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

6 months to
3 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 142 131 96
Rank change year-on-year -11 -35 +6
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 750 637 1,013
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.03% 1.95% 2.35%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 5.87% 6.09% 7.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 491 380 684
10th Percentile £278 £357 £313
25th Percentile £408 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -5.24% -2.33% +2.38%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £650
90th Percentile £688 £675 £721
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% +7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 29 23
10th Percentile £21.27 £11.75 £18.96
25th Percentile - £22.22 £21.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £24.18 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.01% +5.13% -64.06%
75th Percentile £37.25 £29.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.90 £41.25 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £24.18 £23.00
% change year-on-year +168.80% +5.13% -65.15%

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 12,782 10,456 13,467
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.54% 32.06% 31.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,034 6,213 8,947
10th Percentile £281 £264 £263
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £526 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.94% -4.36% -
75th Percentile £628 £655 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 620 324 525
10th Percentile £14.06 £18.06 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.22 £23.30 £19.99
Median hourly rate £27.21 £33.27 £41.23
Median % change year-on-year -18.21% -19.31% +38.73%
75th Percentile £61.31 £64.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.75 £76.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £32.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -15.83% -26.97% +90.99%

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 3 January 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 3 January 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 3 January 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 -15 650 £500 -4.76% 589
UK excluding London -2 421 £475 -5.00% 472
London -15 239 £525 - 187
Work from Home +41 208 £519 -3.08% 257
North of England -13 139 £475 -4.52% 95
South East -7 94 £450 -10.00% 152
North West +14 89 £523 +4.50% 37
Midlands +1 87 £451 -22.24% 63
West Midlands -3 70 £474 -18.28% 34
Yorkshire -37 46 £398 -5.36% 49
Scotland +5 37 £450 - 36
South West -30 36 £550 +0.18% 55
East of England -14 31 £492 +16.45% 63
East Midlands -13 17 £179 -71.40% 25
Wales -5 10 £265 -33.75% 10
North East -4 7 £175 - 9
Northern Ireland - 3 £425 - 7

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 30 (4.00%) SharePoint
2 22 (2.93%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (1.47%) Confluence
4 9 (1.20%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 6 (0.80%) Apache
7 5 (0.67%) Apache Spark
8 4 (0.53%) HCL Notes
8 4 (0.53%) nginx
9 3 (0.40%) CICS
9 3 (0.40%) GeoServer
9 3 (0.40%) Smallworld
9 3 (0.40%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.27%) FileNet
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle Coherence
10 2 (0.27%) ThingWorx
10 2 (0.27%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.13%) IIS
11 1 (0.13%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 54 (7.20%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (4.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 24 (3.20%) MS Visio
4 18 (2.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 15 (2.00%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.13%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 6 (0.80%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
3 2 (0.27%) DELMIA
3 2 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.13%) Epicor iScala
4 1 (0.13%) Maximo
4 1 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.13%) Primavera
4 1 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 140 (18.67%) Azure
2 109 (14.53%) AWS
3 68 (9.07%) Microsoft 365
4 41 (5.47%) GCP
5 25 (3.33%) Power Platform
6 17 (2.27%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 14 (1.87%) OpenShift
8 13 (1.73%) Entra ID
8 13 (1.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 11 (1.47%) AWS Direct Connect
9 11 (1.47%) SaaS
10 10 (1.33%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (1.33%) GitHub
11 9 (1.20%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 9 (1.20%) IaaS
11 9 (1.20%) PaaS
12 8 (1.07%) npm
13 7 (0.93%) OCI
14 6 (0.80%) Azure DevOps
15 5 (0.67%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 218 (29.07%) Firewall
2 139 (18.53%) WAN
3 87 (11.60%) Wireless
4 82 (10.93%) VPN
5 78 (10.40%) BGP
6 74 (9.87%) LAN
7 65 (8.67%) Network Security
8 58 (7.73%) OSPF
9 53 (7.07%) Wi-Fi
10 51 (6.80%) DNS
11 44 (5.87%) SD-WAN
11 44 (5.87%) VLAN
12 38 (5.07%) SAN
13 35 (4.67%) Cisco Nexus
14 34 (4.53%) Cisco ISE
15 33 (4.40%) IPsec
16 32 (4.27%) DHCP
17 31 (4.13%) VXLAN
18 30 (4.00%) MPLS
19 28 (3.73%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (2.93%) Power BI
2 17 (2.27%) Relational Database
3 10 (1.33%) RDBMS
3 10 (1.33%) SQL Server
4 8 (1.07%) GIS
5 6 (0.80%) NoSQL
6 5 (0.67%) Apache Hive
6 5 (0.67%) Hadoop
6 5 (0.67%) HBase
7 4 (0.53%) Data Mining
7 4 (0.53%) InfluxDB
7 4 (0.53%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.53%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (0.53%) Power Query
7 4 (0.53%) PowerPivot
8 3 (0.40%) Data Lake
8 3 (0.40%) Data Vault
8 3 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
8 3 (0.40%) Metadata
8 3 (0.40%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 27 (3.60%) Git
2 20 (2.67%) Jenkins
3 14 (1.87%) GitLab
3 14 (1.87%) Sonatype Nexus
4 13 (1.73%) JIRA
5 11 (1.47%) Maven
6 8 (1.07%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.40%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.40%) ER Studio
7 3 (0.40%) ERwin
7 3 (0.40%) Gradle
7 3 (0.40%) ScriptRunner
7 3 (0.40%) Selenium
8 2 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
General
1 197 (26.27%) Social Skills
2 133 (17.73%) Finance
3 88 (11.73%) Public Sector
4 85 (11.33%) Analytical Skills
5 62 (8.27%) Telecoms
6 60 (8.00%) Banking
7 49 (6.53%) Documentation Skills
8 43 (5.73%) Manufacturing
9 27 (3.60%) Marketing
10 25 (3.33%) Electronics
11 23 (3.07%) Presentation Skills
12 18 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 15 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
14 11 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
14 11 (1.47%) Retail
15 8 (1.07%) Law
16 7 (0.93%) Front Office
16 7 (0.93%) Investment Banking
16 7 (0.93%) Legal
16 7 (0.93%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 125 (16.67%) Network Engineer
2 115 (15.33%) Architect
3 71 (9.47%) Project Manager
4 65 (8.67%) Analyst
5 49 (6.53%) Senior
6 43 (5.73%) Network Architect
7 33 (4.40%) Consultant
7 33 (4.40%) Data Centre Manager
8 31 (4.13%) Solutions Architect
9 30 (4.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 29 (3.87%) IT Support
11 27 (3.60%) Cisco Engineer
11 27 (3.60%) Data Centre Engineer
11 27 (3.60%) Lead
11 27 (3.60%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 27 (3.60%) Security Engineer
12 25 (3.33%) Cisco Network Engineer
12 25 (3.33%) Desktop Support
13 23 (3.07%) 2nd Line Support
13 23 (3.07%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.07%) 802.1X
2 22 (2.93%) Middleware
3 10 (1.33%) RFC 2544
4 9 (1.20%) LDAP
5 5 (0.67%) Spark Streaming
6 4 (0.53%) ADO
6 4 (0.53%) Jinja
6 4 (0.53%) VML
7 3 (0.40%) REST
7 3 (0.40%) Yocto
8 2 (0.27%) .NET
8 2 (0.27%) ARM Templates
8 2 (0.27%) EJB
8 2 (0.27%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.27%) Java SE
8 2 (0.27%) ModSecurity
8 2 (0.27%) NETCONF
8 2 (0.27%) OpenLayers
8 2 (0.27%) Spring
8 2 (0.27%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 44 (5.87%) Hybrid Cloud
2 29 (3.87%) Cloud Native
3 26 (3.47%) Public Cloud
4 21 (2.80%) Self-Motivation
5 17 (2.27%) Driving Licence
5 17 (2.27%) Replication
6 16 (2.13%) Fibre Optics
7 15 (2.00%) Mainframe
7 15 (2.00%) Onboarding
8 13 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
8 13 (1.73%) Management Information System
8 13 (1.73%) Private Cloud
8 13 (1.73%) SCADA
9 11 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
10 10 (1.33%) PKI
11 9 (1.20%) CMDB
12 8 (1.07%) Clustering
12 8 (1.07%) Legacy Systems
13 7 (0.93%) Operational Technology
13 7 (0.93%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 98 (13.07%) Windows
2 81 (10.80%) Linux
3 40 (5.33%) Windows Server
4 39 (5.20%) Android
4 39 (5.20%) Mac OS
5 25 (3.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (1.73%) Unix
7 11 (1.47%) CentOS
8 7 (0.93%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.80%) Ubuntu
9 6 (0.80%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.67%) VMS
11 4 (0.53%) Solaris
11 4 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.40%) Embedded Linux
13 2 (0.27%) zOS
14 1 (0.13%) AIX
14 1 (0.13%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 126 (16.80%) Migration
2 109 (14.53%) Problem-Solving
3 91 (12.13%) Stakeholder Management
4 67 (8.93%) ITIL
5 62 (8.27%) Agile
6 61 (8.13%) Project Management
7 54 (7.20%) Project Delivery
8 51 (6.80%) Infrastructure as Code
9 50 (6.67%) DevOps
10 47 (6.27%) CI/CD
11 46 (6.13%) Network Design
11 46 (6.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 45 (6.00%) Change Management
13 44 (5.87%) Business Intelligence
14 43 (5.73%) Customer Service
14 43 (5.73%) Load Balancing
14 43 (5.73%) Service Management
15 40 (5.33%) Continuous Improvement
15 40 (5.33%) Programme Management
15 40 (5.33%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 74 (9.87%) Python
2 48 (6.40%) PowerShell
3 40 (5.33%) SQL
4 20 (2.67%) Bash
4 20 (2.67%) Java
5 11 (1.47%) Shell Script
6 10 (1.33%) Perl
7 8 (1.07%) Lisp
8 5 (0.67%) MATLAB
8 5 (0.67%) VBA
9 4 (0.53%) C
9 4 (0.53%) C++
9 4 (0.53%) Go
10 3 (0.40%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.27%) Bicep
11 2 (0.27%) JavaScript
11 2 (0.27%) Ruby
12 1 (0.13%) Groovy
12 1 (0.13%) JCL
12 1 (0.13%) Korn
Qualifications
1 245 (32.67%) Security Cleared
2 205 (27.33%) SC Cleared
3 109 (14.53%) Cisco Certification
4 85 (11.33%) CCNP
5 62 (8.27%) Degree
6 43 (5.73%) DV Cleared
7 40 (5.33%) CCNA
8 25 (3.33%) CCIE
9 23 (3.07%) AWS Certification
10 17 (2.27%) PMP
11 16 (2.13%) PMI Certification
12 12 (1.60%) CISSP
12 12 (1.60%) JNCIE
13 8 (1.07%) Azure Certification
13 8 (1.07%) BPSS Clearance
13 8 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
13 8 (1.07%) Network+ Certification
13 8 (1.07%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 7 (0.93%) A+ Certification
14 7 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (2.80%) NIST
2 20 (2.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 20 (2.67%) SLA
3 19 (2.53%) PMO
4 18 (2.40%) PCI DSS
5 14 (1.87%) QA
6 12 (1.60%) GDPR
7 11 (1.47%) Data Quality
8 6 (0.80%) NCSC
9 4 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.27%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.27%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.13%) GRC
11 1 (0.13%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 78 (10.40%) VMware Infrastructure
2 54 (7.20%) Active Directory
3 43 (5.73%) VMware NSX
4 27 (3.60%) Docker
5 19 (2.53%) Virtual Machines
6 17 (2.27%) Hyper-V
7 14 (1.87%) vSphere
8 9 (1.20%) Firmware
9 8 (1.07%) KVM
9 8 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.67%) HDFS
11 3 (0.40%) Lustre
12 2 (0.27%) Ceph
12 2 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
12 2 (0.27%) NFS
12 2 (0.27%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.27%) SRDF
12 2 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.27%) Xen
13 1 (0.13%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 82 (10.93%) Ansible
2 70 (9.33%) Terraform
3 35 (4.67%) FortiGate
4 23 (3.07%) SCCM
5 22 (2.93%) Kubernetes
6 15 (2.00%) Grafana
7 11 (1.47%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (1.33%) SCOM
8 10 (1.33%) vCenter Server
9 9 (1.20%) Puppet
10 8 (1.07%) Prometheus
11 7 (0.93%) CASB
12 6 (0.80%) Check_MK
12 6 (0.80%) SCOrch
12 6 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
13 5 (0.67%) Hadoop YARN
13 5 (0.67%) Podman
13 5 (0.67%) Red Hat Satellite
14 3 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (0.40%) Argo
Vendors
1 250 (33.33%) Cisco
2 100 (13.33%) VMware
3 95 (12.67%) Palo Alto
4 90 (12.00%) Microsoft
5 67 (8.93%) Dell
6 55 (7.33%) Juniper
7 54 (7.20%) F5
8 47 (6.27%) HP
9 41 (5.47%) CheckPoint
10 39 (5.20%) Apple
11 36 (4.80%) SAP
11 36 (4.80%) ServiceNow
12 34 (4.53%) Oracle
13 33 (4.40%) Aruba
13 33 (4.40%) Fortinet
14 32 (4.27%) Meraki
15 17 (2.27%) Arista
16 16 (2.13%) Citrix
16 16 (2.13%) Red Hat
17 14 (1.87%) NetApp