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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 131 116
Rank change year-on-year +6 -15 -25
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,197 714 753
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.19% 2.18% 2.00%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.35% 6.04% 6.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 730 450 456
10th Percentile £318 £280 £360
25th Percentile £413 £380 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £506 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% -3.62% -2.33%
75th Percentile £650 £600 £613
90th Percentile £750 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £525
% change year-on-year +5.26% -9.52% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 41 35
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.25 £11.83
25th Percentile £19.04 - £12.08
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% +11.78% -2.17%
75th Percentile £53.38 £31.00 £26.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £40.00 £28.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.50 £25.11 £15.00
% change year-on-year -14.39% +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 18,863 11,816 11,456
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.52% 36.01% 30.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,255 7,246 6,862
10th Percentile £320 £299 £275
25th Percentile £425 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £518 £526
Median % change year-on-year +1.38% -1.55% -4.36%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £670
90th Percentile £750 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,299 615 417
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.78 £15.57
25th Percentile £17.72 £18.82 £22.50
Median hourly rate £37.50 £28.13 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% -40.79% +5.56%
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.45 £72.50 £75.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £29.14 £57.35
% change year-on-year +28.71% -49.20% +13.09%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 +4 1,017 £540 +4.85% 2,182
UK excluding London -17 647 £500 +5.26% 949
London +13 408 £550 +0.69% 1,239
Work from Home -23 274 £550 +6.95% 567
North of England -1 227 £500 +5.26% 221
South East -8 174 £525 +27.27% 294
Yorkshire +9 134 £500 +11.11% 53
North West -22 73 £538 +0.47% 106
Midlands -56 66 £488 +1.30% 122
South West -22 59 £650 +18.18% 70
West Midlands -56 55 £500 +0.81% 91
East of England -3 48 £500 -16.67% 126
Scotland -6 45 £375 -16.67% 51
Wales +6 35 £468 +58.47% 44
North East -14 26 £625 +257.14% 62
East Midlands -16 11 £413 -8.33% 31
Channel Islands - 1 £575 - 2
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 29

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 34 (2.84%) Confluence
2 19 (1.59%) SharePoint
3 15 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.75%) OpenStack
5 7 (0.58%) 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 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 21 (1.75%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 10 (0.84%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 5 (0.42%) AutoCAD
6 5 (0.42%) Navisworks
6 5 (0.42%) Revit
7 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%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 255 (21.30%) Azure
2 210 (17.54%) AWS
3 64 (5.35%) GCP
4 60 (5.01%) GitHub
5 48 (4.01%) IaaS
6 46 (3.84%) Microsoft 365
7 40 (3.34%) Entra ID
8 37 (3.09%) SaaS
9 29 (2.42%) OCI
10 20 (1.67%) Azure DevOps
10 20 (1.67%) PaaS
11 17 (1.42%) OpenShift
12 16 (1.34%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 15 (1.25%) OneDrive
13 15 (1.25%) Power Platform
14 13 (1.09%) AWS Direct Connect
15 12 (1.00%) Nutanix
16 11 (0.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 8 (0.67%) Azure Monitor
18 7 (0.58%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 283 (23.64%) Firewall
2 184 (15.37%) WAN
3 166 (13.87%) BGP
4 128 (10.69%) DNS
5 122 (10.19%) VPN
6 121 (10.11%) Network Security
7 112 (9.36%) LAN
8 106 (8.86%) VXLAN
9 103 (8.60%) VLAN
10 100 (8.35%) OSPF
11 92 (7.69%) SAN
12 87 (7.27%) TCP/IP
13 86 (7.18%) SD-WAN
14 85 (7.10%) DHCP
15 78 (6.52%) Ethernet VPN
16 62 (5.18%) Wireless
17 61 (5.10%) Structured Cabling
17 61 (5.10%) Wi-Fi
18 54 (4.51%) BIG-IP
19 53 (4.43%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (3.68%) SQL Server
2 15 (1.25%) 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 (0.58%) Oracle Database
6 6 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (0.42%) Db2
7 5 (0.42%) Elasticsearch
8 4 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
8 4 (0.33%) Oracle Database 12c
8 4 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
9 3 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
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 79 (6.60%) JIRA
2 38 (3.17%) Jenkins
3 36 (3.01%) GitLab
4 26 (2.17%) Git
5 7 (0.58%) 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
1 288 (24.06%) Social Skills
2 173 (14.45%) Finance
3 94 (7.85%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (5.18%) Banking
5 55 (4.59%) Telecoms
6 54 (4.51%) Public Sector
7 46 (3.84%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (2.09%) Retail
9 24 (2.01%) Legal
10 17 (1.42%) Manufacturing
11 16 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 16 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
12 13 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 7 (0.58%) Police
14 6 (0.50%) Financial Institution
14 6 (0.50%) Investment Banking
15 5 (0.42%) Cyber-Physical System
15 5 (0.42%) Law
15 5 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
16 4 (0.33%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 198 (16.54%) Architect
2 192 (16.04%) Network Engineer
3 146 (12.20%) Senior
4 121 (10.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 85 (7.10%) Data Centre Engineer
6 79 (6.60%) Project Manager
7 75 (6.27%) Lead
8 71 (5.93%) Network Architect
9 47 (3.93%) Consultant
10 44 (3.68%) Data Centre Manager
11 42 (3.51%) IT Engineer
12 39 (3.26%) Senior Network Engineer
13 37 (3.09%) Technical Architect
14 34 (2.84%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 34 (2.84%) Support Engineer
15 33 (2.76%) Solutions Architect
16 32 (2.67%) Infrastructure Manager
17 30 (2.51%) Analyst
18 29 (2.42%) IT Support
19 28 (2.34%) Field Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 118 (9.86%) Terraform
2 31 (2.59%) REST
3 30 (2.51%) Middleware
4 18 (1.50%) YAML
5 16 (1.34%) 802.1X
6 15 (1.25%) .NET
6 15 (1.25%) JSON
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%) OpenConfig
8 5 (0.42%) Redfish
8 5 (0.42%) RESTCONF
8 5 (0.42%) YANG
9 4 (0.33%) GeoJSON
9 4 (0.33%) Kafka
9 4 (0.33%) RESTful
10 3 (0.25%) .NET Framework
10 3 (0.25%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 83 (6.93%) Hybrid Cloud
2 50 (4.18%) Public Cloud
3 35 (2.92%) Cloud Native
3 35 (2.92%) Private Cloud
4 33 (2.76%) Enterprise Storage
5 32 (2.67%) Management Information System
6 30 (2.51%) PKI
7 29 (2.42%) Replication
8 28 (2.34%) Analytical Mindset
9 27 (2.26%) Onboarding
10 25 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
10 25 (2.09%) Operational Technology
11 24 (2.01%) Clustering
12 20 (1.67%) Fibre Optics
12 20 (1.67%) SCADA
12 20 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
13 16 (1.34%) CMDB
14 15 (1.25%) Driving Licence
14 15 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
15 12 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 202 (16.88%) Windows
2 130 (10.86%) Linux
3 75 (6.27%) Windows Server
4 31 (2.59%) Unix
5 19 (1.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (1.17%) AIX
7 13 (1.09%) Mac OS
8 10 (0.84%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.75%) VMS
10 8 (0.67%) Solaris
10 8 (0.67%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.42%) HPUX
12 5 (0.42%) Oracle Linux
12 5 (0.42%) SUSE
12 5 (0.42%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.33%) Data ONTAP
14 3 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 261 (21.80%) Migration
2 180 (15.04%) Problem-Solving
3 171 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 161 (13.45%) Stakeholder Management
5 131 (10.94%) Infrastructure as Code
6 113 (9.44%) ITIL
7 109 (9.11%) CI/CD
8 107 (8.94%) Agile
9 98 (8.19%) High Availability
9 98 (8.19%) Project Delivery
10 95 (7.94%) Validation
11 92 (7.69%) Continuous Improvement
12 89 (7.44%) Roadmaps
13 88 (7.35%) Disaster Recovery
14 83 (6.93%) Zero Trust
15 80 (6.68%) Change Management
16 78 (6.52%) Cybersecurity
17 74 (6.18%) DevOps
17 74 (6.18%) Technical Leadership
18 67 (5.60%) Network Design
Programming Languages
1 162 (13.53%) Python
2 75 (6.27%) PowerShell
3 54 (4.51%) SQL
4 34 (2.84%) Bash
5 19 (1.59%) ActionScript
6 15 (1.25%) C#
7 11 (0.92%) Bicep
7 11 (0.92%) T-SQL
8 8 (0.67%) Perl
9 7 (0.58%) PL/SQL
9 7 (0.58%) Shell Script
10 4 (0.33%) Go
10 4 (0.33%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.25%) Java
11 3 (0.25%) JCL
11 3 (0.25%) Lisp
11 3 (0.25%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.17%) Korn
12 2 (0.17%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.17%) REXX
Qualifications
1 305 (25.48%) Security Cleared
2 207 (17.29%) SC Cleared
3 150 (12.53%) Cisco Certification
4 102 (8.52%) DV Cleared
5 92 (7.69%) CCNP
6 61 (5.10%) Degree
7 54 (4.51%) CCNA
8 33 (2.76%) AWS Certification
9 31 (2.59%) Microsoft Certification
9 31 (2.59%) Network+ Certification
10 29 (2.42%) A+ Certification
11 28 (2.34%) CCIE
11 28 (2.34%) CISSP
11 28 (2.34%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 26 (2.17%) Azure Certification
13 23 (1.92%) MCSE
14 22 (1.84%) PMI Certification
15 21 (1.75%) PMP
16 19 (1.59%) VCAP
17 18 (1.50%) City & Guilds
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (2.84%) QA
2 29 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (2.34%) NIST
4 27 (2.26%) SLA
5 14 (1.17%) GRC
5 14 (1.17%) PMO
6 13 (1.09%) GDPR
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 (0.33%) RMADS
12 3 (0.25%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.17%) HIPAA
13 2 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 155 (12.95%) VMware Infrastructure
2 99 (8.27%) Active Directory
3 56 (4.68%) vSphere
4 50 (4.18%) VMware NSX
5 41 (3.43%) Hyper-V
6 37 (3.09%) VMware ESXi
7 35 (2.92%) Docker
8 26 (2.17%) Firmware
9 15 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.92%) NFS
11 8 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.42%) ISA Server
13 5 (0.42%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
14 4 (0.33%) PowerHA
14 4 (0.33%) SRDF
15 3 (0.25%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.25%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 3 (0.25%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 145 (12.11%) Ansible
2 58 (4.85%) Kubernetes
3 33 (2.76%) FortiGate
4 20 (1.67%) Microsoft Intune
5 19 (1.59%) vCenter Server
6 18 (1.50%) Prometheus
7 16 (1.34%) VxRail
8 15 (1.25%) Grafana
9 14 (1.17%) SCCM
10 12 (1.00%) Microsoft Clustering
10 12 (1.00%) PowerCLI
11 11 (0.92%) SCOM
11 11 (0.92%) vMotion
12 10 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
12 10 (0.84%) NetBackup
13 9 (0.75%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 8 (0.67%) Dell DRAC
15 7 (0.58%) Nagios
16 6 (0.50%) CASB
17 5 (0.42%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 284 (23.73%) Cisco
2 205 (17.13%) VMware
3 159 (13.28%) Microsoft
4 132 (11.03%) Palo Alto
5 111 (9.27%) F5
6 67 (5.60%) ServiceNow
7 66 (5.51%) Fortinet
8 59 (4.93%) Arista
9 58 (4.85%) Juniper
10 56 (4.68%) Dell
11 43 (3.59%) Aruba
12 38 (3.17%) CheckPoint
13 35 (2.92%) Veeam
14 34 (2.84%) Oracle
14 34 (2.84%) Red Hat
15 33 (2.76%) Google
16 27 (2.26%) Commvault
17 25 (2.09%) Zscaler
18 24 (2.01%) NetApp
18 24 (2.01%) SolarWinds