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 5 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 168 143 147
Rank change year-on-year -25 +4 +113
Contract jobs citing Network Security 557 487 628
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.67% 1.85% 1.66%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 16.02% 14.31% 11.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 350 306 441
10th Percentile £347 £350 £406
25th Percentile £415 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £575 £626 £650
90th Percentile £676 £731 £745
UK median daily rate £500 £510 £550
% change year-on-year -1.96% -7.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 6 18
10th Percentile £34.30 £17.38 -
25th Percentile £51.44 £22.63 £7.43
Median hourly rate £65.50 £38.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.37% -5.00% +6.67%
75th Percentile £81.56 £46.00 £57.19
90th Percentile £93.88 £48.75 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £65.50 £41.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +59.76% +2.50% +6.67%

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 3,476 3,403 5,349
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.41% 12.95% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,269 1,968 3,237
10th Percentile £204 £213 £205
25th Percentile £356 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £485
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% +3.09% -7.62%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK median daily rate £475 £500 £493
% change year-on-year -5.00% +1.52% -4.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 105 384
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £15.38
25th Percentile £18.97 £20.75 £21.25
Median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% -30.00% +143.90%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £70.00 £75.47
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -8.57% -30.00% +150.00%

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 5 February 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 5 February 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 5 February 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 -20 237 £531 -3.41% 102
North of England -29 113 £475 -5.00% 28
South East -10 76 £446 -15.05% 65
North West -2 71 £481 -4.47% 19
Midlands -31 61 £500 -14.13% 34
West Midlands -9 53 £500 -14.13% 28
Yorkshire -38 52 £350 -29.29% 8
South West -16 30 £535 +2.39% 26
East of England -19 25 £475 -14.80% 21
East Midlands -28 8 £442 +92.28% 6
North East -11 2 £475 - 1
South Coast - 2 - -
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 11 (1.97%) Confluence
2 5 (0.90%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (0.90%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.72%) Apache
4 1 (0.18%) IIS
4 1 (0.18%) nginx
4 1 (0.18%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 18 (3.23%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.97%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.18%) Windchill
Cloud Services
1 150 (26.93%) Azure
2 108 (19.39%) AWS
3 51 (9.16%) GCP
4 31 (5.57%) Entra ID
5 25 (4.49%) GitHub
6 23 (4.13%) GitHub Actions
6 23 (4.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 20 (3.59%) Azure DevOps
8 19 (3.41%) Amazon S3
9 18 (3.23%) Microsoft 365
10 17 (3.05%) Azure Key Vault
11 15 (2.69%) Amazon EC2
11 15 (2.69%) Azure Sentinel
12 14 (2.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 14 (2.51%) Serverless
13 11 (1.97%) Amazon ELB
13 11 (1.97%) AWS CloudFormation
13 11 (1.97%) Azure Monitor
13 11 (1.97%) Google Workspace
14 10 (1.80%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 274 (49.19%) Firewall
2 118 (21.18%) VPN
3 89 (15.98%) WAN
4 83 (14.90%) DNS
5 68 (12.21%) LAN
6 63 (11.31%) BGP
7 53 (9.52%) TCP/IP
8 47 (8.44%) OSPF
8 47 (8.44%) VLAN
9 41 (7.36%) SSL
10 36 (6.46%) SD-WAN
11 35 (6.28%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 32 (5.75%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 31 (5.57%) Wireless
14 30 (5.39%) DMZ
15 24 (4.31%) Cisco ASA
15 24 (4.31%) MPLS
16 20 (3.59%) Internet
17 18 (3.23%) DHCP
17 18 (3.23%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
1 4 (0.72%) InfluxDB
1 4 (0.72%) Relational Database
2 3 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (0.36%) Data Lake
3 2 (0.36%) Oracle Database
3 2 (0.36%) Power BI
3 2 (0.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 1 (0.18%) Amazon Athena
4 1 (0.18%) Redis
4 1 (0.18%) SQL Server
4 1 (0.18%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 25 (4.49%) Jenkins
2 20 (3.59%) GitLab
3 16 (2.87%) Git
4 12 (2.15%) JIRA
5 3 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
6 1 (0.18%) Subversion
General
1 167 (29.98%) Social Skills
2 85 (15.26%) Analytical Skills
3 67 (12.03%) Finance
4 48 (8.62%) Public Sector
5 36 (6.46%) Banking
6 23 (4.13%) Documentation Skills
6 23 (4.13%) Telecoms
7 13 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (2.33%) Investment Banking
8 8 (1.44%) Financial Institution
8 8 (1.44%) Military
9 7 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.08%) Legal
10 6 (1.08%) Pharmaceutical
11 5 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (0.90%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.72%) Local Government
12 4 (0.72%) Marketing
12 4 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.54%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 115 (20.65%) Network Engineer
2 103 (18.49%) Architect
3 83 (14.90%) Security Engineer
4 56 (10.05%) Security Architect
5 44 (7.90%) Network Architect
6 43 (7.72%) Senior
7 34 (6.10%) Network Security Engineer
8 29 (5.21%) Analyst
9 24 (4.31%) Network Security Architect
10 20 (3.59%) Administrator
11 19 (3.41%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 18 (3.23%) Security Analyst
13 17 (3.05%) Cybersecurity Engineer
13 17 (3.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 16 (2.87%) Cloud Engineer
14 16 (2.87%) SIEM Engineer
15 15 (2.69%) IT Support
15 15 (2.69%) Lead
15 15 (2.69%) Operations Engineer
16 14 (2.51%) Wintel Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.05%) 802.1X
2 12 (2.15%) LDAP
3 9 (1.62%) SAML
4 8 (1.44%) .NET
4 8 (1.44%) Node.js
5 5 (0.90%) .NET Core
5 5 (0.90%) AngularJS
5 5 (0.90%) Elastic Stack
5 5 (0.90%) OAuth
5 5 (0.90%) OAuth2
5 5 (0.90%) OpenID
5 5 (0.90%) PyTorch
5 5 (0.90%) RabbitMQ
5 5 (0.90%) React
5 5 (0.90%) TensorFlow
6 4 (0.72%) ARM Templates
7 3 (0.54%) HTML
7 3 (0.54%) REST
8 2 (0.36%) CSS
8 2 (0.36%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 71 (12.75%) Data Centre
2 32 (5.75%) Security Posture
3 31 (5.57%) Hybrid Cloud
3 31 (5.57%) PKI
4 27 (4.85%) Cloud Native
5 26 (4.67%) Management Information System
6 17 (3.05%) Onboarding
6 17 (3.05%) Public Cloud
7 16 (2.87%) Security Operations Centre
8 15 (2.69%) Cyber Security Posture
9 14 (2.51%) Analytical Mindset
9 14 (2.51%) Cyber Threat
9 14 (2.51%) Operational Technology
10 13 (2.33%) IoT
11 11 (1.97%) Product Ownership
12 10 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
12 10 (1.80%) Virtual Team
13 8 (1.44%) CSOC
13 8 (1.44%) SCADA
14 7 (1.26%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 79 (14.18%) Windows
2 65 (11.67%) Linux
3 28 (5.03%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.44%) VMS
5 6 (1.08%) Ubuntu
5 6 (1.08%) Unix
6 4 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.54%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.18%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (24.96%) Cybersecurity
2 104 (18.67%) Problem-Solving
3 94 (16.88%) SIEM
4 82 (14.72%) CI/CD
5 79 (14.18%) Incident Response
6 78 (14.00%) DevOps
7 77 (13.82%) Cloud Security
8 76 (13.64%) Infrastructure as Code
9 73 (13.11%) Zero Trust
10 65 (11.67%) Security Architecture
11 63 (11.31%) Migration
12 58 (10.41%) Change Management
13 52 (9.34%) Continuous Improvement
14 49 (8.80%) Load Balancing
14 49 (8.80%) Network Segmentation
15 48 (8.62%) Agile
16 47 (8.44%) Identity Access Management
16 47 (8.44%) Security Operations
17 43 (7.72%) Vulnerability Management
18 42 (7.54%) Network Architecture
Programming Languages
1 109 (19.57%) Python
2 66 (11.85%) PowerShell
3 30 (5.39%) Bash
4 18 (3.23%) SQL
5 16 (2.87%) Bicep
6 14 (2.51%) Kusto Query Language
7 13 (2.33%) JavaScript
8 10 (1.80%) Java
9 7 (1.26%) Go
10 5 (0.90%) C
10 5 (0.90%) C#
10 5 (0.90%) C++
10 5 (0.90%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.54%) Perl
11 3 (0.54%) PHP
12 1 (0.18%) ActionScript
12 1 (0.18%) C-shell
12 1 (0.18%) Korn
12 1 (0.18%) Rust
12 1 (0.18%) VBA
Qualifications
1 189 (33.93%) Security Cleared
2 134 (24.06%) SC Cleared
3 92 (16.52%) Cisco Certification
4 73 (13.11%) CCNP
4 73 (13.11%) CISSP
5 62 (11.13%) DV Cleared
6 42 (7.54%) Degree
7 34 (6.10%) CISM
8 32 (5.75%) CCNA
9 29 (5.21%) GIAC
10 25 (4.49%) CCIE
10 25 (4.49%) CEH
11 18 (3.23%) CompTIA Security+
12 17 (3.05%) Azure Certification
13 14 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
14 12 (2.15%) AWS Certification
15 10 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
15 10 (1.80%) JNCIS
16 9 (1.62%) GSEC
16 9 (1.62%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (11.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 60 (10.77%) NIST
3 41 (7.36%) GDPR
4 28 (5.03%) PCI DSS
5 22 (3.95%) Cyber Essentials
6 14 (2.51%) NCSC
7 12 (2.15%) GRC
8 8 (1.44%) SOC 2
9 7 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 7 (1.26%) HIPAA
10 6 (1.08%) SLA
11 5 (0.90%) Actionable Recommendations
11 5 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 4 (0.72%) JSP 440
12 4 (0.72%) RMADS
13 3 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 3 (0.54%) PMO
14 2 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 2 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 2 (0.36%) PSD2
System Software
1 44 (7.90%) VMware Infrastructure
2 38 (6.82%) Active Directory
3 31 (5.57%) Docker
4 14 (2.51%) VMware NSX
5 9 (1.62%) Hyper-V
5 9 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.72%) Firmware
7 4 (0.72%) ProxySG
7 4 (0.72%) vSphere
8 3 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.36%) KVM
9 2 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.18%) RHEV
10 1 (0.18%) Xen
10 1 (0.18%) XenApp
10 1 (0.18%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 101 (18.13%) Terraform
2 59 (10.59%) Ansible
3 40 (7.18%) Kubernetes
4 20 (3.59%) FortiGate
5 13 (2.33%) Kibana
5 13 (2.33%) Nagios
6 10 (1.80%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (1.62%) QRadar
7 9 (1.62%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.26%) Grafana
8 7 (1.26%) Prometheus
9 6 (1.08%) Microsoft Clustering
9 6 (1.08%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.72%) Progress Chef
10 4 (0.72%) Puppet
11 3 (0.54%) CASB
11 3 (0.54%) Icinga
11 3 (0.54%) Istio
11 3 (0.54%) SCCM
11 3 (0.54%) SCOM
Vendors
1 147 (26.39%) Cisco
2 109 (19.57%) Palo Alto
3 99 (17.77%) Microsoft
4 77 (13.82%) F5
5 53 (9.52%) VMware
6 52 (9.34%) CheckPoint
7 44 (7.90%) Fortinet
8 43 (7.72%) Juniper
9 30 (5.39%) Splunk
9 30 (5.39%) Zscaler
10 26 (4.67%) Google
11 22 (3.95%) SolarWinds
12 18 (3.23%) Meraki
13 17 (3.05%) ServiceNow
14 14 (2.51%) Databricks
15 13 (2.33%) FireEye
15 13 (2.33%) Tanium
16 12 (2.15%) Tenable
17 10 (1.80%) Aruba
17 10 (1.80%) CrowdStrike