Network Security Contract Job Trends in England

Network Security
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Network Security skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 23 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 168 166 168
Rank change year-on-year -2 +2 +3
Contract jobs citing Network Security 764 489 489
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.64% 1.77% 1.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.50% 15.04% 12.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 501 289 326
10th Percentile £400 £375 £363
25th Percentile £460 £450 £453
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £533 £538
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% -0.98% -2.23%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £647
90th Percentile £738 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £534 £538
% change year-on-year +3.09% -0.74% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 14 6
10th Percentile £26.80 £45.00 £30.50
25th Percentile £67.50 £55.00 £44.38
Median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year +4.05% +30.53% -24.30%
75th Percentile £74.00 £84.09 £58.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £95.50 £88.81
UK median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £50.00
% change year-on-year +4.05% +40.32% -25.65%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
England

Network Security 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 in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,366 3,251 3,865
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.38% 11.78% 12.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,581 2,036 2,258
10th Percentile £258 £225 £243
25th Percentile £400 £363 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £505
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.97% +1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £688 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.69% -4.48% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 385 165 196
10th Percentile £16.02 £15.50 £15.76
25th Percentile £21.33 £25.00 £24.09
Median hourly rate £45.00 £41.00 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +9.76% -28.51% +1.52%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.11 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £34.75 £42.50 £51.50
% change year-on-year -18.24% -17.48% -8.83%

Network Security
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Network Security relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Network Security job vacancy trend in England

Network Security
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Network Security.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Network Security

Network Security
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Network Security in England over the 6 months to 23 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Network Security in England

Network Security
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Network Security.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Network Security

Network Security
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Network Security in England over the 6 months to 23 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Network Security in England

Network Security
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Network Security within the England region over the 6 months to 23 September 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
London -2 336 £550 - 299
North of England +8 203 £540 +10.32% 89
North West -6 110 £537 +13.05% 54
South East -34 89 £559 +24.26% 111
Yorkshire +12 88 £540 +8.87% 26
Midlands -62 51 £450 -14.29% 58
East of England -9 40 £525 +10.53% 39
West Midlands -63 37 £450 -14.29% 43
South West -45 24 £675 +5.47% 36
East Midlands -9 14 £500 - 15
North East - 4 £680 - 10
Network Security
UK

Network Security
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 20 (2.62%) Microsoft Exchange
2 15 (1.96%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.44%) Confluence
4 4 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.39%) Apache
6 1 (0.13%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.13%) CMS
6 1 (0.13%) IIS
6 1 (0.13%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.13%) nginx
Applications
1 20 (2.62%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.79%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.39%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.13%) InfoPath
4 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.79%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 263 (34.42%) Azure
2 177 (23.17%) AWS
3 94 (12.30%) GCP
4 87 (11.39%) Entra ID
5 48 (6.28%) Microsoft 365
6 37 (4.84%) GitHub
7 36 (4.71%) Azure DevOps
8 33 (4.32%) Azure Monitor
9 28 (3.66%) Serverless
10 23 (3.01%) SaaS
11 21 (2.75%) Azure Sentinel
12 19 (2.49%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 17 (2.23%) GitHub Actions
13 17 (2.23%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 15 (1.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 15 (1.96%) Amazon EKS
14 15 (1.96%) Azure AKS
14 15 (1.96%) OCI
15 14 (1.83%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 13 (1.70%) AWS Direct Connect
Communications & Networking
1 355 (46.47%) Firewall
2 179 (23.43%) VPN
3 164 (21.47%) WAN
4 130 (17.02%) DNS
5 106 (13.87%) LAN
6 95 (12.43%) Wireless
7 85 (11.13%) TCP/IP
8 81 (10.60%) BGP
9 72 (9.42%) DHCP
10 67 (8.77%) VLAN
11 63 (8.25%) SD-WAN
12 54 (7.07%) OSPF
12 54 (7.07%) SSL
13 42 (5.50%) MPLS
14 39 (5.10%) Cisco ISE
15 35 (4.58%) IPsec
16 34 (4.45%) Cisco ASA
17 32 (4.19%) Wi-Fi
18 31 (4.06%) Internet
19 27 (3.53%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.70%) SQL Server
2 6 (0.79%) BigQuery
3 5 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.52%) Neo4j
5 3 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (0.39%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.26%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.26%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.26%) Power BI
7 1 (0.13%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.13%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.13%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.13%) Metadata
7 1 (0.13%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.13%) Qlik Sense
7 1 (0.13%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.13%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 37 (4.84%) Git
2 29 (3.80%) GitLab
3 27 (3.53%) JIRA
4 25 (3.27%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.52%) MSBuild
6 4 (0.52%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.52%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.39%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.39%) Browser DevTools
8 2 (0.26%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.26%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.13%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.13%) Postman
9 1 (0.13%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.13%) Subversion
General
1 215 (28.14%) Social Skills
2 139 (18.19%) Finance
3 82 (10.73%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (8.12%) Banking
5 38 (4.97%) Public Sector
6 33 (4.32%) Documentation Skills
7 22 (2.88%) Telecoms
8 21 (2.75%) Legal
9 18 (2.36%) Financial Institution
10 14 (1.83%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (1.83%) Retail
11 13 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 13 (1.70%) Manufacturing
12 10 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
13 9 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
14 8 (1.05%) Local Government
15 6 (0.79%) Automotive
15 6 (0.79%) Military
15 6 (0.79%) Police
16 5 (0.65%) Law
Job Titles
1 212 (27.75%) Network Engineer
2 131 (17.15%) Architect
3 108 (14.14%) Security Engineer
4 94 (12.30%) Senior
5 69 (9.03%) Security Architect
6 64 (8.38%) Network Security Engineer
7 57 (7.46%) Consultant
8 49 (6.41%) Network Architect
9 42 (5.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 42 (5.50%) Project Manager
9 42 (5.50%) Senior Network Engineer
10 40 (5.24%) Cloud Engineer
11 31 (4.06%) Lead
12 29 (3.80%) Security Consultant
13 24 (3.14%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
14 23 (3.01%) Network Security Architect
15 22 (2.88%) Analyst
15 22 (2.88%) Network Manager
16 21 (2.75%) DevSecOps Consultant
16 21 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (15.97%) Terraform
2 34 (4.45%) 802.1X
3 21 (2.75%) REST
4 15 (1.96%) SAML
5 14 (1.83%) ARM Templates
6 11 (1.44%) Kafka
7 8 (1.05%) NETCONF
8 7 (0.92%) JSON
9 6 (0.79%) gRPC
9 6 (0.79%) Keycloak
9 6 (0.79%) LDAP
9 6 (0.79%) OpenID
10 5 (0.65%) Azure Blueprints
10 5 (0.65%) OAuth
10 5 (0.65%) SLSA
10 5 (0.65%) Software Packaging
10 5 (0.65%) YAML
11 4 (0.52%) .NET
11 4 (0.52%) Protocol Buffers
11 4 (0.52%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 97 (12.70%) Data Centre
2 75 (9.82%) Security Posture
3 45 (5.89%) Onboarding
4 44 (5.76%) Cloud Native
5 39 (5.10%) Hybrid Cloud
6 37 (4.84%) Management Information System
7 31 (4.06%) Cyber Threat
7 31 (4.06%) Operational Technology
8 27 (3.53%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 24 (3.14%) PKI
10 21 (2.75%) Self-Motivation
11 20 (2.62%) Cloud Security Posture
12 18 (2.36%) Security Operations Centre
13 16 (2.09%) Public Cloud
14 14 (1.83%) Data Protection Act
15 13 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
15 13 (1.70%) Linux Command Line
16 12 (1.57%) Replication
17 9 (1.18%) SCADA
18 8 (1.05%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 94 (12.30%) Windows
2 77 (10.08%) Linux
3 41 (5.37%) Windows Server
4 18 (2.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 11 (1.44%) Unix
6 10 (1.31%) Windows 10
7 6 (0.79%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.65%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.52%) SUSE
10 3 (0.39%) Check Point GAiA
10 3 (0.39%) VMS
11 2 (0.26%) Android
11 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.26%) zOS
12 1 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.13%) Rocky
12 1 (0.13%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 158 (20.68%) Cybersecurity
2 152 (19.90%) Cloud Security
3 132 (17.28%) Stakeholder Management
4 128 (16.75%) CI/CD
5 121 (15.84%) Zero Trust
6 114 (14.92%) Continuous Improvement
7 111 (14.53%) Infrastructure as Code
8 107 (14.01%) Incident Response
8 107 (14.01%) Migration
8 107 (14.01%) SIEM
9 106 (13.87%) DevOps
10 104 (13.61%) Change Management
11 95 (12.43%) Problem-Solving
12 90 (11.78%) Security Architecture
13 88 (11.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 82 (10.73%) Identity Access Management
15 79 (10.34%) Security Operations
16 78 (10.21%) Vulnerability Management
17 77 (10.08%) ITIL
18 75 (9.82%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 140 (18.32%) Python
2 86 (11.26%) PowerShell
3 68 (8.90%) Bash
4 32 (4.19%) Bicep
5 23 (3.01%) SQL
6 13 (1.70%) Go
7 10 (1.31%) Java
8 7 (0.92%) Search Processing Language
8 7 (0.92%) Shell Script
9 5 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.52%) ActionScript
10 4 (0.52%) Rust
11 3 (0.39%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.39%) Perl
11 3 (0.39%) VBScript
12 1 (0.13%) Ruby
12 1 (0.13%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 219 (28.66%) Security Cleared
2 154 (20.16%) Cisco Certification
2 154 (20.16%) SC Cleared
3 99 (12.96%) CISSP
4 87 (11.39%) CCNP
5 69 (9.03%) DV Cleared
6 63 (8.25%) Degree
7 48 (6.28%) CCSP
8 45 (5.89%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 44 (5.76%) CCNA
10 43 (5.63%) CISM
11 30 (3.93%) Azure Certification
11 30 (3.93%) CCIE
12 24 (3.14%) AWS Certification
13 16 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
14 12 (1.57%) PMP
15 11 (1.44%) GIAC
15 11 (1.44%) PMI Certification
16 10 (1.31%) CEH
16 10 (1.31%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (7.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 58 (7.59%) NIST
3 27 (3.53%) GDPR
4 26 (3.40%) NCSC
5 23 (3.01%) PCI DSS
6 13 (1.70%) Cyber Essentials
6 13 (1.70%) GRC
7 11 (1.44%) NIST 800
8 8 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 8 (1.05%) SLA
9 7 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 6 (0.79%) QA
11 4 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 3 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.39%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
13 2 (0.26%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.26%) JSP 440
14 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
14 1 (0.13%) ISA99
System Software
1 80 (10.47%) Active Directory
2 56 (7.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (3.93%) Docker
4 19 (2.49%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (2.09%) VMware NSX
6 13 (1.70%) vSphere
7 12 (1.57%) Hyper-V
7 12 (1.57%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (1.05%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (0.65%) Firmware
9 5 (0.65%) Squid
9 5 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
10 3 (0.39%) FreeRADIUS
11 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 2 (0.26%) NFS
11 2 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.13%) Postfix
12 1 (0.13%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.13%) Samba
12 1 (0.13%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 94 (12.30%) Ansible
2 74 (9.69%) Kubernetes
3 45 (5.89%) FortiGate
4 26 (3.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 24 (3.14%) Grafana
6 16 (2.09%) Progress Chef
6 16 (2.09%) Prometheus
7 13 (1.70%) SCCM
8 12 (1.57%) Single Sign-On
9 10 (1.31%) CASB
10 8 (1.05%) QRadar
11 7 (0.92%) Cisco CUCM
11 7 (0.92%) Puppet
11 7 (0.92%) vCenter Server
11 7 (0.92%) VxRail
12 6 (0.79%) Nagios
12 6 (0.79%) WSUS
13 5 (0.65%) Suricata
14 4 (0.52%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.52%) Podman
Vendors
1 228 (29.84%) Cisco
2 153 (20.03%) Microsoft
3 143 (18.72%) Palo Alto
4 78 (10.21%) Fortinet
5 71 (9.29%) VMware
6 67 (8.77%) F5
7 62 (8.12%) Zscaler
8 50 (6.54%) CheckPoint
9 44 (5.76%) Juniper
10 31 (4.06%) SolarWinds
10 31 (4.06%) Splunk
11 28 (3.66%) Google
12 24 (3.14%) ServiceNow
13 20 (2.62%) Aruba
14 19 (2.49%) Citrix
15 15 (1.96%) Meraki
16 14 (1.83%) Blue Coat
17 13 (1.70%) CyberArk
17 13 (1.70%) Tenable
18 12 (1.57%) AlgoSec