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

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 102 125 99
Rank change year-on-year +23 -26 -6
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,092 657 939
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.29% 2.25% 2.18%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 7.10% 6.63% 7.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 674 428 629
10th Percentile £318 £346 £300
25th Percentile £405 £413 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.87% -2.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £625
90th Percentile £725 £675 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £464 £475 £535
% change year-on-year -2.24% -11.21% +7.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 23 45
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.18 £14.60
25th Percentile £16.01 £24.66 £21.25
Median hourly rate £19.34 £27.50 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.67% +14.58% +10.75%
75th Percentile £30.63 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £74.78 £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 15,374 9,905 13,106
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.21% 33.96% 30.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,578 6,327 8,422
10th Percentile £308 £300 £268
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.35% -2.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 723 393 903
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.00 £21.00 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +4.84% +37.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.50 £83.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £31.76 £28.50
% change year-on-year +57.43% +11.44% +29.55%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +16 886 £481 -8.33% 438
UK excluding London +5 613 £464 -2.24% 262
London +3 315 £550 +4.76% 210
Work from Home +22 284 £475 -8.43% 135
North of England +17 199 £459 +8.00% 63
South East -1 190 £460 +2.22% 100
Yorkshire -6 96 £365 -6.41% 16
North West +10 86 £479 -4.13% 35
Scotland +8 55 £469 +10.35% 14
Midlands -46 53 £466 -15.29% 24
South West -41 49 £498 -9.22% 29
West Midlands -43 47 £467 -15.12% 20
East of England -22 40 £478 +32.32% 32
Wales +1 33 £455 +13.75% 4
North East 0 19 £400 +263.64% 12
East Midlands -32 5 £400 -27.27% 4
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 4

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 (2.01%) Confluence
2 12 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (0.92%) CICS
3 10 (0.92%) SharePoint
4 5 (0.46%) nginx
5 4 (0.37%) OpenStack
5 4 (0.37%) WebLogic
6 3 (0.27%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.092%) Mendix
Applications
1 20 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (1.10%) MS Visio
5 11 (1.01%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.27%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 2 (0.18%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 4 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.18%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.18%) Primavera
4 1 (0.092%) Maximo
4 1 (0.092%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.092%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 205 (18.77%) Azure
2 167 (15.29%) AWS
3 65 (5.95%) GCP
4 34 (3.11%) Microsoft 365
5 22 (2.01%) SaaS
6 21 (1.92%) Entra ID
7 20 (1.83%) GitHub
8 19 (1.74%) IaaS
9 18 (1.65%) OCI
10 17 (1.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 15 (1.37%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 14 (1.28%) PaaS
13 13 (1.19%) Power Platform
14 12 (1.10%) OpenShift
15 11 (1.01%) Amazon GuardDuty
15 11 (1.01%) Azure DevOps
16 10 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
17 9 (0.82%) AWS Direct Connect
17 9 (0.82%) Azure Sentinel
17 9 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 301 (27.56%) Firewall
2 184 (16.85%) WAN
3 168 (15.38%) BGP
4 134 (12.27%) OSPF
5 120 (10.99%) Network Security
6 113 (10.35%) VPN
7 111 (10.16%) LAN
8 100 (9.16%) SAN
9 99 (9.07%) VXLAN
10 84 (7.69%) Structured Cabling
11 74 (6.78%) VLAN
12 73 (6.68%) DNS
13 71 (6.50%) Ethernet VPN
14 59 (5.40%) SD-WAN
15 55 (5.04%) DHCP
16 51 (4.67%) Cisco Nexus
17 48 (4.40%) Wi-Fi
18 39 (3.57%) NX-OS
19 38 (3.48%) BIG-IP
20 36 (3.30%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (0.92%) DataStage
1 10 (0.92%) SQL Server
2 8 (0.73%) Power BI
3 6 (0.55%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (0.46%) Relational Database
5 4 (0.37%) Big Data
5 4 (0.37%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.37%) Power Query
5 4 (0.37%) PowerPivot
5 4 (0.37%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.27%) GIS
6 3 (0.27%) Oracle Database
6 3 (0.27%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.18%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.18%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.18%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.18%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.092%) MariaDB
8 1 (0.092%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 45 (4.12%) JIRA
2 35 (3.21%) Git
3 28 (2.56%) GitLab
4 25 (2.29%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.73%) Sonatype Nexus
6 7 (0.64%) Maven
7 6 (0.55%) ScriptRunner
8 5 (0.46%) JMeter
9 4 (0.37%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 4 (0.37%) Eclipse
9 4 (0.37%) Subversion
10 3 (0.27%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.27%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.092%) AppScan
11 1 (0.092%) Burp Suite
11 1 (0.092%) LoadRunner
11 1 (0.092%) Metasploit
11 1 (0.092%) Postman
General
1 274 (25.09%) Social Skills
2 150 (13.74%) Finance
3 137 (12.55%) Analytical Skills
4 80 (7.33%) Public Sector
5 57 (5.22%) Documentation Skills
6 46 (4.21%) Banking
7 31 (2.84%) Legal
8 30 (2.75%) Telecoms
9 24 (2.20%) Manufacturing
9 24 (2.20%) Retail
10 21 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
11 12 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 12 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
12 10 (0.92%) Military
13 9 (0.82%) Law
14 8 (0.73%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.73%) Marketing
15 6 (0.55%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.55%) Organisational Skills
16 5 (0.46%) Portuguese Language
Job Titles
1 195 (17.86%) Network Engineer
2 174 (15.93%) Architect
3 121 (11.08%) Senior
4 81 (7.42%) Data Centre Engineer
5 74 (6.78%) Project Manager
6 59 (5.40%) IT Engineer
7 56 (5.13%) Field Engineer
7 56 (5.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 56 (5.13%) Lead
8 53 (4.85%) Field Service Engineer
9 48 (4.40%) Network Architect
10 46 (4.21%) Data Centre Manager
11 41 (3.75%) Analyst
12 40 (3.66%) Solutions Architect
13 36 (3.30%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 34 (3.11%) Senior Network Engineer
15 33 (3.02%) Infrastructure Manager
16 30 (2.75%) Technical Architect
17 29 (2.66%) Support Engineer
18 28 (2.56%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (4.03%) Middleware
2 32 (2.93%) 802.1X
3 12 (1.10%) LDAP
4 8 (0.73%) Redfish
5 7 (0.64%) Spring
6 6 (0.55%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (0.46%) Jinja
7 5 (0.46%) NETCONF
7 5 (0.46%) REST
7 5 (0.46%) XML
8 4 (0.37%) ADO
8 4 (0.37%) Kafka
8 4 (0.37%) OpenConfig
8 4 (0.37%) RESTCONF
8 4 (0.37%) Spring Boot
8 4 (0.37%) VML
8 4 (0.37%) YANG
9 3 (0.27%) OpenLayers
9 3 (0.27%) RFC 2544
9 3 (0.27%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 61 (5.59%) Analytical Mindset
2 58 (5.31%) Hybrid Cloud
3 32 (2.93%) Management Information System
4 29 (2.66%) Clustering
5 28 (2.56%) PKI
6 27 (2.47%) Cloud Native
7 25 (2.29%) Fibre Optics
8 22 (2.01%) Public Cloud
9 20 (1.83%) CMDB
9 20 (1.83%) Onboarding
10 19 (1.74%) Driving Licence
10 19 (1.74%) Replication
10 19 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
11 18 (1.65%) Enterprise Storage
11 18 (1.65%) SCADA
12 16 (1.47%) Private Cloud
13 15 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 14 (1.28%) NHS
15 12 (1.10%) Mainframe
16 11 (1.01%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 135 (12.36%) Windows
2 134 (12.27%) Linux
3 40 (3.66%) Windows Server
4 37 (3.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (2.11%) Unix
6 20 (1.83%) AIX
7 17 (1.56%) Solaris
8 11 (1.01%) CentOS
9 9 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
10 7 (0.64%) VMS
11 5 (0.46%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.37%) Android
12 4 (0.37%) HPUX
12 4 (0.37%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.37%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.37%) SUSE
13 3 (0.27%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.27%) Windows 10
13 3 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 204 (18.68%) Problem-Solving
2 190 (17.40%) Migration
3 101 (9.25%) Stakeholder Management
4 97 (8.88%) High Availability
5 93 (8.52%) ITIL
6 91 (8.33%) Infrastructure as Code
7 87 (7.97%) Roadmaps
8 86 (7.88%) Continuous Improvement
9 78 (7.14%) CI/CD
10 76 (6.96%) Load Balancing
11 75 (6.87%) Project Management
12 72 (6.59%) Change Management
13 71 (6.50%) Validation
14 70 (6.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 68 (6.23%) Break/Fix
16 67 (6.14%) Project Delivery
17 65 (5.95%) Customer Service
18 59 (5.40%) Agile
18 59 (5.40%) DevOps
19 58 (5.31%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 114 (10.44%) Python
2 40 (3.66%) PowerShell
3 36 (3.30%) SQL
4 23 (2.11%) Bash
4 23 (2.11%) Java
5 16 (1.47%) Shell Script
6 12 (1.10%) COBOL
7 10 (0.92%) MATLAB
7 10 (0.92%) Perl
8 9 (0.82%) Bicep
9 7 (0.64%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.46%) C
10 5 (0.46%) C++
10 5 (0.46%) JavaScript
10 5 (0.46%) VBA
11 3 (0.27%) Korn
12 2 (0.18%) Groovy
12 2 (0.18%) JCL
12 2 (0.18%) Lisp
13 1 (0.092%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 313 (28.66%) Security Cleared
2 232 (21.25%) SC Cleared
3 228 (20.88%) Cisco Certification
4 134 (12.27%) CCNP
5 104 (9.52%) CCNA
6 64 (5.86%) DV Cleared
7 63 (5.77%) Degree
8 60 (5.49%) Network+ Certification
9 54 (4.95%) Microsoft Certification
10 51 (4.67%) A+ Certification
10 51 (4.67%) MCSE
11 25 (2.29%) CCIE
12 24 (2.20%) PMP
13 23 (2.11%) PMI Certification
14 22 (2.01%) Azure Certification
14 22 (2.01%) City & Guilds
15 19 (1.74%) AWS Certification
15 19 (1.74%) BICSI Certification
16 16 (1.47%) JNCIS
17 14 (1.28%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (2.75%) SLA
2 26 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 25 (2.29%) PMO
4 24 (2.20%) QA
5 22 (2.01%) NIST
6 20 (1.83%) GDPR
7 11 (1.01%) NCSC
7 11 (1.01%) PCI DSS
8 9 (0.82%) Disclosure Scotland
9 8 (0.73%) GRC
10 6 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
12 3 (0.27%) NIST 800
12 3 (0.27%) RMADS
13 2 (0.18%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 1 (0.092%) COBIT
14 1 (0.092%) NEBOSH
14 1 (0.092%) SOC 1
System Software
1 93 (8.52%) VMware Infrastructure
2 58 (5.31%) Active Directory
3 47 (4.30%) VMware NSX
4 30 (2.75%) Firmware
5 27 (2.47%) vSphere
6 24 (2.20%) VMware ESXi
7 22 (2.01%) Virtual Machines
8 20 (1.83%) Hyper-V
9 14 (1.28%) Docker
10 10 (0.92%) KVM
11 6 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.37%) SRDF
12 4 (0.37%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
13 3 (0.27%) NFS
13 3 (0.27%) PowerHA
13 3 (0.27%) UAG
13 3 (0.27%) Veritas Cluster Server
14 2 (0.18%) vCloud
14 2 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 117 (10.71%) Ansible
2 89 (8.15%) Terraform
3 59 (5.40%) FortiGate
4 40 (3.66%) Kubernetes
5 33 (3.02%) Grafana
6 25 (2.29%) Prometheus
7 13 (1.19%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (1.19%) SCCM
8 11 (1.01%) Check_MK
8 11 (1.01%) NetBackup
8 11 (1.01%) vCenter Server
9 10 (0.92%) Podman
9 10 (0.92%) Red Hat Satellite
10 9 (0.82%) PowerCLI
11 8 (0.73%) Dell DRAC
11 8 (0.73%) vMotion
12 7 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (0.55%) EMC NetWorker
14 5 (0.46%) Nagios
14 5 (0.46%) SCOM
Vendors
1 292 (26.74%) Cisco
2 141 (12.91%) VMware
3 139 (12.73%) Palo Alto
4 98 (8.97%) Dell
4 98 (8.97%) Microsoft
5 94 (8.61%) F5
6 88 (8.06%) Juniper
7 58 (5.31%) Arista
8 50 (4.58%) Aruba
8 50 (4.58%) Fortinet
9 45 (4.12%) CheckPoint
10 38 (3.48%) ServiceNow
11 36 (3.30%) Google
11 36 (3.30%) Red Hat
11 36 (3.30%) SolarWinds
12 32 (2.93%) IBM
13 31 (2.84%) Splunk
14 28 (2.56%) Oracle
15 27 (2.47%) Meraki
16 25 (2.29%) NVIDIA