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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 112 128 100
Rank change year-on-year +16 -28 -6
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,016 637 975
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.21% 2.17% 2.22%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.84% 6.43% 7.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 631 410 650
10th Percentile £318 £325 £298
25th Percentile £412 £413 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.28% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £719 £675 £714
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £475 £538
% change year-on-year -1.05% -11.63% +7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 27 45
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.17 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.07 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £21.46 £24.66 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -12.98% -0.84% +14.77%
75th Percentile £63.94 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £77.93 £43.75 £41.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £23.50
% change year-on-year -21.57% +4.94% +9.48%

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 14,844 9,914 13,363
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.32% 33.84% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,287 6,351 8,565
10th Percentile £300 £295 £263
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 704 384 904
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.72 £22.44 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +19.27% +21.19%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £83.20 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.50 £25.28
% change year-on-year +46.15% +28.59% +14.89%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 +13 832 £488 -7.14% 432
UK excluding London +1 578 £470 -1.05% 276
London +7 296 £550 +4.76% 185
Work from Home +18 260 £475 -11.21% 151
North of England +28 186 £462 +8.68% 46
South East 0 177 £475 -4.28% 98
North West +17 92 £500 - 20
Yorkshire -4 81 £365 -5.93% 23
Midlands -44 58 £474 -18.63% 36
Scotland +3 52 £472 +11.06% 18
West Midlands -38 49 £474 -24.16% 27
South West -33 45 £498 -9.22% 46
East of England -22 36 £478 +13.14% 33
Wales -3 30 £400 - 8
North East -3 15 £175 +59.09% 3
East Midlands -31 8 £200 -63.64% 9
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 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 18 (1.77%) Confluence
1 18 (1.77%) SharePoint
2 14 (1.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (0.98%) CICS
4 4 (0.39%) nginx
4 4 (0.39%) OpenStack
4 4 (0.39%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.20%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.20%) HCL Notes
5 2 (0.20%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.098%) Mendix
Applications
1 26 (2.56%) Microsoft Office
2 21 (2.07%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.77%) MS Visio
4 16 (1.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.30%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.59%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.30%) Primavera
2 3 (0.30%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.20%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.098%) Maximo
4 1 (0.098%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.098%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 184 (18.11%) Azure
2 155 (15.26%) AWS
3 66 (6.50%) GCP
4 43 (4.23%) Microsoft 365
5 22 (2.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 18 (1.77%) Entra ID
7 17 (1.67%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 17 (1.67%) IaaS
7 17 (1.67%) SaaS
8 14 (1.38%) GitHub
8 14 (1.38%) Power Platform
9 13 (1.28%) OpenShift
10 12 (1.18%) Azure DevOps
10 12 (1.18%) PaaS
11 11 (1.08%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 11 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (1.08%) AWS Direct Connect
12 9 (0.89%) Amazon S3
13 8 (0.79%) Azure Sentinel
14 7 (0.69%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 295 (29.04%) Firewall
2 178 (17.52%) WAN
3 159 (15.65%) BGP
4 121 (11.91%) OSPF
5 113 (11.12%) LAN
6 109 (10.73%) Network Security
7 106 (10.43%) VPN
8 87 (8.56%) VXLAN
9 86 (8.46%) SAN
10 78 (7.68%) Structured Cabling
11 75 (7.38%) DNS
12 73 (7.19%) VLAN
13 61 (6.00%) DHCP
14 57 (5.61%) Ethernet VPN
15 52 (5.12%) Wireless
16 51 (5.02%) SD-WAN
17 46 (4.53%) Cisco Nexus
18 43 (4.23%) Wi-Fi
19 41 (4.04%) Cisco ISE
20 39 (3.84%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (0.98%) DataStage
2 9 (0.89%) Power BI
3 6 (0.59%) Relational Database
3 6 (0.59%) SQL Server
4 5 (0.49%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.39%) Big Data
5 4 (0.39%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.39%) Power Query
5 4 (0.39%) PowerPivot
5 4 (0.39%) SAP Data Services
6 3 (0.30%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (0.30%) InfluxDB
7 2 (0.20%) Data Lake
7 2 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.20%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.20%) GIS
7 2 (0.20%) Oracle Database
7 2 (0.20%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.098%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.098%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 35 (3.44%) JIRA
2 34 (3.35%) Git
3 22 (2.17%) Jenkins
4 18 (1.77%) GitLab
5 9 (0.89%) Maven
6 8 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (0.49%) JMeter
8 4 (0.39%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 4 (0.39%) Eclipse
8 4 (0.39%) Subversion
9 3 (0.30%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.30%) ScriptRunner
10 1 (0.098%) AppScan
10 1 (0.098%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.098%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.098%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.098%) Postman
General
1 260 (25.59%) Social Skills
2 145 (14.27%) Finance
3 127 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
4 81 (7.97%) Public Sector
5 57 (5.61%) Documentation Skills
6 46 (4.53%) Banking
7 34 (3.35%) Telecoms
8 31 (3.05%) Legal
9 27 (2.66%) Manufacturing
10 22 (2.17%) Retail
11 21 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
12 15 (1.48%) Marketing
12 15 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
13 13 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 9 (0.89%) Law
14 9 (0.89%) Military
15 8 (0.79%) Investment Banking
15 8 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
16 7 (0.69%) Aerospace
16 7 (0.69%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 185 (18.21%) Network Engineer
2 169 (16.63%) Architect
3 100 (9.84%) Senior
4 80 (7.87%) Project Manager
5 74 (7.28%) Data Centre Engineer
6 50 (4.92%) Network Architect
7 49 (4.82%) IT Engineer
8 47 (4.63%) Lead
9 45 (4.43%) Analyst
9 45 (4.43%) Data Centre Manager
9 45 (4.43%) Solutions Architect
10 44 (4.33%) Field Engineer
11 43 (4.23%) Field Service Engineer
12 40 (3.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 37 (3.64%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 35 (3.44%) Infrastructure Manager
15 31 (3.05%) Senior Network Engineer
16 30 (2.95%) Technical Architect
17 27 (2.66%) Cisco Engineer
17 27 (2.66%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (3.94%) Middleware
2 36 (3.54%) 802.1X
3 11 (1.08%) LDAP
4 6 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
4 6 (0.59%) Redfish
4 6 (0.59%) Spring
5 5 (0.49%) Jinja
5 5 (0.49%) NETCONF
5 5 (0.49%) REST
5 5 (0.49%) XML
6 4 (0.39%) ADO
6 4 (0.39%) ARM Templates
6 4 (0.39%) OpenConfig
6 4 (0.39%) RESTCONF
6 4 (0.39%) Spring Boot
6 4 (0.39%) VML
6 4 (0.39%) YANG
7 3 (0.30%) Kafka
7 3 (0.30%) RFC 2544
7 3 (0.30%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 50 (4.92%) Analytical Mindset
2 48 (4.72%) Hybrid Cloud
3 28 (2.76%) Clustering
3 28 (2.76%) PKI
4 26 (2.56%) Management Information System
5 23 (2.26%) Fibre Optics
6 22 (2.17%) Onboarding
7 21 (2.07%) Cloud Native
7 21 (2.07%) Driving Licence
8 20 (1.97%) Public Cloud
9 19 (1.87%) Replication
9 19 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
10 18 (1.77%) CMDB
11 16 (1.57%) Private Cloud
12 15 (1.48%) Enterprise Storage
13 14 (1.38%) NHS
14 13 (1.28%) Mainframe
15 11 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
15 11 (1.08%) SCADA
16 10 (0.98%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 131 (12.89%) Windows
2 123 (12.11%) Linux
3 42 (4.13%) Windows Server
4 37 (3.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 21 (2.07%) Unix
6 18 (1.77%) AIX
7 15 (1.48%) Solaris
8 12 (1.18%) Android
8 12 (1.18%) Mac OS
9 11 (1.08%) CentOS
10 8 (0.79%) VMS
11 7 (0.69%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (0.49%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.30%) HPUX
13 3 (0.30%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.30%) SUSE
13 3 (0.30%) Windows 10
14 2 (0.20%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (17.62%) Problem-Solving
2 173 (17.03%) Migration
3 97 (9.55%) Stakeholder Management
4 88 (8.66%) ITIL
5 82 (8.07%) High Availability
5 82 (8.07%) Roadmaps
6 77 (7.58%) Continuous Improvement
7 73 (7.19%) Infrastructure as Code
8 72 (7.09%) Project Management
9 67 (6.59%) Load Balancing
10 66 (6.50%) Change Management
11 63 (6.20%) CI/CD
12 62 (6.10%) Project Delivery
13 59 (5.81%) Break/Fix
13 59 (5.81%) Customer Service
14 58 (5.71%) Agile
15 55 (5.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 55 (5.41%) Technical Leadership
16 54 (5.31%) Validation
17 52 (5.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 98 (9.65%) Python
2 48 (4.72%) PowerShell
3 27 (2.66%) Bash
3 27 (2.66%) SQL
4 23 (2.26%) Java
5 16 (1.57%) Perl
6 14 (1.38%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.18%) COBOL
8 9 (0.89%) MATLAB
9 8 (0.79%) Bicep
10 6 (0.59%) VBA
11 5 (0.49%) C
11 5 (0.49%) C++
11 5 (0.49%) Lisp
12 4 (0.39%) JavaScript
13 3 (0.30%) Korn
13 3 (0.30%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.098%) Groovy
14 1 (0.098%) JCL
14 1 (0.098%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 312 (30.71%) Security Cleared
2 232 (22.83%) SC Cleared
3 216 (21.26%) Cisco Certification
4 138 (13.58%) CCNP
5 93 (9.15%) CCNA
6 68 (6.69%) Degree
6 68 (6.69%) DV Cleared
7 49 (4.82%) Network+ Certification
8 42 (4.13%) Microsoft Certification
9 41 (4.04%) A+ Certification
9 41 (4.04%) MCSE
10 30 (2.95%) CCIE
11 24 (2.36%) PMP
12 22 (2.17%) PMI Certification
13 21 (2.07%) AWS Certification
14 20 (1.97%) Azure Certification
15 16 (1.57%) JNCIS
16 14 (1.38%) CISSP
16 14 (1.38%) City & Guilds
16 14 (1.38%) JNCIP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 27 (2.66%) NIST
2 27 (2.66%) SLA
3 26 (2.56%) PMO
4 25 (2.46%) GDPR
5 17 (1.67%) PCI DSS
5 17 (1.67%) QA
6 11 (1.08%) NCSC
7 7 (0.69%) GRC
8 6 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
9 5 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.30%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.30%) RMADS
12 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.098%) COBIT
13 1 (0.098%) NEBOSH
13 1 (0.098%) SOC 1
System Software
1 92 (9.06%) VMware Infrastructure
2 62 (6.10%) Active Directory
3 51 (5.02%) VMware NSX
4 22 (2.17%) Firmware
4 22 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
4 22 (2.17%) vSphere
5 19 (1.87%) VMware ESXi
6 18 (1.77%) Hyper-V
7 15 (1.48%) Docker
8 10 (0.98%) KVM
9 4 (0.39%) SRDF
9 4 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.30%) NFS
10 3 (0.30%) PowerHA
10 3 (0.30%) UAG
10 3 (0.30%) Veritas Cluster Server
11 2 (0.20%) Ceph
11 2 (0.20%) vCloud
11 2 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 103 (10.14%) Ansible
2 82 (8.07%) Terraform
3 58 (5.71%) FortiGate
4 41 (4.04%) Kubernetes
5 34 (3.35%) Grafana
6 24 (2.36%) Prometheus
7 16 (1.57%) SCCM
8 14 (1.38%) Microsoft Intune
9 11 (1.08%) NetBackup
10 10 (0.98%) Check_MK
10 10 (0.98%) vCenter Server
11 9 (0.89%) Podman
11 9 (0.89%) Red Hat Satellite
12 7 (0.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 7 (0.69%) SCOM
13 6 (0.59%) Dell DRAC
13 6 (0.59%) EMC NetWorker
14 5 (0.49%) Endace
14 5 (0.49%) Nagios
14 5 (0.49%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 296 (29.13%) Cisco
2 133 (13.09%) VMware
3 123 (12.11%) Palo Alto
4 100 (9.84%) Microsoft
5 97 (9.55%) Dell
6 85 (8.37%) Juniper
7 76 (7.48%) F5
8 48 (4.72%) Arista
9 45 (4.43%) Fortinet
9 45 (4.43%) ServiceNow
10 43 (4.23%) Aruba
11 42 (4.13%) CheckPoint
12 38 (3.74%) SolarWinds
13 35 (3.44%) Red Hat
14 34 (3.35%) Google
14 34 (3.35%) Meraki
15 30 (2.95%) Splunk
16 29 (2.85%) IBM
17 28 (2.76%) HP
18 26 (2.56%) Citrix