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

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 167 164 163
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -8
Contract jobs citing Network Security 775 472 505
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.68% 1.68% 1.56%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 18.01% 14.48% 12.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 507 278 326
10th Percentile £400 £364 £363
25th Percentile £463 £442 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £533 £538
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% -1.02% -2.18%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £538 £526
% change year-on-year +2.33% +2.23% -4.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 17 7
10th Percentile £27.00 £45.00 £28.40
25th Percentile £62.81 £55.00 £38.75
Median hourly rate £70.63 £70.16 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.66% +40.32% -31.03%
75th Percentile £73.94 £85.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £97.00 £82.79
UK median hourly rate £70.63 £70.16 £45.00
% change year-on-year +0.66% +55.91% -37.93%

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 4,303 3,259 3,927
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.30% 11.61% 12.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,537 2,076 2,255
10th Percentile £261 £216 £237
25th Percentile £400 £357 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -3.75% -
75th Percentile £600 £588 £608
90th Percentile £688 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 392 169 155
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £16.30
25th Percentile £21.33 £20.18 £26.25
Median hourly rate £38.62 £34.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.60% -40.87% +1.79%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £94.75 £80.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £35.00 £48.56
% change year-on-year -7.14% -27.92% -14.04%

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 11 October 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 11 October 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 11 October 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 +3 334 £550 - 305
North of England +11 203 £545 +11.85% 75
North West -6 111 £550 +15.79% 44
South East -28 92 £559 +19.18% 124
Yorkshire +18 88 £540 +9.76% 24
Midlands -53 54 £475 -7.77% 58
West Midlands -63 42 £450 -12.62% 30
East of England -10 38 £515 +3.00% 29
South West -28 32 £675 +5.47% 42
East Midlands -1 12 £500 - 28
North East - 3 £680 - 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 (2.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 16 (2.06%) SharePoint
3 12 (1.55%) Confluence
4 4 (0.52%) Apache
4 4 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.26%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.26%) NetWeaver
5 2 (0.26%) nginx
6 1 (0.13%) CMS
6 1 (0.13%) IIS
6 1 (0.13%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 16 (2.06%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.77%) MS Visio
3 5 (0.65%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.13%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 6 (0.77%) Oracle ERP
2 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 264 (34.06%) Azure
2 183 (23.61%) AWS
3 99 (12.77%) GCP
4 95 (12.26%) Entra ID
5 52 (6.71%) Microsoft 365
6 42 (5.42%) GitHub
7 37 (4.77%) Azure DevOps
8 36 (4.65%) Azure Monitor
9 32 (4.13%) Serverless
10 25 (3.23%) SaaS
11 23 (2.97%) Azure Sentinel
12 21 (2.71%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 19 (2.45%) OCI
14 18 (2.32%) GitHub Actions
15 17 (2.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 17 (2.19%) Amazon EKS
15 17 (2.19%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 17 (2.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 16 (2.06%) AWS Direct Connect
16 16 (2.06%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 363 (46.84%) Firewall
2 185 (23.87%) VPN
3 167 (21.55%) WAN
4 137 (17.68%) DNS
5 110 (14.19%) LAN
6 93 (12.00%) Wireless
7 89 (11.48%) TCP/IP
8 86 (11.10%) BGP
9 70 (9.03%) DHCP
10 62 (8.00%) SD-WAN
10 62 (8.00%) VLAN
11 59 (7.61%) OSPF
12 54 (6.97%) SSL
13 45 (5.81%) MPLS
14 35 (4.52%) Cisco ASA
14 35 (4.52%) Cisco ISE
15 34 (4.39%) IPsec
16 32 (4.13%) Wi-Fi
17 29 (3.74%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 29 (3.74%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (1.42%) SQL Server
2 8 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
3 6 (0.77%) BigQuery
4 5 (0.65%) Delta Lake
4 5 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.52%) Neo4j
5 4 (0.52%) Power BI
6 3 (0.39%) Azure SQL Database
6 3 (0.39%) Data Lake
6 3 (0.39%) PostgreSQL
7 2 (0.26%) Relational Database
7 2 (0.26%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.13%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.13%) Big Data
8 1 (0.13%) DynamoDB
8 1 (0.13%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.13%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.13%) Qlik Sense
8 1 (0.13%) SAP Data Services
8 1 (0.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 39 (5.03%) Git
2 30 (3.87%) GitLab
2 30 (3.87%) Jenkins
3 24 (3.10%) JIRA
4 7 (0.90%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (0.52%) Claude Code
5 4 (0.52%) MSBuild
5 4 (0.52%) SonarQube
5 4 (0.52%) Visual Studio
6 3 (0.39%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.26%) IBM UrbanCode
8 1 (0.13%) Browser DevTools
8 1 (0.13%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.13%) Postman
8 1 (0.13%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.13%) Subversion
General
1 224 (28.90%) Social Skills
2 157 (20.26%) Finance
3 84 (10.84%) Analytical Skills
4 66 (8.52%) Banking
5 41 (5.29%) Public Sector
6 35 (4.52%) Documentation Skills
7 26 (3.35%) Legal
8 22 (2.84%) Telecoms
9 18 (2.32%) Financial Institution
10 15 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
11 14 (1.81%) Retail
12 13 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 13 (1.68%) Manufacturing
13 11 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
15 7 (0.90%) Local Government
15 7 (0.90%) Military
16 6 (0.77%) Automotive
16 6 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
16 6 (0.77%) Police
Job Titles
1 210 (27.10%) Network Engineer
2 131 (16.90%) Architect
3 109 (14.06%) Security Engineer
4 95 (12.26%) Senior
5 69 (8.90%) Security Architect
6 61 (7.87%) Consultant
6 61 (7.87%) Network Security Engineer
7 55 (7.10%) Network Architect
8 44 (5.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 43 (5.55%) Cloud Engineer
10 41 (5.29%) Senior Network Engineer
11 39 (5.03%) Project Manager
12 34 (4.39%) Lead
13 30 (3.87%) Security Consultant
14 29 (3.74%) Network Security Architect
15 25 (3.23%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
16 23 (2.97%) Analyst
17 21 (2.71%) Network Manager
18 20 (2.58%) Solutions Architect
19 19 (2.45%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 138 (17.81%) Terraform
2 37 (4.77%) 802.1X
3 22 (2.84%) REST
4 16 (2.06%) ARM Templates
5 13 (1.68%) Kafka
5 13 (1.68%) SAML
6 8 (1.03%) NETCONF
7 7 (0.90%) JSON
7 7 (0.90%) LDAP
8 6 (0.77%) gRPC
8 6 (0.77%) Keycloak
8 6 (0.77%) OAuth
8 6 (0.77%) OpenID
8 6 (0.77%) Software Packaging
8 6 (0.77%) YAML
9 5 (0.65%) Azure Blueprints
9 5 (0.65%) SLSA
10 4 (0.52%) Protocol Buffers
10 4 (0.52%) RESTful
10 4 (0.52%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 105 (13.55%) Data Centre
2 71 (9.16%) Security Posture
3 51 (6.58%) Onboarding
4 45 (5.81%) Cloud Native
5 39 (5.03%) Hybrid Cloud
6 38 (4.90%) Management Information System
7 34 (4.39%) Cyber Threat
8 32 (4.13%) Operational Technology
9 27 (3.48%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 24 (3.10%) PKI
11 21 (2.71%) Self-Motivation
12 19 (2.45%) Public Cloud
12 19 (2.45%) Security Operations Centre
13 18 (2.32%) Cloud Security Posture
14 17 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
15 14 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
16 12 (1.55%) Replication
17 11 (1.42%) Linux Command Line
18 10 (1.29%) Video Conferencing
19 9 (1.16%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 98 (12.65%) Windows
2 83 (10.71%) Linux
3 45 (5.81%) Windows Server
4 20 (2.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 12 (1.55%) Unix
6 9 (1.16%) Windows 10
7 8 (1.03%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.39%) Check Point GAiA
8 3 (0.39%) macOS
8 3 (0.39%) Oracle Linux
8 3 (0.39%) Rocky
9 2 (0.26%) Android
9 2 (0.26%) SUSE
9 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (0.26%) zOS
10 1 (0.13%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 175 (22.58%) Cybersecurity
2 160 (20.65%) Cloud Security
3 139 (17.94%) CI/CD
4 137 (17.68%) Stakeholder Management
5 128 (16.52%) Zero Trust
6 126 (16.26%) Infrastructure as Code
7 115 (14.84%) Continuous Improvement
8 112 (14.45%) DevOps
9 111 (14.32%) Incident Response
10 110 (14.19%) Migration
11 107 (13.81%) SIEM
12 103 (13.29%) Change Management
12 103 (13.29%) Problem-Solving
13 93 (12.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 88 (11.35%) Security Architecture
15 84 (10.84%) Identity Access Management
16 83 (10.71%) Security Operations
16 83 (10.71%) Vulnerability Management
17 82 (10.58%) Agile
18 79 (10.19%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 155 (20.00%) Python
2 91 (11.74%) PowerShell
3 74 (9.55%) Bash
4 34 (4.39%) Bicep
5 29 (3.74%) SQL
6 14 (1.81%) Go
7 13 (1.68%) Java
8 7 (0.90%) ActionScript
8 7 (0.90%) Search Processing Language
8 7 (0.90%) Shell Script
9 6 (0.77%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.52%) Rust
11 3 (0.39%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.39%) Perl
11 3 (0.39%) VBScript
12 1 (0.13%) ABAP
12 1 (0.13%) C#
12 1 (0.13%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 228 (29.42%) Security Cleared
2 154 (19.87%) Cisco Certification
2 154 (19.87%) SC Cleared
3 98 (12.65%) CISSP
4 90 (11.61%) CCNP
5 79 (10.19%) DV Cleared
6 60 (7.74%) Degree
7 45 (5.81%) CCNA
7 45 (5.81%) CCSP
8 42 (5.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 41 (5.29%) CISM
10 34 (4.39%) CCIE
11 25 (3.23%) Azure Certification
12 24 (3.10%) AWS Certification
13 17 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
14 11 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
14 11 (1.42%) JNCIP
14 11 (1.42%) PMI Certification
14 11 (1.42%) PMP
15 10 (1.29%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (8.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 61 (7.87%) NIST
3 32 (4.13%) GDPR
4 30 (3.87%) PCI DSS
5 26 (3.35%) NCSC
6 16 (2.06%) Cyber Essentials
7 13 (1.68%) GRC
8 11 (1.42%) NIST 800
9 9 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 7 (0.90%) QA
11 6 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.77%) SLA
12 4 (0.52%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 4 (0.52%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 3 (0.39%) Data Quality
13 3 (0.39%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 2 (0.26%) JSP 440
15 1 (0.13%) Accessibility
15 1 (0.13%) GLBA
System Software
1 85 (10.97%) Active Directory
2 55 (7.10%) VMware Infrastructure
3 33 (4.26%) Docker
4 16 (2.06%) Virtual Machines
5 15 (1.94%) VMware NSX
6 13 (1.68%) vSphere
7 10 (1.29%) Hyper-V
8 8 (1.03%) Virtual Desktop
8 8 (1.03%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.65%) Squid
9 5 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
10 4 (0.52%) Firmware
10 4 (0.52%) FreeRADIUS
11 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 2 (0.26%) NFS
11 2 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
12 1 (0.13%) OpenSSH
12 1 (0.13%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.13%) Samba
Systems Management
1 98 (12.65%) Ansible
2 74 (9.55%) Kubernetes
3 44 (5.68%) FortiGate
4 32 (4.13%) Microsoft Intune
5 29 (3.74%) Grafana
6 20 (2.58%) Prometheus
7 18 (2.32%) Progress Chef
8 15 (1.94%) SCCM
9 11 (1.42%) CASB
9 11 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
10 9 (1.16%) Nagios
11 8 (1.03%) QRadar
12 7 (0.90%) Cisco CUCM
12 7 (0.90%) Puppet
13 5 (0.65%) Suricata
14 4 (0.52%) Kustomize
14 4 (0.52%) Podman
14 4 (0.52%) systemd
14 4 (0.52%) VxRail
15 3 (0.39%) McAfee ePO
Vendors
1 231 (29.81%) Cisco
2 160 (20.65%) Microsoft
3 144 (18.58%) Palo Alto
4 82 (10.58%) Fortinet
5 70 (9.03%) VMware
6 69 (8.90%) F5
7 59 (7.61%) Zscaler
8 50 (6.45%) CheckPoint
9 41 (5.29%) Juniper
10 33 (4.26%) SolarWinds
11 32 (4.13%) Google
12 31 (4.00%) Splunk
13 26 (3.35%) ServiceNow
14 23 (2.97%) Aruba
15 16 (2.06%) Meraki
16 14 (1.81%) Citrix
16 14 (1.81%) Oracle
17 12 (1.55%) AlgoSec
17 12 (1.55%) Blue Coat
17 12 (1.55%) CyberArk