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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 133 123
Rank change year-on-year +8 -10 -31
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,194 714 757
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.19% 2.16% 2.00%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.32% 5.98% 6.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 731 450 455
10th Percentile £325 £277 £358
25th Percentile £413 £380 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £650 £600 £612
90th Percentile £750 £725 £720
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £525
% change year-on-year +5.26% -9.52% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 41 35
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.83
25th Percentile £18.90 - £12.08
Median hourly rate £33.86 £25.15 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +34.63% +11.78% -2.17%
75th Percentile £53.81 £31.00 £26.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £40.00 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £25.11 £15.00
% change year-on-year -12.39% +67.42% -34.78%

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 18,907 11,932 11,609
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.64% 36.02% 30.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,283 7,315 6,943
10th Percentile £325 £299 £275
25th Percentile £425 £408 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £665
90th Percentile £750 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,313 623 414
10th Percentile £13.92 £14.69 £15.79
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.51 £22.70
Median hourly rate £36.00 £27.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +30.91% -42.11% +5.56%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £72.30 £75.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.50 £27.21 £54.25
% change year-on-year +26.77% -49.84% +5.50%

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 +1 1,020 £538 +4.88% 2,402
UK excluding London -9 644 £500 +5.26% 1,025
London +10 414 £550 +0.69% 1,381
Work from Home -10 277 £540 +5.88% 614
North of England -3 225 £500 +5.26% 236
South East -9 165 £525 +27.27% 306
Yorkshire +18 132 £500 +11.11% 60
North West -24 73 £550 +2.33% 121
Midlands -52 73 £475 -1.30% 129
West Midlands -51 60 £500 - 95
South West -20 57 £650 +18.18% 81
East of England -9 52 £500 -16.67% 145
Scotland -1 46 £375 -16.67% 66
Wales +8 33 £468 +61.21% 43
North East -19 26 £625 +257.14% 55
East Midlands -20 13 £425 -4.17% 34
Channel Islands - 1 £575 -
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 24

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 35 (2.93%) Confluence
2 19 (1.59%) SharePoint
3 16 (1.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.75%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.59%) IIS
6 5 (0.42%) Apache
6 5 (0.42%) CloudStack
7 1 (0.084%) CICS
7 1 (0.084%) nginx
7 1 (0.084%) SAS
7 1 (0.084%) Tomcat
Applications
1 23 (1.93%) Microsoft Excel
1 23 (1.93%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
3 10 (0.84%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
5 5 (0.42%) Navisworks
5 5 (0.42%) Revit
6 2 (0.17%) EPLAN
Business Applications
1 11 (0.92%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
3 1 (0.084%) Cloudability
3 1 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.084%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.084%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.084%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 258 (21.61%) Azure
2 210 (17.59%) AWS
3 68 (5.70%) GCP
4 60 (5.03%) GitHub
5 49 (4.10%) Microsoft 365
6 48 (4.02%) IaaS
7 40 (3.35%) SaaS
8 39 (3.27%) Entra ID
9 32 (2.68%) OCI
10 21 (1.76%) Azure DevOps
10 21 (1.76%) PaaS
11 19 (1.59%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 17 (1.42%) OpenShift
13 16 (1.34%) AWS Direct Connect
14 15 (1.26%) OneDrive
14 15 (1.26%) Power Platform
15 12 (1.01%) Nutanix
15 12 (1.01%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 8 (0.67%) Azure Monitor
17 6 (0.50%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 281 (23.53%) Firewall
2 183 (15.33%) WAN
3 167 (13.99%) BGP
4 130 (10.89%) DNS
5 121 (10.13%) Network Security
6 119 (9.97%) VPN
7 108 (9.05%) LAN
8 104 (8.71%) VLAN
9 102 (8.54%) VXLAN
10 101 (8.46%) OSPF
11 87 (7.29%) SAN
11 87 (7.29%) SD-WAN
11 87 (7.29%) TCP/IP
12 84 (7.04%) DHCP
13 76 (6.37%) Ethernet VPN
14 62 (5.19%) Wireless
15 59 (4.94%) Structured Cabling
15 59 (4.94%) Wi-Fi
16 52 (4.36%) BIG-IP
17 51 (4.27%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (3.85%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.26%) Power BI
3 11 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 10 (0.84%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 10 (0.84%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 7 (0.59%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.42%) 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
9 3 (0.25%) Big Data
9 3 (0.25%) PostgreSQL
10 2 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.17%) Flink
10 2 (0.17%) Metadata
10 2 (0.17%) Sybase ASE
10 2 (0.17%) Sybase IQ
Development Applications
1 80 (6.70%) JIRA
2 38 (3.18%) Jenkins
3 37 (3.10%) GitLab
4 28 (2.35%) 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 (0.084%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.084%) Cucumber
General
1 285 (23.87%) Social Skills
2 179 (14.99%) Finance
3 90 (7.54%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (5.28%) Banking
5 55 (4.61%) Telecoms
6 54 (4.52%) Public Sector
7 46 (3.85%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (2.09%) Legal
9 24 (2.01%) Retail
10 19 (1.59%) Manufacturing
11 17 (1.42%) Organisational Skills
12 16 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
13 13 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 8 (0.67%) Police
15 6 (0.50%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.50%) Investment Banking
16 5 (0.42%) Cyber-Physical System
16 5 (0.42%) Law
16 5 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
17 4 (0.34%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 190 (15.91%) Architect
2 189 (15.83%) Network Engineer
3 145 (12.14%) Senior
4 121 (10.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 86 (7.20%) Data Centre Engineer
6 81 (6.78%) Project Manager
7 74 (6.20%) Lead
8 71 (5.95%) Network Architect
9 48 (4.02%) Consultant
10 44 (3.69%) Data Centre Manager
11 37 (3.10%) IT Engineer
12 36 (3.02%) Senior Network Engineer
12 36 (3.02%) Technical Architect
13 34 (2.85%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 33 (2.76%) Analyst
14 33 (2.76%) Solutions Architect
14 33 (2.76%) Support Engineer
15 31 (2.60%) Infrastructure Manager
16 29 (2.43%) Technical Manager
17 28 (2.35%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 118 (9.88%) Terraform
2 33 (2.76%) REST
3 29 (2.43%) Middleware
4 18 (1.51%) YAML
5 16 (1.34%) .NET
5 16 (1.34%) JSON
6 13 (1.09%) 802.1X
7 6 (0.50%) LDAP
7 6 (0.50%) NETCONF
7 6 (0.50%) SAML
8 5 (0.42%) Elastic Stack
8 5 (0.42%) OpenAPI
8 5 (0.42%) OpenConfig
8 5 (0.42%) RESTCONF
8 5 (0.42%) Swagger
8 5 (0.42%) YANG
9 4 (0.34%) GeoJSON
9 4 (0.34%) Kafka
9 4 (0.34%) Redfish
9 4 (0.34%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 83 (6.95%) Hybrid Cloud
2 47 (3.94%) Public Cloud
3 34 (2.85%) Cloud Native
3 34 (2.85%) Enterprise Storage
4 32 (2.68%) Private Cloud
5 30 (2.51%) PKI
6 29 (2.43%) Management Information System
7 28 (2.35%) Onboarding
7 28 (2.35%) Replication
8 26 (2.18%) Operational Technology
9 25 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
10 24 (2.01%) Clustering
11 21 (1.76%) Analytical Mindset
11 21 (1.76%) SCADA
11 21 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
12 20 (1.68%) CMDB
13 17 (1.42%) Fibre Optics
14 15 (1.26%) Driving Licence
15 13 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
16 11 (0.92%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 204 (17.09%) Windows
2 127 (10.64%) Linux
3 78 (6.53%) Windows Server
4 29 (2.43%) Unix
5 17 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (1.09%) Mac OS
7 12 (1.01%) AIX
8 10 (0.84%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.75%) VMS
9 9 (0.75%) Windows 10
10 8 (0.67%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.50%) Solaris
12 5 (0.42%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.25%) HPUX
13 3 (0.25%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.25%) SUSE
13 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.25%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 260 (21.78%) Migration
2 176 (14.74%) Problem-Solving
3 174 (14.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 168 (14.07%) Stakeholder Management
5 134 (11.22%) Infrastructure as Code
6 112 (9.38%) ITIL
7 110 (9.21%) Agile
7 110 (9.21%) CI/CD
8 101 (8.46%) Project Delivery
9 100 (8.38%) High Availability
10 96 (8.04%) Validation
11 94 (7.87%) Continuous Improvement
12 89 (7.45%) Disaster Recovery
12 89 (7.45%) Roadmaps
13 83 (6.95%) Zero Trust
14 82 (6.87%) Change Management
15 79 (6.62%) Cybersecurity
16 74 (6.20%) DevOps
17 70 (5.86%) Technical Leadership
18 69 (5.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 165 (13.82%) Python
2 76 (6.37%) PowerShell
3 55 (4.61%) SQL
4 34 (2.85%) Bash
5 19 (1.59%) ActionScript
6 16 (1.34%) C#
7 12 (1.01%) T-SQL
8 11 (0.92%) Bicep
9 8 (0.67%) Perl
10 7 (0.59%) PL/SQL
10 7 (0.59%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.34%) Go
11 4 (0.34%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.25%) Java
12 3 (0.25%) JCL
12 3 (0.25%) Lisp
12 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.17%) Korn
13 2 (0.17%) MATLAB
13 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 302 (25.29%) Security Cleared
2 207 (17.34%) SC Cleared
3 140 (11.73%) Cisco Certification
4 100 (8.38%) DV Cleared
5 89 (7.45%) CCNP
6 59 (4.94%) Degree
7 49 (4.10%) CCNA
8 34 (2.85%) AWS Certification
9 27 (2.26%) CCIE
10 26 (2.18%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 25 (2.09%) CISSP
11 25 (2.09%) Microsoft Certification
11 25 (2.09%) Network+ Certification
12 23 (1.93%) A+ Certification
12 23 (1.93%) Azure Certification
13 22 (1.84%) PMI Certification
14 21 (1.76%) PMP
15 19 (1.59%) VCAP
16 17 (1.42%) MCSE
17 15 (1.26%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (3.02%) QA
2 28 (2.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 27 (2.26%) SLA
4 25 (2.09%) NIST
5 14 (1.17%) PMO
6 12 (1.01%) GDPR
6 12 (1.01%) GRC
7 9 (0.75%) JSP 440
7 9 (0.75%) NCSC
8 8 (0.67%) PCI DSS
9 6 (0.50%) ISO 31000
9 6 (0.50%) ISO 9001
9 6 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 5 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
10 5 (0.42%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.34%) RMADS
12 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 2 (0.17%) HIPAA
System Software
1 154 (12.90%) VMware Infrastructure
2 100 (8.38%) Active Directory
3 55 (4.61%) vSphere
4 48 (4.02%) VMware NSX
5 41 (3.43%) Hyper-V
6 36 (3.02%) Docker
7 34 (2.85%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (2.18%) Firmware
9 14 (1.17%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.92%) NFS
11 6 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
12 5 (0.42%) ISA Server
12 5 (0.42%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.34%) PowerHA
14 3 (0.25%) BitLocker
14 3 (0.25%) KVM
14 3 (0.25%) SRDF
14 3 (0.25%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 147 (12.31%) Ansible
2 59 (4.94%) Kubernetes
3 32 (2.68%) FortiGate
4 20 (1.68%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (1.42%) Prometheus
6 16 (1.34%) SCCM
6 16 (1.34%) vCenter Server
6 16 (1.34%) VxRail
7 14 (1.17%) Grafana
8 12 (1.01%) Microsoft Clustering
8 12 (1.01%) PowerCLI
9 11 (0.92%) SCOM
9 11 (0.92%) vMotion
10 10 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
11 9 (0.75%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 8 (0.67%) Dell DRAC
13 7 (0.59%) Nagios
14 6 (0.50%) CASB
14 6 (0.50%) Cisco Prime
14 6 (0.50%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 282 (23.62%) Cisco
2 203 (17.00%) VMware
3 160 (13.40%) Microsoft
4 134 (11.22%) Palo Alto
5 109 (9.13%) F5
6 68 (5.70%) ServiceNow
7 66 (5.53%) Fortinet
8 60 (5.03%) Arista
9 59 (4.94%) Juniper
10 49 (4.10%) Dell
11 44 (3.69%) Aruba
12 37 (3.10%) CheckPoint
13 36 (3.02%) Oracle
14 35 (2.93%) Google
15 32 (2.68%) Veeam
16 31 (2.60%) Red Hat
17 26 (2.18%) Commvault
18 25 (2.09%) Zscaler
19 22 (1.84%) IBM
19 22 (1.84%) NetApp