Network Engineer Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Network Engineer
Central London > City of London

The median Network Engineer daily rate in the City of London is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 February 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

 6 months to
16 Feb 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 110 102 103
Rank change year-on-year -8 +1 +37
Contract jobs requiring a Network Engineer 13 20 28
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 0.68% 1.10% 1.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.72% 1.19% 1.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 17 18
10th Percentile £413 £354 £425
25th Percentile £443 £524 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £600 £500
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +20.00% -
75th Percentile £619 £638 £543
90th Percentile £675 £685 £636
Central London median daily rate £500 £588 £500
% change year-on-year -14.89% +17.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £72.50
Median hourly rate - - £75.00
75th Percentile - - £77.50
90th Percentile - - -
Central London median hourly rate - - £75.00

All Contract IT Job Roles
City of London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the City of London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the City of London with a recognized job title 1,797 1,686 2,261
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 93.99% 92.94% 94.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,232 1,018 1,625
10th Percentile £350 £350 £341
25th Percentile £433 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £539 £575 £568
Median % change year-on-year -6.30% +1.32% -3.40%
75th Percentile £675 £678 £688
90th Percentile £775 £777 £788
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 7 21
10th Percentile £18.75 £22.00 £17.00
25th Percentile £24.37 £26.63 £18.93
Median hourly rate £37.25 £38.50 £24.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.25% +60.42% -28.89%
75th Percentile £48.67 £80.38 £40.00
90th Percentile £59.72 £112.00 £50.25
Central London median hourly rate £26.34 £35.00 £26.00
% change year-on-year -24.74% +34.62% -10.34%

Network Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Network Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London.

Network Engineer job vacancy trend in the City of London

Network Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the City of London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the City of London

Network Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Network Engineer in the City of London over the 6 months to 16 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Network Engineer in the City of London

Network Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the City of London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Network Engineer job vacancies in the City of London

Network Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London

For the 6 months to 16 February 2026, Network Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the City of London region featuring Network Engineer in the job title.

1 6 (46.15%) Security Cleared
2 5 (38.46%) Cisco
2 5 (38.46%) SC Cleared
3 4 (30.77%) Firewall
4 3 (23.08%) DV Cleared
5 2 (15.38%) AWS
5 2 (15.38%) Azure
5 2 (15.38%) BGP
5 2 (15.38%) Cisco Firepower
5 2 (15.38%) DNS
5 2 (15.38%) GCP
5 2 (15.38%) High Availability
5 2 (15.38%) Network Design
5 2 (15.38%) Network Security
5 2 (15.38%) NX-OS
5 2 (15.38%) Observability
5 2 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
5 2 (15.38%) Python
5 2 (15.38%) Splunk
5 2 (15.38%) SSL
5 2 (15.38%) TCP/IP
5 2 (15.38%) Terraform
5 2 (15.38%) VPN
6 1 (7.69%) Actionable Insight
6 1 (7.69%) Akamai
6 1 (7.69%) Ansible
6 1 (7.69%) Broadcom
6 1 (7.69%) Capacity Planning
6 1 (7.69%) CheckPoint
6 1 (7.69%) CI/CD

Network Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of London 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:

Cloud Services
1 2 (15.38%) AWS
1 2 (15.38%) Azure
1 2 (15.38%) GCP
2 1 (7.69%) Akamai
2 1 (7.69%) Cloudflare
Communications & Networking
1 4 (30.77%) Firewall
2 2 (15.38%) BGP
2 2 (15.38%) Cisco Firepower
2 2 (15.38%) DNS
2 2 (15.38%) Network Security
2 2 (15.38%) NX-OS
2 2 (15.38%) SSL
2 2 (15.38%) TCP/IP
2 2 (15.38%) VPN
3 1 (7.69%) Cisco IOS
3 1 (7.69%) Cisco ISE
3 1 (7.69%) Cisco Nexus
3 1 (7.69%) Ethernet VPN
3 1 (7.69%) HTTPS
3 1 (7.69%) Junos
3 1 (7.69%) SD-WAN
3 1 (7.69%) Software-Defined Networking
3 1 (7.69%) VLAN
3 1 (7.69%) VXLAN
3 1 (7.69%) Wireshark
Development Applications
1 1 (7.69%) GitLab
1 1 (7.69%) Jaeger
General
1 2 (15.38%) Banking
1 2 (15.38%) Finance
1 2 (15.38%) Public Sector
1 2 (15.38%) Social Skills
2 1 (7.69%) Games
2 1 (7.69%) Influencing Skills
2 1 (7.69%) Investment Banking
2 1 (7.69%) Legal
2 1 (7.69%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (7.69%) Loki
1 1 (7.69%) OpenTelemetry
1 1 (7.69%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 2 (15.38%) Data Centre
2 1 (7.69%) Cloud Native
2 1 (7.69%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
2 1 (7.69%) Media Streaming
2 1 (7.69%) Online Games
Operating Systems
1 1 (7.69%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2 (15.38%) High Availability
1 2 (15.38%) Network Design
1 2 (15.38%) Observability
1 2 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
2 1 (7.69%) Capacity Planning
2 1 (7.69%) CI/CD
2 1 (7.69%) Computer Science
2 1 (7.69%) Critical Thinking
2 1 (7.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 1 (7.69%) Infrastructure Management
2 1 (7.69%) ITSM
2 1 (7.69%) Load Balancing
2 1 (7.69%) Low Latency
2 1 (7.69%) Platform Engineering
2 1 (7.69%) Root Cause Analysis
2 1 (7.69%) SIEM
2 1 (7.69%) Site Reliability Engineering
2 1 (7.69%) Software Engineering
2 1 (7.69%) Technical Debt
2 1 (7.69%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 2 (15.38%) Python
2 1 (7.69%) Go
2 1 (7.69%) Java
Qualifications
1 6 (46.15%) Security Cleared
2 5 (38.46%) SC Cleared
3 3 (23.08%) DV Cleared
4 1 (7.69%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (7.69%) Degree
System Software
1 1 (7.69%) Firmware
1 1 (7.69%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 2 (15.38%) Terraform
2 1 (7.69%) Ansible
2 1 (7.69%) Dell DRAC
2 1 (7.69%) Grafana
2 1 (7.69%) Kubernetes
2 1 (7.69%) Prometheus
2 1 (7.69%) Single Sign-On
2 1 (7.69%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 5 (38.46%) Cisco
2 2 (15.38%) Splunk
3 1 (7.69%) Broadcom
3 1 (7.69%) CheckPoint
3 1 (7.69%) F5
3 1 (7.69%) Fortinet
3 1 (7.69%) Infoblox
3 1 (7.69%) Juniper
3 1 (7.69%) Meraki
3 1 (7.69%) Oracle
3 1 (7.69%) Palo Alto
3 1 (7.69%) SolarWinds
3 1 (7.69%) Zscaler
Network Engineer jobs