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 30 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 148 152 183
Rank change year-on-year +4 +31 -1
Contract jobs citing Network Security 729 468 476
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.74% 1.95% 1.29%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.09% 14.92% 9.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 504 287 333
10th Percentile £400 £385 £363
25th Percentile £447 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £563
Median % change year-on-year - -6.67% -2.17%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £672
90th Percentile £700 £705 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £521 £564
% change year-on-year +0.86% -7.67% -1.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 6 15
10th Percentile £27.20 £80.34 -
25th Percentile £42.13 £80.59 £7.43
Median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £13.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.10% +502.59% -74.10%
75th Percentile £74.00 £81.91 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.05 -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £19.00
% change year-on-year -20.10% +328.16% -63.55%

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 4,030 3,137 4,843
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.59% 13.06% 13.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,496 1,965 2,917
10th Percentile £263 £220 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -3.85%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £602
90th Percentile £675 £675 £694
UK median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 119 388
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.33 £15.87 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.50 £37.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% -6.25% +128.57%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £81.35 £70.20
UK median hourly rate £28.88 £39.66 £40.00
% change year-on-year -27.18% -0.85% +116.22%

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 30 May 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 30 May 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 30 May 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 +6 315 £550 -4.35% 98
North of England +2 162 £498 -0.50% 56
South East -29 103 £520 +6.12% 76
North West +2 93 £498 -1.49% 35
Yorkshire -26 66 £500 +2.04% 16
Midlands -47 49 £450 -14.29% 18
East of England -20 36 £525 -6.67% 17
South West -27 33 £550 - 22
West Midlands -69 31 £435 -17.14% 13
East Midlands -10 17 £638 - 5
North East -22 3 £538 -14.00% 7
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 17 (2.33%) Confluence
2 12 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (0.96%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.27%) Apache
Applications
1 14 (1.92%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.78%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 216 (29.63%) Azure
2 156 (21.40%) AWS
3 91 (12.48%) GCP
4 59 (8.09%) Entra ID
5 26 (3.57%) GitHub
6 25 (3.43%) Azure Sentinel
7 23 (3.16%) Azure DevOps
8 22 (3.02%) GitHub Actions
9 20 (2.74%) Microsoft 365
9 20 (2.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 17 (2.33%) Azure ExpressRoute
10 17 (2.33%) Azure Key Vault
10 17 (2.33%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 15 (2.06%) Serverless
12 14 (1.92%) Akamai
12 14 (1.92%) SaaS
13 13 (1.78%) Azure Monitor
14 12 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
14 12 (1.65%) AWS Direct Connect
14 12 (1.65%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 333 (45.68%) Firewall
2 149 (20.44%) VPN
3 138 (18.93%) WAN
4 104 (14.27%) LAN
5 95 (13.03%) DNS
6 91 (12.48%) BGP
7 78 (10.70%) OSPF
8 72 (9.88%) VLAN
9 66 (9.05%) SD-WAN
10 63 (8.64%) TCP/IP
10 63 (8.64%) Wireless
11 47 (6.45%) MPLS
12 46 (6.31%) DHCP
13 40 (5.49%) SSL
14 34 (4.66%) Cisco ISE
15 31 (4.25%) Cisco ASA
15 31 (4.25%) IPsec
16 28 (3.84%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
16 28 (3.84%) HTTP
17 27 (3.70%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
2 5 (0.69%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.55%) Neo4j
4 3 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.41%) Power BI
5 2 (0.27%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.27%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (0.27%) InfluxDB
5 2 (0.27%) Oracle Database
5 2 (0.27%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.27%) Relational Database
5 2 (0.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.14%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 33 (4.53%) JIRA
2 18 (2.47%) Git
3 17 (2.33%) GitLab
4 16 (2.19%) Jenkins
5 5 (0.69%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (0.55%) Snyk
6 4 (0.55%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.41%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.27%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.14%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.14%) Postman
9 1 (0.14%) SoapUI
General
1 165 (22.63%) Social Skills
2 114 (15.64%) Finance
3 63 (8.64%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (7.13%) Public Sector
5 46 (6.31%) Banking
6 31 (4.25%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (3.29%) Telecoms
8 20 (2.74%) Financial Institution
9 10 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 9 (1.23%) Retail
11 8 (1.10%) Legal
11 8 (1.10%) Manufacturing
12 6 (0.82%) Law
12 6 (0.82%) Local Government
12 6 (0.82%) Military
12 6 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.82%) Police
13 5 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
14 3 (0.41%) Electronics
14 3 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 179 (24.55%) Network Engineer
2 158 (21.67%) Architect
3 95 (13.03%) Security Engineer
4 73 (10.01%) Security Architect
5 69 (9.47%) Senior
6 56 (7.68%) Network Architect
7 48 (6.58%) Network Security Engineer
8 33 (4.53%) Project Manager
9 30 (4.12%) Consultant
10 28 (3.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 28 (3.84%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 25 (3.43%) Lead
12 24 (3.29%) Cloud Engineer
12 24 (3.29%) Network Security Architect
13 21 (2.88%) Senior Network Engineer
13 21 (2.88%) Solutions Architect
14 20 (2.74%) Cloud Architect
14 20 (2.74%) Senior Architect
15 19 (2.61%) Analyst
15 19 (2.61%) Azure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.25%) 802.1X
2 13 (1.78%) LDAP
2 13 (1.78%) SAML
3 7 (0.96%) Kafka
3 7 (0.96%) OAuth
4 6 (0.82%) OpenID
4 6 (0.82%) REST
5 5 (0.69%) CSS
5 5 (0.69%) OAuth2
6 4 (0.55%) ARM Templates
6 4 (0.55%) HTML
7 3 (0.41%) JSON
7 3 (0.41%) Lambda Expressions
7 3 (0.41%) Node.js
7 3 (0.41%) Plotly
7 3 (0.41%) SailPoint
7 3 (0.41%) SLSA
8 2 (0.27%) gRPC
8 2 (0.27%) Keycloak
8 2 (0.27%) Protocol Buffers
Miscellaneous
1 99 (13.58%) Data Centre
2 45 (6.17%) Security Posture
3 43 (5.90%) Cloud Native
4 40 (5.49%) Hybrid Cloud
5 29 (3.98%) PKI
6 24 (3.29%) Onboarding
7 23 (3.16%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 22 (3.02%) Cyber Threat
9 21 (2.88%) Public Cloud
10 20 (2.74%) IoT
11 19 (2.61%) Operational Technology
12 17 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
12 17 (2.33%) Management Information System
13 16 (2.19%) Product Ownership
14 14 (1.92%) Security Operations Centre
15 12 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
16 11 (1.51%) Cyber Security Posture
17 10 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
17 10 (1.37%) Replication
18 9 (1.23%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 65 (8.92%) Windows
2 54 (7.41%) Linux
3 26 (3.57%) Windows Server
4 7 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (0.96%) VMS
5 6 (0.82%) Ubuntu
5 6 (0.82%) Unix
6 5 (0.69%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.55%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.41%) SUSE
9 2 (0.27%) Android
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
10 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 153 (20.99%) Cybersecurity
2 121 (16.60%) Zero Trust
3 114 (15.64%) Cloud Security
4 100 (13.72%) Security Architecture
5 97 (13.31%) CI/CD
6 96 (13.17%) Migration
7 95 (13.03%) SIEM
8 94 (12.89%) DevOps
9 87 (11.93%) Infrastructure as Code
10 80 (10.97%) Continuous Improvement
11 75 (10.29%) Problem-Solving
12 74 (10.15%) Network Segmentation
13 68 (9.33%) Application Security
13 68 (9.33%) High Availability
14 66 (9.05%) Threat Modelling
15 65 (8.92%) Stakeholder Management
16 64 (8.78%) Agile
17 62 (8.50%) Incident Response
18 61 (8.37%) Identity Access Management
19 60 (8.23%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 95 (13.03%) Python
2 61 (8.37%) PowerShell
3 30 (4.12%) Bash
4 21 (2.88%) Bicep
5 20 (2.74%) JavaScript
6 17 (2.33%) SQL
7 9 (1.23%) Kusto Query Language
8 7 (0.96%) Shell Script
9 5 (0.69%) Java
10 4 (0.55%) C
10 4 (0.55%) Go
10 4 (0.55%) PHP
11 3 (0.41%) C++
12 2 (0.27%) Perl
12 2 (0.27%) Ruby
12 2 (0.27%) Rust
13 1 (0.14%) ActionScript
13 1 (0.14%) C#
13 1 (0.14%) C-shell
13 1 (0.14%) Korn
Qualifications
1 224 (30.73%) Security Cleared
2 164 (22.50%) SC Cleared
3 139 (19.07%) Cisco Certification
4 92 (12.62%) CCNP
5 84 (11.52%) CISSP
6 71 (9.74%) DV Cleared
7 55 (7.54%) CCNA
8 53 (7.27%) Degree
9 45 (6.17%) CISM
10 31 (4.25%) CCSP
11 30 (4.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 28 (3.84%) Azure Certification
13 17 (2.33%) CCIE
14 16 (2.19%) GIAC
15 14 (1.92%) AWS Certification
16 12 (1.65%) CEH
17 11 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
17 11 (1.51%) CompTIA Security+
17 11 (1.51%) Computer Science Degree
17 11 (1.51%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (10.01%) NIST
2 54 (7.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 31 (4.25%) GDPR
4 22 (3.02%) PCI DSS
5 17 (2.33%) GRC
6 16 (2.19%) NCSC
7 14 (1.92%) Cyber Essentials
8 11 (1.51%) QA
9 10 (1.37%) SLA
10 9 (1.23%) Actionable Recommendations
11 8 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 8 (1.10%) SOC 2
12 6 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 4 (0.55%) NIST 800
13 4 (0.55%) PMO
13 4 (0.55%) RMADS
14 3 (0.41%) ISA99
15 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
System Software
1 54 (7.41%) Active Directory
1 54 (7.41%) VMware Infrastructure
2 23 (3.16%) VMware NSX
3 20 (2.74%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (2.33%) Docker
5 14 (1.92%) Hyper-V
6 11 (1.51%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (1.23%) vSphere
8 5 (0.69%) Firmware
8 5 (0.69%) Squid
9 4 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.27%) NFS
10 2 (0.27%) Postfix
10 2 (0.27%) Sendmail
10 2 (0.27%) Varnish
10 2 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.14%) KVM
11 1 (0.14%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.14%) RHEV
11 1 (0.14%) Xen
Systems Management
1 103 (14.13%) Terraform
2 67 (9.19%) Ansible
3 57 (7.82%) Kubernetes
4 36 (4.94%) FortiGate
5 16 (2.19%) Single Sign-On
6 14 (1.92%) Nagios
7 13 (1.78%) Grafana
8 11 (1.51%) vCenter Server
9 10 (1.37%) Microsoft Intune
10 9 (1.23%) Microsoft Clustering
11 8 (1.10%) Kibana
12 6 (0.82%) QRadar
13 5 (0.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.69%) CASB
13 5 (0.69%) Prometheus
13 5 (0.69%) Suricata
13 5 (0.69%) WSUS
14 4 (0.55%) Istio
14 4 (0.55%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.55%) Puppet
Vendors
1 211 (28.94%) Cisco
2 120 (16.46%) Palo Alto
3 106 (14.54%) Microsoft
4 68 (9.33%) VMware
5 64 (8.78%) F5
6 55 (7.54%) Fortinet
7 51 (7.00%) Juniper
8 47 (6.45%) Zscaler
9 46 (6.31%) CheckPoint
10 34 (4.66%) ServiceNow
11 26 (3.57%) Splunk
12 25 (3.43%) SolarWinds
13 20 (2.74%) Google
14 19 (2.61%) Citrix
14 19 (2.61%) ForeScout
15 17 (2.33%) Aruba
16 13 (1.78%) Tenable
17 12 (1.65%) SAP
18 11 (1.51%) Meraki
18 11 (1.51%) Okta