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

6 months to
2 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 164 145 180
Rank change year-on-year -19 +35 -12
Contract jobs citing Network Security 769 537 470
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.69% 1.93% 1.40%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.00% 15.56% 11.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 530 325 328
10th Percentile £399 £375 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £650 £625 £667
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £540 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 18 5
10th Percentile £26.20 £45.00 £20.30
25th Percentile £42.13 £58.79 £23.00
Median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.51% +40.30% -6.88%
75th Percentile £74.00 £83.53 £58.75
90th Percentile - £89.50 £94.82
UK median hourly rate £73.00 £80.68 £40.25
% change year-on-year -9.51% +100.43% -39.02%

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 4,272 3,452 4,188
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.38% 12.43% 12.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,589 2,143 2,594
10th Percentile £263 £235 £241
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £494 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.21% -1.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 162 293
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.27
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £20.00
Median hourly rate £27.88 £45.00 £54.88
Median % change year-on-year -38.04% -18.00% +9.75%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.16 £87.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £26.66 £50.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -46.68% +5.26% -5.00%

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 2 August 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 2 August 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 2 August 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 +3 340 £550 - 138
North of England +4 183 £528 +8.87% 43
South East -30 121 £554 +12.96% 74
North West -9 99 £536 +12.84% 30
Yorkshire +4 81 £500 +1.63% 13
Midlands -49 52 £475 -17.39% 27
East of England -11 34 £525 -4.55% 15
West Midlands -74 33 £413 -28.26% 14
East Midlands +3 18 £638 - 13
South West -56 17 £550 -8.33% 23
North East -38 2 £675 +8.00%
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 (2.08%) Microsoft Exchange
2 13 (1.69%) Confluence
3 11 (1.43%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.39%) Apache
5 1 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.13%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.13%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 21 (2.73%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.78%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.39%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.13%) InfoPath
4 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (0.78%) Oracle ERP
1 6 (0.78%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 259 (33.68%) Azure
2 181 (23.54%) AWS
3 103 (13.39%) GCP
4 84 (10.92%) Entra ID
5 33 (4.29%) Microsoft 365
6 31 (4.03%) Azure DevOps
7 29 (3.77%) GitHub
8 26 (3.38%) Azure Sentinel
9 24 (3.12%) Azure Monitor
9 24 (3.12%) Serverless
10 23 (2.99%) SaaS
11 19 (2.47%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 19 (2.47%) GitHub Actions
11 19 (2.47%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 16 (2.08%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 15 (1.95%) OCI
14 14 (1.82%) Akamai
14 14 (1.82%) Azure AKS
15 13 (1.69%) Azure Key Vault
16 12 (1.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 350 (45.51%) Firewall
2 173 (22.50%) VPN
3 163 (21.20%) WAN
4 120 (15.60%) DNS
5 112 (14.56%) LAN
6 88 (11.44%) TCP/IP
7 87 (11.31%) BGP
7 87 (11.31%) Wireless
8 70 (9.10%) VLAN
9 68 (8.84%) SD-WAN
10 67 (8.71%) OSPF
11 61 (7.93%) DHCP
12 45 (5.85%) SSL
13 39 (5.07%) Cisco ISE
13 39 (5.07%) IPsec
13 39 (5.07%) MPLS
14 35 (4.55%) Cisco ASA
15 33 (4.29%) NGFW
16 32 (4.16%) Wi-Fi
17 30 (3.90%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.69%) SQL Server
2 6 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
3 4 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (0.52%) Data Lake
3 4 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.52%) Neo4j
3 4 (0.52%) Power BI
4 3 (0.39%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (0.39%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.26%) Delta Lake
6 1 (0.13%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.13%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.13%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.13%) InfluxDB
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.13%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.13%) Snowflake Schema
6 1 (0.13%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 35 (4.55%) Git
1 35 (4.55%) JIRA
2 22 (2.86%) GitLab
3 16 (2.08%) Jenkins
4 7 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
5 6 (0.78%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (0.52%) MSBuild
6 4 (0.52%) Snyk
6 4 (0.52%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.52%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.39%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.13%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.13%) IBM UrbanCode
8 1 (0.13%) Postman
8 1 (0.13%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.13%) Subversion
General
1 189 (24.58%) Social Skills
2 133 (17.30%) Finance
3 67 (8.71%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (7.80%) Banking
5 48 (6.24%) Public Sector
6 34 (4.42%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (3.12%) Financial Institution
8 20 (2.60%) Telecoms
9 15 (1.95%) Legal
10 13 (1.69%) Retail
11 12 (1.56%) Manufacturing
12 11 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 11 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
13 10 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
14 8 (1.04%) Police
15 6 (0.78%) Automotive
15 6 (0.78%) Law
15 6 (0.78%) Local Government
16 5 (0.65%) Military
17 4 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 208 (27.05%) Network Engineer
2 159 (20.68%) Architect
3 97 (12.61%) Security Engineer
4 92 (11.96%) Senior
5 79 (10.27%) Security Architect
6 61 (7.93%) Network Architect
7 58 (7.54%) Network Security Engineer
8 46 (5.98%) Consultant
9 42 (5.46%) Project Manager
10 39 (5.07%) Senior Network Engineer
11 36 (4.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 34 (4.42%) Lead
13 28 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
14 24 (3.12%) Network Security Architect
15 23 (2.99%) Network Manager
16 21 (2.73%) Analyst
17 19 (2.47%) Security Consultant
17 19 (2.47%) Senior Architect
17 19 (2.47%) Solutions Architect
18 18 (2.34%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (4.55%) 802.1X
2 15 (1.95%) SAML
3 12 (1.56%) REST
4 11 (1.43%) ARM Templates
5 9 (1.17%) Kafka
6 6 (0.78%) NETCONF
7 5 (0.65%) .NET
7 5 (0.65%) CSS
7 5 (0.65%) JSON
8 4 (0.52%) gRPC
8 4 (0.52%) HTML
8 4 (0.52%) Keycloak
8 4 (0.52%) OAuth
8 4 (0.52%) OpenID
8 4 (0.52%) Protocol Buffers
8 4 (0.52%) RESTful
9 3 (0.39%) Lambda Expressions
9 3 (0.39%) ModSecurity
9 3 (0.39%) SailPoint
9 3 (0.39%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 87 (11.31%) Data Centre
2 64 (8.32%) Security Posture
3 44 (5.72%) Cloud Native
4 43 (5.59%) Hybrid Cloud
5 33 (4.29%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 33 (4.29%) Onboarding
6 26 (3.38%) Management Information System
6 26 (3.38%) Operational Technology
7 22 (2.86%) Cyber Threat
8 19 (2.47%) PKI
9 18 (2.34%) Public Cloud
10 17 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
11 16 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
12 15 (1.95%) Product Ownership
12 15 (1.95%) Security Operations Centre
13 14 (1.82%) Linux Command Line
14 12 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
15 10 (1.30%) Cloud Security Posture
15 10 (1.30%) IoT
16 9 (1.17%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 67 (8.71%) Windows
2 65 (8.45%) Linux
3 23 (2.99%) Windows Server
4 14 (1.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.17%) Unix
6 7 (0.91%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.78%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.65%) Mac OS
9 3 (0.39%) Android
9 3 (0.39%) Check Point GAiA
9 3 (0.39%) SUSE
9 3 (0.39%) VMS
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.13%) Rocky
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.13%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 150 (19.51%) Cybersecurity
2 140 (18.21%) Cloud Security
3 118 (15.34%) Zero Trust
4 111 (14.43%) CI/CD
5 106 (13.78%) Continuous Improvement
6 104 (13.52%) DevOps
7 103 (13.39%) SIEM
8 100 (13.00%) Stakeholder Management
9 98 (12.74%) Migration
10 96 (12.48%) Infrastructure as Code
11 93 (12.09%) Change Management
12 86 (11.18%) Security Architecture
13 82 (10.66%) Problem-Solving
14 80 (10.40%) Agile
15 79 (10.27%) Identity Access Management
16 78 (10.14%) Incident Response
17 76 (9.88%) ITIL
18 75 (9.75%) Security Operations
19 74 (9.62%) Threat Modelling
20 73 (9.49%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 95 (12.35%) Python
2 61 (7.93%) PowerShell
3 50 (6.50%) Bash
4 30 (3.90%) Bicep
5 21 (2.73%) SQL
6 17 (2.21%) JavaScript
7 8 (1.04%) Shell Script
8 7 (0.91%) Java
9 4 (0.52%) Perl
9 4 (0.52%) Rust
10 2 (0.26%) Go
10 2 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.26%) Ruby
10 2 (0.26%) Search Processing Language
11 1 (0.13%) ActionScript
11 1 (0.13%) C
11 1 (0.13%) PHP
11 1 (0.13%) VBA
11 1 (0.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 206 (26.79%) Security Cleared
2 141 (18.34%) SC Cleared
3 139 (18.08%) Cisco Certification
4 90 (11.70%) CISSP
5 81 (10.53%) CCNP
6 72 (9.36%) DV Cleared
7 64 (8.32%) Degree
8 53 (6.89%) CCNA
9 52 (6.76%) CISM
10 38 (4.94%) CCSP
11 37 (4.81%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 32 (4.16%) Azure Certification
13 19 (2.47%) AWS Certification
13 19 (2.47%) CCIE
14 14 (1.82%) Computer Science Degree
15 12 (1.56%) CompTIA Security+
15 12 (1.56%) PMP
16 10 (1.30%) JNCIS
17 9 (1.17%) PMI Certification
18 8 (1.04%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (8.97%) NIST
2 58 (7.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 33 (4.29%) GDPR
4 25 (3.25%) NCSC
5 22 (2.86%) PCI DSS
6 15 (1.95%) GRC
6 15 (1.95%) SLA
7 11 (1.43%) QA
8 9 (1.17%) Cyber Essentials
9 8 (1.04%) NIST 800
9 8 (1.04%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 5 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 5 (0.65%) SOC 2
11 4 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 3 (0.39%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.39%) ISA99
12 3 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 3 (0.39%) PMO
13 2 (0.26%) JSP 440
System Software
1 73 (9.49%) Active Directory
2 51 (6.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (3.12%) Docker
4 21 (2.73%) VMware NSX
5 20 (2.60%) Virtual Machines
6 10 (1.30%) vSphere
7 9 (1.17%) Hyper-V
8 8 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.78%) Firmware
10 5 (0.65%) Squid
10 5 (0.65%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.39%) NFS
12 2 (0.26%) Postfix
12 2 (0.26%) Sendmail
12 2 (0.26%) Varnish
12 2 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
13 1 (0.13%) FreeRADIUS
13 1 (0.13%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.13%) ProxySG
13 1 (0.13%) Samba
Systems Management
1 103 (13.39%) Terraform
2 75 (9.75%) Ansible
3 63 (8.19%) Kubernetes
4 41 (5.33%) FortiGate
5 21 (2.73%) Microsoft Intune
6 20 (2.60%) Grafana
7 16 (2.08%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (1.43%) Prometheus
9 9 (1.17%) CASB
9 9 (1.17%) SCCM
10 8 (1.04%) vCenter Server
11 7 (0.91%) Puppet
12 6 (0.78%) Cisco CUCM
12 6 (0.78%) QRadar
13 5 (0.65%) Progress Chef
13 5 (0.65%) Suricata
13 5 (0.65%) WSUS
14 4 (0.52%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.52%) Podman
14 4 (0.52%) systemd
Vendors
1 220 (28.61%) Cisco
2 131 (17.04%) Microsoft
3 122 (15.86%) Palo Alto
4 66 (8.58%) Fortinet
5 65 (8.45%) VMware
6 63 (8.19%) F5
7 57 (7.41%) Zscaler
8 52 (6.76%) Juniper
9 51 (6.63%) CheckPoint
10 32 (4.16%) ServiceNow
11 30 (3.90%) Splunk
12 26 (3.38%) SolarWinds
13 23 (2.99%) Citrix
14 20 (2.60%) Google
15 19 (2.47%) Aruba
16 17 (2.21%) Tenable
17 14 (1.82%) ForeScout
17 14 (1.82%) Infoblox
18 13 (1.69%) CyberArk
18 13 (1.69%) Meraki