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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 147 150 181
Rank change year-on-year +3 +31 +1
Contract jobs citing Network Security 734 460 470
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.75% 1.91% 1.28%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.22% 14.73% 9.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 511 285 325
10th Percentile £400 £378 £363
25th Percentile £447 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £624 £625 £672
90th Percentile £700 £700 £775
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 7 15
10th Percentile £27.20 £80.34 -
25th Percentile £42.13 £80.84 £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 £83.05 £41.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £90.40 -
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £19.00
% change year-on-year -20.10% +328.16% -65.45%

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 4,028 3,123 4,797
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.60% 12.97% 13.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,492 1,954 2,872
10th Percentile £263 £220 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £498 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.46% -0.46% -3.85%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £601
90th Percentile £675 £675 £693
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £495
% change year-on-year +4.17% -3.03% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 263 122 386
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.25 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.33 £16.30 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.50 £39.66 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.05% -0.85% +135.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £82.03 £70.66
UK median hourly rate £28.96 £41.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -30.22% +3.75% +119.30%

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 June 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 June 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 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
London +3 316 £550 -4.35% 129
North of England +6 166 £500 - 68
South East -26 105 £520 +6.12% 80
North West +12 93 £498 -1.49% 42
Yorkshire -10 70 £500 +2.04% 20
Midlands -38 48 £450 -18.18% 39
East of England -18 36 £525 -6.67% 27
South West -25 33 £550 - 29
West Midlands -56 30 £435 -20.91% 25
East Midlands -11 17 £638 - 14
North East -26 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 16 (2.18%) Confluence
2 13 (1.77%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (0.95%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.27%) Apache
5 1 (0.14%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 15 (2.04%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.77%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 217 (29.56%) Azure
2 158 (21.53%) AWS
3 93 (12.67%) GCP
4 60 (8.17%) Entra ID
5 25 (3.41%) Azure Sentinel
5 25 (3.41%) GitHub
6 22 (3.00%) Azure DevOps
7 21 (2.86%) GitHub Actions
7 21 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
7 21 (2.86%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 17 (2.32%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 17 (2.32%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 17 (2.32%) SaaS
9 16 (2.18%) Azure Key Vault
9 16 (2.18%) Serverless
10 14 (1.91%) Akamai
11 13 (1.77%) AWS CloudFormation
12 12 (1.63%) AWS Direct Connect
12 12 (1.63%) Azure Monitor
13 11 (1.50%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 333 (45.37%) Firewall
2 146 (19.89%) VPN
3 135 (18.39%) WAN
4 102 (13.90%) LAN
5 95 (12.94%) DNS
6 88 (11.99%) BGP
7 76 (10.35%) OSPF
8 73 (9.95%) VLAN
9 65 (8.86%) SD-WAN
10 64 (8.72%) TCP/IP
10 64 (8.72%) Wireless
11 46 (6.27%) DHCP
12 44 (5.99%) MPLS
13 41 (5.59%) SSL
14 35 (4.77%) Cisco ISE
15 31 (4.22%) Cisco ASA
16 30 (4.09%) HTTP
16 30 (4.09%) IPsec
17 26 (3.54%) NGFW
18 24 (3.27%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
2 5 (0.68%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (0.54%) Neo4j
4 3 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
4 3 (0.41%) Power BI
5 2 (0.27%) Data Lake
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
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 33 (4.50%) JIRA
2 19 (2.59%) GitLab
3 18 (2.45%) Git
4 17 (2.32%) Jenkins
5 5 (0.68%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (0.54%) Snyk
6 4 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.41%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.41%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.14%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.14%) Postman
8 1 (0.14%) SoapUI
General
1 168 (22.89%) Social Skills
2 117 (15.94%) Finance
3 65 (8.86%) Analytical Skills
4 53 (7.22%) Public Sector
5 47 (6.40%) Banking
6 31 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
7 22 (3.00%) Telecoms
8 20 (2.72%) Financial Institution
9 10 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 10 (1.36%) Retail
10 9 (1.23%) Legal
11 7 (0.95%) Manufacturing
12 6 (0.82%) Law
12 6 (0.82%) Local Government
12 6 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.82%) Police
13 5 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.68%) Military
14 3 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
15 2 (0.27%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 181 (24.66%) Network Engineer
2 158 (21.53%) Architect
3 97 (13.22%) Security Engineer
4 73 (9.95%) Security Architect
5 70 (9.54%) Senior
6 55 (7.49%) Network Architect
7 50 (6.81%) Network Security Engineer
8 33 (4.50%) Project Manager
9 30 (4.09%) Consultant
10 28 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 28 (3.81%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 26 (3.54%) Lead
12 24 (3.27%) Cloud Engineer
13 23 (3.13%) Network Security Architect
14 21 (2.86%) Senior Network Engineer
14 21 (2.86%) Solutions Architect
15 20 (2.72%) Analyst
15 20 (2.72%) Cloud Architect
15 20 (2.72%) Senior Architect
16 19 (2.59%) Azure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (4.36%) 802.1X
2 13 (1.77%) LDAP
2 13 (1.77%) SAML
3 8 (1.09%) Kafka
3 8 (1.09%) REST
4 7 (0.95%) OAuth
5 6 (0.82%) CSS
5 6 (0.82%) OpenID
6 5 (0.68%) HTML
6 5 (0.68%) OAuth2
7 4 (0.54%) ARM Templates
8 3 (0.41%) gRPC
8 3 (0.41%) Keycloak
8 3 (0.41%) Lambda Expressions
8 3 (0.41%) Plotly
8 3 (0.41%) Protocol Buffers
8 3 (0.41%) RESTful
8 3 (0.41%) SailPoint
8 3 (0.41%) SLSA
9 2 (0.27%) AWS CDK
Miscellaneous
1 100 (13.62%) Data Centre
2 49 (6.68%) Security Posture
3 44 (5.99%) Cloud Native
4 40 (5.45%) Hybrid Cloud
5 29 (3.95%) PKI
6 25 (3.41%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 24 (3.27%) Onboarding
8 22 (3.00%) Cyber Threat
9 21 (2.86%) Public Cloud
10 19 (2.59%) Management Information System
10 19 (2.59%) Operational Technology
11 18 (2.45%) Product Ownership
11 18 (2.45%) Security Operations Centre
12 17 (2.32%) Data Protection Act
12 17 (2.32%) IoT
13 12 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
14 11 (1.50%) Cyber Security Posture
15 10 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
15 10 (1.36%) Replication
16 9 (1.23%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 63 (8.58%) Windows
2 56 (7.63%) Linux
3 26 (3.54%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (0.95%) VMS
6 6 (0.82%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.68%) Unix
7 5 (0.68%) Windows 10
8 4 (0.54%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.41%) SUSE
10 2 (0.27%) Android
11 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 159 (21.66%) Cybersecurity
2 121 (16.49%) Zero Trust
3 117 (15.94%) Cloud Security
4 101 (13.76%) SIEM
5 99 (13.49%) CI/CD
6 98 (13.35%) Security Architecture
7 95 (12.94%) Migration
8 94 (12.81%) DevOps
9 90 (12.26%) Infrastructure as Code
10 84 (11.44%) Continuous Improvement
11 75 (10.22%) Network Segmentation
12 74 (10.08%) Problem-Solving
13 69 (9.40%) Application Security
14 68 (9.26%) High Availability
14 68 (9.26%) Threat Modelling
15 66 (8.99%) Incident Response
15 66 (8.99%) Stakeholder Management
16 64 (8.72%) Agile
17 62 (8.45%) Security Operations
18 61 (8.31%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 93 (12.67%) Python
2 60 (8.17%) PowerShell
3 31 (4.22%) Bash
4 20 (2.72%) Bicep
4 20 (2.72%) JavaScript
5 17 (2.32%) SQL
6 9 (1.23%) Kusto Query Language
7 8 (1.09%) Shell Script
8 6 (0.82%) Java
9 4 (0.54%) C
9 4 (0.54%) PHP
10 3 (0.41%) C++
10 3 (0.41%) Rust
11 2 (0.27%) Go
11 2 (0.27%) Perl
11 2 (0.27%) Ruby
12 1 (0.14%) ActionScript
12 1 (0.14%) VBA
Qualifications
1 229 (31.20%) Security Cleared
2 168 (22.89%) SC Cleared
3 135 (18.39%) Cisco Certification
4 88 (11.99%) CCNP
5 86 (11.72%) CISSP
6 75 (10.22%) DV Cleared
7 54 (7.36%) CCNA
7 54 (7.36%) Degree
8 47 (6.40%) CISM
9 31 (4.22%) CCSP
10 30 (4.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 28 (3.81%) Azure Certification
12 17 (2.32%) GIAC
13 16 (2.18%) CCIE
14 15 (2.04%) AWS Certification
15 13 (1.77%) CEH
16 12 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
16 12 (1.63%) CompTIA Security+
17 11 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
17 11 (1.50%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (9.81%) NIST
2 57 (7.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 32 (4.36%) GDPR
4 24 (3.27%) PCI DSS
5 18 (2.45%) NCSC
6 16 (2.18%) Cyber Essentials
6 16 (2.18%) GRC
7 11 (1.50%) QA
8 10 (1.36%) SLA
9 9 (1.23%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 8 (1.09%) SOC 2
11 6 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 4 (0.54%) NIST 800
13 4 (0.54%) PMO
13 4 (0.54%) RMADS
14 3 (0.41%) ISA99
15 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
System Software
1 54 (7.36%) Active Directory
1 54 (7.36%) VMware Infrastructure
2 22 (3.00%) VMware NSX
3 21 (2.86%) Virtual Machines
4 18 (2.45%) Docker
5 14 (1.91%) Hyper-V
6 11 (1.50%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (1.23%) vSphere
8 5 (0.68%) Firmware
8 5 (0.68%) Squid
9 4 (0.54%) 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 (14.03%) Terraform
2 69 (9.40%) Ansible
3 59 (8.04%) Kubernetes
4 36 (4.90%) FortiGate
5 16 (2.18%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (2.04%) Grafana
7 14 (1.91%) Nagios
8 11 (1.50%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (1.50%) vCenter Server
9 9 (1.23%) Microsoft Clustering
10 8 (1.09%) Kibana
11 7 (0.95%) Prometheus
12 6 (0.82%) QRadar
13 5 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (0.68%) CASB
13 5 (0.68%) Puppet
13 5 (0.68%) Suricata
13 5 (0.68%) WSUS
14 4 (0.54%) Istio
14 4 (0.54%) Kustomize
Vendors
1 211 (28.75%) Cisco
2 116 (15.80%) Palo Alto
3 107 (14.58%) Microsoft
4 67 (9.13%) VMware
5 60 (8.17%) F5
6 56 (7.63%) Fortinet
7 47 (6.40%) CheckPoint
7 47 (6.40%) Juniper
8 46 (6.27%) Zscaler
9 34 (4.63%) ServiceNow
10 27 (3.68%) Splunk
11 25 (3.41%) SolarWinds
12 20 (2.72%) Google
13 19 (2.59%) Citrix
13 19 (2.59%) ForeScout
14 17 (2.32%) Aruba
15 15 (2.04%) Tenable
16 12 (1.63%) SAP
17 11 (1.50%) CyberArk
17 11 (1.50%) Okta