SAN Contract Job Trends

Storage Area Network (SAN)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SAN skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 400 354 326
Rank change year-on-year -46 -28 +18
Contract jobs citing SAN 254 172 267
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 0.58% 0.61%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 5.32% 4.66% 4.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 163 117 187
10th Percentile £128 £350 £280
25th Percentile £375 £425 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £567 £575 £600
90th Percentile £612 £623 £673
UK excluding London median daily rate £430 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -18.10% +5.00% +17.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 21
10th Percentile £21.15 - £12.00
25th Percentile £30.38 - £16.25
Median hourly rate £46.50 - £23.80
75th Percentile £63.38 - £40.00
90th Percentile £73.05 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.00 - £19.95
% change year-on-year - - -71.31%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

SAN falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,775 3,691 5,424
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.53% 12.48% 12.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,931 2,271 3,207
10th Percentile £263 £220 £209
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -2.02% -3.41%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £485
% change year-on-year +2.13% -3.09% +2.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 169 421
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.86
Median hourly rate £27.69 £41.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.28% +3.75% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.20 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.25 £31.79 £47.50
% change year-on-year -4.84% -33.07% +150.00%

SAN
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SAN relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

SAN job vacancy trend in the UK

SAN
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SAN.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SAN

SAN
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SAN over the 6 months to 14 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SAN in the UK

SAN
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SAN.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SAN

SAN
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SAN over the 6 months to 14 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SAN in the UK

SAN
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SAN within the UK over the 6 months to 14 June 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 -65 200 £500 -4.76% 43
UK excluding London -69 182 £430 -18.10% 39
North of England -14 79 £500 +10.50% 16
Yorkshire -19 46 £457 +12.72% 3
London -66 45 £538 +7.50% 6
Work from Home -34 37 £500 +3.90% 10
South East -76 32 £394 -25.50% 14
North West -22 30 £585 +11.43% 10
South West -8 21 £123 -74.21% 4
Scotland -12 19 £425 -10.01%
Midlands -53 17 £425 -10.53% 3
West Midlands -53 12 £419 -11.84% 2
Wales - 12 £418 - 1
East Midlands -20 5 £450 -18.18% 1
East of England -54 4 £500 -9.09% 1
North East - 3 - - 3

SAN
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 5 (1.97%) Apache
2 4 (1.57%) IIS
2 4 (1.57%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.18%) Oracle Workflow
4 2 (0.79%) CloudStack
4 2 (0.79%) nginx
4 2 (0.79%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.79%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.39%) Confluence
Applications
1 6 (2.36%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.39%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 51 (20.08%) Azure
2 43 (16.93%) OpenShift
3 32 (12.60%) AWS
4 15 (5.91%) IaaS
4 15 (5.91%) Microsoft 365
5 10 (3.94%) PaaS
6 9 (3.54%) Datadog
7 8 (3.15%) SaaS
8 7 (2.76%) Entra ID
9 6 (2.36%) GCP
9 6 (2.36%) GitHub
10 5 (1.97%) Nutanix
11 4 (1.57%) Amazon S3
11 4 (1.57%) Cohesity
11 4 (1.57%) GitHub Actions
11 4 (1.57%) Rubrik
12 2 (0.79%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 2 (0.79%) Azure Sentinel
12 2 (0.79%) Azure Storage
12 2 (0.79%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 112 (44.09%) NAS
2 51 (20.08%) Firewall
3 49 (19.29%) DNS
4 42 (16.54%) DHCP
5 39 (15.35%) VLAN
6 26 (10.24%) Fibre Channel
7 21 (8.27%) Structured Cabling
8 19 (7.48%) iSCSI
8 19 (7.48%) Wireless
9 18 (7.09%) Cisco IOS
9 18 (7.09%) NX-OS
10 13 (5.12%) VPN
11 10 (3.94%) VSAN
12 9 (3.54%) LAN
13 8 (3.15%) TCP/IP
14 7 (2.76%) WAN
15 6 (2.36%) Wi-Fi
16 5 (1.97%) FCoE
17 4 (1.57%) HTTPS
18 3 (1.18%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (6.30%) SQL Server
2 3 (1.18%) MySQL
2 3 (1.18%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
3 2 (0.79%) Power BI
4 1 (0.39%) Db2
4 1 (0.39%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
4 1 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 1 (0.39%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 21 (8.27%) JIRA
2 17 (6.69%) Jenkins
3 12 (4.72%) Git
4 7 (2.76%) Chocolatey
5 4 (1.57%) GitLab
6 1 (0.39%) Bitbucket
General
1 81 (31.89%) Analytical Skills
2 74 (29.13%) Social Skills
3 26 (10.24%) Banking
4 20 (7.87%) Documentation Skills
5 14 (5.51%) Finance
6 7 (2.76%) Public Sector
7 4 (1.57%) Legal
7 4 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (1.18%) Investment Banking
8 3 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
9 1 (0.39%) Advertising
9 1 (0.39%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.39%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.39%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.39%) Military
9 1 (0.39%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 61 (24.02%) IT Engineer
2 51 (20.08%) Field Engineer
2 51 (20.08%) Field Service Engineer
3 36 (14.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 32 (12.60%) Architect
5 24 (9.45%) Support Engineer
6 23 (9.06%) Senior
7 19 (7.48%) IT Support
7 19 (7.48%) IT Support Engineer
8 17 (6.69%) Storage Engineer
9 16 (6.30%) Field Support Engineer
10 13 (5.12%) Consultant
10 13 (5.12%) Data Centre Engineer
11 12 (4.72%) Administrator
12 10 (3.94%) Technical Architect
13 8 (3.15%) Automation Engineer
13 8 (3.15%) Azure Engineer
13 8 (3.15%) Infrastructure Support
13 8 (3.15%) SAN Engineer
13 8 (3.15%) Storage Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (3.94%) REST
2 8 (3.15%) .NET
2 8 (3.15%) LDAP
2 8 (3.15%) Redfish
3 6 (2.36%) Loki
4 5 (1.97%) Kafka
5 4 (1.57%) Celery
5 4 (1.57%) Flash
5 4 (1.57%) RabbitMQ
6 3 (1.18%) Elastic Stack
6 3 (1.18%) YAML
7 2 (0.79%) EDI
7 2 (0.79%) JSON
7 2 (0.79%) Middleware
8 1 (0.39%) HTML
8 1 (0.39%) LAMP
8 1 (0.39%) RESTful
8 1 (0.39%) Software Packaging
8 1 (0.39%) Web Services
8 1 (0.39%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 119 (46.85%) Data Centre
2 55 (21.65%) Analytical Mindset
3 49 (19.29%) Replication
4 47 (18.50%) Enterprise Storage
5 17 (6.69%) EMC VMAX
5 17 (6.69%) Hybrid Cloud
6 9 (3.54%) Cyber Threat
7 8 (3.15%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (3.15%) Management Information System
8 7 (2.76%) Public Cloud
9 6 (2.36%) Cloud Native
9 6 (2.36%) FlexPod
9 6 (2.36%) PACS
10 4 (1.57%) Clustering
10 4 (1.57%) EMC VNX
11 3 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 3 (1.18%) NVMe
12 2 (0.79%) CMDB
12 2 (0.79%) HP Storage
Operating Systems
1 86 (33.86%) Windows
2 66 (25.98%) Linux
3 34 (13.39%) Windows Server
4 29 (11.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (7.87%) Unix
6 11 (4.33%) Data ONTAP
7 9 (3.54%) VMS
8 8 (3.15%) AIX
9 7 (2.76%) Ubuntu
10 6 (2.36%) CoreOS
10 6 (2.36%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (1.97%) CentOS
12 4 (1.57%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.39%) Rocky
13 1 (0.39%) Solaris
13 1 (0.39%) SUSE
13 1 (0.39%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (32.28%) Migration
1 82 (32.28%) Problem-Solving
2 57 (22.44%) Disaster Recovery
3 51 (20.08%) Customer Service
4 50 (19.69%) Break/Fix
4 50 (19.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 35 (13.78%) Capacity Planning
5 35 (13.78%) ITIL
6 34 (13.39%) High Availability
7 33 (12.99%) Data Protection
8 31 (12.20%) ITSM
9 30 (11.81%) Runbook
10 28 (11.02%) Infrastructure as Code
11 25 (9.84%) DevOps
12 24 (9.45%) Performance Tuning
13 23 (9.06%) Storage Management
14 22 (8.66%) CI/CD
15 20 (7.87%) Validation
16 19 (7.48%) Data Centre Operations
16 19 (7.48%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 57 (22.44%) Python
2 35 (13.78%) PowerShell
3 28 (11.02%) Bash
4 15 (5.91%) Perl
5 10 (3.94%) SQL
6 7 (2.76%) Shell Script
7 5 (1.97%) C++
7 5 (1.97%) Java
8 2 (0.79%) Korn
9 1 (0.39%) C
9 1 (0.39%) C#
9 1 (0.39%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 75 (29.53%) Cisco Certification
2 68 (26.77%) CCNA
3 67 (26.38%) Network+ Certification
4 59 (23.23%) Security Cleared
5 54 (21.26%) Microsoft Certification
6 50 (19.69%) A+ Certification
6 50 (19.69%) MCSE
7 40 (15.75%) SC Cleared
8 25 (9.84%) CCNP
9 17 (6.69%) Server+ Certification
10 15 (5.91%) Degree
11 13 (5.12%) DV Cleared
12 11 (4.33%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 6 (2.36%) Azure Certification
13 6 (2.36%) OCP
13 6 (2.36%) Oracle Certification
14 5 (1.97%) NCDA
15 4 (1.57%) HP ASE
16 3 (1.18%) NCIE
16 3 (1.18%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.91%) SLA
2 5 (1.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (1.57%) DICOM
4 3 (1.18%) Disclosure Scotland
4 3 (1.18%) HL7
5 2 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (0.79%) NIST
5 2 (0.79%) QA
6 1 (0.39%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.39%) COBIT
6 1 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.39%) GDPR
6 1 (0.39%) GRC
6 1 (0.39%) GxP
System Software
1 80 (31.50%) VMware Infrastructure
2 40 (15.75%) Active Directory
3 32 (12.60%) NFS
4 30 (11.81%) vSphere
5 24 (9.45%) VMware ESXi
6 16 (6.30%) Firmware
7 15 (5.91%) Hyper-V
8 12 (4.72%) SRDF
9 9 (3.54%) Virtual Machines
10 7 (2.76%) VMware NSX
11 5 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (1.57%) Docker
13 3 (1.18%) DFS Replication
13 3 (1.18%) EMC RecoverPoint
13 3 (1.18%) KVM
13 3 (1.18%) PowerHA
14 2 (0.79%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 1 (0.39%) Dovecot
15 1 (0.39%) GPFS
15 1 (0.39%) VMFS
Systems Management
1 47 (18.50%) Ansible
2 36 (14.17%) Kubernetes
3 21 (8.27%) NetBackup
3 21 (8.27%) Terraform
4 15 (5.91%) Grafana
5 13 (5.12%) Prometheus
5 13 (5.12%) vCenter Server
5 13 (5.12%) vMotion
6 12 (4.72%) EMC VPLEX
7 11 (4.33%) Microsoft Intune
7 11 (4.33%) SCCM
7 11 (4.33%) SnapMirror
8 10 (3.94%) Dell DRAC
9 9 (3.54%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (2.36%) EMC NetWorker
10 6 (2.36%) EMC TimeFinder
10 6 (2.36%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 5 (1.97%) Puppet
11 5 (1.97%) vRealize
12 4 (1.57%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 101 (39.76%) VMware
2 80 (31.50%) Dell
3 57 (22.44%) Cisco
4 38 (14.96%) Pure Storage
5 37 (14.57%) Microsoft
6 29 (11.42%) Brocade
6 29 (11.42%) Red Hat
7 28 (11.02%) NetApp
8 22 (8.66%) ServiceNow
9 20 (7.87%) Commvault
9 20 (7.87%) EMC
10 18 (7.09%) Veritas
11 17 (6.69%) Veeam
12 13 (5.12%) Oracle
13 12 (4.72%) HP
13 12 (4.72%) IBM
14 9 (3.54%) Juniper
15 7 (2.76%) 3PAR
15 7 (2.76%) AppDynamics
15 7 (2.76%) Dynatrace