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

6 months to
7 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 118 130 102
Rank change year-on-year +12 -28 -7
Contract jobs citing Data Centre 1,002 624 972
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.20% 2.13% 2.21%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 6.75% 6.29% 7.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 619 407 644
10th Percentile £318 £325 £295
25th Percentile £409 £413 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.95% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £595 £601 £638
90th Percentile £700 £675 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £470 £535
% change year-on-year +0.90% -12.20% +6.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 27 46
10th Percentile £16.01 £24.17 £16.25
25th Percentile £19.02 £24.18 £21.25
Median hourly rate £21.86 £24.66 £24.87
Median % change year-on-year -11.34% -0.84% +14.77%
75th Percentile £72.34 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £80.05 £43.75 £52.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £24.66 £24.00
% change year-on-year -21.57% +2.75% +11.81%

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 14,847 9,921 13,356
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.56% 33.90% 30.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,316 6,352 8,564
10th Percentile £300 £290 £263
25th Percentile £410 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.05% -2.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.26% -0.77% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 703 379 893
10th Percentile £15.79 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.75 £22.22 £15.39
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +16.07% +24.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.63 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £83.20 £66.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £31.42 £26.00
% change year-on-year +44.68% +20.85% +18.18%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +8 823 £485 -7.62% 436
UK excluding London -3 564 £474 +0.90% 306
London +3 301 £530 +0.95% 184
Work from Home +23 261 £475 -10.80% 123
North of England +20 186 £460 +8.24% 53
South East +5 170 £475 -5.00% 115
North West +24 96 £500 - 28
Yorkshire -6 76 £365 -5.93% 17
Midlands -37 64 £474 -24.16% 32
West Midlands -36 52 £474 -24.16% 14
Scotland 0 50 £475 +11.76% 29
South West -38 39 £525 -4.20% 31
East of England -25 34 £478 +13.14% 45
Wales +1 30 £350 -12.50% 11
North East -1 16 £175 +59.09% 8
East Midlands -25 11 £201 -59.75% 18
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 18 (1.80%) Confluence
1 18 (1.80%) SharePoint
2 16 (1.60%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.00%) CICS
4 4 (0.40%) nginx
4 4 (0.40%) OpenStack
4 4 (0.40%) WebLogic
5 2 (0.20%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.20%) HCL Notes
5 2 (0.20%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.100%) Mendix
Applications
1 30 (2.99%) Microsoft Office
2 22 (2.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (1.80%) MS Visio
4 16 (1.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.30%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.60%) 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 (0.100%) Maximo
4 1 (0.100%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.100%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 187 (18.66%) Azure
2 152 (15.17%) AWS
3 65 (6.49%) GCP
4 49 (4.89%) Microsoft 365
5 22 (2.20%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 18 (1.80%) SaaS
7 17 (1.70%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 17 (1.70%) IaaS
8 16 (1.60%) Entra ID
9 14 (1.40%) Power Platform
10 13 (1.30%) GitHub
11 12 (1.20%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (1.20%) OpenShift
11 12 (1.20%) PaaS
12 11 (1.10%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 11 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
12 11 (1.10%) AWS Direct Connect
13 9 (0.90%) Amazon S3
14 8 (0.80%) Nutanix
15 7 (0.70%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 297 (29.64%) Firewall
2 177 (17.66%) WAN
3 152 (15.17%) BGP
4 114 (11.38%) OSPF
5 109 (10.88%) VPN
6 107 (10.68%) LAN
7 104 (10.38%) Network Security
8 81 (8.08%) SAN
9 78 (7.78%) VXLAN
10 77 (7.68%) Structured Cabling
11 74 (7.39%) DNS
12 68 (6.79%) VLAN
13 60 (5.99%) DHCP
14 56 (5.59%) Wireless
15 54 (5.39%) Ethernet VPN
16 50 (4.99%) SD-WAN
17 42 (4.19%) Wi-Fi
18 41 (4.09%) Cisco ISE
19 36 (3.59%) Cisco Nexus
19 36 (3.59%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (1.00%) DataStage
2 9 (0.90%) Power BI
3 6 (0.60%) Relational Database
3 6 (0.60%) SQL Server
4 5 (0.50%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (0.40%) Big Data
5 4 (0.40%) MongoDB
5 4 (0.40%) Power Query
5 4 (0.40%) PowerPivot
5 4 (0.40%) 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 (0.100%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.100%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 34 (3.39%) Git
1 34 (3.39%) JIRA
2 21 (2.10%) Jenkins
3 18 (1.80%) GitLab
4 9 (0.90%) Maven
5 7 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (0.50%) JMeter
7 4 (0.40%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 4 (0.40%) Eclipse
7 4 (0.40%) Subversion
8 3 (0.30%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.30%) ScriptRunner
9 1 (0.100%) AppScan
9 1 (0.100%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.100%) LoadRunner
9 1 (0.100%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.100%) Postman
9 1 (0.100%) Rational DOORS
General
1 257 (25.65%) Social Skills
2 148 (14.77%) Finance
3 119 (11.88%) Analytical Skills
4 84 (8.38%) Public Sector
5 56 (5.59%) Documentation Skills
6 45 (4.49%) Banking
7 39 (3.89%) Telecoms
8 31 (3.09%) Legal
8 31 (3.09%) Manufacturing
9 21 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
9 21 (2.10%) Retail
10 19 (1.90%) Marketing
11 16 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
12 15 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 11 (1.10%) Electronics
14 10 (1.00%) Law
14 10 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
15 9 (0.90%) Investment Banking
15 9 (0.90%) Military
16 7 (0.70%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 180 (17.96%) Network Engineer
2 169 (16.87%) Architect
3 93 (9.28%) Senior
4 79 (7.88%) Project Manager
5 71 (7.09%) Data Centre Engineer
6 53 (5.29%) Network Architect
7 47 (4.69%) Analyst
7 47 (4.69%) Solutions Architect
8 46 (4.59%) Data Centre Manager
9 44 (4.39%) Lead
10 42 (4.19%) IT Engineer
11 38 (3.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 37 (3.69%) Field Engineer
13 36 (3.59%) Field Service Engineer
13 36 (3.59%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 35 (3.49%) Infrastructure Manager
15 31 (3.09%) Technical Architect
16 29 (2.89%) Senior Network Engineer
17 28 (2.79%) IT Support
17 28 (2.79%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (3.99%) Middleware
2 33 (3.29%) 802.1X
3 11 (1.10%) LDAP
4 6 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
4 6 (0.60%) Spring
5 5 (0.50%) Jinja
5 5 (0.50%) NETCONF
5 5 (0.50%) Redfish
6 4 (0.40%) ADO
6 4 (0.40%) ARM Templates
6 4 (0.40%) OpenConfig
6 4 (0.40%) REST
6 4 (0.40%) RESTCONF
6 4 (0.40%) Spring Boot
6 4 (0.40%) VML
6 4 (0.40%) XML
6 4 (0.40%) YANG
7 3 (0.30%) Kafka
7 3 (0.30%) RFC 2544
7 3 (0.30%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 47 (4.69%) Hybrid Cloud
2 42 (4.19%) Analytical Mindset
3 27 (2.69%) Clustering
3 27 (2.69%) PKI
4 24 (2.40%) Driving Licence
5 23 (2.30%) Fibre Optics
5 23 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 22 (2.20%) Onboarding
7 19 (1.90%) Self-Motivation
8 18 (1.80%) Cloud Native
8 18 (1.80%) Public Cloud
8 18 (1.80%) Replication
9 17 (1.70%) CMDB
10 14 (1.40%) Enterprise Storage
10 14 (1.40%) NHS
10 14 (1.40%) Private Cloud
11 13 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (1.30%) Mainframe
12 12 (1.20%) SCADA
13 10 (1.00%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 129 (12.87%) Windows
2 119 (11.88%) Linux
3 43 (4.29%) Windows Server
4 34 (3.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (1.70%) Unix
6 16 (1.60%) Android
6 16 (1.60%) Mac OS
7 15 (1.50%) AIX
8 12 (1.20%) Solaris
9 11 (1.10%) CentOS
10 8 (0.80%) VMS
11 7 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
12 5 (0.50%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
13 3 (0.30%) Windows 10
14 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
14 2 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 1 (0.100%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.100%) Debian
15 1 (0.100%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (16.97%) Problem-Solving
2 166 (16.57%) Migration
3 104 (10.38%) Stakeholder Management
4 86 (8.58%) ITIL
5 80 (7.98%) High Availability
6 79 (7.88%) Roadmaps
7 71 (7.09%) Project Management
8 70 (6.99%) Continuous Improvement
9 69 (6.89%) Infrastructure as Code
9 69 (6.89%) Load Balancing
10 63 (6.29%) Change Management
10 63 (6.29%) Project Delivery
11 61 (6.09%) Agile
11 61 (6.09%) CI/CD
12 54 (5.39%) Customer Service
13 53 (5.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 52 (5.19%) Break/Fix
14 52 (5.19%) DevOps
15 51 (5.09%) Validation
16 50 (4.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 97 (9.68%) Python
2 50 (4.99%) PowerShell
3 28 (2.79%) Bash
3 28 (2.79%) SQL
4 23 (2.30%) Java
5 18 (1.80%) Perl
6 14 (1.40%) Shell Script
7 12 (1.20%) COBOL
8 9 (0.90%) MATLAB
9 7 (0.70%) Bicep
10 6 (0.60%) VBA
11 5 (0.50%) C
11 5 (0.50%) C++
11 5 (0.50%) Lisp
12 4 (0.40%) JavaScript
13 3 (0.30%) Korn
13 3 (0.30%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.100%) Groovy
14 1 (0.100%) Ruby
14 1 (0.100%) Scala
Qualifications
1 308 (30.74%) Security Cleared
2 231 (23.05%) SC Cleared
3 202 (20.16%) Cisco Certification
4 135 (13.47%) CCNP
5 86 (8.58%) CCNA
6 68 (6.79%) Degree
7 67 (6.69%) DV Cleared
8 42 (4.19%) Network+ Certification
9 35 (3.49%) Microsoft Certification
10 34 (3.39%) A+ Certification
10 34 (3.39%) MCSE
11 28 (2.79%) CCIE
12 24 (2.40%) PMP
13 22 (2.20%) PMI Certification
14 20 (2.00%) AWS Certification
15 16 (1.60%) Azure Certification
15 16 (1.60%) JNCIS
16 14 (1.40%) JNCIP
17 12 (1.20%) JNCIA
17 12 (1.20%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (2.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 27 (2.69%) SLA
3 26 (2.59%) PMO
4 24 (2.40%) NIST
5 23 (2.30%) GDPR
6 17 (1.70%) PCI DSS
6 17 (1.70%) QA
7 10 (1.00%) NCSC
8 5 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
9 4 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
9 4 (0.40%) GRC
10 3 (0.30%) RMADS
11 2 (0.20%) Data Quality
11 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.20%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.100%) COBIT
12 1 (0.100%) NEBOSH
12 1 (0.100%) SOC 1
System Software
1 90 (8.98%) VMware Infrastructure
2 65 (6.49%) Active Directory
3 49 (4.89%) VMware NSX
4 23 (2.30%) Virtual Machines
5 22 (2.20%) Firmware
6 21 (2.10%) vSphere
7 17 (1.70%) Docker
7 17 (1.70%) VMware ESXi
8 16 (1.60%) Hyper-V
9 10 (1.00%) KVM
10 3 (0.30%) PowerHA
10 3 (0.30%) SRDF
10 3 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.20%) Ceph
11 2 (0.20%) Lustre
11 2 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.20%) UAG
11 2 (0.20%) vCloud
11 2 (0.20%) Veritas Cluster Server
11 2 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 100 (9.98%) Ansible
2 78 (7.78%) Terraform
3 56 (5.59%) FortiGate
4 40 (3.99%) Kubernetes
5 33 (3.29%) Grafana
6 23 (2.30%) Prometheus
7 17 (1.70%) SCCM
8 15 (1.50%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (1.00%) Check_MK
10 9 (0.90%) Podman
10 9 (0.90%) Red Hat Satellite
11 8 (0.80%) vCenter Server
12 7 (0.70%) NetBackup
12 7 (0.70%) SCOM
13 6 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (0.50%) Dell DRAC
14 5 (0.50%) EMC NetWorker
14 5 (0.50%) Endace
14 5 (0.50%) PowerCLI
14 5 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 291 (29.04%) Cisco
2 130 (12.97%) VMware
3 123 (12.28%) Palo Alto
4 98 (9.78%) Microsoft
5 92 (9.18%) Dell
6 88 (8.78%) Juniper
7 69 (6.89%) F5
8 48 (4.79%) Arista
9 45 (4.49%) Fortinet
10 44 (4.39%) Aruba
10 44 (4.39%) CheckPoint
11 42 (4.19%) ServiceNow
12 36 (3.59%) Meraki
12 36 (3.59%) SolarWinds
13 34 (3.39%) Google
14 31 (3.09%) Red Hat
15 30 (2.99%) IBM
16 29 (2.89%) HP
16 29 (2.89%) Splunk
17 26 (2.59%) Citrix