMADS
10 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
10 3 (0.25%) NIST 800
10 3 (0.25%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.17%) Accessibility
11 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 142 (12.02%) VMware Infrastructure
2 89 (7.54%) Active Directory
3 49 (4.15%) vSphere
4 44 (3.73%) VMware NSX
5 39 (3.30%) VMware ESXi
6 37 (3.13%) Hyper-V
7 32 (2.71%) Docker
8 26 (2.20%) Firmware
9 15 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (1.02%) NFS
11 6 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
11 6 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.42%) PowerHA
13 4 (0.34%) BitLocker
13 4 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.34%) SRDF
13 4 (0.34%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.34%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
Systems Management
1 146 (12.36%) Ansible
2 57 (4.83%) Kubernetes
3 35 (2.96%) FortiGate
4 26 (2.20%) Prometheus
5 23 (1.95%) Grafana
6 19 (1.61%) Microsoft Intune
7 18 (1.52%) vCenter Server
8 15 (1.27%) SCCM
8 15 (1.27%) VxRail
9 12 (1.02%) Microsoft Clustering
9 12 (1.02%) vMotion
10 10 (0.85%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (0.85%) NetBackup
10 10 (0.85%) PowerCLI
10 10 (0.85%) SCOM
11 9 (0.76%) Dell DRAC
11 9 (0.76%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 8 (0.68%) Nagios
13 7 (0.59%) Check_MK
14 5 (0.42%) EMC NetWorker
Vendors
1 291 (24.64%) Cisco
2 197 (16.68%) VMware
3 140 (11.85%) Microsoft
4 125 (10.58%) Palo Alto
5 105 (8.89%) F5
6 76 (6.44%) Dell
7 71 (6.01%) Arista
8 70 (5.93%) Fortinet
9 68 (5.76%) Juniper
10 64 (5.42%) ServiceNow
11 41 (3.47%) Aruba
12 38 (3.22%) CheckPoint
13 35 (2.96%) Red Hat
14 30 (2.54%) Google
15 26 (2.20%) Veeam
16 25 (2.12%) IBM
16 25 (2.12%) Oracle
17 23 (1.95%) SolarWinds
18 22 (1.86%) Zscaler
19 20 (1.69%) NetApp